War Criminals in High Office

Part 4: The New World Order
Chapter 15

Under the Bush administration, torture has become an official US Government policy. The orders to torture POWs in Iraq and Guantanamo emanated from the highest governmental levels. Prison guards, interrogators in the US military and the CIA were responding to precise guidelines.

The President directly authorized the use of torture including "sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc."(1)

This authorization was confirmed in a secret FBI email dated May 22, 2004. The latter indicated that president Bush had "personally signed off on certain interrogation techniques in an executive order."(2)

Another FBI email dated December 2003, described how military interrogators at Guantanamo had impersonated FBI agents,"to avoid possible blame in subsequent inquiries", and that this interrogation method had the approval of (former) Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz:

[The email] describes an incident in which Defense Department interrogators at Guantánamo Bay impersonated FBI agents while using "torture techniques" against a detainee. The e-mail concludes: "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [sic] [by] the 'FBI' interrogators. The FBI will [be] [sic] left holding the bag before the public."(3)

The document also stated that no "intelligence of a threat neu-tralization nature" was garnered by the "FBI" interrogation, and that the FBI's Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF) believes that the Defense Department's actions have destroyed any chance of prosecuting the detainee. The author of the e-mail writes that he or she is documenting the incident "in order to protect the FBI".(4)

A third incriminating FBI email dated June 25, 2003 entitled "Urgent Report":

showed that the Sacramento field office warned the FBI director that it had received testimony of "numerous physical abuse incidents of Iraqi civilian detainees", including "strangulation, beatings, and place-ment of lit cigarettes into the detainees' ear openings". Other documents reported incidents such as detainees being dropped onto barbed wire, having Israeli flags wrapped around them, spat on and knocked unconscious, and shackled until they defecated on themselves.(5)

The evidence also confirmed that the US military was also involved in "mock executions" and the application of burning and electric shocks to detainees.(6)

Moreover, while several dozen detainees died in US custody, the records of these deaths were tampered with and the autopsy reports in many cases were not conducted, with a view to concealing the acts of torture.(7)

Abu Ghraib

The 2004 Abu Ghraib Taguba investigation (as well as two other reports) commissioned by the US military into "inhumane interrogation techniques" had exempted Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and of course, President Bush, of any wrongdoing or involvement.(8)

Despite the evidence, the reports placed the blame on lower rank servicemen and commanders in Iraq:

Several US Army Soldiers have committed egregious acts and grave breaches of international law at Abu Ghraib/BCCF and Camp Bucca, Iraq. Furthermore, key senior leaders in both the 800th MP Brigade and the 205th MI Brigade failed to comply with established regulations, policies, and command directives in preventing detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib (BCCF) and at Camp Bucca.(9)

The conclusion of the report was that command directives to prevent the occurrence of torture were not followed.

In other words, the reports not only denied the existence of official US policy guidelines on torture (e.g.. the August 2002 and March 2003 memoranda), they stated that the directives were explicitly "not to torture POWs" and that command orders had been disregarded. Their conclusions should come as no surprise, since Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had approved the conduct of these investigations.

Following the investigation, Brigadier General Janice Karpinksi in command of the military police unit at Abu Ghraib was suspended, whereas several lower rank servicemen and women were subjected to court martial procedures.

Court martial procedures were, therefore, initiated on the orders of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when in fact it was Donald Rumsfeld and the President who had issued the Executive Order to torture the POWs.

War criminals in high office thus ordered the holding of these show trials, which essentially served to camouflage a systematic policy of torturing POWs, in violation of the Geneva convention, while also exempting these officials in high office from prosecution.

Torture is "Un-American"

President Bush "apologized" following the release of the Abu Ghraib photos in May 2004:

People in Iraq must understand that I view those practices as abhor-rent. ... They must also understand that what took place in that prison does not represent the America that I know. ... There will be investigations, people will be brought to justice.(10)

Rumsfeld also apologized in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee:

We didn't, and that was wrong, ... So to those Iraqis who were mistreated by members of the US armed forces, I offer my deepest apology.(11)

The Legalization of Torture

Torture is permitted "under certain circumstances", according to an August 2002 Justice Department "legal opinion":

if a government employee were to torture a suspect in captivity,"he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the Al Qaeda terrorist network," said the memo, from the Justice Department's office of legal counsel, written in response to a CIA request for legal guidance. It added that arguments centering on "necessity and self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability" later.(12)

Even if an interrogation method might arguably cross the line drawn in Section and application of the stature was not held to be an unconstitutional infringement of the President's Commander in Chief authority, we believe that under current circumstances [since the "war on terrorism"] certain justification defenses might be avail-able that would potentially eliminate criminal liability.(13)

A subsequent Department of Defense Memorandum dated March 2003 drafted by military lawyers, leaked to The Wall Street Journal, follows in the footsteps of the August 2002 "legal opinion":

Compliance with international treaties and US laws prohibiting torture could be overlooked because of legal technicalities and national security needs.(14)

These "legal opinions" are casually presented as a surrogate for bona fide legislation. They suggest, in an utterly twisted logic, that the Commander in Chief can quite legitimately authorize the use torture, because the victims of torture in this case are "terrorists", who are said to routinely apply the same methods against Americans.

New "Legal Opinion": Torture is no longer Un-American

Coinciding with the release of the incriminating FBI memos in mid December 2004, the Justice Department ordered the drafting of a new "legal opinion" on so-called "permissible US military interrogation techniques" to replace that of August 2002:

[Attorney General] Gonzales "commissioned" the infamous Justice Department memo of 2002 that asserted President Bush's right to order torture, even redefining the meaning of torture not to include any pain short of organ failure, death or permanent psychological damage. This prompted other legal decisions approving such inter-rogation practices as "stress positions" and intimidation with dogs, leading then to the abyss of abuses at Abu Ghraib.(15)

The Criminalization of Justice

"Legal opinions" drafted on the behest of war criminals are being used to "legalize" torture and redefine Justice.

War criminals legitimately occupy positions of authority, which enable them to redefine the contours of the judicial system and the process of law enforcement.

It provides them with a mandate to decide "who are the crim-inals", when in fact they are the criminals.

In other words, what we are dealing with is the criminalization of the State and its various institutions including the criminaliza-tion of Justice.

The truth is twisted and turned upside down. State propaganda builds a consensus within the Executive, the US Congress and the Military. This consensus is then ratified by the Judicial, through a process of outright legal manipulation.

Media disinformation instills within the consciousness of Americans that somehow the use of torture, the existence of con-centration camps, extra judicial assassinations of "rogue enemies"-all of which are happening-are, "under certain circumstances," "acceptable" and perfectly "legal" because the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) says "it's legit".

The existence of an illusive outside enemy who is threatening the Homeland is the cornerstone of the propaganda campaign. The latter consists in galvanizing US citizens not only in favor of "the war on terrorism", but in support of a social order which upholds the legitimate use of torture, directed against "terrorists", as a justifiable means to preserving human rights, democracy, freedom, etc.

The Spanish Inquisition

In other words, we have reached a new threshold in US legal his-tory. Torture is no longer a covert activity, removed from the public eye.

War criminals within the State and the Military are no longer trying to camouflage their crimes. Until recently, the logic was "We're sorry for the torture, we didn't do it. We're against torture. Those responsible will be punished."

The logic in the wake of 9/11 is entirely different and is remi-niscent of the Spanish Inquisition.

Under the Inquisition, there was no need to conceal the acts of torture. In fact, quite the opposite. Torture is a public policy with a humanitarian mandate. "Democracy" and "freedom" are to be upheld by "going after the terrorists".

"The war on the terrorism" is said to be in the public interest. Moreover, anybody who questions its practices-which now includes torture, political assassination and concentration camps-is liable to be arrested under the antiterrorist legislation.

The Inquisition, which started in the 12th century and lasted for more than four hundred years was a consensus imposed by the ruling feudal social order. Its purpose was to maintain and sustain those in authority.

The Inquisition had a network of religious courts, which even-tually evolved into a system of political and social control.

The great Inquisitor was similar to the Department of Homeland Security.

The underlying principles governing the courts were straight-forward, and apart from the rhetoric, similar to today's procedures: "You find them and take 'em out":

[H]eresy cannot be destroyed unless heretics are destroyed and ... their defenders and [supporters] are destroyed, and this is effected in two ways: ...they are converted to the true catholic faith, or ... burned [alive].(16)

Those who refused to recant and give up their heresy, were burned alive. Moreover, no lawyers were allowed, because it was considered heresy to defend a heretic:

A bishop came out and shouted out the names of the condemned. Then the heretics were led out, wearing black robes decorated with red demons and flames. Officials of the government tied them to the stake.

"Do you give up your heresy against the holy church?" a priest would challenge.

Anyone who repented would be strangled to death before the fires were lit. Most, however, stood silent or defiant. The fires were lit, and the square echoed with the screams of the heretics and cheers from the crowd.(17)

The Road towards a Police State

Today's World is far more sophisticated. CIA torture manuals devel-oped under successive US Administrations are more advanced. The anti-terrorist legislation (PATRIOT Acts I and II) and law enforcement apparatus, although built on the same logic, are better equipped to deal with large population groups.

In contrast to the Spanish Inquisition, the contemporary inquisi-torial system has almost unlimited capabilities of spying on and categorizing individuals.

People are tagged and labeled, their emails, telephones and faxes are monitored. Detailed personal data is entered into giant Big Brother data banks. Once this cataloging has been completed, peo-ple are locked into watertight compartments. Their profiles are established and entered into a computerized system.

Law enforcement is systematic. The witch-hunt is not only directed against presumed "terrorists" through ethnic profiling, etc. The various human rights, affirmative action, antiwar cohorts are themselves the object of the anti-terrorist legislation and so on. Converting or recanting by antiwar heretics is not permitted.

Meanwhile, war criminals occupy positions of authority. The citizenry is galvanized into supporting rulers "committed to their safety and well-being" and "who are going after the bad guys."

Historically, the Inquisition was carried out in Spain, France and Italy, at the neighborhood level in communities across the land. Today in America, the mission of the Citizens Corps operating at the local level is to "make communities safer, stronger, and better prepared to respond to the threats of terrorism".

The Citizens Corps in liaison with Homeland Security are establishing "Neighborhood Watch Teams" as well as a "Volunteer Police Service" in partnership with local law enforcement.(18)

When the inquisition came to a suspected area, the local bishop assembled the people to hear the inquisitor preach against heresy. He would announce a grace period of up to a month for heretics to confess their guilt, recant, and inform on others.

If two witnesses under oath accused someone of heresy, the accused person would be summoned to appear. Opinions, preju-dices, rumors, and gossip were all accepted as evidence. The accused was never told the names of the accusers, nor even the exact charges.

The inquisition would collect accusations, where neighbors can be denounced.(19)

Under an inquisitorial system, the Executive Order personally signed by the president to torture becomes a public statement endorsed by the citizenry. It is no longer a secret FBI memorandum.

No need to conceal acts of torture.

The practice of torture against terrorists gains public acceptance, it becomes part of a broad bipartisan consensus.

It is no longer Un-American to torture "the bad guys".

Under the Inquisition, people firmly believed that torture and burning was a good thing and that torture served to purify society.

We have not quite reached that point. But we are nearly there.

With regard to the Executive order to torture, several media in the US including the Washington Post, condemned Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, calling for his resignation.

They have not, however, acknowledged the fact that torture has for some time been a routine practice of the Military and Intelligence apparatus, since the days of "Operation Condor" and the US sponsored Central American Death Squadrons. The latter were overseen at the time by John Negroponte, who now heads the Directorate of National Intelligence.

What comes next?

When the Justice Department emits a legal opinion stating that the Executive order to torture is "legit", that means that a legal and political consensus is being built.

In which case, the war criminals in high office, have "the right" to commit atrocities in the name of democracy and freedom. It is no longer necessary for them to lie, to hide their actions or to "say sorry" if and when these actions are brought to public attention.

Under this logic, torture is no longer seen as "Un-American", as stated by President Bush when the Abu Ghraib photos were first released in 2004.

