Category: Uncategorized

Did the FBI Have Six Years Warning in Terrorist Attacks?

A lot of the comments from the usual suspects on the 9/11 attacks run along the lines that no one ever imagined terrorists would be capable of, much less want to, simultaneously hijacks several jets and crash them into American targets. In fact, CNN reports that the FBI was warned several years ago that terrorist Ramzi Yousef had planned just such an act,

In another development, the FBI was warned six years ago of a terrorist plot to hijack commercial planes and slam them into the Pentagon, the CIA headquarters and other buildings, Philippine investigators said.

Philippine authorities learned of the plot after a small fire in a Manila apartment, which turned out to be the hideout of Ramzi Yousef, who was later convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Yousef escaped at the time, but agents caught his right-hand man, Abdul Hakim Murad, who told them about plots to hijack U.S. jets.

Chickens Coming Home to Roost?

After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, Malcolm X created a controversy when he characterized the assassination as “chickens coming home to roost.” Malcolm X believed that the United States was a fundamentally violent society, and his point was that in the context of that violence it is hardly surprising that someone would direct violence at the nation’s political leaders.

Harry Browne, the recent Libertarian Party presidential candidate, wrote an article yesterday which bluntly blamed American foreign policy for Tuesday’s terrorist attack,

Our foreign policy has been insane for decades. It was only a matter of time until Americans would have to suffer personally for it. It is a terrible tragedy of life that the innocent so often have to suffer for the sins of the guilty.

When will we learn that we can’t allow our politicians to bully the world without someone bullying back eventually?

President Bush has authorized continued bombing of innocent people in Iraq. President Clinton bombed innocent people in the Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Serbia. President Bush Senior invaded Iraq and Panama. President Reagan bombed innocent people in Libya and invaded Grenada. And on and on it goes.

Did we think the people who lost their families and friends and property in all that destruction would love America for what happened?

Myles Kantor is outraged in response and claims that this is excusing or justifying the terrorist acts.

I think that is an untenable position. Browne’s point, at least as I read it, isn’t that somehow these terrorists were justified because of U.S. military intervention, but rather that if the United States is going to engage in the killing of innocent people abroad, we are foolish to think that those people won’t try to strike back in a similar fashion.

Kantor says that, “For a libertarian to soft-pedal it [mass murder] is obscene incoherence.” No, Myles, what is obscene is that our government has for far too long been an active participant in exactly the sorts of cowardly terrorist acts that were committed on Tuesday (though rarely on that scale).

George W. Bush says that countries that harbor or stand by and allow such acts to be planned and carried out are just as guilty as the terrorists. Well, where does that leave the United States given that the Central Intelligence Agency not only knew about but clearly provided aid and comfort to the Guatemalan military while it murdered tens of thousands of civilians? How can members of Congress go on television and talk about cowards who murder civilians when they just a few months ago approved a multi-billion dollar package to fight a war against Colombian civilians?

There is no excuse or justification for the 9/11 attacks, and the United States needs to respond appropriately by tracking down and bringing to justice, one way or another, those responsible for that heinous act. But we also need to have empathy and understanding for the civilian victims of the U.S. military and foreign policy and say enough is enough.

Where Did Osama bin Laden Get the Idea that Murdering Civilians was Acceptable?

The horror of it all is still difficult to comprehend. Thousands of civilians murdered in cold blood as part of a campaign of terror. These people were killed simply to make a point and to attempt to weaken the resolve of a nation. No, I’m not talking about the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, but rather a war crime perpetrated by Allied nations during the end of World War II.

Just a couple weeks before the bombing of the World Trade Center, the BBC aired a look at the bombing of German cities in the last months of World War II. Dresden, of course, has always stood out as a target that was mercilessly bombed apparently not out of any strategic military concerns but rather to terrorize its civilian population and thereby bring a quicker end to the war. And, it turns out, Dresden wasn’t the only city victimized this way.

The BBC program, Bombing Germany, looked at the Allied bombing of Wuerzburg, Germany — a small town of about 8,000 people. On March 16, 1945, Allied forces dropped almost 1,000 tons of bombs on the city, killing almost 5,000 people and destroying more than 80 percent of the town.

Documents turned up by the BBC confirm what was long suspected — Dresden, Wuerzburg, and other German towns were chosen not because of any military value but rather because for a number of reasons it would be easy to destroy these largely residential errors and terrorize the civilian population.

The BBC quotes from a memo by US Air Force general Frederick Anderson that maintained the goal of the operations was “not expected in itself to shorten the war … However, it is expected that the fact that Germany was struck all over will be passed on, from father to son, thence to grandson; that a deterrent for the initiation of future wars will definitely result.”

In other words, they were pure and simple acts of terrorism — a fact explicitly conceded by Winston Churchill who drafted a memorandum suggesting that it was time to curtail such raids since the war was quickly drawing to a close,

The moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land.

The Allied campaign of terrorism had to be stopped not because it was in violation of international law as well as an affront to morality, but rather it had to be stopped so that Allied forces would have something left to occupy when they inevitably defeated Nazi Germany. As long as it did not interfere with other objectives, terrorizing a civilian population was perfectly acceptable to Allied commanders and their political leaders.

Unlike Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, nobody even tried to bring those responsible for these despicable acts of terrorism to justice. But contemporary terrorists have done well by adopting that callous view of human life.

Source:

War papers reveal bombers’ terror tactics. Richard Norton-Taylor, SMH.Com.Au, August 24, 2001.

Animal Rights Group Donated 50,000 Pounds to Labour

In early August, Great Britain’s Labour Party filed a legally required report detailing donors to the party. Among the donors listed, was an anti-hunting group, the Political Animal Lobby, which donated almost 50,000 pounds to the Labour Party only a few weeks before Tony Blair had formally announced that his party would seek another vote in Parliament on a measure to ban hunting.

In April, while the Labour Party was in the middle of drafting its election manifesto, the Political Animal Lobby donated 30,000 pounds. In June it chipped in an additional 17,582 pounds.

In the previous election, various animal rights groups donated about 1 million pounds to the Labour Party to help its election efforts.

Labour did introduce a bill to ban hunting, but while it was approved overwhelmingly by the House of Commons, it was blocked by the House of Lords. Labour plans to reintroduce the bill, and animal rights groups are betting that with the election behind him, Blair will act to overrule the House of Lords if it again blocks the hunting ban.

Fifty thousand pounds, after all, is nothing to sneeze at.

Source:

Anti-hunting group donated pounds 50,000 to Labour. Marie Woolf, The Independent (London), August 8, 2001.

“I’m proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have.”

Important note: I posted this shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack to highlight isolated acts of racism and violence against Muslims and Arabs. I find the acts described below to be abhorrent and deplorable. People who want to express their hatred for Arabs need to get their heads out of their asses and go post somewhere else.

According to the Associated Press, 300 people showed up in Oaklawn, Illinois to protest outside a mosque there. Police kept the protesters well away from the mosque, and made three arrests.

One of the protesters, 19-year-old Colin Zaremba, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, “I’m proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have.”

Meanwhile a 75-year-old man tried to run over a Pakistani woman near a Huntington, New York, shopping mall and then followed her into the mall shouting that he was going to kill her for “destroying my country.”

In Indiana, somebody fire shots at a gas station owned by a Yemen-born U.S. citizen.

But the most bizarre incident occurred in Australia, where people apparently threw stones at a school bus carrying Muslim children.