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těr’ə-rĭz’əm: Why We Struggle to Define the Defining Threat of Our Time

While addressing an international counter-terrorism meeting in Tunis last Thursday (15th), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), spoke about the need for the world to come up with a clear, internationally recognised definition of the term ‘terrorism’.

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”– unattributed

Ihsanoglu made a similar call at a High-Level Plenary Meeting of the UN General Assembly back in September 2005. In doing so, he brought the problem facing the body charged with coming up with a definition – the United Nations Sixth Committee on Aggression – into sharp focus.

To be equitable, any definition of terrorism should include State terrorism, and should not prejudice the rights of people struggling for their selfdetermination or under foreign occupation to resistance.

This has proven to be the main stumbling block for the Committee, with the US and Israel, most notably, rejecting attempts to recognise the rights of those pursuing self-deterministic or nationalistic goals – the fundamental drivers behind the rise in terrorist activity – when defining the term ‘terrorism’ (see selected definitions at the foot of this post). There was no such debate over its original meaning, however.

The first recorded use of the term ‘terrorism’ dates back to 1795 during the French Revolution. It referred specifically to the Reign of Terror (la Terreur), which was instituted by the Jacobin-led French government to defend the nation from what Louis de Saint-Just called the ‘enemies of liberty’.

In his article, Bush’s Dangerous Liaisons, Francois Furstenberg draws some disturbing parallels between 19th century Jacobism and 21st century neoconservatism.

Among the Jacobins’ greatest triumphs was their ability to appropriate the rhetoric of patriotism… and to promote their political program through a tightly coordinated network of newspapers, political hacks, pamphleteers and political clubs.

Even the Jacobins’ dress distinguished “true patriots”: those who wore badges of patriotism like the liberty cap on their heads, or the cocarde tricolore (a red, white and blue rosette) on their hats or even on their lapels.

Insisting that their partisan views were identical to the national will, believing that only they could save France from apocalyptic destruction, Jacobins could not conceive of legitimate dissent. Political opponents were treasonous, stabbing France and the Revolution in the back.

To defend the nation from its enemies, Jacobins expanded the government’s police powers at the expense of civil liberties, endowing the state with the power to detain, interrogate and imprison suspects without due process. Policies like the mass warrantless searches undertaken in 1792 — “domicilary visits,” they were called — were justified, according to Georges Danton, the Jacobin leader, “when the homeland is in danger.”

Robespierre — now firmly committed to the most militant brand of Jacobinism — condemned the “treacherous insinuations” cast by those who questioned “the excessive severity of measures prescribed by the public interest.” He warned his political opponents, “This severity is alarming only for the conspirators, only for the enemies of liberty.” Such measures, then as now, were undertaken to protect the nation — indeed, to protect liberty itself.

‘When you point your finger ‘cos your plan fell through, you got three more fingers pointing back at you.’ – Mark Knopfler, Solid Rock

Furstenberg’s article is as much an allegory of post-9/11 America as it is an historical account of Revolutionary France. But as Edward Peck, former White House Terrorism Task Force Director under President Reagan, admits, suggestions of US involvement in state-sponsored terrorism stretch back well beyond 9/11.

In a 2006 interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, Peck acknowledged that, when his task force was asked ‘to come up with a definition of terrorism that could be used throughout the government’, its work-product was rejected ‘because careful reading would indicate that [the US] had been involved in some of those activities’.

After the task force concluded its work, Congress got into it, and you can google into U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2331, and read the U.S. definition of terrorism. And one of them in here says — one of the terms, “international terrorism,” means “activities that,” I quote, “appear to be intended to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.”

Yes, well, certainly, you can think of a number of countries that have been involved in such activities. Ours is one of them. Israel is another. And so, the terrorist, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. And I think it’s useful for people who discuss that phrase to remember that Israel was founded by terrorist organizations and terrorist leaders, Menachem Begin, who became statesmen and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And [Hassan] Nasrallah [the leader of Hezbollah, whom Peck had met a few months prior to the interview] may not be the same kind of guy, but his intentions are the same. He wants to free his country from domination by another.

Thus the debate over what is and what isn‘t ‘terrorism’ looks set to continue, not only because the US rejects calls to recognise the rights of those pursuing self-deterministic or nationalistic goals, but also because it would never countenance the adoption of a definition that identified it as a terrorist state.

‘[Doublethink is] the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them…‘ – George Orwell – Nineteen Eighty-Four

According to George Orwell, ‘He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.’ There can be little doubt that the US, and by extension, its allies, control the present. Unless and until things change, therefore, we will continue to accept that illegal unprovoked invasions of sovereign states, mass-murders of civillians and occupations of hydrocarbon-rich lands are ‘liberations’; and that those who try to defend against such atrocities are ‘terrorists’.

Orwell called this self-deception ‘doublethink’, where ‘the lie is always one leap ahead of the truth’.

SELECTED DEFINITIONS OF THE TERM ‘TERRORISM’

The UN’s ‘academic consensus definition’, which was written by Alex Schmid, the Officer-in-Charge of the Terrorism Prevention Branch of the United Nations states, that:

Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby — in contrast to assassination — the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperilled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought.

Whilst not explicitly defining the term ‘terrorism’, The European Union sets out a list of serious offences against persons and property in Article 1 of the Framework Decision on Combating Terrorism (2002).

1. Each Member State shall take the necessary measures to ensure that the intentional acts referred to below in points (a) to (i), as defined as offences under national law, which, given their nature or context, may seriously damage a country or an international organisation where committed with the aim of:

— seriously intimidating a population, or

— unduly compelling a Government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing any act, or

— seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country or an international organisation, shall be deemed to be terrorist offences:

(a) attacks upon a person’s life which may cause death;

(b) attacks upon the physical integrity of a person;

(c) kidnapping or hostage taking;

(d) causing extensive destruction to a Government or public facility, a transport system, an infrastructure facility, including an information system, a fixed platform located on the continental shelf, a public place or private property likely to endanger human life or result in major economic loss;

(e) seizure of aircraft, ships or other means of public or goods transport;

(f) manufacture, possession, acquisition, transport, supply or use of weapons, explosives or of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, as well as research into, and development of, biological and chemical weapons;

(g) release of dangerous substances, or causing fires, floods or explosions the effect of which is to endanger human life;

(h) interfering with or disrupting the supply of water, power or any other fundamental natural resource the effect of which is to endanger human life;

(i) threatening to commit any of the acts listed in (a) to (h).

The United States Federal Criminal Code, Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 113B, Section 2331 defines terrorism and crimes associated with terrorism.

(1) the term “international terrorism” means activities that—

(A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;

(B) appear to be intended—

i. to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
ii. to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
iii. to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and

(C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum;

and;

(5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—

(D) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;

(E) appear to be intended—

i. to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
ii. to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
iii. to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and

(F) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

The United Kingdom defined terrorism in the Terrorism Act 2000.

Section 1. -
(1) In this Act “terrorism” means the use or threat of action where-

a) the action falls within subsection (2),
b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and
c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.
d) Action falls within this subsection if it-
e) involves serious violence against a person,
f) involves serious damage to property,
g) endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the action,
h) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or
i) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.

(2) The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied.

Section 1 (1) b) was amended by the Terrorism Act 2006 to include ‘international governmental organisations’ in addition to ‘government’.

Oxford English Dictionary.

(a) Policy intended to strike with terror those against whom it is adopted;
(b) the employment of methods of intimidation;
(c) the fact of terrorizing or condition of being terrorized.

The American Heritage Dictionary.

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

Merriam Webster’s Dictionary.

[T]he systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.

Attacking Iran: Tragedy or Farce?

According to The Telegraph, Washington is losing patience with British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, accusing him of failing to ‘match his more robust private conversations on Iran with hard-hitting public statements’. Is this simply political self-preservation from a man who has yet to face his electorate, or does Brown know what many of us strongly suspect: that claims about the threat posed by Iran have been ‘sexed-up’?

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” – Karl Marx

There are clear parallels between the way public opinion toward Iran is being shaped today and the escalation in rhetoric against Iraq in the months before the 2003 invasion.

You’ll recall that, throughout 2002 we were assured that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States and its allies; that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons programme; that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons; and that Iraq provided funding, training and weapons to terrorist organisations.

Well, we face broadly the same threats from Iran today – or so we are led to believe.