In other words, under an inquisitorial system, the public does not question the wisdom of the rulers. Citizens are compelled into accepting the political consensus. They must endorse the acts of torture ordered by those who rule in their name. Moreover, politi-cal assassinations are no longer conducted as covert operations. The intent to assassinate is announced, debated in the US Congress, pre-sented as a safeguard of democracy. In turn, the alleged terrorists are sent to concentration camps and this information is public.

Why is Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo, Cuba, public knowledge?

Precisely, to gradually develop, over several years, a broad pub-lic consensus that concentration camps and torture directed against "terrorists" are ultimately acceptable and in the public interest.

When we reach that point of acceptance, of broad consensus, there is no going back.

The lie becomes the truth. "Democracy and Freedom" are sustained through State terror. The police state and its ideological underpinnings become fully operational.

Unseat the Inquisitors

And that is why at this critical juncture in our history, it is crucial for people across the land, in the US, Canada, Europe and around the world, to take an articulate stance on President Bush's Executive Order to torture POWs.

But one does not reverse the tide by firing Rumsfeld and putting in a new Defense Secretary or by asking president Bush to please abide by the Geneva Convention.

How can one break the Inquisition?

Essentially by breaking the consensus which sustains the inquisi-torial social order.
To shunt the American Inquisition and disable its propaganda machine, we must "unseat the Inquisitors" and prosecute the war criminals in high office, implying criminal procedures against those who ordered torture.

If the Judicial system supports torture, that means we have to dismantle the Judicial.
It is not sufficient, however, to remove the Inquisition's high priests: George W. Bush or Tony Blair, who are mere puppets.

Increasingly, the military-intelligence establishment (rather than the State Department, the White House and the US Congress) is calling the shots on US foreign policy. Meanwhile, the Anglo-American oil giants, Wall Street, the powerful media giants and the Washington think tanks are operating discretely behind the scenes, setting the next stage in this ongoing militarization of civil-ian institutions.

"Fear and Surprise"

To break the Inquisition, we must break the propaganda, fear and intimidation campaign, which galvanizes public opinion into accepting the "war on terrorism".

-----

TEXT BOX 15.1

Break the Spanish Inquisition
by Monty Python

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Our chief weapon is surprise ... surprise and fear ... fear and surprise ....

Our two weapons are fear and surprise ...and ruthless efficiency....

Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency ... and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope ....

I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.

... Nobody expects the ...um ... the Spanish ... um ... Inquisition.

I know, I know! Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Our chief weapons are ... ... um ... er ... Surprise ...

Okay, stop. Stop. Stop there-stop there. Stop. Phew! Ah!

Our chief weapons are surprise ...blah blah blah. Cardinal, read the charges.

You are hereby charged that you did on diverse dates com-mit heresy against the Holy Church.
Now, how do you plead? We're innocent.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! [Diabolical Laughter].(20)

-----

Osama bin Laden, Al-Zarqawi are names which are repeated ad nauseam, day after day, identified in official statements as enemies of America, commented on network TV and pasted on a daily basis across the news tabloids.

We must break the big lie.

Fear and Disinformation constitutes the cornerstone of Bush's propaganda campaign.

Without fear, there can be no inquisitorial social order.

"Code Orange Terror Alerts."

"The terrorists are preparing to attack America."

"A terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur] somewhere in the Western world-it may be in the United States of America-that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event." (Former CENT-COM Commander Tommy Franks)

"If we go to Red [code alert] ... it basically shuts down the coun-try", (Former Secretary for Homeland Security, Tom Ridge)

"You ask,'Is it serious?' Yes, you bet your life. People don't do that unless it's a serious situation." (Vice President Dick Cheney)

Notes

1. See American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), "FBI E-Mail Refers to Presidential Order Authorizing Inhumane Interrogation Techniques", 20 December 2004.

2. Text of the original FBI Memo dated 15 December 2004, ACLU website.

3. Ibid.

4. ACLU, op cit.

5. The Boston Globe, 23 December 2004.

6. The Washington Post, 23 December 2004.

7. Ibid.

8. See also Army Report, Department of Defense, August 2004.

9. Taguba Report, http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2004/800-mp-bde.htm.

10. President Bush, 5 May 2004, interview for the US-funded al-Hurra network and the Al-Arabiya satellite channel, 5 May 2004.

11. Transcript of Donald Rumsfeld's Statement, Senate Armed Services Committee, 6 May 2004.

12. Dana Priest and R. Jeffrey Smith, "Memo Offered Justification for Use of Torture Justice Dept. Gave Advice in 2002", Washington Post, 6 June 2004.

13. See complete August 1, 2002 Justice Department Memorandum: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/dojinterrogationmemo20020801.pdf.

14. See complete Department of Defense text leaked to the Wall Street Journal at http://news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/torture/30603wgrpt.html.

15. Observer-Dispatch (Utica, NY), 9 December 2004.

16. See Constitutional Rights Foundation, http://www.crf-usa.org/bria/bria9_1.htm.

17. Ibid.

18. See Citizens Corps website at http://www.citizencorps.gov/pdf/council.pdf.

19. Constitutional Rights Foundation, http://www.crf-usa.org/bria/bria9_1.htm.

20. Excerpts from the BBC TV Show, Monty Python, The Spanish Inquisition by Monty Python, http://people.csail.mit.edu/paulfitz/spanish/index.html.

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Protecting Al Qaeda Fighters in the War Theater

Chapter 14

In late November 2001, the Northern Alliance, supported by US bombing raids, took the hill town of Kunduz in Northern Afghanistan. Eight thousand or more men "had been trapped inside the city in the last days of the siege, roughly half of whom were Pakistanis. Afghans, Uzbeks, Chechens, and various Arab merce-naries accounted for the rest."(1)

Also among these fighters, were several senior Pakistani military and intelligence officers, who had been dispatched to the war theater by the Pakistani military.

The presence of high-ranking Pakistani military and intelli-gence advisers in the ranks of the Taliban/Al Qaeda forces was known and approved by Washington. Pakistan's military intelligence, the ISI, which was indirectly involved in the 9/11 attacks, was overseeing the operation. (For details on the links of ISI to the CIA, see chapters 2, 4 and 10.)

In a statement in the Rose Garden of the White House, President Bush confirmed America's resolve to going after the terrorists:

I said a long time ago, one of our objectives is to smoke them out and get them running and bring them to justice... I also said we'll use whatever means necessary to achieve that objective-and that's exactly what we're going to do.(2)

Most of the foreign fighters, however, were never brought to justice, nor were they detained or interrogated. In fact, quite the opposite occurred. As confirmed by Seymour Hersh, they were flown to safety on the orders of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld:

The Administration ordered the US Central Command to set up a special air corridor to help insure the safety of the Pakistani rescue flights from Kunduz to the northwest corner of Pakistan...

[Pakistan President] Musharraf won American support for the airlift by warning that the humiliation of losing hundreds-and perhaps thousands-of Pakistani Army men and intelligence operatives would jeopardize his political survival. "Clearly, there is a great willingness to help Musharraf," an American intelligence official told me [Seymour Hersh]. A CIA analyst said that it was his under-standing that the decision to permit the airlift was made by the White House and was indeed driven by a desire to protect the Pakistani leader. The airlift "made sense at the time," the CIA analyst said. "Many of the people they spirited away were the Taliban leader-ship"-who Pakistan hoped could play a role in a postwar Afghan government. According to this person, "Musharraf wanted to have these people to put another card on the table" in future political negotiations. "We were supposed to have access to them," he said, but "it didn't happen," and the rescued Taliban remain unavailable to American intelligence.

According to a former high-level American defense official, the air-lift was approved because of representations by the Pakistanis that "there were guys-intelligence agents and underground guys-who needed to get out.(3)

Out of some 8000 or more men, 3300 surrendered to the Northern Alliance, leaving between 4000 and 5000 men "unaccounted for". Indeed, according to Indian intelligence sources (quoted by Seymour Hersh), at least 4000 men including two Pakistani Army generals had been evacuated. The operation was casually described as a big mistake, leading to "unintended consequences". According to US officials:

What was supposed to be a limited evacuation, apparently slipped out of control, and, as an unintended consequence, an unknown number of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters managed to join in the exodus.(4)

An Indian Press report confirmed that those evacuated by the US were not the moderate elements of the Taliban, but rather "hard-core Taliban" and Al Qaeda fighters.(5)

"Terrorists" or "Intelligence Assets"?

The foreign and Pakistani Al Qaeda fighters were evacuated to North Pakistan as part of a military-intelligence operation led by officials of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in consultation with their CIA counterparts.

Many of these "foreign fighters" were subsequently incorpo-rated into the two main Kashmiri terrorist rebel groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Mohammed). (See Chapter 2.) In other words, one of the main consequences of the US sponsored evacuation was to reinforce these Kashmiri terrorist organizations:

Even today [March 2002], over 70 per cent of those involved in terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir are not Kashmiri youths but ISI trained Pakistani nationals. There are also a few thousand such Jehadis in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir prepared to cross the [Line of Control] LOC. It is also a matter of time before hundreds from amongst those the Bush Administration so generously allowed to be airlifted and escape from Kunduz in Afghanistan join these ter-rorists in Jammu and Kashmir.(6)

A few months following the November 2001 "Getaway", the Indian Parliament in Delhi was attacked by Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad. (See Chapter 2.)

Saving Al Qaeda Fighters, Kidnapping Civilians

Why were several thousand Al Qaeda fighters airlifted and flown to safety? Why were they not arrested and sent to the Pentagon's con-centration camp in Guantanamo?

What is the relationship between the evacuation of "foreign fighters" on the one hand and the detention (on trumped up charges) and imprisonment of so-called "enemy combatants" at the Guantanamo concentration camp.

The plight of the Guantanamo "terrorist suspects" has come to light with the release of a number of prisoners from Camp Delta in Guantanamo, after several years of captivity.

While Defense Secretary Rumsfeld claims that the Guantanamo detainees, are "vicious killers", the evidence suggests that most of those arrested and sent to Guantanamo were in fact civilians:

The Northern Alliance has received millions of dollars from the US Government, and motivated the arrest of thousands of innocent civilians in Afghanistan on the pretext they were terrorists, to help the US Government justify the "war on terror". Some Guantanamo prisoners "were grabbed by Pakistani soldiers patrolling the Afghan border who collected bounties for prisoners." Other prisoners were caught by Afghan warlords and sold for bounty offered by the US for Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Many of the prisoners are described in classified intelligence reports as "farmers, taxi drivers, cobblers, and laborers". (Testimony provided by the Lawyer of Sageer, see Appendix to this chapter by Leuren Moret.)

Whereas Al Qaeda fighters and their senior Pakistani advisers were "saved" on the orders of Donald Rumsfeld, innocent civil-ians, who had no relationship whatsoever to the war theater, were routinely categorized as "enemy combatants", kidnapped, interrogated, tortured and sent to Guantanamo. Compare, in this regard, Seymour Hersh's account in the "Getaway" with the testimonies pertaining to the deportation of innocent civilians to Guantanamo. (See Appendix to this chapter.)

This leads us to the following question. Did the Bush administration need to "recruit detainees" amidst the civilian population and pass them off as "terrorists" with a view to justifying its commitment to the "war on terrorism"? In other words, are these detentions part of the Pentagon's propaganda campaign?

Did they need to boost up the numbers "to fill the gap" resulting from the several thousand Al Qaeda fighters, who had been secretly evacuated, on the orders of Donald Rumsfeld and flown to safety?

Were these "terrorists" needed in the Kashmiri Islamic militant groups in the context of an ISI-CIA covert operation?

At least 660 people from 42 countries, were sent to the Camp Delta concentration camp in Guantanamo. While US officials continue to claim that they are "enemy combatants" arrested in Afghanistan, a large number of those detained had never set foot in Afghanistan until they were taken there by US forces. They were kidnapped as part of a Pentagon Special-access program (SAP) in several foreign countries including Pakistan, Bosnia and The Gambia on the West Coast of Africa, and taken to the US military base in Bagram, Afghanistan, before being transported to Guantanamo.

