But this is exactly what the mass media has refused to do. On the contrary, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, many mainstream commentators labeled Black Tuesday as the worst act of terrorism in history.[1] For example, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, head of the U.S. National Commission on Terrorism, declared that “this is a different order of magnitude... This is not only the worst terrorist attack in American history, it is the worst terrorist attack in history, period.”[2]

“Since World War II, the U.S. government has given more than $200 billion in military aid to train, equip, and subsidize more than 2.3 million troops and internal security forces in more than eighty countries, the purpose being not to defend them from outside invasions but to protect ruling oligarchs and multinational corporate investors from the dangers of domestic anti-capitalist insurgency. Among the recipients have been some of the most notorious military autocracies in history, countries that have tortured, killed or otherwise maltreated large numbers of their citizens because of their dissenting political views… U.S. leaders profess a dedication to democracy. Yet over the past five decades, democratically elected reformist governments… were overthrown by pro-capitalist militaries that were funded and aided by the U.S. national security state.”[3]

“For these reasons and many others (such as the initial false certainties about the Oklahoma bombing and the Sudanese medicine factory, and the identification of live innocents as dead terrorists), I think we have some cause to regard the new evidence against Bin Laden with a measure of scepticism… [I]f the West starts chasing the wrong man across the Hindu Kush while the real terrorists are planning their next atrocity, this hardly guarantees our security.” [4]

“It is designed to withstand heat of up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for one hour, salt water for at least 30 days, immersion in a variety of liquids such as jet fuel and lubricants, and an impact of 3,400 G’s. By comparison, astronauts are typically exposed to up to six Gs during a shuttle takeoff.”[5]

Each plane has two separate Black Boxes designed to be indestructible in the event of crashes, which in total means that there were eight Black Boxes – since there were four planes in total used in the attacks on U.S. targets. Yet the FBI is asking us to believe that while all eight Black Boxes were completely and utterly destroyed in the crashes, a mere paper passport survived to be discovered a few blocks away.[6] CNN reported that: “The searchers found several clues, he said, but would not elaborate. Last week, a passport belonging to one of the hijackers was found in the vicinity of Vesey Street, near the World Trade Center. ‘It was a significant piece of evidence for us,’ Mawn said.”[7] “In New York, several blocks from the ruins of the World Trade Center, a passport authorities said belonged to one of the hijackers was discovered a few days ago, according to city Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.”[8] Not only then did a passport survive a plane crash that was allegedly so intense it obliterated the virtually indestructible Black Box, the same passport is also supposed to have flown down a few blocks from the WTC. It is true that due to the sudden shattering of the windows in the WTC, all paper materials in the building were immediately ejected out before incineration. Yet a passport in the pocket of a hijacker sitting within a plane that explodes will naturally undergo the same process as the hijacker and the plane he is sitting in, along with the other passengers: absolute cremation.[9]

This is only one anomaly out of many that have been ignored, leaving the official story accepted uncritically as unquestionable fact, by the vast majority of mainstream media outlets.[10] The timely release of tapes depicting Bin Laden apparently admitting involvement in 9-11, served as a convenient propaganda exercise in buttressing the official narrative, while pushing its inherent incoherence down the memory hole. As usual with government claims in war-time, the mass media simply assumed that the tapes released by the Defense Department were genuine. But there is certainly reasonable room for doubt.

Sean Broughton, director of the London-based production company Smoke and Mirrors and one of Britain’s leading experts on visual effects, has stated that it would be relatively easy for a skilled professional to fake a video of Bin Laden. He admitted that to fool top experts would, however, be difficult, although he added that: “There are perhaps 20 people in America who would be good enough to fool everybody.” Another expert, Bob Crabtree, editor of the magazine Computer Video, has gone further, stating that it was impossible to judge whether or not the video was a fake without more details of its source: “The U.S. seems simply to have asked the world to trust them that it is genuine.”[11] Dr. Peter French, a forensic expert specialising in audio, speech, and language, similarly confirms that using digital technology, “it’s possible to edit or fabricate in ways that completely defy forensic detection.”[12] Canadian foreign correspondent Eric Margolis, who believes that Al-Qaeda was responsible for the 9-11 attacks, nevertheless expresses scepticism with respect to the of authenticity the Bin Laden tape, commenting in the Toronto Sun: “… two other Arabic experts say the tape’s audio quality is so poor that almost nothing bin Laden says on it can be verified…

