Bush's War: The WTC Oil Gambit
By Stan Goff
I'm a retired Special Forces Master Sergeant. That
doesn't cut much for those who will only accept the
opinions of former officers on military matters, since
we enlisted swine are assumed to be incapable of
grasping the nuances of doctrine.
But I wasn't just in the army, I studied and taught
military science and doctrine. I was a tactics
instructor at the Jungle Operations Training Center in
Panama, and I taught Military Science at West Point.
And contrary to the popular image of what Special
Forces does, SF's mission is to teach. We offer advice
and assistance to foreign forces. That's everything
from teaching marksmanship to a private to instructing
a Battalion staff on how to coordinate effective air
operations with a sister service.
Based on that experience, and operations in eight
designated conflict areas from Vietnam to Haiti, I
have to say that the story we hear on the news and
read in the newspapers is simply not believable.
The most cursory glance at the verifiable facts,
before, during, and after September 11th, does not
support the official line or conform to the current
actions of the United States government.
But the official line only works if they can get
everyone to accept its underlying premises. I'm not at
all surprised about the Republican and Democratic
Parties repeating these premises. They are simply two
factions within a single dominant political class, and
both are financed by the same economic powerhouses. My
biggest disappointment, as someone who identifies
himself with the left, has been the tacit acceptance
of those premises by others on the left, sometimes
naively, and sometimes to score some morality points.
Those premises are twofold.
One, there is the premise that what this de facto
administration is doing now is a "response" to
September 11th.
Two, there is the premise that this attack on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon was done by people
based in Afghanistan. In my opinion, neither of these
is sound.
To put this in perspective we have to go back not to
September 11th, but to last year or further.
A man of limited intelligence, George W. Bush, with
nothing more than his name and the behind-the-scenes
pressure of his powerful father-a former President,
ex-director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and an
oil man-is systematically constructed as a candidate,
at tremendous cost. Across the country, subtle and
not-so-subtle mechanisms are put into place to
disenfranchise a significant fraction of the
Democrat's African-American voter base.
This doesn't come out until Florida becomes a
battleground for Electoral College votes, and the
magnitude of the story has been suppressed by the
corporate media to this day. In a decision so lacking
in legitimacy, the Supreme Court will neither by-line
the author of the decision nor allow the decision to
ever be used as a precedent, Bush vs. Gore awards the
presidency of the United States to a man who loses the
popular vote in Florida and loses the national popular
vote by over 600,000.
This de facto regime then organizes a very interesting
cabinet. The Vice President is an oil executive and
the former Secretary of Defense. The National Security
Advisor is a director on the board of a transnational
oil corporation and a Russia scholar. The Secretary of
State is a man with no diplomatic experience
whatsoever, and the former Chair of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. The other interesting appointment is Donald
Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld is the
former CEO of Searle Pharmaceuticals. He and Cheney
were featured as speakers at the May 2000
Russian-American Business Leaders Forum. So the
consistent currents in this cabinet are petroleum, the
former Soviet Union, and the military.
Based on the record of Daddy Bush, in all his guises,
and the general trajectory of US foreign policy as far
back as the Carter Administration, I feel I can
reasonably conclude that Middle Eastern and South
Asian fossil fuels are one of their major
preoccupations. Not just because this klavern has some
very direct financial interests in fossil fuel, but
because they surely know that worldwide oil production
is peaking as we speak, and will soon begin a
permanent and precipitous decline that will completely
change the character of civilization as we know it
within 20 years.
Even the left seems to be in deep denial about this,
but the math is available. And, no, alternative
energies and energy technologies will not save us. All
the alternatives in the world can not begin to provide
more than a tiny fraction of the energy base now
provided by oil. This makes it more than a resource,
and the drive to control what's left more than an
economic competition.
I further conclude that the economic colonization of
the former Soviet Union is probably high on that
agenda, and in fact has a powerful synergy with the
issue of petroleum. Russia not only holds vast
untapped resources that beckon to imperialism in
crisis, it remains a credible military and nuclear
challenger in the region.
We have not one, but three members of the Bush de
facto cabinet with military credentials, which makes
the cabinet look quite a lot like a military General
Staff. All this way before September 11th.
Then there's the subject of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization. NATO might have expected consignment to
the dustbin of the Cold War after the Eastern Bloc
shattered in 1991. Peace dividend and all that. But it
didn't. It expanded directly into the former states of
the Eastern Bloc toward the former Soviet Union, and
contributed significant forces to the devastation of
Iraq-a key country in the world oil market, over which
control translates into the ability to manipulate oil
prices.
NATO is a military formation, and the United States
exerts the controlling interest in it. It seemed like
a form without a function, but it remedied that pretty
quickly.
