What Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri Do All Day, or Why I Cannot Talk About Politics With My Father

I have finally come to understand why I cannot talk about politics, terrorism or international relations with my father, not that it matters much, except as a glimpse of a much larger phenomenon.

It's not just my father. I can't talk about politics or terrorism or world affairs with anyone who has lived his or her entire life under the great umbrella of American propaganda.

They have insulated themselves under an enormous web of lies, and hidden themselves away from actual knowledge of their nation and its role in the world, both of which they see dimly, if at all: the world as a dark, dangerous, mysterious place, and their nation as the best of all nations -- nay, the best of all possible nations.

They have been content to collect the scraps tossed their way by the American War Machine, although they would never call it that. Nor would they ever consider themselves in any way complicit in America's endless war on the rest of the world, a war they never even acknowledge.

It's a war waged on multiple planes, of which the military, being the bloodiest, is easily the most visible. And it didn't start last week, or last year, or even eight years ago.

It's been going on all their lives -- or since they were little kids. For an ever-increasing percentage of America's population, it's always been there.

Like the land, the sea and the sky, it's the backdrop against which their lives take place.

Only a fool would question the sea and sky.

... or the notion that the American War Machine should be what it is, and is what it should be.

Except that it's not true. None of it is true. And even worse -- they know it's not true.

As long as every little lie stays in place, the umbrella stands, so to speak: the big lies remain sacred, so to speak. But once you start to pull and tug, and separate one lie from another, and expose them to the light of knowledge and reason ... well, that's where it gets intolerable.

And I guess I just love to pull and tug.

I came to this moderately interesting conclusion in the hospital room where I've been spending most of my weekends lately, sitting there with my father and reading the newspaper he read before I arrived.

He's so far from where I grew up that I have no connection with any of the local stories: I read them as if they were field reports from places I may never hear of again, much less visit.

One week there was a story about a guy who took some construction equipment and started blazing a trail through a state park. One week there was a story about a new McDonald's opening in one of the suburbs. This weekend there was a story about a schoolteacher who was sitting alone in her classroom doing paperwork when a buck burst through the window.

You just never know what you'll find in the local news, but all the stories share a common feature: they're verifiable. I could go see the damage to the park. I could eat at the new fast food restaurant. And I could visit the school, admire the new window, and meet the teacher who hid under her desk.

I haven't actually done any of these things, and it's not likely that I ever would. But I could. You could. Anyone could. And the same is true of virtually all the local news: you can't predict what you'll find, but you can certainly check it out.

On the other hand, with world news, and often with national politics, it's just the opposite. What there is to read -- what my father reads every day, what he's been reading for his entire adult life -- is utterly predictable, and completely unverifiable. And therefore, he doesn't have any reason not to believe it -- unless I start talking.

I've just had dental surgery and I wasn't doing much talking this weekend. But that's another story -- and one I'll spare you.

I've read a lot of predictable, unverifiable, manure over the years, but I have never seen it more concentrated and hilarious than in Sebastian Rotella's most recent piece in the Los Angeles Times.

Entitled "Setbacks weaken Al Qaeda's ability to mount attacks, terrorism officials say", it had me laughing so hard that I've preserved it for posterity at my "other blog".

I happened to read Sebastian Rotella's newest masterpiece, not because it was in the paper in my dad's room, but because it set off my Google News Alert with its mention of Rashid Rauf. As long-time readers will remember, I wrote extensively about Rashid Rauf and the so-called Liquid Bombers, beginning in August of 2006 when they were arrested, and continuing until I became unable to blog much (or at all). But even when I haven't been writing, I've still been reading, and collecting.

Over the past three years I have preserved more than 330 articles mentioning Rashid Rauf, and it has been fascinating (in an entirely predictable way) to watch his legend develop. (And you can read the word "legend" in either of two ways: it can mean either "a fable" or "an intelligence agent's cover story".)

In 2006, Rashid Rauf was merely a "key figure" in the so-called Liquid Bombing plot -- possibly a messenger of some kind. Then he was the al Qaeda connection. Then he was the bomb-making expert. Then he was the mastermind. Then he was an al Qaeda commander.

The latter was an interesting step in the growing legend. Not everyone gets to be an al Qaeda commander.

I first read that Rashid Rauf was an al Qaeda commander from Bill Roggio, who writes the aptly named "Long War Journal". Upon reading that Rashid Rauf was an al Qaeda commander, I immediately felt a sense of inadequacy -- having read everything I could find about Rashid Rauf, how could I not have known he was an al Qaeda commander?

Then I got a bit indignant: Why should Bill Roggio know that Rashid Rauf is an al Qaeda commander when I don't know it myself? Later I simmered down a bit and became less emotional and more pragmatic. The question became: How does Bill Roggio know Rashid Rauf is an al Qaeda commander?

Much to my astonishment, Long War Journal takes comments from unknown visitors. So I left Bill Roggio a comment, saying: "How do you know Rashid Rauf is an al Qaeda commander?"

To my further astonishment, my comment appeared immediately. So I bookmarked the page and returned a day later, hoping for an explanation from Bill Roggio as to where and how he had learned that Rashid Rauf was an al Qaeda commander. Instead of such an explanation, I found -- to no astonishment at all -- that my comment had been deleted. "Aha!" I thought, "That's how we know Rashid Rauf is an al Qaeda commander." What a thing to have learned!

We also learned quite a bit about Bill Roggio and his "Long War Journal", none of which could have been news. (Long War Journal? Why do you think it's called that?)

Then Rashid Rauf was also named -- as always, by an unnamed source -- as the al Qaeda contact for the dozen Pakistani students arrested in the UK in April of 2009 under so-called "Operation Pathway". No criminal charges were filed against any of the students, who were released from police custody but nonetheless held pending "deportation hearings" which still haven't started -- and most of the students have now left the UK "voluntarily".

Shortly after the Operation Pathway arrests, Rashid Rauf's legend began to grow again. Soon he was was al Qaeda's Commander for European Operations. Then he was a facilitator for the London bombings of 7/7/2005.

How much more is there? I've been wondering: How long it will take before he was behind 9/11? Or the 1993 WTC bombing? Oklahoma City? Beirut? Who really killed JFK, anyway? Was it Rashid Rauf? Or to put it another way: How do we know it wasn't?

I may have been kidding about that last part but the rest is serious, and Rashid Rauf's legend continues to grow backwards. The most recent additions to the legend have proceeded despite (or because of) the death (or not) of Rashid Rauf in a drone-launched missile attack in Pakistan in November of 2008.

Sebastian Rotella's LAT piece hints -- for the first time of which I am aware -- at a connection between Rashid Rauf and a failed attempt to bomb London in 2004. This is a year earlier than the previous publicly hinted connection: the backward legend-building is only three years short of 9/11 now, and it won't be long ...

It's a sick laugh, and one I can't share with my father, but laughs are scarce in these days of bogus terror everywhere, and unspoken dangers everywhere else. And the people who make me laugh have an impossible job.

The task -- for somebody like Bill Roggio or Sebastian Rotella -- is to make the threat of terrorism appear to be diminishing and increasing at the same time. It has to be serious enough to justify spending hundreds of billions every year, and throwing your civil rights down the drain at the same time, and the results of such an enormous sacrifice must be tangible. And yet, despite the tangible success, the threat must never go away, or even be significantly diminished, because then the hundreds of billions of dollars per year would have to stop -- or at least stop growing. And we can't have that.

You might start clamoring for the return of your civil rights. We can't have that, either.

For all these reasons -- not to mention the oil -- we simply can't have an end to the War on Terror (by whatever name the president wants us to call it these days), and that means no president can ever declare it won and no president can ever declare it un-winnable.

Victory, while always getting closer, has to remain as far away as ever.

Very few writers manage it well, and Sebastian Rotella is a master of the art. But he exceeds even himself in his most recent piece. You have to read the whole thing to get the full sick belly laugh from it, but a few fragments may entice you to read more (at the LAT or at my home away from home).

Rotella leads with this give-and-take combination:

As Al Qaeda is weakened by the loss of leaders, fighters, funds and ideological appeal, the extremist network's ability to attack targets in the United States and Western Europe has diminished, anti-terrorism officials say.

