9/11 truth groups dissect Rumsfeld's 'another attack' quip
Muriel Kane
Raw Story
Monday, May 19, 2008

A newly-revealed speech delivered by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before an audience of Pentagon-sponsored military analysts in December 2006 is providing ample grist for 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

An audio recording of the speech was one of a large number of items released by the Pentagon on May 8 as a result of Freedom of Information requests. The New York Times had filed the requests in the course of preparing its expose of the Pentagon's use of supposedly independent retired military officers to present its message on network news shows.

Speaking a month after the Democratic Party had recaptured majorities in both houses of Congress, and just following his own resignation as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld suggested that a new 9/11 could be the corrective for American complacency:

"This President's pretty much a victim of success. We haven't had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it's not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing's in Europe, there's a low threat perception. The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack. And when that happens, then everyone gets energized for another [inaudible] and it's a shame we don't have the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats...the lethality, the carnage, that can be imposed on our society is so real and so present and so serious that you'd think we'd be able to understand it."

The audio received no notice for several days, until blogger Jack Gillis discovered it in the course of a thread at Talking Points Memo devoted to combing through the documents. Gillis then made the full audio available at his blog, along with brief quotes from some of the more "chilling" moments. Jason Linkins at the Huffington Post carried the story along by providing a complete transcription of Rumsfeld's "extraordinary" remark.

At that point, awareness of the speech exploded. However, while moderate bloggers saw it merely as Rumsfeld "blurt[ing] out the secret wet-dream fantasy of every warmongering neocon Republican," others found it far more sinister.

Rob Kall, the executive editor of OpEd News, was one of the first to suggest the obvious conclusion. "Call me a conspiracy theorist," he wrote on May 14. "Because this slips too easily off Rumsfeld’s reptilian tongue. Too easily because perhaps it’s not at all a new idea. Perhaps it is an idea that, for him, for all the propagandist sell-out generals, this is not new, that is actually, already tried and true. One of the oft cited premises of the 9/11 Truth movement is that the attack on the towers was the pearl harbor-like event that the neocons anticipated would be necessary to move the US to embrace the aggressive militaristic tactics manifested in Iraq. Here, we have Rumsfeld casually joking about it—not a smoking gun, but, perhaps, a clear 'tell' in poker parlance, indicating ready ability to think in these terms."

A few days later, PrisonPlanet.com, a website devoted to conspiracy theories, was featuring the Rumsfeld remarks as something far more than "casually joking." Editor Paul Joseph Watson described the tape as revealing "former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talking with top military analysts about how a flagging Neo-Con political agenda could be successfully restored with the aid of another terrorist attack on America."

"Rumsfeld's admission that the correction for dwindling support of the Neo-Con imperial crusade is another terror attack is perhaps the most startling and blatant indication that 9/11 was an inside job," Watson continued. "How much more evidence do we need to confirm that the Neo-Con hierarchy in control of the U.S. government are instigating and exploiting terror in the pursuit of their own domestic and geopolitical agenda?"

Larry Chin at GlobalResearch.ca was equally emphatic, writing, "Placing the new evidence against previously revealed 9/11-related acts on the part of Rumsfeld, his guilt is overt and obvious. Recall that it was Rumsfeld who enthusiastically penned the 'Go Massive' memo, gleefully declaring the Bush administration finally had the green light to kill: 'Not only UBL (Usama bin Laden). Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.' As the Bush administration’s war ensued in earnest, Rumsfeld gloated to the New York Times that 9/11 provided 'the kind of opportunities that World War II offered, to refashion the world.'"

In an interview with conservative commentator Rusty Humphries for a Pentagon radio talk show in September 2006, three months before his speech to the military analysts, Rumsfeld was asked about "this new wave of conspiracy theories on September 11th."

He replied, "I suppose there have always been people in the world who subscribe to conspiracy theories and are -- you just almost have to suspend the idea of disbelief. I can't imagine people saying -- writing books the way they're writing them, articles of what they're writing, believing what they believe -- people contending that the -- September 11th was not an attack by al Qaeda, even though when the al Qaeda take credit for it."

Humphries went on to say, "I talk to terrorists personally, and they tell me every single time, it was the Jews that sent the planes in to start a war between us and Islam. They also told me one time that it was the Jews that sent Monica Lewinsky in to have sex with Bill Clinton so they could run America. You like that one?"

"My goodness," Rumsfeld replied.

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