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September
14, 2001
Aftershocks
By Alexander Cockburn and
Jeffrey St. Clair
Is Camp
David Cheney's Siberia?
When President Bush and the
rest of America's elites mustered on Friday in the National Cathedral
for the service of prayer and remembrance, vice president Dick
Cheney was nowhere to be seen. The official reason given for
this conspicuous absence of the man many believe has been running
the country: the Secret Service and FBI fear further terrorist
attacks, and insist that at no time can the President and Vice
President be in the same place, lest a single terrorist blow
would decapitate America's leaders and leave the nation to be
led by Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert.
One very highly placed denizen
of the Clinton White House is giving friends a rather different
reason why Cheney is sequestered far from the press cameras at
Camp David. It seems that President Bush's widely ridiculed journey
from Sarasota, Florida, through Barksdale AFB outside Shreveport,
Louisiana, to a Strategic Air Command bunker outside Omaha, Nebraska,
took place at the urging on none other than vice president Cheney.
It was the vice president, on this account, who insisted that
Bush not return directly to Washington, on grounds that the journey
was too fraught with danger.
Bush finally limped into Washington
late on Tuesday, with the vast, distraught national audience
noting the contrast between Mayor Rudy Giuliani's sterling conduct
in New York and the prudent invisibility of the commander in
chief. Cheney, it seems, decided against making a public appearance
on Tuesday, fearing that this would seem too close to a vice
presidential coup d'etat. Memories are still vivid in Washington
of the terminal blow Secretary of State Al Haig struck against
his own career when, in the immediate aftermath of the assassination
bid on Ronald Reagan, he strode to the White House pressroom
announced to the world, "I'm in control here."
As Wednesday dawned a continued
poor showing by Bush would have further savaged his credibility
as a leader, particularly if Cheney seemed to be the man issuing
the orders. On Wednesday Bush's inner circle rushed to repair
the huge political damage caused by Bush's strange itinerary
the previous day. Bush hatchetman Karl Rove leaked a preposterous
story to the ever credulous William Safire at the New York Times
that a Muslim terrorist mole in the White House had leaked targeting
data and that it would have been madness to let Bush enter Washington
air space. Bush was given a stronger script to read to his cabinet.
Even then, Cheney was nowhere to be seen. He had already been
packed off to exile in the Camp David dacha, told to keep his
head down and his mouth shut.
Revenge Tragedy
The lust for revenge is feverish,
stoked by politicians left and right, talk shows and the editorial
pages of the nation's newspapers. Retributive attacks on civilians
in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other Middle Eastern countries are
being put forward not as a tragic consequence of war, but as
a kind of perverse justice. Congressional leaders are calling
for a declaration of war, without even identifying the respondent.
Laptop military strategetist on the nation's editorial pages
are attempting to outgun each other in terms of the megatonnage
of planned counter-attacks, with more than one suggesting that
the only appropriate response would be a nuclear strike. All
of this on a day of mourning and reflection.
"This nation is now at
war. And in such an environment, domestic political dissent is
immoral without a prior statement of national solidarity, a choosing
of sides."
Peter
Beinart, editor in chief of The New Republic
"FORGET JUSTICE: WE WANT
REVENGE! We shouldn't lollygag...Justice should not take precedence
over vengeance...we should turn their country into a glowing
desert."
New
York Post
"I say
bomb the hell out of them. If there's collateral damage, so be
it. They certainly found our civilians to be expendable."
Sen.
Zell Miller, D-Georgia
"We should
give the Taliban, which protects this monster, 24-hours to clear
the city of Kabul of innocent civilians and then start the process
of urban renewal with high-altitude bombing. Then we should go
into the interior, hunt down the desert rat and execute him and
his followers on the spot. And if Saddam Hussein makes so much
as a peep, do him, too."
Steve
Duleavy, NY Post
"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 Pentagon's rebuilt fifth side should include
a new
Department of Pre-emption."
William
Safire
"Along
with the funerals, the grieving and the intelligence
shakeup comes a grim recognition that America is at war and this
time our land is one of the battlegrounds. The next attack will
probably not be by a hijacked jet, for which we will belatedly
prepare. More likely it will be a terrorist-purchased nuclear
missile or a barrel of deadly germs dumped in a city's reservoir.Which
poses the most pertinent question: What are we doing to
protect our skies, to develop innate immunity and multivalent
vaccines, and to carry the war to the enemy? Now it's our turn.