Of course, the claims made against Iraq are now known to have been grossly exaggerated. In March 2004, the House of Representatives Special Investigation Division published a report based upon ‘a database of statements about Iraq made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice.’ The report, entitled Iraq on the Record: The Bush Administration’s Public Statements on Iraq, found that the five officials had made 237 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in the 12 months or so prior to the commencement of hostilities.

These statements were made in 125 separate appearances, consisting of 40 speeches, 26 press conferences and briefings, 53 interviews, 4 written statements, and 2 congressional testimonies. Most of the statements in the database were misleading because they expressed certainty where none existed or failed to acknowledge the doubts of intelligence officials. Ten of the statements were simply false.

None of this would have been news to Gordon Brown who, as a recipient of the infamous 2002 Downing Street Memo, would already have known that ‘the intelligence and facts were being fixed around’ Bush’s policy of removing Saddam.

In that context, maybe Brown is right to be a little more cautious in his handling of the current crisis with Iran than his predecessor, Tony Blair, was with Iraq. The same can be said of the US intelligence community, which seems to be resisting calls to reverse-engineer the ‘facts’ about Iran back in to the politicians’ allegations. As Gareth Porter, writing for Inter Press Service, reported on November 8th:

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.

That dissenting judgements persist is really no great surprise given that just two years ago, the Washington Post reported that the best intelligence suggested Iran was ‘about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon’, which was roughly double the ‘previous estimate of five years’.

“I have not received any information that there is a concrete active nuclear weapons program going on right now.” – Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency

The US intelligence community is not alone in failing to produce the alarmist judgements that Cheney allegedly demands. Speaking on October 29th, Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said that, although he couldn’t ‘give Iran a pass right now’, there was no evidence that Iran was building nuclear weapons. Further, in a move that will undoubtedly have angered Washington, he accused US leaders of ‘spinning and hyping the Iranian issue’, and warned that military force could spark a global conflagration.

There is no shortage of alarm coming from Israel, however, as it continues to trade off of the mistranslation of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s famous “wipe off the map” comment.

Even before Ahmadinejad’s had uttered those fateful words, Israel had introduced the concept of the ‘point of no return’ as a possible justification for the use of pre-emptive force against Iran’s suspected nuclear facilities. Since then, speculation has mounted that, if there is to be a strike against Iran, it could well come from Israel and not America.

Back in January 2007, The Times carried an article suggesting that ‘Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities’ using ‘low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”’ in an attack reminiscent of that which crippled Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

Osirak was a 40 megawatt light-water nuclear reactor, which was sold to Iraq by France. Construction began in 1979 at the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Center near Baghdad.

Although Iraq insisted that its interest in nuclear energy was a peaceful one, Israeli intelligence determined that Iraq intended to use the facility to produce nuclear weapons. Whilst some estimates suggested Iraq was between five and ten years away from building a nuclear weapon, others indicated it might have happened within one or two years. Convinced that the opposition party might not act pre-emptively should they gain power, Prime Minister Menachem Begin decided his only option was to attack.

Operation Opera commenced in the afternoon of June 7th 1981, when a squadron of eight F16s left Etzion Air Force Base in southern Israel, accompanied by six F15s. At a little after 17:30, Iraq’s reactor was ruined.

Critics of the attack rejected Israel’s claims that this act of ‘pre-emptive self-defence’ was justifiable both under international law and under Article 51 of the charter of the United Nations. Indeed, the United Nations Security Council expressed its ‘deep alarm over the unprecedented Israeli act of aggression… which created a grave threat to international peace and security’, in a resolution dated Novermber 13th 1981.

Interestingly, this resolution was suspended in 2005 following Israel’s continued refusal to comply. And now Israel appears ready to commit another act of ‘pre-emptive self-defence’. This time, however, any such ‘act of aggression’ wouldn’t be ‘unprecedented’.

Passing the ‘Buck’

Back in June 2003, with its oil exports to Europe already euro-denominated, Dr Mohammed Jaffar Mojarrad, then Vice-Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), announced that Iran would be prepared to offer member countries of the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) a two-month settlement period for oil transactions. But there was one caveat: though trades would continue to be invoiced in dollars, Iran would require payment in euros.

Although motivated in part by political tensions, Iran recognised that its earlier switch to euros for trades with Europe – which accounts for around 40% of its imports – had provided a degree of insulation from the damaging economic effects of the weakening dollar. The move to adopt the euro as the unit of payment for oil trades with ACU members was simply a pragmatic extension of this policy, particularly given that its oil export destinations by rank were Asia (~60%), Europe (~30%) and Africa (~10%).

“The dollar as a benchmark currency has been weakening quite a lot and it creates distortions in oil markets” – Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela’s Energy Minister

Today, only 15% of Iran’s oil revenue is dollar-denominated. And, whilst Iran acted unilaterally in moving to abandon the dollar it looks as though long-standing calls from some other OPEC members to discuss the need to establish a basket of currencies for oil pricing are finally being heeded. According to an October 27th Reuters report, “the cartel is slated to hold a summit of the heads of state of OPEC nations in November and a meeting of ministerial delegates in December.”

Having stemmed the influx of dollars, Iran spent much of 2007 steadily diversifying its external reserves away from dollar-denominated assets. On October 23rd, Tahmasb Maaheri, the new Governor of Iran’s Central Bank, announced that this process was almost complete. And it is not alone. Recent US Treasury Department Statistics suggest that several countries in the Middle East, particularly OPEC member countries, have been doing likewise.

The problem for the US is not so much that OPEC member countries own a great deal of US debt, but because such diversification might precipitate an accelerated weakening of the dollar, prompting countries with large dollar reserves and dollar debt instruments, such as China, to do likewise. This could have dire consequences for the US economy.

To appreciate some of the factors at play, it is first important to understand how the dollar became the global reserve currency, and also how US economic and foreign policy is geared around keeping it that way.

In July 1944, delegates at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference signed the Bretton Woods Agreement – a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern commercial and financial relations among independent nation-states. As Daniel Singer explains…

…a multilateral, international institution [was set up] to deal with the financial problems of the world. At its heart was the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which was to authorize the very exceptional adjustments in the fixed rates of exchange, but also to act as a supplier of liquidity. (Gradually it became a lender of last resort.) It was to fulfill this function thanks to a fund filled by members’ contributions according to a complex mechanism of quotas, determined by the given country’s economic strength, which also signaled the amount of money that country could borrow.

However, Singer goes on to argue that, in practice, ‘the arrangement [was] an instrument of American domination’, explaining that ‘the new monetary arrangement was in fact a gold-dollar exchange standard, since all currencies were linked to the dollar valued at $35 per ounce of gold’. Furthermore, because the American quota in the IMF was by far the biggest, no decisions could be taken without Washington’s consent. Thus the US exerted its predominance and an economically decimated post-war Europe had little option but to acquiesce.

Initially, the Bretton Woods system worked well. Dollars flowed into the world economy through the institutions established under the agreement, as well as through US aid programmes such as the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. This in turn created vibrant overseas markets for US corporations to exploit. Before long, over half of the world’s international money transactions were dollar denominated, establishing it as the de facto global reserve currency.

However, by the late 1960’s, the system was in danger of collapse. The emergence of Germany and Japan as economic rivals, coupled with the enormous costs associated with the Vietnam War, led the US into a period of relative economic decline.

Dollar-holding countries, fearing dollar depreciation, began exchanging their currency reserves for gold. In August 1971, with gold supplies dwindling, President Richard Nixon abandoned the gold-dollar exchange standard, allowing market forces to determine the dollar’s floating value. Without firm backing, the currency became volatile, forcing the US to explore new ways of re-establishing dollar hegemony.

The answer came in the form of ‘petrodollar recycling’, an arrangement brokered by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whereby oil-producing countries agreed to price their oil exports exclusively in US dollars.

The effect of this ‘recycling’ was elegantly summed up by Henry Liu in his April 2002 article for the Online Asia Times.

World trade is now a game in which the US produces dollars and the rest of the world produces things that dollars can buy. The world’s interlinked economies no longer trade to capture a comparative advantage; they compete in exports to capture needed dollars to service dollar-denominated foreign debts and to accumulate dollar reserves to sustain the exchange value of their domestic currencies.

As a consequence of petrodollar recycling, both foreign-owned US debt and dollar reserves have soared astronomically.

Table showing dollar-denominated foreign debt ownership by country: June 2006 (source: US Treasury Department)

Current ‘live’ US Debt Clock.

