Most Pakistanis - 9-11 Was Inside Job

[mirandapriestly]

I was listening to a story on NPR's All Things Considered about how northwest Pakistan was a haven for "terrorists" particularly "Al Qaida" according to the U.S. State Department, but Pakistan claims otherwise. The author visited the Akora Khattak madrassa, on the road between Islamabad and Peshawar, which is a school of fundamentalist Islam, but the school claims it does not train terrorists, although they consider suicide bombers to be courageous. Pakistani Officials, according to this report, become very upset at the idea that they are not trying to control terrorism. I listened with interest when she said she interviewed people from cab drivers to gov't officials and they all know that 9-11 was U.S propaganda and not carried out by Al Q. They ask "Why have there been no attacks there since?" and they also point out the recent attacks in Pakistan that were carried about the U.S., but the Pakistani's took responsibility. Then she goes on to call it "conspiracy theory" which is funny, because it's the majority view there.

Here is a link to the story.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6567426

...The State Department says northwest Pakistan has been a "safe haven" for al-Qaida fighters
for five years now. The head of MI-5, Britain's security service, recently made a similar
pronouncement. Eliza Manningham-Buller said her officers have disrupted 30 terrorist plots
in the past year -- plots that "often" link back to Pakistan...
....Rashid-ul-Haq showed off the library, then the computer room. His grandfather founded the madrassa 60 years ago. Today his father, Sami ul-Haq, runs the place...
...But Ul-Haq did offer up some thoughts distinctly at odds with the U.S. world view. Suicide bombers, ul-Haq says, die honorably. And he argued that the U.S.-led invasion of
Afghanistan was illegitimate because -- he claims -- the Sept. 11 attacks were not the work of
al-Qaida ...

"...I doubt al-Qaida and Bin Laden were behind them," ul-Haq told me. "If they were, why have they
done nothing in the five years since? No, this was a propaganda plan from the Bush administration
-- to given them an excuse to attack Afghanistan, to attack Iraq, to attack Muslims."...

...This is not a minority view in Pakistan. Over two weeks -- and dozens of interviews -- I
met only a handful of people who say they believe the U.S. account of what happened on Sept. 11.
From taxi drivers to senior government officials, the far more common view is that Israeli or U.S.
intelligence orchestrated the attacks.
Another conspiracy theory circulating is that the United States -- having invaded Iraq and Afghanistan -- might attack Pakistan next. As evidence, Pakistanis cite two recent strikes against alleged terrorists in Bajaur, a tribal area in the northwest.


...As evidence, Pakistanis cite two recent strikes against alleged terrorists in Bajaur, a tribal
area in the northwest....

The first, in a village called Damadola in January, killed 18; the second, at a madrassa just
a few weeks ago, killed more than 80. In both cases, Pakistan's government -- at least initially
-- claimed responsibility. But veteran Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai says he -- and
many other Pakistanis -- believe American planes carried out both strikes....The people in Bajaur will tell you that, look, this is the second time that the Americans have attacked us," he says. "And the Pakistan army has not been able to protect us."

[Taxloss]

1. Hardly surprising.

The great bulk of Pakistanis suffer from a persecution complex. This is on the face of it hardly surprising. They exist in grinding poverty. Their own government has zero regard for them or their rights. A geopolitical crossroads, post-colonially they have been crammed between British and then Shi'ite Persian interests in the west, Soviet-aligned India in the east, and the Soviet Union and China in the north. To triangulate their autonomy in this crunch, they've become firmly US-aligned - or rather, the Pakistani government has, as most Pakistanis regard the USA as evil incarnate.

This has led to a domestic political scene of entrenched post-Partition revanchism and Islamic extremism. (It's this part that puts the "complex" in what is otherwise plain old persecution.) A poisonous mix, and one that is kept on the boil by Musharaff and his predecessors in a dangerous bit of tiger-riding - in the hope that maintaining hatred directed outwards will prevent that hatred and frutration being turned inwards on Pakistan's own horrible political and social failings. (Also, it should be noted that the hatred of the USA has a lot to do with the actions of the World Bank and the IMF, so it is not conjured out of nothing. The people of Pakistan are robbed blind by the US-run global economy and their local Kleptocrats.)

