From: Patrick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 21 October 2001 10:27 To: Jonathan Knight Subject: What proof? Missing: crucial facts from the official charge sheet against Bin Laden http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=98195 What the Government's dossier against bin Laden doesn't say and can't say: One thing is missing from the document 'proving' Bin Laden's guilt - the proof By Chris Blackhurst 07 October 2001 It was too good to be true. We were told we would be getting evidence of Osama bin Laden's guilt. Instead, close analysis of the 21-page document put out by the Government on Thursday reveals a report of conjecture, supposition and unsubstantiated assertions of fact. It uses every trick in the Whitehall drafter's arsenal to make the reader believe they are reading something they are not: a damning indictment of Mr bin Laden for the events of 11 September. No wonder Tony Blair and his officials are delighted with the reaction to publication of the dossier. One Whitehall source told the Independent on Sunday they were "chuffed with two newspapers for hailing it as 'proof' of bin Laden's involvement and delighted it got such a good reaction overall". Ministers believe the document has sealed the propaganda war, convincing the country of the need to move against Mr bin Laden and al-Qa'ida and to accept limited British and civilian casualties. To their relief they are not being subjected to rigorous questioning on the report, either from their own supporters, the Opposition, or much of the media. Officials are also pleased: the document successfully papers over the cracks in their own intelligence operations. The report was put together by a committee which included senior members of MI5 and MI6, working round the clock, with drafts going backwards and forwards to Washington. Within Whitehall, the dossier was seen as vital to gaining the approval of a naturally cautious and sceptical British public. As a paper produced by mandarins anxious to brook no argument it is a classic of its kind, straight from the script of Yes Minister: short on checkable detail; long on bold assertion; highly selective with the choice of facts. Officials when they prepare such reports operate to a set of principles. They know that unlike the US, and thanks to their efforts in suppressing freedom of information down the years, Britain is a secret society. We are not used to having anything presented to us about intelligence matters and threats to national security. That, plus the British characteristic of not defying authority, especially in times of crisis, means that if the Government says loudly enough that something is "evidence", even if it is not, we will accept it as such. That is why the very first sentence in the paper, in the introduction, states: "The clear conclusions reached by the government are: Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida, the terrorist network which he heads, planned and carried out the atrocities on 11 September 2001." This is the introduction, not the conclusion or an executive summary. Introductions, as the authors knew too well, normally set up a document, relating the background as to why the book or, in this instance, a government document, has been written. Here, that convention was rejected: from the word go, the Government wanted to ensure the point of the document was conveyed. The document carries a health warning that intelligence material has been withheld to protect the safety of sources. But, lawyers point out, this is not good enough. Assuming one aim of the military build-up is to try to capture Mr bin Laden and put him on trial, that so-far-unseen evidence would have to be displayed - because on the basis of what has been released there is no chance of his being prosecuted, let alone convicted. "The Prime Minister told Parliament that this evidence was of an even more direct nature indicating guilt," said Richard Gordon QC. "The document makes it clear that the additional evidence is 'too sensitive to release'. That may be so, but in any criminal prosecution against bin Laden the necessary evidence would have to be adduced for the case to be proved." For page after page, the paper spews out facts about Mr bin Laden. In 1996, he issued a declaration of jihad, or holy war. In February 1998 he issued and signed a fatwa which included a decree to all Muslims that "the killing of Americans and their civilian and military allies is a religious duty for each and every Muslim to be carried out..." In the same year he also said that acquiring chemical or nuclear weapons for the defence of Muslims was a "religious duty". It might look like evidence of something, but it is not proof he organised the 11 September attacks. "All this shows, in the language of the lawyers, propensity, but it proves little," said Mr Gordon. More pertinent to 11 September were two TV interviews he gave, in 1997 and 1998, in which he referred to the terrorists who carried out the earlier attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993 as "role models". In December 1999, a terrorist cell linked to al-Qa'ida was discovered trying to carry out attacks in the US. Other attacks on US targets by al-Qa'ida or terrorists trained at bin Laden camps were made in January and October 2000. Again, said Mr Gordon, it is not enough. "This material shows that bin Laden may well have been responsible for the 11 September massacre but it does not, of itself, prove that he was." The document goes into great detail about the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. But there is not one single fact presented that was not already known. While the operation was similar to 11 September - well planned, two attacks on the same day, suicide attackers indiscriminate killing of civilians, including Muslims - it does not prove anything. Officials deny that the minute description of the previous bombings was designed to cover up cracks in their own intelligence about 11 September. Nevertheless, it is noticeable that in a 21-page document the overwhelming bulk of it is devoted to rehashing old information. It is not until page 18 and paragraph 61 that the reader is told