“China has accumulated a large sum of US dollars. Such a big sum, of which a considerable portion is in US treasury bonds, contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency” – Xia Bin, finance chief at the Chinese Development Research Centre

Until now, China’s grossly imbalanced economic relationship with the US has been largely symbiotic; the US has had the benefit of a steady stream of cheap funding for its deficit, whilst China has been able to maintain a high rate of export-led economic growth.

But this sustained high rate of growth has led to domestic inflationary pressure. This is because Chinese citizens are not permitted to hold foreign currency. Instead, exporters hand over any foreign currency they receive to the government in exchange for Chinese yuan. The government then retires dollars from circulation in order to keep the yuan weak relative to the dollar, which in turn fuels further export growth.

China’s rate of export growth for the first three quarters of 2007 was over 27%. Its foreign reserves are growing at the rate of $1 billion per day and have now reached a staggering total of $1.5 trillion.

China’s policymakers recognise things must charge, however they are undecided about the best course of action. The weak yuan, whilst essential for China’s export policy, has not only driven domestic inflation up, it has also widened the trade gap between it and its partners, encouraging some to threaten possible protectionist measures to force a yaun revaluation.

In response, Xia Bin, finance chief at the Development Research Centre, hinted that the Chinese government might be prepared to use – i.e. to dispose of – its foreign reserves as a ‘bargaining chip’, in talks with the US. Pointing out that several countries had already started to look at diversifying away from the dollar, he added:

China is unlikely to follow suit as long as the yuan’s exchange rate is stable against the dollar. The Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars once the yuan appreciated dramatically, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar.

“Spring 2007 indeed appears as the tipping point of the global systemic crisis: the US economy went into recession, US interest rates were restored, the bond market is in crisis, the subprime crisis begins to hit large US financial institutions such as Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and Freddie Mac, the US housing crisis is speeding up…” – Laboratoire europeen d’Anticipation Politique, June 16th 2007

In a February 2007 letter to Henry Paulson, Secretary of the United States Department of the Treasury, and Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, US Presidential nominee Hilary Clinton expressed her concerns about the extent to which countries like China had ‘been buying [US] debt and in essence becoming [America’s] banker.’

I have long argued that a great source of vulnerability is the fact that other countries, including China, own so much of our debt. Today, foreign nations according to the most recent Treasury statistics hold over $2.2 trillion or 44% of all publicly held United States (U.S.) debt with Japan and China alone holding nearly $1 trillion. In essence, 16% of our entire economy is being loaned to us by the Central Banks of other nations. Having so much debt owned by other countries can be economically unsound.

…if China or Japan made a decision to decrease their massive holdings of U.S. dollars, there could be a currency crisis and the U.S. would have to raise interest rates and invite conditions for a recession.

More recently, in June, Laboratoire europeen d’Anticipation Politique published an even bleaker assessment in an almost apocalyptic paper entitled ‘Global systemic crisis / Summer 2007: Fed looses control on US interest rates and crisis reaches China and EU’. It really ought to be read in full but, failing that, here is one of the key paragraphs.

The rest of world now determines US rates. Simultaneously systemic uncertainty is back on financial markets. Investors suddenly realise that in the medium- and long-term, they no longer have any guarantee on global system’s trends (while only a few months ago, they were convinced that the current system was sustainable). This situation highlights the fact that it is outside the US that the country’s future economically and financially speaking is being played, as illustrated on three occasions in the last six months by the impact on US markets of Chinese decisions (dollar and stocks). This is a totally new situation for the US ever since the end of WWI which clearly suggests that the world order created after 1945 has come to an end.

And if China’s influence on the US economy policy alone wasn’t worrying enough, it also poses an ever-increasing threat to US energy needs – a threat exacerbated by China’s relative geographic proximity to the vitally important Gulf and Caspian regions, not to mention its strong ties to Iran.

As Senator Joe Liebernam pointed out back in December 2005…

Today… one of the biggest sources of potential friction between the U.S. and the PRC [People’s Republic of China] – that is our global competition for oil. The U.S. and China are now the world’s number one and two consumers of oil respectively, with China’s need growing as rapidly as its economy is.

Over the past decade, China’s population has increased by over 82,000,000 (6.7%), whilst its oil consumption has risen by nearly 3,600,000 barrels per day (105.8%). During the same period, US population has grown by around 28,000,000 (10.3%), yet its oil consumption has increased by just over 2,900,000 barrels per day (16.5%). The upshot is that China’s oil consumption per head has risen by 93% compared to just 5.6% in the US.

According to Lieberman, not only are these trends set to continue, but in a world with increasingly limited resources (see Peak Oil and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) the implications are very clear.

In the next 20 years estimates show that the Chinese demand for oil will double [to around 14,000,000 barrels per day] as their economy grows. Estimates also are that they will need to obtain two thirds of that from outside of the PRC [People’s Republic of China] itself.

What I want to say today is it is time the U.S. and China not only recognize the similarity of our oil dependency status, and the direction that competition may take us, but begin to talk more directly about this growing global competition for oil so that we can each develop national policies and cooperative international policies – even joint research and development projects – to cut our dependency on oil before the competition becomes truly hostile.

Some commentators have recently suggested that preparations for a Sino-American conflict are being made under the guise of the war on terror. In an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald on November 4th, for example, Hugh White, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University, claimed that ‘big-ticket’ weapons sales were being publicly portrayed as a response to the threat posed by global terrorism when, in reality, they were ‘designed to contain China’.

Another contributor to the article, Professor Kevin Clements, director of the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland, said ‘the war on terrorism was a front to keep up arms spending to maintain the US’s ability to fight a [sic] wars on three fronts – Asia, the Middle East and Europe.’

Clements’ and White’s views seem to reflect those expressed by the Project for the New American Century in a publication entitled ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ (emphasis added).

Today [the US military’s] task is to secure and expand the “zones of democratic peace;” to deter the rise of a new great-power competitor; defend key regions of Europe, East Asia and the Middle East; and to preserve American preeminence through the coming transformation of war made possible by new technologies. From 1945 to 1990, U.S. forces prepared themselves for a single, global war that might be fought across many theaters; in the new century, the prospect is for a variety of theater wars around the world, against separate and distinct adversaries pursuing separate and distinct goals.

The similarity between Clements’/White’s and PNAC’s positions is striking, particularly when you consider that the former were speaking in 2007 and the latter way back in 2000.

It’s almost as though PNAC was expecting a war on terror, brought about, perhaps, by ‘some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor’.

Removing the Regime in Iran From the Page of Time?

For anyone who believes the US and her allies have been manipulating the public into supporting military action against Iran, the latest Zogby International poll makes grim reading.

According to this poll, which has an error margin of +/- 3.1%, 52.9% of US voters now believe it is either very likely or slightly likely that ‘Based on what [they] know about Iran’s development of a nuclear program… the U.S. will be involved in a military strike against Iran before the next presidential election?’ Further, when asked, ‘Based on what you know about Iran’s development of a nuclear program, how supportive are you of a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon?’, 52.4% said they would either be somewhat supportive or very supportive.

At first glance, this is a little perplexing, particularly against a backdrop of waning support for the invasion of Iraq. But it simply reflects how successful our leaders have been at convincing us that Iran is determined to both acquire a nuclear weapons capability and use it against us. The truth is, we have no hard evidence that they intend to do either. So why are we buying it?

“…if you are going to conclude that we have said the people there have to be removed or they have to be massacred or so, this is fabricated, unfortunate selective approach to what the mentality and policy of Islamic Republic of Iran is.” – Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency

Perhaps this NewYork Times translation of a speech given by Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in October 2005 to an Islamic Student Associations conference on ‘The World Without Zionism’ has something to do with it.

Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine. Is it possible to create a new front in the heart of an old front. This would be a defeat and whoever accepts the legitimacy of this regime [Israel] has in fact, signed the defeat of the Islamic world. Our dear Imam targeted the heart of the world oppressor in his struggle, meaning the occupying regime. I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world.

This, undoubtedly hostile and inflammatory speech, was quickly interpreted as a call for genocide and specifically, the destruction of the state of Israel.

Naturally, Israel was quick to respond, calling an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and arguing that Iran should be expelled from the UN. Benjamin Netanyahu went so far as to warn that Iran was “preparing another holocaust for the Jewish state”.

The EU also issued a statement, which declared that “[c]alls for violence, and for the destruction of any state, are manifestly inconsistent with any claim to be a mature and responsible member of the international community”. It later adopted a resolution condemning Ahmadinejad’s comments.

