Later this morning, I shall do a one hour zoom meeting with two dozen Social Studies students at Harvard. The session was originally called “Bagels with Bob Wolff” but I have just been told that it has been switched to quiche and pastries. I shall not make the obvious comment.
While waiting, I should like to make one small observation
about something that Joe Biden has said several times. In urging the Israelis
to exercise restraint, Biden has said that after 9/11 Americans were so upset
that they made “certain mistakes.” He appears to be referring to the war in
Iraq.
I do not think that was a “mistake.” I think it was one of
the most successful bait–and–switch operations in recent American political
history. Sixteen Saudls hijacked four planes and flew them into into the Twin Towers
and the Pentagon and tried unsuccessfully to fly one into Congress or the White
House. In response, the Bush administration temporarily closed all commercial
air travel in the United States, save for one plane that was permitted to carry
Saudi diplomats back to Saudi Arabia. Bush and Cheney then used the
deliberately misleading notion of WMD to launch an unprovoked attack on Iraq.
The war did not turn out in quite the way they hoped, but getting into it was
no “mistake.”
36 comments:
I agree with the main point of this post inasmuch as the neocons surrounding Bush had wanted to move vs Saddam Hussein long before 9/11 occurred and used the event as a sort of pretext to do so. I would note though a point I've made before: the govt of Saudi Arabia, objectionable in many ways as it was and is, really had no more to do w the 9/11 attacks than the govt of Iraq did. Saudi Arabia had kicked Osama bin Laden out of the country years before. He went to Sudan and then eventually to Afghanistan.
The most relevant fact about the 9/11 hijackers is not that they were Saudi nationals but that they were members of al-Qaeda.
As for why Saudi diplomats flew back to Saudi Arabia, presumably it was partly bc they feared for their personal safety given that the U.S. press reported on the nationality of the hijackers and most Americans were ignorant at that point of the history of al Qaeda and of the longstanding bad blood between Osama bin Laden and the Saudi monarchy. I'm not sure in that context that there was anything esp wrong about chartering a plane to fly Saudi embassy staff back to Saudi Arabia.
I think a few wealthy Saudis contributed financially to bin Laden and his operations after he was kicked out of Saudi Arabia, but the Saudi monarchy itself hated him and viewed him as someone who had tried to overthrow the government.
P.s. Since I made this point on this blog a long time ago, to no apparent effect, I probably won't bother to make it again.
The word "mistake" has several different connotations.
One of them is that things don't turn out as one expects or a miscalculation.
For example, I made a mistake marrying X because after we were married, she revealed a side of her personality that I had not perceived previously and which was quite sinister.
In that sense, invading Iraq was a mistake for the U.S. because controlling it wasn't as easy as they imagined and Iraq pro-invasion is a failed state which is more of a danger to U.S. hegemony in the Middle East than a corrupt, but predictable dictator like Saddam Hussein.
Call me paranoid if you like …
THE PLAIN PEOPLE OF THE INTERNET: You’re paranoid!
Thank you. Call me paranoid, but my first thought on hearing about “Israel’s 9/11” was to consider that this thing seems likely to pull Netanyahu’s nuts out of the fire. SOUNDS FAMILIAR! Somehow, what with Israel’s “vaunted” security apparatus and all the rest of it, someone managed to leave the back door unlocked, with a note pinned to it saying something like, “Gone fishing for a week or two, let yourself in, there’s some cold chicken in the fridge.”
Peter Dale Scott makes the point that we really don't know all that happened on 9/11. He gives as an example that several of the men whom we were told died that day as hijackers, and whose photographs were published widely in news reports, subsequently came forward to say that they were alive and well and had no idea why they were being accused of such a crime. Scott says that the fact that the 9/11 Commission report made no mention of this is one indication of how much the 9/11 Commission was a coverup.
(this was published by BBC Sept 23, 2011 "Hijck 'suspects' alive and well":
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/1559151.stm
but Scott has made that point in several interviews, now on YouTube, he gave years later)
s.w., perhaps Bibi's calculus included acceptable damage. Prior to 9/11 there were a number of attacks in Europe that involved train stations, etc. with little damage and relatively few causalities. While Bush is sort of a dummy, perhaps it's not unreasonable to assume that the assorted neo-cons in the administration were laying a spread on really bad assumptions.
