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From
The
Big Wedding:
9/11,
the Whistle-Blowers and the Cover-Up
|
|
Chapter
9
Muslim
Brotherhood, Team B, PNAC, and the New International
Fascist Agenda
Your face was blue in the light of the screen
As we watched the speech of an animal scream.
The new party army
was marching right over our heads.
There you are, ha, ha, I told you so,
hurrah, trala,
Says everybody that we know, hurrah, trala!
But who hid a radio under the stairs?
Who got caught out unawares
When the new party army came marching right over our heads?
When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, trala
Nobody understands it can happen again, hurrah, trala!
The
sun is shining
and the kids are shouting loud,
But you gotta know it's shining through a crack in the cloud,
And the shadow keeps falling,
when Johnny comes marching home!
—"English Civil War"
Joe Strummer and the Clash
Nobody understands that it can happen again.
Joe Strummer was talking about a new police
state, a resurgent fascism, a new era of fear
he prophesied would be ushered in, in the
wake of a televised spectacle. And although
plenty of good people
have spoken out against the trampling of the
Bill of Rights under the banner of "Homeland
Security," no one has explored the connections
"Al Qaeda" has to an international
neo-fascist agenda.
Lets explore where this new term "Al
Qaeda" came from, and why the force that
people normally describe as "Al Qaeda"
is more accurately described by the words
"Muslim Brotherhood," "Islamic
Jihad," "Hamas," or even "Team
B."
AL
QAEDA
Former
National Security Advisor Richard Clarke described
Al Qaeda as "...part of an international
political network...hiding behind a religious
sect."67
American culture (with its Christian
foundations rooted deep in the dominant subconscious)
tends to identify Al Qaeda as devotees of
the "other" religion, Islam. But
Clarke's suggestion here is that the religious
aspects of the movement are a disguise.
Let's take that analysis one step further.
Where did the name "Al Qaeda" come
from? It's a relative newcomer to the international
lexicon, supposedly the invention of the moderate
Mujahedeen leader Abdullah Azzam in 1989.
Yet it didn't appear in the U.S. media until
1996, and it didn't gain traction until after
the August 1998 Embassy bombings.
"Al Qaeda" is a curious choice
for the name of a revolutionary group: literally
it means "the base" but it can also
imply "the bottom," "the anus,"
or something having to do with menstruation.
The Arabic root word is "qaf-ayn-dal."
It can mean a camp or a home, a foundation;
but also a rule, principle, formula, or method.
It's been suggested that Azzam, the spiritual
mentor to bin Laden, "was talking about
a mode of activism and a tactic, not talking
about a particular organization."68
According
to Montreal professor R.T. Naylor:
"Al
Qaeda itself does not exist, except in the
fevered imaginations of neo-cons and Likudniks,
some of whom, I suspect, also know it is
a myth, but find it extremely useful as
a bogeyman to spook the public and the politicians
to acquiesce in otherwise unacceptable policy
initiatives at home and abroad. By those
terms, Al Qaeda is cast like 'the Mafia'
and similar nonsense coming from police
lobbies."69
Top BBC documentarian Adam Curtis broadcast
his three-part television film "The Power
of Nightmares," in early 2005 on British
TV, and pointed out the similarities between
"Al Qaeda" and the American neo-conservative
agenda. Both are willing to use religion as
propaganda, while ignoring the moral principles
at the core of the respective faiths. Both
worked together to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Both headed off in separate directions after
the Mujahedeen civil war, but with a full
head
of steam and a strategy of violence and rule-by-fear.
In both cases, that strategy didn't result
in the massive followings both movements longed
for. Curtis points out that the Islamists
then turned to terrorism, in a desperate and
doomed attempt to win the people over to their
side. Likewise, the neo-cons also thrive off
this same terrorism, because fighting it justifies
their existence.