“To my ears, well accustomed to Arabic, half of bin Laden’s words were inaudible. The translation was sometimes out of sync with the action on screen. Bin Laden’s statements looked cut up and edited. Cynics suggest the tape was a forgery made by Russian intelligence or the U.S. government, with incriminating statements spliced into an otherwise boring exchange of pleasantries between bin Laden and a visiting admirer. This is possible. In 1990, the U.S. used retouched satellite photos to convince the Saudis that Iraq was about to invade - which it was not.”[13]

Indeed, even if one assumes that the tape is genuine, whether it really does provide “smoking gun” proof of Bin Laden’s culpability in the 9-11 attacks is extremely unclear. Richard Thomas, Director of Public Policy at the British law firm Clifford Chance argues that: “The tape which we have so far seen doesn’t actually contain hard evidence that Mr. bin Laden was the person who organized the attacks. He simply talks about his reaction to the attacks as they took place. And again, that wouldn’t be hard evidence that he was the organizing mind behind these dreadful attacks.”[14]

“If Osama bin Laden did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. For the past four years, his name has been invoked whenever a U.S. president has sought to increase the defence budget or wriggle out of arms control treaties. He has been used to justify even President Bush’s missile defence programme, though neither he nor his associates are known to possess anything approaching ballistic missile technology. Now he has become the personification of evil required to launch a crusade for good: the face behind the faceless terror... [H]is usefulness to western governments lies in his power to terrify. When billions of pounds of military spending are at stake, rogue states and terrorist warlords become assets precisely because they are liabilities.”[15]

U.S. officials have spoken of the need to indiscriminately target states where terrorists are suspected to reside or with a record of being implicated in terrorist acts, rather than merely focus specifically on the perpetrators of this particular crime. Speculation by innumerable esteemed personalities including U.S. officials, academics and journalists about the role of Osama Bin Laden and his legendary terror network has also been exploited to fuel a more general anti-Muslim suspicion and hostility. The hysteria harks back to the 1998 bombing of Sudan when the U.S. destroyed a pharmaceutical factory, killing an unknown number of civilians, on the pretext that it was actually one of Bin Laden’s chemical weapons factories. Not long after this event it was revealed that the factory produced essential medicines for the Sudanese people – not to mention much of Africa - and had nothing to do with Bin Laden. The U.S. also blocked an inquiry by the UN into the bombing which would have disclosed the exact number of civilian casualties.[16]

The reaction of the United States speaks volumes about the real nature of the new programme targeting the entire Muslim world. Former spokesman for the U.S. State Department James Rubin outlined the future vision on BBC 2’s Newsnight: “We lead. We go around the world and we make people be counted whether they’re on our side, or on the side of the terrorists.”[17] The U.S. solution it seems is to categorise “people” around the world into two types: those who support U.S. and Western terrorism around the world whether they know it or not and who are thus “on our side”; and those who do not, who will inevitably be labeled those “on the side of the terrorists”. And accordingly those who are not “on our side” will be targeted indiscriminately. This simplistic division of the world into “us” and “them” – firstly, the crusaders against terrorism and secondly, the terrorists themselves – collectively demonises all those who do not support American foreign policy in the post-9-11 period and reduces them to an alien “otherness” who must be indiscriminately destroyed. This U.S. government attempt at legitimisation of a policy with unnervingly fascist – if not genocidal – overtones, has been widely parroted by the mass media.

For example, on the same day as the WTC and Pentagon terrorist attacks, a former U.S. Secretary of State was paraded on CNN, advocating that the U.S. adopt the very same policy of terrorism utilised by the 9-11 terrorists: “There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them even if they are not immediately directly involved in this thing.”[18]

The next day, the New York Post echoed CNN’s sentiments: “The response to this unimaginable 21st-century Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift - kill the bastards. A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them if you have to. As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts.”[19] The Post was in agreement with the New York Daily News, which was even more detailed in advocating the same fanatical terrorist strategy pursued by Al-Qaeda: “This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack.... We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”[20]

And the day after that, the public continued to be whipped into a frenzy of bloodlust by the National Review: “America roused to a righteous anger has always been a force for good. States that have been supporting if not Osama bin Laden, people like him need to feel pain. If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution.”[21] Bill O’Reilly on FOX News Channel concurred:

O’Reilly: “Doesn’t make any difference.”[22]

“If war aims are stated, which seem to be concerned solely with Anglo-American imperialism, they will offer little to people in the rest of the world... Such aims would also strengthen the most reactionary elements in the United States and the British Empire. The interests of other peoples should be stressed, not only those of Europe, but also of Asia, Africa and Latin America. This would have a better propaganda effect.”[23]

