ENEMIES

BY

DESIGN
Inventing the W a r o n Te r r o r i s m GREG FELTON

Enemies by Design:
Inventing the War on Terrorism
Copyright by Greg Felton All Rights Reserved and Published by Progressive Press, PO Box 126, Joshua Tree, Calif. 92252, under its Banned Books imprint www.ProgressivePress.com Length: 173,000 words ISBN 0-930852-56-7 EAN 978-0930852-566 First Printing: May 2005 Second Printing: April 2008 Printed in Malaysia Topics: Life of Osama bin Laden. Zionist influence on US politics. War on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine. 9/11 Terrorism: faked pretext for wars of aggression. Library of Congress Catalog information: LCCN 2005279562 Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: War on Terrorism, 2001Islamophobia--United States. Christian Zionism--United States. United States--Foreign relations--Arab countries. United States--Foreign relations--Middle East. Bin Laden, Osama, 1957LC Classification: Dewey Class No.: HV6432 .F45 2005 973.931 22

Tab l e o f C o n t e n t s
Preface 5

PART I OSAMA BIN LADEN

1. Saudi In heritance 2. The Outsider (19 571980) 3. The Mujahid (19801989) 4. The Dissident (19 891991) 5. The Exile (19911996) 6. American Jihad (19962000) 10 21 29 51 65 85

PART II Z I O N I Z AT I O N O F T H E U . S .
7. Unhol y Trinity 8. Housebreaking the U.S. 9. Invasi on of the Polic y Snatchers 105 133 161

P ART III A FGHANISTAN , P ALESTINE , I RAQ

10. The Tali ban and Petr opoli tics 11. Oil f or One, and One for Oi l 12. Warm Jews; Cold Calculation s 13. Rogue State 182 204 235 259

P ART IV O NE N ATION UNDER PNAC

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. Imperial DesignsPart I Imperial DesignsPar t II The Hos t and the Parasite Tortured Reasoning The Grand Decepti on 279 304 322 343 361 388 399 408

19. Epil ogue Index of Names Bibliography

. A

L F R E D

M. L

I L I E N T H A L

Preface
When I began this book in early November 2001, I did not envision the tome you are now holding. I had intended to research and write a short biography on Osama bin Laden to serve as a sober corrective to the hatemongering and bloodlust that passed for respectable journalism in the months following the Sept. 11, 2001, attack. When Saddam Hussein supplanted bin Laden as the evil Arab du jour in the spring of 2002, I feared that my book had been superseded by events. When Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003, I thought nobody would be interested in a book on bin Laden. As often happens in such circumstances this obstacle turned into an opportunity. Rather than focus narrowly on bin Laden and U.S. geopolitical machinations in Afghanistan, I realized I could place him and Hussein within the broader context of U.S. servility to the proIsrael lobby. This book, therefore, incorporates my initial research (Chapters I to VI and X to XI) as well as research into the cause and effect of the Zionization of the U.S. and the war on terrorism. In the latter context bin Laden and Hussein, despite their stark differences, exist less as people in their own right than they do as bogeymen conjured up by pro-Israel/anti-Arab media and governments. This is one meaning of the title Enemies by Designthese men were turned into supervillains because U.S. servility to Israel and the domestic Israel Lobby require such enemies. Bin Laden was a virtual non-entity until the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in August 1998, after which he seemed to emerge parthenogenically from the head of President Bill Clinton as Public Enemy Number One. Saddam Hussein was Americas buddy in the Iran-Iraq War, as shown by the infamous 1983 handshake between Hussein and envoy Donald Rumsfeld. Only after the war, did Hussein become persona non grata for reasons that had nothing to do with terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. Hence, we come to the two great acts of violence perpetrated in the name of national security, and made possible by demonized images of Arabsthe assaults on Afghanistan and Iraq. We have been told that these attacks were waged in the name of fighting the war on terrorism, but this argument is impossible to take seriously. 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 violence committed against states, but not by states. Thus, the sanctioned definition begs the existence of state terrorism committed by the U.S. and Israel.

Enemies by Design

Terrorism cannot be the target of military policy because it is a tactic. To wage total war against an ism amounts to attacking a behavior. This is even more true of ideologies. War against communism or Islam, for example, amounts to waging war against people whose only crime is to hold different beliefs. In an earlier time, such wars were called persecutions or pogroms, and in fact these terms accurately define U.S. policy toward Iraq and Afghanistan, and indirectly against Palestine. In the name of rooting out an invisible enemy, the U.S. visits collective political punishment on civilians. In the name of fighting terrorism the U.S. commits a greater terrorism. As we will see in Chapter 13, Bushs imperium represents the sixth and highest stage of the Zionization of the U.S., much of it committed after Ronald Reagan allowed a cabal of pro-Israeli Jews, evangelical Christians and neo-conservative ideologues to infiltrate his government in 1980. Today, that infiltration has achieved its zenith with the war on terrorism. To bomb an impoverished country like Afghanistan overtly to gain pipeline transit rights would be politically indefensible. Nor could Bush admit he invaded Iraq because his Zionist puppetmasters wanted to destroy the Palestinians major supporter in the region. Nevertheless, if these nations could be portrayed as terrorist or terrorist-sponsoring, Congress and the American public could support unilateral aggression, or at least not have the courage to challenge it. Thus, we have the demonization of bin Laden and Hussein; the slandering of Islam; racial profiling; and the arbitrary, unconstitutional arrests of Muslims at home and abroad. In a few short years, Bush has managed to destroy the international reputation of the U.S., commit fraud and mass murder, violate the Constitution, and rack up record budget deficits. Domestic and international protests against U.S. militarism easily surpass those of the Vietnam era, and traditional allies like France and Germany are vilified simply for challenging the divine right of the U.S. to bully the world. U.S. behavior since Sept. 11 has been so self-destructive that it fits historian Barbara Tuchmans criteria of a folly: [a policy] must be perceived to be counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight; a feasible alternative course of action must have been available; and it should be that of a group, not an individual ruler, and should persist beyond any one political lifetime.1 One of the follies Tuchman describes is the the U.S. entanglement in Vietnam. Even though the war ended in April 1974, the futility of U.S. policy was known less than a year into President John Kennedys administration. On Nov. 6, 1961, Asst. Secretary of Defense John T. McNaughton summarized U.S. aims in Vietnam for Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara:
1. Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly from Troy to Vietnam (New York: Ballantine, 1984), p. 5.

Preface

(a) 70 percentTo avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat (to our reputation as a counter-subversion guarantor). (b) 20 percentTo keep [South Vietnam and adjacent territory] from Chinese hands. (c) 10 percentTo permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life. Alsoto 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 One can hear disturbing echoes of Vietnam in the U.S. quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan. 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 ongoing operations in Vietnam. He later corrected himself: Vietnam was a long time ago, and not at all like what were seeing now.3 Despite the reflexive denial, Franks Freudian slip betrayed the fact that open comparisons with Vietnam had become commonplace.4 Like the Vietcong, Islamist resistance fighters do not wear uniforms, march in formation, or fight on a battlefield. They wage a determined guerrilla insurgency against American overlordship and colonial puppet governments. The main similarity between the Vietnam War and the war on terrorism lies in their irrationality. In neither case did the U.S. understand the enemy or the needs of the native population, have a defensible political goal, make a distinction between civilians and combatants, or have any exit strategy. In each case, bull-headed incompetence generated a self-destructive dynamic: the longer it went on, the greater became the threat to the U.S. leadership and ego; the greater the insult, the deeper and more indiscriminate the military retaliation; the deeper the retaliation, the greater the ego investment; the greater the ego investment, the greater the potential insult; and so on. For all the similarities, though, one major distinction stands outthe Vietnam War was a folly committed in the name of the U.S. own selfinterest; the war on terrorism is a folly committed in the name of a foreign states self-interest. That state is Israel. How the U.S. became an instrument of Israeli foreign policy and how this subordination is responsible for the official bigotry toward Arabs and Muslims is the main theme of this book. Only from this perspective can the war on terrorism be fully understood.
2. The Pentagon Papers (New York: Bantam, 1971), pp. 255, 365. 3. Cited in Jonathan Weisman, Battle is fiercest yet, and it wont be last, USA Today, March 5, 2002. 4. Among numerous sources see for example, Robert McNamara, Its just wrong what were doing, interviewed by Douglas Saunders in the Globe and Mail, Jan. 24, 2004; Erich Marquardt, Parallels Between U.S. Occupation of Iraq and U.S. Involvement in Vietnam, Power and Interest News Report, Nov. 28, 2003; Patrick Cockburn, Iraqs resistance: A new Vietnam for the White House? The Independent, July 2, 2003.

Enemies by Design

Before I build my case, though, I must first demolish the demonized images of Arabs and Muslims. Therefore, Part I primarily concerns the life and political development of Osama bin Laden. This story will be intertwined with various subthemes to present a fully rounded portrait of the man and the geopolitical landscape that shaped him. The main subthemes include: a brief history of political Islam and jihad; U.S. and British Arab policy; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; how the invasion was exploited by the U.S., Pakistan and Saudi Arabia; the Gulf War; and the rift between bin Laden and the Saudi royal family. Because of its essentially biographical structure, this part is more expository and less interpretive than the rest of the book. The constructive phase of my argument begins with Part II, which examines the theory and practice of neo-conservatism, evangelical Christianity and Jewish Zionism, and how the fusion of these three belief structures made the demonization of Arabs and Muslims acceptable. Particular attention is paid to the corrupting influence of philosopher Leo Strauss on U.S. liberal culture, and the profusion of Zionist think tanks that his ideas helped engender. Part III concerns the political analysis of U.S.-Israeli conduct in Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq, the beggaring of Iraq, and the origin of the war on terrorism. Part IV deals extensively with the Project for the New American Century, the pro-Israel pressure group that completed the Zionist usurpation of the U.S. government. At this point, I would like to acknowledge the following people for their generosity and invaluable assistance in helping me survive my first book. Rafeh Hulays gave me the original idea and edited early drafts of Part I. Gary Keenan offered much-needed moral support, and also helped with Part I. For the past three years, Muhammad Ali Khan has generously allowed me to post my writing on mediamonitors.net, thus helping me gain a large audience and the confidence to tackle a large project like this. Marc Ash and the team at truthout.com provided me with the most upto-date information about U.S. foreign policy on Iraq. Phyllis Ann Good proofread every chapter, helped with research, promoted the book, and was a constant source of inspiration. Paul de Rooij gave valuable criticism and helped shape the finished product. Mimi Adams was instrumental in lining up key interviews and review comments. Finally I need to thank Brenda Ceaser, my long-suffering wife who put up with this uninvited houseguest longer than should have been necessary. She lent her considerable artistic talents to creating the maps. Whatever shortcomings this book may have are solely my responsibility. New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada November 15, 2004 Eid Al Fitr & Palestinian Independence Day

Part I
Osama bin Laden

N A L Y S E S A N D A R T I C L E S on Osama bin Ladens life generally begin with his father and the foundation of the bin Laden construction empire. The reason is obvious: Since nobody is born a terrorist, people and events in bin Ladens life must have turned him from a quiet, privileged Saudi youth into a champion of militant Islam.

The methodology, though seemingly logical, is biased and shortsighted. First, it assumes a conclusion (Bin Laden is an evil, sick, America-hating terrorist) and then looks for evidence to support it. That the evidence could lead to a different conclusion is not considered. Second, this arbitrary starting point fosters the illusion that the Sept. 11 attack was a unique phenomenon and a specific manifestation of bin Ladens will. Such an approach excludes consideration of other causes for the attack. To avoid both of these shortcomings this book begins with a short, focused history of Saudi Arabia, without which it is impossible to render any informed opinion of bin Laden. Virtually every major influence on his life religion, relations with the Saudi royal family, and the Western orientation of the Saudi governmentcan be traced to specific people and events that led to the founding of this desert kingdom. We begin with the 18th-century zealot who gave his name to Saudi Arabias intolerant, Wahhabi version of Islam.

1. Saudi Inheritance

11

WAHHABISM
Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab1 (1703-1792) was born in the village of Uyayna north of Riyadh in the Najd, a huge expanse in the centre of the Arabian Peninsula. Two great deserts mark its lengththe an-Nafud in the north and the Rub al-Khali or Empty Quarter in the south. To the west lie the Hijaz Mountains; to the east, a narrow strip of Persian Gulf Coast. This hostile sea of sand is the only part of Arabia that never came under the direct rule of the Ottoman Empire. The fiercely independent nomadic and oasis-dwelling Bedouin peoples largely retained their insularity from the great Arab civilizations. In matters of religion, this would be most important. Al-Wahhab grew up exceedingly pious and was said to have memorized the Quran by age 10, and developed an exaggerated and reactionary affinity for the early salafi (pious) Islam of the time of the Prophet Muhammad and his family. All subsequent changes to the faith he condemned as bida (innovation) because they detracted from the singular focus on Allah (God) as an object of worship. Such practices included: invoking the name of any prophet, saint, or angel in a vow or prayer; calling upon such beings for intercession with Allah; or making pilgrimages to the tombs of saints. Yet, all these practices were widespread throughout the Muslim world at that time. During his 13 years of study in Iran and Iraq, al-Wahhab saw that the austere, simple monotheism of early Islam had all but disappeared, a fact that was confirmed by the deserted and neglected mosques. Islam, like all religions, had adapted and changed, but as far as al-Wahhab was concerned, Muslims who practiced this impure Islam had forsaken Allah. These Muslims, he decided, had to be made to see the sinfulness of their idolatry, and he made it his mission to reimpose the exclusive worship of Allah and obedience to Islamic law throughout the Muslim world. Upon returning from his scholastic travels, al-Wahhab delivered his call for a return to purity in the Najd village of Harimada. Despite opposition, including from his father, he attracted a following and earned himself a wide reputation. From here, he returned to his ancestral village and persuaded its ruler Uthman bin Hamd bin Muammar to embrace tawhid (unity), the worship of Allah alone. He promised Uthman that if he did he would soon rule in Najd and be crowned with eternal bliss. By this time, word of al-Wahhabs revivalist movement had reached Sulaiman bin Muhammad bin Uraiir, sheik of the eastern province of Hasa. He saw this new movement as a threat to Ottoman rule and ordered Uthman to kill al-Wahhab. Uthman could not bring himself to do this, but also could not afford to cross the sheik, so he banished al-Wahhab.

1. Full name: Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab bin Sulaiman bin Ali bin Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Rashid al-Tamimi. The Arabic words bin and ibn both mean son or son of and are used interchangeably.

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Enemies by Design

After crossing the desert on foot, al-Wahhab arrived at ad-Dariya in the northeast part of the Najd, centre of power of Sheikh Muhammad ibn Saud, the 18th chieftain of his line. During his stay, al-Wahhab held secret meetings for those who wanted to be tutored in tawhid. Among the devotees were two of Sauds brothers. At their urging, ibn Saud agreed in 1744 to meet with al-Wahhab. Ibn Saud not only heard al-Wahhab talk of the need to purify Islam, but also an invitation to become leader of the Muslims. Ibn Saud accepted, thus forming the powerful Saudi-Wahhabi bond. It was a perfect match. Both men were Bedouins who wanted conquest one religious, the other secular. Conquest would bring Ibn Saud more power and land at the expense of his Najd rivals, the ibn Rashids; and al-Wahhab and his followers would propagate their doctrinaire version of Islam with each conquest.

VARIANTS OF ISLAM
European scholars and most Arabs today use the term Wahhabi to describe the followers of al-Wahhab, but the Wahhabi call themselves muwahhidunstrict monotheists; like tawhid, the word is derived from wahid, meaning one. In fact, they consider the term Wahhabi to be a sign of ignorance, because it implies membership in a sect, much as Muslims never call themselves Muhammedans. These muwahhidun consider themselves to be the only authentic Muslims. Those who do not agree95 percent of Muslimsare looked on as infidels and mere claimants to Islam. The Wahhabi are especially contemptuous of the sufi (mystics), who seek higher knowledge and a closer personal connection to God through trances and communal ceremonies. Sufism also provoked opposition, most importantly from the extremist legal philosopher Ibn Taymiya (1268-1328 CE) who condemned many aspects of sufism as contrary to Sharia and tawhid. The term sufi is also used as a general epithet to condemn anyone who opposes Wahhabism or believes in intermediaries between man and Allah. Sufism derived from Islam circa 800 CE, and incorporates elements of other belief systems, like neo-Platonism. Sufism is especially strong in Egypt, Sudan, and on the Indian subcontinent. One cannot see in the Wahhabi any connection to the humanistic, tolerant, enlightened Muslims who preserved, enhanced and transmitted the knowledge of ancient Greece, without which modern science and the European Renaissance would not have been possible. Today, 85 to 90 percent of all Muslims are Sunni, so called because in addition to the Quran they base their faith on the Sunna (rule or custom), recommended conduct based on the Prophet Muhammads words and deeds or hadith (traditions) of the Prophet. Although the Wahhabi are Sunni, this book will use the term Wahhabi rather than muwahhiddun, because their

1. Saudi Inheritance

13

intolerant puritanism places them in a de facto state of war with virtually the rest of the Arab and Muslim world. During his life, Muhammad was known as rassulallah (Messenger of God) because he received and recited revelations directly from Archangel Jibril (Gabriel). His death in 632 CE presented a problem for his family and followers because the question of how Islam would continue after Muhammad had not been dealt with. Creating a religious caliph (successor) was out of the question because Muhammad was considered to be the seventh and last of Allahs prophets, which meant that the religious lineage died with him. That left only the possibility of continuing Islam through a political and administrative Caliphate based on the Sunna. In its early stages, the terms Arab and Muslim were virtually interchangeable, as were the political and religious lives of those living under the Caliphate. This centralized ethical institution spread rapidly throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Spain, bringing Islam to non-Arab peoples. The Caliphate reached its limit in 847 after only 225 years, after which time it disintegrated into smaller political and cultural units. The institution of Caliph would persist in vestigial form into the 20th century.2 In contrast to Sunni Muslims, Shiites (partisans) believe that Muhammad did choose a caliphAli, his cousin, son-in-law, and the last of the founding four elected caliphs. Shiites comprise 10-15 percent of all Muslims, and are the majority sect only in Iran and Iraq. Doctrinal hostility between the two sects is passionate, but recent attempts have been made to reconcile the two sects; in Lebanon, Hezballah (Party of God) has led the way.

SAUDIWAHHABI SYMBIOSIS
The Saudi-Wahhabi army of purification emerged out of the Najd in 1763 and dominated the peninsula on and off until 1889. It achieved consistent success until 1811, when it lost control of the Najd in a 10-year war against Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Ottoman viceroy in Egypt who was also regent of the all-important Hijaz. This region, running the length of the Arabian Peninsulas western Red Sea Coast, contains Islams two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, as well as the port of Jeddah and the lush Asir region in the southwest. Saudi-Wahhabi forces took Mecca in 1804 and Medina in 1805, but in 1812 Alis Egyptians drove them out of Mecca after a bloody battle. In 1818, they were forced to fall back on Riyadh, thus ending the first Saudi state.
2. Islam, World Civilizations, Washington State University. The end came in August 1923 when Mustafa Kemal Atatrk became the first president of Turkey. Although he retained Islam as the state religion, Atatrk abolished the caliphate and all Islamic institutions as part of a broad modernization program based on Western ideas of law and secular government. The six principles (isms) of Atatrkism would be: republicanism, nationalism, populism, statism, secularism and revolutionism, <www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/Islam/Islam1.htm>.

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Enemies by Design

A second state, the Najd Sultanate, began in 1824, but it was little more than a minor principality, and controlled only a handful of villages. By 1833 the purification movement had peaked and began a long decline. In 1865, inter-tribal rivalry tore apart the Saudi dynasty, and Ottoman forces recaptured Riyadh 19 years later. In 1889, the Saudis were forced to flee the Najd and became penniless exiles in Kuwait. At the time, Kuwait was a British protectorate carved out of Iraq, so effectively ibn Saud was under British protection. Had the history of Arabia been allowed to unfold without foreign intervention, this might have been the last we heard of the Saudis: of the four major families outside of the Persian Gulf emirates, the Saudis were the least fit to rulepoor, violent, illiterate and lacking a noble lineage. The ibn Rashids, also Bedouin, were a class above the Saudis. As journalist and Saudi authority Sad K. Aburish writes: 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.3 The Hashemite dynasty in the west was, and is, the greatest and most important in the Arab world, and was the most deserving of rule. Sharif Hussein bin Ali, Emir of Mecca (19081916) and King of Hijaz (19161924), was the direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammada 37th great grandson through his first son al-Hassan.4 The Hashemites had ruled Hijaz and been guardians of the Holy Mosques in Mecca and Medina continuously since 1201. The Idris dynasty also had a recognized descent from the Prophet, but was of insufficient stature to be a contender. Still, its members were civilized, and what Aburish said about them also sums up his views of the Hashemites: They were educated people who lived in accordance with an Islamic tradition which preached equality, kindness and the rule of law, and they were people full of goodness and hospitality and opposed to illiteracy and violence.5

3. Sad K. Aburish, The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud (New York: St. Martins Press, 1994), p. 17. 4. The current King of Jordan, Abdullah, is the great (x41) grandson of the Prophet. 5. Aburish, p. 17.

1. Saudi Inheritance

15

Despite the odds, the Saudis would prevail over the other families because of two factors. The first was the leadership of Abd al-Aziz ibn Saudfourth generation great grandson of Muhammad ibn Saud, and future founder of Saudi Arabia.6 The second was the British. In January 1902, ibn Saud led a charge of 40 camelmen from Kuwait to recapture Riyadh, which since 1884 had been governed by the ibn Rashids, allies of the Ottoman Turks. Sir John Bagot Glubb, British soldier, author and chronicler of Bedouin language and culture, recounts the daring assault: Reaching their old family capital, Riyadh, the little group slipped into the town by night. The Rashidi governor slept in the castle but came out every morning after dawn. Ibn Saud lay hidden until the governor emerged. Then, rushing forward with his men, he killed him and seized the castle. This exploit roused the former supporters of his dynasty. They rallied to so magnetic a leader, and in two years of raids and skirmishes ibn Saud reconquered half of central Arabia.7 Ibn Rashid appealed to the Turks for assistance, and on June 15, 1904, their combined forces defeated ibn Saud, but failed to drive him from central Arabia. This failure would allow ibn Saud to regroup and mount his final assault. In 1913, he captured the eastern region of Al Hasa, and in 1921 extinguished ibn Rashidi rule in Jabal Shamar. By the end of 1926, ibn Saud had taken the entire HijazMecca fell bloodlessly in 1924, and Medina fell in 1925, ending 724 years of continuous Hashemite protectorship. Ibn Saud took Asir in 1926, and the next year named himself King of al Hijaz and of Najd and its Dependencies. In 1932, he renamed the lands for himselfthe Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

6. Full name: Abd al-Aziz ibn abd al-Rahman ibn Faisal ibn Turki abd Allah ibn Muhammad al-Saud. 7. Sir John Bagot Glubb, Ibn Saud, Abdul-Aziz, entry in Encyclopedia Britannica.

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Enemies by Design

British betrayal
The other factor that made Saudi rule possible was World War I and Britains imperial designs on Arabia. Until the war, Britain followed a policy of studied neutrality. Ostensibly, it cared only about maintaining the various legs of the imperial air route to India, and ensuring the safety of Indian Muslims making the hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca.8 By the 1890s, though, Britain was scheming to get its hands on Kuwaiti oil, and that meant it had a vested interest in maintaining stable Ottoman rule. According to Sir Louis Mallet, Britains 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

8. Private letter from Lord Kitchener to Sir William Lord Tyrrell, Sir Edward Grey MSS, Vol. 9, British Agency, Cairo, April 26, 1914 <www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1914m/arabetuk.html>.

1. Saudi Inheritance

17

difficult to estimate what might be the effects on India of a prolonged struggle for the possession of the Caliphate.9 Even after Britain entered the war against Germany on Aug. 4, 1914, its attitude toward the Ottoman Empire didnt change until the sultan formally sided with Germany and Austria-Hungary on Oct. 28. Now, Britain needed the help of Sharif Husseins Arabs to harass and divert the Ottomans so they could not aid Germany. This was an ironic request, given the nature of Britains first encounter with the Hashemites. On Feb. 5, 1914, Husseins son Abdullah met Lord Kitchener in Cairo to sound out British support for the Arabs, who were rebelling against increasingly bureaucratic Ottoman rule and 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.10 Nevertheless, Hussein agreed to commit his army to the service of Britain provided that Britain support 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 Mediterranean Sea on the West. Subject to minor amendments, Britains High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, did just that, and signalled His Majestys approval to Hussein in a letter dated Oct. 24, 1915.11 Hussein lived up to his end of the bargainthe Ottomans never did aid Germanybut Britain had no intention of reciprocating. Six months before McMahon even wrote his letter, Britain had decided to carve up the Ottoman Empire to its advantage. In April, the government had commissioned its ambassador in Vienna, Maurice de Bunsen, to head a committee to look into the matter. The Bunsen report, issued two months later, determined essential

9. 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>. 10. Emir Abdullahs 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>. 11. The Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, Oct. 24, 1915, <webct.marshall.edu/public/idlc/history/meconflict/correspondance.htm>.

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Enemies by Design

British spheres of influence, which included the Red Sea and Iraq, both of which Hussein claimed for the Caliphate. Iraq was deemed especially important for two reasons: a railway from Palestine to Basra on the Persian Gulf could become an alternate route to India, and suspected oil reserves around Mosul, 400 km. north of Baghdad, would be vital to keeping the now-oil dependent British navy afloat. Britains betrayal of Hussein and the promise of Arab independence were formalized in the clandestine Anglo-French Sykes-Picot agreement of May 1916, which carved up the Middle East into British and French spheres of influence. Britain didnt want a partner in Arabia; it wanted a lackey to serve the Crown. As fate would have it, one such lackey was already on Britains payrollibn Saud. After losing to the Ottoman/ibn Rashidi forces in 1904, ibn Saud realized that Britain was the only power in the area capable of providing him with an income and armamentsthe only two things he cared about. Even though supporting ibn Saud contradicted its pro-Ottoman policy, Britain established secret contacts and advanced him small sums to keep him in reserve. By 1911, when war seemed all but inevitable, the contacts and money increased.12 The decision to cultivate ibn Saud was not unanimous. 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.13 In December 1915, the two sides signed a friendship and cooperation treaty that if nothing else confirmed the unsophistication and servility Britain was looking for. In exchange for arms, a monthly subsidy of 5,000 and an agreement to wage war on the ibn Rashids, ibn Saud turned his eastern and central Arabian lands into a British protectorate, over which he was made governor. After stalling for five years because he felt the subsidy was too small, ibn Saud launched his assault on Jabal Shamar, extinguishing ibn Rashidi rule as mentioned above. However, a more accurate assessment would be: Britain extinguished ibn Rashidi rule by using ibn Saud and his Wahhabi warriors. Three years before he aligned himself with British imperial interests, ibn Saud began forming his own elite army. He sent Wahhabi ulama (Islamic scholars and legists) among the Bedouin to convince them that the traditional nomadic way of life was un-Islamic, and that they had a religious duty to settle in hijrah (agricultural colonies) around desert oases. These hijrah ranged in population from 1,000 to 10,000, and provided all the necessities of

12. Aburish, p. 18. He dates first Saudi contact to 1865, the same year the dynasty fell into civil war, but nothing came of this contact. 13. Mallet to Grey, op. cit.

1. Saudi Inheritance

19

communal life: living quarters, mosques, schools, agricultural equipment and instruction, and arms and ammunition. Though designed to promote land reclamation, they were primarily Wahhabi indoctrination centers, where ibn Saud hoped to break the traditional nomadic tribal bonds and reinvent the Bedouin as a cohesive army. These new Wahhabi were called ikhwan (brethren) and became renowned for their ferocity and fighting skill. It is to them that ibn Saud owed his victories over the ibn Rashids and the Hashemites in the Hijaz. The ikhwan would eventually form the nucleus of the modern Saudi National Guard. But with victory came obsolescence. What the ikhwan didnt know and couldnt have known is that they were only an instrument of ibn Sauds personal ambition. Once ibn Saud controlled the Hijaz, he had no further use for them. Ibn Saud cared solely only about forming a nation-state in Arabia and promoting his own economic interest.14

Civil war
For the most part, the ikhwan remained on the hijrah, even though the resettlement scheme ultimately failed, and many were reduced to poverty. The more fanatical among them returned to raiding, and openly challenged ibn Saud. In 1926, three chieftainsibn Humayd, al-Dawish, and ibn Hithlayn, accused ibn Saud of un-Islamic conduct for introducing bida: the telephone, telegraph, automobile, and sending his son to study in Egypt, a country of infidel Muslims. To placate them, ibn Saud took their grievance to the ulama, whom he controlled, but compromise was out of the question. The ikhwan would have to be destroyed as a fighting force. The end came in 1927 when the ikhwan destroyed an Iraqi force that had crossed into the neutral zone on the Arabian Peninsula. As the Saudi state expanded northward it encroached upon the artificially created Hashemite kingdoms of Transjordan and Iraq, both of which were British protectorates. Because national boundaries are un-Islamic, the ikhwan did not recognize them, even though ibn Saud negotiated the neutral zone with the British. Britain was trying to stabilize the region and was incensed by these renewed attacks. It bombed the Najd in retaliation and told ibn Saud to do something about the ikhwan. In October 1928, ibn Saud deposed the three rebel chieftains, but that only moved them to armed insurrection. Ibn Saud engaged them in a major battle with British air support on the plain of asSabalah in the east. The ikhwan suffered heavy losses, but the violence
14. As early as 1923, ibn Saud granted his first oil concession (Ahsa) to the Eastern and General Syndicate, a British investment group. The syndicate hoped to turn a profit by selling the concession but no British petroleum company was interested. The concession lapsed in 1928 and was declared void. Standard Oil of California took a concession in 1932 and made the first oil discovery in Saudi Arabia in 1938.

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Enemies by Design

dragged on for months. The defection of a rebel faction later that summer allowed ibn Saud to encircle the insurgents and force them to surrender to the British in Kuwait in 1930. The fighting in Arabia was over, and in 1932 ibn Saud renamed his domain Saudi Arabia.

S U M M A RY
The price of victory was ibn Sauds increased dependence on the ulama. He needed their support not only to defeat the ikhwan but also to solidify his rule. Thus we come to the mutual hostage scenario that dominates Saudi Arabia. The ulama need the protection of the House of Saud, because the Wahhabi arent welcome anywhere else in the Muslim world. The House of Saud needs the ulama to provide it Muslim legitimacy, and to coerce the citizenry into obedience. Saudi Arabia is a totalitarian kingdom, which means that its citizens risk intimidation, torture, imprisonment or death if they dissent from Wahhabi doctrine or challenge the Saudi government in any way. The House of Saud cannot tolerate criticism because it has neither Muslim nor Arabic legitimacy. By rights, the Hashemites should be ruling the peninsula. The problem for the Saudis is that their pro-Western servility and proWahhabi dependency are mutually irreconcilable. Of the two, the latter is the more easily controllable because the King also carries the title of imam (spiritual leader), and so appoints the ulama. The Saudis above all need Western oil revenue to finance their un-Islamic self-aggrandizement, as well as Western military protection to maintain their rule, even at the expense of their own citizens welfare. This hypocrisy would result in a similar pattern of factors determining the path of Osama bin Ladens life: Ideological armies turning on their creators; A zealot championing the cause of jihad (struggle) against the enemies of Islam; A brotherhood of fighters; Recreating the Caliphate; and The Saudis colluding with their Western master (U.S.) to the detriment of other Muslims (Palestinians and Iraqis).

T H E S A U D I A R A B I A N P L U T O C R A C Y , proximity to the royal family is not just the key to successit is success itself. The countrys immense petrochemical wealth and the revenue it generates are virtually the familys private property: the Saudi royal family is the government; they control the press, and together with the ulama, they repress any political dissent or activism. N

Saudi Arabia is not so much a country as a private fiefdom in which the common people have no civil rights. For example, slavery was still officially legal in the kingdom until 1962. In that year the number of slaves totaled approximately 30,000one for every 100 native Saudi Arabians.1 Only pressure from U.S. President John Kennedy, and the fear of growing domestic unrest, convinced then-King Faisal to abolish the practice. Still, the blanket manumission has not stopped the buying and selling of wives, or the virtual enslavement of immigrant workers, who have no legal protection from physical and financial abuse by their employers. In 1995, the number of these indentured immigrants numbered more than 3 millionone third of the native population.2 In Saudi Arabia, ones power, influence and station in life depended not on merit or personal ambition, but who your father was and who his father was. Consequently, a genuine share in the countrys wealth was denied to non-members of the House of Saud. This was especially true of immigrants who not only had no Saudi genealogy, but no Saudi citizenship. Nevertheless, the bin Laden construction empire was founded by an illiterate Yemeni immigrant.

1. David Holden and Richard Johns, The House of Saud: The Rise and Rule of the Most Powerful Dynasty in the Arab World (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston), pp. 229-230. 2. Sad K. Aburish, The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud (New York: St. Martins Press, 1994), pp. 46-47; 90-91.

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Enemies by Design

THE BIN LADEN EMPIRE

The story of Muhammad bin Awad bin Ladens remarkable rise from impoverished Yemeni longshoreman to international industrial Saudi tycoon reads like a Horatio Alger novelbut with a twist.3 Bin Laden did work hard and doubtless would have been a success on his own, but it was Saudi patronage that made him and his family rich and powerful. Like many Yemenis from the poor coastal province of Hadhramaut, bin Laden came to Hijaz by camel caravan in search of a better life. He arrived around 1930 and found work as a bricklayer for ARAMCO (the ArabianAmerican Oil Company), at the rate of one Saudi riyal, (US 21 cents) per day. More than likely, he would also have suffered discrimination as a Yemeni. Bin Laden worked hard and saved assiduously until he could start his own construction business. He started by taking on small jobs, all the while learning the fine art of lobbying for lucrative royal contracts. He managed to gain ibn Sauds attention by undercutting the lowest bid to work on his palace in Riyadh. Ibn Saud was said to be so impressed that he granted bin Ladens company contracts for other Saud palaces, the exclusive right to renovate and maintain the mosques at Mecca and Medina, and a monopoly on all construction of a religious nature. The Bin Laden company could thus claim the unique honor of renovating and maintaining all three of Islams holiest sitesthe mosques in Mecca and Medina, as well as the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, until it came under Israeli occupation in 1967. In 1961, bin Laden landed the lucrative Medina-to-Jeddah highway construction project after a foreign bidder backed out. The bin Laden construction empire was now established, thanks to hard work and Saudi patronage. During the following decades, the company built tunnels, dams and thousands of miles of roads and evolved into a multinational conglomerate with interests in industrial and power projects, chemicals, airports, mining, telecommunications, manufacturing, media, retailing and trading. In all, the bin Laden empire is today worth $5 billion and employs 35,000 to 40,000 people. In temperament and personality, Muhammad bin Laden could not have been more unlike his patrons. He was unpretentious, generous, and a devout Muslim, but not to Wahhabi excess. A French engineer who worked with him in the 60s remembered that bin Laden always left home with a wad of banknotes to hand out to the poor, because almsgiving is a fundamental duty of every Muslim.4
3. Horatio Alger was a 19th-century American novelist who wrote more than 100 books about young boys who achieved fame and wealth through honesty and hard work. 4. Jason Burke The making of Osama bin Laden, The Observer, reproduced at salon.com, Nov. 1, 2001.

2. The Outsider

23

The family and the people who worked for him all loved him, said Gerry Auerbach, a Texan who flew bin Ladens private plane around Saudi Arabia from 1966 to 1967. He had a sense of humor. 5 Muhammad bin Ladens success was not just measured in contracts and dollars. He became a trusted confidant and advisor to the House of Saud, and in this role he cemented the special relationship between the two families. In the late 1950s or early 60s, bin Laden developed a strong personal relationship with King Saud, whose extravagant spending habits caused an economic crisis, and generated calls from within the family for him to abdicate in favor of his brother Faisal. Bin Ladens relationship with ibn Saud was a major factor in convincing him to relinquish power in 1964. After ibn Sauds departure, bin Laden proved his loyalty to the new king Faisal by paying civil servant wages for six months, because the kingdom was broke. In gratitude, Faisal decreed that bin Laden must be involved in all construction contracts. The privileges of this special friendship would be passed down to bin Ladens children, who played and studied with the children of the King and of the most prosperous Saudi families. Men of the bin Laden family often chaperoned the kings sons and helped them get a start in business. In turn, bin Ladens sons would strengthen their familys personal ties at the Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt, where their schoolmates included King Hussein of Jordan, the Khashoggi brothers and actor Omar Sharif. The illiterate longshoreman from Yemen and his family had become associate members of the royal family.

YOUNG OSAMA
Throughout his life, Muhammad bin Laden is estimated to have had 10 or 11 wivesthree official wives, and a fourth who was changed regularly. According to Islamic law, the maximum number of wives at any one time is four. In all, bin Laden sired 52, 54, 55 or 57 children, depending on the source. All three official wives were Saudi, but the fourth wife, Alia Ghanem, was not. She was a beautiful, stylish, sophisticated 22-year-old Syrian. She gave birth to her only child on March 10, 1957Osama, Muhammad bin Ladens 17th son. Muhammad treated all of his children equally and expected his sons to grow up quickly and display self-confidence, even at a young age. Out of pride for his laboring roots and to instill a work ethic, he kept the bag he brought with him from Hadhramaut in a trophy case in his palaces main reception room. As the business empire expanded into more countries and

5. Charming and well connected, bin Laden family network spans the globe, American Press, Oct. 4, 2001.

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Enemies by Design

industrial sectors, bin Ladens children would share some of the managerial responsibility. Each of Muhammad bin Ladens wives had her own house and lived with her own children, but he made a point of ensuring that all of his progeny developed a strong sense of daily religious and social obligation. In such a large household, children of a common mother would band together to influence their father and to compete against their half-siblings. Even today, the bin Laden brothers cluster into business groups according to the nationality of their mothers: the Syrian group, Lebanese group, Jordanian group and Egyptian group. Osama bin Laden had no such natural allies. We know almost nothing about Osamas early life or personality, save what can be gleaned from second-hand accounts from family members and acquaintances. The common picture is that of a lonely, shy, polite and reserved boy. Certainly, his unique status as a double outsiderneither of his parents was Saudimeant that he didnt have the credentials to join the right royal circles, but whether this low socio-political status had anything to do with his subsequent career as a rebel is unclear. Throughout his life, Osama bin Laden never had direct relations with either the Saudi government or the royal family. All of his dealings were mediated through his brothers, and two sympathetic members of the royal family: Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz, deputy minister of interior and Abdul Rahman bin Abdul Aziz, deputy minister of defense. As for the bin Laden households, Carmen, the wife of Osamas elder brother Yeslam, said Osama was never shunned or made to feel unwelcome as the only child of a foreign-born woman.6 The first great event in Osamas life occurred in 1968, when Mohammad bin Laden and his pilot died in a helicopter crash in the mountains of southwestern Saudi Arabia. Upon their fathers death, Osamas Britisheducated eldest brother Salem bin Laden took control of the family business. Eleven-year-old Osama inherited his share of the family fortune, $80 million, and was sent to live with his mothers family in the Syrian port city of Ladhiqiah. His cousin, Suleiman al-Kateb, a 54-year-old English teacher, said Osama was a calm child who internalized his grief over his fathers death. Osama bin Laden later returned to Saudi Arabia and grew up inconspicuously. As this Nov. 1, 2001, excerpt from The Observer shows, he was just a normal, though privileged, teenager: In 1971, the family went on holiday en masse to the small Swedish copper mining town of Falun. A smiling Osamaor Sammy as he sometimes called himselfwas pictured, wearing a lime-green top and blue flares, leaning on a Cadillac.

6. The Political SceneThe House of Bin Laden, Media 2000 Communications special report, <www.imedia2000.com/BinLaden.html>.

2. The Outsider

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Osama, then 14, and his older brother Salem had first visited Falun a year before, driving from Copenhagen in a Rolls-Royce flown in from Saudi Arabia. Oddly, they stayed at the cheap Astoria Hotel, where the owner, Christina Akerblad, recalled them spending the days out on business and the evenings eating dinner in their rooms. I remember them as two beautiful boysthe girls in Falun were very fond of them, she said. Osama played with my two [young] sons. Akerblad remembered the wealth she found on display when cleaning the boys rooms. At the weekends we saw they used the extra bed in their rooms to lay out their clothes. They had lots of white silk shirts packaged in cellophane. I think they had a new one for every dayI never saw the dirty ones. They also had a big bag for their jewelry. They had emeralds and rubies and diamond rings and tie pins. Nor was there any sign of incipient fervor in a bucolic summer at an Oxford language school in the same year. Bin Laden and his brothers befriended a group of Spanish girls and went punting on the Thames. Last month one woman showed a Spanish newspaper photos of herself and girlfriendsone in hot pantswith three bin Laden boys. Bin Laden, wearing flares, a short-sleeved shirt and a bracelet, looks like any other awkward teenager. His two older brothers look more assured. The young Saudi even once stayed on Londons Park Lane. He had forgotten the name of the hotel his Saudi parents had checked into, he told a reporter several years ago, but he recalled the trees of the park and the red buses.7 Osama returned every year to Ladhiqiah, but al-Kateb noticed that with each visit he became more and more pious. Osama developed a deep affinity for Islam not only because of his religious upbringing but also because of the many hajj (pilgrimages) his father hosted. These brought Osama and his siblings into contact with senior Islamic scholars and leaders of Muslim movements. Osamas elder brothers maintained the tradition. During a 1974 visit, when Osama was 17, al-Kateb noticed that he began to let his beard grow, a trait he rightly attributed to the growing influence of Saudi Arabias Wahhabi culture. Osama was also spiritually moved by the commission granted to his father to refurbish the Holy Mosques that began in 1973. Also in 1974, some sources say 1975, Osama married his 14-year-old cousin, Najwa Ghanem. He was terribly timid around women, but he would eventually marry three more times.8

7. Burke, op. cit. 8. Bin Laden was a quiet, shy child, Middle East Online, Nov. 15, 2001

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Enemies by Design

T E M P TAT I O N S O F T H E W E S T
In the early 1970s, two upheavals in the Middle East would determine the future course of bin Ladens life. The first was the October War. On Oct. 6, 1973, Egyptian and Syrian forcessupported by Jordan and Iraq and funded by Saudi Arabialaunched an attack on Israeli forces illegally stationed in Egypts Sinai Peninsula and Syrias Golan Heights. The objective was to reclaim these lands, which Israel had seized in the 1967 War. The October War was short and a net territorial defeat for Israel. On Oct. 26, the United Nations negotiated a ceasefire on the Egyptian front with UN monitoring. Egypt regained full control over both shores of the Suez Canal as well as a strip of land along the first half of the western coast of Sinai. In 197475 a U.S.-led truce settlement left Syria with a small area of the Golan around the town of Quneitra. But the war had more far-reaching political repercussions because of President Richard Nixons decision to resupply Israel after it suffered heavy early losses.9 To punish the West, especially the U.S., the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an oil embargo on Oct. 17. Overnight, the price of a barrel of oil to the U.S. and its Western European allies rose more than 70 percent from $3 to $5.11. The following January, it rose to $11.65. Gasoline shortages and economic hardship plagued many Western economies, especially the U.S. The embargo ended in March 1974, but Middle Eastern economies had been irrevocably distorted. Saudi Arabia and other Arab states were suddenly flush with cash, and this wealth bought instant, overwhelming exposure to the licentious temptations of Western individualism. The effect was most pronounced in Osama bin Ladens home of Jeddah, Saudi Arabias main port on the Red Sea and most cosmopolitan city. The growing influence of Western values also attracted leading Islamist intellectuals who came to universities and mosques to teach that the only defense against Western corruption was absolute and unconditional return to pure Islam, that is, Wahhabism. From 1976 to 1979, Osama bin Laden worked toward his degree in civil engineering at King Abdul Aziz University. Like all students, he was also required to take courses in Islamic studies, and it was here that he met leading exponents of the new Islamist revivalism, one of whom would become a major figure in Afghanistan: Sheik Abdullah Azzam.

9. On Oct. 6, 1973, 70,000 Egyptian troops attacked and overran 500 Israelis stationed on the Bar Lev Line in Egyptian territory along the Suez Canal. To the north, 1,100 Syrian tanks fought 157 Israeli tanks, capturing a key intelligence-gathering position, and a large part of the Golan Heights from Israel. In the first two days, Israel suffered 2,000 dead and 340 captured troops, as well as the loss of 49 planes and 500 tanks. On Oct. 13, the U.S. flew 550 sorties, carrying 50 new Phantom jets and $2.2 billion-worth of ammunition and equipment in two weeksmore than during the Berlin airlift of 1948-49.

2. The Outsider

27

Azzam was born in 1941 to a pious family in the Palestinian province of Jenin. His early education took him to Jordan and Damascus, where he earned a Bachelors degree in sharia (Islamic Law) in 1966. The following year he returned to join the jihad against Israel during the 1967 Six Day War. He continued his education at Cairos al-Azhar university, earning a masters degree in Islamic law and later a doctorate. In the mid-1970s, Azzam abandoned the Palestinian cause because it he said it was too focused on nationalist goals and insufficiently committed to the religious essence of jihad. He then came to King Abdul-Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Azzam belonged to the Jamiat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun (The Society of Muslim Brothers), founded in 1928 in Egypt by the Islamic scholar Hassan alBanna, who dedicated himself to rejuvenating Islam after the fall of the Caliphate in 1924. Members of the society believe that the government of a Muslim country should prepare its people to accept Islamic law, as set out in the Quran and Sunna, and that Islam should be an integral part of political life. Throughout the Muslim world, Islamist movements like this posed the greatest threat to traditional ruling Arab elites and new secularism, so they have existed underground. This is one reason why Azzam and others found sanctuary in the land of the Wahhabi.

INSURRECTION
On Nov. 20, 1979, a band of 1,400 or so militant Islamists led by a selfstyled messiah (former national guardsman Juhayman ibn-Muhammad ibn Sayf al-Utaibi) seized the Holy Mosque in the name of restoring Islamic purity. Although the insurrection was defeated and left no lasting impression, it is significant because it marks the first time that Islamists joined the political opposition to the Saudi regime. In one sense it bore a resemblance to the earlier ikhwan movementit was purely rejectionist, had no constructive recommendations, and lacked a comprehensive vision. On the other hand, it was motivated by specific political concernsthe governments adoption of deliberate policies aimed at spreading corruption and the promotion of Westernization through the media and through educational institutions.10 The insurrection had special significance for the bin Laden family. Because bin Laden trucks have exclusive rights to enter the holy site to effect repairs, the insurrectionists used them to transport weapons into Mecca, knowing that the trucks would not be inspected. Osamas brother Mahrous was arrested for his ties to radical Islamists, but was later freed, and no lasting harm was done to the Saudi-bin Laden special relationship.

10. The Rise and Evolution of the Modern Islamic Reform Movement in Saudi Arabia, Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia <www.islah.org/chap1.html>.

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Enemies by Design

The insurrection was too extreme to secure a popular following, but Juhaymans sermons against Westernization found a wide audience among intellectuals, including Osama bin Laden, and they forced the Saudi regime to take a hard look at its politics and lavish habits. Osama did not approve of the assault, nor of the people behind it. He was still both a devout Muslim and a loyal subject of the House of Saud. Like the brotherhood, he believed that a strong Islamic government was the only way to protect Saudi society from the evils of Westernization, and believed that the monarchy was best able to achieve it. The Juhayman Insurrection was only one of four significant events that shook the Muslim world toward the end of the 1970s. Jan. 16, 1978The Shah of Iran flees to the West; Feb. 1, 1979Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns from exile in Paris to the establish the Islamic Republic of Iran; July 16, 1979Saddam Hussein becomes president of Iraq; and Dec. 27, 1979The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan to defend the puppet government of Nur Mohammed Taraki. It is hard to overestimate the significance of the Soviet invasion. A nonMuslim army invaded a Muslim country for the first time since World War II. Muslims from all over the Arab world joined the jihad, and Osama bin Laden found his professional calling.

E F O R E W E E X A M I N E the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and how it shaped Osama bin Laden, we need to understand the meaning of jihad, or struggle. Its a multi-faceted concept on which even Muslims do not agree. However, one thing is certainit does not mean holy war, which in Arabic would be rendered as al-harb al-muqaddasa (an oxymoron, since harb, with the root meaning of rage, is always used in a negative sense in the Quran). This common Western misinterpretation is likely born of opportunistic propaganda or a simplistic allusion to the Crusades, which were holy warswars of sanctified aggression.

Muslims do not force their faith on non-Muslims, because the Quran (2:236) says: There is no compulsion in religion. We know that Muslims show tolerance toward other faiths thanks to testimony from people like Christian missionary and historian Sir Thomas W. Arnold: [Of] any organized attempt to force the acceptance of Islam on the nonMuslim 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 Christendom 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 1 [sic] governments towards them.

1. 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.

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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 the phrase fi sabil Allah (in the way of God).2 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.3 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 Quran, 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, writes Streusand, because the vast majority of Sunni Muslims prefer to compromise Sharia doctrine to create a harmonious society rather than an Islamic tyranny. Still another version of jihad comes from the Sufi concept of greater jihadan internal struggle against temptation and polytheism. As Streusand writes: Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (10591111), probably the most important figure in Islams 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.4 Despite the differences in these three traditional modelslimited war, rebellion against impiety, and moral enlightenmentjihad is always
2. Douglas E. Streusand, What Does Jihad Mean? Middle East Quarterly , September 1997. 3. The various contexts of jihad according to the Quran and Hadith 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 4. Ibid., Streusand.

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31

understood as jihad fi sabil Allah. It can not be justified in the name of individual or national aggrandizement. Today, though, that view is now no longer absolute. Jihad in the modern world has taken on the additional form of an anticolonial national liberation struggle, like the Palestinian Intifada (shaking off) against Israels occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. As we saw in the last chapter, this modern interpretation does not find support among strict theocrats like Sheikh Azzam, who abandoned the Palestinian cause on this very point. Because jihad is based on voluntary commitment and subject to conflicting interpretations, the call to arms is rarely effectivea fact that should disabuse anyone of the notion that jihad means a concerted holy war directed at destroying Western culture. Moreover, doctrinal differences within Islam and conflicting national interests ensure that the Arab/Muslim world remains fractured and easily exploited.

O N E C O N F L I C T T H R E E WA R S
The jihad to expel the Soviet army from Afghanistan was illusive because the mujahedin (Islamic resistance fighters) were not the determinants of their own actions. They, and the Arabs who came to help expel the Communists, were pawns in larger geopolitical battles. In fact, the jihad was largely a foreign war in which Afghans were little more than cannon fodder. Osama bin Laden is a direct product of this foreign war, and so the motives of the major players must be treated in some detail.

Soviet Union
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan started much the same way that World War I broke outa political assassination set off a chain reaction of military and political misjudgment. Once events were set in motion, the Soviet Union could not stop the momentum. The more it struggled to fix the problem, the more its war party pushed it into the mire of its own Vietnam. The analogy to the June, 28, 1914, assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the April 11, 1978, murder of Mir Akbar Khyber, a founder of Afghanistans Communist Party (the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan or PDPA) and vocal critic of the government of President Muhammad Daoud Khan. His assassin is thought to have been the minister of the interior. Eleven days afterward, the PDPA assaulted the presidential palace, killing Daoud and most of his family. On April 25, Nur Mohammed Taraki, leader of the PDPAs Khalq (Peoples) faction, was named chairman of the Revolutionary Council and the 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

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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 Daoud sought to carve out an independent foreign policy. Even though leftists helped him in 1973 to overthrow the monarchy of his cousin Zahir Shahwho was in Italy on a European visitDaoud 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 Afghanistans new constitution established oneparty presidential rule. The assassination of Mir Akbar Khyber was seen as part of Daouds 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 Daouds 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 governments 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 [restructuring] 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.

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The embassy jointly with a group of Party advisors is undertaking measures to overcome the disagreements in the Afghan leadership.5 Of course, Puzanovs Marxist-Leninist sloganeering utterly ignored the largely rural, tradition-bound and fiercely independent Afghan people, who would never accept rule by atheistic communists. Puzanov did acknowledge the factional infighting within the PDPA, but could not appreciate how this 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 political stability was the mujahedin. Tarakis reforms, such as womens emancipation and land reform, trampled on centuries of Afghan rural tradition, and in June the mujahedin declared 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 womens literacy program. The townspeople were joined by most of the Afghan armys 17th Infantry Division. Tarakis forces won the battle but at the cost of more than 5,000 dead, including 100 Soviets. That month, Taraki placed a desperate call to Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin. T A R A K I : The situation is bad and getting worse. K O S Y G I N : 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? T A R A K I : There is no active support on the part of the population. It is almost wholly under the influence of Shiite slogans -- follow not the heathens, but follow us. The propaganda is underpinned by this. K O S Y G I N : Are there many workers there? T A R A K I : Very few -- between 1,000 and 2,000 people in all. K O S Y G I N : What are the prospects? T A R A K I : We are convinced that the enemy will form new units and will develop an offensive. K O S Y G I N : Do you not have the forces to rout them? T A R A K I : I wish it were the case.

5. 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 ArchivesCold War International History Project. (CWIHP), <gwis.circ.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b8-9a13.htm>.

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K O S Y G I N : Hundreds of Afghan officers were trained in the Soviet Union. Where are they all now? T A R A K I : Most of them are Muslim reactionaries. We are unable to rely on them, we have no confidence in them.6

On March 20, 1979, Taraki met with Kosygin and other Politburo members, at which time Kosygin articulated the Soviet Unions 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.7 Tarakis 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 PDPAs 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.8 The Soviet Union was in an untenable position. It was blindly committed to a government that seemed only capable of waging terror on its own people and destroying itself from within. Retreat seemed impossible because of the potential loss of face and risk of Afghanistans Islamist insurgency expanding into the Central Asian Soviet republics. For better or worse, Moscow was stuck with Taraki. Until now, Moscow treated Taraki and Amin as a duumvirate; now, Amin had to go. In September, en route home from a Nonaligned Movement conference in Cuba, Taraki stopped off in Moscow to discuss Amins future.
6. Transcript of telephone conversation between Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin and Afghan Prime Minister Nur Mohammed Taraki, March 1979, Cold War, Episode 20, CNN, September 1998April 1999, <europe.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/20/documents/Moscow>. 7. 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, its logical to conclude that it occurred before this meeting, given Kosygins reassuring tone. 8. Afghanistan: The Making of U.S. Policy (1973-1990), Digital National Security Archive, George Washington University, <nsarchive.chadwyck.com/afessayx.htm#1>.

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Amin learned of the stopover and had Taraki arrested upon his arrival on Sept. 16. He was secretly executed on Oct. 9. October 1979 was the pivotal month. A fact-finding mission on the state of Afghanistan by Gen. Ivan Pavlovsky determined the armys morale and fighting ability to be low, and that 23 of Afghanistans 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.9 As Gen. Valentin Varennikov, deputy head of the Soviet General Staff from 1979-84 and an architect of the invasion, told CNN in 1997: [The invasion] was supported first of all by Brezhnev ... [partly] because of Tarakis 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 couldnt 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 didnt meet Brezhnevs proposals halfway.10 In late November, Amins demand that Puzanov be replaced as Soviet ambassador convinced the Politburo that military force and the elimination of Amin were necessary. On Dec. 12, the Politburo decided to invade. At 3 a.m. on Dec. 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 the Politburo member Yuri Andropov, was brought back from exile and installed as president. Varennikov summarized the tragic futility of Soviet policy: We didnt 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 usI 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. 11

9. Odd Arne Westad, Concerning the situation in ANew Russian Evidence on the Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan, CWIHP Bulletin 128-132, <www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b8-9a12.htm>. 10. Interview with CNN in Cold War, Episode 20. 11. Ibid.

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The United States

Until the invasion, the U.S. paid little or no attention to Afghanistan. Because it shares a long border with the Soviet Union, successive administrations from Dwight Eisenhower to Jimmy Carter accepted Afghanistan as a Soviet buffer state. The State Departments March 9, 1976, Annual Policy Assessment described it as a militarily and politically neutral nation, effectively dependent on the Soviet Union. The U.S. could afford to be calm because during this time it could project military power into South Asia from Iran. Iran became the linchpin of U.S. Middle East policy after 1953, when the CIA and MI6 destabilized the elected nationalist government of Muhammad Mossadeq and reinstalled the pro-Western, anti-Communist autocrat Shah Reza Muhammad Pahlevi. The linchpin broke in 1978, taking with it the U.S. governments equanimity about Soviet influence in Afghanistan. The inability of the U.S. to cope with the ramifications of the fall of the shah would lead to profound policy blunders, including the massive, indiscriminate arming of the mujahedin. Like the Soviet Union, the U.S. suffered from geopolitical blindness. Under Shah Pahlevi, Iran seemed to be a stable outpost of American power and influence in the Persian Gulf. It gave the U.S. access to military bases and intelligence facilities, and the U.S. provided military assistance in return. The U.S. and Israel even helped create Pahlevis secret police, SAVAK, and provided training in terrorist and torture techniques. The image of Iran as an unflagging ally of America became an ide fixe, which meant that basic questions about Pahlevis rule were never asked, even though the country was collapsing from within. Discontent with Pahlevi grew in the early 1970s as oil revenues began to rise. The rich lived in opulence, the poor endured famine, and intellectuals were tortured in SAVAK dungeons. Pahlevi was scarcely more popular among his people than Taraki was among the Afghans. On Jan. 16, 1978, Pahlevi was forced to flee. With no domestic political opposition to speak of, the only alternative leaders were Irans ultraconservative Shiite Muslim clerics led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was in Paris. If nothing else, the clerics unyielding anti-Westernism appealed to Iranians. On Feb. 1, 1979, Khomeini returned from 15 years in exile to proclaim the Islamic Republic of Iran. The end of the shah and of the mirage of Iranian stability should have been expected, but the U.S. was incapable of rational thought on the subject. As Time reported in its Jan. 7, 1980, Man of the Year cover story on Khomeini: 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-

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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 Washingtons continued support.12 Americas blindness would continue until the end. Despite repeated demands from the new Khomeini regime 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 the U.S. In retaliation, 500 Iranians stormed the U.S. embassy compound in Teheran on Nov. 4, 1979, and took the employees hostage. Of the 90 hostages, 52 were held for the full 444 days.13 The collapse of Iran led the U.S. to re-examine its attitude toward Afghanistan within weeks of the Herat uprising. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was now telling Carter that the Soviet Union might use Afghanistan to penetrate into South Asia, and even influence Pakistan, the remaining ally of U.S. containment policy in the region. This scenario was nonsense since no change had occurred in the Soviet attitude towards Afghanistan, and the U.S. was being kept apprised of Soviet activity. Brzezinskis motive was to provoke a conflict to ensnare the Soviet Union in its own Vietnam. In language that now seems eerily 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 countrys independence.14 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
12. Ayatullah Khomeini: The Mystic Who Lit the Fires of Hatred, Time, Jan. 7, 1980. 13. The hostage-taking ended on Jan. 21, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in, which 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 campaign staff to commit one of the grossest acts in American history. Reagans 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 McFarlaneboth of them future national security advisorsmet with an emissary from the Khomeini regime in Washington in early October 1980 to delay the release of the hostages until after the November 1980 election. The moment Reagan was sworn in and the hostages were released, Irans 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. See Chapter 9. 14. 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>.

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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.15

Carter, preoccupied by the hostage crisis, accepted Brzezinskis 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 worlds 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.16 This last sentence would become known as The Carter Doctrine, but it was little more than bravado and bluster. The U.S. was in no position to engage the Soviets in Afghanistan, so Carter sought indirect methods to hinder Soviet expansionism. One such method was to increase covert aid to 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, Dec. 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.17 Carter and Brzezinski read into the Soviet invasion what they wanted, but it would take incoming president Ronald Reagan to distort U.S. Afghanistan policy into a full-blown crusade. Reagan viewed the world though a simplistic moral prism in which the U.S. was the bastion of virtuous Christian democracy, and the Soviet Union was the embodiment of atheistic evil. In a famous quote Reagan said: No one who disbelieves in God and in an afterlife can possibly be trusted.

15. Memo from Zbigniew Brzezinski to President Jimmy Carter, Dec. 26, 1979, Cold War, Episode 20, op. cit. 16. President Jimmy Carter, State of the Union Address, Jan. 21, 1980. 17. The CIAs Intervention in Afghanistan Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur, Jan.15-21 1998, <www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html>.

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During his Feb. 16, 1985, State of the Union Address, Reagan made a statement that would later become known as The Reagan Doctrinethe 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.18 This last statement is, of course, highly speciousone mans freedom fighter is another mans terroristbut it is in essence the same false reasoning that presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush would later use to justify the war on terrorism, a term that Reagan coined. In March 1985, Reagan signed National Security Directive 166 authorizing what would become 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 crush 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. By 1987, annual supplies of U.S. arms to the mujahedin, including Stinger missiles from 1986 onward, totaled 67,000 tons. U.S. involvement in Afghanistan was the Cold War continuation of the Great Game played by Britain against Russia for Eurasian domination, a cruel game paid in Afghan blood.

Pakistan
Until the invasion, Pakistan did not enjoy warm relations with the U.S. In 1977, the Carter Administration reduced foreign aid because of Pakistans atomic bomb program and the repressive rule of its strongman Gen. Zia ulHaq, who came to power in a coup that year.19 Carter was the first and last U.S. president to predicate foreign aid upon an ethical principlerespect for human rightsand Zia clearly didnt measure up. However, after Iran fell, ethics suddenly became a luxury Carter couldnt afford, as the Carter Doctrine showed. Almost overnight, Pakistan was granted Most Favored Nation trading status, and Carter offered Zia hundreds of millions of dollars in economic and military aid, as well as
18. President Ronald Reagan, State of the Union Address, Feb. 16, 1985. The address speaks more to the Contras opposition to Nicaraguas Sandinista government, than to the mujahedin and their jihad, but Reagan clearly places both on the same moral plane. 19. Zia declared martial law on July 5, 1977, on the pretext that President Zulfikar Ali-Bhuttos ruling socialist Pakistan Peoples Party had rigged the March 7 vote. Under the new proWestern rgime, the private sector prospered, and Zia set about Islamicizing the countrys political, legal and economic structures. Zia cancelled elections planned for Oct. 15, and promised new ones within 90 days. They were indefinitely postponed, and Bhutto was executed.

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protection against possible Soviet strikes. All Zia had to do was help train the mujahedin. The rabidly anti-Communist Reagan administration proved to be even more obliging. Zia obtained a six-year economic and military aid package that elevated Pakistan to the third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel and Egypt. The facts that Zia was still pursuing a nuclear weapons program and had no intention of permitting democratic rule were irrelevant now that the U.S. had redefined Zia as a freedom fighter. Another instance of moral backsliding concerned U.S.-Pakistani relations over drug policy. 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 didnt really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade... I dont think that we need to apologize for this. Every situation has its fallout....20 When the operation by the CIA/ISI (the Inter-Service Intelligence agency, Pakistans CIA) to fund the mujahedin began in July 1979, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region grew opium only for regional markets, and produced no heroin. Within two years, it became the worlds 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 the operation, so 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.21 In this mutually exploitative scenario, Pakistan ostensibly had a free hand. The CIA provided weapons and funding, but the ISI controlled disbursement and the training camps. Despite repeated requests, the ISI didnt allow official representatives from the CIA or Pentagon to have any
20. Alfred McCoy, Drug fallout: the CIAs Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade, The Progressive, August 1997. The U.S. government didnt really sacrifice anything, since it had long been involved in the regions 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 Daouds coup dtat: 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. interestscontinued Afghan independence, stability in the region and narcoticsthere 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). 21. Ibid., McCoy.

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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.22 When the pressure finally became too much to bear in the late 1980s, the ISI set up stage-managed tours so that American visitors would only see what the ISI wanted them to see. Pakistans training camps already existed before the Soviet invasion. They were started in 1973 to address an 80-year-old problemthe Durand Line. On Nov. 12, 1893, Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, Britains Foreign Secretary to India, forced the Emir of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan, to define his the countrys eastern border, placing more than half of Afghanistans Pashtuns within British India. Pashtuns make up half of the population of Afghanistan, and virtually all of its leaders have been Pashtun. When Pakistan (Punjab-Afghanistan-Kashmir-istan) was created out of the Muslim-Hindu partition of British India in 1947, the Durand Line defined Pakistans Western border. The Afghan government declared the boundary null and void, but the world paid not heed. Thus, a simmering sore point between the two countries would be the issue of Pashtunistana demand that Pakistan grant their Pashtuns autonomy, independence, or the right to join Afghanistan. When Daoud overthrew Zahir Shah in 1973, he made the Pashtunistan cause a central theme of his government. In response, Pakistan began developing subversive rebel Afghan forces. Mediation efforts by Iran and the U.S. helped defuse tensions by 1977, and during a visit to Islamabad in March 1978, Daoud and Zia reached an understanding: Zia would release Pashtun and Baluchi militants from prison, and Daoud would withdraw support for these groups and expel Pashtun and Baluchi militants taking refuge in Afghanistan.23 One of these militants was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Islamist Pashtun from northern Afghanistan, who wanted to unite Afghans of all ethnic groups under Islamic rule. Hekmatyar was a terrorist, major heroin manufacturer, and a liability to mujahedin unity, but to Zia he was the perfect instrument to be installed in Kabul once the fighting ended. As Robert Kaplan writes in Soldiers of God:

22. The principals 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 Aug. 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. The charter of the ISI stipulates that its Director is a CIA appointee. To maintain the posture of plausible deniability, an imperialist intelligence service obligatorily employs proxies to do dirty work that would not pass muster with civilian oversight and public opinion. For the purpose, Pakistan is an ideal vassal, a creation of imperial divide and conquer on the subcontinent and dependent on protection from India. 23. Baluchistan is a province in Southwest Pakistan, straddling the southern border of Afghanistan.

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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 Zias protection and financial largesse (courtesy of American taxpayers).24

Because Hekmatyar was Zias man, he became the CIAs favorite mujahid. The Soviet Union, the U.S. and Pakistan all had selfish motives for involving themselves in Afghanistan. Our world today is a direct product of this selfishness.

BIN LADEN AND THE MUJAHEDIN

For Muslims worldwide, the Soviet invasion justified jihad both in the classical sense of jihad fi sabil Allah and in the modern sense of anti-colonial liberation, although the religious sense prevailed among those who came to fight. Osama bin Laden heeded Sheikh Abdullah Azzams call to jihad, and left for Pakistan on a secret orientation trip within two weeks after the Soviet tanks rolled in. Members of Jamiat-i-Islami (Society of Islam) met him at the port of Karachi and took him to Peshawar to see the refugees, meet the leaders of the mujahedin, and survey the organization. Peshawar was Jihad Central. Located near the Khyber Pass Afghan border crossing, the capital of Pakistans 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 Azzam had always been dissuaded from fighting to concentrate on his teaching. Azzam helped set up a vast network to help the refugees and train the Arab volunteers. He inspired Arab youth with his calls to defeat the enemies of Islam. Jihad must not be abandoned until Allah (SWT) alone is worshipped. Jihad continues until Allahs 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.25 Azzam would turn out to be the single greatest influence on bin Laden and the development of the international Islamist movement, but the mujahedin lacked infrastructure and organization to wage jihad effectively. Bin Laden would solve this problem.
24. Robert D. Kaplan, Soldiers of God (New York: Vintage, 2001), p. 69. 25. Cited in Abdullah Bin Omar, [trans. Mohammed Saeed], The Striving Sheik: Abdullah Azzam, Nidaul Islam, July-September 1996, <www.islam.org.au/articles/14/Azzam.htm>.

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Soon after he came to Pakistan, Osama bin Laden returned home to begin a massive fundraising and recruitment drive. His father supported the jihad, so when bin Laden joined, his family responded enthusiastically, but his presence was needed elsewhere first. 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 anti-Communist insurgency forces. The Saudi leadership may have had just cause to be concerned about the communist military threat, but the recent discovery of new oilfields on the undefined Saudi-Yemeni border might also have been a significant 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 Ladens 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 fathers 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.26 The shelters were necessary to protect the mujahedin from Soviet and Afghan government artillery. As a result, bin Laden bulldozers became prime military targets. After 1982, bin Laden began spending more time in Pakistan and by 1984, was spending eight months of the year away from Saudi Arabia. One of his first significant achievements was the establishment with Azzam of Bait alAnsar (Partisans House) 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 repair, so the guesthouse served as an inn or headquarters where people could find funds, training, and logistical support. This excerpt from the Observer gives a sense of daily life: Conditions were Spartanalmost 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
26. Robert Fisk interview with bin Laden, Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace, The Independent, Dec. 6, 1993.

