America is a Nation with a mission -- and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace -- a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.
~George W. Bush

Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
~George W. Bush

Al Qaeda is still a threat. We cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president, suddenly everything is going to be OK.
~Barack Obama

I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.
~Barack Obama

On August 7, 1990 U.S. military forces touched down in the country of Saudi Arabia to defend against a possible invasion of the country by it’s neighbor Iraq. Iraq, under the leadership of dictator Saddam Hussein, had already captured the country of Kuwait, whom Saudi Arabia and Iraq share an eastern border with, days earlier. The next day Hussein declared Kuwait a province of Iraq and began installing his own government. President George H.W. Bush immediately escalated the U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf  . In a later speech to Congress on September 11, President Bush said he was responding to a massive buildup of Iraqi troops on the Iraq-Kuwait-Saudi border. The Pentagon claimed that satellite photos showing the buildup would confirm this. The photos showed nothing but empty desert.

An organization in Kuwait looking to influence American opinion toward an invasion of Iraq began distributing material detailing atrocities being committed by Iraqi military in Kuwait. Much of it was PR stuff and never proven but there were valid complaints. Several executions of civilians and senseless destruction of homes just for the sake of doing it. Abuses of women, sexual and otherwise, and a total disregard for anything not wearing a uniform. But many here were hesitant to become involved militarily in the region.  The major problem for many though, was the oil. Even if diplomatic compromises were reached, even if the safety of Kuwaiti citizens could be assured, Saddam Hussein could still control Kuwaiti’s oil supply. One of the richest in the world. Couldn’t have it. Both American and Saudi government officials knew the consequences if this occurred.

Bush eventually got the authority he needed and on January 17, 1991 the Gulf War began. It ended rather quickly. Iraq was not the mighty military machine it had been made out to be early on. Iraq was backed by few countries, Yemen being the most prominent. Iraq was also backed by Palestine and this led to a mass expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from Kuwait.  America had assembled one of the most impressive global coalitions since WW 2. Despite some early claims of the overwhelming success of Iraqi SCUD missiles, the “war” lasted about 3 weeks. Allied commanders were admittedly surprised by how easy it was. Iraqi soldiers abandoned Kuwait, many at the first sight of Allied forces. Sometimes the Iraqi forces would hold their ground and put up a prolonged resistance, but most often fled after the first few minutes of an engagement. Iraqi soldiers appeared poorly trained, even among their officer ranks. It also appears that their numbers had been greatly exaggerated both in terms of troops and hardware. Many later questioned whether military intervention was even necessary at all. Many more questioned the need to bomb Iraqi civilian targets. This was not collateral damage. It was an attempt to destroy the basic infrastructure if Iraq. This has never really been fully explained. Severe sanctions and embargoes were then placed on the country, further decimating an already beaten people.

There was a lot of talk about freeing the people of Kuwait and giving them their country back. Kuwait wasn’t a great place for many of the people who lived there. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq all had a history together. Kuwait heavily funded Iraq’s war against Iran and they had several deals with Saudi Arabia and Iraq regarding the oil fields they share. When the Iraq-Iran war was over, Kuwait called in Iraq’s tab with interest. An economic war quickly escalated to a full scale invasion.  Neither of these countries are  a bastion of democracy and  freedom. But, hey, oil. Gotta do what you gotta do.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGD9O0tks_A

With the “war” won, America packed up and left the region. I’m kidding. We built giant military bases and harassed any Arab and Muslim that came within a mile of them. This move was controversial to say the least. Many, many Muslims did not like the idea of U.S. troops stationed on Muslim holy ground. Saudi Arabia is home to the two most important sites in Islam, the cities of Mecca and Medina. The Saudi Royal family was already quite unpopular and many interpreted permanent U.S. presence as a defense of the crown. And we’re not talking about just “extremists”. A majority of Saudis were quite furious with these developments. In 2003, we finally started moving a majority of troops out of Saudi Arabia. But it was far too late for that and many saw it as a slap in the face. The continued anger over “U.S. occupation” in Saudi Arabia became a powerful recruiting tool for terrorist organizations in the region. People in these countries aren’t stupid. They know the West backs any dictator making their life miserable as long as he can make them a fortune in oil profits.

But, before we go on, let’s step back to 1979. In December of that year the Soviet Union deployed combat troops to Afghanistan in a bid to stabilize the country.  Why? Well, funny story. In the decades before all this mess, Afghanistan was a republic. At some points a democratic republic. Some leaders were more conservative than others but progressive policies were often sought by the interior. Afghanistan formed friendly relations with both America and Russia and both countries paid huge bucks to build up Afghanistan. In April of 1978, a military coup gave control of the country to the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, a communist organization. They were obviously not prepared to rule. Though they followed through with many good reforms including more reforms for women, including government participation, and outlawing usury, they were often brutal in their treatment of the “elite class”. Atheism was made state law and religious leaders were dealt with harshly, as well as the “intelligentsia“. The PDPA wanted absolute control of the country. They claimed to be pro poor and pro worker but they were pro PDPA. Russia found them compatible and the governments quickly formed an alliance.

Watching all this was the CIA. And they saw a great opportunity. There was no way America was gonna let Russia buddy up with Afghanistan and work their way toward Arab oil fields. That shit was ours. So, beginning in ’79 we started funding anti-communist forces in Pakistan, the Mujaheddin. Not the best group of guys in the world but they hated commies just like us. So we could work with them. President Carter and the Pentagon formed a plan to pull Russia into the “Afghanistan Trap”. The Mujaheddin may have thought that we were helping them get rid of the PDPA. Actually we had bigger plans. Unbeknownst to Afghanistan, we wanted to lure Russia into a huge costly war in their country. Sure, Afghanistan would be destroyed, set back many decades socially and economically,  but fuck Russia! Oh, and we’re gonna leave the Mujaheddin in charge, whom most Afghanis also hate. Goodbye democracy, goodbye women’s rights, goodbye schools, goodbye roads, goodbye businesses. Fuck Russia!

Stepping into all this mess was  a man named Osama Bin Laden. A name soon to be known worldwide but this is where the story really begins. After leaving college in ’79 Bin Laden went straight to Afghanistan to fight the “invading infidels”. But we’ll come back to that.  Russia most likely never wanted to invade Afghanistan. Why would they?  The governments were friendly, even before communists seized Afghanistan, and Russia had sunk billions into economic and military aid for the country. At the same time revolution was happening in Iran as the Shah was being deposed by Islamic revolutionists. So the CIA was already operating in the area.  Also during this time the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan was kidnapped by Setami Milli militants and subsequently killed during a failed raid by Afghan police and Soviet military. Things were degrading very quickly. America sent a fleet of ships to the Persian Gulf and everyone thought war between America and Iran was imminent. This and American aided peace treaties between Egypt and Israel further fanned the flames of war between America and Russia. Proxy wars of course. No sense destroying the globe all at once when you can do it country by country while making  a profit.

Afghanistan became lost in the mess over Iran. And we kept pissing Russia off. First we stole Iraq from them and then we sold tons of missiles to people they hate. England said, “maybe we shouldn’t sell missiles to these people. They don’t like us either.” And we said, “Shut up England! Do your job!”. When the Mujaheddin began threatening the government in Kabul, the PDPA called on Russia for military support. Russia took the bait and went into Afghanistan to put down the Mujaheddin. President Carter had pledged to support the Mujaheddin and followed through on it. But things really didn’t take a big turn til Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981. Russia was spending itself out of existence and Reagan knew it full well. The nuclear arms race with America had gutted their country. We knew Russia couldn’t keep up with us so we just kept making weapons til they couldn’t do it anymore.  A protracted war in Afghanistan would not make things any easier.

Congressman Tom Hanks… I mean, Charlie Wilson, was instrumental in upping financial support for insurgents in Afghanistan.

   ”The U.S. had nothing whatsoever to do with these people’s decision to fight … but we’ll be damned by history if we let them fight with stones.” ~Charlie Wilson(1984)

This, of course, was not true. We trained them in Pakistan, told them who to shoot, and sent them to Afghanistan. And look, it may seem like it, but I’m not trying to defend Russia here. They were assholes. I  just wanna clear up the reasons why all this happened.  Anyways, Charlie got his CIA funding and the Mujahedin’s firepower increased significantly. Saudi Arabia and England were also big contributors to the war fund. After the “fall” of Iran the U.S. put a renewed interest into driving Russia out of Afghanistan.  A lot of talk about freedom and liberating the people. Russia had to relent. In February of 1989 Russia finally deserted Afghanistan. They had lost thousands of troops and vehicles, including tanks and super expensive Hind helicopters. At the end of the war, Russia had the 2nd largest economy on Earth. The failed invasion resulted in major power shifts in he government and the Soviet GDP fell by more than half. Russia eventually went “bankrupt”.

