But I am also angered that this event has been turned into a political spectacle that has divided our country into the sharpest polarization since before WWII and led to the most sustained period of lost credibility, incompetent leadership, and squandered influence for our country. This event has led to the end of a golden period for America, a period of steadily growing influence, economic might, and power since WWII.
The cause of the Twin Tower's destruction is in dispute. This President has made it's policy of communication to the press and American people one of deliberate deception, distorting scientific results, paying off unethical media pundits, sending our sons and daughters to war under false pretences, and even distorting history.
This Administration has been marked by infighting within the Intelligence community when good intelligence is one the the country's most important resources. Our foreign policy has been directly influenced by Iranian and Israeli spies and focused on a plan for world economic, political and military dominance. All along, the Administration that America has assumed grandiose capabilities of influence, while scuttling those very means in policy execution. Meanwhile, real dangers emerge in east Asia, the Korean peninsula, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia, Nigeria, the Persian Gulf and ominously, all over the Arab and Muslim world with the US bogged down in a what had been a frivolous adventure in Iraq. Now Iraq and Afghanistan look more and more like emerging failed states and worse dangers than before.
This Administration's formal and informal advisors are too often persons with conflicts of interest, a history of blind loyalty to the monied class, abusive and disrespectful behavior, has been marked by corruption and tax-funded giveaways to corporations, cronies, funded by the national debt at the expense of the nations economic health. Big oil has not been the only beneficiary. The warning of Eisenhauer about the military industrial complex has not been just ignored, it's dire consequences for combatants and innocents ignored, but it's interests have become the center piece of our fiscal policy. Whistleblowers have stepped forward to tell the American public about it's excesses only to face a justice system that uses selective enforcement, and loyal opposition has been demonized, combining to create withering suppression of the truth.
While the rich have gotten richer, the poor poorer, often left to die of neglect and lack of medical care, while middle class incomes have stagnated, and the real opportunity for the American dream is fading.
Our civil rights such as privacy and freedom of speech and information have been curtailed and our democracy undermined by rolling back Bill of Rights protections such as separation of church and state and separation of powers especially under the War Powers Act. Our mass media has been undermined in it's independence by consolidation under control of a few billionaires.
America seems inevitably headed towards a decline that rivals the fall of the Roman Empire. All this was unnecessary. A change in course has been and still is available.
The truth behind 9/11 may never be known. For example on 9/10, the Bush Administration knew where bin Ladin was.
GlobalResearch.ca
On September 10. 2001, "Enemy Number One" was in a Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi, courtesy of America's indefectible ally Pakistan, as confirmed by a report of Dan Rather, CBS News. (See our October 2003 article on this issue)
He could have been arrested at short notice which would have "saved us a lot of trouble", but then we would not have had an Osama Legend, which has fed the news chain as well as George W's speeches in the course of the last five years.
CBS News has more.
In a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden, CBS Evening News has been told that the night before the Sept. 11 terrorists attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan. Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into a military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment.
[...]Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the Taliban, said the military was often there to help before Sept. 11. "There were reports that Pakistan intelligence had helped the Taliban buy dialysis machines and the rumor was that these were for wanted for Osama bin Laden," said Rashid.
Doctors at the hospital told CBS News there was nothing special about that night, but they declined our request to see any records. Government officials reached Monday night denied that bin Laden received any medical treatment that night. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday the United States has seen nothing to substantiate the report.
It was Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf who said in public what many suspected: that bin Laden suffers from kidney disease, saying he thinks bin Laden may be near death. His evidence — watching the most recent video, showing a pale and haggard bin Laden, his left hand never moving. Bush administration officials admit they don't know if bin Laden is sick or even dead.
"With respect to the issue of Osama bin Laden's health, I just am...don't have any knowledge," said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The U.S. has no way of knowing who in Pakistan's military or intelligence supported the Taliban or Osama bin Ladin, maybe up to the night before Sept. 11 by arranging dialysis to keep him alive. So the U.S. may not know if those same people might help him again — perhaps to freedom.
Back to GlobalResearch.ca for a summation.
Osama bin Laden's whereabouts were known. He could have been arrested at short notice on September 10th, 2001. But then we would not have been privileged to five years of Osama related media stories. The Bush administration desperately needs the fiction of an "outside enemy of America".
Known and documented Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda is a construct of the US intelligence apparatus. his essential function is to give a face to the war on terrorism. The image must be vivid. According to the White house, "The greatest threat to us is this ideology of violent extremism, and its greatest public proponent is Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden remains the number one target, in terms of our efforts, but he's not the only target." Recent Statement of White House Assistant for Homeland Security Frances Townsend, 5 September 2006).
The national security doctrine rests on the fiction of Islamic terrorists, led by Osama who are portrayed as a "threat to the civilized World". In the words of President Bush, "Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say? We are on the offensive. We will not rest. We will not retreat. And we will not withdraw from the fight until this threat to civilization has been removed." (quoted by CNN, September 5, 2006)
The "hot pursuit" for Osama in the rugged mountainous areas of Pakistan must continue, because without Osama, referred to ad nauseam in news reports and official statements, the fragile legitimacy of the Bush administration's crusade collapses like a deck of cards.
While I don't necessary believe that the whole legend of bin Ladin is a fraud, we clearly don't know for sure. The average American cannot give advice and consent to it's government because they have no way of knowing what is going on. That more than anything else undermines our democracy.
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