If Netanyahu was counting on the same old, same old of a few rockets/bombs, etc. and not all that many bodies, then why not solve his internal political problems and advance his settler goals? Whatever could go wrong?
Regardless of nation, the right will always be some combination of ignorant, stupid, and evil.
Eric
You linked to a BBC article published on Sept. 23, 2001 (not 2011, but 2001) -- 12 days after 9/11. Since the FBI had failed to prevent the attack, it's not too surprising that it took the FBI a little while to figure out exactly who all the hijackers were, and that there were some initial mis-identifications. (As I recall, there was one member of the plot who dropped out at the last minute but that's a vague recollection -- I'd have to double-check that.)
I don't know who Peter Dale Scott is, but if this is his evidence that the 9/11 Commission report was a "cover-up," it's very weak evidence.
The basic facts about what happened on 9/11 are not in doubt, I think.
LFC,
The Saudi government was not a monolith, and there may well have been factions that were supporting bin Laden.
Former Senator Bob Graham of Florida, along with survivors of 9/11 victims who have been trying to sue the Saudi government, has been calling for years for full declassication and release of documents related to the 9/11 investigations that would not seriously compromise national security, and his requests have been largely stonewalled by the intel communities. Biden did, however, declassify some heavily-redacted documents that further implicate Saudi operatives and Saudi bankers who had deep ties to the Saudi government.
How much of those operatives' efforts were directed by or occurred with the blessing of members of the Saudi government (or of US operatives, for that matter) isn't yet clear, I don't think. But I really haven't looked into any of this--there aren't enough hours in the day.
LFC,
Peter Dale Scott is a (emeritus?) professor of English at Berkeley, but is probably better known for his scholarship on the deep state, or what he calls deep politics--the actors who influence government but are outside the control of the formal government and who largely act without much direct attention from the media. I believe Scott's doctorate was in political science, and early in his career he worked as a Canadian diplomat, but he became disillusioned with what the US and Canadian governments were doing during the Vietnam era, and became an an activist highly critical of govt actions subverting other governments, as in Indonesia, and in lying to the public about its actions, as in the assassinations of the Kennedys and in the 9/11 investigations.
I think we need to apply Occam's Razor here.
It's much simpler to posit that Hamas was able to breach Israeli security at the border because the Netanyahu government was preoccupied elsewhere (domestic political crisis + West Bank) than it is to posit that Netanyahu somehow was in on the Oct. 7 attack and knew about it in advance. Netanyahu's opposition to a 2-state negotiated settlement meant that it was in his interest to see that the threat from Hamas remained a very live one and that Palestinian rejectionist factions remained very much in the picture, but I think it's a stretch to suggest that he knew about this in advance and didn't realize that it would get -- what with Hamas plus assorted other elements who took advantage of the situation -- out of hand (so to speak).
Two items, just a tidbit:
Saudi assertions, however, are seriously undermined by the declassified FBI records.
For the kingdom, the single most devastating FBI document to emerge is a 130-page report dated July 23, 2021 that lays out numerous connections of U.S.-based ‘‘personnel and entities controlled by the Saudi Arabian government’’ to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. It marks the first time since the disclosure of Operation Encore that declassified records previously declared to be “state secrets” explicitly state that Saudi government officials knowingly provided a support network for the first two al Qaeda hijackers to enter the U.S....
“As Saudi government officials and intelligence officers were directly operating and supporting the entities involved with this network, their involvement with the activities of these organizations/individuals would logically be supposed to have the knowledge or concurrence of the KSA government....’’
Florida Bulldog—Saudi Arabia: Our Ally or Our 'Perfidious Ally'? Calls for a new 9/11 investigation to find out
In the course of writing this essay, I came to another disturbing conclusion I had not anticipated. This is that a central feature of the protection has been to defend the 9/11 Commission’s false picture of al-Qaeda as an example of non-state terrorism, at odds with not just the CIA but also the royal families of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In reality, as I shall show, royal family protection from Qatar and Saudi Arabia (concealed by the 9/11 Commission) was repeatedly given to key figures like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged “principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.”
