9/11 Ripple Effect: The Neoconservatives Blueprints For War
“Social conservatism and neoconservatism have revived authoritarian conservatism, and not for the better of conservatism or American democracy. True conservatism is cautious and prudent. Authoritarianism is rash and radical. American democracy has benefited from true conservatism, but authoritarianism offers potentially serious trouble for any democracy.” ― John W. Dean
The late evening hours of September 11th 2001 at the CIA’s Bin Laden Issue Station were highly busy, roaming the floors after evacuating the premises earlier during the frantic hours. As the evening hours passed, those who left, were slowly coming back in and expected to work long hours as intelligence started to pour in at every cable station as never seen before. The passenger lists from the hijacked airliners from American and United Airlines passed thru the Counter-intelligence Center. The lists were handed to one official from the Customs Office of Intelligence, where it was handed eventually to George Tenet, the Director of the CIA. To which he remarked in awe with mouth slightly agape.
“Oh god, it’s all of them!”
Meanwhile just a few miles away, the National Security Counsel along with some of the highest officials of government were holding a meeting which tried to make sense of the data, and show who was culpable of the terrorist attacks. Stephen Cambone, the Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, began taking notes.
“AA77–3 indiv have been followed” Since Millennium & Cole 1 guy is assoc. of Cole bomber 2 entered U.S in early July (2 or 3 pulled aside & interrogated?)
Over in Sanaa, Yemen, Ali Soufan (FBI) and Bob McFadden (NCIS) were waiting to leave back to New York City when Dina Corsi (FBI) began calling Soufan, asking him to return back to the hotel where they were staying and wait for an important fax. Soufan looked at McFadden with his weary and semi brooding look at the message. Both were given a ride back. while the fax slowly unveiled the cable, a local CIA liaison officer glanced at the contents.
His astonishment was clear, the fax had the photographs of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi while they were outside the residence of Yazid Sufaat during the Malaysian meeting. Soufan was handed it’s contents, and immediately recognized the faces, but this time, he now had the names. they were both involved in the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77 which crashed into the Pentagon earlier.
Soufan ran to the nearest bathroom to vomit, sick to the bottom of his stomach. For he realized that the CIA had with held this information for 16 months. 16 months….he and his boss, John O’Neill, who perished in the North Tower, had been asking the CIA’s Alec Station for what seemed like an eternity, about any information regarding “Khallad” and anyone else involved with the Cole and the 1998 East Africa Embassy Bombings. Only to be given the run around, and even outright denials from not just former Chief Michael Scheuer but also its current Chief, Richard Blee.
The State Department however would hold multiple briefings which included members of the “Vulcans”, a nickname given to the “astute” Neoconservative faction of President George W. Bush’s cabinet. Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dov Zakheim, Richard Perle, Condoleezza Rice and Richard Armitage. Some of these people would have massive influence within the Foreign Policy team whole having close connections with the Israeli Lobby (AIPAC). Perle himself had declared Iraq the primary suspect for the terrorist attack’s against the United States, an opinion shared mainly by Bush’s most ardent supporters.
But not to those of the intelligence community, especially not Richard Clarke (National Security Counsel). Clarke knew all to well this was the work of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, Afghanistan and even to an extent Saudi Arabia. Wolfowitz had years ago drafted a paper, the Defense Planning Guidance better known as the “Wolfowitz Doctrine”. Its primary goals were to announce the United States as the sole superpower after the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan in 1989. With it’s primary objectives outlined below:
“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”
With the United States leading the way as the military force for the new world
“The U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. In non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”
The paper was leaked to the NY Times, and the public declared the document as infringing upon “imperialism”. It was immediately met with resistance and seen as “too soon” after the Gulf War had ended just months prior. However these same tenets would be revisited, but this time, with far more support behind it under the “Bush Doctrine”.
“Make no distinction between terrorists and the nations that harbor them — and hold both to account.” “Take the fight to the enemy overseas before they can attack us again here at home.” “Confront threats before they fully materialize.” “Advance liberty and hope as an alternative to the enemy’s ideology of repression and fear.”
