Twain's Ghost

Putting the Super back in Superstition!

On job-security kick, Pope Benedict the 16th warns against atheism

In an attempt to secure the livelihood of countless thousands of hyperventilating bible-thumpers and modern-looking witchdoctors, Pope Benedict released an encyclical (recyclical, if you ask me) denouncing among other things atheism. Atheism could not be reached for comment, but its publicist said "My client supports the right of the pope to be an idiot."

This is key of course. If atheism becomes popular, where will the religious charlatans be? Out in the cold looking for real jobs, that's where! How will they maintain their wealth and power? They won't, that's what!

Even though plenty of theologians have over the centuries come to realize (if reluctantly) the fraudulent nature of religion, it's dishonest and bloody rise, it is against the interests of the theocrats to let this cat out of the bag. Facts are not the point. Truth is not the point. The point is faith - a warm and fuzzy word for stubborn stupidity. As the Bible likes to say, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."  Perhaps it sounds nice until you put it another way, like, "faith is evidence of Mother Goose." Is it really? Of course not! It's a bit like saying purple dreams are evidence of pole-vaulting pretzels. Yes, exactly, its pure fertilizer.

In the big time "Clash of Civilizations", does it help to become more like your purported enemies?

Mohammed the Teddy Bear, Jesus the Singing Bunny

Fox News (the Mullahs of American "Traditionalism") noted that crazy people in the Sudan (and they are crazy) wanted to execute an English schoolteacher in their country for allowing her Sudanese students to name a teddy bear Mohammed. Though the extremists there want her to die, the more reasonable Islamic authorities in Khartoum only sentenced her to 15 days in prison and deportation for "insulting religion" (CNN). Both reactions, though one is definitely more palatable, are insane fundamentalist responses to a nothing incident. If you want to have faith, how about having faith in an innocent schoolteacher and her innocent students who are having an innocent moment naming a teddy bear with a common Muslim name. Have faith in that! Fuck Mohammed and all the non-prophets and Jesus and his winged demons, too. They are a blight on this world, an absolute pestilence, a disease of the heart and the mind. But, since they are imaginary, let me say what I really mean: Fuck the insane idiocy of those that push this kind of inhumanist superstition - east and west. And make no mistake: it is insane idiocy. It is the reason people burn witches and blow themselves up in pizza shops.

For the Islamists, the idea is that naming a teddy bear Mohammed is tantamount to idolatry - meaning worshiping 'graven images', or to put it another way, inanimate objects that look like something looking back at you. Have faith, they'd say, not in inanimate objects, but in invisible entities. It's the same mental illness that caused the Taliban nutcases to demolish the giant Bamayan buddhas before 9-11. Worshipping graven images (or just giving them a name) is evil, but murdering people who don't share your wacky beliefs is sacred! That's the message.

Fortunately, religion in the West was put in check by the rise of rationalism. (Though stupid religionists use it on their side, few people remember that when Thomas Jefferson said
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" he was being ironic since he meant also the tyranny of religion.) But no such battles are permanently won. And unfortunately, to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, the bitch that bore religion is still in heat. Christians in America (and elsewhere) who demand that, contrary to the Constitution, dominant religious ideas and expressions and symbols remain front and center in the public sphere are only one loosening screw [link]  away from the likes of the Taliban beheaders and Buddha-smashers (who voted for Sanjaya just to ruin our beloved 'American Idol'). The difference is that there are not sad masses of dumb, desperate and oppressed people in the West like there are in the Middle East and elsewhere in the former Third World. But the way the West is going, there may be soon.

Osama Made Me Do It

Recall another chapter in the War on Reason: Bill "I'm a 'traditionalist', not a right-wing wacko" O'Reilly has often denounced those unbelievers in the Official "Osama Did It" Conspiracy Theory as "pinheads" - as distinct from "patriots" who buy into the fairy tale of Al Qaeda wickedness and U.S. government innocent braveness, or brave innocentness. Nationalist fanatic, is that what "Tabloid" O'Reilly means by "traditionalist"?

All of these stories - from Popish calls for more faith, to Islamist denunciations against teddy bear namers, to the irrational promotion of officially-sanctioned 9-11 myths - are of a piece. And the defenders of these beliefs all use the same tactics, fear and denunciation - and, if we let them, ultimately murder and mayhem. That's the real culture war, Billy Boy. Christopher Hitchens, like a broken clock, is right some times.

Take a stand for sanity: trust your doubts, name your penis (or the penis of a friend) Mohammed (but don't worship it unless it is very much animate) and read David Ray Griffin's Debunking 9-11 Debunking.

Nawaz Sharif: Candidate of the False-Flaggers?

Earlier this month, I ridiculed War on Terror Vaudevillian Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf's method of fighting extremism by arresting moderates. (Talibanis transplanted by the U.S. and Pakistan in 2001 recently routed the Pakistani army in Waziristan. For Musharraf, the solution was obvious: crack down on the secular moderates!) I ventured that Benazir Bhutto, though no perfect figure would remain on Musharraf's shitlist since she is anathema to the false-flaggers in Washington and Islamabad and she threatens to lead a return to relatively decent democratic rule in Pakistan.

