"The People Will Not Go to War Over Imperialism."
A New Look at the Reality of 9/11
By Sander Hicks

Something stinks.

The official line from the White House about 9/11 doesn't make any sense. On February 13, 2002, Senator Tom Daschle was threatened by Bush and Cheney not to dig too deep in his impending hearings in the Senate Intelligence Committee about the "intelligence community's" failure to detect 9/11.

But beyond Daschle's inquiry, bigger questions are being asked by alternative media. Some are even asking if it's possible that the White House was somehow complicit about the attacks of 9/11.


Background on Bush/bin Laden

Since 1978, there has been a relationship between the bin Laden family and the Bushes. Bush's first company, Arbusto Energy, took $50,000 from James Bath. Later sued by his former business partner Bill White, Bath had to divulge the cash sources. While indicted in the BCCI Scandal, Bath admitted working for rich Saudis who bought political influence in the USA. The Sheiks invested in the young Bush whose dad was head of the CIA.

Bath's Saudis were Kalid bin Mahfouz and Salem M. bin Laden. The latter was the older brother of Osama bin Laden, his close companion since childhood. When Salem died in a mysterious 1988 plane crash, Osama attended the funeral. Some bin Ladens have distanced themselves from Osama, but Salem's fatal plane crash could have started a feud between the Bushes and bin Ladens.

According to PBS, Salem's death was investigated but the results of the inquiry never revealed. A former pilot, American Heinrich Rupp, stated to PBS that this BAC 1-11 that killed Salem was the same that flew Vice Presidential candidate George Herbert Walker Bush to Paris on October 18, 1980. There, according to sources, they convinced the Iranians not to release the 52 American hostages until Reagan was inaugurated. Israeli intelligence's Ben-Menashe corroborated Rupp's story when he told Congress he had seen Bush in Paris before they met with Iranian Mehdi Karrubi. Reagan was inaugurated January 20, 1981, and Tehran simultaneously released all 52 hostages. The Iranians later received advanced American weaponry in their long, bloody war with Iraq.

When a C-123 cargo plane was shot down by the Sandinistas in 1986, the Iran/Contra/Cocaine arms-for-hostages trading scandal unraveled. The Reagan administration was exposed for violating its own laws, selling arms to the Iranians in exchange for the release of hostages in Lebanon, and then diverting the funds to Contras in Nicaragua. Vice President Bush maintained at the time (and later throughout his Presidency) that he was "out of the loop." But late into his disastrous 1992 presidential re-election campaign, General Richard Secord testified that Bush did know all about the operation. The best that President Bush's campaign strategist Mary Matalin could do was panic. With four days to go before the election, she claimed that Iran/Contra was old news. Her mantra was, "people's capacity to focus on politics is about the depth and breadth of their thumbnail."

Wrong. People sensed they were being lied to. Bush and Matalin suffered a resounding defeat at the hands of Bill "Slick Willie" Clinton. On Christmas Eve, 1992, Bush pardoned Caspar Weinberger, McFarlane and four other CIA operatives "undermin[ing] the principle that no man is above the law." according to Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh. Bush had withheld evidence, refusing to hand over his personal notes on high level meetings.

Background on Afghanistan

The U.S. lost its foothold in oil-rich Central Asia when fundamentalist Iranian Muslims overthrew The Shah. The State Department turned to unstable Afghanistan, where power had just been seized in April, 1978, by the People's Democratic Party (PDP), a left-leaning nationalist party who deposed aristocrat Mohammad Daoud. According to historian William Blum at this time "Afghanistan was a backward nation: a life expectancy of about 40, infant mortality of at least 25 percent...widespread malnutrition...illiteracy of more than 90 percent."

The PDP's new regime was not Communist, but it did institute badly needed reforms. It didn't abolish private property or religion, but "declared a commitment to Islam within a secular state" according to Blum. The sharpest contrast to past Muslim fundamentalists was the PDP's support of the equality of women. The new Afghanistan was praised worldwide. However, counter-revolution from the large landowners, royalists, and tribalists began to build in the hills. The Mujahedeen made false claims that the PDP had secret plans to curtail religious freedom. Even the New York Times stated the religious issue was "being used by some Afghans who actually object more to President Taraki's plans for land reforms..." The United States began officially supporting Afghan fundamentalists a year later, ignoring the fact that in February 1979 they had kidnapped and killed the American ambassador, Adolph Dubs.

The U.S. and Pakistan began training Mujahedeen at camps in Pakistan in 1978. One of the "holy warriors" the U.S. had on its side at this time was Osama Bin Laden. Five years after arriving, he was running the Maktab al-Khidamar(MAK) which funneled international aid, cash, and CIA advice into the "anti-communist" cause. In association with Pakistani intelligence, MAK was soon the "primary conduit" for cash, weapons and CIA intelligence.

President Taraki begged Moscow for military aid, but Moscow demurred, scared of an international incident. Six months later Taraki was murdered by a colleague, Hafizullah Amin, a PDP extremist. The Soviets, who claimed Amin had CIA ties, entered the country, on December 8, and shot him. They helped install Babrak Karmal, an original revolutionary from the 1978 uprising. On December 23, The Washington Post clarified "There was no charge [from the State Department] that the Soviets have invaded Afghanistan, since the troops apparently were invited."

The conflict became the western Cold Warrior's ideal: confrontation with Soviet communism through surrogates. Representative Charles Wilson rationalized: "There were 58,000 dead in Vietnam...we owe the Russians one..." At no point did any hawks have the foresight to think what the result would be if the rebels won. The US always had denounced "terrorists," but the Mujahedeen had shot down passenger airplanes. In 1986, the British hardliner Margaret Thatcher met formally with Abdul Haq, a Mujahedeen leader who planted a bomb at Kabul airport in 1984, killing 28 innocents. On September 24, 2001, Haq re-joined the Northern Alliance.

Is Osama bin Laden a "coward," "barbarian," or "madman" as he's been called by our leaders? Or is he just as brutal and monstrous as our leaders themselves, with a different set of politics? The ABC News' John Miller's 1998 interview with bin Laden shows an intelligent but desperate leader at war with the USA. The following is not quoted to endorse the murderous tactics of Osama bin Laden. Rather, it is presented to counter the U.S.A.'s caricaturing of the man:

"The American-led sanctions resulted in the death of more than one million Iraqi children. All of this is done in the name of American interests. We believe that the biggest thieves in the world and the terrorists are the Americans. The only way for us to fend off these assaults is to use similar means... Americans accuse our children in Palestine of being terroristsÑthose children, who have no weapons and have not even reached maturity. At the same time, Americans defend a country, the state of the Jews, that has a policy to destroy the future of these children..." Later he accused the U.S. as "the ones who used bombs against Nagasaki. Can these bombs distinguish between infants and military? America does not have a religion that will prevent it from destroying all people."