"Former intelligence officials confirmed to the Associated Press Monday a Le Monde newspaper report that France's foreign intelligent service had heard about an al Qaeda plot which was "likely to involve a US airplane." The French paper also reported that France informed the Central Intelligence Agency prior to the attacks on September 11, 2001, in which nearly 3,000 were killed.FTR - Richard Perle & Feith supply the Chechens with illegal arms.
However, it is uncertain whether the intelligence was alluding to the specific plot hatched on 9/11.
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Le Monde based its report on 328 pages of classified documents leaked by DGSE sources, showing that Osama bin Laden's network had been infiltrated by foreign agents long before the September 2001 attacks.
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The plot described was allegedly drawn up by Al-Qaeda with the Taliban militia in Afghanistan and Chechen rebels."
* NYT:
'Israel and the United States have been in discussions over a new military aid package that could increase American support for Israel's military to around $3 billion from $2.4 billion."
* driftglass:
"In other words, kids, “Courtesy Sanctions Don't Work.” And neither does sanctimony. Polite, civil discourse is a wonderful thing, when dealing with elderly relatives, church people, the workplace or just folks who enjoy polite, civil discourse. But I for one have no intention whatsoever of unilaterally disarming my vocabulary when dealing with the rodents who are fucking up my country."
* athenae:
"In the coming days we're going to get a lot crap from the national press. A lot of national therapy, a lot of excuses, a lot of blaming this person or that person, this law or that law. There are going to be stories about gun regulations in Virginia and elsewhere. There are going to be special segments about security on college campuses everywhere. Some of the discussion will be well-informed and practical. Most of it won't be.
Most of it will be, as Scout wrote to me in an e-mail earlier today, an attempt to make sense of the senseless. Most of it will be, as Mike often calls it, the Oprah-ization of the evening news, the kind of coverage that makes me want to tear my hair out, the kind of stories designed to make those far away from whatever is going on feel better about putting it back in the mental drawer they use to store tragedies, senseless and otherwise. Most of it will be an attempt to Get Us All Through This, Make Us Feel United, the kind of stuff we had for a few months after Sept. 11 until people realized they didn't actually love their families more because 3,000 strangers died, and they didn't want to go back to church again on the backs of murdered fellow citizens. Most of it will be horseshit, in other words, and not useful to anyone.
There probably won't be a lot of discussion about this being terrorism. Though it was. And there probably won't be a lot of discussion about how this fits into our ideas of safety and national security. Though it should. The "War on Terror" isn't a failure because you can't war against a concept — of course you can. But we defined terror too narrowly, we made the idea too small. What happened in Virginia is terror, too, and what happens everywhere in this country when someone dies a violent death is terror. I had a conversation with a comedian after 9/11, maybe two weeks later, and though I can't remember his name I'll never forget what he said: "Every day is 9/11 for somebody."
Our country does in fact need a War on Terror. I just don't think that word means what for the past seven years we've taken it to mean."
* larry johnson:
"The next time you hear Dick Cheney or George Bush blame the public attitude regarding Iraq on the media's failure to report "good news", examine carefully our reaction to the shooting at Viginia Tech. Look at our collective shock. Our horrified reaction. The public sorrow. Yet, in truth, this is an exceptional, unusual day in America. It is not our common experience. But we cannot say the same about Iraq.
3 comments:
I also noticed that reference in the French documents to Chechen rebels -- and what it immediately reminded me of was not Feith's and Perle's adventures, but Peter Dale Scott's "The Global Drug Meta-Group."
I've never felt I've fully understood Scott's article, bit as a result I get something new out of it every time I look at it. In this case, what jumped out at me was these paragraphs:
(The goal of splitting up Russia attributed here to Surikov is that which, in an earlier text co-authored by Surikov, is attributed by Russian "radicals" to the United States:
The radicals believe that the US actively utilizes Turkish and Muslim elements....From Azerbaijan, radicals foresee a strategic penetration which would irrevocably split the Federation. US influence would be distributed to the former Soviet Central Asian Republics, to Chechnya and the other North Caucasus Muslim autonomous republics of T[at]arstan and Bashkortostan. As a result Russian territorial integrity would be irreparably compromised.) . . .
In my conclusion I shall return to the possibility that U.S. government might share common goals with Hizb ut-Tahrir and the meta-group in Russia, even while combating the Islamist terrorism of al-Qaeda in the Middle East and the West.
I've been thinking more and more lately that for many people of, shall we say, a Cheney-ish persuasion, the real enemy has never ceased to be Russia. Something strange has going on recently at a very covert level, with Putin clearly feeling himself under siege for reasons that are never made clear in the West.
