Bcc: a few folks
Friends,
New Dawn has asked me to write an article on the recent
horrific events and their meaning. As usual, I'll post that
to the list as well. Meanwhile, I'll be forwarding along
various items people send me, with minimal comment. I do
not know what is true and what isn't. Please use your own
judgement.
Please send in things you come across in the news or from
other sources which you believe deserve wider attention.
rkm
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Delivered-To: moderator for •••@••.•••
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 14:25:29 -0400
From: "Nurev Ind." <•••@••.•••>
Subject: It's called a " trigger."
The U.S. Government lied to the American People about
the following events. Each of these incidents led the
United States into War....
1898..THEY LIED about the sinking of the battleship
Maine. (Spanish American War)
1915..THEY LIED about the sinking of the ocean liner
Lusitania (World War I)
1941..THEY LIED about the attack on Pearl Harbor.
(World War 2)
1964..THEY LIED about the Gulf of Tonkin affair.
(Vietnam War)
trigger
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Delivered-To: moderator for •••@••.•••
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 11:26:39 -0400
From: "Nurev Ind." <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Help discover the truth.
9/16/01
These two URLs have been pulled.
Does anyone have these articles?
If so please sent them to us by reply
AND POST THEM.
Thanks,
Nurev
3-- US Officials were warned of a possible terrorist attack
at US airports a month before Sept 11
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/11/attack-airport-security.
4--the FBI received French intelligence reports that at
least one of bin Laden's men was operating in the US a month
before the attack
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/wtc_terrorsuspects_010911
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Delivered-To: •••@••.•••
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 14:03:16 -0400
To: •••@••.•••
From: Jay Fenello <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Predictions ...
FYI:
----- Original Message -----
From: John & Mary Salegui
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 9:20 PM
Subject: prediction
Nostradamus' prediction on WW3:
"In the year of the new century and nine months, From the
sky will come a great King of Terror... The sky will burn at
forty-five degrees. Fire approaches the great new city..."
"In the city of york there will be a great collapse, 2 twin
brothers torn apart by chaos while the fortress falls the
great leader will succumb third big war will begin when the
big city is burning"
- NOSTRADAMUS
He said this will be bigger than the previous two. 2001 is
the first year of the new century and this is the 9th month.
New York is located at the 41st degree Latitude.
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Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 22:33:05 +1000
To: •••@••.•••
From: [send personally]
"One of the largest acts of domestic terrorism in U.S.
history was the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in
New York. As it turned out, the FBI was fully aware of the
bomb plot before the attack took place. The Muslim group
involved had been infiltrated by Emad Salem, a former
Egyptian intelligence agent who was hired by the FBI and
ultimately paid $1 million. The FBI even provided the
Egyptian with a timer for the bomb, prompting the Chicago
Tribune to publish a report headlined, "FBI Tipster Said He
Built NY Bomb" (Tribune, Dec. 15, 1993).
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Delivered-To: •••@••.•••
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 13:13:52 -0400
From: William Josef Schleich <•••@••.•••>
Reply-To: •••@••.•••
Organization: DYNAMIX TECHNOLOGIES INC.
X-Accept-Language: en
To: •••@••.•••
Subject: CRG -- Who Is Osama Bin Laden?
Information and background you won't get through the main stream media.
If you are interested in getting a better picture of the global theme
playing out on our TV sets, radio and print media, I think you may owe
it to yourself to have a peek at the relationship between Osama bin
Laden and the Americans.
Willy
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html
[ <http://globalresearch.ca/articles/>home ] [
<http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.print.html>print version ]
Who Is Osama Bin Laden?
by Michel Chossudovsky
Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), Montréal
Posted 12 September 2001
A few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Centre and the Pentagon, the Bush administration concluded
without supporting evidence, that "Osama bin Laden and his
al-Qaeda organisation were prime suspects". CIA Director
George Tenet stated that bin Laden has the capacity to plan
``multiple attacks with little or no warning.'' Secretary of
State Colin Powell called the attacks "an act of war" and
President Bush confirmed in an evening televised address to
the Nation that he would "make no distinction between the
terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor
them". Former CIA Director James Woolsey pointed his finger
at "state sponsorship," implying the complicity of one or
more foreign governments. In the words of former National
Security Adviser, Lawrence Eagleburger, "I think we will
show when we get attacked like this, we are terrible in our
strength and in our retribution."
