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| The news spread like wildfire. |
All of a Sudden
Everyone turned on (or to) the nearest television, and within a few minutes most of us were asking "Where did all this terrorism come from all of a sudden?" Fortunately, we have no idea. But I can tell you what we do know.
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| Zbigniew Brzezinski loves you. |
Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski
In 1979, our sweet humanitarian President, Jimmy Carter, did not approve a plan drawn up by his charming national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, which would have involved hiring fundamentalist Islamic madmen, training them in the gentle arts of sabotage and murder, and infiltrating them into Afghanistan through Pakistan, whose intelligence agency, ISI, has no conceivable connection with the CIA.
The idea, according to the charming Mr. Brzezinski, was to give the Soviets "their own Vietnam". But Carter, refusing to violate the sacred humanitarian principles for which he was known and loved, told Brzezinski he couldn't sign anything that day because he had yet to wash his hair. Instead, Carter suggested that Brzezinski might come back in another day or two and ask him again. But as far as we can tell, that never happened.
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| Jimmy Carter loves you. |
Their Own Vietnam
Brzezinski was lucky that most Americans knew nothing at all about the war in Southeast Asia. They interpreted the word "Vietnam" to mean "the place where a big powerful country got its butt kicked by a small weak country", and they figured it would be good for the U.S.S.R. to have one of those every now and then. They didn't realize (or else they didn't mind) that Brzezinski was trying to start a war which would kill millions of people over the next decade, drive many more millions from their homes and into abject poverty, and cause international animosity that would last for generations.
Sometimes we forget how lucky we are that President Carter saw through the whole dismal charade and announced that he wasn't having any of it. In any case, the CIA didn't immediately start recruiting the terrorists whom Carter had decided not to hire, none of whom, as a matter of astounding coincidence, were named Osama bin Laden.
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| Ronald Reagan loves you. |
Ronald Reagan and the Founding Fathers
We were lucky that the Reagan administration didn't increase the funding and logistical support which the Carter administration hadn't been giving to the terrorists that the CIA hadn't been hiring because fomenting large-scale terrorism in a foreign country is contrary to everything America stands for. We should be especially grateful that Reagan didn't invite any of these monsters to the White House.
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| Ronald Reagan with the Founding Fathers in
the Oval Office |
The photograph reproduced above was filed in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library with the caption "President Reagan meeting with Afghan Freedom Fighters to discuss Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan. 2/2/83". But some clown found it at Wikipedia, where it bears the title "Reagan sitting with people from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in February 1983".
Of course the "Afghan Freedom Fighters" may well have been "people from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region", but on first glance it appears that Wikipedia may be trying to hide something. It's a moot point, though, since the meeting in question never took place at all, as we can confirm by examining a newspaper article which didn't describe it.
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| This newspaper article, which describes the
meeting that never happened, was never published. |
No Substance
We're very lucky that Reagan never described these madmen, or any of the other death squads the U.S. had suddenly learned to create, in glowing terms such as "freedom fighters" or "the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers". Had he done so, we might have been fooled into thinking that our government might have been supporting them in some way or another.
And of course this didn't happen just before the practice of establishing death squads in foreign countries didn't become standard U.S. policy, so we're lucky that there was no substance to any of the rumors that weren't circulating in the aftermath of the White House visit that never happened.
but in the long run
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| Michael Springmann hates you. |
Springmann of Arabia
In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the American consulate didn't suddenly start approving visa applications for unqualified applicants, and there were certainly no CIA agents disguised as diplomats running the show there. So nobody paid any attention when Michael Springmann, a former State Department official who had been stationed in Jeddah, made some public statements to the contrary.
According to Springmann, he had rejected visa applications which were clearly unacceptable according to U.S. law while stationed in Jeddah, only to have many of his rejections overruled. Springmann said the applications he'd rejected had later been approved by other State Department officials who had no official standing in the matter and could not offer any reason why his decisions to reject them had been incorrect.