Then when Yugoslavia refused to play ball with the
International Monetary Fund, the US and Germany began
a systematic campaign of destabilization there, even
using some of the veterans of Afghanistan in that
campaign. NATO became the military arm of that
agenda-the break-up of Yugoslavia into compliant
statelets, the further containment of the former
Soviet Union, and the future pipeline easement for
Caspian Sea oil to Western European markets through
Kosovo.
You see, this is important to understand, and
people-even those against the war talk-are tending to
overlook the significance of it. NATO is not a
guarantor of international law, and it is not a
humanitarian organization. It is a military alliance
with one very dominant partner. And it can no longer
claim to be a defensive alliance against European
socialists. It is an instrument of military
aggression.
NATO is the organization that is now going to thrust
further along the 40th parallel from the Balkans
through the Southern Asian Republics of the former
Soviet Union. The US military has already taken
control of a base in Uzbekistan. No one is talking
about how what we are doing seems to be a very logical
extension of a strategy that was already in motion,
and has been in motion for two decades.
Once we recognize the pattern of activity designed to
simultaneously consolidate control over Middle Eastern
and South Asian oil, and contain and colonize the
former Soviet Union, Afghanistan is exactly where they
need to go to pursue that agenda.
Afghanistan borders Iran, India, and even China but,
more importantly, the Central Asian Republics of the
former Soviet Union, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and
Tajikistan. These border Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan
borders Russia. Turkmenistan sits on the southeastern
quadrant of the Caspian Sea, whose oil the Bush
Administration dearly covets.
Afghanistan is necessary for two things: as a base of
operations to begin the process of destabilizing,
breaking off, and establishing control over the South
Asian Republics, which will begin within the next
18-24 months in my opinion, and constructing a
pipeline through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and
Pakistan to deliver petroleum to the Asian market.
The BBC was recently told by Niaz Naik, a Pakistani
Foreign Secretary, that senior American officials were
warning them as early as mid-July that military action
for mid-October was being planned for Afghanistan.
In 1996, the Department of Energy was issuing reports
on the desirability of a pipeline through Afghanistan,
and in 1998, Unocal testified before the House
Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific that this
pipeline was crucial to transport Caspian Basin oil to
the Indian Ocean.
Given this evidence that a military operation to
secure at least a portion of Afghanistan has been on
the table, possibly as early as five years ago, I
can't help but conclude that the actions we are seeing
put into motion now are part of a pre-September 11th
agenda. I'm absolutely sure of that, in fact. The
planning alone for operations, of this scale, that are
now taking shape, would take many months. And we are
seeing them take shape in mere weeks.
It defies common sense. This administration is lying
about this whole thing being a "reaction" to September
11th. That leads me, in short order, to be very
suspicious of their yet-to-be-provided evidence that
someone in Afghanistan is responsible. It's just too
damn convenient. Which also leads me to wonder-just
for the sake of knowing-what actually did happen on
September 11th, and who actually is responsible.
The so-called evidence is a farce. The US presented
Tony Blair's puppet government with the evidence, and
of the 70 so-called points of evidence, only nine even
referred to the attacks on the World Trade Center, and
those points were conjectural. This is a ********
story from beginning to end.
Presented with the available facts, any 16-year old
with a liking for courtroom dramas could tear this
story apart like a two-dollar shirt. But our corporate
press regurgitates it uncritically. But then, as we
should know by now, their role is to legitimize.
This cartoon heavy they've turned bin Laden into makes
no sense, when you begin to appreciate the complexity
and synchronicity of the attacks. As a former military
person who's been involved in the development of
countless operations orders over the years, I can tell
you that this was a very sophisticated and costly
enterprise that would have left what we call a huge
"signature".
In other words, it would be very hard to effectively
conceal.
So there's a real question about why there was no
warning of this. That can be a question about the
efficacy of the government's intelligence apparatus.
That can be a question about various policies in the
various agencies that had to be duped to orchestrate
this action. And it can also be a question about
whether or not there was foreknowledge of the event,
and that foreknowledge is being covered up. To dismiss
this concern out of hand as the rantings of conspiracy
nuts is premature. And there is a history of this kind
of thing being done by national political bosses,
including the darling of liberals, Franklin Roosevelt.
The evidence is very compelling that the Roosevelt
Administration deliberately failed to act to stop
Pearl Harbor in order to mobilize enough national
anger to enter World War II.
I have no idea why people aren't asking some very
specific questions about the actions of Bush and
company on the day of the attacks. Follow along:
Four planes get hijacked and deviate from their flight
plans, all the while on FAA radar. The planes are all
hijacked between 7:45 and 8:10 AM Eastern Daylight
Time.
Who is notified?
This is an event already that is unprecedented. But
the President is not notified and [goes] to a Florida
elementary school to hear children read.
By around 8:15 AM, it should be very apparent that
something is terribly wrong. The President is
glad-handing teachers.