Both Canada and the US linked what they saw as Ahmadinejad’s threat of genocide to what Paul Martin, then Canadian Prime Minister, called its ‘obvious nuclear ambitions.’ The US further argued that it had been shown to be right in seeking to halt Iran’s nuclear programme.

More recently, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution aimed at persuading the UN Security Council to charge Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on Genocide and the United Nations Charter. At its core was the oft-repeated claim that Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map’. But when Congressman Dennis Kucinich tried to introduce an alternative translation – ‘the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time’ – into the Congressional record, he was blocked form doing so.

There is clearly a considerable difference between the phrases, ‘Israel must be wiped off the map’ and ‘the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time’. This begs the question, what was Kucinich’s source for this alternative, not to mention unpopular translation, and is it the correct one?

One possible source is Arash Norouzi. In an article from his web site, The Mossadegh Project, Norouzi takes us through a word by word translation of this key phrase.

Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).

Or…

The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.

Norouzi also sets out the context, which he argues is necessary in order to get a fuller understanding of Ahmadinejad’s meaning.

In his speech, Ahmadinejad declares that Zionism is the West’s apparatus of political oppression against Muslims. He says the “Zionist regime” was imposed on the Islamic world as a strategic bridgehead to ensure domination of the region and its assets. Palestine, he insists, is the frontline of the Islamic world’s struggle with American hegemony, and its fate will have repercussions for the entire Middle East.

Ahmadinejad acknowledges that the removal of America’s powerful grip on the region via the Zionists may seem unimaginable to some, but reminds the audience that, as Khomeini predicted, other seemingly invincible empires have disappeared and now only exist in history books. He then proceeds to list three such regimes that have collapsed, crumbled or vanished, all within the last 30 years:

(1) The Shah of Iran- the U.S. installed monarch

(2) The Soviet Union

(3) Iran’s former arch-enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein

In the first and third examples, Ahmadinejad prefaces their mention with Khomeini’s own words foretelling that individual regime’s demise. He concludes by referring to Khomeini’s unfulfilled wish: “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise”. This is the passage that has been isolated, twisted and distorted so famously. By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war.

Juan Cole, President of the Global Americana Institute, agrees with Norouzi, adding:

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope– that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah’s government.

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that “Israel must be wiped off the map” with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.

Perhaps the most surprising source for this alternative translation, however, is The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Surprising because the institute is led a former Israeli military intelligence officer and has often been accused of distorting selected quotations in order to help present Israeli foreign policy in the most favourable light.

I wonder whether American voters, armed with these alternative translations, would still be so enthusiastic about a pre-emptive strike against Iran.

The Algiers Discord

In March 1954, Dr Donald N Wilbur wrote a paper entitled ‘Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran’. It was an historical review of Project TPAJAX, the CIA’s first successful overthrow of a foreign government, which was carried out in August 1953. Although Wilbur himself had been one of the plan’s chief architects, the original idea was a British one.

“Specifically, the aim [of the TPAJAX project] was to bring to power a government which would reach an equitable oil settlement, enabling Iran to become economically sound and financially solvent, and which would vigorously prosecute the dangerously strong Communist Party” – Dr Donald N Wilbur in ‘Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran’

In 1901, the then-Shah of Iran, Mozzafar al-Din Shah Qajar, granted a 60-year concession to British entrepreneur William Knox D’Arcy to search his country for oil. Although he struck oil in 1908, the cost of exploration left D’Arcy financially crippled, and he was forced to sell a controlling interest to the Burmah Oil Company (BOC). In 1909, the BOC incorporated the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) in order to exploit the find.

The British government acquired a controlling interest in the APOC during World War I and maintained it until Iran’s parliament voted in March 1951 to nationalise its oil industry. This represented a major affront to British interests. In response, Britain imposed a blockade, cutting Iran off from its export markets. It also took the case to the International Court of Justice, where it petitioned against Iran’s oil nationalisation bill without success.

Britain then turned to the US with the idea of deposing Dr Mohammed Mossadeq, who had been elected Prime Minister shortly after the bill’s passing. It pointed to Iran’s Communist-backed nationalist movement as evidence of increasing Soviet influence – an argument it hoped would resonate in a country gripped by rampant anti-Communism. As Wilbur writes:

By the end of 1952, it had become clear that the Mossadeq government in Iran was incapable of reaching an oil settlement with interested Western countries; was reaching a dangerous and advanced stage of illegal, deficit financing; was disregarding the Iranian constitution in prolonging Premier Mohammed Mossadeq’s tenure of office; was motivated mainly by Mossadeq’s desire for personal power; was governed by irresponsible policies based on emotion; had weakened the Shah and the Iranian Army to a dangerous degree; and had cooperated closely with the Tudeh (Communist) Party of Iran. In view of these factors, it was estimated that Iran was in real danger of falling behind the Iron Curtain; if that happened, it would mean a victory for the Soviets in the Cold War and a major setback for the West in the Middle East. No remedial action other than the covert action plan set forth below could be found to improve the existing state of affairs.

Although the outgoing President, Harry Truman, refused to entertain the idea, his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, was more agreeable. In March 1953, General Walter Bedell Smith, US Under Secretary of State, authorised the CIA ‘to consider operations which would contribute to the fall of the Mossadeq government.’ The following month, Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA, accordingly ‘approved a budget of $1,000,000 which could be used… in any way that would bring about the fall of Mossadeq.’

At around the same time, a study entitled ‘Factors Involved in the Overthrow of Mossadeq’ identified former cabinet member General Fazlollah Zahedi as the Premier’s most eligible successor, since he had been ‘the only person of stature who had consistently been openly in opposition to Mossadeq and who claimed any significant following’. It was also determined that the Shah’s co-operation would be necessary to ‘assure the action required of the Tehran military garrisons, and to legalize the succession of a new prime minister.’

The plan took shape throughout May and June, and was approved by both the US and UK governments in early July. Once implemented, US and British intelligence officers set about creating a climate for change within Iran.

[A] considerable number of anti-Mossadeq articles were written or outlined by [Wilbur’s] group while the CIA Art Group was given constant guidance in its preparation of a large number of anti-Mossadeq cartoons and broadsheets. In addition, these artists did an effective drawing for a wall poster showing Zahedi being presented to the Iranian people by the Shah.

CIA agents gave serious attention to alarming the religious leaders at Tehran by issuing black propaganda in the name of the [Communist] Tudeh Party, threatening these leaders with savage punishment if they opposed Mossadeq. Threatening phone calls were made to some of them, in the name of the Tudeh, and one of several planned sham bombings of the houses of these leaders was carried out.

Wilbur describes how, in the weeks leading up to the coup, the planners experienced considerable difficulty in persuading the indecisive Shah to sign the firmans (royal decrees), and how on August 14th, the very eve of the operation, the plot was ‘betrayed [to elements loyal to Mossadeq] by the indiscretion of one of the Iranian Army officer participants.’

At 0545 hours on the morning of 16 August 1953, Radio Tehran came on the air with a special government communique covering the so-called abortive coup of the night just ending, and by 0600 hours Mossadeq was meeting with his cabinet to receive reports on the situation and to take steps to strengthen the security forces at government buildings and other vital points.

At that point, it seemed ‘obvious that something – or everything – had gone wrong’. By the 18th the Tehran station was preparing ‘for a clandestine evacuation of up to 15 people from Iran.’

However, hopes were revived when ‘violence flared in the streets of Tehran’ that evening – the mood of the protestors reflecting an apparent revival in pro-Shah sentiment. This was attributed to a number of factors, including the recent defilement of statues of the monarchy by Tudeh Party members, and the culmination of a TPAJAX-backed terrorist campaign in the form of ‘gangs of alleged Tudehites on the streets [of Tehran] with orders to loot and smash shops.’

These demonstrations carried with them irresistible momentum. By mid-morning on the 19th, Chief of Staff General Tahi Riahi ‘informed Mossadeq that he no longer controlled the army’. Later that afternoon, General Zahedi has assumed power in Iran.

The effect of the coup was to consolidate the power of the Shah in Iran until he was eventually toppled by the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Later that same year, the exiled Shah was admitted into the US for cancer treatment. This prompted an outcry in Iran and calls for his extradition to face trial. In protest, student forces loyal to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, invaded the American embassy compound in Tehran – the so-called ‘nest of spies’. They took 66 hostages, 53 of whom were held for the full 444-day duration of the crisis. A settlement was finally reached with the signing of the Algiers Accords.

Point 1: Non-Intervention in Iranian Affairs states that…

The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.