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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.27

By 1985, the same year that Reagan signed National Security Council Directive 166, the numbers of volunteers jumped sharply. Worldwide media coverage, the guesthouse, and improved transportation courtesy of bin Laden construction inspired thousands of Saudis and other Arabs to join the jihad.

Al-Qaida fact and myth

The influx of volunteers, which in 1982 was barely a trickle, was becoming a bureaucratic nightmare. Because the organization was informal, no record was kept of peoples comings and goings, making the total number passing through the guesthouse hard to estimate. Saudi dissident Dr. Saad alFagih, who was at the Bait al-Ansar with bin Laden, puts it at 30,000 to 40,000, of whom 7080 percent came from Saudi Arabia. Visitors would typically show up at the guesthouse, spend a few weeks training or fighting, and then leave. Thus, when a relative inquired after a loved one, 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 peoplemujahedin, charity workers, or visitorsas well as all traffic between the training camps and the house. Al-Fagih told Frontline that in 1988 bin Laden established a proper reporting procedure whereby anyone who came for whatever reason had to sign in and out of the guesthouse. That record, that documentation, was called the record of al-Qaida. Theres nothing sinister about al-Qaida. Its not like an organization like any other terrorist organization or any other underground group. I dont think [bin Laden] used any name for his underground group. If you want to name it, you can name it bin Laden group. Al Qaida 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.28 The stark contrast between al-Fagihs definition and the accepted interpretation of al-Qaida as base stems from the homonyms Qaida and Qaid. Most Arabic words are derived from root verbs with three consonants. Qaida (Q-ayn-D) means to sit and gives rise to a cluster of words around the primary meaning of seat, foundation, or basis.29 When combined with
27. Jason Burke, The making of Osama bin Laden, The Observer, Oct. 28, 2001. 28. Interview with Dr. Saad al-Fagih, FrontlineHunting bin Laden, PBS, Sept. 13, 2001. 29. The consonant [ayn] is made by constricting the larynx and is very difficult for non-Arabic speakers to make. As there is no Latin letter for this sound, it is represented by an inverted comma. In Qaida the [ayn] carries a short [i] vowel, creating the quasi-diphthong [ai]. In Qaid, the third letter is equivalent to [y] and the resulting diphthong is a long [i], which is hard for non-Arabic speakers to distinguish from [ai].

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harb (war), it signifies a military base of operations (Qaida harbiya). From this connotation arose the myth of the HQ of the terrorist network, AlQaida the Base. Qaid means to fasten or record, and gives rise to a cluster of meanings like booking, registry, or enrollment. This is the word al-Fagih uses to describe Al-Qaida the Log Book. In the beginning was a book, and no base, but one can't make war on a mere notebook, and this seems to be why the baseless but more sensational meaning of base prevailed. 30

A fateful partnership
The year 1985 also saw Azzams recruitment center mushroom from a single storefront in Peshawar into a network of recruitment centres, mosques and Islamic centres, thanks to financing from his new partner, Osama bin Laden. Now called Maktab al-Khidamat (The Services Office), Azzams 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. During the 1980s, bin Laden was still learning his way and kept a low profile. He was very much the junior partner. In 1986, bin Laden broke free of the Peshawar infrastructure to establish his own organization. Two years later he had more than six camps in Afghanistan, and even his own military command staffed with 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 with the Red Army, the first of which was the battle of Jaji in the province of Baktia, 200 kilometres from Khost.31

30. One plausible explanation concerns the influence of non-Arabs. Pakistanis in the guesthouse might have associated bin Ladens Qaid with Qaida, which in Urdu also means a beginning (basic) grammar book for students of Arabic. Second, the first mention of alQaida with respect to bin Laden came from the Western media, which is notoriously ignorant of Arabic language and culture. The BBC related that bin-Laden first used the term Al-Qaida after 9/11, taking his cue from the U.S. this in an exceptional documentary aired Nov. 3, 2004, The Power of Nightmares - Part III: The Shadows In The Cave < http://207.44.245.159/video1040.htm >. It shows that AlQaida as an organization does not exist, and that the Islamist terror threat is a fantasy, from which both Islamists and neo-cons derive their political power. 31. Milt Bearden, the CIAs 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, Jan. 24, 2000), <www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?010924fr_archive03>.

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Enemies by Design

In one engagement, bin Laden joined a force of 50 Arabs to repel a prolonged assault by Soviet helicopters and infantry. 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.32 The Observer account continued: Over the next three years, bin Laden fought hard, often exposing himself to extreme physical danger. One leader of the hard-line Hezb-iIslami group said he remembered bin Laden holding a position under heavy bombardment after being surrounded by Soviet soldiers. At least a dozen other senior veterans, many of whom are now opposed to bin Laden, corroborate the accounts of his combat role. They all mention his lack of concern for his own safety. The devout boy was becoming a warrior.33

The Peshawar Seven

The true nature of the mujahedin leaders could not have been further from Reagans freedom fighter delusion. These small militias were led by querulous, petty religious leaders and warlords. The Peshawar Seven, as they would come to be known, spent as much time fighting among each other as with the Russians.34 The first two mujahedin leaders were Hekmatyar and Burhanuddin Rabbani. Hekmatyar came to Peshawar in 1973 to organize a well-trained group of mujahedin to fight the Daoud government because it included infidel Communists. In 1976 Hekmatyar broke with the Jamiat-i-Islami to form the radical Hezb-i-Islami (Party of Islam). He became Zias protg from 1977 onward, because Zia thought his terrorist tactics could keep Daoud off balance if he chose to pursue his Pashtunistan policy. That same year, Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, recruited Muslim youths to found the Jamiat-i-Islami, which carried out protests and Islamic dissident activities against Daoud. He fled Afghanistan after a government crackdown.

However, this view is contradicted by bin Ladens combat experience in the Yemeni conflict and numerous first-hand accounts of his valour. 32. Burke, op. cit. 33. Ibid. 34. The following biographical sketches are based on the Digital National Security Archive and the essay Whither Afghanistan? The History and Politics of the Afghan War After the Soviet Withdrawal and Some Thoughts on the Future, National Security Caucus Foundation, Boston, Virginia, <www.nscf.net/danner>.

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The three moderate political leaders were Sibghatullah Mohjadedi, Maulawi Mohammed Nabi Mohammedi and Pir Sayed Ahmed Gailani. Mohjadedi, a Pashtun Sufi spiritual leader (pir), was a former teacher of Islamic law in Kabul with connections to the Afghan royal family and the PDPA. He founded the Jabha-i-Nejat-i-Milli (Afghan National Liberation Front). Pir Sayed Ahmed Gailani, Sufi spiritual leader and former Peugeot dealer, also with ties to the royal family, founded the Mahaz-i-Melli-i-Islami (National Islamic Front of Afghanistan). Mohammed Nabi Mohammedi was a parliamentarian in the 1960s who criticized secular influence in Afghanistan. He founded the Harakat-i-Inqilab-iIslami (Islamic Revolutionary Movement). The sixth leader was Yunus Khalis, an Islamist Pashtun, who owed his power to tribal connections in his home province of Nangarhar rather than to religious charisma. He fled in 1974 after writing a book critical of the Daoud regime. He formed his own Hizb-i-Islami after splitting from Hekmatyars party. The last member to join was Abdul Rasul Abu Sayyaf. Unlike the other six leaders, he was a Wahhabi financed by Saudi Arabia. An attempt was made to unite the six groups into the Ittehad-i-Islami Birai Azad-i-Afghanistan (Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan) under Abu Sayyafs rule, but the plan failed due to infighting. Throughout the jihad, divisions between Islamists and traditionalists, and a general contempt for Hekmatyar and Pakistani meddling, rendered unity impossible. As Kaplan writes: 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 mujahedinas the media phrased itwas 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.35 Unfortunately, the other six leaders were over a barrel, because they depended on Zia for training, funds and weapons. Moreover, Zia could at any time have cut a deal with the Communist government in Kabul in exchange for their taking back the 3.5 million refugees on Pakistani soil. Putting up with Hekmatyar was the price the other six had to pay.
35. Kaplan, op. cit., p. 69.

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Enemies by Design

Jalalabad
At the end of the Soviet-Afghan war, on Feb. 14, 1989, the Peshawar Seven announced the establishment of an Interim Government headed by Sibghatullah Mujadeddi. Shiite resistance groups and many key field commanders were excluded. The next day the Soviet occupation officially ended. Total Soviet dead have been estimated at 40,000 to 50,000, not counting suicides. The greatest suffering was born by the Afghan people, of whom one million died during the eight-year conflict and millions more fled as refugees, most of them to Pakistan. But the defeat of the Soviet Union did not mean an end to war. In fact, history generally treats the period 1979-1989 as The First Afghan War. With the jihad now redirected against the communist government in Kabul, led by Dr. Muhammad Najibullah, the Second Afghan War begins.36 The last major military engagement of the mujahedin against the communists would be the battle for Jalalabad (MarchSeptember 1989), and would demonstrate perhaps more clearly than any other event the true attitude of the U.S. toward the freedom fighters. The CIA convinced Pakistan that Najibullahs control over Kabul could be broken by a threepronged assault against the cities of Jalalabad, Kunduz, and Qandahar. The mujahedin should be thrown at Jalalabad. According to veteran Afghan guerrilla leader Abdul Haq, this was a dreadful idea: Its dumb to lose 10,000 lives. Theres no way the mujahedin can take the city now. Its surrounded by a river, mountains and minefields. And if we do take it, whats going to happen? The Russians will bomb the shit out of us, thats what.37 Haq was a genuine hero of the Afghan resistance. He was wounded 16 times and lost a foot to a land mine in October 1987. Haq hated the ISI and the Peshawar Seven, both for their military planning and their embrace of militant Islam: I dont think we need it. Always in the history of Afghanistan the people have resisted any kind of force. The British learned this, and now the Russians have. If our people are forced into something they dont want, the fighting will continue. What we need instead is a broad-based government.38 Nevertheless, Pakistan did as the CIA wantedit ordered the lightly armed mujahedin, including bin Laden, to stage a frontal assault on Jalalabads artillery defensive emplacements. As Haq predicted, the mujahedin were massacred. Speaking on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, Peter Gill of Britains Thames Television said the mujahedin badly underestimated
36. New Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev installed Najibullah in 1986 over dissatisfaction and impatience with Karmals leadership. Najib changed his name to Najibullah (Excellent, Noble of God) to give himself a religious air. 37. Kaplan, op. cit., p. 166. 38. Ibid., p. 167.

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the Afghan armys defensive resolve, and as a result lost up to 10,000 fighters. However, this conclusion is based on the false assumption that the intent was to take Jalalabad. The moment the Soviet Red Army began to retreat, making the Persian Gulf safe from invasion, the mujahedin became a political liability. Pakistani Brig.-Gen. (Retd.) Mohammad Yousaf argues persuasively that the CIA wanted to deny the mujahedin outright victory, and sought to destroy it as a fighting force. As he wrote in his book Silent Soldier, the story of Gen. Akhtar Abdur Rahman, (Director-General of ISI from 1979-1987): 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 Soviets 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.39 Support for the view that the mujahedin were being set up to be destroyed comes from Gill who described the battle for Jalalabad as a contest between the Soviet Union and the U.S. 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.40 After Jalalabad, the mujahedin never again constituted a military threat. 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, Nov. 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. With the death of Azzam, the Maktab al-Khidamat split into moderate and extremist factions, of which the latter followed bin Laden. Its 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 in many different countries. Some of these Arabs were Palestinians who reinforced bin Ladens sympathy for their plight. Demanding an end to Israeli occupation would become one of the cornerstones of bin Ladens jihad against the U.S.
39. Brig. Gen. (Retd.) Mohammed Yousaf, Introduction, Silent Soldier: The Man behind the Afghan Jehad, 1998, published on-line at www.afghanbooks.com. 40. Rebels Without a Cause, MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, PBS, Aug. 29, 1989.

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Enemies by Design

After the jihad, bin Laden returned home to Jeddah and the familys 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 and jihad. Even though the Afghan campaign was over, Muslims elsewhere in the world were living under oppression, and bin Laden believed they also deserved his help. He had developed a taste for jihad, but without the Soviet Union, he and his followers would need to direct their martial religious zeal against new targets.

N N O V E M B E R 1 9 7 9 , the Juhayman Insurrection, though ultimately a failure, raised uncomfortable questions about the House of Sauds commitment to pure Islam. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan a month later, the Saudi government had a tailor-made foreign war to occupy its domestic religious zealots. The jihad was like a gift.

Like Pakistan and the U.S., Saudi Arabia funded, armed and trained a religiously motivated guerrilla army without regard for the local population or the wars long-term ramifications. So long as it continued, the Saudi government could indulge the fantasy that it was a champion of Islam and patron of Osama bin Ladens Arab Afghans. When the war ended, the mujahedin that were trained in bin Ladens camps came home, and the Saudi government found itself evicted from its fools paradise. Contrary to first impressions, the jihad was really a no-win proposition: if the Saudis refused to heed the call, it risked exacerbating criticism about its piety; if it did heed the call, 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 their proxy war against the Soviet Union, and the Saudis could not refuse. In the end, the burden of victory and the Gulf War would focus an unwanted critical light on the Saudi governments Islamist credentials. When one considers that the Saudi government runs its domestic and foreign affairs according to man-made laws, lives in most un-Islamic wastefulness, and aligns itself with the enemies of Islam, it is in fact the very model of the impious leadership that it claims should be overthrown. Consequently, the hero of the jihad had outlived his usefulness the moment he returned home.

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Enemies by Design

J I H A D V S . R I YA D H P O L I T I K
For reasons first discussed in Chapter I, ibn Saud treated the Wahhabi only as a means to a political endcreating a nation-state and living opulently off the revenue from oil revenues. Tending to the needs of Saudi citizens or oppressed Muslims in other lands was not considered important. In the mid-1930s, the U.S. supplanted Great Britain as ibn Sauds patron. This change was due to two factors: Chicago businessman Charles Crane brought drinking water to the Saudi interiorsomething the British could not doand the U.S. government appealed to ibn Sauds greed. Britain had insisted that ibn Saud spend some of his oil revenue on improving the lot of ordinary Saudismedical care, housing, educationto pre-empt revolutionary tendencies from upsetting British imperial interests. This paternalistic attitude was standard imperial policy, and helped raise living and literacy standards in countries under British rule. The U.S., on the other hand, cared only about cheap oil, and so absolved ibn Saud from any formal moral or fiduciary responsibility towards his own people. This suited ibn Saud fine, and in return he gave ARAMCO (The Arab-American Oil Company) the right to exploit the kingdoms vast oil fields. Journalist Sad K. Aburish aptly calls the Saudi-U.S. relationship The Brutal Friendship: The overall results of Americas hands-off policy were disastrous. There was not a single hint as to how the huge oil revenues should be spent and not a penny of the $400 million paid to ibn Saud between 1946 and 1953 was used for development. In 1946, the countrys record of expenditure showed a mere $150,000 for building schools and $2 million for the royal garage. And ibn Sauds sons followed his ways. The crown prince built a palace for $10 million, then razed it when he disliked the way it looked and built one for $30 million. Another prince drove a Cadillac until the petrol ran out, then gave it away and bought another with a full tank.1 Such profligate spending would lead to the 1964 abdication of King Saud, generate popular resentment for the monarchy, and force the Saudis into greater dependence on the U.S. The brutal friendship intensified under the Cold War-obsessed Reagan administration. King Fahd uttered little more than a peep of protest against Israels 1982 invasion of Lebanon, bought 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. In addition, Reagan used his Saudi friendship to procure $1 million per month in illegal funding for the contras, a CIA-funded and created rebel force
1. Sad K. Aburish, The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud (New York: St. Martins Press, 1994), pp. 38, 40.

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opposed to the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The Boland Amendment to the 1973 War Powers Act prohibited the U.S. from providing military equipment, training or support to anyone for the purpose of overthrowing the Government of Nicaragua. The proposal to exploit outside foreign sources of funding was raised by Reagans national security advisor Robert McFarlane in February 1984. In 1985, the Saudis doubled their contributions. In all, they gave $32 million to the Contras, thus allowing the government to circumvent the Boland Amendment.2

Pan-Arabism and Nasser

Perhaps the most destructive ramification of the brutal friendship has been the creation of political Islam, commonly labeled militant Islam, or Islamism. Although it is widely portrayed as a virulently anti-Western movement, it was in fact created by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to defend Western interests. 3 After World War II, political instability was rife 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. Though communism was a priori unacceptable to the U.S., pan-Arabism was little better. In the early 1940s, Syrian intellectuals Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din alBitar founded the Harakat al-Baath al-Arabi (Movement of the Arab Resurrection). Through the revolutionary transformation (inqilab) of the intellectual, economic and social aspects of society, Baathists 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 Islamic Caliphate, this decidedly modern, nationalist movement included all peoples of the Middle East, regardless of ethnic origin, tribe or religion. However, 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 around Israel, the Shahs Iran and Saudi Arabiathe most antiArab, pro-Western, repressive regimes imaginable. For its part, the House of
2. The Boland Amendment, Dec. 8, 1982; Lawrence E. Walsh, Final Report of the Independent Counsel For Iran/Contra Matters, Aug. 4, 1993, <www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/part_i.htm>. The relation between the Reagan administration, Saudi money, the contras and the Middle East is of course notoriously convoluted and illegal, and beyond the scope of this book. Suffice to say that from October 1984 to October 1986, the Reagan government with Israeli complicity, sold weapons and spare parts to Iran, both to raise funds for the contras and to barter the freedom of hostages being held in Lebanon. The scandal nearly brought down the Reagan government and resulted in criminal proceedings against high administration officials, many of whom were pardoned by Reagans successor George Bush. One such convicted felon, Elliot Abrams, now serves in the government of George W. Bush. 3. As we saw, the Islamist Wahhabi dynasty itself was installed with British aid. In the 19th century, the British Arab Bureau had hit on Islamism as a means to deflect anti-imperialist nationalism by making Muslims pariahs incapable of forming alliances with Britains rivals. See Webster Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA (Progressive Press, 2005).

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Enemies by Design

Saud could not allow the Arab world to join together and present a challenge to its artificially created privileged position. 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 countrys pro-Western monarchy. He immediately set about negotiating the end of Britains 72-year presence in Egypt, and in 1956 became Egypts president. Nassers 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. In response, the U.S. and Britain withdrew promised financial support for the planned Aswan High Dam. That led Nasser on July 26 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 also wanted to punish Nasser for his support of 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 Canadas 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 on the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula, thus ensuring quiet for 10 years. The Suez Crisis added tremendously to Nassers standing in the Arab world. By standing up to the West, he was without doubt the paramount leader of the Arab world. As such, he posed a direct threat to the Saudis. Nasser was young, educated, charismatic and well-liked among the Arab massesin short, he was 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 Baath 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. Syrias resentment at its subordinate status led to a break-up on Sept. 29, 1961, when radical members of the Baath Party re-established Syrias independence. Nasser nevertheless retained the name UAR to inspire Arabs. He died in September 1970, and the next year the country was renamed the Arab Republic of Egypt. 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 Iraqthe presidency was shared among a three-member sovereignty council, comprised of Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders.

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Although pan-Arabism had many supporters in the country, Qassem was not among them. Nevertheless, he was executed in February 1963 in a CIAbacked Baathist coup. The events in Iraq encouraged anti-government forces in Lebanon. Fearing a coup, the Christian-led government of President Camille Chamoun appealed to Eisenhower for troops to guarantee the regimes security. Eisenhower reluctantly agreed and sent in the marines.

Rise of political Islam

The period 1958-1960 marks the beginnings of a co-ordinated U.S.-Saudi effort to promote political Islam specifically to defeat Nasser. The CIA in Beirut and Cairo, together with ARAMCO, which had its own department, began promoting and funding various groups, especially Egypts Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood initially supported the 1952 revolution that brought Nasser to power, but it was quickly outlawed and thousands of its members were imprisoned. Its leader was the ideologue and prolific author Sayyid Qutb, a professional teacher who dedicated himself to ridding Egypt of Western influences. From 19481950, Qutb lived in the U.S. studying educational curricula, and came away with even greater contempt for the Wests worship of materialism and lack of spirituality. He 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 an un-Islamic nationalist ideology. Qutb was arrested in 1954 on charges of attempting to overthrow the government. After spending 10 years in a Cairo prison, he was released because of poor health and the intercession of Iraqi president Abdul Salam Arif. He was again arrested and hanged in 1966 on conspiracy charges. Qutb and his writings24 books on religion, education as well as novelsinspired many of the radical Islamic movements of the 1970s and 80s and generations of Egyptian and Arab intellectuals, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Ladens most trusted colleague. In 1962, after the minor setback of the Syrian secession from the UAR, pan-Arabism received renewed strength from a pro-Nasser revolution against Yemens monarchy. Whether Nasser approved of it is debatable, but he couldnt refuse to support it. However, a Nasserite government on the Arabian 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 regime. One of Faisals tactics was to establish the World Muslim League to undermine Nasser by promoting Saudi Arabias Islamic identity. This, combined with U.S. exaggerations of a communist threat in the Middle East, marks the moment when the brutal friendship drove a wedge between Arab

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Enemies by Design

politics and religion and gave sanction to Islamist movements. 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 Nassers 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 CIAs cryptodiplomats.4 The Yemeni adventure would prove fatal for Nasser. The Soviets couldnt match the anti-Nasser Saudi/American aid. At the same time Nasser was maintaining 100,000 elite troops in Yemen, he also had to cope with resistance from Jordan and Iraq; a civil war in neighbouring Sudan; and assisting anti-French rebels in North Africa. Nassers dream of a unified Arab world collapsed when Israel routed Egyptian forces in the June 1967 War.5 In the wake of his defeat, Islamist movements gathered strength and became the dominant voice of Arab political opposition. Thus, we see in bin Laden, Hamas and other Islamist organizations, the end result of U.S., Saudi and Israeli efforts to destroy the democratic pan-Arab movement. For the Saudi government, the more it ties the country to the U.S. military-industrial complex, the more it disadvantages its own people. This estrangement in turn intensifies popular resentment towards the monarchy and support for political Islam, leading to greater repression and further dependency of the House of Saud on the U.S. for its survival.

THE GULF WAR

In the spring of 1990, bin Laden still believed that the Saudi governments commitment to Islam was principled, and that it would support jihad wherever necessary, but events in Yemen demonstrated otherwise. Negotiations to unite North and South Yemen had been underway since 1981, when the government of the Yemen Arab Republic (North) and the Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen (South) signed a draft unification constitution. Sanaa in the YAR would become the political capital, and Aden in the PDRY would be the economic capital. The new Yemen,

4. Aburish, op. cit., pp. 160, 161. 5. See Chapter 10. Nassers dream was not new. In the 1830s and 1840s, Muhammad Ali Pasha of Egypt bid to industrialize his country and unite it with Arabia and Syria. For challenging mercantilist hegemony he was deposed by a Anglo-Austrian military intervention.

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announced on May 22, would be a parliamentary democracy with a mixed economy and Islam as the official religion. Bin Laden, as a disciple of ibn Taymiya, naturally considered the new government to be un-Islamic and deserving of overthrow on grounds of impiety. However, the Saudi government wanted no part of bin Ladens agitation. Jihad in Afghanistan was one thing; jihad in the Arab world did not serve the interests of Riyadhpolitik. To rein in bin Laden, the government confiscated his passport. Bin Laden finally broke with the kingdom over the Saudi governments conduct before, during and after the 1990 Gulf War. 6 When the Shah fell, so did his U.S.-built army, which was dependent on U.S.-made spare parts. The suddenly weakened state of Irans army gave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein an opportunity to redress an old grievance: the Shatt al-Arab waterway that separates the two countries. The old border ran along the Iranian bank, but in 1975, Iraq had agreed to split it down the middle in exchange for the Shahs promise to stop funding Iraqs Kurdish rebels. With the mullahs now in charge of Iran, Hussein saw an opportunity to return to the status quo ante, and to remove the cause of the Iran-supported Shiite insurgency that had been threatening to plunge Iraq into civil war. Also, Hussein might pick up the oil-rich western Iranian region of Khuzestan as a bonus. The U.S. saw in Husseins plans a chance to exact revenge against Iran, and egged him on. Diplomatic relations were established with Baghdad in the person of Ambassador April Glaspie. Until this time, the U.S. had no formal representation, because Iraq was friendly with the Soviet Union and a declared foe of Israel. Now, the U.S. hoped to exercise diplomatic influence, and supplant the Soviet Union as Husseins main military supplier. The U.S. began sending Iraq covert military aid, and when Iraq toned down its criticism of Israel, trade credits and intelligence followed. The U.S. also encouraged Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to offer aid. Consequently, on Aug. 5, 1980, Crown Prince (now king) 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 Baath Party, and was the first invitation for any Iraqi president. The Saudis then encouraged Hussein to invade Iran, as President Carter wanted. Alexander Haig, Ronald Reagans first Secretary of State, said that
6. With the support of some Gulf States, the Yemeni Socialist party tried to redivide the country on May 5, 1994, but two months later they were defeated by the unification army. After this defeat, the communists fled the country. Some observers believe that bin Laden never broke with the Saudis or the CIA; a report in Le Figaro that a CIA case officer visited him in hospital in July 2001 is often cited. Both versions could be partly right; there seems to be more than one bin Laden, especially on tape after 9/11. Whether witting or not, double agent or dupe, or even still alive, he remains a prime propaganda asset in the campaign to demonize Muslims and Arabs.

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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 also said Fahd was very enthusiastic about President Reagans 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.7 Iraqs land and air invasion of western Iran began on Sept. 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 underestimated the tenacity of Iranian resistance, and by 1982 he had been forced to give back all Iranian territory he had occupied. Now the initiative shifted to Iran. Khomeinis forces recaptured Khorramshahr in 1983, and began to make inroads into Iraq. Husseins gamble now looked like a blunder. The spectre 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.8 By the time the war ended on Aug. 20, 1988, the heavily armed Iraqi military had grossly distorted the balance of power in the Persian Gulf. As was the case in Afghanistan, U.S. foreign policy manufactured an enemy. Iraq emerged from its misbegotten war with Iran politically and economically devastated. Hussein desperately needed oil revenue to rebuild, but found that Kuwait was hampering his efforts. First, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates were producing beyond the OPEC limits, thus depressing the world price of oil, and directly affecting how much revenue Iraq could earn. Second, Hussein charged Kuwait with illegally tapping the Rumailah oil field that straddles the two countries. During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq stopped producing from its side of the field, though Kuwait continued. Third, Iraq wanted Kuwait to forgive the US$13 billion in loans. Given that Iraq was now US$80 billion in debt and fought the Iranians by itself,

7. Robert Parry, Saddams Green Light, The Consortium, Jan. 31, 1996, The Consortium for Independent Journalism, Arlington, Va. 8. Judith Miller and Jeff Gerth, U.S. Is Said to Develop Oman as Its major Ally in the Gulf, New York Times, March 25 1985, pp. A1, A8.

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Hussein thought his request to be reasonable, especially since Kuwaits economy was strong.9 In this excerpt from an interview with Frontline, Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz explained Iraqs economic dilemma. F R O N T L I N E : July 17th, President Hussein appeared on television, and accused Kuwait of waging economic warfare. Why such a strong stand? Why threaten war? A Z I Z : 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. F R O N T L I N E : What did the Kuwaitis do? A Z I Z : 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. F R O N T L I N E : And by July 17th? A Z I Z : 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. F R O N T L I N E : When was the possibility of putting troops into Kuwait first discussed? A Z I Z : Kuwait never occurred in the mind of the leadership til the end of June 1990. We still hoped that our efforts would succeed. The
9. Kuwaits policy of economic hardball is eerily reminiscent of the way the U.S. treated Great Britain and France after World War I (down to the detail of war profiteering by the Bush dynasty). The U.S. demanded repayment of loans made to fight the war, but the exhausted British and French economies were simply unable to comply. As a result, Britain and France imposed onerous reparations obligations on the nascent German democracy. This strain in turn led to the collapse of the Weimar Government and the rise of Hitlers Nazi Party, which grew strong exploiting German resentment over reparations payments.

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summit ended sometime the first half of June, the Deputy Prime Minister went to see King Fahd and he promised to do something, he didnt 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.10

The conflict between Iraq and Kuwait became very public, and in 1990 bin Laden was giving speeches and lectures warning of an impending attack. Bin Laden detested Hussein, because he was a secular Arab leader and therefore a political and religious threat to Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden 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, Husseins 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. Unbeknownst to bin Laden he faced two problems: the Saudis did not want an army of devout mujahedin running around stirring up Islamic passion and, most importantly, the Saudi and U.S. governments were still allied with Iraq against Iran. Bin Ladens immense popularity, heroic stature and commitment to jihad had become liabilities.

Invasion
On Aug. 2, 1990, 150,000 veterans of the Iran-Iraq War overwhelmed the inexperienced 20,000-man Kuwaiti army, and had annexed the whole country by Aug. 9. 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 Husseins 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 Glaspies 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 Iraqs 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 Iraqs 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
10. Interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, FrontlineThe Gulf War, PBS, Jan. 9, 1996.

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Iraqi coastline. Bushs reaction was low-key. He cabled Saddam, saying that the U.S. was concerned about Iraqs 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.11 In fact, a candid exchange with journalists on Sept. 2 outside the U.S. embassy in Baghdad suggests that the U.S. actually approved of the invasion. J O U R N A L I S T : You encouraged this aggressionhis invasion. What were you thinking? A M B A S S A D O R G L A S P I E : Obviously, I didnt think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait. J O U R N A L I S T : 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 okaythat 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 closes behind her and the car drives off.)12 Bin Laden looked like a prophet and the Saudi government looked inept. It could have prevented the conflict by compelling the Kuwaitis to adhere to production limits, or by offering aid to Hussein. Instead of paying attention to Hussein, they fixated on Iran. Within days of the attack, bin Laden again tried to sell the government on the Arab Afghans. He wrote a letter to King Fahd describing what defensive measures the kingdom could take. As he awaited a response, he received news that appalled himFahd had agreed to allow Western troops onto Saudi soil. On Aug. 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:
11. Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison (Stoddart: 1991), p. 353. Transcript of April Glaspies 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, Saddams War: The Origins of the Kuwait Conflict and the International Response, (Faber & Faber, 1991), <www.casi.org.uk/discuss/1999/msg00009.html>. 12. Ibid., Glaspie.

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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.13

What Cheney did not tell Fahd and other members of the royal family was that the satellite pictures were fakes, 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. Riyadhs 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 guard over its oil assets and neutralize Husseins 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 the real objective was to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. On Nov. 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 Jan. 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.14

FALLOUT
The ulama were appalled that Fahd, as Custodian of the Holy Sites, would place the defense of the kingdom in the hands of Western infidels who cared only about Arab oil. Nevertheless, Fahd desperately needed them to issue a fatwah (a formal legal or religious judgment) to legitimize his decision.
13. Interview with Richard Cheney, FrontlineThe Gulf War, PBS, Jan. 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, New York Times Sept. 5, 1985, pp. A1, A10. 14. 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.

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To solve the impasse, Fahd held discussions with Grand Mufti Sheikh AbdulAziz bin Baz. The result of the discussions 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 Fahds decision, but cited no Islamic precedent from the Quran or hadith. Instead, he declared the American presence justifiable on the grounds of necessity. Even if Fahds decision were militarily necessary, this co-optation of the ulama made the Wahhabi religious leaders look like servants of the government, and this perception gave greater strength to the Islamist opposition like the Shiites 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.15 Despite Fahds decision, bin Laden was still determined to bring the mujahedin to the defense of the kingdom, but this time he decided to appeal directly to religious scholars and Muslim activists.16 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. Bin Laden also gave speeches condemning the presence of foreign armies in Saudi Arabia and Iraqs aggression. In one speech he said: When we buy American goods, we are accomplices in the murder of Palestinians. American companies make millions in the Arab world with which they pay taxes to their government. The United States uses that money to send $3 billion a year to Israel, which it uses to kill Palestinians.17

15. Interview with Nidaul Islam magazine, OctoberNovember 1996, <www.islam.org.au/articles/15/ladin.htm>. 16. The two most outspoken critics were the renowned scholars Sheikh Safar ibn AbdulRahman 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 Fahds decision and Bin Bazs fatwah was unmistakable. See The Gulf Crisis and the Islamic Revival, <www.islah.org/chap3.html>. 17. Cited in Yossef Bodansky, Bin LadenThe Man who declared War on America (New York: Forum, 1999), p. 30.

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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 werent so circumspect. Sheikh Tamimi, for one, 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.18 But the government was not of a mind to draw fine distinctions between pro-Saudi and anti-Saudi criticismit would not tolerate any opposition to the presence of Western troops or bin Bazs fatwah. Bin Laden now found himself confined to Jeddah, and twice summoned to receive warnings about his speeches and activities. The royal family didnt 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 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 didnt take his immense popularity and organization over to the anti-Saudi Islamists, and also to have him use his Afghan network to drum up support for the government. Bin Laden, though, was getting fed up with Saudi Arabia. The end of the Gulf War did not mean an end to the presence of Western troops as bin Laden had hoped. Despite Cheneys assertion that the troops would not stay in the kingdom one minute longer than necessary, the U.S. showed no signs of packing up. Given this continuing affront to Islam and his virtual status as a prisoner in his own country, bin Laden 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 Ladens brothers was close to the deputy minister, Prince Ahmed. While Nayef was outside the kingdom, bin Ladens 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 attention not to return and offering his apologies to him and the royal family. Osama bin Laden would spend the rest of his life in exile as a Saudi dissident and a wanted man.

18. Ibid.

bin Laden crossed into Afghanistan to avoid the risk of being turned over to the Saudis. Nevertheless, Saudi and Pakistani intelligence agents pursued bin Laden across the border and tried several times to assassinate him. Timely tip-offs from sympathetic sources allowed bin Laden to avoid capture. What was worse was the Afghan civil war. This time, the Afghan mujahedin were not only fighting Najibullahs communist regime, but also each other. Bin Laden could not abide the sight of Muslims fighting Muslims, so he tried to mediate among the various factions, but to no avail. The combination of Afghanistans political instability and the threats to his life convinced bin Laden that he had to leave. In late 1991, he flew to Sudan, because the new Islamic government was admitting Muslims or Arabs to enter the country without a visa. Bin Laden could not have picked a more compatible country to hole up in. Sudan was emerging as a major sponsor of Islamist movements, thanks to the leadership of the charismatic Dr. Hasan Abdullah Dafaallah al-Turabi. Bin Ladens difficulties with the Saudi royal family were not public knowledge at this time, so Turabi had no inkling why bin Laden happened to arrive when he did. He simply welcomed the wealthy Saudi as an honored guest. Even in his new location, bin Laden continued to receive frequent directives from the Saudi government warning him against speaking out. The House of Saud had good reason to fear embarrassment from bin Laden, especially since it was, and still is, locked in a dispute over the succession.1
1. King Fahd is in poor health, and the heir to the throne is Fahds half-brother Crown Prince Abdullah. Although this succession is not contested, the question of who will follow Abdullah is a matter of intense rivalry. Fahds 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

O O N A F T E R P A K I S T A N , Osama

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Dynastic squabbling aside, the real cause of the embarrassment was the governments 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 again tried to kill him in a Khartoum mosque. From 1992 to 1994, the Saudis also tried to freeze bin Ladens assets and confiscate most of his property, but by that time most of his money, more than $250 million, was in foreign banks. Bin Laden may or may not still have access to his share of the familys multi-billion-dollar fortune. The House of Sauds hamfisted bullying pushed bin Laden deeper into the milieu of political Islam.

T U R A B I A N D T H E G R E AT C O M P R O M I S E
On June 30, 1989, Col. (later Lt.-Gen.) Omar Hassan Ahmad al Bashir came to power in a coup, as had every Sudanese leader since the country emerged from the colonial shadow of Britain and Egypt in 1954.2 The Islamic Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) for National Salvation suspended the constitution, abrogated press freedoms, and dissolved all political parties and trade unions. Turabi, as leader of the National Islamic Front, spent six months as a political prisoner. However, Bashir reorganized the NIF and incorporated Turabis ideology, which raised suspicions that Turabis imprisonment was for show.3 The RCC ruled Sudan until it dissolved itself in October 1985, after which it appointed Bashir President of the Republic and transferred to him most of its powers. Three years later, Bashir and Turabi established their

Sudairi Seven are King 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. 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, currently U.S. ambassador, succeed Abdullah. Abdullah would have the right to name his successor without regard to seniority, but 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 Arabias 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 Abdullahs reputation by pointing out the current kings conspicuously un-Islamic conduct during the Gulf War. 2. Sudan achieved full independence in 1956. 3. See Gregory Sanders, Dr. Hasan Al-TurabiHis Political Philosophy in Context of Religion and Progress, Nov. 12, 1998 <www.wam.umd.edu/~gsanders/text/alturabi.html>.

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Islamic state.4 Although Bashir was the new head of state, the real leader was generally thought to be Turabi.5 Turabi, born into a conservative Sunni Muslim family in Eastern Sudan in 1932, provides an interesting contrast to the other great influence on bin Ladens life, Sheikh Abdullah Azzam. Both men were great theorists of Islamic revolution, and each fought with words rather than with weapons. Each also belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, and dedicated himself to recreating the Caliphate. Unlike Azzam, though, Turabi had studied outside the Muslim world, earning a master of laws from the University of London. This exposure to the West gives Turabis version of Islamic rule an uncharacteristically modern outlook. He blended Islamic sharia with Western ideas of democratic equality to create what might be termed Islamic democracy. Turabis embrace of democratic thought is most evident in his support for the rights of women, whom he believes to be fully entitled to work, hold public office, serve in the military, and even attend mosques without being segregated: Segregation of women is definitely not a part of Islam. This is just conventional, historical Islam. It was totally unknown in the model of Islam or the text of Islam. It is unjustified.6 But Turabis version of democracy is a curious, contradictory mix of totalitarianism and tolerance. On international matters, he says the world order should be pluralistic, diverse and fair to Muslims, yet he calls the UNs standards of human rights Western-based impositions. Turabi praises Islam as an ethical political order that can free all people from Western imperialism. Of course, this argument has a familiar ring to it. It was used by Marxist-Leninists who believed that world Communism would liberate the working classes. The international dimension of the Islamic movement is conditioned by the universality of the umma (community of believers) and the artificial irrelevancy of Sudans borders, said Turabi.7 Turabis acceptance of state-to-state relations as a temporary political condition highlights the fundamental schism between modern Sunni and Shiite doctrines of Islamic revolution. In the Sunni doctrine, as defined by Qutb, the re-establishment of the Caliphate is predicated on the prior success of national Islamic revolutions. Shiites, on the other hand, consider the
4. In the wake of the coup, the northern parties joined the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) to form the National Democratic Alliance. 5. The relationship between Turabi and Bashir began to sour in December 1999, when Bashir declared a state of emergency and dissolved Parliament. At the time, Turabi was speaker. According to a party official, Turabi was asked to explain a memorandum of understanding with the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army, which called for joint peaceful resistance against Bashirs regime. Turabi was arrested on Feb. 21, 2001, on charges of organizing a coup. 6. Islam, Democracy, the State and the West World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE) roundtable discussion with Dr. Hasan Turabi, held May 10, 1992, in Tampa, Fla., Middle East Policy (Vol. 1, No. 3, 1992), pp. 49-61. 7. Ibid.

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nation-state to be un-Islamic by definition, and therefore they actively support any anti-statist Islamic movement, even against Arab states. Turabis great achievement would be the reconciliation of revolutionary Sunni and Shiite Islam under one banner. The momentous event occurred at the inaugural Islamic Arab Peoples Conference in Khartoum in late April 1991. The IAPC, founded to challenge the Saudi-founded Organization of the Islamic Conference, had as its objectives the liberation of the Noble Sanctuary Jerusalem from Zionist occupation, promotion of Arab solidarity, and defending the ideals of peace, equality and humanity as described in the Quran, the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By its next meeting in 1993, the IAPC would be renamed the Popular Arab and Islamic Conference (PAIC) to indicate it was not restricted to Muslims. The timing of the conference is significant, coming as it did a scant two months after Iraq was routed in The Gulf War. The presence of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf during and after the war, and the willing collaboration of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states in the American-led attack, gave Turabi his unifying cause. What he did was place ibn Taymiyas jihad against impious leaders into Qutbs modern, political context. Turabi said Islamic movements should declare jihad against pro-U.S. Arab governments not because they werent Islamic, but because they were collaborationist. In one stroke, Turabi defended the integrity of Muslim nation-states while supporting the Shiite notion of jihad against impious nation-states. The conference produced the first international revolutionary Sunni Islamic movement, the Popular International Organization (PIO), and a formal working relationship between Khartoum and Tehran. Iran would provide funds, training and organizational assistance, and Sudan would serve as Irans beachhead in Africa, allowing it to export Iranian influence into black Africa and the Maghrib (North Africa).

TURABI BANKS ON BIN LADENS HELP

On July 5, a financial scandal almost scuttled the new Khartoum-Tehran partnership. The Bank of England shut down the Bank of Credit and Commerce International because its 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 Turabis.8

8. Abu Dhabis ruling family owned 77.4 percent of the bank. In June 1994, 11 of the 12 former BCCI executives accused of fraud were convicted in Abu Dhabi, given prison sentences and ordered to pay compensation.

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According to the December 1992 report by U.S. senators John Kerry and Hank Brown to the Committee on Foreign Relations: BCCIs criminality included fraud by BCCI and BCCI customers involving billions of dollars; money laundering in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas; BCCIs 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 BCCIs 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.9 Among the Islamist 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. In the United States, those involved with BCCI included Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford and former president Jimmy Carter. It should be noted that the BCCI was not just a bank for Islamists. The CIA used the banks special services to launder drug and Iran-Contra money, and to finance 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. Funds from Argin and the CIAs own accounts at BCCI were distributed to the mujahedin via Pakistans Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), 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 bank accounts to funnel money to Islamic movements. For example, Iranians and Gulf Arabs deposited $12 million into an account at the Faysal Islamic Bank, whence the funds were redirected to Algeria to help the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) fight an election. Bin Ladens financial dealings also led him to collaborate with his close friend Ayman al-Zawahiri to establish a banking network in the name of the

9. Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Hank Brown, The BCCI AffairA 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/>.

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Brotherhood Group.10 The groups task was to obscure the origin of the Islamists funding from Western security authorities. The groups 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. Among the major infrastructure projects he undertook were a road linking Khartoum to Port Sudan (built by his al-Hijra construction company), an airport near Port Sudan, and Islamist training centers in northern Sudan, the largest two being al-Shambat and al-Mazraah, designed for Tunisians, Algerians, French and Belgians. This may not have been the first time bin Laden aided Turabis National Islamic Front. In 1990, he is said to have arranged for hundreds of mujahedin to travel to Sudan to fight alongside the NIF against non-Muslim guerrillas. According to a retired 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.11 On Sept. 19, 2001, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a bin Laden associate turned government witness, said bin Ladens businesses dealings included Taba Investments, the Wadi al Aqiq holding company, Laden International import-export company, a bakery, a furniture company, a cattle-breeding operation, the al-Ikhlar Co., which made honey and other sweets, and the Blessed Fruits farming business.12 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.13

10. Zawahiri, an upper-class Cairo pediatrician, became a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad in 1981, and on Oct. 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. Zawahiri, once again, was a key part of the Sadat assassination, and afterwards was protected by London. The world needs to remember Sadats widow, Jehan Sadat, recalling in a television interview after 9/11 that Zawahiri, a murderer of her husband, had lived in London for years after that crime, while extradition to Egypt was always refused by the UK. The guess here would be that Zawahiri is a double agent working for MI-6, while Bin Laden is indeed a fanatical, deluded patsy and dupe. Webster Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA (Progressive Press, 2005). Sadat was likely eliminated because he made peace with Israel at Camp David to help re-elect Carter, in return for Carters personal, spoken promise of a Palestinian state. Carter was then brought down by the October Surprise - Iran hostages intrigue. With both parties to the promise out of power, the US-UK-Israel axis was quit of the bargain. Tragically, all Carter could do was to set up his Carter Peace Center and occasionally sermonize on justice for the Palestinians. 11. Frank Smyth and Jason Vest, One Mans Private Jihad, Village Voice, Aug. 1925, 1998. 12. Bin Laden Draws on Global Financing, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Sept. 19, 2001. 13. Ibid. This citation is from 1992.

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In the simplest terms, this purpose was the eviction of Western forces from the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia. In late 1992, though, the Islamists faced a new intrusion.

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 anarchy and civil war 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 Dec. 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 Mombasa, Kenya, under Operation Provide Relief.) The famine was caused by fighting which grew out of Cold War geopolitics. In 1969, a military coup brought Maj.-Gen. Mohammed Siad Barre to power. He aligned himself with the Soviet Union, which expected him to export revolution throughout East Africa. Barre nationalized industry and invaded Ethiopia, but the Soviets backed Ethiopia instead, and the Somalis lost the war badly. Ethiopia then backed Somali dissident groups, which led to civil war and the partition of the country among feuding warlords. 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. and UN presence in Somalia was seen as a threat, not only to Islam but also possibly to Sudans Islamic government. Bin Laden prevailed upon Sheikh Tariq al-Fadli to return from his London exile to lead the assault. Bin Laden had met al-Fadli in 1980 when they fought in the failed Saudi-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, known to house U.S. servicemen. The attack left three Americans dead and five wounded, but 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

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Ethiopia from northern Somalia between the onset of hostilities in May 1988 and January 1989. 14 On Jan. 27, 1991, Barres Socialist-Islamic Revolutionary Party (SRSP) was overthrown by the rival United Somali Congress.15 In October, Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid and interim president Ali Mahdi Mohammed began fighting for control of Mogadishu.16 Mahdis faction supported an Italianstyle democracy, and was supported by Europe; Aidid favored traditional tribal government. When Aidid declared his faction to be the legitimate national government, Mahdi declared war.

Blundering into the Islamist strategy

The Somali National Alliance and the Somali Islamic Union Party threw their support behind the pro-Islamist Aidid. Augmenting their numbers were fighters from a dozen mostly Muslim countries, many of them battlehardened veterans of the Afghan jihad. Bin Laden provided logistical supportfunding, communications, constructionand 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 UN representative 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 airportreally 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 nervousthey 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?17

14. Robert Gersony, Why Somalis Flee: Conflict In Northern Somalia, Cultural Survival Quarterly, Vol. 13 (4), (1993), pp. 4558. 15. Barre tried twice to regain power but left the country in 1992. He died in exile in Lagos, Nigeria, on Jan. 2, 1995. 16. Mohamed Sahnoun, Flashlights over Mogadishu, New Internationalist No. 262, December 1994. 17. Ibid.

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For his caution, Sahnoun was fired and his interventionist successors declared Somalia to be in a state of anarchy, and in need of a UN force to disarm the population. The tragedy of the UN involvement is that BoutrosGhali was more interested in headlines than in helping. 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 UNs 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 this as an implicit challenge to the UNs 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. As for the U.S., the intervention degenerated into a self-destructive vendetta against Aidid. On June 5, 1993, UN troops attempted to shut down Radio South Mogadishu for broadcasting Aidids anti-UN propaganda. Aidids forces repelled the attack and killed 24 Pakistani troops. Because of these casualties, Aidid was branded a war criminal, and the U.S. set out on an expensive, bloody, five-month campaign to capture him. This obsession would bring ignominious defeat. On Oct. 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. For 17 hours, 90 Rangers were pinned down under withering fire. In all, 18 Americans were killed and 84 wounded.18 Among the Somalis, 300 died and 700 were wounded, mostly civilians who died in indiscriminate U.S. bombing. Three days later, President Clinton abandoned the hunt for Aidid, and declared that the U.S. would withdraw most of its troops by March 31, 1994.19 With the ambush and U.S. withdrawal, the Islamists could now claim to have defeated the worlds two greatest military powers. For bin Laden, the Somali campaign reinforced his belief that his Afghans could also evict the U.S. from Saudi Arabia. In a March 1997 interview with CNNs Peter Arnett, he proudly described the role they 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
18. Other sources state that the firefight lasted 12 hours and that the number of U.S. wounded totaled 77 (FrontlineAmbush in Mogadishu, PBS, Sept. 29, 1998.) 19. Aidid proclaimed himself president in 1995 after the UN troops left. He died on Aug. 1, 1996, of a heart attack related to bullet wounds suffered during the conflict.

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while you kill our children in all of those places? With Allahs 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.20

R I YA D H
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.21 Nevertheless, the Saudis had not given up on diplomacy to earn bin Ladens 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.22 After a long silence, 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 communiqus attacking the Saudi regime, but stopped short of advocating violence.23 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 Nov. 13, 1995, when a white van loaded with 45 pounds of compound C-4 (SEMTEX) exploded in a parking lot adjacent to the Riyadh headquarters of the Office of the Program Manager Saudi Arabian National Guard.24 A few moments later an antipersonnel mine exploded.

20. Transcript of Osama Bin Ladin interview by Peter Arnett, CNN, late March 1997, <www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7204.htm>. 21. Mary Anne Weaver The Real bin Laden, New Yorker, Jan. 24, 2000. For URL, See Chapter 3, note 30. 22. Rahimullah Yousafsai interview with Osama bin Laden (Part II), ABC, Dec. 28, 1998. 23. FrontlineHunting bin Laden, PBS, Sept. 13, 2001. 24. 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>.

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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. In the end, four Saudi nationals confessed to the bombing and were executed. In a May 1998 interview with John Miller of ABC, bin Laden admitted at least an indirect 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 nations 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.25 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.

CONCOCTING THE BIN LADEN MYTH

All that can be said with any degree of certainty about the Sudan phase of bin Ladens life is that he established some businesses; was a public relations headache for the Saudi government; helped Turabi out of a financial and logistical jam; and supported attacks on U.S. forces in Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia. Apart from this, accounts of his activities in Sudan must be treated with skepticism. At this time bin Laden had not yet been linked to the Riyadh bombing, and didnt register on the U.S. radar. The only country that wanted him dead was Saudi Arabia, principally for reasons of image. Nevertheless, this is when
25. 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 6.

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the myth of Osama bin Laden as the great demiurge of international Islamist terrorism begins. Take, for example, the strange case of bin Ladens relationship with the Shamal Islamic Bank in Khartoum.

The Shamal Bank

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 is merely asserted. On the Shamal Banks official website (www.shamalbank.com) bin Laden is nowhere mentioned in the whos who of the banks founders, directors or shareholders going back to 1985.26 It states that bin Ladens 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 Banks 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.27 On Sept. 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 claimed that bin Laden helped establish a bank in the Sudan in 1991 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 Publications 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 banks 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 Indigo newsletters claim that bin Laden was the largest shareholder of Shamal Bank as of March 2000 is unsupported by any evidence.
26. 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). 27. Finance Watch/Inner City Press, Dec. 3, 2001, <www.innercitypress.org/finwatch.html>.

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Nevertheless, a Sept. 26, 2001 CNN/Money Magazine story Bin Laden linked to BCCI dutifully regurgitated Levins testimony, claiming that a bank established by bin Laden was involved in the BCCI scandal. 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 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 Aug. 14, 1996, State Department document that merely asserted the following: Bin Laden and wealthy NIF members capitalized Al-Shamal Islamic Bank in Khartoum. Bin Laden invested $50 million in the bank.28 The likely source for this statement is Yossef Bodansky, a former senior terrorism consultant to the U.S. Departments of Defense and State. In his 1999 book, Bin Laden: the Man Who Declared War on America, he repeats the same $50 million claim in virtually the same way, and with no attribution. That bin Laden used the al-Hijra and Wadi al-Aqiq accounts to finance Islamist operations is generally accepted. For example, an airplane was purchased in 1993 with money wired from the Wadi al Aqiq account at al Shamal bank via Bank of New York to a Bank of America account held in Dallas, Texas by Essam al Ridi. Al Ridi, an Egyptian flight instructor who met bin Laden in Pakistan in 1985, flew the plane to Khartoum.29 However, if the $50 million story were remotely true, it would have some evidentiary basis, not just rumor and unsubstantiated assertions. Yet, as we shall see, this is the method used to create the demonized myth of bin Laden. Although Bodansky claims to have conducted extensive interviews with numerous officials, mujahedin, terrorists, commanders, migrs, defectors and otherwise involved individuals from all sides of the conflict,30 he said he refused to name his sources out of concern for their safety. Such secrecy is understandable in some instances, but the total absence of footnotes calls into question the veracity of his information and the credibility of his book, especially when he makes controversial or questionable assertions. For example, he credits bin Laden with building the al-Ruseiris Dam (Sudans largest), the al-Rahad Kiananah canals, numerous airports and military installations, and the 310-mile al-Tahaddi (defiance) military road. 31 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
28. State Department Fact Sheet On Bin Laden, Aug. 14, 1996, <www.usisisrael.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 the $50 million figure is immediately suspect. 29. Financial Times, Nov. 29, 2001. 30. Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man who Declared War on America (New York: Forum, 1999), p. xxi. 31. Bodansky, op. cit., p. 46.

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Westminster, says these claims are nonsense. For example, he pointed out that the 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 OIC countries. It is therefore far-fetched, he said, to claim that bin Laden exercised any influence to have the loan approved.32 Regarding the road construction, the Sudanese Peoples 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 Jubaonly access by air and Nile barge.33 In addition, el-Affendi said the road described above is geographically impossible. The road goes north, then suddenly jumps to Waw, and then from there to Juba, 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 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 Airportno mention of the dam, terrorist bases or the southern or northern roads.34 Another factor undermining Bodanskys credibility is his position as a contributing expert for the Ariel Center for Policy Research. The membership of this Israel-based organization reads like a whos who of arch-Zionists and anti-Arab polemicists.

INVENTING AL-QAIDA
Few myths about bin Laden are as pervasive as the one concerning his leadership of the al-Qaida terrorist network. In language similar to that of Saudi dissident Dr. Saad al-Fagih, former U.S. State Department official and terrorism expert David Long told the New Yorker that the bin Laden Group more accurately resembles an informal brotherhood: [Its] not a terrorist organization in the traditional sense. Its more a clearing-house from which other groups elicit funds, training, and logistical support. Its 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.35
32. Correspondence with the author. 33. Drought in Sudan, Emergency BriefingThe South of Sudan, Oxfam, May 1998, <www.oxfam.org.uk/atwork/emerg/begsit.htm>. 34. El-Torabi: World media made Bin Laden symbol of Islamic struggle, Arabicnews.com, Sept. 12, 1998, <www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/980912/1998091207.html>. 35. Mary Anne Weaver, The Real bin Laden. New Yorker. For URL, see Ch III, note 30.

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Groups in the brotherhood 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 Ladens assistance. For example, on Feb. 26, 1993, a bomb exploded with the force of 1,200 lbs. of explosives in the underground parkade of the World Trade Center in New York causing six deaths, 1,042 injuries and nearly $600 million in property damage. The key figure responsible for making the explosive, Ramzi Yousef, was said to have stayed at the Bait al-Ansar, thus giving rise to the notion that he was affiliated with bin Laden.36 In a May 1998 interview with ABCs John Miller, bin Laden rejected the charge that he had anything to do with the attack: After the explosion that took place in the World Trade Center, Ramzi Yousef became a well known Muslim figure. Muslims have come to know him. Unfortunately, I did not know him before this incident. I, of course, remember who he is. He is a Muslim who wanted to protect his religion jealously from the oppression practiced by America against Islam. He acted with zeal to make the Americans understand that their government was attacking Muslims in order to safeguard the AmericanJewish interests.37 Given that bin Laden freely admitted to knowing the Riyadh bombers, his denial of knowing Yousef would seem genuine. Thus, one must at least consider the possibility that bin Laden was not behind the bombing, especially since no evidence to the contrary has been produced, and the name al Qaida never came up. The same is true of the plan to assassinate Clinton, which was attempted by the Philippine Islamist Wali Khan. Bin Laden said: [Wali Khan] was among the most courageous Muslim young men. He was a close friend and we used to fight from the same trenches in Afghanistan. We fought many battles against the Russians until they were defeated and put to shame and had to leave the country in disgrace. As to what you said about him working for me, I have nothing to say. We are all together in this; we all work for Allah and our reward comes from him. As to what you said about the attempt to assassinate President Clinton, it is not surprising. What do you expect from people
36. On March 4, 1994, Muhammad Amin Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmud Abouhalima, and Ahmed Ajaj were convicted for their roles in the attack, and on April 25, 1994, each received a 240-year prison term and a $500,000 fine. Yousef fled to Pakistan soon after the attack, but was arrested on Feb. 7, 1995, and deported to stand trial. Moreover, skeptics point to evidence that the 1993 WTC bombing was an FBI false flag operation. 37. < www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html>.

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attacked by Clinton, whose sons and mothers have been killed by Clinton? Do you expect anything but treatment by reciprocity?38

The collective we is important, for it encapsulates the collective spirit of bin Ladens group, for want of a better name. Any attack against American or Israeli interests is looked upon as a selfless act of bravery against the enemies of Islam. As Mark N. Katz, professor of government and politics at George Mason University concludes in his largely critical review of Bodanskys book: 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.39

Chechnya/Dagestan
A good example of the Islamist movements decentralized nature is the Chechen/Dagestani jihad. On Sept. 6, 1991, Dzokhar Dudayev, leader of the Chechen Autonomous Republic in the Soviet Union and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, declared Chechnyas independence from Russia. Muslims in Southern Russia, especially Chechens, had good reason to want to be rid of Russian rule. Stalin deported the Chechens en masse to Central Asia on charges of being Nazi sympathizers.40 The most specific figures come from the Danish Support Committee for Chechnya, which says 387,229 Chechens and 91,250 Ingush were known to have been loaded onto the trains; fewer than 400,000 survived. In 1957, during Nikita Khrushchevs de-Stalinization campaign, the Chechens were allowed to return home, but found Russian settlers living on their land. At the time of Dudayevs declaration, however, the new Russian government was seized by insurrectionist problems of its own, and so did not launch a concerted effort to remove Dudayev until November 1994.41 The move provoked calls for a jihad, which received wide support. The Gulf States, long-time backers of the mujahedin, wanted to repay the Soviet Union for its support of Iraq during the Gulf War, and the Arab masses resented its
38. Ibid. 39. Mark N. Katz, Bin Laden Biography Raises Doubts, Eurasianet.org, Oct. 27, 2001, <www.eurasianet.org/departments/culture/articles/eav102701.shtml>. 40. Thomas B. Larsen, Danish Support Committee for Chechnya, <www.tjetjenien.dk/chechnya/23.feb.html>. 41. Beginning in October 1990, President Mikhail Gorbachev, architect of perestroika [restructuring] and glasnost [openness], had come under attack from hard-line Communists. The much heralded consumer benefits of his economic reforms failed to materialize and the countrys gross national product actually shrank by 10 percent in the first half of 1991. Moreover, the devolution of centralized control allowed pent-up ethnic and nationalist sentiments to evolve into secessionist movements (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine and Moldavia).

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support of Serbia against Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. According to Pakistani sources, Chechens and other foreign nationals received training in military camps in Afghanistan such as Kargha-1, about 12 kilometres north of Kabul.42 After a bitter, inconclusive war that cost 80,000 casualties and made hundreds of thousands homeless, hostilities ended in August 1996 when both sides signed a peace treaty and pledged to renounce violence, but it did not last. On Aug. 7, 1999, an Islamist group that fought in the Chechen war took the jihad eastward to Dagestan, a large autonomous region bordering oil-rich Azerbaijan and Caspian Sea. The aim was to unite Chechnya and Dagestan into an independent Islamic state. The main field commanders in Dagestan are Shamil Basayev, who leads the Chechens and Khattab, a 35-year-old Jordanian (some say Saudi Arabian) of Chechen descent, who leads the 2,000-man Islamic Army of Dagestan. Khattab, whose real name is Habib Abd al-Rahman, is in every sense a product of the Afghan infrastructure that bin Laden helped establish with American, Saudi and Pakistani assistance. He gave up a future as a surgeon in 1987 at age 18 to fight the Soviet Union. When Khattab expresses his passion, you might think you were listening to bin Laden. When a New York Times reporter asked him about the 1995 attack on the U.S. military housing compound in Saudi Arabia, he said: There is no difference between the American Army and the Russian army. They seized our territory, and Muslims have the right to seek such a solution.43 The Chechen/Dagestani jihad falls into the category of a modern national liberation struggle. Moreover, it is a local phenomenon, even though many Islamists began training months earlier at secret bases in Muslim countries like Pakistan, Sudan and Afghanistan. It cannot be categorized as an example of international Islamic terrorism. Nevertheless, some make this argument by charging that bin Laden is the jihads leading financier. According to Russian intelligence reports, bin Laden recently gave $30 million to Basayev and Khattab. Ben Venzke, a senior consultant with Pinkerton Global Intelligence Services in Arlington, Va., said bin Laden used a secret e-mail network to raise funds, and also made a weeklong visit to a training camp in the Chechen village of Serzhen-Yurt just before the Aug. 7 insurrection.44
42. Vinod Anand, Export of Holy Terror to Chechnya From Pakistan and Afghanistan, Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, June 2000, <www.idsa-india.org/an-jun-700.html>. 43. Carlotta Gall, Muslim Fighter Embraces Warrior Mystique, New York Times, Oct. 17, 1999. 44. Dave Montgomery, Bin Laden helped bankroll Dagestan war, expert says, San Jos Mercury News, Sept, 10. 1999. The first time bin Laden set up his own organization was the aforementioned Organization of Advice and Reform in 1994, but it did not progress much further than a one-man London office. Later, he announced the establishment of the

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On Sept. 1, 2004, hundreds of schoolchildren and adults were taken hostage in a middle school in the town of Beslan, in North Ossetia. The terrorists from Chechnya and neighboring autonomous regions demanded that Russian troops be removed from Chechnya and that local regional officials be brought to the school. The crisis ended when Russian elite troops stormed the school two days later, but at the cost of hundreds of lives. Whether the standoff would have ended peacefully will never be known, but the horrific bloodshed was blamed on Russian overreaction. On Sept. 6, the foreign ministers of Israel and Russia signed an agreement in Jerusalem to step up intelligence cooperation and declared terrorism to be the biggest challenge facing the international community. Each country is in a political war with restive Muslim populations, so it is not surprising that each would hide behind the bogeyman of international terrorism. Russia clearly has a motive to discredit the Chechen insurgency as a form of international terrorism rather than an indigenous independence movement. However, observers like Prof. Michel Chossudovsky or Webster Tarpley point to U.S. support for Chechen leaders and Al-Qaeda involvement in Afghanistan and Bosnia as indications that the U.S. uses synthetic terrorism as a geopolitical weapon against Russia in the great power struggle over spheres of influence. International terrorism is sponsored by the U.S. The absurd comments of Israeli foreign Minister Silvan Shalom typify the worlds libeling of Muslim resistance movements: The terror that hit Russia is no different to the terror that hit New York, Tel Aviv or Madrid. Israel and Russia share interests to cooperate against terrorism. Today we discussed ways to do so. The international community must unite against terrorism, must raise a united front against the murder of children.45 This last sentence is most revealing because the international community is united against the murder of Palestinian children by Israeli soldiers, but Israel harasses and slanders the UN and its agencies whenever they bring up the subject of compliance with international law.46

International Front for the Struggle against Jews and Crusaders, but it also fizzled. Abdelwahab el-Affendi, Curing the public ignorance: All those myths about Al-Qaeda and the Afghan Arabs, Daily Star (Lebanon), Nov. 24, 2001. (After the Beslan atrocity, Putin accused the U.S. and U.K. of supporting secessionists in Chechnya, as they had in Afghanistan. This is in line with the thesis that Islamic fundamentalism is a creature of U.S.- U.K. policy. In Putin Exposes US-UK Terror Strategy Behind School Atrocity; Russian Press Blasts Anglo-Saxon Terrorist Controllers, <http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=793>.) 45. Israel, Russia agree to united front in war against terrorism, Agence France Presse, Sept. 6, 2004. 46. See Israeli commander accused of machine-gunning child, Irish Examiner, Oct. 11, 2004.

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OUT OF AFRICA
The end of bin Ladens stay in Sudan came 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 Ladens departure was not the hasty expulsion Bashir and Turabi sought to portray. Bin Ladens 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.47 Yet El-Affendi dismisses this 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 to the government, which were in the region of tens of millions of dollars, mainly for road building, but the insolvent regime had no money to pay him, 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. 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.48
47. Bodansky, op. cit., p. 186. The Darfur crisis is another imperialist proxy war, instigated by the CIA through provocateur John Garang <http://www.africa2000.com/IMPACT/sudanwar.html>. As Sudan has a moderate, progressive but nationalist Arab leadership, with reported oil resources in the South, it is a model target for a classic destabilization and secessionist breakup. 48. Correspondence with the author.

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Of the two versions, El-Affendis must be seen as the correct one. Corroborating evidence comes from an Oct. 4, 2001, Washington Post story that dispels any notion that bin Ladens departure was amicable. The offer dates to a Feb. 6, 1996, dinner at the home of Sudans 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 and his base of operations. After weeks of trying to convince the Saudis to take him, Sudans thenMinister of Defense Maj.-Gen. Elfatih Erwa said: In the end they said, Just ask him to leave the country. Just dont let him go to Somalia. We said he will go to Afghanistan, and they said, Let him.49

49. Barton Gellman, Sudan offered to turn bin Laden over to the Saudis in 96, Washington Post (printed in the Seattle Times), Oct. 4, 2001.

S A M A B I N L A D E N was now stateless, full of confidence in the power of jihad, but not considered a terrorist. In the Hindu Kush he was geographically inaccessible, and the Taliban provided the unstinting political protection that Turabi could not. There was nothing the U.S. or Saudi Arabia could do. Their ineptitude caused bin Laden to flee Saudi Arabia for Sudan, and then to flee Sudan for Afghanistan. As a former U.S. intelligence official remarked in 1998: Both countries may look back on this as the stupidest move since the Germans sent Lenin back to Moscow.1

As if to correct their error, the Saudis tried to lure bin Laden with promises of a dignified return complete with restored passport and personal property, if only he would declare his support for the House of Saud. Whether this offer was legitimate or a ruse to trap him is irrelevant, since bin Laden had no intention of accepting. He responded by saying he didnt need to be defined as a Saudi, and that the government had no right to say who could or who could not live on the Arabian Peninsula.2 The return to Afghanistan in May 1996 was a watershed event, because from here we can date the start of the U.S.-made myth of bin Laden as the demiurge of international terrorism. Bin Laden hadnt changed; only his targets did.

KHOBAR
About a month after bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan, an explosion rocked King Abdul Aziz Airbase near Dhahran. Around 10 p.m. on June 25, 1996, a diesel tanker loaded with at least 5,000 pounds of plastic explosives
1. Robin Wright, Saudi Dissident a Prime Suspect in Blasts, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 14, 1998. 2. Ibid.

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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.3 The Khobar bombing was the worst attack against overseas U.S. personnel since the Oct. 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.4 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 Islamist 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.5 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 indulging this conceit, Americans absolve themselves from having to understand their attackers. To do so would imply that the attacks might be rational, even moral in some sense, and this cannot be admitted. To this day, the vast majority of Americans have never heard that the attack on the Beirut marine barracks was in retaliation for an offshore bombardment by the battleship USS New Jersey that destroyed Arab villages in Lebanons Shouf mountains. After the Khobar blast, the U.S. government wrapped itself in the mantle of victimhood, as shown by President Bill Clintons remarks: The explosion appears to be the work of terrorists. If thats 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.6
3. Federal Bureau of Investigation press release, June 21, 2001, <www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/khobar.htm>. 4. 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>. 5. Ibid., ERRI. 6. President Clintons Remarks, CNN, June, 26, 1996.

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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.7 The U.S. had promised King Fahd that its forces would not stay one moment 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.8 One does not have to sympathize with bin Laden to reject Clintons depiction of the Khobar bombing as a cowardly terrorist act. From the Islamists perspective, it was a legitimate act against a foreign occupier and the Saudi government that refused to evict it. The brutal friendship had created another enemy for the U.S. If that fact werent plain enough, bin Laden would soon spell it out in unambiguous language.

