Facts to the contrary, there just are no conspiracies

David Lindorff has finally stuck his foot in his mouth, over at Commondreams.org, a notorious anti-truth gatekeeping site. I suppose we should all just abandon even the hope for justice, truth and reconciliation and take orders from the establishment Democrats?

Lindorff mixes irrational hyperbole with some revisionist whitewashing, all in an effort to put those pesky "conspiracy theories" behind us -- in the service of "the left." This tactic was employed previously by Alexander Cockburn among others, and is quite simply shameful.

I just stumbled on this must-read article concerning Taliban and a US State Department paid Afghan businessman.

Cockburn and St. Clair lay out shocking evidence that implicates both Clinton And Bush (although they only blame Bush in their editorializing) for deliberately leaving bin Laden free and at large, despite numerous offers by Taliban to turn him over, kill him or deal with him in any other way -- unconditionally.

Note, that bin Laden was indeed on the FBI Most Wanted List for the African embassy bombings of 1998, at the time the article recounts. Bin Laden had also declared war on the US and "the Jews," in two fatwas issued in 1998. The fatwas encouraged Muslims to attack US and Israeli civilians as well as military targets.

So, why would the US government -- across two administrations -- repeatedly refuse the Taliban's offers of extradition?

The below information fits in seamlessly with other reports of a similar nature.

CounterPunch's editorializing (spin) is the weak part. This insider witness, Mr. Mohabbat, should be a household name and a part of any new investigation into 9/11.

posting this in full to preserve it for posterity. Counterpunch should be ashamed; they knew all this in June 2002 (presents a strong "LIHOP" perspective), and since then they've posted numerous hit pieces instead of doing the obviously sorely needed investigative reporting- although they have published stories on Sibel Edmonds, and one on the high-fivers.

http://www.counterpunch.org/weiner0601.html

The Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies by Bernard Weiner

Don't know about you, but all this who-knew-what-when pre-9/11 stuff is mighty confusing. So once again, I head to that all-purpose reference series for some comprehensible answers.

Q. I've heard all these reports about the government knowing weeks and months in advance of 9/11 that airliners were going to be hijacked and flown into buildings, and yet the Bush Administration apparently did nothing and denied they did anything wrong. They claimed the fault lay in the intelligence agencies "not connecting the dots," or that it was the "FBI culture" that failed. Can you explain?

Paul Craig Roberts brings 9/11 truth to COUNTERPUNCH !! Is a FALSE FLAG Dirty Bomb in Our Future?

Secret Schemes and Undeclared Agendas
Inside the Shell Game
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein has taken up the Litvinenko case.

The media used the Litvinenko case as sensational propaganda against Russian President Putin and then tossed it aside. For those whose memories of the case have faded, Alexander Litvinenko was a former KGB officer living in England who died in 2006, apparently from the radioactive isotope Polonium-210 . . .

Those who have attempted to clue in fellow citizens are invariably frustrated, because Americans have been trained to dismiss the messenger who brings news of "false flag" events as a "conspiracy theorist."

I know some of you believe this is a no-brainer. You might say, "oh, well Mark Roberts is a schill or an idiot" but consider for a minute that he is another human being like all of us. (and for the record I am not a Mark Roberts apologist) However, I just spent well over 5 hours (more than I would have liked to really) reading over his material and I have a simple question; How is Mark Roberts wong? Please do not come at me with disinfo non-sense or any sort of character assault. I have read his material and have my own opinions on the matter. However I am interested in what other people think. If you have never read a word from him, DO NOT RESPOND. I am not interested in immature name calling or unsubstantiated claims. If you do have solid evidence that might be of interest to us all, please share but please do not throw out inflammatory comments that do nothing to address the issue at hand. And to make sure I am making myself absolutely clear. This is not an attempt at Debunking! I am simply encouraging critical thinking and investigation. So please if you would humor me...How is Mark Roberts wrong?

Mr. St. Clair,

I commend you for openly disagreeing with your co-editor. As global temperature does change all by itself without human intervention -- and I have never seen an accurate accounting to date of the natural vs. manmade contributions to temperature, I'm not 100% convinced that Cockburn is wrong about the reasons for climate change.

