'Fight Smart' Bulletins - The Bogus War Against Terrorism

'FIGHT SMART' BULLETINS
THE BOGUS WAR AGAINST TERRORISM

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"The Bush Administration began making plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 -- not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks, as has been previously reported. That's what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider.... In the book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded. 'It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,' says O'Neill in the book.... "
Saddam Ouster Planned Early '01?
CBS News, 10 January 2004

"Many adults in the United States believe the current federal government has not been completely forthcoming on the issue of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a poll by the New York Times and CBS News.... Only 16 per cent of respondents say the government headed by U.S. president George W. Bush is telling the truth on what it knew prior to the terrorist attacks, down five points since May 2002."
Americans Question Bush on 9/11 Intelligence
Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research, 14 October 2006

".... the so-called 'war on terrorism' is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives..... 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11..... the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into 'tomorrow's dominant force' is likely to be a long one in the absence of 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor'. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the 'go' button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement. The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s..... the 'global war on terrorism' has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project."
Michael Meacher MP, UK environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003
This war on terrorism is bogus
Guardian, 6 September 2003

"The Iraq war was just the first of this century's 'resource wars', in which powerful countries use force to secure valuable commodities, according to the UK government's former chief scientific adviser. Sir David King predicts that with population growth, natural resources dwindling, and seas rising due to climate change, the squeeze on the planet will lead to more conflict. 'Future historians might look back on our particular recent past and see the Iraq war as the first of the conflicts of this kind - the first of the resource wars,' he told an audience of 400 in London as he delivered the British Humanist Association's Darwin Day lecture. '"
UK's ex-science chief predicts century of 'resource' wars
Guardian, 13 February 2009

"Historians may well conclude that the US decision to invade Iraq was primarily motivated by the desire to gain physical control of Iraq’s oil and to provide defence support to other Middle Eastern oil powers."
Lord William Rees-Mogg
Are these the last days of the Oil Age?
London Times, 16 July 2007

“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge
what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Alan Greenspan, Chairman Of The US Federal Reserve 1987 - 2006
Sunday Times, 16 September 2007

"For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."
Dick Cheney, Chief Executive of Halliburton, now Vice President of the United States
Speech at London Institute of Petroleum, Autumn Lunch 1999

"I want to thank you all for coming today. I've assembled a team within my administration, in particular, the Secretary of Energy, as well as the Deputy Secretary of Defense [Paul Wolfowitz], to discuss energy. As the country knows, we're in the process of developing a comprehensive energy plan that will work to increase supplies, as well as encourage conservation. This is a long-run solution to the energy problems we now face.....I think we ought to ask all agencies to review energy policy. We're focused right now on California because that's a state that's going to suffer blackouts. But we've always got to be mindful of being energy efficient.... I think [energy] conservation has got to be an integral part of making sure we've got a reasonable energy policy. But what the Vice President was saying is we can't conserve our way to energy independence; nor can we conserve our way to having enough energy available. So we've got to do both. We must conserve, but we've also got to find new sources of energy. I haven't seen the final report yet, but I suspect the American people will find a balanced approach. But what people need to hear, loud and clear, is that we're running out of energy in America. And it is so important for this nation to improve its infrastructure so we can not only deliver supplies, but we need to go find new supply.....what the Vice President and I understand is that you cannot conserve your way to energy independence. We can do a better job in conservation, but we darn sure have to do a better job of finding more supply. It is naive for the American people and its -- and those who purport to speak for the American people, some of those, to say that we can be okay from an energy perspective by only focusing on conservation. We've got to find additional supplies of energy."
Remarks by President Bush, Secretary of Energy Abraham and Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz After Energy Advisors Meeting
Office Of The Press Secretary, White House, 3 May 2001

"Fuel is our economic lifeblood. The price of oil can be the difference between recession and recovery. The western world is import dependent. ....So: who develops oil and gas, what the new potential sources of supply are, is a vital strategic question...The Middle East, we focus on naturally."
Prime Minister's speech at the George Bush Senior Presidential Library, Texas
10 Downing St, Press Release, 7 April 2002

