Terrorism in America (Sep 11, 2001)

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TiM GW Bulletin 2001/9-2

Sep. 11, 2001

Thousands Killed in New York, Washington...

"Collateral Damage" Hits Home

Terrorists Strike at the Heart of the New World Order; Grotesque and Pathetic War; Is Bush Walking into a Trap?

(click on above image for photos of more "collateral damage" from the NATO bombing in 1999)

Matthew 26: 52 - "Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword."

PHOENIX, Tuesday, Sep.11, 2001 - “I can’t believe what’s happening,” a shocked close friend said this morning about the deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor (or maybe even ever?). “No surprise there,” I replied. “I've seen too many tragedies (around the world) in the last 11 years, some firsthand as you know, to be fazed by anything anymore.”

When the "world's only superpower" and its allies bombed and killed thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq and Serbia, Americans were told it was just "collateral damage." After all, we, the "champions of democracy and the free world," were only fighting the murderous regimes of Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. Some civilian casualties were "regrettable, but unavoidable," the Pentagon, NATO or State Dept. spokesmen told us.

Now the tables have turned. Terrorism begets terrorism. Unnamed terrorists, presumed to be "Islamic fundamentalists," have now killed thousands of innocent Americans while fighting, what they think are, the murderous regimes of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Now Americans know firsthand some of the terror the Baghdad or Belgrade residents felt when NATO bombers unloaded their deadly cargo on them. The only thing missing is the terrorists' spokesmen telling us now that "it was just "collateral damage;" that "some civilian casualties were regrettable, but unavoidable."

What we did to Iraq and to Serbia was a case of state terrorism. What unnamed terrorists did to us today was retaliation to state terrorism. "Collateral damage" has come home to roost. "What goes around, comes around." "He who plays with fire, gets burned by fire."

But make no mistake: This was NOT an “Attack on America,” as CNN and other networks are hailing. This was a strike at the heart of the Washington-led New World Order. Signs are unmistakable. Just look at the targets: The World Trade Center/Wall Street, the Pentagon... Some sources speculated that the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania might have been also destined for either the White House or the Capitol.

America and Americans, meaning innocent civilians who perished today, are “just collateral damage.” As Iraqi and Serb civilians were. We are now paying for aggressions and crimes against humanity that our government has committed. Just as Iraqi and Serb civilians were. We've become expendable. Just as Iraqi and Serb civilians were.

So whenever you hear a politician or a media personality say that this attack was “unprovoked;” that this was a murder of innocent “men, women and children;” that it was a strike at the “American way of life” - and no doubt you’ll see and hear much of that in the next hours and days - try a role reversal. Imagine that you’re listening to an Iraqi or a Serb politician using those words in reference to victims of American bombs. And then you’ll get a fuller picture of what transpired today.

Meanwhile, madness also begets madness. The dust had not yet settled from the collapsed World Trade Center twin-towers, and already some “hawks” in the American government and media were crying for “retaliatory strikes.” That’s pretty shallow on several levels…

First, the same “hawks” who are telling us bombastically that “America is at war” are at a loss to identify with whom. So who and what are we to retaliate against?

Second, such “hawks” never learn. One only needs to look at the Middle East for an example of futility of violence. To stop anti-American terrorism, Washington must stop its own state terrorism. Both brands of terrorism are despicable and inexcusable.

Finally, if there is a silver lining in this vast American tragedy; if there is one good thing that comes out of all this madness - let us hope it is the death of that "death merchant" scheme - the national Defense Missile Shield. The DMS was being rammed down the American taxpayers throats by both Clinton and Bush administrations, notwithstanding the opposition to it even from most of our allies.

Now I have a very simple question for the American President: In light of what happened today in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, how would your national Defense Missile Shield have defended us from this attack?

The answer is obvious. Congress should kill the sucker (DMS) before it kills us - financially and geopolitically!

Meanwhile, may God have mercy upon the souls of all innocent people who died today as "collateral damage" of the Clinton/Bush arrogant foreign policy. The Washington-led New World Order has now come home to roost. For, "all who draw the sword will die by the sword."