But what about former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif? The exile on Saudi street returned yesterday to Pakistan to wide acclaim. And in a move that only reinforces the suspicion that he is Musharraf's poodle, Sharif claims that he cut no deal with the Emergency Ruler. Isn't that a little like Senator Larry Craig saying in his weird way, "I am not gay"?

The Los Angeles Times' Laura King wrote on November 26, 2007: "It was unclear whether Sharif might try to ally himself politically with Bhutto. Some analysts believe Musharraf relented and allowed Sharif to return to diminish Bhutto's role as the main opposition leader."

Anyone with sense would immediately dismiss the former and assume the latter.

Though he was ousted by his underling Musharraf in 1999, just in time for the theater of 9-11 and its aftermath, he is nevertheless the more obvious choice for the false-flaggers in stabilizing Pakistan: a religious conservative who will likely dampen the anger among the religious right in Pakistan, anger that is both troublesome but also crucial to the false-flaggers' agenda, while allowing much real power to remain with Musharraf, et al. At the same time he will serve to undercut Bhutto's claim to be the alternative to the unpopular Musharraf. Could the likelihood of a deal be any more glaring? If the non-deal that Sharif cut with Musharraf includes a retention of military power by Musharraf, then it is likely the occasionally awkward U.S.-Pakistani partnership of high weirdness in the name of the War on Terror will simply begin a new chapter. The only ones that will remain out in the cold in Pakistan are those who believe in a meaningful return to democratic rule.

In contrast with Bhutto's besieged return, after all, Nawaz Sharif has returned triumphantly and only a nominal number of his supporters have suffered arrest compared to those of Bhutto. And though Bhutto has been released from house arrest, it is telling that the one individual capable of meaningfully opposing Musharraf's "emergency rule" at this juncture, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudry, remains in jail. It is telling also that while a bomb attack, killing almost 150 people, and huge numbers of arrests put a real damper on pro-Bhutto rallies and organization, no such bombings nor nowhere near the same number of arrests have hampered Sharif's political return. But he cut no deal and he has no ties to the Islamo-False-Flag regime! Uh-huh.

Michael Ledeen Says, 'Nuke Las Vegas'

From the Department of No Pain, No Gain

Given his direct involvement in the most vile policies and propaganda operations of the last 30 years, I think it is incumbent on any thinking person to take note of just what sort of things Michael "I Was Neocon When Neocon Wasn't Cool" Ledeen happens to say. He reflects the sick fuck underbelly of American foreign policy management - a management that frequently entails tweaking or, say, bludgeoning Americans' perception of reality.

You may think you don't know Ledeen from Adam, but you likely know his work. Consider the background of beliefs about the world that have been spoon-fed to you over the years, and there you'd find Ledeen's grubby fingerprints.

After all, this Neocon Goebbels (I'm sure he would prefer an Italian fascist comparison instead) was directly involved in marketing the fraudulent Bulgarian connection to the Pope shooting in 1981; something that certainly made the Cold War hotter than it would have been, increasing the likelihood of actual nuclear holocaust. Ya can't blame a guy for trying.

Then just a few years ago he had a direct hand in the forging of documents implicating designated-enemy Iraq in a scheme to purchase yellowcake uranium from the African nation of Niger; the capstone of the propaganda drive to rationalize aggression against Iraq, continuing bloodily (mostly for Iraqis) to this very minute. But then Ambassador Joseph Wilson said the Niger yellowcake documents were obviously faked, as did the International Atomic Energy Agency. Then the Bushies committed a felony (or treason, as the Proto-Neocon Reaganites who originally pushed the law against it would have said) by outing CIA agent and Wilson wife, Valerie Plame to get even. You wanna bet that was Ledeen's idea?

During the interim Ledeen had his hand in the Iran-Contra crimes of the 1980s, and the Project for a New American Century's agitation for a "new Pearl Harbor" in the 1990s, and other sociopath behavior.

He has even been an idea man for Karl Rove! The Black Heart of Bush's Brain, you might say.

But what is he up to just now?

In a recent Jewish World Review column (pubished also at National Review Online), 'Red Army Dreams: You're getting colder', Ledeen, while focusing on Vladimir Putin's likely mixed-feelings (to say the least) for the Iranians, digressively asks, "What does it take to galvanize the Americans? A nuke in Las Vegas?"

So there it is.

The neocon not-exactly-a-shadow government has its marching orders. Nuke an American city and blame it on the Iranians so that Americans, just in time for the Clinton and/or Guiliani version of the Long War, can at last become united under the banner of nationalist outrage in a way that the 3,000 dead of the faked September 11th couldn't quite manage.

"To be galvanized, some Americans must be vaporized," saith Michael "Faster, Please" Ledeen - before he edits himself for public. So watch your back, Las Vegas. Better safe, than sorry. If anyone besides Michael Ledeen was saying it, you might be forgiven for taking it as a sick joke. But it is Michael Ledeen, he of the Bulgarian Connection, and the Famous 16 words, so while it is in fact sick it is hardly a joke. He don't play that.

Sarko l'Neocon

The Rise of the French Neocons and the Fall of Frog-bashing

With the rise of Nicolas Sarkozy, 'Sarko l'Americain' to his detractors (and friends, too, apparently), the Neocons are set to do for France perhaps what they have done for the United States.