So this is where the prevailing obsession with anti-West and anti-USA conspiracy theories comes in. Remember, MIHOP was invented in Syria, by a government-run Syrian newspaper, Al-Thawra, broadcast more extensively by Hezbollah's Al-Manar* and most of the "research" groundwork was done in the Muslim world by extremist anti-semitic publications before US-based ultra-rightists picked it up. According to many newspapers in Damascus, Tehran and Lahore (indeed, any Muslim state where a repressive regime likes to keep tensions pointed outwards, not inwards), "Zionists" can be blamed for fender-benders, the birth of two-headed goats, and unseasonably chilly weather. Needless to say these regimes do not have the most free access to information and consequently their majorities are not as well informed as they could be, and I wouldn't give this poll much heed. In 2001 71% of Pakistanis polled gave credence to the lie that 4000 Jews failed to turn up for work on 11 September. Major General Hamid Gul, the former chief of Pakistan's intelligence service, blamed Israel for the attack on 14 September.***

It's a pity, and worrying, but we have only ourselves to blame for half a century of boneheaded foreign policy which has given brutal thugs the world over a get-out-of-jail-free card.

---

* Al-Manar is Hezbollah's Lebanon-based regional TV station. Its biggest-rated soap opera features scene of rabbis using the blood of Muslim children to make bread.

** Similar polls involving alien abductions abound in the USA.

*** Gul's reasoning will be familiar - almost word-for-word - to anyone who reads this forum regularly. When non-MIHOPers talk about the anti-semitic origins of MIHOP, Gul is an excellent example to bear in mind. And Al-Thawra. And Al-Manar.

[SidDithers]

3. Good post...

So, you're saying that maybe the average cab driver in Islamabad isn't the most unbiased source for an opinion of the involvement of the US government in the attacks of Sept 11?

Sid

[mhatrw]

5. But US media and message board pundits definitely are?

[SidDithers]

8. Nope, and I didn't say they were, either...

but thanks for the strawman.

Sid

[John Q. Citizen]

4. That's hillarious, Taxloss. I thought 9/11 was an inside job from day 1. Now

I find out, the Syrians made me think that.

And I don't even read Arabic.

Also, I wasn't aware that the IMF and the World Bank were the source for hatered of the US, all this time I thought it was the fact that we support Isreal to the detrimate of the Palistinians.

So what you are saying is the people in this part of the world have no knowledge about our support of Isreal but they are real tuned into the IMF and the World Bank? Wow, that's news to me.


Got any links to support your ratther strange assertians, or should we take this stuff from you on faith?

[seatnineb]

6. Taxloss spends too much time on the UNBIASED ADF web site!!!!!!!!

Taxloss rather subtly inserted a link to the ADF who are so unbiased that...........

The ADL lost most of it credibility in my eyes as a civil rights organization when it began to identify criticisms of Israel with anti-Semitism, still more when it failed to defend me when I was receiving threats to my life from right-wing Jewish groups because of my critique of Israeli policy toward Palestinians (it said that these were not threats that came from my being Jewish, so therefore they were not within their area of concern).
http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/ask_the_rabbi

[Taxloss]

7. The quotes, and the poll, are entirely genuine.

The poll was conducted by Paknews.com and reported by the Washington Post.

The quote is direct from Gul, as reported by an interview with him in Newsweek.

As you would know if you had looked at the linked page.

[seatnineb]

16. Those "sources" forgot to mention the ISI and Mossad link....

Zia decided to establish a clandestine relationship between Inter-Services Intelligence and Mossad via officers of the two services posted at their embassies in Washington, DC.

The ISI knew Mossad would be interested in information about the Libyan, Syrian, Jordanian and Saudi Arabian military. Pakistani army officers were often posted on deputation in the Arab world -- in these very countries -- and had access to valuable information, which the ISI offered Mossad.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/sep/08spec.htm

But hey......can't say I am surprised.

[Taxloss]

20. What common interests could Mossad and the ISI possibly have?

Other than Iran, Syria, India, Afghanistan ... etc.