After the war America had an opportunity to  rebuild Afghanistan, shepherd them through government transitions, and  forge a lasting friendship with the people they wanted to bring “freedom” to. Instead we sold the country to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who raped the country for every resource they could get. Pakistan formed alliances with regional warlords and backed the Taliban’s eventual domination of the state. So, good times. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are old friends. They’re military personnel and governments work very closely together. Most global intelligence agencies are pretty sure that Saudi Arabia is funding Pakistan’s nuclear program in hopes of buying nukes from them in the future.

Saudi Arabia and Iran, no so much. The a fore mentioned Iranian Revolution greatly strained ties between the two countries. Ties that were not very strong to begin with. Both Saudi Arabia and Iran are led by duplicitous, authoritarian governments who fund proxy wars and global terrorist networks. So we had a lot in common with them. After the revolution we, of course, backed Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia was an Islamic theocracy just like Iran but Saudi Arabia favored the Wahhabi school of Islam and Iran did not look kindly on it. Wahhabism got a lot of press in this country following the attacks of 9/11. Since Osama Bin Laden followed Wahhabism, it must be evil. Very little mention of the fact it’s practically the Saudi state religion and he had little choice in the manner. What attracted many young Muslims to Wahhabi teachings was it’s strict adherence to the “old ways” and it’s seeming disdain for authority. Not only did Wahhabists condemn Islamic “spiritual leaders” they criticized priests and rabbis and leaders of other faiths. Al-lah has the only authority and no one on Earth has the means to represent Him or speak with His authority. Many Wahhabi sects felt that no school, even their own, should be considered as an “authority” on scholarly subjects. Just a guide. But rigid ideologies often lead to extremism. It’s the case in almost all religious sects.

Bin Laden was born into a wealthy Saudi family with close ties to the Royal Family. He was a typical  trust fund baby for most of his life. He lived in a strict Wahibbist household but he went to very prestigious schools that boasted the best in “modern”(Westernized) curriculum. He had many different interests during his time in school but most people agree that the majority of his studies were in religion. He was a kind of practicing Wahabbist but he studied many facets of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. During his college years he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and attended many meetings. It was during this time that he became swept up in the supposed jihad in Afghanistan. After leaving school in 1979 he went straight to the front lines against the Soviets. It’s still a point of contention as to whether Bin Laden received the same CIA training most all Mujaheddin did or if he fell straight into he conflict. Either way he quickly became a commanding presence. During his time he met and befriended a man named Hamid Gul. Gul was a Pakistani general working closely with the CIA to train Mujaheddin.

Gul was training foot soldiers for the movement led by Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. Azzam was the spiritual and vocal leader of the Afghani resistance. Bin Laden quickly found a kindred spirit in Azzam and became his prized pupil. Together they set up the Maktab al-Khidamat, or Afghan Intelligence Agency in 1984. Bin Laden was an attractive recruit since he held a vast inherited family fortune. Records say Bin Laden inherited between 25 and 30 million dollars. If you count various holdings and undocumented resources, the number was probably closer to 50 million over all. Quite a chunk of change to bring into a jihad. Most of al-Khidamat’s revenue came from Bin Laden’ s deep pockets. Even though the CIA was training and funding a large number of militants, Azzam wanted “true believers” in his army, not just paid mercs so they began funding and training troops of their own. The groups prospered quickly as money and manpower began pouring in from all over Afghanistan. As the war in Afghanistan entered its final years, discussions began about how al-Khidamat would move forward.

By 1988 Bin Laden had already formed  Al Qaeda  after leaving al-Khidamat. He and Azzam were still friendly but operational conflicts had led Bin Laden to form his own group. Azzam wanted to integrate Arab fighters into the resistance and Bin Laden was in full “holy war” mode and wanted Muslim soldiers only. In 1989 Azzam was assassinated by unknown forces and Bin Laden absorbed the Muslim members of al-Khidamat into Al Qaeda. After the war Bin Laden and his generals returned to Saudi Arabia. To many in the country he was  a conquering hero who had driven out the infidels. American involvement was downplayed and Bin Laden insisted it was Muslim soldiers who had beaten Russia with the strength of Al-Lah.  Bullshit of course, but good bullshit.

After Pakistan took over Afghanistan, America became worried about Pakistan’s nuclear program. Meetings with Saudi Arabia went nowhere so major sanctions were forced on Pakistan further infuriating many in both countries. Bin Laden was gaining much favor with the Saudi royals and was often consulted on military matters. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, bin Laden warned the Royal Family not to enlist Western help. The Qur’an never specifically forbids aid from foreigners but it does condemn non-Muslims spilling the blood of any Muslim on holy land, and U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia would violate several tenets regarding foreign occupation of Muslim Holy Land. Bin Laden saw almost everything in religious terms. He didn’t see Christianity as  a problem so much as those claiming to practice it. Islamic leaders throughout history have had great respect for different religions but a greater allegiance to their own. Bin Laden felt  the West was going to bastardize Islam and Islamic Holy Ground as they had done their own religion.

Worse, he felt that American occupation on Muslim Holy Land would curse Muslims for generations to come. Though he put much blame on the Saudi Royal Family, Bin Laden saw America as the aggressors. Far from just dropping in to help, Bin Laden saw signs of a prolonged American occupation of Saudi Arabia. Men who fought with Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but later put down their arms, all commented in one way or another on Bin Laden’s mental state coming out of Afghanistan. His zealotry had filled him with a resolve bordering on insanity. Everywhere he looked he saw enemies of Islam and appointed himself its champion. Bin Laden already had  a natural charisma and his “heroic” actions in Afghanistan had won him many allies in the Middle East. The fact he was loaded didn’t hurt matter s either. Al Qaeda translates into “The Base” and this is what Bin Laden was forming. A base to launch operations against major targets in Europe and North America. Bin Laden envisioned an organization with centralized leadership but decentralized execution.

Overall direction for Al Qaeda would come from Bin Laden and his leadership team but operational control would mostly fall to the individual cells around the world. They would receive a general idea of what was to be done and it was up to them to execute it in whatever way they could. Which is exactly how the 9/11 attacks played out but we will get to that later. The moment American troops touched down in Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden began his crusade against the West. And it did begin immediately. In November of 1990,  3 months after U.S. troops landed in Afghanistan, New Jersey police raided the home of  suspected Al Qaeda member, El Sayyid Nosair. They found evidence of terrorist plots against New York city involving the destruction of skyscrapers. Apparently he had also been fed military info from a plant at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.   Nosair had been arrested for the murder of Meir Kahane, leader of the Jewish Defense League in New York, 3 days earlier. His trial was described as “bizarre”.

Nosair apparently ignored the court and spent most of the proceedings looking through sketches he had made of Princess Di. I shit you not. The Jersey police turned over a mountain of evidence to the courts detailing Nosair’s involvement in Al Qaeda. Nosair’s defense argued that this was all part of a conspiracy against his client and that Kahane had probably been killed by a disillusioned follower.   The jury, after a short deliberation,  returned with a split decision. The judge in the case was shocked. He reprimanded the jury for their stupid decision and sentenced Nosair to 7- 22 years in prison based on incontrovertible proof. The max he could get away with from the bench. Nosair went to prison and his defense team immediately began appealing the decision. I bring all this up to get to Nosair’s “friend” on the outside, the “blind sheik”,  Omar Abdel-Rahman. Rahman was an al-Qaeda confidant in America. Not exactly a member but a partner in affairs who had been carrying out his own war against the West. Along with Nosair, Rahman had gathered a small but loyal group to carry out major operations in America. The FBI was pretty aware of Rahman’s activities but didn’t know exactly where and how he would strike. Part of the difficulty was the way Rahman’s agents so easily disappeared into the American population making it extremely difficult to track them on a day to day basis.