It appears that the US has recently broken this pledge. According to an article on ABC’s ‘The Blotter’ last week, the ‘CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government’ involving a ‘coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of [its] currency and international financial transactions’.

“I can’t confirm or deny whether such a program exists or whether the president signed it, but it would be consistent with an overall American approach trying to find ways to put pressure on the regime” – Bruce Riedel (Ret), former senior CIA official

Not that this will come as any surprise to Iran. On April 5th this year, Gholamali Haddadadel, speaker of Iran’s parliament, said there was ‘no doubt in our minds that the United States spares no effort to put pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran’. This followed earlier reports from ABC that the CIA has ties to groups designated as terrorist organisations by the US, including the Kurdistan Free Life Party (aka JPAK); the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (aka MEK); and Jundallah, a militant Islamist group based in Baluchestan with links to both al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Jundullah has been particularly active inside Iran’s borders. Led by Abdel-Malik Regi, described by Alexis Debat, a counterterrorism expert at the Nixon Center, as ‘part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist’, it has carried out many attacks, including one against a bus in the city of Zahedan that left 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard dead. Other raids have led to the death or kidnap of Iranian soldiers, officials and civilians, some of those captured having been subsequently been executed on camera.

Whilst the US denies directly funding Jundallah, its leaders are apparently in touch with US officials. In a set-up that has more than a whiff of Operation Cyclone about it, the group is also said to be receiving finance and arms through both Afghanistan and Pakistan military sources, as well as through the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service.

It’s no great surprise to find that this proxy war is being co-ordinated, in part, by the Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams. Although he was implicated in efforts to orchestrate a coup against Venezuela’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Hugo Chavez, he is perhaps best known for his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair (see also Chapter 25 of the Final report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters). The scandal, which came to light in 1987, revealed how Reagan Administration officials had used the proceeds of illegal arms sales to Iran to illegally fund right-wing Contra rebels in Nicaragua in support of their insurgency against the incumbent leftist Sandanista government.

At the time, Abrams had worked under US Secretary of State George P Shultz with responsibility for Central American issues. As a result of working closely with Lt Col Oliver L North, he ‘became aware of North’s efforts to assist the contras militarily, despite the Boland prohibition’. Abrams himself also sought to circumvent the prohibition by soliciting third-country aid for the contras. His involvement in the affair led to an ignominious fall from grace.

On October 7, 1991, Abrams pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of withholding information from Congress. Abrams admitted that he withheld from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in October 1986 his knowledge of North’s contra-assistance activities.

“Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has” – from Rebuilding America’s Defenses, published in September 2000 by the Project for the New American Century

Abrams spent much of the 1990’s involved with neoconservative think tanks such as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Although a great deal has been made of the role PNAC is said to have played in shaping US policy towards Iraq, the organisation also has strong views about Iran. These attitudes have hardened recently, following remarks made by Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that were interpreted as a threat to Israel.

Abrams, a Jew and staunch advocate of a Middle East strategy based on the overwhelming military power of both the United States and Israel, is said by Republican Senator, Chuck Hagel, to be ‘making policy in the Middle East’. If Hagel is right, then the combination of Ahmadinejad’s recalcitrance and US intrigue has only one endgame.

Is NIST Faking it?

I’ve been fascinated by optical illusions for as long as I can remember. My favourite is this [1]…

But this one is right up there…

The image on the left was captured on 9/11 by the NYPD and is used by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in its ‘Working Collapse Hypothesis for WTC7’. The one on the right was taken by Aman Zafar, a witness to the unfolding events that day, from his apartment across the Hudson River in Jersey City. Both have been cropped from larger photographs, and NIST’s has also been ‘skewed’ in order to line up the windows for the purposes of comparison. Here are the original photographs.

The nature of the damage at the Southwest corner of WTC7, said to have been caused by the earlier collapse of the twin towers, sparked a vigorous debate at an online Internet forum, ‘Above Top Secret’ (ATS), where I post as ‘coughymachine’. The principle charge was that NIST had manipulated its image in order to exaggerate this damage. Whilst NIST certainly needs all the help it can get if it is to convince conspiracy theorists that WTC7 wasn’t brought down in a controlled demolition, I wanted to explore all possible explanations before reaching any firm conclusions.

Initial efforts were focussed on establishing the times the photographs had been taken. If it turned out that Zafar’s had been taken earlier than NIST’s, it opened up the possibility that some sort of an ‘event’ had occurred between the two, like the explosion heard in the video below, to account for the apparent anomalies.

Working with the original images, an aerial shot of Manhattan (below) and astronomical data from the US Naval Observatory, I estimated the times to be around 15:30 EDT for NIST’s photograph and around 15:00 EDT for Zafar’s.

The time for NIST’s was corroborated by another ATS contributor. The time for Zafar’s, however, was challenged and a much later time of 17:00 EDT proposed (see [2] for my final estimation). This prompted the suggestion that perhaps Zafar’s image had been manipulated.

This made little sense to me.

I established a dialogue with Zafar in order to try and arrive at a definitive time. Meanwhile, I also began developing an idea I’d introduced in the early stages of the debate – that there was actually no discrepancy between the two images, only the illusion of one caused by a combination of angles and smoke. The following graphics show how this theory evolved.

The first shows that, despite initial impressions, Zafar’s photograph does show significant damage.

The next demonstrates how the Southwest edge of WTC7 could appear intact in Zafar’s image but not in NIST’s.

I finally became convinced by this explanation when, rather than skewing NIST’s image, I skewed Zafar’s. The only apparent anomaly is a ‘missing’ window at the bottom, circled in yellow. But this window has simply been obscured by smoke in the NIST image (right). The same effect can be seen further, up where another window, also circled in yellow, has been partially obscured.

It’s fair to say that not everyone at ATS is convinced by this. For me, however, it’s very much a case of mystery solved.

[1] Checkerboard illusion: the squares marked ‘A’ and ‘B’ are the same shade of grey.

[2] Throughout the course of the ATS discussion, Aman Zafar and I had communicated via email to try and establish a timestamp for his photograph. Initially, he felt that it may have been as early as 14:00 EDT. However, he now accepts it could have been as late as my final estimate, which was 16:15 EDT.

WTC7: The Achilles Heel of 9/11?

According to a Zogby International poll dated May 24th 2006, as many as 43% of Americans were ‘not aware of World Trade Center Building 7’s collapse’ at 5:21pm on September 11th 2001. With NIST preparing to release its final report into the collapse, the recent ‘mainstreaming’ of 9/11 conspiracy theories couldn’t have come at a more interesting time.

“We are studying the horizontal movement east to west, internal to the structure, on the fifth to seventh floors… but truthfully, I don’t really know. We’ve had trouble getting a handle on Building No. 7.” – Dr S Shyam Sunder, NIST’s lead WTC investigator

The collapse of the 47 storey WTC7 is often the epiphany for 9/11 conspiracy virgins; unlike WTC1 and 2, WTC7 was not hit by an aircraft yet it collapsed symmetrically, at near free fall speed and largely into its own footprint.

Some believe that, despite the damage caused to WTC7 by the collapse of WTC1, and despite the resulting fires, which went untended throughout the day, the only way to account for such a collapse is by controlled demolition. This would point to foreknowledge of the attacks and thus a conspiracy, since the 47 storey WTC7 would have taken several weeks to prepare for a demolition.

The building’s collapse certainly did have the appearance of a controlled demolition.

Demolitions expert Danny Jowenko agreed.

Two videos even appear to capture the sound of explosions – possibly the same blast event – coming from the direction of WTC7.

The second video also shows the area around the building being cleared in anticipation of a collapse.

In an interview with Bonnie Faulkner, of KPFA’s Guns and Butter, Indira Singh, a volunteer Emergency Medical Technician on 9/11, goes further, suggesting that the area was cleared in anticipation of a controlled collapse (emphasis added).

SINGH [at 11:22]: …pretty soon after noon, after midday on 9/11, we had to evacuate that because they told us Building 7 was coming down. If you had been there, not being able to see very much – just flames everywhere and dark smoke – it is entirely possible… I, I do believe that they brought Building 7 down because I heard that they were going to bring it down because it was unstable because of the collateral damage. That I don’t know – I can’t attest to the… to the um, validity of that. All I can attest to is that by noon or one o’clock they told us we had to move from that triage site up to Pace University, a little further away, because Building 7 was going to come down or be brought down.

FAULKNER: Did they actually use the word ‘brought’ down, and who was it that was telling you this?