Nonetheless, Al Qaeda and allied groups based primarily in Pakistan remain a threat, particularly because of an increasing ability to attract recruits from Central Asia and Turkey to offset the decline in the number of militants from the Arab world and the West.

Rotella even uses the words "diminished" and "increasing" in his opening paragraphs. The man is a wizard!

And he follows with another combination:

Al Qaeda's relative strength these days is of crucial importance in the complex debate in Washington over future U.S. troop levels and tactics in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Although factions within the Obama administration differ on how best to deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, all agree that the paramount priority is defeating Al Qaeda. Unlike the Afghan Taliban, the terrorist network Al Qaeda remains committed to a holy war against the West with a goal of matching or surpassing its devastating attacks in 2001.

Matching or surpassing whose devastating attacks in 2001? There's the rub, isn't it?

All chroniclers of the Terror War, from hacks like Bill Roggio to masters like Sebastian Rotella, must write as if 9/11 had been fully and impartially investigated and that the conclusions of said investigation had been accepted as final by all thinking people. The fact that only non-thinking people believe any of the 9/11 manure is routinely glossed over, by wizard and hack alike.

Rotella is not only a wizard himself but he also has some wizardly sources:

"Some pretty experienced individuals have been taken out of the equation," a senior British anti-terrorism official said in a recent interview.

"There is fear, insecurity and paranoia about individuals arriving from outside, worries about spies and infiltration," said the official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive topic. "There is a sense that it has become a less romantic experience. Which is important because of the impact on Al Qaeda the brand, the myth, the idea of the glorious jihadist."

"Taken out of the equation" is British math-talk for "killed along with hundreds of civilians in a series of drone attacks".

But "Al Qaeda the brand"?? And "the myth"?? This senior British anti-terrorism official has one foot in the grave and the other on the truth, does he not? Outrageous!!

But it gets better! Enter the president:

President Obama cited the debilitated condition of the terrorist network last week during a visit with U.S. counter-terrorism officials.

"Because of our efforts, Al Qaeda and its allies have not only lost operational capacity, they've lost legitimacy and credibility," he said.

I almost stopped laughing long enough to ask myself: How could this fiction lose "legitimacy and credibility"? Is Obama pulling our leg, too?

Next in line for Rotella: an "ex"-CIA man working for the NYPD (whom Rotella calls a "scholar") virtually confirms the long-simmering notion that the entire al Qaeda legend is built on entrapment:

The number of failed plots in the West, whether directed or inspired by Al Qaeda, also shows that the quality of operatives has declined, scholar Marc Sageman testified at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.

"Counter-terrorism is working," said Sageman, a former CIA officer and New York Police Department expert. "Terrorist organizations can no longer cherry-pick the best candidates as they did in the 1990s. There is no Al Qaeda recruitment program: Al Qaeda and its allies are totally dependent on self-selected volunteers."

Self-selected volunteers, indeed. Knuckleheads of the world unite!

I won't make you wait any longer. Here's the bit you've been waiting for, and once again it's from the unnamed senior British official:

In several recent cases, Western trainees in Pakistan allegedly had contact with Mustafa Abu Yazid, also known as Said Sheik, a longtime Egyptian financial boss. Abu Yazid acts as the day-to-day chief of the network while Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, spend their time eluding capture, said the British official.

It's a thing of beauty, is it not?

Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, spend their time eluding capture.

As I was saying, it's a sick laugh. But it's a laugh all the same.

The pity is that my father (who reads three newspapers a day and has done so for the past 40 years) and millions of other mainstream media Americans believe every word of it. It doesn't matter to them if Osama bin Laden is obviously dead, or Ayman al-Zawahri (whose name is always misspelled as "Zawahiri" in the Western press) is obviously an agent of Israeli propaganda -- just the same as it doesn't matter whether Rashid Rauf is alive or dead: if he's dead, his death is a victory for the forces of good (the US military, of course) and if he's alive, then he's a threat that must be eliminated by the forces of good (ditto, ditto).

It's no wonder we can't catch bin Laden or al-Zawarhi.

And only a fool would question the sea and sky.

So I rubbed my jaw and tried to smile. Dental surgery is such a bitch!

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From The Mouths Of Terrorists: The Poisonous Truth

Two weeks ago we were talking about the most recent terror propaganda from friends of Mossad and the CIA, an "al Qaeda video" in which al Qaeda's purported number two man, Ayman al-Zawahri, spoke some uncomfortable truths about our transformative new President-elect, Barack Obama.

Zawahri [whose name often appears as Zawahiri in our bizarre western media], referred to Obama as a "house slave". It was a historical reference to pre-Civil War days when white Americans in the land of the free could legally own black Americans; those who worked in the mansions were typically more docile, and more inclined to do the bidding of their owners, than those who worked in the fields.

The video came to us via Rita Katz and the SITE Intelligence Group, which was called the SITE Institute until Katz' only partner left her holding the phony intelligence bag. It was the latest in a long line of questionable videos, some of which Katz has obtained before they appeared on the Islamist websites which SITE allegedly monitors.

Zawahri's comments about Obama were portrayed as racial insults, whereas the criticisms themselves were political in nature. Zawahri wasn't putting Obama down for being black; he was talking about Obama's agenda, his loyalties, his plans for our future -- all of which Obama has spelled out very clearly. Unfortunately, most of Obama's supporters haven't been listening very closely; otherwise Zawahri's comments would have been seen as insightful rather than insulting.

The Zawahri video was apparently intended to mark territory: now anyone who points out the various ways in which Barack Obama is doing the bidding of his owners can be branded a terrorist sympathizer, if not an outright terrorist.

Furthermore, the ties that bind Katz and SITE to the Bush administration, Israeli intelligence and the American media are becoming increasingly clear. But still -- even with all this in full view -- the propaganda is apparently having the desired effect.

Thus, shortly after the video was released, CNN reported: U.S. Muslim leaders denounce al Qaeda's slur toward Obama

Spiritual leaders of New York's African-American Muslim communities lashed out Friday at a purported al Qaeda message attacking President-elect Barack Obama and, using racist language, comparing him unfavorably to the late Malcolm X.

The imams called the recorded comments from al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri "an insult" from people who have "historically been disconnected from the African-American community generally and Muslim African-Americans in particular."

"We find it insulting when anyone speaks for our community instead of giving us the dignity and the honor of speaking for ourselves," they said in a statement read during a news conference at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial, Educational and Cultural Center.

The al Qaeda statement, an 11-minute, 23-second audio message in Arabic with subtitles in English, appeared on the Internet on Wednesday [November 19]. Its authenticity has not been confirmed.

Heh! That's a laugh! None of the purported al Qaeda videos have ever been confirmed -- nor can they be -- because they are all so clearly bogus.

We're routinely told that al Qaeda hides out in caves in the mountains of Pakistan, and their operational leaders apparently cannot even use cell phones without being targeted; but somehow their chief propaganda agent has regular access to high-tech production studios?

None of it makes any sense, except as a black op. And yet ... ABC's Brian Ross, who -- when he's not lying about anthrax -- leaks Katz' videos to the media, told us once that we don't need to be concerned about the authenticity of al Qaeda videos because none of them have ever been shown to be fake.

Ross was speaking about the Osama bin Laden video in which a still image of bin Laden appears for 19 of the 22 minutes.

We could laugh if it weren't so tragic. CNN continues:

The message said Obama represents the "direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X.

The speaker also said Obama, former and current Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice and "your likes" fit Malcolm X's description of "house slaves."

The description is a bit lame, though, since Malcolm X never said anything about "house slaves" being war criminals. Obama, Rice and Powell, with their support of the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and various other aspects of the Glorious War on Terror, have done more damage to more people than all the "house slaves" combined could ever have dreamt of. CNN goes on to spin a little on the history of Malcolm X, and why not? Most of CNN's readers never knew anything about him.

Malcolm X, the fiery African-American Muslim activist from the 1950s and 1960s, was an early member and leader of the Nation of Islam. He left that group in 1963 over disillusionment with its then-leader, Elijah Muhammed, but remained a Muslim.

After months of death threats, he was assassinated in 1965 by members of the Nation of Islam, who shot him 16 times at close range. The three men who were convicted of the crime have been paroled.