Meanwhile, overseas, Bin Laden was planting Al-Qaeda cells in Iraq in hopes of either finally forming a business relationship with the government or overthrowing it and installing  a friendlier administration. Very CIA. Contrary to popular belief, Bin Laden was not a huge fan of Saddam Hussein. He viewed Hussein as  a puppet of the West who they would toss aside when the dying began. He was right but, again, we’ll get to that later. Bin Laden was not a fan of the sanctions leveled against Iraq after the Gulf War and that was his motivation for seeking an inroad to the country. Whether Hussein joined him or not seemed to be irrelevant. Bin Laden was more worried about the people and how he could win more recruits from them. He did get several cells up and running in the country  but no formal talks were ever documented between Iraqi and Al Qaeda leadership that even came close to some kind of “partnership”. That doesn’t mean back channel communications weren’t used, it just never really led to anything. It’s a good bet Hussein was paranoid of anyone “setting up shop” inside his borders. Like Sauron, he shares power with no one.

In 1992, Al-Qaeda conducted it’s first documented operation led by Bin Laden. In December of that year they blew up a hotel in Aden, Yemen believing it housed American troops on the way to Somalia. It did not. The blast only killed bystanders. Al Qaeda later released a justification for killing innocents stating that any innocent who dies near the enemy will have their reward in Heaven. Forgetting that no enemies were in that hotel. This was their first attack and the first time Muslim leaders began to question whether it was a good idea to support them or not. Killing their own people was never part of the bargain. The Yemen government released a soft condemnation of the bombing but many in the government supported Bin Laden and his associates, most likely providing the intel and support to bomb the hotel. Yemen has been in an almost constant state of revolution since leaving the Ottoman Empire in 1918. North and south Yemen finally united in 1990 but tensions remained high and many terrorist groups found warm welcomes in the homes of Yemeni government officials. In particular Bin Laden.

Back to the states. After the ’92 bombing in Yemen the United States put Al Qaeda on its radar. President Bill Clinton came in with a strategy to pursue Al Qaeda operatives in America and trace them back to the operational base overseas. A similar strategy was already in place but Clinton upped the funds and manpower considerably after many tense debates with Congress, who still wanted money for their individual pet projects.  To many people in Washington, terrorism was the rest of the world’s problem. Over here in America we were supposedly protected from those things so spending all kinds of money on counter terrorism seemed a waste to most. Most of the counter terrorism Clinton’s team produced were voted down. And sometimes not on party lines.  Many in the Congress wanted nothing to do with it. We would spend  decades overcoming this short sightedness. In 1993 America would receive its “warning shot”. Former “students” of Omar Abdel-Rahman planted a gigantic amount of explosives in the basement garage of the World Trade Center in New York and detonated it.  Over a thousand pounds of explosive material rocked the North Tower.  The plan was to knock over the North tower into the South Tower and bring both crashing down. 6 people, including a pregnant woman, were killed in the blast but the tower remained. Barely. They almost pulled it off. Had the explosives been closer to the central supports, the tower very likely could have toppled over.

So you would assume this would renew Congress’ urgency to address international terrorism.  It really didn’t. Democrats used it as an excuse to fund dozens of projects that had little or nothing to do with national security and Republicans, of course, blamed Clinton for all of it and further demonized his attempts at counter terrorism funding. Clinton had been President for a month, but he immediately set to work to install the counter terrorism measures I mentioned in the last paragraph.  During this time Bin Laden was forming the mission statement Al Qaeda would rally around. First and foremost was his plan to draw western powers, particularly the United States, into long, bloody conflicts in the Middle East. He had stationed himself in Sudan  and ingratiated himself to the people by heavily investing his own money into infrastructure and local business. He also became involved with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, . The EIJ was committed to overthrowing Egyptian President Hasni Mubarak  and installing an Islamic government. Bin Laden’s dealings in Sudan forced King Faud’s hand. Bin Laden was still trashing the Saudi royals publicly and they were tired of hearing about it. In 1994 they put immense pressure on Bin Laden’s family to cut off his sizable stipend and disown him.

By 1995 the EIJ was an arm of Al Qaeda under control of Bin Laden and his leadership council. That year they attempted to assassinate Mubarak and failed quite spectacularly. This was the last straw for many in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden’s visa was revoked and his family completely cut him off.  Bin Laden’s operational mode had to change. He still wanted to fund smaller attacks around the globe but, now on somewhat of a budget, he wanted to land an attack that would put his bigger plans into motion. This is when the ideas that would eventually lead to 9/11 began. In ’96 he was forced back to Afghanistan by constant pressure from KSA(Saudi Arabia), Egypt, and America on Sudan. At this time he met and formed a partnership with Mullah Mohammed Omar, the spiritual and operational leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan. He was also funding cells operating in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Some reports date this activity as far back as 1992. There was  a committed Muslim population in Bosnia and foreign fighters from all over Asia and Europe poured into the country to help combat Serb and Croat forces. When the war finally ended in 1995 Bin Laden still kept informants and operators in country in hopes of fueling a larger conflict that would consume much of Europe. When the Kosovo War of 1999 threatened to relaunch the entire conflict, Bin Laden again moved to back sides he felt would lead to larger conflicts.

But most of his time was spent planning his opus. President Clinton’s counter terrorism team, headed by Richard Clark, were hot on Bin Laden’s heels. Most people believed Bin Laden was moving around in the mountains on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Pakistani government was somewhat committed to capturing Bin Laden but a military coup in 1999 would put the kibosh on a whole lot of plans. When General Pervez Musharraf,   was installed as “president” after a brief, relatively bloodless coup, dealings with Pakistan changed immediately. Efforts to “box in” Bin laden on the border were met with resistance by Pakistani officials concerned with political instability in their own country. Al Qaeda had just enough breathing room to plan and stage their biggest attack yet.  Bin Laden was already a wanted man. Several countries had already issued warrants for his arrest. The 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole moved him onto the top 5 on the FBI’s most wanted list. His next move would make him the most wanted man in the world. An attack so heinous and vile that even old supporters would question his sanity. And the worst part is, we were all warned multiple times before it happened and the government did nothing about it.

The 2000 American presidential race was a historic event and one that would become infamous in this country. Clinton’s extra marital dealings had tarnished the last half of his presidency giving the new Democratic hopeful, Al Gore, an unwelcome  handicap.  Gore was facing Texas moron and governor George W. Bush. Son of slimy CIA chief George H.W. Bush of the Nazi dealing, union busting, war profiteering Bush family. Bush got a legacy bid. After crushing his best competition, John McCain, with an underhanded poll question involving mixed race children(A Karl Rove special) he cakewalked to he Republican nomination. He ran on a platform of “restoring integrity to the White House”. I don’t need to tell you how laughable that is. Bush had run three companies into the ground, escaping each one with stocks in hand just before collapse. What a coincidence.   He then ran one of the dirtiest campaigns ever to win the governorship of Texas where he oversaw the largest decline into debt of any state in American history. So obviously this was  a great resume to become president.  But Americans were fat and happy. That was the end of the millennium. Our biggest collective concern was whether or not the President got a B.J. in the Oval Office.

In 1999, in Afghanistan, Bin Laden was reaquainted with an old “war buddy”, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Both had fought together in the Afghan war but never formed a particularly close relationship. This would change after the two were reintroduced through  a mutual friend. Mohammed took quickly to Bin Laden’s ideas about attacking the United States in a spectacular way. Contrary to what anyone in the Bush administration may have said, ideas about hijacking commercial airliners and using them as weapons was nothing new.  Even the idea to attack the Trade Towers was inspired by Israel’s attacks on similar structures in Lebanon during the 1982 war. In 1998 a man in Turkey attempted to desecrate  the tomb of   a former Turkish president by crashing his plane into it. A document detailing, and explicitly warning against, plans to crash hijacked planes into targets in America was largely ignored by the Bush administration, who later denied it even existed.