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| Michael Springmann's Visas for al Qaeda:
CIA Handouts The Rocked The World |
Visas for Terrorists
Fortunately, Michael Springmann's allegations were never taken very seriously except by a few unhinged fruitcakes, even though 15 of the 19 alleged hijackers had obtained their visas in Jeddah, and in some cases they hadn't even bothered to fill in all the blanks on their applications. It's almost impossible to estimate how much damage could have been done to America's shining reputation as a city on a hill if Michael Springmann's claims had actually been investigated.
Send in One Clown
Some clown on the internet, having read of Springmann's allegations, decided to find out whether his dastardly allegations could be substantiated, and if not, whether the dastardly former State Department official would try to substantiate them anyway. So he approached Michael Springmann by stealthy email, saying:
Dear Mr. Springmann,No doubt you recognize this tricky ploy, by which a clown sticks a foot in the door of your life, after which he never leaves you alone. Michael Springmann must have recognized it too. He replied to the clown almost immediately, with a threatening message that ran:
I've been reading about you on the internet and I wonder whether you'd be willing to answer a question.
Hi! Call me Mike. Sure. Ask as many questions as you want.You may also recognize this ploy, which of course is fraught with danger. But the clown was naive and he didn't recognize this at all, so he rushed in where angels may have at least thought for a second or two. The poor dumb clown, taken in by the apparent friendliness of this mysterious man who suddenly wished to be called "Mike", asked the question he had in mind all along:
I think it would be good if there was a website dedicated to your story.This is where Springmann made a mistake. He didn't realize he was dealing with a clown. And that wasn't his fault. After all, their correspondence had been conducted by email. Had "Mike" seen the fluffy red nose, he never would have said:
And I would be willing to set that up for you, if you're interested.
Are you?
Sure! That's a great idea! Thank you!!and the world would have known just a bit less about the "Visas for Terrorists" program which the CIA wasn't running through the U.S. Consulate at Jeddah. [1]
"Mike" Becomes a bit Clownish
The clown dug up all the material on Mike which was available on the net at the time, and Mike contributed a series of biographies which he had written, exposing the agents he had seen in Jeddah posing as diplomats.
He also contributed a collection of letters which he had written to Congressional and spooky types, in which he described what he had seen and what it must have meant.
Nobody Paid Any Attention
Fortunately nobody ever paid any attention to the site, otherwise certain actions might have become necessary. For instance, the CIA might have had to run the terrorist pipeline through some other Saudi city for a while. Or at least maybe they might have been forced to pretend that they'd actually shut the pipeline down, if only for a day or two. Instead the spooks found an even better solution, but I can't tell you anything about it.
Visa Applications for Terrorists
The following images show six visa applications which were approved despite being obviously incomplete. Strangley enough, the names on the applications correspond to the names of alleged hijackers. This astonishing coincidence was revealed by National Review in a piece which seems to have vanished. But that's OK.
We're lucky they took it down. Nobody wants to know about this anyway. You can click on the names or the images to enlarge them. But don't pay attention to the areas marked in red or the explanations for why those areas are marked unless you're willing to become a bit clownish:
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| Hani Hanjour (1997) |
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| Hani Hanjour (2000 [a]) |
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| Hani Hanjour (2000 [b]) |
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| Waleed al Sherhi (2000) |
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| Wail Mohammad al Sherhi (2000) |
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| Abdulaziz Alomari (2001) |
Slipping Through the Cracks
The minor clerical errors revealed by National Review caused a flurry of activity among certain paranoid lunatics in the clown brigade, but they went into hiding when we learned that none of the hijackers had been helped in any way by any nations or intelligence services, particularly the Saudi royal family or the CIA.
We know that the CIA worked overtime to prevent the hijackers from entering the country, but they got in anyway. And we know the CIA did everything in its power to help the FBI corral them before they could do any serious damage. But you can't win 'em all, as they say, and for just a moment it seemed our luck had run out.
Fortune Smiles Again
But that was only an illusion. Fortune smiled on us again almost immediately: On the morning of 9/11, the FBI knew the alleged identities of all 19 alleged hijackers before the FAA even knew that four planes had allegedly been hijacked. This gave the investigators a crucial advantage because there wasn't much left of the alleged hijackers when the attack was over, and what remained would have been very difficult to identify with precision.