As well as being a "fiery leader", Malcolm X was also an honorable man, who worked to improve the lot of others. Like many "radical leaders" of his time, Malcolm X was horrified about the role his country had chosen for itself on the world stage. Standing up against state-sponsored mass murder was seen as "radical" in those days. And some things haven't changed a bit. But CNN won't tell you that.

There is also substantial evidence implicating government agents in the murder of Malcolm X. CNN won't tell you about that, either.

On Friday, Imam Al-Hajj Talib 'Abdur-Rashid, recalling Malcolm X's legacy, said that he "stood for human rights and the principle of self defense ... international law. He would have rejected, and we who are Muslim African-Americans leaders reject, acts of political extremism."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations also condemned Zawahiri's comments in a statement issued Thursday.

"As Muslims and as Americans, we will never let terrorist groups or terror leaders falsely claim to represent us or our faith," the statement said. "We once again repudiate al Qaeda's actions, rhetoric and world view and re-state our condemnation of all forms of terrorism and religious extremism."

You can see the American Muslim leaders squirming in their boots. They can't repudiate what Zawarhi actually said without exposing themselves as "house negroes", so they attack on false premises, saying things such as "We find it insulting when anyone speaks for our community instead of giving us the dignity and the honor of speaking for ourselves" and "We will never let terrorist groups or terror leaders falsely claim to represent us or our faith".

Zawarhi wasn't speaking for any community, nor was he claiming to represent anyone. He was just telling the truth about the President-elect. But that truth is obviously poisonous.

The Nature Of The Poison

Zawahri himself (accidentally) threw a bright light on the nature of the poison, in an interview which Juan Cole quoted on September 11, 2008. [I've added emphasis and inserted comments in square brackets]:

[Q:] Do you have any advice or any words to refute the argument of the theoreticians [conspiracy theorists] who claim that 9/11 was an internal action [inside job] carried out by the Israeli Government?

Al-Zawahiri: My answer: It is enough to reply to this suspicion by saying that it is not based on any evidence. [denial]

The first side that released this suspicion was Al-Manar Television, which is affiliated with the Lebanese Hizballah. It claimed that it cited a certain website. [shoot the messenger] The objective behind this lie is clear. The objective is to deny that the Sunnis have heroes who harm America as no one has harmed it throughout its history. [sheer speculation, based on a story we know is false] This lie was then circulated by the Iranian news media and they continued to repeat it until today for the same objective. [shoot the messenger again] Perhaps, they guided Al-Manar Television to begin these lies. [more speculation] Iran's objective is clear. It is to cover its collusion with America in invading the homelands of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. [another red herring]

I gave examples of this collusion in my recent interview with Al-Sahab under the title "reading in the events." This lie was then repeated by some of the psychologically defeated ones in our Islamic world, whose minds, which were distorted by Western exaggeration, refuse to believe that some Muslims can cause this harm to America. [ad hominem] These poor minds have thus far not been able to understand why America is defeated in Afghanistan and Iraq in front of the simple mujahidin [red herring], and, in fact, why America has failed to arrest Mulla Mohammad Omar and Shaykh Usama Bin Ladin, may God watch over them, after more than six years of fierce war, during which it used all means of technology, which caused us a headache about its legendary capabilities. [au contraire! The weak-minded theoreticians understand very well that the American terror warriors have no interest in acting against Mullah Omar or Osama bin Laden, who are both, after all, their allies in this massive fraud -- a fraud which would have to stop if they were somehow defeated.] Furthermore, why the power of the mujahidin is growing against it day by day despite this world war that is being launched against them?' [another red herring]

You will note that virtually none of Zawahri's statement has anything to do with the question he was asked.

About this exchange, Juan Cole wrote:

No more eloquent testament to the defeat of the original al-Qaeda could be found than the pitiful inability of Zawahiri to name any genuine accomplishments in recent times save the ability of the top leadership to elude capture!

The Bush administration over-reacted to September 11, misunderstanding it as the action of a traditional state rather than of a small asymmetrical terrorist group. [...]

No kidding? Just an over-reaction? Just a misunderstanding?

Juan Cole is no more willing than Zawahri to discuss the evidence of Israeli complicity in 9/11.

Neither is he willing to call the Bush administration's "over-reaction" what it obviously was: not a reaction at all, but an action -- one that was obviously planned well in advance of the event that "caused it".

It's no wonder Juan Cole has become such a popular and well-respected blogger.

More Poison

If you're looking for more poison, you can get some from At Largely, where on April 16, 2008, Larisa Alexandrovna quoted the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz in a post called "Netanyahu spreading sunshine wherever he goes..."

The Ha'aretz headline reads: "Report: Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel", and the article says:

"The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv on Wednesday reported that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan university that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks had been beneficial for Israel.

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

About this rather blunt admission of Israeli priorities, Larisa wrote:

Very nice. It is bad enough that Antisemites around the world have used the tragedy of 9/11 for their own propaganda purposes to push the lie that Israel was in actuality behind the attacks of September 11. Now Netanyahu has all but underwritten these dangerous talking points with this one, single, and shocking comment. Aside from this, most obvious issue, there are two small problems with Benji's assertions:

1. That 9/11 was good for Israel
2. That US public opinion is with Israel

As I have already noted, antisemitism is on the rise the world over, which is hardly good for Jews in general or Israel in particular. But in addition to that, American Jews are pulling further and further back from Israel thanks in large part to Likud's extremism and its lock-step relationship with Dick Cheney. Joe Lieberman, for example, was a contender for VP before 9/11. Now he is a political outcast by-and-large because of his bed-sharing with Likud and Dick Cheney.

Larisa seems to have missed the larger point, which is that Israel depends on the support of the American government much more than the support of American Jews. Netanyahu can conflate the two; in fact, he must. Americans (and Israelis too) like to pride themselves on the thought that they live in a democracy, so politicians such as Netanyahu must speak of "public opinion" as if it mattered. But it doesn't. Power matters. Military might matters. Israel doesn't care what you think -- as long as you keep electing politicians who swear allegiance to the Israeli flag.

And Israel no longer needs Joe Lieberman -- in the White House, or anywhere else -- since it has benefitted from eight years of "lock-step relationship with Dick Cheney", and can now look forward to a fully pro-Israel Democratic administration, run by the likes of Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Rahm Emanuel.

The missing link from this analysis is the obvious fact that 9/11 was good for the Israeli hard-liners, who until that point had been told quite regularly by their American supporters to restrain their ongoing orgy of violence against the Palestinians. As soon as 9/11 happened, the Israeli gloves came off. And they've been off ever since.

Many of Larisa's readers commented about the evidence of Israeli complicity in 9/11, beginning with Damien, who (among other things) wrote:

There are significant questions about what Israeli Intelligence knew prior to 911 (see 1 | 2 | 3).

There are various accounts of Israeli owned trucks detained on 911 in the Lincoln Tunnel with traces of explosives(1 | 2 | 3 | 4)

There appears to be at least one instance where Israeli Intelligence had previously impersonated al Qaeda operatives:

In February of 2000, Indian intelligence officials detained 11 members of what they thought was an Al Qaeda hijacking conspiracy. It was then discovered that these 11 "Muslim preachers" were all Israeli nationals.

Damien continued:

I have no idea of any Israeli awareness of or participation in 911, but I do know there are significant unanswered questions. If the topic is taboo then the public debate passes immediately into the hands of the rabid Israel haters. I think that would be a tragic outcome for everyone. We need all the answers about 911 and a full, independent inquiry.

I would go quite a bit farther than Damien, and in fact I have done so. See this post for more: Gatekeepers Bury Dancing Israeli Movers And Bogus Art Students On DN!

(See this blog for even more: Plunger Speaks.)

A Double Dose To Start

I now return you to the second week of September, 2001. On September 12, the day after the attacks, the Washington Post ran the following piece by a serial mass murderer, former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger:

Kissinger: Destroy The Network

An attack such as yesterday's requires systematic planning, a good organization, a lot of money and a base. You cannot improvise something like this, and you cannot plan it when you're constantly on the move. Heretofore our response to attacks, and understandably so, has been to carry out some retaliatory act that was supposed to even the scales while hunting down the actual people who did it.

This, however, is an attack on the territorial United States, which is a threat to our social way of life and to our existence as a free society. It therefore has to be dealt with in a different way -- with an attack on the system that produces it.