George W. Bush’s  controversial “victory” in the 2000 presidential election dominated most news cycles in the first year of his presidency. Richard Clarke, one of few holdovers from the previous White House, was trying urgently to get someone in the Bush White House to hear him out. His team had been tracking Al-Qaeda’s movements for years and were pretty confident they would attempt an attack in America very soon. In his book, Against All Enemies,  Clarke details a meeting in January 2001 with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He attempts to brief Rice on Al-Qaeda and the major threat he felt they posed to national security. He felt the capture or death of Osama Bin Laden should be one of their top priorities going forward.  Not only was Rice unmoved by the briefing, Clarke sensed she had never even heard of Al-Qaeda. Clarke’s anti-terrorism unit was downgraded, pushed to the “basement”. It was a sign that the Bush White House felt terrorism was not much of a priority. Clarke was neutered. Instead of sending briefings directly to the president, they now had to go through several levels of scrutiny by SoS Rice and her staff. Very few if any actually reached Bush’s desk. Again, in April 2001, Clarke strongly suggested that the United States put its focus squarely on Bin Laden. He recommended aiding the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, a proxy military branch of the Afghan government. The NA were already deeply vested in driving out the Taliban, along with Bin Laden, and ending Pakistan’s influence through them.

Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, the “architect of the Iraq Invasion”, stated “”Well, I just don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden.”. Clarke’s team tried to explain that this one very rich man’s organization, Al Qaeda, was planning and executing multiple attacks around the globe. Clarke states that Wolfowitz didn’t buy that this one man was behind all these attacks. But Wolfy has always had his heart set on another man. Saddam Hussein, Iraq, and all that sweet, sweet fucking oil. (Not oil for fucking, just using it as an expletive there) We’ll get to that soon enough. Clarke and others in the intelligence community would spend the next few months desperately trying to get anything they said taken seriously.  In July the damning “Phoenix Memo” was delivered to FBI offices and virtually ignored. Special Agent Kenneth Williams, who authored the memo, requested an immediate inquiry into flight schools around the country for possible terrorist links. He noted that his own office in Arizona had seen an unusual rise in flight school attendance from people of “investigative interest”. His unit leader at FBI headquarters, David Frasca, reportedly barely gave the memo a look. He was later promoted by the Bush Administration after the attacks of 9/11. The lack of attention placed on the “Phoenix Memo” is considered by many to be a key moment in the possible prevention of the 9/11 attacks and an absolute failure of this country’s intelligence agencies.

After the attacks occurred a light was shined on the juvenile infighting that goes on between our intelligence agencies. How the FBI and CIA turn almost everything into a “biggest dick” contest. And how neither was ever very helpful or concerned with the thoughts of local officials. Evidence continued to point toward a very serious attack on America by Al Qaeda. In August of 2011 a daily briefing came across the President Bush’s desk(his desk in Crawford, Texas) entitled, Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US. I think the title says it all. It was not discussed very much after that until spring 2002 when it was leaked to the media. Bush spent most of his time after that on vacation.  I’m sorry, “work vacations”.  He spent a lot of time vacationing during his 8 years. Not too much reading, but a whole lot of golfing. But one story in particular would become almost synonymous with is presidency. Not a great political thriller or historical text. A children’s book entitled ‘The Pet Goat’.

Bush was reading the book to a group of children at a Florida elementary school on September 11, 2001  when he received news that would shape the country’s future for the next decade and beyond. And he sat there for 7 minutes. Then started reading to the kids again. O.K., I get that we don’t want to panic the kids but the excuse given by the Bush team was lame. The country was seriously, ACTUALLY under attack, Pearl Harbor style, and you’re worried what leaving a room abruptly would do to your image? Seriously! This is what one of them said:

   Bush wondered whether he should excuse himself and retreat to the holding room, where he might be able to find out what the hell was going on. But what kind of message would that send—the president abruptly getting up and walking out on a bunch of inner-city second-graders at their moment in the national limelight?

(Quote provided by Wikipedia)

PEOPLE ARE DYING!!! You’re worried about ruining their 30 second piece on the local news???!!!! Anyways, the attack that many had dreaded for years was upon us. And we all know the details. They have been poured over so many times. A brutal day. It’s the aftermath of these attacks that deserves the same if not more scrutiny than the events that led up to it. How a group of power hungry men used  a national tragedy to fuel their own personal agendas and fill their private coffers.

This is really where the story begins and we will get into it in great detail in part 2. Until then I am bringing this section to a close. In Part 2 we will list in gory detail the atrocities committed by the Bush administration, the dismantling of our liberties, most of the world turning against us(England is still our bitch),   and much more back story on all the foreign players involved and how it all came to a head.

On the eve of our final and formal departure from Iraq, the GOP is shouting that the U.S. should have engaged in tougher diplomatic negotiations and insisted we keep a sizable force in-country.

The Obama Administrations has made great strides in acting with one simple idea in mind: Other Nations are Not the U.S. and Will Not Be Better if They Try to Become US.

Afghanistan provides a valuable illustration.

The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001 as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the Afghan United Front (the Northern Alliance) launched Operation Enduring Freedom. The primary drivers of the invasion was the September 11 attacks on the United States, and growing concerns about spreading Al Qaeda operations with the stated goal of dismantling the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization and ending its use of Afghanistan as a base AND Taliban actions involving assassinations of tribal leaders in the North of Afghanistaan coupled with the imposition of a radical minority view of Sha’ria Law.

The goals of the action being taken were clear:

a) From the U.S. perspective, go after and eliminate Al-Qaeda as a threat,
b) From the Northern Alliance point of view, drive the Taliban from power an restore local governance.

But from the first Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et.al. added a goal:
The U.S. would remove the Taliban regime from power and create a viable democratic state.

Northern Alliance leaders while happy for the logistical, intelligence, transport, and intelligence support and for the action by specialized U.S. and British units, made it clear that that goal was not their goal.

By January 1, 2002 the war was over.

With less than 5000 U.S.troops, mostly Special Forces and Rangers, assisting, the much larger Northern Alliance forces, based out of villages and only massing when that would be most effective, the Taliban had been driven from most villages and removed from control in all of the cities. Al Qaeda had abandoned all its operational centers and had fled to the AfPak Border lands. THAT WAR WAS WON. BUT WE WERE ABOUT TO LOSE THE PEACE AND TRIGGER ANOTHER WAR.

Things went awry. Rather than pursuing AQ into Tora Bora and demanding Pakistani help with incursions into the AfPak no man’s land, the U.S. turned to nation building to create a permanent extension of U.S. power into Asia, just as it hoped to do in the upcoming Iraq War.

Following a Loya Jirga or Grand Council of all major Afghan factions, tribal leaders, and former exiles, an interim Afghan government was established in Kabul under Hamid Karzai an ethnic Pashtun of the Popalzai tribe.

The Problem: The Loya Jirga did not reflect the alliance that unseated the Taliban. The Council should have been dominated by the tribal groups of the Northern Alliance who were mostly rural, conservative Muslims and supportive of localized government. Instead the Council was packed with an urban alliance of wealthy individuals, mosly Pashtuns, aligned with the West and not by those who had won the war.

The Northern Alliance with its conservative, but not Taliban, Muslim clerical support wanted a symbolic head of state, favoring a restored monarch, and a small central government controlled by a parliament favoring village representation in Kabul.

In April 2002, while the country was under NATO occupation, Zahir Shah, the exiled king, returned to Afghanistan to open the Loya Jirga, which met in June. After the fall of the Taliban, there were now open calls for a return to the monarchy. Zahir Shah himself let it be known that he would accept whatever responsibility was placed on him by the Grand Council.

However the U.S. refused to consider this option and used its military presence and promised post-war economic relief to pressure him. He was obliged/compelled/forced to publicly step aside at the behest of the United States because of the many delegates prepared to vote for Zahir Shah and block the US-backed Hamid Karzai.

It was because of this U.S. pressure that Zahir Shah now claimed that while he was prepared to become head of state he did not necessarily believe that role to be as monarch: “I will accept the responsibility of head of state if that is what the Loya Jirga demands of me, but I have no intention to restore the monarchy. I do not care about the title of king. The people call me Baba (Father) and I prefer this title.”

He was given the ceremonial title “Father of the Nation” in the current Constitution of Afghanistan symbolizing his role in Afghanistan’s history as a nonpolitical symbol of national unity. He never was consulted or asked to act in any official capacity. The title of the ‘Father of the Nation’ dissolved with his death.

The U.S. had clearly backed those aligned with its own interests which was the urban and Western oriented Pashutuns. As a result the Northern Alliance disengaged from the Karzai-Kabul government declaring it inauthentic and unrepresentative

.

They have only cooperated with limited actions in support of their local priorities but not so-called “national” priorities. The Taliban has renewed its efforts and the U.S. has been pulled into a conflict that the former U.S.S.R. experienced in its own Afghan adventure in state building. I have every confidence that the Northern Alliance will be able to do what it did in 2002 when we leave. It is now well armed and well trained. What they lack is motivation. They will not fight for Karzai.

