|
CounterPunch
January
28, 2003
Bin Laden and the CIA
Is Bush Guilty
of Mass Murder?
By KURT NIMMO
"How can you call George Bush a
mass murderer?" a recent email asked. "In order for
him to be classified as a mass murderer, he would have to kill
all those people you say he's killed with his own hands."
Let us begin by using the logic of government,
in particular the government of California when it prosecuted
Charles Manson over thirty years ago. Manson did not personally
murder Sharon Tate, et al, he ordered his crazed minions to do
it. In fact, when the murders occurred, Manson wasn't even at
the scene. Yet he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death
(a sentence that was never carried out after California repealed
in the death penalty in the early 70s).
If we use the above criteria, Bush is
a mass murderer.
But then presidents are never prosecuted
for murder, let alone convicted. Bush ordered the US military
to bomb Afghanistan -- an act resulting in approximately five
thousand murders -- supposedly to get bin Laden and his cronies
who are believed to have perpetuated the 911 atrocities. Yet
bin Laden was not killed or were any of his high-ranking followers.
The people who died were mostly peasants and lowly Taliban. Exactly
zero percent, far as we know, of these people were responsible
for 911.
I will go one better.
Bush didn't kill bin Laden because the
Saudi is a CIA asset. Bin Laden was the "Pearl Harbor"
the neocons have talked about now for years, well before Bush
was elected (excuse me, appointed) to the presidency.
It's common knowledge that bin Laden
was funded by the CIA to fight the Soviet occupation troops in
Afghanistan. Andrew Evered Allen, a reclusive millionaire and
CIA insider, admitted as much in court documents. He also admitted
the CIA is attempting to overthrow the government of Myanmar,
or Burma.
Overthrowing governments and killing
dissidents is what the CIA does.
Mark Zapezauer has written extensively
on CIA operations in Afghanistan under the Reagan regime. Reagan
and the CIA spent between five and six billion dollars to bankroll
and equip the drug trafficking Afghan mujihadeen, the largest
and most expensive operation ever conducted by the CIA. As Ahmed
Rashid has detailed, between 1982 and 1992 some 35,000 Muslim
radicals from 43 Islamic countries trained and fought with the
Afghan mujihadeen. Reagan's CIA director, William Casey, orchestrated
the recruitment and arming of these vicious anti-Soviet warriors.
One of these warriors was a young Saudi
student, Osama bin Laden.
It's not like the CIA to let an asset
like that wither on the vine, especially considering the well-documented
connections between Bush Republicans and Osama bin Laden going
back 20 or more years. (Read Michel Chossudovsky's "Who
Is Osama Bin Laden?")
As Michael C. Ruppert points out, "Bin
Laden's role has not just been as a practitioner of terrorist
acts but as a trainer and supplier of terrorist organizations
around the world. Included in bin Laden's coterie are terrorist
groups linked to the Balkans, Albania, the KLA (a U.S. ally),
and rebel groups leading the insurrection against Russia in Chechnya."
In other words, the CIA used the bin
Laden network (the media calls it "al-Qaeda," although
no such organization really exists) on several occasions. The
CIA (and the Bush neocons) will use it again in the future. It's
too valuable to eradicate.
Bush and the neocon chicken hawks tapped
into this CIA-cultivated network well before 911. The neo-fascist
PNAC (Project for the New American Century) organization (a "think
tank" founded by the warmongers Robert Kagan and William
Kristol) essentially sketched out the Bush worldview and plan
of attack for global dominance, which naturally includes plenty
of mass murder (no problem for the butcher of Texas, who oversaw
the execution of 152 humans while governor).
As Australia's Sunday Herald reported
last September, the Bush neocons-in-waiting (Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dubya's little bother Jeb, and Lewis
"Scooter" Libby) had PNAC contrive a "blueprint
for maintaining global U.S. pre-eminence... and shaping the international
security order in line with American principles and interests,"
an ambitious conspiracy to be carried out by "the cavalry
on the new American frontier."
In other words, a diagram for mass murder
on a global scale.
Remember: "international security
order" is code for making sure US-backed brutal dictators
rule over "strategic" places all over the world (places
with a lot of valuable natural resources such as oil, diamonds,
rainforests, minerals, agriculturally viable land, etc.); "international
security order" translates into more torture, genocide,
environmental degradation, and looting of water resources, social
programs, schools, hospitals, etc., by banks and transnational
corporations.
It's US foreign policy on steroids. It's
the selfish and anti-social (or sociopathic) rich minority cannibalizing
the vast majority of humanity for private gain. It's criminal
-- and now it will include murder like we have not witnessed
since WWII.
After PNAC drafted up this connivance,
Bush had his little brother fix the election in Florida and the
neo-fascist majority of the Supreme Court made sure it stuck.
Computer voting machines owned by rich Republicans (i.e., Election
Systems & Software and the McCarthy Group) will make sure
it happens again. It essentially matters not if you vote, sit
out elections, or write angry letters to your rich lawyer or
business congress person.
All Bush needed to get the ball rolling
was have the CIA engineer "some catastrophic and catalyzing
event -- like a new Pearl Harbor," an "opportunity
of ages," as PNAC described it.
Deliverance came gift wrapped on September
11, 2001.
Unlike Clinton, who vacillated somewhat
on the prospect of killing a lot of people in one fell swoop
(he preferred to kill small numbers over a long period of time),
Bush has no problem ordering the mass murder of 500,000 or more
humans in one blitzkrieg-like "operation" conducted
by "the cavalry on the new American frontier."
In the weeks ahead, Bush will, like Hitler
and Stalin before him, order the unconscionable murder of untold
thousands of innocent humans in the name of the PNAC-envisioned
imperium.
As is now painfully obvious, the American
citizenry can do almost nothing to stop the impending blood bath
about to unfold in Iraq (and maybe Saudi Arabia). Bush, the vicious
frat boy who once tortured small animals, will not be dissuaded,
he will not listen to the American people because they did not
elect him and he does not represent them.
Bush was "elected" by the Enron
and Lockheed Martin class of rich people who thrive on fraud,
deception, murder, and theft. Bush represents transnational corporations,
the kind run by criminals such as Dick Cheney and Ken Lay.
So determined to kill is the unelected
president of the United States, he is now considering using nukes
in Iraq if Saddam Hussein resists invasion with biological or
chemical weapons. Bush will soon be a war criminal of immense,
possibly so far unattained magnitude.
We can only hope there's enough left
after this madman is finished (enough of a civilization and legal
system, that is, left intact) so we can bring him and the other
life-negating neocons and miscellaneous warmongers up on charges
of crimes against humanity.
It may make the Nuremberg war crimes
trials look like kindergarten.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Visit his excellent online
gallery. He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
We highly recommend regular visits to
Nimmo's website, Another
Day in the Empire
Yesterday's
Features
Walt Whitman
Respondez!
Respondez!
Jennifer Berkshire
Porto
Alegre Diary 3: Lula, Savior or Sell Out?
Chris Floyd
Street
Legal
Linda Heard
Are You a Friend of Freedom?
Agustín Velloso
Santisteban
Spain
and the War on Iraq
Rich Procter
We Can Stop This War
A National Rifle Association of Peace
Saul Landau
A Guide to Bush's Political Bipolar Disorder
Ralph Nader
Protecting Public Education from Corporate Tax Giveaways
Robert Fisk
The Human Cost of War
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax--Deductible Donation Today Online!
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|