The immediate response, of course, has to be taking care of casualties and restoring some sort of normal life. We must get back to work almost immediately, to show that our life cannot be disrupted. And we should henceforth show more sympathy for people who are daily exposed to this kind of attack, whom we keep telling to be very measured in their individual responses.

But then the government should be charged with a systematic response that, one hopes, will end the way that the attack on Pearl Harbor ended -- with the destruction of the system that is responsible for it. That system is a network of terrorist organizations sheltered in capitals of certain countries. In many cases we do not penalize those countries for sheltering the organizations; in other cases, we maintain something close to normal relations with them.

It is hard to say at this point what should be done in detail. If a week ago I had been asked whether such a coordinated attack as yesterday's was possible, I, no more than most people, would have thought so, so nothing I say is meant as a criticism. But until now we have been trying to do this as a police matter, and now it has to be done in a different way.

Of course there should be some act of retaliation, and I would certainly support it, but it cannot be the end of the process and should not even be the principal part of it. The principal part has to be to get the terrorist system on the run, and by the terrorist system I mean those parts of it that are organized on a global basis and can operate by synchronized means.

We do not yet know whether Osama bin Laden did this, although it appears to have the earmarks of a bin Laden-type operation. But any government that shelters groups capable of this kind of attack, whether or not they can be shown to have been involved in this attack, must pay an exorbitant price.

The question is not so much what kind of blow we can deliver this week or next. And the response, since our own security was threatened, cannot be made dependent on consensus, though this is an issue on which we and our allies must find a cooperative means of resistance that is not simply the lowest common denominator.

It is something we should do calmly, carefully and inexorably.

If you read this calmly and carefully, especially in light of the events which followed, you can see quite clearly the lies at the heart of our current situation, and who helped to put them there.

When Kissinger says, "any government that shelters groups capable of this kind of attack" must be made to "pay an exorbitant price", he is legitimizing the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war, especially with his insistence that this price must be paid "whether or not they can be shown to have been involved in this attack".

When he says, "until now we have been trying to do this as a police matter, and now it has to be done in a different way", he is laying the groundwork for the militarization of America, regardless of the facts that 9/11 was a crime, not an act of war, and that it could have been prevented with normal police actions, if the Bush administration hadn't gone to great lengths to prevent any investigation of the impending terrorist attack.

When he talks about "a network of terrorist organizations sheltered in capitals of certain countries", he knows what he's saying. America helped put those organizations in those capitals. But he wouldn't want you to know that.

It turned out that the "threat to our social way of life and to our existence as a free society" has come from our government, not from any "terrorists", and Kissinger's characterization of the attacks as a threat "to our existence as a free society" is as much exaggeration as you are likely to get ... until two sentences later, when Kissinger writes:

And we should henceforth show more sympathy for people who are daily exposed to this kind of attack, whom we keep telling to be very measured in their individual responses.

Aside from the fact that there are no people anywhere who are "daily exposed to this kind of attack", Kissinger's purpose is clear: Hands off Israel!

And it has worked! Israeli leaders came to Washington and said, "There? You see what it's like? We're on the front line of this war. We have to deal with this stuff every day!" And Bush said "We sympathize! You're on the front line of this war. You have to deal with this stuff every day. We sympathize!"

It was a remarkable performance, just what Kissinger had asked for. And rightly so. After all, when you're on a path to global domination, and it's all based on lies, you have to proceed "calmly, carefully and inexorably."

For me, there's only one surprise in the entire piece, and that's the tortured bit of syntax that runs:

If a week ago I had been asked whether such a coordinated attack as yesterday's was possible, I, no more than most people, would have thought so...

His performance on the previous day had been one of the telltale signs that everything was bogus. And then, as we can see, he couldn't even put together a coherent denial.

I always thought Kissinger was a better liar than that. But then again, with all the help he gets, he doesn't really have to be, does he?

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Glenn Beck Gets Something Right

I don't agree very often with any of the people who host and contribute to FOX News, but that's not because of any hard and fast rule; it's just because of the things they say.

Usually they feed you one lie wrapped in another, smothered by a third. But every now and then they accidentally allow a little bit of truth to slip into the mix, and that's when they get interesting.

One interesting bit of accidental truth-telling was occasioned by Wednesday's release of yet another "al Qaeda" video, featuring "number two" Ayman al-Zawahri ([Za-WAHR-ee] whose name often appears as "Zawahiri" [Za-wa-HEER-ee] in the reports of the confused western media) .

The new Zawarhi video was brought to you, if you're a subscriber, by the SITE Intelligence Group, remnant of the now defunct SITE Institute, which somehow gets these videos before they become available on the militant Islamic websites that SITE claims to monitor.

SITE is run by Rita Katz, whose father was an Israeli spy executed in Iraq. This, combined with Katz' close connection to the Bush family, may tend to explain SITE's seemingly magical ability to obtain al Qaeda communications before the radical Islamists do so.

In any case, Ayman al-Zawahri is listed as al Qaeda's "number two" because the confused western media cannot bring itself to believe that Osama bin Laden is dead -- even though the actor who plays him in videos doesn't look very much like him!

As has been clear for a long time, Ayman al-Zawahri, like the late Osama bin Laden, is a CIA asset who specializes in psyop propaganda. The psyops are usually a bit tricky. But one common theme is the "terrorist" voicing legitimate complaints against the American leadership, often in elaborate and earthy language. In this instance, Zawahri's words in Arabic are given in English as subtitles, as provided by SITE or al Qaeda -- who can tell the difference?

Sophisticated psyops such as this one are multi-dimensional and multi-purpose, so it's not easy to say precisely what this video is for. But one recurring purpose has always been to paint any legitimate domestic political opposition as totally offside: immoral, treasonous, and in sympathy with -- if not actually in league with -- "the terrorists".

According to the usual pattern, a "terrorist" video makes a splash and then the domestic propaganda machine hosts the echo. Of course, as with all complicated clandestine operations, there are exceptions. Sometimes the expert manipulators get it wrong, and there was a time when SITE released a video to the White House, which leaked it to the world before SITE could plant it on the militant Islamic websites.

That incident resonates with the story about BBC broadcasting the collapse of World Trade Center 7 before it happened.

Q: What's going on here?

A: Just don't ask and you'll be ok!

In the new video, Zawarhi compares president-elect Barack Obama unfavorably with slain civil rights leader Malcom X.

Look closely at the following mainstream news accounts of the video, and see how everything is spun. It helps to keep the following questions in mind:

• How much of what Zawahri says is true?
• How much of what they say about Zawahri is true?
  
• Where did this video come from?
• Where did Zawahri come from?
  

From the Times of London:

Al-Qaeda today invoked the speeches of Malcolm X in a propaganda exercise designed to divide African-Americans, accusing Barack Obama of being a "house negro".

Ask yourself: How could the Times know what the video was designed to do?

In his first video message to Mr Obama since the Illinois senator was elected on November 4, Ayman Zawahiri attempted to vilify the president-elect in comparison with the black power radical, whom he described as an "honourable" African-American.

His message, entitled The departure of Bush and arrival of Obama, appeared to have been carefully choreographed. It was staged in front of pictures of Mr Obama praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem during a pre-election visit to Israel, and Malcolm X, who was murdered in 1965.

But Mr Obama's visit to Israel, including a photo-op of him praying at the Wailing Wall, wasn't carefully choreographed -- not at all. That goes without saying ... meaning that no one dares to say it. Such freedom of the press!

As Osama bin Laden's deputy spoke, old footage of the black power leader's speeches was played in the background. In one of the speeches, Malcolm X used the term "house negroes" in reference to domestic slaves who were considered more docile towards their masters than the field slaves.

“It is true about you and people like you ... what Malcolm X said about the house negroes,” he said, naming Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State, and his successor, Condoleezza Rice.

“You represent the opposite to honourable Black Americans like ... Malcolm X."

This is all too true. It's all too horribly, bitterly, true. I've been saying it for months, and I have not been alone in this. But anyone who has agreed with me has been roundly ignored.

By putting the truth about Obama in the mainstream media via the mouths of "terrorists", the psyop manipulators are preempting any criticism which might someday be given a national voice ... among other things.