Despite his complete reliance on the U.S., Karzai is NOT a friend of the U.S. He is a loyal member of the Pashtun aristocracy who supports and is supported by the money that flows in from the West. Like similar regimes in the past, he says what is convenient¬, takes little risk, and always has a well financed escape in mind.

Not surprisingly, he is very disturbed that the U.S. is backing talks with the Northern Alliance AND the Taliban.

This is the Separate Peace he fears.

On October 25, 2001 the Patriot Act sailed through the US Senate with a vote of 98-1.  The lone dissenting vote was from Senator Russ Feingold – D Wisconsin

 In an address given October 12, 2001, to the Associated Press Managing Editors Conference at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Sen. Feingold (D-Wis) explained why he, alone among United States Senators, voted against the Administration-sponsored “U.S.A. Patriot” Act. The text below followed his introductory remarks.

“[T]his conference comes at a tragic time for our country. Let us first pause to remember, through one small story, how September 11^th has irrevocably changed so many lives. In a letter to The Washington Post last Saturday, a man wrote that as he went jogging near the Pentagon, he came across the makeshift memorial built for those who lost their lives there. He slowed to a walk as he took in the sight before him – the red, white and blue flowers covering the structure, and then, off to the side, a second, smaller memorial with a card.

The card read, “ Happy Birthday Mommy. Although you died and are no longer with me, I feel as if I still have you in my life. I think about you every day.”

After reading the card, the man felt as if he were “drowning in the names of dead mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.” The author of this letter shared a moment in his own life that so many of us have had – the moment where televised pictures of the destruction are made painfully real to us. We read a card, or see the anguished face of a grieving loved one, and we suddenly feel the enormity of what has happened to so many American families, and to all of us as a people.

We all also had our own initial reactions, and my first and most powerful emotion was a solemn resolve to stop these terrorists. And that remains my principal reaction to these events. But I also quickly realized that two cautions were necessary and I raised them on the Senate floor within one day of the attacks.

The first caution was that we must continue to respect our Constitution and protect our civil liberties in the wake of the attacks. As the chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, I recognize this is a different world with different technologies, different issues, and different threats. Yet we must examine every item that is proposed in response to these events to be sure we are not rewarding these terrorists and weakening ourselves by giving up the cherished freedoms that they seek to destroy.

The second caution I issued was a warning against the mistreatment of Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, South Asians, or others in this country. Already, one day after the attacks, we were hearing news reports that misguided anger against people of these backgrounds had led to harassment, violence, and even death.

I suppose I was reacting instinctively to the unfolding events in the spirit of the Irish statesman John Philpot Curran, who said: “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.”

During those first few hours after the attacks, I kept remembering a sentence from a case I had studied in law school. Not surprisingly, I didn’t remember which case it was, who wrote the opinion, or what it was about, but I did remember these words: “While the Constitution protects against invasions of individual rights, it is not a suicide pact.” I took these words as a challenge to my concerns about civil liberties at such a momentous time in our history; that we must be careful to not take civil liberties so literally that we allow ourselves to be destroyed.

But upon reviewing the case itself, Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, I found that Justice Arthur Goldberg had made this statement but then ruled in favor of the civil liberties position in the case, which was about draft evasion. He elaborated:

“It is fundamental that the great powers of Congress to conduct war and to regulate the Nation’s foreign relations are subject to the constitutional requirements of due process. The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with fundamental constitutional guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit governmental action. “The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances…. In no other way can we transmit to posterity unimpaired the blessings of liberty, consecrated by the sacrifices of the Revolution.”

I have approached the events of the past month and my role in proposing and reviewing legislation relating to it in this spirit.

And so we must redouble our vigilance. We must redouble our vigilance to ensure our security and to prevent further acts of terror. But we must also redouble our vigilance to preserve our values and the basic rights that make us who we are.

The Founders who wrote our Constitution and Bill of Rights exercised that vigilance even though they had recently fought and won the Revolutionary War. They did not live in comfortable and easy times of hypothetical enemies. They wrote a Constitution of limited powers and an explicit Bill of Rights to protect liberty in times of war, as well as in times of peace.

There have been periods in our nation’s history when civil liberties have taken a back seat to what appeared at the time to be the legitimate exigencies of war. Our national consciousness still bears the stain and the scars of those events: The Alien and Sedition Acts, the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the internment of Japanese-Americans, German-Americans, and Italian-Americans during World War II, the blacklisting of supposed communist sympathizers during the McCarthy era, and the surveillance and harassment of antiwar protesters, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., during the Vietnam War. We must not allow these pieces of our past to become prologue.

As this morning’s panel has discussed, even in our great land, wartime has sometimes brought us the greatest tests of our Bill of Rights.

For example, during the Civil War, the government arrested some 13,000 civilians, implementing a system akin to martial law. President Lincoln issued a proclamation ordering the arrest and military trial of any persons “discouraging volunteer enlistments, [or] resisting militia drafts.” Wisconsin provided one of the first challenges of this order. Draft protests rose up in Milwaukee and Sheboygan. And an anti-draft riot broke out among Germans and Luxembourgers in Port Washington. When the government arrested one of the leaders of the riot, his attorney sought a writ of habeas corpus. His military captors said that the President had abolished the writ. The Wisconsin Supreme Court was among the first to rule that the President had exceeded his authority.

In 1917, the Postmaster General revoked the mailing privileges of the newspaper the Milwaukee Leader because he felt that some of its articles impeded the war effort and the draft. Articles called the President an aristocrat and called the draft oppressive. Over dissents by Justices Brandeis and Holmes, the Supreme Court upheld the action.

During World War II, President Roosevelt signed orders to incarcerate more than 110,000 people of Japanese origin, as well as some roughly 11,000 of German origin and 3,000 of Italian origin.

Earlier this year, I introduced legislation to set up a commission to review the wartime treatment of Germans, Italians, and other Europeans during that period. That bill came out of heartfelt meetings in which constituents told me their stories. They were German-Americans, who came to me with some trepidation. They had waited fifty years to raise the issue with a member of Congress. They did not want compensation. They came to me with some uneasiness. But they had seen the government’s commission on the wartime internment of people of Japanese origin, and they wanted their story to be told, and an official acknowledgment as well.

Now some may say, indeed we may hope, that we have come a long way since the those days of infringements on civil liberties. But there is ample reason for concern. I have been troubled in the past month by the potential loss of commitment to traditional civil liberties.

As it seeks to combat terrorism, the Justice Department is making extraordinary use of its power to arrest and detain individuals, jailing hundreds of people on immigration violations and arresting more than a dozen “material witnesses” not charged with any crime. Although the government has used these authorities before, it has not done so on such a broad scale. Judging from government announcements, the government has not brought any criminal charges related to the attacks with regard to the overwhelming majority of these detainees.

For example, the FBI arrested as a material witness the San Antonio radiologist Albader Al-Hazmi, who has a name like two of the hijackers, and who tried to book a flight to San Diego for a medical conference. According to his lawyer, the government held Al-Hazmi incommunicado after his arrest, and it took six days for lawyers to get access to him. After the FBI released him, his lawyer said, “This is a good lesson about how frail our processes are. It’s how we treat people in difficult times like these that is the true test of the democracy and civil liberties that we brag so much about throughout the world.”

Now, it so happens that since early 1999, I have been working on another bill that is poignantly relevant to recent events: legislation to prohibit racial profiling, especially the practice of targeting pedestrians or drivers for stops and searches based on the color of their skin. Before September 11^th, people spoke of the issue mostly in the context of African-Americans and Latino-Americans who had been profiled. But after September 11, the issue has taken on a new context and a new urgency.

Even as America addresses the demanding security challenges before us, we must strive mightily also to guard our values and basic rights. We must guard against racism and ethnic discrimination against people of Arab and South Asian origin and those who are Muslim.

We who don’t have Arabic names or don’t wear turbans or headscarves may not feel the weight of these times as much as Americans from the Middle East and South Asia do. But as the great jurist Learned Hand said in a speech in New York’s Central Park during World War II: “[T]he spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias . . . .”

Was it not at least partially bias, however, when passengers on a Northwest Airlines flight in Minneapolis three weeks ago insisted that Northwest remove from the plane three Arab men who had cleared security?

