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By rahnuma ahmed

Today, September 11, 2011, is the tenth anniversary of the attacks on New York city’s Twin Towers, and the Pentagon.

Eleven days after the attack, president Bush, in his address to a joint session of the Congress had said, the attacks were carried out by al Qaeda, a “collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations” because they hate our freedoms. Freedom of religion, speech, vote, and assembling and disagreeing with each other. Briefly put, a hatred for the American way of life. They kill not only to end lives “but to disrupt and end a way of life.” “They stand against us because we stand in their way” (September 20, 2001).
But?and I hope this will give grounds for thought to readers and friends, who still cling to the idea that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the attacks, for the deaths of three thousand innocent civilians?the Bush administration had decided by 11am, September 11, 2001 that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks. Prior to conducting an indepth police investigation.
That same evening, at 9:30pm, a War Cabinet, with a select number of top intelligence and military advisors, was formed. That very night, at 11:00pm, a mere 12 hours after Bush administrators had declared al Qaeda to be responsible, the `War on Terror’ was officially launched (Michel Chossudovsky, The Truth Behind 9/11, Global Research, September 11, 2008).
Less than 4 weeks later, Afghanistan was bombed and invaded. The occupation, as we know, continues. And US troops, as recent press reports indicate, may stay in Afghanistan until 2024.
But the impression that was then given, that it was a retributive war because of the 9/11 attacks, swiftly and spontaneously mapped out and undertaken, is not true. A large scale war theater is never planned and executed in a number of weeks. “The decision to launch a war and send troops to Afghanistan had been taken well in advance of 9/11.” The attacks had helped galvanise American public opinion, described by CentCom Commander General Tommy Franks, as a “terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event”, to provide support for a war agenda which was already in its final planning stage (Chossudovsky).
Proof that there is truth in what Chossudovsky says, is lent by no other than Wesley Clark, a retired four star general, former commanding general of US European Command, which included all American military activities in 89 countries and territories of Europe, Africa and the Middle East. In a video interview to Democracy Now, given on March 2, 2007, Clark says,
“About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you?ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you?re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We?ve made the decision we?re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We?re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don?t know.” He said, “I guess they don?t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There?s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it?s like we don?t know what to do about terrorists, but we?ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”
“So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it?s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” ? meaning the Secretary of Defense?s office ? “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we?re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
Did Gaddafi know that he would be “taken out”, despite having rendered invaluable service? For, as Human Rights Watch’s recent discovery of hundreds of letters in the Libyan foreign ministry show, the US and UK had extensive ties with the Gaddafi regime on rendition and torture, post-9/11 attacks.
Suspicions about the government’s account have been forcefully expressed by some former top-ranking US government officials. The “conspiracy theory advanced by the administration” cannot be true, says Colonel Ronald D. Ray, deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration and a highly-decorated Vietnam veteran. The official story of 9/11 is that of “the dog that doesn’t hunt.” False flag operations have been carried out earlier by the US government to use as a pretext for aggression, says Ray, citing Israel’s attempted sinking of the USS Liberty, which president Lyndon B. Johnson let happen so that Egypt could be blamed, to `kickstart a war.’ “Half a trillion dollars a year and a bunch of guys over in a cave in Afghanistan were able to penetrate that half a trillion dollar network that’s supposed to provide Americans with national security” (Prison Planet.com, July 1, 2006).
Another former top-ranking official to have come out of the closet since is Dr. Steve Pieczenik, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state under Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance and James Baker. Dr. Pieczenik, a medical doctor, with doctoral degrees in psychiatry (Harvard), and international relations (MIT), who became `a colonel at the age of 32.’ Pieczenik is an `infowarrior’, i.e., an expert in PsyOps (Special Operations), black ops, also known as covert warfare, which includes psychological warfare. Thirty years ago I understood very clearly that the very essence of relationships between countries, and understanding what our national security is about, has to lie in the psychological political arena. Not in what your mother did, or your father did, but in what kind of image perception propaganda has been created against us, and what we have to create against someone else. I served president Reagan, he understood the importance of perception because he had been an actor and he understood that perception becomes reality. We, I mean the Reagan administration was effectively able to bring down an entire Soviet empire without firing a gun simply by manipulating perception. We forced them into bankruptcy, we manipulated their mind by using their chief of staff, who eventually committed suicide.