The essence behind their outlines were simple. Authorize the use of preemptive war with a unilateral effect behind it. The influence behind these doctrines and ideals would come directly from Leo Strauss and former National Security Adviser to U.S President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “Grand Chessboard”. An outline for the United States as being the primary force for democracy in the world would begin here. Brzezinski in 1973 helped to co-found, along with David Rockefeller, the Trilateral Commission, a nonpartisan group to foster substantive political and economic dialogue across the world. Including the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
However Brzezinski was not part of the Leo Strauss Neoconservative school of thought, and was hardly referenced in the affairs involving Wolfowitz, Eliot Abrams, Donald Wurmser or Douglas Feith. They were an incredibly different kind of neocon, one in which, shared the ideals of the more strict nationalists which dominate the Israeli right wing party, the Likud, headed by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Diametrically opposed when it came to their religious orientation, but closely aligned when it came to the geo-political nature involving the Middle East.
Bush was pressuring his top officials to find a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Clarke, was left to an impossible task, one in which he knew would find no answer. Up next was The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Robert Mueller, who also saw no connection. Finally it was up to CIA Director George Tenet. And thru-ought most of it’s long, marred, history the Central Intelligence Agency will find a way to connect two opposing objects. In short time, Tenet birdied the President, there was a connection.
Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Ba’athist army had met with unnamed Al Qaeda subjects, and were seen making chemical weapons. Sarin Gas to be precise. This information had come from Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan national who was captured in Afghanistan and sent to a CIA black site where he would undergo torture from his captives. His admissions regarding Al Qaeda and Iraq were as follows:
“Iraq — acting on the request of al-Qa’ida militant Abu Abdullah, who was Muhammad Atef’s emissary — agreed to provide unspecified chemical or biological weapons training for two al-Qa’ida associates beginning in December 2000. The two individuals departed for Iraq but did not return, so al-Libi was not in a position to know if any training had taken place.”
This information would later be used in Colin Powell’s speech made before the United Nations Security Counsel in 2003, but it would turn out to be false. al-Libi had told his captors anything to stop from torturing him. Including the Iraq-Al Qaeda connection, but by then it was too late.
On September 13th, Tenet would arrive with CTC chief Cofer Black at the White House, and meet with the National Security Counsel’s top officials in regards to a draft plan to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden and toppling the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. Black tells Bush that the war itself could last weeks but a sure victory will be declared if given the right manpower to conduct it. “Americans are going to die.… How many, I don’t know. Could be a lot.” Bush responds, “That’s war. That’s what we’re here to win.” The operation was codenamed “Jawbreaker” , Black gave Harry Crumpton, his top man, the head of operations and imposed a final declaration.
“Your mission is to find al-Qa’ida, engage it, and destroy it.”
Meanwhile Bin Laden, along with his family and top Al Qaeda leadership, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Sulemain Abu Gaith and Mohamed Atef had to flee as they prepared an American military response in the country, leaving the Taliban to conduct defense. Between September 14th and 19th, prominent members of the Saudi Royal Family and Bin Laden family had high level clearance from the State Department to leave the country, while it was under a nationwide aviation lockdown.
Clarke had no choice but to go along, as this came predictably from Bush himself. Preparations were underway for a full scale military attack in Afghanistan, while factions of the Neocons began making plans to try and connect Iraq to the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks, even if it was using faulty intelligence. Or even outright fictitious info.
The National Security Agency, the primary entity behind the signals intelligence collection, and whom were monitoring the satellite phone of Bin Laden between the years 1992–1998, while also monitoring the phone in the Al Qaeda communications hub in Sanaa, Yemen owned by Ahmed al-Hada between 1996–2002. The agency itself had become far too insular and didn’t share its intelligence with anyone, but managed to get a free pass to conduct operations by Bush. Thomas Drake, former NSA senior executive, had stated that the terrorist attacks didn’t have to take place, due to the agency’s meta-data collection of those involved which could have stopped the attack’s from transpiring.
“Our primary responsibility as an intelligence agency was to provide indicators of warning, and we obviously failed to do that.”
