The New AG Appointment and the WTC

In introducing his new pick for Attorney General, Judge Michael Mukasey, President Bush put great emphasis on Mukasey's performance during a crucial criminal case: the trial of the "blind sheikh" found responsible for the bombing of a New York landmark in 1993. The target, of course, was the World Trade Center, and prominent mention of that case brings up a nagging question: why was that attack on the WTC treated, successfully (to hear President Bush tell it), as a criminal matter, while the 2001 attack was treated as a casus belli--not one war, but two? A British author published an opinion column over the weekend that raised the question anew, but it's a question that has been pushed to the margins of our political discourse: to question the very necessity for a "war on terror" at this point in time is now regarded as kooky. Yet the blind sheikh sits in jail, and the three countries in Europe that faced deadly serious terrorist threats in the 1970s--Britain, Italy and Germany--all successfully dealt with those threats without electing to put themselves on a war footing. Somehow, this President was allowed to make that choice without a moment of public debate. Six years down the line, we're beginning to realize the costs of that decision.

Comments

[skyblu]

Last night Naomi Klein was on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now. She spoke for about an hour. I was mesmerized by her discussion of Shock.

Folks, what occurred on September 11,1973? The U.S. backed Pinoche coup against Allende. Guess who was the main cog in the wheel of this foreign policy coup d'atat? Henry Kissinger.

Okay. September 11, 2001...the Neo Cons' "Pearl Harbor"...who sat on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board prior and during this time, in addition to Richard Perle, Newt Gringrich, and David Addington? Henry Kissinger.

Naoimi talked about shock how the shock of the coup d'etat in Chile was brought about by the powerful elite for the purpose of reducing the populace to a state of fear so profound that they allowed the power elite to roll over and put in place policies and programs that never, ever would have been allowed by the people of Chile had they not been shocked first. Naomi also mentioned that some of the soldiers that came in with Pinochet and tortured the Chileans are fighting in Iraq.

First the Shock, "911", make the population vulnerable; then reduce them into an infantile state where they crave protection from 'the State', in this case, of course, the "power elite".

Klein's underlying thesis is brilliant. Her perceptions, field work, research and understanding are profound to say the least. She has unravelled that skein of confusion some of us find ourselves wound up in where we sort of intuit what is happening (war on terror? huh? Neocon gray ops); in bits and pieces that we know somehow fit together with the past evil done in the name of power but it is as if Klein has wings and can flying over the past and the present that enables her to reveal to us the macro reality and the manipulation wrought by the power elite.

If and how we can get our country out from under the power grab will be a miracle in itself. And it is not a matter of D's or R's; evil doesn't discriminate.

[campaignman]

Sorry, typing too fast. Meant to write "warriors" not "warriers."

[campaignman]

Harry,

I love your work but I'm not sure I completely agree with you on this.

The nature of the attack, the dramatic destruction of the Towers, combined with the attack on the Pentagon and Flight 93, meant the United States had to take stronger action to attempt to get to the originators of these terrorist actions, not just prosecute those we could capture via intelligence work.

We failed to do the job right though. We let Bin Ladin escape when we had him surrounded because we didn't send our troops to do the job. Most Americans still don't know that and it would have been a great political campaign tactic on the part of John Kerry to focus on it. Too bad he was an incompetent campaigner.

Still, it would be wise for some org to go back, combine all the knowledge we have gained in hindsight, and turn it into a movie like Al Gore's on global warming. If any friends of yours want to fund it, I'll be happy to work on it with them.

Back to the story. After we blew it and lost Bin Laden, Bush knew he could not get a satisfying victory in Afghanistan to justify his proclamations. That led us to Iraq, a war his father had won and he figured (with no actual thought) was a place where he could get a cheap win. Whoops!

While we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that Bin Laden and his ilk are criminals, not warriers, and treat them as such when caught, we needed to go after Bin Laden with everything we had and still do, even if we have less to go after him with now.
HARRY RESPONDS: Timothy McVeigh attacked a Federal building. It wasn't the Pentagon, but it was a major government facility, housing sensitive installations. The problem with the war model for dealing with BL and AQ is that it served as the best possible advertising and recruiting device for his little outfit, inflating them to the status of equivalency to the world's superpower. Not smart.

[hkhenson]

Everyone seems to miss the point of the 9/11 attack.

Most of the Islamic world faces bleak times. In the stone age that happened whenever the population grew to the extent the environment could not feed it. Now "bleak times detection" probably maps into the prospect of falling income per capita.

When this happens, there is a mechanistic increase in the circulation of xenophobic memes, very often religious memes. These memes fire up the warriors to a do or die attempt to kill neighbors. In the stone age that meant the tribe in the next valley, now it's any nation on earth.

Though OBL and company don't realize it, what they are after in genetic terms is a reduction in the overall population, theirs or whoever they attack.

It's a bleak situation because most of Islamic culture (Iran excepted) is a long way from the women reducing the number of children they have to near replacement level. That, incidentally, is why the IRA eventually went out of business, they just could not find support when the future was looking promising.

Keith Henson
(longer version linked off the Wikipedia page about me)

[lexdee]

Kooky??? Harry, you are giving your age away, all the way back to the Aquarius in LA.