Meanwhile, parroting official statements, the Western media
mantra has approved the launching of "punitive actions"
directed against civilian targets in the Middle East. In the
words of William Saffire writing in the New York Times:
"When we reasonably determine our attackers' bases and
camps, we must pulverize them -- minimizing but accepting
the risk of collateral damage" -- and act overtly or
covertly to destabilize terror's national hosts".
The following text outlines the history of Osama Bin Laden
and the links of the Islamic "Jihad" to the formulation of
US foreign policy during the Cold War and its aftermath.
Prime suspect in the New York and Washington terrorists
attacks, branded by the FBI as an "international terrorist"
for his role in the African US embassy bombings, Saudi born
Osama bin Laden was recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war
"ironically under the auspices of the CIA, to fight Soviet
invaders". 1
In 1979 "the largest covert operation in the history of the
CIA" was launched in response to the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in support of the pro-Communist government of
Babrak Kamal.2:
With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI
[Inter Services Intelligence], who wanted to turn the Afghan
jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against
the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40
Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's fight between 1982
and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani
madrasahs. Eventually more than 100,000 foreign Muslim
radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad.3
The Islamic "jihad" was supported by the United States and
Saudi Arabia with a significant part of the funding
generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade:
In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security
Decision Directive 166,...[which] authorize[d] stepped-up
covert military aid to the mujahideen, and it made clear
that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet
troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a
Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S. assistance began with
a dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a steady rise to
65,000 tons annually by 1987, ... as well as a "ceaseless
stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the
secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near
Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There the CIA specialists met with
Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for
the Afghan rebels.4
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) using Pakistan's
military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a key role
in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA sponsored
guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of
Islam:
Predominant themes were that Islam was a complete
socio-political ideology, that holy Islam was being violated
by the atheistic Soviet troops, and that the Islamic people
of Afghanistan should reassert their independence by
overthrowing the leftist Afghan regime propped up by
Moscow.5
Pakistan's Intelligence Apparatus
Pakistan's ISI was used as a "go-between". The CIA covert
support to the "jihad" operated indirectly through the
Pakistani ISI, --i.e. the CIA did not channel its support
directly to the Mujahideen. In other words, for these covert
operations to be "successful", Washington was careful not to
reveal the ultimate objective of the "jihad", which
consisted in destroying the Soviet Union.
In the words of CIA's Milton Beardman "We didn't train
Arabs". Yet according to Abdel Monam Saidali, of the Al-aram
Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo, bin Laden and the
"Afghan Arabs" had been imparted "with very sophisticated
types of training that was allowed to them by the CIA" 6
CIA's Beardman confirmed, in this regard, that Osama bin
Laden was not aware of the role he was playing on behalf of
Washington. In the words of bin Laden (quoted by Beardman):
"neither I, nor my brothers saw evidence of American help".
7
Motivated by nationalism and religious fervor, the Islamic
warriors were unaware that they were fighting the Soviet
Army on behalf of Uncle Sam. While there were contacts at
the upper levels of the intelligence hierarchy, Islamic
rebel leaders in theatre had no contacts with Washington or
the CIA.