Fortunately it wasn't necessary to devote any time or energy to such a difficult task, since the answers were already obvious.
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| Six dead hijackers claimed to have survived their suicide missions. Fortunately no one believed them. |
Surviving The Ordeal
It's very difficult to imagine what would have happened if half a dozen of the alleged hijackers, having martyred themselves on 9/11, had turned up alive and well (but perplexed to see their names and photos on the news) in the next few days. Even given that they were all devout Muslims, we would have been hard pressed to understand how they had survived their suicide missions, so we're lucky we didn't have to do that.
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| Sibel Edmonds hates you. |
Sibel Edmonds Appears
Some time after the dastardly surprise attacks, a young woman named Sibel Edmonds came forward with some very interesting information. Edmonds had worked for the FBI as a translator, where she was urged by another translator to garble some documents and hide some others. Sibel is a sharp cookie, plenty smart enough to realize that this was not exactly standard practice, so she started keeping her eyes open, and you won't believe what she saw! But that's fine because you'll never find out about it anyway.
Sibel was called to testify before an open session of the Congress, during which she spoke for three and a half riveting hours, explaining what she'd seen and what it must have meant.
Sibel Edmonds Disappears
The information Sibel Edmonds provided to the Congress was so damning that it required an immediate refutation, but so detailed and so well-supported that no such refutation could be concocted, even by the most experienced political hit men in the Bush White House.
A refutation wouldn't have needed to be very convincing because most decent loyal Americans didn't want to believe what she had said, but it would have needed to exist, so they could pretend it was true. And that was the trouble. Rather than wasting time and energy trying to disappear a problem which couldn't be solved, the wise servants of America decided to disappear Sibel instead.
An Intimate Relationship
Thus, the transcript of her testimony was stricken from the Congressional Record, the video of her testimony was deleted from the National Archives, and she was slapped with a State Secrets gag order which held her in check for many years.
And all of this was extremely fortunate because, even now, twenty years after the fact, very few Americans know about any of the explosive things Sibel Edmonds told the Congress, one of which was that Osama bin Laden had maintained an "intimate relationship" with the CIA for which he never worked, all the way from from the day when he wasn't hired until the day when he was positively identified as the most evil bastard on the face of the Earth.
How the System Works
The less-than-astonishing story of Sibel Edmonds' Congressional testimony is instructive because it shows us how the system works. Sibel was not allowed to talk, and none of the major news agencies were allowed to tell us why Sibel wasn't talking. Neither, by the way, were Fox News or CNN. Eventually Sibel got fed up with the gag order and started to think
What are they going to do? Kill me?
So she started talking, and she had no shortage of interesting things to say. But Sibel talks very fast and nobody has ever bothered to ask her to slow down, so her whole story went by in a flash and all the major news agencies missed it. So did Fox and CNN.
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| Sibel Edmonds hates you. |
Nobody Ever Knew
And nobody ever knew what Sibel Edmonds didn't say to the Congress when she didn't testify all those years ago, except a few clowns on the internet who had been paying close attention all along, and of course Sibel herself, who still remembered. And nobody ever talks about any of it anymore except for Sibel, who still hasn't slowed down at all, and of course only a handful of people can listen fast enough to keep up with her.
Nobody Talks About Sibel
As for the few clowns on the internet who ever cared about Sibel, they were allowed to make as much noise as they liked but it didn't make any impact at all because nobody reads them and all the big search engines except Google block them and we really can't trust them because they're just a bunch of clowns anyway.
We can be thankful that none of them own any newspapers or radio stations or anything, not that they would ever be allowed to do so. We can also be thankful that nobody talks about Sibel and what she said and what she was prevented from saying. Why? Well, why do you think her testimony was stricken from the record in the first place?
A Splendid Example
The whole sorry mess serves as a splendid example of how media integrity hasn't been distorted by political pressure in the Age of Terror. Since she couldn't talk, Sibel started writing a blog. Since she was forbidden to mention any names, she started posting pictures of the people she was writing about. Did I mention she was sharp? She is! But not sharp enough to pierce the propaganda blanket for very long.