The `War on Terror’ is an orchestrated type of war and I think that I didn’t want to believe that for a very long time. “[But] more and more evidence points to the fact that…people who are appointed to the department of defense [Cheney, Rice]…the same whole cast, very tightly controlled and they are managing something that doesn’t make sense to me.” If bin Laden did it, then why would the FBI evacuate the entire family? You wouldn’t go to a criminal scene of investigation and say, “oh, that’s the culprit, let’s get rid of the whole family and not ask anybody any questions.” And look at the fourth plane, which had 75 minutes… “You can’t fly at three or four-hundred feet off the ground… you are telling me that we couldn’t get fighter planes in there [by then, to defend ourselves]? When we had already had two attacks and you are telling me that that was not a military pilot who was trained to crash into the Department of Defense? That’s unbelievable and that was a sleeper.” For those not in the know, a `sleeper’ is an agent who is trained to kill, and is `activated’ many years later. A Manchurian Candidate, asked Alex Jones? Yes. MKUltra mind control? Yes.
“I’m not going [to let] American soldiers die for something that may have been concocted or created. It’s one thing if we are attacked by the Nazis or the Japanese or something. I’m not denying that we were attacked. The question is who did what and how it was orchestrated and if it was orchestrated, then we have a real problem and that will destroy our democracy. That’s why I went public” (Steve Pieczenik: Paradigm Management, interviewed by Alex Jones, Prison Planet.com, April 24, 2002).
One cannot help but appreciate Dr. Pieczenik’s coming out, about his deep concern for America’s democracy, although one may, rightly, be less appreciative of his disregard for that of other nations.
Civilians too, do not believe the government’s conspiratorial account of events. RememberBuilding7, a nonpartisan campaign led by 9/11 family members, has been active in raising public awareness of World Trade Center Building 7 through television and other forms of advertising, aimed at compelling the New York City Council and Manhattan District Attorney to open an investigation into the building’s destruction.
Building 7 was a 47-story skyscraper, part of the World Trade Center complex which collapsed at 5:20pm on September 11, 2001. It was not hit by a plane. It had suffered minimal damage compared to other buildings closer to the Twin Towers, Buildings 3, 4, 5 and 6, which were severely damaged by falling debris, and fires that burned for hours. But none of them collapsed. At the time of its destruction, Building 7 exclusively housed government agencies and financial institutions (IRS, US Secret Service, Securities and Exchange Commission).
It also housed NY city mayor Rudy Guiliani’s Office of Emergency Managment, a special bunker designed precisely for managing an emergency such as 9/11. Guiliani and his team, interestingly enough, had set up office in a different headquarters that day. A coincidence similar to the sudden cancellation of travel plans for the next morning by a group of top Pentagon generals on September 10, 2001, `apparently because of security concerns’ (Newsweek, September 23, 2001).
International Hearings are being held on this 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, in the city of Toronto, Canada, from September 8-11, 2011. Sponsored by the International Center for 9/11 Studies, Ryerson university, its objectives include presenting evidence that the US government’s official investigation is `seriously flawed and has failed to describe and account for the 9/11 events.’ To `single out the most weighty evidence of the inadequacy of the US government’s investigation’, to organise, classify and preserve it, and to make it widely known to national and international institutions, and to the world public. Expert, and eye witnesses, will speak of their research findings and their experiences, which will be listened to by an international panel of distinguished citizens.
Why? The 9/11 attacks, according to the Hearings organisers, have provided a pretext for replacing one global conflict framework, the Cold War framework, with the War on Terror one. Military invasions and occupations have taken place within this new framework, as have violations of international law and human rights. Global military spending has increased.
I look forward to the concluding report of the International Hearings. Surely, it will expose to the world public the global ruling elite’s hatred for other peoples’ freedom, including civil liberties of western citizens? Because we, collectively, stand in their way of occupation, loot, plunder, death and destruction.
Published in New Age, Sunday, September 11, 2011