D E C L A R AT I O N O F W A R
From his new sanctuary in Khorasan, bin Laden wrote a 12-page epistle entitled Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy PlacesExpel the Infidels from the Arab Peninsula. The essence of the Declaration of War 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 ones 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

7. See CNN June 26, 1996 op. cit. 8. At an Aug. 8 press conference, Pres. George 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: T e r e n c e H u n t , Associated Press: Is this an open-ended commitment? I mean, could this drag on for years? Th e P r e s i d e n t : Nothing is open-ended, but Im not worrying about that there at all. Im 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 Bushs Press Conference, The Bush Library, Aug. 8, 1990, <bushlibrary.tamu.edu/papers/1990/90080801.html>.

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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 [infidels].9

Replace pushing the American enemy out of the holy land with pushing the Soviet enemy out of Afghanistan and you have the essential mission of the mujahedin, whom the Reagan administration funded and supported with $3 billion. Now that the jihad was directed at the U.S., bin Laden, the once-virtuous freedom fighter, overnight became the evil terrorist. The Declaration of War is divided into five exhortations, throughout which citations from the Quran, invocations to God, and references to liberating the holy sites frequently recur. The first is a general address to the umma (community of believers) 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 governments conduct before and during the Gulf War. After establishing the religious and political necessity of jihad, bin Laden instigates the umma to put aside their private quarrels and unite to evict the U.S. from Saudi Arabia. The second is addressed to Saudi Arabias security and military forces to incite them to support the mujahedin. For the first time, bin Laden attacks King Fahd directly: 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 American will leave.10 The third, only a few paragraphs long, is an exhortation to Muslims on the Arabian Peninsula to boycott American goods: It is incredible that our country is the worlds largest buyer of arms from the USA and the areas 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.11 The fourth is addressed to the youth of Islam, to whom bin Laden entrusts the execution of the jihad:

9. Osama bin Laden, Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying The Land of the Two Holy Places, Oct. 23, 1996, p. 4, <msanews.mynet.net/MSANEWS/199610/19961012.3.html>. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid.

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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.12 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 al-Quds in my internal organs. That loss is like a burning fire in my intestines.13 Whether the presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia constituted an attack on Islam is a matter of debatenot 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 worlds 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 BosniaHerzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and
12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. pp. 6, 10. Al-Aqsa is integral to Islam because it here that Muhammad, the seventh and final prophet, led all prophets in prayer, and then ascended to heaven to receive Gods 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, instead of west towards Jerusalem.

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shake the conscience. All of this and the world watched and heard, and not only didnt 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.14

Qana
The above-mentioned Qana massacre typifies the double standard that animates Islamist animosity towards the West, in particular the U.S. On April 18, 1996, Israeli forces bombed the UN refugee compound in Qana during its Grapes of Wrath offensive against Shiite Hezballah 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. Van Kappen asked Israel to offer evidence to refute the charges, but did not receive any documents. Shortly after the massacre, Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for the Independent, wrote: 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 worlds protection. Like the Muslims of Srebrenica, the Muslims of Qana were wrong.15 Grapes of Wrath was ostensibly a response to a Hezballah rocket attack on an Israeli patrol, but the patrol in question was planting antipersonnel 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 Hezballah attack. Despite incontrovertible evidence that Israelis had planted the device,
14. 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. 15. Robert Fisk, Massacre in sanctuary; Eyewitness, The Independent, April 19, 1996.

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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.16 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.17 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 Israels 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 worlds leading warplane by McDonnell Douglas; AMRAM air-to-air missiles, Americas 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 Israels military defense; and
16. Robert Fisk, The Deadly Secret that Led to Bloodbath at Qana, The Independent, June 1, 1996, re-printed in Mid-East Realities. 17. Robert Fisk, Qana massacre coverup successful, The Independent, July 2, 1996, reprinted in Mid-East Realities.

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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.18

Polite vs. impolite terror

With the U.S. forces lingering in Saudi Arabia five years after the end of hostilities, the time had come to liberate the land of the holy sites from infidel occupation. Bin Ladens depiction of the brutal friendship and the 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?19 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 an Islamist 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 bombingsor bombings like themwere inevitable. Notwithstanding the substance of bin Ladens 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. These anti-Muslim stereotypes were set in rhetorical granite on Feb. 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 against the United States that 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 Gods order, we issue the following fatwah to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their alliescivilians and militaryis an individual duty for every Muslim
18. The Qana massacre, Ibid. 19. Declaration, op. cit.

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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.20 The fatwah foreclosed any possibility that U.S. attitudes towards the Persian Gulf and Islamists would be governed by diplomacy. The most damning aspect of the fatwah was not its message but its language, especially the invocation to kill American civilians. 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. Islamists, though, dont share this squeamishness for honest, violent speech. They are candid about what they intend to do, but by eschewing euphemism, bin Laden and his followers placed themselves beyond the pale of polite, civilized society and became depicted as evil. By the same token, the perceived legitimacy of the U.S. was dramatically enhanced. If bin Laden did not exist, the U.S. would have had to invent him. Yet the issue of good and evil is moot. 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 Islamists impolite terrorism. Nevertheless, bin Laden would henceforth be damned because of what he said, more than for any specific act he may have committed.

THE EMBASSY BOMBINGS

On the morning of Friday, Aug. 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 employees12 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.21 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
20. 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>. 21. Report of the Accountability Review Boards on the Embassy Bombings in Nairobi and Dares-Salaam on Aug. 7, 1998 <www.terrorism.com/state/accountability_report.html>; James C. McKinley Jr., Security Flaws Left Nairobi Embassy Open to Attack, New York Times, Sept. 9, 1998.

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Americas wrathone 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.22 On Aug. 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 reprisalsand the war on terrorism in generalbut also the moral and political validity of bin Ladens 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 networks 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. 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 childrenbut 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.23 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. governments 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.24

22. Cited in Mary Anne Weaver, The Real bin Laden, New Yorker, Jan. 24, 2000. For URL, see Ch. III note 30. 23. Ibid. According to Frontline, the number of missiles was 75. Other sources put the total number of camps at four. 24. James Risen and David Johnston, Experts Find No Arms Chemicals at Bombed Sudan Plant, New York Times, Feb. 9, 1999. The number of missiles fired at the plant is either six (Weaver) or 13 (Frontline).

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Senior Pentagon officials also alleged that al-Shifa was part of Sudans military-industrial complex, to which bin Laden was known to have made financial contributions.25 However, 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 national born in Sudan. In May 1999, the U.S. unfroze Idriss 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.26 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.27 But biblical-style retribution, not rational evaluation of scientific data, was uppermost in Washingtons 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 and 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, weve 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. 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 lawfine, but when push comes to shove the U.S. will get what it wants by forceinternational law be damned.
25. Vernon Loeb and Michael Grunwald, U.S. fails to provide evidence against bin Laden, The Washington Post, Aug. 20, 1998. 26. Tony Karon, Did U.S. Bomb Sudan in Error? Time, Oct. 27, 1999. 27. US sued over Sudan strikes, BBC News July 27, 2000.

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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.28 The only country that has made any serious effort to prosecute bin Laden is Libya. In their book Ben Laden: la vrit intrdite [Bin Laden: the Forbidden Truth], French investigative reporters and intelligence experts Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasqui published a confidential March 16, 1998, memo from Libyas 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 1996.29 Dasqui 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. 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, Americas unilateralism must be deemed to be an aggressive act by a rogue state, and therefore a crime under international law.

28. Ibid., U.S. fails to provide evidence against bin Laden, The Washington Post, Aug. 20, 1998. 29. Cited in U.S. efforts to make peace summed up by oil, an interview with the Irish Times, Nov. 19, 2001.

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Further evidence of the illegal nature of the attack comes from Clintons 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 oclock 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 Pakistans 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 Pakistans 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.30

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, sayingand I quoteWe do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians. Theyre 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 were the most open society on earth; and because, as we have shown yet again, we take an uncompromising stand against terrorism. Before it was destroyed, the al-Shifa plant produced 50 percent of Sudans 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.31 After the attack, Sudan was forced to import these drugs at considerable cost. As a result, many thousands of Sudanese civilians would die needlessly.
30. Ibid., Weaver. 31. Questions remain about Sudan factory, USA Today, 1999.

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Even if the need for a retaliatory attack had been defensible, the quality of intelligence that selected these targets vitiates any claim that the bombing had any connection to justice. It amounted to bombing for its own sake against two of the worlds poorest countries, a true 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 the 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.32

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 Clintons 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 Ladens 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 worlds most dangerous terrorist. But reporters for The New York Times and the PBS program Frontline, have found him to be less a commander of terrorists than an inspiration for them We cant say for sure what was going on with him from 1991 to 1996most of the years covered in the indictmentone senior official said.33
32. Hunting bin Laden Sept. 13, 2001, op. cit. 33. Tim Weiner, U.S. Case Against bin Laden in Embasy [sic] Blasts Seems to Rest on Ideas, New York Times, April 13, 1999.

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The Times story generally accords with bin Ladens own interpretation of the bombings, which he articulated in the first of a four-part interview with ABC on Dec. 12, 1998. ABC N E W S : You have been charged with masterminding the bombings of the two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Are these charges true? O S A M A B I N L A D E N : 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 Kaaba), 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, Gods 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 Kaaba, is considered a crime, let history be a witness that I am a criminal. ABC N E W S : 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? B I N L A D E N : 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 N E W S : If the targets of jihads are Americans, how can the deaths of so many Africans be justified? B I N L A D E N : 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.34

34. Terror SuspectAn interview with Osama bin Laden, ABC News, Dec. 28, 1998.

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The day after the bombings, Sheikh Omar Barkri, bin Ladens 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.35 On Oct. 13, 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 harbour 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 sailors 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.36 In contrast, the BBC offered sober speculation on bin Ladens involvement and took what might be called a swipe at the U.S. obsession: Kuwaits 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 Ladens denial is confirmed, it removes the most obvious suspect and makes the job of U.S. detectives that much harder.37 By the time of the Cole bombing, bin Laden had spent two years on the Federal Bureau of Investigations 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. terrorist radar. These years span the entire presidency of Bill Clinton, who is responsible for turning bin Laden into a demonized celebrity. Larry Johnson, deputy director of the U.S. State Department Office of Counterterrorism (1989-1993), explained the folly of the Clinton administrations response to bin Laden:

35. Joyce M. Davis, Bin Laden asks Muslims worldwide to retaliate against the United States, The Charlotte Observer, Aug. 22, 1998. 36. U.S. finds link between bin Laden and Cole bombing, CNN, Dec. 7, 2000. 37. Frank Gardner, Bin Laden denies Yemen blast,, BBC News, Nov. 13.

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Theyre grossly exaggerating the problem. They are hyping it Instead of saying terrorisms rising, (its not); Terrorism is spreading, (its not); More people are dying from terrorism, (not the case); they should be saying: Theres one individual out there that really doesnt like us, and hes made it his mission in life to kill Americans, and weve 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 whats taking place right now. They call it the administration that cries wolf.38 One month after the Cole bombing, Clintons reign expired, and his successor, former Texas Governor George W. Bush, would intensify the U.S. obsession with bin Laden. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 bombings, government spokesmen and media pundits routinely spoke of before Sept 11/after Sept. 11, and the first war of the 21st century as if the old world had ended, and in its place arose a new world in which traditional certainties and moral beliefs no longer applied. The dropping of the atomic bomb, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the WorldWideWeb are three events that can be said to have changed the world, because each brought about fundamental, permanent change to our moral and political frame of reference. The Sept. 11 bombings did not. These attacks, and Bushs subsequent bombardment of Afghanistan, merely continued and exacerbated a pattern of behavior that Clinton started: Blame bin Laden for any attack against Americans; Denigrate him and his followers as evil and cowardly; Portray the attacks as a senseless assault on democracy and the American way of life; Fuel public hatred for Islam; Use that hatred to justify an attack on Afghanistan; Blacken the U.S. already bad reputation in the Arab world; and Enhance bin Ladens prestige. This paradigm represents the essential dynamic of the war on terrorism: demonization of Arabs and Muslims fuels popular and political consent for militarism; militarism fuels attacks against the U.S.; and these attacks fuel even more militarism.

38. Interview with Larry Johnson, FrontlineHunting bin Laden, PBS, Sept. 13, 2001. The Bush administration would turn gross exaggerations of terrorist threats and crying wolf into official official government policy and a re-election platform.

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S U M M A RY
So far, we have seen how the geopolitical conditions that led to Bushs attack on Afghanistan can be traced to events in the 1970s. The U.S. willful blindness about Shah Reza Pahlevis rule and subsequent support for him in exile provoked the February 1979 Shiite Revolution in Iran. The loss of the Iranian foothold caused the Carter administration to disregard its own intelligence, overreact to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and fund the mujahedin. Meanwhile, Ayatollah Khomeinis Shiite revolution led the U.S. to prod Iraqi president Saddam Hussein into attacking Iran. The ensuing and inconclusive Iran-Iraq War left Iraq devastated and in dire need of money to rebuild. Kuwaits refusal to adhere to production quotas depressed the world price of oil, thus provoking Hussein. His decision to mobilize Iraqi forces for an attack on Kuwait unnerved Saudi Arabia, and gave the U.S. a pretext to base troops on the peninsula. This act, more than any other, turned Osama bin Laden into an anti-Saudi/anti-U.S. mujahid, although the effect would not be felt immediately. From May 1996, when bin Laden issued his Declaration on War until the embassy bombings of August 1998, the U.S. still hardly noticed him. After the bombings, capturing or killing bin Laden became the top priority; the pipeline would have to wait until the Taliban could be ousted. Thus began the absurd scenario of the U.S. allying itself with the very people it wanted the Taliban to defeat. When George W. Bush came to the White House under questionable circumstances, the U.S. changed priorities again. Despite the rhetoric about the war on drugs and the war on terrorism, oil was back on top. From February to August 2001, the U.S. government did everything possible not to offend the Taliban. The FBIs investigations into bin Ladens role in the USS Cole bombing were obstructed, and field reports of suspicious Arab flight school students were ignored. In August 2001, U.S. coercion failed, and the decision to bomb Afghanistan into submission was set in motion. The Sept 11 attack provided the ideal casus belli, and the pre-existing demonized imagery of Osama bin Laden, Arabs and Islam made the bombing politically acceptable. To appreciate how the U.S. government could behave with such wanton disregard for the rule of law and human decency, a philosophical digression into the origins of this warped mindset is required.

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Part II
Zionization of America

O M A T T E R H O W S T R O N G the oil industrys influence in Washington might seem, especially over the last 10 years, it is nothing compared to the coercive and corrosive power of Israels U.S. agentsthe domestic Jewish Lobby.

Heres a sampling of observations from the past half-century: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, 1957: I am very much concerned over the fact that the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get Congress to do anything they dont approve of. The Israeli embassy is practically dictating to the Congress through influential Jewish people in the country. Sen. William Fulbright, 1973: The Israelis control the policy in the Congress and the Senate somewhere around 80 percent of the senate of the United States is completely in support of Israelof anything Israel wants. Adm. Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1983: Ive never seen a presidentI dont care who he isstand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles your mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know whats going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasnt writing anything down. If the American people understood what grip those people have on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens dont have any idea what goes on.1 Obedience to Tel Aviv is enforced by the Lobby and its Christian allies, who embrace an obscurantist reading of the Old Testament. Under the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, active prejudice against Arabs and Muslims in the name of the war on terrorism would become official policy at home and abroad. This is the essence of what Osama bin Laden called the Zionist-Crusader alliance against the Muslim people.2
1. Media and Political Power of Israel in the U.S, <geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7891/index_media.html>. 2. See Chapter 6, note 12.

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The main focus of Part II concerns the philosophical development of this alliance and of neo-conservatism. These three ideological movements came together during the post-Vietnam War malaise to mount a surreptitious coup dtat and pervert the U.S. republican foundations.

CHRISTIAN ZIONISM
Although Zionism is commonly associated with Jews and Theodore Herzls 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 (18001882). 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.3 The cause of Darbys 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.4 After breaking from the Church, Darby and other apostates formed a fellowship known as the Plymouth Brethren, which propagated an ultraliteralist, pessimistic world view known as premillennial dispensationalism or chiliasm, from chilioi, the Greek word for thousand (also written as kilo). According to Darby, the history of man can be divided into five dispensations, each defined as a period of rule by Gods agents: Noah, Moses, Aaron, kings (David, Solomon, Rehoboam, Jeroboam and Manasseh) and Spirit (Jesus). The key factor of Darbys 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 churchs only function was to aid the return of Gods 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 Meggido (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.
3. Stephen Sizer, John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), The Father of Premillennial Dispensationalism, <www.virginiawater.co.uk/christchurch/articles/darby1.html>. 4. Ibid.

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For eccentrics like Darby, the need to reconstitute biblical Israel was a pressing matter because the rapture was thought to be imminent. This expectation of imminent rapture 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 movements 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.5

Chiliasm comes to the United States

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 (18411935). After the Civil War in 1866, he claimed to have heard a calling from God to evangelize Darbys dispensationalism. He did this largely in two ways. The first was through the publication in 1878 of his book Jesus is Coming, which profoundly influenced the Christian church. The second was through his intense preoccupation with Jews, the reconstitution of Israel, and the rapture. On Nov. 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 Chicagos Jews. Conference participants included some of the best-known Jewish and Christian community leaders. Out of the conference came resolutionsdecrying the oppression of Russias Jews, for examplebut also a call for world leaders to allow Jews to return to Palestine.6

5. J.N. Darby, The Hopes, The Collected Writings, Prophetic I, Vol. II, p. 380, cited in Ibid. 6. William E. Currie, Gods Little Errand Boy, 1987, <www.amfi.org/errandboy.htm>.

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The culminating event of the conference was the Blackstone Petition of 1891a 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.7 The petition failed because 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 JewsDr. 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.8 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 Darbys dispensationalism. In 1890, while
7. 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>. 8. A Statement to the Peace Conference by prominent U.S. Jews, annex to Roselle Tekiner, Samir Abed-Rabbo and Norton Mezvinsky, eds., Anti-ZionismAnalytical Reflections (New York: Amana Books, 1988), <www.codoh.com/zionweb/ziondark/zionopp01.html>.

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a pastor in Dallas and head of the Southwestern School of the Biblenow the Dallas Theological SeminaryScofield 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 Scofields Bible the dominant influence at the two institutions.

Zionist Jews and Christians unite

Dispensationalism was, and is, a non-standard belief, and many Christians rightly condemn it as rigid and intolerant, but these defects made it ideal for uniting Zionist Jews and Christians after the 1967 war. Christian Zionists saw Israels victory as biblical prophecy in action. In July of that year, L. Nelson Bell, Billy Grahams 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.9 Bell and other Christian Zionists could point to various passages in the Old Testament, such as: 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.10 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.11 The New Testament picks up this theme, although to a much lesser degree and without any specific reference to the Old Testament: 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.12

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.
9. Cited in Donald Wagner, Evangelicals and Israel: Theological Roots of a Political Alliance, The Christian Century (Nov. 4, 1998), pp. 120-1026, <www.religion-online.org/cgibin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=216>. 10. Genesis 17:7-8. 11. Deuteronomy 30: 4-5. 12. Matthew 24:31.

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In the immediate post-war era, these elitesparticularly the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation Leaguewanted to avoid any association with Israel for fear they and their members could 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 denounced as anti-Semitic, yet Jewish leaders did this to their co-religionists in the name of conformism and political opportunism. Professor Norman Finkelsteins explanation of this mindset deserves to be cited at length: American Jewish elites forgot the Nazi holocaust because GermanyWest Germany by 1949became 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 werent 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.13 In a cruel irony, the very people being repressed in the name of the political interests of Jewish elites were the same people who were sold out by the Zionist elites in Nazi Germany. To paraphrase George Orwell, all Jews are equal, but some Jews are more equal than others. As late as 1961, the Nazi holocaust was still virtually invisible in our political culture. Only three scholarly works had been published: Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York, 1961); Viktor Frankl, Mans 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.14

13. Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust IndustryReflections on the exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London: Verso), pp. 14-15. 14. Ibid., p. 7 and note 5; p. 21.

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Finkelstein said this is 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 risky; it was religiously and politically expedient. The Holocaust could now be discussed openly and used instrumentally to attack Israels critics because the stigma of dual loyalty had vanished. If Jewish elites were thrilled by Israels victory, the vast majority of U.S. society wasnt. Israels occupation of Palestine alienated mainline Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic Christians, as well as liberal Jews. Leading Protestant clergyman Henry P. van Dusen compared Israels assault to the Nazi blitzkrieg, where the aim was annihilation, not victory.15 Some Orthodox Jews to this day even 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 Judaism16 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.17 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 goal of evangelicalism is opposed to Judaism. This perverse religious marriage of convenience would not have amounted to much on its own. It needed a political connection to effect real change. That assistance came from the neo-conservative revolution and the legacy of its spiritual progenitor, Leo Strauss.
15. Peter Grose, Israel in the Mind of America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), p. 310. 16. Judaism vs. Zionism, Neturei Karta <www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Zionism/judaism_v_zionism.cfm>. 17. What is the Neturei Karta? in Ibid.

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T H E G R E AT N E O - C O N A RT I S T
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 egalitarian.18 As a Jewish German who escaped Hitlers Reich, Strauss judged egalitarianism to be a threat to Americas 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 egalitarianism 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 egalitarianism itself to be a prejudice, and an inferior one at that. Strauss felt that the key to bringing about this new value-based order 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 denominatorthe masses. As a result, philosophers were undermining the aristocratic virtues that made philosophy the noblest pursuit of the human mindtradition, heroism, creativity and excellence. Instead, egalitarianism and historical relativism bred 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. The solution, he said, lay in the re-separation of philosophy and philosophers from government. He believed he found the key example in the trial of Socrates.
18. The following summary of Leo Strausss 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 Strausss Platonism <mun.ca/animus/1999vol4/roberts4.htm>; Peter Berkowitz, What Hath Strauss Wrought?Misreading a political philosopher, Weekly Standard, June 2, 2003. See also NeoCon family tree in Tarpley, op. cit., p. 365. Appraising the cabal of neo-con Straussians running the Bush administration, [Norman] Finkelstein suggests they use their political mensch, Machiavelli, as ideological babble to cover their single interest, power. They appropriate anything which justifies their greed, which justifies their power. Straussians, my behind. <www. snowshoefilms.com>.20. Nietzsche held Christianity in contempt, but esteemed Judaism as 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 the bermensch (Superman). The ascription of anti-Jewish prejudice should be directed at his sister Elizabeth and his publisher. Nonetheless, Nietzsches values did foreshadow fascism.

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Strausss 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 towards the end of the 19th century. The Romanticsin art, literature, music and philosophybrought creativity, emotion, genius, spiritual truth and transcendent imagination to the forefront of European society in reaction to the formalistic, logical world of the Enlightenment, which 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 bermensch (The Superman)a gentle, cultured leader like the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who would live a life beyond good and evilnot 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.20 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. Strauss believed the charges to be valid, but only because Socrates made the error of taking his philosophy into the marketplace, where it upset the authorities and undermined faith in the gods. 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.19 This lesson is utterly lost on Strauss because, unlike Plato, he wasnt interested in justice; he was trying to manufacture a case against moral relativism. It should seem axiomatic to any reasoned mind that an authoritarian, preEnlightenment governing model like the Republic could not be applied to an Enlightenment-based political society without doing great violence to that societys liberal character, yet this is precisely what Strauss believed the U.S. had to do.
19. Republic, Book IX, lines 593-4, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues, Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns eds. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 819.

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Because Strausss obscurantist anti-modernism gave rise to neoconservatism, and hence the Zionist usurpation of the U.S., it needs to be critiqued at some length. The next ten pages concern Strausss use and abuse of the philosophical ideas of Niccol Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke to lend verisimilitude to his eccentric concept of governance. The reader might find this section heavy going, but theres no easy way to do it.

Maligning Machiavelli
Strausss attack on modernity and the Enlightenment can be sourced to Machiavelli, the Renaissance Florentine who gave us our foundations of political science and Realpolitik. During his 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: 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 necessarily 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 needThis 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.20 For his impolitic candor, irreligion and embrace of 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 embrace Machiavellis amorality. If nature could be understood free from biblical sophistry, then so could man and society. Machiavellis humanistic redefinition of statecraft led to the Enlightenment, which has given us our political values. With politics now based on reason 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.21
20. Niccol Machiavelli, The Prince, in The Prince and the Discourses (New York: Random House, 1950), p. 56. 21. 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 wiseWe 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 peoples capacity of judging of things, it is exceedingly rare that, when they

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For Strauss, this was Machiavellis unpardonable sin, because republicanism puts government in the hands of the people: Machiavellis 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.22 One cannot take seriously Strausss 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.23 The fact that he would consider a Tudor English playwright to be a legitimate critic of Machiavelli speaks volumes about Strausss credentials as a philosopher.

A Hobbes of a different color

Strauss believed he found the remedy for Machiavellis 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) lived 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-defence 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 sets out the need for a sovereign in languagealbeit slightly archaicthat is virtually indistinguishable from that of Strauss:
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. 22. Ibid. p. 178. 23. Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 177.

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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.24 There is much to admire in Hobbess clarity and logic, but his view of society is too mechanistic. In the name of peace, citizens must not only surrender their arms, but also their liberty and right to dissent. As we know today, such absolute obedience to authority is the hallmark of totalitarian regimes. Hobbes sovereign-ruled state might very well be peaceful, but it is the kind of peace that democracies abhor. Then, again, 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 Machiavellis fundamental objection to the utopian teaching of the tradition, although in opposition to Machiavellis own solution, was to maintain the idea of natural law but to divorce it from the classical idea of mans perfection.25

25. Strauss, p. 180.

24. Thomas Hobbes, Of Commonwealth, Leviathan (London: Pelican, 1980), pp. 223, 227.

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Strausss 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 mans natural rights, not natural duties. The states function is to safeguard the natural right (morality) of each citizen. The power of the state finds its highest expression here and nowhere else.26 This 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 contradiction. 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 between 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 the 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.27 As the following two excerpts show, Strausss views on the divinely guided natural liberty of men, laissez-faire economics, and defense against foreign invasion are virtually lifted from Leviathan.
26. Ibid. p. 181.

27. Ibid.

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Liberty identical to Gods 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 Gods 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.28

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.29

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 concepts of the minimalist state and negative freedomall 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 selfinterest 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 an equal measure of freedom on the part of all others, the freedom of each must be limited and limited

28. Hobbes, p. 263. 29. Ibid., pp. 262, 264.

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precisely for the purpose of preventing the freedom of one from encroaching upon or destroying the freedom of others.30

Taking liberties with Locke

Adlers 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 Lockes Second Treatise of Government while drafting the Declaration of Independence. This is undoubtedly a facetious 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.31 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; Locke speaks of positive freedom in which citizens legislate rules 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 couldnt. 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 Lockes 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 didnt fit, it would be made to fit. In the next section, one must keep in mind Hobbes 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.
30. 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>. 31. U.S. Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, Pa., July 4, 1776.

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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 Genesisthe birth of Adam, the Fall, the Floodbut beyond these articles of faith, human reason was the sole arbiter of what was true and what wasnt. 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 Lockes 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 mens 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 mans 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.32 As the italicized passage shows, 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.33
32. John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), reproduced in From Revolution to Reconstruction: A Hypertext on American History from the Colonial Period until Modern Times, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, <odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/16511700/locke/ECT/toleraxx.htm>. (Italics not in original.) 33. 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 mens souls, men cannot be

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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 Lockes religious and political philosophy. In Natural Right and History, Strauss spends an inordinate amount of time on Lockes chief religious writingsA 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 Lockes 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 moralitycan 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.34 Leaving aside the fanciful assertions about the facticity of Gods will and the idea that Gods existence can be demonstrated, this passage openly misrepresents Locke.35 Strausss truth claims about the New Testament
forced to be saved whether they will or no. And therefore, when all is done, they must be left to their own consciences. Ibid. 34. Strauss, op. cit., pp. 202-203, 204-205. 35. The demonstrability of Gods existence was 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 Mller, New York: Anchor Books, 1966), pp. 408-409.

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violate Lockes 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 propertybased 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 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 Filmers 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 him36 Lockes 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 parents 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 Adams children, being not presently as soon as born under this law of reason, were not presently freebut 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 mans 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
36. John Locke, The First Treatise of Government, Section 14, cited in John LockeTwo Treatises of Government, intro. by Peter Laslett (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1963), p. 185. He is recapitulating the beginning of Filmers Observations Concerning the Original of Government upon Mr. Hobbes Leviathan (1652).

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under which he is; and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.37 Beyond its applications to political society, the First Treatise is utterly irrelevant to the Second. 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 Gods will, and that any interference with absolute acquisitiveness was immoral, Strauss spliced together the two important themes from Lockes writingstrong defense of the New Testament (First Treatise) and a theory of property that extolled individualism and exploitation of nature (Chapter V, Second Treatise): Lockes 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.38 Locke does indeed extol private property, the accumulation of wealth, and the exploitation of nature.39 Moreover, he predicates his social contract on the need to regulate and preserve private property,40 which is explicitly identified as the fruits of ones labors.41 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
37. 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.) 38. Strauss, p. 246. 39. 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. 40. Ibid., Sections 3. See also Section 94, where Locke declares that the failure of government to protect property signifies the end of civil society. 41. 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.

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to look that he used them before they spoiled, else he took more than his share, and robbd others. And indeed it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of.42 This last sentence alone utterly refutes Strausss 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 Lockes chapter-ending Section 51 where he makes his case most emphatically.43 Nevertheless, Strauss dismissed Lockes arguments so that he could invent the idea that criticism of selfishness was merely a tactic for pandering to mass sensibilities, and that Locke didnt really mean what he said: In stating his doctrine of property, Locke so involved his sense, this 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.44 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 ones 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 Gods property, and that mans propriety in the creatures is nothing but that liberty to use them which God has permitted.45 Strauss asserts that Locke embraced selfishness, and then juxtaposes this assertion with non-sequitur citations to show that all property, including man, is Gods property. This union of selfishness and divine bequest is what he needs to justify his case that post-war America needs a Hobbesian governmentthat mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defense. As we saw above (First Treatise, Section 14), Locke expressly denied that man was subject to the arbitrary will of king or God.
42. Ibid., Section 46.

43. 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. 44. Strauss, p. 246. 45. Ibid., p. 247.

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Second, Strauss actually refutes himself. When he said: One must take ones bearings not by how men should live but by how they do live, he took the words right out of Machiavellis mouth. We have come full-circle Strauss sought to build a new authoritarianism on the bones of Machiavelli, ends up being the greatest exponent of the very amoral pragmatism he professed to abhor. By rights, Strauss should have been written off as a paranoid philosophaster, but instead his ideas gave rise to a school of thought. The popularity of Straussianism is not hard to understand. His econotheology dovetailed nicely with laissez-faire capitalism and intolerant, authoritarian Zionist and evangelical movements. The man most responsible for this merger, which turned 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 neoconservatism. 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 to redress inequality and prejudice would 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 outr, so The Public Interest featured academic essays, mostly on economics. Later Kristol would add essays attacking social ills like pornography, homosexuality, drug use and crime. These articles gradually earned a following in 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 Christiansmost of them, as it happens, registered Democratscame to the realization that they

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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 dothey 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 enemiesliberal government, a left-liberal educational establishment, a judiciary besotted with liberal dogmas.46 As neo-cons firmed up this support base, Kristol said the journal also found favor among the Democratic Jewish elite, who broke from the civil rights movement after government policy began to emphasize economic equality and not just 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 opinion page of the Wall Street Journal [in 1972]. He quickly melded the familiar anti-statist views of the Journal with the neoconservative critique of contemporary liberalism. This trio of publications suddenly became something like a national force, and politicians and editorial writers began to pay attention.47 Kristol, like Strauss, fervently believed that reinvigoration of American democracy could not exist without the political use of Christianity. Kristol titled his 1978 collection of essays Two Cheers for Capitalism (not three) 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 maintained that whatever the Framers intended, they did not intend to divest politics of a religious sense, for they said it was the states duty to ensure that morality was upheld. Before we get to that, we need to understand what the Framers said regarding religion, the state and freedom.

46. Irving Kristol, American Conservatism, 1945-1995, Public Interest, No. 121, Fall 1995, Part IV. 47. Ibid., Part III. Kristol was managing editor of Commentary from 1947 to 1952.

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Morality and the state

The man most closely associated with the separation of church and state is Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. third president, and emulator of John Locke. In a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in 1802, Jefferson gave the most succinct definition of this division: 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 a wall of separation between Church & State.48 This letter reiterates the First Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1791Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereofand 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 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.49
48. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jan. 1, 1802, <www.au.org/resources/ foundingdocs/Thomas_Jeffersons_Letter_To_The_Danbury_Baptists.pdf>. 49. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, Jan. 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>.

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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 per se: As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religionas 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.50 So far as the Framers were concerned, religion was purely personal and none of the states 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.51 Jeffersons 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, and his 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 defensivea 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
50. The Barbary Treaties: Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Article 11, Nov. 4, 1796, <www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary/bar1796t.htm>. Washingtons support for this position may be inferred from the treatys passage 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. 51. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Jeremiah Moor, Aug. 14, 1800, reproduced in Thomas Jefferson Political Writings, eds. Joyce Appelby and Terrence Ball (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 172.

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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.52 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.53 Kristol condemned the government for committing outrages against traditional morality, yet Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and Paine went out of their way to separate law, morality and Christian tradition. 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 Constitution 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.54 Kristols 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 the government. Clearly, neo-conservative does not accurately describe Strauss, Kristol or the Jewish elites. They are not neo, because their belief structure is an eccentric pastiche of pre-existing ideas, principally from Hobbes, Filmer and pseudo-Locke. They are not conservative in the traditional American sense, because they embrace foreign intervention, free trade and elephantine defense budgets. Traditional conservatives are isolationist and fiscally prudent. Similarly, democratic seems inappropriate. Strauss and Kristol both professed to be acting in the best interests of the U.S. at the same time they were eviscerating the nations ethos. If you add up the sum of their beliefs hyper-nationalism, demagoguery, religious chauvinism, heroic leadership, economic and moral elitism, and militaristic foreign policyyou end up with something familiar and frightening. In these 1932 excerpts from Benito Mussolini extolling fascism, we hear the unmistakable voice of Leo Strauss:

52. Kristol, American Conservatism, 1945-1995, Public Interest, No. 121, Fall 1995, Part I. 53. 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, Jan. 26, 1799, in From Revolution to Reconstruction, op. cit, <odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl125.htm>. 54. Thomas Jefferson, Plan for Elementary Schools, Sept. 9, 1817, in Bergh, Vol. XVII p. 425, t <www.constitution.org/tj/jeff17.txt>.

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Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage... Fascism denies, in democracy, the absurd conventional untruth of political equality dressed out in the garb of collective irresponsibility, and the myth of happiness and indefinite progress. The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone... In the doctrine of Fascism, Empire is not only a territorial, military or mercantile expression, but spiritual or moral For Fascism, the growth of Empire, that is to say, to the expansion of the nation, is a manifestation of vitality, and its opposite, staying at home, is a sign of decadence: peoples who rise or re-rise are imperialist, people who die are renunciatory.55

American fascism
Fascism has become such a meaningless epithet of contempt that a person cannot discuss the subject rationally, lest he be scurrilously accused of condoning the Third Reichs atrocities. Nevertheless, fascism is a recognized system of social organization. Its application varies according to a states culture, development and history, but Professor Lawrence W. Britt has identified 14 general characteristics of fascist or proto-fascist governments. Based upon analyses of seven regimesHitlers Germany, Mussolinis Italy, Francos Spain, Salazars Portugal, Papadopoulos Greece, Pinochets Chile, and Suhartos Indonesiahe found the following common traits:

1. 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.

2. 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.
55. Benito Mussolini with Giovanni Gentile, What is Fascism? <www.fordham.edu/ halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html>, as well as at Enciclopedia Italiana (1932), <www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html>.

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3. 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.

4. 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.

5. Rampant sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively maledominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and antigay legislation and national policy.

6. Controlled mass media

Sometimes the media are directly controlled by the government, while in other cases, they are indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in wartime, is very common.

7. Obsession with national security

Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. 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 used frequently by government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the governments policies or actions.

8. Religion and government are intertwined

9. Corporate power is protected

The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often put the government leaders into power, creating a symbiotic businessgovernment relationship and power elite.

10. 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.

11. 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.

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12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.58 Fascisms 14 traits stare out from the mirror of George W. Bushs Amerika. We have already seen how cronyism and corporate-government collusion drove U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Fanaticism against birth control and abortions together with fanaticism for executions are typical features of the religious right. In addition, Bushs fetish for upper-income tax cuts and his assault on regulatory legislation epitomize the dominance of Straussian economic selfishness. Points 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 11 and 14especially number threeare of particular importance for understanding how the Zionist contagion took root.

58. Lawrence W. Britt, Fascism Anyone? Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 2, <www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm>.

S E E M S A B S U R D to think that a tiny rogue state like Israel should be able to browbeat and humiliate historys greatest superpower. Every president since 1967 has told Israel to stop settlement construction in the Occupied Territories, and every Israeli government has responded with open contempt and disregard. Israel even interferes in U.S. affairs with other states, as we saw with the arms sales to Saudi Arabia. T

One would think that Israel were the superpower and the U.S. a sycophantic vassal state. This suggestion, facetious though it may be, is not far from the truth. On Oct. 20, 1990, syndicated columnist Patrick Buchanan made the point succinctly in a now famous declaration: Capitol Hill is an Israeli occupied territory. The remark was pithy, but no revelation. The occupation had been going on for decades, and is the reason why the U.S. has become an anti-Arab terrorist state serving Israeli expansionism. One could pick a number of events from which to date the Zionization of the U.S., but the most common is the creation of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948. Contrary to popular belief, this creation was illegal, immoral and did not have the sanction of the United Nations. The Partition Plan that would have carved up Palestine into Jewish and Arab regions only received approval from the UN General Assembly, which is why it is called UNGA Res. 181. The Security Council never ratified it, which means that Arab compliance was not compulsory. In fact, the neighbouring Arab states had every right, even a duty, to reject it because the UN has no power to take land from one party and give it to another. The plan would have awarded 56 percent of Palestine to one-third of the population, the 650,000 Jews, who were mostly recent settlers at that, leaving only 44 percent to the 1.3 million indigenous Muslim and Christian Arabs. According to the UNs own Constitution, UNGA Res. 181 was ultra vires, which also explains why it was never enacted.

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F R O M T R U M A N T O C A RT E R
For its part, the U.S. had been preparing to withdraw support for UNGA Res. 181 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.1 However, domestic electoral considerations would soon dominate Trumans thinking. As Gore Vidal writes in his preface to the late Rabbi Israel Shahaks 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. Thats 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., Israels unlikely patron.2 Although critics may be tempted to dismiss Vidals 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 US 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 Nov. 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: Im 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.3 Within the Truman White House, a virtual war erupted between 67-yearold Secretary of State George C. Marshall and Clark Clifford, a 41-year-old neophyte political advisor who held the minority view that Truman had to

1. 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. 2. Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion (London: Pluto Press, 1994), pp. vii-viii. 3. Richard H. Curtiss, Truman Adviser Recalls May 14, 1948, U.S. Decision to Recognize Israel, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 1991.

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recognize Israel if he expected to capture the Jewish vote.4 Loy Henderson, Trumans 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.5 A more candid view is that Truman was mainly 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 Lobbys 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. Hendersons assistant and I answered many of the letters, because he didnt 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
4. Marshall firmly opposed American recognition of the new Jewish state; I did not. Marshalls 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 Presidents Palestine policy in 1947 and 1948, while I had fought for assistance to the Jewish Agency. Clifford, cited in Ibid. 5. Cited in President Harry S. Truman and U.S. Support for Israeli Statehood, <www.mideastweb.org/us_supportforstate.htm>.

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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. 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. Trumans desk and said, And if you dont come out for a Jewish state well run you out of town.6

Exploiting Jewish suffering solving the Arab problem

The great propaganda device the Zionists exploited was the Nazi holocaust. Even though it had no relevance to Israel,the tactic was highly effective. Generally speaking, the Zionists succeeded in persuading large segments of world public opinion to link the Zionist cause with the Holocaust, wrote Professor Ilan Papp of Haifa University. Against such a claim, even able Palestinian diplomatsand there were not many in those dayshardly could win the diplomatic game.7 Of course, the Holocaust shoe was on the other foot. Evidence from Zionist sources on the systematic depopulation of Arab Palestine is enormous. Some of the most damning come from Joseph Weitz, a Jewish Pole who was responsible for Israels transfer program: [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 Committees 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.8
6. 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>. 7. Ilan Papp, Post-Zionist Critique on Israel and the Palestinians, Part I: The Academic Debate, The Journal of Palestine Studies (Winter, 1997), pp. 3334. 8. 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.

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For the foreseeable future, the world would be expected to succumb to obligatory guilt over the Nazi holocaust, yet deliberately ignore the ongoing Zionist holocaust continually being committed in Palestine. From Nov. 29, 1947, when UN Res. 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, then-Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, referred to the UNRWAs figure as meticulous and believed that the real number was closer to 800,000.9 In their zeal to destroy Palestinian society, Zionists committed unspeakable atrocities. On April 9, 1948, Menachem Begin led the systematic murder of more than 250 men, women and children in the village of Deir Yassin, which was 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, while the noted British historian, Professor Arnold Toynbee described it as comparable to crimes committed against the Jews by the Nazis.10 On July 13, 1948, Israeli troops forced the entire populations of the towns of Lydda and Ramlehup to 80,000 peopleto leave their homes so that newly arrived European Jews could take them. The incident 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 slowshuffling 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 diedfrom exhaustion, dehydration and disease along the roads eastwards, from Lydda and Ramleh, before reaching temporary rest near at 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
9. Dr. Norman Finkelstein, Debate on the 1948 Exodus, Journal of Palestine Studies (Autumn 1991), note 4, p. 86. 10. 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>.

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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.11 The following candid remark from David ben-Gurion to Nahum Goldmann, future president of the World Jewish Congress, shows that the Zionists knew that they were committing an atrocity: 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?12 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 the Palestinians became institutionalized.

The 1967 War

A full account of U.S. political relations with Israel and the frequent use of its veto in the service of Israel is beyond the scope of this section, which is concerned with how Jewish and Christian Zionists were able to usurp U.S. Middle East policy. The key event in this regard is 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. 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 area and we knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didnt 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 thats how it was. I made a mistake in allowing the
11. Cited in Donald Neff Expulsion of the PalestiniansLydda and Ramleh in 1948, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 1994, page 72. 12. Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Hirsh Goldberg, The Jewish Paradox (Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), p. 121.

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conquest of the Golan Heights. As defense minister I should have stopped it because the Syrians were not threatening us at the time.13 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. Nevertheless, Israel used the closing of Eilat as an excuse to attack Egypt and seize the Sinai, which was the objective. Those involved in the attack dismiss as ludicrous the idea that Israel acted out of self-defense. For example, on Aug. 21, 1982, Israels 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 Oct. 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. Israels capture of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem from the Palestinians, 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.14 Unfortunately for the Palestinians and Syrians, the U.S. government has vetoed more than 35 Security Council resolutions to force Israel to comply with UNSC Res. 242. Since the Occupied Territories were never meant to be part of Israel under UNGA Res. 181, the U.S. refusal to press Israel to return them makes no sense unless as a function of domestic politics. President Lyndon Johnson, like Truman before him, was unpopular. He needed to shore up support for the Vietnam 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
13. Stephen S. Rosenfeld, Israel and Syria: Correcting the Record, Washington Post, Dec. 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. 14. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, Nov. 22, 1967, UNSC Res. 242 was passed unanimously 150. Zionists argue that the absence of the word all before occupied territories gives Israel the right to some of this land, but this is a lie. Great Britains UN ambassador Hugh Foot, the resolutions drafter, has affirmed its comprehensive intent. (Paul Foot (son of Lord Hugh), Still waiting for No 242, Guardian, Nov. 13, 2002. The Zionist interpretation would make the resolution self-contradictory and a contempt of the UN Charter.

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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.15 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 and 30mm gunfire, even at life rafts. Thirty-four men died and 171 were wounded. According to the official version, Israel mistook the Liberty for an 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. As Adm. Moorer told the Houston Chronicle, a few weeks before his death in February 2004, The Liberty was conspicuously different from any vessel in the Egyptian navy. It was the most sophisticated intelligence ship in the world in 1967. With its massive radio antennae, including a large satellite dish, it looked like a large lobster and was one of the most easily identifiable ships afloat.16 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, Johnsons 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.17
15. Grace Halsell How LBJs Vietnam War Paralyzed His Mideast Policymakers, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 1993, Page 20. 16. Ibid., and Jim Ennes and Joe Meadows, The USS Liberty Memorial, May 1, 2001, <ussliberty.org>. This site also contains the following statement from the 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 Johnsons 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. 17. Ibid., Halsell. See also Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (St. Martins Press, New York, 1988), p. 203. In an October 2003 affidavit, the former captain of the USS Liberty admitted that Johnson ordered the attack be covered up. According to the Associated Press: [Capt.] Ward Boston said Johnson and McNamara told those heading the navys inquiry to conclude that the attack was a case of mistaken identity despite

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In fact, the members of Johnsons inner circle were mostly Jewish and pro-Israel, so it was impossible for him to have 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 and Ben Wattenberg, domestic affairs aide Larry Levinson, and John P. Roche, Johnsons intellectual-in-residence.18 Adding to Israels attractiveness was its potential to be 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.

C A RT E R O P E N S T H E D O O R
The Vietnam War effectively destroyed Washingtons political establishment,which officially died on Aug. 8, 1974, when President Richard Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment for his role in the Watergate Hotel break-in and cover-up. The subsequent two-year caretaker presidency of Gerald Ford was merely the last gasp of a moribund political culture. Georgia governor Jimmy Carters victory over Gerald Ford was the third major event leading to the Israeli takeover of U.S. Middle East policy. Republicans had never owed anything to the Zionist cause, since most Jews were liberal and voted overwhelmingly Democratic. Thus Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon were able to stand up to the Lobby without ill effect. On Oct. 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. Nixon was avowedly anti-Israel, and as recently released tapes from 1972 show, Rev. Billy Graham and he held disparaging views about Jews, especially about their influence within the media: G R A H A M : This stranglehold has got to be broken or the countrys going down the drain. N I X O N : You believe that? G R A H A M : Yes, sir. N I X O N : Oh, boy, so do I. I cant ever say that, but I believe it. G R A H A M : No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something.19

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, Oct. 22, 2003. 18. Ibid., Halsell. 19. James Warren, Nixon, Graham anti-Semitism on tape, Chicago Tribune, March 1, 2002.

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Even when Nixon agreed to aid Israel after it suffered defeats in the early stages of the 1973 War, he did so belatedly and only because the Soviet Union was giving military aid to the Arab states.20 Zionist optimism over Carters victory, however, quickly turned to disappointment when he proved that he would not be an apologist for Tel Aviv. He wanted a comprehensive end to the 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., he made this point explicit. After uttering the standard line about the need for Arab states to recognize Israels right to exist, he said: There has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees, who have suffered for many, many years.21 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 Presidents 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.22 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 delusion that his job was to work for peace in the Middle East. Whenever the government did something that upset the Lobby, such as criticizing settlement construction in the West Bank, speaking about involving the Palestinians in peace negotiations, or selling military aircraft to Saudi ArabiaCarter and his cabinet came under withering attack: telegrams to the White House, telephone calls to congressmen, and op-ed pieces in the New York Times and other pro-Zionist newspapers. Always, there was the overt or covert slur of anti-Semitism to intimidate members of Congress and the administration. In Israel, meanwhile, Menachem Begin, the terrorist who led the Deir Yassin massacre, led the Likud (Union) Party to its first victory on May 17, 1977. Likud is an amalgam of the most extreme elements of Jewish dispossessionalism: hawkish military leaders, smaller Orthodox religious parties, and settler groupsprincipally Jewish Slavs from Russia, Ukraine and Poland. In contrast to the Labor Party, which had ruled Israel from the outset, Likud aggressively advocates the aggressive colonization of Palestinian land. The first settlement was established in 1968, and three years later the
20. See Chapter 2 and note 9. 21. Cited in Alfred M. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection IIWhat Price Peace? (New Jersey: North American Inc, 1982), p. 681. 22. Ibid.

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extremist settler organization Gush Emunim (Block of the Faithful), grew out of the Kiryat Arba settlement near Hebron. It remains one of the most strident voices of the Israeli right wing.23 Two months after the election, Begin arrived in the U.S. for a state visit with all the arrogance and swagger of a disgruntled king come to browbeat a miscreant noble. Begin openly repudiated the U.S. stand on settlements, and openly lied about the application of UNSC Res. 242. The master had come to set the record straight about Israel and Israels God-given right to claim any land it wants, and the U.S. took its punishment. Nothing symbolizes U.S. subservience better than this exclamation from Begins Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan: I know you Americans think youre going to force us out of the West Bank, but were here and youre in Washington. What will you do if we maintain settlements? Squawk? What will you do if we keep the army there? Send troops?24 By early 1979, the Lobby abandoned Carter and gambled on Republican California governor Ronald Reagan. He won the 1980 election in a landslide, and by the time he took office the following January, all the elements for the Lobbys eventual usurpation of U.S. Middle East policy were in place: the rise of evangelicals to political prominence; the alliance of pro-Israeli Christians and Jews; the alliance of pro-Israeli Christians with Straussians; and the election of Israels first Likud government.

1 9 7 3 P R O PA G A N D A A N D P O C K E T B O O K S
A case could be made that the Straussian road to conquest began with the high-water mark of liberalismthe U.S. Supreme Courts Roe vs. Wade decision. The 7:2 ruling on Jan. 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 became the fastestgrowing sects of North American Christianity, while mainstream Protestant and Catholic denominations began to shrink.
23. Likuds 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 Army reserve 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 occupation is the single greatest issue dividing Israel today. A poll published in the Israeli newspaper Maariv on June 1, 2003 reported that 62 percent of Israelis are fed up with the violence and want to end the occupation. 24. Cited in Paul Findley, Deliberate DeceptionsFacing the Facts About the U.S.-Israeli Relationship (New York: Lawrence Hill, 1993), p. 235.

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Arguably, the most important of these evangelicals was former Senate aide Paul Weyrich. In the same year that Roe vs. Wade was decided, he created the Heritage Foundation, the first think-tank specifically designed to propagate a militant Christian-Straussian political order. The foundations influence on the White House would redefine U.S. politics and be a main engine of the American fascist revolution, but Weyrich did not accomplish this feat by himself. That revolution owes its success to three philanthropists who became politically active in this seminal year.25

Joseph Coors
The Heritage Foundation began with a $250,000 grant from Colorado brewing tycoon Joseph Coors in late 1972. On the occasion of Coorss death at age 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 wouldnt existand 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.26 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 Weyrichs 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 to 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,
25. 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. 26. Edwin J. Feulner, Heritage Foundation President Mourns Death of Joseph Coors, Heritage Foundation, March 16, 2003, <www.heritage.org/Press/NewsReleases/nr031603.cfm>.

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though, sit on the U.S. Advisory Commission for Public Diplomacy, which oversees the U.S. Information Agency. Again, it is Feulner who testifies to Scaifes influence. In November 1994, he told a group of supporters after the Republican sweep of the House of Representatives: The victories were celebrating today didnt 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.27

R. Randolph Richardson
Little is known about Randolph Richardson, save that his familys 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 foundations philosophy, as described on its website (www.srf.org), could have been lifted out of John Lockes 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 fathers small mortar-and-pestle drug manufacturing business into an industrial concern of international stature.

O N WA R D C H R I S T I A N S O L D I E R S
The next year, 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 its website, 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
27. Karen Rothmyer, The Man Behind The Mask, Salon.com, April 7, 1998.

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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. Here again we find the quintessential Straussian econo-theology, the unity of unenlightened self-interest and biblical chauvinism. Out of this comes a hatred for all things Islamic, and since Sept. 11, 2001, Free Congress has pumped out dozens of articles and monographs with this bias. The authors of these tracts 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 selectively cites the words of radical Muslims and traditional Islamic sources to show that Islam is inherently a violent religion. Such a disingenuous feint should fool nobody; no group is immune to smearing by such caricature. As we saw in Part I, Islamic culture was historically known for its tolerance and sophistication, and jihad is not offensive, but a defensive response to invasion. These facts appear alien to Spencer, who spends much of his time cherry-picking offensive passages from the Quran. Significantly, Spencer does not cite Jewish or Christian militants or passages from the Hebrew or Christian bibles to illustrate the bloody and irrational origins of the Wests glorious Judeo-Christian tradition. Leaving aside the fact that no holy book can be read literally, or directly applied to the real world, Spencers scholarship lacks objectivity. He makes wild allegations founded on nothing but hysterical emotion: 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...28 First, Allah is merely the Arabic word for Godthe same God of the Hebrew and Christian bibles. The word for God in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, is Alah or Alaha (cognate with Hebrew Elohim), so for a Christian to insinuate that Allah is opposed to God is an unforgivable howler. Second, nowhere does Spencer acknowledge that the Afghan jihad, the Somali jihad or Osama bin Ladens invocation to rid the Middle East of U.S. forces were all the result of foreign invasion. Also, absent is any mention of the role Israel and Saudi Arabia played in repressing the Muslim world. Thus,
28. Robert Spencer, Jihad in Context, excerpted at <www.freecongress.org/media/030826.asp>.

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Spencers attempted dismissal of his critics fails, as does the description of Free Congress as a research and education foundation. Weyrich also established National Empowerment Television (NET TV), Free Congress own satellite network channel, now called Americas Voice. From this bully pulpit, it rallies grassroots evangelicals across the U.S. to lobby the government, and propagates the views of the National Rifle Association, Pat Robertsons Christian Coalition, and the Eagle Forum, which opposes womens 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 led Falwell to boast: Ronald Reagan would not have been president unless Bible-believing Christians in 1979 and 1980 by the millions said, Weve had enough, and threw Jimmy Carter out and put Ronald Reagan in, to put it bluntly.29 The theocratization of the White House became firmly entrenched in 1981 with the founding of the deceptively innocuous Council on National Policy. Comprised of more than 500 evangelical, Pentecostal, charismatic, Catholic and Mormon Christians, the council plans 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 (radio, television and print) and education.30 Some past and present members are: Holland and Jeffrey Coors, Jerry Falwell, Lt.-Col. Oliver North (who lied to Congress regarding the 1980s Iran-Contra arms-for hostages scandal), Pat Robertson (Christian Broadcast Network), Attorney General John Ashcroft, Rich DeVos (Owner of the NBA Orlando Magics), Alan Gottlieb (Chairman, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms), Congressman Jack Kemp, Richard Scaife, John Sununu (Reagans Chief of Staff), Richard Viguerie (Chairman, American Target Advertising), Paul Weyrich and Don Wildmon (American Family Association). This shadowy college of conspirators embodies Strausss litist governing model. The CNP imbues selfishness with divine sanction, treats regulatory and civil rights legislation as virtual sins against God, and actively conspires against the Constitution. Furthermore, few people know the CNP exists, which reminds us of Strausss eccentric argument that philosophers, like Socrates, should work their magic out of public view.
29. Controversial Falwell statements cut by SBC agency radio show, Biblical Recorder, July 28, 2000. 30. 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>.

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THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN

Common to Zionists and Straussians is a Manichean mentality that reduces the world to moral archetypes of good and evil: evangelicalism vs. liberal Christianity; Zionism vs. liberal Judaism; and neo-con economics vs. paleo-con economics. All this evangelical-zionist-neocon troika needed to take control of government was a horseman to ride it into office. A retired actor, Ronald Reagan began his race for the presidency armed with a strong moral senseand 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. Even Reagans chief advisorsEdwin 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, wrote arms control expert Strobe Talbot 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 blas 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 Reagans 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 Reagans 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.31 In all, 11 members of Reagans transition team came from Heritage, and the foundations pre-election document Mandate for Leadership became Reagans playscript for the presidency. It would be more accurate to call Reagan Heritages man in Washington rather than a representative of the American people, as this remembrance by Feulner demonstrates: It was Joe Coors belief in conservative principles such as limited government and economic freedom that led him, starting in the 1960s, to support a citizen politician from California named Ronald Reagan.
31. Strobe Talbott, Deadly Gambits (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), pp. 75-76. There is a consistent pattern in U.S. history of power brokers selecting weak Presidents.

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Throughout the 1970s, Reagan often visited Joes home, usually winding up in the Coors kitchen. When Reagan was elected our 40th president, Joe became a member of his Kitchen Cabinet, offering staffing and policy suggestions, especially on national defense. His most important contribution was in the area of strategic missile defense. Like Reagan, Joe Coors had long known nuclear physicist Edward Teller, who stressed the vulnerability of the United States to nuclear attack. Coors agreed strongly that America had to have a defense against Soviet missiles. When Reagan entered the White House, Joe gladly joined a small group assembled by Teller that called itself High Frontier. I am proud to say that Heritage underwrote High Frontiers first study calling for the development of a multi-satellite global ballistic missile-defense system.33

Economic fantasyland
In economic matters, Reagan also followed the script he was given. One of his first acts was to make good on a pledge to cut taxes. Under the KempRoth tax cut, as it was known, the bottom tax rate fell from 14 to 10 percent and the top rate from 70 to 50 percent. This tax cut was the first step in a thoroughly Straussian economic strategy called supply-side economics. According to this theory, based on the ideas of California economist Arthur Laffer and conservative writer George Gilder, cutting taxes was the way to stimulate the economy, which was just coming out of a recession. According to this theory, 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 is also known as trickle-down because the benefit accruing to the economic elite at the top of the income pyramid is 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 unsound. There was no incentive or obligation to compel the wealthy to reinvest their tax cut, nor could there be, as that would run counter to the supply-siders Hobbesian, anti-statist mentality. Reagans economic script was initially written for Jack Kemp, the congressional standard bearer for supply-side economics, but he was a long shot to win the 1980 Republican nomination. In view of Reagans popularity, Kemp made a deal not to oppose Reagan if he would give supply-siders the lead in making policy. David Stockman, Reagans first budget director and a devout supplysider, thought Reagan was a preposterous choice to lead the Republicans, but he suppressed his misgivings. Stockmans 1986 book The Triumph of Politics
33. Edwin J. Feulner, Coors R.I.P. National Review online, March 18, 2003.

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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 nations fiscal stability were apparentbut 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 nations fiscal imbalance was never addressed or corrected; it just festered and grew. By 1982, I knew the Reagan Revolution was impossibleit was a metaphor with no anchor in political and economic reality.34 Nowhere did the imbecility of trickle-down economics assert itself more fully than in Reagans bizarre promise to increase defense spending and balance the budget in three years without making serious social spending cuts to offset the tax cuts. For good reason, then-presidential rival George Bush Sr. called it voodoo economics. When Reagan came to office, the federal debt stood at $909 billion; by the time he left, it had nearly tripled to $2,601 billion. From 1981 to 1986, the Reagan 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 far more deeply indebted. The following 1985 account by Richard Stubbing, deputy chief of the Office of Management and Budgets National Security division (1974-81) shows how elitism and militarism (Straussianism) supplanted responsible government: 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
34. David Stockman, The Triumph of PoliticsWhy the Reagan Revolution Failed (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), pp. 13, 49.

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havoc at home and confusion abroad, and that cannot be dealt with wisely by the Pentagon. The Reagan Administration chose not to heed Lairds warning.35
Table I: Defense Spending and Federal Debt, 198089, (US $billion, FY1998)
Year 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 President Carter Carter Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan Defense Spending $134.0 $157.5 $186.3 $209.9 $227.4 $252.7 $273.4 $282.0 $290.4 $295.3 Percent increase -17.5 18.3 12.7 8.3 11.1 8.2 3.1 3.0 1.7 Federal Debt $909 $995 $1,137 $1,371 $1,565 $1,818 $2,121 $2,346 $2,601 $2,868 Percent increase -9.4 14.4 20.6 14.1 16.8 16.0 10.7 10.9 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.

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 militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced
35. Richard Stubbing, The Defense Program: Buildup or Binge? Foreign Affairs, Spring 1985, p. 848.

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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.36 In the end, Reaganomics undermined and distorted the U.S. economy: A rapid defense buildup and 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. 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.37 Thus, we see what Stockman meant when he said Reagans economic policy was a metaphor with no anchor in political and economic reality. This aphorism could also stand as testament to the utter failure of Strausss economic elitism, which was the essence of Reaganomics.

Foreign Policy Begin shows Reagan whos boss

For all of his charisma and moral rectitude, Reagan would quickly find that he was little more than a bystander in foreign policy, even where U.S. law was concerned. In June 1981, Israel used U.S. F-16s to bomb Iraqs uncompleted Osirik nuclear reactor. This act of aggression clearly violated the U.S.-Israel arms procurement agreement, which stipulated that weapons may only be used for defensive purposes. Alexander Haig, Reagans Secretary of State, swept the matter under the rug. For his part, Reagan sent a letter to Begin to protest the bombing. In response, Begin threw the Nazi holocaust at Reagan: A million and half children were poisoned by the Ziklon [sic] gas during the Holocaust. Now Israels 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 the heroism of our pilots to whom we owe so much.38

36. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, MilitaryIndustrial Complex Speech, November 1960, <www.yale.edu/lawwebavalon/presiden/speeches/eisenhower001.htm>. 37. Michael Mandel, Lessons of the Reagan Years, Business Week, Aug. 19, 1996. 38. Avi Shlaim, The Iron WallIsrael and the Arab World Since 1948 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), p. 387.

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To compound the insult, the first person Begin called after the bombing was Jerry Falwell to ask him to explain to the Christian public the reasons for the bombing.39 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 rose to $1.8 billion. As part of the agreement, Israel would have 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.40 Israels abuse of U.S. technology was a key factor in the Osirik bombing. In early 1981, Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, wondered how Israel managed to target the Iraqs reactor with such accuracy, and proceeded to make inquiries about Israels requisitioning of U.S. satellite photographs. According to mutual agreement, satellite data was to be shared only for defensive purposes so that Israel could highlight potential direct threats. 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, said Inman. 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.41 Inman goes on to say that then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was so furious he came to the U.S. to protest to Reagans Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, but neither Weinberger nor CIA Director William Casey would cave in. Moreover, Inman enjoyed considerable bipartisan respect.42
39. 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), Oct, 9, 2003. 40. Lilienthal, op. cit., p. 732. 41. Excerpts from transcript of televised news conference by Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, Jan. 18, 1994, cited in Safire Media Attacks Began When Inman Blocked Israeli Access to U.S. Satellite Intelligence, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Feb./March 1994, p. 29. 42. 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, Dec. 16, 1993, <fas.org/irp/news/1993/931216i.htm>.

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Of all the Middle East issues that bothered Reagan, Israels June 6, 1982, invasion of Lebanon was the most painful. Begin claimed that the invasion was meant to stop Palestinian attacks from southern Lebanon, but Israel quickly betrayed its true purpose when it laid siege to Beirut to push the PLO out of Lebanon. On June 14, Israel began a punishing two-month bombardment of Beiruts 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. For Reagan, the pictures of babies with burnt-off limbs, children dying of starvation and thirst, and weeping mothers was too much.43 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 Reagan 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 Berlinwith or without inverted commaswill never happen again.44 On Sept. 1, 1982, Reagan delivered a nationwide address in which he defined U.S. policy for Palestinian-Israeli peace. It was a moderate speech, replete with the requisite paeans to Israel and its history, but its significance lies in Reagans compassion for the suffering of the Palestinians. The following two paragraphs contain the key points: 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
43. Horror for Lebanon, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Aug. 23, 1982, p. 2. 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. Were 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. Jacobo Timmerman, The Longest WarIsrael in Lebanon (New York: Vintage, 1982), p. 162. Begin deliriously confuses Beirut with Berlin. 44. Shlaim, op. cit., pp. 404-405.

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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 Israels 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.45 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 Nov. 3, five more settlements were approved. Harsh 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 2010.46 Even though the Lobby bullied previous administrations, its pressure had been externalfrom Jewish groups, senators, congressmen and the media. As Rabbi Alexander Schindler, the leader of Jewish political lobbying, said in April 1978: The strength of Israel depends on the strength of the American Jewish community and its unity in support of Israel.47 With Reagan in the White House, the Lobby was given the keys to government. Although Reagan did not appoint any Jews to his cabinet, many Zionists, including Israeli citizens, received key appointments to advisory and sub-cabinet policymaking positions. Thus, it came to pass that Ronald Reagan, the movie actor-turnedpolitical actor, was cast in a reality movie written, directed and produced by the Heritage Foundation and supply-side economic mystics. The Reagan Revolution, as this production came to be called, was a critical and financial failure, but it became a cult hit among Americans eager to imbibe simplistic slogans and jingoistic patter. Moreover, the backers of The Reagan Revolution were prepared to do anything to ensure an indefinite run. As a result of these machinations, Zionist influence on government proliferated, and the U.S. began to resemble an Israeli satrapy.

45. President Ronald Reagan, Address to the Nation on United States Policy for Peace in the Middle East, Sept. 1, 1982, <www.reagan.utexas.edu/resource/speeches/1982/90182d.htm>. 46. West Bank: Settlements Galore, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Nov. 15, 1982, p. 3. 47. Cited in Lilienthal op. cit., p. 709.

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BURNING BUSH
After the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989, the geopolitical social order changed radically: the Cold War was over, the Soviet Union disappeared, and the U.S. found itself without a clear external enemy. This was the world Reagans Vice-President and successor George Bush Sr. inherited. Bush was a reluctant Reaganaut. He was neither senile nor passively dependent on advisors. Thanks to his elite connections, Bush had spent much of his life in politics, including posts as UN ambassador and director of the CIA under Nixon. On foreign policy, Bush was an internationalist and pragmatist, and in the Middle East, he favored regional stability over Israels selfaggrandizement. Using the pretext of rolling back Iraqs invasion of Kuwait and protecting Saudi Arabia from an attack, he put together an international armed coalition to protect the U.S. Persian Gulf oil supply. Bushs limited aims put him at odds with the radical Pentagon Zionists, whom he derisively called the crazies. The crazies wanted to use the Gulf War to oust Saddam Hussein, but then-Gen. Colin Powell (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and field commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf opposed the idea on legal, political and military grounds. The United States had a UN mandate only to liberate Kuwait, not to topple Husseinwhich would 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 Turkeys own Kurdish population, and Iraqs majority Shiites could find themselves under Iranian influence. To his credit, Bush stared down the crazies, but he would not enjoy his victory for long. In 1991, Bush tried to breathe new life into Carters idea of a comprehensive Middle East peace. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev co-sponsored an Oct. 3031 ministerial conference in Madrid to devise an end to the first Palestinian Intifada or uprising (literally, shaking off). A letter 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. had still not recognized the PLO. Former terrorist and assassin Yitzhak Shamir, the Likud Prime Minister at the time, refused to participate. To compel his participation, Bush threatened to withhold $10 billion in loan guarantees. The threat worked, but the Lobby was furious, to say nothing of Shamir. The cause of their anger is obvious in these excerpts from Bushs address. 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 nonbelligerency. This is not enough; this would not last. Rather, we seek

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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 peacelasting peacemust 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 Israels 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.48 The very act of showing compassion for Palestinians and arguing for stability in the Middle East was logical and rational, but it posed a direct threat to the crazies and the colonialist ambitions of Israels ruling Likud party. Since 1968, Labor and Likud governments alike have supported progressive Jewish colonization in the Occupied Territories. On paper at least, Labor governments have been willing to trade land for peace, because they recognize that the occupation is the greatest threat to Israels security. On this point, the party has the backing of the vast majority of Israelis, who are tired of the violence. On the ground, Labor merely pursues expansionist results with greater discretion than Likud. Likud governments derive much of their electoral support from thuggish settler groups, who overtly terrorize and provoke Palestinians. As such, Likud does not want a political solution to the violence, because such a solution would compromise their power base and their messianic Nile to Euphrates expansionism. In short, Labor governments pay lip service to international law and profess to want a political solution, albeit one grossly unfair to the Palestinians. Likud governments care nothing for international law or
48. President George Bush, Madrid Conference Opening Speeches, Oct. 30-31, 1991, <www. mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0bvp0>.

