CLASSIC QUOTES FROM THE AFTERMATH OF 9-11

"The people that perpetrated this barbarous act think that by killing people and destroying buildings you can achieve a political goal. They are always wrong."

- Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, September 11th 2001, describing precisely the same policy he thoroughly approved of during his tenure in the US Chief of Staffs at the time of the Gulf war

- Description of the My Lai massacre by US forces in Vietnam, as quoted by Mark Steel in The Independent, 20th September 2001, in an article that made the point about 'selective' grief for innocent American casualties

"Did you know?

- Major U.S. television networks and the Voice of America radio network complied with Bush administration requests to edit or suppress statements opposing U.S. military action.

- The Pentagon, reacting to reports of heavy civilian casualties in its bombing raids, spent millions of taxpayers’ dollars purchasing highly accurate civilian satellite images of Afghanistan, in order to prevent their release to the western media.

- The major networks released guidelines for reporting on civilian casualties in Afghanistan, ordering that news of civilian deaths must be "balanced" with reminders of the September 11 attacks.

- The Bush administration recently hired an ad executive to help "sell America" through a propaganda war in Afghanistan."

- From Freespeech TV internet posting, 22nd September 2001

"[President Bush] peremptorily dismissed a request from the Taliban for proof that Mr. bin Laden was behind the outrages on 11th September."

- Article in The Independent, UK, 22nd September 2001

"The proposal, which had bin Laden's approval, was that within the framework of Islamic shar'ia law, evidence of his alleged involvement in the New York and Washington attacks would be placed before an international tribunal. The court would decide whether to try him on the spot or hand him over to America."

- Article in The Daily Telegraph, UK, 4th October 2001. The offer was vetoed by President Musharraf of Pakistan.

"A puzzling and worrying piece of work [with] so many omissions that the document begins to undermine itself. [It is] more significant for what it leaves out than what it leaves in [with] few clues even to the form of evidence for September 11th: almost nothing on money or phone records. [It] seems lame - to the point of advertising a defciency - to say that a signature of an al-Qaeda attack is the absence of a warning. There is nothing hard enough in it to convince sceptics in either London or Washington, let alone Kabul. [It is] striking that apparently the most solid evidence refers to the 1998 attacks [on US embassies]. There is no evidence presented that directly links bin Laden to September 11th. [...] It is a political dance, not a serious attempt to preach to the unconverted."

- Bronwen Maddox, Foreign Editor of  The Times, UK, 5th October 2001, describing the British government's 70 page document that they claimed provided "incontrovertible evidence" of bin Laden's responsibility. Other newspaper reviews of the dossier came to similar conclusions:

"Only nine of the seventy points in the document relate to the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. [The document] took us no further than the information already in the public domain." - Independent, UK, 5th October

"Almost worthless from a legal point of view." - The Guardian, UK, 5th October 2001

"[A work that] uses every trick in the Whitehall drafter's arsenal to make ther reader believe they are reading something they are not: a damning indictment of Mr. bin Laden for the events of Spetember 11th." - Independent on Sunday, UK, 7th October 2001

"{It would need] more concrete evidence to obtain an indictment for murder against bin Laden. Nothing in the disclosed material shows actual participation in the murders as opposed to giving approval to terrorist attacks." - Lawyer Nick Blake QC, The Daily Telegraph, UK, 5th October 2001

"It is a sobering thought that better evidence is required to prosecute a shoplifter than is needed to commence a world war." - Lawyer Anthony Sciver QC, The Times, UK, 5th October 2001

"When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Washington said nothing. Why? Because Taliban leaders were soon on their way to Houston, Texas, to be entertained by executives of the oil company, Unocal."

- John Pilger

"In 1997 a US diplomat told Rashid '...the Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco [the former US oil consortium in Saudi Arabia] pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that.'

Soon after the Taliban took Kabul in September 1996, the Telegraph reported that '...oil industry insiders say the dream of securing a pipeline across Afghanistan is the main reason why Pakistan, a close political ally of America's, has been so supportive of the Taliban, and why America has quietly acquiesced in its conquest of Afghanistan'.

Unocal invited some of the leaders of the Taliban to Houston, where they were royally entertained. The company suggested paying these barbarians 15 cents for every thousand cubic feet of gas it pumped through the land they had conquered.

 In 1998, Dick Cheney, now US vice-president but then chief executive of a major oil services company [Halliburton Inc.], remarked: "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian."