This after Drake had met with an NSA analyst tasked to the Al Qaeda communications hub, where he was handed a reprint in hard copy form where the NSA had accurately mapped in extensive detail Bin Laden’s network cells and associated movements, It was an extraordinarily detailed, long term study of Al Qaeda’s activities that had also identified the planning cells for September 11th 2001. Mohamed Atta, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi had been known to the NSA since early 2000. Yet this information was never shared with any outside agency. This information was collected using William Binney’s own creation, ThinThread. However the NSA had begun to use a new intelligence operation which would not encrypt data protecting its primary account, Trailblazer.
During the White House cabinet meetings in November 17th to 24th, Rumsfeld had begun taking to task, the connections between Iraq and possible chemical weapons enrichment used in the latest attacks, the Anthrax Letters attacks. Where contaminated letters sent to specific media outlets, and senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, were later found to contain Anthrax a deadly chemical compound which could have the toxicity to kill a person if left untreated.
Excerpt from Donald Rumsfeld memo dated 27 November 2001📷
The Arab World League itself would hold meetings during this troubled period, while at a meeting in Beirut in March 2002, they devised the Arab Peace Initiative, a 10 sentence proposal for an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. During the meeting, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah remarked:
“In spite of all that has happened and what still may happen, the primary issue in the heart and mind of every person in our Arab Islamic nation is the restoration of legitimate rights in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon…. We believe in taking up arms in self-defence and to deter aggression. But we also believe in peace when it is based on justice and equity, and when it brings an end to conflict.
Only within the context of true peace can normal relations flourish between the people of the region and allow the region to pursue development rather than war. In light of the above, and with your backing and that of the Almighty, I propose that the Arab summit put forward a clear and unanimous initiative addressed to the United Nations security council based on two basic issues: normal relations and security for Israel in exchange for full withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories, recognition of an independent Palestinian state with al-Quds al-Sharif as its capital, and the return of refugees.”
The initiative would be put on hold however, as the proposals for Israel were halted by the opposition to the declaration, including Syria’s Bashir al-Assad who remarked that the Palestinians have a unilateral right to armed resistance to Israeli military aggression. But it was during the Al Aqsa Intifada (Second Intifada) which halted any progression toward the imitative. And while the Israeli government put talks on hold, it was left to the Bush cabinet to produce evidence of Iraqi involvement in the September 11th attacks. He eventually got what he initially wished.
Former Deputy Director for Central Intelligence, Richard Kerr, was tasked to lead a review of agency analysis of Iraqi WMD claims. One report was unclassified, “Intelligence And Analysis on Iraq: Issues for the Intelligence Community”
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0001245667.pdf
Kerr, had felt the heat coming from the Bush White House regarding his findings.
“A lot of analysts believed that they were being pressured to come to certain conclusions … . I talked to a lot of people who said, ‘There was a lot of repetitive questioning. We were being asked to justify what we were saying again and again.’ There were certainly people who felt they were being pushed beyond the evidence they had.”
Valerie Plame, a former CIA case officer, whose husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, had been sent to Niger to investigate the claims that Iraq had intended to purchase uranium nitrate (yellow cake), claims which turned out to be false. But the CIA along with its minimal information began constructing a written paper to be produced before the United Nations, but who would deliver the address to make it all the more believable. The selection was obvious. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, and a refreshing face from a rancid collection of masks out of the State Department was chosen to give the address. He was liked by the American people, as well as universally respected.
On February 5, 2003, Powell with CIA Director Tenet sitting directly behind him, gave his resoundingly clear speech about Iraq and their production of chemical weapons which was linked to the September 11th attacks. The speech came with cartoon computer generated deigns that would make any inspector view with suspicion. Was this really enough to go to war over? Hand crafted designs of underground caves and not a single actual photographs to show for it? The United Nations approved of the presentation. But according to The Intercept, Powell told outright fabrications to the committee.
