FIVE YEARS LATER, AMERICA STILL IGNORANT OF WHY

[mistertrickster]

Soon after 9-11, President Bush addressed a joint session of Congress and the nation saying, “Americans are asking, why do <terrorists> hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. . . . They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”

“They hate us for our freedoms” quickly became an oft-repeated talking point.

Al-Qaeda first attacked the United States in February 1993, when a truck bomb was detonated in the World Trade Center’s parking garage.

This attack was followed up with a plot to kill President Clinton when he visited Manila in 1994, to blow up American airliners in 1995, and to fly a plane laden with explosives into the CIA headquarters later that year. Al-Qaeda successfully blew up a military complex in Riyadh killing five Americans in November 1995, exploded a truck bomb in June 1996 at Khobar Towers killing 19 Americans, destroyed American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 <1>, and nearly sank the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

Seen against this timeline, the idea that “they hate us for our freedoms” becomes more and more absurd. Does Canada stay unattacked because they are less free? Did the United States suddenly become freer in 1993 than before?

Clearly, something happened prior to 1993 that enraged jihadists to the point of suicide attacks, and there’s little mystery as to what it was: the United States stationed military troops in Saudi Arabia.

In 1991, the US used Saudi Arabia as a staging ground for Operation Desert Storm. This infuriated Islamic hard-liners like bin Laden, but they tolerated it as long as it could be justified as a defense of Arabia. Then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney promised that US troops would not stay “a minute longer than they were needed.” <2>

When the Gulf War ended, the Saudis reneged on their assurances to the senior religious leaders—the ulema—and allowed US troops to remain permanently. To this outrage, the jihadists vowed to kick the US out of their holy land in defiance of the house of Al-Saud.

In his 1996 “fatwa,” Bin Laden refers some twenty times to attacking the United States as long as it desecrates the site of the “two holies”—Mecca and Medina. He says, “the sons of the two Holy Places have started their Jihad in the cause of Allah, to expel the occupying enemy from the country of the two Holy places” and “there is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the Holy land; no other priority, except Belief, could be considered before it” and “the greatest of these aggressions imposed upon the Muslims since the death of the Prophet (PBUH) is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places . . . by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies.” <3>

Quietly, in April of 2003, the Bush administration pulled US troops out of Saudi Arabia. <4>

Jihadists like bin Laden don’t hate us “for our freedoms.” They hate us for our government’s policies, primarily for stationing troops on the Arabian peninsula. Why our government refuses to inform the American people of this is the question that remains unanswered.

*****

1. Bodansky, Yossef. Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America. Roseville, CA: Prima (Random House), 1999.

2. Bodansky, Yossef. p. 30.

3. www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html

4. http://www.gregpalast.com/so-osama-walks-into-this-bar-see#more-1477

[mistertrickster]

1. I sent this as a LTTE to my hometown paper.

Let's see if they have the guts to print it.

Feel free to cut and paste and send to YOUR local paper if you want.

[greyl]

2. Interesting, I agree with most of it.

However, I thought osama issued his first public statement against US policies in the Mid-East while Reagan was president. ?

[mistertrickster]

8. I'd like to see that. OBL was a "freedom fighter" against the old

USSR back then . . .

[FoxOnTheRun]

9. Don't forget the Pakistani ISI

[greyl]

10. Here's some info:

Peter Bergen expanded on the supposed CIA/ bin Ladin links in his book, Holy War Inc:

But were the CIA and the Afghan Arabs in cahoots, as recent studies have suggested? One author charges: "The CIA had funded and trained the Afghan Arabs during the war". Another refers to "the central role of the CIA's Muslim mercenaries, including upwards of 2,000 mercenaries in the Afghanistan war". Both authors present these claims as axioms, but provide no real corroboration.