For additional STARTLING (!) similarities between the bombing of Serbia and the Sep. 11 attack on the New World Order, click on - http://www.donald99.homestead.com/

COEUR D’ALENE, IDAHO, Sep. 18 - No war is pretty. But the one that George W. Bush and his warmongering cohorts are promising the nation will probably take the cake in terms of ugliness. It will be the most grotesque and pathetic war in mankind’s history. It will be a war fought by honorable American men and women who have been duped into wasting their lives for a losing cause. President Bush is painting himself and our troops into a corner with his no-win scenario.

Even before the first shots are fired, we will have lost that war. Why? Because Bush wants to lead America, a nation of 281 million people, the greatest power in the history of the world, into war against ONE man?!

Such an act would only underline our WEAKNESS, not to mention inanity. Dead or alive, Osama bin Laden is guaranteed to end up a martyr. And we, the victims of the September 11 attack, are sure to look like aggressive fools in the eyes of the world. We will continue to be despised, hated and attacked whenever possible.

Way to turn a victim into an assailant, and an assailant into a martyr, Mr. Bush! Now, that’s “leadership;” that’s “wisdom;” that’s “farsighted foreign policy”… But such an outcome would befit a self-infatuated and self-indulgent dozing giant (America) which has allowed its government to be taken over by the fools and dilettantes working for the New World Order..

Fools and dilettantes? Is there any other epithet that befits our Washington leaders and the folks in our “intelligence community” (what an oxymoron!) on whom we’ve been spending $30 billion a year? What happened on September 11 was an example of their (and, therefore, America’s) impotence and incompetence. Nineteen audacious terrorists, armed with plastic knives and hearts as big as mountains, tore to shreds America’s high tech-based folly; a self-perpetuated myth of impenetrable security.

At the start of NATOs bombing of Serbia in 1999, we reminded the “NWO Uebermenschen” (supermen) of an old Serbian proverb. It says, "Bitku ne bije svijetlo oruzje no srce u junaka" ("Battle is not fought by shiny weapons but by the hearts of heroes" - see “Kosovo War: Serbs Outnumbered 97 to 1 by NATO Countries”). In the end, the bombing also exposed the frailties of the high tech-driven wars (see "How Serb Dummies Fooled NATO Dummies").

What did we learn from that? Evidently very little. For, even if we turn the mountainous Afghanistan into a pancake while trying to flatten bin Laden with it, how is that going to protect us from another group of fanatics armed with plastic knives and hearts as big as mountains causing another tragedy like the WTC and the Pentagon? It won’t, of course.

So what should we be doing? Well, we should be waging war… a war on all inside intelligence moles, leaks and weak links in our government who have allowed the September 11 crimes against humanity to take place. They are the ones we should be “taking out” first and foremost. What the determined terrorists did to us was bad; what our own "intelligence services" didn’t do was worse.

If the heads of the NSC, the CIA or the FBI were men of honor, they would have submitted their resignations within hours of the disaster. If they were Japanese men of honor, they would have probably hung themselves, as some JAL executives did, for example, after a 747 crash in Japan in the 1980s.

It has now been a week, and all three government officials are still behind their desks, as far as we know. And no wonder… An Eastern European proverb says that, “fish always stinks from the head.”

Harry Truman reminded Americans that “the buck stops here,” meaning at the White House. Not so in Bush’s White House. Which is why Bush and his cohorts in the federal government are now trying to deflect our attention and scrutiny away from themselves and their failures by moving straight to retaliation against third parties.

The President and his advisors have been telling us that they want to “take out” Osama bin Laden no matter what; even if it takes taking out Afghanistan as a country. And some other countries that allegedly harbor terrorism. Never mind that they have not yet produced any EVIDENCE of bin Laden’s sponsorship of the September 11 attack.