I am 100% sure that he's wrong about September 11th. Your own website has supported the allegations of Sibel Edmonds and several others who spoke of protected drug smuggling which has financed terrorism, and probably still does today.

If I could prove that there were indeed laws broken intentionally, to the benefit of the 9/11 terrorists -- would it matter over at Counterpunch? Cockburn doesn't seem willing to look at any evidence, no matter the source, no matter the damning implications.

I can prove criminal behavior by US government operatives easily in a dozen ways. I'll cite two incontrovertible cases.

Al Mindhar and Al Hazmi

Crimes of the State

CounterPunch, infamous for its attacks on the very idea of 9/11 government complicity, has published an article detailing some old news about Israeli spying in connection with the 9/11 attacks. The Christopher Ketcham article "What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks?" is from its title onward, a confined and limited interpretation of the available information. It's limited to a debate about foreknowledge of 9/11, therefore Israeli participation in the attacks is strictly off-limits.

This is in part because it was written for mainstream publication, with the corollary that one must accept the official story of 9/11 in its broad strokes, and selectively edit the data to conform to that narrative.

The Counterpunch article which Reprehensor previously wrote about is now available online for free (it was previously only for subscribers).

I sent the following mail to Counterpunch (http://www.counterpunch.org) on Saturday. They have yet to make a correction:

"Hi. I'm enjoying my new subscription to Counterpunch and am pleased that you decided to publish Christopher Ketcham's article. In all honesty, it's largely what motivated me to finally subscribe. I would urge you to have the same courage by publishing 9/11 related articles by noted CIA veteran Bill Christison. Christison is a person for whom you otherwise seem to have a great deal of respect. But as I understand it, you have sent him to the showers on 9/11 issues the same way Salon and the Nation sent Ketcham packing.

During an interview on Electric Politics, Christison says that you will not publish any of his articles suggesting that 9/11 may have been an "inside job":
http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2006/09/the_case_for_intellectual_inte.html

As for the misquote mentioned in my subject line, I noticed while reading "The Tragedy of a Dozen Evil Men" by Paul Craig Roberts that the Brzezinski quote is incorrect. It does appear to be correct in Roberts' earlier article "Brzezinski's Damning Indictment".

(NOTE: There is an error in the following. Please see the correction in the comments below.)

Andrew Cockburn, I was going to challenge you to a debate, but I see now you do an even better job of dismantling yourself.

One week you attack 9/11 skepticism using every cheap shot worthy of a Limbaugh, reducing it all to a laughable caricature that you yourself must recognize as unfair. (The families who lobbied for the 9/11 Commission ended up condemning it? Really? How would a busy fellow like you know that?)

The next week, you try to compensate - for the lost subscriptions, perhaps? - by reaching for the "Art Students," as though the only intelligence agencies who could have known that 9/11 was in the works would have had to be Israeli.

Now you present this great profile of Rumsfeld in the 1990s, the little emperor of a self-appointed Shadow Government who enjoyed nothing more than playing Strangelove in a bunker, firing off all his missiles and killing everyone. (READ MORE...)

The following are excerpts from the recent Counterpunch article, "Cheering Movers and Art Student Spies," by Christopher Ketcham. The article itself takes up about 10 pages, so what follows is a selective representation, beginning with the tale of the five Israelis in a van arrested on 9/11.

"From inside the vehicle the officers, who were quickly joined by agents from the FBI, retrieved multiple passports and $4,700 in cash stuffed in a sock. According to New Jersey’s Bergen Record, which on September 12 reported the arrest of the five Israelis, an investigator high up in the Bergen County law enforcement hierarchy stated that officers had also discovered in the vehicle “maps of the city … with certain places highlighted. It looked like they’re hooked in with this”, the source told the Record, referring to the 9/11 attacks. “It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park.”