In September, a few days before the attack on New York, the US energy information administration reported that 'Afghanistan's significance from an energy standpoint stems from it's geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from central Asia to the Arabian sea. This potential includes the possible construction of oil and natural gas export pipelines through Afghanistan'.

John Flynn wrote in 1944: 'The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.' "

-George Monbiot, article in The Guardian, 22nd October 2001

"Impressed by the ruthlessness and willingness of the then-emerging Taliban to cut a pipeline deal, the State Department and Pakistan's Inter - Services Intelligence agency agreed to funnel arms and funding to the Taliban in their war against the ethnically Tajik Northern Alliance. As recently as 1999, U.S. taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official, all in the hopes of returning to the days of dollar - a - gallon gas."

- Article by Ted Rall, San Francisco Chronicle, 2nd November 2001

"A month into the war in Afghanistan, the hand-wringing has already begun over how long this might last. Let's all take a deep breath and repeat after me: Give war a chance. This is Afghanistan we're talking about. Check the map. It's far away."

- 'One War, Two Fronts', article by Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 2nd November 2001

"The use of cluster bombs (in Afghanistan) is entirely appropriate. Against certain targets they are the best and most effective weapons we have."

- Geoff Hoon, British Defence Minister, Press Association, 2nd November 2001

''At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, '...either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs...', Brisard said in an interview in Paris.

To polish their image in the United States, the Taliban even employed a U.S.expert on public relations, Laila Helms. The authors claim that Helms is also an expert in the works of U.S. secret services, for her uncle, Richard Helms, is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Brisard and Dasquie contend the U.S. government's claim that it had been prosecuting Bin Laden since 1998. ''Actually,'' Dasquie says, ''the first state to officially prosecute Bin Laden was Libya, on the charges of terrorism.''

''Bin Laden wanted settle in Libya in the early 1990s, but was hindered by the government of Muammar Qaddafi,'' Dasquie claims. 'Enraged by Libya'srefusal, Bin Laden organised attacks inside Libya, including assassination attempts against Qaddafi.' "

- From the book 'Bin Laden, La Verite Interdite' ('Bin Laden, The Forbidden Truth') by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, excerpts of which appeared in Le Monde, December 2001

Brisard and Dasquie have long experience in intelligence analysis. Brisard was until the late 1990's director of economic analysis and strategy for French company Vivendi. He also worked for French secret services, and wrote for them in 1997 a report on the now famous Al Qaeda network, headed by Bin Laden.

Dasquie is an investigative journalist and publisher of 'Intelligence Online', a respected newsletter on diplomacy, economic analysis and strategy, available through the Internet.

"Next up Baghdad"

"By March 1995, Chalabi, al-Samurrai and the Kurds were ready to launch a coup attempt and an uprising [against Saddam Hussein]. But when the appointed day arrived, they received a cable from the then National Security adviser Tony Lake telling them they couldn't expect backing from Washington. Bob Baer, the CIA agent on the ground with them, says in a forthcoming book that even when their offensive racked up stunning results over the next few days, the NSC and CIA just didn't want to know about it. After that, the Iraqi opposition's faith in American backing largely evaporated."

- Article in Newsweek, 21st January 2002

"If we had credible evidence [....] of chemical and biological facilities that are there in Iraq, that helps out our effort quite a lot."

- Rtd. Admiral Steve Baker, former commander of the USS Roosevelt aircraft carrier during the Gulf war, quoted by Reuters, 7th March 2002

"If chemical, biological or nuclear capability falls into the wrong hands, we know what some of these people are capable of. These are not people like us. They are not people who are democratically elected, they are not people who abide by the normal rules of human behaviour. If these weapons fall into their hands, and we know they have the capability and the intention to use them, then I think we have got to act on it. If we don't act, we will find out too late the potential for destruction."

- Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister, speaking on Australian television, as quoted by the Evening Standard, 4th March 2002, demonstrating his severe lack of memory as regards the UK use of Depleted Uranium ammunition in the Gulf war, and of Winston Churchill's use of poison gas against Iraq in 1921 - the acts of 'democratically elected' people, who are exactly 'like us'.

"Terrorists have declared war on civilization, and states like Iran, Iraq, and Syria are inspiring and financing a culture of political murder and suicide bombing."

- Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, March 28th 2002, a statement that might be very contextually interesting to the peoples of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Panama and Iraq to name a few.

"This war has no territorial or other boundaries."

- Benjamin Ben Eliezer, Israeli Defense Minister, 29th March 2002, as cited by Bill Thompson, 3rd April 2002. It isn't clear whether this refers to the war against Palestinians or the 'war on terrorism' or both.