Of course, given the enormous anxiety and fears generated by the events of September 11^th, it would not have been difficult to anticipate some of these reactions, both by our government and some of our people. And, of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists.

But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. That would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America.

Preserving our freedom is the reason that we are now engaged in this new war on terrorism. We will lose that war without firing a shot if we sacrifice the liberties of the American people.

That is why I found the antiterrorism bill originally proposed by Attorney General Ashcroft and President Bush to be troubling.

The proposed bill contained vast new powers for law enforcement, some seemingly drafted in haste and others that came from the FBI’s wish list that Congress has rejected in the past. You may remember that the Attorney General announced his intention to introduce a bill shortly after the September 11 attacks. He provided the text of the bill the following Wednesday, and urged Congress to enact it by the end of the week. That was plainly impossible, but the pressure to move on this bill quickly, without deliberation and debate, has been relentless ever since.

It is one thing to shortcut the legislative process in order to get federal financial aid to the cities hit by terrorism. We did that, and no one complained that we moved too quickly. It is quite another to press for the enactment of sweeping new powers for law enforcement that directly affect the civil liberties of the American people without due deliberation by the peoples’ elected representatives.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed at least to some extent, and while this bill has been on a fast track, there has been time to make some changes and reach agreement on a bill that is less objectionable than the bill that the Administration originally proposed.

As I will discuss in a moment, I concluded that the Senate bill still does not strike the right balance between empowering law enforcement and protecting civil liberties. But that does not mean that I oppose everything in the bill. Indeed many of its provisions are entirely reasonable, and I hope they will help law enforcement more effectively counter the threat of terrorism.

For example, it is entirely appropriate that with a warrant the FBI be able to seize voice mail messages as well as tap a phone. It is also reasonable, even necessary, to update the federal criminal offense relating to possession and use of biological weapons. It made sense to make sure that phone conversations carried over cables would not have more protection from surveillance than conversations carried over phone lines. And it made sense to stiffen penalties and lengthen or eliminate statutes of limitation for certain terrorist crimes.

There are other non-controversial provisions in the bill which I support – those to assist the victims of crime, to streamline the application process for public safety officers benefits and increase those benefits, to provide more funds to strengthen immigration controls at our Northern borders, expedite the hiring of translators at the FBI, and many others.

In the end, however, my focus on this bill, as Chair of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate, was on those provisions that implicate our constitutional freedoms. And it was in reviewing those provisions that I came to feel that the Administration’s demand for haste was inappropriate; indeed, it was dangerous. Our process in the Senate, as truncated as it was, did lead to the elimination or significant rewriting of a number of audacious proposals that I and many other members found objectionable.

For example, the original Administration proposal that was dropped contained a provision that would have allowed the use in U.S. criminal proceedings against U.S. citizens of information obtained by foreign law enforcement agencies in wiretaps that would be illegal in this country. In other words, evidence obtained in an unconstitutional search overseas was to be allowed in a U.S. court.

Another provision would have broadened the criminal forfeiture laws to permit – prior to conviction – the freezing of assets entirely unrelated to an alleged crime. The Justice Department has wanted this authority for years, and Congress has never been willing to give it. For one thing, it touches on the right to counsel, since assets that are frozen cannot be used to pay a lawyer. The courts have almost uniformly rejected efforts to restrain assets before conviction unless they are assets gained in the alleged criminal enterprise. This proposal, in my view, was simply an effort on the part of the Department to take advantage of the emergency situation and get something that they’ve wanted to get for a long time.

The foreign wiretap and criminal forfeiture provisions were dropped from the bill that we considered in the Senate. Other provisions were rewritten based on objections that I and others raised about them. For example, the original bill contained sweeping permission for the Attorney General to get copies of educational records without a court order. The final bill in the Senate requires a court order and the certification by the Attorney General that he has reason to believe that the records contain information that is relevant to an investigation of terrorism.

Another provision increased penalties for conspiracy to the level of the penalties for the underlying crime. I was concerned that this might bring the federal death penalty into play for conspiracy. The provision was modified to make life in prison the maximum penalty for conspiracy.

And the definition of “federal terrorism offense,” originally a laundry list of federal crimes that in some instances might, but in most instances would not, relate to terrorism was significantly narrowed.

So the bill the Senate passed last night was certainly improved from the bill that the Administration sent to us on September 19, and wanted us to pass on September 21. But again, in my judgement, it did not strike the right balance between empowering law enforcement and protecting constitutional freedoms. Let me take a moment to discuss some of the shortcomings of the bill that we passed in the Senate very late Thursday night, by a vote of 96-1. And I guess you know by now who the “one” was.

First, the bill contains some very significant changes in criminal procedure that will apply to every federal criminal investigation in this country, not just those involving terrorism. One provision would greatly expand the circumstances in which law enforcement agencies can search homes and offices without notifying the owner prior to the search. The longstanding practice under the Fourth Amendment of serving a warrant prior to executing a search could be easily avoided in virtually every case because the government would simply have to show that it has “reasonable cause to believe” that providing notice “may” “seriously jeopardize an investigation.” This is a significant infringement on personal liberty.

Notice is a key element of Fourth Amendment protections. It allows a person to point out mistakes in a warrant and make sure that a search is limited to the terms of a warrant. Just think about the possibility of the police showing up at your door with a warrant to search your house. You look at the warrant and say, “yes, that’s my address, but the name on the warrant isn’t me.” And the police realize a mistake has been made an go away. If you’re not home, and the police have received permission to do a “sneak and peak” search, they can come in your house, look around, and leave, and may never have to tell you.

Another very troubling provision has to do with the effort to combat computer crime. The bill allows law enforcement to monitor a computer with the permission of its owner or operator, without the need to get a warrant or show probable cause. That’s fine in the case of a so called “denial of service attack” or plain old computer hacking. A computer owner should be able to give the police permission to monitor communications coming from what amounts to a trespasser on the computer.

As drafted in the Senate bill, however, the provision might permit an employer to give permission to the police to monitor the emails of an employee who has used her computer at work to shop for Christmas gifts. Or someone who uses a computer at a library or at school and happens to go to a gambling or pornography site in violation of the Internet use policies of the library or the university might also be subjected to government surveillance – without probable cause and without any time limit.

I am also very troubled by the broad expansion of government power under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA. When Congress passed FISA in 1978 it granted to the executive branch the power to conduct surveillance in foreign intelligence investigations without meeting the rigorous probable cause standard under the Fourth Amendment that is required for criminal investigations. There is a lower threshold for obtaining a wiretap order from the FISA court because the FBIis not investigating a crime, it is investigating foreign intelligence activities. The law currently requires that intelligence gathering be the primary purpose of the investigation in order for this lower standard to apply.

The bill that passed the Senate last night changes that requirement. If it becomes law, and there is every reason to believe with a Senate vote of 96-1 that it will, the government will only have to show that intelligence is a “significant purpose” of the investigation. Even if the primary purpose is a criminal investigation, the heightened protections of the Fourth Amendment won’t apply.

It seems obvious that with this lower standard, the FBI will try to use FISA as much as it can. And of course, with terrorism investigations that won’t be difficult because the terrorists are apparently sponsored or at least supported by foreign governments.

But the significance of the breakdown of the distinction between intelligence and criminal investigations becomes apparent when you see the other expansions of government power under FISA in this bill. One provision that troubles me a great deal is a provision that permits the government under FISA to compel the production of records from any business regarding any person if that information is sought in connection with an investigation of terrorism or espionage.

Now we’re not talking here about travel records pertaining to a terrorist suspect, which we all can see can be highly relevant to an investigation of a terrorist plot. FISA already gives the FBI the power to get airline, train, hotel, car rental and other records of a suspect.

But under the Senate bill, the government can compel the disclosure of anyone – perhaps someone who worked with, or lived next door to, or went to school with, or sat on an airplane with, or has been seen in the company of, or whose phone number was called by the target of the investigation.

And under this new provisions all business records can be compelled, including those containing sensitive personal information like medical records from hospitals or doctors, or educational records, or records of what books someone has taken out of the library. This is an enormous expansion of authority, under a law that provides only minimal judicial supervision.

Under this provision, the government can apparently go on a fishing expedition and collect information on virtually anyone. All it has to allege in order to get an order for these records from the court is that the information is sought for an investigation of international terrorism or clandestine intelligence gathering. That’s it. On that minimal showing in an ex parte application to a secret court, with no showing even that the information is relevant to the investigation, the government can lawfully compel a doctor or hospital to release medical records, or a library to release circulation records. This is a truly breathtaking expansion of police power.

