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CounterPunch
March 22,
2003
Memory Lane
Bush Uses War
to Bury Probe of 9/11
By CHRIS FLOYD
Long before Genghis W. Bush and his Boardroom
Horde launched their campaign of rapine against the clapped-out
Iraqi regime, there was a little incident involving hijacked
planes, famous buildings and the mass slaughter of innocent people
on American soil that caused a good deal of commotion at the
time. You might remember; it happened on September 11 a couple
of years back.
True, Genghis does mention it occasionally,
as part of his successful bamboozling of the shell-shocked American
people into blaming Iraq for the atrocity, which was of course
financed and carried out by faithful followers of the extremist
variant of Islam propagated worldwide by the Bush Family's longtime
pals and patrons, the Saudi royals. The attacks were also facilitated
at least in part (and perhaps--let's be charitable--indirectly)
by extremist elements in the Pakistani secret service, the ISI,
longtime ally of the Bush family firm, the CIA. The connections
between these Bush cronies and the Taliban, al Qaeda and the
killers of journalist Daniel Pearl are extensively documented
in the public record.
Of course, the American public is told
nothing of this record. Their own history--even the recent horror
that exploded live on their TV screens that fateful September
morning--is being falsified and obliterated by the Bush Regime
and its cowed, corrupted and ignorant enablers in the media.
Dazzled by the glitzy video-game graphics of the wardrumming
TV networks, and battered by a ceaseless barrage of lies from
their leaders--even from the sainted Colin Powell, whose much-ballyhooed
"case for the prosecution" at the UN has since been
revealed as a farrago of fake documents, doctored tapes and plagiarised
schoolwork--a full 45 percent of Americans now believe the transparent
lie that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks.
Yet in the first months after the assault--before the Bush fog
machine went to work--only 3 percent of the public believed this
lunatic conspiracy theory, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
This week we saw how the national amnesia
induced by the Bush blizzard of bull is serving another useful
purpose for the unelected junta: obscuring its hugger-mugger
strangulation of the "Independent Commission" appointed
to investigate the September 11 attacks.
Of course, Genghis long resisted any
outside probe into the catastrophic failure of his beloved secret
services to thwart the plotters--not to mention the Horde's strangely
tepid response to the attack itself. Even after severe public
pressure forced Bush to convene an independent panel, he tried
to sandbag the proceedings by appointing accused war criminal
and self-proclaimed master of the public lie, Henry Kissinger,
as chairman. But Hank exited the scene rather than submit to
disclosure rules that would have revealed the extent of his role
as bagman for the Saudis and other interested parties.
Finally, a less controversial bagman
for Saudi interests, Thomas Keane--an oil business partner of
Osama bin Laden's financier and brother-in-law, Saudi magnate
Khalid bin Mahfouz--was appointed to head the panel. At last
it seemed the commission's Establishment worthies could actually
get down to work. But one should never underestimate--or even
misunderestimate--the ingenuity of professional liars like the
Bush boys. For they quietly found another way to nobble the commission:
subjecting the panel members--who were picked, remember, because
of their reputations for impeachable probity and public service--to
months-long security checks before allowing them access to the
secret documents at the heart of the probe, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
reports.
Most commissioners already have security
clearance from their previous government service, but the Horde
has decided to put many of them--those not directly appointed
by Bush, apparently--through the glacially-paced FBI background
checks yet again. How long will this take? Coy FBI officials
will say only that the usual length for such checks is 10 months.
But here's the beauty part: the panel is required to deliver
its report to Congress in just 14 months--leaving only enough
time for the kind of rush-rush, hush-hush whitewash the Horde
has always wanted.
Family Quarrel
Of course, America's carefully cultivated
amnesia also covers the entire background history of the Bush
rampage in Iraq. Few folks back in the Homeland realize that
Bush's planned mass murder of Iraqi children--half the population
targeted by his "Shock and Awe" missiles is under age
15--is simply a falling out among thieves, old comrades in crime.
Yes, just like Daddy Bush's old punching bag, Panama's Manuel
Noreiga, and even the Islamic Pimpernel himself, Osama, Saddam
is a son of the CIA, as historian Roger Morris detailed in the
New York Times this week.
In 1963, the CIA helped Saddam and his
Baathist Party take power in a brutal coup. Operating from secret
bases in Kuwait (where Daddy Bush was drilling for oil with his
business partners, the Kuwaiti royals), the Agency directed Baath
rebels as they laid some serious "regime chance" on
an Iraqi strongman who'd gotten a bit uppity by seeking advanced
weaponry and challenging Western hegemony over the region. After
winning power, Saddam and his fellow CIA proxies launched a blood-Baath,
systematically murdering hundreds of people from lists helpfully
supplied by American agents. Five years later, the CIA gave Saddam
and his family another boost, helping their faction oust rivals
in an internal power struggle. And still later, that future CIA
boss, now translated to Oval glory, would turn out to be the
most lavish and fawning of Saddam's many American sugar daddies--long
after the "Hitler of our day" had "gassed his
own people."
No, these dark forces--these secret agencies,
these corrupt political families, who gorge themselves on plunder
and proxy murder--have never been "liberators." They
are not liberators now.
Chris Floyd
is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor
to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
Yesterday's
Features
Ben Tripp
Blood
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Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
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Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
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A Cheap Family Farce
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