Coastal
Post Online
January
2002
Corporate Government Take-Over Of American Civil Rights, Basic
Freedoms, Afghan Pipeline Rights
By Carol Sterritt
Shortly after the attacks of September 11th
George W. Bush expressed the notion that "this has been an attack on
Freedom." I assume that he meant that whoever the terrorists were, their
goal was to destroy our way of life.
But the President was also, ironically and perhaps unknowingly,
suggesting that Forces beyond Our Control were about to snatch away our Basic
Rights and Liberties. These rights were proclaimed in this nation's charter
under the Declaration of Independence and also in our Bill of Rights. We need
to ask ourselves: Who are these Forces beyond Our Control? Just who and what
influences the secret government? Theories abound that not only Cheney but
George Bush Sr. are actually running George Jr.'s presidency. Cheney himself is
also heavily tied to Big Oil interests.
These theories raise the old specter of Oil Interests Running
the World. Bush the Elder has numerous
ties to oil, starting with his ownership of Zapata Oil in the mid-1960's,
continuing with his treacherous business association with Saddam Hussein in the
1980's, right up to the Bush family's current business ties to the Bin Laden
family. Noam Chomsky has spoken of Bush
owning at least one company that manufactured the slant oil drilling equipment
that Kuwait needed when it was rustling oil out from under the border of Iraq
immediately before the Iraqi War in 1991.
Little has been said to the American people about all the
reasons that the Bush family so eagerly sought the war against Afghanistan. We
were told that Osama Bin Laden was the brain behind the 911 attacks. It was
mentioned, ad nauseum, that he was in Afghanistan. No mention was made that
this ruthless terrorist was allowed to stay in an American hospital in Dubai,
Saudi Arabia, in July, just two months before the attacks. "Le Figaro" of Paris reports that
while in the hospital, he was visited by at least one CIA official. After his
discharge from the hospital, he was allowed to leave Saudi Arabia by private
jet. Over the summer, the government's official word on Bin Laden was that he
was to be brought up on charges leading to his execution, yet these actions
were never taken. (In October, the CIA denied all involvement with Bin Laden
including involvement with him as a freedom fighter against the Russians.)
Additionally, we must examine
our government's interactions with the Central Asian area of Afghanistan and
Pakistan in the months prior to the Sept. 11th attacks. Our focus there is this
Administration's desire on the part of Corporate America to secure an oil
pipeline through the heart of Afghanistan. Let's review the timeline:
February 3rd, 2000. George Tenet, Director
of the CIA, addresses the Senate Committee on Armed Services. He discusses
openly the importance of the following: "Western companies are trying to
construct a gas pipeline under the Caspian Sea from Turkmenistan through
Azerbijan and Georgia en route to Turkey." Scenarios elaborated upon over
the next few months recognize the importance of a Central Asian pipeline
requiring permission to extend such pipeline into Afghanistan. The goal: to
have one continuous pipeline running from the waters of the Caspian Sea to the
Arabian Sea.
February to April
2001. Government officials from both the United States and Afghanistan meet to
discuss the possibility of building this pipeline. Corporations most interested
in this development are Unocal * and Amoco. Participating officials include
Laila Helms, a relative of Richard Helms, former director of the CIA, and Sayed
Ramatulla, aide to Taliban Mullah Mohammed Omar. Also around this point in
time, over 40 million dollars were released to Taliban government of
Afghanistan in the name of the American War on Drugs. In accepting these
monies, the Taliban agreed to see that the opium in local drug lords'
warehouses would stay there. This policy of course, did very little to
influence the local drug lords, who simply raised the price of their product to
cover for the curtailment of supply.
May 2001. During this time period, at least one significant meeting
between CIA Director George Tenet and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraff
takes place. Mushareff possibly repeats his earlier-in-the-year statement that
Pakistan would be willing to hand Bin Laden over to a Muslim tribunal for his
part in the Embassy bombings that took four lives.
July 2001, Thomas Simons, former US
Ambassador to Pakistan; Karl Inderfurth, former assistant secretary of state
for South Asian affairs; and Lee Coldren, former State Department expert on
South Asia, meet in Berlin with negotiators from the Taliban, Russia and six
oil-rich nations that neighbor Afghanistan (BBC news, Sept. 18; the Guardian,
Sept. 22, 2001).**
According to
Jean-Charles Brisard, co-author of "Bin Laden: The Hidden Truth":
"At one point during the negotiations, the US reps told the Taliban,
'Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet
of bombs." Naif Naik, former Pakistani minister for foreign affairs, was
also present. He recalled that the discussions turned on "the formation of
a government of national unity. If the Taliban had accepted this coalition,
they would have immediately received international economic aid ... And the
pipe lines from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan would have come.'' Naik also recalled
that Tom Simons, the US representative at these meetings, openly threatened the
Taliban and Pakistan. "Simons said, 'Either the Taliban behave as they ought
to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option.' The
words Simons used were 'a military operation','' Naik claimed (Inter Press
Service, Nov. 15, 2001).