With CIA backing and the funneling of massive amounts of US
military aid, the Pakistani ISI had developed into a
"parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects
of government". 8 The ISI had a staff composed of military
and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents
and informers, estimated at 150,000. 9
Meanwhile, CIA operations had also reinforced the Pakistani
military regime led by General Zia Ul Haq:
'Relations between the CIA and the ISI [Pakistan's military
intelligence] had grown increasingly warm following
[General] Zia's ouster of Bhutto and the advent of the
military regime,'... During most of the Afghan war, Pakistan
was more aggressively anti-Soviet than even the United
States. Soon after the Soviet military invaded Afghanistan
in 1980, Zia [ul Haq] sent his ISI chief to destabilize the
Soviet Central Asian states. The CIA only agreed to this
plan in October 1984.... `the CIA was more cautious than the
Pakistanis.' Both Pakistan and the United States took the
line of deception on Afghanistan with a public posture of
negotiating a settlement while privately agreeing that
military escalation was the best course.10
The Golden Crescent Drug Triangle
The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately
related to the CIA's covert operations. Prior to the
Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and
Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was
no local production of heroin. 11 In this regard, Alfred
McCoy's study confirms that within two years of the
onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, "the
Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's top
heroin producer, supplying 60 percent of U.S. demand. In
Pakistan, the heroin-addict population went from near zero
in 1979... to 1.2 million by 1985 -- a much steeper rise
than in any other nation":12
CIA assets again controlled this heroin trade. As the
Mujahideen guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan,
they ordered peasants to plant opium as a revolutionary tax.
Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local
syndicates under the protection of Pakistan Intelligence
operated hundreds of heroin laboratories. During this decade
of wide-open drug-dealing, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency
in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests
... U.S. officials had refused to investigate charges of
heroin dealing by its Afghan allies `because U.S. narcotics
policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war
against Soviet influence there.' In 1995, the former CIA
director of the Afghan operation, Charles Cogan, admitted
the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold
War. `Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible
to the Soviets. We didn't really have the resources or the
time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade,'... `I
don't think that we need to apologize for this. Every
situation has its fallout.... There was fallout in terms of
drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The
Soviets left Afghanistan.'13
In the Wake of the Cold War
In the wake of the Cold War, the Central Asian region is not
only strategic for its extensive oil reserves, it also
produces three quarters of the World's opium representing
multibillion dollar revenues to business syndicates,
financial institutions, intelligence agencies and organized
crime. The annual proceeds of the Golden Crescent drug trade
(between 100 and 200 billion dollars) represents
approximately one third of the Worldwide annual turnover of
narcotics, estimated by the United Nations to be of the
order of $500 billion.14
With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a new surge in
opium production has unfolded. (According to UN estimates,
the production of opium in Afghanistan in 1998-99 --
coinciding with the build up of armed insurgencies in the
former Soviet republics-- reached a record high of 4600
metric tons.15 Powerful business syndicates in the former
Soviet Union allied with organized crime are competing for
the strategic control over the heroin routes.
The ISI's extensive intelligence military-network was not
dismantled in the wake of the Cold War. The CIA continued to
support the Islamic "jihad" out of Pakistan. New undercover
initiatives were set in motion in Central Asia, the Caucasus
and the Balkans. Pakistan's military and intelligence
apparatus essentially "served as a catalyst for the
disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of six
new Muslim republics in Central Asia." 16.
Meanwhile, Islamic missionaries of the Wahhabi sect from
Saudi Arabia had established themselves in the Muslim
republics as well as within the Russian federation
encroaching upon the institutions of the secular State.
Despite its anti-American ideology, Islamic fundamentalism
was largely serving Washington's strategic interests in the
former Soviet Union.
Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, the civil
war in Afghanistan continued unabated. The Taliban were
being supported by the Pakistani Deobandis and their
political party the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). In 1993,
JUI entered the government coalition of Prime Minister
Benazzir Bhutto. Ties between JUI, the Army and ISI were
established. In 1995, with the downfall of the Hezb-I-Islami
Hektmatyar government in Kabul, the Taliban not only
instated a hardline Islamic government, they also "handed
control of training camps in Afghanistan over to JUI
factions..." 17
And the JUI with the support of the Saudi Wahhabi movements
played a key role in recruiting volunteers to fight in the
Balkans and the former Soviet Union.
