Hypnosis

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Excellent reminder Mr. Palast! 
 
I say “reminder” for all who know the real story of 9/11 and the lies given for the initial invasion of Afghanistan—equal to if not exceeding the lies that lead to the incursion into Iraq and the war in Vietnam.  
 
For those still mystified by all this, I recommend Adam Curtis’ three part BBC series, “The Power of Nightmares” (available from Netflix) that sets the real players in their proper places on the geopolitical chessboard. This excellent series not only details the players but also helps understand these middleastern conflicts as bullet points on the Neocon resume. 
 
You may be surprised to learn (as I was) that Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri were NOT the masterminds behind 9/11; That prior to 9/11, the training camps in Afghanistan were not primarily organized and run by terrorists whose goal was to attack the United States; that there was no massive presence of the so-called al Qaeda in Afghanistan; that most of those captured and killed in the push to destroy the terrorists in Afghanistan were not al Qaeda; Afghanistan is, was and never will be a base from which to launch a terrorist jihad against the west; and the most damning accusation of all that Adam Curtis asserts: that bin Laden and al Qaeda are entirely phantom enemies who owe their origins and whatever present mythic power they possess, nearly entirely to Neocon hype. We are presently seeking to destroy the wrong enemy in the wrong place with the wrong tools. 
 
Mr. Palast’s metaphoric title of "Afghanistan Hypnosis" is apt. It is amazing that after all the blood and dying in that part of the world, all the reports of the corruption, drug dealing and atrocities of the Karzi government and their accomplices, the evidence of growing resistance to our war policies, etc, even most liberals blindly accept all these falsehoods about al Qaeda and the war on terror. Look deeply in to Dick Cheney’s eyes. You are getting sleeperier and sleeperier…. 
 
The following are excerpts from the “Power of Nightmares.” I am not releasing this as a full Op-Ed on the main page as I don’t think Shahram would allow such extensive excerpts from a secondary source. Nevertheless, it is important to read it all if you want to get a realistic idea of the massive level of the Neocon deception that dominated and continues to dominate the Amerikan consciousness after 9/11. The material below pretty successfully substantiates the assertions I have alluded to. Better yet, just watch the entire three-part video. It will literally open your eyes—wide. 
 
Peace, 
 
Bob Boldt 
 
 
“By 1998, all their attempts to transform America by creating a moral revolution had failed. Faced with the indifference of the people, the neoconservatives had become marginalized, in both domestic and foreign policy. But with the attacks that were about to hit America, the neoconservatives would at last find the evil enemy that they had been searching for ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And in their reaction to the attacks, the neoconservatives would transform the failing Islamist movement into what would appear to be the grand revolutionary force that Zawahiri had always dreamed of. But much of it would exist only in people’s imaginations. It would be the next phantom enemy. 
 
from The Power of Nightmares Part Two 
 
...and from the concluding program in the series -- Part Three: 
 
“At the end of the 1990s, Osama bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan. He was accompanied by Ayman Zawahiri…For 20 years, Zawahiri had struggled to create revolutions in the Arab world, but all attempt had ended in bloody failure. 
 
Zawahiri and bin Laden began implementing this new strategy in August, 1998. Two huge suicide bombs were detonated outside American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania… had a dramatic effect on the West. For the first time, the name “bin Laden” entered the public consciousness as a terrorist mastermind. 
 
The suicide bombers had been recruited by bin Laden from the Islamist training camps in Afghanistan. The overwhelming majority of the fighters in these camps had nothing at all to do with bin Laden or international terrorism. They were training to fight régimes in their own countries, such as Uzbekistan, Kashmir, and Chechnia. Their aim was to establish Islamist societies in the Western world, and they had no interest in attacking America. Bin Laden helped fund some of the camps, and in return was allowed to look for volunteers for his operations.  
 
Even bin Laden’s displays of strength to the Western media were faked. …bin Laden had no formal organisation—until the Americans invented one for him. 
 
During the investigation of the 1998 bombings, there is a walk-in source, Jamal al-Fadl, who is a Sudanese militant who was with bin Laden in the early 90s, 
 
Jamal al-Fadl was on the run from bin Laden, having stolen money from him. In return for his evidence, the Americans gave him witness protection in America and hundreds of thousands of dollars. 
 
The picture al-Fadl drew for the Americans of bin Laden was of an all-powerful figure at the head of a large terrorist network that had an organised network of control. He also said that bin Laden had given this network a name: “Al Qaeda.” It was a dramatic and powerful picture of bin Laden, but it bore little relationship to the truth. 
 
The reality was that bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri had become the focus of a loose association of disillusioned Islamist militants who were attracted by the new strategy. But there was no organisation. These were militants who mostly planned their own operations and looked to bin Laden for funding and assistance. He was not their commander. There is also no evidence that bin Laden used the term “Al Qaeda” to refer to the name of a group until after September the 11th, when he realized that this was the term the Americans have given it. 
 
The attack on America …was Ayman Zawahiri’s new strategy. But neither he nor bin Laden were the originators of what was called the “Planes Operation.” It was the brainchild of an Islamist militant called Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who came to bin Laden for funding and help in finding volunteers. But in the wake of panic created by the attacks, the politicians reached for the model which had been created by the trial earlier that year: the hijackers were just the tip of a vast, international terrorist network which was called, “Al Qaeda.” 
 
For days, the Americans bombed the mountains of Tora Bora with the most powerful weapons they had. The Northern Alliance had been paid more than a million dollars for their help and information, and now their fighters set off up the mountains to storm bin Laden’s fortress and bring back the Al Qaeda terrorists and their leader. 
 
The Northern Alliance did produce some prisoners they claimed were Al Qaeda fighters, but there was no proof of this, and one rumor was that the Northern Alliance was simply kidnapping anyone who looked remotely like an Arab and selling them to the Americans for yet more money. 
 
But wherever they looked, there was nothing there. Al Qaeda seemed to have completely disappeared. 
 
The terrible truth was that there was nothing there because Al Qaeda as an organisation did not exist. The attacks on America had been planned by a small group that had come together around bin Laden in the late 90s. What united them was an idea: an extreme interpretation of Islamism developed by Ayman Zawahiri. With the American invasion, that group had been destroyed, killed or scattered. What was left was the idea, and the real danger was the way this idea could inspire groups and individuals around the world who had no relationship to each other. In looking for an organisation, the Americans and the British were chasing a phantom enemy and missing the real threat. 
 
From The Power of Nightmares Part Three

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