SINGH: The fire department. The fire department. And, um, they did use the words “we’re gonna have to bring… we’re gonna have to bring it down”. And for us there, um, observing the nature of the devastation, it was… they made total sense to us that this was indeed a possibility. Given the subsequent controversy over it I… I don’t know. You know, I’m not an engineer, I don’t know. All I know is, you know, that was my experience.

We backed off a little bit to Pace University. There was another panic around 4 o’clock because they were bringing the building down. And people seemed to know this ahead of time so people were panicking again and running.

This ties in with recently uncovered CNN footage, in which anchor Aaron Brown announces at 4:10pm that building 7 ‘is on fire and has either collapsed or is collapsing.’

By 4:57pm, the BBC were sure that…

…the Salomon Brothers building [WTC7] in New York, right in the heart of Manhattan, has also collapsed.

Yet a short while later, and much to the BBC’s chagrin, correspondent Jane Standley is filmed in front of the still standing WTC7. The loss of her feed just minutes before the building’s actual collapse served to fuel conspiracists’ claims.

But nothing has done more to arouse suspicion than comments made in September 2002 by the WTC complex owner, Larry Silverstein. During an interview for a PBS documentary entitled America Rebuilds, he said (emphasis added):

I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire. And I said, “You know, we’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is… is pull it.” Er… and they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse.

Conspiracy theorists contend that Silverstein’s use of the term ‘pull it’ is an admission that WTC7 was brought down in a controlled manner. Three years later, Siverstein’s spokesman, Dara McQuillan, offered a different interpretation. The statement, which is published on the US Department of State’s web site, reads:

In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.

Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his firefighters out of the building and at 5:20 p.m. the building collapsed. No lives were lost at Seven World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

This explanation has proven to be almost as controversial as Silverstein’s original comment. Many people are simply not prepared to accept that Silverstein would have used the term ‘pull it’ rather then ‘pull them’ to refer to the withdrawal of a group of firefighters, arguing instead that ‘pull it’ is a demolitions industry term for a controlled demolition. Silverstein’s defenders counter with the claim that the term ‘pull it’ is not used within the demolitions industry to refer to the demolition of a building by way of explosives, but rather by way of cables. However, this is not strictly true. The terms ‘pull’ or ‘pulling’ are frequently used to describe a part of the ‘implosion’ process whereby cutter charges (or a combination of cutter charges and cables) have been set in a particular way to ensure that the perimeter walls of a building are ‘pulled’ in. This is especially common in situations where the building being brought down is in close proximity to neighbouring buildings.

As Stacy Loizeaux, daughter of Controlled Demolition Incorporated (CDI) founder, Mark Loizeaux, explained during an interview with Nova:

There are a series of small explosions [during an implosion], but the building itself isn’t erupting outward. It’s actually being pulled in on top of itself. What we’re really doing is removing specific support columns within the structure and then cajoling the building in one direction or another, or straight down.

But, even if we accept that the term is not a demolitions industry term for the controlled demolition of a building by way of explosives, there is another problem with Silverstein’s explanation.

According to NIST NCSTAR1-8, The Emergency Response Operations, page 111 (emphasis added)…

One Battalion Chief coming from the building indicated that they had searched floors 1 through 9 and found that the building was clear. In the process of the search, the Battalion Chief met the building’s Fire Safety Director and Deputy Fire Safety Director on the ninth floor. The Fire Safety Director reported that the building’s floors had been cleared from the top down. By this time, the Chief Officer responsible for WTC 7 reassessed the building again and determined that fires were burning on the following floors: 6, 7, 8, 17, 21, and 30. No accurate time is available for these actions during the WTC 7 operations; however, the sequence of event indicates that it occurred during a time period from 12:30 p.m. to approximately 2:00 p.m.

The Chief Officer then met with his command officer to discuss the building’s condition and FDNY’s capabilities for controlling the building fires.

Thus, if the building was cleared by 2:00pm; and if the Chief Officer subsequently discussed ‘the FDNY’s capabilities for controlling the building fires’ with his command officer; then the fire department commander could not have informed Silverstein ‘that [the FDNY] were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire’ until after the building had been evacuated.

In other words, there were no firefighters to withdraw at the time Silverstein spoke with the fire department commander.

That aside, there has been a great deal of speculation about the nature of the damage caused to WTC7 by the collapse of WTC1. Whilst early eyewitness accounts were vague about the extent of the damage, one firefighter, Captain Chris Boyle, did report specifically that…

…on the north and east side of 7 it didn’t look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn’t look good.

Until recently, it was thought that Boyle was referring to this trauma at the south west corner. But a recent ‘find’ appears to show the damage was more extensive.

However, the extent to which this new material will support NIST’s preliminary ‘Working Collapse Hypothesis’ for WTC7 is unclear. The vertical gash is towards the west end of the south face. But as ‘Winston Smith’ points out in his paper, entitled ‘Photographic Analysis of Damage to WTC7 and Critical Errors in NIST’s Estimations’…

NIST’s collapse hypothesis hinges on the failure of one or more of columns 79, 80, and 81 [at the east end of the south face]. The report cites the massive size and strength of the three columns as appearing to require “severe fires and/or damaged fireproofing to initiate thermally-related failures. Damage to the building from WTC1 debris is pointed to as the most likely contributing factor or direct cause of that failure, specifically damage to truss #2 (or adjacent components) which was located on the 6th floor. Simply put, a single truss or a single column is claimed to have been the Achilles heel of the structure, a heel that once broken, caused the entire entire [sic] 47 storey building to implode perfectly in on itself, with no resistance and at free fall rate.

NIST then appears to use a rather exaggerated damage assessment to support its theory.

Perhaps the Achilles heel of NIST’s hypothesis will ultimately prove to be the seismic data. I’ll leave you with the words of researcher and Internet discussion board contributor, LaBTop, who explains in his detailed analysis that (original emphasis):

13 seconds before NIST found their first visual event proof of building failure, the east penthouse roof dent photograph by Nicolas Cianca, some seismic event, comparable to the head-on collision of a huge air plane on each WTC 1 and 2 towers, shook the bedrock at the WTC-7 building.

Mohamed Atta’s Final Days

I have partially reconstructed the movements of the alleged hijackers in the weeks leading up to the September 11th attacks by studying the evidence produced at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, as well as contemporary news sources and public records. The picture that emerges raises more questions than answers.

“And the more I see – the more I know; the more I know – the less I understand. ” – Paul Weller, The Changingman

Much of the uncertainty surrounds the behaviour of the alleged lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta. For clarity, I have stripped out everything that doesn’t relate to either Atta himself, or else to his two closest associates, Marwan al-Shehhi and Abdulaziz a-Omari. I have also limited this study to an examination of period between August 28th and September 11th. Finally, I have avoided repeating the questions raised in my earlier article, Mohamed Atta and the ‘Rosetta Stone’, concerning the bags that mysteriously failed to make it aboard American Airlines Flight 11.

CHRONOLOGY

A. August 28th – Mohamed Atta flies from Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale aboard US Air FL2970 [1].

B. August 29th – Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi return their rented Chevy Corsica to Warrick’s Rent-a-Car. They leave in a rented Ford Escort [1], [13].

C. September 4th – Waleed al-Shehi books reservations for Abdulaziz al-Omari and Satam al-Suqami on Delta FL2462 from Fort Lauderdale to Boston, departing September 6th [2].

D. September 4th – A white Mitsubishi Mirage, which was rented in Springfield, Massachusetts under Atta’s name, is seen at Logan International Airport between 14:15 and 16:00 [3a].

E. September 5th – Mohamed Atta books a reservation on US Air FL2968 from Fort Lauderdale to Boston, departing September 7th [1].

F. September 5th – Marwan al-Shehhi books a reservation on Delta FL2462 from Fort Lauderdale to Boston, departing September 9th [4].

G. September 6th – A white Mitsubishi Mirage, which was rented in Springfield, Massachusetts under Atta’s name, is seen at Logan International Airport between 14:15 and 16:00 [3a].

H. September 6th – Abdulaziz al-Omari & Satam al-Suqami fly from Fort Lauderdale to Boston aboard Delta FL2462. Flight departs at 12:00 and arrives at 15:20 [5].

I. September 7th – Mohamed Atta flies from Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore aboard US Air FL2719 [1]. Flight departs at 15:15 [6].