"In a world of looming shortage, Iraq represented a unique opportunity. With 115bn barrels, it had the world's third biggest reserves, and after years of war and sanctions they were the most underexploited. In the late 1990s, production averaged about 2m barrels, but with the necessary investment its reserves could support three times that..... Cheney knew, fretting about global oil depletion in a speech in London the following year, where he noted that 'the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and lowest cost is still where the prize ultimately lies'. Blair too had reason to be anxious: British North Sea output had peaked in 1999, while the petrol protests of 2000 had made the importance of maintaining the fuel supply excruciatingly obvious. Britain's and the US's fears were secretly formalised during the planning for Iraq. It is widely accepted that Blair's commitment to support the attack dates back to his summit with Bush in Texas in April 2002. What is less well known is that at the same summit, Blair proposed and Bush agreed to set up the US-UK Energy Dialogue, a permanent liaison dedicated to 'energy security and diversity'. Its existence was only later exposed through a freedom of information inquiry. Both governments refuse to release minutes of Dialogue meetings, but one paper dated February 2003 notes that to meet projected demand, oil production in the Middle East would have to double by 2030 to more than 50m barrels a day. So on the eve of the invasion, UK and US officials were discussing how to raise production from the region - and we are invited to believe this is coincidence. The bitterest irony is, of course, that the invasion has created conditions that guarantee oil production will remain hobbled for years to come, bringing the global oil peak that much closer. So if that was plan A, what on earth is plan B?"
The real casus belli: peak oil
Guardian, 26 June 2007

"Former House Speaker [and Republican] Newt Gingrich said Thursday the Bush administration is waging a 'phony war' on terrorism, warning that the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001. A more effective approach, said Gingrich, would begin with a national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil...."
Gingrich says war on terror 'phony'
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 3 August 2007

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The Omar Sheikh Files
The 9/11 Money Trail Leads To Pakistan's ISI And MI6 Double Agent

"Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist militant, is waiting to be hanged in Pakistan for a murder he almost certainly didn't commit - of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Both the US government and Pearl's wife have since acknowledged that Sheikh was not responsible. Yet the Pakistani government is refusing to try other suspects newly implicated in Pearl's kidnap and murder for fear the evidence they produce in court might acquit Sheikh and reveal too much. Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the instructions of General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. It is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. Why not? Ahmed, the paymaster for the hijackers, was actually in Washington on 9/11, and had a series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White House, the Pentagon, the national security council, and with George Tenet, then head of the CIA, and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to 'retire' by President Pervez Musharraf. Why hasn't the US demanded that he be questioned and tried in court? .... It has been rumoured that Pearl was especially interested in any role played by the US in training or backing the ISI. Daniel Ellsberg, the former US defence department whistleblower who has accompanied [former FBI translator Sibel] Edmonds in court, has stated: 'It seems to me quite plausible that Pakistan was quite involved in this ... To say Pakistan is, to me, to say CIA because ... it's hard to say that the ISI knew something that the CIA had no knowledge of.' Ahmed's close relations with the CIA would seem to confirm this. For years the CIA used the ISI as a conduit to pump billions of dollars into militant Islamist groups in Afghanistan, both before and after the Soviet invasion of 1979. W ith CIA backing, the ISI has developed, since the early 1980s, into a parallel structure, a state within a state, with staff and informers estimated by some at 150,000. It wields enormous power over all aspects of government. The case of Ahmed confirms that parts of the ISI directly supported and financed al-Qaida, and it has long been established that the ISI has acted as go-between in intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA. Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate select committee on intelligence, has said: 'I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted, not just in financing ... by a sovereign foreign government.' In that context, Horst Ehmke, former coordinator of the West German secret services, observed: 'Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with four hijacked planes without the support of a secret service.' That might give meaning to the reaction on 9/11 of Richard Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism chief, when he saw the passenger lists later on the day itself: 'I was stunned ... that there were al-Qaida operatives on board using names that the FBI knew were al-Qaida.' It was just that, as Dale Watson, head of counter-terrorism at the FBI told him, the 'CIA forgot to tell us about them'."
Michael Meacher, former UK environment minister
The Pakistan connection
Guardian, 22 July 2004

