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Politics : Bush-The Mastermind behind 9/11? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: sea_urchin who wrote (7752)8/14/2004 12:59:43 PM
From: James Calladine  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 20039
 
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire

by Karen Kwiatkowski

Better than anyone to date, the Canadian Media Education Foundation has quietly and accurately documented the most important history of 21st century thus far in their recent video and DVD release, Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear, and the Selling of American Empire.

Hijacking Catastrophe is powerful, understated, straightforward and educational. In a single meticulously organized hour of evidence and analysis, viewers are treated to a thoughtful explanation of modern American empire, neo-conservatism as a driving force for the current Bush administration, and something I have not seen before, a real economic analysis of what is driving some of our current "global war on terror."

The film examines the Bush Administration’s investment in neo-conservatism, and the early, and already horrific, results. While past performance is no guarantee of future earnings, Hijacking Catastrophe shows exactly why America’s "new conservatism" is a pyramid scheme of inhumane proportions.

The film examines eight aspects of the current situation of American foreign policy. The film provides an explanation for the obvious continuity between Cold War policies and those of the present. It examines long-term neoconservative thinking and how this peculiar version of Jacobin utopianism ascended from its rather inauspicious political roots. The film explores the dangerous territory of how the post 9-11 national shock was carefully cultivated by neoconservatives in Washington to support their own long-held objectives in the Middle East.

Hijacking Catastrophe then documents the Pentagon and White House process of disinformation, exaggeration, and media-supported propaganda between 9-11 and America’s March 2003 invasion of Iraq. It describes the neoconservative vision of military dominance over a supine, energy-rich Middle East, not only for its own sake, but as a warning to other potential international rivals.

Hijacking Catastrophe describes the cost of empire in a way so comprehensive that it becomes clear that neo-conservatism, as a foreign policy guide, comes with a very real moral, political and financial garnishment of every American, and of American children yet unborn. The cost is shown not only as a current financial outlay or in lives unlived on the part of soldiers and marines, but in terms of an alarming debt burden, loss of domestic freedom, the growing and invasive state, a permanent tattering of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

There are some critical darts thrown in the film, but the few that can be discerned relate to the facts. For example, the general lack of military experience among neo-conservatives is discussed in the context of their most interesting fascination with the use of military force, and their unbelievable disregard for the horrific cost of war both physically and psychologically, on our soldiers, on the purported battlefield enemy, and upon the countries in which they reside.

Unlike the Michael Moore treatment in Fahrenheit 9-11, where images of the Deputy Secretary of Defense combing his hair with fresh spittle cheapen our horror while turning our stomachs, Hijacking Catastrophe is a working man’s treatment of 21st century American foreign policy – what it is, where it comes from, what it wants, what it costs, and how Americans might deal with it. In this regard, the final segments of the film focus on the need to fight fear domestically by engaging in a public debate on the war in Iraq, post 9-11 policies in general, and engendering a real national discussion about what America stands for and how she might more wisely relate to the world, and solve problems instead of creating them.

Hijacking Catastrophe, in my view, has only one weakness, and that is the possibility that those who follow commentary may incorrectly conclude, because Noam Chomsky and Immanuel Wallerstein are among those interviewed, that this exposé of the war in Iraq and neo-conservatism is from the political left.

In a day and age when ex-Trotskyite democratic socialists, big government-huggers and naked empire-worshipers find a safe and happy home in the Republican Party – a party once popularized as advocating small decentralized government at home and non-interference and trade abroad – one might wonder if left, right and center are not passé. But for old-timers, the libertarian right, the American center, the military backbone, academia and economists are all represented, with interviews of Scott Ritter, Dan Ellsberg, Chalmers Johnson, Stan Goff, Ben Barber, Shadia Drury, Norm Mailer and Stan Goff and many others. I’m there as well.