[t2toesdeb]

Yep, you got that right. Why was this attack (Sept. 11, 2001) on the WTC different from the one the sheik committed? Why is one a criminal offense and the other a war offense? Because Bush is a warmonger out for glory that is why.
When those towers fell I knew then that we were at war. At least understood that Bush would take us into a war where I did not know but knew we were at war.
Why have we not heard more about the persons Bush so splendidly said he would bring to justice for "knocking down these buildings?"
What a mess!

[Kendo Nagasaki]

Do you mean to tell me that with the billions spent by the Pentagon, the mighty US Air Force cannot bring down three passenger jets ?

My pet goat, they can't.

[Toole]

Remember how everything was set for the invasion of Iraq years before the detonator --I mean 9/11 -- presented 'itself'. That was the "new Pearl Harbour" the neocons were wishing for when they concocted their famous paper, "Project For A New American Century".

Afganistan too was already on the radar screen since the Taliban -- formed largely with American financing and blessings -- reneged on a prior agreement to support the construction of an oil pipeline across the country extending from the former Soviet Muslim republics to a port in Pakistan.

It was all about oil dude.

[nottoworry]

In 1950.........8-year old son says to Mom, with tears in his eyes, "I don't like history."

Mom says, "that's alright...just learn enough to pass the test. That is all you will ever need."

Son says, "but I don't like civics either!"

Mom says, "Use the same way to pass the test. That is all you will ever need."

We, the American citizens, are the enemy and we reaped the consequences in sneaky politics.

[Levittown]

WE went to war without a plan after Saddam was down.
We went to war under staffed and under equipt. We went to war with the UN, and the neighbors of Iraq who might have helped. And he calls himself a ' wartime leader '.
He is the right leadrer for the road to hell and he proves it day after day.

[Dansden]

There is NO WAY that Judge MuKasey IS NOT connected to this criminal administration in some way- that's the ONLY way LIL GEORGE does it-he pays some one off with Daddy's MONEY$$$.

WATCH! There'll be a connection remotely- perhaps his children are lawyers with some right-wing nut firm OR he has given exorbitant contributions to BUSHY OR he signed off on one of Georgie's insane spying techniques OR he is closely tied to one of the Republican presidential candidates in some legal or personal way...

[bamboozled]

Shit, Harry, you know the answer to that: Capturing terrorists isn't an operation that justifies the Pentagon's half a trillion dollars a year budget.

Nor the sort of cash infusion the market needed after the dot-com-bust/9-11 one-two punch.

That's precisely why Bush said, "I don't think about Bin Laden much." Bin Laden is only useful if he's still out there playing the bogeyman to frighten people into handing over their wallets to support the hugely expensive (and therefore successful) "War on Terror."

It's just like Oz""Don't look at that man behind the curtain!"

[antispin]

The blind sheik was led by the hand of our government and Mukasey knew it.

[shades3]

Handling the attack on Sept 11, 2001 as a criminal act, to be handled either by the U.S. courts, or the International Court wouldn't have involved any "War Presidenting", or any cool uniforms, or speeches at military bases, or other let's-play-soldier stuff for Dubbya.
Where's the fun in that?
How would that impress George H W Bush, or "Poppy" as he is known to his nearest and dearest?
Too bad that this war was a little more complicated than just Shock and Awe and a maximum stay of six weeks as promised by Donald Rumsfeld.
All in all, instead of redeeming himself with his family, which is all he ever seems to want, Dubbya is in the uneviable position, once again, as someone who has everything he touches turn to shit.

[truth101]

Counterfactual thinking about these events is improved considerably when it is extended directly to the real source of the contemporary situation -- the eve of the Kuwait War. Why, with the entire IRAQ army lined up on the highway into Kutwait, did the US and UK not scrable a sigle light bomber to knock out the road and stop the advance? The consequences of this inaction reverberated subsequently across the entire world.
HARRY INQUIRES: Why stop the clock at that moment? Why not dial it back to the last conversation Saddam Hussein had with an American diplomat, April Glaspie, before he ordered the invasion? The one in which, reportedly, she expressed no opposition to his statement that Kuwait was Iraq's 19th province and that he intended to redress his alleged grievances with Kuwait....

[backhandpath]

If we're dialing back here
how about to 1953 (this month in fact) when Teddy Roosevelt's grandson, Kermit, orchestrated the United State's first ever CIA take-down of a democratically elected government,
Iran.
http://www.rense.com/general40/roots.htm

It was so effective, and cheap too compared to messing with congress to get use of our real army, that the US used the same tactics in Guatemala the very next year.

[backhandpath]

The rest, as they say, is just
Black Water under the bridge.

[truth101]

The 19th provice argument apparently derived from Saddam's well-known lifelong admiration for Stalin and adaptation of all his techniques of totalitarian terror and suppression. The Iraqi troops in Kutwait operated like SS commandos, invading hospitals and throwing all the new borns
out of windows. What was going on in the situation room in the White House or Downing Street on the eve of the invasion, if anything?
Within a month Saddams troops would create the gresatest ecological disaster in human history!