...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Tuesday, September 09, 2003
      ( 12:42 PM )
 
Whoa.

In this week of commemorating the 2nd anniversary of 9/11, GNN's Guerilla of the Week this week is British Labour MP Michael Meacher. In an article he wrote this week for the Guardian, he laid out the framework for why this whole "war on terrorism" thing is one big smokescreen:

First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing
to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at
least 11 countries provided advance warning to the
US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts
were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the
CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be
preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September
16 2001). The list they provided included the names of
four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.

[...]

Given this background, it is not surprising that some
have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as
creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan
in a war that had clearly already been well planned
in advance. There is a possible precedent for this.
The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt
used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor
on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the
attacks was received, but the information never reached
the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a
reluctant US public to join the second world war. Similarly
the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the
process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant
force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some
catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl
Harbor". The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the
"go" button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC
agenda which it would otherwise have been politically
impossible to implement.

And the lynchpin:

The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen
is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of
secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the
Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's
oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of
remaining global oil export capacity.

[...]

The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that
the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a
political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly
different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built
around securing by force command over the oil supplies
required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this
myth and junior participation in this project really a
proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was
ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven
by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga
surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical
change of course.

This was a pretty radical step for a recently-former minister of the government to take - especially from one who isn't even in the opposition party. This kind of public dissent and listing of the facts from a government official or representative would not be tolerated in this country... or would it? I wouldn't know, as far as I can tell, it hasn't been tried.

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