He scolded Mr Obama for “choosing to be an enemy of Islam and Muslims”, saying that the Muslim “nation had bitterly received” the US President-elect's pledge of support for Israeli security and the peace process with the Palestinians.

“You have chosen to stand in the ranks of the enemies of Muslims and pray the prayer of the Jews, although you claim that your mother is Christian,” Mr Zawahiri added.

All this is true -- visibly, provably true. And even the most mainstream reports don't attempt to deny any of it. They depend on your revulsion: they want you to assume all these things must be false, simply because of who is saying them. And they want you to get angry on behalf of your "leaders", whose legacies are so badly "maligned" by having the truth spoken.

Also in his video, he threatened to work towards Mr Obama's removal if he went ahead with his proposals to withdraw troops from Iraq in order to concentrate on Afghanistan, urging him to remember "the fate" of President Bush, President Musharraf of Pakistan and Afganistan's former Soviet occupiers.

The recording came after an interview, broadcast on Sunday, in which Mr Obama said that he would push ahead with his campaign promise to begin pulling troops out of Iraq and switch the military focus to Afghanistan.

“What you have announced before ... that you will withdraw [US] troops from Iraq [and send them] to Afghanistan is a policy that is doomed to failure,” Mr Zawahiri said in the message, made available by the SITE Intelligence Group.

"If you still want to be stubborn about America’s failure in Afghanistan, then remember the fate of Bush and Pervez Musharraf, and the fate of the Soviets and British before them,” he added.

This is a difficult pill to swallow for Americans who are used to swallowing the propaganda. They don't think America has failed in Afghanistan. Or perhaps I should say they don't realize America has failed there.

Oh well. They'll figure it out eventually.

Mr Obama refused to comment, declining to get into a "tit for tat with a terrorist group", according to CNN.

That's his best move, from his point of view -- probably his only available move.

What else can he do?

Can he say: "Zawahri is right. I am a house negro. My job is to look after the intrests of the rich and powerful. Didn't you know that already? What did you think the President was supposed to do?"

Not if he wants to maintain his aura of audacity and hope and change.

Or can he say, "Zawahri is all wrong. I won't look after the rich and powerful. I will take care of the little guy. I'll stop America's wars of aggression and I'll stop the American elite from preying on their fellow-countrymen, too."

Not unless he wants to get assassinated.

The tape was not unexpected. Intelligence officials and Mr Obama's campaign team have been bracing themselves for terrorist groups to take advantage of the presidential transition period.

Here's another big lie -- another of the endless big lies in the terror myth psyop. Again it's multi-faceted and multi-purposed.

Aside from scaring you, it reinforces the lie that 9/11 was caused by an understandable difficulty inherent in the transition from one administration to another.

And that's why

Both President Bush and Mr Obama have acknowledged that extremists could stage attacks to destabilise the period, which ends when Mr Obama is inaugurated on January 20.

The myth that 9/11 was the unfortunate and innocent result of the understandable difficulty inherent in the transition has been promoted by some very artful dodgers, including Jamie Gorelick and Slade Gorton who wrote about it in the New York Times back in July.

Both Gorelick and Gorton, of course, were among the chief architects of the 9/11 coverup. Here's an excerpt from their NYT psy-op/ed:

One of the observations of the 9/11 commission was that the deeply flawed presidential transition of 2000 and 2001 created a dangerous period of vulnerability.

As always, the crowd coming in was dismissive of the concerns of the crowd going out. There was a mismatch between the concerns of the Clinton national security team and those of the incoming Bush team. While there were briefings between the election and the swearing-in, there was no trust — and thus no effective dialogue — between the members of the two administrations.

Translation: Because the Bush administration didn't trust Bill Clinton, it paid no attention to the Clinton administration's warnings about the imminent threat of a terrorist attack.

This is, once again, part of the whitewash: it's Clinton's fault that Bush decided not to do any domestic counter-terrorism. If Clinton had only kept it in his pants when that little Lewinsky slut was around, Bush and the rest of the country could have trusted him, and the incoming Bush administration would have taken Clinton's concerns seriously. Yeah, right!

Jamie Gorelick was on Obama's short list for appointment as Attorney General. What does that say about Obama? Nothing you didn't already know, I hope. But we digress...

Here's another, somewhat more detailed report, from MSNBC:

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader slurred Barack Obama with a demeaning racial term for a black American who does the bidding of whites in a new Web message posted Wednesday.

It's interesting to note that all the mainstream reports categorize Zawahri's statements about Obama as racial, when in fact the gist of them is political: This is not about what color Obama is; it's about whose interests he protects. But of course nobody could write that one day and still have a job the next morning. And so we get nonsense like this.

Ayman al-Zawahri's speech was al-Qaida's first reaction to Obama's election victory — and it suggested the terror network is worried the new American leader could undermine its rallying cry that the United States is an enemy oppressor.

In fact the Muslim world is worried -- and rightly so -- about the possibility that America, under the new "black" and "formerly Muslim" president, will be allowed a free hand to commit atrocites against blacks and Muslims even beyond the atrocities committed by the Bush and Clinton administrations.

Obama has been welcomed by many in the Middle East who hope he will end what they see as American aggression against Muslims and Arabs under President George W. Bush.

Their hope is contradicted by his public statements to the contrary -- which proves, as if any further proof were needed, that the power of self-delusion is not uniquely American.

Some believe his race and Muslim family connections could make him more understanding of the developing world's concerns.

They can believe anything they like, of course. Some people believe the sun revolves around the earth.

Al-Zawahri dug into U.S. racial history to try to directly knock down that belief and argue Obama will be no more sympathetic than white leaders to what the al-Qaida leader called "the oppressed" of the world.

MSNBC is apparently incapable of calling oppressed people oppressed, unless the word is in quotes and attributed to somebody else. What else is new?

He said Obama was the "direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X, the 1960s Muslim African-American rights leader, who is known among some in the Arab world and seen as a symbol of anti-imperialism.

Al-Zawahri also called Obama — along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — "house Negroes."

They should be flattered. Among all the terms that fit, "house Negro" is probably the most polite.

The video included old footage of speeches by Malcolm X in which he explains the term, saying black slaves who worked in their white masters' house were more servile than those who worked in the fields. Malcolm X used the term to criticize black leaders he accused of not standing up to whites and discrimination.

Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri used the phrase "abeed al-beit," which literally translates as "house slaves." But in the video message, posted on Islamic militant Web sites Wednesday, al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of the speech that translated the phrase as "house Negroes."

Considering that all the house Negroes were slaves and all the house slaves were Negroes, this little discrepancy doesn't seem to make much difference. But this article -- like all mainstream news on this and many other subjects -- is chock full of details that don't make any difference.

Consider the White House response to the video:

In Washington, White House press secretary Dana Perino said the tape is a reminder that al-Qaida is irrational.

There's nothing irrational about the way Perino digs herself into a hole, though, right?

"What we have here is more despicable and pathetic comments by al-Qaida terrorists," Perino said. "And in America, we are going to have a smooth transition from one administration to the next, and that will be a period of change in our country. What won't change is our commitment as a country to fighting terrorism. And I think that these comments just remind everybody of the kind of people that we're dealing with."

The "transition" is going to be "smooth" precisely because Obama has not challenged -- and will not challenge -- the bogus assumptions behind "our commitment as a country" to fighting bogus terrorism, looking for bogus terrorists, and fomenting terror of our own. Therefore it won't be much of a change as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

There was no immediate reaction from Obama's transition team.

As noted.

The 11-minute, 23-second video featured an audio message by al-Zawahri, played over a still image of the al-Qaida No. 2.

The video graphics underlined the contrast al-Zawahri aimed to show: On one side of the screen was a photo of Obama wearing a Jewish skullcap and meeting Jewish leaders. On the other side was a photo of Malcolm X praying in a mosque. Interspersed was footage of Malcolm X talking of a "worldwide revolution" against the "Western power structure."

Al-Zawahri addressed "all the world's weak and oppressed," and warned them: "America has put on a new face, but its heart full of hate, mind drowning in greed and spirit which spreads evil, murder, repression and despotism continue to be the same as always."

Again, this is exactly true. I wish it were otherwise. But wishes are not the stuff of truth-telling.

