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