And does anyone doubt that Sarkozy is in fact a Neocon? Well, in the United States, neocons are largely defined, if not by themselves, as essentially those who are extreme in their wishes and actions to bring about imperialist resurgence. Sarkozy's recent accord with the U.S. regarding Iran certainly puts him in that category (as does that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel). (Britain never left the fold, even if it is now only a lieutenant ("partner") of the U.S.)

The history of U.S.-French relations has always been on-again, off-again. The reasons for early problems probably lie in the fact that the United States realized that French support in the revolutionary period and beyond was really just the result of 19th century realpolitik: France was glad to support what was turning out to be a real thorn in its English enemy's side. (The British and the French had been battling on and off-again for nearly a thousand years, mostly due to crazy ass aristocratic squabbles, claims and counterclaims.) When the British came to the aid of the Confederate States of America in the 1860s, French support was all the more welcomed even if it might have been seen as self-serving.

In the later period, beginning perhaps with the First World War, which President Woodrow Wilson entered after promising he wouldn't, in order to buttress America's new ally (mostly due to financial links), former colonial master, Great Britain. Remember it was Great Britain, not France, which launched the War of 1812 by attacking the fledgling United States, eventually burning down the White House (perhaps the only real threat to its existence the United States has ever faced). In any event, WWI began the modern period of U.S.-French relations. Then came the Second World War and the rise of the United States as the preeminent power in the west, for sure, but also the world. As the U.S. rose, the continental powers declined. British and French imperial fortunes, despite still considerable holdings, were sinking. The British took to its lieutenant-to-the-United-States role rather blithely. It's called a partnership, but it's not a partnership anymore than bosses and workers are "partners". It's unequal. The British fool themselves and the United States encourages them. All the better for everyone involved. The French, however, were never quite as eager to be so dominated by the U.S., for understandable as well as, perhaps, egotistical reasons. This unease first showed up in France's split with NATO fairly early on. It has continued until most recently with the French resistance to the U.S. war against Iraq.

However, throughout the history of U.S.-dominated part of U.S.-French relations, France has generally been largely (if not specifically) in accord with the U.S. regarding the international system. France simply desired a more independent status. Those times that it hasn't been in accord have not necessarily been for altruistic reasons, of course. For instance, it is likely true that the French government opposed the Iraq war not because it was a crime, but because they had business ties to Iraq. But that's certainly not completely illegitimate - although when translated via Neocon propaganda, it certainly seemed so. But French disagreements with U.S. policies have always been presented as the worst sort of betrayal. And this betrayal has been tied in the most xenophobic ways to France's supposed lack of appreciation for America's liberation of the country in WWII and, simultaneously, to France's supposed lack of intestinal fortitude in dealing with "bad guys", which, so goes our own propaganda, is always the reason we shoot up other people's countries.

Of course the accusation of French cowardice was always more self-serving to American elite power than fair or true. World War Two is the most oft-cited example, though Dien Bin Phu come in a close second. Concerning the first example, it is true the French were defeated by the Germans in a few weeks in the spring of 1940. It also true that many French then collaborated with the Germans, including collusion in the rounding up of Jews, Communists and others. But defeat at the hands of the Germans is not cause to be deemed cowardly. The French army's defeat had more to do with outmoded tactics than cowardice. Guderian's breakthrough at the Ardennes and the Germans use of concentrated armor columns are the answer to France's defeat. As for collaboration, it was always limited. After all, there was also the resistance, l'Maquis, which was not only instrumental in many independent operations but also provided support and intelligence to the allies before and after D-Day. As for Dien Bien Phu, it is telling that French failure to follow up a defeat by oppressed colonialists I think it is not an exaggeration at all to say that the anti-French attitude among American nationalists has been due to French failure to kiss American ass, not cowardice or snottniness. But it has not always been so.

In an important recent example of French connivance with American policy, France actively took part in carrying out the kidnapping a few years ago of elected Haitian leader Jean Bertrand Aristide. Apparently, the French helped in the operation, including setting up Aristide temporarily in its former colony, a recent client, Central African Republic. This was as unseemly an act on the part of the United States as one could imagine. The French not only did not object, they helped. Those crazed xenophobes in the United States that rant and rave about the French lost this opportunity to pat the French on the heads since they were too busy denying the fact the U.S. kidnapped Aristide and took over his country - again.

But such things are hardly new. The French and the U.S. were in accord as early as 1804 in smashing the Haitian upstarts. Then it was due to a slave rebellion that was crushed by the United States and France, with the French then being the dominant partner in the criminal activity. A century later, during the First World War in fact the United States took over the brutalization of Haiti. The pattern has continued up until today.

The Iraq war, though, brought about a real coarsening of U.S.-French relations, but it was largely because of American extremism in pursuit of Bush's neocon agenda. It became so bad that hack politicians in the United States changed "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries" in a display of hostility so childish and bizarre that it would have been laughable if it hadn't been so reminiscent of typical xenophobic nationalist smack-talk.

Many French perhaps didn't give a crap and figured, if unfairly, it was an example of just the sort of America they had come to hate so much. Others though smarted at the hyperventilating "France Sucks" rhetoric emanating from across the pond and wished to do something about it. America and France, they felt, have a lot in common: they both like to exploit, manipulate and kick around Third World countries when they can. That's enough to hang a relationship on, isn't it? The Iraq thing was just a moment in time; the U.S. and France can go back to old collaborations, can't they?