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morality. They are deliberately provocative and bent on conducting a Nazistyle Lebensraum conquest and dispossession. In spirit if nothing else, Bush supported the Labor position, and for this reason he had to go. On Feb. 26, 1992, a domestic pressure group of crazies 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 Res. 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.49 Nevertheless, the ad signaled the impending end of Bushs presidency and the Lobbys intention to return to the Democrats. In a 2002 article Should Israel Retaliate? Avi Davis, a Likudnik writer for the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies, typified the Israel Lobbys anger with 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 the Bush administration and a swipe at the Labor Party: The last Bush administration was the most unfriendly to Israel since the countrys 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.50
49. Elaine C. Hagopian, The Popes emphasis on Palestinian rights, Boston Globe, May 16, 2001, p. 15. 50. Avi Davis, Should Israel Retaliate? Freeman Center for Strategic Studies, November 2002, <www.freeman.org/m_online/nov02/davis1.htm>.

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With the last point we see the beginnings of the latest shift in Zionist strategy. Just as Israel and the Lobby pushed the special relationship as the foundation of U.S.-Israeli relations under Reagan, it now needed to adapt to a post-Cold War vacuum marked by the lack of an arch-enemy for the U.S. The new role for Israel would be as bulwark against the bogeyman of Islamic fundamentalism. It was an easy sell. By this time, the chief opposition to repressive regimes in the Arab world had taken Islamist forms, and Israel-firsters in the media, academia and Middle East think tanks were propagating the dogma of a global threat from Muslims who gratuitously hated Western freedoms, values and prosperity.

E A L P O W E R D O E S N O T L I E with the White House or Congress; it lies with the people and pressure groups that tell the president and Congress what to do. Lobbyists, academics and think tanks constitute the real governing class, as in the example of the Heritage Foundations dominance over Ronald Reagan.

Over the past half-century, especially the last 25 years, Christian and Jewish Zionists used this extra-governmental structure to become, in essence, the real government. The shadowy cabal at the Council on National Policy epitomizes Leo Strausss elite economic governing class imposing a moral order on society. Some of these think tanks, though, operate in plain sight. They carry deceptively neutral names and operate as tax-deductible educational foundations, but they are in fact part of an intricate network that fosters Straussian econotheology, Christian-Jewish Zionism, and hatred of Muslims.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE PROFILE OF A STRAUSSIAN/ZIONIST FRONT

In its promotional blurb, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research claims to be one of Americas largest and most respected think tanks: [The AEI] is dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of freedomlimited 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.

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The institutes 50 resident scholars and fellows include some of Americas 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. 1 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 Roosevelts 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 AEIs 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 AEIs image with the media, Baroodys hiring of former Ford administration officials after the Republicans 1976 electoral defeat was also instrumental. Baroodys strategy was extremely successful, turning AEI into a $9 million, 154person Republican government-in-waiting. AEI employees who eventually became high-level Reagan officials included James C. Miller, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Murray Weidenbaum and Antonin Scalia.2 With the advent of the Straussian brand of American fascism under Reagan, however, the AEI found itself increasingly outfunded and outmaneuvered by the likes of Paul Weyrichs 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 Reagans Office of Management and Budget. Since then, the institute has subsumed its former conservative economic and political ideology under a Straussian militancy.
1. See the institutes website, www.aei.org. 2. Deborah Toler, The Rights Race DeskAmerican Enterprise Institute finds profit in prejudice, Extra! March/April 1999, <www.fair.org/extra/9903/aei.html>.

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Michael Ledeen warmonger extraordinaire

One of the clearest exponents of the symbiosis between Zionism and government policy is Michael Ledeen, who holds the institutes ironically named Freedom Chair. Ledeen advocates nothing less than the de facto U.S.Israeli conquest of the Middle East, and writes with such venom and ignorance that he might as well be writing Likud policy papers, as in the following excerpt from the National Review, reprinted at AEI: 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 cant 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, its 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 lets get on with the war. Faster, please.3 Just four months earlier on Feb. 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, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton 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,4 even though such a widening of the conflict ran counter to the primary U.S. interest in promoting stability in the oil-rich region. Bolton is one of George W. Bushs most zealous ideologues, and the leading proponent of confrontation with states that oppose Israel. He is also known to be argumentative and dogmatically opposed to international treaties, because he believes they impede the U.S. military will. He successfully sabotaged a 2001 biological weapons conference because it would have involved inspection of U.S. facilities, and earned exemptions for Americans before the International Criminal Court. Bolton rails against
3. Michael Ledeen, What Is George Tenet Doing Anyway? National Review onlne, June 3, 2002. 4. Aluf Benn, Sharon says U.S. should also disarm Iran, Libya and Syria, Haaretz, Feb. 20, 2003.

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rogue states at the same time he pushes rogue U.S. conduct upon the world in defiance of international agreements. Before he joined the administration, Bolton served as the vice president of the AEI.5

Syria
Ledeens castigation of Syria as one of the terror masters cannot be taken at face value, since its not based on any defensible argument, and conspicuously omits evidence of Israeli manipulation. Three days before the U.S. formally ended its war against Iraq on May 1, 2003, Israels 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.6 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 Iraqweapons 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 Saddams regime may retain part of its army there.7 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 Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the U.S. didnt know if Hussein had exported weapons to Syria. Israel took command of the Syrian campaign on Oct. 5, 2003, when it bombed the Ein Saheb camp 22 kilometres northwest of Damascus, ostensibly in reprisal for a Haifa restaurant bombing. Israel claimed Islamic Jihad used the camp to train terrorists; in fact, 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 groups military bases were inside the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The only casualty of the bombing was an injured civilian guard.8

5. Barbara Slavin and Bill Nichols Bolton, A guided missile USA Today, Dec 1, 2003. 6. Jonathan Wright, Israeli Ambassador to US Calls for Regime Change in Iran, Syria, April 28, 2003, <www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0428-07.htm>. 7. Toby Harnden, Syria now top U.S. target for regime change, The Telegraph, April 8, 2003. 8. Israel Bombs Alleged Terror Base in Syria; U.N. to Meet on Israeli Strike in Syria, Associated Press, Oct. 5, 2003.

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To keep up the propaganda barrage, Israels UN ambassador Dan Gillerman that same day called Israels 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. Moreover, the target in question was not a threat.9 Gillerman also justified the attack by claiming that Syria provided safe harbour, training facilities, funding, logistical support to terrorist groups; this happens to be the same justification Nixon gave for the secret bombing of Cambodia. That bombardment, which began on Feb. 22, 1969, ultimately led to the Watergate break-in and cover-up that brought down Nixons presidency. It also led to the 1973 War Powers Act by which Congress banned bombing of Cambodia and compelled the president to consult Congress before committing troops. If the U.S. Congress recognized that the bombing of Cambodia was illegal, it should do the same in the case of Syria. Nevertheless, on Nov. 11, the Senate passed the 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.10 The Act also bans exports of dual-use technology, allows the U.S. to freeze Syrias 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.11
9. Fionnuala Sweeney, Brent Sadler and Rula Amin, Syria asks UN to condemn Israel, CNN.com, Oct. 5, 2003. 10. H.R. 1828 (as amended), U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 108th Congress1st Session, Nov. 11, 2003, <www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/ roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=108&session=1&vote=00445>. 11. Sen Byrd: U.S. Syria bill could lead to an invasion, Agence France Press, Nov. 12, 2003, <www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1112-05.htm>.

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Meanwhile, a U.S. team investigating multiple reports of banned weapons or weapons-related substances moving from Iraq into Syria, Iran and Jordan had turned up nothing. National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice conceded this point three days after the Syria Accountability Act was passed: Ive seen reports, as everyone has. We dont have any evidence at this point that thats what happened.12 The U.S. case against Syria is worse than threadbare, but it serves Israels 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 Ledeens alleged analysis.

Iran
Two days after Ayalon spoke of the need to apply political and economic pressure on Syria and Iran, Ledeen also wrote about the need to use political and economic pressure to topple these regimes: The Syrians and the Iranians are going to fight now in Iraq. They are not going to send their armies against us, but rather a swarm of terrorists, from Hezballah to Islamic Jihad, Hamas, al-Qaida, Ansar al-Islam, and the rest of the jihad mafia. The irresponsible hyperbole in this passage demonstrates that neither Ledeen nor the AEI is familiar with responsible scholarship on the Middle East. As was the case with Syria and Iraq, the political and economic pressure on Iran would be applied through intimidation and coercion over weapons of mass destruction. The UNs International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna monitors compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and would be the body to determine if Iran, a signatory, were producing such weapons in violation of the treaty. Nevertheless, the United States had already prejudged the matter. On June 11, Rumsfeld declared: 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.13 Why the U.S. should want to pick a fight with Iran at this time seems strange, given that its forces are bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq.

12. U.S. Has No Evidence Iraq Hid Banned Arms in Syria, Reuters, Nov. 14, 2003, <story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20031115/ts_nm/iraq_usa_syria_dc_1>. 13. Richard Bernstein, Rumsfeld Says Iran Is Developing Nuclear Arms Under Guise of Civilian Program, New York Times, June 12, 2003.

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Since Rumsfelds statement came about six weeks after the end of offensive operations in Iraq, one could argue that the U.S. felt it would soon extricate itself and be in a position to face Iran. This view, though, doesnt account for the subsequent inconsistencies in U.S. rhetoric toward Iran or the realignment of its overseas military forces. A better interpretation of this belligerency comes from a piece Ledeen wrote for the Wall Street Journal the same day Rumsfeld spoke: Irans 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. Iraqs support of terrorism was miniscule compared to Irans activities. If we are serious about winning the war against the terror masters, the Tehran regime must fall.14 Since Hamas and Islamic Jihad target Israel, not the U.S., Ledeens use of we must be read as Israeli agitprop. Like all the crazies, many of whom are spawned and reared at the AEI, Ledeen treats U.S. interests, resources, prestige and lives as commodities to be expended in the service of Greater Israel. According to the standard Zionist argument, Iran is developing an offensive nuclear capability, presumably to use against Israel. On Sept. 17, Ledeen wrote a scaremongering piece for the National Review built entirely out of conjecture and innuendo. It concluded: If Iran turns up with the bomb, that would add urgency to our ongoing war against the terror masters in Tehran. Lets hope we have time to do that before they use the thing.15 Yet the U.S., which bristles with nuclear weapons, has a lot more to do with promoting anxiety in the region than does Iran. Erich Marquardt, Middle East analyst for the Power and Interest News Report, argues persuasively that the U.S. is provoking Tehran into building a nuclear arsenal: 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 Irans 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 kilo meter range, putting them well within striking capability of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and also within striking distance of Israel.16
14. Michael Ledeen, The Tehran Regime Must Fall, Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2003. 15. Michael Ledeen The Ayatollahs Bomb, National Review Online, Sept. 17, 2003. 16. Erich Marquardt, Irans Race for Nuclear Weapons, The Power and Interest News Report, Sept. 29, 2003.

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The U.S. is pressing the international community to act as soon as possible, said Marquardt, because when Irans main reactor at Bushehr is loaded with nuclear fuel sometime this year, any attempt to destroy it from the air would risk nuclear fallout. Strong parallels between the AEI and the government are visible in the near identical comments of Ledeen and the Bush administration concerning the need for non-military pressure to change the Iranian regime, specifically regarding a popular uprising. On June 6, Powell told CBS: What we have to do is keep showing to the Iranian people that there is a better world out there waiting for you, and you can become a more responsible member of the international community if you stop supporting terrorist activity and if you stop trying to develop weapons of mass destruction.17 A month later in the National Review, Ledeen urged the U.S. to stoke antigovernment rebellion in Iran: I have long argued that the United States could provide the decisive support that would guarantee success of the democratic revolution. All Iranians, from the top ayatollahs to the student organizers, believe that America is capable of guaranteeing the outcome of the conflict, and they are all trying to decipher the American strategy. Whenever President Bush speaks warmly of the demonstrators, they are enormously encouraged; whenever some other official--typically from the State Department--speaks words subject to many interpretations (or, worse still, proclaims the current regime a democracy, as Deputy Secretary of State [Richard] Armitage did in February), it sends a chill through the hearts of the freedom fighters. The doom of the mullahs will not come from the barrel of a gun. It will come from millions of Iranians in the public spaces of the major cities, demanding an end to their misery. So what are we waiting for?18 Ledeen and the other crazies caught a break last year when Iran admitted that it had not been totally forthcoming about making nuclear safety reports to the IAEA. In June, Irans nuclear energy chief Gholamreza Aghazadeh said that in 1991 the government failed to report the purchase of a small amount of uranium hexofluoride (UF6), which is used for uranium enrichment. In fact, Iran had failed to meet its obligations under the IAEAs Safeguards Agreement for 18 years concerning:

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is not a one-way street; non-nuclear powers agree to refrain from developing nuclear weapons in exchange for an undertaking by the nuclear signatories not to threaten them. Israel has broken both sides of the agreement. 17. Iran Admits Importing Uranium, Associated Press, June 9, 2003, <www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/18/world/main559246.shtml>. 18. Michael Ledeen The Future of Iran, National Review Online, July 9, 2003.

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reporting of nuclear material and its processing and use; declaring the facilities where such material was being processed and stored; enriching uranium and separating plutonium in said undeclared facilities, in the absence of IAEA safeguards; continuing a pattern of concealment that led to breaches of safeguard obligations; and supplying contradictory information to the Director-General of the IAEA.19 Serious though these failures were, though, they did not constitute formal violations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty; therefore, Irans conduct did not have to be referred to the UN Security Council for action. At its Sept. 12 meeting, the IAEA Board of Governors gave Iran until Oct. 31 to submit documents to prove that its nuclear program was for peaceful civilian purposes. It also asked Iran to sign an additional protocol permitting snap IAEA inspections of nuclear sitesArak, 240 kilometres southwest of Tehran, and Nantaz, 250 miles to the south. The IAEA was particularly concerned about the Nantaz site, because it contains a higher percentage of enriched uranium than is considered necessary for a civilian power program. Irans Foreign Minister Kamal Karrazi attributed the higher percentage to contamination of imported components.20 To induce Iran to meet the Oct. 31, 2003, deadline and sign the additional protocol, the U.K., France and Germany offered renewed trade negotiations and access to nuclear technology. In the end, Iran met the deadline and 10 days later signed the protocol. Iran agreed to suspend all enrichment and reprocessing activities, especially at Nantaz; production of feed material for enrichment; and the importation of enrichment-related items.21 Hassan Rowhani, secretary of Irans Supreme National Security Council, subsequently asserted that Iran would determine how long this voluntary fuelrestraint measure would last, given that it plans to generate 6,000 megawatts of electricity within 20 years: Our decision to suspend uranium enrichment is voluntary and temporary. Uranium enrichment is Irans natural right, and [Iran] will reserve for itself this right. There has been and there will be no question of a permanent suspension or halt at all.22

19. Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran, IAEA, Nov. 26, 2003, <www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2003/gov2003-75.pdf>. 20. Iran minister denies nuke program, CNN.com, Aug, 28, 2003. 21. Iran to sign Additional Protocol and Suspend Uranium Enrichment and Reprocessing (Press Release 2003/13), IAEA, Nov. 10, 2003, <www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/PressReleases/2003/prn200313.html>. 22. Erich Marquardt, Tehran Outmaneuvers Washington for Now,PINR, Dec. 4, 2003.

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In its final report of Nov. 26, which had been leaked five days earlier, ElBaradei condemned Irans prior transgressions, praised its new openness, and found no evidence of a weapons program. On the other hand, he was not prepared to accept that Irans nuclear energy was meant entirely for peaceful purposes until further research was done. El-Baradeis report infuriated the U.S., especially Bolton, who wanted him to include explicit trigger mechanisms to send problems of compliance to the Security Council. The U.S. also attacked El-Baradei for not declaring Iran guilty of pursuing nuclear weapons and violating the NPT. The disrespectful conduct towards El-Baradei by U.S. envoy to the IAEA Kenneth Brill was appalling.23 El-Baradei defended the IAEA against Brills accusations by saying simply: We reflect facts, as radar does, without partiality. That, for the U.S., was the problem. In the fallout from this contrived dust-up, Iran clearly emerged the victor. As the Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told CNN on Nov. 18: I see no grounds for imposing sanctions against Iran. On the contrary, if it carries out its obligations to the IAEA, the world community, on the basis of international agreements, is obliged to assist Iran in developing its nuclear program for peaceful aims.24 The U.S. had no support among the other nations on the IAEA board and its disparagement of El-Baradei and the IAEA report exposed the shallowness of its case and alienated key nations, especially Russia. The reasons for picking this fight are no real mystery. U.S. harassment of Iran at the IAEA is part of a co-ordinated Israeli campaign to destroy Irans nuclear industry.25 Meir Dagan, director of Israels spy agency Mossad, has called Iran an existential threat to Israel, thus showing that the question of peaceful or military intent is irrelevant. The real threat is that Iran will break Israels nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Consequently, Israel is prepared to launch an Osirik-style pre-emptive attack if international coercion does not shut down Irans nuclear program, and the U.S. is more than willing to use any excuse to trigger a crisis, even though no evidence of nuclear weapons exists.26 Nowhere in its analysis does the AEI offer any useful research about the views of Iran or Syria, much less take up the subject of U.S.-Israeli collusion. One would think that an institute conducting public policy research would provide as complete a picture of a subject as possible, but as stated above, such bodies serve private agendas, not the public interest.
23. U.S. Sparks UN Nuclear Flap, Associated Press, Nov. 21, 2003, <www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031121.wnuke1121/BNStory/ International>. 24. Marquardt, Dec. 4, 2003, op. cit. 25. Nicole Gaouette, Israel: Iran is now danger No. 1, Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 28, 2003. 26. Tests Show No Nuke Activity at Iran Site, Associated Press, Sept. 28, 2004.

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AEIs 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, were 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.27

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 individuals that advocate a return to absolute laissez-faire capitalism, and by extension oppose business regulation, welfare reform and social spending.28 It also staunchly supports increased defense spending. (The Bradleys gave their name to the U.S. Armys Bradley fighting vehicle.) In 1985, the Allen-Bradley Company, a major manufacturer of electronic and radio components, was sold to supergiant defense contractor 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 before. Many of the beneficiaries are the same ones that benefit from the Bradley Foundation.
27. 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. 28. 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, Fundings new heavy-hitter, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel online, Feb. 9, 2003.)

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Joyce serves as an example of the cross-pollination among these groups. In 1979, at the behest of Irving Kristol and William Simon, he left as president of the Allen-Bradley foundation to run the Olin Foundation. In 1985, Joyce returned to Bradley until his retirement in 2001. Olin funding also shows a connection to Strausss economic litism. 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 DSouza (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 annual 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 Murrays $100,000 stipend when he moved to the AEI.29 Also typical of the specious scholarship the AEI churns out is Borks essay Civil Liberties after 9/11a polemic against civil libertarians and critics of the Bush administration, as well as an apologia for racial profiling and the PATRIOT Acts Orwellian surveillance, search and seizure provisions.30 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 industry is. In addition to the AEI, Heritage and Free Congress, the table includes: Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy StudiesFounded 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 citizens or businesss 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 PeaceFounded 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 InstituteFounded in 1961, the institute advocates the abolition of federally funded Social Security and corporate income taxes. Its
29. Buying a MovementThe Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, <www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=2068>. 30. Robert H. Bork, Civil Liberties after 9/11, Commentary (Vol. 116, No. 1, July-August 2003), pp. 29-35.

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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 ResearchFounded in 1978, the institute advocates privatization of public maintenance services and public education, and cuts to social welfare programs.
Table II: Sample of financial support for Straussian/Zionist organizations (US$000, FY2002)
RECIPIENT ORGANIZATION AEI Federalist Society Heritage Free Congress Hoover Institution Hudson Institute Manhattan Institute FOUNDATION Bradley 750 100 200 200 375 510 200 Olin 661 602 400 -445 280 443 Sarah Scaife 25 300 1,375 900 600 200 150 Carthage 100 100 15 250 -85 30 Scaife Fam.* 84 -100 --32 4 Smith Rson 625 ---265 200 231 Castle Rock 245 135 1,949 1,050 25 55 70

*Annual average (1985-2001). FY2001

Sources: annual reports, MediaTransparency.org, disinfopedia.org.

In addition to the AEI, an understanding of the following three Zionist fronts is 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 others bathwater. The second point is the connection between these groups and the Reagan administration, which made the infiltration of government possible.

J E W I S H I N S T I T U T E F O R N AT I O N A L S E C U R I T Y A F FA I R S ( J I N S A )
The Nixon Administrations less-than-zealous support for Israel during the 1973 war led to the creation of the first overtly pro-Israel 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

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individuals, not members of a particular group. At that time, JINSA only existed as an idea, not as a functioning effort.31 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. JINSAs 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. JINSAs main activity is the General and Flag Officers 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 set up meetings with political and military leaders of both countries. JINSA has also recently begun to coordinate the sharing of 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. It 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 the 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, Ledeens JINSA affiliations do not appear in any of his official biographies. After serving as executive director, Ledeen entered government on the coattails of Reagans presidential victory. From 1982 to 1986 he served as 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 armsfor-hostages scandal (Irangate), which exposed the Reagan administrations 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
31. Mark H. Milstein Strategic Ties or Tentacles? Institute for National Security Affairs, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 1991, p. 27.

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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.32 Ledeens 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 Begins 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.]33 Saba, who is also former executive director of the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA), 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 Bryens 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.34 During the investigation, Bryen was suspended from the committee but was later reinstated. Despite a series of successful NAAA appeals, Bryen was never indicted. As Saba wrote, Deputy U.S. Attorney General Philip
32. Ibid. Ledeen affirms that his meetings had been approved. 33. Richard H. Curtiss, Book Review: Michael P. Saba, The Armageddon Network (Brattleboro, VT: Amana Books, 1984), WRMEA, Nov. 26, 1984, p.10. 34. Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out, (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1989), Ch. 5.

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Heymann was a long-time professional associate and close friend of Bryens lawyer. Sabas book The Armageddon Network is a history of the Bryen investigation, his current activities, and the Justice Departments role. He raises the possibility that the department might have covered up Israeli espionage.35 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. Israels abuse of U.S. satellite intelligence to bomb Iraqs Osirik nuclear reactor also occurred at this time. The man responsible for Bryens 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 pro-Israel Senator Henry Scoop Jackson. He also had more than casual 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.36 Perle was the mentor of Wolfowitz, architect of the Gulf War while George W. Bushs 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 (Reagans UN ambassador), John Bolton, Sen. Connie Mack, Congressmen Jack Kemp and Stephen Solarz, Lt.-Gen. Jay Garner (George W. Bushs 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 JINSAs defense and foreign policy arm, since its leadership features many of the same peoplePerle, Ledeen, Kirkpatrick, etc.
35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. Perle said the fees were for work done before he entered government.

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The center is run by Frank Gaffney, and these highlights from his CSP bio show how fast the Zionists spread throughout the Reagan administration. late 1970swith 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 1987Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy under Perle. April to November 1987Succeeded Perle as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, and chaired the prestigious High Level Group, NATOs senior politico-military committee. Whereas JINSA declares its Israeli bias up front, the CSP hides behind an innocuous, generic name. The center is little more than a reflection of Gaffneys own simplistic, militant prejudices, and as such cannot seriously be considered a research institution. If theres an anti-Arab, anti-UN, pro-Israeli, pro-military or obsequiously pro-George W. 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 Ledeens 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 members 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 venom. 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 hes pushed for some of the most flawed missile defense and conventional systemsAnd since 9/11, hes been less concerned with the threat to America than to Israel.37
37. Jason Vest, The Men From JINSA and CSP, The Nation, Sept. 2, 2002.

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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, cofounded WINEP with Barbi Weinstein, former president of the Jewish Federation in Los Angeles and wife of AIPAC chairman emeritus Lawrence Weinberg. Indyk sought to model WINEP after the Brookings Institution, and promote it as a balanced and realistic voice on the Middle East, but WINEPs transparent pro-Israel bias and links to AIPAC say otherwise. Of the more than 100 members on the institutes board of trustees, 14 also sat on AIPACs board. In turn, six members of WINEPs 11 executive committee members served on AIPACs executive committee or national council, including Weinberg and two of WINEPs three vice-presidents. AIPAC also provided office space and services to WINEP during its first year.38

Building for Peace

In 1988, WINEP became to President Bush what the Heritage Foundation was to Reagan in 1980it set the agenda and sent its people into government. Just before the November 1998 election, WINEP issued the 113page report Building for Peace: An American Strategy for the Middle East, a howto-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 Israels 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 Israels right to exist.

38. Mark H. Milstein, Washington Institute for Near East Policy: An AIPAC Image Problem, WRMEA, July 1991, p 30; Grace Halsell, Clintons Indyk Appointment One of Many from Pro-Israel Think Tank, WRMEA, March 1993, p. 30.

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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.39 Of course, this is exactly the tack Bush adopted at the 1991 Madrid conference, as shown by James Bakers 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 Israels 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 Israels military superiority is the only way to ensure Israels 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 presidents desire to work in close consultation on the peace process and his unshakeable commitment to Israels security. [emphasis added] Begin the sensitive process of discussing with the regions leaders the need to control the arms race. Emphasize the new administrations commitment to a process designed to reshape the political environment rather than seek a procedural breakthrough to negotiations. Express to friendly Arab leaders the presidents 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 Israels military superiority, including its nuclear monopoly, the second point must be read as an attempt to prevent other states from developing even a civilian nuclear industry. The third point means that Israel and the U.S. want to stall for time until compliant regimes are in place, especially in Iraq, Syria, and Iran.
39. 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>.

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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, there are other Zionist fronts masquerading as objective public policy centersthe Hudson Institute, Middle East Media Research Institute and Middle East Forum to name but threebut 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. From the theory and development of American fascism we now turn to its applications in Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq from 1991 onward. From these three simultaneous threads comes the Clinton-Bush war on terrorism and the politically instrumental demonization of Muslims.

Part III
Afghanistan Palestine Iraq

T A L I B A N O R I G I N A T E D in August 1994 in the small town of Sanghisar just north of Qandahar. Unlike the mujahedin, which are led by Tajiks and Uzbeks, the Taliban are drawn from the majority 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.
H E

According to one version, the movement began when Mawlawi Muhammad 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, Omars Islamist morality militia was greeted warmly. After 15 years of civil war, Afghans desired peace and order, as did the Iranians, Saudis and Pakistanis, so the Taliban were seen as a vast improvement over the corrupt, power-hungry warlords of the Peshawar Seven. Under the terms of an April 1992 United Nations-brokered peace plan, these victorious mujahedin were supposed to form a broad-based coalition government of reconciliation with Najibullahs 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 any interest in the long-term success of an Islamic Afghanistan.

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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 10-year U.S. investment: The U.S. mistake was to ignore Afghanistan, he said. We walked away.1

Third Afghan war

On March 7, 1993, after more than eight months of starvation, economic blockades, and anarchic violence, Saudi Arabias 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 Jan. 1, 1994, Uzbek warlord Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum joined Hekmatyars 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.2 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 Rabbanis government of being too friendly with India, and was looking with apprehension at Afghanistans improved relations with 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 Pakistans guerrilla activity in Kashmir. Pakistan expected Hekmatyar and his Hizb-i-Islami to take power once the jihad was over, but Rabbanis elevation to leader thwarted Pakistans grand design. With Hekmatyar a lost cause, Pakistan searched for a new surrogate, and found the ideal candidate in Omar and his taliban. As the magazine Nidaul Islam (Call of Islam) reported:

1. Cited in Mary Pat Flaherty, David B. Ottaway and James V. Grimaldi, How Afghanistan Went Unlisted as Terrorist Sponsor, Washington Post, Nov. 5, 2001. 2. On Nov. 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.

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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.3 A comprehensive history of the Taliban and their defeat of the mujahedin is beyond the scope of this book, but a few events are worth highlighting to give a sense of its popularity and 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 Sept. 5, 1995, 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 Rabbanis forces put up fierce resistance. Rabbani continued to denounce Pakistan for meddling in Afghan politics and supporting the Taliban, but Pakistan consistently denied the charges. Nevertheless, rioting Afghans set fire to the Pakistani Embassy on Sept. 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 were already in command of most of the country. On Sept. 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 Sept. 27, the Taliban took Kabul, hanged Najibullah, and declared Afghanistan to be completely Islamic. The victory wasnt complete, though: three of Afghanistans 30 provinces remained under mujahedin control, thus ensuring that hostilities and the suffering of the hapless civilian population 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 Hekmatyars 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 Ladens position strengthened. He and Omar were both Islamists, and each needed the other. Bin Laden needed refuge, and the Taliban needed cash.

3. Abu Abdul Aziz Al-Afghani, The Islamic Taliban Movement And The Dangers of Regional Assimilation, Nidaul Islam, AprilMay 1997, <www.islam.org.au/articles/18/taliban1.htm>.

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Bin Laden gave Omar $3 million, and with that money the Taliban took Jalalabad on Sept. 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 [among] your families and kinsmen, and we bless the soil that you walk upon.4 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 Pakistans ISI to bring mercenaries to the Afghan border, but bin Laden got wind of the plan from sympathetic sources in Pakistans 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 Ladens 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.5 Bin Laden further entrenched himself with the Taliban by marrying his eldest daughter to Omar. As Omars 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 Ladens activities since the 1996 Khobar bombing, we know next to nothing, which is not surprising given his inaccessibility. Yet the myth of bin Laden as the demiurge of Islamist terrorism gets a boost during this period, due largely to the Zionist author Yossef Bodansky. As we saw in Chapter V, readers of his book Bin Laden: The Man who Declared War on America have no way to check the veracity of his assertions. However, one passage stands out as glaringly absurd. In October 1996, when bin Laden is supposed to be in Qandahar, Bodansky has him returning from a terrorism summit in Khartouma meeting that is not previously mentioned, or cited in the books index. Bodansky then has bin Laden, among other things, returning home via Tehran where he is supposed to have stopped for consultations with highranking terrorists like Abu Nidal: Bin Ladens visit to Tehran was significant

4. Ibid. 5. Hunting Bin Laden, Sept. 13, 2001, op. cit.

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in the planning of the new wave of Islamist international terrorism that the ISI would support and benefit from.6 Bodansky goes on to say that bin Laden is a high official in Hezballah; made frequent visits to Tehran; and acted as political go-between for Islamabad and Tehran. Shooting down these assertions is childs play. First, a Wahhabi would not be caught dead negotiating with Shiites. On this score, bin Laden and the Taliban are of one mind. Only moderate Sunnis like Hasan al-Turabi of Sudan could manage to establish a co-operative working relationship with Shiites. Second, we have no independent evidence that bin Laden even left Afghanistan. Third, Bodanskys 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 Bodanskys sources, this whole episode must be rejected as an attempt to exaggerate bin Ladens importance in the Islamist movement and to give plausibility to the existence of al-Qaida with bin Laden at or near the top, as well as targeting Iran and Sudan as alleged terror masters. Ironically, the one thing about bin Laden that can be said with certainty is that he and the U.S. had the same objectivesupporting the Taliban because they promised to impose order.

T H E U N O C A L S TAT E S O F A M E R I C A
Soon after Kabul fell to the Taliban on Sept. 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 repudiated, because Rabbanis government was still recognized as the legitimate authority. Only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates recognized the new Taliban regime.7 As we now know, the Taliban were arguably the worlds most repressive and regressive anti-Western regime of their 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.
6. Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man who Declared War on America (New York: Forum, 1999), pp. 196-197. 7. On May 25, 1997, Pakistan became the first state to offer diplomatic recognition.

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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.8 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.9 Contrary to Raphael, the interests of Afghanistan played no role in the U.S. decision to support the Taliban. So long as the U.S. got its pipeline, the Taliban could abuse their people as much as they wanted, because they could count on the U.S. to shield them 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.10 On Dec. 12, 1996, The New York Times gave the following account of the rosy U.S. scenario: From early on, American diplomats in Islamabad had made regular visits to Qandahar to see Taliban leaders. In briefings for reporters, the
8. Taliban Abuses Ignored for Oil, Money, Drug War, American Atheists, July 19, 1998, <www.atheists.org/flash.line/taliban3.htm>. 9. Peter Symonds, The Taliban, the US and the Resources of Central Asia, World Socialist Website, Oct. 24, 2001, <www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/tal1-o24.shtml>. 10. Cited in Unocal & Afghanistan, Oil and Gas International, Oct. 29, 2001, <www.oilandgasinternational.com/departments/from_editor/10_29_01.html>.

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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.11 A bonus for the U.S. was the Talibans 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 were one of the recipients of this money.12 It was impossible to tell where Unocals 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 Unocals vice-president of international relations.

Like Burma, like Afghanistan

Unocals disregard for Taliban repression has precedents 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 Burmas panhandle might embolden Afghan claimants to seek redress for human rights abuses committed because of Unocals support for the Talibans atrocities. The Burmese are suing Unocal in California court for violating that states constitution and unfair business practice law. The issue is the Yadana Projecta joint venture among Unocal, the Burmese military government and Frances Total-Elfina. The suit charges that Unocal knowingly supported the Burmese armys use of torture, beatings and forced labor during the building of a 4o-mile $1.2 billion natural gas pipeline from the Yadana gas field under the Andaman Sea to Thailand. On Aug. 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
11. Workers Freed, U.N. Resumes Afghan Aid, New York Times, Dec. 12, 1996. 12. Symonds, op. cit.

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specifically created to protect the pipeline. On Aug. 30, 2001, California Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney ruled that the plaintiffs would have their day in court, although Unocal eventually won the case.13

Pipeline politics
The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline had been the Clinton administrations 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 countrys 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 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 at more than 60 billion barrels, though some estimates place it as high as 200 BB. 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 Argentinean 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 them in negotiations with the Pakistani government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.14 Bridas had an exclusive arrangement with the Turkmen government, but in March 1995 Unocal approached President Saparmurat Niyazov with the idea of building a 48-inch diameter pipeline from the Daulatabad gas fields,
13. Burmese Workers Suing Unocal in Los Angeles Will Have Their Day in Court, International Labor Rights Fund, Aug. 30, 2001, <www.laborrights.org>. On Jan. 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 Unocals subsidiary, Burmas 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 Unocals 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. 14. Symonds, op. cit.

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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 Moscows 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 Turkmenistans oil and gas closer to world markets. Niyazov also liked Unocals 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, Pakistans 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 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.15 Bridas lost, but 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.16 After being squeezed out of Turkmenistan, Bridas struck a deal with the Taliban, who 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 Niyazovs 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
15. According to Unocals 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>. 16. Ishtiaq Ahmad, U.S.-Taliban relations: Friend turns fiend as pipeline politics fail, Oct. 3, 2001, <www.tehelka.com/channels/currentaffairs/2001/oct/3/ca100301us1.htm>.

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community to recognize the Taliban as the official government so that Afghanistan could secure financing from agencies like the World Bank.

Different priorities
Despite their seeming unanimity of purpose, Unocal was in a more dependent position than the U.S. government. The pipeline depended on the recognition of the Taliban regime, while for the Clinton administration, recognition was contingent upon proof that the Taliban could end the civil war, but that 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 didnt 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.)

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The Taliban responded by trying again to take the city, aided this time by Dostums 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.17 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.18 Even though Unocal is part of the $8 billion, 11-member Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) consortium, it doesnt 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

17. Background, Afghanistan: The Massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif, Human Rights Watch, November 1998, Vol. 10, No. 7 (C), <www.hrw.org/reports98/afghan/Afrepor002.htm#P98_20660>. 18. 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, Azerbaijans Riches Alter the Chessboard (first of three articles), Washington Post Oct. 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, Sept. 29, 1997, <archive.salon.com/sept97/columnists/hitchens970929.html>.

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other routes could.19 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.20 CentGas (The Central Asia Gas Consortium) was formed at a signing ceremony in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat on Oct. 27, 1997.21 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 to build a pipeline was close, civil unrest notwithstanding. Soon afterwards, Unocal Vice-President Martin Miller waxed pessimistic: Its 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.22 In December 1997, Unocal lobbyist Sen. Hank Brown glad-handed with Taliban ministers and invited three of them for several days of industrygovernment talks in Washington D.C., and at the companys headquarters in Sugarland, southwest of Houston. Although the British press covered the eventThe Daily Telegraph and the BBCa 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 unmistakable: 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 Houstons zoo, the NASA space center and Omahas Super Target discount store to buy stockings, toothpaste, combs and soap. The
19. 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>. 20. International Energy Annual, 1997, <www.eia.doe.gov/iea/chron97.html>. 21. Unocals share of CentGas was 46.5 percent; Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia had 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 Nov. 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. 22. Cited in Symonds, op. cit.

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Taliban, who control two-thirds of Afghanistan and are still fighting for the last third, were 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 fundamentalistswho have banned women from working and girls from going to schoolasked 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 But 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.23 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.24 Differences notwithstanding, there can be no doubt that Unocal actively pursued the Taliban and was eager to do business with them, despite the Talibans 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 for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Omaha, Nebraska. However, this act of apparent magnanimity came under criticism as a front to funnel aid to the Taliban. The Center set up a training and humanitarian aid program for Afghansincluding disaster relief aid after the earthquakesand 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.

23. Caroline Lees, Oil barons court Taliban in Texas, The Telegraph, Dec. 14, 1997. 24. Unocal & Afghanistan, editorial, Oil and Gas International, Oct. 29, 2001.

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Finally, its worth noting Pakistans 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.25 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 Aug. 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 Unocals 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 notand will notbecome a party to a commercial agreement with any individual Afghanistan faction.26 Given the Sugarland episode, this last statement is at best contentious and at worst fallacious. Also, Clintons attack was not the decisive factor Unocal made it out to be. According to an editorial in Oil and Gas International, Unocal found the Talibans 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

25. Cited in Pipeline Dreams: One of the factors which led to throwing Ms Benazir Bhutto out of Power, The Herald (Pakistan), June 1997. 26. Unocal Statement: Suspension of activities related to proposed natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan, Aug. 21, 1998, <www.unocal.com/uclnews/98news/082198.htm>.

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the pipeline to provide oil and gas for Afghanistan, Unocal balked, and finally dropped its plans after the East Africa embassy bombings.27 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 Dec. 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.28 Other members of the consortium hadnt given up. On April 29, 1999, Pakistans Petroleum Minister Nisar Ali Khan, Turkmenistans Deputy Prime Minister Batyr Sardjaev, and Afghanistans 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 Pakistans opposition to Russias support for India, and Russias opposition to Pakistans support of Islamists. In place of Unocal, Delta Oil was reported to be taking over as lead partner, but the plan went nowhere. According to Indias 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, especially when Afghanistan being only a transit state would receive not more $100 million per year in transit fees (i.e., no more than one-fifth of one percent of the drug revenue).29

OSTRACIZING THE TALIBANBIN 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.
27. Oil and Gas International, Oct. 29, 2001, op. cit. 28. Cited in U.S. seeks Pakistans oil nod, pakwatan.com, Jan. 26, 2002, <www.pakwatan.com/main/article_detail.php3?t1=402>. 29. P. Stobdan, The Afghan Conflict and Regional Security, IDSA (August 1999), pp.719747.

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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 forcesjust like Pakistan never admitted to aiding and promoting the Talibanbut it couldnt give in to threats without loss of face. Iran therefore hoped that Rabbanis forces would be in a position to launch a quick and effective pre-winter offensive to reclaim most of the country. On Aug. 8, 1998, the Taliban launched another attack on Mazar-i-Sharif. It not only succeeded in taking the town, but exacted a horrible vengeance on the Hazara, a Farsi-speaking Shiite 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 the report from 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 citys 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.30 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 shia. 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.31 In a UN report, all killings were described as systematic, planned, and very well organized. Approximately 3,000 Hazara were murdered in their
30. 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/Afrepor002.htm#P98_20660>. 31. Incitement to Violence against Hazaras by Governor Niazi, in Ibid.

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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; 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 time was up for the Taliban. Clinton had thought that the Taliban would improve their humanitarian record and ease up on the repression of women in expectations 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 Dostumthe same warriors who slaughtered 50,000 people in Kabul during the 19921996 civil war, and committed the May 1977 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 of this scenario, 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 was cynical and unethical, it was at least understandable in the context of traditional U.S. 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 Afghanistans 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 Afghanistans 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 createthe near annihilation of Afghanistan at the hands of a barbaric horde mothered by the CIAtrained ISI, fathered by the U.S.-backed Saudis and cheered by Uncle Samso he seeks to focus on Osama, a scapegoat of Washingtons own creation?32 On Feb. 3, 1999, Assistant Secretary of State Karl E. Inderfurth and State Department counter-terrorism chief Michael Sheehan met the Talibans 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,

32. Clinton Draws a Blank on Afghanistan, editorial, Omaid Weekly, March 27, 2000.

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especially since Afghanistan had not appeared on any U.S. State Department list of terrorism-supporting countries. Afghanistan is desperately poor, and depends on international food relief agencies to fend off starvation. Whats worse, two massive earthquakes struck northern Afghanistan in 1998 (Feb. 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 150.33 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 dependent on bin Ladens 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.34 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 Ladens image as a champion of oppressed Muslims. In his Declaration of War, Bin Laden made much of the Wests mistreatment of Muslims and the international communitys moral double standard. On Oct. 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 Nov. 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 resolutions 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
33. Afghanistan quake survivors face new peril,, Feb. 10, 1998, and Earthquake hits northern Afghanistan,, May 31, 1998, Seattle Times. 34. Clinton bucks the trend with Taliban sanctions, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 10, 1999.

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deadline, foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil stated that the U.S. was going to impose sanctions anyway, so talking was a waste of time.35 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 itand they were unsuccessful.36 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 Oct. 12 when Pakistans president Nawaz Sharif was overthrown in a military coup by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who halted the operation.37 Twenty-five years earlier, President Gerald Ford outlawed political assassinations. Clinton had just confessed to attempted murder and violating U.S. law.

OSTRACIZING THE TALIBANDRUGS

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 Unocals 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 Afghanistans opium crop was put at $100 billion, of which the Taliban derived a modest annual tax of $10-75 million during the 1990s.38 Without international recognition and the foreign investment that comes with it, the Taliban had no means to offset the loss in revenue. Similarly, poppy-growing was the only viable cash crop for Afghanistans impoverished
35. Cited in Ajith Abeysinghe, US intrigues and the imposition of United Nations sanctions on Afghanistan, World Socialist Website, Nov. 23, 1999, <www.wsws.org/articles/1999/nov1999/afgh-n22.shtml>. 36. Clinton ordered bin Laden killing, BBC, Sept. 23, 2001. 37. Patrick Martin, U.S. planned War In Afghanistan, rense.com, Nov. 20, 2001, <www.rense.com/general17/spp.htm>. 38. James Ridgeway, Bushs Opium Bender, Village Voice, June 20-26, 2001.

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farmers. A farmer could earn US$8,600 per hectare of opium compared to just $49 per acre for wheat.39 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 Afghanistans wheat harvests, so planting more wheat would have been fruitless.
Table III: Opium production under Taliban rule
Year 1999 1998 Opium produced (tonnes) 6,000 3,750 Cultivation (hectares) 91,000 64,000 World output 75% 60% N/A

1996 2,2002,300 55,00058,000 Source: Taliban and Drugs, Hazara.net, April 7, 2002.

The Taliban were 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 strictly enforced. According to the drug control programs Annual Opium Survey, production and plantings increased markedly in Taliban-controlled areas. Until 2000, 95 percent of Afghanistans 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 unilateral U.S. 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, Afghanistans opium production was nearly wiped out. From a high of 3,667 tonnes (70 percent of world production), it fell to 74.0 tonnes.40 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. (Badakhshan was run by troops loyal to Rabbani, the officially recognized head of state.) 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
39. Paul Harris, Victorious warlords set to open the opium floodgates, Sunday Observer, Nov. 25, 2001. The Observer figures give 6,000 per hectare and 34 per hectare respectively. There is of course a large body of research indicating that the drug trade exists to provide covert funding for intelligence agencies, originally the UKs, now chiefly the USAs. 40. Tim Golden Afghan Ban On Growing of Opium Is Unraveling, The New York Times, Oct. 22, 2001; Anthony Davis Afghan drug output wanes but only under Taliban, Janes Intelligence Review, October, 2001. Davis estimates the 2000 crop at 3,300 tonnes.

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opium and heroin. Alliance fields accounted for 83 percent of total Afghan production of 185 tonnes of opium during the ban.41 However, as far as the U.S. State Department was concerned, the Talibans opium ban and the Northern Alliances drug trafficking didnt exist. In The Taliban and the Afghan Drug Trade, a Dec. 20, 2000, fact sheet released by the Bureau of South Asian Affairs, the Taliban are mentioned 26 times, the Northern Alliance, not once. The information in the fact sheet is at such variance with published accounts of the Talibans opium ban and the UNDCPs detailed data, that it must be considered disinformation designed to demonize the Taliban while masking the unethical conduct of the new U.S. 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 worlds illicit opium.42 According to UNDCP data, 64,510 hectares would represent a decrease of more than 26,000 acres. Although Helmand at the time was a Taliban-held province, by the time the fact sheet came out it was no longer a major source of opium. The claim that Helmand accounted for 39 percent of world output is outlandish. The U.S. war on drugs is more a political weapon of convenience than 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 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. Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance openly produced opium to which the U.S. was conveniently blind. As Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said: It is legal under U.S.-led UN sanctions to send

41. Ibid., Janes; Sunday Observer, op. cit. 42. Fact SheetThe Taliban And The Afghan Drug Trade, Bureau of South Asian Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Dec. 9, 2000, <www.state.gov/www/regions/sa/facts_taliban_drugs.html>.

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arms to the Northern Alliance, which is actively exporting drugs, but illegal to send arms to the Taliban, which has stopped drug production.43 When you add up the tens of thousands of Afghan dead and wounded, the millions who wer made refugees, the destruction of Afghanistans infrastructure. the corrupt U.S. drug policy, and support for the repressive Taliban in the name of Unocals self-interest, U.S. policy in Afghanistan since 1979 has been one of abject failure and ruthless disregard for human lifea heinous legacy.

43. Ridgeway, op. cit.

E F O R E

D I S C U S S I N G the Bush governments relations with the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and the war on terrorism, its important to appreciate the degree to which petropoliticians controlled U.S. policy during this period.

O I L I N T H E FA M I LY
President George W. Bush
In 1978, Bush started his own oil company, Arbusto (bush in Spanish), with money from his fathers friends and associates. Bush consistently lost money, and three times had to call on his investors to bail him out (earning his firm the trade nickname of Are-Bust-Owe). He was finally saved in 1986 when he merged Arbusto with Harken Energy of Houston, Texas. Bushs political connections and ability to raise investment funds were what Harken needed. Two years later, Bushs connections helped Harken attract Saudi investment and win its first international contractoil drilling in Bahrain.1
1. Damien Cave, The United States of Oil, salon.com, Nov. 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 to suspicions that George W. Bush illegally used inside information for personal gain. See Rick Wiles Bushs Former Oil Company Linked to bin Laden Family, American Freedom News, Oct. 3, 2001, <www.rense.com/general14/bushsformer.htm>; and George W. Bush Jr.The Dark Side <www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm#financing>.

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Vice-President Dick Cheney

Cheney was George Bush Sr.s Defense Secretary from 1988-1992, whence he became chairman and chief executive officer of Dallas-based Halliburton Corporation, the worlds largest pipeline services company, with interests throughout the Caspian region. One of Halliburtons largest clients is Chevron (Standard Oil of California), the major shareholder in the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. Chevron owns a 55 percent share with Kazakhstan in the joint company Tengizchevroil. Halliburton also did contract work for Unocals pipeline in Burma, which was being built in co-operation with the Burmese military.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice was a director of Chevron from 1991 until January 15, 2001, when she entered Bushs government. Nevertheless, her name still floated around the company, causing the government some embarrassment. Before she left, Chevron did her the honor of naming a 136,000-ton tanker after her. At an April 2001 press briefing, a reporter asked assistant press secretary Scott McLellan about Bushs attitude on the Condoleezza Rice: Given that Chevron has been accused of human rights abuses with the Nigerian Mobile Police against civilians in Nigeria, Im wondering whether the president thinks its wise to have this close a relationship with Chevron. McLellan said, in effect, that the issue had been resolved and Chevron spokesman Fred Gorell told the San Francisco Chronicle that the ship would not be renamed: If you remember, Carla Hills was on our board, and went off the board to take a role in the administration, and we did not rename the tanker. In May, the Condoleezza Rice was quietly renamed Altair Voyager. When asked if the White House asked for the name change, Gorell declined comment.2

Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans and Secretary of Energy Stanley Abraham

Both men worked for Tom Brown, a Denver-based energy company engaged in exploration, development, acquisition, production and marketing of natural gas and crude oil mostly in the Rocky Mountains, Texas and Alberta. Among other notables, Robert Oakley (Ambassador to Pakistan), Richard Armitage (Deputy Secretary of State), Donald Rice (former RAND corporation CEO and Secretary of the Air Force under George Bush Sr.), and Charles Larson (Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Navys Pacific Command) all went to work for Unocal as consultants or directors. Oakley played an important role helping the CIA funnel aid to the mujahedin during the 1980s.
2. Condi Rice Renamed, Multinational Monitor, June 2001, <multinationalmonitor.org/mm2001/01june/june01names.html>.

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Former Unocal consultant Zalmay Khalilzad, now U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, will be discussed below in a separate section.

Big Oil
Because of the oil and gas industrys overrepresentation in senior political offices, and its role in shaping foreign policy, it should be treated as a collective petropolitician in its own right. Overall, the oil and gas industry spent $33.9 million in the 2000 presidential election, of which $26.6 million (78 percent) went to the Republicans.3 Of the top 20 contributors, all save one favored Bush.
Table IV: Top five oil contributors to Bush
Corporation Enron Corp. Exxon Mobil Corp. El Paso Corp. Chevron Corp. Koch Industries Contribution $2,374,298 $1,375,250 $1,114,995 $1,084,077 $1,062,956 % to Republicans 72 89 83 72 90

Halliburton was 17th, contributing $420,688, (98 percent Republican). Regarding the final presidential candidates, the oil and gas industry collectively gave Bush $1,914,706; Gore, $138,514. For its part, Unocal, through its subsidiary Pure Resources of Midland, Texas, contributed $125,000 in soft money to the Republican National Committee. 4 The example of Texas-based Enron epitomizes the dominance of oil interests in the Bush administration. In early 2001, Enron was among a group of multinationalsAmoco, Chevron, Mobil, Unocal, British Petroleum and othersspending billions to tap Caspian Sea oilfields. Cheney and James Baker III were two major government figures who negotiated deals on their behalf. Among Enrons ventures was a February 1999 feasibility study of a $2.5 billion gas pipeline project from Turkmenistan. The signing of a joint venture agreement among Turkmenistan, Bechtel Corp. and General Electric Capital Services supplanted in importance the CentGas project, which was in limbo after Unocals withdrawal.
3. Unless otherwise noted, all campaign statistics come from www.opensecrets.org, the website for The Washington, DC-based Center for Responsive Politics. 4. Soft money refers to campaign contributions not regulated by federal election laws, and which are meant to support political parties at the state and local levels rather than specific candidates. Such projects would include voter registration, get-out-the-vote drives, bumper stickers, and generic TV ads that support party platforms. However, soft money is applied much more widely to pay for office overhead, computer equipment, and other non-candidate expenses that free up hard money contributions that do support candidates. Thus, this widespread abuse of soft money contributions indirectly benefits candidates, creating a gaping loophole in the law.

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Enrons former Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lay is a close friend of the Bush family. He was the biggest contributor to Bushs 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 the task force staff. Addington has also refused to produce documents connected with its meetings with outside groups.5 The General Accounting 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 Enrons 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.6 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 Enrons 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 Enrons behalf by the government and by Clinton himself led the Indian government to issue provisional clearance in November 1993. The following year, the Washington based Export-Import Bank approved a $302 million loan, and after two years construction began.

5. The Bush White Houses Refusal to Cooperate with a Congressional Investigation of the Energy Task ForceChronology, 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>. 6. Letter, Rep. Henry Waxman to Vice-President Dick Cheney, Jan. 25, 2002, <www.house.gov/reform/min/pdfs/pdf_inves/pdf_energy_cheney_jan_25_let.pdf>.

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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 Enrons case, Cheney approached government officials and Opposition Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi during a June 2001 visit by Indias 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 Cheneys actions, saying public funds were at risk 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.7 Since there was no logical reason for the government to risk public money on a project that was shown to be unsound, the real explanation is petropolitics. Enron, though, wasnt 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. For example, on May 3, 2001, two electrical utilities lobbyistsformer 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, Cheneys 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 vicepresidential mansion for hundreds of the fetes sponsors and longtime party donors. Another company that had an entre to the Cheney task force was Peabody Energy, a coal behemoth whose holding company and top

7. At its height, Enron was the seventh largest corporation in the U.S. (16th largest in the world), and worth $70 billion. On Dec. 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, Enrons 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 administrations 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 governments involvement, see Chronology of Administration Dealings With Enrons Dabhol Power Plant in India, Washington Post, Jan. 22, 2002.

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officer have given nearly $200,000 to the president and his party since Bush took office, including $25,000 for the May gala.8 The full scope of the governments support for energy companies is codified in H.R. 4, the National Energy Security Act, introduced by Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-AK) on Feb. 26, 2001. The energy interests returns on investment in exchange for their political contributions are as follows:9
Table V: Big Oils political investment
Industry Contributions, 2000 election cycle, in $ millions $3,8 $33,3 $18,6 $13,8 $69,5 Total industry benefits in NESA, in $ millions $5,844 $21,980 $5,862 $2,666 $36,352 Return on Investment

Coal Oil & gas Electric Nuclear TOTALS

153,800 % 66,000 % 31,500 % 19,300 % 52,300 %

P U B L I C A N D P R I VAT E A F G H A N I S TA N P O L I C I E S
Until the Sept. 11 attack, the political pecking order on Afghanistan was still 1) Oil, 2) drugs, 3) bin Laden. At any given time 2 and 3 were interchanged or sacrificed for the sake of 1, but so far as the public was concerned, 1 had nothing to do with it. The idea that the U.S. could have commercial dealings with the Taliban at the same time the UN and U.S. were subjecting them 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, but used the suffering of the Afghan people to play up the image of the U.S. as a caring, generous state. Take, for example, Secretary of State Colin Powells 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

8. Michael Weisskopf and Adam Zagorin, Getting the Ear of Dick Cheney, Time, Feb. 03, 2002. 9. 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, Aug. 1, 2001, p.2. The figures for industry sector contributions are approximately 10 percent higher than those given by opensecrets.org.

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other livelihood and food security programs (read: crop substitution). After delineating the aid, Powell proceeded to praise U.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.10 Given that the opium industry is worth in excess of $100 billion annually, $10 million to promote crop substitution was conspicuously inadequate, which raises 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 Administrations Steven Casteel admitted, The bad side of the ban is that its bringing their countryor certain regions of their countryto 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.11 An example of the self-defeating nature of U.S. policy is what happened to Jamroz, a farmer in the Black Mountains of Eastern Afghanistan, after he switched to wheat and onions in the wake of Mullah Mohammed Omars political and religious injunctions against growing poppies. All Jamroz 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 poppy-growing income.12 So long as the U.S. and UN subjected the Taliban to economic sanctions and refused to recognize their government, Afghanistan had no hope of attracting investment 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 Afghanistans share of the drug market. The Taliban faced a no-win scenariogrow poppies and suffer isolation and punishment, or grow wheat and starve on U.S. handouts.
10. Colin L. Powell, Humanitarian Assistance to Afghans, U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C. May 17, 2001. 11. Robert Scheer, Bushs Faustian Deal With the Taliban, Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001. 12. Jim Teeple, Taliban Wipes out Afghanistans Opium Production, Institute for Afghan Studies, April 8, 2001, <www.institute-for-afghan-studies.org/AFGHAN CONFLICT/Drugs/Taliban Wipes Out Opium.htm>.

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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 dependent on the worlds demand for its opium.13 However, the concept of leadership presupposed an attitude that didnt 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 Afghanistans 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 Afghanistans 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.14 At first glance, Powells 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 twosupport for terrorism and violations of human rightscan 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 Afghanistans civil war through a negotiated settlement, is the key.

Carpet of Gold
Even though the CentGas bid collapsed, the U.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 expectations that the regime could be convinced or forced to support the U.S. In Ben Laden: la vrit intrdite, Brisard and Dasqui describe an intense six-month campaign to compel the Taliban to accept 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
13. Cited in James Ridgeway, Bushs Opium Bender, Village Voice, June 20-26, 2001. 14. Ibid., Powell.

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Afghanistan were present at these meetings. Sometimes, representatives of the Taliban also sat around the table.15 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 Omars advisor Sayed Rahmatullah Hashimi, the directorate of Central Intelligence at the CIA and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department. As proof of Bushs 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 Afghanistans six neighborsChina, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistanplus the U.S. and Russia.) The U.S. ceded control of the negotiations to the UN because it had taken the decision to oust the Taliban. It did, however, leave one last ultimatum: form a coalition government of national unity with the Northern Alliance, or else. As Niaz A. Naik, Pakistans 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.16 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.17 The last direct contact with the Taliban occurred on Aug. 2, 2001, when the State Departments director of Asian affairs Christina Rocca 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 after this meeting, 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.18
15. Cited in Julio Godoy, US policy on Taliban influenced by oilauthors, Asia Times, Nov. 20, 2001. 16. Cited in Ibid. See also Jonathan Steele et al. Threat of US strikes passed to Taliban weeks before N.Y. attack, Guardian, Sept. 22, 2001. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid.

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Z A L M AY K H A L I L Z A D B U S H S T H E O R I S T
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 a special assistant to the president and senior director for Gulf, Southwest Asia and Other Regional Issues. Bushs Afghan policy would ultimately be his brain child. 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 highschool education as an exchange student in the U.S., and later received an undergraduate degree from the American University in Beirut. He obtained 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 Departments 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. 19931999, Director of the Strategy, Doctrine and Force Structure program for the hawkish RAND Corporations Project Air Force, and founder of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. 19911992, 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. 19851989, 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.

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Though this rsum 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 timeNew York Times, New York Post, Washington Post was any mention of Khalilzads 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 Oct. 7, 1996, in an opinion piece for the Washington Post, Khalilzad argued that the U.S. abandonment of Afghanistan following the Soviet defeat was a mistake, and that it was now time for re-engagement. He recommended three steps: 1) Encourage the Taliban to end the civil war by negotiating a national government with Dostums forces in the North and other major groups; 2) offer the Taliban recognition and humanitarian assistance, and promote international economic reconstruction; and 3) 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.19 It cannot be coincidence that ending the civil war and obtaining international recognition were Unocals 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 Unocals 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 regimes treatment of women.20 Khalilzads pro-Taliban views changed after Clinton attacked Afghanistan in August 1998, which was also when Unocal suspended its participation in CentGas. Now, the Taliban were seen as an obstacle to
19. Zalmay Khalilzad, Afghanistan: Time To Reengage, Washington Post, Oct. 7, 1996. 20. Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, Consultants Policy Influence Goes Back to the Reagan Era, Washington Post, Nov. 23, 2001.

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peace. Khalilzads most influential work on this theme was a 2000 essay cowritten 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 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 appointment of a high-level envoy for Afghanistan to coordinate overall U.S. policy.21 These six steps would form the essence of Bushs 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. (p. 66). Khalilzad fails to mention that he was one of these officials, and that favoring the Taliban was not just a minority viewit was government policy. As for U.S. support of a regime inimical to regional stability and even its own national interest, such conduct is standard operating procedure when the regime in question possess a raw material the U.S. needs. The same could be said of U.S. policy towards Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Latin America, ad nauseam. 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. (pp. 69, 74.) Pakistan comes in for particularly harsh criticism for arming the Taliban in 1994, and then using them to fight a proxy war with Iran. However, in saying this, Khalilzad repudiated his own 1996 Washington Post article in
21. Zalmay Khalilzad and Daniel Byman, Afghanistan: The Consolidation of a Rogue State, The Washington Quarterly (Winter 2000), pp. 6578.

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which he argued for Pakistani re-engagement. Khalilzads and Bymans statement about the dangerous effects of meddling most directly points to the U.S. itself, and to a lesser degree Saudi Arabia. Embracing the Pashtun would likely alienate minority groups, representing more meddling. this measure is supposed to remedy. Khalilzads recommendation comes down to a roadmap for overthrowing the Taliban. Since May 2000, the CIAs Special Activities Division had been inserting specialized case officers from the agencys Near East Division into Afghanistan. These officers speak 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 1997.22 The importance of Afghanistan may grow in the coming years, as Central Asias 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 AsiaSo 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. (pp. 7071) The conditional tense in this passage is disingenuous. Khalilzad knows full well that Afghanistans importance has grown, that Central Asian oil is playing a major role, and that 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 worlds 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. (pp. 65, 69) In this passage we have the essence of Bushs war on terrorism, which he articulated at a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001. What makes this passage significant is the equation of Afghanistan, specifically the Taliban, with terrorist activity. Since 1996, there have been only seven names on the U.S. State Departments list of terrorism-supporting countries: Cuba, Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. The exclusion of Afghanistan leads to one of two conclusions: 1) Afghanistan didnt support terrorism, or 2), Afghanistan did, but could not be on the list because of petropolitics.
22. Bob Woodward, Secret CIA Units Playing a Central Combat Role, Washington Post, Nov. 18, 2001, p. A1.

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Given the Talibans protection of bin Laden and his supporters, option 1 is not possible. Option 2 is the only answer, and this fact shows Khalilzads and Bymans condemnation of the Taliban to be hypocritical.

WHO CARES ABOUT OSAMA?

In fact, hypocritical is the best word to describe the general U.S. approach to terrorism. Nobody knew that better than FBI Deputy Director John ONeill. 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 vrit intrdite, ONeill told Brisard and Dasqui that U.S. oil companies and the Saudi Arabian government repeatedly frustrated his efforts to bring bin Laden to justice. ONeill said that all the information needed to dismantle bin Ladens organization was in Saudi Arabia, but the government didnt want to upset the Saudi monarchy. In the case of the 1996 Khobar blast, the Saudis interrogated, tried and executed the suspects without allowing the FBI to speak with them. Similarly, the U.S. State Department obstructed ONeills attempts to prove that bin Laden was behind the USS Cole explosion. He told Brisard that he had clear evidence of bin Ladens guilt, but Barbara Bodine, U.S. ambassador to Yemen, refused to allow ONeill and his team to enter the country. In August 2001, ONeill resigned in frustration and took up a job as head of security in the World Trade Center. He died in the Sept. 11th attack. In a CNN interview with Paula Zahn about Brisards and Dasquis claims of Bush administration obstruction, former chief UN weapons inspector Richard Butler confirmed the necessity of a trans-Afghanistan pipeline. These are allegations. Theyre worth airing and talking about, because of their gravity. We dont know if they are correct. But I believe they should be investigated, because Central Asian oil, as we were discussing yesterday, is potentially so important. And all prior attempts to have a pipeline had to be done through Russia. It had to be negotiated with Russia. Now, if there is to be a pipeline through Afghanistan, obviating the need to deal with Russia, it would also cost less than half of what a pipeline through Russia would cost. So financially and politically, theres a big prize to be had. A pipeline through Afghanistan down to the Pakistan coast would bring out that Central Asian oil easier and more cheaply.23

23. Interview with Richard Butler, Explosive New Book Published in France Alleges that U.S. Was in Negotiations to Do a Deal with Taliban, American Morning With Paula Zahn, CNN, Jan. 8, 2002.

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Catching bin Laden was not the priority it was made it out to be. 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. Moreover, 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 openly warned the Clinton administration that bin Laden posed a danger: Washingtons reaction at the time really amazed me. They shrugged their shoulders and said matter-of-factly: We cant do anything because the Taliban does not want to turn him over.24 Before Sept. 11, Bushs attitude about bin Laden differed little from Clintons. From Jan. 1 to Sept. 10, 2001, the number of hits in the New York Times database totaled 187fewer than one per day. Over that same period, Taliban registered 205 hits. This apparent lack of urgency about bin Laden is consistent with the exigencies of pro-Taliban petropolitics and obstruction of ONeills 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 Ladens network, Washington must gain the support of the governments that host it. (pp. 71-72) The importance of this passage cannot be exaggerated. It represents not only a sober refutation of Clintons obsession with bin Laden and the war on terrorism, but its 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 towards bin Laden, not the Taliban. Significantly, this passage also contains the essays only citation, thus enhancing the authors rational appreciation of the low importance of bin Laden within the context of petropolitical self-interest. (The assessment remained accurate, if one subscribes to the dissenting view that bin Laden had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.)

24. Cited in Jonathan Steele, et al., Threat of US strikes passed to Taliban weeks before NY attack, The Guardian, Sept. 22, 2001.

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WERE BIN LADEN AND HIS FOLLOWERS R E A L LY T H E TA R G E T ?

The conspicuous benefits that accrued to the Bush White House as a result of the Sept. 11 attack, as well as the administrations incoherent statements about its ability to capture bin Laden, shows that the bombing of Afghanistan had little to do with bin Laden and his Islamist followers. On Oct. 25, 2001, Rumsfeld exposed the inconsistency between the Bush administrations apparent objective (capturing or killing bin Laden) and its actual objective (destroying the Taliban) during an interview with the editorial board of USA Today: Rumsfeld has tried to lower expectations for the military campaign by comparing it to the Cold War, which lasted a half-century. In a 50minute interview, Rumsfeld cautioned repeatedly that it would be very difficult to capture or kill bin Laden: Its a big world. There are lots of countries. Hes got a lot of money, hes got a lot of people who support him, and I just dont know whether well 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.25

Setting up the Taliban

The USA Today interview is particularly noteworthy because Rumsfelds equation of the war on terrorism with the Cold War contradicts Pentagon statements that public support for the war on terrorism stems 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, its an emotional response to a specific act. The incoherence of these two positions at least shows that bin Laden was not the all-consuming target he was made out to be. Rumsfelds 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.27 In fact, Bushs own statements indicate that the Afghan government, not bin Laden, was his major target. In his Sept. 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
25. Jonathan Weisman and Andrea Stone, Rumsfeld: Bin Laden may get away; Its a big world, he says, but predicts the Taliban regime will be toppled, USA Today, Oct 25, 2001. 27. Barton Gellman and Thomas E. Ricks, U.S. concludes bin Laden survived Tora Bora fight, Washington Post, April 17, 2002.

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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 were under no obligation to comply with Bushs 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, the U.S. under Bush was violating Afghanistans sovereignty and declaring to the world that it 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 Ladens life was put out despite President Gerald Fords explicit 1976 ban on political assassinations. Rumsfeld even acknowledged the bans authority: There is no question but that that ban does have effect. It restricts certain things that government can and cannot do.28 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 Bushs uncompromising tone showed that he cared less about obtaining bin Laden than destroying the Taliban. The same is true of Rumsfelds 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 vengefulness, Bushs ultimatum to the Taliban was so arrogant, punitive and humiliating that compliance was precluded. Bush had already decided that the Taliban should be destroyed, but the illusion of fair-mindedness was necessary to delude the American public, and the world at large, into believing that the coming U.S.-led onslaught was morally justified.

28. Ibid., News Briefing, Sept. 18, 2001.

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SACRED VIOLENCE
In his Sept. 20, 2001, address George W. Bush declared: Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. (Applause.) This was not the language of reasoned statecraft. It was the sort of immature posturing one expects of a gang leader looking to pick a fight. It didnt matter that Afghanistan had nothing to do with the attacks, or that the vast majority of the alleged hijackers were Saudi Arabian nationals living in the United States. Afghanistan would receive Americas wrath. Bombing one of the worlds poorest countries was irrational. It would be the first act in an open-ended crusade against U.S. enemies, who were to henceforth to be known as terrorists. On the same day Bush spoke, the Pentagon christened the crusade Infinite Justice. The overt chauvinism of the name and the invocation of a crusade 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 governments 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: Q U E S T I O N : 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? A R I F L E I S C H E R : I think what the President was saying washad 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. Q U E S T I O N : Does he regret having used that word, Ari, and will he not use it again in the context of talking about this effort? F L E I S C H E R : 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. Its a broad cause.29 Five days after it was created, Operation Infinite Justice was smugly renamed Operation Enduring Freedom, a change that 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 Fleischers comments showed, politics, not concern for Muslims, was what mattered.
29. Ari Fleischer, Press Briefing, White House Documents, Sept 18, 2001.