Moreover, two years later, in October 2003, the Bush adminis-tration decided to expand the facilities of the Guantanamo camp. Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), the British subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney's company Halliburton was granted a multimillion dollar contract to expand the facilities of the Guantanamo concentration camp including the construction of prisoner cells, guard barracks and interrogation rooms. The objective was to bring "detainee capacity to 1,000".(7)

Several children were held at Guantanamo, aged between 13 and 15 years old. Indeed, according to Pentagon officials,"the boys were brought to Guantanamo Bay because they were considered a threat and they had 'high value' intelligence that US authorities wanted".(8) According to Britain's Muslim News,"out of the window has gone any regard for the norms of international law and order...with Muslims liable to be kidnapped in any part of the world to be transported to Guantanamo Bay and face summary justice".(9)

Going after Al Qaeda in Northern Pakistan

Also in October 2003, the Pentagon decided to boost its counter-terrorism operations in Northern Pakistan with the support of the Pakistani military. These operations were launched in the tribal areas of northern Pakistan, following the visit to Islamabad of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca.

The operation was aired live on network TV in the months leading up to the November 2004 US presidential elections. The targets were bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, who were said to be hiding in these border regions of Northern Pakistan.

Both the Pentagon and the media described the strategy of "going after" bin Laden as a "hammer and anvil" approach,"with Pakistani troops moving into semiautonomous tribal areas on their side of the border, and Afghans and American forces sweeping the forbidding terrain on the other".(10)

In March 2004, Britain's Sunday Express, quoting "a US intelligence source" reported that:

Bin Laden and about 50 supporters had been boxed in among the Toba Kakar mountainous north of the Pakistani city of Quetta and were being watched by satellite... Pakistan then sent several thou-sand extra troops to the tribal area of South Waziristan, just to the North.(11)

In a bitter irony, it was to this Northern region of Pakistan that an estimated 4,000 Al Qaeda fighters had been airlifted in the first place, back in November 2001, on the explicit orders of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And these Al Qaeda units were also being sup-plied by Pakistan's ISI.(12)

In other words, the same units of Pakistan's military intelligence, the ISI-which coordinated the November 2001 evacuation of foreign fighters on behalf of the US-were also involved in the "hammer and anvil" search for Al Qaeda in northern Pakistan, with the support of Pakistani regular forces and US Special Forces.

From a military standpoint, it does not make sense. Evacuate the enemy to a safe-haven, and then two years later (in the months leading up to the 2004 presidential elections), "go after them" in the tribal hills of Northern Pakistan.

Why did they not arrest these Al Qaeda fighters in November 2001?

Was it incompetence or poor military planning? Or was a covert operation to safeguard and sustain "Enemy Number One"? Because without this "outside enemy" personified by Osama bin Laden, Musab Al-Zarqawi and Ayman al-Zawahri, there would be no justification for the "war on terrorism".

The terrorists are there, we put them there. And then "we go after them" and show the World in a vast media disinformation campaign that we are committed to weeding out the terrorists.

The timing of this operation in Northern Pakistan was crucial. "The war on terrorism" had become the cornerstone of Bush's 2004 presidential election campaign. The Bush campaign needed more than the rhetoric of the "war on terrorism". It needed a "real" war on terrorism, within the chosen theater of the tribal areas of Northern Pakistan, broadcast on network TV in the US and around the World.

Notes:
1. Seymour M. Hersh, "The Getaway", The New Yorker, 21 January 2002.

2. The White House, November 26, 2001.

3. Seymour Hersh, op cit.

4. Quoted in Hersh, op cit.

5. The Times of India, 24 January 2002.

6. Business Line, 4 March 2002.

7. Vanity Fair, January 2004.

8. The Washington Post, 23 August 2003.

9. Muslim News, 11 March 2004. http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/index/ press.php?pr=177

10. The Record, Kitchener, 13 March 2004.

11. Quoted in The South China Morning Post, 7 March 2004.

12. United Press International, 1 November 2001.

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Providing a Face to the Enemy: Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?

Chapter 13

The "war on terrorism" requires a humanitarian mandate. It is presented as a "Just War" to be fought on moral grounds "to redress a wrong suffered".

The Just War theory defines "good" and "evil". It concretely portrays and personifies the terrorist leaders as "evil individuals".

Several prominent American intellectuals and antiwar activists, who stand firmly opposed to the Bush administration, are nonetheless supporters of the Just War theory: "We are against war in all its forms but we support the campaign against international terrorism."

To reach its foreign policy objectives, the images of terrorism must remain vivid in the minds of the citizens, who are constantly reminded of the terrorist threat.

The propaganda campaign presents the portraits of the leaders behind the terror network. In other words, at the level of what constitutes an "advertising" campaign, "it gives a face to terror".

The "war on terrorism" rests on the creation of one or more evil bogeymen, the terror leaders, Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, et al., whose names and photos are presented ad nauseam in daily news reports.

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi: New Terrorist Mastermind

Since the war on Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi has been presented to World public opinion as the new terrorist mastermind, over-shadowing "Enemy Number One", Osama bin Laden.

The US State Department has increased the reward for his arrest from $10 million to $25 million, which puts his "market value" at par with that of Osama. Ironically, Al-Zarqawi is not on the FBI most wanted fugitives' list.(1)

Al-Zarqawi is often described in official government statements as well as in media reports as an "Osama associate", allegedly responsible for numerous terrorist attacks in several countries. In other reports, often emanating from the same sources, he is said to have no links to Al Qaeda and to operate quite independently. He is often presented as an individual who is challenging the lead-ership of bin Laden.

Osama belongs to the powerful bin Laden family, which has business ties to the Bushes and prominent members of the Texas oil establishment. Osama bin Laden was recruited by the CIA during the Soviet-Afghan war and fought as a Mujahideen. In other words, there is a longstanding documented history of bin Laden-CIA and bin Laden-Bush family links, which are an obvious source of embarrassment to the US Government. (See Chapter 2)

In contrast to bin Laden, Al-Zarqawi has no family history. He comes from an impoverished Palestinian family in Jordan. His par-ents are dead. He emerges out of the blue.

"Lone Wolf"

Al-Zarqawi is described by CNN as "a lone wolf" who is said to act quite independently of the Al Qaeda network. Yet surprisingly, this "lone wolf" is present in several countries, in Iraq, which is now his base, but also in Western Europe. He is also suspected of preparing a terrorist attack on American soil.

The media reports suggest that he is in several places at the same time. He is described as "the chief US enemy","a master of disguise and bogus identification papers". We are led to believe that this "lone wolf" manages to outwit the most astute US intelligence operatives.

According to the Weekly Standard-which is known to have a close relationship to the Neocons in the Bush administration:

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is hot right now. He masterminded not only [Nicholas] Berg's murder [in 2004] but also the Madrid carnage on March 11 [2004], the bombardment of Shia worshippers in Iraq the same month, and the April 24 [2004] suicide attack on the port of Basra. But he is far from a newcomer to slaughter. Well before 9/11, he had already concocted a plot to kill Israeli and American tourists in Jordan. His label is on terrorist groups and attacks on four continents.(2)

Al-Zarqawi's profile "is mounting a challenge to bin Laden's leadership of the global jihad."

In Iraq, according to press reports, he is preparing to "ignite a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites". But is that not precisely what US intelligence is aiming at ("divide and rule") as confirmed by several analysts of the US led war? Pitting one group against the other with a view to weakening the resistance movement.(3)

The CIA, with its $40 billion plus budget, pleads ignorance: they say they know nothing about him, they have a photograph, but, according to the Weekly Standard, they apparently do not know his weight or height.

The aura of mystery surrounding this individual is part of the propaganda ploy. Zarqawi is described as "so secretive even some operatives who work with him do not know his identity."(4)

Consistent Media Pattern

What is the role of this new terrorist mastermind in the Pentagon's disinformation campaign?
In previous war propaganda ploys, the CIA hired Public Relations firms to organize core disinformation campaigns. In 1990, the British PR firm Hill and Knowlton launched the 1990 Kuwaiti incubator media scam, where Kuwaiti babies were allegedly removed from incubators in a totally fabricated news story, which was then used to get Congressional approval for the 1991 Gulf War.

Almost immediately in the wake of a terrorist event or warning, US network television announces (in substance) that, they think this mysterious individual Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is possibly behind it, invariably without presenting supporting evidence, and prior to the conduct of an investigation by the relevant police and intelligence authorities.

In some cases, upon the immediate occurrence of the terrorist event, there is an initial report which mentions Al-Zarqawi as the possible mastermind. The report will often say (in substance) that they think he did it, but it is not yet confirmed and there is some doubt on the identity of those behind the attack. One or two days later, the reports will be confirmed, at which time CNN may come up with a more definitive statement, quoting official police, military and/or intelligence sources.

Often the CNN report is based on information published on an Islamic website, or a mysterious video or audio tape. The authenticity of the website and/or the tapes is not the object of discus-sion or detailed investigation.

The news reports never mention that Al-Zarqawi was recruited by the CIA to fight in the Soviet-Afghan war, as acknowledged by Secretary Colin Powell in his presentation to the UN Security Council on 5 February 2003. (See Chapter 11.) Moreover, the press usually presents the terrorist warnings emanating from the CIA as genuine, without acknowledging the fact that US intelligence has provided covert support to the Islamic militant network consistently for more than 20 years. (See Chapters 1 and 3.)

History of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi's name was first mentioned in relation to the thwarted attack on the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman, Jordan, during the December 1999 millennium celebrations. According to press reports, he had previously gone under another name: Ahmed Fadil Al-Khalayleh, among several other aliases.

An Al-Zarqawi legend was in the making. According to The New York Times , Al-Zarqawi is said to have fled Afghanistan to Iran in late 2001, following the entry of US troops. According to news reports, he had been "collaborating with hard-liners" in the Iranian military and intelligence apparatus:

United States intelligence officials say they are increasingly concerned by the mounting evidence of Tehran's renewed interest in terrorism [and support to Al-Zarqawi], including covert surveillance by Iranian agents of possible American targets abroad. American officials said Iran appeared to view terrorism as [a] deterrent against [a] possible attack by the United States.

Since the surprise election of reformer Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran in 1997 and his wide public support, Washington has been counting on a new moderate political majority to emerge. But the hard-line faction has maintained its grip on Iran's security apparatus, frustrating American efforts to ease tensions with Tehran.

Now, Iranian actions to destabilize the new interim government in Afghanistan, its willingness to assist Al Qaeda members and its fuelling of the Palestinian uprising are prompting a reassessment in Washington, officials say.(5)

Presenting the Tehran government as having links to Al Qaeda was part of an evolving disinformation campaign, consisting in portraying Iran as a sponsor of the "Islamic terror network".

Turning Point in the Disinformation Campaign

In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Al-Zarqawi's name reemerges, this time almost on a daily basis, with reports focusing on his "sinister relationship to Saddam Hussein".

A major turning point in the propaganda campaign occurs on February 5, 2003 at the United Nations Security Council, follow-ing Colin Powell's historic address to the UN body.

Focussing on the central role of Al-Zarqawi, Secretary Colin Powell presented detailed "documentation" on the ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and linked this "sinister nexus" to Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction:

Our concern is not just about these illicit weapons; it's the way that these illicit weapons can be connected to terrorists and terrorist organizations...

But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.

Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan War more than a decade ago [as a Mujahideen recruited by the CIA]. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of the specialities of this camp is poisons...

We know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi because they remain, even today, in regular contact with his direct subordinates, including the poison cell plotters. And they are involved in moving more than money and materiel. Last year, two suspected Al Qaeda operatives were arrested crossing from Iraq into Saudi Arabia. They were linked to associates of the Baghdad cell, and one of them received training in Afghanistan on how to use cyanide.

From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi can direct his network in the Middle East and beyond. [Al-Zarqawi is presented here as being active in several countries at the same time.]...

According to detainees, Abu Atiya, who graduated from Zarqawi's terrorist camp in Afghanistan, tasked at least nine North African extremists in 2001 to travel to Europe to conduct poison and explosive attacks. Since last year, members of this network have been apprehended in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last count, 116 operatives connected to this global web have been arrested. The chart you are seeing shows the network in Europe.

We know about this European network, and we know about its links to Zarqawi, because the detainee who provided the information about the targets also provided the names of members of the net-work...

We also know that Zarqawi's colleagues have been active in the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia, and in Chechnya, Russia. The plotting to which they are linked is not mere chatter. Members of Zarqawi's net-work say their goal was to kill Russians with toxins.