Well, along came French rightist Nicolas Sarkozy. Do I need to tell you that the French business, military and intelligence elites might have drooled over the possibility of so pleasing the American neocons as to put Sarko the American in power? How do you say Diebold in French?

And why not? French elites after all more or less see things the way U.S. elites do on everything from corporate welfare and the lowering of economic expectations on the part of ordinary folk to the War on Terror and the manufactured need to defeat the "Islamo-fascists."

The rise of Sarko the American is a manufactured mending of U.S.-French relations. It is an excuse for all the "Frog"-bashers to put away their pillows and hail the snail-snackers as comrades again. A good example is stealth-neocon Tucker Carlson of MSNBC (stealth because he pretends to be a loyal oppositionist but nevertheless nearly always shills for the latest Bush Administration claims, saying it is because they are true or self-evident not because he is a neocon shill). When Sarkozy recently sneaked into the country and vacationed with the Bush's in Maine, he menaced paparazzi, bare-chested even, when they wandered too close. Carlson took this as a good sign - a sign that the French had regained their manhood - and, by definition, their alignment with American interests. Carlson said something to the effect, "Hey, maybe the Frogs are not so bad." Yeah, if they elect a French version of George Bush, they can't be so bad, right?

Cue: The Iraq War Cool Down

Are we Seeing Evidence of Covert Management of Appearances in the Iraq War?

Facts:

Insurgent attacks are down in Iraq.

Deaths of Americans and Iraqis are down in Iraq.

IED incidents are down in Iraq.

What we are meant to believe:

The "surge" worked.

The "bad guys" are on the run or have, in effect, switched sides.

The war is not the chaotic mess that it has been and Bush was right to stick to his "surge".

Speculation:

The U.S., the U.K. and the Israelis have been covertly manipulating events in Iraq to cause maximum carnage and ethnic division for four years, the intent being the division of Iraq per a standing Western-approved Zionist plan.

The Western-authored religious/ethnic killings and bombings - in keeping with the Western-authorship of Al Qaeda in general - has always been distinct from the insurgent activities that are genuinely nationalistic.

However, Iraq has either recently reached a point of no return in terms of ethnic division and national reconciliation (the public face of U.S. policy) is now impossible or unlikely or the political problems for the Neocons in the U.S. have become so acute that the covert divide-and-conquer agenda can and must be abandoned, at least temporarily.

The surge can be seen to have worked, and the war can now be seen as winnable or even to be winding down.

Next stop on the Neocon warpath, Iran.

Would Benazir Bhutto Fly the False-Flags So Readily?

The Musharraf Method of fighting extremism: "Arrest the Moderates!"

In recent weeks, U.S.-imported Taliban foot soldiers and other extremists (and this) in the Waziristan region of western Pakistan, near the Afghan border, have managed some significant victories, forcing large numbers Pakistani troops to retreat and capturing many others.

So how does the U.S.-supported dictator Pervez Musharraf respond? By arresting urban intellectuals and moderates! It is a bit like being attacked (supposedly) by Arabs hiding in Afghan caves and taking it out on the people of Iraq!

Musharraf has even put former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto under house arrest. And she is an extremist neither of the Taliban nor the Musharraf type. So why is she and others like her facing repressive measures? Is it simply because Al Qaeda™ is on the march in the Hindu Kush? Is it because Musharraf maintains power by being seen as the only viable alternative to the Taliban and Al Qaeda types? Certainly this is why Washington votes for him - usually a deciding and veto-proof vote.

But there is likely more to Musharraf's martial law than military defeats in Waziristan. Just as threatening, perhaps, is the menace of upcoming elections, now postponed, perhaps indefinitely.

If there is a moderate element that might actually win elections or heavily influence political events, can they possibly be tolerated as the Musharraf camp faces declining fortunes? If the moderate sector is silenced, it could encourage the rest of Pakistan to focus on the perceived options left to them, the Islamic extremists or the military dictator. That leaves the Musharraf camp as the ready-made savior without an alternative, doesn't it? How well, after all, would the moderates do keeping up the fake War on Terror anyway?

Of course, if Musharraf keeps the "emergency rule" going long enough, the moderate opposition will be in such disarray, that elections may be meaningless even if he doesn't cheat - always a distinct possibility. And if the extremists gain too many votes, sufficient reason for further "emergency rule" will be handed to Musharraf on a silver platter. Either way, Musharraf wins - and the U.S.-sponsored and stage-managed War on Terror ™ can be salvaged.

Will the Real Al Qaeda Please Stand Up?

"Beware the Green Menace!" Cue Dramatic Music

Some of the most significant mysteries regarding Al Qaeda may not involve bin Laden's perennially vague whereabouts, the latest purported Al Qaeda message broadcast on Al Jazeera or the nature of Al Qaeda's purported evolution from an organization per se to an ideology. They may involve questions regarding the very authorship of Al Qaeda. They may involve questions much closer to home.