As some of you know, I raised a few of these issues during our debate on the bill on Thursday night. I had to wage war with my own leadership over the previous two days to get that opportunity. The leadership of both parties wanted to take this bill, which was never considered or voted on in the Judiciary Committee, and ram it through the U.S. Senate without a single amendment being offered.

In the end, the high water mark for my three amendments was 13 votes – that was on the amendment to the computer trespass provision. Prior to that vote the majority leader of the Senate stood up and implored the Senate to vote down all of my amendments, not on their merits, but because a deal had been struck on this bill.

This was not, in my view, the finest hour for the United States Senate. The debate on a bill that may have the most far reaching consequences on the civil liberties of the American people in a generation was a non-debate. The merits took a back seat to the deal.

Let me turn to a final area of real concern about this legislation because I think it brings us full circle to the cautions I expressed on the day after the attacks. There are two very troubling provisions dealing with our immigration laws in this bill.

First, the Administration’s original proposal would have granted the Attorney General extraordinary powers to detain immigrants indefinitely, including legal permanent residents. The Attorney General could do so based on mere suspicion that the person is engaged in terrorism. I believe the Administration was really over-reaching here, and I am pleased that Senator Leahy was able to negotiate some protections. The Senate bill now requires the Attorney General to charge the immigrant within seven days with a criminal offense or immigration violation. In the event that the Attorney General does not charge the immigrant, the immigrant must be released.

While this protection is an improvement, the provision remains fundamentally flawed. The Senate bill, even with this seven-day charging requirement, would nevertheless continue to permit the indefinite detention in two situations. First, immigrants who win their deportation cases could continue to be held if the Attorney General continues to have suspicions. Second, this provision creates a deep unfairness to immigrants who are found not to be deportable for terrorism but have an immigration status violation, such as overstaying a visa. If the immigration judge finds that they are eligible for relief from deportation, and therefore can stay in the country because, for example, they have longstanding family ties here, the Attorney General could continue to hold them indefinitely.

The second provision in the bill that deeply troubles me allows the detention and deportation of people engaging in innocent associational activity. But the Senate bill would allow for the detention and deportation of individuals who provide lawful assistance to groups that are not even designated by the Secretary of State as terrorist organizations, but instead have engaged in vaguely defined “terrorist activity” sometime in the past. To avoid deportation, the immigrant is required to prove a negative: that he or she did not know, and should not have known, that the assistance would further terrorist activity.

This language creates a very real risk that truly innocent individuals could be deported for innocent associations with humanitarian or political groups that the government later chooses to regard as terrorist organizations. Groups that might fit this definition could include Operation Rescue, Greenpeace, and even the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban in northern Afghanistan. This provision amounts to “guilt by association,” which I believe violates the First Amendment.

And speaking of the First Amendment, under this bill, a lawful permanent resident who makes a controversial speech that the government deems to be supportive of terrorism might be barred from returning to his or her family after taking a trip abroad.

Now here’s where my cautions in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks and my concern over the reach of the anti-terrorism bill come together. To the extent that the expansive new immigration powers that the bill grants to the Attorney General are subject to abuse, who do we think is most likely to bear the brunt of that abuse? It won’t be immigrants from Ireland, it won’t be immigrants from El Salvador or Nicaragua, it won’t even be immigrants from Haiti or Africa. It will be immigrants from Arab, Muslim, and South Asian countries. In the wake of these terrible events, our government has been given vast new powers and they may fall most heavily on a minority of our population who already feel particularly acutely the pain of this disaster.

The anti-terrorism bill that we considered in the Senate this week highlights the march of technology, and how that march cuts both for and against personal liberty. Justice Brandeis foresaw some of the future in a 1928 dissent, when he wrote:

“The progress of science in furnishing the Government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire-tapping. Ways may some day be developed by which the Government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home. . . . Can it be that the Constitution affords no protection against such invasions of individual security?”

We must grant law enforcement the tools that it needs to stop this terrible threat. But we must give them only those extraordinary tools that they need and that relate specifically to the task at hand.

In the play, “A Man for All Seasons,” Sir Thomas More questions the bounder Roper whether he would level the forest of English laws to punish the Devil. “What would you do?” More asks, “Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?” Roper affirms, “I’d cut down every law in England to do that.” To which More replies:

“And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast . . . and if you cut them down . . . d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake. ”

We must maintain our vigilance to preserve our laws and our basic rights.

You and I have a duty to analyze, to test, to weigh new laws that the zealous and often sincere advocates of security would suggest to us. This is what I have tried to do with the so-called anti-terrorism bill.

Protecting the safety of the American people is a solemn duty of the Congress; we must work tirelessly to prevent more tragedies like the devastating attacks of September 11^th. We must prevent more children from losing their mothers, more wives from losing their husbands, and more firefighters from losing their brave and heroic colleagues. But the Congress will fulfill its duty only when it protects both the American people and the freedoms at the foundation of American society. So let us preserve our heritage of basic rights. Let us practice that liberty. And let us fight to maintain that freedom that we call America.”

Mr. Feingold, thank you for being a Great American.

As the 10th anniversary of Al Qaeda’s 9/11/2001 attack on the U.S. nears, I must confess to a feeling of unease…not about more terrorist attacks but about how the anniversary of this heinous act will be treated.

The first of two unappetizing appetizers to the banquet that’s to come is Dick Cheney’s release of a book that proudly touts the torture, deaths and destruction that he and the Bush administrations wrought in the aftermath of 9/11. He’s appeared to hype the book and brag about his crimes against international law on every cable channel except Animal Planet (which might have been the most appropriate).

The second run up to this anniversary was the National Geographic Channel’s infomercial-like presentation of George W. Bush’s historical revisions of his first reaction to the 9/11 attacks, his eventual responses to it and his surprise that it even happened (how was he supposed to know that a daily briefing titled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US” and described the hijacking of planes wasn’t about Bin Laden collaborating with Unions for better pay?).

Many stations on cable and network tv have one or more 9/11 specials planned. No doubt, many will take viewers back through that horrible day and many of the most tragic and traumatic events that occured.

I am a lover of history and there can be no question about the historic importance of that day and how it changed the course of America. However, there can be a thin line between exploring those events and exploiting the horror of that day just for ratings or other less than altruistic agendas.

The question for each of these alleged tributes is, are they reflecting genuine remembrance and insights or are they just terror porn?

Will they honor the lives of the innocent that were brutally taken that day and those who loved them or will the real focus be the planes crashing into the towers repeatedly, people jumping and those on the streets running in terror from the debris clouds of the collapsing towers?

Do we gain something worthwhile from seeing those disturbing images repeatedly? Is it important that they be refreshed in our minds periodically? For me they seem drug-like, working on parts of the brain such as the fear center. Those images communicate a sense of fear, sorrow, helplessness and vulnerability which the majority in this nation has had more than enough of over the last 10 years.

I’m not for censorship, networks absolutely should be free to show them but I personally have no wish to be immersed in them again, to witness mass murder over and over. The irony is, at the time, I was like many who were glued to the news and watched repeatedly, the planes crashing into the towers and their later collapse. It was surreal, so hard to grasp, bigger than reality had seemed before.

However, now that we have seen these images for 10 years and know the details very well, now that Bin Laden has been killed and Al Qaeda’s on the ropes, it would seem most appropriate that the focus is on the human aspect of that day and moving forward. Reliving or going back to those days is in itself, terrifying (it was amusing how Bush and his Admin kept saying years later how he wished we could go back to those days right after 9/11 when Americans were united…what he clearly was saying was, it was so much easier to get what he wanted passed into law and critics silenced when Americans were all together in being scared shitless and gave him a 90% approval rating just for being President when we were attacked) .

Instead of the spectacle of fear and horror that day provided, I wonder if any of these specials will focus on the firefighters and workers who have contracted cancer and other terrible illnesses…but ten years later still can’t get the government to treat them as the heroes they proclaimed them to be and pay all of their health costs and help their families cope financially? Will we see tributes to those who were lost and will it be thoughtful instead of exploitative?