We are not surprised that Iraq is harboring Zarqawi and his subordinates. This understanding builds on decades-long experience with respect to ties between Iraq and al Qaeda...

As I said at the outset, none of this should come as a surprise to any of us. Terrorism has been a tool used by Saddam for decades. Saddam was a supporter of terrorism long before these terrorist networks had a name, and this support continues. The nexus of poisons and terror is new; the nexus of Iraq and terror is old. The combination is lethal.

With this track record, Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take their place alongside the other Iraqi denials of weapons of mass destruction. It is all a web of lies. When we confront a regime that harbors ambitions for regional domination, hides weapons of mass destruction, and provides haven and active support for terrorists, we are not confronting the past, we are confronting the present. And unless we act, we are confronting an even more frightening future.(6)

Following Powell's February 2003 UN Security Council presentation, Al-Zarqawi immediately gained in public notoriety as a terrorist mastermind involved in planning chemical and biological weapons attacks.

The Ansar Al-Islam Connection

Based on fake intelligence, Secretary Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council consisted in linking the secular Baathist regime to the "Islamic terror network", with a view to justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

According to Powell, Al-Zarqawi had been working hand in glove with Ansar Al-Islam, an obscure Islamist group, based in Northern Iraq.

In the wake of 9/11, Ansar had allegedly been responsible for plotting terror attacks in a number of countries including France, Britain, and Germany. US officials had also pointed to the sinister role of Iraq's embassy in Islamabad, which was allegedly used as a liaison between Ansar Al-Islam operatives and representatives of the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein.

Ironically, Ansar was allowed to develop in a region which had been under US military control since the 1991 Gulf War, namely Kurdish held Northern Iraq. This region-which was in "the no fly zone"-was not under the control of the Saddam government. It became a de facto US protectorate in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War.

There was no evidence of Saddam Hussein's support to Ansar Al-Islam. In fact, quite the opposite. The US military authorities stationed in the region had turned a blind eye to the presence of alleged Islamic terrorists. With virtually no interference from the US military, "Al Qaida affiliates [had] been operating freely in the [regional] capital, ...coordinating the movement of people, money and supplies for Ansar al-Islam".(7)

The spiritual founder of Ansar Al-Islam, Mullah Krekar con-firmed that "like most militant Islamists, [he] hates Saddam." At the time of the US invasion of Iraq, Mullah Krekar was living in Norway, where he had refugee status. "The US has not requested his arrest. If Iraq is guilty of occasional meetings with second-level Al Qaeda operatives, then what is the Norwegian government guilty of?"(8)

Ansar Al-Islam was largely involved in terrorist attacks directed against the secular institutions of the Kurdish regional govern-ments. It was also involved in assassinations of members of the Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

In fact in the days following Colin Powell's February 5, 2003 presentation to the United Nations Security Council, a senior military leader of PUK forces General Shawkat Haj Mushir was assas-sinated allegedly by Ansar Al-Islam.(9) Surrounded in mystery, the assassination of Shawkat was barely mentioned in the US press.

In the days following Colin Powell's February 5, 2003 UN address, the Iraqi foreign ministry clarified in an official statement that:

the Iraqi government [of Saddam Hussein] helped the [PUK] Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani against the Ansar al-Islam group. He [the spokesman] accused Ansar al-Islam of carrying out acts of sabotage inside Iraq...[and] that the United States had turned down an Iraqi offer to cooperate on the issue of terrorism.(10)

While accusing Baghdad of links to the terror network, the presence and activities of Islamic fundamentalist groups in Northern Iraq was largely serving US interests.

These groups were committed to the establishment of a Muslim theocracy. They had contributed to triggering political instability while at the same time weakening the institutions of the two dom-inant secular Kurdish parties, both of which had been on occasion been involved in negotiations with the government of Saddam Hussein.

Quoting a "top secret British document", the BBC revealed on the very same day Colin Powell made his presentation to the UN Security Council (5 February 2003): "that there is nothing but enmity between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The BBC said the leak came from [British] intelligence officials upset that their work was being used to justify war."(11)

Moreover, the powerful Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which plays a behind the scenes role in US military planning also refuted the substance of Colin Powell's statement to the UN Security Council concerning the links between the Iraqi government and the Islamic terror network. (This refutation is all the more serious, in view of the fact that these alleged links were used as a justifica-tion for the invasion of Iraq.):

The question of Iraqi links to Al Qaeda remains murky, although senior Bush administration officials insist such ties exist... [M]any experts and State Department officials note that any Al Qaeda pres-ence in Iraq probably lies in northern regions beyond Saddam's control. Many experts say there is scant evidence of ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq, noting that Al Qaeda's loathing for "impious"Arab governments makes it an unlikely bedfellow for Saddam's secular regime.(12)

Mysterious Chemical-Biological Weapons Plant in Northern Iraq

The substance of Powell's UN statement with regard to Al-Zarqawi rested on the existence of an Ansar al-Islam chemical-biological weapons plant in Northern Iraq which was producing ricin, sarin and other biological weapons, to be used in terror attacks on the US and Western Europe:

When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in North-Eastern Iraq.

The network is teaching its operative how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch-imagine a pinch of salt-less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food would cause shock, followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no anti-dote. There is no cure. It is fatal.

Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq, but Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000, this agent offered Al Qaeda safe haven in the region. After we swept Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today.

The above statement by Colin Powell, concerning the North Iraqi facility where the ricin was being produced, was refuted by several media reports, prior to the US-led invasion:

There is no sign of chemical weapons anywhere-only the smell of paraffin and vegetable butter used for cooking. In the kitchen, I discovered some chopped up tomatoes but not much else. The cook had left his Kalashnikov propped neatly against the wall. Ansar al-Islam-the Islamic group that uses the compound identified as a military HQ by Powell-yesterday invited me and several other foreign journalists into their territory for the first time. "We are just a group of Muslims trying to do our duty," Mohammad Hasan, spokesman for Ansar al-Islam, explained."We don't have any drugs for our fighters. We don't even have any aspirin. How can we produce any chemicals or weapons of mass destruction?"(13)

The intelligence contained in Colin Powell's UN statement had been fabricated. At the height of the military invasion of Iraq, a few weeks later, US Special Forces, together with their "embedded" journalists, entered the alleged chemical-biological weapons facility in Northern Iraq. Their report also refutes Colin Powell's state-ments to the UN body:

What they [US Special Forces] found was a camp devastated by cruise missile strikes during the first days of the war. A specialized bio-chemical team scoured the rubble for samples. They wore protective masks as they entered a building they suspected was a weapons lab. Inside they found mortar shells, medical supplies, and grim prison cells, but no immediate proof of chemical or biological agents. For this unit, such evidence would have been a so-called smoking gun, proof that it has banned weapons. But instead, this was a disappointing day for these troops on the front line of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction here. Jim Sciutto, ABC News, with US Special Forces in Northern Iraq.(14)

The Alleged Ricin Threat in the US

On February 8, 2003, three days after Colin Powell's UN speech, the ricin threat reemerged, this time in the US. Al-Zarqawi was said to be responsible for "the suspicious white powder found in a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist which contained the [same] deadly poison ricin."(15)

In a CIA report which was supposedly "leaked" to Newsweek, a group of CIA analysts predicted authoritatively that:

"[There was] a 59 percent probability that an attack on the US homeland involving WMD would occur before 31 March 2003." ...It all seems so precise and frightening: a better than 90 percent chance that Saddam will succeed in hitting America with a weapon spewing radiation, germs or poison. But it is important to remember that the odds are determined by averaging a bunch of guesses, informed perhaps, but from experts whose careers can only be ruined by under-estimating the threat.(16)

The picture of "terrorist mastermind"Al-Zarqawi was featured prominently in Newsweek's cover story article.

In the National Review (February 18, 2003), one month before the onslaught of the invasion of Iraq, Al-Zarqawi was described as Al Qaeda's "chief biochemical engineer":

It is widely known that Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's chief biochemical engi-neer, was at the safe house in Afghanistan where traces of ricin and other poisons were originally found. What is not widely known-but was briefly alluded to in Sec. Powell's UN address-is that starting in the mid-1990s, Iraq's embassy in Islamabad routinely played host to Saddam's biochemical scientists, some of whom interacted with al Qaeda operatives, including Zarqawi and his lab technicians, under the diplomatic cover of the Taliban embassy nearby to teach them the art of mixing poisons from home grown and readily available raw materials.(17)

Radioactive Dirty Bombs

In the immediate aftermath of Powell's speech, there was a code orange alert. Reality had been turned upside down. The US was not attacking Iraq. Iraq was preparing to attack America with the support of "Islamic terrorists". Official statements also pointed to the dangers of a dirty radioactive bomb attack in the US. Again Al-Zarqawi was identified as the number one suspect.(18)

Meanwhile, Al-Zarqawi had been identified as the terror mas-termind behind the (thwarted) ricin attacks in several European countries including Britain and Spain, in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

Britain's Ricin Threat

In January 2003, there was a ricin terror alert, which supposedly had also been ordered by Al-Zarqawi. The ricin had allegedly been discovered in a London apartment. It was to be used in a terror attack in the London subway. British press reports, quoting official statements claimed that the terrorists had learnt to produce the ricin at the Ansar al-Islam camp in Northern Iraq.

Two years later, the police investigation revealed that the ricin threats in Britain had been fabricated, and Britain's system of jus-tice had been "tailored to a time of terror":

There was no ricin and no Al Qaeda recipe, only a formula apparently confected by a white American Christian survivalist and downloaded from the Internet. Even if Bourgass, a nasty and deluded loner, had managed to create his poison and smear it on car-door handles, it would not have worked. Had Bourgass the poisoner devoted himself to creating the perfect Nigella chickpea couscous, he could hardly have been a less likely mass exterminator...

In the absence of chemical poison, a war against Iraq, a fake link between Al Qaeda and Saddam and a double helping of contempt of court were brewed up on Kamel Bourgass's hob. Tony Blair, David Blunkett, Colin Powell and senior police officers all used the arrests to illustrate the existence of a new breed of Islamist super-terrorist. A criminal prosecution was exploited to fit a political agenda. A war was justified and civil liberties imperiled by the ricin stash that never was.

Lawyers for the eight cleared men are outraged at the way their clients have been portrayed by the media and politicians, and there is so little acknowledgment of a just result, from the Home Office and elsewhere, that one wonders if dodgy convictions would have left some politicians more satisfied. Meanwhile, a new terror law, more draconian than expected, is in the Labour manifesto, pushing crim-inal trials for those who "glorify or condone acts of terror".

The affair of the sham ricin casts a long shadow over the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the credulous sensationalists of the media and, most of all, over politicians...

Eight innocent men were presumed guilty. Ten others held for two years without charge reportedly had non-existent links to the ricin plot cited on their government control orders.(19)

It is worth mentioning that "authoritative" news stories on the ricin threat as well as the (nonexistent) chemical weapons plants in Northern Iraq, continued to be churned out in the wake of the invasion, despite the fact that official reports confirmed that they did not exist. In a June 2004 report in the Washington Times:

Zarqawi stands as stark evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein's autocratic regime and bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network. Zarqawi, 38, operated a terrorist camp in northern Iraq that specialized in developing poisons and chemical weapons.

The Spanish Connection

In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, fabricated threats of chemical weapons attacks had emerged in several countries at the same time. Was the disinformation campaign being coordinated by intelligence officials in several countries?

In Spain, in the months prior to the March 2003 invasion, Bush's indefectible coalition partner, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar had initiated his own disinformation campaign, no doubt in liaison with the office of the US Secretary of State.

The timing seemed perfect: on the very same day Colin Powell was presenting the Al-Zarqawi dossier to the UN (focussing on the sinister chemical weapons facility in Northern Iraq), Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was busy briefing the Spanish parliament on an alleged chemical terror attack in Spain, in which Al-Zarqawi was supposedly also involved.

According to Prime Minister Aznar, Al-Zarqawi had established links to a number of European Islamic "collaborators" including Merouane Ben Ahmed,"an expert in chemistry and explosives who
visited Barcelona".(20)

Prime Minister Aznar confirmed in his speech to the Chamber of Deputies (Camera de diputados) on the 5th of February 2001 that the sixteen Al Qaeda suspects, allegedly in possession of explo-sives and lethal chemicals, had been working hand in glove with "terrorist mastermind" Al-Zarqawi.