Other commentators have reported that bin Ladin himself was aided by the CIA. A report in the respected British newspaper The Guardian states: "In 1986 the CIA even helped him build an underground camp at Khost where he was to train recruits from across the Islamic world in the revolutionary art of jihad"...Bin Ladin, meanwhile, had expoused{sic- espoused} anti-American positions since 1982, and thanks to the fortune derived from his family's giant construction business had little need of CIA money. In fact, the underground camp at Khost was built in 1982 by an Afghan commander, with Arab funding.

A source familiar with bin Ladin's organisation explains that bin Ladin "never had any relations with America or American officials... He was saying very early in the 1980's that the next battle is going to be with America... No aid or training or other support have ever been given to bin Ladin from Americans." A senior offical unequivocally says that "bin Ladin never met with the CIA."
Page 67/68, Holy War Inc,
Peter Bergen

http://www.911myths.com/html/bin_ladin_links_to_the_cia.html

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.

The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds that original error. So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1523838,00.html

...the handful of Americans who had heard of bin Ladin in the 1980's knew him mainly for his violently anti-American views. Dana Rohrabacher, now a Republican congressman from Orange County, California, told me about a trip he took with the mujihideen in 1987. At the time, Rohrabacher was a Reagan aide who delighted in taking long overland trips inside Afghanistan with anti-Communist forces. On one such trek, his guide told him not to speak English for the next few hours because they were passing by bin Ladin's encampment. Rohrabacher was told, "If he hears an American, he will kill you."
Page 16, Disinformation
Richard Miniter

There is a bin laden speech I posted here once before from either '82 or '83 which is what I was really looking for. I'll keep looking.

Also, look here:

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline

[mistertrickster]

12. Hmmm . . . I'd feel a lot better about this information if it was PRE-1993

After a decade of Al Qaeda attacks culminating in 9-11, I think a lot of history may be getting re-written.

I was watching a Primetime interview with Bandar Bush who was saying that in the late 80's, he was a go-between for Bin Laden and Americans. Bin Laden was appreciative of American help.

Anyway, Bin Laden's 1996 fatwah makes it clear--the jihadis wanted America out of the Arab peninsula. That was their number one priority.

Greg Palast has also made this point in his link.

[FoxOnTheRun]

3. Who are the terrorists?

Soon after 9-11, President Bush addressed a joint session of Congress and the nation saying, “Americans are asking, why do <terrorists> hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government

Are you kidding? elected?







I think Osama likes the attention being on TV, even if he is dead(high probability)

An article in the French daily Le Figaro confirms that Osama bin Laden underwent surgery in an American Hospital in Dubai in July.

During his stay in the hospital, he met with a CIA official. While on the World's "most wanted list", no attempt was made to arrest him during his two week stay in the hospital, shedding doubt on the Administration's resolve to track down Osama bin Laden.

Barely a few days ago Defense Secretary Rumsfeld stated that it would be difficult to find him and extradite him. Its like "searching for a needle in a stack of hay". But the US could have ordered his arrest and extradition in Dubai last July. But then they would not have had a pretext of waging a war. Meanwhile, innocent civilians are being killed by B-52 Bombers as means "to go after" Osama bin Laden. According to UN sources, the so-called "campaign against international terrorism" could lead to the death of several million people from an impending famine.

The original article in French is also posted on the CRG webpage.

Michel Chossudovsky, CRG. 2 November 2001

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RIC111B.html

[greyl]

4. It's become impossible to distinguish them. nt

[FoxOnTheRun]

5. Whom?

Mussolini and Hitler?

[greyl]

6. Well, I should have said nearly impossible. nt

[FoxOnTheRun]

7. Prescott Bush would be proud

[salvorhardin]

16. I wouldn't trust Chossudovsky's analysis or anything on his site

He has close ties to Larouchites and far right wing conspiracist sites.