By advocating an “eye-for-an-eye” approach (we can kill more of you than you can kill of us), our President and his advisors are stooping down to the level of the terrorists they are condemning. Rather than follow such a leader, Americans should be ashamed of a President and the “hawks” around him who want to (ab)use our military to “take out” an unindicted suspect and the country in which he lives, rather than bring him to justice and prove his or that country’s guilt first. The latter is what a civilized leader of a civilized country would be saying to the civilized world.

By trying to arouse war fever and hatred of Islam among some jingoistic Americans, Bush and his administration are only further illustrating their arrogance and impotence. And it is the former that led to the latter. Arrogance breeds hatred and resistance, not fear and respect. Had it not been for Washington’s arrogant and murderous foreign policy, starting with the Bush Sr. administration (1988-1992), there would not be so much hate for America around the world, especially among the Muslims (see “Collateral Damage” Hits Home - Item 1 of this Bulletin).

The fact that in the 1980s, when Washington wanted fanatical Muslims to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, bin Laden and Taliban were valuable CIA assets, further weakens Bush’s call to war against them. (Saddam Hussein was also a western darling at about the same time because Iraq was at war with Iran, a sworn U.S. enemy since the 1979 Islamic revolution).

Nor do bin Laden ties to the Muslim terrorists in Chechnya, or to the U.S.-supported Muslim Albanian terrorists in Kosovo (KLA), help Bush’s credibility (for more on that, see other stories in this report). They make his call for war sound grotesque and pathetic; no less so than was the warmongering of our infamous draft-evader (Bill Clinton) and Madeleine Albright (a.k.a. Madam Halfbright).

TiM Ed.: As you know, the TiM editor has been traveling lately through the western mountain states. This report, for example, is being filed from Northern Idaho. In driving around the area, one can see that at least one-third of the homes are flying American flags, some at half-mast. Interestingly, the wealthier the neighborhood, the higher the percentage of the flag-waving citizens.

To the extent that such a public display of “patriotism” is an indication of the American’s support of Washington’s and the establishment media’s unceasing warmongering pitches, George W. Bush’s war fever propaganda seems to be working. But as Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent for the London-based daily, The Independent, wondered in his Sep. 17 report, “Is Bush Walking into a Trap?” And the flag-waving Americans are following him right in, like the lemmings walking off the cliff.

Until the body bags start coming home. That’s when the cold reality of war quickly drains off the early enthusiasm to fight, and gives rise to war resistors. Anybody still remember the Vietnam era chants in front of the White House: “Hey, hey LBJ, how many did you kill today?”

COEUR D’ALENE, IDAHO, Sep. 17 - Robert Fisk has spent many years reporting from the Middle East for the London-based daily, The Independent. He has met and interviewed Osama bin Laden before. Here are some excerpts from his latest commentary, titled, “Is Bush Walking into a Trap?”, published in the Sep. 17 edition of the paper:

“Retaliation is a trap. In a world that was supposed to have learnt that the rule of law comes above revenge, President Bush appears to be heading for the very disaster that Osama bin Laden has laid down for him. Let us have no doubts about what happened in New York and Washington last week. It was a crime against humanity. We cannot understand America's need to retaliate unless we accept this bleak, awesome fact. But this crime was perpetrated - it becomes ever clearer - to provoke the United States into just the blind, arrogant punch that the US military is preparing.

Mr. bin Laden - every day his culpability becomes more apparent - has described to me how he wishes to overthrow the pro-American regime of the Middle East, starting with Saudi Arabia and moving on to Egypt, Jordan and the other Gulf states. In an Arab world sunk in corruption and dictatorships - most of them supported by the West - the only act that might bring Muslims to strike at their own leaders would be a brutal, indiscriminate assault by the United States. Mr bin Laden is unsophisticated in foreign affairs, but a close student of the art and horror of war. He knew how to fight the Russians who stayed on in Afghanistan, a Russian monster that revenged itself upon its ill-educated, courageous antagonists until, faced with war without end, the entire Soviet Union began to fall apart.[…]

In Israel/Palestine, it is the same story. An Israeli soldier shoots a Palestinian stone-thrower. The Palestinians retaliate by killing a settler. The Israelis then retaliate by sending a murder squad to kill a Palestinian gunman. The Palestinians retaliate by sending a suicide bomber into a pizzeria. The Israelis then retaliate by sending F-16s to bomb a Palestinian police station. Retaliation leads to retaliation and more retaliation. War without end.