Prime Minister Aznar's statements concerning these "lethal chemical weapons in the hands of terrorists" was also based on fabricated intelligence. An official report of the Spanish Ministry of Defense confirmed that "the tests on chemicals seized from 16 suspected Al Qaeda men in Spain...have revealed that they are harmless and some were household detergent."(21)

A defense ministry lab outside Madrid tested the substances-a bag containing more than half a pound of powder and several bottles or containers with liquids or residues-for the easy-to-make bio-logical poison ricin... The Spanish defense ministry, which car-ried out the tests, and the lab itself declined to comment.(22)

3/11: The Madrid 11 March 2004 Train Bombing

In the wake of the US led invasion of Iraq, Al-Zarqawi's name was being routinely associated, without supporting evidence, with numerous terror threats and incidents in Western Europe and the US.

While the press reports regarding the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombing did not generally point to Al-Zarqawi's involvement, they nonetheless hinted that the Moroccan group which allegedly "supervised the bombings in Madrid, [was] acting [according to the CIA] as a link between Al-Zarqawi and a cell of mostly Moroccan Al Qaeda members."(23)

This type of reporting, which broadly replicates the sinister relationship described by Prime Minister Aznar in his February 5, 2003 statement to the Spanish Parliament, provides a face to the out-side enemy.

Two days after the 3/11 Madrid bombing, CNN reported, quot-ing US intelligence sources, that Al-Zarqawi, described as "a lone wolf", might be planning attacks on "soft targets" in Western Europe:

LISOVICZ: And Jonathan, specifically, Abu Musaab Al-Zarqawi is someone you have described as Al Qaeda 2.0, which is pretty scary.

SCHANZER: Yes. Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is the man we caught; we intercepted his memo last month. US intelligence officials found this memo. It indicated that he was trying to continue to carry out attacks against the United States.

CAFFERTY: Where do we stand in your opinion on this war on terrorism? We have got this terrible situation in Madrid. We've got this fellow, Zarqawi, you are talking about, the lone Wolf that is active, some think inside Iraq. We have got terrorist attacks happening there. There is discussion all over Western Europe of fear of terrorism, possibly being about to increase there. Are we winning this war or are we los-ing it? What is your read?

SCHANZER: I think we're winning it. We've certainly-I mean counterterrorism at its core is just restricting the terrorist environment. So we've cut down on the amount of finances moving around in the terrorist world. We have arrested a number of key figures. So we are doing a good job.(24)

"Are we winning or loosing" the war on terrorism. "We are doing a good job." These catch phrases are part of the disinformation campaign. While they acknowledge "weaknesses" in US countert-errorism, their function is to justify enhanced military-intelligence operations against this illusive individual, who is confronting US military might, all over the World.

The April 2004 Osama Tape

Meanwhile, another mysterious Osama tape (April 2004) had emerged in which bin Laden acknowledged his responsibility for the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the 3/11 train bombing in Madrid in March 2004:

"I [Osama] am offering a truce to European countries, and its core is our commitment to cease operations against any country which does not carry out an onslaught against Muslims or interfere in their affairs as part of the big American conspiracy against the Islamic world... The truce will begin when the last soldier leaves our countries. ...Whoever wants reconciliation and the right (way), then we are the ones who initiated it, so stop spilling our blood so we can stop spilling your blood... What happened on September 11 and March 11 was your goods delivered back to you.(25)

In other words, Osama bin Laden offers "a truce" if the various European countries involved in Iraq accept to withdraw their troops. In return, Al Qaeda will declare a moratorium on terrorist attacks in Europe.

Without further investigation, the Western media described the controversial April 2004 Osama tape as an attempt by "Enemy Number One" to create a rift between America and its European allies.

The tape in all likelihood was a hoax of US intelligence. The propaganda ploy consists not only in upholding the US-led occupation of Iraq as part of the broader "war on terrorism", it also provides a pretext to European governments, pressured by citizens movements, to turn a blind eye to the US-UK sponsored war crimes in Iraq. In the words of France's President Jacques Chirac, "nothing can justify terrorism and, on that basis, nothing can allow any discussion with terrorists."

Underlying the Osama tape is the presumption that the "extremists" in Iraq are the same people responsible for the 9/11 and 3/11 terrorist attacks. It follows, according to one US press report, that the "anti-war zealots", by opposing the US led occupation, are in fact providing ammunition to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda:

Bin Laden's deranged fantasies are frighteningly similar to those many anti-war zealots harbor both here and abroad.... He also apparently tries to justify the attacks of 9/11 as retaliation for US support for Jews in Palestine, and US invasions in the Gulf War and Somalia. "Our actions are reactions to your actions," he said.

This is gibberish, but it is typical of a megalomaniacal mind. Even Hitler, after all, insisted his attack on Poland was in self-defense. Evil often comes cloaked in the counterfeit robes of virtue.

But it's also easy to see how such arguments can gain traction among impoverished Arabs who long have been repressed by their own governments and are searching for answers.

The United States should be grateful for this latest tape. It puts a lot of things in perspective. Europe and the United States are at war together, and the enemy is someone of flesh and blood who can be frightened-enough so that he feels it necessary to propose a truce.(26)

Al-Zarqawi and the Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal

The Abu Ghraib torture scandal, including the release of the pho-tographs of tortured POWs, reached its climax with the broadcast of CBS's "60 Minutes" hosted by Dan Rather on the 28th of April 2004.(27)

Within days of an impending scandal involving the upper ech-elons of the Pentagon, which directly implicated Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Al-Zarqawi was reported to be planning simultaneous large scale terrorist attacks in several countries, including a major terrorist operation in Jordan.

With Al-Zarqawi featured prominently on network television, these reports served to usefully distract public attention from the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

A mysterious videotape was released, describing in minute detail how "terrorist mastermind" Al-Zarqawi was planning to wage a major attack inside Jordan. The alleged attack consisted in using "a combination of 71 lethal chemicals, including blistering agents to cause third-degree burns, nerve gas and choking agents, which would have formed a lethal toxic cloud over a square mile of the capital, Amman".(28)

According to the news reports, "the alleged terrorist plot was just days away from execution". The targets were the Jordanian intelligence headquarters, the prime minister's office and the US Embassy. According to CNN, which broadcast excerpts of the mys-terious videotape, "the Jordanian government fears the death toll could have run into the thousands, more deadly even than 9/11".(29)

[In CNN's coverage], Jordanian special forces [are] raiding an apartment house in Amman in the hunt for an al Qaeda cell. Some of the suspects are killed, others arrested, ending what Jordanian intelli-gence says was a bold plan to use chemical weapons and truck bombs in their capital... The Jordanian government fears the death toll could have run into the thousands, more deadly even than 9/11.

For the first time the alleged plotters were interviewed on video-tape, aired on Jordanian TV. CNN obtained copies of the tapes from the Jordanians. This man revealing his orders came from a man named Azme Jayoussi, the cell's alleged ringleader.

HUSSEIN SHARIF (through translator): The aim of this operation was to strike Jordan and the Hashemite royal family, a war against the crusaders and infidels. Azme told me that this would be the first chemical suicide attack that al Qaeda would execute.

VAUSE: Also appearing on the tape, Azme Jayoussi, who says his orders came from this man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the same man the US says is behind many of the violent attacks in Iraq.

AZME JAYOUSSI,ACCUSED PLOTTER (through translator): I took advanced explosives course, poisons, high level, then I pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to obey him without any questioning, to be on his side. After this Afghanistan fell. I met Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.(30)

Al-Zarqawi 's "Attack on America"

Two days later on the 29 April 2004, immediately following the reports on the terrorist threat in Jordan, the State Department announced that Al-Zarqawi was now planning a similar chemical weapons attack on America.(31)

The " freelancer" and "lone wolf, ...acting alone in the name of Al Qaeda" had been crossing international borders unnoticed. One day, he's in Jordan, the next day in the US, and back again a few days later in Iraq.

According to the US State Department Annual Report on Terrorism, quoted by CNN:

[T]he number of terrorist attacks around the world declined last year, but the government's annual report on terrorism includes a chilling warning about the year ahead... The State Department says terrorists are planning an attack on US soil. High on their anxiety list, terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.

[According to the State Department's Coordinator for Counter-terrorism, Cofer Black] "He [Al-Zarqawi] is representative of a very real and credible threat. His operatives are planning and attempt-ing now to attack American targets, and we are after them with a vengeance.(32)

The State Department report was released on the same day as the CBS's "60 Minutes" program on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

The Nicholas Berg Execution

Barely a couple of weeks later, Al-Zarqawi is named as the mastermind behind the execution in Iraq of Nicholas Berg on May 11, 2004. Media coverage of Berg's terrible death was based on a mys-terious report (and video) on an Islamic website, which according to CNN provided evidence that Al-Zarqawi might be involved:

ENSOR: The Web site claims that the killing was done by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist whose al Qaeda affiliated group is held responsible by US intelligence for a string of bombings in Iraq and for the killing of an American diplomat in Amman. CNN Arab linguists say, however, that the voice on the tape has the wrong accent. They do not believe it is Zarqawi. US officials said the killers tried to take advantage of the prison abuse controversy to gain attention...

BROWN: So, the administration said today we'll track these people down.We will get them beyond, I guess, this belief that Zarqawi somehow was involved. Are there any clues out there that we heard about?

ENSOR: This is going to be very, very difficult. They've been look-ing for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for several years now. There's a large price on his head. He's been blowing up a lot of things in Iraq according to him and according to US intelligence. They don't know where he is, so it's-I don't think they have any clues right now, at least none that I know of-Aaron.(33)

While initially expressing doubts on the identity of the masked individual, a subsequent and more definitive report, based on "authoritative intelligence", was aired two days later by CNN on 13 May 2004:

The CIA confirms that Nicholas Berg's killer was Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi; The CIA acknowledges sticking to strict rules in tough interrogations of top al Qaeda prisoners.

BLITZER Because originally our own linguists here at CNN suspected that-they listened to this audiotape and they didn't think that it sounded like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But now definitively, the experts at the CIA say it almost certainly is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?

ENSOR: They say it almost certainly is. There's just a disagreement between the CNN linguists and the CIA linguists. The US Government now believes that the person speaking on that tape and killing Nick Berg on that tape is the actual man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.(34)

The report on the Nicholas Berg assassination, coincided with calls by US senators for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. It occurred a few days after President Bush's "apology" for the Abu Ghraib prison "abuses". It served once again to distract public attention from the war crimes ordered by key members of the Bush Administration.

Authenticity of the Video

The video footage published on the website was called "Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi shows killing of an American".

While CIA experts released a statement saying that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi "was the man in the mask who beheaded the US citizen Nick Berg in front of a camera," several reports question the authenticity of the video.(35)

Al-Zarqawi is Jordanian. Yet the man in the video "posing as Jordanian native Zarqawi does not speak the Jordanian dialect. Zarqawi has an artificial leg, but none of these murderers did. The man presented as Zarqawi had a yellow ring, presumably a golden one, which Muslim men are banned from wearing, especially so-called fundamentalists."(36)

When the issue of his artificial leg was mentioned in relation to the video, US officials immediately revised their story, stating they were not quite sure whether he had actually lost a leg: "US intelligence officials, who used to believe that Zarqawi had lost a leg in Afghanistan, recently revised that assessment, concluding that he still has both legs."(37)

Nicholas Berg was assassinated. The identity of the killers was not firmly established. Moreover, there were a number of other aspects pertaining to the video, which suggested that it was a fake.

Another report stated that Zarqawi was dead.

The audio was not in synchrony with the video, indicating that the video footage might have been manipulated.

The Iraqi Resistance Movement

In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, the disinformation campaign consisted in presenting the Iraqi resistance movement as "terrorists".

The image of "terrorists" fighting US peacekeepers is presented on television screens across the globe.

