Fourteen Years Without Justice

As we spend another 9/11 remembering the horrible death and destruction of that morning 14 years ago, it’s also important to call attention to the ever growing body of evidence that disputes the official narrative of that day’s events. I am more convinced than ever that 9/11 was carried out by a faction of neoconservatives inside and outside of Washington, D.C., headed by Dick Cheney, who needed a pretext to send the U.S. military into the Middle East to secure oil fields and facilities and dispose of Saddam Hussein.

For those of you who still find that assertion shocking, all I can do is urge you to study the evidence presented on various 9/11 Truth websites, especially Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and Pilots for 9/11 Truth. There you will find experts in their respective fields presenting compelling, and in some cases, irrefutable evidence that the 9/11 Commission’s official report is deeply flawed and inaccurate. The report, you’ll learn, was a sham, conducted not to learn the truth, but to reinforce a pre-drawn conclusion supplied by Bush and Cheney. Its assertions were so spurious and contrived that even former members of the commission today admit it got a whole lot of things wrong.

The question that many people have about 9/11 is how could American’s do such a horrible thing to other Americans? How could they possibly live with themselves after murdering 3,000 innocent people? It’s not a mystery to me at all. They believed what they were doing was right and necessary. In their deluded worldview, expounded on in the 1997 report Rebuilding America’s Defenses, taking out unfriendly Middle East rulers and seizing their oil was a neocon (and Israeli) top priority, but they knew the American people would not support an unprovoked invasion, so they needed a new Pearl Harbor, and they created one. They had to create an incident so horrible, so stigmatizing that the Americans would demand military action. Killing thousands of Americans and attacking the Pentagon did the trick.

As we all know, the neocons who were so successful in starting a war had no idea what to do once we got there or how our actions would impact the larger region. Our occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan proved to be a disaster that Cheney and other criminals are now trying to blame on Obama. Instead of spending their life behind bars where they belong, Cheney and his cronies are being hosted on talk shows and treated like political wise men. 

The truth is, 9/11 was an inside job and the criminals who committed the crime of the new century are still at large. That’s what this day should be significant for.

Cheney the Heartless

What words can you use to describe a man who swears that torture works, when there is not a shred of evidence to corroborate that claim, says that given the opportunity he’d torture people again, and who blithely dismisses the fact that innocent people were tortured and murdered in America’s name? Could it be…Satan?

Dick Cheney isn’t Satan, but he is one of the most despicable humans on the planet. On top of his disgusting, full-throated defense of torture, the man was absolutely eager to throw his former boss (in title only) George Bush under the bus by letting the world know that he was fully aware of every dark and dirty deed committed by the CIA.

Obviously, Cheney the Heartless is playing the only card he has in his deck. He has no choice but to aggressively defend his actions despite the insanity of that position. He committed international crimes against humanity, but he also knows that there is little to no chance that the current administration will do anything about it. For all his failings as a human being, and maybe because of them, Cheney is unmatched at political maneuvering and manipulation. Because torture was allowed to continue by Obama, the current president has no appetite to seek a path to justice that could eventually find its way back to him.

With the appointment of George Bush as President in 2000, Cheney and his merry band of neocons took advantage of their long desired opportunity to mold the executive branch into their warped image. The attack on the Twin Towers conveniently provided them with the opportunity to give the President new and unprecedented powers and at the same time send troops into the Middle East to settle old scores and take control of oil-rich lands. All of it has proven an utter disaster for this country and the rest of the world.

No, Dick Cheney isn’t Satan, but he has done more than any other single person to destroy all that was once seen as good about America, and turn this country into lawless, war-loving international pariah.

Cheney to Obama: “I shit on the floor and you didn’t clean it up.”

This cannot go by without comment. Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz are conducting an all out frontal media assault on Obama for abandoning Iraq and failing to keep the peace. A man who by all international standards of justice should be sitting in jail for war crimes and his little parrot are given air time and column inches to attack Obama for a disaster he inherited. This is not merely madness, it is hubris on a galactic scale. It’s a slap in the face to every American and a thumb in the nose to rest of the world.