And while Mr Bush - and perhaps Mr Blair - prepare their forces, they explain so meretriciously that this is a war for "democracy and liberty'', that it is about men who are "attacking civilisation''. "America was targeted for attack,'' Mr Bush informed us on Friday, "because we are the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.'' But this is not why America was attacked. If this was an Arab-Muslim apocalypse, then it is intimately associated with events in the Middle East and with America's stewardship of the area.

Arabs, it might be added, would rather like some of that democracy and liberty and freedom that Mr Bush has been telling them about. Instead, they get a president who wins 98 per cent in the elections (Washington's friend, Mr Mubarak) or a Palestinian police force, trained by the CIA, that tortures and sometimes kills its people in prison. The Syrians would also like a little of that democracy. So would the Saudis. But their effete princes are all friends of America - in many cases, educated at US universities.

I will always remember how President Clinton announced that Saddam Hussein - another of our grotesque inventions must be overthrown so that the people of Iraq could choose their own leaders. But if that happened, it would be the first time in Middle Eastern history that Arabs have been permitted to do so. No, it is "our'' democracy and "our'' liberty and freedom that Mr Bush and Mr Blair are talking about, our Western sanctuary that is under attack, not the vast place of terror and injustice that the Middle East has become.

Let me illustrate what I mean. Nineteen years ago today, the greatest act of terrorism - using Israel's own definition of that much misused word - in modern Middle Eastern history began. Does anyone remember the anniversary in the West? How many readers of this article will remember it? I will take a tiny risk and say that no other British newspaper - certainly no American newspaper - will today recall the fact that on 16 September 1982, Israel's Phalangist militia allies started their three-day orgy of rape and knifing and murder in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila that cost 1,800 lives. It followed an Israeli invasion of Lebanon designed to drive the PLO out of the country and given the green light by the then US Secretary of State, Alexander Haig which cost the lives of 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinians, almost all of them civilians.

That's probably three times the death toll in the World Trade Centre. Yet I do not remember any vigils or memorial services or candle-lighting in America or the West for the innocent dead of Lebanon; I don't recall any stirring speeches about democracy or liberty. In fact, my memory is that the United States spent most of the bloody months of July and August 1982 calling for "restraint". […]

It was fired from an Apache helicopter (made in America, of course) during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when hundreds of cluster bombs were dropped in civilian areas of Beirut by the Israelis in contravention of undertakings given to the United States. Most of the bombs had US Naval markings and America then suspended a shipment of fighter bombers to Israel for less than two months.

The same type of missile - this time an AGM 114-C made in Georgia - was fired by the Israelis into the back of an ambulance near the Lebanese village of Mansori, killing two women and four children. I collected the pieces of the missile, including its computer coding plate, flew to Georgia and presented them to the manufacturers at the Boeing factory. And what did the developer of the missile say to me when I showed him photographs of the children his missile had killed? "Whatever you do," he told me, "don't quote me as saying anything critical of the policies of Israel." […]

No wonder we have to refer to the terrorists as "mindless''. For if we did not, we would have to explain what went on in those minds. But this attempt to censor the realities of the war that has already begun must not be permitted to continue. Look at the logic. Secretary of State Colin Powell was insisting on Friday that his message to the Taliban is simple: they have to take responsibility for sheltering Mr bin Laden. "You cannot separate your activities from the activities of the perpetrators,'' he warned. But the Americans absolutely refuse to associate their own response to their predicament with their activities in the Middle East. We are supposed to hold our tongues, even when Ariel Sharon - a man whose name will always be associated with the massacre at Sabra and Shatila - announces that Israel also wishes to join the battle against "world terror''.