“POWELL: Iraq’s record on chemical weapons is replete with lies. It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced 4 tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons. The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein’s late son-in-law. As far as this went, this was accurate. However, Kamal, the head of Iraq’s WMD programs, defected in 1995. Iraq had produced this VX before the Gulf War, in 1991 — and according to Kamel, Iraq had secretly destroyed it soon after the war. Then they lied about ever producing it (until his defection). But according to Kamel, they weren’t lying when they said they no longer had it.”
Afghanistan was Bin Laden’s vision of America’s Vietnam, just as the country saw the Soviet Union back in 1979. Bin Laden knew about the American response, which would be enormous in military might. He wanted to draw the Americans into a quagmire, which would drain the country financially. Spending billions on a war which they cannot win. As of this day, we are still in conflict with the country which has cost the American taxpayer to the tune of 2.4 trillion dollars. Bin Laden’s wish, came true.
With the UN Security Counsel approval for war., the Bush Doctrine has began its initial phases. This document was not only the Neocons plan for regional military dominance, the Israeli’s also had a doctrine, very much alike the Neocon’s. It was entitled ‘A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s’ or known also as the Yinon Plan, named after its architect, Oded Yinon, a former advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The document entails weaknesses within the surrounding Arab countries and how to capitulate upon said weaknesses and use it for a broader geo-political advantage using the United States coalition powers. Political commentator and newspaper columnist, Linda S. Heard once remarked about the influences of Yinon Plan in the Bush Doctrine:
“There is one thing that we do know. Oded Yinon’s 1982 “Zionist Plan for the Middle East” is in large part taking shape. Is this pure coincidence? Was Yinon a gifted psychic? Perhaps! Alternatively, we in the West are victims of a long-held agenda not of our making and without doubt not in our interests.”
The strategy was to separate the Arab powers, they included Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. Yinon’s strategy for Iraq was as follows:
“The dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run, it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us.
Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul and Shiite areas in the South will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.”
But the question remained, what evidence was there linking Iraq to terrorism in general? Even after the fabricated evidence from the CIA thru the torture of Sheikh al-Libi, even after Colin Powell’s speech given to the UN Security Counsel with its fabricated contents, surely there must have been some indirect evidence at the very least. According to Richard Perle, it was a matter of “our word”. In a Frontline interview taken on January 23rd 2003, Perle explains how the Bush White House came to the conclusion about the Iraq and Al Qaeda connection.
Question: How significant is the fact that on 9/11, that evening, the president immediately steps us up to not fighting a group of terrorists but bringing it to sponsor states? And then soon after at Camp David, Rumsfeld is bringing up the possibility that perhaps we should be looking at Iraq here?Perle: I think Sept. 11 is the precipitating event. And it was, in part, because the lesson of Sept. 11 was that if you ignore problems, they don’t go away.
Because everything we did after Sept. 11, to go after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, which was its national base, if you will, could have been done before Sept. 11. And had it been done before Sept. 11 there’s every reason to believe we not only would have avoided Sept. 11, and the death of 3,000 people, but we might well have been able largely to destroy Al Qaeda, because it was all in one place. By the time we understood the danger we were in and went after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, they were dispersed all over the place. So, it’s going to take us years to deal with the Al Qaeda diaspora, which could have been avoided if we acted first.And on Sept. 11, the president made what I think is probably the most important statement in all the statements by him and others, and that was that we would not distinguish between the terrorists and the countries that harbor them.
Because we will never defeat terrorism, if terrorists can organize free, if they have the run of the sanctuary in which to train, recruit and plan. So, we have to make life so difficult for the terrorists that they can’t be effective. And going after countries that harbor them has got to be the critical element.Question: Following up on that, the basic question, what does a war against Iraq have to do with the fight against terrorism?Perle: Well, I think, the relationship between the fight against terrorism and dealing with Saddam Hussein is complicated, but very clear. For one thing, Saddam Hussein harbors terrorists. He’s done it for years and years.
There are terrorists today living in Baghdad, and carrying out operations when they have opportunities to do so. … Secondly, we now have clearly established links between Al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence, links that are beyond dispute. We’ve gone back and looked at the evidence that was never properly investigated before, old evidence, but looked at in the light of recent experience. And we find meetings between Al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence, training programs in Iraq for Al Qaeda and agreements, something has been called a non-aggression pact, but it’s really a friendship and cooperation pact between Al Qaeda and the Iraqis. So, there’s a clear established relationship there as well.