Jane Defense Weekly confirms in this regard that "half of
Taliban manpower and equipment originate[d] in Pakistan
under the ISI" 18
In fact, it would appear that following the Soviet
withdrawal both sides in the Afghan civil war continued to
receive covert support through Pakistan's ISI. 19
In other words, backed by Pakistan's military intelligence
(ISI) which in turn was controlled by the CIA, the Taliban
Islamic State was largely serving American geopolitical
interests. The Golden Crescent drug trade was also being
used to finance and equip the Bosnian Muslim Army (starting
in the early 1990s) and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In
last few months there is evidence that Mujahideen
mercenaries are fighting in the ranks of KLA-NLA terrorists
in their assaults into Macedonia.
No doubt, this explains why Washington has closed its eyes
on the reign of terror imposed by the Taliban including the
blatant derogation of women's rights, the closing down of
schools for girls, the dismissal of women employees from
government offices and the enforcement of "the Sharia laws
of punishment".20
The War in Chechnya
With regard to Chechnya, the main rebel leaders Shamil
Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in CIA
sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to
Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress's Task Force
on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the war in Chechnya
had been planned during a secret summit of HizbAllah
International held in 1996 in Mogadishu, Somalia. 21 The
summit, was attended by Osama bin Laden and high-ranking
Iranian and Pakistani intelligence officers. In this regard,
the involvement of Pakistan's ISI in Chechnya "goes far
beyond supplying the Chechens with weapons and expertise:
the ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling
the shots in this war". 22
Russia's main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and
Dagestan. Despite Washington's perfunctory condemnation of
Islamic terrorism, the indirect beneficiaries of the Chechen
war are the Anglo-American oil conglomerates which are vying
for control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of
the Caspian Sea basin.
The two main Chechen rebel armies (respectively led by
Commander Shamil Basayev and Emir Khattab) estimated at
35,000 strong were supported by Pakistan's ISI, which also
played a key role in organizing and training the Chechen
rebel army:
[In 1994] the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence arranged
for Basayev and his trusted lieutenants to undergo intensive
Islamic indoctrination and training in guerrilla warfare in
the Khost province of Afghanistan at Amir Muawia camp, set
up in the early 1980s by the CIA and ISI and run by famous
Afghani warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In July 1994, upon
graduating from Amir Muawia, Basayev was transferred to
Markaz-i-Dawar camp in Pakistan to undergo training in
advanced guerrilla tactics. In Pakistan, Basayev met the
highest ranking Pakistani military and intelligence
officers: Minister of Defense General Aftab Shahban Mirani,
Minister of Interior General Naserullah Babar, and the head
of the ISI branch in charge of supporting Islamic causes,
General Javed Ashraf, (all now retired). High-level
connections soon proved very useful to Basayev.23
Following his training and indoctrination stint, Basayev was
assigned to lead the assault against Russian federal troops
in the first Chechen war in 1995. His organization had also
developed extensive links to criminal syndicates in Moscow
as well as ties to Albanian organized crime and the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA). In 1997-98, according to Russia's
Federal Security Service (FSB) "Chechen warlords started
buying up real estate in Kosovo... through several real
estate firms registered as a cover in Yugoslavia" 24
Basayev's organisation has also been involved in a number of
rackets including narcotics, illegal tapping and sabotage of
Russia's oil pipelines, kidnapping, prostitution, trade in
counterfeit dollars and the smuggling of nuclear materials
(See Mafia linked to Albania's collapsed pyramids, 25
Alongside the extensive laundering of drug money, the
proceeds of various illicit activities have been funneled
towards the recruitment of mercenaries and the purchase of
weapons.