No wonder the Palestinians are fearful. In the past four days, 23 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and Gaza, an astonishing figure that would have been front-page news had America not been blitzed. If Israel signs up for the new conflict, then the Palestinians - by fighting the Israelis - will, by extension, become part of the "world terror'' against which Mr Bush is supposedly going to war. Not for nothing did Mr Sharon claim that Yasser Arafat had connections with Osama bin Laden.

I repeat: what happened in New York was a crime against humanity. And that means policemen, arrests, justice, a whole new international court at The Hague if necessary. Not cruise missiles and "precision'' bombs and Muslim lives lost in revenge for Western lives. But the trap has been sprung. Mr Bush - perhaps we, too - are now walking into it.

JERUSALEM, Sep. 16 - We received the following contribution from Barry Chamish, an Israeli journalist and author who needs no introduction to regular TiM readers (just run a Search using his name as keyword if you’re not familiar with his prior articles published by TiM). His is another voice of sanity in a sea of madness that is pervading Washington and other western capitals these days:

“Well they did it again. For the third time is less than a century, the Illuminati manipulated a world war (TiM Ed.: The term Illuminati term is a bit outdated, but it does symbolize what we today call the New World Order. For more on Illuminati, see “Stitching Together the New World Order Flag,” Nov. 1999). They succeeded in creating an issue of good and evil that cannot be ignored. Yes, the Muslim extremists present a danger to the planet and have to be extinguished, just like the Nazis. So who created the Nazis and who created Islamic extremism?

For hundreds of years the Arabs were quiescent and obedient servants of the Ottoman Empire. Then in 1917, the British expelled them and took over Palestine. They, and their secretive Round Table, approved a declaration permitting Jews to re-establish Israel, thus offering them a shelter from Europe's pogroms, which were fueled by the Illuminati for just this purpose. Then they set Arab on Jew, creating such animosity that Islam gleefully allied itself with Nazism.

After that, the Illuminati ignited the Holocaust, and when it was ended, the Vatican's Jesuit rulers, with Allied approval, shipped the worst of the genocidal criminals worldwide through its appropriately named "ratline." Europe's Jews were then shipped to Israel, and a war was ignited which the Jews were supposed to lose, thus completing Stage Two of the Holocaust. But Israel overcame the odds and survived.

Since then, the planet's hidden rulers have done their utmost to turn Islam into an improved version of Nazism, starting with the creation of an artificial, terrorism-based "Palestinian" nationhood. It took barely a generation after that to create Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban out of the same mold.

So who created the Taliban? President Jimmy Carter of the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) took the first step by ordering a covert war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

Who originally funded the Taliban? Former CIA chief George Bush of the CFR and its affiliate, Skull And Bones Society.

Who supplied the Taliban with all the sophisticated encrypted telecommunications equipment, which made its attacks on the dead twins and Pentagon possible? President Clinton of the CFR, who approved sales of the high-tech wonders to Syria, where it was inevitable that radical Islam would inherit it.

Who handed the Taliban $48 million, to eradicate poppies, knowing full well it wouldn't be used for that purpose? Why our current American President, George W. Bush, like his father, a Skull And Bones graduate.

Who is Bin Laden's brother's business partner? Why Percy Rockefeller of the CFR-founding Rockefeller family.

Who owned the land the World Trade Centers stood on? Why those pesky Rockefellers again.

And who created Islam in America? The same gang who imported Islam to Europe. No American black should identify with Islam. This religion captured territory in Africa in Medieval times and looted its conquests for slaves. Without Arab slave traders, it is unlikely the European industry would have taken hold. Even today, Muslims enslave huge numbers of Christian blacks in the Sudan and Mauritania.

The hidden rulers have created an angry community of Muslims in America, and if they object too vigorously to this new war, there will be a race war in America. The same goes for the Muslims of Europe, imported by the millions for just this moment in history.