It is well known, if widely ignored and explained-away, that Osama Bin Laden was one of the CIA's mujahideen "Afghan Arabs" that it used to battle the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. As late as July 2001, two months before 9/11, the CIA was publicly in contact with Osama Bin Laden when he was a patient at the American Hospital in Dubai. The supposed estranged nature of Osama's relationship with his Saudi relatives has been doubtful at best. His 9/11-confession tape is readily questionable.

But if the conventional picture painted of Al Qaeda as America's desperate and implacable enemy is questionable, then what exactly is Al Qaeda? Well, the first problem, perhaps, to get out of the way is the black vs. white matter. In other words, an underlying assumption in debates (such as they are) regarding the Official vs. the competing 9-11 conspiracy theories is the idea that Al Qaeda is our sworn enemy in a straightforward way and it committed 9-11 or the U.S. government really orchestrated all these things and Al Qaeda is not a real enemy. But Al Qaeda can be real and something else altogether at the same time. What should be kept in mind is that in the world of covert operations, up is down, black is white - it is a virtual not-so-funhouse of mirrors. The point is that Al Qaeda, or especially its smaller lights and foot soldiers, may in fact be very serious about being an enemy of the United States and all things non-Islamo-fascist at the very same time that the organization or many of its cells may in fact be controlled by Western (including U.S., British, German, Italian, and Israeli) intelligence agencies. That Al Qaeda is now more diverse, and, some say, nearly an ideology as opposed to a centralized organization, would only make it easier for covert operators to manipulate enough of it to shape perceptions as well as events and trends.

This notion of Al Qaeda's realness being taken at face value and thus used as proof in itself of the non-U.S. government authorship of 9-11 is not only promoted by the usual suspects in the illiberal media, but also by self-described leftist critics of the going order. For instance, in the October 2007 issue of Z Magazine, Alternative Radio host David Barsamian spewed discredit on the 9-11 truth movement, thus:

There are certain what I hesitate to call schools of thought in the United States, Canada and elsewhere that say that it was not bin Laden and al-Qa'ida that carried out the attacks on September 11. Is there any doubts in your head that it was, in fact, bin Laden and al-Qa'ida?

To which his interviewee, Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based Arabic daily newspaper, Al-Quds al-Arabi, replied:

From day one I said it is most likely the work of al-Qa'ida because I knew they were planning something really big (…) all the indications are clearly that al-Qa'ida did it.

Notice how "Al Qaeda did it" is conflated with "Al Qaeda did it all by itself from a cave in Afghanistan." Barsamian failed to mention, if he is even aware of it, that the evidence shows that al-Qa'ida is certainly connected to these things, but that the reality of Al Qaeda as advertised and to whom and what it is connected are the relevant questions. However, with one smarmy sweep of his hand, Barsamian has dismissed all of the evidence that Al Qaeda is in fact fake (in that it is connected to and manipulated by Western intelligence and police agencies) AND guilty of terrorism. This sort of either/or-ism is part and parcel of the mainstream (and leftist) dismissals in defense of the Official Conspiracy Theory. But in fact it is a form of stupidity that should be self-evident to the reader.

Al Qaeda, 'the base', (or, 'the toilet', according to some sources, perhaps half seriously) is the Arabic name given by western intelligence agencies to a computer database of Jihadis trained and armed by the United States and its allies to fight the Soviets in the 1980s. The former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, revealed this in July 2005. A month later he passed away unexpectedly.

A database?!

Emad Ali Salem, a former high-ranking Egyptian military intelligence officer and FBI informant, facilitated the Al Qaeda-authored1993 World Trade Center, providing safe houses where plans were made and bombs manufactured. He also provided weapons to the plotters. The FBI knew well in advance that the plans were active and the bombs already made.

Ali Mohamed [pdf] a former Egyptian army major, has been an active co-conspirator in all of Al Qaeda's terrorist acts (as far as we know), successful and unsuccessful, except for the U.S.S. Cole bombing and 9/11, including:

· The November 5, 1990 assassination of Zionist extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane
· The February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center
· The June 24, 1993 New York "Landmarks" foiled bomb plot
· The August 7, 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania

During much of this time, Mohamed ran an Al Qaeda cell from his Santa Clara, California home. Tellingly, Mohamed has had quite a career working with and for U.S. military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including:

· The U.S. Army special forces at Fort Bragg, where he was eventually an officer and instructor in the 1980s
· The CIA as a mujahideen operative. In the 1980s, while he was in the U.S. Army, he took leave to go to Afghanistan to fight as an Islamic Jihadi. In the 1995 trial of WTC bomber Sheik Abdul Rahman it is discovered that Mohamed was able to enter the U.S. through a CIA-controlled special visa program even though supposedly he had long been terrorist watch list.
· The FBI as an informant in the 1990s.

Mohamed was arrested in 1998. As of July 2001, according to Peter Lance's timeline (source for this article), Ali Mohamed was in custody, to be sentenced for a number of crimes (he plead guilty to involvement in the embassy bombings). As of 2006 this U.S. Army Special Forces officer, CIA operative and FBI informant still had not been publicly sentenced and his exact location, and whether or not he was still incarcerated, was unknown.

Undermining the Official Conspiracy Theory further is the fact that on the orders of Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. military evacuated thousands of Al Qaeda troops and their Pakistani military handlers over the Hindu Kush to the Waziristan region of Pakistan in November 2001. This is the very region that has subsequently been called the new home of Al Qaeda from which it plots more 9-11 level mayhem.