"Pakistani intelligence chiefs are concerned that General Musharraf may jeopardise their relationship with British intelligence agencies after claiming that a convicted terrorist was once an MI6 informer. The President outlines the role played by a former London public schoolboy, Omar Sheikh, in the kidnap and murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, in February 2002. General Musharraf says that Sheikh, who orchestrated the abduction, was recruited by MI6 while he was studying at the London School of Economics and sent to the Balkans to take part in jihad operations there. "
'America paid us to hand over al-Qaeda suspects'
London Times, 25 September 2006

US (And UK) Backed Islamic Terrorism In The Balkans
The Scandal Of What Really Happened In Yugoslavia Before 9/11
More On The Omar Sheikh Scandal - Click Here

The Omar Sheikh Files
The 9/11 Money Trail Leads To Pakistan's ISI And MI6 Double Agent

"Pakistani intelligence chiefs are concerned that General Musharraf may jeopardise their relationship with British intelligence agencies after claiming that a convicted terrorist was once an MI6 informer. The President outlines the role played by a former London public schoolboy, Omar Sheikh, in the kidnap and murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, in February 2002. General Musharraf says that Sheikh, who orchestrated the abduction, was recruited by MI6 while he was studying at the London School of Economics and sent to the Balkans to take part in jihad operations there. "
'America paid us to hand over al-Qaeda suspects'
London Times, 25 September 2006

"Less well known is evidence of the British government's relationship with a wider Islamist terrorist network. During an interview on Fox TV this summer, the former US federal prosecutor John Loftus reported that British intelligence had used the al-Muhajiroun group in London to recruit Islamist militants with British passports for the war against the Serbs in Kosovo. Since July Scotland Yard has been interested in an alleged member of al-Muhajiroun, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who some sources have suggested could have been behind the London bombings. According to Loftus, Aswat was detained in Pakistan after leaving Britain, but was released after 24 hours. He was subsequently returned to Britain from Zambia, but has been detained solely for extradition to the US, not for questioning about the London bombings. Loftus claimed that Aswat is a British-backed double agent, pursued by the police but protected by MI6. One British Muslim of Pakistani origin radicalised by the civil war in Yugoslavia was LSE-educated Omar Saeed Sheikh. He is now in jail in Pakistan under sentence of death for the killing of the US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 - although many (including Pearl's widow and the US authorities) doubt that he committed the murder. However, reports from Pakistan suggest that Sheikh continues to be active from jail, keeping in touch with friends and followers in Britain. Sheikh was recruited as a student by Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Muhammad), which operates a network in Britain. It has actively recruited Britons from universities and colleges since the early 1990s, and has boasted of its numerous British Muslim volunteers. Investigations in Pakistan have suggested that on his visits there Shehzad Tanweer, one of the London suicide bombers, contacted members of two outlawed local groups and trained at two camps in Karachi and near Lahore. Indeed the network of groups now being uncovered in Pakistan may point to senior al-Qaida operatives having played a part in selecting members of the bombers' cell. The Observer Research Foundation has argued that there are even 'grounds to suspect that the [London] blasts were orchestrated by Omar Sheikh from his jail in Pakistan'. Why then is Omar Sheikh not being dealt with when he is already under sentence of death? Astonishingly his appeal to a higher court against the sentence was adjourned in July for the 32nd time and has since been adjourned indefinitely. This is all the more remarkable when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit. Yet neither Ahmed nor Omar appears to have been sought for questioning by the US about 9/11. Indeed, the official 9/11 Commission Report of July 2004 sought to downplay the role of Pakistan with the comment: 'To date, the US government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance' - a statement of breathtaking disingenuousness. All this highlights the resistance to getting at the truth about the 9/11 attacks and to an effective crackdown on the forces fomenting terrorist bombings in the west, including Britain."
Michael Meacher, former UK environment minister
Britain now faces its own blowback
Guardian, 10 September 2005