We've all been set up for a period of bloody, murderous chaos. Then lucky us, we get a new planetary order with guess who in charge? And if enough people choose not to investigate how this war was really started, and who was behind it, we'll all deserve this New World Order as a collective punishment for collective human stupidity.”

COEUR D’ALENE, IDAHO, Sep. 18 - The following piece was written by Joseph Sobran, an independent columnist, at about the same time as our special editorial comment “Collateral Damage” was being crafted - the morning of Sep. 11, while news was still happening before our very eyes. We bring it to the TiM readers here with Mr. Sobran’s permission:

“It was predictable. For years I’ve been writing that the U.S. Government has been making more enemies than Americans really need, all over the globe, and that one of these days some of them would have a nasty surprise for us.

In fact it nearly happened a few years ago, when Islamic radicals tried to blow up the World Trade Center. But of course they made a botch of it and got caught.

This time, though, someone pulled off what must have been an extremely cunning conspiracy, a criminal feat for the ages. They managed to execute a secret plan calling for four simultaneous hijackings of airplanes. Those who committed these coordinated deeds — in spite of all security measures — also had the determination to die in hitting their targets.

This wasn’t “terrorism.” This was war. It wasn’t a random attempt to scare people with an arbitrary atrocity, like the bombing of a pizza joint; it was a serious attempt to kill as many people and do as much material damage as possible at two strategic targets, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But, as I write, hours after the attacks, we don’t know who is at war with us. We may never know. Who has reason to hate this country? Only a few hundred million people — Arabs, Muslims, Serbs, and numerous others whose countries have been hit by U.S. bombers.

Imagine hating a country so much that you were willing to cross an ocean and carry out an elaborate revenge against its people, killing yourself in the process. This is something far more than the sort of ideological anti-Americanism that leads student mobs to throw stones at U.S. embassies abroad; that’s kid stuff. This is an obsessive, fanatical, soul-consuming hatred.

Foreigners aren’t quite real to Americans, and most Americans are unaware of how profoundly their government antagonizes much of the human race. We are easy-going people who generally have no idea how bullying we seem to foreigners. Until now, we have had no experience of what the U.S. government has so often inflicted on others. Now, at least, we have an inkling of what it feels like.

Government spokesmen have responded with their usual cant of “cowardly attacks” by “terrorists” who “hate democracy and freedom.” Rubbish. A fanatic who is ready to die is the opposite of a coward, and nobody can “hate” such abstractions as “democracy and freedom” with that kind of intensity.

It’s dangerous to belittle your enemy, especially when his courage and cunning have already proved as formidable as his hatred and cruelty. The first question you should ask about your enemy is why he is your enemy in the first place.

You may be deluding and flattering yourself if you assume he hates you for your virtues. But our “leaders” assure us that our enemies are unnaturally evil people who hate us only because we are so wonderful. And they manage to utter this nonsense with an air of tough-minded realism.

True realism, on the other hand, doesn’t mean blaming Americans for bringing these horrifying and truly evil acts on themselves. It does mean trying to imagine alien perspectives from which our government’s conduct might appear so intolerable that some people might be driven to take atrocious revenge.

“To understand all is to forgive all,” says the French aphorism. Not true. But understanding all can at least teach you how to avoid making enemies, and avoiding making enemies is the best defense — better than a $300 billion “defense” budget that didn’t defend the World Trade Center.

The great director Jean Renoir was once asked why there were no villains in his films. He answered simply: “Everyone has his reasons.” Your bitterest enemy may have his reasons for hating your guts. You may not think they are good or sufficient reasons, but you’d better take them into account. If he has any brains, he may find a way to hurt you.

The United States is now a global empire that wants to think of itself as a universal benefactor, and is nonplussed when foreigners don’t see it that way. None of the earlier empires of this world, as far as I know, shared this delusion; the Romans, the Mongols, the British, the Russians and Soviets didn’t expect to rule and to be loved at the same time. Why do we?”

Joe Sobran is an independent columnist. His articles can be seen at his web site - www.sobran.com .