Zawahri spoke directly to Obama:

"You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the Muslims, and pray the prayer of the Jews, although you claim to be Christian, in order to climb the rungs of leadership in America," he said.

"It appears that you continue to be captive to the same criminal American mentality towards the world and towards the Muslims," he said.

It certainly does appear that way. But not to professional spin-merchants, who cannot afford to tell the obvious truth.

Jeremy Binnie, an analyst with Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center, said al-Zawahri's message suggests al-Qaida leaders are worried "that Obama could be effective in rebuilding America's image."

"They hated Bush, but Bush was good for them in many ways because he was such a polarizing figure. But Obama seems at the moment to be a more uniting figure," Binnie said.

They hated Bush but he was good for them; they hate Obama because he will be bad for them ...

"Al-Qaida very much would like the U.S. to stay with its old policies that put it in opposition to much of the Muslim world."

... They want us to stay in Afghanistan and that's why they want us to leave ...

All this nonsense feeds into the public pronouncements that al Qaeda is "irrational". But al Qaeda is more than irrational. al Qaeda is fictional!

Blind acceptance of the government/media spin is irrational. Belief in the independent existence of al Qaeda is irrational! But MSNBC can hardly say that, any more than Barack Obama can.

Al-Zawahri proclaimed Obama's victory a sign that Americans had realized the failure of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This part is unclear: If Americans realize the failure of the war in Afghanistan, then why did they elect a new president who wants to escalate the war in Afghanistan?

Because American voters are irrational! And that's a fact that cannot be denied.

But it doesn't matter, either, because our electoral system is so compromised that the will of the people doesn't express itself at the ballot box anymore. So we're stuck with what we've got -- for as long as we are willing to stay stuck.

MSNBC's coverage of the Zawahri video concludes as follows:

He urged Islamic militants everywhere to continue their jihad, or holy war, saying, "Your enemy's stagger has begun, so don't stop hitting him."

Al-Zawahri said Obama's plan to shift troops to Afghanistan is doomed to failure, because Afghans will resist.

"Be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them," he said.

Al-Zawahri specifically addressed al-Qaida fighters in Iraq, saying, "your enemy has admitted defeat," and that as U.S. troops withdraw, "you must persevere, for victory is in an hour of perseverance."

He also told Islamic militants in Somalia, who have been capturing towns in an advance against the tenuous central government, "don't put down your weapons before the Mujahed state of Islam ... has been set up in Somalia."

This summary reveals another aspect of the psy-op: the manipulators are always trying to foment more "terrorist" resistance, in order to "justify" more armed intervention in more foreign countries.

And everything we've read about this video so far amounts to the typical mainstream spin on what is, after all, a transparently thin and mass-murderous sham.

But way off to the side of the mainstream sits FOX News, telling even more outrageous lies, more vicious, more ridiculous lies of the sort which are enabled by all the other lies about al Qaeda and its videos that the mainstream has been telling.

Here's Glenn Beck:

While many Americans want to ignore the threat posed by Islamic extremism and collectively hope it has gone away, Al Qaeda is determined not to let us forget.

On the contrary, the American government and media are the ones who are determined not to let us forget. They're determined not to let us stop and think, either. Otherwise, the mainstream accounts would be telling you about what a farce SITE is, and how disgusting it is to have an Israeli mole doing supposed intelligence gathering for our national government, and much more, too.

But instead, they insist on taking all this stuff seriously.

In their first video release since the election of Barack Obama, Al Qaeda’s No. 2 — Ayman al-Zawahiri — said Obama’s election was “the American people’s admission of defeat in Iraq.” Unless I’ve been holding the graphs of every measurable facet of the war upside down for the last couple of years, I don’t think that we’ve admitted anything of the sort.

It's the unmeasurable facets of the war that are destroying America; it's no wonder they don't show up on FOX news graphs. And it's no wonder Glenn Beck is denying what everyone already knows. That is his job, after all.

He also claimed that Obama’s idea of sending troops currently fighting in Iraq over to Afghanistan wouldn’t work, but we should send more anyway because the “dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious.” Classy guy.

Not half as classy as bombing innocent sleeping children and then denying it, and claiming that the survivors had fabricated the evidence.

Not half as classy as imprisoning hundreds of innocent people for years and years without even giving them a chance to prove their innocence.

Not half as classy as invading sovereign countries based on deliberately fabricated lies.

But the overall message was very clear: the election of Barack Obama changes nothing to our enemies. Zawahiri said Obama appears to “continue to be captive to the same criminal American mentality towards the world and towards the Muslims.” He called Obama “dishonorable” and a “house Negro,” and he said Obama would continue the “crimes of the American Crusade.”

After we’ve been told for months that the election of Obama would magically make our enemies start to like us again, this might surprise some people. But the truth is no change in our voting patterns, no talk of meeting without preconditions, and no blanket promises of diplomacy will be enough to make these people change their minds about us.

Will Barack Obama be as tough as he needs to be? That remains to be seen. There’s not much in his record that makes me believe it, but I hope so. If he is, I’ll be happy to stand with him — because if our enemies aren’t defining us by party, we shouldn’t either.

Here's one point Glenn Beck and I agree about:

no change in our voting patterns, no talk of meeting without preconditions, and no blanket promises of diplomacy will be enough to make these people change their minds about us.

Assuming that by "these people", Beck means the people who actually do hate us, and not the actors in the psyop drama, then why do they hate us?

It's because of what we have done to them, and to their families, and to their countries.

Promises of diplomacy won't make any of that damage go away.

Talk of meetings without preconditions won't bring millions of innocent people back from the dead.

Changing our voting patterns won't help any of those people at all -- especially when we shift our support from a president who has spent the past eight years increasing the military budget and using it to get his way in the world, to a president-elect who pledges to increase the military budget and use it to get his way in the world.

If we were sufficiently color-blind to see beyond Obama-is-black and Bush-is-white, and also to see beyond Obama-is-a-Democrat and Bush-is-a-Republican, what would we be left with? Two guys with funny-looking ears who will tell any lie at all, in a quest to become "the most powerful man in the world", and who are quite willing to use that power to ruin the lives of millions of innocent people.

And instead of being shocked and appalled at Zawahri, all of America would be shocked and appalled at Glenn Beck.

If, if, if: We're in fantasy land again.

Here's the one other bit of Beck's column that I partially agree with:

if our enemies aren’t defining us by party, we shouldn’t either.

I don't agree completely, because it doesn't matter to me how "our enemies" are "defining us". I don't even believe that one person can "define" another. But that's beside the point. The point is: I care about what people do, not what party they join.

And that's what matters to the people of Afghanistan, and Iraq, and Somalia, and Pakistan, and all the other countries where the American military routinely uses its exceptional might, against innocent unarmed people, with unmitigated hubris -- as if somehow it were our right to destroy lives and homes in any foreign countries we choose.

When bombs start falling, the people being shredded and crushed and burned to death don't much care who the president is, or what color his skin is, much less what political party he belongs to. Of course they hate America. You'd hate America too, if America did things like that to you.

But you wouldn't expect to hear such things from FOX News, would you?

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Because You'll Believe Anything: Unknown Terrorist Group Claims Responsibility For Marriott Bombing

In a phone call to an Islamabad TV station, "a group calling itself Fedayeen-i-Islam" has claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, according to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn.

Fedayeen-i-Islam is "a little-known group" according to Bloomberg. But just how little-known?

Dawn's report quotes "a senior [Pakistani] government official" as saying:

“We have not heard the name of the organisation but we are trying to locate its network.”

Amazing.

Ever since Saturday night's bombing the media have been wrestling with the big question: "Why did al Qaeda do this?"

But now they have to deal with a different question: "How is Fedayeen-i-Islam related to al Qaeda?"

It goes without saying that Fedayeen-i-Islam must be a violent radical Islamofascist group and that they must have bombed the hotel. And they must have been assisted, if not directed, by al Qaeda, and probably the Taliban as well. After all, who else but the world's most violent Islamic terrorists could make an anonymous phone call to a TV station?

It's nice to know the big questions are looked after. That gives us leeway -- here in the frozen corners of the blogosphere -- to ask meaningless little insignificant questions, like:

What were US Marines doing in the Marriott Hotel just before the attack?