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Infinite literally described the Bush cabals warmongering zeal. Toward the end of September, Rumsfeld submitted to Bush two proposals for openended war in the Middle East and Central Asia drawn up by Wolfowitz.30 The attacks on the World Trade Center gave the crazies the impetus they needed to launch unfettered war against terrorist states, of which Afghanistan would be only the first. From here, the U.S. would go after Iraq, Iran, Syria and southern Lebanon. Justice captured the essence of the vigilante-style retribution to be visited upon Afghanistan for the Talibans harboring of bin Laden. In short, Enduring Freedom was a ludicrous and cruel euphemism that pretended Afghanistan was being bombed for its own good.

U.S.WAR CRIMINAL
Professor Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshires Whittemore School of Business & Economics compiled an exhaustive daily account of the civilian cost of this imposed enduring freedom entitled A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting. His research is based on analyses of data collected from more than two-dozen sourcesnews agencies, major newspapers and first-hand reports. These sources include The Frontier Post [Pakistan], BBC News, Pakistan Observer, Times of India, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Agence France-Presse, The Independent [UK], The Hindustan Times, The Times of London, The Singapore News and Al Jazeera [Qatar]. Herold concluded that from Oct. 7 to Dec. 6, 2001, at least 3,767 Afghani civilians were killedan average of 62 per day: What causes the documented high level of civilian casualties? The explanation is the apparent willingness of U.S. military strategists to fire missiles into and drop bombs upon, heavily populated areas of Afghanistan. A legacy of the ten years of civil war during the 80s is that many military garrisons and facilities are located in urban areas where the Soviet-backed government had placed them since they could be better protected there from attacks by the rural mujahedin A heavy bombing onslaught must necessarily result in substantial numbers of civilian casualties simply by virtue of proximity to military targets, a reality exacerbated by the admitted occasional poor targeting, human error, equipment malfunction, and the irresponsible use of out-dated Soviet maps. But, the critical element remains the very low value put upon Afghan civilian lives by U.S. military planners and the political

30. Ed Vulliamy, Hawks and doves fight for control of campaign, The Observer, Sept. 30, 2001.

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elite, as clearly revealed by U.S. willingness to bomb heavily populated regions.31 The U.S. also played a major role in one of the worst massacres of the campaignthe bombing of the Qala-i-Janghi fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif (again), where as many as 400 Taliban being held prisoner staged a revolt. According to The Independent: The Northern Allianceon the advice of the U.S. Special Forces and the SASpoured oil into the basement of the building and set fire to it, forcing those remaining prisoners holed up in the lower parts of the fort to move upstairs. The Northern Alliance troops then drove a huge Russian-made tank through the gates of the fortress, crushing the corpses of Pakistani and Arab fighters lying in the courtyard. The tank fired off four rounds aimed at the small building where the remaining Taliban fighters were holding out. The distance was no more than 20 metres, and the building was reduced to rubble in seconds. If the accounts of the Northern Alliance soldiers are to be believed, 400 defeated men managed to force the United States into taking part in the massacre of prisoners of war.32 An Associated Press photographer who wandered into the area saw the dead bodies of 50 prisoners, whose hands had been tied behind their backs with black scarves. Alliance soldiers were busy removing the scarves with knives and scissors. The BBC reported that alliance troops continued to shoot at corpses in case any Taliban were still alive.33 Officially, the Pentagon has tried to discredit any report that reflects badly on the U.S. After the morning of Nov. 13, this task was made easier when a U.S. missile destroyed Al-Jazeeras Kabul office and damaged the offices of the Associated Press and the BBC. When asked if he thought al-Jazeera was deliberately targeted, managing director Mohammed Jassim al-Ali said: They know where we are located and they know what [equipment] we have in our office, and we also did not get any warning.34

31. Professor Mark Herold, A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting [revised], March 2002, <www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm>. 32. Justin Huggler, The Castle of Death, The Independent, Nov. 20, 2001. 33. Jerry White, After US massacre of Taliban POWs: the stench of death and more media lies, World Socialist Website, Nov. 29, 2001. 34. Adnan Malik, Arab satellite channels Kabul office destroyed by missile, The Independent, Nov. 13, 2001.

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Table VI: Marc Herolds analysis of the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan
Date of bombing Oct. 11 Taliban version Bombed Karam village, 200 killed. Pentagon/State Dept. version Hit military base on hillside. While possible civilians killed, Taliban claims are predictably exaggerated Herolds assessment

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Two jets bomb the mountain village of Karam comprised of 60 mud houses, during dinner after evening prayer time, killing 100-160 in Karam alone. F-18 dropped a 1,000 lb. cluster bomb on a 200-bed military hospital and mosque, missing the target by 5001000 metres.

Oct. 21

Bombed Herat hospital, killing 100+ civilians.

Pentagon admits missing military barracks, but says hospital is "considerable distance" from where bomb landed and bomb blast unlikely to cause civilian deaths. A military target was hit and a Red Crescent hospital was in vicinity - 100s of meters away and was undamaged.

Oct. 31

Red Crescent clinic in Qandahar hit, killing 11.

In a pre-dawn raid, F-18 drops a 2,000 lb. JDAM bomb on the clinic, killing 15-25. A photo shows the clinic reduced to a mangled mess of iron and concrete

WAR ON TERRORISMS DIVIDENDS

Electoral amnesia
Bush came to power in a virtual coup dtat; that is, his victory reflected the will of vested interests, not the democratic will of the American electorate. Although vested interests always influence elections, Bushs election was unique. On election night in November 2000, a scandal over voting irregularities in a handful of southeast Florida counties held up that states vote certification. Since neither Bush nor Vice-President Al Gore emerged as a clear favorite in the lackluster campaign, each needed Floridas 25 electoral college votes to win the presidency. Much of the scandal concerned imperfect or mistaken punches in badly designed butterfly ballots that led to tens of thousands of votes being disqualified. In fact, independent candidate Patrick Buchanan acknowledged that most of the 3,000 votes he received, six times more than in any other state, were meant for Gore.

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The Bush and Gore camps fell into a bitter existential ballot war that lasted for weeks. Was a vote defined by a clean punch on the ballot, or by the clear intent of the voter? In the contentious counties, numerous ballots were imperfectly punched, leaving the punched-part of the ballot, the chad, hanging or merely dimpled. Technically the votes didnt count, and so were rejected, but the Gore camp argued that these undervotes should have counted because the will of the voter could be accurately discerned. In a final petition to the Florida State Supreme Court, the Gore camp was granted a full hand-recount in the disputed counties. Oddly, neither the Florida Supreme Court nor Gore demanded a recount of the overvotes, votes made when a voter punched more than one choice for president. If a voter mistakenly voted for Buchanan, and then punched the chad next to Gore and also wrote in Gores name, that would be considered legal under Florida law. However, the question was rendered moot when the conservative, Republican-dominated Federal Supreme Court quashed the recount order on Dec. 9, 2000. That decision, not the will of the American public, handed Floridas 25 electoral college votes to Bush, making him the countrys 43rd president. By the time the counting was stopped, the final tally for Florida was: Bush 2,912,790; Gore 2,912,253a difference of 537 votes, or 9/1,000ths of one percent. To settle the question of legitimacy, a consortium of eight major newsgathering organizationsincluding the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and CNNconducted a post mortem of the Florida recount. After spending almost $1 million examining 175,010 uncounted ballots, the consortium rendered its verdict on Nov. 12, 2001. It determined that Bush would have won a limited state-wide recount of undervotes by 243, but in a statewide recount of all ballots, including approximately 113,820 rejected overvotes, Gore would have eked out a slim victory by 60 to 171 votes, depending on the counting standards of the particular consortium member. In fact, Newsweek obtained hastily scribbled faxed notes from recount presiding judge Terry Lewis suggesting that overvotes would have been counted. In a Dec. 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.35 On balance, the evidence showed that Gore was the true winner in Florida and that the Supreme Court helped Bush steal the presidency, yet the Times and virtually every major news organization ran with a Bush wins version of the recount, under the false presumption that overvotes would have been excluded. The Times front page declared: Study of Disputed Florida

35. Cited in Michael Isikoff, The Final Word? Newsweek, Nov. 19, 2001.

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Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote. The Post, though, was more equivocal: In all likelihood, George W. Bush still would have won Florida and the presidency last year if either of two limited recountsone requested by Al Gore, the other ordered by the Florida Supreme Courthad been completed. But if Gore had found a way to trigger a statewide recount of all disputed ballots, or if the courts had required it, the result likely would have been different.36 Even less did the corporate media raise the issue of 90,000 mostly black voters who were wrongly denied the right to vote by Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris, while she was also serving as Republican campaign chairman under Florida governor Jeb Bush. It seems illogical for the U.S. media to spin their coverage to favor Bush, but with the country still seething from the World Trade Center attacks, and actively engaged in the war against terrorism, the question of Bushs legitimacy had become a non-issue, if not an unpatriotic one. In the USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll: 91 percent approved of Bushs handling of events after the attack; 92 percent supported retaliatory military action; 86 percent approved of Bushs handling of the presidency, compared to 51 percent between Sept. 7 and Sept. 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.37 Typical of the new jingoism was the governments disparagement of Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. In an early April 2002 radio interview in Berkeley, Calif., McKinney charged Bush forces with denying the American public a free and fair election in 2000, and becoming an administration of questionable legitimacy [that had] been given unprecedented power. In response, Bush spokesman Scott McLellan said: The American people know the facts, and they dismiss such ludicrous, baseless views, he said. The fact that she questions the presidents legitimacy shows a partisan mindset beyond all reason.38

36. 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, Nov. 12, 2001. The disenfranchisement of alleged felons by the Republican machine in Florida was reported in the book Black Box Voting, and by journalist Greg Palast. 37. USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll results, USA Today, Sept. 16, 2001. 38. Cited in Juliet Eilperin, Democrat Implies Sept. 11 Administration Plot, Washington Post, April 12, 2002.

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Absolute power
For the first nine months of 2001, Bush tried to put the Florida controversy behind him, but could not shake the taint of illegitimacy or charges that he was intellectually unqualified. On May 24, he was dealt a seemingly crippling blow when 67-year-old Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords broke from the Republican Party to sit as an independent. Jeffords refused to support the 2002 budget or Bushs conservative educational reforms. Bush planned to create a voucher system to allow parents to transfer their children out of failing public schools into faith-based schools, but Jeffords pointed out this did not amount to new funding as promised.39 Jeffords defection shifted the balance of power in the Senate to the Democrats and cast doubt on Bushs ability to impose his legislative agenda on the nation. Instead of a 50-50 split in which Vice-President Cheney held the deciding vote, the balance was now 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans and one independent. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush was able to don the mantle of war president and co-opt the nation. Everyone was now united in the war against terrorism, as he said in his Sept. 20, 2001, speech: I thank the Congress for its leadership at such an important time. All of America was touched on the evening of the tragedy to see Republicans and Democrats joined together on the steps of this Capitol, singing "God Bless America." And you did more than sing; you acted, by delivering $40 billion to rebuild our communities and meet the needs of our military. Speaker Hastert, Minority Leader Gephardt, Majority Leader Daschle and Senator Lott, I thank you for your friendship, for your leadership and for your service to our country.40 Two days later, Bush asked Congress to strip the export of U.S. military assistance and weapons exports of all moral and political restrictions. Countries that had been denied military aid because of human rights abuses, sponsorship of terrorism, possession of nuclear and offensive-weapons programs, or lack of a commitment to democracy, were now eligible if they joined in the war on terrorism. Also on Sept. 22, Bush lifted all military and economic restrictions on India, and permitted Pakistan to make commercial military purchases from U.S. companies. The new proposal would also allow the president to lift restrictions on U.S. military cooperation with other countries that had been imposed by Congress based on human rights concerns.41
39. Jeffords bolts GOP; Democrats poised to take over, Inside Politics, CNN, May 24, 2001. 40. President George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, White House documents, Sept. 20, 2001. 41. Karen de Young, Bush Seeks Power to Lift Arms Curbs, Washington Post, Sept. 24, 2001.

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The first Democratic criticism of Bushs handling of the war on terrorism dates to comments made by Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Sen. Joseph Biden during an Oct. 22, 2001, conversation with the Council on Foreign Relations: How much longer does the bombing continue? Because we're going to pay every single hour, every single day it continues, we're going to pay an escalating price in the Muslim world. We're going to pay an escalating price in the region. And that in fact is going to make the aftermath of our victory more difficult to reconstruct the region I hope to God it ends sooner than later, because every moment it goes on, it makes the aftermath problem more severe. I know of no clear path that suggests how they [the government] secure the notion that there is no possibility of Pakistan degenerating into chaos, and us dealing with a problem there. The ultimate answer would be, if that were the case, we would find ourselves with a whole hell of a lot more forces in that region than we have now, which would be a very bad idea.42 The White House had no comment on Bidens criticism, but Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert called Biden's legitimate skepticism about the bombing completely irresponsible. The American people want us to bring these terrorists to justice. They do not want comments that may bring comfort to our enemies.43 Four days after Biden made his comments, Bush cemented his cooptation of Congress when he signed into law the Orwellian sounding USA PATRIOT Act, which was presaged in his speech: Tonight I announce the creation of a Cabinet-level position reporting directly to methe Office of Homeland Security. [Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge] will lead, oversee and coordinate a comprehensive national strategy to safeguard our country against terrorism, and respond to any attacks that may come. These measures are essential. But the only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows. (Applause) Office of Homeland Security is only two synonyms away from Committee of State Security, the English for KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti). The odious comparison is deserved, although Homeland Security also reminds one of the Nazi motto of Fatherland. For example, Sec. 213 of the Act gives the police arbitrary powers to search a persons property and ask permission later, thus violating the fundamental protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which reads:
42. A Conversation with Joseph R. Biden, Council on Foreign Relations, Oct. 22, 2001. 43. Cited in Seymour M. Hersh, Watching The Warheads The risks to Pakistans nuclear arsenal, The New Yorker FACT, Nov. 5, 2001. Further proof of the irrationality of the attack on Afghanistan was this comment to Hersh by a former State Department official: What worries me is if, a month from now, bin Laden gets on al-Jazeera and thumbs his nose at us. Itd be a huge loss of prestige for the United States.

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The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Sec. 412 permits, among other things, the arbitrary detention without charge of any non-citizen whom the Attorney General suspects might be a terrorist. In a pointed letter dated Nov. 9, 2001, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy demanded that Attorney General John Ashcroft answer questions relating to this and other aspects of the Act: Since we provided you with new statutory authorities in the USA Patriot Act, I have felt a growing concern that the trust and cooperation Congress provided is proving to be a one-way street. You have declined several requests to appear before the Committee to answer questions and have not responded to requests to provide information on such basic points as the number of peopleaccording to some Department of Justice reports, more than a thousandcurrently detained without trial and without specific criminal charges under your authority. Today I also learned through the press of another troubling development: Your unilateral executive decision to authorize interception of privileged attorney-client communications between detained persons and their lawyers. As I noted to you this morning, after having worked closely with the Department to equip Federal and State law enforcement to combat terrorism and after having received no request from you for statutory authorization to take this controversial step, and with no warning that you were contemplating such a step, I am deeply troubled at what appears to be an executive effort to exercise new powers without judicial scrutiny or statutory authorization.44 Bushs Brave New Legislation had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden, but by propagating the notion that he and his followers represented a pervasive threat, Bush effectively short-circuited his critics. In his speech, he said without a trace of irony: I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them(Applause.) Their principles include the arbitrary arrest and detention of hundreds of Americans, and the establishment of military tribunals. Bush established the tribunals on Nov. 13, the same day that the Justice Department ordered the nation-wide detention of 5,000 men aged 18-33, mainly from Middle Eastern countries, who entered the country legally on tourist, student or business visas since Jan. 1, 2000.45
44. Letter from Sen. Patrick Leahy to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Nov. 9, 2001, <groups.yahoo.com/group/LawTalk/message/2446>. 45. Elisabeth Bumiller And David Johnston, Bush to Subject Terrorism Suspects to Military Trials, New York Times, Nov. 14, 2001.

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The PATRIOT Act passed in the House of Representatives by 357 votes to 66, before the first draft was even finished. The only dissenting voice in the Senate was Wisconsin Democrat Russell Feingold. This is one of the ridiculous things they do in Washington, he told the Washington Post. They want to intimidate people A number of my colleagues said they thought I was right on the merits but felt they had to vote for it anyway.46 In the article, Feingold was condescendingly dismissed as a maverick. Not a single congressman or senator read the Act before voting. By Dec. 5, 2001, almost 1,000 people had been secretly detained. A total of 19 human rights organizationsincluding the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and Reporters Committee For Freedom of the Pressfiled a civil action against the Justice Department demanding the disclosure of all documents relating to the proceedings as are guaranteed under the law.47 As the assembled congressmen, senators and assorted dignitaries repeatedly interrupted Bushs Sept. 20 address with thunderous applause, it was easy to envision Roman senators cheering the demented emperor Caligula as he named his horse to sit among them.

Gas pipeline back on front burner

Operation Infinite Justice / Enduring Freedom began on Sunday, Oct. 7, 2001. Two days later in Islamabad, U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain paid a visit to Usman Aminuddin, Pakistans petroleum and natural resources minister.48 The conversation centered on topics like current and future development of oil and gas fields, exploitation of Pakistans coal deposits (fifth-largest in the world), and investment in onshore and offshore exploration. Aminuddin also briefed Chamberlain on the CentGas pipeline project. 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."49 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 that Pakistan could revive its economy.

46. Robert E. Pierre, Wisconsin Senator Emerges as a Maverick, Washington Post, Oct. 27, 2001. 47. Arthur B. Spitzer et al., Complaint for Injunctive Relief, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Dec. 5, 2001, <http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/doj/cnssdoj120501cmp.pdf>. 48. Virtually the only newspaper to cover this event was Pakistans Frontier Post, U.S. envoy calls on Petroleum Minister, Oct. 10, 2001. The meeting got no mention in the New York Times or the Washington Post. 49. Pipelineistan: The rules of the game, Alexanders Gas and Oil Connections, volume 7, issue #4, Feb. 21, 2002.

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Behind the scenes, the U.S. had been quietly laying the groundwork for a pro-pipeline, post-Taliban Afghanistan. From Nov. 27 to Dec. 5, 2001, in Bonn, Germany, the UN was sponsoring talks with four Afghan factions to come up with an interim government. 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. At the end of the Bonn meetings, the U.S. got its wish, but it was a victory it did not dare 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 cant say that and Karzai cant 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.50 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 a political agreement among Afghanistans ethnic and political factions. 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 Karzais 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.51 Karzais 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 Reagans 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 the idea of a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. In 1994, Karzai aligned himself with U.S. petropolitics and supported the new Taliban regime.

50. Marc Kaufman, Karzais Ties to U.S. are a Mixed Blessing; Pashtun Leader Trades Carefully on U.S. Bond, Washington Post, Dec. 22, 2001, p. A16. 51. Ibid.

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In 1996, the year Osama bin Laden returned from Sudan, Karzai broke with the Taliban over the inordinate political influence exercised by bin Laden and his Arab Afghans, but the Taliban were in a thoroughly dependent position. Whether or not they approved of bin Ladens activities or the domineering conduct of the Arab Afghans, they couldnt afford to alienate bin Laden because his money was running the government. The following year, Karzai started organizing Pashtun resistance movements in the southern provinces, but since Clinton was still playing footsie with the Taliban at the time, Karzais requests for assistance were rejected. Nevertheless, he made contact with Pashtun chiefs and leaders, and started fomenting rebellion, which led to his fathers assassination in 1999.52 After the Sept. 11 attack, the U.S. decided to support Karzais insurrection. Karzai wanted to lead a group of men across the border to instigate uprisings in Qandahar, Zabol, Urozgan and Helmand provinces. The plan had the approval of Zahir Shah and the CIA, who also promised arms to rebel Afghans. The infiltration, co-ordinated with Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet, took place on Oct. 8, 2001, 24 hours after the launch of Infinite Justice / Enduring Freedom. The close co-operation between Karzai and the Bush administration is significant for a number of reasons. First, and most obviously, it proves that Bush lied when he held out the possibility that the Taliban could avoid military attack, or that bin Laden was the primary target of the offensive. Second, it helps explain Rumsfelds contradictory pronouncements about assassinating or capturing bin Laden. The crusade to get bin Laden was a rhetorical feint to obscure the premeditated destruction of the Taliban. As such, when questioned about U.S. objectives, Rumsfeld occasionally lapsed into honesty, and admitted the implausibility of this task. The need to sustain the cover-story led to the sharp reversals of opinion. Third, the decision to go after the Taliban rather than bin Laden, as Clinton had, shows how closely Bush followed Khalilzads advice as set out in the Washington Quarterly. On Dec. 31, 2001, Bush followed through on another recommendation: He appointed a high-level envoy for Afghanistan. Khalilzad said such an envoy should have sufficient stature and access to be taken seriously in foreign capitals and by local militias, and be able to shape Afghan policy within U.S. bureaucracies. The man Bush chose was Khalilzad. Significantly, this appointment was not covered in the U.S. press, and the BBC account failed to make any mention of Khalilzads work for Unocal.53
52. 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, Dec. 11, 2001, reprinted and translated by the BBC monitoring service, Dec. 15, 2001. 53. Khalilzad and Byman, p. 77; Mike Fox, Bush appoints Afghan envoy, BBC, Jan. 1, 2002. On Nov. 24, 2003, Khalilzad was sworn in as ambassador to Afghanistan.

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Thus, after the U.S. deposed the Taliban, Bush engineered the appointment of one Unocal consultant to lead Afghanistan, and appointed another Unocal consultant to be his chief policy advisor in the area.54 During a one-day visit to Islamabad on Feb. 9, 2002, Karzai and Pakistans leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf discussed the proposed Central Asian gas pipeline project. They agreed that it was in the interest of both countries.

54. Karzai took up his duties as interim leader, on Dec. 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. He was reelected in October 2004, amid accusations of vote fraud and a boycott by other candidates.

N A 1 9 6 2 E P I S O D E of The Twilight Zone, a ventriloquist named Jerry is an emotional wreck because of his wooden dummy Willy. Unbeknownst to anyone else, Willy does his own thinking and talking, and Jerry is trying to keep his sanity.

Jerry finally decides to get rid of his malevolent partner in favor of a new act with a different dummy, but Willy will not accept defeat. Towards the end of the episode, we find the other dummy destroyed, and Jerry and Willy back on stage. This time, Jerry looks like a wooden dummy and Willy looks human. The ostensible dummy is now firmly in control. Did Jerry and Willy exist as separate entities, or did Willy represent a disturbed part of Jerrys psyche? We can make of it what we want because The Twilight Zone exists in the world of imagination. On the other hand, there is nothing imaginary about the similarity of this episode to the way Zionists dictate U.S. Middle East policy. This chapter covers the eight years of Clintons presidency (19922000), which can be divided into three overlapping political layersAfghanistan, Palestine and Iraq. We have already seen: The Riyadh and Dhahran bombings; Osama bin Ladens declaration of war on the U.S.; U.S. attempts to cajole the Taliban into signing a pipeline deal; The bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; Clintons gratuitous retaliatory bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan; The beginning of the war on terrorism; and The demonization of Osama bin Laden. These events constitute the Afghanistan thread. Now we examine the Palestinian thread, and the Zionist domination of the White House.

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THE JEWISH PRESIDENCY

The 1992 presidential election represented the fifth and highest stage to date of the Zionist campaign to control the U.S. government. The first stage was 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. In the third stage (1976), Carter brought Christian Zionists to political prominence, thus allowing dispensationalist thinking to fill the post-Vietnam political vacuum. The fourth stage (1980) began with the election of Reagan and the rise of American fascism. Even though Zionists strengthened their influence during these periods, few warm Jews (Israel-first Jews) were appointed to senior ministerial positions. In other words, Zionists had made their bullets, but lacked a compliant government to fire them. Under Clinton, warm Jews would fill many 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 warm Jews was so conspicuous that the Israeli newspaper Maariv ran a 4,000-word article entitled The Jews Who Run Clintons Court: As far as the Jews are concerned, President Bill Clinton contributed towards a real change in the administrations outlook, having concluded a series of changes in enhancing Jewish power beginning under President 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, Kissinger, enjoying the confidence of President Richard Nixon, and there were Jewish Cabinet members under 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
1. For a list of the 64 Zionist Jews in the administration as of Jan. 4, 1998, see The Jews in Clintons Cabinet, <radioislam.org/islam/english/toread/collect.htm>.

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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. The first concerns the assertion that warm Jews have a primary loyalty towards America. One would naturally expect American government officials to be loyal to their own country; anything else is treason. Yet the phrase primary loyalty implies that warm Jews have another 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 best interests of the U.S. 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 Palestinian people, 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 idle U.S. threat of predicating support for Israel on its respect for basic U.S. interests. If this threat had any meaning, settlement

2. See the reproduction at <www.mideastfacts.com/js_rn_cort.html>, translated and annotated by Rabbi Israel Shahak.

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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 disagreement among warm Jews and how the Labor-Likud alternations in Israels government determined U.S. attitudes toward Middle East peace during the Oslo peace process. 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, when Iraq was already hobbled by sanctions, so this means the plan to crush Iraq had been in the works for more than eight years.

T H E FA R C E O F O S L O
A major factor in the Likud defeat was the First Intifada, a spontaneous uprising against Israeli occupation that began in the fall of 1987 in the Gaza Strip. In June 1992, Shamirs 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 IsraeliPalestinian violence, so Rabins victory was fortuitous. Clinton capitalized quickly. On Sept. 13, 1993, he was front-and-centre when Arafat and Rabin came to the White House to sign the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-government, which signaled the official end of the first Intifada by starting the five-year Oslo peace process, after which time Israel would pull its military out of the Occupied Territories and a final status agreement would be signed.4 Arafats 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

3. Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Oct. 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 in English: 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.

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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 Israels 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 peoples representative and Israels negotiating partner. Given this long-awaited mutual recognition, it seemed nothing could stop the inexorable move towards a peaceful settlement. Doubtless one reason for Arafats optimism was Rabins 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 Oct. 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 Nov. 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 overtly 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 undeserved. Rabin only agreed to recognize the PLO because repeated refusals to do so 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 coerce Arafat into legitimizing Israels theft of Arab land.

5. Exchange of letters between PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in Ibid. 6. Haaretz, Jan. 21, 1988, cited in Issa Nakhleh ed., Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem, Vol. II (New York: Intercontinental Books, 1991), p. 744.

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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; less than one-sixth of that increase 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, 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 Oslos principles, Rabin and Peres reaffirmed Israels annexation of East Jerusalem.7 This kind of treachery is part of Labors standard operating procedure. The only real difference between it and Likud is that Labor feigns respect for diplomacy and legal niceties, whereas Likud indulges in 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 show up the emptiness of Rabins promise. Nevertheless, Arafat continued to negotiate and sign interim agreements, thereby giving increasing legitimacy to Israels dishonest interpretation of UNSC Res. 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 honour these commitments (UNGA Res. 194 and 273), but would not discuss them. Arafat had nothing to gain and everything to lose. U.S. acquiescence in Israels 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

Netanyahus victory in May 1996 gave the crazies the opening they needed to mount a power play against their own U.S. 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 groups leader. Other signatories included James Colbert (JINSA),
7. Joel Beinin, The Demise of the Oslo Process, Middle East Report, March 26, 1999. 8. Khaled Al-Maeena, Is the U.S. Governments First Obligation to Americans or to Israelis? Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 1996, p. 17.

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Douglas Feith (Feith and Zell Associates law firm), Jonathan Torop, (WINEP), David Wurmser (who commissioned the report for IASPS and who is Perles colleague at the AEI) and his wife Meyrav Wurmser (Johns Hopkins University, Hudson Institute). Clean Break was an opportunistic end-run around the Clinton administration and a radicalized version of WINEPs earlier 1998 LaborZionist Building 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 Netanyahus 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 that 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 yearsis 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. In language eerily similar to Adolf Hitlers portrayal of Germany, the authors see Israel as a peace-loving state beset on all sides by foes eager to destroy it, and invoke chauvinistic allusions to a romanticized past (the biblical state of Israel) to justify the theft of land for Lebensraum.

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 Iraqan important Israeli strategic objective in its own rightas a means of foiling Syrias regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syrias regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq. This has triggered a
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.

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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 map to suit its interests, and King Husseins 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. Bushs reasons for wanting to remove Hussein had nothing to do with compliance with UN Security Council resolutions or weapons of mass destruction.

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, Israels 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 Arafats base of power. Jordan has ideas on this. This section reduces the Oslo agreements to a scofflaw by making compliance a one-way street. If Arafat wont play along, he will be removed to make way for a compliant Palestinian leader who will do Israels bidding. Under this double standard, Zionist settlers can terrorize Palestinians at will, but the moment a single Palestinian retaliates, Netanyahu can charge Arafat with non-compliance.

Forging A New U.S.-Israeli Relationship

In recent years, Israel invited active U.S. intervention in Israels 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 is 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 wage unfettered terror on Palestinians. That cannot happen so long as the U.S. controls the purse strings and values regional stability over Zionist expansionism.

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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 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 Feb. 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 141. 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 ministrys statement flatly contradicted Article I of the Declaration 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 Qatars request, the UN General Assembly convened a rare special session to discuss Jebel Abu Ghneim/Har Homa. Israels charg daffaires David Peleg vehemently denounced the UNs right to have any say in Israeli-Palestinian affairs, and especially condemned the special session:
10. Har Homa, Legal Aspects, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, March 3, 1997, <www.israel-mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH01gi0>.

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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 PLOs lack of commitment to curb terrorism, even though Kidwas statements are entirely consistent with the Charter of the UN and the right to self-defense against aggression.12 The U.S. refusal to let the Security Council condemn Israel, even though the Clinton administration strongly opposed Har Homa, also shows that Israel and the Lobby were dictating policy. UN Ambassador Bill Richardsons speech followed a standard propaganda formatquickly 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 virtually 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
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>.

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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 and created a fait accompli, more facts on the ground, 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, and to dynamite the peace process.14 Even today, the place is all but deserted. As Haaretz reported on June 10, 2002: 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 Jerusalems 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 pressuremilitary raids, destruction, mass arrests, tightening siege, continuation of settlement initiatives and daily toll of victimswill ensure a further spiraling up of the circle of violence.15

Israels 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 letterssponsored by Sen. Connie Mack (R-FL) and Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA)were identical, a strong
14. Kurt Holden Clintons 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 Principles of the Intifada, Haaretz, June 10, 2002.

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indication they were written by the Lobby.16 At length, Clinton sent a representativeU.S. Consul General in Jerusalem Edward Abingtonbut 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 Israels 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 leaderswho 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 of Clean Break. Their objective was two-foldundermine the presidents 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 Arafats information warfare campaign against Israel.18 Ten days after the end of the conference, 10 of the top U.S. 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
16. Shirl McArthur, Congress Launches Fawning Frenzy Over Netanyahus Har Homa Decision, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June/July 1997, pp. 1417. McArthur 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), Oct. 10, 2003. 18. McArthur, op. cit. 19. Christians Call for a United Jerusalem, New York Times, April 18, 1997. 20. Ibid., Wagner.

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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 as such God sanctifies whatever is done to them in the name of reclaiming biblical Israel. Similarly, any acts of Palestinian resistance are by definition acts of terrorism.

Manufacturing dissent
Netanyahus government resorted to outright disinformation to stoke anti-Muslim hatred among Christians within the Zionist community. On Oct. 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 Dec. 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. Arafats henchmen, and regurgitated the Netanyahu governments 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 Authoritys direct control who can afford to leave are doing so. Since the beginning of the Middle East peace process, Christians living under Mr. Arafats regime have suffered in a silent state of oppression.21 Against Wattss 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 Ive never heard that theyve 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
21. J.C. Watts, Yasser Arafat vs. Christians, The Washington Times, Dec. 4, 1997.

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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, Netanyahus 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-Ilans 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 In a broad sense, the title Enemies by Design can mean any subversive manufacturing of enmity. Divide and conquer, divide et impera is the motto of the British empire. Fomenting minority secessionist movements breaks up rival empires, as with Chechnya or Lawrence of Arabia. The garrison state of Israel itself was surely invented for an imperial agenda: preventing the rise of a rival world power that would straddle the strategic isthmus of Eurasia and Africa and dominate the worlds fields of oil. Enmity as a tool of psychological warfare is useful for frightening free citizens into accepting oligarchical rule at home, while destabilizing targeted nations, incapacitating them from national development or joining rival alliances. Moreover, the Straussian or neo-conservative philosophy requires enemies: as a form of fascism, it glorifies war as noble and despises peace as weak.

22. Ibid., Wagner.

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FINAL PUSH
The Wye River Memorandum, signed on Oct. 23, 1998, between Arafat and Netanyahu, was supposed to restart the peace process and expedite its resolution by May 1999five 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 Dec. 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 politicsNetanyahu faced a no-confidence vote over the memorandum, and needed to prepare for the upcoming May 1999 elections. In the face of Netanyahus obstructionism, Clinton was vapid and craven: We now have the means to decide practical means to go forward and I think were 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 well just keep at it.23 The dummy knew who was doing the talking.

Camp David the final indignity

On May 17, 1999, Labor returned to power under Ehud Barak. Arafat had acceded to Clintons 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 Sept. 13, 2000. The substance of the memorandum, like all those before, is immaterial since the Palestinians and Israelis had always been negotiating at crosspurposes. Moreover, Israel had consistently found excuses to avoid fulfilling its interim treaty commitments: Scheduled military withdrawals from occupied territory had not taken place;

23. Cited in Arafat, Netanyahu, Clinton gather to seek Mideast Peace, CNN.com, Dec. 15, 1998.

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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 couldnt 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 conferenceit was an ambush. Shlomo Ben-Ami, head of Baraks 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 Arafats 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 is one of Arafats greatest blunders.

Israels right to exist

Morally and conceptually, [Arafat] didnt recognize Israels right to exist. He doesnt 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, toobut at the deep level, he doesnt accept us. Neither he nor the Palestinian national movement accept us. The fact that Arafat was prepared to negotiate at all proves the dishonesty of Ben-Amis 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 Israels refusal to recognize Palestines right to exist.
24. Insider Reflects on Failure of 2000 Camp David Summit, Haaretz, Sept. 13, 2001, <www.us-israel.org/jsource/Peace/benami2.html>. All of Ben-Amis citations come from this source.

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Arafats obstinacy
When all is said and done, Camp David failed because Arafat refused to put forward proposals of his own and didnt 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-Amis statement contains the faulty presumption that Israel had the right to negotiate with land it didnt 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 represent the stated objectives of the peace negotiations. For his part, Barak came with five obstructions that violated international law and Israels own prior agreements: 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 already put forward his proposals, because they were spelled out in the objectives of the negotiations.

Baraks generous offer

Palestinians dont 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 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 the deal offered to the Arabs was insulting.

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Arafat was expected to agree to a total of four disconnected Bantustanlike 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 a de 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 Sept. 28 after Likud leader Ariel Sharon with a bodyguard of 1,000 made a deliberately provocative visit to the sacred precincts of al-Aqsa Mosque in Arab East Jerusalem, where he declared it to be Israeli territory in perpetuity. The Israeli police violently repressed demonstrations, killing several Muslims, including Mohammed AlDurah, the boy captured on camera trying to shelter under his fathers arm against a wall. Arafat called the intrusion a dangerous affront to Islams holy places. Thus began the Second or Al-Aqsa Intifada. The visit sparked widespread rioting in the Occupied Territories and in the Galilee region, where police clashed with Israeli Arabs staging a sympathy strike. Sharons provocation re-ignited violence, as he intended, and this in turn pushed Clinton and Barak to lean on Arafat even harder. On Oct. 7, Barak gave Arafat a 48-hour ultimatum to end the violence, but this was an absurd and impossible demand. Six days earlier, Hamas had called for Arafats resignation and for an increase in the resistance. Arafat was fighting a three-front waragainst the U.S., Israel and Hamas. On the same day as Barak issued the ultimatumthe first of twoa mob of Hamas militants overran Josephs 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.

25. For a summary of the Palestinian Negotiating Teams 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, New York Times, Oct. 8, 2000.

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1. [The Security Council] deplores the provocation carried out at AlHaram 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 194927 The next day, 200 Jews from the town of Upper Nablus attacked the Arab town of Nablus. Israels 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 the violence had again erupted. It didnt matter that the offer was a travesty, or that Sharon deliberately provoked the violence. Blame was predetermined. On Oct. 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 occupationeverything was Arafats fault. No negotiations would take place until he was replaced as the Palestinian representative. In this manner, Arafat became a necessary enemy for the crazies. The way was now open for a return to Likud heavyhandedness and the thorough colonization of the White House.

WE, THE JEWISH PEOPLE, CONTROL AMERICA

On Oct. 3, 2001, the Israeli radio station Kol Yisrael reported that Sharon reacted testily to complaints from Shimon Peres and other cabinet ministers who said refusal to heed incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests and turn the US against Israel.

27. UN Security Council Res. 1322, Oct. 7, 2000. The U.S. abstained. 28. Ibid., Timeline in Le MondeMiddle East: The Faultline. 29. Senators Support Israel, Reuters, Oct. 13, 2000.

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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. Dont worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.30 The truth of Sharons candid outburst is undeniable because Israel humiliates the U.S. whenever it shows any sign of political independence. Take the example of veteran diplomat Daniel Kurtzer, who was appointed ambassador to Israel soon after PNAC seized power. In early January 2002, Kurtzer reiterated the oft-heard 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 Israels internal affairs.31 Despite official condemnation of the remark as anti-Semitic and Hendels subsequent retraction, the insult accurately described the parasites contempt for its host. In April, Israel invaded Bethlehem, Nablus and other towns in the West Bank with the standard excuse of stopping suicide attacks. Secretary of State Colin Powell told Israel it had to get out now, and Bush spent 20 minutes on the phone with Sharon insisting he pull out immediately. Sharon ignored them.32 Given the history of this exploitative relationship, it was inevitable that U.S. opposition to Israels Wall should end in another humiliating retreat. The following brief chronology shows what happens when the U.S. tries to defy its master.

July 25, 2003

Bush welcomed Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas on an official visit to the White House. In his address in the Rose Garden afterwards, Bush uttered the usual boilerplate phrasing that the U.S. opposes settlement construction, insists on an end to Palestinian (but not Israeli) terrorist attacks, and supports an improvement in the lives of the Palestinian people. It was an unremarkable speech, but in response to a reporters question about the wall, he said something risky: 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

30. Sharon to Peres: Dont worry about American pressure; we control America, IAP news, Oct. 3, 2001 <www.wrmea.com/html/newsitem_s.htm>. 31. Uri Dan, Israeli pol rips U.S. envoy, New York Post, January 9, 2002. 32. Israel defies US pressure to withdraw, BBCNews, April 8, 2002.

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issued a statement saying he is willing to come and discuss that with us. And I appreciate the willing to discuss it.33

July 29
Throughout the summer, Bush still 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 proposal that imposed conditions on the Palestinians, disregarded international law, and did nothing to arrest Israeli expansionism. Bush, though, failed to appreciate that Sharon was not interested in diplomatic duplicity, and cared nothing for U.S. sensitivities. After a White House meeting to discuss their differences, Bush and Sharon stated their respective positions at another Rose Garden press conference. Despite Bushs public opposition to the walldisingenuously called a fenceSharon declared: The security fence will continue to be built, with every effort to minimize the infringement on the daily life of the Palestinian population.34 After this emasculating rebuke in his own back yard (literally), Bush immediately changed his tune in response to a question: 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 well 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.35 Note that the wall is no longer a problem to be stopped but a sensitive issue to be discussed. The idea that Palestinians could lead normal lives behind the wall is idiotic, since whole villages were destroyed, and Palestinians are cut off from farms, homes, schools and workplaces.

Aug. 4
Despite his upbraiding the week before, Bush still wanted to stop the wall. He was considering 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 is deducted from the guarantee. The New York Times reported that many in the government were concerned that the wall might also be illegal, at least the part that extended into Occupied Palestine:
33. Remarks by President Bush and Prime Minister Abbas, White House Documents, July 25, 2003, <www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030725-6.html>. 34. President Discusses Middle East Peace with Prime Minister Sharon, White House documents, July 29, 2003, <www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/200307292.html>. 35. Ibid.

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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.36

Aug. 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.

Sept. 7
Mahmoud Abbas resigned as prime minister, citing Israels unwillingness to implement its road map commitments, and the U.S. unwillingness to exert any influence on Israel. He also cited a lack of support within the Palestinian Authority.

Sept. 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.

Oct. 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 negotiating partner. So long as Abbas was around, the wall threatened to undermine his leadership and 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.37 Bushs four-month fling with political independence was over.

April 1, 2004
In addition, Bush assured Sharon that Israel would not have to return to the Green Line (1967 border) in any future settlement with the Palestinians. Not only does this assurance violate UNSC Res. 242which the U.S. supportsbut it proves the fraud of the U.S. claim to be an honest broker.

36. Steven R. Weisman, U.S. May Reduce Aid to Get Israel to Halt Barrier, New York Times, Aug. 5, 2003. 37. Ori Nir, Bush Drops Opposition to Building of Barrier, Forward, Oct. 24, 2003.

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This new assurance appears in a draft letter of guarantees as a quid pro quo for Sharons disengagement from the Gaza Strip, even though Israels departure is 37 years overdue.38 The letter also includes implied recognition of settlement blocks, a denial of the Palestinian right of return, and a de facto imposition of a border. Throughout all these proceedings, the Palestinians were never consulted.

The ICJ Ruling

On July 9, The International Court of Justice in The Hague rendered its advisory opinion on the legality of the Wall. It rejected all of Israels arguments about defensive necessity and the nature of the Wall, and specifically condemned Israel for humanitarian and legal violations. Some of the ICJs key findings include: Rejection of Israels claim that the ICJ had no jurisdiction to rule on a political matter. (Paras. 3641) 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)39 The Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War does apply to Palestinians under Israeli Occupation, contrary to Israels claim. (Paras. 86101). 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. 115122) The route chosen for the wall gives expression in loco to the illegal measures taken by Israel with regard to Jerusalem and the settlements,
38. Aluf Benn Bush to assure PM: Israel wont have to retreat to Green Line, Haaretz, April 1, 2004. 39. Advisory Opinion, Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (International Court of Justice: The Hague, July 9, 2004), <www.icjcij.org/icjwww/idocket/imwp/imwpframe.htm>. All ICJ citations come from this website.

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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. 132137) 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 in paragraph 160 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. Naturally, Israel has refused to recognize the courts decision, which means the U.S.and other compromised countriesalso refused. Israel is accustomed to being an international pariah; in fact, the isolation feeds the illusion of Israel as a victim, which reinforces the propaganda of bias against Israel, which reinforces the Lobbys strength. The U.S. is another matter. Because it still nurtures the conceit that it stands for freedom and the rule of law, its endorsement of Israels illegality cannot be sustained over the long term without even greater moral, political and economic cost, especially when the weight of evidence and world opinion is so clearly on the side of the Palestinians. Only when the U.S. finds the courage to stand up to them will the war of terrorism end, but for that to happen, the U.S. must be prepared to fight another war of independence.

H E N G E O R G E W . B U S H formally occupied the White House in January 2001, the American republic ceased to exist. The corrupt edifice that arose in its place bore no resemblance to the Enlightenment philosophy of Washington, Jefferson or Locke.

Of course, the republic had been deteriorating rapidly ever since Ronald Reagans benighted presidency led the fascist revolution, but now anyone who stood up for traditional, Eisenhower-style Republicanism, defended the rule of law, or put U.S. interests ahead of Israels would be purged, intimidated or marginalized. This final stage of the Zionization of America was led by a cabal of familiar crazies and economic imperialists who belonged to a new organization called Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Certain members of this think tank would come to fill high government positions under George W. Bush and orchestrate the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, the demonization of Muslims, and the evisceration of the Constitution, civil liberties, environmental laws and any other public goods and services that stood in the way of realizing the dream of unenlightened imperial statecraft. PNACs bias is obvious from its address: 1150 17th St. NW, Suite 510, 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. PNACers believe that the U.S. lost its way during Clintons presidency, because Israels needs and U.S. economic expansionism were not prosecuted with sufficient zeal.

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Table VII: Selected signatories to PNACs Statement of Principles

PNACer Elliot Abrams

Reagan era post(s) Assistant Secretary of State Indicted by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor for giving false testimony before Congress

George W. Bush era post(s) National security council senior director for democracy, human rights and international operations Vice-President

Dick Cheney (Founding PNACer) Zalmay Khalilzad

Six-term congressman from Wyoming Defense Secretary (Bush Sr.) Special State Department advisor on the Iran-Iraq War and the Soviet War in Afghanistan State Dept. Policy Planning Staff Director of special projects for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Deputy defense undersecretary for policy (Bush Sr.)

Head of the Bush-Cheney Transition team for the Department of Defense and advisor to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Chief of staff to Cheney

Lewis Scooter Libby

Peter W. Rodman

Director of State Dept. Policy Planning Staff Deputy Asst. National Security Affairs Special Assistant for National Security Affairs and NSC Counselor (Reagan-Bush)

Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs

Frank Gaffney

Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Editor, Commentary General Advisory Committee on Arms Control Presidential envoy to Iraq

Founder of the Centre for Security Policy Editor-at-large, Commentary Senior fellow Hudson Institute Secretary of Defense

Norman Podhoretz Donald Rumsfeld

Paul Wolfowitz

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Ambassador to Indonesia Head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff

Deputy Secretary of Defense Advisor to Cheney

13. Rogue state

According to PNACs June 3, 1997 Statement of Principles:

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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. PNACers longed for their own ventriloquists dummy that could project the image of strength without having the actual strength to think for himself. After Reagan, presidents Bush and Clinton were too smart to be stampeded into unilateral militaristic adventurism. Of the 25 people who signed the Statement of Principles, many had come to prominence during the Reagan administration. The media and Labor-Zionist foreign policy establishment of the Clintonera dismissed PNACs warmongering fulminations, even after Benjamin Netanyahu led Israels hard-line Likud to power in May 1996. To get PNACs message out, Kristol issued public propaganda letters against the government. The letter dated Jan. 26, 1998, warning Clinton about the danger posed by Iraq is easily recognizable as the basis of George W. Bushs justification for invasion: 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
1. Statement of Principles (Washington, D.C.: The Project for the New American Century, June 3, 1997), hereinafter cited as PNAC.

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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 For the true-believing Marxist or fascist, the cause is everything; the end justifies the means. Truth in the abstract does not exist because the cause is Truth. As the disseminator of Truth, the propagandist will freely distort, lie, libel, inflame, intimidate, misrepresent and dissemble. A reader can detect propaganda by the conspicuous repetition of slogans and key words, valueladen assertions, and promotion of an enemy. 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; Husseins 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 worlds supply of oil will all be put at hazard. Note particularly the passing mention of defending Israel and oil supplies. This, not WMDs, is the real objective of the letter. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to claim the assault on Iraq came solely at PNACs instigation. An undeclared war to destroy Iraq had been in effect since the invasion of Kuwait.3 A cease-fire was declared on Feb. 28, 1991, and Iraqs army withdrew to its position status quo ante. With hostilities ended and the sovereignty of Kuwait re-established, the pretext for economic sanctions had vanished, yet they were not removed. They remained in place for 12 years, keeping Iraq weak until it was invaded for the second time.

2. Letter to President Clinton, PNAC, Jan. 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>.

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After the war, UNSC Res. 687 (April 3, 1991) institutionalized a sanctions regime, which was illegal when compared to the terms of Res. 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 Iraqs 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 kilometres, 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 hidden somewhere, thus ensuring the continuation of the economic sanctions.

Weapons of mass disinformation

The U.S. had known for at least 10 years that Saddam Hussein had no credible chemical, biological or nuclear weapons capability, yet the Bush administration went to preposterous lengths to bludgeon the world into believing he did. The best way to demonstrate this point is to let Husseins accusers speak for themselves. Saddam Husseins 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 shes been at any time in the recent past because of the elimination of Iraqs offensive military threat. A very significant development.5 (Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, April 29, 1991) [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
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. Dick Cheney, The Gulf War: A First Assessment, Soref Symposium, Washington Institute for Middle East Policy, April 29, 1991, <www.washingtoninstitute.org/pubs/soref/cheney.htm>.

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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 regimes ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction6 (Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 24, 2001) Even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destructionchemical, biological and nuclearI think the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful. Theres 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.7 (Powell, Senate testimony, May 15, 2001) The 10-year span between Cheneys statement and Powells two statements proves beyond doubt that during the 1990s the U.S. did not believe that Hussein had a WMD capability. Nevertheless, within a year of Powells last statement, the U.S. would abandon logic and reasoned analysis for demagoguery, hatemongering and fraud: 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.8 (Vice-President Cheney, Aug. 26, 2002) We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep 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

6. Colin Powell, Press Remarks with Foreign Minister of Egypt Amre Moussa, U.S. Department of State, Feb. 24, 2001. 7. 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>. 8. Dick Cheney, Address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars 103rd National Convention, White House documents, Aug. 26, 2002.

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years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.9 (Powell, Feb. 5, 2003) The issue of weapons of mass destruction, once the subject of skepticism, was now implicitly assumed, even though no new information had come forth to confirm their existence. This bizarre flip-flop convinced few world leaders, as shown by this comment from Russian President Vladimir Putin less than two months after Cheneys 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.10 Clearly, the Bush administration was now deliberately lying to manufacture public and international support for an invasion of Iraq. Wolfowitz virtually admitted as much in a May 9, 2003, Vanity Fair interview: 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 reason11 After he reigned as the chief U.S. arms hunter on Jan 23, 2004, David Kay upheld the original skeptical point of view: I dont think they existed. What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the [1991] Gulf War and I dont think there was a large-scale production program in the 90s.12

C A L C U L AT E D G E N O C I D E
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 UNs humanitarian relief efforts and overseer of the oil-for-food program in Baghdad, resigned in disgust:

9. Remarks by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell To The United Nations Security Council, U.S. State Department, Feb. 7, 2003. 10. Cited in Michael White Putin demands proof over Iraqi weapons Guardian, Oct. 12, 2002. 11. Critics of the Iraq invasion trumpeted this statement as proof that the WMD rationale was a fraud, but defenders of the war claimed Wolfowitz had been misquoted, and that newspapers like Britains The Independent distorted his meaning. (See David Usborne, WMD Just a Convenient Excuse for War, Admits Wolfowitz, May, 30, 2003.) However, the U.S. knew full well that Iraq had no WMDs. The Independent headline accurately reflected the dishonesty of the Bush administrations rush to war. 12. Cited in Tabassum Zakaria, Ex-Arms Hunter Says Iraq Had No Banned Stockpiles, Reuters, Jan. 24, 2004.

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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, grain silosin 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 is 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 drop-out 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 Iraqeven if the American people do not.13 The sanctions were felt much more acutely in the strategically sensitive south-central region than in the Kurdish north. For all categories in southcentral, infant mortality under age 5 almost doubled in every category between 1990 and 1998. 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 1998.14 Thus, Hallidays use of genocide is not an exaggeration; it fits the definition in Article 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: 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.15

13. 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. 14. Under-5 mortality (UNICEF, July 23, 1999 <www.unicef.org/reseval/pdfs/irqu5est.pdf.>. 15. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court <www.un.org/law/icc/statute/romefra.htm>.

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Table VIII: Child mortality per 1,000 live births
Years 1980 1985 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 Avg. 198090 Avg. 199698 Newborn 33.2 29.9 26.2 59.1 59.5 63.4 67.2 66.9 69.2 63.1 67.6 29.8 66.6 Infant 57.2 45.1 46.8 98.7 99.2 101.3 102.8 105 112.3 108.3 113 49.7 111.2 Child 18.5 8.1 13.2 19.2 18.8 20.3 21.3 26.5 28.3 26.5 33.3 13.3 29.4 Newborn 44.6 35.8 42.5 48.4 39.5 31.7 36.7 47.3 33.2 35.2 41.7 41.0 36.7 Infant 93.6 71.6 72.4 103.1 68 52.5 58.6 66.1 52 51.5 52.2 79.2 51.9 Child 37 26.2 21.1 27.9 21.2 16.1 15.9 15.4 19.6 11.1 7.9 28.1 12.9 South-Central Iraq Northern Iraq

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% 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 at <www.lshtm.ac.uk/cps/public/excess mortality in Iraq.pdf>

On May 12, 1996, in a now infamous exchange on 60 Minutes, Clintons Secretary of State Madeleine Albright conceded that the U.S. was willfully and knowingly killing Iraqi children: I N T E R V I E W E R L E S L I E S T A H L : We have heard that a half million children have died... I mean, thats more children than died in Hiroshima. Andand you know, is the price worth it ? M A D E L E I N E A L B R I G H T : I think this is a very hard choice, but the pricewe think the price is worth it. S T A H L V O I C E - O V E R : Worth it because she believes the sanctions are working. A L B R I G H T : 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. Dont 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. S T A H L : Even with the starvation?

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A L B R I G H T : 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 dont have to go and refight the Gulf War.16 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 directly created and perpetuated this catastrophe, Hussein had to be made responsible for it and finally even for 9/11. Its Saddams fault would become the catch-all U.S. mantra to justify the beggaring of Iraqi civilians and the subsequent invasion. In reflecting upon the UN Resolutions behind this man-made humanitarian catastrophe, UNSC Res. 662 (Aug. 9, 1990) is also worth noting. Substitute Israel for Iraq, Palestine for Kuwait, and 5 June 1967 for 1 August 1990 and you have the essence of Israels occupation of Palestine: 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.17
16. See excerpts at <www.thestruggle.org/mecc_11/Albrightx.html>. 17. Security Council resolutions 1990, op. cit. This result supports the prevalent belief in the Arab world that the UN is the handmaiden of Western imperialism, since Kuwait is after all an integral part of Iraq that was carved off by the British Empire to secure its oil.

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Nevertheless, the UN has not imposed sanctions against Israel or threatened it with military reprisals for continuing to flout international law; in fact, the UN has done nothing but issue a blizzard of paper protests. When Osama bin Laden charges the U.S. and the UN with a moral double standard and disregard for the welfare of Muslims, this is what is meant.

Illegal containment
When the subject of WMDs comes up, invariably so does Halabja, the 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 Iraqi inhumanity toward its Kurdish minority, even though Hussein likely had nothing to do with it. Stephen C. Pelletire, the CIAs senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war has evidence to suggest 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, Pelletire 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.18 Nevertheless, on April 5, 1991, the Security Council passed Res. 688 that, 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.19 Two weeks later, the U.S., U.K. and France used Res. 688 as a pretext for setting up a no-fly zone for Iraq 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 Iraqs Shiites. The U.S. extended this zone up to the 33rd parallel in September 1996.20 In total, the two NFZs covered about two thirds of Iraq. The NFZs were illegal, since nothing in this or any Security Council or UN resolution authorized them. Furthermore, their stated humanitarian objectives didnt stand up to observational scrutiny. For example, in the south, the NFZ did not stop artillery bombardments, draining and poisoning of marshes, mass arrests and large-scale burning of houses.
18. Stephen C. Pelletire, A War Crime or an Act of War? New York Times, Jan. 31, 2003. 19. Security Council Resolutions, 1991, op. cit. 20. France withdrew from the northern NFZ in December 1996 and from the southern NFZ December 1998. The northern no-fly zone 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.

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In fact, the U.S. State Department acknowledged that Husseins repression of his opponents had increased since the zone was established.21 One reason was that the latitudinal boundaries of the NFZs did not encompass all Kurdish or Shiite areas, so its impossible to see how they 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 Iraqs 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 radarall 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.22 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.23 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)Jan. 25 Oil exports cut after attack damages pipeline in Mosul (North)Feb. 28 12 killed when planes hit residential area (North)May 13 14 civilians killed (South)July 18 Eight killed and 26 injured (North)July 28.24 So much for the humanitarian justification.

21. 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 >. 22. Paul Richter, Clinton OKs More Aggressive Response to Iraqi Attacks, Los Angeles Times, Jan 27, 1999. 23. 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>. 24. No-fly zones: The legal position, BBC, Feb. 19 2001, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1175950.stm.

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The UNSCOM scam

Clintons 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 Feb. 28 or March 1, 1998, with U.S. 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 season. 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 allowed them in. Their acquiescence, said Ritter, forced Albright to cancel plans to explain to the French why the U.S. was planning to take military action.25 In December 1998, Australian weapons inspector Roger Hill successfully manufactured a provocation when the Iraqis initially refused entry into one of Saddam Husseins presidential palaces. As Ritter told an audience in Vancouver, Canada, on Oct. 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

25. 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.

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they got it and attempted to reconstitute a biological, chemical or nuclear factory, it is detectable.26 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 increased 180 times to more than 54 tonnes. 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 Shiites.27 The softening up of Iraq for the invasion was in its final stages.

IMPERIAL MANIFESTO
In September 2000, PNAC came out with Rebuilding Americas 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 Americas Defenses, though written near the end of the Clinton administration, became the policy bible for George W. Bush. It is a politicotheocratic manifesto calculated to reduce the U.S. to a servant of Big Oil and Zionism. (Even though Israel is only mentioned once in passing, its agenda is well represented.) Its 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 ventriloquists dummy that exceeded Reagans capacity for gormless leadership. As the rest of this chapter will show, Bushs bombing of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq, and assault on the Constitutionall in the name of fighting the war on terrorismcan be traced to PNAC and its need for an external Arab enemy.

Rationalizing militarism
Rebuilding Americas Defenses is an unselfconsciously patronizing apologia for U.S. world domination. Its underlying conceit of whats 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
26. 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>. 27. Richard Norton-Taylor, Britain and US step up bombing in Iraq, Guardian, Dec. 4, 2002.

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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 militarys combat readiness, and put in jeopardy the Pentagons 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 wellconceived 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.28 One neednt 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 embraces 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 todays 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.29 Furthermore, PNAClike JINSA, WINEP, AEI, CSP and other think tankshas deep ties to the U.S. and Israel military establishments, and as such needs an external enemy to justify bloated defense budgets. In short, PNACers needed to re-orient U.S. military doctrine toward overt, unilateral aggression in a world that at least paid lip service to the idea of collective security. Rebuilding Americas Defenses articulates this strategy by disguising aggression and wasteful military spending as necessary defensive reforms. The following passage is key to understanding the mentality of PNAC: 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
28. Donald Kagan, Gary Schmitt, Thomas Donnelly et al., Rebuilding Americas 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 PNACs website. 29. Ibid., p. 73.

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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 DPGs 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.30 Because the period between Cheneys statement and the publication of Rebuilding Americas 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 U.S. allies: The presence of American forces in critical regions around the world is the visible expression of extent of Americas 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.31 This noblesse oblige underscores the primacy of 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 make the case 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 whos in control. In fact, preeminence or preeminent with respect to U.S. power occurs 51 times in 76 pages of text. Pax Americana or American Peace occurs 17 times. Such conspicuous repetition of pat phrases indicates that Rebuilding Americas Defenses is propaganda, not analysis.
30. Ibid.,. p. ii. For a detailed treatment of the DPG, see Chapter 14. 31. Ibid., p. 14.

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Plan of attack
In the report, the authors describe four core military missions of a reformed military: defending the American homeland; fighting and winning multiple simultaneous major theatre wars; performing constabulary duties to shape the security environment in critical regions; and reorganizing 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, the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia, and redeploy the Navy in East Asia; Modernize our fighter aircraft, submarine and surface fleets; 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 ensure 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.32 Even if the case for military reform were sound, the recommendations in Rebuilding Americas 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 any other countries, even allies, from challenging U.S. dominance. Rebuilding Americas Defenses, therefore, is a manifesto for the unbridled use of U.S. military power to coerce the world into serving U.S. and Israeli interests. The following table 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 Clintons term, total national defense spending amounted to $330 billion; if Bushs projected increases through 2007 hold true, that figure will rise by 29.16 percent in 2007, especially in procurement and new weapons programs.

32. Ibid., pp. iv-v, 23.

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Table IX: National Defense Budget Authority Trends by Appropriations Title, FY19932007 (US $billion FY2003)

Department

Avg. 1993 2000 91.0 112.9 52.0 40.7 6.2 4.2 3.9 310.8 13.5

Estd. 2001 2004 91.0 135.9 67.2 50.6 5.6 4.1 2.4 356.7 16.1

Estd. 2005 2007 103.1 140.2 83.5 55.9 9.7 4.7 1.9 399.0 15.7

Real Growth 1985 1990 0% -4% -29% -2% -23% -7% NA -13% 13%

Real Growth 1990 1998 -31% -9% -52% -14% -8% 3% NA -27% 0%

Real Growth 1998 2003 11% 36% 42% 34% -20% 2% NA 29% 23%

Military Personnel Operation and Maintenance Procurement RDT&E* Military Construction Family Housing Other Subtotal, Dept. of Defense Dept. of Energy Defenserelated Other Defenserelated Total, National Defense

1.3 325.6

1.7 374.5

1.6 416.3

4% -12%

37% -26%

49% 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.

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.33 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, because as we saw earlier the U.S. does not want genuine democracy in countries that have valuable raw materials. This asymmetry is characteristic of mercantilist economic practice,
33. Ibid., p. 1

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in which a central power exploits the resources of other, usually poorer, countries 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.34 This seemingly even-tempered recommendation masks profound frustration with Clintons policy. Because the sanctions and no-fly zones destroyed Iraqs 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 thingthey damned the Clinton administration with faint praise. Now, the no-fly zones were only an essential element in U.S. strategy and force posture.35 This diminution of importance amounts to covert preparedness for unilateral military action as presaged in PNACs Jan. 26, 1998, open letter to Clinton. As we saw above, PNACers fumed about the failure of Clintons containment policy, and declared that Saddam Hussein had to be deposed at any cost. The letter concluded: 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.36 Contrary to the letter-writers assertion, Clintons containment policy did not failit worked too well. From this perspective, we can now appreciate the apparent non sequitur between the boast of U.S. hegemony and the lament of U.S. military unpreparedness. The boast was not an endorsement of the status quo, but a warning that the status quo did not serve the interests of Israel. PNAC needed an excuse for an enormous military buildup to do Israels dirty work and expand U.S. hegemony. It selected the same excuse Clinton used to justify the no-fly zonesweapons of mass destruction.

34. Ibid., p. 14. 35. Ibid., p. 23. 36. Letter to President Clinton, PNAC, Jan. 26, 1998, <www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm>.

Part IV
One Nation under PNAC

E V E S E E N H O W the Cheney White House hid behind the Sept. 11 attack and the rhetoric of the war on terrorism to wreak a terrible vengeance on Afghanistan for the Talibans refusal to be intimidated. According to a popular theory, controlling energy supplies from the Persian Gulf was the primary motive for Bushs invasion of Iraq. At first glance the case seems persuasive:

Iraq possesses the worlds second largest reserves of accessible oil, and indirect U.S. control would lessen dependence on Saudi Arabia, which is becoming a political liability. Using the military to secure long-term access to Persian Gulf oil is a stated objective of PNAC, both in the letter to Clinton and in Rebuilding Americas Defenses; Bush and Cheney are both products of the oil industry. Like Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who was treated as an ally while he served U.S. purposes, but then became an enemy of convenience over access to energy; The U.S. exploited the UN to give moral sanction to the invasion of Iraq, as it did with Afghanistan; and Both attacks were justified in the name of the war on terrorism. Nevertheless, these similarities only go so far. As oil analyst Anthony Sampson wrote in the Observer: The fact that President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney have both been enriched by oil companies raises suspicions about their motives for war, even though oil companies have had little influence on US policy-making. 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.

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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.1 Sampson goes on to note that an added disincentive for British and European oil companies to wage war 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. Second, if the U.S. were really interested in maintaining a secure oil supply, it would not have used trumped up charges against Saddam Hussein to impose crippling sanctions and no-fly zones. Hussein may have been a tyrant, but the U.S. has a long history of supporting and working with repressive rulersthe Shah, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Suhartoall of whom were no less brutal than Hussein. In fact, the U.S. enjoyed good relations with him during the 1980s, even though it knew Hussein was using U.S.supplied chemical weapons almost daily.2 On Nov. 26, 1983, President Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 114, in which he spelled out the primacy of oil in the declared neutral U.S. stance in the Iran-Iraq war: 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.3 To underscore U.S. support for Iraq, on Dec. 20, 1983, Reagan sent Rumsfeld as a special envoy to assure Hussein of U.S. support and to promise assistance to build a pipeline to Aqaba, Jordan.4 Neither Reagan nor Rumsfeld brought up the subject of Husseins use of chemical weapons. In the following table, we can see how U.S. policy under Clinton did not show a paranoid fear of losing control of Persian Gulf oil. In Table X, the drop from 514,000 bbl/d in 1990 to zero in 1991 coincides with the start of the sanctions program. The resumption of imports from zero to 1,000 bbl/d in 1996 reflects the beginning of the oil for food program, which was virtually useless in allowing Iraq to export sufficient
1. Anthony Sampson, Oilmen dont want another Suez, Observer, Dec. 22, 2002. 2. Declassified State Department information memorandum, Nov. 1, 1983, at <www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq24.pdf>. 3. President Ronald Reagan, National Security Decision Directive 114, Nov. 26, 1983, at National Security Archives, <www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq26.pdf>. 4. Robert Scheer, U.S. to Hussein: WMD AOK, The Nation, Dec. 30, 2003.

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quantities of oil to help either the Iraqi people or rebuild the economy. By 1998, U.S. import levels returned to pre-sanction levels and more than doubled the following year.
Table X: U.S. annual average crude oil imports from Iraq (1,000 barrels per day)
Year U.S. Imports Year U.S. Imports Year 1980 28 1988 343 1996 1981 <.5 1989 441 1997 1982 3 1990 514 1998 1983 10 1991 0 1999 1984 12 1992 0 2000 1985 46 1993 0 2001 1986 81 1994 0 2002 1987 82 1995 0 2003

U.S. 1 89 336 725 620 795 459 470 Imports Source: Table 3.3a, Energy Information Administration/Monthly Energy Review, February 2004. <www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/pdf/pages/sec3_8.pdf>

By May 2000, though, U.S. refineries were buying 90 percent of Iraqs allowable exports, which made up seven percent of total U.S. oil imports. In 2001, Iraq was the sixth largest supplier to the U.S., after Saudi Arabia, Canada, Venezuela, Mexico and Nigeria. Iraqi oil is especially prized for its low sulphur contentthe lower the sulphur, the sweeter the oil because it requires less refining, which in turn translates into higher profits for oil companies. 5 We are now left with the following conundrum: Reagan ignored Husseins known use of WMDs for the sake of maintaining the flow of oil, whereas Clinton and later Bush trumped up charges of WMD use and production that ended up impeding the flow of oil. Under Bush, NFZ enforcement intensified, but U.S. imports of Iraqi oil remained higher than any year since 1982, save 1990. Was U.S. control of Iraqi oil not as big a concern for Bush as it was for Reaganor was it simply never the motive it was claimed to be?

Dollar dilemma
Another scenario that seems to augur for an oil-based motive concerns Iraqs 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 it was at its all-time low against the

5. John K. Cooley, Trading with the enemyU.S. refineries buying most of Iraqs oil, ABC News, July 20, 2001; Simon Romero et. al, New Scrutiny of the Flow of Iraqi Oil to American Consumers, New York Times, Oct. 11, 2004. Iraqi oil is second only to Lybian oil for sweetness.

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U.S. dollar (82 cents). Consensus opinion at the time was that this was a bizarre move that could cost Iraq up to 270 million.6 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 Oct. 30, 2000, the UN assented and by 2001 almost all of Iraqs revenues were paid in euros. Husseins tactic turned out to be brilliant, since the euro has risen by almost 50 percent against the U.S. dollar since July 2001. In the oil currency scenario, the U.S. launched the invasion to install a pliant government in Baghdad that would re-establish the dollar as Iraqs 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 may be one motive behind covert U.S. 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.7 The currency theory 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 OPECs total $241.9 billion. That figure is forecast to rise to US$16.6 bn this year and to $21.2 bn in 2005, but in the grand scheme of things this is hardly enough to justify war. By comparison, an analysis by Lehman Brothers found that Asian central banks outside of Japan converted $133 billion from low-yield higher risk U.S. securities to stronger, higher-yielding currencies like the euro, British pound, and the Australian dollar, just in the latter half of 2003. Asian banks also financed half of the U.S. current account and fiscal deficits that year.8 Given the magnitudes, going to war over Iraqs euro conversion seems absurd. Second, the trade deficit actually militates against considering euro conversion as a casus belli. The U.S. economy is in such decrepit shape 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.
6. Faisal Islam, Iraq nets handsome profit by dumping dollar for euro, Observer, Feb. 16, 2003. 7. For a representative discussion of this theory see William Clark, The Real Reasons For The Upcoming War In Iraq, March 2, 2003, <www.rense.com/general34/realre.htm>. 8. Faisal Islam, Asian banks dump dollar, Observer, Feb. 22, 2004.

