Who was surprised to find Pakistan associated with a “significant terrorist event” in New York? Was anyone surprised that this “car bomb” incident occurred in the same city as the last significant event? Or that news reports promptly featured the Taliban of Pakistan?
Who labeled it a significant terrorist event? A “security analyst” with IntelCenter. Visit the site and remember the old adage: Best Story Wins.
Was this a genuine terrorist event? Or was this an agent provocateur operation meant to freshen up a stale storyline: the Global War on Terrorism?
Remember the “Christmas Day Bomber”? Were you surprised to find that “significant terrorist event” was an Israeli operation? Or have you not yet realized its source? See Christmas Day Crotch Bomber Tied to Israel, FBI
Was anyone surprised at the post-event surge in the market value of firms that produce body-scanning equipment? Or that Israel is an industry leader?
Who was surprised to learn that the industry is represented by the law firm of former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff?
If none of this surprises you, read no further because you already have a grip on reality.
For everyone else, please reflect on the seductive fictions that induced us to invade Iraq. And recall the central role played by mainstream media in that successful deceit.
Facts are only valued by those who value a system of law based on facts.
Yet many of us were seduced to become True Believers in what we now know was phony intelligence that took us to war—based on that phony intelligence.
War By Deception
What are the facts of this latest “significant terrorist event”? Was this just a ruse? We don’t yet know. What we know is this: it fits a pattern of displacing facts with beliefs.
The facts are not the point. From a psy-ops perspective, the point is this: notice the impact of this event on what you believe to be true. Do you now associate Pakistan with Evil Doing?
What other associations came to mind? When you heard about possible Islamic terrorists in New York, did Iran come to mind? Did fear of a nuclear “event” come to mind?
Regardless of the facts, impressions were created along with mental associations, however subtle. Once again the public’s shared mind space was awash with Muslim Evil Doers.
Who better than the “Taliban of Pakistan” to advance the 911 narrative? The Taliban is Evil. Pakistan is Muslim. Therefore….
Did The Clash of Civilizations come to mind? Islamo-fascism? Images of Osama bin Laden?
What better way to sustain the narrative—regardless of the facts—than an “event” in Manhattan? As with the Crotch Bomber, the profile given the incident reinforces the need for a pricey and highly profitable Global War on Terrorism.
Facts are irrelevant. To advance the narrative is the point. Who better to portray as evil than nuclear-armed Pakistan?
We Americans are not known for our fluency in geography. But we know Pakistan is a neighbor of Iran who—we are constantly assured—is a certified Evil Doer and habitual Holocaust Denier with an agenda of nuclear terrorism.
Again, the facts are beside the point. The storyline is everything.
What’s a Storyteller to Do?
What happens when a storyline grows ragged around the edges? As the last Evil Doer narrative played out, we found ourselves watching on television the end of a storyline as Saddam Hussein, a former ally, dropped through a Baghdad gallows at the end of a rope.
While there’s no doubt he was an Evil Doer, he did not do the evil claimed as the rationale for war: Iraqi WMD, ties to Al Qaeda, mobile biological weapons laboratories, yellowcake uranium from Niger and so forth.
None of it was true.
Never mind. Let’s move on. Hit the reset button and gird your groins for the next Evil Doer. Iran would be nice but Pakistan will do in a pinch.
To punish a genuine Evil Doer would require that we hang those who fabricated the intelligence that induced us to war in Iraq on false pretenses.
To indict and prosecute those Evil Doers would also help restore U.S. national security. Dispatching more Americans to kill more Muslims seems unlikely to achieve that goal.
To convict and execute genuine Evil Doers requires that we do what the 911 Commission members implied: open a new investigation. Americans don’t yet know how this significant terrorist event succeeded. Nor do we know by whom it was orchestrated. Or why.
With the storyline going stale, Americans are ready for the real facts to displace the report’s many fictions and glaring omissions—as conceded both by 911 Commission members and senior staff.
Those with a grip on reality will not be surprised if a good faith investigation uncovers the same transnational network of operatives as we found in the Crotch Bomber incident. We may find the same operatives at work in the shadows of this latest event.
All that’s required is a singular commitment: to follow the facts wherever they may lead. What a concept.
This time around our national security team is far more cautious. The White House press secretary aptly framed this latest provocation, conceding the Obama administration is “considering all possibilities regarding the motivation behind the bombing.”
One possibility is that this event was the work of the only nation with the requisite means, motivation and opportunity—plus the stable intelligence network—required to stage events such as the Crotch Bomber attack and others too numerous to list.
That nation is not Pakistan. Nor is it Syria. Nor is Iran a possibility. However, don’t be surprised if someone uncovers an evidentiary trail pointing to Hezbollah and the Evil Doers of Iran. Or Pakistan.
For several analyses chronicling the “how” of such duplicity, see:
What’s Next From Israel – Entropy or Outrage?
When Will Israel Attack the U.S. – Again?
Can the U.S. Beat Israel at their Game?
How Israel Wages War on the U.S.