".... the corporate media are still largely sticking to the demonstrably false Official Story of 911... So research into the events tends to be by alternative sources..... the NLP has investigated the murder of [American] journalist Daniel Pearl and highlights an astonishing fact: The [British] Pakistani sentenced to death for the murder of Pearl, Omar Sheikh, is the same Al Qaida contact who wired USD 100,000 to Mohammed Atta shortly before 911 on the instructions of the head of Pakistani Intelligence General Mahmoud who quietly resigned soon after. Astonishingly, Mahmoud on the days around the 911 attacks was in a series of secret top level meetings in the White House and with hawkish senators on Capitol Hill .... The NLP suspects that Pearl was murdered because he was investigating the smoking gun USD 100,000 transaction and that Sheikh was framed for the murder to stop him talking... [A British MP] has put down a question on the matter to the Foreign Office, which they have refused to answer... ."
Ian Henshall, chair of INK the Alternative Publishers umbrella group in the UK
and publisher of 911dossier.co.uk
Crisis Newsletter, 27 January 2003

"To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has received a response from the Pakistan Government for his request for information on the detention of Mr. Sheikh; and if it provides evidence of a link between Mr. Sheikh and the September 11 attacks."
Ministerial question asked through the House of Commons by Mark Oaten, MP
Published in Hansard, the official British parliamentary record, 16 Dec 2002

"... As the legal process [in relation to Sheikh's alleged murder of Pearl] is ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment on possible linkages to other terrorist crimes."
'Answer' to the above question provided by Foreign Office Minister for South Asia and the Far East
Published in Hansard, the official British parliamentary record, 16 Dec 2002

"It would be very difficult to just hang Sheikh, and everyone knows that.... It’s a complicated thing [Sheikh's alleged ties to the ISI], and I don’t know if I can talk about them publicly right now. Everything is related. Of course, there’s his relationship with the ISI, but there’s also his relationship with other organizations and other countries. It’s complicated and it’s murky."
Marianne Pearl, widow of Daniel
Seven Questions: Mariane Pearl
Foreign Policy, May 2007

"A high-profile new film has focused renewed attention on the case of the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and executed by Islamic insurgents here in 2002, and has underscored the fact that many questions remain unanswered.... The most persistently nebulous element of the case, analysts say, is how much Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency knew about the events surrounding Pearl's capture and execution. Pakistani military intelligence has a history of entanglement with the Islamic militants it is charged with policing. 'There are officials within the security services who are not entirely interested in seeing this [investigation] go forward,' said John Harrison, a senior researcher for the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore. 'Not that they were involved in the murder itself, but there are definitely embarrassing connections between the ISI and many of the perpetrators.' These dark and various complexities underpin the film 'A Mighty Heart,' starring Angelina Jolie and produced by Brad Pitt, which opens in U.S. theaters Friday. ....... Four men have been convicted in connection with the Pearl case. But the Pakistani legal system is a convoluted one, and appeals have been pending in the courts for years, and could take years more to move forward. The most prominent of the four defendants was British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, sentenced to death in July 2002 for helping lure Pearl to the fateful meeting. But he is seeking to have his conviction overturned on the basis of a reported confession by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged No. 3 in Al Qaeda, who is said to have claimed to have personally beheaded the journalist."
Pearl slaying in Pakistan unresolved
Los Angeles Times, 17 June 2007