During his training in Afghanistan, Shamil Basayev linked up
with Saudi born veteran Mujahideen Commander "Al Khattab"
who had fought as a volunteer in Afghanistan. Barely a few
months after Basayev's return to Grozny, Khattab was invited
(early 1995) to set up an army base in Chechnya for the
training of Mujahideen fighters. According to the BBC,
Khattab's posting to Chechnya had been "arranged through the
Saudi-Arabian based [International] Islamic Relief
Organisation, a militant religious organisation, funded by
mosques and rich individuals which channeled funds into
Chechnya".26
Concluding Remarks
Since the Cold War era, Washington has consciously supported
Osama bin Laden, while at same time placing him on the FBI's
"most wanted list" as the World's foremost terrorist.
While the Mujahideen are busy fighting America's war in the
Balkans and the former Soviet Union, the FBI --operating as
a US based Police Force- is waging a domestic war against
terrorism, operating in some respects independently of the
CIA which has --since the Soviet-Afghan war-- supported
international terrorism through its covert operations.
In a cruel irony, while the Islamic jihad --featured by the
Bush Adminstration as "a threat to America"-- is blamed for
the terrorist assaults on the World Trade Centre and the
Pentagon, these same Islamic organisations constitute a key
instrument of US military-intelligence operations in the
Balkans and the former Soviet Union.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York and
Washington, the truth must prevail to prevent the Bush
Adminstration together with its NATO partners from embarking
upon a military adventure which threatens the future of
humanity.
Endnotes
1. Hugh Davies, International: `Informers' point the
finger at bin Laden; Washington on alert for suicide
bombers, The Daily Telegraph, London, 24 August 1998.
2. See Fred Halliday, "The Un-great game: the Country
that lost the Cold War, Afghanistan, New Republic, 25 March
1996):
3. Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban: Exporting Extremism,
Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999.
4. Steve Coll, Washington Post, July 19, 1992.
5. Dilip Hiro, Fallout from the Afghan Jihad, Inter Press
Services, 21 November 1995.
6. Weekend Sunday (NPR); Eric Weiner, Ted Clark; 16
August 1998.
7. Ibid.
8. Dipankar Banerjee; Possible Connection of ISI With
Drug Industry, India Abroad, 2 December 1994.
9. Ibid
10. See Diego Cordovez and Selig Harrison, Out of
Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal,
Oxford university Press, New York, 1995. See also the review
of Cordovez and Harrison in International Press Services, 22
August 1995.
11. Alfred McCoy, Drug fallout: the CIA's Forty Year
Complicity in the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive; 1 August
1997.
12. Ibid
13. Ibid.
14. Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a changing World,
Technical document no 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also
Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for
1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations Publication, Vienna 1999,
p 49-51, And Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin
Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000.
15. Report of the International Narcotics Control Board,
op cit, p 49-51, see also Richard Lapper, op. cit.
16. International Press Services, 22 August 1995.
17. Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban: Exporting Extremism,
Foreign Affairs, November- December, 1999, p. 22.
18. Quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, 3 September
1998)
19. Tim McGirk, Kabul learns to live with its bearded
conquerors, The Independent, London, 6 November1996.
20. See K. Subrahmanyam, Pakistan is Pursuing Asian
Goals, India Abroad, 3 November 1995.
21. Levon Sevunts, Who's calling the shots?: Chechen
conflict finds Islamic roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 23
The Gazette, Montreal, 26 October 1999..
22. Ibid
23. Ibid.
24. See Vitaly Romanov and Viktor Yadukha, Chechen Front
Moves To Kosovo Segodnia, Moscow, 23 Feb 2000.
25. The European, 13 February 1997, See also Itar-Tass,
4-5 January 2000.
26. BBC, 29 September 1999).
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html
Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, Montreal, September 2001. All
rights reserved. Permission is granted to post this text on
non-commercial community internet sites, provided the source
and the URL are indicated, the essay remains intact and the
copyright note is displayed. To publish this text in printed
and/or other forms, including commercial internet sites and
excerpts, contact the author at
•••@••.•••,
fax: 1-514-4256224.
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