When the video team came out to the farmhouse to ask me some questions, I didn’t expect the net result of their work would be so informative, fair-minded, and at times, poignant. Parts of the film show my former military colleagues in Iraq questioning the unsound military strategy and absurd neoconservative political vision, yet dutifully following their orders, killing and dying, and holding ground until the rest of the country wakes up. The White House insists that the occupation is about American values and patriotism and the public good. Hijacking Catastrophe shows straightforwardly how those Washington-elite fantasies scuttle on the ground around the feet of our soldiers and marines like so much garbage.

When Hijacking Catastrophe was completed, 600 Americans and probably 20,000 or more Iraqi civilians had been killed. Today we approach an American death count of 1,000, and each day it seems more Iraqis give their lives and sacrifice their freedom for "American democracy." Instead of learning from political mistakes of 2003, we recently invaded and destroyed much of the Shia holy city of Najaf, alienating much of the remaining Iraqi population that still clung to the idea that we were there to help. We have emplaced the second-rate thug Allawi as Prime Minister, following in the real American tradition in the Middle East and proving our critics abroad to be absolutely correct about our true intentions. America’s decline as a respected and influential world power continues, while at home Americans increasingly seem to feel oppressed and apprehensive. Incidentally, the ingredients are all in place for an American version of National Socialism.

Thankfully, fear, panic and stupidity are for sheep and lemmings, not people. Hijacking Catastrophe does a great service in gently reminding us of this liberating fact. Yet, the film does far more than remind. Like the Rosetta stone, it contains a necessary and crucial key for translating Washington’s mystical and symbolic description of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and it will guide future generations as well as our own.

August 14, 2004

Karen Kwiatkowski [send her mail] is a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, who spent her final four and a half years in uniform working at the Pentagon. She now lives with her freedom-loving family in the Shenandoah Valley, and writes a bi-weekly column on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for militaryweek.com.

Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com

Karen Kwiatkowski Archives



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To: sea_urchin who wrote (7752)8/16/2004 4:20:12 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 20039
 
Except for the "hologram" thing, I totally concur with the article below --as I said, the USAF did fly a Boeing 737 over Manhattan on Sept 11, 2001....

As 9/11 debunkers drift, controversial theory lingers

30/04/04

By John Kaminski
skylax@comcast.net


[...]

A recent 9/11 conference in San Francisco was really subverted into a discussion about peak oil, leaving some observers worried that the more famous researchers in the 9/11 truth movement were actually and inadvertently working to justify Bush's war policies. One of the top researchers early on has now become a shill for Israel, casting doubt on all the comprehensive research he did on the military standdown that purportedly enabled the attacks to happen.

Many of the other major 9/11 sites have focused on small specific items that tend to confuse the public with an endless repetition of theoretical suppositions.

After all, if one fact in the official version is found to have been deliberately false - Was the flight over Pennsylvania shot down? Did a missile hit the Pentagon? What if the so-called hijackers never got on the planes? Were bombs planted in the World Trade Center? - then the whole story is false, and should come crumbling down, just like the towers.

But the paid-off political functionaries comprising the Kean commission aren't pursuing the important questions. Instead, they're locked in this pre-scripted political vaudeville with Condi Rice and Richard Clarke debating the finer points of presidential briefings. It's a classic distraction. The contemporary term is limited hang-out.

I mean, Osama bin Laden was declared guilty at the outset of the commission's deliberations on the basis of no evidence that would hold up in a court of law. Nothing much has been said about hijackers ever since.

Can you say Lee Harvey Oswald?

The real problem seems to be that law enforcement has no interest in actually investigating 9/11, only in assuring that the official story holds up, that the designated culprits remain targets, thereby justifying new totalitarian laws against freedom and validating a new U.S. foreign policy that seems aimed at making large amounts of money for government contractors rather than pursuing actualized justice.

Which is why the FBI can come out and say there was nothing suspicious about pre-9/11 trading activities when the whole world knows that there was. There hasn't been a single peep about this red-flag issue from the official commission.

Recent weeks have brought two major revelations among the minor details of 9/11. First, a new website revealed footage that appears to show the jetliner that hit the South Tower firing a missile just before impact. You can only see this in slow motion, but it's there, if you look carefully.