Peter Dale Scott—The Falsified War on Terror: How the US Has Protected Some of Its Enemies | The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus
Scott has written at least one book, and various articles on 9/11, and he has lectured and been interviewed on the topic. He seems incredibly well informed on the matter. You can disagree with his analyses, but it would be a mistake to do so on the basis of him not knowing what he is talking about.
I only included that 2001 BBC link because when I heard him making the claim, it sounded so outrageous that I looked for an establishment source. I lived in Manhattan on 9/11. I was at work in the city that day. And in those days I regularly listened to NPR, watched the Newshour, Washington Week in Review, CNN, Charlie Rose, and read the NYT, etc. I didn't ever hear that there was any question about who all of the identified hijackers were.
Eric
Re Bin Laden's movements -- he moved to Sudan in '92, following the '89 coup there led by Omar al Bashir. Then in mid-'96, under some pressure from the Sudanese govt, he moved to Afghanistan.
Re his relations w Saudi Arabia. Few governments are monolithic, and it's possible Bin Laden retained some support inside the S.A. govt, and/or, as I mentioned above, that some wealthy Saudis continued to back him. That said, his relations w the Saudi royal family were hostile, and if anything if that's an understatement.
A long-ish time ago I read L. Wright's The Looming Tower which fwiw won a Pulitzer Prize (for some reason I never finished last few pages) and took notes on parts of it. This is an entry from my notes:
Ch.11: Aug 95: Bin Laden manifesto calls for King Fahd’s [of Saudi Arabia] resignation, further solidifying his break from the Saudi regime which had already taken away his passport and cut off family stipend. (p.238)
The Saudi government took away his f***ing passport. That suggests to me that they were on less than friendly terms.
While we’re Occam-Razoring, let’s consider what someone (someone whom, I’m fairly sure, the Bibi-ocracy is familiar with) has to say about these sorts of situations:
“If the old constitution no longer exists and the new one is not yet in force, there is no formal procedure for generating a public will. And yet, the sovereign dictator claims to exercise the constituent power of the people … Schmitt therefore has to … give an account of how the people’s political existence prior to any constitutional framework can ground a sovereign dictatorship. Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political phrases the answer to this question as an account of the nature of ‘the political.’”
The essence of Politics requires, first and foremost, an enemy. If there isn’t an enemy handy, you manufacture one, and as a corollary it pays political dividends to make your enemy as repulsive as possible.
I'll submit that neither of the far right parties on either side of the fence have any desire at all to see their enemy go away. This would be to abandon the game of politics.
Peter Dale Scott:
In reality, as I shall show, royal family protection from Qatar and Saudi Arabia (concealed by the 9/11 Commission) was repeatedly given to key figures like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged “principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.”
For all I know that could be right. The Saudi royal family might well have given "protection" to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It could do that while also being on bad terms w/ Bin Laden, because I'm sure the internal workings of the royal family may be somewhat byzantine and not everyone might have known what everyone else was doing. Btw remember that the Saudis let U.S. soldiers be stationed in the country during the Gulf War? Bin Laden thought that was defiling the sacred sites of Mecca and Medina.
I have no liking for the Saudi royal family. It's a repulsive, repressive regime, like probably all the Gulf monarchies. The question is: what would the Saudi royal family have gained from 9/11? Offhand I'm having trouble coming up w an answer. Perhaps they were nettled by Saddam Hussein and clairvoyant enough to see that the Bush admin wd not only invade Afghanistan but also Iraq. But S.A.'s main rival was Iran, not Iraq, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein strengthened, not weakened, Iran.
In Latin America, one often hears allies of a past authoritarian party or dictator say that "mistakes" were made as a concession. They never say that innocent civilians were killed, arrested, kidnapped or disappeared while they did nothing and in many cases cheered on the massacres. While I was not surprised by Biden's choice of words I was still deeply annoyed.
a brief addendum to Eric's bio of P.D.S.
https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Escalation-Vietnam-Schurmann-Franz/dp/B000J02MRA
After reading P.D. Scott's Wikipedia entry, it's clear that he's not some deranged nut raving online. He has impressive academic credentials and all that.