something new about 11 September. This is that three of the 19 hijackers have been "positively identified as associates of Al Qaida" and that one of them "has been identified as playing key roles in both the East African embassy attacks and the USS Cole attack". The word "associates" suggests the authorities lack intelligence on al-Qa'ida: they think they know who may be involved but they are not sure, and they are not certain where they come in the pecking order - hence the catch-all, "associates". The three are understood to be: Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, both filmed secretly in Kuala Lumpur meeting other al-Qa'ida members involved in the USS Cole bombing in Aden; and Mohamed Atta. Suspected of being the ringleader, Atta is believed to have been a member of Islamic Jihad, a major grouping within al-Qa'ida, and the authorities are convinced he received training at a bin Laden camp in Afghanistan. The hijacker who played a key role in the embassy, USS Cole and 11 September attacks, is thought to refer to Almihdhar. If there is a hijacker linking all three, that is a crucial piece of evidence since there is no doubt al-Qa'ida committed the earlier bombings. The next paragraph, 62, promises much and delivers little. Prefaced with another rider about names remaining anonymous to protect sources, it begins by saying how, prior to 11 September, Mr bin Laden "mounted a concerted propaganda campaign ... justifying attacks on Jewish and American targets". It was well known in the Middle East that, earlier this year, a bin Laden recruitment video was in circulation, exhorting Muslims to lay down their lives for the jihad. The video makes no mention of any coming big assault nor does it refer to 11 September or possible targets in the US. Last week it emerged that Mr bin Laden called his adoptive mother in Syria on 10 September to tell her there would be "big news", subsequent to which he might be out of touch for some time. It is hard to believe that someone as cautious as him would risk such a call. However, this is understood to be what is being referred to when the document says, in paragraph 62: "We have learned, subsequent to 11 September, that bin Laden himself asserted shortly before 11 September that he was preparing a major attack on America." The document goes on, saying that in August and early September, close bin Laden associates were warned to return to Afghanistan by 10 September. This is new, and odd. Since the attacks, known al-Qa'ida associates have been picked up or they are being watched. If there was advice to go to Afghanistan presumably they ignored it or did not receive it. The names of the "close associates" are not specified, neither is any more detail made available - which is a mystery. It is hard to see why giving a bit more detail would compromise anybody or a foreign intelligence service that may be monitoring their calls. Again, this tantalising paragraph - by far the most intriguing in the document - says that just before the attacks "some known associates of bin Laden were naming the date for action as on or around 11 September". What associates? How? When? Again, no detail is supplied. Then, the paragraph continues, "one of bin Laden's closest and most senior associates was responsible for the detailed planning of the attacks". This is thought to be a reference to either Mohamed Atef, al-Qa'ida's operations chief, or Ayman al Zawahiri, Mr bin Laden's deputy. Another senior al-Qa'ida member being mentioned by those close to the investigation is Abu Zubeidah. After all this, the most vital paragraph in the paper ends with this curious sentence: "There is evidence of a very specific nature relating to the guilt of bin Laden and his associates that is too sensitive to release." What this document is not is a detailed exposition of the investigation to date. To be fair, that is still ongoing, but providing that amount of information would distract from the paper's main purpose, to blame Mr bin Laden. This is summarised in the final narrative paragraph, 69: "No other organisation has both the motivation and the capability to carry out attacks like those of the 11 September - only the Al Qaida network under Osama bin Laden." This smacks of exasperation. To ram that point home, paragraph 70, "conclusion", repeats the message of the introduction. This, in the end, is what the paper is for, a Government plea for trust: it was Mr bin Laden. To which the response must be: we believe you - but prove it. WHO TERRORIZES WHOM? October 18 By Edward S. Herman and David Peterson One of the marks of exceptional hegemonic power is the ability to define words and get issues framed in accord with your own political agenda. This is notorious at this moment in history as regards "terrorism" and "antiterrorism." Since the September 11 attacks, two truths have been indisputable and universally reported. One is that the hijacker bombings of the World Trade Center and Pentagon were atrocities of a monumental and spectacular scale (and media coverage of that day's events alone may have generated more words and graphic images than any other single event in recent history). A second truth is that the bombings were willful acts of terrorism, accepting the basic and widely agreed-upon definition of terrorism as "the use of force or the threat of force against civilian populations to achieve political objectives." And let us also recognize that "sponsorship of terrorism" means organizing, and/or underwriting and providing a "safe harbor" to state or nonstate agents who terrorize. But there is a third indisputable truth, although much less understood, let alone universally reported: namely, that from the 1950s the United States itself has been heavily engaged in terrorism, and has sponsored, underwritten, and protected other terrorist states and individual terrorists. In fact, as the greatest and now sole superpower, the United States has also been the world's greatest terrorist and sponsor of terror. Right now this country is supporting a genocidal terrorist operation against Iraq via "sanctions of mass destruction" and regular bombing attacks to achieve its political objectives; it is underwriting