MUSLIM
BROTHERHOOD
Curtis's
documentary is laudable. But he states that
the term "Al Qaeda" is not the most
accurate, without suggesting what terms are
better. How should we refer to the organizational
force of the Islamists that seeks to destroy
the USA and create a global theocracy? That
would be the "Muslim Brotherhood",
in Arabic, "Al-Ikhwan Al-Moslemoon."
The Brotherhood is a social, political network
that ties together the political Right, the
Nazis, the neo-cons, and Al Qaeda.
Muslim Brotherhood was started in 1928
in Egypt and has been involved in a variety
of terrorist activities since (including the
assassination of Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat, and an earlier attempt on President
Gamal Abdel-Nasser). Yet, it's not on the
U.S. Treasury's watch list of terrorist organizations.
Its history is mentioned, briefly, in The
9/11 Commission Report, buried in the
11th endnote of Chapter 2. When the Washington
Post and Wall Street Journal reported
on it, they didn't mention the well-documented
links to wealthy neo-Nazis. The Washington
Post did, however, quote a "former"
CIA official who called the Brotherhood "the
preeminent movement in the Muslim world...
something we can work with." He warned
that to alienate the organization "would
be foolhardy in the extreme." 70
According to the Post, the CIA relies
on the Brotherhood for intelligence.
"Mastermind of Terror" Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed joined the Muslim Brotherhood
at age sixteen. Mohammed Atta's father is
a member, and researchers are almost certain
that Atta himself was one as well. Atta was
a member of a Muslim Brotherhood "unofficial
base" when he joined an engineer's syndicate
after studying architecture at Cairo University
in 1990. Amanda Keller remembers Atta using
the term of endearment "Brother"
for his companion in Venice, Marwan Al-Shehhi,
but not other Arabs. One of the Germans who
partied with them in Key West, "Stephen,"
was also a "Brother."71
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded
by a young Egyptian schoolteacher Hassan Banna.
Banna railed against colonialism and argued
for a government based on the Koran. The Brotherhood
grew quickly, with a militia, oaths of allegiance,
and a culture of secrecy. The Brotherhood
worked for Third Reich intelligence before
and during World War II. Banna was assassinated
by the Egyptian state in 1949. Although the
Brotherhood facilitated the rise to power
of President Nasser, Nasser turned out to
be committed to a secular state. When the
Brotherhood made an attempt on his life, Nasser
clamped down and imprisoned them by the thousands.
Similar repression took place against the
group's tentacles in Iraq and Syria.
Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian writer and
fierce proselytizer, was a Muslim Brother,
and a big influence on Osama bin Laden. His
commitment to violence and terror were deepened
by his experiences in Egyptian prison, where
he was covered in animal fat and thrown into
a cell full of attack dogs. He was hanged
in 1966.
The Brotherhood split into two divisions
in 1953, a militant and a political branch,
the latter of which eventually elected some
of its own to the Egyptian parliament. This
is ironic, because this brand of Islam believes
that democracy and representative government
are contrary to the will of Allah. They believe
that only a government built on sharia, or
Islamic law, is justifiable. The stated platform
of the Muslim Brotherhood is to ban national
elections, once they actually win one.
Mahrous
bin Laden, older brother of Osama, was close
to certain Syrians who were militant Muslim
Brothers. When the Brotherhood denounced the
Saudi royal family and seized Mecca's Grand
Mosque in 1979, Mahrous was found partly at
fault. The Brotherhood had used Bin Laden
Construction company trucks to slip the militants
past security.
Today, the government of Syria is trying
to ferret the Muslim Brotherhood out of their
country. Before the 2003 U.S. invasion of
Iraq, the CIA's Robert Baer was on the verge
of getting the Syrians to provide a list of
Muslim Brotherhood members, worldwide. They
offered this list of real terrorists on the
condition that the U.S. reconsider its attack
on non-terrorist Saddam Hussein. After all,
Hussein hadn't been behind 9/11, the Muslim
Brotherhood had. A logical deal? Not to the
White House, who refused it.