Philadelphia
Daily News Editorial
"The people
who planned Tuesday's bombings combined world-class evil with
world-class genius to devastating effect. And unless we are ready
to put our best minds to work combating them the World War III
Manhattan project in an equally daring, unconventional and unremitting
fashion, we're in trouble. Because while this may have been the
first major battle of World War
III, it may be the last one that involves only conventional,
non-nuclear weapons."
Thomas
Friedman, New York Times
"The nation
has been invaded by a fanatical, murderous cult. And we welcome
them. We are so good and so pure we would never engage in discriminatory
racial or "religious" profiling...We should invade
their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler
and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed
civilians. That's war. And this is war."
Ann
Coulter
"It will
soon become obvious that only a few
terrorist organizations are capable of carrying out such a massive
and coordinated strike. We should pour the resources necessary
into a global effort to hunt them down and capture or kill them.
It will become apparent that those organizations could not have
operated without the assistance of some governments, governments
with a long record of hostility to the United States and an equally
long record of support for terrorism. We should now immediately
begin building up our conventional military forces to prepare
for what will inevitably and rapidly escalate into confrontation
and quite possibly war with one or more of those powers. Congress,
in fact, should immediately declare war. It does not have to
name a country. It can declare war against those who have carried
out yesterday's attack and against any nations that may have
lent their support. A declaration of war would not be pure symbolism.
It would be a sign of will and determination to see this conflict
through to a satisfactory conclusion no matter how long it takes
or how difficult the challenge."
Robert
Kagan, Washington Post
They Were
Warned!
German police have confirmed
that an Iranian man, while in German custody, phoned US police
and the Secret Service several times last week warning that a
terrorist attack on the World Trade Center complex was impending.
The man also brought his concerns to officials at the Langenen
prison in Lower Saxony, where he was being held pending deportation
back to Iran. However, according to the Justice Ministry there,
his warnings were discarded by both German police and the US
Secret Service. Frank Woesthoff, a spokesman for the Justice
Ministry, told the Hanover paper, Neue Presse, that the man phoned
America "several times", but that he was dismissed
as being "mentally unstable".
Blame the
ACLU, Pagans and Lesbians?
Amid the den there are few
voices sounding notes of caution. Two of the nation's most prominent
Christian leaders seemed to be thumbing through the Old Testament
in search of passages of retributive justice that would, however
feebly, back their desire to annihilate the Islamic fundamentalists.
Of course, when it comes to causality, Robertson and Falwell
reach back to their old cast of villains: the American Left,
the ACLU, gays, and pro-lifers. A sample of their treacle:
Jerry Falwell:
"The ACLU's got to take
a lot of blame for this. And, I know that I'll hear from them
for this. But, throwing God or successfully with the help of
the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square,
out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden
for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy
40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really
believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists,
and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make
that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American
Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point
the finger in their face and say "you helped this happenDid
you notice yesterday, the ACLU, and all the Christ haters, People
For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the
Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they
went out on the steps and called out to God in prayer and sang
'God Bless America' and said 'let the ACLU be hanged'. In other
words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural
and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the
time-calling upon God."
Pat Robertson:
"And we have thought that
we're invulnerable. And we have been so concerned about money.
We have been so concerned about material things. The interests
of people are on their health and their finances, and on their
pleasures and on their sexuality, and while this is going on
while we're self-absorbed and the churches as well as in the
population, we have allowed rampant pornography on the internet.
We have allowed rampant secularism and occult, etc. to be broadcast
on television. We have permitted somewhere in the neighborhood
of 35 to 40 million unborn babies to be slaughtered in our society.
We have a court that has essentially stuck its finger in God's
eye and said we're going to legislate you out of the schools.
We're going to take your commandments from off the courthouse
steps in various states. We're not going to let little children
read the commandments of God. We're not going to let the Bible
be read, no prayer in our schools. We have insulted God at the
highest levels of our government. And, then we say "why
does this happen?". Well, why its happening is that God
Almighty is lifting his protection from us. And once that protection
is gone, we all are vulnerable because we're a free society,
and we're vulnerable. We lay naked before these terrorists who
have infiltrated our country. There's probably tens of thousands
of them in America right now. They've been raising money. They've
been preaching their hate and overseas they've been spewing out
venom against the United States for years. All over the Arab
world, there is venom being poured out into people's ears and
minds against America. And, the only thing that's going to sustain
us is the power of the Almighty God."
Bunker Mentality
Clinton got
to New York from Australia quicker than Bush got to DC from Florida.