the army and paramilitary forces in Colombia, who openly terrorize the civilian population; and it continues to give virtually unconditional support to an Israeli state that has been using force to achieve its political objectives for decades. The United States has terrorized or sponsored terror in Nicaragua, Brazil, Uruguay, Cuba, Guatemala, Indonesia/East Timor, Zaire, Angola, South Africa, and elsewhere. And it stands alone in both using and brandishing the threat to use nuclear weapons. It has for many years provided a safe harbor to the Cuban refugee terror network, and it has done the same for a whole string of terrorists in flight from, among other places, El Salvador, Haiti, Vietnam, and even Nazi Germany (see Christopher Simpson's Blowback). Even in its response to the September 11 terrorist events the United States resorted instantly to its own terrorism. Ignoring legal niceties-- despite its supposed devotion to the "rule of law"- -the United States immediately began to threaten to "take out" states harboring terrorists, threatened the Afghans with bombing--itself an act of terrorism--and by such threats succeeded in blocking the flow of food supplies to a starving population, which is yet another act of terrorism, and a major one. (A spokesman for Oxfam International stationed in Islamabad recently stated that "Prior to this crisis, the World Food Program, with the help of Oxfam and other groups, was feeding 3.7 million [Afghan] people. But with the onset of the bombing campaign, this has stopped as the aid workers have been force to withdraw. The airdrops will--at their very best--feed 130,000 people," or only 3.5 percent of those facing winter and starvation). On October 7 the United States then began to bomb this impoverished country--not just a further act of terrorism, but the crime of aggression. All serious observers recognize that the U.S. actions against Afghanistan have and will cause many, many more deaths than the 6,000 killed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. But U.S. power and self-righteousness, broadcast and justified to the whole world by a subservient media machine, assure that what the United States does will neither be called terrorism, nor aggression, nor elicit indignation remotely comparable to that expressed over the events of September 11--however well its actions fit the definitions. The same bias extends to other Western countries, diminishing in scope and intensity from Britain to the others, and weakening further in the Third World. In the Middle East, for most of the population the bias disappears and U.S. terrorism is called by its right name, although the U.S.-dependent governments toe their master's line, if nervously. In these more remote areas the press speaks a different language, calling the United States a "rogue state par excellence repeatedly defying international rulings whether by the World Court or by U.N. resolutions when they have not suited its interests" and a "bandit sheriff" (The Hindu, India), and speaking of this as an "age of Euro-American tyranny" with tyrants who are merely "civilized and advanced terrorists" (Ausaf, Pakistan). But another sad fact is that in this country, and Britain as well, even the Left has trouble escaping the hegemonic definitions and frames. Leftists here regularly discuss the terrorism issue starting from the premise that the United States is against terrorism and that the issue is how the U.S. government can best deal with the problem. They are worried that the United States will go about solving the problem too aggressively, will seek vengeance, not justice. So they propose lawful routes, such as resort to the United Nations and International Court of Justice; and they urge seeking cooperation from the Arab states to crush terrorists within their own states. They discuss how bin Laden money routes can be cut off. Some of them even propose that the United States and its allies intervene not to bomb, but to build a new society in Afghanistan, engage in "nation-building", as the popular phrase puts it, in the spirit of the Kosovo "new humanitarian" intervention. While some of these proposals are meritorious, we haven't seen any that discuss how a "coalition of the willing" might be formed to bring the United States under control, to force it to stop using and threatening violence, to compel it and its British ally to cease terrorizing Iraq, and to make it stop supporting terrorist states like Colombia, Turkey, Indonesia, and Israel. Or to make U.S. funding of its terrorist operations more difficult! The hegemon defines the main part of the agenda--who terrorizes--and the debate is over how he and his allies should deal with those he identifies as terrorist. A good illustration of this Left accommodationism is displayed in the "New Agenda to Combat Terrorism," recently issued by the Institute for Policy Studies and Interhemispheric Resource Center in their Foreign Policy in Focus series. Nowhere in this document is it suggested that the United States is itself a terrorist state, sponsor of terrorism, or safe harbor of terrorists, although it is acknowledged that this country has supported "repressive regimes." "Repressive" is softer and less invidious than "terrorist." The report refers to the "destructive and counterproductive economic sanctions on Iraq," but doesn't suggest that this constitutes terrorism. In fact, "destructive" sounds like buildings knocked down and fails to capture the fact of a million or more human casualties. The recent publicity given the U.S.'s deliberate destruction of the Iraqi water supply also suggests something more than "destructive and counterproductive" is needed to properly describe U.S. policy toward that country (Thomas Nagy, "The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply," The Progressive, September 2001). Nowhere does the IPS/IRC document mention Colombia, Turkey or Indonesia, where the United States is currently supporting "repressive regimes." This practice of leaning over backwards to downplay the U.S. terrorist role merges into serious misreadings of ongoing events: for example, the New Agenda claims that one effect of September 11 was that "defense policy was redefined as defending America and Americans rather than as force projection." This takes as gospel official propaganda claims, when in fact September 11 has given the proponents of force projection just the excuse they need to project force, which they are doing under the guise of antiterrorism. As John Pilger notes, "The ultimate goal is not the capture of a fanatic, which would be no more than a media circus, but the acceleration of western imperial power" (New Statesman, Oct. 15, 2001). And discussing the Bush administration's non-negotiable demands on the Taliban, Delhi University professor Nirmalangshu Mukherji points out that "it is hard to believe that thousands are going to be killed and maimed, entire nations devastated, regional conflicts allowed to take ugly turns, the rest of the world held in fear--all because the dead body of a single, essentially unworthy person is given such high value." On the contrary, she proposes, as does Pilger, that "in the name of fighting global terrorism, the US is basically interested in using the opportunity to establish [a] permanent military presence in the area" that is notable for its geo-political importance ("Offers of Peace," Oct. 16, 2001). Calling for "reorienting U.S. policy along the lines of respecting human rights," the New Agenda report states that "the unnecessary projection of U.S. military abroad, represented by the archipeligo of overseas military bases, often serves as a physical reminder of U.S. political and military support for repressive regimes." This claim that such bases are "unnecessary" completely ignores their ongoing important role in facilitating the global expansion of U.S. business, and, amazingly, ignores the fact that the United States is right now in the process of building new ones in "repressive" states like Uzbekistan, with 7,000 political prisoners and in the midst of a low- intensity war against Islamic insurgents ("U.S. Indicates New Military Partnership With Uzbekistan," Wall Street Journal, Oct. 15, 2001). Such bases are only "unnecessary" to analysts who are unable or unwilling to confront the reality of a powerful imperialism in fine working order and in a new phase of expansion. These analysts seem to believe that the United States can easily, perhaps with Left advice, be dissuaded from being an imperialist power! The reasons for this Left accommodation to what we must call the Superterrorist's antiterrorist agenda are mainly twofold. One is the power of hegemonic ideas, so that even leftists are swept along with the general understanding that the United States is fighting terrorism and is only a victim of terrorism. Some swallow the New Imperialist premise that the United States is the proper vehicle for reconstructing the world, which it should do in a gentler and kinder fashion. Thus Richard Falk takes this for granted in declaring the U.S. attack on Afghanistan "the first truly just war since World War II" (The Nation, Oct. 29, 2001), although claiming that its justice "is in danger of being negated by the injustice of improper means and excessive ends." Though writing in the liberal Nation magazine, it never occurs to Falk that the rightwing Republican regime of Bush and Cheney, so close to the oil industry and military-industrial complex, might have an agenda incompatible with a just war. Apart from this, as the attack was itself a violation of international law, and was from its start killing civilians by bombs directly and via its important contribution to the already endemic mass starvation, Falk makes the war "just" despite the fact that its justice was already negated at the time he made his claim. (By Falk's logic, an Iraqi attack on the United States would also be a highly just war, though its justice might be endangered by dubious means and excessive ends.) This is imperialist apologetics carried to the limit. The other reason for leftist accommodation is pragmatic. Thanks to the effectiveness of the U.S. propaganda system, U.S. citizens by and large are caught within the epistemic bind of NOT KNOWING THAT THEY DO NOT KNOW. Thus, leftists understand that people will have difficulty understanding what they are talking about if they start their discussions of controlling terrorism with an agenda on how to control Superterrorist's terrorism. If one wants to be listened to quickly and possibly influence the course of policy right now--and be far safer personally and professionally--it is better to take the conventional view of terrorism as a premise and discuss what the United States should do about it. Maybe this way one can help curb extremist responses. On the other hand, by taking it as the starting premise that the United States is only a victim of terrorism, one loses the opportunity to educate people to a fundamental truth about terrorism and even implicitly denies that truth in order to be practical. We find that we can't do that. After one of us (Herman) authored books entitled The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (with Noam Chomsky) and The Real Terror Network, the latter featuring the gigantic U.S.-sponsored terror network that emerged in the years after 1950, and after following U.S. policy for years thereafter in which terrorism has been very prominent, he (and we) consider the notion of the United States as an antiterrorist state a sick joke. We believe it is of the utmost importance to contest the hegemonic agenda that makes the U.S. and its allies only the victims of terror, not terrorists and sponsors of terror. This is a matter of establishing basic truth, but also providing the long- run basis for systemic change that will help solve the problem of "terrorism," however defined. Others see things differently, and very good articles have been written in the pragmatic mode. But we want to call attention to the fact that there is a cost to using that mode, and those that work in it should do this understanding what they are taking for granted and its costs. Given the current trajectory of world events, we believe that we need a greater focus on ALL the terrorists and sponsors of terror, and less pragmatism. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