Sibel's readers recognized the pictures she'd been posting because they belonged to the names she couldn't mention, which were all quite well-known if you can believe it. It's probably a good omen if you can't. But nobody paid any attention except for a few clowns who were rapidly identified and marginalized in various ways. Of course it was nothing compared to the way in which Sibel was marginalized, but it wasn't about the clowns anyway. It was mostly intended to keep her story hidden, and for a while it worked like a charm.
Not a Single Taker
Eventually Sibel Edmonds got so fed up that she offered to violate her gag order and talk to any reputable news agency in the world, or even Fox or CNN, on the condition that they would air her interview uncut. Not a single news agency took her up on the offer.
It was the story of the century and nobody wanted it except a few clowns on the internet, who already had most of it anyway, since they'd been paying attention to her for all this time and she had become very good at telling us things that she was not allowed to tell anybody.
Sibel Spills the Beans
Tragically, Sibel spilled the beans to a gatekeeping blogger who buried her story on his gatekeeping site, while glorifying himself for his noble decision to talk to her when no one else would do so. This turn of events left a particularly foul taste in the mouth of one particular internet clown, who knew that the gatekeeping blog in question could have been running fair to excellent coverage of 9/11 for a long time.
But the gatekeeping blogger had been more interested in suppressing new information than in posting it, unless of course said new information happened to coincide with the official story that said gatekeeper was trying to support while said clown was trying to refute it.
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| Everyone was leaning. |
Everyone Was Leaning
Said gatekeeping blogger had been leaning on said clown to try to keep him from writing about 9/11 on said site because he was being leaned on by his gatekeeping publicist. His publicist was leaning on him because other people were leaning on her.
Everyone was leaning because said clown had shredded some vicious propaganda in several pieces which he had written on and around the anniversary of 9/11, and he had accidentally posted said pieces at said site when nobody who could stop him was paying attention. Needless to say, the results were entirely unacceptable for an influential gatekeeping blog that was drawing such a large audience at the time, even though most of the material posted there was so poorly written that regular readers couldn't stand to read it unless the clown had snuck in the back door and fixed all the stupid spelling mistakes first.
And to tell the truth, they weren't spelling mistakes but telltale signs indicating that the gatekeeping blogger didn't understand the English language well enough to write it fluently, even though he had allegedly been reading it for his whole life.
The Most Obvious Questions
The most obvious questions that could have been raised at the time were (1) how said blogger and said blog had ever become popular, (2) why said blogger was so anxious to suppress coverage of 9/11 even while admitting that he had never looked into it, and (3) whether it made any difference that both he and his publicist were American Jews enamored of Zionist Israel.
These questions were difficult to disentangle, and said clown thought it was a shame because he had been writing for said blog for years, had been in touch with Sibel and interviewed her, and had written about her several times before he was unceremoniously shown the virtual door.
Apparently, once said clown had been safely banished, said gatekeeping blogger felt confident enough to interview Sibel on his own, secure in the knowledge that there was no longer anyone hanging around who had ever taken her seriously, or ever would.
"Look Who I Interviewed!"
Making the best personal use of his opportunities as always, he posted some pictures of the young woman he had just interviewed, and everyone said, "Wow! She's so pretty!" or "Wow! He's so cute!" except said clown, who knew it was only a publicity stunt at best. It was one of those magical moments when things come into brilliant focus and we can all see that the system works exactly the way it was designed to work.
And that was a great blessing in retrospect, but it was a good thing that most of us didn't understand it well enough to do anything about it while it was happening. Sadly, we thought we were trying to protect our democracy, not realizing until some time later that it had already vanished. As for Sibel, she figured this was good enough, so she didn't write a book.
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| This is the book Sibel Edmonds didn't write. |
Such a Long and Boring Tangent
Surely I would not have dragged you with me on such a long and boring tangent, dear reader, if it hadn't been so meaningless and totally unrelated to the main line of our story. And the tangent would not have appeared in the present chapter, which was supposed to be about Terrorists of Global Reach, except that most of what we know about them comes from Sibel, and most of what Sibel knows will never see the light of day.