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For it would still not have fallen by enough to make a significant dent in Americas current-account deficit. The maths behind Americas 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 Americas 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.9 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 euro would have to rise to $1.45 by 2005. To bring it to 2.5 percent, it would have to harden to $1.98 by 2008, assuming the dollar fell evenly against all currencies. So the dollar devaluating and losing ground to the euro as the worlds reserve currency should help the U.S. pull itself out of its economic morass. In sum, neither oil nor oil currency seemed to be much of a motive for invading Iraq, at least as far as U.S. energy needs were concerned, which means we must look at the other two-thirds of the fascist allianceChristian and Jewish Zionism.

O N WA R D C H R I S T I A N S O L D I E R S
Just as Ronald Reagan was an instrument of the Heritage Foundation, George W. Bush did the bidding of PNAC, although that could not have been predicted from the outset. During the 2000 presidential campaign, PNAC had little use for Bush, who was thought to be a moderate like his father and likely to adopt a Labor-Zionist approach to the Middle East. After the hopes of zionistically correct presidential candidate Sen. John McCain faded, the cabal rallied behind Bush. After the controversial 2000 election put Bush in the White House, Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition team, which allowed him to stack the administration with fellow PNACers like Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby. The coup dtat had begun, and the gormless Bush would be the figurehead. Despite spending his entire life exploiting his fathers name and business connections, Bush was a professional failure.10 The only reason anybody wanted to have anything to do with him was to gain access to his father.

9. Competitive sport in Boca Raton, The Economist, Feb. 5, 2004. 10. See, for example, George W. Bush Resume For Re-Election, <www.rense.com/general48/repe.htm>.

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On paper, Bush has a bachelors degree in history from Yale and a Masters in business administration from Harvard, but how much these degrees owe to intelligence or to daddys connections is a moot point. Professor Yoshi Tsurumi taught Bush international business 30 years ago at Harvard, and has vivid memories of his students bizarre understanding of economics: Bush was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare and public schools. To him, the antitrust watchdog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to free market competition. To him, Franklin Roosevelts New Deal was socialism. [Today] President Bush and his brain, Karl Rove, are leading a radical revolution of destroying all the democratic political, social, judiciary and economic institutions that both Democratics [sic] and moderate Republicans have built together since Roosevelts New Deal. Bushs tax cuts have given over 93 percent of their benefits to large corporations and well-to-do households with over $250,000 of annual income.11 The PNACers could hardly have found a more useful idiot to implement Leo Strausss unenlightened, secretive, elitist governing model.

George finds Jesus

Bushs religiosity dates to a life-altering weekend with Rev. Billy Graham in 1985. For two decades Bush had been a dissolute alcoholic and cocaine abuser, but after the weekend he emerged a born-again Christian. The 39year-old Bush then began two years of Bible study that helped him conquer his addictions and refocus his life. He abandoned his familys Episcopalianism for his wifes Methodism, and embraced compassionate conservatism. Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of the Christian magazine Sojourners describes how Bush subsequently metamorphosed into an imperial crusader: Then came Sept. 11, 2001. Bushs 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 Sept. 11 Bush found his mission in life. The self-help Methodist slowly became a messianic Calvinist promoting Americas 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
11. Cited in William Hughes, Bushonomics 101, Mediamonitors.net, July 16, 2004.

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arrogant nation, they will resent us, he said. If were a humble nation, but strong, theyll 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?12 The answer is simple: A foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic, and cruel is the essence of PNACs grand design.

Crusader rabid
Even though Bushs religiosity was a significant catalyst for the invasion, bigotry toward Muslims has been a feature of Christianity since the First Crusade. In 1095, Alexios I Komnenos, emperor of the Byzantine Empire, sent Pope Urban II an urgent call 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. Its unlikely Urban II acted purely out of compassion for the beleaguered emperor. A crusade meant that he could send Christians abroad to fight a common foe, instead of making war on each other in Europe. In short, the crusade to defend the Byzantine Empire was if nothing else a convenient way to export violence, as this account by Fulcher of Chartres shows: For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised them. For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of Romania [the Greek empire] as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont, which is called the Arm of St. George. They 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.

12. Jim Wallis, Dangerous ReligionGeorge W. Bushs theology of empire, Sojourners, SeptemberOctober 2003.

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On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christs 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.13 Note the following themes: Killing Turks and Arabs is equated with peace and the rights of the church, and is 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 Turks and Arabs (Muslims) were sub-human and not worthy of respect. A robber can become a knight just by fighting them. Turks and Arabs are condemned as pagansa ludicrous charge since Muslims not only belong to the same monotheistic tradition as do Jews and Christians, but also waged their own battles against pagans.14

13. 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>. 14. For evidence that Jews, Christians and Muslims pray to the same God, see John Kearney, My God is your God, New York Times, Jan. 28, 2004.

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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 nonChristian than a Christian. Muslims are portrayed as the attackers and the Christian as the virtuous defender who has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ! Those who die in battle against the Turks and Arabs receive heavenly rewards. After the Sept. 11 attack, columnist Ann Coulter articulated the essential Zionist hatred of Muslims in a bigoted rant for The National Review: This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack. Those responsible include anyone anywhere in the world who smiled in response to the annihilation of patriots like Barbara Olson. We dont need long investigations of the forensic evidence to determine with scientific accuracy the person or persons who ordered this specific attack. We dont need an international coalition. We dont need a study on terrorism. We certainly didnt need a congressional resolution condemning the attack this week. The nation has been invaded by a fanatical, murderous cult We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We werent punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. Thats war. And this is war.15 The hatemongering was highly successful. Compare these two excerpts from a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll of 1,032 adults conducted on Sept. 14 15, 2001. In the first, people were asked to ascribe blame for the attacks. The first four categories each polled more than 80 percent for some degree of responsibility, despite the fact that Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine have no role in the attack and Pakistan had no motive. Note also that the Palestinians are included, but Saudi Arabia (a vital source of U.S. oil) is not, even though the majority of the alleged hijackers were Saudis.

15. Ann Coulter, This Is WarWe should invade their countries, National Review, Sept. 13, 2001. As a result of this column and Coulters attempted rebuttal to her critics, her column was cancelled. See Jonah Goldberg, LAffaire CoulterGoodbye to all that, National Review, Oct. 3, 2001.

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Table XI: USA Today PollAssigning Blame

Those responsible Afghanistan Iraq Pakistan Palestinians Fundamentalist Muslim Leaders Osama bin Laden A great deal 64%a 41% 31% 35% 53% 83% A moderate amount 21% 32% 32% 36% 25% 7% Only a little 5% 9% 17% 10% 6% 3% Not at all 4% 9% 10% 11% 6% 3% No opinion 6% 9% 10% 8% 10% 4%

Table XII: USA Today pollsecurity measures

Security measure Requiring Arabs, including those who are U.S. citizens, to carry a special ID Requiring Arabs, including those who are U.S. citizens, to undergo special, more intensive security checks before boarding airplanes in the U.S. Instituting new security procedures that would require passengers to check in two to three hours before their flight is scheduled to depart Requiring every person going into an office building or public place to show ID In favor 49% Opposed 49% Dont know 2%

58%

41%

1%

86%

14%

0%

77%

22%

1%

The second excerpt measured opinions on the adoption of eight proposed security measures, of which four are cited in Table XII. For a republic built on respect for individual liberty, one would have expected a very low affirmative vote in the top two categories. The high degree of support indicates that Arab-Americans rights are not deemed worthy of the same degree of protection as those of non-Arabs, negating the principle of equality before the law embedded in the Constitution.

OPEN SEASON ON MUSLIMS

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Muslim Americans were subjected to intense racial profiling, arbitrary arrest and other forms of officially sanctioned discrimination that continue to this day. In summer 2004, the U.S. Census

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Bureau acceded to a directive from the Department of Homeland Security to provide private information on Arab-Americans. On the following day, an organizer for the Bush-Cheney campaign asked the Arizona Daily Star to disclose the race of one of its journalistsMamta Popat. The paper indignantly refused.16 On Oct. 19, 2004, the U.S. banned Muslims from giving to 27 charities, ostensibly to prevent funds from reaching terrorists, but this argument is transparently ludicrous. Among those blacklisted are: Aid Organization of the Ulema (Pakistan) Global Relief Foundation (U.S.) Benevolence International Foundation (U.S.) Benevolence International Fund (Canada) Commit de Bienfaisance et de Secours aux Palestiniens (France) Association de Secours Palestinien (Switz.) Interpal (U.K.), and Palestinian Association in Austria (Austria)17 That this blacklisting is deliberately designed to harm Muslims is obvious from the fact that it does not include any Hindu, Jewish or Christian charities that might be involved in terrorist activity. Note also the conspicuous inclusion of three international Palestinian charities. But of all the acts of official bigotry, nothing typifies the manufacturing of anti-Muslim hatred better than the Great Anthrax frame-up. From October to December 2001, anthrax-laced letters were mailed to 22 people in New York, New Jersey, Washington D.C., Florida and Connecticut. Among the five who died from inhaling the toxin were two U.S. postal workers and Robert Stevens, the 63-year-old photo editor of The Sun newspaper in Boca Raton, Fla. Among those targeted but not affected were Democratic senators Leahy and Daschle, and NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw.18 The letters inside the envelopes bore the title 09-11-01 and crudely written threats like Death to America, Allah is Great, and Take Penacilin Now. The immediate effect was predictable, as the following excerpt from Bob Woodwards Bush at War shows: The powder in the letter mailed to Senator Daschles office had been found to be potent, prompting officials to suggest its source was likely an expert capable of producing the bacteria in large amounts. Tenet said, I think its AQmeaning al-Qaida. I think theres a state
16. Lynette Clemetson Homeland Security Given Data on Arab-Americans, New York Times, July 30, 2004; C.J. Karamargin, Bush camp solicits race of Star staffer, Arizona Daily Star, July 31, 2004. 17. U.S. blacklists 27 Muslim charities, The Dawn, Oct. 20, 2004. 18. For a chronology of the scare see Anthrax InfoU.S. Anthrax Attacks 2001, George Washington University, <www.gwu.edu/~cih/anthraxinfo/public/publicthreat_attacks.htm>.

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sponsor involved. Its too well thought out, the powders too well refined. It might be Iraq, it might be Russia, it might be a renegade scientist, perhaps from Iraq or Russia. Scooter Libby, Cheneys chief of staff, said he also thought the anthrax attacks were state-sponsored. Weve got to be careful on what we say. It was important not to lay it on anyone now. If we say its al-Qaida, a state sponsor may feel safe and then hit us thinking they will have a bye because well blame it on al-Qaida. Im not going to talk about a state sponsor, Tenet assured them. Its good that we dont, said Cheney, because were not ready to do anything about it.19 Cheney had good cause to say this, because if something had been done about it, the fallout would have been devastating for the junta. First of all, linguistic analysis of the letters determined that Muslims did not write them. Second, and most importantly, chemical analysis specified the type of anthrax as the Ames strain, which was manufactured only at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md.20 A detailed investigation by the Hartford Courant revealed that security at USAMRIID was all but non-existent, and that 27 specimens of the Ames strain had gone missing 10 years earlier: After one weekend in February [1992, Dr. Mary Beth] Downs discovered that someone had been in the lab using the microscope to take photos of slides, and apparently had forgotten to reset a feature on the microscope that imprints each photo with a label. After taking a few pictures of her own slides that morning, Downs was surprised to see Antrax 005 emblazoned on her negatives. Downs also noted that an automatic counter on the camera, like an odometer on a car, had been rolled back to hide the fact that pictures had been taken over the weekend. She wrote of her findings in a memo to [Commanding Officer Lt.-Col. Michael] Langford, noting that whoever was using the microscope was either in a big hurry or didnt know what they were doing. Documents from the inquiry show that one unauthorized person who was observed entering the lab building at night was Langfords predecessor, Lt.-Col. Philip Zack, who at the time no longer worked at Fort Detrick. A surveillance camera recorded Zack being let in at 8:40 p.m. on Jan. 23, 1992, apparently by Dr. Marian Rippy, a lab pathologist and close friend of Zacks, according to a report filed by a security guard.21
19. Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), pp. 248-49. Indeed, the anthrax powder was not only highly refined, it was aerosolized and weaponized by a hitherto unknown, state-of-the-art process, pointing to a high-tech U.S. source. 20. Jack Dolan and Dave Altimari, Anthrax Missing From Army Lab, Hartford Courant, Jan. 20, 2002. 21. Ibid. One specimen was later found in the lab.

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Soon after Zack, a staunch Zionist, began to be identified as the prime suspect, the anthrax scare quietly disappeared from public view. He has never been arrested or questioned, even though he was unlawfully in the lab just before it was discovered that anthrax was missing. Zack left Fort Detrick in December 1991 because of charges of unprofessional conduct toward Egyptian scholar Dr. Ayaad Assaad.22 Arabs had nothing to do with the anthrax scare and the five deaths it caused; yet Zionists exploited it to incite hatred toward Muslims and manufacture a justification to attack Iraq. In his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union Address Bush said: The budget I send you will propose almost $6 billion to quickly make available effective vaccines and treatments against agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, Ebola, and plague. We must assume that our enemies would use these diseases as weapons, and we must act before the dangers are upon us.23 He was at least right about one thing: the U.S. does have enemies who will use diseases as weapons.

F A S C I S M A N D FA N AT I C I S M
In his book The True Believer, American philosopher Eric Hoffer shows how a religious fanatic can convince himself of any truth, no matter how bizarre: 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 believers 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.24 Generally speaking, Hoffers book is a treatise on how true believers control masses and how and why the masses are susceptible to control. As might be expected, Adolf Hitler and the power of Nazi propaganda are a featured subject. On Dec. 11, 1941, Hitler delivered a speech in the Reichstag in which he discussed, among other things, the reasons for his attack on the Soviet Union:
22. Ibid., and Hector Carreon, FBI Closes in on Anthrax TerroristPrime Suspect is a Zionist, La Voz de Aztlan, Feb. 26, 2002. 23. George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, Jan. 28, 2003. 24. Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (Chicago: Time-Life Books, 1966), pp. 82-83.

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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.25 Of course, 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 to the end of 1941. Under Stalins paranoid control, the army was badly trained, badly equipped and badly led. Also, Hitlers motive for the invasion was entirely economicthe Third Reich was growing desperately short of oil, and he needed to capture the Soviet oilfields in and around Azerbaijan as quickly as possible. Hitler, though, knew that facts and reason were irrelevant to propaganda. He had to appeal to the peoples fear, hatred and nationalism. He had to convince the German people that an evil foe was threatening Germany, and that his unilateral decision to attack the Soviet Union was justified in the name of self-defense. It was an easy task. Prejudice against communists, especially Jewish communists, was woven into the fabric of Nazi society. The invocation of God and Christian imagery was the great unifying technique by which he convinced the people they were united with him in a grand crusade. As Hoffer notes: 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.26 Leo Strauss would wholeheartedly agree.

25. The Reichstag speech of December 11, 1941: Hitlers 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>. 26. Hoffer, p. 109. Todays neo-fascist cant is artfully grafted by twisting American core values like the work ethic.

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Demonizing Osama bin Laden

One could hardly call George W. Bush an inspiring speaker, but the people who write his speeches understand the power of prejudice and religious fanaticism as well as Hitler did. In his address to the nation on the evening of the attack, Bush used the word evil four times. In a Sept. 16 address and press briefing on the South Lawn of the White House, he used evil or evil-doer nine times, and depicted bin Laden as a devil-figure who wanted to destroy the Western democratic way of life. Yet, there is no proof that either bin Laden or his spokesmen have said or done anything to justify this charge.27 Furthermore, bin Laden has never vented his anger at symbols of American popular cultureonly at the U.S. presence in the Middle East and its treatment of Muslims. On Oct. 9, 2001, Qatars al-Jazeera satellite television network broadcast a videotape of this anger from bin Laden spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith: 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.28 One doesnt have to like, much less agree with, bin Laden to acknowledge the essential truth of this statement. The U.S. and Israel perpetrate virtually unfettered violence in the Middle East, and the worlds
27. George Bush, Address to the Nation, Sept. 11, 2001; Remarks upon arrival at the South Lawn, Sept. 16, 2001. Sen. John McCain was closer to the mark when he called the bombings an act of war, not an act of terrorism. 28. Al-Qaida statement, BBC, Oct. 10, 2001.

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double standard on terrorism is too obvious to deny. Within this context, bin Ladens lament for the suffering of Muslims and condemnation of U.S. terrorism is understandable, and this poses a danger for Bush: If bin Ladens motives are understandable, they must be rational. If they are rational, they cannot be evil, yet the portrayal of bin Laden as evil is the basis for the war on terrorism. Although bin Laden, through Abu Ghaith, expressed admiration for the Sept. 11 attack, he said nothing to intimate that he had anything to do with it. Moreover, neither Bush nor the media presented any such evidence. From Aug. 1 to Sept. 10, 2001, The New York Times database shows no matches for evil + bin Laden; however, from Sept. 11 to Dec. 31, 2001, it registers 57 hits. It also registers 1,820 hits for bin Laden, compared with 187 over the year to date. The most conspicuous attempt to blame bin Laden occurred in midDecember 2001, when CBS broadcast an amateur Arabic-language videotape supposedly found in a house in Qandahar, Afghanistan. On the tape, which was of poor video and audio quality, bin Laden and a circle of his followers are seen ostensibly talking about the Sept. 11 attack. The English-language translation, conducted by the Pentagon, purported to show bin Laden confessing to planning them. Three passages are particularly significant: 1) We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. (...Inaudible...) due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for. 2) We were at (...inaudible...) when the event took place. We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that day. We had finished our work that day and had the radio on. It was 5:30 p.m. our time. I was sitting with Dr. Ahmad Abu-al-(Khair). Immediately, we heard the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We turned the radio station to the news from Washington. The news continued and no mention of the attack until the end. At the end of the newscast, they reported that a plane just hit the World Trade Center. 3) The brothers, who conducted the operation, all they knew was that they have a martyrdom operation and we asked each of them to go to America but they didnt know anything about the operation, not even one letter. But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes. The CBS news anchor declared that the video represented undeniable proof of bin Ladens guilt, but the tape did no such thing. The German television program Monitor obtained the Arabic original from the U.S. State Department and asked two experts to compare independently the Pentagons

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translation with the Arabic original. After several days, they found numerous errors, and the Monitor report was broadcast Dec. 20.29 In the first of the abovementioned examples, diplomat and translator Dr. Murad Alami, one of the experts, found that the phrase in advance did not appear in the Arabic original, nor did any mention of the planning or calculation of fatalities. In the second, the word previous was also not found, nor was any indication of when the attack was to take place. In the third, he found that the interpolation of we was also a Pentagon invention. Alami said he heard it was required by them on the tape, and what followed thereafter was unintelligible. Later in the program, Gernot Rotter, professor of Middle Eastern and Oriental Studies at the University of Hamburg, summarized the dubious quality of the Pentagons translation: Whether or not bin Laden organized or was involved in the attacks, the tape is of such poor quality that some sections cannot be understood at all. What can be understood often comes from broken connections that no evidence can be construed. The American translator who heard and transcribed the tape, in many places wrote into it things he wanted to hear, but which after repeated listenings cannot be found to exist.30 Leaving aside the errors in translation, the video itself is likely a hoax. The idea that bin Laden would allow himself to be taped making such a confession is suspicious, as is the convenient finding of the videotape. In addition, the character on the tape has facial features that differ significantly from those found in existing pictures of bin Laden.31 In sum, no credible empirical evidence at the time linked bin Laden to the Sept. 11 attack. Nevertheless, this videotape was just what the Bush administration needed to manufacture consent for a U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan. Bush failed in his stated goal of capturing or killing bin Laden, but he did destroy the Taliban government and replace it with a friendlier regime.

Demonizing Saddam Hussein

Bush employed the same rhetoric to justify the invasion of Iraq, in his infamous 2003 State of the Union address he said: Once again, we are called to defend the safety of our people, and the hopes of all mankind. And we accept this responsibility

29. Wrong translation as evidence, Monitor, WDR, Dec. 20, 2001, <www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/real.phtml?id=379>. (Translation from the German by the author). 30. Cited in Ibid. 31. See You are Looking at a U.S Government Lie, www.whatreallyhappened.com. The article goes on to point out inconsistencies between statements on the tape and alleged evidence linking the attack to the hijackers.

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Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaida. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own. Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.32 Of course, not one word of this was true, and the fact that Bush repeatedly lied about the threat from Hussein is prima facie grounds for impeachment. Nevertheless, many people believed Bushs words and still do, because prejudice against Islam and Arabs is woven into the superiority complex of militant Judeo-Christianity. On March 27, 2003, eight days after the start of the invasion, Bush betrayed the role of Christian Zionism in foreign policy when he held a private meeting with 141 evangelical leaders. Among the invitees were Jerry Falwell, who had called the Prophet Mohammed a terrorist; the late 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 JudeoChristian superiority complex and contempt for other beliefs.33 As he told Time magazine: The secular world tends to look at Iraq and say, well, its Muslim, and thats 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.34

Gods little terrorist

Bushs speeches after Sept. 11 are liberally peppered with good vs. evil absolutism, but as we have seen, this moralism is not the language of reasoned, democratic statecraft; it is a language of fascism, and the similarities between Bush and Hitler are neither accidental nor exaggerated. Common to each is the delusion that he was selected by God to champion justice and commit violence against a specific people. Just as Bush demonized Arabs and Muslims, Hitler demonized Jews, as in this excerpt from Mein Kampf: If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men.
32. George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, Jan. 28, 2003. 33. Dana Milbank, An Answer? Out of the Question, Washington Post, April 21, 2003. 34. Broward Liston, Interview: Missionary work in Iraq, Time, April 15, 2003.

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Eternal Nature inexorably avenges the infringement of her commands. Hence today 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.35 It seems that for some people, the Devil is the most important character in Christianity. If he didnt exist, thered be no need for salvation, and therefore no need to believe in Jesus or the Bible. In politics as in religion, the fascist needs to propagate the myth of an omnipresent devil-figure to keep his people in a constant state of paranoia so that they will eagerly accept infringements of their civil liberties. So that the fascist can anathematize criticism as subversive, the violence to come must be stripped of all rational substance and be recast as a stark moral battle. He must exploit the spirit of sacrifice to convince the people to identify themselves with his crusade and see themselves as part of a greater community. This is precisely what happened after the Sept. 11 attack. The climate of contrived paranoia and imperial diktat stifled informed dissent, especially about the unconstitutional PATRIOT Act and the concomitant persecution of Arabs and Muslims. In a November 2003 speech dripping with sanctimony and condescension, Bush depicted 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 importancedemocracy 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 undertakingit 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 succeedand that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheranthat 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.36
35. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. I, Ch. 2: Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna, <www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch02.html>. 36. George W. Bush, Freedom in Iraq and Middle East (Remarks at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy), Nov. 6, 2003, <www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rm/26019.htm>. Despite its title, the NED is a front set up by the Reagan administration to mask counterrevolutionary subversive activities previously carried out covertly by the CIA.

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Bush doesnt mention that in 1991 his father promised to support the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south if they rose up against Hussein, but in the end he stood by and watched as Hussein slaughtered them. The feeling at the time was that Husseins iron-fisted rule was a greater force for stability than a Kurdish or Shiite government that might be less amenable to U.S. interests. For George W. Bush, Iraqs only value is as a country of great strategic importance because it might pose a danger to the U.S., but it is necessary to obscure this selfish motive by playing up Christiandemocratic magnanimity and noblesse oblige. Bushs megalomania dates to his time as governor of Texas, when he said God called him to run for president. After he became leader of the U.S., Bush claimed God again called him, this time to vanquish evil men [meaning Muslim leaders 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.37 Fourteen months later, at peace talks with Palestinian representatives at Aqaba, Jordan, Bush confided his religious mission to former Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas: God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.38 An account from Lawrence Martin in the Globe and Mail about a meeting between Bush and new Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in early January in Mexico corroborates this religious self-delusion: Mr. Bush let the Prime Minister know that he believed himself to be on the side of God and tending to Gods 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 Presidents world view that sent Mr. Bush off on his sermon. It wasnt, Canadian officials say, a gratuitous rant. Whether or not he was presenting himself as Gods agent depends on whose version of the meeting one listens to.39

37. State of the Union, 2003 op. cit. (Italics added.). 38. Arnon Regular Road map is a life saver for us, PM Abbas tells Hamas, Haaretz, March 19, 2004. 39. Lawrence Martin, Christian soldier Bush swears by the Lord, Globe and Mail, Feb. 5, 2004.

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Bushs megalomania, delusions of grandeur and moodiness have also invited allusions to the obsessive secrecy and persecution complex of President Richard Nixon. The Washington newspaper Capitol Hill Blue captured this irrationality: The mood here is that were under siege, theres no doubt about it, says one troubled [White House] aide who admits he is looking for work elsewhere. In this administration, you dont 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.40 West Wing staffers said Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft are privately referred to as The Blues Brothers because they think theyre on a mission from God.41 In his recently published book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, Dr. Justin Frank, director of psychiatry at George Washington University, concludes that Bush is an untreated ex-alcoholic who sees himself, the U.S. and God as interchangeable.42 In the introduction to his book, Frank writes: 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 unacknowledgedeven 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.43 Although Frank did not meet Bush or members of his family, he defends at-a-distance psychoanalysis of political leaders as a well-respected practice that dates to the 1940s. Moreover, other prominent psychiatrists have supported Franks findings. Dr. Carolyn Williams, a psychoanalyst who specializes in paranoid personalities, described how a stern upbringing left Bush with immense feelings of inadequacy:
40. Doug Thompson, Bushs Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides, Capitol Hill Blue, Jun 4, 2004. 41. Ibid. 42. Cited in Richard Leiby, Rx for W: Electoral Surgery, Washington Post, June 10, 2004. 43. From the introduction to Justin Frank, Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), excerpted at </www.harpercollins.com/catalog/excerpt_xml.asp?isbn=0060736704>.

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I find the bulk of [Franks] analysis credible. 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 cost because he feels surrounded by disapproval. His behavior suggests a classic paranoid personality. Additionally, his stated belief that certain actions are Gods Will is symptomatic of delusional behavior.44 Frank wrote that Bushs early years of heavy drinking caused lasting brain damage, and that the only possible treatment option for Bushs sake and for the nations is to remove him from office. Bushs public ranting about evil, demonizing of bin Laden and Hussein, browbeating of subordinates who disagree with him, and non-cognitive responses to those who challenge his credibility are proof that the man inhabits a rarefied quasi-religious fantasyland of his own making. Even though PNAC didnt couch its worldview in religious language, Bushs embrace of sacred violence was immensely useful, much in the same way that Muhammad al-Wahhab helped ibn Saud conquer the Arabian Peninsula. Bushs lust to attack was so great that the U.S. conspired with Great Britain to sabotage last-ditch secret negotiations to give weapons inspectors more time to complete their work. As The Observer reported: [Mexicos former ambassador to the UN Adolfo] Aguilar Zinser claimed that the intervention could only have come as a result of surveillance of a closed diplomatic meeting where the compromise was being hammered out. He said it was clear the Americans knew about the confidential discussions in advance. When they [the US] found out, they said, You should know that we dont like the idea and we dont like you to promote it.45 Because Bushs religiosity was merely a catalyst, it could not be the primary motive for the invasion. The only part of the Oil-Christian CrusadeIsrael troika left to consider is Israels self-interest.

ISRAELS REGENT
With Dick Cheney in the White House and Donald Rumsfeld in the Pentagon, PNAC controlled two of the three positions necessary to impose Israels military and political objectives on the Middle East. The missing element was the State Department, led by the moderate Colin Powell, but he was safely outnumbered within George W. Bushs inner circle, and undermined at the department by the likes of John Bolton.
44. Teresa Hampton, New Information Shows Bush Indecisive, Paranoid, Delusional, Capitol Hill Blue, June 17, 2004. 45. Martin Bright, Peter Beaumont and Jo Tuckman, British spy op wrecked peace move, The Observer, Feb. 15, 2004. The scandal of US/UK bugging of UN delegates was reported in March 2003. For further attempts to forestall invasion see James Risen, Iraq Said to Have Tried to Reach Last-Minute Deal to Avert War, New York Times, Nov. 6, 2003.

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The White House was Cheneys (and Roves) to run, because Bush had neither the intellect nor the inclination to run the country. By April 9, 2004, Bush had spent some or all of 233 days at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and just six months into his presidency he took a month-long vacation.46 To all intents and purposes, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their enforcers ran foreign policy on behalf of PNAC. Powell quickly became a political eunuch, and his supporters were viewed as enemies. On July 1, 2003, one of Powells closest and most influential advisors Richard Haass left the State Department to become president of the Council on Foreign Relations. That he was politically sabotaged by the cabal was well known. Haass espoused the co-operative realism of G. H. W. Bush and James Baker III, and cautioned against arrogance in pursuit of U.S. self-interest. As Powells main advisor on Afghanistan, Haass delivered a major speech in April 2002 on the need for hardheaded multilateralism: [The U.S. should] integrate other countries and organizations into arrangements to sustain a world consistent with U.S. interests and values.47 Two months after Haass departure, Cheney surreptitiously bolstered the cabal by appointing David Wurmser as foreign policy advisor. Wurmser, the initiator of Clean Break, comes from the governments Zionist training ground at the American Enterprise Institute and is former senior advisor to John Bolton. He is a staunch unilateralist and advocate of U.S.-Israeli co-operation to undermine Syria, and works closely with Cheneys national security advisor Lewis Scooter Libby.48 Cheney epitomizes the corporatism and moral arrogance of Leo Strausss authoritarian, laissez-faire governing model. As a six-term congressman from Wyoming, Cheney held an extreme pro-military, pro-business, and anti-social spending voting record. He opposed abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, gun control, bans on armor-piercing cop killer bullets and detector-evading plastic guns, the Clean Water Act, and fought legislation to require oil, chemical and other industries from disclosing records of toxic emissions. He supported the postponement of sanctions on industries that violated air pollution standards, and maintained aid for Nicaraguan contra rebels even after a funding moratorium was passed. As Defense Secretary under President Bush and later as vice-president under George W. Bush, Cheney proved himself to be a master prevaricator, a trait consistent with Strausss belief that those in power should keep higher truths to themselves and tell the public only what the government decides they need to hear.
46. Dana Milbank and Robin Wright, Powell Calls U.S. Casualties Disquieting, Washington Post, April 9, 2004. 47. Jim Lobe, Loss of key aide another setback for Powell, Asia Times online, June 7. 2003, <www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF07Ak01.html>. 48. Marc Perelman Cheney Taps Syria Hawk As Adviser On Mideast, Forward, Oct. 31, 2003, <www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.10.31/news2.wurmser.html>.

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In Chapter 4, we saw how Cheney misled King Fahd about Saddam Husseins troop deployments to get Fahd to let the U.S. station troops in Saudi Arabia. In Chapter 13, we saw Cheneys two-faced attitude on Iraqs WMD capability. He performed the same deceit regarding Bush Sr.s handling of the Gulf War. According to Vice-President Cheney: 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.49 Heres what 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 Shia, 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 wed have had to hunt him down. And once wed done that and wed gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then wed have had to put another government in its place. What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shii government or a Kurdish government or Baathist 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 its 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.50 Note particularly the last phrase: It would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq. Cheneys 1991 assessment was sober and prescient, yet none of the six rhetorical questions in the above excerpt received any consideration under George W. Bush. In fact, VicePresident Cheney took great pains to deny their applicability. Of course, in 1991 he was not ex-CEO of Halliburton.
49. Donald Kagan, Gary Schmit, Thomas Donnelly, et al., Rebuilding Americas Defenses Strategy, Forces And Resources for a New Century (Washington, DC: PNAC, September 2000), p. 22. 50. Dick Cheney, The Gulf War: A First Assessment, Soref Symposium, Washington Institute for Middle East Policy, April 29, 1991, <www.washingtoninstitute.org/pubs/soref/cheney.htm>.

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Today, Iraq has no credible government; the U.S. occupation force is dying the death of 1,000 cuts; Iraqis who collaborate with the U.S. are murdered at will; crime is rampant; colleges, business and museums have been looted with the assistance and acquiescence of U.S. forces; dissension, depression and disobedience within U.S. military ranks is growing; and Bushs objective of installing a U.S.-friendly democratic puppet regime is a cruel joke. As a member of Bush Sr.s cabinet, Cheney had to reflect administration policy, but it is clear that he did not agree with it. The real Cheney came out in the 1992 report Defense Policy Guidance, written at his behest by future PNACers Wolfowitz and Libby. It was a precursor to Rebuilding Americas Defenses in its emphasis on preventing the emergence of a rival superpower, safeguarding U.S. interests and promoting U.S. values, and arrogating the right of unilateral action if the world didnt do as the U.S. wished. The time for revolution was not yet at hand, however. After DPG was leaked to the press, the ensuing outcry forced Bush Sr. to demand Cheney rewrite it.51 DPG remained ignored until PNAC made it national policy. The unclassified version of George W. Bushs September 2002 National Security Strategy was little more than an affirmation of DPG and Rebuilding Americas Defenses.52 From DPG to NSS, the cabal only had to wait 10 years to find the perfect dummy to implement Israels agenda.

51. See Excerpts from 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance, FrontlineThe War Behind Closed Doors, PBS, Feb. 20, 2003: The 46-page classified document circulated for several weeks at senior levels in the Pentagon, but controversy erupted after it was leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post and the White House ordered then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to rewrite it. 52. See The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, Sept. 20, 2002, <www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/national/nss-020920.pdf>.

A F O R E I G N E N T I T Y in the body politic of the Middle East for 56 years, Israel is perpetually obsessed with existential questions. It is a pariah in the international community, and only the USAs Security Council veto, which Israel virtually controls, has prevented the world body from applying international military and economic sanctions against it.1 Consequently, Israel needs to project the illusion, if not the fact, of its legitimacy, and Saddam Hussein made this task difficult. S

Iraq has not signed a peace treaty with Israel, so technically the two states have been at war since 1948. Iraq sent forces to bolster Arab armies in the 1967 and 1973 wars, and Saddam Hussein even lobbed Scud missiles into Israel during the Gulf War. Although these caused little damage, the sight of an Arab state striking back at Israel was psychologically significant. Even more significant, though, was Husseins financial and medical support for the Palestinian victims of the Occupation. While all Arab states denounced it, only Hussein provided free medical care and money to bereaved families. By the start of the invasion, he had given $35 million for Palestinians killed or wounded in the Intifada and for reconstruction. One recipient of Husseins largesse was Mohammed Shkukeini, who received a $25,000 cheque to compensate him for the martyrdom of his eldest son Amar who went to blow himself up near a Tel Aviv disco, but was shot before he could get near the entrance. The car exploded, injuring a dozen people. This cheque is not going to make me support Iraq more, said Shkukeini. I already supported Iraq before this. They have always helped the Palestinian people.2
1. See Chapter 8. 2. Ferry Biedermann, Iraq gives martyrdom bonus for families of Palestinian suicide bombers, Inter Press Service, March 19, 2003, <www.cyberdyaryo.com/features/f2003_0321_06.htm>.

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Thus, we have the leader of the country with the richest and longest Arab heritage not only refusing to recognize Israel, but also gaining immense popularity, especially among young Palestinians. Hussein was a political threat to Israel, but he had to be reinvented as a moral and military threat to the U.S. In the rest of this chapter, we analyze how Israel and the PNAC junta exploited the Sept 11 attack to bring about the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

TARGETIRAQ
The first inkling that the U.S. was planning to invade Iraq came just hours after the World Trade Center was hit, as this March 23, 2003, excerpt from Meet the Press shows: T I M R U S S E R T : 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 Ill show it on the screen, about 2:40 in the afternoon, according to your notes, you said: Lets 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, havent you? R U M S F E L D : You said my notes? I didnt keep notes. That cant be my notes. R U S S E R T : They were notes made contemporaneously of conversations you were having on September 11. R U M S F E L D : By whom? R U S S E R T : By people on your staff. It was reported by the Associated Press and by CBS. R U M S F E L D : Well, that doesnt make it so. Ive never seen those notes. R U S S E R T : Thats not accurate. R U M S F E L D : I have no idea what I I dont remember what I said, but I didnt keep notes and I have no idea what notes anyones referring to.3 Richard Clarke, Bushs top counterterrorism advisor, corroborated this premeditation. On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, Clarke said the following scene took place in the White House Situation Room:

3. Tim Russert interview with Donald Rumsfeld, Meet the Press, NBC, March 23, 2003. According to CBS, Rumsfelds 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, Sept. 5, 2002. Rumsfeld lied again on Jan. 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>.

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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. Weve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. Theres no connection. He came back at me and said, Iraq! Saddam! Find out if theres a connection. And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer.4 On Sept. 13, 2001, at Camp David, Iraq was a featured topic of discussion in the context of PNACs pre-emptive military strategy. As Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair: W O L F O W I T Z : 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 longterm effort, to root out these networks and to get governments out of the business of supporting them. But that wasnt something that was going to happen overnight. Q U E S T I O N : 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? W O L F O W I T Z : 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.5 The fact that Iraq is being discussed at this time is curious. The shock of the Sept. 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 Jan. 1, 2001, to Sept. 10, 2001.6

4. Clarkes Take On Terror, 60 Minutes, CBS, March 21, 2004, <www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml>. 5. Wolfowitz interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair, May, 2003, <www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html>. 6. Marie Cocco, Al-Qaida didnt rush to Bushs lips, Newsday, March 30, 2004.

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Thus we have the Bush administration going out of its way to ignore the attacks most widely touted suspect to manufacture a case against a country that could not have had anything to do with it. The only explanation for this behaviour is that PNAC fascists were running the show and would not permit facts or reasoned analysis to interfere with Israels needs. After the encounter in the Situation Room, Clarke gave CBSs Lesley Stahl this account of the governments 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 dont think the people around the president show him memos like that. I dont think he sees memos that he doesntwouldnt like the answer.7 Evidence that the fascists pushed the U.S. to invade Iraq for the benefit of Israel comes from University of Virginia professor Philip Zelikow, member of the Presidents Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001-2003) and currently director of the commission investigating the events of Sept. 11.8 As a member of a Sept. 10, 2002, foreign policy panel at the University of Virginia, he said: Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? Ill tell you what I think the real threat (is), and actually has been since 1990its the threat against Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans dont care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesnt want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.9 In 1990, Zelikow said Hussein began to spend large sums of hard currency to harden his countrys command and control bunkers against electromagnetic pulsea 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, he said.

7. Clarke, op. cit. 8. Zelikow is a controversial figure because he has close ties to the Bush government. Some families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attack charged that he is in a conflict of interest and should step down. 9. 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>.

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[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.10 He said Israel feared that biological weapons from Iraq might get into the hands of Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an absurd scenario. Play out those scenarios and I will tell you, people have thought about that, but they are just not talking very much about it. Dont look at the links between Iraq and al-Qaida, but then ask yourself the question, Gee, is Iraq tied to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the people who are carrying out suicide bombings in Israel? Easy question to answer; the evidence is abundant.11 Zelikows Israel-first perspective makes sense of a lot of seemingly bizarre U.S. behaviour. First, it explains the Bush governments fickle attitude toward bin Laden. We already know it sabotaged FBI and CIA efforts to capture him and ignored reports of suspicious activity from FBI field officers. Only after the Taliban refused to cave in to intimidation did Bush officially take notice of bin Laden, and then only as a pretext to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq. Second, Zelikows perspective exposes Rumsfelds hypocrisy about bin Laden. As Defense Secretary, Rumsfeld had to defend the attack on Afghanistan and pledge to capture or kill him. However, in his primary role as an agent of PNAC, he 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 arent 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 arent enough targets inin Afghanistan, I thought he was joking.12 After the Taliban were defeated in mid-March 2002, bin Laden no longer served a purpose. The U.S. turned its back on Afghanistan and began to focus on Iraq, which explains why bin Laden again fell below U.S. radar. Third, the sanctions and No-Fly Zones can now be understood as steps to assuage Israeli insecurity, even though beggaring Iraq and undermining Husseins regime contradicted the long-standing U.S. view that Hussein should be supported as a force for regional stability. Israels 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 Kuwaits independence,

10. Ibid., Mekay. 11. Ibid. 12. Clarke, op. cit.

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he couldnt afford to have Israel involved militarily, as this excerpt from Frontlines 1996 show The Gulf War shows: N A R R A T O R : Israel became the presidents top priority. P R E S I D E N T G E O R G E B U S H : [January 19, 1991] Were going to be redoubling our efforts in the darnedest search-and-destroy effort thats ever been undertaken in that out in that area. And I hope that that is very reassuring to the citizens of Israel. G E N . N O R M A N S C H W A R Z K O P F : Washingtons 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 N A R R A T O R : 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. S C H W A R Z K O P F : As you know, the total Scud launches have beenNo 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. R I C H A R D C H E N E Y , S E C R E T A R Y O F D E F E N S E : From my perspective, from the strategic perspective and the presidents perspectiveand, obviously, I was doing this with the presidents approvalit 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.13 Israel could not allow Hussein to develop a defense against nuclear attack, which explains why Israel had to destroy Iraqs 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.14 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:

13. FrontlineThe Gulf War, PBS, Jan. 9, 1996, <www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ gulf/script_a.html>. Cheneys comment is disingenuous, since it still boils down to doing what Israel wants. 14. Christopher M. Centner, Ignorance Is RiskThe Big Lesson from Desert Storm Air Base Attacks, Airpower Journal, 1992, <www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/ centner.html#chris>. 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.

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The equipment, shelters, and blast wallseverything 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.15 For Israel to force the U.S. to invade Iraq, Hussein had to be reinvented as a military menace, even though both Israel and the U.S. knew this was not true. In addition to the pre-Sept. 11 assessments from Cheney and Powell, Israel's chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon conceded in October 2002 that he wasnt losing any sleep over Iraq because the gap in relative military strength had diverged so sharply in favor of Israel during the 1990s.16 Nevertheless, the Israeli governments public posture was one of paranoia and anxiety: Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose, said spokesman Ranaan Gissin. It will only give [Saddam] more of an opportunity to accelerate his program of weapons of mass destruction.17 To stampede the nation into a political war for Israel, the cabal had to wage a preliminary war on the Pentagons military culture, which was based on the moderate Republican traditions of multilateralism, regional stability and Labor Zionism.

FEITH-BASED POLICY
The man charged with imposing PNACs worldview on the Pentagon was Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, the third-highest ranking Pentagon Zionist after Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. He was responsible for purging the Pentagons military planners of anyone who didnt fall lockstep into line with the new PNAC 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, Kwiatkowski joined the Pentagons 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.

15. Cited in Ibid. 16. James Bennet, Sharon Tells Cabinet to Keep Quiet on U.S. Plans, New York Times, Oct. 7, 2002. 17. Israel To U.S.: Dont Delay Iraq Attack, C B S .com, Aug. 18, 2002.

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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.18 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 Strausss major themes, Shulsky and Schmitt criticize Americas 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.Strausss 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.19 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 parrots 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 Sharons office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddams Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorize.20
18. Karen Kwiatkowski, The New Pentagon Papers, Salon.com, March 10, 2004, p. 1. 19. Seymour M. Hersh, Selective Intelligence, New Yorker, May 12, 2003. 20. Julian Borger, The spies who pushed for war, Guardian, July 17, 2003.

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The Office of Strategic Plans

For the OSP to manufacture a case against Iraq, it had to radicalize the Pentagons intelligence establishment, for which purpose inexperienced ideologues from the Zionist breeding grounds at AEI, WINEP, JINSA and MEMRI were brought in. Kwiatkowski remembers a long-time career civil servant warning her that if she hoped to get ahead she shouldnt 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 IranContra 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 Ghorbanifarall Iran-Contra figures.21 The great obstacle for Luti and Shulsky was the Pentagons 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, Bushs Middle East envoy and former head of Central Command.

The General and the Secretary

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 nevernot oncedid it say, He has WMD.22 Zinni was not a willing critic of the administration. He supported Bush and Cheney in 2000, believing them to be moderates, but he would be rudely surprised. In August 2002, Zinni was in Nashville to receive the Veterans of Foreign Wars Dwight D. Eisenhower Distinguished Service Award, in recognition of his 35 years in the Marine Corps. Cheney was also at the ceremony to
21. Kwiatkowski, Salon.com., op. cit., pp 2, 5. See also Chapter 4, note 2. Reuel Marc Gerecht is a senior fellow and Director of the Middle East Initiative at PNAC, and writes for William Kristols Weekly Standard. 22. Cited in Thomas E. Ricks, For Vietnam Vet Anthony Zinni, Another War on Shaky Territory, Washington Post, Dec. 23, 2003.

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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.23 Zinnis 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 Bushs 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.24 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.25 In January 2003, the Joint Chiefs of Staff expressed concerns that Bushs determination to go to war would violate the U.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 dont have the backing of other Middle Eastern nations. We dont have the backing of any of our allies except Britain and were advocating a policy that says we will invade another nation that is not currently attacking us or invading any of our allies.26 This lack of blind obedience infuriated Rumsfeld, who is said to have told the chiefs to get in line or quit. This response is typical of a dictator, who knows that informed dissent is the greatest threat to his arrogant misuse of power. In August 2003, the PNACers started cleaning house. Rumsfeld chose Gen. Peter Shoomaker, a critic of the militarys 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 circulated widely, Shoomaker said: Rumsfeld might think were at war with terrorism, but Ill bet he also thinks he is at war within the Pentagon... Its a war of the culture.27 The other shoe fell with a thump, as Kwiatkowski put it, on Feb. 5, 2003, when Powell capitulated to the PNACers. To convince the world that Iraq was bent on developing WMDs and that Hussein was in league with alQaida, Powell presented the UN Security Council with vague,
23. Ibid. 24. Kwiatkowski, Open Door Policy, American Conservative, Jan. 19, 2004. 25. Kwiatkowski, cited in Marc Cooper, Soldier for the TruthExposing Bushs talkingpoints war, LA Weekly, Feb. 2026, 2004. 26. Doug Thompson, Role reversal: Bush wants war, Pentagon urges caution, Capitol Hill Blue, Jan 22, 2003. 27. The Army Cleans House, Newsweek, Aug. 3, 2003, <www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m4PRN/2003_August_3/106209971/p1/article.jhtml>.

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unauthenticated intercepts of Iraqi conversations, satellite photos of empty buildings and trucks and uncorroborated defectors statements. 28 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 tones 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 Spains foreign minister said the international community found no proof of a nuclear bomb program before the invasion.29 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, out of Saddams reach in the no-fly zone, and a deadly terrorist network run by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, supposedly an associate and collaborator of bin Ladens. Ansars 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.30 Hans Blix, the UN chief weapons inspector, dismissed Powells 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 warthe existence of weapons of mass destructionwas 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.31 Both Zinni and Blix believe 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
28. Colin Powell, Remarks to the United Nations Security Council, Feb. 5, 2003, <www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htm>. 29. Charles J. Hanley, Powells battle cry fails test of time, Associated Press, Aug. 10, 2003, <www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/6496667.htm>. 30. Excerpted from Hanley, ibid. In Zarqawi - Bushs man for all seasons, Asia Times, Oct. 15. 2004, Pepe Escobar concluded that Zarqawi is a fabrication from CIA labs. 31. Hans Blix Says Iraq War Was Unfounded, Associated Press, Feb. 24, 2004, <www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/8030734.htm>.

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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
The primary source of this intelligence failure was Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (the INC), 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 Staffs cogent estimate that the invasion would require hundreds of thousands of troops, but Chalabis intelligence was really irrelevant. The decision to invade had already been taken. A few days after the Sept. 11 attack, Chalabi even 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 9/11 could be used as a pretext for attacking Iraq.32 The fight between the Pentagon and the State Department over Chalabis 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. 33 For their part, the State Department and CIA were trying to create a broad-based alliance independent of Chalabis 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.34 Logically and politically, there was no good reason to back the INC. Chalabi, a Shiite Muslim, hadnt 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 (allegedly a Mossad operation, in shades of the corruption and collapse of the CIA-linked BCCI and Bush family-linked Silverado S&L and Enron.) 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
32. Jim Lobe, Chalabi, Garner Provide New Clues to War, antiwar.com, Feb. 21, 2004, <www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=2004>. 33. Cited in Hersh, op. cit. 34. 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.

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articles based on INC information, all of which was either false or unsubstantiated. For example: Saddam collaborated for years with bin Laden and was complicit in the Sept. 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 Sept. 11 strikes and prepared them for operations against Iraq's neighbors and possibly the United States. Two senior U.S. officials said that 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. Iraq held 80 Kuwaitis captured in the 1991 Gulf War in a secret underground prison in 2000. No Kuwaiti prisoners have been found. Iraq could launch toxin-armed Scud missiles at Israel that could kill 100,000 people, and was aggressively developing nuclear weapons. No Iraq Scuds, bio weapons or nuclear programs were ever found.35 The Defense Intelligence Agency states that the INC provided little useful information, and that the source for Husseins alleged mobile biologicalwarfare laboratories was a fabricator, who happened to be the brother of one of Chalabis senior aides.36 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 PNACs influence, Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act to fund the INCs 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 Chalabis credibility.37 Honesty and credibility
35. Jonathan S. Landay and Tish Wells, Iraqi exile group fed false information to news media, Knight Ridder News Service, March 15, 2004, < www.realcities.com/mld/ krwashington/8194211.htm>. More specifically, the mobile labs were found to be hydrogen generators for weather balloons. As if to underscore Chalabis self-serving character, he was thoroughly blas when accused of deliberately misleading the U.S. We are heroes in error. As far as were concerned weve 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. Were ready to fall on our swords if he wants. Jack Fairweather and Anton La Guardia, Chalabi stands by faulty intelligence that toppled Saddams regime, The Telegraph, Feb. 19, 2004. 36. Andrew Gumbel, Iraqi defector behind Americas WMD claims exposed as out-and-out fabricator, Independent, March 29, 2004. 37. Dan Morgan and David B. Ottaway, In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil Is Key IssueU.S. Drillers Eye Huge Petroleum Pool, Washington Post, Sept. 15, 2002.

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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 INCs 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 will go towards training 10,000 INC soldiers to help U.S. invasion forces.38 To make sense of PNACs peculiar fetish for the INC, it helps to consider Chalabi not as a source of information but as a stooge, similar in many respects to the role ibn Saud played for the British government. 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 hadstrong ties in the American Jewish community.39 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 publicly after the invasion began: 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.40 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.

38. Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and John Walco, Iraqi exiles still getting paid, despite false intelligence, Seattle Times, Feb. 22, 2004. 39. Collaboration with Zionists seems to run in the family. Chalabis 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 Chalabis brothers Jawad and Hazem of false accounting in connection with the collapse of Socofi, an investment firm in Ahmad Chalabis widespread financial empire. The charges are similar to the ones associated with Petra Bank. Fresh bank scandals hit Iraqs leader in waiting, Sydney Morning Herald, April 18, 2003. 40. Matthew E. Berger, Pro-Israel activists courting Iraqi opposition leader, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, April 18, 2003, <www.jewishsf.com/bk030418/1b.shtml>.

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Israel The silent partner

The following account from Kwiatkowski shows just how much authority PNAC, and by extension 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 Feiths 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 Feiths waiting room, the leader continued at speed to Feiths 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 secretarys 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 dont) and how the generals didnt have to sign in.41 The generals didnt have to sign in because they were acting on behalf of the Pentagons new owners, a fact that Kwiatkowski could not have imagined at the time. 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. Confirmation of a sort comes from Israel. 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
41. Kwiatkowski, American Conservative, op. cit.

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presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's nonconventional 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.42 For all of its apparent candour, Broms expos of Israels 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 Gen. Yaalon stated that Israel had nothing to fear from Iraq. The entire tone of Broms 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-tosurface 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.43 None of this was news to Blix or his inspection teams, whose first-hand intelligence and access to sites was discounted in preference to Powells ambiguous satellite pictures and Chalabis fabrications. Brom also maintains that Iraq was not Israels 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 doubtsif anyabout 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
42. Shlomo Brom, The War in Iraq: An Intelligence Failure? Strategic Assessment (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies), Vol. 6, No. 3, November 2003, <www.tau.ac.il/jcss/sa/v6n3p3Bro.html>. 43. Ibid.

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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.44 The irony of Broms 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 enemyin this case, Saddam Hussein as a caricature of eviland a lack of intelligence professionalism 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, its hard to imagine that Brom would have written this piece. To accept Broms premise that Iraq was not invaded for Israels sake, or that there was no political pressure in Israel to distort intelligence, one would have to discount Zelikows frank admissions, which given their controversial nature could hardly be invented. In fact, according to Israeli radio, Cheney admitted to Sharon that the invasion was conducted for Israels sake, and that Israel should keep a low profile to avoid upsetting pro-Western Arab governments. At the National Press Club on Aug. 9, 2004, Gen. Tommy Franks reinforced the USAs Israel-first motive: We wanted the oil infrastructure in Iraq to remain in place. 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.45 To no ones surprise, Sharon expressed whole-hearted support for the invasion, and hoped the defeat of Iraq would demoralize the Palestinians to the point that 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 [that] 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 necessaryplacing a large number of troops on the ground in western Iraq, for examplein order to destroy potential Scud-launching sites at the outset of an attack.46
44. Ibid. 45. Gen. Tommy Franks: Threat on Israel justified pre-emption, Jewish Telegraph Agency, Aug. 10, 2004 <www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6692.htm>. 46. 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

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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 level of resistance the invasion force met, an officer called western Iraq a special forces playground.47 The objective of this excessive show of force, of course, had nothing to do with any putative threat, as Brom convincingly explains: 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.48 Thus, we see why Israel kept itself in the shadows; why the OSP was considered to be a shadow government; why Powell did not mention Israels intelligence-gathering role during his UN speech; why Israeli officers have free run of the Pentagon; and why the OSP used Chalabi to fabricate a case for warThe Pentagon serves Israel.

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 Bushs 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>. 47. Tim Ripley, Iraqs western desert a special forces playground Janes Defense Weekly, April 3, 2003. 48. Brom, op. cit.

S R A E L I S N O T O N L Y politically illegitimateit is economically unviable. Since its spurious foundation, U.S. Zionists have had to cultivate allies in Congress to ensure that Israel would be looked after. Thus, this artificial entity exists only because of a financial pipeline from the Treasury to Tel Aviv. In 1997, the amount siphoned out of the U.S. economy totaled $15.1 million per day, $630,799 per hour, $10,513 per minute. Israel isnt a countryits a parasite.

The authoritative Washington Report on Middle East Affairs keeps a running tally on its website (www.wrmea.com) of how much public money has gone to Israel. Since 1949, U.S. taxpayers have been bled to the tune of $90.6 billionplus $10 billion in loan guarantees. Despite this unparalleled largesse, Israel is still insolvent.
Table XIV: U.S. Financial Aid to Israel 1949 to Nov. 1, 1997
Benefits to Israel Foreign Aid Grants & Loans Other (12.2% of Foreign Aid) Interest to Israel from Advanced Payments Grand Total Total Benefits per Israeli Plus: Interest borne by U.S. Total Cost Total Taxpayer Cost per Israeli Cost to U.S. Taxpayers $74,157,600,000 $9,047,227,200 $1,650,000,000 $84,854,827,200 $14,630 $49,936,680,000 $134,791,507,200 $23,240

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In 1975, Henry Kissinger signed a Memorandum of Understanding guaranteeing that in the event of a crisis the U.S. would meet all of Israels oil needs. This memorandum, which has been quietly renewed every five years, commits the U.S. to build and maintain a strategic 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 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 anything. The depth of this parasitic relationship is revealed in Table XII. Every dollar Israel receives costs the U.S. $1.15. This financial aid, though, has been only a fraction of the true burden of propping up Israel. Thomas Stauffer, a Washington, D.C.-based engineer who has taught Middle East economics at Harvard University and Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, puts the cumulative burden at $3 trillion, of which $1.7 trillion (60 percent) has been incurred since Nixon precipitated the OPEC oil crisis by bailing out Israel in 1973: 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 Of Israels $3 trillion drain on the U.S. economy, $1.5 trillion (2002 dollars) is directly due to Israels wars and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Its impossible to imagine any government entering into such a long-term, self-destructive relationship of its own free will. The only possible answer is that over the last 55 years, Israelthrough its agents in Congress, the Pentagon, media, and think tankshas usurped control of the government. The parasite is consuming its host.

PIRACY ON THE HIGH OIL SEAS

Inasmuch as oil for the U.S. sake was not the primary motive for the invasion, oil for Israels sake is another matter. A long-sought goal of U.S. Zionists has been energy security for Israel. Until 1979, Iranian tankers unloaded oil for Israel at the Red Sea port of Eilat, which was then piped through the Trans-Israel Pipeline (Tipline) to Ashkelon on the

1. Thomas R. Stauffer, The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2003. U.S. aid to Israel costs almost 275,000 American jobs annually.

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Mediterranean coast, from where it was brought by tanker to Haifa. The Shiite revolution cut off this Iranian oil, forcing Israel to look further afield. In 2002, Israel imported nearly all of its oil (237,000 bbl/d) from Egypt, the North Sea, West Africa and Mexico, but in recent years most of it has come from Russia and other Caspian Sea states like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. With PNAC now in control of Iraq, courtesy of the U.S. military, Israel could expect to realize two longstanding political ambitions a secure regional oil supply and political recognition from the Palestinians former staunch ally. Before the invasion, Chalabi even met with U.S. and Israeli officials and promised that he would recognize Israel, and reopen the old MosulHaifa pipeline.2 The first promise was predictable, given Chalabis chummy relationship with JINSA; the second was absurd. The Mosul-Haifa pipeline was built by the British in the 1930s, and at its peak carried 100,000 barrels of oil per day (bbl/d). 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 pipelines diameter, what may be left of it, is a mere eight inches.3 The new Tipline, in contrast, is to be 42 inches. In other words, theres no pipeline to reactivate, yet Israel's National Infrastructure Minister Joseph Paritzky told Haaretz on March 31, 2003, that he endorsed reactivation. This statement has since been irresponsibly 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.4 By speaking this way, Chalabi and Paritzky were engaging in purposeful propaganda. The image of an existing pipeline suggests that the cost of pumping oil from Iraq to Israel would only involve repairs. The truth of the matter is that discussions are underway to build a new 42-inch pipeline from Mosul to Haifa at a cost of $400,000 per kilometer. Paritzkys ministry puts the total cost at $0.5 billion to $1.5 billion.5

2. Ed Vuillamy, Israel seeks pipeline for Iraqi oil, Observer, April 20, 2003. 3. Lowell Feld, IsraelCountry Analysis Brief, Energy information Administration, Department of Energy, April 2004, <www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/israel.html>. 4. Oil from Iraq: An Israeli pipedream? Janes Defense Weekly, April 16, 2003; Israel stands to benefit greatly from U.S. conquest of Iraq, Alexanders 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. 5. Amiram Cohen, U.S. Checking Possibility of Pumping Oil from Northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan, Haaretz, Aug. 25, 2003, <www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0825-03.htm>.

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Under the rule of PNAC, Chalabi, and U.S. viceroy Paul Bremer, Iraq had become a U.S.-Israeli economic colony in the true spirit of 18th-century mercantilism.

Contracts, coziness and corruption

On Sept. 7, 2002, George Shultz wrote a warmongering screed in the Washington Post insisting that Saddam Hussein be removed as soon as possible. In addition to the usual jingoism, canards about WMDs, and defence of aggression as self-defence, Schultz put the invasion into a business context: A strong foundation exists for immediate military action against Hussein and for a multilateral effort to rebuild Iraq after he is gone. The tagline at the end of the piece merely identified Shultz as Secretary of State from 1982 to 1989 and a Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Missing from this identification was his role as president of the Bechtel Group, an oil engineering firm that gave generously to Bushs 2000 election campaign. In effect, Shultz was arguing that Iraq be destroyed so Bechtel and others could make a fortune rebuilding it. The invasion has enriched Bechtel in a big way. It received the first reconstruction contracta $680 million deal over 18 monthsthus putting it in the preferred position for more contracts, the total of which could exceed

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$100 billion. Columnist Bob Herbert described the cronyism perfectly: Bechtel essentially was given a license to make money, and that license was granted in a closed-door process that was restricted to a handful of politically connected American companies.6 On Jan 7, 2004, Bechtel scored again, as it and Parsons, another Bush donor, were given a joint $1.8 billion infrastructure contract.7 The U.S. government is now indistinguishable from an organized crime family doling out favors to its mob buddies. On May 28, 2003, Bush signed Executive Order 13303Protecting the Development Fund for Iraq and Certain Other Property in Which Iraq Has an Interest; however, Iraqs interests had nothing to do with it. EO 13303 overturned U.S. anti-profiteering legislation by declaring any limitations on the Development Fund for Iraq or on the activities and profits of U.S. companies to be an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States: Unless licensed or otherwise authorized pursuant to this order, any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void, with respect to the following: (a) The Development Fund for Iraq, and (b) all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein, and proceeds, obligations, or any financial instruments of any nature whatsoever arising from or related to the sale or marketing thereof, and interests therein, in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons.8 The broad language of EO 13303 covers everything from oil extraction to transportation, advertising, manufacturing, retail sales, corporate records, payment of taxes, health and safety violations, child labor, the minimum wage, fraud, environmental duties, and shareholder accountability. Bechtel, Parsons, Halliburton and other Bush cronies were now above the law; rather, they were the law, especially Houston-based Halliburton, the worlds secondlargest provider of oilfield services and equipment. From 1995 to 2000, Cheney served as the companys president. As de facto ruler of the PNAC States of America he continues to receive deferred annual salary of at least $100,000$205,298 in 2001, and $162,393 in 2002. Cheney also holds 433,333 unexercised Halliburton stock options.

6. Bob Herbert, What is it Good For? New York Times, April 21, 2003. 7. Bechtel gets new $1.8bn Iraq deal, BBC, Jan. 7, 2004. 8. George W. Bush, Executive Order 13303, May, 28, 2003, <a257.g.akamaitech.net/ 7/257/2422/14mar20010800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2003/pdf/03-13412.pdf>. Italics added.

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Nevertheless, on Sept. 14, 2003, he declared on Meet the Press that he had had no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind for three years.9 That claim came under a cloud during the fall of 2003. Halliburton was under intense scrutiny for price gouging, such as charging an average price of $2.65 for a gallon of gasoline imported from Kuwait to Iraq, despite evidence that the price should be less than $1 per gallon. Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics brought this fact before the Democratic Policy Committee in Washington, and added that Iraqs state oil company pays only 97 cents per gallon. According to her estimates, Halliburtons pricing could waste $286 million to $339 million of the $900 million the administration requested to import petroleum products.10 To give an idea of how inflated the contract costs had become, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said delays in tendering an engineering contract worth $704 million pushed the cost to $1.011 billion, by which time the tendering period had expired and the contract was simply given to Kellogg Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary. These inexplicable delays may be good for Halliburton; they are costing taxpayers a bundle, said Congressman Henry Waxman.11 Attempts to prosecute Halliburtonand by extension Cheneyfor profiteering were formally pre-empted on Oct. 28, 2003, when Congress passed the $87-billion Iraq Supplemental Bill, of which $18.6 billion (21 percent) was allocated for companies to provide security, relief and rehabilitation.12 A key feature of the bill was the removal of the anti-profiteering clause, which was designed to protect taxpayers. Democrats and Republicans alike were appalled, but the bill passed all the same. According to a Senate Democratic aide: Several House Republican conferees were clearly
9. Christopher Bollyn, Halliburton Creating Iraqi Secret Police At Your Expense, American Free Press, Sept. 22, 2003. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage previously worked as a consultant to Halliburton. 10. Klaus Marre, Rage erupts over profiteering clause, The Hill, Nov. 5, 2003, <www.thehill.com/news/110503/profiteering.aspx>. 11. Oliver Morgan, Iraq delays hand Cheney firm $1bn, Observer, Dec. 7, 2003. 12. $5.56 billion for the electric sector $4.33 billion for water resources and sanitation. $3.24 billion for security and law enforcement $2.10 billion for oil infrastructure $1.32 billion for justice, public safety infrastructure, and civil society $793 million for health care $500 million for transportation and telecommunications $370 million for roads, bridges, and construction $280 million for education, refugees, human rights, democracy and governance $153 million for private sector development From What is the $87 Billion Iraq Supplemental Bill? Fact Sheet, Institute for Southern Studies, Durham, North Carolina, Oct.28, 2003, <www.southernstudies.org/reports/87$%20B2.htm>.

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empathetic, but they had to look to a higher authority. That higher authority was the White House, which had sent the marching order to strip this from the bill.13 Almost certainly, Cheney had something to do with the order, because he had, and continues to have, a clear personal stake in Halliburtons financial health. In fact, he took out a $15,000 insurance policy on his deferred salary in the event that Halliburton were to go out of business, which at the time seemed like a distinct possibility. A March 5, 2003, e-mail from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official, recently published by Time, proves a link between the Pentagon, Halliburton and Cheney. The official wrote that Feith approved arrangements for Halliburton to receive a lucrative no-bid contract to rebuild Iraqs oil industry, subject to conferring with the White House the following day: We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VPs office.14 Despite its size, or perhaps because of it, Halliburton had been in serious financial trouble. For FY 2002, it showed a second-quarter net loss of $498 million, but in FY 2003 government contracts doubled, allowing Halliburton to show a net profit of $26 million for the same period. Total sales rose from $3.24 billion to $3.6 billion, of which oil-field services sales ballooned 7,500 percent from $24 million to $1.8 billion. Halliburton has become the biggest contractor for the U.S. military in Iraq, charging $8 billion for everything from laundry service, construction of bases, meal service and oil industry reconstruction. In understating the obvious, a Deutsche Bank Securities analyst said most of the improvement occurred in international markets where there tends to be a more stable, high-margin business for the oil-service industry.15 The analyst didnt mention the Cheney connection or that Halliburton was simply handed its contracts, possibly because Deutsche Bank owns 8.3 million shares of Halliburton, making the German bank the companys eighth-largest investor.16 Sen. Ted Kennedy put into perspective the $87 billion burden the Iraq Supplemental Bill places on U.S. citizens: It is 87 times what the federal government spends annually on afterschool programs. It is two years worth of unemployment benefits.
13. Marre, op. cit. 14. Democrats Ask Special Halliburton / Cheney Counsel, Reuters, June 2, 2004. 15. Iraq work helps Halliburton return to a profit, Bloomberg News, International Herald Tribune, Aug. 1, 2003. 16. In another act of favouritism, former ConocoPhillips executive Robert E. McKee III was appointed senior adviser to the Iraqi Oil Ministry in September. McKee is chairman of a joint venture with Halliburton. (David Ivanovich, Houston exec gets top Iraq energy post, Houston Chronicle, Sept. 23, 2003.) Also, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage was a Halliburton consultant before joining the government.