Today, this effect is achieved through dressing up military operations either as humanitarian interventions or as a war for self-defence. The maintenance of insanely high levels of military spending, in order to support the unlimited militarisation of U.S. foreign policy, has thus entailed the manufacturing of new threats by which to justify such spending. In the current world order, the Soviet/Communist “threat” has become defunct. One of the major new ideological constructions being highlighted as an alleged threat to national security, and thus being utilised as a pretext on which to maintain massive investment in the military, is ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. This phenomenon can be found within the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe.[24] The current crisis has permitted the U.S. to exaggerate the alleged threat of “Islamic terrorism” beyond all proportion to suit its drive towards military escalation to secure strategic and economic interests. Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, Francis Boyle, comments:

“According to the facts in the public record so far, this was not an act of war and NATO Article 5 does not apply. President Bush has automatically escalated this national tragedy into something it is not in order to justify a massive military attack abroad and an apparent crackdown on civil liberties at home. We see shades of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which the Johnson administration used to provide dubious legal cover for massive escalation of the Vietnam War.”[25]

It is no coincidence that the Middle East and Central Asia together hold over two-thirds of the world’s reserves of oil and natural gas. After Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq are respectively the second and third largest oil-producers in the region. Both Iran and Iraq, in accordance with their local interests, are fundamentally opposed to the U.S. drive to secure unimpeded access to regional resources. The former, for instance, has been attempting to secure its own interests in Afghanistan and Central Asia, thus coming into direct conflict with regional U.S. interests, whereas the latter has for a decade now been tolerated only because the U.S. has been unable to replace Saddam Hussein’s regime with a viable alternative.[26] In light of the results of the apparently successful ‘test case’ provided by the war on Afghanistan – which has opened up Central Asian resources to U.S. corporate clutches - the U.S. seems intent on attempting a replay in Iraq by eliminating Saddam, and enlisting the opposition to establish a compliant new regime. Similar plans may be in the pipeline for Iran. As for North Korea, this country borders China, and is thus strategically located in terms of longstanding U.S. policy planning. China has long been viewed by U.S. policy planners as its principal rival in north and east Asia. The military network being installed by the United States in the wake of 11^th September systematically encircles China—Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, and now Korea.

The Guardian has also commented on these developments and their military-strategic context: “Every twist in the war on terrorism seems to leave a new Pentagon outpost in the Asia-Pacific region, from the former USSR to the Philippines. One of the lasting consequences of the war could be what amounts to a military encirclement of China.” In explanation, the London daily cites the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review warning of the danger that “a military competitor with a formidable resource base will emerge in the region.” The journal recommended a U.S. policy that “places a premium on securing additional access and infrastructure agreements.”[27] The expansion of the misnamed ‘war on terror’ is thus specifically tailored to target regions of strategic and economic interest to the United States, and thus to consolidate unrivalled U.S. hegemony in these regions – many of which are predominantly Muslim.

“Now that the Cold War is becoming a memory, America’s foreign policy establishment has begun searching for new enemies. Possible new villains include ‘instability’ in Europe - ranging from German resurgence to new Russian imperialism - the ‘vanishing’ ozone layer, nuclear proliferation, and narcoterrorism. Topping the list of potential new global bogeymen, however, are the Yellow Peril, the alleged threat to American economic security emanating from East Asia, and the so-called Green Peril (green is the color of Islam). That peril is symbolized by the Middle Eastern Moslem fundamentalist - the ‘Fundie’, to use a term coined by The Economist.”[28]

Thus, according to Amos Perlmutter in the Washington Post, “Islamic fundamentalism is an aggressive revolutionary movement as militant and violent as the Bolshevik, Fascist and Nazi movements of the past”. It is “authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-secular” and by its inherent nature cannot be reconciled with the “Christian-secular universe”. Its goal is the establishment of a “totalitarian Islamic state” in the Middle East. Thus, the U.S. should ensure that the movement is “stifled at birth”.[29] The rise of Islamic movements throughout countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia are contributing to an elitist “urge to identify Islam as an inherently anti-democratic force that is America’s new global enemy now that the Cold War is over”, writes Jim Hoagland in the same newspaper.[30] According to the Washington Times, the rise of political Islam, unless quelled with appropriate Western policy, will lead “the Middle East and the once Soviet Central Asian republics [to] become in a few years the cultural and political dependencies of the most expansionist militarized regime in the world today, a regime for which terrorism is the governing norm.”[31]