J. September 7th – Mohamed Atta was variously reported to have been with two companions at Shuckums Sports Bar in Hollywood, Florida between 15:00 and 18:00. Some reports suggest the companions may have been Marwan al-Shehhi and Abdulaziz al-Omari [7], [8], [9]. (Note: Time Magazine reported it was September 8th [10])

K. September 9th – Mohamed Atta flies from Baltimore to Boston aboard US Air FL2979 [1].

L. September 9th – Marwan al-Shehhi returns the rented Ford Escort to Warrick’s Rent-a-Car [4].

M. September 9th – Marwan al-Shehhi flies from Fort Lauderdale to Boston aboard Delta FL2462. Flight departs at 12:00 and arrive at 15:20 [4].

N. September 9th – A white Mitsubishi Mirage, which was rented in Springfield, Massachusetts under Atta’s name, is seen at Logan International Airport between 16:15 and 17:39 [3a].

O. September 9th – Marwan al-Shehhi returns the hire car [11] in the afternoon [12]. This is corroborated by the rental agreement, which indicates the time of the return is 17:00 [13]. Apart from Marwan al-Shehhi, none of the alleged hijackers is known to have been in Fort Lauderdale on the 9th [14].

P. September 9th – Mohamed Atta rents a Nissan Altima from Alamo at Boston’s Logan Airport at 18:08 [1].

Q. September 9th – It is alternatively reported that the Nissan Altima was rented by two brothers, Adnan Bukhari and Ameer Abbas Bukhari [15]. Although this is no longer the ‘accepted story’ [16].

R. September 9th – Marwan Shehhi books into the Milner Hotel, Boston for one night at 22:00 [4].

S. September 10th – Mohamed Atta’s credit card is reportedly used in Manhattan [17], [18]. None of the alleged hijackers are known to have been in Manhattan on September 10th [14].

T. September 10th – A white Mitsubishi Mirage, which was rented in Springfield, Massachusetts under Atta’s name, is seen at Logan International Airport between 16:25 and 17:05 [3a]

U. September 10th – Mohamed Atta is seen driving a Mitsubishi Mirage at Exit 13 of the Massachusetts Turnpike [19].

V. September 10th – Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari drive from Boston to Portland in the Nissan Altima. They check into The Comfort Inn, room 233 at 17:37 [1].

W. September 11th – Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari check out of the Comfort Inn at 05:33 and drive to Portland International Jetport [1].

X. September 11th – Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari fly from Portland to Boston aboard Colgan Air FL5930. Flight departs at 06:00 [1].

Y. September 11th – Marwan al-Shehhi drives the Mitsubishi Mirage to Boston’s Logan Airport [3b].

REFERENCES

[1] Chronology of Events for Hijackers: Mohamed Atta

[2] Chronology of Events for Hijackers: Waleed al-Shehri

[3] Wikipedia Article: Cars Owned and Rented by Mohammed Atta

[a] A white Mitsubishi Mirage was rented in Springfield, Massachusetts under Atta’s name, and is thought to have been the car seen circling the restricted-parking areas of Logan International Airport for several days including on September 4th and 6th (2:15-4pm), 9th (4:15-5:39pm) and 10th (4:25-5:05pm) (Time, 28 January 2002).

[b] On September 11th, Marwan drove the car to the airport, and phoned Atta at 6:45am to confirm the plan was still on.

[4] Chronology of Events for Hijackers: Marwan al-Shehhi

[5] Chronology of Events for Hijackers: Satam l-Suqami

[6] US Bureau of Transportation Statistics – Searchable Database

[7] The Washington Post – September 13th 2001

Last Friday night, Atta, Shehhi and an unidentified man spent 3½ hours at a sports bar, Shuckums, in Hollywood, Fla. While Atta played video games, the other two had about five drinks each and appeared resistant to paying the $48 tab. The manager, Tony Amos, recalled yesterday that he inquired whether they could not afford the bill. Shehhi “looked at me with an arrogant look,” Amos said. “He pulled out a wad of cash and put it on the bar table and said, ‘There is no money issue. I am an airline pilot.’ ”

[8] The Daily Telegraph – September 14th 2001

Tony Amos, the manager of Shuckums Oyster Bar and Restaurant in Hollywood, just north of Miami, was interviewed by the FBI and he and his barman and a waitress all identified Atta and his cousin as some hard drinkers who propped up the bar last Friday.

Atta’s bill for three hours of vodka drinking came to $48 (£33). When he drunkenly disputed the charge, Mr Amos intervened. “Of course I can pay the bill,” Atta told him. “I’m an airline pilot.”

[9] ABC (Australia)

LIZ JACKSON: With three days left to go, the pair spent their last Friday night out on the town in Shuckums bar, Miami, with a friend. It’s a cheap dive.

TONY AMOS, BAR MANAGER: There were three gentlemen that came in that day. Two gentlemen sat — actually where you’re sitting right now and the other gentle — the third gentleman, Mohamed Atta, was sitting at the other end of the bar and he was playing video games.

LIZ JACKSON: Tony Amos was the manager on the night and says, as the evening progressed, Marwan Al-Shehhi got agitated and drunk.

TONY AMOS: And he pulled out a wad of cash and he put it on the bar and he said, “I’m an airline pilot.” So I just took it at face value. I mean, he had been drinking, I found out that him and the other gentleman had five rounds each. Mohamed Atta, he was just drinking cranberry juice. He’d get up once in a while, come over to — who I found out was this Marwan, was his cousin or claimed to be related in some way, and he would just maybe say something in his ear and then go back to the other end of the bar and just continue playing the video game. And he did that for four hours.

[10] Time Magazine

It was at Shuckums, on Sept. 8, that Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi did some pre­mass murder tippling. Atta drank vodka and orange juice, while Al-Shehhi preferred rum and cokes, five drinks apiece. “They were wasted,” the bartender recalled, and Atta objected to the $48 bill. Tony Amos, the manager, asked if they were short the cash. “No,” said Atta. “I have plenty of money. I’m a pilot.” And he hauled a wad of $50 and $100 bills from his pocket, eventually leaving a $3 tip.

[11] St Petersburg Times – September 1st 2002

When al-Shehhi returned the rental car for the last time Sept. 9, he asked that the charge be removed from Atta’s credit card and placed on his.

[12] ABC (Australia)

LIZ JACKSON: That weekend, Mohamed Atta headed north to Portland, Maine. Al-Shehhi returned their hire car on the Sunday afternoon.

[13] Warrick’s Rent-a-Car: Rental Agreement for Ford Escort

[14] United States v. Zacarius Moussaoui – Prosecution Trial Exhibits

[15] People’s Daily (China) – September 13th 2001

Police and law enforcement sources said the two brothers suspected in the Boston hijackings were Adnan Bukhari and Ameer Abbas Bukhari, who up until recent days had lived in Vero Beach, Florida. Both of their homes have been searched, the sources said.

The two rented a car, a silver-blue Nissan Altima, from an Alamo car rental at Boston’s Logan Airport and drove to an airport in Portland, Maine, where they got on US Airways Flight 5930 at 6 a.m. Tuesday headed back to Boston, the sources said.

Investigators are analyzing videotapes at the car rental facility and at the Maine airport.

Before CNN learned the identities of the two brothers, Portland Police Chief Mike Chitwood said, “I can tell you those two individuals did get on a plane and fly to Boston early yesterday morning … I can tell you that they are the focus of a federal investigation.”

[16] Wikipedia Article – Mohamed Atta’s Rented Nissan Altima

While it was initially reported that Adnan and Ameer Bukhari had rented and driven the car, the accepted story is now that Mohamed Atta al Sayed rented the car, although later reports continued to suggest that Adnan Bukhari fell under suspicion because of documents found within the car.

[17] CNN – May 22nd 2002

The FBI has found credit card receipts that appear to place September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta in Manhattan the day before the attacks, a source close to the investigation told CNN Wednesday.

[18] Freedom of Information Center – May 22nd 2002

The FBI found transactions that show Atta used a credit card in Manhattan the day before the planes crashed into the World Trade Center. Until recently, law enforcement officials could not figure out why he was here. New evidence has emerged that leads investigators to believe Atta made a last-minute visit to double-check coordinates of the twin towers and plug them into a sophisticated Global Positioning System device bought by the hijackers, the source said.

Investigators suspect Atta’s trip to the Trade Center was necessary because they believe the hijackers were too inexperienced to handle the jumbo jets without help. They know the hijackers bought GPS devices in the months leading up to the attack.

[19] Newsday – September 30th 2001

It was Monday, Sept. 10, and Atta, 33, an Egyptian who in the past few years had lived a wanderer’s life between several cities in Florida, was stopped at a toll booth at Exit 13 of the Massachusetts Turnpike. He boiled over in anger when the operator demanded that he pay the toll.