How Israel Wages War in Plain Sight
How Israel Wages Game Theory Warfare
How the Israel Lobby Took Control of U.S. Foreign Policy
How Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal Endangers Us All
A Common Enemy
VT chief editor Gordon Duff and I traveled to Pakistan in mid-February for ten days of briefings at the invitation of the Pakistani military. My 3-part message was simple:
- Pakistan is being pre-staged as the next in a series of plausible Evil Doers. With traction slipping for an attack on Iran, Pakistan could well be next.
- The U.S. was induced to invade Iraq on false pretenses. Pakistan is bearing much of the cost in blood and treasure.
- We share a common enemy. Please be our friend and remind us who deceived us. Should you encounter any resistance, ask us: what part of this do you not yet understand?
I left behind several dozen copies of Guilt By Association – How Deception and Self Deceit Took America to War.
The invitation was triggered by a 7-part series that first appeared on Opinion-Maker, a Pakistani website where the first analysis generated 25,000 reads in the first 24 hours:What is Israel’s Role in the Destabilization of Pakistan?
Pakistanis did not seem to recall how long ago this guilt-by-association storyline began. Every story must have a beginning, a middle and an end.
This story began no later than October 10, 2001 when, one month after 911, two Israelis were arrested with guns and grenades inside the Mexican Congress. What passports were found on them? Answer: Pakistani.
Had that operation succeeded, would those passports have been left behind? Will an investigation of this latest incident uncover evidence that points to Pakistan?
Just prior to our departure for Lahore, Pakistan was routinely referenced on the front page of our national newspapers. Those reports included a high-profile account of the arrest of five young Muslim students from Virginia who flew to Pakistan, reportedly for training.
Two weeks prior to this latest “significant terrorist event,” Jewish-Zionist commentator Charles Krauthammer ridiculed President Obama for the outcome of a nuclear weapons conference. Portraying the result as “nuke misdirection,” Krauthammer charged that the real concern should be Pakistan and, implied by association, Iran.
Two days prior to this incident, Khalid Khawaja was found dead in Pakistan. The Taliban took credit for the murder of this former Pakistani intelligence agent.
Reportedly he and a colleague were working to strike an accord between the Taliban and the Pakistani military as a means to stop the violence before a massive U.S.-Pakistan assault creates more violence and provokes, in response, more hatred of the U.S.
Preparing the Minds
Such “associative” news accounts typically precede “significant terrorist events.” Those events prepare the public to draw a conclusion announced soon after the event. Just four days after 911, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a Jewish Zionist, argued in a principal’s meeting at Camp David that the U.S. should invade Iraq even though Osama bin Laden was then thought to be the culprit and was hiding in caves in Afghanistan.
Our briefings in Pakistan were conducted largely for senior military leaders, including General Mirza Aslam Beg, former Pakistani Army chief. Included in that meeting was Sultan Amir Tarar (aka Colonel Imam) who has even stronger credibility with the Taliban than Khawaja with whom he was traveling. Colonel Imam’s fate is presently unknown.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Tarar ran CIA-funded camps for fighters resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Among his backers was the late U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson. Among his charges was Mohammad Omar who in the mid-1990s became leader of the Taliban.
Trained in guerrilla tactics as a U.S. Army Ranger at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Tarar was invited to the White House where he was presented a brick from the Berlin Wall by President George H.W. Bush. In recognition of his heroism and his commitment to freedom, the brick signified his role in helping defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan and bring down that wall.
Four days after our return from Pakistan, The New York Times ran a front page article that sought to discredit Colonel Imam by suggesting he was working against U.S. interests by working with the Taliban.
The facts suggest just the opposite: Colonel Imam worked with the Taliban in an attempt to broker a peace that would bring stability to the area—consistent with our interests—while also hastening an early exit of American troops, consistent with U.S. policy.
By derailing that mission, whose interests are advanced? As this analysis is published, it remains unclear whether Colonel Imam is dead or alive.
Nor is it clear who catalyzed this latest “significant terrorist event” that associated the Pakistani Taliban with Evil Doing. In truth, peace requires that we negotiate in good faith with those closest to the situation on the ground in an environment that has long proven a graveyard for foreign invaders.
If not Colonel Imam, who better to broker such a truce with the Taliban? If not, in effect, a U.S. trained Army Ranger with decades of on-the-ground experience, who does the U.S. have that could ease the withdrawal of U.S. troops from this environment?
If not Israel and its surrogates, who had the motivation to create yet another well timed round of impressions hostile to Pakistan? Whose interests are advanced by an event that advances the storyline: the need for a Global War on Terrorism against “Islamo” fascism?
We may yet be surprised when the facts surrounding this incident are clarified. The result, however, is no surprise. To restore U.S. national security requires a reality check. Who are our friends, who are our allies and who—really—is the enemy?
A Vietnam veteran, Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide. He served for seven years as counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.
He is widely published in the trade, popular and academic press. His latest book is Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War.
His previous books include Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street and The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century. Topical commentaries appear on the Criminal State website.
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