The other shocker actually showed up in an e-mail to me that recounted a "power-down" situation on the upper floors of the WTC on the very weekend before 9/11, providing a window of opportunity to plant bombs in the towers, had anyone so desired.

And yet, something is missing. Perhaps it's just the media blockade. Just like they won't tell you that American soldiers are being outmaneuvered and slaughtered by the Iraqi resistance (they're not "insurgents," they're ordinary people defending their homes against American sociopaths - who incidentally now have no legitimate reason to even be there - now that Saddam has been captured - not that they ever did).

As far as 9/11 goes, we seem to still not have a truly significant smoking gun, at least as recognized by the media and disseminated to the general public, even though we have many smoldering guns, many mentioned above. But what Americans really believe and what action is taken is all shaped by the media, which refuse en masse to admit that everything Bush and his accomplices say about practically every topic is a false story designed to deceive the public.

So in the face of this media mindlock, the 9/11 truth troops are rattling, reverberating in frustration in the echoes of their own rhetoric. They've presented plenty of compelling arguments, but can't fight through this blanket of corporate censorship.

A couple of fertile areas for new 9/11 revelations continue to be investigated by tireless researchers who don't do things for money like those highly paid anchormen and reporters do. The researchers simply want the truth; the so-called reporters who regurgitate Pentagon press releases and call it news simply want their money.

One interesting factoid was unearthed by Gerard Holmgren, one of the truly legendary 9/11 sleuths, who found out by checking FAA records that two of the so-called death flights never even existed, never took off, so they couldn't have crashed into anything, despite all the official hype about flight times and radar tracking.

To be clear about this, the flights Holmgren pinpoints USUALLY fly every day, but the FAA logs reveal they didn't fly THAT day.

The other provocative tangent being scrutinized by several researchers (including me) seem to indicate that many of the names on the airline passenger death lists don't appear to be real people. There are plenty of names, for sure, but they don't seem to be matching up with birthdates in available records. Further, certain foundations created to honor a couple of very famous names in the mythology of the fatal day appear to have ties to neocon businesses.

Though the state of this research is still in its infancy, the thought that motivates this work is that if the names on the passenger lists were not actual individuals, and at least two of the planes never took off from their points of departure ... well, that would be another rack of smoking guns in a situation that already has plenty.

I've done a lot of radio over the past year, trying to plant the seed among the general populace that the sheer number of lies told by the government about 9/11 merits more than a passing outrage by a majority of U.S. citizens.

Back along the trail, when I was chatting with Bill Boshears on WLW-AM in Cincinnati, we received a phone call from somebody known as The Webfairy, who tried to tell us that no planes were involved in the 9/11 attacks. I must admit I was caught off guard.

My objective on the show was to present the basic fundamental facts - the most understandable ones - to try to get people who hadn't comtemplated versions of events other than the government's to at least recognize there were some basic parts of the official story that were preposterous, and many others that were very questionable.

So I wasn't very receptive to The Webfairy's perspective, and frankly, we gave her the bum's rush out of the door (if you can do that on the telephone).

However, I always check back on people I disagree with, to make sure I haven't deceived myself. What got me started on my search was something totally unrelated.

I've always been puzzled by the apparent metamorphosis of the Emperor's Clothes website from the vanguard of 9/11 alternative versions right after the terrible day to what it has become now - a blatantly pro-Israel website that is always yowling about what bad people the Palestinians are. In my mind, it just didn't compute that a site that could so concisely enumerate the flaws in the U.S. government's story and have such incredible reporting about the so-called military standdown that enabled these supposedly hijacked airliners to wreak so much damage could suddenly turn and become predictable Zionist public relations of the same stripe as Fox news and the rest of that fascist network joke.

Since I remain convinced that Israel played a major role in the 9/11 attacks (simply because through its neocon double agents it has almost total control over America's foreign policy), I mulled over how a pro-Israeli reporter could have done so well itemizing the flaws in Washington's official story.

