1 ...6 7 8 10 11 12 ...17 As can be ascertained on the website of the FBI, Osama bin Laden was neither accused nor charged by the U.S. authorities for 9/11. He finished serving his role as the poster-boy of international terrorism.
(8) The need for a traumatic event
In order to unite the population behind a pro-active foreign policy, which the United States sought to pursue, it was not sufficient for U.S. leaders to promote a threat that does not bite: a real, traumatic and catalyzing event was necessary. This necessity was recognized early on by leading U.S. strategists, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Brzezinski, foreign policy advisor to several U.S. presidents, recognized in the 1990s the difficulty for a democratic regime to mobilize its population behind imperial policies except after a sudden and shocking event. In his often-quoted book The Grand Chessboard, he wrote:
Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization…[T]he pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public’s sense of domestic well-being.{63} The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.{64}
The authors of a report titled “Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century,” published in September 2000 by the “Project For a New American Century (PNAC),“ also referred to Pearl Harbor as a “catastrophic and catalyzing event,” necessary to accelerate the process of transforming U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs.”{65}
In the 1950s the CIA conducted psychological experiments on unsuspecting citizens designed to control their behavior through exotic drugs, electro-shock, radiation and other means.{66} Eighty institutions were involved in the program, dubbed MKUltra, including forty-four universities and twelve hospitals.”{67} The effect of these experiments was to cause among the subjects a state of dis- orientation, regression and dependency upon the examiner. A general shock doctrine was later developed by economist Milton Friedman and applied on an entire nation, Chile, in 1973. The economic shock doctrine included a drastic reduction of living standards accompanied by overt and ruthless political repression against anyone resisting this shock doctrine. The extent and brutality of this repression led to their designation as crimes against humanity. The method was later copied to other countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Indonesia, in order to serve corporate interests. In Indonesia the killings reached genocidal proportions.
In her book called The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein correctly highlights the similarity of the shock doctrine, as applied to entire nations, to the process of torture. The shock doctrine achieves “on a mass scale what torture does one on one in the interrogation cell. The clearest example was the shock of 11 September, which, for millions of people [...] opened up a period of deep disorientation and regression that the Bush administration expertly exploited.”{68} Although the author claimed in her book, published in 2007, that the corporate world “does not deliberately scheme to create the cataclysms on which it feeds,”{69} the facts filling her book provide evidence to the contrary, namely that certain shocks are indeed planned before they occur, particularly where they serve foreseeable benefits.
Philip D. Zelikow, who later became the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, and his co-authors Ash Carter and John M. Deutsch, designated catastrophic terrorism in a paper they published in 1998 as the “new danger” facing America. They also spelled out its implications and consequences, as if they already had it all planned:
Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, this event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures, scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either further terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently.{70}
Not only did catastrophic terrorism occur on 11 September 2001, but it was followed by precisely those measures the above authors had described in 1998: 9/11 was immediately described by U.S. leaders as a watershed event in American history, allowed wider surveillance of citizens, the erosion of civil liberties and the use of deadly force. The event also caused the American people to rally around the flag and support war, as they did after Pearl Harbor. Did Osama bin Laden heed the desires of U.S. strategists by presenting the United States with a new Pearl Harbor on a silver platter? Or were Zelikow and his co-authors merely prescient?
Chapter 2: Establishing the official account of 9/11
A unique, unambiguous, official account of the events that took place on 11 September 2001, emerged within days.
Every major historical event is sooner or later described in a simplified and easily apprehended manner. What distinguishes the official narrative of 9/11 from most historical accounts, however, is the swiftness with which it took its definitive form. This narrative was not based on factual evidence but assembled to serve a political agenda, as was later the case with alleged Iraqi weapons of mass-destruction.
(1) The official account of 9/11
On the morning of 11 September 2001 four civilian airlines with dozens of passengers and crew, designated as flights AA11, UA175, AA77 and UA93, were hijacked by teams of four or five Muslim fanatics. Each team included one trained pilot. The hijackers took control of the airliners and flew a Boeing 767 assigned to flight AA11 into the North Tower of the WTC in New York, another Boeing 767 assigned to flight UA175 into the South Tower and a Boeing 757 assigned to flight AA77 into the Pentagon. The fourth airliner, a Boeing 757 assigned to flight UA93, presumed to have been destined to crash on the White House, did not reach its target. It crashed in an empty field in Pennsylvania after the passengers rose up and tried to seize control of the aircraft.
As a result of the impact of the aircraft on the Twin Towers and the ensuing fires, both towers collapsed soon afterwards onto their own footprint, causing massive deaths. Almost 3,000 people died in the attacks. Osama bin Laden and his al-Qa'eda network were shortly thereafter blamed for conceiving, planning, financing and coordinating the attacks.
(2) Fox News launched the five memes of the official account within minutes
Anchors and journalists of Fox News, one of the main, arch-conservative, U.S. TV networks, spawned five central memes of the official 9/11 account within minutes of a reported plane crash on the World Trade Center, i.e. before that account was imposed by the U.S. government.{71}
At 08:57:34a.m. Jon Scott took over as news anchor at Fox News. At this point Scott was told that a plane had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. What did he say? That an army bomber had smashed by accident into Empire State Building in WWII. Fifty seconds later, Scott dismisses the theory of an accident.
Thirty five seconds later – at 08:58:55 – Scott launched casually two memes that would underpin the official account of 9/11 for years to come: One, that the attacks were the work of Islamic fanatics and two, that they were executed by suicide pilots. He first reminded viewers of “the bombing back in 1989 [sic] of the World Trade Center”, attributed to Islamic terrorists, then added that the current attack “may have been simply a suicidal pilot who wanted to make a point.” Was Scott merely improvising? At that point in time, he had no apparent reason to suspect foul play.
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