"America will have a continuing presence in Central Asia of kind that we could not have dreamed of before [September 11th]."

- Coiln Powell, US Secretary of State, Sydney Morning Herald, 11th February 2002.

"[The former Soviet Republics are] all about America's energy security. [....] We would like to see them reliant on Western commercial and political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that the pipeline map and the politics come out right."

- Bill Richardson, former US Energy Secretary, International Herald Tribune, 9th November 1998, cited by John Pilger in 'The New Rulers of the World', 2002

"[The Taliban] are the players most capable of acheiving peace in Afghanistan at this moment in history [and are crucial to secure the country as] a prime trans-shipment route for the export of Central Asia's vast oil, gas and other natural resources."

- Article in The Wall Street Journal, 1996, as cited by Lance Selfa in International Socialist Review, December 2001, and by John Pilger in 'The New Rulers of the World', 2002

"If the measure used by the US of making somebody part of the axis of evil is acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, then the United States is number one in this axis, number two is Israel and number three is Britain."

- Dr Naji Sabri, Iraqi Foreign Minister, quoted in The Mirror, 4th April 2002

"The 1991 Gulf war against Iraq involved 532,000 American troops. The United States had 31 allies. The cost was $61 billion, 89 percent of which was paid by other countries, including Arab states under threat from Iraq and European and Asian countries dependent on Middle East oil."

- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1st May 2002, revealing that the 'world's policeman' charges dearly for its' services.

"Every form of an embargo has been rejected since it would be counterproductive for a breakthrough to peace."

- Joschka Fischer, describing Germany's opposition to any sanctions against Israel, as reported by Agence France Press, 4th May 2002. He fails to mention the possibility that sanctions are counterproductive in relation to peace with Iraq.

"Whether or not the Europeans liked the way the president said it, it is very hard to argue with the logic that states that repress their own people, try to acquire weapons of mass destruction and have demonstrated their willingness to violate and to completely shove aside all international norms, those states are a danger. That's unassailable."

- Condoleeza Rice, US National Security Advisor, Reuters, 21st May 2002. It seems Ms. Rice has taken to her role with gusto, as not a trace of irony as regards 'international norms' can be found in her statement, given the astonishing amount of 'norms' that the administration had abondoned in the past months.

"We are all painfully aware, furthermore, that governments which systematically disregard the rights of their own people are not likely to respect the rights of other nations and other people."

- Max Kampelman, Chair of the Delegation to the Plenary Session of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, cited in Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210, 238 (1990).

"According to two sources, [Saudi Crown Prince] Abdullah surprised Bush with three handouts - a photo album and two videocassettes - each containing powerful images of the destruction of Palestinian homes by Israeli troops. The two men looked through the book and watched the videos, the sources said. Abdullah wanted Bush to see what people in Arab countries were waking up to every day in local newspaper and television reports - and then contemplate the anger those images generated and the pressure that placed on Arab leaders."

- Time Magazine, 28th April 2002

"My job isn't to try to nuance, my job is to tell people what I think. And when I think there is an axis of evil, I say it. I think moral clarity is important."

- George W. Bush, 9th April 2002

"The fanatic is stubborn, obstinate, dogmatic. Everything for him is black or white--nothing in between. He has no taste for or interest in nuances. Does he seek clarity? Driven by irrational impulses, he wants everything to be visible and necessarily clear."

- Elie Wiesel, 9th April 2002

"When I came across Free Speech TV after channel surfing for twenty minutes, I couldn't believe what I was seeing! I didn't even think it was legal for a TV station to present material critical of the US government. You never see it on any other channels, that is for sure. Keep up the great work!"

- Unidentified viewer comment on Freespeech TV's website. It is noteworthy that they thought it was illegal to be critical of a government whose salary you pay.

"The worst thing that could happen would be to allow a nation like Iraq, run by Saddam Hussein, to develop weapons of mass destruction, and then team up with terrorist organizations so they can blackmail the world. I'm not going to let that happen," said Bush. When asked by a British journalist how he was going to achieve this, Bush replied: "Wait and see.'"

-  Bob Woodward, from his article 'President Broadens Anti-Hussein Order - CIA Gets More Tools to Oust Iraqi Leader,' Washington Post, 16th June 2002

Note that Geoerge Bush Sr. was asked a similar question in late 1990, to which he responded: "Watch and learn."

"Has the war on terrorism become the modern equivalent of the Roman Circus, drawing the people's attention away from the failures of those who rule them?"

- Robert Scheer, former Los Angeles Times journalist

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