A major Griffin source, Michel Chossudovsky, has departed from a history of serious left critique to making unsubstantiated claims based on right-wing conspiracists such as Jeffrey Steinberg, a well-know top aide to neofascist Lyndon LaRouche, and John Whitley, who sees world affairs shaped by secret plots. Chossudovsky's website also cites and praises material from the American Patriot Friends Network, a site notorious for peddling unsubstantiated right-wing anti-government conspiracist theories similar to those circulated in the militia movement (1,2).
http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/Post911/dubious_claims.html

He also publishes the work of the anti-semite James Petras.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=PET20060907&articleId=3174

On Jews Loss of manufacturing jobs for workers in New York City was no doubt facilitated by "the ethnic-class differences between the six-figure salaried Jewish labor bosses and the low-paid Asian and Latino workers". The myth of war for oil "is circulated by almost all the major progressive Jewish intellectuals and parroted by their Gentile followers, who are in word and deed prohibited from mentioning the AIPAC word in any public meetings or manifestos. The power of the minority of politically active Jewish financiers in the pro-Israel lobby is spreading far beyond the area of US foreign policy into the cultural, academic and economic life of the US." To discredit professors Mearsheimer and Walt, who wrote a paper critical of The Israel Lobby, all the major Jewish publications "have launched together with all the major Jewish organizations, a propaganda campaign of defamation...and pressure for their purge from academia." While most Jews oppose the Iraq war, "they are not willing to criticize the pro-war Jewish lobby or to mention Israel ’s involvement in precipitating the war through its occupation of Palestine." <3> Some of these views have been challenged in the socialist newsweekly The Militant. <4>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Petras

[FoxOnTheRun]

17. I like Larouche for mentioning the problems

He wants to get back to Bretton Woods, he was imprisoned by G Bush Sr., He wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve.

I don't agree on Atomic Energy and United Nations with him and he could go to more detail but he understands the severe problems the US and world is facing

Extremism is a term used to characterise the actions or ideologies of individuals or groups outside the perceived political center of a society;

Remember who wants to torture, remember who isn't obeying the constitution, remember who starts illegal wars....when this is the political center than I'm an extremist.


BTW the story was reported by Le Figaro and UPI

[salvorhardin]

18. Le Figaro and UPI

Even more credible huh?

UPI is of course The Mooney Times.

And Le Figaro is about as independent as Fox News

As of 2004, Le Figaro is controlled by Serge Dassault, a conservative businessman and politician best known for running the aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation. The ownership of a major national newspaper by a person who also controls a major military supplier, as well as being a mayor and senator from the ruling UMP party, and whose son Olivier Dassault is a member of the French National Assembly for the same party, was highly controversial inside and outside the newspaper. <1> In response, Dassault remarked in an interview on the public radio station France Inter <2>, that "newspapers must promulgate healthy ideas", and that "left-wing ideas are not healthy ideas."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Figaro

As far as "liking" Lyndon Larouche, you might want to learn more about the man. He's a neo-facist through and through. Does this sound like a man worthy of your respect?

In an August 16, 1973 internal memo, "The Politics of Male Impotence," LaRouche told his followers:

"The principle source of impotence, both male and female, is the mother. . . .to the extent that my physical powers do not prevent me, I am now confident and capable of ending your political--and sexual-- impotence; the two are interconnected aspects of the same problem. . . . I am going to make you organizers--by taking your bedrooms away from you until you make the step to being effective organizers. What I shall do is to expose to you the cruel fact of your sexual impotence, male and female. . . .I shall destroy your sense of safety in the place to which you ordinarily imagine you can flee. I shall not pull you back from fleeing, but rather destroy the place to which you would attempt to flee."

In a cruel sense, LaRouche was true to his twisted words, those members who challenge the increasingly macabre political and social theories expounded by their leader were confronted by loyalists as politically and sexually inadequate traitors to the cause.