And it’s not only Cheney who is being given a bull horn by the media but other nincompoop neocons like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, members of the Bush administration who were colossally wrong about every aspect of the Iraq war. Still think the media has a liberal bias? Write to the papers that publish Cheney's editorial and call the television stations who air his lies and tell them how wrong this all is.

Pre and post 9/11 history starting to get foggy

There is no doubt that the events unfolding in Iraq today are a direct result of the Bush administration’s wars of choice in the region in order to topple Saddam Hussein and grab control of that country's oil sources. An article in today’s Salon makes that case very effectively, however, the author then goes into a lengthy discussion of how events unfolded in the Middle East after 9/11, arguing that the attacks and everything that followed were all a carefully orchestrated plan by Osama bin Laden to draw the U.S. into an unwinnable struggle on foreign soil that would bankrupt the country. It was a strategy used to great success against Russia in Afghanistan.

So in the author’s assessment, Bush and company essentially got suckered into invading Afghanistan and then Iraq, and the diabolical bin Laden was laughing all the way to the mosque. I think there are serious problems with this narrative and that it disregards historically significant facts.

First, we know that from the very first days of the Bush Administration plans were being drawn up for an invasion of Iraq. Bush was intent on toppling Saddam Hussein. Far from being tricked into invading Iraq, Bush, Cheney and others were drawing up plans for an attack well before 9/11.

We also know that despite what Bush and Rice and others said immediately after 9/11, there were numerous warnings related to terrorists flying planes into buildings. People in the intelligence community and in the administration knew this was a distinct possibility, yet did next to nothing to prepare for it and then lied about it after the fact.

There is also a glaring omission in this article, as there is in many other pieces written about 9/11 and its aftermath, regarding the attitude of Bush and the Neocons in his administration toward the Middle East. Many of Bush’s closest advisors were members of The Project for the New American Century (PNAC). PNAC issued a 90-page report entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” in 2000 that outlined the Neocon worldview. At the time, William Rivers Pitt wrote,

“The Project for the New American Century seeks to establish what they call 'Pax Americana' across the globe. Essentially, their goal is to transform America, the sole remaining superpower, into a planetary empire by force of arms. A report released by PNAC in September of 2000 entitled 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' codifies this plan, which requires a massive increase in defense spending and the fighting of several major theater wars in order to establish American dominance. The first has been achieved in Bush's new budget plan, which calls for the exact dollar amount to be spent on defense that was requested by PNAC in 2000. Arrangements are underway for the fighting of the wars.”

In what is perhaps the most chilling line in the document, the authors’ note (again, this is 2000) that their goals would be extremely difficult to accomplish with alacrity "absent some galvanizing event like a new Pearl Harbor."

Contrary to popular opinion even on the Left, Bush and his administration were not dupes fooled into a Middle East trap. They were planning to move against Saddam Hussein well before 9/11, and from their standpoint, the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon just happened to be their new Pearl Harbor. Almost unbelievable how that worked out. Isn’t it?

Fredo Corleone as The Godfather

My favorite movie is The Godfather. My worst nightmare is the Bush administration. The two have intersected with some significant alterations to the script. In today’s rewrite, a series of improbable events has resulted in Fredo heading the Corleone family. Fredo, you’ll remember, is the mentally challenged oldest son of Don Corleone. Unable to handle more important family business, Fredo is relegated to showing politicians and judges a good time in Vegas.

George Bush is our Fredo, an inept, intellectually challenged son of an accomplished father thrust into a position of great power. One can imagine Fredo barking orders to his lieutenants, and everyone in the room rolling their eyes in disbelief. It must happen to George several times a day.

And, like the Corleone family, the Bush administration is a criminal enterprise. Think Progress notes, “As many as eight U.S. Attorneys are leaving or being pushed out of their positions by the Bush administration. Several of these prosecutors are working on high-profile cases, such as Carol Lam, who ran the investigation into the corruption of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA).”

The Fredo/Bush response to judges who won’t play ball? “Whack the S.O.B’s.” Justice? That’s for suckers. The administration’s blatant strong-arm tactics are lifted right out of the Mafia Handbook.

But who has the guts to go up against the mob? Even one ruled over by Fredo?