But, lastly, if the United States’ war against terrorism consists of destroying the Taliban in Afghanistan, and we then recoil from dealing effectively with Saddam Hussein, we will set a threshold. We will be saying to terrorists, “Go locate in a country that’s a bit bigger, and you’re home free because we won’t challenge you. A country that’s a little bit bigger.” So, I believe that even if we had not gone as far as we have now gone, at which point turning back has its own catastrophic consequences, even if we were not where we are today, a failure to come to grips with Iraq would gravely diminish our ability to win the war on terrorism.”
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/interviews/perle.html
But the planning stages for war in the Middle East couldn’t have been anymore clearly stated than in the Neocon think tank document called the Project for the New American Century, created in 1997. The chairman was a long time Neocon understudy, William Kristol, who once served as the Chief of Staff to the Vice President under Dan Quayle in 1989, he co-founded the PNAC committee along with Robert Kagan. Of the twenty-five people who signed PNAC’s founding statement of principles, ten went on to serve in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, which included Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. In January 2002, both Kristol and Kagan wrote an article in the Weekly Standard, entitled “What to do about Iraq”. Both men asserted, by citing dubious evidence, that Iraq had personally trained Mohammed Atta and the use of hijackings airliners.
“Reliable reports from defectors and former U.N. weapons inspectors have confirmed the existence of a terrorist training camp in Iraq, complete with a Boeing 707 for practicing hijackings, and filled with non-Iraqi radical Muslims. We know, too, that Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of September11, went out of his way to meet with an Iraqi intelligence official a few months before he flew a plane into the World Trade Center. As Leon Fuerth understates, “There may well have been interaction between Mr. Hussein’s intelligence apparatus and various terrorist networks, including that of Osama bin Laden.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/what-to-do-about-iraq-2064
The PNAC committee stated goal?
“American leadership is good both for America and for the world,” and sought to build support for “a Reganite” policy of military strength and moral clarity.”
The document was clearly outlined and seen as sheer American militarist dominance in the region and by destabilizing Iraq and ensuring peace within the region thru said military force. But this could not be feasible in the allotted timeframe.
“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.”
Even with the collapse of the committee in 2006, the agendas outlined in all the above documents and committees, all came to fruition. The September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks was the catalyst for these geo-political goals which can still be seen today as we continue to military involve ourselves in Arab countries such as Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Pakistan. Former U.S Army General, Wesley Clark in his book “A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country” wrote that the decisions to invade Iraq was made just a few short days after the 9/11 attack’s. A startling revelation.
“The general recalls two visits to the Pentagon, the first before September 25, 2001. A “senior general” told him, “We’re going to attack Iraq. The decision has basically been made. Six weeks later, very close to Britain’s Guy Fawkes Day on November 5, Clark returned to Washington to see the same general and inquired whether the plan to strike Iraq was still under consideration. The general’s response was a surprise to Clark. Oh, it’s worse than that,’ he said, holding up a memo on his desk. ‘Here’s the paper from the Office of the Secretary of Defense [then Donald Rumsfeld] outlining the strategy. We’re going to take out seven countries in five years.’ And he named them, starting with Iraq and Syria and ending with Iran.”
The actionable intelligence received before the terrorist attack’s of September 11th 2001, was not the only “damning” evidence for government and intelligence community malfeasance, but surely with the stated principals and goals made by the Neoconservatives and Israeli government officials, we very well may have evidence of premeditated use for those terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C to extrapolate on the geo-political agendas and stated goals by these war mongering sycophants. The real crimes which came at the allotted costs of over one million Iraqis, over 7,000 American servicemen and women, over 7,000 Afghans and an untold amount in the rest of the Arabian Peninsula. These are the people who mattered, not the draconian bureaucrats here or in Israel who only valued human life as a cost benefit for their selfish geopolitical agendas.
