American Conservative: The War Bin Laden Wanted (via truthout)

[LibeMatt]

This one's pretty long, but very interesting and well thought out. Subquestion: does the fact that the American Conservative publishes an article which seems to me to state that Bush and his gang willingly fell into Bin Laden's trap bode a landslide (or at least a stronger than expected Kerry victory)?

URL:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102604E.shtml

" George W. Bush’s re-election campaign rests on three claims, distinct but always run together: that the United States is at war against terror, that it is winning the war, and that it can ultimately achieve victory but only under his leadership.

<snip>

" Other reasons, however - different, more powerful, highly practical, and astonishingly overlooked - argue against conceiving of the struggle as a war and, more important still, waging it as such. The reasons and the logic behind them are somewhat complicated, but the overall conclusion is simple: by conceiving of the struggle against international terrorism as a war, loudly proclaiming it as such, and waging it as one, we have given our enemies the war they wanted and aimed to provoke but could not get unless the United States gave it to them.

This conclusion is not about semantics or language but has enormous implications. It points to fundamentally faulty thinking as one of the central reasons that America is currently losing the struggle, and it means that a change in leadership in Washington, though essential, will not by itself turn the course of events. What is required is a new, different way of thinking about the struggle against terrorism and from that a different way of waging it.

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda repeatedly and publicly declared war on the United States and waged frequent attacks against its property, territory (including embassies abroad), and citizens for years before the spectacular attack on 9/11. This admission would seem to destroy my case at the outset and end the discussion. If bin Laden and al-Qaeda declared war on the United States and committed unmistakable acts of war against it, then obviously the U.S. had no choice but to declare war in reply, just as it had to do so against Japan after Pearl Harbor.

No, not really. Some other obvious facts also need consideration. First, states frequently wage real, serious wars of the conventional sort against other states without declaring war or putting their countries on a war footing. In the latter 20th century, this practice became the rule rather than the exception. Korea and Vietnam are only two of many examples. Second, revolutionary and terrorist organizations and movements have for centuries declared war on the governments or societies they wished to subvert and overthrow. Yet even while fighting them ruthlessly, states rarely made formal declarations of war against such movements. Instead, they treated these groups as criminals, revolutionaries, rebels, or tools of a hostile foreign power, not as organizations against which a recognized legitimate government declares and wages war.

The reasons are obvious. A revolutionary or terrorist movement has much to gain from getting a real government to declare war upon it. This gives the movement considerable status, putting it in some sense in the same league with the government with which it is now recognized as at war. No sensible government wishes to give such quasi-legitimacy to a movement it is trying to stamp out. Consider Napoleon’s treatment of the insurrection in Spain from 1808 to 1813. The insurgents had powerful claims to belligerent status and even legitimacy. They maintained a government in a small corner of Spain, represented the former legitimate Bourbon government Napoleon had overthrown, included the regular Spanish army, and were supported and recognized by a major power, Great Britain. But Napoleon always insisted they were nothing but brigands, used this designation as justification for the brutal campaign he waged against them, and acknowledged a state of war with them only when, defeated in Spain and on other fronts, he decided to cut his losses, evacuate Spain, and make peace with them and the Bourbon regime....."

np: Papa Mali--Thunder Chicken

[JuniorPlankton]

1. Of course bin Laden wanted it

That was the whole idea: to start a broad conflict.

And stupid fuck * walked right into it....

:mad:

[thecanuck]

2. Michael Ruppert - Sept 11 and the orchestration of war on Iraq

New to the forum, so I hope posting this rather than continuing discussion on the previous and extremely interesting post is appropriate.

The following is a link to an address made on August 31/04 to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. The information that Ruppert presents is a staggering condemnation of the current administration's underlying agenda. While many have been suspect of the influence of Cheney, Wolfowitz, et al and PNAC's agenda, this lays out details to connect the dots of activity. I'd be very interested to know if any of you are familiar with the material presented or have verified any of it.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/PDF/Commonwealth.pdf

Here's an exerpt:
September 11th
Both here in the United States and around the world I am not alone in believing that the attacks of September 11th were facilitated, orchestrated and executed by the United States government. However, there is a great deal of misunderstanding and conclusion-jumping about these assessments that is not supported by the evidence. I was trained as a police officer and detective, and for many years now I have been an effective investigative journalist because I have adhered to strict evidentiary and investigative standards.
The 9/11 attacks were the result of deliberate planning and orchestrated efforts by identifiable leaders within the U.S. Government, and the energy and financial sectors, to see a Pearl-Harbor-like attack which would provide the American empire with a pretext for war, invasion and the sequential confiscation of oil and natural gas reserves, or the key transportation routes through which they pass. 9-11 was a premeditated murder and in my book, and here tonight, I will name some of the suspects who committed the crime. In my book I will show you overwhelming evidence of their guilt which I would be proud and confident to place either before a district attorney or a jury.
Historically, the assertion that the United States government would orchestrate an attack upon American interests has ample precedent. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski described the need for such an event in several places in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard." It was I who first brought this book to world attention in late 2001. The Project for a New American Century made reference to the need for such an attack in its 2000 report Rebuilding America's Defenses. Declassified top secret documents disclosed, by author James Bamford in his book Body of Secrets, tell us that in 1962 the Joint Chiefs had approved a plan called "Operation Northwoods" which was a covert operation that would shoot down American aircraft and stage attacks on American military facilities with the intent of blaming those attacks on Fidel Castro and prompting the subsequent US invasion and occupation of Cuba. The declassified Northwoods documents can be seen and downloaded from the FTW web site. But once viewed, they cannot be ignored.
Therefore it cannot be said that such a thing has never been conceived of or carried out by American political leaders. From the sinking of the battleship Maine, to the Gulf of Tonkin, and indeed, even to Pearl Harbor itself, history today provides us with abundant documentation of US government complicity in varying degrees in similar attacks. The book Day of Deceit and other records from the national archives have shown us that the Roosevelt administration had broken the Japanese codes well before December 7th, and that a conscious decision was made to allow the attack on Pearl Harbor to take place. This was intended to provide the necessary impetus for US entry into the Second World War at a time when Great Britain was buckling under the military blitzkrieg, aerial bombing and U-boat warfare of the Third Reich.
Crossing the Rubicon is a detective story that gets to the innermost core of the 9/11 attacks. It places 9/11 at the center of a desperate new America, created by specific, named individuals in preparation for peak oil: an economic crisis like nothing the world has ever seen. Simply defined, peak oil is that moment in time when global oil – and natural gas – production begins an irreversible and permanent decline which will not yield or give way regardless of how much money and effort is spent trying to change it.

Other ref:
While not a printed publication, there's a new doc out titled "The World According to Bush" that should be a must-see prior to voting. It was playing on the Sundance channel and CBC's newsworld, but not certain where else it can be viewed just now.
http://www.flachfilm.com/film.php?id_film=79&lang=en

It's listed on the following site, which you likely are quite familiar with already:
http://www.filmstoseebeforeyouvote.org/