When Atta refused and sped away, the operator wrote down the license plate number of his rented white Mitsubishi.

KEY QUESTIONS

Since Mohamed Atta is not known to have been in Springfield, MA at any time between August 16th and September 11th [1], when did he rent the Mitsubishi Mirage [3a]?

If Mohamed Atta was in Fort Lauderdale, FL between August 29th and September 7th [1], [A], [I], who was driving the Mitsubishi Mirage in Boston, MA on both September 4th [D] and September 6th [G]?

Why did Mohamed Atta change his mind about flying US Air FL2968 from Fort Lauderdale to Boston on September 7th [E] and instead opt to fly US Air FL2719 from Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore on September 7th [I]?

If Mohamed Atta boarded US Air FL2719 from Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore on September 7th [I]; and if US Air FL2719 departed at 15:15 [6]; then who was at Shuckums Sports Bar in Hollywood, Florida on September 7th between 15:00 and 18:00 [7], [8], [9], [10]?

If Mohamed Atta flew from Baltimore to Boston on September 9th [K]; and if Marwan al-Shehhi flew from Fort Lauderdale to Boston at 12:00 on September 9th [M]; and if none of the remaining alleged hijackers are known to have been in Florida on September 9th [14]; then who returned the rented Ford Escort to Warrick’s Rent-a-Car in Pompano Beach, Florida at 17:00 on September 9th [O], [13] ?

Where did information linking Adnan Bukhari and Ameer Abbas Bukhari to the rented Nissan Altima come from [Q]?

What information was Portland Police Chief Mike Chitwood acting upon when he said, “I can tell you [Adnan Bukhari and Ameer Abbas Bukhari] did get on a plane and fly to Boston early yesterday morning…” [14]?

If Mohammed Atta was in Boston [M] and Portland [V] on September 10th, who was seen driving the Mitsubishi Mirage rented in Atta’s name [3a] in Boston’s Logan Airport [T] and around Exit 13 of the Masspike [U] on September 10th?

If Mohamed Atta is in or around Boston, MA on September 10th [K], [T], [U], [V]; and if none of the alleged hijackers are known to have been in New York on September 10th [14]; then who used Atta’s credit card in New York on September 10th [S], [17], [18]?

Why did Mohamed Atta fly from Baltimore to Boston on September 7th [K]; then drive from Boston to Portland on September 10th [V]; and then fly from Portland back to Boston in the early hours of September 11th [X]?

Who is Emmanuel Goldstein?

Friday’s announcement that Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, one of al Qaeda’s highest-ranking operatives, has been arrested, is a reminder that the ‘War on Terror’ is still very much a work-in-progress.

But, with President George Bush warning Congress that he will veto their war funding bill (or, more accurately, their Iraq Troop Protection and Reduction Act of 2007 bill), there was more than a hint of suspicion about the timing.

The bill, which sets an March 31st 2008 deadline for the ‘redeployment of United States troops from Iraq’, will be well-received by ordinary Americans, the majority of whom, according to recent polls, now favour a withdrawal. But its passing has angered the White House. It argues that such a precipitous move would serve only to ‘embolden the terrorists’. Bush will have none of it. ‘If the Congress wants to test my will as to whether or not I’ll accept a timetable for withdrawal,’ he said on Friday, ‘I won’t accept one.’ Vice President Dick Cheney also reacted angrily to the bill. Speaking at a fundraising event in Oklahoma, he claimed Congressional Democrats had sent ‘a message to our enemies that the calendar is their friend.’

And then, with impeccable timing, the arrest of al-Iraqi is announced.

Surely even the most ardent government supporter must realise that few see the ostensibly serendipitous appearance of this Goldstein-like figure as anything other than stage-managed propaganda (see footnotes). Especially when you consider that, with media attention focussed elsewhere, news of last year’s detention of al-Iraqi, said to have been chosen personally by Osama bin Laden to monitor operations in Iraq, had to be put on the back burner.

“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z.” – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

And no sooner had our bloodlust been sated by the theatre of Saddam’s grizzly demise than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), putative ‘principal architect of the 9/11 attacks’, was wheeled out.

His ‘confession’ to a combatant status review tribunal at Guantanamo Bay – reminiscent of a 1930’s Stalinist purge – was as well-timed as al-Iraqi’s ‘arrest’. It came in mid-March as US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales faced mounting pressure to resign following the politicised dismissals of eight US attorneys. In it, he admitted and affirmed ‘without duress that [he] was a responsible participant, principal planner, trainer, financier (via the Military Council Treasury), executor, and/or a personal participant in’ 31 terror attacks or plots. With his connection to the 9/11 attacks well-established, ‘it is not clear’, as The Guardian points out, ‘why Mohammed would have wished to confess to such a wide-ranging number of outrages.’

There has, of course, been much scepticism about the legitimacy of his confession. Some fear it may have been coerced, citing Bush’s discomfiture with the Geneva Convention’s stipulation that ‘no outrages upon human dignity’ will be committed against detainees during interrogation. Others point out that KSM, who was detained in March 2003, could not have been ‘responsible for planning, training, surveying, and financing for the New (or Second) Wave of attacks against the… Plaza Bank, Washington state’, for example, since the Plaza Bank was founded in 2006.

Not much has been said, however, about the admission that most caught my eye:

I was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, which was frequented by British and Australian nationals.

This admission, if true, has potentially profound implications.

The 2002 Bali bombings killed 202 and left a further 209 injured. Suspicions immediately fell upon Jemaah Islamiyah, a radical Islamist terror group with links to al Qaeda. But, although several members of this group have since been tried and convicted for their involvement in the plot, one tantalising trail has been allowed to go cold. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the then Indonesian Prime Minister, Abdurrahman Wahid, believed that the order to plant the bomb which destroyed Bali’s Sari Club came from Indonesia’s ‘armed forces not from the fundamentalist people.’ In other words, the Bali bombing was a false flag operation.

Crucially, it came at a time when Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s support for the War on Terror was perceived as being weak. Some have construed this as evidence that the US isn’t just managing the flow of Goldstein propaganda but is actually managing Goldstein; that al Qaeda is a modern-day network of Gladio-like clandestine armies, prosecuting a modern-day Strategy of Tension (see Operation Gladio and The Strategy of Tension).

Although the US flatly denies both having created Osama bin Laden and having had a relationship with al Qaeda, it is known to have had a pragmatic relationship with its forerunner, the Maktab al Khidamar (MAK), during the Afghan-Soviet War. The MAK, which was co-founded by bin Laden during Operation Cyclone, acted as the intermediary for the flow of arms and recruits from the CIA to the mujahideen. Were informal relations maintained once the war was over?

If so, how should we interpret comments made by Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to the former US President Jimmy Carter, before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on February 1st 2007?

A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

I wonder what Goldstein will do next.

Footnotes:

1. October 10th – A new video aired by al Arabiya television today shows an al Qaeda militant urging fighters to train hard and encourages training on nuclear weapons. “Man has to prepare himself, starting with the first stages of physical exercise … etc. to the highest levels of preparations reached by science today, to the nuclear weapons,” said Abu Yahya al Libi on the tape. Al Libi is one of four men who escaped from the U.S. Bagram prison in Afghanistan in July 2005 (source: ABC News).

   Note: Elections for the United States House of Representatives were due to be held on November 7th 2006.

2. Four days before the 2004 presidential election, bin Laden appeared with Bush’s ‘October surprise’ – claiming he ordered 9/11 and appearing to goad Americans with threats of more attacks. The tape enabled Bush to recover vital approval ratings that he had lost to John Kerry in the weeks before and win re-election.

   Even veteran newsman Walter Kronkite went public to suggest the tape was a set-up masterminded by Karl Rove (source: Global Research).

3. Previous to the beginning of the Iraq war, Bin Laden appeared in February 2003 on an audio tape that was touted as proof positive of Al Qaeda links with Saddam Hussein. In another amazing timing coincidence, the tape came barely a week after Colin powell’s [sic] attempts to link Al Qaeda and Saddam in his botched presentation of lies and exaggerations before the UN Security Council.

   In an even more bizarre twist, just hours before the tape was found and aired by AlJazeera, Colin Powell announced in the US Senate that a “Bin Laden tape is coming proving Iraq’s links with Al-Qaeda.” How does Colin Powell know what AlJazeera are going to broadcast before they do? (source: Global Research).