Mossad naturally concerns itself with the doings of Muslim extremists globally. Those extremists pose a domestic threat to Musharaff's regime. Shared interests -> shared intelligence. As to the clandestine nature of this arrangement, what would you like them to do, publish the minutes of their meetings?

[seatnineb]

23. That did not stop Mossad from dealing with the Taliban.

Isreal's intelligence agency, Mossad, developed a dialogue with the Taliban through Taliban liason's offices in the USA and with the oil companies.Pakistan's ISI supported the dialogue.

Page 154
Taliban:-
Islam,Oil, And The New Great Game in Central Asia
By Ahmed Rashid
Published in 2000 by I.B Tauris Publishers

[Taxloss]

24. I've read that, it's very good.

I find it more surprising that the Taliban were content to talk to Mossad, rather than the other way around, but one of the most striking messages of that book is that far from the media impression of them being isolated, they were talking to EVERYONE - especially the Americans, who only seemed to develop "humanitarian instincts" towards the regime after 9/11. I suppose they were slowly being warmed up as the new government of Afghanistan and we were seeing a repeat of the secret talks with Iran in '79, only interrupted by 9/11.

[seatnineb]

25. If anything........Israel were talking with a lot of bad people..........

With initial support from Turkey,Israel also developed close diplomatic and economic links with Turkmenistan ,Uzbekistan and Kazakstan.Isreali companies invested in agriculture,the oil industry and communications.

Taliban
By Ahmed Rashid
Page 154
(2000)

Nice friends that the Israelis made in Central Asia...dont ya think?

Saparmurat Niyazov has served as the President of Turkmenistan since 1985 <snip> Criticized by Western media as one of the world's most authoritarian and repressive dictators, he also has a reputation of imposing his personal eccentricities upon the country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saparmurat_Niyazov

The human rights record of Uzbekistan reflects its status as a dictatorship. Several prominent opponents of the government have fled, and among those who have remain, some have been arrested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Uzbekistan

[Taxloss]

9. Interesting insight into your reasoning process, John.

You form your conclusions first and then assemble the evidence to back them up, I see, a daring innovation on centuries of empiricism.

(By the way, do you have any links to back up that you felt that way from day one? Or should I take it on faith?)

It's a bit hard to see your point behind all those strawmen.

I didn't say that you got your opinions from the Syrians, simply that they laid a lot of the now-familiar framework of the MIHOP story, including pretty much everything related to things like Jews not turning up for work, disappearing taxis, Silverstein, the put options, dancing Israelis, Israeli art students being deported, blah-de-blah. The story first appeared in the USA in websites of the very far right - David Irving, Stormfront etc - and gets filtered surprisingly quickly through layers of acceptability to the likes of Alex Jones, and then on to well-meaning but sadly over-trusting liberals. This does not account for the conclusion that it was MIHOP, which those liberals may have come up with independently - simply the thinking behind most of evidence.

I also didn't say that the IMF and the World Bank were the source of all hatred for America, either in Pakistan or elsewhere. In Pakistan, however, they account for a sizeable chunk of that hatred. You would no doubt be surprised how much the average Pakistani knows about world finance, and why it means he's poor. Research by Princeton Survey Research Associates conducted for the World Bank found that people in Pakistan had the strongest anti-IMF views in the Muslim world. Musharaff has made a great deal of play in the Pakistani media about ending the country's reliance on the IMF. It's one of the main planks he plans to run on in 2007, when Pakistan has an electon of sorts.

As for Pakistani public opinion on the Palestine issue, many newspapers across the Muslim world don't limit themselves to criticism of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians - they portray all Jews, everywhere, as according to stereotypes familiar from Der Sturmer: blood-drinking parasitic thieves, cheats and moneylenders. The ADL link will provide plenty of examples. And Israel's treatment of the Palestians cannot account for Pakistan's virulent domestic anti-semitism, which became so pronounced at the point of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 that most of Pakistan's domestic Jewish population was forced to leave the country.

This is all doubt news to you. If you don't like those links, I have others.

Edit: a missing square-bracket deleted one of my sentences.