Then, the thought dawned on me. What if there were no planes? And I took a harder look at what The Webfairy had to say.

Basically, her comprehensive analysis of the video footage of the two WTC crashes has led her to believe that no plane hit either structure.

Why? Because planes don't cut into buildings like butter. They splinter and explode on contact. Parts go flying everywhere.

In the case of the Pentagon crash, for instance, the government argues that the jetliner that supposedly hit it completely disintegrated in a fire so hot it melted every trace of the airplane and its passengers. Disintegrated into invisibility. This opinion made preposterous the later report that government officials were able to extract enough DNA from the scene to identify every passenger on the ill-fated plane.

However, in the case of the WTC, we are supposed to believe that the facade of the Twin Towers was so flimsy that the planes could cut into the walls like a finger into a chocolate cake without losing a single part. Hmmm?

And then there are the videos themselves. The only view of the first impact is known to most by now, the famous Naudet brothers video. Two French filmmakers were supposedly filming a random event of the New York Fire Department, and just happened to swerve their camera skyward to serendipitously capture the final moments of the flight that hit the North Tower.

Except that you can barely make out the plane, because the image is so fuzzy. Is it a plane? Was it added to the film? Were there any eyewitnesses who actually saw the impact? I don't know of any.

And then there's the way the plane disappears into the building. There seems to be an explosion before it hits. The image of the plane, fuzzy as it is, looks square-winged, not like the jetliner the government said it was.

Even more enigmatic is the plane everyone "saw" hit the South Tower, the one that now turns up with an apparent extra fuel tank on its bottom, and in one recent film analysis apparently fires a missile an instant before impact.

But what is most curious is the impact itself. On the famous Fairbanks video, taken from the street below, there is not only no sound of the plane hitting the building, there is also no evidence of anything breaking - not the wall, not the plane - just a silent, smooth entrance of a very solid airliner into a very solid building that at that moment evinces the solidity of marshmallow.

And what really piqued my suspicions were a couple of comments made by The Webfairy when we were on the radio together the other night. It is her suspicion that the Naudet brothers weren't in the position they were in to film a documentary on the fire department. She believes they were there to film the apparent crash.

And further, she claims to have discovered that the so-called Czech video of the South Tower crash was nothing of the sort, because her frame-by-frame analysis hows, by carefully examining the reflections in incidental windows on the film, that the camera was riding in a fire engine, not in a car as some claim. A fire engine in which all the crew died in the WTC collapse, by the way.

Two more little smoking pistols to be filed away for that rainy day when freedom of speech and government integrity are finally restored in America. I know, I know - dream on.

Now, I've heard the arguments against holograms. How could they possibly be projected so as to be visible from so many different angles? Don't know. I'm not a scientist. And what happened to all the people on the planes? Don't know that, either. I'm not a police detective, or an FBI agent.

But I do know that the government has lied about so many aspects about 9/11, and that the reporting of the standdown was best done but someone who did not remain true to form.

I suggest everyone take a look at thewebfairy.com

Look carefully at those film clips. Tell me it was a plane, and not a trick. If you can...

Some observers have claimed that all this talk about holograms is just disinformation meant to throw people off the track of the real story.

Yet just today I received another e-mail talking about the advanced holography of the military that could disguise a missile as a jetliner. But that will be tomorrow's story.

In the meantime, I'd just like to say, if we were a truly free country, we could all get Al-Jazeerah on our cable TV, and then we would really see what America is doing to the rest of the world. It's only a matter of time, on the present course, before they do the same things to us here in America as well.

-----------------------------------

John Kaminski is the author of "America's Autopsy Report," a collection of his Internet essays seen on hundreds of websites around the world, and also "The Day America Died: Why You Shouldn't Believe the Official Version of What Happened on September 11, 2001," a 48-booklet written for those who still believe what the U.S. government says about 9/11. For more information about both, go to

johnkaminski.com

williambowles.info