Aside from this evidence of U.S. connections to Al Qaeda terrorists, there is evidence of such connections between it and our allies, Britain and Israel. In 2005 British agents were caught by Iraqi police driving through the southern Iraqi city of Basra dressed like Arabs in a car full of weapons and explosives. Startling, you say? But wait, there's more. When the Iraqis arrested the Brits and through them in jail, the Brits responded by bulldozing the jail with a tank to set the pair free (along with other jailbirds)! Is this the nature of the so-called Al Qaeda in Iraq? Western commandos dressed like Arabs? Sound crazy? Well, it's a crazy world, so get used to it.

There was also the case of Israelis setting up a fake Al Qaeda cell (what other kind is there?) in Gaza a few years ago. The only weird thing, I suppose, is the fact they got caught!

You combine the startling and (to the U.S. and its allies) unflattering facts about the real Al Qaeda (and I have by no means listed them exhaustively) with the highly questionable nature of the official Conspiracy Theory about 9/11 starring a cave-dwelling Osama Bin Laden and 19 Arab hijackers, some of whom lived through the fireballs and tons of cascading concrete it seems, and it becomes clear that the real world is upside-down to our stage-managed perceptions.

Don't let patriotism or the pretense of it render you utterly stupid and without meaningful moral sense. Even if everyone from Bill O'Reilly to Bill Maher, ostensible opposites, rants and raves against "conspiracy theories" involving 9/11, open your mind to the facts. You will be disappointed, yes, and maybe even terrified. But no one said the truth would be easy or fun.

Fighting the Fake Fight

When Warfare-state propagandists Dress Like Critics

Loyal opposition war critic Andrew Bacevich ('Fighting the Real Fight', Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2007), writes, while claiming the Bush Administration has in effect given up on the War on Terror even while it sticks to its Iraq war guns, "once a conflict becomes an exercise in improvisation, it ceases to be meaningful. It becomes the antithesis of war - killing without purpose or moral justification."

I would argue, first, that most wars meet half that definition anyway: they kill with purpose but without moral justification. Of course, one could argue that wars often seem to be senseless given their stated purpose. However, for anyone not living in La-La-Land and steer clear of Fox news as often as they can (and who are not merely making their judgments from within the liberal/conservative nationalistic/patriotic framework) should be able to grasp the elementary fact that government's lie about their purposes, especially governments at war. This means that a war that seems, given its stated purpose, senseless might actually be rumbling along just fine according to some unstated purpose. That's why, from Democrats to Republicans (and plenty of "independents"), the assumption is that the war is well-intentioned and genuinely motivated by national security concerns if, as many Democrats and some Republicans would say, it was based on "mistaken" intelligence and is has been badly managed. Often however, the unstated purposes are nevertheless self-evident (even if the above mentioned crowd doesn't see them). Sometimes they are only guessed-at - if not by those in La-La Land.

Bacevich (who I think is sincere and whose limited criticisms are often very useful to more fundamental criticisms), being from the more-or-less liberal end of the conventional spectrum of war criticism, says, in regards to the Bush Administration's abandonment of the War on Terror, "Don't expect to hear this from the White House any time soon." And this is true of course. But one might ask what we should not expect to hear from the likes of Bacevich anyt time soon? Bacevich's kind of statements have been the sort that have become a sort of mantra of the mainstream war critics that not only has the Iraq war been merely mismanaged (not that it was in fact a seriously criminal war), but also that it has been a distraction from the "real fight", the War on Terror, with its primary focus being the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the capture of the supposed author of 9/11, Osama Bin Laden. The Bush Adminstration and the illiberal media have tried to do damage-control on this issue by exaggerating (or even manipulating) the Al Qaeda presence in Iraq (which was non-existent there before the U.S. invasion).

So let us consider the Afghan war. Is its purpose the stated purpose? That assumption is likely hard to sustain these days, except among the most hardened aficionados of the Official Conspiracy Theory and the War to Get the Bad Guys.

Once you consider an early American covert-op in Afghanistan in November 2001 that helped Pakistan-supported Al Qaeda troops to flee to Pakistan, the fakery of the war comes into focus. Why were they helped to escape? Is this not in and of itself one of the most damning facts revealing the true nature of the War on Terror?

Once you consider the fact that while the U.S. committed a relatively small (government) force to Iraq, it nevertheless dwarfs the force that was sent to the supposed central front in the War on Terror, Afghanistan, the fakery becomes even more obvious.

Then there was the Pentagon poster-boy Pat Tillman who turned out to be not only brave but also a genuine critic of the Iraq occupation. Why was he killed and why was his death covered up?

Perhaps Afghanistan is really just a must-do war, to keep up the pretense that the War on Terror is in fact just that, and not an new imperialistic war. Of course, there are realpolitik reasons for being in central asia, per Zbigniew Brzezinski's "Grand Chessboard" instruction manual.

And what about the Iraq war, what might its purpose be? Earlier in the week I discussed what I see as the intentional splitting of Iraq. The chaos in Iraq, some of it provoked, seems certain to lead to that outcome, despite U.S. claims that it really just wants to give Iraq democracy and freedom.