Still wondering why Muslim Brotherhood
is not on the U.S. Treasury's list of terrorist
organizations? Recall that double agent Ali
Mohammed was active in one of the Muslim Brotherhood's
most militant fronts, Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
This helps explain why the CIA is reporting
favorable things about the group via the willing
vessel of the Washington Post. Muslim
Brotherhood is also the financial and organizational
backbone of not only Al Qaeda, but also Hamas
and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Muslim Brotherhood's name commonly
comes up in mainstream channels as an offhand
reference to the organizers of Mujahedeen
resistance in Afghanistan. By 1979, Muslim
Brotherhood was active in about forty countries,
and was able to recruit soldiers into the
struggle worldwide. According to Rita Katz
in Terrorist Hunter, the Muslim Brotherhood
first established a front in the U.S. in 1973
with the Islamic Association (IA), later called
IAP (Islamic Association for Palestine). This
association funneled funds from U.S. donors
into Muslim Brotherhood's Maktab al Khidamat
(MAK) Mujahedeen "support services"
group in Pakistan, run by Osama bin Laden
with the help of the CIA. According to former
federal prosecutor John Loftus, Vice President
Bush "was in charge of the covert operations
that supported the MAK."72
Rita Katz and my SEC contact both report
an alarming number of Muslim Brotherhood affiliated
non-profit organizations permitted to operate
in the U.S.: among them are the American Muslim
Council and the Council on American Islamic
Relations. Only after intense outside pressure
did the Feds arrest two board members of these
groups in 2003: Sami al-Arian, in February,
and Abdulrahman Alamoudi, in September. Both
were close to President Bush and had helped
the White House create an image of benevolent
Islamic-American relations.
Both groups met with Karl Rove in 2001 to
help with the White House's faith-based initiatives,
and Sami al-Arian campaigned for Bush in Florida.
When Alamoudi was arrested, there were "vehement
protests and interference at FBI HQ"
according to my SEC contact. When Sami al-Arian
was taken down, he was charged with conspiracy
to commit murder, since he supported and helped
fund suicide attacks in Israel. According
to government officials, al-Arian is a top
dog at Muslim Brotherhood's branch office,
the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Al-Arian obviously felt he had protection
from above. How did he make the cut as a friend
of President Bush?
Saudi money.
Al-Arian
Sami al-Arian was not busted until
John Loftus filed a suit against him in Florida
court in 2002 (Loftus is somewhat legendary
in publishing circles for detailing Prescott
Bush's Nazi dealings on Wall Street, in The
Secret War Against the Jews. Bush raised
$50 million for Adolph Hitler's Third Reich).
According to Loftus, "The Saudi government
was laundering money through Florida charities
run by University of Southern Florida Professor
Sami al Arian for the support of terrorist
groups in the Middle East." My SEC contact
pointed out, "Terrorist money-mover Sami
Al-Arian was so effective in Florida, the
fifty thousand Muslims who had traditionally
voted Democrat overwhelmingly swung Republican.
Bush also received campaign support from Khaled
Elgindy, who headed the Texas cause, and George
Salem, who headed national efforts from Washington,
DC in 2000."
The
Saudi government officially cut off support
to the Muslim Brotherhood when the group condemned
them for allowing U.S. bases on Saudi soil,
in 1990. But evidence persists that the Saudis
continued support for Muslim Brotherhood's
Gaza strip branch, Hamas.73
In 1994, when a Saudi defector Mohammed al-Khilewi
(first secretary at the Saudi Mission to the
UN) wanted to give the FBI fourteen thousand
documents that proved Saudi funding of Hamas,
the FBI refused to accept them.74
My SEC contact has been tracking the
Muslim Brotherhood for a while: "My task
force work for SEC Chicago began in 1999 (following
international banks), as Rita Katz was tasked
to cover non-profits.... I was tasked with
others to explore manipulation and control
of securities markets."
And what have you learned of Muslim
Brotherhood?