I can't comment directly on his 2007 book The Road to 9/11 since I haven't read it. One of the blurbs for the book at the University of California Press website says it does not contain "a theory of responsibility" but rather "crafts a poetics of the dark state" and (paraphrasing) explores the shadowlands of -- something or other. That blurb also uses the word "parapolitics," which I'd have to look up. The summary of the book on the U Cal Press website uses the word "perhaps" when referring to 9/11 in the context of "cover-ups" -- "including, perhaps [sic], 9/11."
LFC, it's not necessary nor likely that Bibi was "in" on anything. I assume that whatever humanity he retains was quite upset at the events. My point is that he was likely willing to accept a "little" carnage for the greater (in his view) good. He made a linear calculation based on past behavior. Hamas upped their game and here we are. Ditto 911.
I have flock of chickens. If I leave the coop open on any one night a fox or raccoon may come visiting. If I slack off for a month a visit is guaranteed. Same with the Gaza border.
John Pilette,
Funny but my first reaction the Hamas terrorist attack was that Bibis nuts are in the fire,
(slow roasted?) but his demise will be delayed due to the unity government. With the stalemate in Israeli over Bibi's legal stuff the readiness of the military was already suspect. The 'never again' mantra of Israel was brutally violated. Bibi can't escape that.
LFC,
"Parapolitics" is basically the same as "deep politics," which I described above.
You seem to have more than a passing interest in the 9/11 Saudis connection, or lack thereof, since you posted on it here before. I don't know that it's necessary to read "The Road to 9/11" (I haven't read it myself as yet). Read the Peter Dale Scott piece I linked to above. He addresses the issue of bin Laden having been forced out of Saudi Arabia without a passport in it. He cites Lawrence Wright (of "The Looming Tower"), and many other sources.
There's no smoking gun, no definitive answers. But I think Scott makes a good case that the story we have been fed with the 9/11 Commission report and most of the mainstream corporate reporting is problematic.
s. wallerstein,
If you're still following along, you might want to take a look at this report from AlJazeera news
"An Al Jazeera digital investigation found no grounds for the Israeli army's claim that the strike on the al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza was caused by a failed rocket launch."
https://twitter.com/AJEnglish/status/1714984258358391057
Nothing definitive. But it adds to the questions about the Israeli account.
Eric,
Just out of curiosity, do you think Jane Mayer's reporting on the excesses and illegalities of the "war on terror" should be discounted because she was at one point (and may still be, I'm not sure) employed by the New Yorker, a "mainstream corporate" outlet?
Btw the reason I have posted before here on the Saudi issue is that Prof Wolff has posted on this topic before. (Recall btw that Mohammad Atta was an Egyptian and Khalid Sheik Mohammad is Pakistani.)
I will read the P.D. Scott piece you linked to above.
Eric,
I just read in The Guardian today that French intelligence services believe after studying the situation that the it was a failed Palestinian rocket launch.
It's obvious that the Israelis will lie about such things, the U.S. too, but the French have no reason to and they have good intelligence services.
We may never know who did it.
Thanks for the link. The Guardian information wasn't a separate article, but rather in their section "Live".
Does anyone here have any kind of in-depth knowledge about Israel? I’ve always thought that I’d like to spend a year or so living in Tel Aviv; I love that kind of food, the beaches look great, and I think it would be a good place to look for insights into what the future likely holds for politics here in America.
TRIGGER WARNING: I’m a (Dionysian) Pessimist so you can take the following with a grain of salt, but our political future looks awful, doesn’t it? That’s the downside. On the ... upside (?) (sort of), it’s stunningly awful! It’s like being transported back in time and watching the Peloponnesian war happen with your very own eyes … every other week, it seems, is some new kind of stranger-than-fiction, second-time-as-farce low. If I were reading about it (rather than actually living through it) I’d tend to dismiss it as too tragically absurd to take seriously … but here we are!