A Very Big Hammer
Even though there's much carping about the CIA's failures in
regard to Tuesday's attacks, there seems to be an unparalleled
unity between the White House and the Congress on the desire
for a swift and savage retaliatory response, a response that
one Pentagon official described as demonstrating "our big
hammer, a very large hammer that can be brought to bear in a
number of ways at any time. That's not a threat, it's a fact.''
The Senate and House, in between
a rash of bomb threats and "suspicious packages" that
emptied the Capitol building on Thursday evening, have moved
forward with a $40 billion military package that may signal the
onset of a huge military build up and the end of all rational
debate about the fate of the social security system. Thus was
the lock-box blown apart.
So what's in store? We got
some clue today from Paul Wolfowitz, the hyper-hawkish assistant
secretary of defense, who said that the Pentagon would begin
examining how to retaliate against the "host countries"
of terrorists with the intent of "ending states that support
terrorism". In other words, the decimation, occupation and
reconstitution of nations that the Bush crowd finger as being
part of Terror Inc. Afghanistan won't be the only target (Iraq,
ever the whipping post of the Bush crowd, and, perhaps, Iran
are also on the list), but the Russian experience in the Hindu
Kush and in Chechnya should give any rationale military planner
pause. Years of fighting, thousands dead, no ground gained.
But word coming out of the
Pentagon is grim. A top Pentagon official told NBC news on Thursday
evening that "Americans have to get over their fear of bloodshed.
The events of Tuesday should have vaccinated them against a fear
of casualties."
Benyamin Netanyahu, former
Israeli prime minister, on being asked what the attack means
for relations between the US and Israel: "It's very good."
New York Times columnist William
Safire, claiming there was a terrorist mole in the White House,
relaying to the kamikaze pilots the whereabouts of the President
and the special coordinates of Air Force One. Safire's political
mission in that particular column was to explain why the President
fled down a SAC bunker in Nebraska.
America's
Greens Rally to Flag,
Run for Cover
Hot to present themselves as
staunch flag-waggers, some of America's premier environmental
organizations have disgracefully ditched their principles.
The Sierra Club, America's
oldest green group has abruptly turned off its campaign against
the anti-environmental program of the Bush administration. CounterPunch
has secured an internal memo in which the club's high command
explains to its staff why it suspending its campaigns. "In
response to the attacks on America," the memo goes, "we
are shifting our communications strategy for the immediate future.
We have taken all of our ads off of the air; halted our phone
banks; removed any material from the web that people could perceive
as anti-Bush, and we are taking other steps to prevent the Sierra
Club from being perceived as controversial during this crisis.
For now we are going to stop aggressively pushing our agenda
and will cease bashing President Bush "
The memo then instructs club
staffers on how to respond to the press: "If you are asked
about what this terrorism does to the Sierra Club's agenda, please
respond simply by saying that right now the public needs to focus
on comforting each other and strengthening our national security
to deal with the crisis at hand."
Imagine if this craven posture
spreads across the public interest movement. We could expect
First Amendment defenders to say that they were abandoning efforts
to protect the Bill of Rights. We could expect groups defending
immigrants to say that henceforth the INS should be given free
rein. Fortunately First Amendment defenders and defenders of
immigrants have stronger spines and principles than the supposed
defenders of the environment at the Sierra Club. Are we now to
expect the Club to endorse drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife
Reserve as necessary "for national security"?
Even groups that we here at
CounterPunch have admired are now in pellmell cowardly retreat.
The Berkeley-based International
Rivers Network, which has been the main bulwark against the Three
Gorges dam in China, now announces that it is suspending its
planned nationwide protest against Morgan Stanley, one of the
dam's principle financiers. Morgan Stanley had 50 floors of offices
in the World Trade Center. IRN has also announced that "out
of respect for the victims of this disaster, with understanding
of the strategic difficulties in conveying to a shocked media
and public our messages regarding the World Bank and IMF, with
concern for the integrity of security systems in Washington DC,
and for the safety of all, we will refrain from participating
in activities surrounding the planned World Bank / IMF this month.
We are also sharing our concerns with the leading organizations
responsible for planning and coordinating these activities."
The Ruckus Society, the direct
action training group involved in many demonstrations at the
World Trade Organization has simultaneously announced that it
is canceling its training camp, to be held in Middleburgh, Virginia,
scheduled as preparation for the next World Bank meeting. This
camp was to be cosponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies,
Jobs with Justice and Global Exchange. All these organizations
have now backed out, saying that now is not the time for such
activity.