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It is enough to pay each of the 3.3 million people who have lost their jobs in the past three years more than $25,000. It is seven times what President Bush proposed to spend on education for low-income schools in 2004. It is nine times what the federal government spends on special education each year. It is eight times what the government spends on [grants] to help middle and low-income students go to college. And it is larger than the total economy of 166 nations. Clearly, we need to require competitive bidding for Iraqi contracts. Left to its own devices, the administration will continue to make sweetheart deals with American contractors at the taxpayers expense.17 For just the first six months of the destruction and reconstruction of Iraq, the total public cost has been $150 billion, or more than $1,150 per U.S. taxpayer. If the final cost comes in at $210 billion, that figure rises to more than $1,600.18 The need for the Iraq Supplemental Bill is itself a matter of considerable controversy: in April 2003, Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said on ABC Nightline News that $1.7 billion was the most that taxpayers would have to pay. Based on this, Kennedy charged that the Bush administration deliberately misled Congress about the true cost of rebuilding Iraq. The best evidence in support of this charge comes from the testimony of Josh Bolten, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 29, 2003: S E N . J O S E P H B I D E N : Mr. Bolten, what are your working assumptions, on the cost side, for the rest of 03 and for 04 for Iraq? J O S H B O L T E N : For the rest of 03, Senator Biden our working assumptions are those that Ambassador [Paul] Bremer has brought back to us. Hes anticipating expenditures in the range for the total of 03 of about 7.3 billion (dollars). And what that -B I D E N : How much will you be requesting for the remainder of the year, if any, from the United States Congress to fund that need? B O L T E N : We dont anticipate requesting anything additional for the balance of this year.19

17. Sen. Edward Kennedy, Floor Statement On The Presidents $87 Billion Supplemental Appropriations Request, Sept. 30, 2003, <kennedy.senate.gov/~kennedy/statements/ 03/09/2003930C52.html>. See also Sen. Patrick Leahys statement, Oct. 17, 2003, <leahy.senate.gov/press/200310/101703.html>. 18. Congressman Jim McDermott, website, <www.house.gov/mcdermott/pr030911.shtml>. 19. Testimony as Delivered by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Director, Office of Management and Budget, Joshua Bolten, and Acting Chief of Staff, U.S. Army,

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On the subject of appropriations for FY 2004, Bolten refused to give a straight answer, causing Sen. Biden to call into question Boltens honesty: B I D E N : Do you anticipate well be continuing to spend $4 billion a month for our troops in Iraq, for 04? B O L T E N : Thats roughly what were spending now. Looking out over the immediate term, we dont have any reason to expect a dramatic change in that number, but I wouldnt want to predict beyond the next couple of months, because the situation is so variable. B I D E N : Dont you have to -- I mean, were talking about the 04 budget. Were going to be voting on that in the next couple months. What the devil are you going to ask us for? B O L T E N : Well, the -- in the 04 budget -- and Senator, weve--as you know, weve been very explicit about it -- we have not included the incremental costs of our fighting forces in Iraq, nor the costs of reconstruction. So you -B I D E N : Why? B O L T E N : Simply because we dont know what they will be. We will-B I D E N : Oh, come on now! Does anybody here at the table think were going to be down below 100,000 forces in the next calendar year? Raise your hand, any one of you. You know its going to be more than that. See, you know at least its going to be $2 billion a month. Give me a break, will you? When are you guys starting to be honest with us? Come on! I mean, this is ridiculous. Wolfowitz came to Boltens aid, and offered this following explanation: Senator, there will be a supplemental request. There is no question about that. And there will be a supplemental request when we think we can make a reasonably good estimate of what will get us through the whole year, so that we dont have to keep coming up here with one supplemental request after another. By no means could $87 billion be considered a supplemental request, but at the committee hearing Bolten and Wolfowitz had to preserve the illusion of financial modesty. Had Wolfowitz declared what the U.S. really needed, he would have been roundly castigated by a committee already distrustful of the administrations grasp of economic responsibility. By putting the demand for more money in a supplemental bill, the cabal could come back for more money in 2004, because a supplemental appropriation is only valid for the current fiscal year. The big lie sold to Congress was that Iraq could mostly fund its own reconstruction out of oil revenues, and that other countries would pick up some of the financial burden. On March 27, 2003, Wolfowitz told the House

General John Keane, Tuesday, July 29, 2003. <www.dod.mil/speeches/2003/sp20030729depsecdef0385.html>.

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Appropriations Committee that U.S. taxpayers need not shoulder the whole burden because Iraqi oil could generate $50 billion to $100 billion to 2006. This was nonsense. A week after Shultz declared war on Iraq, former White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsay estimated the upper annual limit on taxpayer liability to be $100 billion to $200 billion, or up to two percent of Gross Domestic Product. For his candour, Lindsay was immediately repudiated. Boltens predecessor at the OMB Mitch Daniels declared the estimates to be too high and suggested the real cost would be $50 billion to $60 billion. This estimate is similar to the cost of the Gulf War, but in that instance U.S. military partners picked up 90 percent of the cost. Daniels estimate had no basis in reality, but it had to be supported because Lindsays estimate was too close to the truth, and would have spooked the public and Congress.

Sharing the spoils

U.S. companies werent the only beneficiaries of reconstruction. Others were allowed to bid on U.S.-funded contracts, but only companies from countries that helped destroy Iraq were permitted to help rebuild it. On Dec. 12, 2003, 33 countries made the approved list, though the U.S. would soften its stance to permit Canada and Germany to participate. Conspicuously and understandably absent from the list was Israel, yet the White House and the CPA gave several contracts to Israeli companies. Two of the largest ones went to Iridium Satellite (Israel) for mobile satellite phone communications ($4 million to $5 million). Israeli oil company Sonol and International Morgan Town of the U.S. were awarded a $70million to $80-million fuel supply contract to truck 25 million liters of fuel each month across Jordan to U.S. forces. It was granted by Halliburton subsidiary KDR.20 To help Israel penetrate the Iraqi economy, the U.S.registered Israeli company Middle East Development will prepare enterprises to carry out trade and investment. Two parties already expressing interest are the civil engineering firms Solel Boneh and A. Aronsen. In Baghdad, the counterpart to EO 13303 is Order 39, enacted on Sept. 19, 2003. Its clauses include the formal legal equation of foreign companies with Iraqi companies, and the right of foreigners to exploit Iraq without limit. For example: Section 3 overturns all existing foreign investment law, by which nonArab foreigners were prohibited from direct investment in an Iraqi company or project. Section 4 puts foreign investors on the same footing as Iraqi investors and places, no limits on the amount of foreign investment in an enterprise.

20. Israeli firm awarded oil tender in Iraq, al-Jazeera, Feb. 25, 2004.

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Section 8 prohibits any foreign investor or business entity with foreign ownership from purchasing real property, but permits indefinite renewals of 40-year leases.21 In theory, all spending from the Development Fund for Iraq has to be open, according to paragraph 14 of UNSC Res. 1483: The Development Fund for Iraq shall be used in a transparent manner to meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people, for the economic reconstruction and repair of Iraqs infrastructure, for the continued disarmament of Iraq, and for the costs of Iraqi civilian administration, and for other purposes benefiting the people of Iraq.22 In practice, the fund was a glorified piggy bank. In Baghdad, an appointed 11-member Program Review Boardmade up of Americans, Britons, Australians and Iraqismeets two afternoons a week in closed session, ostensibly to co-ordinate three kinds of fundingU.S., foreign and Iraqi, but it only had control over the Iraqi oil revenue. This money has the fewest spending controls, and as such is the least transparent. No written accounts of these meetings exist, save for abbreviated minutes taken since August, and even they do not include information on more than 200 projects approved from May to mid-August, 2003. According to a report by MSNBC, the board had approved more than 500 projects by Dec. 27, 2003. 23 On Nov. 2, 2004, the Sydney Morning Herald cited a leaked audit report showing at least $US8.8 billion in Iraqi funds given to Iraqi ministries by the provisional authority could not be accounted for . Officially, the U.S. did adhere to the June 30, 2004 deadline for handing over control of Iraqi sovereignty to the INC, but the new government is just as hollow a sham as were the Soviet puppet regimes in Afghanistan. No real independence is possible because U.S. firms control security, oil and economic policy. Iraq has independence without sovereigntywhich is no independence at all. In fact, any genuine democratic reformone of the main reasons for the invasion, according to Bushwould likely bring an anti-U.S. Shiite regime, just as Defense Secretary Cheney predicted. If that were to happen, the U.S. would be in the ludicrous position of propping up an unpopular leader against the popular will of the country, after going to war in the name of democracy! Of course, the U.S. is already up to its eyes in this very quagmire. For a
21. Paul Bremer, Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 39 Foreign Investment, Sept. 19, 2003, <http://www.cpa-iraq.org/regulations/20030921_CPAORD39.pdf>. 22. UN Security Council Resolution 1483, May, 22, 2003, <www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/document/2003/0522resolution.htm>. 23. Jackie Spinner and Ariana Eunjung Cha, Iraq Spending Decisions Made in Private, MSNBC, Dec. 27, 2003, <www.truthout.org/docs_03/122803F.shtml>. These projects, include: $120 million for printing and distributing currency; $36 million for renovating police stations; $15 million for a national microcredit program; and $4 million for creating a radio system for the railroad network.

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mercantilist U.S., the ideal ruler of Iraq is a strongman who sells oil to the U.S. and Israel, represses dissent, and maintains stability in the Gulf. Saddam Hussein came pretty close. From the foregoing, one might still conclude that oil was the chief objective. For the Bush cabal, the invasion was a perfect make-work project for Halliburton, Bechtel and their other oil industry friends. In this scenario, Israels pipeline, assuming it is ever built and survives sabotage, is simply a bonus that could also provide the U.S. with safer access to Persian Gulf oil. Yet other factors still militate for a finding of an Israel-first policy. First, there is no shortage of pipelines out of Iraq; the U.S. doesnt need another terminal. Engineer Stauffer said the line from Kirkuk to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and the refining facility there could be expanded much more cheaply than 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.24 Nor can the oil motive explain the dominant role of Israel within the Pentagon or the profusion of Zionist Jews within the Bush and Clinton administrations. Third, George W. Bushs over-the-top belligerence toward Hussein is a direct repudiation of his fathers cautious approach, which was consistent with the traditional U.S. preference for regional stability. The invasion was distinctly destabilizing, and demonstrated that Bush was not acting in the national interest. Fourth, Israels much-touted need for a pipeline is questionable, 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 still mean that the invasion served the Israeli dream of regional hegemony first. Fifth, Cheney and Chalabi both declared their prior support for Israels needs. Sixth, the invasion undermined national security, the very motive that ostensibly motivated it. Congressman Jim McDermott describes the opportunity cost of the first $150 billion spent on Iraq as multiples of other security budgets: Homeland Securityfour; First-response emergency servicesmore than 40; Transportation Security Administration to secure airlines30; Coast Guard30; Customs and border protectionsalmost 30; and
24. Thomas R. Stauffer, Pipeline or Pipe Dream? The KirkukHaifa Scheme, WRMEA, March 2004.

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Grants to secure U.S. ports1,500.25

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For the U.S., the invasion was a no-win proposition. It was a textbook case of Israel-firsters treating U.S. interests, resources, prestige and lives as commodities to be expended in the service of Greater Israel.

T H E A RT O F F E A R M O N G E R I N G
PNAC controlled the White House and had imposed its will on the Pentagon, but it needed to generate popular support for a premeditated attack. 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 plagued the Johnson presidency. When Gen. William Westmoreland asked for an additional 200,000 troops in February 1968, Johnson refused, fearing that he might unleash civil war. To prevent the public conscience from impeding its grand design, and to divert attention from Palestine, the White House 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 bought the line that bin Laden and Hussein were linked, the use of unilateral force could be marketed as retribution and necessary prevention. It wouldnt take much convincing, since Clinton and Bush had already demonized Hussein as a clear and present danger, with his supposed possession and manufacture of WMDs.

PNAC branches out

In late 2002, around the time that Lt.-Col. Karen Kwiatkowski realized that Israeli officers knew the inner workings of the Pentagon better than most American visitors did, PNAC was preparing to destabilize Iraq. 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, and it held frequent meetings with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. The CLI membership included numerous PNAC illuminatiRichard Perle, James Woolsey, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Gary Schmitt, William Kristol, Leon Wieseltier, Newt Gingrich and Robert Kagan. It also gained support from non-PNACers, more moderate Democratic and Republican legislators like JINSA Congressman Stephen Solarz and Sen. John McCain. The honorary chairman of the CLI advisory panel was George Shultz, head of Bechtel, which put him in a conflict of interest as big as Cheneys.

25. McDermott, op. cit. These ratios also hint at how spurious is the alleged risk of terrorism directed at the U.S. from outside its borders.

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Like PNAC, AEI or any of the other American neo-fascist front groups, the CLI had a disarmingly virtuous name. Its mission statement epitomized the themes that PNAC would successfully impose on U.S. public opinion, thus giving rise to the demonized image of Saddam Hussein: 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. Like all propaganda, whats not said is at least as important as what is said. Here, the missing element is Israel. It appears nowhere in this passage, but as the rest of this chapter shows, it was the reason for everything the CLI did.

The Luntz/Wexler Analysis lying with style

In April 2003, two months after Powell lied to the UN and just after the Iraq invasion began, the Virginia-based Luntz Research Companies issued a startlingly frank report on how to manipulate the media. The report, Israeli Communications Priorities 2003, was prepared privately for the Wexler Foundation, which is highly active in philanthropic activity in the U.S. and Israel. The tactics in the report were not newthey had been in effect for at least 10 yearsbut their publication exposed the duplicity of U.S. Middle East policy and the degree to which the White House takes its marching orders from Israel and the domestic Jewish 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. Even though the report concerns the Israel-Palestinian conflict, exploiting Saddam Hussein is the major tactic:

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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 warningThere are some who would say that Saddam Hussein is already old news. They dont understand history. They dont understand communication. They dont 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 our strongest weapon in the linguistic defense of Israel.26 Of the reports 11 conclusions, five are significant:

Iraq colors all. Saddam is your best defense, even if hes dead
For a yeara SOLID YEARyou 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.27 In each paragraph of the mission statement, Saddam Hussein is explicitly equated with tyranny, suffering and WMDs; however, it is in the utterances of Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld and others that the conspicuous repetition of his name became commonplace. In his Jan. 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 Jan. 1, 2001, to Dec. 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. Dont 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.
26. Wexler Analysis: Israeli Communication Priorities 2003, April 2003, <www.adc.org/luntzwexneranalysis.pdf>. 27. Ibid., p. 2.

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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 leadership28 The linkage in these two sections is integral to Israel, because it allows for a direct equation between Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat. After the U.S. ostracized Arafat over the ignominious Oslo Accord, driving a wedge between the Palestinians and their leadership became official U.S. policy. Only quislings who would the accept Israeli diktat were acceptable. The authors of the report warned that not all Americans equate removing Hussein with Arafat, and so they encouraged Wexler to make the argument that freeing the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein equals 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.29 In the case of Hussein, we have this April 1991 White House endorsement of UNSC Res. 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.30 Whether the charges against Hussein are true is less important than their repetition at every opportunity. The more effective and sustained the propaganda, the more likely the public will adopt the point of view. The success of this basic conditioning tactic is reflected in opinion polls and in the governments own language.

28. Ibid., pp. 2, 3. 29. Ibid. p. 10. 30. Saddam Husseins Repression of the Iraqi People, A Decade of Deception and Defiance, Sept. 12, 2002, <www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect4.html>.

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Of course rhetorical questions work, dont they?

Ask a question to which there is only one answer [and it] is hard to lose. It is essential that your communication be laced with rhetorical questions, which is how Jews talk anyway.31 This recommendation is perhaps the most effective because it is the most disarming. It enhances the pseudo-equation between Arafat and Hussein; denies the existence of Israels criminal conduct toward the Palestinians; and masks 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?32 Of course, each of these charges applies to the U.S. and Israel, and is the reason the Palestinians resort to desperate measures. Imputing blame to the Palestinians in this backhanded manner precludes debate, and helps undermine Palestinian leadership. At the UN, Powell used numerous rhetorical questions to add verisimilitude to the PNAC propaganda he was forced to defend. Two examples will suffice: 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?33

31. Wexler Analysis, op. cit., p. 3. 32. Ibid. p. 16. 33. Colin Powell, Remarks to the United Nations Security Council, Feb. 5, 2003, <www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htm>.

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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 Hussein chemical and biological weapons and trained his army to use them, and to prevent possible war crimes charges being laid against the Reagan-Bush governments.34 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 cant 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.35 Since Hussein was only a political threat to Israel, it was necessary to use the scare tactic of WMDs to turn him into a military threat. 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 Baath party. The authors of the report know their audience and what tactics they should use: All the arguments about Israel being a democracy, letting Arabs vote and serve in government, protecting religious freedom, etc., wont 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 reports authors provide advice on propaganda delivery, but the U.S. has 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

34. Michael I. Niman, What Bush didnt 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, HewlettPackard, 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. 35. Ibid., p. 2

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choice but to protect its borders and its people from terrorists who mean us harm.36 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 whyhe'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.37 The security argument is the lynchpin of Israeli propaganda; it is invoked to justify the repression of the Palestinians, disregard of international law, and the need to keep the financial pipeline flowing. In Israeli Communications Priorities 2003, Luntz gave a picture of The Israel Aid Message Tree, thereby disclosing 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 Saddams regime, terrorist threats remain throughout our region. (3) Israel is Americas 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 Americas financial assistance, Israel can defend its borders, protect its people, and provide invaluable assistance to the American effort in the war against terrorism.38

The weakest link

By far the most absurd piece of propaganda had to do with the link between Hussein and bin Laden. Not only was there no evidence, but it is politically and religiously unthinkable.39 Nevertheless, the PNACers in the White House browbeat Powell and his speechwriters into fabricating a connection. They used the allegation that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi diplomat Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani in Prague five months before the Sept. 11 attack. The Czech government vacillated on the story, while even the CIA believed Atta was in the U.S. at the time. Newsweek and the Washington Post finally decided the story was fiction. Nevertheless, in
36. Ibid., p. 6. 37. George W. Bush, Press Conference, March 6, 2003, <www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases/2003/03/20030306-8.html>. 38. Wexler Analysis, op. cit., p. 4. 39. See Chapter 4.

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numerous speeches and television appearances, from 2001 to 2003, Cheney continued to defend the story.40 On Jan. 8, 2004, Powell virtually admitted he lied to the UN about it: I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.41 The feint towards prudence cannot be taken at face value because nothing in Powells 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.42 On Meet the Press with Tim Russert on May 16, 2004, Powell went further and virtually repudiated his entire 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.43 Still, Powell does not tell the whole story. The State Department knew the OSP-generated information was bogus. It seems that Powell was more interested in rehabilitating his reputation than admitting misconduct.

40. For a summary of comments on this and other disproven positions see Administration Comments on Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 Attack, Washington Post, <www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/9-11_saddam_quotes.html>. For Cheney specifically on Hussein and bin Laden, see also Dana Priest and Glenn Kessler, Iraq, 9/11 Still Linked By Cheney, Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2003. 41. Christopher Marquis, Powell Admits No Hard Proof in Linking Iraq to Al Qaida, New York Times, Jan. 9, 2004. 42. Powell, Remarks, op. cit. 43 Transcript of Meet the Press, MSNBC, May 16, 2004. So damaging was Powells admission that his own press aide tried to cut him off while he was being interviewed, < http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4992558>.

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In the end, though, the public accepted the lies. A Washington Post poll conducted from Aug. 7-11, 2003, found that 69 percent of Americans still thought Hussein had at least something to do with the Sept. 11 attack.44 Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University linguistics professor of linguistics who studied Bushs rhetoric, determined that he deliberately manipulated language to imply a connection between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11. 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 the 11th, 2001, showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes.45 If we like the conclusion, were much less critical of the logic, said Tannnen.46 Finally, not even Bush could keep up the charade. On Sept. 18, four days after Cheney appeared on Meet the Press, he conceded he had no proof of a connection between Hussein and the Sept. 11 attack.47 By this time, though, the invasion was over and the official lies about WMDs and the Hussein-bin Laden link were no longer needed. Nevertheless, lies and their consequences have a nasty habit of outliving their purpose and coming back to haunt the liars.

44. That figure was at least down from 82 percent just after the attack. See Table XI. 45. Bush, Press Conference, op. cit. 46 Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane, Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds, Washington Post, Sept. 6, 2003. 47. Dana Milbank, Bush Disavows HusseinSept. 11 Link, Washington Post, Sept. 18, 2003.

O R M O R E T H A N T W O Y E A R S , and perhaps longer, post-Sept 11 paranoia gave the PNAC junta carte blanche to run roughshod over the Constitution, Congress, the UN and sovereign nations in the name of the war on terrorism. This power depended on the ability to invest official disinformation with credibility, and exploit an uncritical, docile media to validate it.

The spell has evaporated in many quarters, now that the gap between disinformation and reality has turned into a chasm, and revelations of sadism by U.S. soldiers erode what little remains.

A F G H A N I S TA N T H E F O R G O T T E N WA R
The Cheney White House toppled the Taliban government and installed a pro-pipeline leader in Kabul, but did not vanquish bin Laden, his followers or the Talibans support base. Moreover, the much-desired calm economic climate for the CentGas pipeline is nowhere in sight. The Pentagon commissioned Col. Hy Rothstein (retd.) to analyze the situation in Afghanistan, 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 wars inadvertent effects may be more significant than we think.1
1. Cited in Seymour M. Hersh, The Other War, The New Yorker, April 12, 2004.

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Rothsteins findings are hardly surprising, since the U.S. never thought beyond aerial bombardment, or seemed to care that this inefficient tactic would kill hundreds or thousands of civilians. For example, on Jan. 17, 2004, an air strike on a village killed 10 Afghan 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.2 Doubtless one reason for this single-minded reliance on air power is 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 the warlords are U.S. allies in Karzais government. Problem is, theyre not only cabinet ministers but theyre fighting among themselves, and Karzai can do little if anything about it.

Back to chaos
For all the effort the U.S. expended to install Karzai as president, real power lies in the hands of commanders like Tajik defence minister Mohammed Fahim. Take, for example, the power struggle over Meymaneh, capital of Faryab province in the northwest. After the Taliban were toppled, forces loyal to Uzbek warlord Abdurrashid Dostum and the Jumbush-i-Milli party became its overlords. Then in 2002, forces loyal to Fahim and Jamiat-i-Islami entered the city to stake their claim, and civil war broke out. The governor of Faryab, a Supreme Court judge appointed by Karzai, can only watch as warlords steal money meant for city administration and wage war at will. Im in a bad situation, he said. The warlords have men with guns and I dont. They might kill me.3 Warlords also control the roads in and out of Kabul, and exact onerous tolls that make it impossible for Karzai to rebuild the country. Even if Karzai wanted to challenge them he couldnt, because one third of the 6,000 newly trained recruits in the new Afghan army have deserted. The U.S. said it plans to have an army of 70,000. As it is, the Afghan army had only 10,000 men under arms as of January 2004one tenth the size of the combined warlord militias. Karzai is therefore dependent on outside funds, some of which he uses to bribe warlords.4 Few if any funds trickle down to the people for reconstruction, which makes the population resentful of the foreign occupiers and desperate to make a living. As we know, desperation is the fuel that drives farmers to 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
2. Karzai: 10 Civilians Died in U.S. Attack, Associated Press, Feb. 1, 2004. 3. April Witt, Karzai Powerless As Warlords Battle, Washington Post, May 18, 2003; 4. Isabel Hilton, Now we pay the warlords to tyrannize the Afghan people, The Guardian , July 31, 2003.

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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 Karzais efforts to establish authority.5 Thus, we have the utterly perverse scenario of the U.S. being in bed with drug traffickers, who in turn are waging political and economic war against the leader handpicked by the U.S. Not surprisingly, one doesnt hear anything about the War on Drugs any more. Karzais own situation is precarious at best, since he cant leave his office without a phalanx of U.S. Special Forces bodyguards. His ministers dont have that luxury. On Feb. 14, 2002, 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. On Sept. 5, Karzai himself narrowly escaped assassination in Qandahar by the Taliban. Afghanistan has returned to the chaotic civil violence that prevailed before the U.S. embraced the Taliban in the name of stability, and the Cheney White House has done everything possible to undermine political stability and relations with the Muslim world. The most egregious example of the latter is the killing and abuse of Afghans. 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. Little or no attempt is made to distinguish enemies from non-combatants.6 The most egregious example occurs at detention centres like Baghram Air Base, where Afghans and internationals are held without right to counsel, legal protections or visitation rights. In his latest 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. In December 2002, two detainee deaths 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. In all, 35 detainee deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are suspicious. On Jan. 10, 2002, the U.S. began flying detainees like Mohamad to Guantnamo Bay Naval Station (GTMO) 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
5. U.S.: Afghan poppy production doubles, CNN, Nov. 28, 2003. 6. Cited in Brian Whitaker, American troops are killing and abusing Afghans, rights body says, The Guardian, March 8, 2004.

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Conventions ban on mistreatment of Prisoners of War, the Fourth Geneva Conventions 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.7 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.8 Similarly at Baghram, detainees were tortured, 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 expect the conventions to protect those held in Afghanistan and Iraq. They do, but the Pentagon and White House deliberately concocted sophistries to rationalize torture in the name of the war on terrorism. The U.S. soldiers who committed the December abuses were supervised by Company A, 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, which moved to Iraq the next year. Some of its members would take part in the atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison, about which more below.9

I R A Q P N A C S G R AV E YA R D
Before the invasion, Rumsfeld and other high officials assured the world that the Iraqi people would welcome U.S. soldiers as liberators. Now, month after month after it officially ended on May 1, 2003, a determined Iraqi insurgency is making the PNACers pay dearly for their hubris. As tyrannical as Hussein was, the Iraqis did not ask to have him removed by the U.S., nor to be bombed into U.S. servitude. Hardly a day goes by without a one or more soldiers being shot or blown up. By Oct. 30, 2004, the death toll had reached 1,120981 since Bush declared Mission Accomplished. The wounded number in the thousands. Speaking to the Washington Post, Army strategist Col. Paul Hughes epitomized the anguish of the soldiers who have been forced to fight PNACs war and die the death of 1,000 cuts:

7. 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>. 8. Cited in John Deane, Guantanamo Britons tell Bush of torture ordeal, The Independent, May 14, 2004. 9. Douglas Jehl and David Rohde, Afghan Deaths Linked to Unit at Iraq Prison, New York Times, May 24, 2004.

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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.10 Hughes is right, but understanding the war was not an issue here or in Afghanistan. Each represents an irrational sacrifice of men, money and morals to the Zionist god of infinite war. As was the case in Vietnam, military force became its own justification, and impotent bravado and obfuscation became standard government responses. Those responsible are now in full damage control mode and trying to pass on the blame to subordinates. How could it be otherwise? The lies that supported the invasion derived strength from prejudice and uncertainty, so the instant the invasion began, the future of the junta was doomed. In what must be seen as acts of panic or cowardice, Bush banned all coverage of burials and returning coffins, and did not visit a single relative of a fallen soldier until forced to for election campaign publicity. The first head to roll was that of CIA director George Tenet. On June 3, 2004, he was forced to resign and his deputy director for operations James Pavitt followed the next day, officially for unrelated reasons. These resignations are thought to be connected to upcoming reports sharply critical of the CIA for failing to prevent the Sept 11 attack or find WMDs. More likely, the CIA is being made the scapegoat in the run up to the November presidential election. The same is now true of PNACs golden boy.

Exit Chalabi
Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the Pentagon and the Cheney White House, is now accused of being a spy for Iran who fed the U.S. bogus intelligence. Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress are thought to have manipulated the U.S. into getting rid of Saddam Hussein so that an Irandominated Shia-led government could rule Iraq. According to The Guardian, a U.S. intelligence official claims to have hard evidence that Chalabi and his intelligence chief Aras Karim Habib passed secrets to Tehran, and that Habib had been on Irans payroll for several years. As a result, certain civilian Pentagon employees are being given lie-detector tests to see who told Chalabi that the U.S. had broken Irans secret intelligence codes.11 Furthermore, we are told that the alleged informant divulged the information while drunk, after which a frantic exchange of messages occurred between Chalabi and Tehran. These messages were intercepted and
10. Cited in Thomas E. Ricks, Dissension Grows in Senior Ranks on War Strategy, Washington Post, May 9, 2004. 11. Julian Borger, U.S. intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war, The Guardian, May 25, 2004; David Johnston and James Risen, Polygraph Testing Starts at Pentagon in Chalabi Inquiry, New York Times, June 3, 2004.

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decoded. In May 2004, U.S. forces raided Chalabi's Baghdad headquarters, and his $335,000 per month contract with the Defense Intelligence Agency was cancelled. He then tried to use his position on the Supreme Shia Council to foment discord between Shiites and Sunnis and destabilize the interim council, which put out a warrant for him on counterfeiting charges. Chalabi vehemently denied any suggestion that he betrayed the U.S., and called the attacks on him a CIA-led smear campaign. It does seem odd that Chalabi would risk a frantic exchange of messages if he knew Irans security codes had been broken. What can be said is that the attempt to blame Chalabi and Iran for the Iraq fiasco is ludicrous. Even if all the allegations against him were true, the PNACers eagerly bought the bogus intelligence he was peddling, even to the extent of browbeating and bullying the State Department and CIA to take it on board. Second, Rumsfeld and others had been grooming Chalabi and the INC since the early 1990s, so the question of Irans role is irrelevant, unless were expected to believe that Chalabi fooled so many people for more than 10 years. The new U.S. satrap in Baghdad is none other than Ayad Allawi, veteran CIA asset and infamous source of the bogus claim that Saddam Hussein could launch WMDs within 45 minutes.

Kings of pain
Not only is the Cheney White House facing aggressive grilling over the fraudulent political and military pretexts for the invasion and corrupt contract tendering for the reconstruction, it now must answer for the torture and sexual degradation of Iraqi detainees. These revelations, which broke into the limelight in late April on CBSs newsmagazine 60 Minutes, are especially damning because Bush made much of the great U.S. crusade to liberate Iraqis from Saddam Husseins torture chambers. In the notorious Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, for example, prisoners were beaten, forced to strip, masturbate and submit to humiliating sexual indignities. Because pornography and public nudity especially in the presence of women are un-Islamic, to enforce such conduct and domination is one of the most horrific tortures the jailers could inflict. The world only learned of them because of the moral courage of soldiers like Sgt. Samuel Provance and Specialist Joseph Darby, and investigative reporters like Seymour Hersh, but reports of serious abuse at Abu Ghraib had been known to the Pentagon since at least October 2003.12
12. 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, Tagubas 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

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So far, six soldiers in the 800th Military Police Brigade. Specialist Charles A. Graner, Sgt. Javal Davis; Specialist Megan Ambuhl, and Specialist Sabrina Harmanwill face a military tribunal on charges of conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty to prisoners, maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts. Pvt. Jeremy Sivits has already pleaded guilty and has been sentenced to a year in prison. Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Chip Frederick II, the senior non-commissioned officer, was sentenced to eight years. A seventh soldier, Pvt. Lynndie England, the most conspicuous participant in the sexual humiliation, was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, because of pregnancy and will be tried there. Brig-Gen. Mark Kimmit, Deputy Director of U.S. Army Operations in Iraq, delivered the standard White House response: As a soldier, I was appalleddisgusted. I have said many, many times when I saw those photos that they are absolutely inconsistent with what we stand for as military. But, quite frankly, that was a small number of peoplesmall number of detainees. Horrible though it may be it is not reflective of the 135,000 soldiers over here serving properly.13 This is a lie. Humiliation, beating and psychological torture of Iraqis have been long-established practice. According to Sgt. Greg Ford, a California National Guardsman assigned to the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion, three of his fellow soldiers severely abused detainees last year in Samarra 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.14 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 armys prison system in Iraq. He found incompetence and ignorance of standard operating procedures:
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 Armys 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. Seymour Hersh broke the Abu Ghraib story first in Torture at Abu Ghraib, The New Yorker, May, 2004. 13. Interview with Kirsty Wark, BBC, May 24, 2004. A defence attorney for the accused called the abusers a group of kids from Virginia who will atone for their sins, thus highlighting the moral crusader religiosity that drives the abuse. Rick Salutin, Americas fundamental sin of abuse, Globe and Mail, May 7, 2004. 14. Calif. Guardsman Alleges Abuse in Iraq, Associated Press, June 9, 2004.

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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.15 Frederick and Graner are typical examples of the unqualified staff at Abu Ghraib. They and the other members of the 372nd MP Company, a component of the 800th MP Brigade, were 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.16 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.17 In addition to unqualified soldiers, the Pentagon hired civilian prison guards who had been charged with sexual or physical misconduct, like Terry Stewart, former head of Arizona's Corrections Department. He was sued by the Justice Department in 1997 after at least 14 female inmates were

15. Taguba Report, p. 37. 16. Hersh, op. cit. 17. 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, Oct. 1, 1997, p. 2 <www.usapa.army.mil/pdffiles/r190_8.pdf>. Page refers to the document, not the pdf.

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repeatedly raped, sexually assaulted and watched by corrections workers as they dressed, showered and used the bathroom.18 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. In his report, 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.19 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 system, and should never have been put in charge of Abu Ghraib. Fact is, she wasnt really in charge, and was dismissed largely for cosmetic reasons, as part of a cover-up. Karpinski has since told the BBC that she is being made a scapegoat for the conduct of senior generals and politicians.

Gitmo-izing Iraq
Karpinski assumed command in June 2003, but within a couple of months her authority was undermined. At the end of August, the Pentagon dispatched Gitmo commander Maj.-Gen. Geoffrey Miller at the head of a 10member task force to find ways to soften up Iraqi detainees and improve the flow of intelligence by Gitmo-izing Abu Ghraib and other prisons; that is, by treating Iraqi detainees with the same inhuman contempt as Gitmo detainees, despite the applicability of the Geneva conventions. This fact is confirmed by Karpinski and by Taguba, who noted that Miller used Gitmo procedures and interrogation techniques, such as setting unmuzzled military dogs to intimidate and frighten detainees. In one case, Taguba reported one detainee was severely bitten.20 During his visit, Miller began undercutting Karpinskis authority by putting Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade (MI), in charge of the two wings of cell block Tier 1-A, which housed the High-Value Targets. Karpinski was not even allowed in this area.21 Furthermore, Miller contaminated the command structure by involving MPs in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees.
18. See Why Did U.S. Hire These 4 Guys? CBS News, June 4, 2004 <www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/03/iraq/main620823.shtml>. 19. Taguba Report, p. 40. 20. 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. 21. David DeBatto, Find Out Who Got the MPs Involved. Military.com, May 17, 2004.

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Under AR 190-8, MPs are not permitted to participate in MI-supervised interrogations.22 As we go up the chain of command, we see that the torture of detainees and violations of the Geneva conventions was deliberate policy sanctioned at the highest levels. On Nov. 19, Lt.-Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Millers immediate superior in Iraq, 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 Karpinskis 800th MP Brigade in charge of routine detainee operations. Sanchez himself approved the use of dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns and sensory deprivation at the complete discretion of the interrogators. A memo dated Oct. 9, 2003 enumerated the wide range of pressure tactics interrogators could use, including stress positions and solitary confinement for more than 30 days.23 Placing MPs under the command of MI, was contrary to established procedure, and Taguba condemned this state of affairs as unsound. 24 Turning the prisons into torture chambers was the height of perversity. First, as Taguba noted, the prison held large numbers of common criminals who were not members of international terrorist organizations, so the coercion was gratuitously sadistic. Second, and most importantly, Army Field Manual 30-15 expressly prohibits any physical or mental torture during interrogation. The prohibition has less to do with morality than with logic: [E]xperience revealed that the use of force was unnecessary to gain cooperation and was a poor interrogation technique, given that its use produced unreliable information, damaged future interrogations, and induced those being interrogated to offer information viewed as expected in order to prevent the use of force.25 The CIA, however, has an entirely different attitude to torture, especially no-touch torture. Rather than inflict physical pain, its training manuals instruct interrogators employ hooding or sleep deprivation to disorient the subject, as well as sexual humiliation. From here they proceed to selfinflicted discomfort, such as standing for hours with arms extended. Alfred W. McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison said the use of these torture manuals ceased in the early 1990s, but

22 Taguba Report, p. 9. 23. Julian Coman, Interrogation abuses were approved at highest levels, The Telegraph, June 13, 2004. 24. Taguba Report, pp. 38-39. 25. Ibid., p. 54.

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resumed after the war on terrorism was declared, beginning at Baghram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.26 At Abu Ghraib, treatment of detainees followed the CIA handbook, not army regulations. In a statement promising reforms, Miller admitted as much: 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.27

The case for torture

The policy of actively subverting the Geneva conventions to torture Muslims predates the Abu Ghraib atrocities by at least two years. Given the clear proscription on torture in AR 190-8 and FM 30-15, those responsible have no regard for U.S. or international lawsuch is the defining characteristic of the fascist White House. The first mention of the treatment of detainees, however, seemed to be in line with the principles of the Geneva conventions. In a Nov. 13, 2001, military order, George W. Bush defined the treatment of international terrorists in light of the Sept. 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 detention28 Within two months, Bush reversed himself. He adopted a Jan. 18, 2002, Department of Justice ruling that the Taliban and al-Qaida detainees were not covered by the Third Geneva Convention because they did not meet its definition of prisoners of war (GPW). Powell opposed Bush on this matter and asked him to reconsider. In a memorandum to Bush, White House head counsel Alberto Gonzales laid out the arguments for and against reconsideration, and argued that Bush should reject Powells 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
26. Alfred W. McCoy, Torture at Abu Ghraib Followed CIAs Manual, Boston Globe, May 14, 2004. 27. Ibid. For sworn statements about the torture from the victims themselves see Sworn Statements by Abu Ghraib Detainees, Washington Post, April 21, 2004. 28. George W. Bush, Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism, Sec. 3 (bd), White House, Nov. 13, 2001.

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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 Genevas strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners.29 Not only does Gonzales concoct an apologia for torturethe ability to quickly obtain information from captured terroristshis understanding of the Third Geneva Convention is tendentious and self-serving. Under Section C Article 5, the convention stipulates that any doubt regarding the hostile status of detainees must be determined by a competent tribunal.30 The U.S. does not have the right to determine who does or does not fall under the protection of the convention. This is why the war on terrorism is so odious. Without it, the Cheney White House cannot rationalize persecuting Muslims for the sake of Israel. A second leaked memorandum, prepared under the supervision of Pentagon general counsel William Haynes II, enhances Gonzales argument: [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.31 Unlawful combatants has no standing in international law and is designed to legitimize the mistreatment of Muslims in the name of the war on terrorism. As we saw in the Preface, to wage war against an ism amounts to waging war against civilians, which is precisely what the PNACoccupied White House set out to do. The war on terrorism allowed it to invent a whole new category of enemy, one that wasnt covered by the conventions. Thus, even though this memorandum included FM 30-15, the criticisms of torture could be ignored.
29. Alberto R. Gonzalez, Decision Re Application of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War to the Conflict with al Qaeda and the Taliban, Jan. 25, 2002, p.2, <http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4999148/site/newsweek>. 30. Geneva Convention (III) Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva, Aug. 12 1949, <www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/0/6fef854a3517b75ac125641e004a9e68?OpenDocument>. 31. 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. This memo was applied to both Iraqi and Afghan prisonsers. It was preceded by an August, 2002 memo by Bush counsel Gonzales, which does not address the question what is the law, but what can we get away with, as The Economist noted. Both memos have been posted online by the Washington Post.

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Calculated ambiguity
Politically appointed lawyers like Haynes made specious arguments for ignoring the Geneva conventions because they outmuscled the military lawyers, the Judges Advocate-General, who insisted on respect for international law. Speaking to ABC News, numerous JAGs stated that 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.32 Furthermore, in May and October 2003, senior JAGs were so concerned that the Pentagon civilians were deliberately fostering legal ambiguity that they took their concerns to the New York Bar Association, chiefly the enemy combatant decision to sidestep the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. For his part Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, denied every one of the charges: There has not been, ever, any ambiguity about the strong support that the leadership of this department gives to the Geneva Conventions.33 This desperate lie is easily exposed, because the Haynes memorandum was specifically designed to subvert the conventions, and Haynes is accountable to Feith. Moreover, the memorandums authors overtly absolved Bush from having to adhere to proscriptions against torture: In light of the Presidents complete authority over the conduct of war, without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the Presidents ultimate authority in these areas.34 The struggle between the legislative and executive branches on the question of who takes the lead in wartime goes back centuries, but the claim of complete authority is grossly misleading if not unconstitutional. Those who argue for Congressional primacy cite Art. 1 Sec. 1 of the Constitution: All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States. Included herein is the power to declare war (Clause 11). Congress, though, did not declare war on al-Qaida or anyone. The attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq were premeditated acts of aggression that Congress was coerced into validating post factum; therefore, no appeal to constitutional authority is valid.
32. Cited in Jake Tapper and Clayton Sandell, Advice RejectedJAG Lawyers Say Political Appointees Ignored Their Warnings on Prisoner Treatment, ABCNews, May 16, 2004. 33. Ibid. 34. Working Group, p. 19.

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Israel shows how its done

A significant detail about the U.S. use of no-touch torture is the revival of the CIA manual. As mentioned above, it was not in use during the 1990s when the Labor-Zionist Clinton administration was in power, but after the war on terrorism was declared, it made a sudden comeback. This is because the Likudnik cabal in the White House and Pentagon is responsible for bringing the U.S. down to Israels level of anti-Muslim sadism. 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.35 One former senior U.S. intelligence official explained the absurdity of this collusion: It is bonkers, insane. Here we arewere already being compared to Sharon in the Arab world, and weve just confirmed it by bringing in the Israelis.36 He was referring to assassination teams, but his comments apply also to torture methods. 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 policybased on Israeli conclusions about Arab sensitivities. One such event took place on Nov. 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 situationMany residents, including women watched him and he was very embarrassed.37 The same sort of humiliation was also inflicted on medical workers with the Red Crescent Society. According to Mohammed Rafi, director of societys youth development programs in Jenin:

35. See, for example: Esther Schrader and Josh Meyer, As violence in Iraq surges, U.S. quietly turns to Israel, Baltimore Sun, Nov. 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 templateRape, feces and urine-dipped cloth sacks, Counterpunch.org, May 10, 2004. 36. Julian Borger, Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq, Guardian, Dec. 9, 2003. Speaking on CBC Televisions 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? 37. Suzanne Russ, Stripping Palestinians has Become Common Practice: Eyewitness Accounts, Palestine Chronicle, Nov. 26, 2002.

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[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.38 Israels role is the one aspect of the tortures at Abu Ghraib that the Pentagon Likudniks wanted to keep hidden at all costs, but the leak of Tagubas report to the New Yorker has made that impossible. The mainstream press has acknowledged the Israeli origin of these techniques. A recent article in Janes Foreign Review disclosed that the U.S. thought it needed help conducting mass interrogations of Arabic-speaking detainees, so it employed linguists from Shin Bet, the Israeli security service, to help break the Iraqi captives.39 Nevertheless, the Likudniks went to laughable lengths to slam the barn door shut after the horse bolted. Daniel R. Dunn, an information officer in Feiths 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 evade Internet searches.40 The Pentagon was right to be afraid because Taguba connected the Pentagon to U.S. civilian contractors with 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.41 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 an army translator from Titan. As detainee Kasim Hilas recounted: I saw [name blacked out] fking 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 dk in the little kids ass. I couldnt see the face of the kid because his face wasn't in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures.42
38. Ibid. 39. Glenn Frankel, Prison Tactics a Longtime Dilemma for Israel, Washington Post, June 16; Israeli interrogators in Iraq An exclusive report, Janes Foreign Rreview, July 7, 2004. 40. Pentagon Email Warning, Time, May 8, 2004. 41. Taguba Report, p. 26. 42. Cited in Julian Borger, US general linked to Abu Ghraib abuse, Guardian, May 22, 2004.

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A lawsuit filed on behalf of nine Iraqis alleges that San Diego-based Titan and CACI of Arlington, Virginia, conspired to torture detainees to obtain more information, thereby increasing their chances of winning more government contracts.43 Titan has deep ties to Israel and Likudnik Zionists, as shown by its connection to James Woolsey, former CIA Director and charter member of PNAC. He served on Titans board of directors, was an architect of the Iraq invasion, and staunchly backed Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraq National Congress. Woolsey is now a pro-Israeli lobbyist with affiliations to a plethora of other Zionist fronts, including the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, JINSA, and the Center for Security Policy. Woolsey also has close connections to Stephen Cambone, a PNACer and member of Rumsfelds Pentagon cabal. If anyone knew of the torture techniques at Abu Ghraib it would be Cambone, because he is Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligencea new department created to rival the CIA, which Rumsfeld hates. In his report, Taguba singled out two contractors attached to the 205th MI Brigade for dismissal and formal reprimandsSteven 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.44 The fact that he did not have a security clearance has fuelled speculation that John Israel, an Iraqi-American Christian born in Baghdad in 1955, is 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
43. US firms face Iraq abuse lawsuit, BBC, June 10, 2004. 44. 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 claims Israel did not work for them and was merely a sub-contractor.

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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.45

WHO BENEFITS?
The mutual support among U.S. and Israeli Likudniks and the deep penetration of PNAC, AEI, JINSA and other Zionist fronts into the highest levels of government also rules out any chance that Bush could have followed anything but an Israeli foreign policy. The U.S. itself has nothing to gain from torturing Muslims: It was contrary to self-interest, because the U.S. needs good relations in the Middle East for the sake of oil; It was useless as an interrogation tool, as the armys filed manual spelled out; It plays to the strength of Osama bin Laden and his followers by highlighting the moral double standard, and The U.S. is governed by the rule of law. Although that isnt always observed in foreign policy, the risks of committing abuses like the tortures at Abu Ghraib far outweigh any hypothetical benefits. Israel, on the other hand, has a keen interest in maximizing animosity between the U.S. and the Arab world. It abuses Arabs as a matter of national policy. To kill a Palestinian, to destroy his livelihood, to humiliate him, to torture him, to force him and his family out of their homesthese are accepted, sanctioned forms of conduct, because Israels purpose is to rid Palestine of its native population. In the Likudnik Zionist mind, all Arabs are sub-humannot worthy of dignity, respect or legal protection under the law. The parallels and similarities between the Zionist treatment of Arabs and the Nazi treatment of Jews are disturbing. Under the Third Reich, the Nazis unleashed state-sanctioned terror against Jews, who were deemed to be subhuman (Untermenschen)not worthy of dignity, respect or legal protection under the law. To kill a Jew, destroy his livelihood, humiliate him, torture him, to force him and his family out of their homesthese were accepted, sanctioned forms of conduct to rid Europe of a specific group of people. Typical is this infamous April 9, 2001 quote from Ovadia Yosef, founder and spiritual leader of the Shas party: It is forbidden to be merciful to them, you must give them missiles, with relishannihilate 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.

45. Ibid.

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This attitude is nurtured through the Israeli school system and military indoctrination. Not so in the U.S., although anti-Muslim sentiment is strong within the Lobby and among Zionist Christians. In general, the U.S. seeks good relations with Middle Eastern states, but such sympathy for Arabs does not sit well with Likudniks, who need the U.S. to underwrite Israels repression of the Palestinians. Fomenting animosity between the U.S. and the Muslim world suits Israels purpose in securing U.S. protection. This lament from an embittered State Department official speaks volumes: 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.46 The more the U.S. is hated, the more it will turn to Israel. To make this scenario possible, PNACers went to extraordinary lengths to sabotage rational decision-making. Those who understood the Middle East, professional analysts in the intelligence community and generals like Anthony Zinni and Eric Shinseki, were marginalized and denigrated. They stood in the way of the PNACers attempt to remake the U.S. in Israels imageto turn it into an instrument of anti-Muslim oppression.

46. Joshua Hammer, Richard Wolffe and Christopher Dickey, The Wars through Arab Eyes, Newsweek, May 31, 2004.

T H I S B O O K , one event has loomed in the background, yet never been treated in its own rightthe Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. It has been treated as a given, because the book is concerned with the systematic persecution of Muslims and Arabs that the attack made possible. Nevertheless, some discussion of Sept. 11 is useful to show how the war on terrorism was contrived. H R O U G H O U T

As we know, the attack saved the juntas hold on power. Before Sept. 11, Bushs electoral victory was still widely regarded as illegitimate, and his popularity was in decline. After Sept. 11, he suddenly became a war president, had more power than Caesar, and turned the U.S. into a police state with barely a peep of political or media opposition. Bushs lucky trifecta seems too fortuitous to be entirely due to chance. On July 22, 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission) issued its final report, ostensibly to answer such questions. Unfortunately, the report turned out to be an even more brazen cover-up than the Warren Commissions whitewash of the Kennedy assassination. The 9/11 commissioners operated only within a given frame of reference (Islamist hijackers did it); found a scapegoat (intelligence community); failed to follow up leads (contrary testimony); offered politically safe recommendations (reform the CIA, inter alia); and defended the war on terrorism. To tell a nation that has been zealously indoctrinated with martyrdom and anti-Muslim demonology that the accepted version of events is a lie invites the knee-jerk charge of conspiracy theorist. Furthermore, to suggest that the evidence points to terrorism by Israelis or Israel-firsters in the U.S. hierarchy invites the kind of scurrilous libels that were heaped upon Sen. Hollingsputting one doubly beyond the pale. Linking Israel in any way to the attack is the theory that dare not speak its name, but as Sherlock Holmes said: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.1
1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four (London: Spencer Blackett, 1890), p. 111, <http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DoySign.html>.

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The whole truth of what happened may never be known, and this chapter will not attempt a detailed analysis of every facet of that day; instead, it will focus on events surrounding the collapse of the WTC, especially WTC 2 and WTC 7. By juxtaposing the commissions findings against other data in the public domain, the official version is shown to be impossible, and the war on terrorism a premeditated fabrication.

F I V E I S R A E L I S A C T I N G S T R A N G E LY
During the WTC attack, a Weehawken, N.J., housewife named Maria noticed a strange sight in her parking lot. Five young men were kneeling on the roof of a white van videotaping the collapse. They seemed to be taking a movie. They were like happy, you know... They didnt look shocked to me. I thought it was strange, she said.2 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 cuttersthe same kind that would later be ascribed to the Muslim hijackers. Bomb-sniffing dogs discovered traces of white explosive powder on their overalls. Brothers Paul and Sivan Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari, all aged between 22 and 26, were handcuffed at gunpoint. 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

2. Neil Mackay, Five Israelis were seen filming as jet liners ploughed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001..., Sunday Herald, Nov. 2, 2003; The White Van: Were Israelis Detained on Sept. 11 Spies? ABC News, June 21, 2002; Marc Perelman, Spy Rumors Fly on Gusts of TruthAmericans 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.

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Israelis were conducting a surveillance mission. The companys Israeli owner Dominik Otto Suter fled the country and the company hurriedly shut down.3 So far, we have three news outletsABC News, the Sunday Herald (Scotland) and the New York Jewish newspaper the Forwardidentifying Israelis acting suspiciously regarding the Sept. 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 told to document an event if the people who sent them didnt know it was going to happen? Not a single mention of these events appears in the 9/11 commissions report, even though they pertain directly to the attack and are in the public domain.

Israels early warning system

Two hours before the first plane hit WTC 1, 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 has yet been made.4 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. On Jan. 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.5 Odigo and Comverse work with Israel-based Onset Technology, the worlds 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 Armys Intelligence Corps. In August 2000, Onset received $3 million from Hollinger Digital, a media management and investment subsidiary of Hollinger International. Its
3. Nevertheless, a search on superpages.com still lists two New Jersey outlets for Urban Moving Systems, one of which is at 1720 Willow Ave., Weehawken, (212) 732-9747. 4. Yuval Dror, Odigo says workers were warned of attack, Haaretz, Dec. 27, 2002. The North American media did not pick it up the story. 5. Odigo, Inc., The Leading Instant Messaging Solutions Provider, Secures $15.35 Million In Private Placement, Media Center, Comverse Inc, Jan, 9, 2001 <www.comverse.com/news/news_big.asp?cat=65&newsid=541>. Comverse bought Odigo outright for $20 million in May 2002.

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co-chairman with Conrad Black has been the notorious neo-con and prince of darkness Richard Perle (who is also on the boards of Onset and the Jerusalem Post. He was obliged to quietly resign under a cloud from the Defense Policy Board in February 2004, and is in a dispute with Hollinger.)6 On Sept. 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 Sept. 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 diedtwo 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 ask a few basic questions: Why did Israelis have warning of an attack against the U.S.? How could the estimated number of suspected Israeli dead in the WTC buildings fall from 4,000 to one? 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 FBIs investigation into the Odigo tipster? Was there a connection between the warning and Odigos relationship with Hollinger, Onset and Comverse? Ironically, the key to unlocking this puzzle comes from Fox News, the most Zionist U.S. television network. On Dec. 12, 2001, the program Special Report with Brit Hume featured the first of a four-part investigative series into Israels espionage against the U.S. and Israels role in the Sept. 11 attack. Because of its incendiary revelations, Fox pulled the series from its website about a week later.7 Nevertheless, partial transcripts can still be found at informationclearinghouse.info, whatreallyhappened.com and rense.com, 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. Its classified information.8
6. Jack Shafer, Richard Perle Libel Watch, 20 Days to Expiration, Slate.com, Feb. 19, 2004. 7. See Justin Raimondo, Now You See It, Now You DontA Note to My Readers, antiwar.com, Dec. 22, 2001; he explains why the links in his latest column no longer work. 8. The actual information is from the originals before they were pulled. Citations from all four parts of the Cameron series are at <www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5133.htm>.

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Parts 2 and 3 of Camerons 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. Infosys provides wiretapping equipment for local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. Comverses 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 Sept. 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 antidrug raids on crime syndicates were exposed.9 In all, 100 Israelis were arrested, including members of organized Israel crime groups, Mossad and employees of two Israel-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 technologycell phones, call forwarding, conference calls and the likewere 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 carriers duty to cooperate in the interception of communications for Law Enforcement purposes, and for other purposes.10 Companies whose computerized telecom switches were installed before Jan. 1, 1995, must ensure that all new parts and equipment are CALEAcompliant. 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.
9. See also Charles R. Smith, U.S. Police and Intelligence Hit by Spy NetworkSpies Tap Police and Government Phones, newsmax.com, Dec. 19, 2001. 10. Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, H.R. 4922, 103rd Congress, Second Session, Oct. 25, 1994, at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, <www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/calea/calea_law.html>.

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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.11 The preceding information is all in the public domain and had to be known to the commission, yet in the reports 567 pages there is barely a mention of Israel. Israel or Israeli occurs a mere 35 times30 times in text and five times in footnotesusually without direct reference to the attack. Predictably, the only direct references are in connection with Islamist 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 designed not to seek answers, but to prevent the right questions from being asked. This is especially obvious concerning the collapse of WTC 1, 2 and 7.

P U L L I N G A FA S T O N E
Perhaps the most suspect incident on Sept. 11 was the collapse of WTC 7, about which the commission said nothing. At 4:10 p.m., fires were reported in the building; 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: Weve 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.12 Silversteins admission directly contradicts the official explanation in the Federal Emergency Management Agencys 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 WTC 7 and how they caused the building to

11. Smith, newsmax.com, op. cit. According to Smith and Cameron, Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were warned on Oct. 18 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. 12. Cited in America Rebuilds, PBS, Sept. 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 wanted that building to fall within a certain area.

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collapse remain unknown at this time.13 The report makes no mention of his admission, and its account of the collapse is feeble and evasive: The collapse of WTC 7 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 WTC 7, as well as about the specific fuels that may have been involved during the course of the fire.14 The passage merely describes the buildings collapse, and uses phrases like appears to have been initiated and if the collapse initiated to create the illusion that fire caused it. Ironically, Appendix A to the report cites experimental data that strongly undermines 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 900C (1,5001,700F) in three tests (well above the traditionally assumed critical temperature of 600C [1,100F]), no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments.15 Even though there were fires in WTC 7, they were minor and localized. FEMA cites no evidence to show that they reached sufficient intensity to compromise structural integrity.16 The appendix also states that WTC 1, 2 and 7 represented the first collapses on record of any buildings with steel frames protected by fireresistant spray-applied materialin this case, asbestos.17 As examples, the appendix cites fires at the First Interstate Bank Building in Los Angeles (May 45, 1988) and at Philadelphias One Meridian Plaza (Feb. 2324, 1991). In each case, the structural integrity of the steel-framed buildings remained intact. Moreover, One Meridians columns continued to stabilize the building for several years.18
13. 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). 14. Ibid., Sec. 5.6.2, p. 30; Sec. 5.5.3, p. 20. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., p. 20. Photographs on the Internet, e.g, <www.wtc7.net>, show clearly how minor the fires were. 17. FEMA, Sec. A.3.1.5, p. A-14, < www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apa.pdf >. No steel building has ever suffered serious structural damage from fire. 18. Ibid., Sec. A.3.1.3, p. A-9.

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The only action taken on WTC 7 was to demolish it after the first report of fire. The commission made no attempt to challenge FEMAs 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 WTC 7, therefore, is that it was prerigged with explosives.

WTC 7 + (WTC 1 x WTC 2) Evidence = Sabotage

Since we know with certainty that WTC 7 was deliberately imploded, its logical to suspect the same was true of WTC 1 and WTC 2, 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 explosionI didnt think it was an explosionbut the base of the building shook. I felt it shakethen when we were outside, the second explosion happened and then there was a series of explosions. We can only wonder at the kind of damagethe kind of human damagewhich was caused by those explosionsthose series of explosions.19 911 emergency calls to Jersey City, New Jersey: O F F I C I A L : Battalion 3 to dispatch, weve just had another explosion. O F F I C I A L : Battalion 3 to dispatch, weve had additional explosion. D I S P A T C H E R : Received battalion command. Additional explosion.20 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.21 Capt. Dennis Tarido, Engine 7: It was as if they had detonators, as if they were planted to take down a building.22 The collapses of WTC 1 and 2 were similar to that of WTC 7: straight down onto its footprint, yet no plane hit WTC 7. According to the official version, WTC 1 and 2 collapsed because immense heat from the planes jet fuel disabled fire protection systems and melted the steel structure. This melting then caused the floor-supporting trusses to fail, creating a downward pancaking effect.
19. Cited in Christopher Bollyn, Feds Withhold Crucial WTC Evidence, American Free Press, Aug. 8, 2002 <www.rense.com/general28/FEDswithholdcrucial.htm>. 20. Exclusive: 911 Tapes Tell Horror of 9/11 (Part 2), WNBC News, June 17, 2002 <www.wnbc.com/news/1315651/detail.html>. 21. Cited in Hell on Earth, People, Sept. 24. 2001. 22. Cited in the documentary 9/11, prod. Goldfish Pictures and Silverstar Productions, dirs. Jules Naudet, Gedeon Naudet, James Hanlon, 2001.

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This scenario is not only inapplicable to WTC 7, it violates basic physics: Commercial jet fuel is a blend of kerosene and other hydrocarbons, and burns around 650 Fahrenheit (345 Celsius) in open air; The black smoke that emanated from WTC 1 is proof that there was insufficient oxygen inside the tower to permit efficient combustion; Without sufficient oxygen, fire cannot burn efficiently, much less attain high temperatures; Steel melts around 2,500F (1370C)with minor variations due to alloysand loses half of its tensile strength at 1,100F (600C); the WTC was built to withstand five times normal loads; To melt steel requires special fuel and forced oxygen, as with an oxyacetylene torch, but even this only works on a tiny area directly under the jet of flame, because steel rapidly dissipates heat; By definition, jet fuel cannot burn hot enough to weaken steel; Even if steel had melted, the buildings would have twisted and toppled, not fallen into their footprints, which requires weeks of expert placement of charges to force the falling load to take the path of greatest resistance; Videos show that the buildings collapsed almost at free-fall speed, as in a controlled demolition, since the structure had been dynamited away; The official version is absolutely untenable.

Crime Scene Interference

Any hope of proving or disproving the melting steel theory vanished after New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had key evidence destroyed. Giulianis office denied FEMA investigators full access to the 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 expresses 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 membersdescribed by

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one close source as a tourist tripno ones checking the evidence for anything.23 Most of the WTCs steel girders, up to two feet thick, were sent across the Hudson River to scrap recycler Hugo Neu Schnitzer East in Jersey City. 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 70,000 was promptly recycled it to China and India, where steel goes for five to 10 percent more than the depressed domestic market will bear.24 Leaving aside the millions of dollars the city made selling the scrap to the recyclers, tons of forensic evidence of foul play before Sept. 11 disappeared. Except for brief mentions of 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.

AN INSECURITY COMPLEX
If, like WTC 7, explosives were responsible for the collapse of the towers, Islamists could not be blamed for their collapse. Demolition by implosion is a highly professional discipline requiring weeks of careful preparation to plan and place the charges. The saboteurs would have to have had access to the buildings before Sept. 11. A suspicious breach of security on the weekend before the attack might have been one such window of opportunity. On the weekend of Sept. 89, information technology specialist Scott Forbes was working overtime in the offices of Fiduciary Trust on the 97th floor of WTC 2.25 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 WTCs 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 knowit was one of the WTCs first occupants. The last time the WTC experienced an extensive power cut was around the time of the 1993 bombing. With no security cameras or security door locks functioning, WTC 2 was left utterly vulnerable. Moreover, a two-week high-security alert had been cancelled just days before the attack, and on Thursday Sept. 6, bomb-sniffing
23. Bill Manning, $elling out the Investigation, Fire Engineering, January 2002. 24. Ron Callari, 9/11 Update Ground Zero For Sale, San Antonio Current, March 21, 2002; World Trade Centre Scrap Sails to India, China Radio International News, January 2002. 25. Unless otherwise stated, all background and citations in this section come from an interview between the author and Scott Forbes, 10 a.m. PDT, Sept. 23, 2004.

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dogs were abruptly removed.26 Forbes said many anonymous technicians came in and out of the tower that day. The floor directly above where Forbes was working belonged to Aon Corporation, and that weekend he heard the familiar sound of construction, even though 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 Sept. 10, Forbes was again in the office because some of Fiduciarys 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 WTC 1. 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 WTC 2: 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? The logical inference to all of this is that these unsupervised engineers were planting explosives, which is why the bomb-sniffing dogs had to be removed. On Sept. 12, Forbes went to Fiduciarys disaster recovery location in New Jerseyan 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:
26. Curtis L. Taylor and Sean Gardiner, Heightened Security Alert Had Just Been Lifted, Newsday, Sept. 12, 2001.

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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 isnt 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. Thats 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 breathe. His voice was actually very calm. It wasnt like someone calling up panicking.27 No rational explanation is sufficient to explain the commissions egregious failure to seek answers to questions of the highest importance, unless it didnt want to know the answers. The case for a cover up is overpowering.

The beneficiaries
At least three people had to have been responsible for the powering down.

Marvin Bush
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 Kuwaits ruling al-Sarah family. Securacom/Stratesec is funded by the Kuwaiti-American investment firm KuwAm.28 Marvin Bush has not been linked to the attack, but that doesnt mean the authorities have tried. Linking the disaster with the White House would be anathema for a corrupt panel of political appointees. Not surprisingly, the report makes no mention of Marvin Bush at all.

Larry, Lewis and their new lease on life

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 WTC 1, 2, 4 and 5. Larry Silverstein had already bought the leases on WTC 3 (The Marriott Hotel) WTC 6 (U.S. Customs Building) and WTC 7 (Solomon Brothers Building).
27. Accounts From the South TowerTranscripts, New York Times, May 26, 2002.

28. Craig Cox, Secrecy Surrounds 9/11 Investigation, Utne.com, February 2003.

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The Port Authority wanted to be rid of responsibility for the buildings, but faced a dilemma: they couldnt 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; few people wanted to move into a toxic building. Selling leases was the only way it could offload responsibility. In early 2001, Vornado Realty Trust of Paramus, N.J., was named the winning bidder for the leases. On Feb. 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 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.29 Why the commission didnt question this fire-sale price and Silversteins 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 each because each plane constituted a separate attack. For its part, Swiss Reinsurance, which represented a consortium of 20 insurers and reinsurers, argued that both attacks constituted one single event, 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 insurers. 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 Silversteins own insurance broker that stipulated Silverstein could never recover more than $3.5 billion. At least two more liability trials are scheduled, but with the $861 million payout on WTC 7, Silverstein had already made a profit of about half a billion.30 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, plans are under way to erect a 1,776-foot Freedom Tower:
29.Complex insurance issues emerge in wake of World Trade Center tragedy, Insurance Times. Oct. 30, 2001, Vol. XX No. 22. 30. WTC Jury Deals Leaseholder a Blow, Associated Press, April 29, 2004; Charles E. Boyle, Swiss Re, Developer Continue to Dispute WTC Cost, Insurance Journal, Aug. 19, 2002. As a lessee, Silverstein paid only a small fraction of the price before the attacks.

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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.31 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.32 With these toxic, underused buildings now pulverized into dust, the authority was rid of its two towering headaches. Eisenberg has since become a member of the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Authority, which is spearheading the reconstruction. The commission had a duty to investigate Silverstein and Eisenberg because they benefited from the attack so conspicuously. The commission did receive a specific request to investigate Silverstein for the implosion of WTC 6 and WTC 7.33 It did nothing. Silverstein and Eisenberg also should have been investigated for their political connections. Eisenberg headed Bushs New Jersey fundraising committee, was recently elected Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and is a director of the Republican Jewish Coalition and a former vice-president of AIPAC. Silverstein, like Eisenberg, held a top position in the United Jewish Appeal, a billion-dollar Zionist charity, and has strong ties to Israels leadership, a fact that was demonstrated shortly after the events of Sept. 11: 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 ministersBenjamin Netanyahu who this week called Silverstein a friend, and Ehud Barak, whom Silverstein in the past offered a job as his representative in Israelalso called soon after the disaster.34 Given the commissions lack of curiosity about the Israeli and Republican connections of Silverstein and Eisenberg, the physical impossibility of the governments bin Laden conspiracy theory, or the familial ties of Marvin and George W. Bush, the commissions report must be deemed a whitewash.

31. Cited in New York: A Documentary Film, The Centre of the World, PBS, Sept. 8, 2003 <www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/newyork/sfeature/sf_forum_0909.html>. 32. See WTC Cleanup Workers File Suit, American Press, Sept. 14, 2004. 33. 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, Jan. 29, 2004, <www.aztlan.net/911_commission.htm>. 34. Sara Leibovich-Dar, Up in smoke, Haaretz, Sept. 17, 2004. Silversteins spokesman Howard Rubenstein, is one of a number of high-priced public relations experts whove agreed to donate their services to burnishing Israels media image.

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DESTRUCTION AND DIVERSION

Although the preponderance of evidence suggests that the WTC was deliberately destroyed from within, we have no proof of who did it or ordered it. One tidbit of information from the other side of the country, though, might point us in the right direction, and perhaps explain the behavior of the five cheering Israelis. Shortly after midnight on May 7, 2002, local police in Oak Harbor, Wash., 80 miles north of Seattle, pulled over a Budget truck for speeding. The driver and passenger said they were moving furniture from California, but given the time of night the police didnt believe their story.35 Because the arrest took place near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, military personnel also took part in the arrest. Both men in the truck were found to be Israelisone in the country illegally and the other in violation of his visa. The subsequent investigation involved FBI, the INS, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, naval intelligence and local police. More significantly, though, bomb-sniffing dogs smelled traces of explosives on one of the occupants and inside the truck; specifically, TNT on the gearshift and RDX on the steering wheel. The rental agreement did not have a special permit to authorize the transportation of explosives. RDX (research development explosive) was developed during World War II, and today constitutes 91 percent by weight of the plastic explosive Composition C-4, which is used both in military ordinance and civilian building demolition.36 We now have a number of isolated but curious bits of information that do not formally add up to anything, but certainly merit investigation: Israelis in a moving van are arrested near a Naval Base in Washington State; Israelis in a white van are arrested at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. The FBI determines that Urban Moving Systems in NJ is a Mossad front; the movers in Washington are not what they claim to be. Explosives brought down the WTC; the Israelis in Washington had handled and transported explosives. If one phony Israeli moving truck or company can handle and carry explosives, why not another? Therefore, we need to ask: Were some or all of the technicians ostensibly conducting cabling upgrades in WTC 1 and WTC 2 in fact Israelis from Urban Moving Systems, who were planting bombs?

35. This summary is taken from Carl Cameron, Police Seize Rental Truck With TNT Traces, Fox News, May 13, 2002. 36. RDX is formally known as Cyclotrimethylene-trinitramine (C3H6N6O6).

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This theory would at least explain the inexplicable removal of bombsniffing dogs, and the joy evinced by Israels military intelligence tourists at the sight of the towers collapse: satisfaction with a job well done.