Of course, I was in the minority of students who really enjoyed reading Thucydides. Most of my classmates emphatically did not: “this book is a real bummer”. Thucydides feels like a cold glass of tart limeade on a hot day, when most political writing is about as refreshing as a serving of lukewarm buttermilk.
Dear John Pillette, I possess some level of knowledge and speak Hebrew and served a year as a non combatant in the IDF- what questions do you have?
My sympathies lie with the Israeli left but I am by no means a pacifist
s. wallerstein,
I don't know much about French politics, but I am sure they have plenty of reasons to mislead. They are members of NATO, so they're allied with the US and other countries that are enemies of Hamas and that want to maintain good relations with Israel. They have also had their own issues with terrorism, including recently.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/17/world/europe/france-teacher-attack-hamas.html
Notice that the news reports about the French intelligence assessment say that the assessment "was based on classified information, satellite imagery, intelligence shared by other countries and open-source information." Is it hard to guess which were those other countries (and where those countries stand in terms of Israel-Palestine)?
LFC,
We should depersonalize the question, don't you think?
Should anything that someone who works for or with corporate media says be discounted?
Well, it really depends on what they are saying.
Cui bono?
Generally speaking, if he or she is saying something that aligns with the perspective of the powerful (the police, prosecutors, intel agencies, other government officials, billionaires, a corporation—including the corporate owner of a media platform) and against that of the relatively powerless, it should be treated with a certain level of scepticism.
But if he or she is saying something critical of the powerful or something that seems to be at odds with their goals, then it should be viewed as especially valuable information. (That's obviously not to say that it should be taken as the unimpeachable truth.)
So when Jane Mayer or Sy Hersh is publishing work critical of the government, we should pay attention even though Mayer is a staff writer for a corporate media outlet and Hersh's work has been published in the most influential newspapers.
Now, when Mayer writes an article or book that advances the White House's & Pentagon's agenda, a la Judith Miller, we should be very suspicious.
The fact that John Stockwell and Philip Agee spent most of their careers working for the CIA and that Daniel Ellsberg was a Defense Department analyst makes their fierce criticism of the government all the more powerful.
Eric,
I looked at the video you link to and I don't rule it out.
However, we're just not going to find anyone who is impartial or "objective" in this mess.
Al Jazeera is owned by the Qatar government, which is no more "above it all" than The Guardian or the French government.
My guess is that there is never going to be any definitive answer as to who bombed the hospital and in 6 months or so a few enterprising journalists, from differing viewpoints, are going to come out with books on the subject and make a bit of money off of it.
We still don't know who killed JFK and why, 60 years after the event. How many books have been written on the JFK assassination?
JP, Eilat looks nice and is as far away from Lebanon, Syria. the West Bank, and Gaza as one can get and still be in Israel.
"My guess is that there is never going to be any definitive answer as to who bombed the hospital..."
Well, we know that no one "bombed" the hospital because it's clear that the parking lot took the hit and whatever landed on the roof was incidental and did kinetic damage. Based on the referenced video, AJ has absolutely no way of knowing that the rocket it shows was destroyed. Based on the pics of the parking lot and environs we know it wasn't a JDAM. The explosion in the AJ video looks more like a fuel event then HE. The crater in the lot resembles way more those produced by Hamas rockets that manage to hit in Israel then an artillery hit (what would be the point of one fire from a 155 or a MLRS anyway)? The hospital is ~2 mi. from the border so a Spike would perhaps make sense during an actual IDF invasion but now and a parking lot? A rocket malfunctioning happens from time to time.
Perhaps the irresponsible headlines, pictures, and inflated casualty counts in some outlets imprinted and it's hard to get past that. The NYT was especially irresponsible printing a pic of a different destroyed building with the accompanying misleading headline.
The who in the Kennedy assassination was explained on Nov. 17, 1996.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzpn5m8AINs
This is a podcast posted yesterday about the Gaza siege with a prof of intl law at the Fletcher School. I haven't listened to it yet.
https://www.justsecurity.org/89638/the-just-security-podcast-the-siege-of-gaza/
I just got around to listening to Paul Jay's excellent interview of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake that Jerry Fresia linked to the other day.