Portrayed as an evil enemy, Al-Zarqawi was used profusely in Bush's press conferences and speeches, in an obvious public relations ploy:

You know, I hate to predict violence, but I just understand the nature of the killers. This guy, Zarqawi, an al Qaeda associate-who was in Baghdad, by the way, prior to the removal of Saddam Hussein-is still at large in Iraq. And as you might remember, part of his operational plan was to sow violence and discord amongst the various groups in Iraq by cold-blooded killing. And we need to help find Zarqawi so that the people of Iraq can have a more bright-bright future.(38)

The portrait of terror mastermind Al-Zarqawi was used to personify the Iraqi resistance.
In an almost routine and repetitive fashion, his name is linked to the numerous "terrorist attacks" in Iraq against the US led-occupation.

While the Western media highlights these various occurrences including the kidnappings of paid mercenaries, on contract to Western security firms, there is a deafening silence on the massacre of more than one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians by coalition forces, since the beginning of the US-led occupation in April 2003.(39)

The 2004-2005 operation in Fallujah, which resulted in several thousand civilian deaths, was casually described by the Bush admin-istration as "a crackdown" against extremists working under the leadership of Al-Zarqawi. According to official statements, Al Qaeda mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Fallujah, which had become a so-called "hotbed for foreign fighters". In the words of Newsweek:"Saddam may not have had direct ties to Al Qaeda, but the Jihadists are eager to fill his shoes."(40)

In other words, the Bush administration needs Al-Zarqawi and the "war on terrorism" as a justification for the killing of civilians in Iraq, which it continues to describe as "collateral damage".

Consistently, a barrage of media reports had surfaced on Al Qaeda links to the Iraqi resistance movement. The insurgents are described as Islamic extremists and fundamentalists: "hard-line Sunnis, foreign extremists, and, now, Sadr and his disenfranchised Shiite followers".41

The secular character of the resistance movement is denied. In a completely twisted logic, Al Qaeda is said to constitute a signifi-cant force behind the Iraqi insurgents.

The disinformation campaign ultimately consists in convincing the US public that the "Defense of the Homeland" and the occupation of Iraq are part of the same process and involving the
same enemy. In the words of former CIA Director James Woolsey in a CNN interview:

Iraqi intelligence, trained al Qaeda in poison gases and conventional explosives. And had senior-level contacts going back a decade. And the Islamists from the Sunni side, from the al Qaeda, work with people like Hezbollah. They're perfectly happy to work together against us. It's sort of like three Mafia families, but they insult each other, but can still cooperate.... I think it's Islamist totalitarians masquerading as part of a religion. Certainly if anybody in the intelligence community is surprised by this, the really surprising thing would be that they are really surprised. Some of them have had an idea fix for a long time, that al Qaeda would never work with the Ba'athist and the Shiite Islamist would never work with the Sunni. It's just nuts. They work together on important things. It's not that one necessarily controls the other. It's not sort of like state sponsorship, but cooperation, support here and there against us, sure, they've been doing it for years and years and years.(42)

New Propaganda Ploy

As the resistance movement in Iraq unfolds and challenges the US military occupation, Al-Zarqawi is increasingly portrayed by the media as the main obstacle to the holding of "free and fair elec-tions" in Iraq.

Barely a week prior to the January 2005 Iraqi elections spon-sored and organized by the Bush administration, with the support of the "international community," another mysterious Al-Zarqawi audiotape surfaced on the Internet.

While the news reports initially stated that "the authenticity of the tape could not be determined", they later confirmed, quoting "authoritative intelligence" that "the voice in the tape appeared to be that of Al-Zarqawi". In his own words, Al-Zarqawi had now declared "a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology".(43)

The Al-Zarqawi pre-election audiotape usefully served the disinformation campaign, by underscoring the evil and insidious links between Al-Zarqawi and former Saddam regime loyalists.

Secular Sunni Baathists and jihadists are said to have joined hands. In the Zarqawi audiotape, the Shiite majority is presented as "evil", serving to create divisions within Iraqi society:

The leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose "young lions" are attacking polling stations and killing candidates, has described Shias as "the most evil of mankind...the lurking snakes and the crafty scorpions, the spying enemy and the pene-trating venom". Understanding that elections favor the majority, he said that the US had engineered the poll to get a Shia government into power.(44)

Again, reality is turned upside down. The existence of an Iraqi resistance movement to the US-led occupation is denied. The "insurgents" are "terrorists" opposed to democracy. Al-Zarqawi is pinpointed as attempting to sabotage what both the American and European media have described in chorus as "the first democratic elections in half a century". Meanwhile, the US-UK military man-date in Iraq is upheld by the "international community" and Washington's European allies.

"Clash of Civilizations"

With Iraq under continued US military occupation, the propaganda ploy now consists in focussing on the "clash of civilizations": the great divide between the societies of the Islamic Middle East and the Judeo-Christian West. Whereas the latter is recognized as "a moral system" closely associated with modern forms of Western democracy, the former is said to be entrenched in theocratic and authoritarian forms of government, dominated directly or indirectly by the tenets of Islamic fundamentalism.

It is on the premises of this "clash of civilizations" that America has formulated its messianic mission "to spread liberty in the world". In the words of President George W. Bush, there is "no neutral ground in the fight between civilisation and terror"

"The clash of civilizations," as described by Samuel Huntington, had become an integral part of the propaganda campaign.

Islam is not only heralded as being broadly "un-democratic" and incompatible with a (Western) system of representative gov-ernment, the jihadists-including bin Laden and Al-Zarqawi are ushered in as the sole spokesmen for an Iraqi "insurgency" described in press reports and on network television, as being composed of "terrorists" and "criminal gangs":

The questions Zarqawi raises go way beyond the elections in Iraq to the whole issue of modernization of the Arab world. Is democracy un-Islamic? Is there a fundamental clash between the principles of representative government and the principles of Islam?(45)

Meanwhile, the illegality of the US occupation under international law and the Nuremberg charter goes unmentioned.

Under the disguise of "peace-keeping", the United Nations is actively collaborating with the occupying forces. The deaths of thou-sands of civilians, the torture chambers and the concentration camps, the destruction of an entire country's infrastructure-not to mention the issue of the missing "weapons of mass destruction"- have been overshadowed by the fabricated image of an American commitment to democracy and post-war reconstruction.

Notes:

1. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),"FBI Most Wanted" at http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/topten/fugitives/fugitives.htm.

2. Weekly Standard, 24 May 2004.

3. See Michel Collon, "Washington has Found the Solution 'Let's Divide Iraq as We Did in Yugoslavia!'", Centre for Research on Globalization, 23 December 2003, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/COL312A.html. See also Vladimir Radyuhin, "From Kosovo to Iraq", The Hindu, 18 August 2003.

4. Washington Times, 8 June 2004.

5. New York Times, 24 March 2002.

6. US Secretary of State Colin Powell's address to the UN Security Council, 5 February 2003.

7 Midland Independent, 6 February 2003.

8. Glen Rangwala, "Claims in Secretary of State Colin Powell's UN Presentation concerning Iraq, 5th February 2003", http://www.traprockpeace.org/ firstresponse.html On Mullah Krekar, see Daily News, New York, 6 February 2003.

9. The Australian, 11 February 2003.

10. News Conference by Lieutenant-General Amir al-Sa'di, adviser at the Iraqi Presidency; Dr Sa'id al-Musawi, head of the Organizations' Department at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry; and Major-General Husam Muhammad Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, BBC Monitoring Service, 6 February 2003.

11. Quoted in Daily News, New York, 6 February 2003.

12. Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) website at http://www.cfrterrorism.org/groups/alqaeda3.html.

13. The Observer, London, 9 February 2003.

14. ABC News, 29 March 2003.

15. Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 8 February 2004.

16. Newsweek, 24 February 2003.

17. National Review, 18 February 2003.

18. ABC News, 13 February 2003.

19. Mary Riddell,"With poison in their souls: The demonisation of the ricin suspects by politicians and the media smacks of Salem", The Observer, 17 April 2005.

20. Reported in El País, Madrid, 6 February 2003.

21. Europe Intelligence Wire, 27 February 2003.

22. Irish News, 27 February 2003.

23. The Australian, 27 May 2004.

24. CNN, 13 March 2004, emphasis added, For details on the Madrid bombing see, "Madrid 'blueprint': a dodgy document" by Brendan O'Neill, Centre for Research on Globalization, 1 April 2004, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ ONE404A.html

25. Ibid., See also the report by Al Jazeera, Centre for Research on Globalization, 17 April 2004, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ALJ404A.html

26. Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake City, 15 April 2004.

27. Torture of Iraqi POWs in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib Prison, CBS Transcript: "60 Minutes", 28 April 2004.

28. Charleston Post Courier, 28 April 2004.

29. CNN, 27 April 2004, emphasis added.

30. Ibid, emphasis added.

31. CNN, 29 April 2003.

32. Ibid.

33. CNN, 11 May 2004.

34. CNN, 13 May 2004.

35. Sirajin Sattayev,"Was Nick Berg killed by US intelligence?", Centre for Research on Globalization, 23 May 2004, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ SAT405A.html.

36. Ibid.

37. US News and World Report, 24 May 2004.

38. President George W. Bush, Press Conference, 1 June 2004, emphasis added.

39. See Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, Gilbert Burnham," Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq", Lancet, 29 October 2004.

40. Newsweek, 19 April 2004.

41. US News and World Report, 19 April 2004.

42. Quoted from CNN, Lou Dobbs, Tonight, 15 April 2004.

43. Associated Press Report, 23 January 2005.

44. Quoted in The New Statesman, 31 January 2005.

45. The Washington Post, 30 January 2004.

Read More..

9/11 and the Iran-Contra Scandal

Chapter 12

The Bush administration accuses people of having links to Al Qaeda. This is the national security doctrine behind the anti-terrorist legislation and Homeland Security. It is not only part of the Administration's disinformation campaign, it is also used to arrest thousands of people on trumped up charges.

Ironically, several key members of the Bush Administration who were the architects of the anti-terrorist agenda, played a key role in supporting and financing Al Qaeda.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who casually accused Baghdad and other foreign governments of "harboring" Al Qaeda, played an indirect role, during the Reagan administration, in supporting and financing Al Qaeda.

Both Colin Powell and his Deputy Richard Armitage, were implicated, having operated behind the scenes, in the Iran-Contra scan-dal during the Reagan Administration, which involved the illegal sale of weapons to Iran to finance the Nicaraguan Contra para-military army:

[Coronel Oliver] North set up a team including [Richard] Secord; Noel Koch [Armitage's deputy], then assistant secretary at the Pentagon responsible for special operations; George Cave, a former CIA station chief in Tehran, and Colin Powell, military assistant to US Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.(1)

Although Colin Powell was not directly involved in the arms transfer negotiations, which had been entrusted to Coronel Oliver North, he was, according to press reports, among "at least five men within the Pentagon who knew arms were being transferred to the
CIA".(2)

Lieutenant General Powell was directly instrumental in giving the "green light" to lower-level officials in blatant violation of con-gressional procedures. According to the New York Times, Colin Powell took the decision (at the level of military procurement), to allow the delivery of weapons to Iran:

Hurriedly, one of the men closest to Secretary of Defense Weinberger, Maj. Gen. Colin Powell, bypassed the written "focal point system'' procedures and ordered the Defense Logistics Agency [responsible for procurement] to turn over the first of 2,008 TOW missiles to the CIA, which acted as cutout for delivery to Iran.(3)

Richard Armitage, who was Deputy Secretary of State during George W. Bush's first term (2001-2004) played a key role in launch-ing the "war on terrorism" in the immediate wake of 9/11, leading to the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. (See Chapter 4.)