War game for real

On Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. military was into Day 4 of a week-long airforce exercise called Operation Vigilant Guardian. This year, the annual war game tested scenarios that included a hijacked airliner, and a Cold Warstyle bomber attack from Russia over the North Pole. Despite the lengthy questioning of the generals involved, the report mentioned Vigilant Guardian only once, and then 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 militarys 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.37 This footnote is misleading. Gen. Eberhart does not utter the phrase it took about 30 seconds, so its accuracy is in doubt.38 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 Forces readiness during the Cold War, according to Maj.Gen. Paul A. Weaver Jr. (Retd). In those days, he said fighters sat fueled and ready to take off at NORADs command at more than 100 alert sites.39 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 ANGs 177th Fighter Wing at Atlantic City International Airport in Pomona, N.J., was only four minutes off UA175s 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
37. 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. 38. Transcript: 9/11 Commission Hearings for June 17, 2004, Washington Post, June 17, 2004. 39. Adam J. Hebert, The Return of NORAD, Air Force Magazine, February 2002, Vol. 85, No. 2.

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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.40 By the time WTC 2 was hit at 9:03 a.m., the two F-15s from Otis were still eight minutes (150 miles) away. For all of the reports praise of advanced preparedness, the northeast sector was seriously vulnerable. Therefore, any role the NORAD-run Vigilant Guardian might have played in the Sept. 11 attack deserved scrutiny. The suspicion is that war games could have been used to paralyze the nations air defenses by diverting interceptors, while creating fake hijackings to overwhelm NORAD. According to the official version, WTC 2 collapsed because it was hit by United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767-222 with identification number N612UA. Television footage of the impact casts considerable doubt on this claim. As the aircraft approached WTC 2, it increased speed sharply to 545 m.p.h. and banked sharply to the left. In the instant before the aircraft sliced into the towers southern face, a brief flash of light appears near the nose, after which a series of fiery explosions erupts along the buildings northern and eastern faces. The fireballs are suspicious because they seem to spread too quickly to have been caused by contact with the aircraft. Germanys Spiegel TV slowed the last moments before impact down to fractions of a second, thus making it possible to identify the flash and explosions. The flash represents the ignition of a missile, which proceeds to cut a swath through WTC 2. The track inside the building is clearly visible, as are the explosions.41 Since passenger aircraft do not carry missiles, this plane could not have been N612UA, the 767-222 that took off from Bostons Logan Airport. Since Islamists are being blamed for hijacking this particular flight, they could not possibly be responsible for the collapse of WTC 2. If not Islamists, then who?

A familiar scenario?
In Rebuilding Americas 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 eventlike a new Pearl Harbor.42
40. Ibid. and James Bamford, A Pretext for War (New York: Doubleday, 2004), excerpted at Inside the failed Air Force scramble to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, MSNBC.com, June 28, 2004. 41. The footage is archived at <www.letsroll911.org>. The link is <Missiles WTC 2 - From Speigel TV> near the top of the page. Right below is ABC footage of the impact played at two different speeds. Corroborating evidence also comes from ground level footage from KABC Channel 7 in Los Angeles. A series of 12 still pictures captured in sequence shows not only the track of the missile but also smoke billowing out of the northeast corner of WTC 2 several floors below the level of impact before the plane hits. 42. Rebuilding Americas Defenses Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, p. 51. For full citation, see Chapter 13, note 28.

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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 Sept. 11 attack have been such a calculated event? On the one hand, if the attack hadnt 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 wed get the trifecta. (Laughter.)43 On the other hand, the idea that the U.S. would deliberately commit an act of terrorism against itself seems preposterous. Unfortunately, its 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. Its 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 anti-Communism. Tactics included blowing up a U.S. ship in Guantnamo Bay, or destroying a drone (unmanned) vessel somewhere in Cuban waters. Operations, though, were not to be 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 enroute 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.44

43. 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. 44. Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, Chmn. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A, Memorandum for the Secretary of DefenseJustification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba, March 13, 1962.paras 3, 4 (hereinafter, Operation Northwoods). A copy is archived at <http://emperors-clothes.com/images/north-i.htm>.

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This latter example provides a familiar parallel with the Sept. 11 attack. Documents incriminating the Islamist hijackers were so conspicuously plentiful and of such dubious linguistic fidelity 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 WTC 1 to land intact a few blocks away. Mohammad 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.45 No Arab name shows up on any of the passenger lists, and Logan Airport has no security video footage of any of them.46 In short, we have no visual or documentary evidence that any of these hijackers even boarded AA11 or UA175. This anomaly leads to the most potentially disturbing parallel between Operation Northwoods and the Sept. 11 attackLemnitzers 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
45. Bob Woodward, Bring knives, your will, IDs, your passport, Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2001. 46. 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>.

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Western Hemisphere to tell the U.S. what has happened to the aircraft instead of the U.S. trying to sell the incident.47 Since we know UA175 took off from Logan Airport, substitution could explain how a missile-bearing aircraft ended up hitting WTC 2.

Co-ordinated failure
The key to executing the Sept. 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 planes identity and altitude to the center where it is monitored continuously. According to the commissions report, AA11s transponder was turned off at 8:21 a.m.; AA77s at 8:56; and UA93s at 9:41. UA175s code was changed twice, the first time at 8:47.48 Contrary to the report, a transcript of radio communications among R42 (New York Air Route Traffic Control Center), UA175, and other aircraft indicate that UA175s 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 thats 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: Hes off about 9 oclock and about 20 miles looks like hes heading southbound but theres no transponder no nothing, and no ones talking to him.49 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 aircrafts 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.50 The case of UA175 again points up glaring inconsistencies between the report and the evidence. At 8:47, virtually the instant that AA11 hit WTC 1, the report said UA175s transponder code changed to an unassigned signal,
47. Operation Northwoods, op. cit., Annex, para 8. 48. 9/11 Commission, op. cit., p. 454. 49. Transcript of United Airlines Flight 175, New York Times, Oct. 16, 2001. 50. 9/11 Commission, op. cit., p. 16.

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and then changed again. These changes were not noticed for several minutes, the report said, because one controller was assigned to both AA11 and UA175.51 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 YorkUnited, United 175do you read New York?52 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 controllers failure to raise it (deliberately silent or destroyed). It might also explain how UA175 suddenly acquired a missilelauncher. 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; WTC 1 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, primary radar information was later 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; 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, 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 OBrien: The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we

51. Ibid., p. 21. 52. Transcript of United Airlines Flight 175, op. cit.

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all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane.53 Well never know the real story of what happened in the control tower because the records have been confiscated, and the cassette tapes containing the controllers evidence were crushed and the tapes cut to ribbons. Regarding AA77, FBI agents seized security tapes from the rooftop of the Sheraton National Hotel, the Pentagons private gas station, and along Interstate 395, which the aircraft crossed. These tapes, like those of the firefighters, have never been made public.54 The same is true of transcripts from all four black boxes and cockpit voice recorders. We are told that UA93s cockpit voice recorder was the only recorder recovered from all four aircraftthe CVRs and flight data recorders from AA11 and UA175 were not found, and the CVR from AA77 was badly burned and not recoverable.55 This explanation is patently ludicrous. First, black boxes, which are actually orange, are built to withstand temperatures greater than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, several times hotter than the temperatures inside the towers, so they should have been found. Second, we are expected to believe that a paper passport could survive the WTC 1 crash in near mint condition, yet a fire-resistant black box could not. Third, first-hand evidence from firefighter and all-terrain vehicle enthusiast Nicholas DeMasi strongly suggests that the 9/11 Commission is engaged in a cover-up. In 2003, he wrote a book (published by Trauma Recovery Assistance for Children) that debunks the commissions 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.56 DeMasis account is confirmed by TRAC Team member and recovery site volunteer Mike Bellone, who saw FBI agents walking off with a redorange, charred device with two white stripesa description identical to the one depicted on the National Transportation Safety Boards website.57 Whether or not any of the alternate scenarios discussed in this chapter stands up, one thing is certainthe 9/11 Commission is covering up for the Bush administration, which means the implications of calling into question the official version are incendiary:
53. Get These Planes on the GroundAir Traffic Controllers Recall Sept. 11, ABCNews, Oct. 24, 2001. 54. 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>. 55. 9/11 Commission, op. cit., p. 456 (footnote 76 to Chapter 1). 56. Cited in William Bunch, 2 say they found 9/11 black boxes, Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 28, 2004. 57. Ibid. For the NTSB website see <www.ntsb.gov/aviation/cvr_fdr.htm>.

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Islamist hijackers could not have caused the collapse of WTC 1 and WTC 2. If the hijackers didnt cause the collapse, then the war on terrorism was unprovoked and fraudulent. If it were unnecessary, then the crusades launched against Afghanistan and Iraq in its name were premeditated acts of violence. Therefore, those responsible for planning, approving and implementing these crusadesBush, his Cabinet, personal advisors, and the vast majority of Republican legislatorsshould be charged with committing crimes against humanity. Like Clinton and Bush, the 9/11 Commission blamed Islamists for the attack because it was the expected thing to do. No real investigation was necessary, because bin Ladens words condemned him. The conclusion to the reports first chapter demonstrates the uselessness of the whole project: 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.58

POSTSCRIPT
Just before the Nov. 2, 2004 election, al-Jazeera broadcast a new videotape by Osama bin Laden in which he admitted to being responsible for the Sept. 11 attack. This tape, if authentic, would cast doubt upon the conclusions made in this chapter and vindicate the 9/11 Commissions kneejerk conclusion. Therefore it deserves to be analyzed in detail. In tone and in content, this latest videotape differs markedly from previous interviews and speeches: 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

58. 9/11 Commission, op. cit., p. 46.

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tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.59 These excerpts all speak to a political motive for the Sept. 11 attackthe invasion of Lebanon and the tyranny of the American Israeli coalitionbut as we saw in Chapter 6 with regard to the April 18, 1996, Qana massacre, bin Laden is concerned with defending Islam. In his March 1997 interview with Peter Arnett, and in his October 1996 Declaration of War, bin Laden adorned all of his statements in religious reverence. For example: P E T E R A R N E T T : 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 Quran at the time of the Prophet? O S A M A B I N L A D E N : 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 Gods 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 Muhammads revelation, Peace be upon him, we were in great happiness and in great dignity, to God belong credit and praise.60 The Oct. 29, 2004, videotape contains not a single reference to the Prophet Muhammad, and bin Ladens invocations of God (Allah), though numerous, lack the effusive reverence found in his earlier speeches. A second anomaly concerns bin Ladens perfunctory description of the Afghan jihad: All that we have to do is to send two mujahideen 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 mujahideen, bled Russia for ten years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.61 Guerrilla warfare, tyrannical superpower, bled Russia, went bankrupt are simply not part of bin Ladens usual vocabulary. The jihad was

59. Full transcript of Osama bin Ladens speech, al-Jazeera, Oct. 29, 2004, <www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7201.htm>. Some spellings modified for consistency. 60. Transcript of Osama Bin Ladin interview by Peter Arnett, CNN, late March 1997, <www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7204.htm>. 61. Bin Laden speech, Oct. 29, 2004 op. cit.

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not a war against a superpower; it was a jihad in the traditional sense of the word. As bin Laden 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.62 Regarding the 2001 U.S. attack on Afghanistan, bin Ladens language was similar, as in these three excerpts: 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.63 This is a matter of religion and creed; it is not what Bush and 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.64 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 Bush, the pharaoh of the age, is doing by killing our sons in Iraq and what Americas ally Israel is doing, bombarding houses with women and old people and children inside with American planes.65 It is unlikely that bin Laden had anything to do with this recent tape, and in fact thats the conclusion of Professor Herv Boulard, chairman of the Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence in Lausanne, Switzerland. French television commissioned the institute to analyze the tape, and after a comparison with 20 earlier recordings, Boulard said he was 95 percent certain that the voice did not belong to bin Laden.66

62. Interview with Peter Arnett, op. cit. 63. Al-Qaida statement, BBC, Oct. 10, 2001. 64. Neil MacFarquhar, Bin Laden, in a Taped Speech, Says Attacks in Afghanistan are a War Against Islam, New York Times, Nov. 4, 2001. 65. Al-Jazeera TV Airs bin Laden Tape, Associated Press, Nov. 12, 2002. 66. Bin Laden tape a fake, Swiss lab says, Toronto Star, Oct. 31, 2004. In an interesting alternate theory, former dean of U.S. news broadcasting Walter Cronkite suggests that Karl Rove, Bushs chief puppetmaster, might have put bin Laden up to it (Larry King Live, CNN, Oct. 29, 2004).

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Timing and contradictions

The videotape is also dubious because it came out within a week of the presidential election. If indeed he were responsible for the attack, Bin Laden could have said so at any time during the last three years, so its reasonable to suggest that it was concocted to frighten voters into supporting Bush. Fact is, bin Laden had formally denied having any connection to the attack: I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle.67 This could also be a lie, but to what end? Bin Laden was already a wanted man and had nothing to lose. Previously, he spoke of the attack only in an impersonal way, and praised it as if it were a selfless act carried out by other people. 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.68 Bin Laden did not admit responsibility, but rather blamed the U.S. in language that is entirely consistent with the conclusions in this chapter. 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 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.69

67. Interview with Osama bin Laden, Ummat (Pakistan), Sept. 28, 2001. 68. Excerpts From Osama bin Ladens Address on al-Jazeera, Agence France-Presse, Dec. 27, 2001. 69. Bin Laden interview with Ummat, op. cit. There has been a good deal of speculation on the effect the bin Laden tapes may have on the American public, but almost nothing written on the psychological warfare aspects of the bin Laden mythos on the Arab world. By inventing a link between Islam, the heroic figure of bin Laden, and terrorism, this latest videotape propaganda

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387

Indeed, what did certain PNACers know about the attack and when did they know it? Who in the administration gave the go-ahead for the plane substitutions? Who told Giuliani to clear away steel girders before they could be analyzed? Even if one accepted the videotape at face value, that would not vitiate the copious evidence pointing to sabotage and Israeli involvement, or suggestions that the collapse of the World Trade Center might have been a big real estate scam. In the absence of any refutation of this evidence, or any verified, unambiguous statement from bin Laden, one must congratulate anchorman emeritus Cronkite on his reporters nose for the news, and dismiss this videotape as a cheap fake from Karl Roves inexhaustible bag of dirty tricks.

attempts to glorify terrorism in the eyes of the Arabs, inciting and trapping them in the position of international pariahs, beyond the pale, where the Zionists can do what they will with them.

C T I O N S S P E A K L O U D E R than words, it is said, but against Osama bin Laden and Islamists in general, this adage does not apply. Like Clinton, the 9/11 Commission waved bin Ladens February 1998 fax to al-Quds al-Arabi in the air, so to speak, and declared that it meant war in our time.1

After six years, nobody has come up with any tangible evidence linking bin Laden to any violent act against the U.S., yet this one missive is accepted as proof of guilt. Only after Sept. 11 did the PNAC junta discover bin Laden, and only then did it propagate an exaggerated, demonized image of him. So long as he was at large, his name and that of al-Qaida could be invoked to rationalize not only the attack on Afghanistan but any number of fascistic measures at home or abroad. For PNAC, bin Laden and Afghanistan were always of secondary importance at best. So focused were Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and others on destroying Iraq, that they deliberately ignored the outgoing Clinton administrations intelligence on bin Laden. The attack on Afghanistan, of course, had nothing to do with the war on terrorism because the decision to attack was based on other factors, and was taken long before the World Trade Center was hit. The war on terrorism is a war on Muslims, Muslim states and international law. In prosecuting the war on terrorism in the name of the allpurpose excuse of national security, the U.S. and Israel commit crimes against humanity with near impunity. Thus, one should rightly call Bushs war on terrorism a war of terrorism in the service of U.S.-Israeli absolutism.
1. See Chapter 6.

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The strategy of flogging the war of terrorism, as it will now be called, terrified enough voters on Nov. 2 for the cabal to hold onto power. No incumbent has been as vulnerable, incompetent or dishonest as Bush, which means if a well-organized campaign of propaganda and electoral fraud can keep him in power, then democracy in America truly is dead. For a sense of the magnitude of how the U.S. has suffered under PNACs ignominious rule, heres a partial list of grievances from a Sept. 28 editorial from the Lone-Star Iconoclast in Bushs 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% 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. These were elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office. Note how the writers speak of a hidden agenda, which we know to be the crusade of infinite war and big-business cronyism. Yet the bogeyman of terrorism mattered more to voters than did the economic, military, political, environmental, and diplomatic ruination of their country. However, those who thought that a Kerry-led government could have restored sanity to U.S. foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, would have been in for a rude shock. A little more than a year before the election, Kerry 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. Of course, he made no mention of the historical injustices done to the Palestinians, which means the Jewish elites had no reason to find fault with his comments, except for the following: I know how disheartened Palestinians are by the Israeli governments decision to build the barrier off of the Green Linecutting deep into Palestinian areas. We dont need another barrier to peace. Provocative and counterproductive measures only harm Israels security over the

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long term, increase the hardships to the Palestinian people, and make the process of negotiating an eventual settlement that much harder.2 During the primaries, Kerry and other leading Democratic candidates bent over backwards to ingratiate themselves to Jewish elites and organizations. Such obsequious pandering to a constituency that comprises only two percent of the population might seem excessive, but Jews are the most influential of all voting blocs because they are concentrated in key swing states with large Electoral College votes. According to Jewish newspaper editor Jeffrey S. Helmreich, the Jewish vote 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. 3 Eight months later, a leaked draft of the Democratic Party platform showed that Kerry had reversed course and would continue Bushs blind support for Sharon. Contributions from Jewish Americans make up more than half of all Democratic campaign contributions. When the ICJ handed down its decision on the West Bank Wall 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 todays International Court of Justice ruling related to Israels security fence. Israels 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 Israels fight against terrorism. It is not a matter for the ICJ.4 Not only did Kerry embrace Bushs capitulationism, he even endorsed the repudiation of UNSC Res. 242. The next month in a bizarre commentary piece, Kerry described in detail how he would, if elected, reform the Middle East while perpetuating the same self-defeating anti-Arab/pro-Israeli prejudice. Here are some choice quotes: The greatest long-term strategic threat to U.S.Israeli relations is U.S. dependence on Middle East oil.
2. Sen. John Kerry, Remarks at the Arab American Institute, Oct. 17, 2003 <www.cfr.org/ campaign2004/pub6497/john_kerry/remarks_at_the_arab_american_institute.php?issue=26>. 3. 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, Jan. 15, 2001, <www.jcpa.org/jl/vp446.htm>. See also the work of California State University sociology professor Kevin MacDonald documenting Jewish control over the major media. Cited in Ahmed and Leonard, The War on Freedom (Progressive Press), p. 370. Comment on campaign contributions from E.J. Kessler, <www.forward.com/issues/ 2003/03.02.07/news2.html>. 4. Statement by John Kerry on International Court of Justice Ruling Regarding Israels Security Fence, July 9, 2004 <www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/releases/ pr_2004_0709a.html>.

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As president, I will support the creation of an office within the State Department dedicated to combating anti-Semitism, as well as adding reporting on acts of anti-Semitism around the world to the State Departments annual human rights reporting. I will launch an aggressive public diplomacy campaign in Arab and Muslim countries to tackle head-on the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda that fuels ignorance and hatred. New Palestinian leadership is required, as Yasser Arafat has proven himself not to be a partner for peace. But we will never compromise Americas special relationship with our ally Israel. As president, I will never pressure Israel to make concessions that will compromise its security. My commitment to a safe and secure Jewish state is unwavering. For 19 years, this is a pledge I have kept in the United States Senate whether through my votes on economic aid, military security or the location of the U.S. Embassy. And it is one I will continue to keep as I lead a bold new effort to enhance regional security throughout the Middle East.5 Occasionally, a politician about to retire acts like a statesman, free of this kowtowing to Israel and the Lobby. The end of a political career is liberating, because a politician who does not fear electoral reprisal is free to speak his mind. Such a man is South Carolina Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings. On May 6, 2004, he wrote a bold commentary for the Charleston Post and Courier, condemning Bushs war on terrorism and explicitly linking the Iraq war with Bushs need to serve Israel and pander to the Jewish vote. Israels intelligence, Mossad, knows whats going on in Iraq. They are the best. They have to know. Israels survival depends on knowing. Israel long since would have taken us to the weapons of mass destruction if there were any or if they had been removed. With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bushs policy to secure Israel. Bush felt tax cuts would hold his crowd together, and spreading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats. You dont come to town and announce your Israel policy is to invade Iraq. But George W. Bush, as stated by former Treasury Secretary Paul ONeill and others, started laying the groundwork to invade Iraq days after inauguration.6 Hollingss statement is unimpeachable, yet the fallout was predictable. The American Board of Rabbis and other Lobby groups howled anti5. John Kerry, An Unwavering Commitment to Reforming the Middle East, Forward, Aug. 27, 2004. 6. Sen. Ernest Hollings, Bushs failed Mideast policy is creating more terrorism, Charleston Post and Courier, May 6, 2004.

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Semitism, and demanded Hollings resign. Non-retiring Senators, including Kerry, joined the chorus. Hollings, though, did not back down. On May 20 from the Senate floor he delivered a defiant defense of his article and his personal character: You cant have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here I can tell you, no President takes officeI dont care whether it is a Republican or a Democratthat 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 Bushs appearance before the AIPAC. He confirmed his support of the Jewish vote, referring to adopting Ariel Sharons 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 didnt 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.7 PNAC was itself the latest domino in the Zionization of the U.S. This process passed through successive stages analogous to John Nelson Darbys stages of dispensation. Whereas Darby described the periods of Noah, Moses, Aaron, kings and Jesus, the Zionists have Truman, Johnson, Carter, Reagan and Clinton. The PNAC stage can be likened to the rapture of the faithful. After Reagan rode the fascist troika into office, U.S. Middle East policy was no longer focused primarily on maintaining secure access to Persian Gulf oil. For most of the ReaganBush era, the U.S. tried to balance oil policy with paying economic, military and political tribute to Israel. The 1991 Gulf War, which President Bush allowed to happen, was the last time the U.S. invaded the Middle East to protect oil supplies. After Clinton and his Jewish cabinet took office, Israels self-interest became the top priority. If control of Middle East oil were still the prime directive at this time, Clinton would have found a way to end the sanctions and illegal no-fly zones so that the U.S. could to buy as much Iraqi oil as it needed, but in Chapter 14 we saw that the U.S. was already buying most of Iraqs allowable exports. Even if control of oil were deemed to be paramount,

7. Sen. Ernest Hollings, Floor Statement Setting the Record Straight on his Mideast Newspaper Column, May 20, 2004 <http://hollings.senate.gov/~hollings/statements/ 2004521A35.html>.

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the caveats that President Bush and Defence Secretary Cheney mentioned about meddling in Iraqi affairs still applied. The inhuman suffering that the UN, principally the U.S., inflicted on Iraq is incomprehensible if considered from the perspective of a national selfinterested oil policy. In 1991, Rumsfeld even admitted that Hussein was a force for stability in the region. When understood as an example of Israels self-interest, the 12 years of sanctions and NFZs seem comprehensible. In fact, Israeli journalist Oded Yinon wrote in 1982 that Israel had already targeted Iraq for dismemberment: 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.8 In Chapter 15, Philip Zelikow, director of 9/11 Commission, confirmed this assessment when he declared that the Iraq invasion was done for the sake of Israels security, but what kind of security? Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon stated that Israel had nothing to fear from an Iraqi attack, so we must conclude that the threat Iraq posed to Israel was political, not military. Adding to the primacy of Israeli interests is the U.S. campaign to provoke confrontations with Syria and Iran. This belligerence also makes no sense in a scenario of oil primacy, but it fits perfectly with Israels grand design. Over the last four years of increasingly fascist misrule, the U.S. has metamorphosed from being just a colony of Israel, to a mirror of Israel itself. The absurd electoral endorsement of Bushs misrule confirms the power and intensity of the reflection. Nonetheless, the eventual end of PNACs hold on power can reasonably be inferred from the spate of scandals and investigations that have hobbled the government over the past year. For example, Cheney will doubtless become a target of a U.S. Grand Jury investigation because of Halliburtons illegal dealings with Iran. Also, he faces possible indictment in France because the role of Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root in a bribery and money-laundering scandal over a $6 billion contract to build a gas liquefaction plant in Nigeria. Much damage was done to the Lobbys image after Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin passed a classified report on Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Even though AIPACs control of U.S. policy is an
8. Oded Yinon, A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties, Kivunim (Directions), No. 14, February 1982, trans. Israel Shahak, < www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1025.htm>. Italics in original.

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open secret that nobody dares mention, the fact that Franklin was caught was highly embarrassing. The Lobby went into immediate damage control mode, its senators and congressmen jumped to attention to defend its honour [sic], and Israel uttered the predictably absurd statement that it does not spy on the U.S. One of the most potentially damaging scandals is the governments deliberate exposure of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. She is the wife of Joseph Wilson IV, former ambassador to Gabon under President Bush, and African affairs advisor to Clinton. Plame was outed in retaliation for her husband not telling the Cheney White House what it wanted to hear. Wilson was sent to Niger in February 2002 to find evidence of uranium sales to Saddam Hussein under a memorandum of agreement, which was subsequently exposed as a crude forgery. Wilson found no evidence of a sale, and upbraided the administration for its claims against Hussein.9 Betraying an undercover officers identity is a federal crime. On June 25, Bush was interviewed for 70 minutes by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the head of the Justice Department investigation on this score. Other interviewees include Cheney, Rice and Alberto Gonzales, the White House Counsel, who argued that Bush should deny Taliban and al-Qaida detainees (prisoners) protection under the Third Geneva Convention.10 The Plame scandal, along with revelations of prison tortures, a decrepit economy, skyrocketing deficits, international opprobrium, unanswered questions about Sept. 11, and growing judicial and popular protests should have spelt a debacle for the PNAC regime in the Nov. 2004 election. Unfortunately, massive vote fraud and even more massive brainwashing gave the neo-cons four more years of rope to hang the U.S. On Dec. 18, 2003, the Second Circuit in Manhattan ruled that Bush did not have the constitutional authority as commander-in-chief to arrest a U.S. citizen as an enemy combatant if the citizen were on U.S. soil. Also on that day, the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco ruled that all 600 detainees at Guantnamo Bay had a right to legal counsel: We cannot simply accept the governments position that the executive branch possesses the unchecked authority to imprison indefinitely any persons, foreign citizens included, on territory under the sole jurisdiction and control of the United States, without permitting such prisoners recourse of any kind to any judicial forum, or even access to counsel, regardless of the length or manner of their confinement.11

9. Joseph C. Wilson IV, What I Didnt Find in Africa, New York Times, July 6, 2003. 10. Bush Questioned at White House on CIA Leak, Associated Press, June 25, 2004. According to Wilson, the most likely suspects are Elliott Abrams, Lewis Scooter Libby and serior Bush advisor Karl Rove. See Bush Knew About Leak of CIA Operatives Name, Capitol Hill Blue, Jun 3, 2004. 11. Paul Koring, U.S. Courts Rein in Terror War, Globe and Mail, Dec. 19, 2003.

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This June, Appeals Court Judge Guido Calabresi of the Second Circuit directly equated Bushs rise to power with that of with Benito Mussolini. Somebody came to power as a result of the illegitimate acts of a legitimate institution that had the right to put somebody in power. That is what the Supreme Court did in Bush versus Gore. It put somebody in power.12 Calabresis concern was that, unlike President Franklin Roosevelt who also wielded strong personal power, Bush had no such mandate. He said Bush should be expelled from office to cleanse the democratic system. The criminality of the last four years easily surpasses the worst excesses of the Reagan years, when 138 administration appointees resigned under an ethical cloud or were indicted. The very acts for which the White House is now being condemned are exactly what Perle, Wolfowitz, Kristol (pre et fils) and other Israeli agents have hungered for.

Synchronicity of insanity
Reagan remained blissfully clueless about the malfeasance of his subordinates, not only because he was a figurehead, but because he suffered from a serious cognitive impairment. Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimers disease four years after leaving office, but his mental faculties showed clear signs of deterioration while he was still president. One revealing moment came in the first televised debate with Democratic opponent Walter Mondale in the run-up to the 1984 election. Reagan did not seem to understand simple questions and rambled incoherently.13 On election day, he nevertheless carried 49 of 50 states, proving that the illusion of strength mattered more to voters than did the reality of mental infirmity. By winter 1987, Reagans diminished faculties were an open secret within the White House. On Feb. 27, Tennessee Senator Howard Baker replaced Donald Regan as chief of staff, much to Regans surprise, shock and consternation. Regans outgoing staff fully expected Baker to ask VicePresident George Bush to assume the presidency, as illustrated in this excerpt from the PBS profile on Reagan: D A V I D M C C U L L O U G H , N A R R A T O R : What Bakers transition team was told by Don Regans White House staff that weekend shocked them. Reagan was inattentive, inept, and lazy, and Baker should be prepared to invoke the 25th amendment to relieve him of his duties.
12. Audience gasps as judge likens election of Bush to rise of Mussolini, New York Sun, June 21, 2004, <www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6367.htm>. 13. An excellent source for presidential debates (19601996) and the role television has played in shaping public opinion is <www.museum.tv>, which includes video and newspaper clippings as well as interviews. For the Oct. 7, 1984, Reagan-Mondale debate see <www.museum.tv/debateweb/html/history/1984/video.htm>.

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E D M U N D M O R R I S , R E A G A N S B I O G R A P H E R : The incoming Baker people all decided to have a meeting with him on the Monday morning, their first official meeting with the President and to cluster around the table in the Cabinet Room and watch him very, very closely to see how he behaved, to see if he was indeed losing his mental grip. They positioned themselves very strategically around the table so they could watch him from various angles, listen to him and check his movements and listen to his words and look into his eyes. And I was there when this meeting took place. And Reagan who was, of course, completely unaware that they were launching a deathwatch on him, came in stimulated by the press of all these new people and performed splendidly. At the end of the meeting they figuratively threw up their hands realizing he was in perfect command of himself. H O W A R D B A K E R : Ladies and gentlemen, is this president fully in control of his Presidency? Is he alert? Is he fully engaged? Is he in contact with the problems? And Im telling ya, its just one days experience and maybe thats not enough, but today he was superb.14 Of course it wasnt enough; brief flashes of lucidity are normal with Alzheimers. Reagan should have been removed, but that would have been difficult given the mindset of the people who actually ran the country. Because Reagan was more figurehead than president, his diminished mental state was a non-issue, even an asset.

A NO-WIN ELECTION
Kerry ought to have won the 2004 presidential elections in a landslide, since the Bush term was an unmitigated disaster, domestically and internationally. The argument that Bush has ruined the country economically, militarily, politically, environmentally, and diplomatically finds broad support within both parties and across the world. Staunch Republicans are endorsing Kerry, military families are suing Bush, and diplomats and heads of state want Bush gone.15 His abysmal, unfocused and combative performance during the debates with Kerry proved that hes nothing more than PNACs sock puppet. For his subservience to Israel, Bush got only 25% of the Jewish vote, up from his 19% against Gore-Lieberman, and the Jewish electorate is only about 3% of the total. The indictment above by Bushs home-town paper, the Lone Star Iconoclast of Crawford, Texas, speaks authentically for America. Note how the writers openly speak of a hidden agenda, which we now know as the crusade of infinite war and big-business cronyism21st-century Straussianism.
14. The American Experience, Reagan, PBS, Fall 1998. 15. See John Eisenhower, Another View: Why I will vote for John Kerry for President, New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday Times, Sept. 28, 2004, and Keith B. Richburg, Kerry Is Widely Favored Abroad, The Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2004.

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The publishers of the Iconoclast drove home their disgust by painting Kerry as a savior: John Kerry has 30 years of experience looking out for the American people and can navigate our country back to prosperity and reinstill in America the dignity she so craves and deserves. Nevertheless, a Kerry presidency would have represented only a small step on the road to political rehabilitation, assuming that such rehabilitation is even possible. Aside from a purge of PNACers and re-establishment of respect for diplomacy, Kerry would have had to repudiate the war on terrorism and stand up to Israel to effect any meaningful reform. This is quite doubtful. John Forbes Kerrys paternal grandfather was a Czech Jewish immigrant who anglicized his surname from rabbinical Kohn to Irish Kerry. Johns second wife, Teresa Heinz, is the Jewish heiress to the Heinz 57 fortune. His father Richard Kerry had also married up, into the blue-blood Forbes family. Like the social climbing Bushes, upwardly mobile John Kerry went to Yale, where he joined the powerful secret society Skull and Bones. On Oct. 27, 2003, Kerry 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. Of course, he made no mention of the historical injustices done to the Palestinians, so the Jewish elites had no real reason to find fault with his comments, except for the following: I know how disheartened Palestinians are by the Israeli governments decision to build the barrier off of the Green Line cutting deep into Palestinian areas. We dont need another barrier to peace. Provocative and counterproductive measures only harm Israels security over the long term, increase the hardships to the Palestinian people, and make the process of negotiating an eventual settlement that much harder.16 In June 2004, a leaked draft of the Democratic Party platform showed that Kerry had flip-flopped to Bushs course of blind support for Sharon. On the day the ICJ handed down its decision, Kerry issued his own condemnation, which read as if it had been written by a Bush propagandist: Israels 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 Israels fight against terrorism. It is not a matter for the ICJ. 17

16. Sen. John Kerry, Remarks at the Arab American Institute, Oct. 17, 2003, <www.cfr.org/campaign2004/pub6497/john_kerry/ remarks_at_the_arab_american_institute.php?issue=26>. 17. Statement by John Kerry on International Court of Justice Ruling Regarding Israels Security Fence, July 9, 2004, <www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/releases/ pr_2004_0709a.html>.

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While Kerry and Bush slugged it out in their More Zionist Than Thou contest, a July 2004 Zogby poll showed that only 34% of respondents thought Kerry should follow the Bush policy; 51% were for an entirely new policy towards Israel. Kerry was not permitted to follow his own or his constituents instincts. So long as Zionists run the U.S., official enmity toward Muslims and Arabs will increase, as will the countrys degeneration into a fascistic theocracy. ErF Father John Sheehan of the Jesuit order summed up the essential truth of what Israel and The Lobby have done to the U.S. with these words:

Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I cant help but think that, before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.

Index of Names
Abbas, Mahmoud, 254, 256 Abdul Aziz, Ahmed bin, 24 Abdul Aziz, King, 85, 89 Abington, Edward, 246 Abraham, Stanley, 205 Abrams, Elliot, 260, 313 Aburish, Sad K., 14, 52 Adams, John, 12729 Addington, David, 207 Aflaq, Michel, 53 Aga, Mia Mohammed, 46 Aghazadeh, Gholamreza, 168 Ahmed, Prince, 64 Ahmedjan, Maulvi, 196 Aidid, Mohammed Farah, 72 Akerblad, Christina, 25 Akhtar, Abdur Rahman, 49 Alami, Murad, 295 Albright, Madeleine, 95, 267, 268, 271 Ali, Mohammed Jassim al-, 224 Allawi, Iyad, 348 Ambuhl, Spct. Megan, 349 Amin, Hafizullah, 32, 3435 Aminuddin, Usman, 231 Amleh, Firas al-, 252 Andropov, Yuri, 35 Ani, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-, 340 Annan, Kofi, 211 Arafat, Yasser, 179, 23840, 24243, 24553, 337, 338 Arif, Abdul Salam, 55 Armitage, Richard, 168, 205 Arnett, Peter, 73, 384 Arnold, Sir Thomas W., 29 Ashcroft, John, 148, 230, 299, 389, 397 Assaad, Dr. Ayaad, 291 Assad, Bashar, 166, 242 Atta, Mohamed, 340 Auerbach, Gerry, 23 Ayalon, Daniel, 164, 166 Azeez, Abdul, 75 Aziz, Tariq, 5960 Azzam, Sheik Abdullah, 2627, 31, 4245, 49, 67 Baker III, James, 151, 159, 179, 206, 301 Baker, Howard, 395, 396 Bandar, Prince, 62 Banna, Hassan al-, 27 Barak, Ehud, 24952 Barbour, Haley, 208 Bar-Ilan, David, 248 Barkri, Sheikh Omar, 100 Baroody Jr., William, 162 Bartley, Robert, 126 Basayev, Shamil, 81 Bashir, Omar Hassan Ahmad al, 66, 67, 83 Becker, Silvan, 96 Begin, Menachem, 137, 139, 14344, 15356, 175 Bell, Nelson, 109, 172 Ben-Ami, Shlomo, 250, 251 Ben-Eliezer, Binyamin, 237, 320 Bergson, Henri, 291 Berkowitz, Henry, 108 Bhutto, Benazir, 18991, 195 Biden, Joseph, 229, 32930 Billings, Robert, 148 bin Abdul Aziz, Abdul Rahman, 24 bin Baz, Sheikh Abdul-Aziz, 63 bin Laden, Mahrous, 27 bin Laden, Muhammad bin Awad, 2224 bin Laden, Osama, 5, 6, 10, 20, 2426, 28, 29, 31, 51, 5557, 60, 61, 6367, 69103, 105, 147, 18486, 198200, 202,

400 204, 209, 21723, 230, 233, 235, 269, 288, 29395, 305, 306, 308, 310, 314, 316, 334, 34042, 343, 359, 383, 385, 386, 388 bin Laden, Salem, 24, 25 bin Laden, Yeslam, 24 bin Muammar, Uthman bin Hamd, 11 bin Uraiir, Sulaiman bin Muhammad, 11 Bitar, Salah al-Din al-, 53 Blackstone, William Eugene, 1078 Blix, Hans, 314, 319, 338 Bodansky, Yossef, 80, 83, 185 86 Bolten, Josh, 32931 Bolton, John, 16364, 170, 176, 283, 300, 301, 311 Bork, Robert H., 172 Boulard, Herv, 385 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, 72, 91 Bremer, Paul, 317, 325, 329 Brezhnev, Leonid, 35 Brill, Kenneth, 170 Brisard, Jean-Charles, 96, 211 12, 218 Brom, Shlomo, 31821 Brown, Hank, 69, 193 Brown, Lewis, 162, 205 Bryen, Stephen, 17576 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 3738, 143 Buchanan, Patrick, 133, 22526 Bush, George H.W., 60, 71, 151, 15759, 178, 179, 180, 205, 232, 260, 261, 308, 309, 339, 392, 395 Bush, George W., 56, 39, 101 2, 105, 16368, 172, 173, 176 77, 2045, 21113, 21623, 22535, 238, 242, 255, 259 61, 263, 265, 272, 273, 275,

Enemies by Design
281, 28385, 291, 293303, 31115, 31920, 32526, 329, 33234, 336, 342, 34748, 353, 355, 359, 361, 364, 383, 386, 388, 390, 395 Bush, Jeb, 227 Bush, Marvin, 374 Butcher, William C., 162 Butler, Richard, 218, 271 Byman, Daniel, 21619 Byrd, Robert, 165 Calabresi, Guido, 395 Cambone, Stephen, 358 Cameron, Carl, 364, 365 Carney, Timothy, 84 Carter, Jimmy, 3640, 5758, 69, 102, 143, 144, 148, 152, 157, 236 Casey, William, 154, 232 Casteel, Steven, 210 Cellar, Emmanuel, 135 Chalabi, Ahmad, 176, 31517, 319, 321, 32425, 333, 347, 358 Chamberlain, Wendy, 231 Chaney, Victoria, 189 Chavez, Hugo, 282 Cheney, Dick, 6162, 64, 176, 205, 2079, 213, 228, 260, 26365, 27374, 279, 283, 290, 300303, 30913, 315, 320, 32728, 33234, 34043, 34748, 354, 39394, 412 Chossudovsky, Michel, 82 Christopher, Warren, 87 Clark, William, 149 Clarke, Richard, 305, 307, 308 Clifford, Clark, 69, 134 Clinton, Bill, 5, 39, 73, 7880, 8687, 9395, 97, 98, 105, 143, 178, 180, 187, 189, 191 92, 195, 198201, 207, 209, 21516, 219, 233, 23538, 240, 241, 24344, 24546,

Index of Names
24950, 253, 25961, 262, 267, 27072, 277, 28081, 333, 334, 356, 383, 388, 394 Cockburn, Andrew, 60 Cockburn, Leslie, 60 Colbert, James, 240 Coors, Joseph, 14546, 148, 149, 150 Coulter, Ann, 287 Crane, Charles, 52 DSouza, Dinesh, 172 Dagan, Meir, 170 Daniels, Mitch, 331 Daoud Khan, Muhammad, 31 32, 34, 41, 46, 47 Darby, John Nelson, 1068, 246, 247, 392 Darby, Spct. Joseph, 348 Daschle, Sen. Tom, 289 Daschle, Tom, 228 Dasqui, Guillaume, 96, 211, 218 Davis, Avi, 159 Davis, Sgt. Javal, 349 Dawish, al-, 19 Dayan, Moshe, 138, 144 de Bunsen, Maurice, 17 Deaver, Michael, 149, 151 DeMuth, Christopher, 162, 172 DeVos, Rich, 148 Dewey, Gov. Thomas, 136 Dewey, Thomas, 135 Dostum, Abdurrashid, 183, 191 92, 198, 215, 344 Downs, Dr. Mary Beth, 290 Dulles, John Foster, 105 Dunn, Daniel R., 357 Durand, Sir Henry Mortimer, 41 Eagleburger, Lawrence S., 180 Eberhart, Gen. Ralph, 376 Eisenberg, Lewis, 374 Eisenhower, Dwight, 36, 55, 141, 152, 259, 312

401 El-Affendi, Abdelwahab, 77, 78, 8384 Ellner, Oded, 362 El-Refaei, Abu Emad, 164 England, Pvt. Lynndie, 349 Erwa, Elfatih, 84 Eshkol, Levi, 139 Evans, Donald, 205 Eytan, Walter, 137 Fadl, Jamal Ahmed al-, 70 Fagih, Saad al-, 44, 45, 78, 98 Fahd, King, 14, 43, 52, 5764, 87, 88, 183, 302 Fahim, Mohammed, 344, 345 Faisal, King, 21, 54 Faisal, Turki al-, 60 Falwell, Jerry, 148, 154, 246, 296 Feinberg, Abraham, 141 Feingold, Russell, 231 Feith, Douglas, 17677, 241, 283, 310, 312, 318, 328, 355, 357 Ferdinand, Archduke Franz, 29, 31 Feulner, Edwin J., 14546, 149 Fierst, Herbert, 173 Findley, Paul, 175 Finkelstein, Norman, 11011, 137 Fisk, Robert, 90, 91 Fitzgerald, Patrick J., 394 Fleischer, Ari, 222 Footlik, Jay, 236 Ford, Gerald, 141, 162, 200, 221 Ford, Sgt. Greg, 349 Fortas, Abe, 141 Franco, Francisco, 130 Frank, Justin, 299 Franklin, Benjamin, 128, 129 Franklin, Larry, 393 Franks, Gen. Tommy, 7, 320 Frederick II, Sgt. Ivan L., 349 Fukuyama, Francis, 180 Fulbright, Sen. William, 105

402 Fulcher of Chartres, 285 Gaffney, Frank, 177, 260 Gailani, Pir Sayed Ahmed, 47 Gandhi, Sonia, 208 Garner, Jay, 176, 317 George, Dev, 194 Gephardt, Richard, 228 Gerecht, Reuel Marc, 312 Gersony, Robert, 71 Ghaith, Sulaiman Abu, 29394 Ghanem, Alia, 23 Ghanem, Najwa, 25 Ghaus, Mullah Mohammad, 194 Ghazali, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-, 30 Ghorbanifar, Manucher, 174, 312 Gilder, George, 146, 150 Gill, Peter, 4849 Gillerman, Dan, 165 Gingrich, Newt, 146, 24546, 315, 334 Gissin, Ranaan, 310 Giuliani, Mayor Rudolph, 369, 387 Glaspie, April, 57, 6061 Glazov, Jamie, 177 Glubb Pasha, Sir John Bagot, 15, 137 Goethe, Johann, 113 Goldberg, Arthur, 141 Goldmann, Nahum, 138 Goldmuntz, Lawrence, 174 Gonzales, Alberto, 35355, 394 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 157 Gore, Al, 134, 206, 22527, 272 Gorell, Fred, 205 Gottlieb, Alan, 148 Graham, Billy, 109, 141, 284 Graner, Spct. Charles A., 349, 350 Grey, Sir Edward, 18 Gurion, David ben, 136 Gurion, David Ben, 138

Enemies by Design
Haass, Richard, 180, 301 Habib, Aras Karim, 81, 347 Hadi, Mahmud Al, 75 Hagee, John, 246 Haig, Alexander, 57, 58, 153 Halliday, Denis, 26566 Halsell, Grace, 143 Hanjour, Hani, 381 Haq, Abdul, 48 Harman, Spct. Sabrina, 349 Harris, Katherine, 227 Harrison, Benjamin, 108 Hashimi, Sayed Rahmatullah, 212 Hastert, Dennis, 22829 Haynes II, William, 355 Haynes II, William, 354 Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin, 4147, 18384 Helmreich, Jeffrey S., 390 Helms, Richard, 212 Hendel, Zvi, 254 Henderson, Loy, 135 Herold, Marc W., 22325 Hersh, Seymour, 311, 315, 320 Herzl, Theodore, 106 Heymann, Philip, 176 Hilas, Kasim, 357 Hill, Roger, 271 Hills, Carla, 205 Hitler, Adolf, 112, 130, 138, 155, 241, 287, 29193, 296 Hobbes, Thomas, 11419, 122, 129 Hoffer, Eric, 29192 Hollings, Ernest, 361, 391 Hoover, Herbert, 172, 173 Horowitz, Michael, 247 Hughes, Paul, 346 Hume, Brit, 364 Hussein, King, 23, 242 Hussein, Saddam, 5, 6, 8, 28, 5762, 81, 102, 157, 164, 239, 241, 242, 26165, 26871,

Index of Names
277, 27982, 296, 298, 302, 3046, 30710, 31317, 320, 32526, 33342, 34648, 394 Hussein, Sharif, 14, 1718 ibn Hithlayn, 19 ibn Humayd, 19 ibn Rashid, 15 ibn Saud, Abd al-Aziz, 1420, 2223, 52, 89, 300, 317 ibn Saud, Sheikh Muhammad, 12, 15 Idris, Saleh, 14, 95 Indyk, Martin, 178 Inman, Bobby Ray, 154 Iqbal, Asif, 346 Israel, John, 35859 Ivanov, Igor, 170 Jaber, Sheik, 59 Jackson, Bruce, 334 Jackson, Henry, 175 Jackson, Lyndon, 17677 Jacobsen, Jake, 141 Jamroz, 210 Jastrow Jr., Morris, 108 Jefferson, Thomas, 119, 259 Jeffords, Jim, 228 Jensen, Brad, 366 Johnson, Larry, 100 Johnson, Lyndon, 125, 236, 334 Joseph, Dov, 137 Joyce, Michael, 17172 Juhayman ibn-Muhammad ibn Sayf al-Utaibi, 2728 Kagan, Robert, 334 Kahn, Julius, 108 Kampelman, Max M., 174 Kaplan, Robert, 41, 47 Karamat, Jehangir, 97 Karmal, Babrak, 33, 35 Karpinski, Brig.-Gen. Janis, 35152 Karrazi, Kamal, 169 Karzai, Hamid, 23234, 34445 Kateb, Suleiman al-, 2425

403 Katz, Mark N., 80 Keane, Gen. John, 313 Keller, Richard, 196 Kelly, John, 61 Kemp, Jack, 148, 150, 176 Kennedy, John F., 6, 21, 134, 329, 361 Kennedy, Sen. Ted, 328 Kerry, Sen. John, 69, 258, 389, 390, 397 Khair, Ahmad Abu-al, 294 Khalili, Karim, 191 Khalilzad, Zalmay, 206, 21519, 23234, 260 Khalis, Yunus, 47, 184 Khan, Abdur Rahman, 41 Khan, Nisar Ali, 196 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 28, 36, 37, 58, 102 Khrushchev, Nikita, 80 Khyber, Mir Akbar, 3132 Kidwa, Nasser, 244 Kimche, David, 174 Kimmit, Brig.-Gen. Mark, 349 Kirkpatrick, Jeane, 162, 176, 334 Kissinger, Henry, 149, 188, 236, 323 Klein, Joe, 285 Komnenos, Alexios I, 285 Kosygin, Alexei, 33, 34 Krauthammer, Charles, 311 Krekar, Mullah, 314 Kristol, Irving, 12526, 12829, 172, 395 Kristol, William, 259, 261, 305, 334, 395 Kurtzer, Daniel, 254 Kurzberg, Paul, 362 Kurzberg, Sivan, 362 Kwiatkowski, Karen, 31014, 318, 320, 334 Laffer, Arthur, 150 Laird, Melvin R., 15152 Langford, Lt.-Col. Michael, 290

404 Larson, Charles, 205 Lay, Kenneth, 207 Leahy, Sen. Patrick, 230, 289 Ledeen, Michael, 16369, 174 77, 312 Lemnitzer, Gen. Lyman L., 378, 379 Levin, Carl, 76, 77 Levinson, Larry, 141 Lew, Ronald S.W., 188 Lewis, Terry, 22627 Libby, Lewis "Scooter," 260, 283, 290, 301, 303, 311 Lilienthal, Alfred M., 143, 154 Lindsay, Lawrence, 331 Locke, John, 114, 11925, 127, 129, 146, 259 Long, David, 78 Lott, Trent, 228 Lowy, Frank, 373 Luti, William, 31112, 317 Mabus, Raymond, 86 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 11619, 125 Mack, Connie, 176, 245 Macover, Micha, 363 Maddoux, Marlin, 296 Mahdi, Ali, 72 Mallet, Sir Louis, 16 Manning, Bill, 369 Maresca, John J., 188, 189, 192 Marlowe, Christopher, 115 Marmari, Omer, 362 Marquardt, Erich, 16768 Marr, Col. Robert, 381 Marshall, George C., 134 Martin, Lawrence, 298 Masoud, Ahmad Shah, 183, 184, 198 Mazor, Gadi, 363 McAteer, Ed, 246 McCain, John, 283, 334 McCoy, Alfred W., 352 McCullough, David, 395

Enemies by Design
McDermott, Jim, 333 McFarlane, Robert, 53, 175 McKinney, Cynthia, 227 McLellan, Scott, 205, 227 McMahon, Sir Henry, 17 McNamara, Robert, 6, 378 McNaughton, John T., 6 Meese, Edwin, 149, 151 Miller, Aaron David, 180 Miller, James C., 162 Miller, John, 75, 79 Miller, Maj.-Gen. Geoffrey, 351, 353 Miller, Martin, 19394 Miller, William, 107 Mishra, Brajesh, 208 Mohamad, Wazir, 345 Mohammedi, Mohammed Nabi, 47 Mohjadedi, Sibghatullah, 47 Mohler, Albert, 296 Mondale, Walter, 395 Moody, Dwight Lyman, 109 Moorer, Adm. Thomas, 105 Mor, Uri, 248 Morris, Benny, 137 Morris, Edmund, 396 Mossadeq, Muhammad, 36 Mujadeddi, Sibghatullah, 48 Murdoch, Rupert, 259 Murkowski, Frank, 209 Murray, Charles, 172 Musharraf, Pervez, 200, 234 Mussolini, Benito, 129, 130, 395 Muttaqi, Amir Khan, 215 Naik, Niaz A., 212 Najibullah, Muhammad, 48, 65, 182, 184 Nasser, Gamel Abdel, 5356, 13839 Nasser, Hanna, 247 Natsios, Andrew, 329 Nayef, Prince, 64

Index of Names
Netanyahu, Benjamin, 23943, 24549, 261, 374 Neumann, Tom, 317 Niazi, Mullah Manon, 197 Nidal, Abu, 185 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 113 Nixon, Richard, 26, 141, 143, 157, 165, 173, 236, 299, 323 Niyazov, Saparmurat, 18991 Nofziger, Lyn, 149 Noriega, Gen. Manuel, 386 North, Oliver, 148, 174 OBrien, Danielle, 381 ONeill, John, 21819 ONeill, Paul, 391 Oakley, Robert, 205 Ogarkov, Nikolai, 35 Olshansky, Barbara, 346 Olson, Barbara, 287 Omar, Mullah Muhammad, 18285, 200201, 210, 212, 221, 279 Osman, Ismail Mohamed, 76 Pahlawan, Malik, 192 Pahlevi, Shah Reza Muhammad, 3637, 102 Paine, Thomas, 128, 129 Papadopoulos, George, 130 Pappas, Col. Thomas M., 351, 358 Papp, Ilan, 136 Paritzky, Joseph, 325 Pasha, Muhammad Ali, 13, 56 Pavitt, James, 347 Pavlovsky, Ivan, 35 Pearson, Drew, 135 Peres, Shimon, 91, 175, 23940, 243, 253 Perle, Richard, 17677, 240, 241, 283, 312, 31517, 334, 37083, 395 Pilger, John, 345 Pinochet, Augusto, 130, 280 Plame, Valerie, 394

405 Plato, 113 Podhoretz, Norman, 126, 260 Popat, Mamta, 289 Pope Urban II, 285 Powell, Colin, 157, 168, 20911, 213, 254, 26365, 300301, 310, 31215, 319, 321, 335 36, 33842, 353 Provance, Sgt. Samuel, 348 Putin, Vladimir, 219, 265 Puzanov, A., 3233, 35 Qaddafi, Moammar, 96 Qadir, Haji Abdul, 345 Qassem, Abdel Karem, 54, 55 Qutb, Sayyid, 55, 67, 68 Rabbani, Burhanuddin, 46, 183 84, 186, 191, 19698, 201, 23233 Rabin, Yitzhak, 23840, 249 Racicot, Marc, 208 Rafi, Mohammed, 356 Ralston, Joseph, 97 Raphael, Robin, 187, 19495 Rasul, Shafiq, 47, 346 Reagan, Ronald, 6, 3740, 44, 46, 52, 53, 57, 58, 88, 144, 145, 14856, 160162, 173 74, 17678, 200, 213, 232, 23637, 25961, 272, 28081, 283, 299, 339 Reed, Ralph, 246 Regan, Donald, 395 Rehman, Abdul, 345 Rice, Condoleezza, 166, 205, 334, 394 Rice, Donald, 205 Richardson, Bill, 244, 271 Richardson, H. Smith, 146 Richardson, Lunsford, 146 Richardson, R. Randolph, 146 Ridge, Tom, 229 Rippy, Dr. Marian, 290 Ritter, Scott, 271 Robertson, Pat, 148, 246

406 Rocca, Christina, 212 Roche, John P., 141, 177 Rodman, Peter W., 260 Roosevelt, Franklin, 395 Rosenthal, A.M., 247 Ross, Dennis, 180 Rostow, Eugene, 141 Rostow, Walt, 141 Rothstein, Hy, 34344 Rotter, Gernot, 295 Rowhani, Hassan, 169 Rumsfeld, Donald, 5, 166, 167, 213, 22021, 223, 233, 260, 261, 280, 300301, 305, 308, 310, 313, 315, 336, 346, 348, 358, 388, 393 Russert, Tim, 305, 341 Saba, Michael, 17576 Safire, William, 247 Sahnoun, Mohamed, 72 Said, Khalid Al, 75 Salazar, Antnio de Oliveira, 130 Sampson, Anthony, 279, 280 Sanchez, Lt.-Gen. Ricardo, 352 Sardjaev, Batyr, 196 Saud, Faisal, 23, 55, 56 Saud, King, 23, 52, 54 Sayyaf, Abdul Rasul Abu, 47 Scaife, Richard Mellon, 14546, 148, 173 Scalia, Antonin, 162, 172 Scheer, Robert, 210 Schifter, Richard, 174 Schmitt, Gary, 311, 334 Schwarzkopf, Gen. Norman, 157, 309 Scofield, Cyrus Ingerson, 108, 109 Senior, Max, 108 Shachal, Moshe, 237 Shah of Iran, 28 Shah, Zahir, 32, 41, 213, 232, 233

Enemies by Design
Shakarchi, Mohammed, 69 Shalom, Silvan, 82 Shamir, Yitzhak, 157, 159, 179, 238, 240 Shamrani, Muslih Al, 75 Sharar, Yasser, 356 Sharif, Omar, 23 Sharon, Ariel, 154, 163, 164, 252, 253, 255, 257, 311, 320, 356, 374, 390, 392, 397 Sheehan, Fr. John, 398 Sheehan, Michael, 198 Shinseki, Eric, 360 Shkukeini, Mohammed, 304 Shmuel, Yaron, 362 Shoomaker, Gen. Peter, 313 Shulsky, Abram, 311, 312, 315 Shultz, George, 236, 32526, 331, 334 Sicherman, Harvey, 180 Silverstein, Larry, 366, 37274 Simon, William, 172 Simons, Thomas, 212 Sirat, Abdul Sattar, 232 Sivits, Pvt. Jeremy, 349 Sloan, Melanie, 327 Socrates, 11213, 148 Solarz, Stephen, 176, 334 Spencer, Robert, 14748 Stahl, Leslie, 267, 307 Stalin, Josef, 80, 292 Starr, Frederick, 202, 211 Stem, Saul, 174 Stephanowicz, Steven, 358 Stevens, Robert, 289 Stewart, Terry, 350 Stockman, David, 150, 153 Strauss, Leo, 11619, 12126, 12930, 132, 148, 153, 161, 172, 292, 301, 311 Streusand, Douglas E., 3031 Stubbing, Richard, 151 Sugami, Satam al-, 379 Sununu, John, 148

Index of Names
Suter, Dominik Otto, 363 Taguba, Maj.-Gen. Antonio, 349, 351, 352, 359 Taha, Ali Othman, 84 Talbot, Strobe, 149 Tamimi, Sheikh, 64 Tannen, Deborah, 342 Taraki, Nur Muhammed, 28, 3235, 36 Tarpley, Webster, 53, 70, 82, 417 Taymiya, Ibn, 12, 30, 57, 68, 87 Teller, Edward, 150 Tenet, George, 233, 289, 347 Toler, Deborah, 162, 172 Tomsen, Peter, 183 Torop, Jonathan, 241 Toynbee, Arnold, 137 Truman, Harry, 13336, 139, 236 Tsurumi, Yoshi, 284 Tuchman, Barbara, 6 Turabi, Hasan Abdullah dafa'allah al-, 65, 6671, 75 76, 83, 85, 186 Ustinov, Dimitri, 35 Van Dusen, Henry P., 111 Van Kappen, Frank, 90 Varennikov, Gen. Valentin, 35 Vendrell, Francesc, 211 Venzke, Ben, 81 Vest, Jason, 177 Vidal, Gore, 134 Wahhab, Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd al-, 1012, 300 Wallace, Mike, 373 Wanniski, Jude, 146 Washington, George, 128, 259 Wattenberg, Ben, 140, 141 Watts, J.C., 247

407 Waxman, Henry, 207, 327 Weaver, Mary, 97 Weidenbaum, Murray, 162 Weinberg, Lawrence, 178 Weinberger, Caspar, 149, 151, 154 Weitz, Joseph, 13637 Westmoreland, William, 334 Weyrich, Paul, 14548, 162 White, Leo, 141 Wieseltier, Leon, 334 Wildmon, Don, 148 Williams, Carolyn, 299 Wilson IV, Joseph, 394 Wilson, Woodrow, 108 Winchell, Walter, 135 Wise, Rabbi Steven, 136 Wolfowitz, Paul, 164, 176, 223, 260, 265, 283, 303, 305, 306, 310, 317, 32931, 388, 395 Woodard, W. Wayne, 226 Woodward, Bob, 289 Woolsey, James, 315, 334, 358 Wright, Edwin, 135 Wurmser, Meyrav, 173, 241, 301 Yaalon, Moshe, 310, 319, 393 Yinon, Oded, 393 Yousaf, Mohammad, 49 Yousef, Ramzi, 79 Zack, Lt.-Col. Philip, 290 Zahn, Paula, 218 Zarqawi, Abu Musab al-, 314, 341 Zawahiri, Ayman al-, 55, 69, 72 Zelikow, Philip, 3078, 320 Zia, ul-Haq, 3947 Zinni, Anthony, 312, 314, 320, 360 Zinser, Adolfo Aguilar, 300

Maps: Ottoman Empire, p. 16. Middle East, p. 103. Palestine, p. 142. Centgas Pipeline, p. 191. Afghan refugees, p. 214. Iraq, p. 325.

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REPORTS,

POLLS, INTERVIEWS, SPEECHES AND CORRESPONDENCE

AR 190-8 Enemy Prisoners of War, Retained Personnel, Civilian Internees and Other Detainees, Depts. of the Navy, Army, Marine Corps and Air Force, Washington D.C., Oct. 1, 1997. A Conversation with Joseph R. Biden. Council on Foreign Relations, Oct. 22, 2001. American Jewish Committee Annual Survey Reveals Jewish Vote for President, 2003 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion, Jan. 11, 2004. Americans Want a New Policy Towards Israel, Zogby International, Council for the National Interest, July 30, 2004, <www.cnionline.org/resources/polls/kerry-israel/poll.pdf>. Bin Laden, Osama, Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying The Land of the Two Holy Places, Qandahar, Afghanistan, Oct. 23, 1996. Interview with Peter Arnett, CNN, March 1997. Interview with Ummat newsapaper, Sept. 28, 2001. Excerpts from address on al-Jazeera, Agence France-Presse, Dec. 27, 2001. Videotaped speech on al-Jazeera, Oct. 29, 2004. Lord Kitchener to Sir William Lord Tyrrell, Private letter, Sir Edward Grey MSS, Vol. 9. British Agency, Cairo, April 26, 1914. Building for Peace: An American Strategy for the Middle EastExecutive Summary, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, April 1993. 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. El-Affendi Abdelwahab, Correspondence with the author, December 2001 to February 2002. Emir Abdullahs account of his conversations with Lord Kitchener, transmitted with notes by Arab historian George Antonius, Jerusalem, May 1, 1936. FR 3-19.40 Military Police Internment/Resettlement Operations, Department of the Army, Washington D.C., Aug. 1, 1997. Forbes, Scott, Interview with the author, Sept. 23, 2004. Herold, Professor Mark, A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting [revised], March 2002.

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Aburish, Sad K, The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud, New York: St. Martins Press, 1994. Adler, Mortimer J, The Common Sense of Politics, New York: Fordham University Press, 1996. Appelby, Joyce and Terrence Ball eds., Thomas Jefferson Political Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Arnold, Sir Thomas W., The Preaching of Islam, A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith, London: A. Constable & Co., London, 1896. Bodansky, Yossef, Bin LadenThe Man who Declared War on America, New York: Forum, 1999. Brisard, Jean-Charles, Guillaume Dasqui, Ben LadenLa vrit interdite, Paris: Denol, 2002. Cockburn, Andrew and Leslie, Dangerous Liaison, Toronto: Stoddart, 1991. Encyclopedia Britannica. Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur, The Sign of the Four, London: Spencer Blackett, 1890. Dugger, Ronnie, On ReaganThe Man and his Presidency, New York: McGraw Hill, 1983. Findley, Paul, Deliberate DeceptionsFacing the Facts About the U.S. Israeli Relationship, New York: Lawrence Hill, 1993. They Dare to Speak Out, Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1989. Finkelstein, Norman G., The Holocaust IndustryReflections on theExploitation of Jewish Suffering, 2nd ed., London: Verso, 2003. Goldberg, Hirsh, The Jewish Paradox, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978. Grose, Peter, Israel in the Mind of America, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984. Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf, 1923. Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, London: Pelican, 1980. Hoffer, Eric, The True Believer, Chicago: Time-Life Books, 1966.

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9/11, prod. Goldfish Pictures and Silverstar Productions, dirs. Jules Naudet, Gedeon Naudet, James Hanlon, 2001. America Rebuilds, PBS, Sept. 10, 2002. The American Experience, New York: A Documentary Film, The Centre of the World, PBS, Sept. 8, 2003. Anand, Vinod, Export of Holy Terror to Chechnya From Pakistan and Afghanistan, Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, (India), June 2000. Ayatullah Khomeini: The Mystic Who Lit the Fires of Hatred, Time, Jan. 7, 1980. Britt, Lawrence W., Fascism Anyone? Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 2. Bork, Robert H, Civil Liberties after 9/11,Commentary, Vol. 116, No. 1, July-August 2003. Boyle, Charles E., Swiss Re, Developer Continue to Dispute WTC Cost, Insurance Journal, Aug. 19, 2002. Brom, Shlomo, The War in Iraq: An Intelligence Failure? Strategic Assessment, Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. Vol. 6, No. 3, November 2003. Centner, Christopher M., Ignorance Is RiskThe Big Lesson From Desert Storm Air Base Attacks, Airpower Journal, 1992. Cocco, Marie, Al-Qaida didnt rush to Bushs lips, Newsday, March 30, 2004. Competitive sport in Boca Raton, The Economist, Feb. 5, 2004. Complex insurance issues emerge in wake of World Trade Center tragedy, Insurance Times, Oct. 30, 2001, Vol. XX No. 22.

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Avalon Project, Yale Law School The Blackstone Memorial, 1891 Codoh.com Cold War International History Project Commonwealthclub.org Digital National Security Archive Ennes, Jim and Joe Meadows, The USS Liberty Memorial, <ussliberty.org> EPIC.org Feld, Lowell, IsraelCountry Analysis Brief, Energy Information Administration. Freeman Center for Strategic Studies From Revolution to Reconstruction: A Hypertext on American History, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Free Congress Foundation, George W. Bush Jr.The Dark Side. Globalresearch.ca Hazara.net Heritage Foundation Informationclearinghouse.info International Energy Annual, 1997. Islam, World Civilizations, Washington State University Jahn, Karl, Leo Strauss and the Straussians, The American Nationalist, <home.earthlink.net/~karljahn/Strauss.htm> Judaism vs. Zionism, Neturei Karta McDermott, Rep. Jim, website, www.house. gov/mcdermott/pr030911.shtml MediaTransparency.org Miftah.org Thememoryhole.org Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia Opensecrets.org Pakwatan.com People for the American Way Rense.com Sanders, Gregory, Dr. Hasan Al-TurabiHis Political Philosophy In Context of Religion and Progress, university thesis, Nov. 12, 1998 Secularhumanism.org Tehelka.com Terrorism Research Center Truthout.org Whatreallyhappened.com

9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA. High-profile terrorism like 9-11 is done by intelligence agencies, using patsies or fall guys; networks of moles inside government and media; anonymous professionals who carry out the atrocities we see; and command cells in privatized paramilitary settings. By Webster G. Tarpley. 512 pages. New edition in 2008. $17.95. George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography This blockbuster classic is a vivid X-ray of the AngloAmerican oligarchy dominating U.S. politics. Exposes the Bush war-profiteering dynasty involvement with Hitler, Iran-Contra, Skull & Bones, genocides in Latin America and Iraq, in fraud, corruption and scandal. By Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin. 700 pages, $19.95.

Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle against the 9/11 Big Lie Kevin Barrett, skeptical scoffer and confirmed tippler, meets a Moroccan beauty and converts to Islam. When he realizes the awful truth of 9/11, he vows to expose it, no matter the cost its his university post. Barrett, now a talk show host, puts readers into paroxyms as he sends Fox News, neo-con politicos and Secret Service packing. 224 sensational pages of wit for only $9.95. The Nazi Hydra in America: Suppressed History of a Century. US corporatists sponsor fascism over four generations of Bush, Harriman and other dynasties. How they made Hitler, and work towards a world fascist regime today. Ratlines, Paperclip, Nazi Gold, Dulles brothers, Gestapo foundations of the CIA. Hugely provocative and factual. 560 pp., $19.95. How the World Really Works. Ten books in one, ties together the tentacles of the NWO Mega-Conspiracy like no other. The plotting of wars, the bankster elite, their social engineering foundations, and privatized money power of the Fed, police statism, global and environmental ploys, the drug trade, assassinations: exposure is the cure for the roots of evil. 336 pp., $15. Corporatism, the Secret Government of the New World Order by Prof. J. Grupp. Monopolistic megacorporations control all aspects of life using false-flag terror, brainwashing, vaccines, chemtrails, dumbeddown media, the destruction of nature and society. Their agenda is a Hitlerian global prison planet of death camps. 233 letter-size pages, $19.99. Web of Debt. History of the bankster takeover of the money machine of England, America, and the world, up to the minute in Feb. 2008 as the 300-year-old Ponzi bubble bursts. Understanding todays perfect financial storm of derivatives, rigged markets, bankrupt banks. The solution, tested by Franklin, Jefferson, and Lincoln. For all who care about financial security. 544 pp., $34.95. Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation. A frightening vision, a crime drama, and its for real. Science, commerce, agriculture, even seeds all of our needs are weapons in the hands of a few global corporations and their political puppets. To run the world, even sterilize or starve peoples, they can just control our food production. 360 pp., $24.95. progressive press, p.o. box 126, joshua tree ca 92252, info@booxr.us