July
2001: Pakistan's ISI (Pakistan Intelligence Agency) Chief Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmad
has an aide wire-transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the pilot who later
achieved infamy as the presumed leader of the Sept. 11 hijackings and
atrocities. In October 2001, Mahmud Ahmad resigned from the ISI after the FBI
confirmed this crucial wire-transfer (The Times of India, Oct. 11, 2001.)**
September 11th, 2001. Hijacked
planes, supposedly seized and totally under the control of Muslim extremists,
plow into the Two Towers of the World Trade Center, while another crashes into
the Pentagon. Additionally, a fourth hijacked plane slams into a field in the
country- side of Pennsylvania. (Approximately thirty-five hundred Americans are
killed in these actions.) Although the plane hitting the Pentagon does not
reach its target until a full hour after the initial crash in NY, not one Air
Force fighter jet stationed at Andrews Air Force base outside Washington DC is
scrambled to thwart this part of the attack.
Later, officials will state that since this type of event was
previously unknown in American history, they simply were caught unprepared.
Critics scoff. After all, every other day of the week, some Bozo with the keys
to a Cessna is found attempting to photograph family members while the small
aircraft invades airspace over the White House, the Capital Building etc. Those
Bozos are never allowed to get close, but are escorted out and away from
sacrosanct building fly space. So just what was going on during the terrorist
raids of September 11th?
Mid-September 2001: Attorney General John Ashcroft proposes the Anti
Terrorism Act, to greatly enhance the powers of law enforcement-for electronic
media, beyond what the Constitution allows for conventional media-and reduce
law enforcement's accountability to the public. Opposition rises from both
liberals and conservatives. Republican representative Bob Barr notes that many
of the powers in the bill had been requested before and denied by
Congress. He accuses Ashcroft of taking
advantage of the terrorist attack to acquire these powers during a time of
great nationalism.
October 5,
2001: The Tampa Tribune reports that a secret flight evacuated Saudi royal
family members from the United States with Bush's personal approval days after
the terrorist attack, while the FAA denies that such a flight took place.
October 6, 2001: Debka File, a
news source of low repute but which has scooped stories in the past, reports
that China has recently deployed between 5,000 and 15,000 troops to Afghanistan
to fight the United States.
October 7, 2001: The United States launches airstrikes against
Afghanistan, unleashing 2000 lb. bombs upon targets such as airfields and known
terrorist training camps. The Media immediately baptizes this event: The New
War.
November 11, 2001: Two of
Pakistan's top nuclear scientists report having met Bin Laden twice this year
while working for a relief organization in Afghanistan.
Relentless media coverage of the War
against Afghanistan gives the impression that our military objectives of
destroying the Taliban are in the process of being achieved. Nothing is further
from the truth. Although many training camps filled with twelve to sixteen year
old boys have been blown off the face of the earth, many of the more
influential of the Taliban have simply exited the Afghan border into Pakistan.
US military generals privately speak of the "quagmire" that our
country faces with our continued presence there. Meanwhile, up to seven million
refugees face starvation, as we leave the distribution of life-giving foodstuffs
to the Russians. The idea that Russia has been Afghanistan's traditional enemy
seems to inadvertently have escaped our policy makers' decision process. Or did
it?
Rumors exist that there are
now over forty camps in which Afghanis are quarantined for becoming ill with a
virulent virus closely related to Ebola. Rumor also has it that this virus
possesses airborne-contagion properties.
Meanwhile, if you are paying attention to the stock market, it
was announced in a recent SF Chronicle article that CalPers (the investment
holder for state employees retirement funds) has benefited from their
involvement with a little known business entity called the Carlyle group. This
firm buys up distressed or mismanaged companies that have lucrative defense
contracts. Sometime over the past several years, the Carlyle Group has acquired
the Michigan firm holding the patent to the anthrax vaccine. Those deeply
involved with Carlyle include members of the Bush family, and James Baker,
former Secretary of State. The Carlyle Group's stock profits are presently
escalating.
Furthermore, it
appears that the anthrax that has infected various postal workers, post offices
and the Senate and House of Representative chambers was originally developed by
an Army facility in Florida.
Ah, Florida. Right before the September 11th attacks there were serious
threats to this Administration from two sources. One was an impeachment process
underway to terminate the "Gang of Five" positions as members of The
Supreme Court. Also there was to be an investigation into the forty million
dollar pay-out used to entice various Democrats inside the state of Florida to
not take seriously their task of counting votes for Al Gore. The $40 million
were assets created through the laundering of drug monies. Both activities
ceased operation with the "new nationalism" that occurred after Sept.
11.
Time and space do not
permit me to re-hash the CIA paper, the "Northfield Report." This CIA
thesis (circa early 1960's) proposed that the best way to allow American
citizens to accept another invasion of Cuba would be to set up terrorist
happenings here on American soil. After all, what good is a Central
Intelligence Agency if you can't terrorize people on their own soil?
Do I think or know that is what happened on
September 11th? No, but I do know there
are more questions than answers, some concerning our inability to physically
curtail Bin Laden, eventhough he was offered up at least twice on a silver
platter. Given the usual runaround (the description of Andrews Air Force Base
activity, or lack thereof, on Sept. 11th is now classified as State Secret), I
can only quote good Ol' Janet Reno, "we will never ever know."
While I put finishing touches on this
story, today's headlines (Dec. 17th '01) blare their stark truth: "Afghan
Siege Over. Bin Laden Escapes." This might have me more worried, except I
think I know where Bin Laden is. He's down in the basement at 1600
Pennsylvania, playing pool with Jenna and Saddam.
*Local brand name:
Union 76
**Much of the "starred" paragraphs come from Don
Irrerevo
of "SF Bayview"