"They
worked for Ibn Saud to help him unite Arabia,
they worked for British intelligence, they
worked for French intelligence, they work
for U.S. intelligence, a mercenary band
'hiding behind Islam' which is why most
of them are cokeheads and alcoholics who
simply agitate to attract any psycho or
disaffected they can to their ranks. The
big question has been, for whom are they
working? And the answer seems to be the
transnational Reich movement."
The Reich movement. The Nazis. The
neo-Nazis. The Far Right neo-cons. The New
Fascists.
Hold onto your seats. There's proof.
MUSLIM
BROTHERHOOD AND THE NEO-NAZIS
According
to the Southern Poverty Law Center, "the
financial heart of the Islamist economic apparatus,"
is a Swiss bank called "Al Taqwa,"
Arabic for "Fear of God." Al Taqwa
was originally founded in 1988 in the Bahamas.
One of its main players, Yousef Nada, had
served Hitler's Third Reich as an intelligence
agent.
Nada
A
member of Muslim Brotherhood, Nada helped
Muhammed Amin al-Husseini, the "Grand
Mufti" of Jerusalem, escape from Germany
to Palestine at the end of WWII. Hussseini
had held the rank of Major in the SS, and
recruited twenty-six thousand Arabs to fight
with the SS in Europe.
According to European money-laundering
expert Ernest Backes, Francois Genoud was
another ex-spy for the Nazis who was a key
part of the formation of Al Taqwa. Although
he was a Swiss citizen, at the fall of Berlin,
Genoud helped distribute Nazi funds. He was
so high up in the Third Reich, that he became
the literary heir to the writings of Hitler
and Goebbels.
When bank Al Taqwa was raided the November
after 9/11, it was thought to hold all known
Al Qaeda funds. However, this raid didn't
staunch the flow of funds to Islamic terror,
and it didn't stop Al Taqwa. On March 20,
2002, in suburban Washington DC, a joint task
force raided the SAAR Network, a gaggle of
over-lapping Islamic charities. "They
hit a bunch of institutions and individuals
that were linked with bank Al Taqwa,"
said radio journalist, on-air host, and leading
anti-fascist researcher David Emory, in our
interview.75
Finally, the government is doing its
job and busting the bad guys. Right? Maybe
not. Terrorism expert Rita Katz observed a
high level of harassment when she participated
in the SAAR investigation:
"The
CIA was investigating me and the SAAR investigators
from Green Quest and Customs. The CIA and
the FBI investigated everyone who had anything
to do with the SAAR investigation. White
vans and SUV's with dark windows appeared
near all the homes of the SAAR investigators.
All agents, some of whom were very experienced
with surveillance, knew they were being
followed.
So was I. I felt that I was being followed
everywhere and watched, at home, in the
supermarket, on the way to work...and for
what?...I don't know for certain what's
the deal with the CIA investigating the
SAAR investigators, but it sure feels as
if someone up in that agency doesn't like
the idea that the Saudi Arabian boat is
rocked."76
Clinton White House National Security
Council aides first urged an investigation
of the SAAR Network, in 1998. But the FBI
refused. Their reason? The Washington Post
reported that "the FBI declined because
of fears that a probe would be seen as ethnic
profiling." I have to wonder if the Washington
Post and the FBI are secretly stifling
hard laughter. "Ethnic profiling?"
This is the same FBI that harassed the Black
Panthers into early graves, the same FBI who
told Martin Luther King he should go commit
suicide. "Ethnic profiling" is a
polite, PC excuse, when really the truth has
got to be closer to this: the FBI had a severe
unwillingness to disturb the money flow of
an Islamic charity with connections to the
Saudis, and the Far Right.
Once again, the FBI acts like the little
brother following orders of the fatter, stronger,
colder, aloof CIA. Their "negligence"
had serious, direct effects. Even two neo-Nazis
seem to have had foreknowledge of the 9/11
disaster.
Ahmed Huber, a Swiss neo-Nazi who converted
to Islam, fell under sway of the Grand Mufti
when he was in the Middle East.