Bacevich is not the sort of critic as, say, Randolph Bourne was ("war is the health of the state"), nor is he the sort as Smedley Butler ("war is a racket"). Bacevich is the sort that sustains the warfare-state by being way-too-friendly sort of critic.

Defeat Al Qaeda!

When the Cold War ended, we were thrilled, for sure. But we also felt a little lost, didn't we? Who are we? Where are we? Why are we here? Why do we have the most expensive and bloated military machine in the world, sprawled across half the planet? God (and Lockheed Martin) knows. We stumbled a bit, looking for our special purpose. But then, a miracle occurred: Al Qaeda magically appeared. It was as if God knew we would have to have a reason to keep up Cold War level military spending and throw our weight around. The Project for a New American Century (a 1990s think tank filled with beloved Reaganites and Bushies, who, thank Jehovah, took power in 2000) knew this; they acknowledged that if we were to "grow" our domination of the world, it would require a "catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." Well, from their lips to God's ears. That was in 2000. Just one year later they got their "new Pearl Harbor" - 9/11. And people say God is not on our side! So, expect miracles, but in the meantime...

Defeat Al Qaeda!

Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook may have said in 2005 that "Al Qaeda" is not a real terrorist organization, but rather an Arabic term the CIA used to refer to its 'database' of mujahideen trained with their buddy Osama bin Laden in the 1980's, but we know that is just Old Europe raining on our parade (or, peeing on our perceptions, to put it another way). Cook died a month after saying that. Clearly Al Qaeda killed him for saying they were just a CIA computer file. And anyway, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you think Al Qaeda doesn't exist as such, it makes it really hard to convince yourself that we must in fact...

Defeat Al Qaeda!

The situation's so dire there's no time for liberal distractions like the fact that Ali Mohamed, former Egyptian intelligence officer and U.S. Army Green Beret, linked to the CIA (including as a jihadi in Afghanistan while he was a member of the U.S. Army), shielded by the FBI and kept as an informant, and who wrote Al Qaeda's training manual, was a trainer and guiding hand in nearly all of Al Qaeda's early operations, including: the assassination of Zionist hero Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1990 (Al Qaeda's first act), the 1993 WTC bombing, the foiled 1993 "Day of Terror" plot, the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa. (He was in U.S. custody during 9/11 and apparently remains there, publicly unsentenced.) A veritable mastermind, you might say. And just because the State Department complained that Ali remained free after many opportunities for the U.S. to grab him, it doesn't mean the U.S. government was helping him, even though it was like when the CIA gave him a special visa even though he was on a terrorist watch list. But anyway Liberals and other foreigners infiltrate the State Department! The FBI shielded him from prosecution in order to, well, do something really important for national security. The Feds want us to ignore Ali's existence, so let's ignore it, patriotically. Real patriots, like Senator Craig, don't ask and don't tell. But they do remember that we must...

Defeat Al Qaeda!

The links between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda were all non-existent - in that annoying liberal sort of truthy way. But after the smashing success of our invasion and occupation, the link is there now, isn't it? So stop your liberal bitching. Recall also the Iraq war might have really gone sideways if it wasn't for Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). And we mean 'sideways' in the sense that matters: an unmanageable increase in the already overwhelming public opposition to the continuation of the war. AQI saved our butts - the butts that is of the 20 to 30 % that never, ever ask why or how long when it comes to war even if it is criminal, fraudulent and badly managed. Forget that the presence of 'foreign fighters' in Iraq (other than our own) is pretty miniscule and that the operations and size of Al Qaeda in Iraq is greatly exaggerated. AQI is a menace even if it's "microscopic" according to fancy liberal experts like U.S. intelligence officers. Reality has a liberal bias, too. General David Petrayus can be believed simply because he wears a uniform: AQI is small, but big, insignificant, but important. We're fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq so we don't have to invent Al Qaeda in America and then fight them.

Remember: Al Qaeda might be a fabulous fabrication, but that doesn't mean it's not real!

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A By-Golly-You're-Right production of Citizens Against Ruining Patriotism, in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Formulating Popular Certainty

Splitting Iraq: The Overt and the Covert Aspects of A U.S.-Israeli Policy

It is possible the U.S. and Israel believed the Iraq/Iran War (1980-1988) - during which they were assisting both sides, prolonging and worsening the conflict - would lead to that would bring about the dissolution of the Iraqi state.

But that didn't happen. As bad as the Iran/Iraq War was (some 1 million dead), it did not lead to the break-up of Iraq. However, though the Reagan and Bush administrations continued to support Iraq (after apparently abandoning Iran in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal) even during the period of some of its worst atrocities against the Kurds and Shiites, something shifted.

The Kuwaiti dictatorship, another U.S. ally, began to provoke the Iraqis in ways that any leader, not just Saddam Hussein, would have responded to. They began violating the border between the two countries, drilling into Iraqi oil fields. And one must remember, at the risk of sounding like a defender of Hussein, Kuwait was once a part of Iraq and was only split off by the British early on as an obvious means of controlling the Arab lands beyond.