During the Reagan Administration, Armitage held the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense. He was in charge of coordinat-ing covert military operations including the Iran-Contra operation. He was in close liaison with Coronel Oliver North. His deputy and chief anti-terrorist official Noel Koch was part of the team set up by Oliver North. Following the delivery of the TOW anti-tank missiles to Iran, the proceeds of these sales were deposited in num-bered bank accounts and the money was used to finance the Nicaraguan Contra.(4)

A classified Israeli report provided to the Iran-Contra panels of the Congressional inquiry confirmed that Armitage "was in the picture on the Iranian issue."(5)

With a Pentagon position that placed him over the military's covert operations branch, Armitage was a party to the secret arms dealing from the outset. He also was associated with former national security aide Oliver L. North in a White House counterterrorism group, another area that would also have been a likely focus of congressional inquiry.(6)

Financing the Islamic Brigades

The Iran-Contra procedure was similar to that used in Afghanistan, where covert financial assistance had been channeled to the mili-tant "Islamic brigades". Barely mentioned by the press reports, part of the proceeds of the weapons sales to Iran had been channeled to finance the Mujahideen:

The Washington Post reported that profits from the Iran arms sales were deposited in one CIA-managed account into which the US and Saudi Arabia had placed $250 million apiece. That money was dis-bursed not only to the Contras in Central America but to the rebels fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan.(7)

The Irangate Cover-up

In the wake of the Iran-Contra disclosure, Reagan's National Security Adviser Rear Admiral John Pointdexter, later indicted on conspiracy charges and for lying to Congress, was replaced by Frank Carlucci. Major General Colin Powell was appointed deputy to Frank Carlucci, occupying a senior position on Reagan's National Security team:

Both [Carlucci and Powell] came to the White House after the Iran-Contra revelations and the NSC [National Security Council] house-cleaning that followed [the Irangate scandal].(8)

This "housecleaning" operation was a cover-up, as Colin Powell was fully aware of the Iran-Contra affair.

While several Irangate officials including John Pointdexter and Oliver North were accused of criminal wrongdoing, several of the main actors in the CIA and the Pentagon, namely Armitage and Casey, were never indicted, neither was Lieutenant General Colin Powell who had authorized the procurement of TOW missiles from the Defense Logistics Agency and their delivery to Iran.

Moreover, while weapons were being sold covertly to Iran, Washington was also supplying weapons through official channels to Baghdad. In other words, Washington was arming both sides in the Iran-Iraq war. And Donald Rumsfeld, as Special Envoy to the Middle East under President Reagan, was put in charge of negoti-ating US weapons sales to Baghdad.

Notes:

1. The Guardian, 10 December 1986.

2. The Record, 29 December 1986.

3. The New York Times, 16 February 1987.

4. UPI, 27 November 1987.

5. The New York Times, 26 May 1989.

6. Washington Post, 26 May 1989. See also US News and World Report, 15 December 1986.

7. US News & World Report, 15 December 1986.

8. The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, 16 June 1987.

Read More..

War Propaganda: Fabricating an Outside Enemy

Part 3 The Disinformation Campaign
Chapter 11

The US intelligence apparatus has created its own terrorist organ-izations. And at the same time, it creates its own terrorist warn-ings concerning the terrorist organizations which it has itself created. In turn, it has developed a cohesive multibillion dollar counterterrorism program "to go after" these terrorist organizations.

Counterterrorism and war propaganda are intertwined. The propaganda apparatus feeds disinformation into the news chain. The terror warnings must appear to be "genuine". The objective is to present the terror groups as "enemies of America".

One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to fabricate an enemy. As anti-war sentiment grows and the political legitimacy of the Bush Administration falters, doubts regarding the existence of this illusive "outside enemy" must be dispelled.

Propaganda purports not only to drown the truth but to kill the evidence on how this "outside enemy", namely Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda was fabricated and transformed into "Enemy Number One". The entire National Security doctrine centers on the existence of an "outside enemy", which is threatening the Homeland.

The "Office of Disinformation"

Waged from the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA, a fear and disinformation campaign was launched. The blatant distortion of the truth and the systematic manipulation of all sources of information is an integral part of war planning.

In the wake of 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), or "Office of Disinformation" as it was labeled by its critics:

The Department of Defense said they needed to do this, and they were going to actually plant stories that were false in foreign coun-tries-as an effort to influence public opinion across the world.(1)

And, all of a sudden, the OSI was formally disbanded following political pressures and "troublesome" media stories that "its pur-pose was to deliberately lie to advance American interests."(2) "Rumsfeld backed off and said this is embarrassing."(3) Yet despite this apparent about-turn, the Pentagon's Orwellian disinformation campaign remained functionally intact:

"[T]he secretary of defense is not being particularly candid here. Disinformation in military propaganda is part of war.(4)

Rumsfeld in fact later confirmed in a November 2002 press interview that while the OSI no longer exists in name, the "Office's intended functions are [still] being carried out".5
A number of government agencies and intelligence units-with links to the Pentagon-are involved in various components of the propaganda campaign.

Realities are turned upside down. Acts of war are heralded as "humanitarian interventions" geared towards "regime change" and "the restoration of democracy".

Military occupation and the killing of civilians are presented as "peace-keeping". The derogation of civil liberties-in the context of the so-called "anti-terrorist legislation"-is portrayed as a means to providing "domestic security" and upholding civil liberties. And underlying these manipulated realties, "Osama bin Laden" and "Weapons of Mass Destruction" statements, which circulated pro-fusely in the news chain, were upheld as the basis for understanding World events.

The twisting of public opinion at home and around the World had become an integral part of the War agenda. In the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration and its indefectible British ally had multiplied the "warnings" of future Al Qaeda terrorist attacks.

War propaganda is pursued at all stages: before, during the mil-itary operation as well as in its cruel aftermath. The enemy has to appear genuine: thousands of news stories and editorials linking Al Qaeda to the Baghdad government were planted in the news chain.

War propaganda serves to conceal the real causes and conse-quences of war.

Shortly after the OSI had been officially disbanded amidst con-troversy, the New York Times confirmed that the disinformation campaign was running strong and that the Pentagon was:

considering issuing a secret directive to American military to conduct covert operations aimed at influencing public opinion and policy-makers in friendly and neutral nations.... The proposal has ignited a fierce battle throughout the Bush administration over whether the military should carry out secret propaganda missions in friendly nations like Germany.... The fight, one Pentagon official said, is over 'the strategic communications for our nation, the message we want to send for long-term influence, and how we do it.... "We have the assets and the capabilities and the training to go into friendly and neutral nations to influence public opinion. We could do it and get away with it. That doesn't mean we should."(6)

Feeding Disinformation into the News Chain

To sustain "the War on Terrorism" agenda these fabricated reali-ties, funneled on a day to day basis into the news chain, must become indelible truths which form part of a broad political and media consensus. In this regard, the corporate media-although of this evolving totalitarian system.

In close liaison with the Pentagon and the CIA, the State Department had also set up its own "soft-sell" (civilian) propa-ganda unit, headed by Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Charlotte Beers, a powerful figure in the adver-tising industry. Working in liaison with the Pentagon, Beers was appointed to head the State Department's propaganda unit in the immediate wake of 9/11. Her mandate was "to counteract anti-Americanism abroad."7 Her office at the State Department was to:

ensure that public diplomacy (engaging, informing, and influencing key international audiences) is practiced in harmony with public affairs (outreach to Americans) and traditional diplomacy to advance US interests and security and to provide the moral basis for US lead-ership in the world.(8)

The Role of the CIA

The most powerful component of the Fear and Disinformation Campaign rests with the CIA, which secretly subsidizes authors, journalists and media critics, through a web of private founda-tions and CIA sponsored front organizations. The CIA also influ-ences the scope and direction of many Hollywood productions. Since 9/11, one third of Hollywood productions are war movies:

Hollywood stars and scriptwriters are rushing to bolster the new message of patriotism, conferring with the CIA and brainstorming with the military about possible real-life terrorist attacks.(9)

"The Sum of All Fears" directed by Phil Alden Robinson, which depicts the scenario of a nuclear war, had received the endorse-ment and support of both the Pentagon and the CIA.(10)

Disinformation is routinely "planted" by CIA operatives in the newsroom of major dailies, magazines and TV channels. Outside public relations firms are often used to create "fake stories":

A relatively few well-connected correspondents provide the scoops, that get the coverage in the relatively few mainstream news sources, where the parameters of debate are set and the "official reality" is consecrated for the bottom feeders in the news chain.(11)

Covert disinformation initiatives under CIA auspices are also funneled through various intelligence proxies in other countries. Since 9/11, they have resulted in the day-to-day dissemination of false information concerning alleged "terrorist attacks".

A routine pattern of reporting had emerged. In virtually all of the reported cases of terrorist incidents (Britain, France, Indonesia, India, Philippines, etc.) the alleged terrorist groups are identified as having "links to Al Qaeda", without of course acknowledging the fact (amply documented by intelligence reports and official documents) that Al Qaeda is US intelligence asset.

-----

TEXT BOX 11.1

The Secret Downing Street Memo

"The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy"

SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL-UK EYES ONLY

DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195/02

cc: Defense Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard
Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally
Morgan, Alastair Campbell

Iraq: Prime Minister's Meeting, 23 July

C [head of British Intelligence MI-6, Sir Richard Dearlove] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable....

Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intel-ligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

.... The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthu-siasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after mili-tary action.

Excerpts from the "Secret Downing Street Memo" to Prime Minister Tony Blair, leaked in May 2005 to the London Times.

-----

The Doctrine of "Self Defense"

The propaganda campaign is geared towards sustaining the illusion that "America is under attack". Relayed not only through the mainstream media but also through a number of alternative Internet media sites, these fabricated realities continue to portray the war in Afghanistan and Iraq as bona fide acts of self-defense, while carefully concealing the broad strategic and economic objec-tives of the war.

In turn, the propaganda campaign develops a casus belli, a jus-tification, a political legitimacy for waging war. The "official real-ity" (conveyed profusely in George W's speeches) rests on the broad "humanitarian" premise of a so-called "preemptive", namely "defen-sive war", "a war to protect freedom":

We're under attack because we love freedom.... And as long as we love freedom and love liberty and value every human life, they're going to try to hurt us.12)

The National Security Strategy (NSS) includes two essential building blocks:
- The preemptive "defensive war" doctrine,
- The "war on terrorism" against Al Qaeda.

The objective is to present "preemptive military action"-mean-ing war as an act of "self-defense" against two categories of ene-mies, "rogue States" and "Islamic terrorists":

The war against terrorists of global reach is a global enterprise of uncertain duration.... America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.

... Rogue States and terrorists do not seek to attack us using conventional means. They know such attacks would fail. Instead, they rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction.

... The targets of these attacks are our military forces and our civilian population, in direct violation of one of the principal norms of the law of warfare. As was demonstrated by the losses on September 11, 2001, mass civilian casualties is the specific objective of terrorists and these losses would be exponentially more severe if terrorists acquired and used weapons of mass destruction.

The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction-and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend our-selves.... To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.(13)

In early 2005, the Pentagon called for the development of a more "pro-active" notion of preemptive warfare, where military opera-tions could also be launched not only against a "declared enemy" but also against countries, which are not openly hostile to America, but which are considered strategic from the point of view of US interests. (See Chapter 19.)

How is War Propaganda carried out?

Two sets of eye-popping statements emanating from a variety of sources (including official National Security statements, media, Washington-based think tanks, etc.) are fed on a daily basis into the news chain. Some of the events (including news regarding pre-sumed terrorists) were blatantly fabricated by the intelligence agen-cies. (See Chapters 19 and 20.)

However, once the core assumptions of the disinformation cam-paign have been embedded in the news chain, both the printed press and network TV establish their own self-sustaining routine of fabricating the news.

Disinformation relies on a pattern of reporting which tends to dismiss the substance behind the news. In the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the disinformation campaign centered on two simple and catchy "buzzwords", which were used profusely to justify US military action:

- Buzzword no. 1. "Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda" (Osama) is behind most news stories regarding the "war on terrorism" including "alleged", "future", "presumed" and "actual" terrorist attacks.

- Buzzword no. 2."Weapons of Mass Destruction"(WMD) state-ments were used profusely to justify the "pre-emptive war" against the "State sponsors of terror"-i.e., countries such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea which allegedly possess WMD. Amply documented in the case of Iraq, a large body of news on WMD and biological attacks, were fabricated.

In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, "WMD" and "Osama bin Laden" statements continued to be used. They have become part of the day to day debate, embodied in routine conversations between cit-izens. Repeated ad nauseam, they penetrate the inner consciousness of people, molding their individual perceptions on current events. Through deception and manipulation, this shaping of the minds of entire populations sets the stage-under the façade of a functioning democracy-for the installation of a de facto Police State.