According to Pakistan Daily, after the blast, a fire broke out on the fourth and fifth floors of the hotel.

Why these floors and not the others? The official explanation didn't make much sense. On the other hand, according to an eyewitness report from a member of Pakistan's Parliament, a group of US Marines had recently visited the hotel, while Admiral Mike Mullen was there.

According to the eyewitness, all access to the hotel was closed off while the Marines unloaded steel boxes from a white US Embassy truck, bypassed both Pakistani and hotel security, and took these boxes directly to the fourth and fifth floors of the hotel -- just where the fires mysteriously broke out.

Were the Marines loading the building with incendiaries? It certainly wouldn't be the first time a building was primed by insiders for a subsequent "terrorist attack".

I wasn't kidding in my prior post when I called the Marriott bombing "Pakistan's 9/11". But I didn't explain myself particularly well, either.

There's a long list of similarities between the two attacks, including the rush by both politicians and the media to cast the event as "an attack on democracy", when in both cases the attacks came at critical times for governments which falsely claimed to have been legitimately elected.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari can now claim to be in an all-out war against radical Islamic terrorists, and he may even be able to build up enough "political capital" to drag his nation in a direction in which it doesn't wish to go.

As usual, the attack has been followed by a barrage of media nonsense, such as a report from the Financial Times which says men with ties to al Qaeda have been arrested in Pakistan in connection with the Marriott bombing.

Pakistani investigators yesterday said they had found new evidence of al-Qaeda's involvement in the suicide truck bombing of Islamabad's Marriott hotel. Intelligence officials also reported the arrest of up to five militants in connection with planning attacks [...]

According to an intelligence official, two of the five arrested men "came with conclusive evidence of close links to al-Qaeda. Their connection to the militant group is beyond any doubt."

Let's see now: The police are arresting members of one group while another group claims responsibility. Does this not undermine the claims of the police?

If you were tripped up by this little bit of logic, you must be a Democrat, since according to the Republicans, the Democrats have failed to learn the lessons of September 11th, 2001.

And the primary lesson from September 11th, of course, is that logic, evidence, and science are all past their prime.

Therefore, we don't use forensic evidence to solve crimes anymore; we label the crimes acts of war, destroy the forensic evidence, and attack defenseless countries instead. For revenge. Or something.

If you believe that this massive bombing attack was perpetrated by a Pakistani terrorist group that the Pakistani government has never even heard of, then it's not much of a stretch to believe that this hitherto-unknown group must have hitherto-unknown ties to al Qaeda, as well.

As the AP reported (via the Toronto Star):

Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik said "all roads lead to FATA" in major Pakistani suicide attacks – referring to Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where U.S. officials fear Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda No.2 Ayman al-Zawahri are hiding.

And there you have it; it doesn't matter who did it; it doesn't matter who claimed responsibility; it doesn't matter why Marines were acting mysteriously (and evading security) in the building shortly before it was attacked; it doesn't matter what evidence is collected during the investigation; it doesn't even matter whether there is an investigation.

What matters is that the media and the politicians have already decided who's going to be blamed, and who's going to pay the price. And once again -- just like 9/11 -- it won't be the perpetrators.

~~~

UPDATE: The eyewitness referred to in the above account is denying a report published in The News which contains some of the same allegations described above, according to a comment posted on a thread where my piece is being discussed at Pak Links dot com.

Here's the disputed piece in full, from The News, for the record:

Was it an attack on US Marines?

By Ansar Abbasi | Sunday, September 21, 2008

ISLAMABAD: Was there a top secret and mysterious operation of the US Marines going on inside the Marriott when it was attacked on Saturday evening? No one will confirm it but circumstantial evidence is in abundance.

Witnessed by many, including a PPP MNA and his friends, a US embassy truckload of steel boxes was unloaded and shifted inside the Marriott Hotel on the same night when Admiral Mike Mullen met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and others in Islamabad.

Both the main gates (the entrance and the exit) of the hotel were closed while no one except the US Marines were either allowed to go near the truck or get the steel boxes unloaded or shift them inside the hotel. These steel boxes were not passed through the scanners installed at the entrance of the hotel lobby and were reportedly shifted to the fourth and fifth floors of the Marriott.

Besides several others, PPP MNA Mumtaz Alam Gilani and his two friends, Sajjad Chaudhry, a PPP leader, and one Bashir Nadeem, witnessed this mysterious activity to which no one other than the PPP MNA objected and protested.

A source present there told The News that after entertaining them with refreshments at the Nadia restaurant at midnight when Mumtaz Alam, along with his friends, was to leave the hotel, he found a white US embassy truck standing right in front of the hotel's main entrance.

Both the In-gate and the Out-gate of the hotel were closed while almost a dozen well-built US Marines in their usual fatigues were unloading the steel boxes from the truck. No one, including the hotel security men, was either allowed to go near the truck or touch the steel boxes, which were being shifted inside the hotel but without passing through the scanners.

Upon inquiry, one of the three PPP friends who was waiting for the main gates of the hotel to open to get his car in, was informed that the suspicious boxes were shifted to the fourth and fifth floors of the hotel. Mumtaz Alam was furious both at the US Marines and the hotel security not only for the delay caused to them but also for the security lapse he was witnessing.

On his protest, there was absolutely no response from the Marines and the security men he approached were found helpless. Mumtaz Alam told the hotel security official that they were going to endanger the hotel and its security. He was also heard telling his friends that he would never visit the hotel again. He also threatened to raise the issue in parliament.

One does not know whether the PPP MNA revisited the hotel after that mysterious midnight but his brother Imtiaz Alam, who is a senior journalist, was in the same hotel when the truck exploded at the main gate of the hotel. Imtiaz Alam had a lucky escape and found his way out of the hotel with great difficulty in pitch darkness.

One of the lifts he was using fell to the ground floor just after he forced the door open on the 4th floor and got out of it.

The comment, from Lycanthropy of Karachi, runs as follows [I've converted the URLs to links]:

Unfortunately, the MNA reported to be a witness of the US Marines incident, (Mumtaz Alam Gillani, National Assembly Member PPP), is not backing up the report, and is even threatening to sue Ansar Abbasi (the journalist who published this report quoting unknown eyewitnesses), if he does not debunk his article soon.

http://thenews.jang.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=17453
MNA threatens to sue journalist

http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=53599&It emid=2
Story on shifting US Steel boxes in Marriott Hotel a pack of lies: Mumtaz Gillani

http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?205998
MNA threatens to sue journalist: Ansar Abbasi says he never met MNA

http://pakistanpressfoundation.org/userMediaFilesDetails.asp?uid=14505
MNA threatens to sue journalist

it's even on his Wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syed_Mumtaz_Alam_Gillani
Syed Mumtaz Alam Gillani

The report might still be true, but maybe the MNA is not backing it up personally to avoid trouble for himself.

And the article mentioned in the comment runs as follows [I've added emphasis, space, and a few extra words, for clarity]:

MNA threatens to sue journalist

Ansar Abbasi says he never met MNA

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

ISLAMABAD: Mumtaz Alam Gillani, member [of the] national assembly (PPP) [Pakistan People's Party] on Monday strongly contradicted a news item appearing in a section of the press on September 21 that he was witness to a US embassy white truck carrying steel boxes, which were unloaded and shifted inside the Marriott hotel.

Mumtaz Alam Gillani told APP that this was just a conversation in a light mood with the reporter when he along with his friends was coming out of the hotel and some foreigners were going inside the hotel. “I had just roadside chit-chat in a friendly manner with the newsman and told him that Pakistan is a victim of terrorism”, Gillani clarified.

He further said he would be issuing a legal notice to the reporter of the newspaper whose story is based on “pack of lies” and contrary to all professional ethics.

“I have asked the reporter to contradict the news item and tender unconditional apology as he tried to belittle my image as member of parliament in the eyes of the people, particularly of my constituency”, Mumtaz Alam Gillani said.

The MNA further said that on expiry of 10-day notice if the apology is not tendered and contradiction not issued, he will sue the reporter and the newspapers in a Court of law. — APP [Associated Press of Pakistan]

~~~

Ansar Abbasi replies: The PPP MNA Mumtaz Alam Gillani has the right to go to the court of law but he needs to be corrected on the fact that I never spoke to him whether in a light mood or seriously. Rather we never had any interaction either on the night of September 16 or before; nor even after that, though I tried to contact him on the night of September 16 but his mobile phone did not respond.