So, anyway, the Kuwaitis were fucking with the Iraqis at a time when the post-war Iraqi economy was in sad shape. The Iraqis were pissed off. But they decided not to respond immediately to what could justifiably be considered an act of war. Instead, in April 1990, Hussein essentially asked George Bush Sr.'s U.S. ambassador at time, April Glaspie, "Hey, the Kuwaitis are fucking with us, do you care if we take care of this?" Glaspie essentially said, "We don't care." And since the U.S. had supported Iraq's invasion of Iran ten years earlier, Hussein had every reason to believe the U.S. meant it when it said it could take on Kuwait and the U.S. would support it or at least look the other way. Well, we know that history: Iraq invaded Kuwait and the U.S. went ape-shit, crying foul and claiming the Iraqis were acting atrociously. (Even though the U.S. had just six months earlier invaded Panama and killed roughly the same number of innocents there as the Iraqis had killed in Kuwait.) People bought it (sort of; opposition to the war was surprisingly broad, if ineffective in stopping it). Then came a limited war against Iraq (unless you ask the thousands of civilians killed in the U.S. air campaign), and an expulsion of its forces from Kuwait.

Story over? Well, not really. In the wake of the war the U.S. held Iraq to a deal of not pursuing weapons programs. Iraq, it was claimed, balked early on. Economic sanctions were put in place. The U.S., under a U.N. fig leaf, imposed and enforced no-fly zones on Iraq (zones which more or less corresponded with the areas to be split off from Iraq per Israel's 1982 plan).

However, Iraq actually did disarm and gave up most of its programs by the mid-1990s, just a few years after the end of Persian Gulf War. An Iraqi defector named Hussein Kamal confirmed this. The weapons inspections confirmed this. But the U.S. persisted. Economic sanctions on Iraq continued, though they killed tens of thousands. Bombings of the country continued, though they also killed many Iraqis. All under the pretext that Iraq was cheating on the WMD front. This matter came to a head in 2003 after a propaganda campaign of some ten years. Though the evidence showed Iraq was compliant, the propaganda nevertheless was so overwhelming (though, tellingly, people in and out of government were able to see through it even before the war) that the U.S. was able to maintain its benevolent pose and sell an invasion in 2002-2003, leading to a years-long occupation and countless thousands of Iraqi and some fewer American and allied deaths.

In the interim, a pretense has arisen along with a civil war: the idea, namely, that the U.S. government could not have foreseen a fragmented Iraq and certainly did not welcome it.

If you consider the possibility that the U.S. stated position of getting Iraq back on its feet may be no more than a public position used to mask an underlying agenda; and if you consider the circumstantial evidence that the U.S. and its allies have been fomenting violence in Iraq, you may find it easier to deal with the possibility that the U.S. and its allies have been seeking to facilitate, not prevent the break-up of Iraq.

The only evidence the U.S. and its allies may have been trying foment violence in Iraq came in 2005, but its nothing to sneeze at. In September of that year British agents were caught by Iraqi police driving through the southern Iraqi city of Basra dressed like Arabs in a car full of weapons and explosives. Startling, you say? But wait, there's more. When the Iraqis arrested the Brits and threw them in jail, the Brits responded by bulldozing the jail with a tank to set the pair free (along with other jailbirds)! (see this and this) Consider also that Israeli presence in northern Iraq, while hush-hush, is beyond dispute. (see this and this)

This break-up part of this agenda is not secret, but the apparent provocation part of it would be. Many U.S. officials and opinion shapers have stated the break-up-Iraq part openly. They have said, in effect, hey, we tried, but maybe Iraq is just too volatile, a lost cause, you know. Maybe it should be split into to, say, three pieces.

Now I know this sounds like bad old fashioned imperialistic hubris, dividing other people's countries, drawing new borders, etc., etc. But don't let meaning get in the way of a good patriotic feeling, right? So let's just say if the U.S. really is trying to divide Iraq, maybe it's for some benevolent reason. And since the U.S. says (and saying it must make it true) that it is not an arrogant, self-serving imperialistic state, how does it go about dividing Iraq into three pieces without looking like an arrogant, self-serving imperialistic state? Well, one good possibility is to covertly create the rational basis for it on the ground by fomenting violence and civil strife between the three groups that make up the Iraqi population: the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds. If they can't live together, who are we to stand in their way? Now, of course, this violence has been mostly confined to the Shiites and the Sunnis. Perhaps this is because the Kurds essentially are already split off from the rest of Iraq. But where does this idea of splitting Iraq come from? Serioso Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden? The big thinkers in the media and think tanks? Well, not so much. Actually, the idea originated with the Israelis.

That's right. The Israelis. But you might as well holster your cynical "anti-Semite" accusation-phasers, because I can point to the evidence the Israelis came up with the divide-Iraq-into-three-pieces scheme.

In 1982, Oded Yinon, an Israeli official writes in the World Zionist Organization journal Directions: 

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 Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.

Now, most recently, numerous U.S. politicians and media stars, ostensible critics of Bush's Iraq policy who are merely trying to clean up the mess and move on, have supported the idea of dividing Iraq. After so much effort on the part of the U.S. and Israel to create the conditions that would lead to a division of Iraq, it just so happens that U.S. war critics are supporting the final completion of the long-standing goal. The ideological influence of the Neocons (a weird amalgam of Christian fundamentalists and the Israeli lobby) have nothing to do with this outcome, we are to suppose.