These essentially fascist views stem ultimately from the official perspective of the Western political establishment. In 1995, then Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Willy Claes, described Islam as “at least as dangerous as communism was.” He added that: “NATO is much more than a military alliance. It has committed itself to defending basic principles of civilization that bind North American and Western Europe.”[32] Indeed, numerous think-tank studies have purported to analyse the ‘Islamic threat’ to a U.S.-dominated global order, concluding that it has now become a genuine Western foreign policy issue. Since the 1990s, U.S. Congress has conducted a series of hearings on the subject.[33]

“The U.S. identifies all political activities that mobilize using Islamic symbols as ‘terrorism’ aimed at undermining Washington’s grand strategy in the Middle East… U.S. policymakers continue to use ‘Islamic terror’ as the replacement for ‘the communist menace’ or the ‘evil empire’, as the ideological enemy against which all U.S. policy should be aimed. The U.S. is still thinking in state-based, cold war terms”.[34]

Thus in 1999, Islamic fundamentalism was explicitly pinpointed by the United States as a new threat. Other potential enemies include rogue states and nuclear outlaws. The manufacturing of these new threats in place of the now obsolete Soviet Union justifed a $124 billion increase in military spending over seven years, jeopardising much needed investment within the U.S. on domestic issues such as education, social security, medicare and programmes for the poor. As U.S. news commentator Enver Masud, Chairman of the Washington-based Wisdom Fund, observes: “Anxious to protect cold war levels of defense spending, the Pentagon manufactured the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, rogue states and nuclear outlaws.”[35] In a June 2000 report to Congress, L. Paul Bremmer III, Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism, stated that the threat of terrorism to the U.S. “is becoming more deadly”. The commission, established in the aftermath of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, includes a majority of Muslim countries in its list of countries allegedly sponsoring terrorism, especially Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Sudan - as well as Cuba and North Korea.[36]

There is an important context to the sudden discovery of such grave enemies to the United States. U.S. arms trade expert and Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute William Hartung points out that the massive injections of public funds into military spending are not a result of genuine threats to U.S. security, but rather because “the arms industry has launched a concerted lobbying campaign aimed at increasing military spending and arms exports… These initiatives are driven by profit and pork barrel politics, not by the objective assessment of how to best defend the United States in a post-cold war period.”[37]

It should be noted that during this period, while U.S. military spending rocketed steadily on the pretext of the necessity of defending the nation against international terrorism, acts of terrorism against the U.S. were in fact on the decrease since the beginning of the 1990s. In particular, the number of terrorist attacks perpetrated by Muslims against the U.S. has also decreased – and are minute compared to the number of terrorist attacks committed by other national, ethnic and religious groups.[38]

The new threat of ‘Islamic terror’ exemplified in the September 11^th attacks thus plays a particularly important role within world order, permitting the United States to justify strategies by which to enforce U.S. hegemony within the Middle East, as well as in Africa and Asia. The major reason that Western institutions have taken it upon themselves to subtly demonise Islam in this respect, is inseparable from the structure of the global politico-economic order - in fact it is a logical consequence of that order and its relations to the Muslim people throughout the world.[39]

Thanks to the efforts of media and academic commentators, it is commonly believed that there exists a vast, and in many ways unbridgeable, Islam-West divide, in which Islam at some significant level constitutes a fundamental danger to Western civilisation. Harvard political scientist Professor Samuel Huntington is well-known for articulating this belief in the form of an academically acceptable theory of international relations. His ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis is a particularly stark example of how Western academia attempt to justify the concept of an unfathomable Islam-West divide and a new inevitable Cold War with Islam.[40] Tim Hames, a leading politician in the Republican Party who is very close to the Bush administration, claimed only one day after the attacks that Huntington’s thesis was dominating the U.S. political scene.[41] Huntington has most recently presented a crass summary of his already rather crass opinions in an article titled ‘The Age of Muslim Wars’ for Newsweek magazine. The article’s introductory synopsis asserts that:

“Contemporary global politics is the age of Muslim wars. Muslims fight each other and fight non-Muslims far more often than do peoples of other civilizations. Muslim wars have replaced the cold war as the principal form of international conflict. These wars include wars of terrorism, guerrilla wars, civil wars and interstate conflicts. These instances of Muslim violence could congeal into one major clash of civilizations between Islam and the West or between Islam and the Rest.”[42]