Robert Fisk: For 10 years, we've lied to ourselves to avoid asking the one real question

[xchrom]

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-for-10-years-weve-lied-to-ourselves-to-avoid-asking-the-one-real-question-2348438.html

By their books, ye shall know them.

I'm talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as "boys", almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.

Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans – our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense – and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?

American publishers first went to war in 2001 with massive photo-memorial volumes. Their titles spoke for themselves: Above Hallowed Ground, So Others Might Live, Strong of Heart, What We Saw, The Final Frontier, A Fury for God, The Shadow of Swords... Seeing this stuff piled on newsstands across America, who could doubt that the US was going to go to war? And long before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, another pile of tomes arrived to justify the war after the war. Most prominent among them was ex-CIA spook Kenneth Pollack's The Threatening Storm – and didn't we all remember Churchill's The Gathering Storm? – which, needless to say, compared the forthcoming battle against Saddam with the crisis faced by Britain and France in 1938.

[malaise]

1. Good read

Thanks

[marmar]

2. Robert Fisk is one of the few reporters worth reading when it comes to the Middle East.

nt

[deminks]

3. bookmarking

snip

When the Israeli Prime Minister gets even the US Congress to grovel to him, the American people are not going to be told the answer to the most important and "sensitive" question of 9/11: why?

end snip

My question - why does every congress critter 'vacation' at some point in Israel? Example: Why did Marco Rubio beat feet to Israel after his election? Did he not think doing the vacay in Florida was more appropriate?

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2010/11/guess-whos-meeting-marco-rubio-in-israel.html

http://washingtonindependent.com/102572/marco-rubio-headed-to-israel-sunday-after-winning-florida-senate-race

http://www.tboblogs.com/index.php/news/story/rubios-israel-trip-private-and-personal-spokesman-says

[MH1]

4. Wait, what? Can someone help with a link here -

from Fisk's article:

I am not surprised that millions of Americans believe some of this, let alone the biggest government lie: that Saddam was behind 9/11. Leon Panetta, the CIA's newly appointed autocrat, repeated this same lie in Baghdad only this year.

Can someone provide an authoritative link to where Panetta said that Saddam was behind 9/11? I don't recall hearing about that but this has been a tumultuous year for me ... maybe I missed it, hard to believe but maybe ...

[xchrom]

5. here ya go...

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20078552-503544.html

Leon Panetta links Iraq war to al-Qaeda

Appearing in Baghdad Monday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suggested that U.S. troops are in Iraq as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks, echoing a controversial Bush administration assertion largely rejected by President Obama and most Democrats.

"The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked," said Panetta, according to the Washington Post. "And 3,000 Americans -- 3,000 not just Americans, 3,000 human beings, innocent human beings -- got killed because of al-Qaeda. And we've been fighting as a result of that."

[MH1]

6. thanks but

aaaargh ....

facepalm ....

actually it is somewhat historically true that we're in Iraq because of 9/11 - but because it gave Bush an excuse, not because there was a direct link.

but very stupid for Panetta to say.

[Eddie Haskell]

7. Pure bullshit! Wes Clark told us why we're there.

The plans were in the works since 1991. After the first Gulf war; Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz were upset that GHW Bush didn’t get Saddam and they went to work. Clark calls it a policy coup. Listen to his speech.

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/wes-clark-americas-foreign-policy-coup.html

Motive and opportunity lead straight to the WH.

On March 19, 2001, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham told a National Energy Summit, “America faces a major energy supply crisis over the next two decades," and "The failure to meet this challenge will threaten our nation’s economic prosperity, compromise our national security, and literally alter the way we lead our lives.”

Cheney put it bluntly, "The American way of life is not negotiable." The Energy Task Force was developed to target the development of ME petroleum reserves. Why? Because energy is growth and non-Opec oil has peaked.

[SpiralHawk]

8. "Smirk." - xCommander AWOL Bush (R - Occultist PNAC)

[Eddie Haskell]

9. The anthrax attacks are clearly linked to 911 and the Patriot Act.

Look at the targets and the timing and look where it was produced. Whoever sent the spores tried to pass it off as Muslim terrorism. Why? And, why did the FBI order the original strain destroyed when they knew it was the subject of an investigation?