And that's the way it should be, and that's why we should be thankful for it. People who pay too much attention to Sibel Edmonds tend to start having irrational ideas about Osama bin Laden.
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| Osama bin Laden's CIA code-name was "Tim Osman". |
Osama bin Laden
By August of 2001, Osama bin Laden's kidneys were failing, and he needed complicated and expensive dialysis treatments just to stay alive. This was a problem for his handlers, who were planning to offer him up as a scapegoat, since he would not have been able to serve as a moving target in the War on Terror if he had died before the war had even got properly rolling.
But it wasn't a big problem because he was well cared-for in a military hospital in an allied country whose name I am not at liberty to divulge. There he was visited from time to time by the CIA's station chief, who made sure he had everything he needed. And no one expected him to cause any trouble, especially since our national security services had been bragging that they could listen in on all his communication channels whenever they wanted to.
You don't have to be much smarter than a brick to wonder whether they didn't pick up any of his communications pertaining to the big attack he was planning because he wasn't actually planning it but was only being blamed for it. But that was OK too because very few Americans are much smarter than a brick, so this seditious thought never crossed any of their minds.
The Hunt for the Dead Man
Osama bin Laden's kidneys finally gave out in December of 2001, and his funeral was reported by Fox News and several reputable news agencies. His unfortunate passing could have put an end to the War on Terror, but fortunately our great leaders knew how to prevent that from happening.
They continued to chase him for several years after he died, willing to deal with the charges of incompetence which were sure to accrue as they continuously failed to find him, confident that the slight criticism they had to endure in public would be heavily outweighed by the enormous profits which they could continuously succeed in "earning".
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| This was never a good place anyway. |
Collateral Damage
The noble American heroes on the hunt for the dead terrorist blew up most of Afghanistan and half of Pakistan without ever finding the place where he had been buried. They killed thousands of people but they also managed to expend billions of dollars worth of ammunition and soldiers, which would all have to be replaced. But this was not a problem either because replacing soldiers was easy, and replacing spent ammunition was the quickest way to turn a little war into a big profit.
Hundreds or maybe thousands of square miles of worthless real estate were rendered uninhabitable, and hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of worthless people were required to live there anyway, since they had nowhere else to go. But our great leaders didn't care about any of that, so they called it "collateral damage".
Creative Abuse
This phrase was a brilliantly creative abuse of the mathematical term which means "on the same side". We can see the meaning if we take the word apart: "co" meaning "together", as in "cooperation", and "lateral" meaning "sideways", as in football.
So when most Americans, who are not much smarter than a brick, hear "collateral damage", they picture the people of Afghanistan playing football together. And they don't find the image particularly interesting.
Far to the Side
But if our citizens knew that in a military context, the same phrase meant not "on the same side" but only "on the side", or maybe "to the side", they might have paid more attention. Had they done so, they might have noticed that when our greatest military leaders say "collateral", they mean "so far to the side that it doesn't merit any attention whatsoever".
Granted, they say this about primitive morons in primitive societies who can and should be eradicated as soon as possible and with no compunction whatsoever. But some of us still find the terminology a bit unsettling.
The Main Idea
It might have been better had they just called the victims "worthless scoundrels", since that would have given us a much better idea of who was being killed and why.
But then again, it might not have been such a good idea after all, since it would have created a nasty little fiction which could have been used to rouse the normally peaceful American public to such a frenzy that they might have been willing to get involved in a horrible and expensive war. This, according to some clown on the internet, was the main idea behind 9/11.
Peace and Freedom
We don't know how lucky we are. No war frenzy was evident, and nobody in the Bush administration or elsewhere ever tried to create any. The tension generated by the surprise attacks subsided almost immediately. And the U.S. continued to follow the same moderate course it's always followed, bringing peace and freedom to the world at great expense without expecting economic or political advantage in return.
Perhaps this outstanding generosity is the main reason why America is so beloved around the world that American tourists in foreign countries are advised, as a safety precaution, to wear Canadian flags instead of Stars and Stripes. But on second thought, it's entirely possible that the main reason why foreigners love America so much might be McDonald's, or maybe Budweiser, or possibly Madonna.
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