Huber
Huber
was also a protégé of Johann
Von Leers, who had produced Anti-Semitic propaganda
under Joseph Goebbels. After the fall of Berlin,
Von Leers took a gang of Nazis with him when
he moved to Egypt and changed his name to
Omar. Von Leers worked for Nasser, as did
over one hundred former German military and
intelligence personnel who Nasser asked the
CIA to find for him. According to David Emory,
Huber is:
"very
active on the European New Right scene,
and is an intimate of the NPD, the German
neo-Nazi party. Huber is something of a
bridge between the old Nazis (Genoud, who
he met on a daily basis, and Von Leers)
and some of the new guard. Also a bridge
between the Islamists and the neo-Nazis."
In the U.S., Huber has had a relationship
with the New Black Panther Party and Khallid
Mohammad. He claims an intimacy with key Al
Qaeda personnel. He's such a part of Al Taqwa
that his home was raided as part of the Swiss
raid on it. According to trackingthethreat.com,
Huber "was given advance warning that
something big was going to happen here-well
before 9/11."77
That kind of foreknowledge is very
similar to that of William Pierce, the late
founder of the North American neo-Nazi group
National Alliance. In 1998, Pierce gave a
radio address titled "Stay Out of Tall
Buildings" that included the these instructions:
"New Yorkers who work in tall office
buildings anything close to the size of the
World Trade Center might consider wearing
hard hats."78
Maybe that's just loose talk from right
wing whackos. But recall that Muslim Brother
Ramzi Yousef started planning 9/11 in 1993.
NEO-NAZIS
AND BUSH
While
we're on the topic of the National Alliance,
let's probe further into the relationship
between political power in the U.S. and so-called
"fringe" groups on the right wing.
I was a part of the August 2002 street melee
with the National Alliance as part of the
confrontational protest against their agenda,
as they rallied
on Capitol Hill. As part of the preparations
for that protest, I created a working paper
on some of President Bush's connections to
"Southern Heritage" and other white
supremacist movements. Here's what I found:
In 1996, Bush sent letters of support
to the United Daughters of the Confederacy,
praising it for its "dedication to others"
and for the group's "high standards."
His letter was
published in their official magazine in 1996.
The Daughters are a historical preservationist
group that erects statues to honor the Southern
secession. But it's not everybody's history
at stake here—they have worked with and
honored the pro-Klan, white supremacist scholar
Michael A. Grissom.
As Governor of Texas, Bush opposed
"hate crimes" legislation, even
after the brutal murder of James Byrd who
was chained and dragged to death by racist
thugs.
In 1997, Governor Bush was a donor
to the Museum of the Confederacy's Annual
Ball, in Richmond, Virginia. He was named
Honorary Chairman at an archaic spectacle
where guests arrived in traditional period
"Confederate" costume. The event
was held in the old Tredegar Iron Works, where
slave labor was used to make half of the total
cannon of the Confederacy.79
During the 2000 Presidential campaign,
Bush had no problem
with the flying of the Confederate Flag over
the South Carolina Statehouse. To him, it
was an issue for the people of South Carolina
to decide. After losing the New Hampshire
Primary to McCain by eighteen points, Bush
reinvigorated his troops by attacking McCain
from South Carolina's Bob Jones University,
the far-right Fundamentalist Christian school.
The choice of location is telling. Bob Jones
University did not officially admit minorities
until 1975, after a court order brought on
by a lawsuit from the IRS. BJU lost their
tax-exempt status for outlawing interracial
dating. Attacking McCain from Bob Jones University
was a perfect way for Bush to re-invigorate
his base and show his donors that ethics would
not stop him from capturing the White House
for them no matter what.80
Right around this time, rumors started flying
that McCain had fathered a child out of wedlock
with an African-American mother.
As president, Bush authorized the placement
of a Presidential wreath at the Confederate
Monument on Memorial Day 2001. Ironically,
Papa Bush had suspended this practice during
his own administration.81
Even more alarming is the neo-fascist-like
behavior of former
Attorney General John Ashcroft—in 1998
he supported the pro-slavery magazine Southern
Partisan, in print. Among the many backward,
far-right lunatic beliefs of this magazine
are praise for Lincoln's assassin, and "superhero"
Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the KKK.