I came across this interview of Jeffery St. Clair this morning and found it enlightening. What struck me most was how specious his argument was regarding the American left. I wasn't surprised that he dismissed the notion of US complicity in the attacks of September 11th, but was a little bewildered by the repetition of the Counterpunch talking points on the subject. He very clearly put forward the notion that interest in theories about 9/11 are not merely a symptom of the left's deep mistrust of the current administration, but are in fact a causative factor behind the left's inability to organize an effective resistance to the current administration. He states unequivocally that this focus on the cause of 9/11 has stopped people from organizing, distracted people from their opposition to the occupation of Iraq, and essentially reflects a retreat.

But he offers nothing in the way of evidence for this assertion, not even anecdotal evidence.

News and Commentary by David Caputo of Positronic Design.

In reference to my first post's mixed-message comment on CounterPunch and 9/11, I thought I'd include the letters I wrote to them on that subject.

After reading this article by Alex Cockburn,

I wrote the following reply:

Dear Counterpunch and Alex Cockburn,

As a long-time fan and paying subscriber to Counterpunch, I am dismayed by the ad-hominem attack on myself and my friends as "nuts" because we are deeply suspicious of the Bush administration's claims as to the events on 9/11/01.

His hyperbolic piece would almost be amusing in its shrillness if it weren't covering such a serious topic.

His refutation arguments are very weak, and he tars with guilt by association with unrelated conspiracy controversies anyone who suspects that the "official" 9/11 story is a bunch of baloney.

His statement: "One characteristic of the nuts is that they have a devout, albeit preposterous belief in American efficiency, thus many of them start with the racist premise that “Arabs in caves” weren’t capable of the mission." completely misses the point and uses the vague "many" to call most of us "racist" because we believe that the 19 names "found" in "Mohammad Atta's" car in the Portland, ME airport are (by the ever-reliable FBI) nothing approaching a definitive list of the operatives involved.

Joanne wrote:

I didn't respond to the Piazza Fontana example because I am not familiar with it. Agents provocateurs working for US intelligence and planted in left organizations in the 60s proposed and possibly executed bombings then too. That doesn't prove your point that the US government planned and executed attacks designed to destroy perhaps the most iconic symbols of capital, the Twin Towers, plunge NY's economy and the financial sector into crisis, kill thousands of people, bankrupt the airlines, etc. etc. That's just New York. It also doesn't prove that thousands of people involved in the crime have for five years maintained an iron silence.

Yes, I know about Clarke and also know how Condi Rice responded to that in testimony. I'm not sure of the veracity or context of the Bush quote, but having a report saying Bin Laden wants to attack the US also doesn't contradict my point of incompetence, indifference, hubris and perhaps opportunism akin to that of FDR, who had warnings of a Japanese attack but didn't figure on the destruction of the US Pacific fleet.

This is my fundamental political problem with the "nutters" (your word, not mine): by suggesting some special monstrosity in the Bush administration they deflect from the average-old monstrosity of US foreign policy, decade in decade out, regardless of the party in power. There is essentially no antiwar movement, essentially no element organized powerfully to press for a reverse in foreign policy, in economic policy, no organization on the left worth a damn. In the void there are conspiracy theorists. Your point is, Why not encourage them? I think they have encouragement enough and certainly shouldn't be beyond critique because of grieving families.

Ms. Wypijewski,

What would you have told Italian dissidents in the 70s and 80s if they’d dared to claim that Italian intelligence was supporting the neofascist terrorist bombings from 1969-1980 starting with Piazza Fontana bombing?

Is the prospect of a US government willing to kill its own citizens with bombs somehow more disempowering than a government willing to kill the species by failing to address Global Warming?

How do you account for the evidence of foreknowledge in light of the stated objectives of the PNAC?

Finally, could you explain the difference between your conviction that the US was in no way complicit in the attacks and your typical 9/11 conspiracy theorists conviction that the US made every aspect of the event happen on purpose?

Thank You

The US was complicit in 9/11 in the sense that it created the mujahedin in Afghanistan in the 1980s, is an imperialist power with bases all over the Middle East, author via sanctions of the deaths of at least half a million Iraqi children, essential supporter of Israel and of every corrupt Arab state. So, a lot of people have felt the whip-lash of the United States, directly or indirectly, and some of them decided to strike back.