LaRouche also developed a fevered, comprehensive paranoid fantasy about the importance of his role in history--and a militant, new-found resolve to act upon it, wiping out all opposition to his leadership of the U.S. revolutionary movement. The result was Operation Mop-Up. Lyndon LaRouche took his sexual identity crisis into the streets.
http://www.publiceye.org/larouche/nclc1.html

The fact of the matter is that neo-facists will always pick and choose the news articles that support or seem to support their cause while ignoring the rest. Do you really want to be support people like Larouche, Petras or Chossudovsky?

[FoxOnTheRun]

19. I don't say

Larouche is offering the best solution or is he telling who the perpetraitors really are.

There is no free press in the world, do you understand? Everybody has an agenda.

Which newspaper would you believe ? The New York Times or CIA Anderson Cooper?



publiceye.org
Well you should really start looking into the Reece comitee findings for tax exempt foundations

http://www.supremelaw.org/authors/dodd/interview.htm
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7373201783240489827&q=griffin+reece&hl=en

I think I understand why they are targeting Edward Griffin

http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=96099,00.html

Political Research Associates is an independent, nonprofit research center that studies antidemocratic, authoritarian, and other oppressive movements, institutions, and trends. PRA is based on progressive values, and is committed to advancing an open, democratic, and pluralistic society. PRA provides accurate, reliable research and analysis to activists, journalists, educators, policy makers, and the public at large.

PRA is an IRS 501(c)(3) organization, and receives no government funding. Our efforts are funded through publication sales, speaking fees, grants from institutions and foundations, and the generous donations of supporters like you!

Your donation is tax-deductible to the extent provided by law. Donations must be calculated and paid in U.S. dollars.


Donors who give $50 or more receive a subscription to The Public Eye, valued at $29 for tax purposes.

[Sinti]

11. One problem, we actually stationed American troops in SA in 1945

We have been there ever since. We're protecting our oil and have been since the end of WWII. Sometimes there are more of us, sometimes less, it depends on whether the kingship of SA feels more threatened by the fundamentalists in its population or more threatened by outside forces. Technically, if it's population attacked it, in a revolutionary-style, we would defend the monarchy with our own blood and treasure.

[mistertrickster]

13. I can believe it. But do you have a link?

According to the sources I read like Youssef Bodansky (who's no liberal), if American troops are there permanently, the jihadis don't know about it.

[Sinti]

14. I can give you a few and some quotes - it's just a bit of history that

folks don't seem to know. Strange that. :)

Support for the family dictatorship in Saudi Arabia has been a prevailing theme of U.S. policy for several decades. In 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with King Abel-Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of the modern Arabian kingdom that now bears his family's name, and forged the alliance that remains to this day: in return for open access to Saudi oil, the United States would protect the royal family from its enemies, both external and internal.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0520-05.htm

In addition to economic ties, a longstanding security relationship continues to be important in U.S.-Saudi relations. A U.S. military training mission established at Dhahran in 1953 provides training and support in the use of weapons and other security-related services to the Saudi armed forces. The United States has sold Saudi Arabia military aircraft (F-15s, AWACS, and UH-60 Blackhawks), air defense weaponry (Patriot and Hawk missiles), armored vehicles (M1A2 Abrams tanks and M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles), and other equipment. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has had a long-term role in military and civilian construction activities in the Kingdom.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3584.htm



General Day, on Oct. 1, 1950 was assigned 60 days temporary duty at Military Air Transport Service headquarters, Andrews Air Force Base, Md., prior to being transferred to Dhahran Air Field, Saudi Arabia, of which he assumed command in February 1951 with additional duty as acting chief of the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Saudi Arabia.

http://www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=5187

[Recursion]

15. Bin Ladin himself answered this point

In his 2004 tape:

"Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom.

If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike for example - Sweden?"

Bin Ladin has held 3 goals very consistently for a decade or so, and has never made any bones about them:
1. He advocates removing US forces from the Arabian peninsula (accomplished)
2. He advocates the overthrow of Saddam Houssein (accomplished)
3. He advocates the overthrow of the Saudi royal family.

He's got 3 goals, and we accomplished 2 of them for him. Whose ****ing side are we on here?