Ashcroft, in an interview said, "Your
magazine also helps set the record straight.
You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending
Southern patriots.... Traditionalists must
do more. I've got to do more."82
In Campaign 2000, Bush's Presidential
candidacy was officially endorsed by Matt
Hale, founder of the far-right Church of the
Creator. Five years later, Bush seems even
more fascistic: he relishes his two post-9/11
wars, those two genocidal assaults on civilian
populations. Although the peoples of Iraq
and Afghanistan are not the stated targets
of the U.S. military, the amount of civilians
killed in the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan
surpassed that of 9/11. In fact, as reported
in the New York Times International,
a team of doctors and independent researchers
at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at
Johns Hopkins University who conducted a study
in Iraq, concluded that an estimated one hundred
thousand civilians have died in Iraq "as
direct or indirect consequences of the March
2003 United States-led invasion."83
Cheney and Rumsfeld, 1975
TEAM
B
To
some, the Messiah Complex that President Bush
clearly suffers from is alarming. He claims
that the voice of God told him to attack Iraq
despite the lack of a reason. It's widely
believed that Bush thinks God put him in the
White House to fight the "War on Terror."
When he landed on the aircraft carrier USS
Lincoln on May 2, 2003, he quoted from the
Book of Isaiah, Chapter 61. Being a fundamentalist,
he must have known that was the same passage
that Jesus of Nazareth quoted
in the temple, according to Luke, Chapter
4, in order to make the claim that he was
the Messiah.
There is a class of men behind Bush
who aren't exactly into the Spirit. It's likely
they regard Bush's literal evangelical Christianity
with amusement. They regard religion as one
of Plato's "noble lies." They take
to heart what Thomas Hobbes said about ethics
and religion—there's no central truth
to any of it, but it's a good thing to teach
the young.
Karl Rove and his crowd are avowed
readers of the vicious strategist Machiavelli:
their ideal Prince must "lie and be able
to disguise his character well...to be a great
feigner and dissembler...be all mercy, faith,
integrity, humanity and religion. And nothing
is more necessary than to seem to have this
last quality...Everybody sees what you are,
few feel what you are."84
In 1972, Richard Nixon actually displayed
virtue by moving the country away from a culture
of Cold War paranoia. He signed the Strategic
Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreement. Nixon
sought to curb the massive waste of the arms
race through a broad agreement of "détente"
with the USSR. This policy made the right
wing of the GOP go mad.
In the wake of Watergate, and Nixon's
1974 expulsion from the White House, President
Ford faced a challenge from the Republican
hawks. In 1976, Dick Cheney was Ford's Chief
of Staff and Donald Rumsfeld was, then as
now, Secretary of Defense. In running for
re-election, Ford narrowly missed defeat when
Ronald Reagan defeated him in the North Carolina
primary. The same year, before Ford's re-election
campaign went down in flames, Cheney and Rumsfeld
started assembling the blueprint for a triumphant
hawkish agenda to prolong the Cold War indefinitely.
I say indefinitely because, although the Cold
War is technically over, these strategies
have continued into the present. Nixon spoke
out in 1971 about the need to "reduce
the level of fear, by reducing the causes
of fear." But the hawks in his successor's
cabinet wanted the opposite: they loved the
way fear shapes public opinion. They wanted
the defense budget pumped up, they wanted
victory in the "police conflict"
of Vietnam, and if they had to invent "new
causes of fear" to convince voters, they
were willing.
In 1976, the CIA reported that the Soviet Union was decaying
from within and would soon fall apart. But
Rumsfeld countered with his trademark bureaucratic
babble:
"The
Soviet Union has been busy. They've been
busy in terms of their level of effort;
they've been busy in terms of the actual
weapons they've been producing; they've
been busy in terms of expanding production
rates; they've been busy in terms of expanding
their institutional capability to produce
additional weapons at additional rates;
they've been busy in terms of expanding
their capability to increasingly improve
the sophistication of those weapons."