"While working for the Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau in 1993, journalist Asra Nomani played volleyball on the National Mall, explored the city's club scene and got her 'socialization to America' with friend and colleague Daniel Pearl by her side. This fall, more than five years after Pearl was murdered while reporting in Pakistan, [former Wall St Journal reporter Asra] Nomani will lead a for-credit journalism seminar at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., that seeks to investigate the circumstances of his death.... Nomani has a list of dozens of questions she hopes the course will be able to answer, including why Pearl was kidnapped, who financed and distributed the video of his death, what story Pearl was chasing, and whether Omar Saeed Sheikh, whom police have said was identified by others involved in the crime as the mastermind, had ties to Pakistani intelligence. Sheikh has been convicted and sentenced to death for his role in the plot; he is in jail in Pakistan awaiting an appeal, Nomani says."
Pearl’s murder inspires scholarly search for truth
USA Today, 9 May 2007

"I hope audiences will walk away from the film with an important message: the story doesn't end with this film. I hope viewers will understand that we're still navigating through the confusing labyrinth of Danny's kidnapping and murder trying to understand what really happened. The mystery is still not solved..... Over the last five years since Danny's kidnapping, political subterfuge has defined the effort to understand what really happened to Danny and realize justice in his murder."
Asra Nomani
Danny Pearl, the Hollywood version
Guardian, Comment Is Free, 21 May 2007

"Pakistan's Habib Bank Ltd. denied on Thursday allegations by the widow of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl that it transferred funds on behalf of charities supporting 'terrorist organisations'. Mariane Pearl filed a lawsuit at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on Wednesday against al Qaeda, other radical groups and Habib Bank Ltd. over the 2002 abduction, torture and murder of her husband. The government holds a 49 percent stake in the bank, though it plans to sell up to 7.5 percent of the bank through an initial public offering later this month....Among those sued is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, or Sheikh Omar, who was convicted and sentenced to death in a Pakistani court for his role in the abduction and murder. Three others were jailed for life. Another defendant is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a suspected high-ranking al Qaeda leader and Sept. 11 mastermind who is in U.S. custody. Mohammed admitted to a U.S. military tribunal that he beheaded Pearl, the U.S. military said."
Pakistan's Habib Bank denies Pearl allegations
Associated Press, 19 July 2007

"As the film about the kidnap and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is released in the UK, a new project has been launched dedicated to finding out the reason for his death. A team of 21 students is working under the guidance of Asra Nomani, a friend and colleague of Pearl at the Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau, who was among the last people to see him before he went to meet religious leader Sheikh Gilani in Karachi, Pakistan in January 2002....According to testimony given to a tribunal at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to being responsible for Pearl’s murder. But Nomani, who is jointly teaching the seminar at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies, believes there are still many questions unanswered. She has worked with the Washingtonpost.com’s computer-assisted reporting expert, Derek Willis, to develop a website that will chart all the information gathered on a collaborative project that spans the globe. Modelled on the Intellipedia used by the United States intelligence community and other national-security related organisations, the Pearlpedia will be used by students working on different strands of the investigation along with a small group of stringers in Pakistan."
Pearl's colleague and students to investigate reporter's death
Press Gazette, 28 September 2007

Media References For Omar Sheikh - Click Here
Omar Sheikh, 9/11, And The Balkans - Click Here

"I was inspired at a midpoint in my work by a remarkably generous statement from Mariane Pearl, widow of the murdered journalist, Daniel Pearl. On February 22, 2002, when her husband’s death had been confirmed, she said: 'Revenge would be easy, but it is far more valuable in my opinion to address this problem of terrorism with enough honesty to question our own responsibility as nations and as individuals for the rise of terrorism.' This kind of introspection had been almost totally absent in the American press, particularly before 9/11.... it behooves editorial page and OpEd editors to be sure their pages meet issues head-on, even those that run the risk of drawing criticism from super patriots and others with strong opposing views."
Matthew V. Storin, Former Editor, The Boston Globe
While America Slept: Coverage of Terrorism from 1993 to September 11, 2001
Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Spring 2002