By 8:45, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into
the World Trade Center, Bush is settling in with
children for his photo ops at Booker Elementary. Four
planes have obviously been hijacked simultaneously, an
event never before seen in history, and one has just
dived into the world's best known twin towers, and
still no one notifies the nominal Commander-in-Chief.
No one has apparently scrambled any Air Force
interceptors either.
At 9:03, United Flight 175 crashes into the remaining
World Trade Center building. At 9:05, Andrew Card, the
Presidential Chief of Staff whispers to George W.
Bush. Bush "briefly turns somber" according to
reporters.
Does he cancel the school visit and convene an
emergency meeting? No. He resumes listening to second
graders read about a little girl's pet ******* goat,
and continues this banality even as American Airlines
Flight 77 conducts an unscheduled point turn over Ohio
and heads in the direction of Washington, D.C.
Has he instructed Chief of Staff Card to scramble the
Air Force? No.
An excruciating 25 minutes later, he finally deigns to
give a public statement telling the United States what
they already have figured out; that there's been an
attack by hijacked planes on the World Trade Center.
There's a hijacked plane bee-lining to Washington, but
has the Air Force been scrambled to defend anything
yet? No.
At 9:30, when he makes his announcement, American
Flight 77 is still ten minutes from its target, the
Pentagon.
The Administration will later claim they had no way of
knowing that the Pentagon might be a target, and that
they thought Flight 77 was headed to the White House,
but the fact is that the plane has already flown south
and past the White House no-fly zone, and is in fact
tearing through the sky at over 400 [nautical miles].
At 9:35, this plane conducts another turn, 360 degrees
over the Pentagon, all the while being tracked by
radar, and the Pentagon is not evacuated, and there
are still no fast-movers from the Air Force in the sky
over Alexandria and [Washington, D.C].
Now, the real kicker. A pilot they want us to believe
was trained at a Florida puddle-jumper school for
Piper Cubs and Cessnas, conducts a well-controlled
downward spiral, descending the last 7,000 feet in
two-and-a-half minutes, brings the plane in so low and
flat that it clips the electrical wires across the
street from the Pentagon, and flies it with pinpoint
accuracy into the side of this building at 460 nauts.
When the theory about learning to fly this well at the
puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it was
added that they received further training on a flight
simulator.
This is like saying you prepared your teenager for her
first drive on I-40 at rush hour by buying her a video
driving game. It's ***** ****!
There is a story being constructed about these events.
My crystal ball is not working today, so I can't say
why.
But at the least, this so-called Commander-in-Chief
and his staff that we are all supposed to follow
blindly into some ill-defined war on terrorism is
criminally negligent or unspeakably stupid. And at the
worst, if more is known or was known, and there is an
effort to conceal the facts, there is a criminal
conspiracy going on.
Certainly, the Bush de facto administration was facing
a confluence of crises from which they were
temporarily rescued by this event. Whether they played
a sinister role or not, there is little doubt that
they have at the very least opportunistically pounced
on this attack to overcome their lack of legitimacy,
to shift the blame for the encroaching recession from
capitalism to the September 11th terror attack, to
legitimize their pre-existing foreign policy agenda,
and to establish and consolidate repressive measures
domestically and silence dissent. In many ways,
September 11th pulled the Bush cookies out of the
fire.
And given them the green light to begin constructing a
long-term scenario within which to establish fascistic
control measures at home and abroad as a citadel for
the ruling class in the catastrophic conjuncture that
we are entering based on the end of oil.
The FBI has defined terrorist groups not by whether
any given group has ever acted as terrorists, but by
their beliefs. Some socialists and anti-globalization
groups have already been identified by name as
terrorist groups, even though there is not a single
shred of evidence that they have ever participated in
any criminal activity. It reminds me of the Smith Act
that was finally declared unconstitutional, but only
after a hell of a lot of people served a hell of a
long time in jail for the crime of thinking.
There is a very real threat right now of creeping
fascism in this country, and that phenomenon requires
its domestic enemies. Historically those enemies have
included leftists, trade unionists, and racially and
nationally oppressed sectors. This whole "state of
emergency" mentality is already being used to quiet
the public discourses of anti-racism, of feminism, of
environmentalism, and of both socialism and anarchism.
And while there is token resistance by officials to
anti-Muslim xenophobia, the stereotypical images have
saturated the media, and the government is already
beginning to openly re-instate racial profiling. It is
only a short step from there to go after other groups.
We have long been prepared by the ideologies of overt
and covert racism, and racism as both institution and
corresponding psychology in the United States is
nearly intractable.
It's for all these reasons, I say emphatically that we
can not accept anything from this administration; not
their policies nor their ******** stories. What they
are doing is very, very dangerous, and the time to
fight back against them, openly, is right now, before
they can consolidate their power and their agenda.
Once they have done that, our job becomes much more difficult.
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