Just like today, when Cheney and Rumsfeld
don't like what the CIA says, they form a
rival intelligence group. In 1976, they called
it the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board (PFIAB), and eventually issued three
reports. The third report was the most controversial,
the "Team B Strategic Objectives Panel."
Director
of CIA William Colby pleaded with President
Ford, against letting the Team B monster see
the light of day: "It is hard for me
to envisage how an ad hoc independent, group
of government and non-government analysts
could prepare a more thorough, comprehensive
assessment of Soviet strategic capabilities...than
the intelligence community can prepare."86
But Colby was soon replaced by a new head
of CIA, George H.W. Bush who signed off on
the ad hoc group with gusto, "Let her
fly!!—OK, G.B." 87
While the CIA was saying that the USSR
was falling apart, Team B issued statements
and reports that said the Soviet Union was
developing sophisticated new weapons systems.
For example, they claimed the USSR was developing
a new nuclear submarine fleet undetectable
by sonar. When asked for proof, Team B said
there was none, since the new weapons system
was undetectable. "If you go through
most of Team B's specific allegations about
weapons systems, and you just examine them,
one by one, they were all wrong," federal
arms control expert Dr. Anne Cahn told the
BBC.85
Team B released its report right before
the election of 1976, and claimed that the
USA was lagging behind the USSR in the arms
race. The timing of the release was designed
to be a kind of "October Surprise"
against Carter, but this one didn't work.
Upon taking power, President Carter purged
Bush and about eight hundred other suspicious
characters (including Ted Shackley) from the
CIA. Four years later, a lot of those same
characters interfered with the election again
by negotiating with Iran to hold onto the
hostages a little longer. Team B became the
"A Team" when Reagan/Bush/Cheney
came to power in 1981.
For twelve years, the country was subjected
to a series of new "causes to fear":
Muammar Qaddafi, Manuel Noriega, Daniel Ortega
and the Sandinistas, the "Communist"
government in Afghanistan, etc. These were
the straw men, garish bogeymen the government
and media propped up, only to knock them down.
It was a "Big Lie," but many behind
the scenes surely said it was a "noble
lie." It justified a military budget
out of control,
while the White House cut funding for school
lunches.
Back to Dr. Cahn:
"The
United States embarked on a trillion dollar
defense buildup. As a result, the country
neglected its schools, cities, roads and
bridges, and health care system...From the
world's greatest creditor nation, the United
States became the world's greatest debtor—in
order to pay for arms to counter the threat
of a nation that was collapsing."
Nobody understands it can happen again.
Or
that it's happening
right now.
The GOP hawks despised the restraint
President G.H.W. Bush showed in not invading
Baghdad in the first Gulf War. Bush feared
an Iraqi quagmire, and stuck with the stated
goal of the coalition he had assembled: to
expel Iraq from Kuwait. In a rage, Scooter
Libby and Team B veteran Paul Wolfowitz wrote
the report "Defense Planning Guidance"
for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, in
1992. The report called for pre-emptive strikes
on countries developing weapons of mass destruction.
Those ideas were recycled and reissued in
2000 by the Project for a New American Century
(PNAC), under the title, "Rebuilding
America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and
Resources for a New Century."
The rehash incorporated some ideas
from the 1997 book The Grand Chessboard
by Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security
Advisor to Presidents Carter and Reagan. The
point is "to keep the barbarians from
coming together," Zbigniew Brzezinski
had written in Chessboard. America,
scolded Brzezinski, is "fixated on mass
entertainment...heavily dominated by hedonistic
and socially escapist themes." Since
the USA is such an "increasingly multi-cultural
society," and the everyday working people
are not inclined to support any more Vietnams,
the only thing that will motivate massive
emotional support for foreign wars is something
like "the shock effect of the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor." America will
likely "find it more difficult to fashion
a consensus on foreign policy issues, except
in the circumstance of a truly massive and
widely perceived direct external threat."