In turn, the disinformation regarding alleged "terrorist attacks" or "weapons of mass destruction" instills an atmosphere of fear, which mobilizes unswerving patriotism and support for the State, and its main political and military actors.

Repeated in virtually every national news report, this stigmatic focus on WMD and Osama/Al Qaeda essentially serves as a dogma, to blind people on the causes and consequences of America's war of conquest, while providing a simple, unquestioned and author-itative justification for "self defense".

In the months leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, both in speeches by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, as well as in the news, WMD statements were carefully blended into Osama statements. UK Defense Minister Jack Straw had warned in early 2003 "that 'rogue regimes' such as Iraq were the most likely source of WMD technology for groups like Al Qaeda."(14) Also, two months before the March 2003 invasion, a presumed Al Qaeda cell "with links to Iraq" had been discovered in Edinburgh, allegedly involved in the use of biological weapons against people in the UK.

The hidden agenda of "the links to Iraq" statement is blatantly obvious. Its objective was to discredit Iraq in the months leading up to the war: the so-called "State sponsors of terror" are said to support Osama bin Laden. Conversely, Osama is said to collaborate with Iraq in the use of "weapons of mass destruction".

Prior to the 2003 invasion as well as in its wake, several thousand news reports had woven an "Osama connection" into the WMD stories.

The WMD pretext for waging the war was finally dismissed, shortly before Bush's Second Term inauguration in January 2005, by which time the justification for having waged the war on Iraq was no longer considered an issue. The media spin behind WMD was never questioned, to the extent that the elimination of WMD is still regarded by public opinion as a central objective of US for-eign policy.

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TEXT BOX 11.2

The Secret Crawford-Iraq Memo from British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to Prime Minister Tony Blair

SECRET AND PERSONAL PM/02/019/PRIME MINISTER CRAWFORD/IRAQ

If 11 September had not happened, it is doubtful that the US would now be considering military action against Iraq. In addi-tion, there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with UBL [Osama bin Laden] and Al Qaida. Objectively, the threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September. What has however changed is the tolerance of the international commu-nity (especially that of the US), the world having witnessed on September 11 just what determined evil people can these days perpetuate.

(Jack Straw) Foreign and Commonwealth Office, March 2002

Excerpt of Secret-Personal Memo to Prime Minister Tony Blair from British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, The "Secret and Personal" Crawford-Iraq Memo, 25 March 2002.

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While Iraq was the main target of the propaganda campaign, North Korea was also described, without a shred of evidence, as possibly having links to Al Qaeda:

Skeptics will argue that the inconsistencies don't prove the Iraqis have continued developing weapons of mass destruction. It also leaves Washington casting about for other damning material and charges, including the midweek claim, again unproved, that Islamic extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda took possession of a chemical weapon in Iraq last November or late October.(15)

North Korea has admitted it lied about that and is brazenly crank-ing up its nuclear program again. Iraq has almost certainly lied about it, but won't admit it. Meanwhile Al Qaeda, although dispersed, remains a shadowy, threatening force, and along with other terror-ist groups, a potential recipient of the deadly weaponry that could emerge from Iraq and North Korea.(16)

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair listed Iraq, North Korea, the Middle East and Al Qaeda among "difficult and dangerous" problems Britain faced in the coming year.(17)

The WMD-Osama statements were used profusely by the main-stream media. In the wake of 9/11, these stylized statements had become an integral part of day to day political discourse, perme-ating the workings of international diplomacy and the functioning of the United Nations.

Secretary of State Colin Powell underscored this relationship in his presentation to the Davos World Economic Forum, barely two months before the invasion as well as in his historic February 5, 2003 speech at the UN Security Council:

Evidence that is still tightly held is accumulating within the admin-istration that it is not a matter of chance that terror groups in the Al Qaeda universe have made their weapons of choice the poisons, gases and chemical devices that are signature arms of the Iraqi
regime.(18)

Meanwhile,"anti-terrorist operations" directed against Muslims, including arbitrary mass arrests, had been stepped up:

The US and Western interests in the Western world have to be pre-pared for retaliatory attacks from sleeper cells the second we launch an attack in Iraq.(19)

The Smallpox Vaccination Program

In the context of these emergency measures, preparations for compulsory smallpox vaccination were initiated in 2003 in response to a presumed threat of a biological weapons attack on US soil. The vaccination program-which had been the object of intense media propaganda-contributed to creating an atmosphere of insecurity:

A few infected individuals with a stack of plane tickets-or bus tick-ets, for that matter-could spread smallpox infection across the country, touching off a plague of large proportions.... It is not incon-ceivable that a North Korea or an Iraq could retain smallpox in a hidden lab and pass the deadly agent on to terrorists.(20)

The hidden agenda was clear. How best to discredit the anti-war movement and maintain the legitimacy of the State? Create conditions which instill fear and hatred, present the rulers as "guardians of the peace" committed to weeding out terrorism and preserving democracy. In the words of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, echoing almost verbatim the US propaganda dispatches:

I believe it is inevitable that they [the terrorists] will try in some form or other [to wage attacks].... I think we can see evidence from the recent arrests that the terrorist network is here as it is around the rest of Europe, around the rest of the world…. The most frightening thing about these people is the possible coming together of fanati-cism and the technology capable of delivering mass destruction.(21)

Mass Arrests

The mass arrests of Muslims and Arabs on trumped up charges since September 11, 2001 is not motivated by security considerations. Their main function is to provide "credibility" to the fear and prop-aganda campaign.

Each arrest, amply publicized by the corporate media and repeated day after day, "gives a face" to this illusive enemy. It also serves to obscure the fact that Al Qaeda is a creature of the CIA. In other words, the propaganda campaign performs two important functions.
First, it must ensure that the enemy is considered a "real threat".

Second, it must distort the truth-i.e., it must conceal "the rela-tionship" between this fabricated enemy and its creators within the military-intelligence apparatus. The nature and history of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and the Islamic brigades since the Soviet-Afghan war must be suppressed or distorted.

"Possible" or "Future" Terrorist Attacks based on "Reliable Sources"

The propaganda campaign exhibits a consistent pattern. The objec-tive is to instill credibility and legitimacy focusing on supposedly "reliable sources" of information.

The same concepts appear simultaneously in hundreds of media reports:

- These concepts refer to "reliable sources" , a "growing body of evi-dence"-e.g., government or intelligence or FBI.

- They invariably indicate that the terrorist groups involved "have ties to bin Laden" or Al Qaeda, or are "sympathetic to bin Laden",

- The reports often point to the possibility of terrorist attacks, "sooner or later" or "in the next two months" .

- The reports often raise the issue of so-called "soft targets", point-ing to the likelihood of civilian casualties.

- They indicate that future terrorist attacks could "take place in a number of allied countries" (including Britain, France, Germany in which public opinion is strongly opposed to the US-led war on terrorism).

- They confirm the need by the US and its allies to initiate "pre-emptive" actions directed against these various terrorist organi-zations and/or the foreign governments which harbor the terrorists.

- They often point to the likelihood that these "terrorist groups possess WMD" including biological and chemical weapons (as well as nuclear weapons). The links to Iraq and "rogue states" are also mentioned.

- The reports also include warnings regarding "attacks on US soil", "attacks against civilians in Western cities".

- They point to efforts undertaken by the police authorities to apprehend the alleged terrorists.

- The arrested individuals are in virtually all cases Muslims and/or Arabs.

- The reports are also used to justify the Homeland Security leg-islation as well as the "ethnic profiling" and mass arrests of pre-sumed terrorists.

"Sooner or Later"

This pattern of disinformation in the Western media applies the usual catch phrases. (In the press excerpts below, catch phrases are in italics):

Published reports, along with new information obtained from US intelligence and military sources, point to a growing body of evidence that terrorists associated with and/or sympathetic to Osama bin Laden are planning a significant attack on US soil.

Also targeted are allied countries that have joined the worldwide hunt for the radical Muslim cells hell-bent on unleashing new waves of terrorist strikes.... The US Government's activation of antiterrorist forces comes as the FBI issued a warning Nov. 14 that a "spectacu-lar" new terrorist attack may be forthcoming-sooner rather than later....

Elsewhere, the Australian government issued an unprecedented warning to its citizens that Al Qaeda terrorists there might launch attacks within the next two months.(22)

Although [former] CIA Director George Tenet said in recent con-gressional testimony that "an attempt to conduct another attack on US soil is certain," a trio of former senior CIA officials doubted the chance of any "spectacular" terror attacks on US soil.(23)

Germans have been skittish since the terrorist attacks in the United States, fearing that their country is a ripe target for terrorism. Several of the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks plotted their moves in Hamburg.(24)

On Dec. 18 [2002], a senior government official, speaking on con-dition of anonymity, briefed journalists about the 'high probability'of a terrorist attack happening "sooner or later".... [H]e named hotels and shopping centres as potential "soft targets".... The official also specifically mentioned: a possible chemical attack in the London sub-way, the unleashing of smallpox, the poisoning of the water supply and strikes against "postcard targets" such as Big Ben and Canary Warf .

The "sooner or later" alert followed a Home Office warning at the end of November that said Islamic radicals might use dirty bombs or poison gas to inflict huge casualties on British cities. This also made big headlines but the warning was quickly retracted in fear that it would cause public panic(.25)

The message yesterday was that these terrorists, however obscure, are trying-and, sooner or later, may break through London's defenses. It is a city where tens of thousands of souls [live].... Experts have repeatedly said that the UK, with its bullish support for the US and its war on terror, is a genuine and realistic target for terror groups, including the Al Qaeda network led by 11 September mastermind Osama bin Laden.(26)

Quoting Margaret Thatcher: "Only America has the reach and means to deal with Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or the other wicked psychopaths who will sooner or later step into their shoes."(27)

According to a recent US State Department alert: "Increased secu-rity at official US facilities has led terrorists to seek softer targets such as residential areas, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, hotels, schools, outdoor recreation events, resorts, beaches and planes." (28)

Actual Terrorist Attacks

To be effective, the fear and disinformation campaign cannot solely rely on unsubstantiated warnings of future attacks. It requires a credible system of terror alerts, actual arrests of alleged terror sus-pects (on trumped up charges) as well as "real" terrorist occur-rences or "incidents", which provide credibility to the "war on terrorism".


Propaganda endorses the need to implement "emergency measures" as well as implement retaliatory military actions. The triggering of "war pretext incidents" is part of the Pentagon's assumptions. (See Chapter XIX.)

Notes:

1. Interview with Steve Adubato, Fox News, 26 December 2002.

2. Air Force Magazine, January 2003, emphasis added.

3. Adubato, op. cit. emphasis added.

4. Ibid, emphasis added.

5. Quoted in Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Secrecy News, 27 November 2002 http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2002/11/112702.html, Rumsfeld's November 2002 press interview can be consulted at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2002/11/dod111802.html.

6. New York Times, 16 December 2002.

7. Sunday Times, London, 5 January 2003.

8. See US State Department at http://www.state.gov/r/

9. Ros Davidson, "Stars earn their Stripes", The Sunday Herald (Scotland), 11 November 2001.

10. See Samuel Blumenfeld, "Le Pentagone et la CIA enrôlent Hollywood", Le Monde, 24 July 2002.

11. Chaim Kupferberg,"The Propaganda Preparation for 9/11", Centre for Research on Globalization, June 2002, p.19, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ KUP206A.html

12. Remarks by President Bush in Trenton, New Jersey, Welcome Army National Guard Aviation Support Facility, Trenton, New Jersey, 23 September 2002.

13. National Security Strategy, White House, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ nsc/nss.html

14. Agence France Presse (AFP), 7 January 2003.

15. Insight on the News, 20 January 2003.

16. Christian Science Monitor, 8 January 2003.

17. Agence France Presse (AFP), 1 January 2003.

18. The Washington Post, 25 January 2003.

19. Ibid.

20. Chicago Sun, 31 December 2002.

22. Insight on the News, 3 February 2003.

23. United Press International (UPI), 19 December 2002.

24. New York Times, 6 January 2003.

25. Toronto Star, 5 January 2003.

26. The Scotsman, 8 January 2003.

27. United Press International (UPI), 10 December 2002.

28. States News Service, State Department Advisory, similar texts published on several dates, 2002-2005.

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