[John Q. Citizen]

13. Actually, I formed my suspicians from the first. They became confirmed

as time went on and more information became available. I bet you formed some early suspicions also?

I thought it was the networks and Bloomberg news service that first reported on the put options. Maybe they picked it up from anti-jewish web sites? It that your contention?

Same for lots of the other info in your fourth paragraph. Most of those stories were reported by local news, and then were used by anti jewish website to try to support a particular anti-Jewish viewpoint. You are wrong that they first appeared on those sites, however.

What those anti Jewish sites did, is a little bit like what you did with your link to the Princton Survey Story. They used publically available information to try to support an unsupportable subjective viewpoint.

If you actually bothered to read the article you linked to, for instance, it says quite clearly that the interviews weren't conducted with "average Pakistanis, but;

"The report was prepared for the Bank by Princeton Survey Research Associates and its sub-contractors based on interviews with 2,600 'opinion-formers' in 48 countries. These are individuals with high-level positions in government, media, civil society organizations, academia, the private sector and labour unions with some knowledge of the Bank's activities. http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/art.shtml?x=16551

However you attempt to imply that this survey shows the opinion of the "average Pakistani, which it clearly doesn't. None of the people interviewed would be considered "poor" for instance, which was a word you used to try to give the impression that the survey included "poor" people or average Pakistanis.

This is a good example of you either unknowingly or knowingly twisting the evidence to fit your argument.

As for anti-Jewish propaganda, yeah I know there is a lot out there in Islamic countries, and elsewhere, just as there is anti-Islamic propaganda, anti-Arab propaganda, anti-black propaganda, anti-indigenous propaganda, anti Catholic, anti-conspiracy theory, etc.,in other countries besides Pakistan. You name it, it's out there. And that's all a bad thing.

Apparently it's not just Pakistanis who believe 9/11 was an inside job, though. New York city residents do, DU'ers who took the poll on this forum do, lot's of regular people do. In lots of countries around the world.

And of course lots of people don't.

I guess that's life in the ghetto we call earth.

[Taxloss]

19. The IMF is largely responsible for Pakistan's high unemployment,

(a result that is common to its work everywhere in the developing world), the linked poll shows that the overwhelming majority of the country's opinion-formers are against the fund, and Musharaff makes getting rid of the fund central to his bid for public opinion. I don't think it's too great a leap of faith to suggest that public opinion in Pakistan is anti-IMF. Also, people at the sharp end of "structural readjustment" are far more aware of what it actually does - smash welfare systems, drive up unemployment, tenderise indigenous industries for foreign asset-strippers - than we in the West, who are thankfully spared those effects while enjoying the fruits.

As for my first suspicions about 9/11 - I thought a lot of things that day. I think mt overwhelming first fear was that the kneejerk response would be to blame Muslims, because that was what happened in Oklahoma City and it turned out to be McVeigh. I was relieved that the US didn't rain fire on the Middle East that very night, really. My suspicions were that it was the same guys who tried to bomb the WTC in 1993 (they were being fingered on TV), the Taliban, or Afghan Millenarianists of some stripe, or home-grown American nutters. I suppose my basis for those guesses were the missiles that Clinton fired into Afghanistan and Oklahoma City. Other than the Taliban, which almost counts, I didn't think a national government would be behind it. At the time I worked for a construction and engineering magazine, and we were more concerned with drawing together as many facts as we could about the building, not the attackers.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Taxloss]

11. Racist how, exactly? n/t

[Taxloss]

12. Since you're here, isn't your OP somewhat ... misleading?

The NPR piece doesn't state that the majority of Pakistanis think that 9/11 was an inside job, it says that they believe it was either the work of US intelligence or the Israelis. Your title omits that part. I wonder why.

[mirandapriestly]

14. Read the article before making untrue accusations

What, exactly, do you think this means?
"This is not a minority view in Pakistan. Over two weeks -- and dozens of interviews -- I met only a handful of people who say they believe the U.S. account of what happened on Sept. 11. From taxi drivers to senior government officials, the far more common view is that Israeli or U.S. intelligence orchestrated the attacks."