Likewise, the PNAC manifesto in 2000 recognized
the need for a "cataclysmic event of
the magnitude of Pearl Harbor."
According to Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter
Libby, the invasion of Iraq is just an "immediate
justification" for the U.S. to "play
a more permanent role in Gulf regional security."
PNAC's defining principles swore to
"accept responsibility for America's
unique role in preserving and extending an
international order friendly to our security,
our prosperity, and our principles."
In other words, to become the world's policeman
who enforces not some kind of higher law,
but whatever's clever for American big business.
The PNAC report nakedly demanded huge
jumps in U.S. military spending. It demanded
military bases in Central Asia and the Middle
East, the toppling of non-compliant regimes,
the shredding of international treaties, total
control of the world's energy resources, militarization
of outer space, complete control of the Internet,
and a willingness to use nuclear weapons to
achieve American goals.
Before resuming the post of Secretary
of Defense, Rumsfeld wrote a paper of his
own, the "Vision for 2020," which
argued for a new generation of space weapons
"to protect U.S. interests and investment"
since "The globalization of the world
economy...will continue with a widening between
the haves and the have-nots."
Somewhere in this candid language about
the naked abyss of the growing class divide,
I hear a sublimated cry for justice. The masters
of war know what they are doing is wrong.
Their humanity is not totally gone. The truth
comes out in mysteriously nude language.
When I punched a Nazi skinhead on Capitol
Hill in August of 2002, I engaged in political
violence for the last time. Shortly afterward,
I spent a good deal of time in New Mexico
reading Gandhi. When I punched the Nazi, what
I really wanted to do was break through to
him and break out of this whole cycle of violence.
But I realized later that I failed to reach
him and instead just tagged the guy in the
face. Gandhi says that the oppressor is still
human. Somewhere in Rumsfeld's technocratic
neo-con heart, he's gotta know he's living
in a fantasy land. Imperialism is dead, it
is death. To rule by fear and the power of
guns and dollars is pure fascism. When I punched
that Nazi I wanted to be a revolutionary,
but I was only a novice.
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FOOTNOTES:
67
Richard A. Clarke, Against all Enemies (New
York: Free Press, 2004)
69
From interview by Standard Schaefer
70
John Mintz and Douglas Farah, "U.S.
Hopes to Work With Diverse Group,"
Washington Post 11 September 2004.
71
Daniel Hopsicker identified Stephan as Stephen
Verhaaren, owner of a Naples, Florida aviation
company. In return, Verhaaren filed a defamation
suit against Hopsicker. I spoke with Verhaaren
on the phone as this book was going to press.
He denied knowing Atta, or being a member
of Muslim Brotherhood. I thought the conversation
was pleasant, but later, his lawyer said his
client was "upset" by the call.
72
Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of
Saud (New York: Scribner, 2004)
73
According to the Senate Governmental Affairs
Committee testimony of Dr. Dore Gold, President,
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, "The
Hamas-Saudi connection should not come as
a surprise. Hamas emerged in 1987 from the
Gaza branch of Muslim Brotherhood which, as
noted
earlier, has become a key Saudi ally during
previous decades....Saudi Arabia today funds
more than 50 percent of the needs of Hamas."
7/31/03
74
Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money
Can Buy (New York: Plume, 2004)
76
Rita Katz, Terrorist Hunter (New York: CCC: 2003)
79
Sources: Chris Kromm's feature on this topic
in Southern Exposure, Richmond National Parks
Quarterly Newsletter
82
Southern Partisan, Second Quarter/1998
84
The Prince, Machiavelli
85
"The Power of Nightmares", BBC
three-part television series; 2005.
86
William E. Colby to President Ford (Nov. 21,
1975), private collection of Dr. Cahn
87
George A. Carver, Jr., "Note for the
Director," May 26, 1976.
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