The story in question was based on the eyewitness account of a source, [who] narrated the whole episode of what many witnessed that night. The source also quoted the PPP MNA objecting and protesting to the Marines’ activity. He was also shouting thus attracting the attention of several others.

The PPP MNA is also not mentioning the fact when he claims of talking to “reporter” and seeking contradiction of the story and unconditional apology. Nowhere in story the image of the MNA was belittled rather he was reported to have objected to the lapse of security that he witnessed when the Marines were shifting the steel cases inside the hotel.

Mr Gillani talks of “facts”, which are neither relevant to my story nor true. While Gillani “strongly contradicted” the story, one of his friends, accompanying him on the night of September 16 to Marriott, confirmed the facts as stated in The News story.

Meanwhile, the US embassy spokesman on Monday when asked about the September 16 activity did not deny this and said, “A team of support personnel often and routinely precede and/or accompany certain US government officials. They often carry communications and office equipment required to support large delegations, such as high-level administration officials and members of the US Congress. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would travel with communications equipment. It is quite possible that some saw this communications equipment moved into the hotel. This equipment would leave with the CJCS. If the equipment was transported in full public view then obviously there was no attempt made to conceal its movement.”

The News stands by the story.

And so do I.

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Panic And Jubilation In The Wake Of Musharraf's Resignation

Now that Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has resigned, we can expect a tidal wave of propaganda -- some of it deliberately false, some well-meaning but still false -- about how nervous we should be for our future.

After all, Pakistan has terrorists and nuclear weapons. And only Pervez Musharraf could keep them apart. Or so the story goes.

We've been hearing variations on this story for years; but it's still only a story. We get it from the right and from the left:

Let's attack Pakistan; We were attacked on 9/11 by terrorists from Pakistan; Pakistan is going ballistic and we don't even have anyone left in our government who knows anything about Pakistan, let alone somebody in a position to do something...

I don't always agree with Larisa Alexandrovna but I always pay attention. Just yesterday she wrote:

[A] civil war is bad, but a civil war in the same country housing both Al Qaeda and nukes, is really bad....

[A] civil war or any serious power structure threat in another country - especially Pakistan - is a threat of epic proportions.

Forget the Russian-Georgian conflict for a moment. Forget Iraq for a moment. Forget everything for one moment and understand, that if Pakistan explodes into a power struggle, that struggle/conflict will be the match that lights a world war [...] that we are not equipped to deal with anymore....

Were we ever equipped to deal with something like that? Not within my memory. But the "if" in Larisa's analysis is a big one, in my opinion.

So while our entire nation is drunk on election scandal after scandal, and while our entire nation is being bled dry of finances and human treasure, no one - NO ONE - is watching this crisis as it unfolds. They are all too busy playing at politics to care [...]

Not true. I've been up all night watching it unfold. I've been watching it unfold for the best part of the past two years. I've written dozens of posts about it. And I've just about given up on American politics ...

But Larisa's not talking about me. At least I hope she's not talking about me. (I don't mind being called a nobody, but does it have to be in capital letters?)

No, I think Larisa is talking about the federal government. And I think this because she continues:

They are all too busy playing at politics to care and they have already long ago removed any qualified intelligence expert on Pakistan from their post. We know very well that this administration replaced qualified people with political sock-puppets who are now in positions to fuck things up even more, but certainly not to understand the brewing world crisis.

I [loathe] Musharraf and want him removed from office. But right now, any change, big or small in the region is going to be a catastrophe. A change of ISI-backed Musharraf is going to be an epic catastrophe.

I hate to pass up a chance to be an alarmist, but I don't buy the story.

My understanding of Musharraf and his role in the events of the world runs much closer to the analysis published a few weeks ago by Samad Khurram, called: "Musharraf more dangerous than Osama in the War on Terror". It starts with a shocking revelation:

The former head of the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence’s (ISI) political cell recently confessed that he was responsible for political manipulation in Pakistan’s 2002 elections that led to Islamists coming to power in two provinces and gaining 59 seats in the National Assembly. This fraud was the work of the America’s supposedly unfaltering ally in the War on Terror, General (ret.) Pervez Musharraf and his desire to paint an image of Pakistan as an extremely dangerous, unstable country ready to fall into the hands of extremists the moment he leaves.

Musharraf pretends that he is the only hope for the US in Pakistan. Closer analysis, however, suggests that his claims are far from true. In the 2008 elections—which were much freer and fairer than those of 2002—only 6 seats went to the Islamists. In addition, a secular party won the majority of seats from the North-West Frontier Province where the War on Terror is actually taking place. These results prove that the people of Pakistan are against religious fundamentalism, something the US has largely ignored. In 1999, Pakistan was a stable country with a moderate political party in power. There were no suicide bombings, no abductions by extremists, and people were free to move about without security personnel. By 2007, Pakistan was among the world’s most dangerous places. This transformation is the result of Musharraf’s long, incompetent rule.

Of primary importance, in Musharraf's long, incompetent rule, and another detail missing from almost all Western news reports: His alliance with George Bush in the clearly bogus war against clearly bogus terror has been an utter disaster -- seen as treason by many Pakistanis and rightly so, in my opinion.

Samad Khurram won't go into the dark places where I tend to dig: he's not about to remind his readers how phony 9/11 looked at the time, or how much phonier it appears in hindsight.

He's headed in the right direction:

There are many other pieces of evidence to support that Musharraf is not committed to fighting terrorism now, or if he ever was. Musharraf’s own speeches and words, such as, “[I am] not going around trying to locate Osama bin Laden and Zawahri, frankly” are the biggest confirmation of his indifference. In addition, Washington has been shocked by news reports that the majority of the funds given to Pakistan are not used for the War on Terror. This news is corroborated by widely available pictures of troops in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas moving around in traditional ‘chappals’ (open foot shoes) and poor equipment. If even a small portion of the U.S. aid were spent on weapons upgrades, bullet proof jackets, reconnaissance devices and training, the results would have been much better. The Pakistan Army would have performed better: more terrorists caught, fewer casualties and more leads to Osama bin Laden.

Over the past eight years, Pakistan has received $11 billion from the U.S. in direct aid for fighting terrorism, billions from other countries for curbing extremism and development projects, and access to secret intelligence. In response to this, Musharraf has been repeatedly diverting funds in efforts to retain his support within the army, upgrade weapons to be used against India, or pay his supporters and crackdown on political opponents. His long, highly extravagant foreign tours to publicize his book or beg for more aid are hardly helpful in fighting terrorism. [...]

Last November, on the pretext of fighting terrorism a “state of emergency” was declared in Pakistan, and resulted in a country-wide crackdown on the judiciary, media, human rights activists, and anyone who could possibly oppose Musharraf. This was followed by the release of 25 high profile terrorists including former Taliban Defence Minister Mullah Obaidullah, who has close ties to Osama bin Laden and is the highest-ranking Taliban official ever captured.

But, even having laid out all this detail, Samad Khurram doesn't realize (or won't say) just as Larisa Alexandrovna doesn't realize (or won't say) that the Global War on Terror is completely bogus: the terror is bogus and the war is bogus too.

And Musharraf's role in the bogus war on bogus terror is to be a bogus ally. In other words, he's a liability on purpose, because this is exactly what the United States needs.

Without such powerful liabilities, the bogus war on bogus terror would be over by now, and the multi-billion dollar per year "homeland security" trough would be closed as well.

Instead, Samad Khurram spins the same line we usually see:

Musharraf is a major liability in the War on Terror, yet the Bush Administration fails to see this and continues to provide him unfaltering support.

In any case, as I was saying, the bulk of the panic is confined to people far away from Pakistan.

People on the ground there don't seem too concerned.

Bloomberg says Pakistani investors like the news:

Pakistan's Karachi Stock Exchange 100 Index jumped 4.5 percent after President Pervez Musharraf resigned...

The BBC reported people dancing in the streets of Rawalpindi, and lawyers giving thanks in the streets of Islamabad. [Dawn has published ample confirmation.]

And Bilawal Bhutto Zardari says Musharraf's resignation avenges the assassination of his mother!!

But let's not get too carried away.

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