Drake cites several examples from his own experience in the intelligence community that Bush and Cheney, and higher-ups in the intelligence agencies, did not want a thorough investigation of what happened leading up to 9/11, and especially not for findings of an investigation to be released to the public.
In the interview (starting ~@34:10), they touch on former Senator Bob Graham's belief that there has been a coverup of Saudi involvement, involvement which apparently reached all the way to then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar (nicknamed Bandar Bush from his close personal ties to the Bush family). (Graham, a Democrat from Florida, was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and co-chairman of the House-Senate Joint Inquiry into the events of 9/11.)
Drake (@28:15): I actually was a material eyewitness for the ... combined intel committee inquiry into 9/11. But as I was told later, what I gave that committee–hours and hours, and thousands of pages of documentation ... was so secret that it couldn't even be in the secret report. There was a MASSIVE, massive effort to cover up what the government actually knew, should have known, and didn't do with what was known in regards to the plot. They literally covered up their own irresponsibility.... and they were not going to let someone upset all of that. There is no record, other than that I was interviewed. There is no record of my testimony.... This is like Indiana Jones, where you see in the warehouse where it's in a box, and [the camera] turns left, and [the box] disappears.... That evidence was buried incredibly deep. (emphasis added)
Oops. I now see that I didn't listen to quite the same interview as Jerry linked to. (It's easier to deal with interviews on YouTube, so I was trying to listen to that interview on YouTube. But it turns out that I have been listening to what seems to be a more recent interview between Jay and Drake. Not sure it matters that much though because the topics they are discussing are similar.
The interview I have been quoting is at
9/11 Lies and the National Security State on YouTube from Sept 9, 2022.
What I think is the most important part of this latter Thomas Drake interview (@51:21)
Paul Jay: You talk about the trillions that have been spent. Maybe that was the whole point. I interviewed Larry Wilkerson [US Army Colonel, chief of staff to Sec of State Colin Powell; Wilkerson later became very critical of the Bush administration]. Larry said that the coin that really dropped for him, that really turned his head around, is when he realized this actually was all about money-making. [Drake nods in agreement.] The Iraq War, the rest, all the high-sounding objectives, it was banal. It was about money-making. I was just reading about this woman ... who's in the contracts division at the Pentagon, who finds out that Cheney's ... Halliburton gets a $7 billion no-bid contract to restructure Iraq's oil industry prior to the invasion of Iraq....
Paul Jay: ... It's what you said earlier. It's the very structure of the militarization of the economy, that gives such power... The extent to which the financial sector now owns and controls the military-industrial sector.... To me it would be a no-brainer: If you're going to have a need for arms manufacturing, shouldn't it be publicly owned and take the profit motive out of war? But, of course, the profit motive kind of IS the objective. (emphasis added)
Once you understand that it's all about the money, everything else makes sense.
As Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange said in a 2011 interview:
[T]he goal is not to completely subjugate Afghanistan. The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax basis of the United States, out of the tax bases of European countries, through Afghanistan, and back into the hands of the transnational security organizations. That is the goal. I.e., the goal is to have an endless war, not a successful war.
Eric,
I have just now looked at the opening sections of that very long Peter Dale Scott article that you linked. He says at one point that he owes a "considerable debt" to Wright's _The Looming Tower_ which exposed problems and omissions in the official account, but criticizes Wright's "selectivity," which "delayed" his (Scott's) arrival at a "less warped" view of events. (I'm not reproducing the whole passage bc it's awkward to copy and paste on my phone.)
So Peter Dale Scott writes, in the article that you recommend, that he owes a "considerable debt" to Wright's book (which surprised me based on your earlier comments).
Btw some of what Scott says in the opening passages of the article is well known. For example, that the CIA withheld info from the FBI. The silo-ing and lack of cooperation betw the agencies was a major impetus of the reforms in the intel bureaucracy that were legislated and implemented after 9/11.
LFC linked above to an interview of Tom Dannenbaum, who is a scholar of international human rights law. Dannenbaum explains in the discussion the obligations of warring parties under international law and describes how Israel is committing war crimes in its siege of Gaza.
https://www.justsecurity.org/89638/the-just-security-podcast-the-siege-of-gaza/
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