Your post omits that part. I wonder why?

You can't make a post here without relying on "UFO" comments and making accusations of anti-semitism which are ridiculously unfounded in my case.
You say that Pakistan has a persecution complex. With the US threatening to blow them into the stone age and supporting Israel, I wonder why?

[seatnineb]

17. When in trouble....invoke the anti-semitism self defence option....

It is typical OTC behaviour.

But it does not work anymore.

[Taxloss]

18. Your title is misleading.

You say that most Pakistanis think that 9/11 was an inside job. Well, if Israel was behind it, then is it an "inside job"? Inside what, exactly? Also, you suggest that simply because this is an (unscientifically gathered) majority view in Pakistan, it somehow no longer counts as a conspiracy theory, and presumably should be treated with more respect or credence. I can understand you wanting to gather credibility for the thesis that the USA did it, but on that count are you suggesting that we should also respect the opinion that Israel did it? That's what I'm left wondering. You can't point to one aspect of this report as some sort of example of truth-telling without rendering the same accord to the other part.

Incidentally, I didn't accuse you of anything. You, however, jumped straight into unfounded accusations with both boots.

Expose any population to a barrage of anti-semitic and anti-American "reporting" and they will begin to reflect those views. Expose any population to Fox for long enough and they'll start to reflect its views.

'The campaign against the Jews is not without influence on people's opinion either. Very slowly, views are being filtered into it that they used to reject. First people read the "Stormer" out of curiosity, but then in the end something from it sticks.' - Social Democratic agent, Berlin, January 1936

'Unnoticed, racial propaganda is leaving its traces. People are losing their impartiality towards the Jews, and many are saying to themselves that the Nazis are actually right to fight them; people are only against this fight being exaggerated.' SD agent, Bavaria, 1935

Both quotes from Richard J Evans' The Third Reich in Power (Allen Lane 2005, my edition Penguin 2006 pp542, 548).

[mirandapriestly]

21. Duh, If America was involved, it was an inside job

The addition of Israel does not change that. you can't deal with the content so you have to blame it on anti-Jewish propaganda because the word "Israel" was mentioned. I don't think the belief is a conspiracy theory because there has been no trial and no investigation of 9-11, so it is reasonable for people to believe what is likely, not what the corporate media has told them via the Bush administration.

[Taxloss]

22. "Can't deal with the content"?

What's there to deal with? Muslim country blames America, Israel for terrorist attack. Big whoop. How does that have any bearing on the facts? Just because the majority of Pakistanis believe something does not make it a fact. As I said, the majority of Pakistanis believed that no Jews turned up for work on 9/11, that doesn't make that story any more true either. Argumentum ad populum.

But you're right about the problem of the trial, or rather the absence of the trial. I think that that absence has denied the American people, and the rest of the world for that matter, a cathartic experience. The attackers died on the day; the planners, if there are any kingpins, are unlikely to ever be charged for this crime (I say because of the way the investigation has been so royally fucked up, you no doubt differ, but that's an essential point of agreement); and the man most associated with the crime according to the global media, OBL, is very likely already dead. We're left with unsatisfactory bit-players like Moussaoui. The absence of any justice resulting from this is a real curse, and I think that it is the reason so many theories about the events exist - the absence of catharsis, as with JFK.

[spillthebeans]

2. Look at the smiling General Mushaaraf

In 2002 he said Bin Laden is most likely dead

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan's president says he thinks Osama bin Laden is most likely dead because the suspected terrorist has been unable to get treatment for his kidney disease.

"I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a ... kidney patient," Gen. Pervez Musharraf said on Friday in an interview with CNN.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/01/19/gen.musharraf.binladen.1.19/index.html

Now the US has him on a short leash and drags him in front of the cameras into the CNN studio in 2006.
Look how he is smiling and playing the pretend game that Bin Laden is alive and that they have to find him.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609270010

[CJCRANE]

15. More likely that

the Pakistani ISI had a hand in it with collusion from Bushco.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

26. Yeah right

They're only saying that because they're really in on the OCT but they want to divert truth-seekers away from the TRUTH. I am not so easily fooled.