Aspects of this undeclared war include US alliances with the nastier dictators of the 'stans, US intentions to put Star War bases in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and whatever is really happening with Berezovsky and the other oligarchs. (Litvinenko's poisoning -- and his close ties to Chechnya -- are no doubt another clue, if we only knew how to read it.)
But these Scott quotes suggest that an even more significant part of the strategy is the use of ethnic minorities to split off bits of Russia around the edges and ultimately to undercut the central government as well. This is exactly what is going on in Iran right now, with the US stirring up Baluchi separatists. But what if the destabilization of Iran is only a test run for the real goal?
US encouragement of the Gray Wolves and pan-Turanian ideology tie in to this as well. I've pointed in the past to this article, which discusses the strategy of inciting ethnic minorities with regard to Iran. But I found in looking for the link to that piece that I had in my files something which appeared in Asia Times in 2005 that may be even more pertinent. (Note that it cites the Hizbut-Tehrir, the same group referenced by Scott.):
Most major media outlets have spelled out with a profusion of details the "exact" events that led to the death of what some claim to have been hundreds of people in the eastern Uzbekistan town of Andijan on May 13. Led by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, the world media condemned much-maligned Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov for yet another bloody and ruthless suppression of "public dissent". Yet, all the details so far provided do not explain who the real players were or their end objectives.
It is certain, however, that the puzzle cannot be solved unless the London factor is understood. The answers lie in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Liverpool. The old British colonial establishment, with former intelligence officer Bernard Lewis as its mentor, appears to have set in motion a series of events that will bring endless bloodshed to Central Asia. London's objective would appear to be to keep both China and Russia under an open-ended threat. At this point, there is no one who can better serve this "Lewis Doctrine" than Muslims nurtured in Britain - the Hizbut-Tehrir (HT). . . .
Apart from various Islamic preachers, two major Islamic groups function in the Ferghana Valley, whose common objective is to change the regimes in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. These are the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the HT. While the IMU openly thrives on violence, the HT is strongly promoted by the United Kingdom, where it is headquartered, as peaceful. But records indicate that that the IMU and the HT work hand-in-hand. Most of the IMU recruits are from the HT, according to Rohan Gunaratna, an expert on world terrorist outfits. Gunaratna claims that Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the US, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian of Chechen origin who has remained active in the Iraqi insurgency against the US occupying forces, were both once members of the HT. . . .
The West's policy - in other words, the policy of the Anglo-Americans, as the European Union does not have a policy worth citing - toward the Middle East has long been formulated by Bernard Lewis. The British-born Lewis started his career as an intelligence officer and has remained in bed with British intelligence ever since. Avowedly anti-Russia and pro-Israel, Lewis reaped a rich harvest among US academia and policymakers. He brought president Jimmy Carter's virulently anti-Russian National Security Council chief, Zbigniew Brzezinski, into his fold in the 1980s, and made the US neo-conservatives, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, dance to his tune on the Middle East in 2001. In between, he penned dozens of books and was taken seriously by people as a historian. But, in fact, Lewis is what he always was: a British intelligence officer. . . .
The recent developments in Uzbekistan have all the hallmarks of the same process. This time the objective is to weaken China, Russia, and possibly India, using the HT to unleash the dogs of war in Central Asia. It is not difficult for those on the ground to see what is happening. The leader of the Islamic Party of Tajikistan, Deputy Prime Minister Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda, has identified HT as a Western-sponsored bogeyman for "remaking Central Asia". . . .
It is not a lack of understanding on the part of American neo-conservatives associated with the Bush administration, but their keenness to use the "Lewis Doctrine" to achieve what they believe is justified that promises untold danger. How important a brains-trust is Lewis to the neo-conservatives? Just read the words of Richard Perle, a leading neo-conservative who remains a close adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "Bernard Lewis has been the single-most important intellectual influence countering the conventional wisdom on managing the conflict between radical Islam and the West."
So -- we end by coming back round again to Richard Perle, but hopefully in a larger context.
It ain't really about the Middle East, boys and girls -- it's about world domination, by any means necessary. The only question is one of identifying the moves as they happen, instead of many years later.
I awoke this evening from a pleasant nap during a spring rainstorm to hear Richard Perle speaking on a PBS series they're airing here called America at a Crossroad. His little speech rambled on and on through this lengthy program with party-speak, smears of the left and admiration for Reagan and Kennedy's inauguration speech excerpt about using all force to confront evil.
I knew the Bush administration wanted to silence criticism on PBS and use it as a megaphone of war, but seeing it still surprises me. The question I'd ask Perle is what is evil and who gets to decide? Apparently, peace is evil and Perle decides.
starroute - FP'd, finally (!)
thnx
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