The Rainforest Action Network,
based in San Francisco, describes itself as being in a "wait-and-see
mode." "Things are definitely on hold," said RAN's
Patrick Reinsborough.
Let's get this straight. If
all resisters to the Bush political program were to follow this
shameful exhibition by these green groups, we would see peace
groups declining to protest against nuclear attacks on Iraq and
armed invasion of Afghanistan. We would see civil rights sitting
on their hands as racial and religious profiling is used to persecute
people of Middle Eastern descent. Defenders of Palestinian rights
would say that for the time being they wouldn't protest the use
of US Apache helicopters against civilians in West Bank towns
and villages. What nonsense! Principles are never more important
than when it is inconvenient or dangerous to stand up for them.
Big
Oil's Kamikaze
Rep. Don Young, the wild man
from Alaska, was one of the few members of congress who didn't
completely buy into the notion of Osama bin Laden as the mastermind
of the attacks on the World Trade complex and the Pentagon. There's
some possibility, Young told the Alaska Daily News, that the
attacks are linked to the protests against the World Trade Organization,
another of which is scheduled for later this month in Washington
D.C. "If you watched what happened (at past protests) in
Genoa, in Italy, and even in Seattle, there's some expertise
in that field," Young said. "I'm not sure they're that
dedicated but ecoterrorists --which are really based in Seattle
-- there's a strong possibility that could be one of the groups."
Young doesn't believe any of
this. But he smells weakness in the environmental movement and,
like the old fur-trapper that he is, he is poised to exploit
it. Young is not beneath using the carnage of the World Trade
Center as a launching ground for his own agenda: oil drilling
in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, logging in the Tongass rainforest,
passing laws against environmental protest and construction of
new missile bases in the Alaska tundra and on the Aleutian Islands.
Chemical
War in Manhattan
As the environmentalists are putting themselves into a state
of suspended animation, the citizens of Manhattan and the thousands
of volunteer rescue workers mulling through the rubble at the
World Trade Center complex may well be in the whirlwind of a
toxic event, which has received little media attention and almost
no precautionary aid from FEMA or other federal agencies coordinating.
Early reports from the Environmental
Protection Agency described the destruction of the World Trade
complex "an environmental catastrophe": the air of
Manhattan clotted with asbestos, dioxin and other poisons. Yet,
rescue workers found themselves without little more than surgical
masks between their lungs and the poisons emanating from the
smoldering ruins.
For years, the Pentagon and
other terror pundits had been warning of the vulnerability of
American cities to attack by biological and chemical weapons,
the so-called asymmetrical warfare. These apocalyptic scenarios
held that terrorist groups would unleash anthrax or sarin gas
attacks in subways, water supplies or mega-office buildings,
such as the World Trade Towers. Well, it turns out that the attackers
didn't need to pack any chemicals, the buildings themselves proved
to be quite toxic enough. The attackers used American planes
as missiles and the buildings as chemical weapons.
Built during the height of
the asbestos boom, the guts of the World Trade Center may have
been one of the world's largest repositories of the carcinogenic
fiber, used as insulation in the giant towers.
Underneath the rubble, thousands
of tires continue to burn, sending plumes of pitch black smoke
down the canyons of Manhattan. This smoke is contaminated with
dioxins and assorted other poisons of the petrochemical age.
Early Warnings
Reports keep coming in to us of advanced warnings that an attack
of some sort was eminent. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was
booked to fly from the Bay Area to New York City on the morning
of September 11. But Brown says that late Monday evening, a full
8 hours prior to the attack, he received a call from a person
Brown described as his "airport security man" telling
him that he should be extra cautious about air travel on September
11.
In addition to what we have
previously reported about heightened security at the World Trade
Center itself in the weeks leading to the attack and at the Picatinny
Arsenal in Rockaway, New Jersey, CounterPunch has also learned
that an internal memo was sent around Goldman Sachs in Tokyo
on September 10 advising all employees of a possible terrorist
attack. It recommended all employees to avoid any American government
buildings.
That said, according to Rep.
David Bonior, the Michigan Democrat, the Congress was the last
to know. Even after two planes had struck the World Trade Center
towers and another had smashed into the Pentagon, Bonior says
congressional officials were not warned by the CIA or any other
intelligence arm of the federal government that the 30,000 workers
in the Capitol might be at risk of an attack. Bonoir has been
one of the few members of Congress to openly question the value
of bowing to the demands for more money made by CIA and other
intelligence agencies. "If they can't even warn members
of Congress about an ongoing attack, you really have to wonder
what good they are," Bonior said. CP
More CounterPunch Stories
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