Will they document how the Bush Administration used the attacks to shove through violations of our Constitutional rights and freedoms, used the multicolor Terrorism Threat Level politically, raising the threat level periodically to whip up support for Bush when it waned (especially before the 2004 election) or how at a press conference, in response to Bill Maher making an irreverent statement about the terrorists, President Bush’s Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer shot a warning to  “all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.”?

I wonder if they’ll document the chill on free speech and speaking out against Bush, describe the journalists, teachers, entertainers and others who were fired or had their careers damaged just for speaking out against Bush. Will they address how the Anthrax Terrorist struck right after the Al Qaeda attack, targeting only Dem lawmakers and the Bush Administration never convincingly identified the party responsible.

How about the duct tape and plastic sheeting we were all feverishly urged by our government to buy, to somehow make our homes chemical and biological weapon proof (even though having an absolutely airtight house would end up suffocating everyone to death instead).

Will there be mention of the aborted TIPS program that would have legally authorized and required any service person entering your home to spy on you (mail carriers, UPS and Fedex, power and telephone companies, cable installers,  even neighbors).  How we were terrorized on almost a daily basis by the Bush Admin that remote controlled model planes, crop dusters and dirty bombs in common suitcases may be used to destroy us? How our airports, stadiums, malls, bridges, reservoirs and trains were all at risk targets?

Will these specials describe how, in response to 9/11, Bush used what he has admitted was already a plan in hand to invade Iraq? How about the 200,000 to 1 million or more Iraqis who were killed by our liberating them? Or all of our servicemen unnecessarily killed and those permanently disabled because of that war of choice that 9/11 was used to justify?

Maybe they’ll cover the witch hunt against people who could be perceived to be Middle Eastern or Muslim, how they were required to turn themselves in for questioning and in some cases, detained for long periods without any rights or lawyer…meanwhile, the Bin Laden family members in the U.S. were allowed to fly out of the country while all the rest of America was grounded?

Will they cover how Halliburton, KBR and others war profiteered off Iraq with the help of Cheney and Bush and even electrocuted our own soldiers to death in faulty showers? How Blackwater/XE killed scores of innocent civilians and were immune to any prosecution for it?

What about how Americans were told by President Bush that the only way for them to patriotically respond to being attacked on 9/11 was to mindlessly go shopping? Or Freedom Fries, anyone? Or how 10 years later we’re just now starting to rebuild in earnest at the site of the World Trade Center?

And all those American flags people had on their cars…what the hell happened to all of them???

Unfortunately, out of laziness, greed for ratings or propagandizing to manipulate the public, it seems likely that the attacks themselves and their immediate aftermath will be what’s most focused on by many in the MSM.

The fallacy is that 9/11 ended. We are still living through 9/11, the fear of Muslims, Middle Eastern people and the rest of the scary world out there (Muslims were demonized for wanting to build a community center in Manhattan, GOP Presidential hopeful Herman Cain announced he would never hire a Muslim in his cabinet and that states should be free to prevent mosques from being built).

We are surrounded by the economic destruction and continued military and civilian deaths Bush began in the wake of 9/11. We continue the practices of rendition and there are scores of people locked up at Guantanamo for 10 years with no charges and few trials being held. The Republican party still strongly supports Islamophobia and boasts an appetite for torture and other violations of international and Constitutional law that 9/11 inspired.

Only if we were to see 9/11 holistically, beginning with the attacks but continuing through the government sponsored hysteria and oppression that followed, the launching and continuance of two wars, the massive economic collapse, the rise of the intolerant and prejudiced Tea Party with their Presidential candidate Rick Perry as a potential nominee of the GOP,  can we grasp the full scope of 9/11 and its impact on the American psyche.  Hopefully, in doing so, we can finally move past it so it truly is history.

9/11 was more than the horrific events that took place that day. It instigated more horrific acts on the part of the U.S. which helped undermine our moral authority in the world and decimated our sense of shared values with our fellow Americans.

We should remember 9/11 for the good people who were lost, the heroic acts of our fellow Americans and how we can come together to help and to heal each other. That day could and should be taken back from Al Qaeda by Americans, as a cause for coming together, however we differ in our opinions on politics.

If we can use the memory of 9/11 for  something constructive instead of re-living horror, fear and helplessness, that is, when we can truly overcome terror, then the terrorists have indeed lost.

It’s been abandoned by the Obama Administration but the Bush Administration used it like Pavlov might have, pressing the button to make the orange light go on whenever they wanted the public to drool in fear.

When Bush made big mistakes, when reports came out criticizing his Administration, when sentiment would turn against the Iraq War, when Bush’s poll ratings declined and his re-election approached, they’d just hit that ol’ orange light and many people would flip from critical thinking and whatever they were focused on to fearful support of Bush as our President.

Since the Republicans have returned to power, the dynamics of fear and hatred naturally appear as the center plank of their platform but the form has changed slightly. Without any seeming hesitsation, they act openly as “terrorists”. This is not hyperbole or merely an insult, witness the following definitions of terrorism:

From Merriam Webster:

“The systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion”

From Dictionary.com:
1. The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.
2. The state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3. A terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

From Princeton.edu:
1. The calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear.
2. The use of extreme fear in order to coerce people (especially for political reasons); “he used terror to make them confess”.
3. A radical who employs terror as a political weapon; usually organizes with other terrorists in small cells; often uses religion as a cover for terrorist activities.

There have been threats of actual physical violence by Tea Partiers and GOP politicians but I would call more attention to the bulk of the definitions that refer to using fear to coerce people. From the threat to shut down government over the budget to the threat to do that AND destroy our economy, the Republican Congress has embarked on a campaign of terror against the American people to squeeze from them the political changes to our democracy and society they otherwise would be prevented from achieving because of opposition by most of America.

Most would recall Jim DeMint’s and Mitch McConnell’s words since Obama was elected president, their laser focus on denying Obama any accomplishments, preventing his attempts to reverse the recession and in any way succeed as President so he could be eliminated after one term. They began as a minority and implemented a policy of just saying “no”, even to their own policies and plans, even to something as inexcusable as providing health compensation after 9 years to the 9/11 first responders. Their ruthlessness in pursuing only their own power over the welfare of Americans has never faltered.

Now with a majority in The House, their opportunity to move from a defensive posture to an offensive one (very offensive indeed) would not escape them. Their campaign in 2010 set the stage for what was ahead. For two years they instilled fear and hatred of the black, Kenyan, socialist, Muslim President. He didn’t just have political views and opinions that they fiercely opposed, he was evil and intended to destroy the country and Americans (especially white ones). He wasn’t just the opposition, he was the Devil.

As was EVERY proposal and EVERY nominee he proposed. Health care reform was about killing Grannies and making America a socialist country like China. Getting rid of DADT was his ploy to destroy our military. Sonia Sotomayor was a  racist (as all minorities seem to be to those Repubs in power who are white).  Even Michele Obama trying to encourage Americans to have healthy kids (with 1/3 of US kids obese now) is a case of the Obamas trying to have government steal freedom from its citizens.

As usual, helping with the rationalizing of all of this is the corporate media which allows any accusation to be presented as simply a different, valid POV, no matter how plainly dishonest  the propaganda is. Yes, the President had to actually respond to the media’s propagation of corporate/GOP propaganda that the ACA did not contain “death panels”, he actually had to deny that America would not murder its elderly citizens as part of its plan to improve health coverage for all. Seriously, that had to be denied and yet many elderly STILL believed it was true and some still do today.

The cynical, terrorist game plan of the GOP includes the same “stop Obama” agenda. As long as the GOP can manufacture one major crisis after another, it blots out attention and energy from accomplishing anything else that Obama and the Dems may wish to focus on. The potency of this fight also energizes their base, resolving it would be detrimental so not only is having a crisis “good” for the GOP but many are anxiously awaiting default on the debt ceiling to destroy “Obama’s economy” and use that crisis to gain even greater power.

It’s hard to find the time and energy to remodel your house when someone keeps setting fire to it. That is essentially the other part of this game, paired with extorting changes to this country that the majority opposes.

People often remark, “Why is it that whether Dems are in the majority or minority, they can’t muscle their agenda forward like Republicans?” The answer may now be a bit more self-apparent, the Republicans’ method of extracting what they want from the public and Democrats comes from a willingness to put a gun at America’s head and pull the trigger.

Only Republicans have shut down our government to get what they want. Only Republicans have refused to raise the debt ceiling, threatening a worldwide economic catastrophe,  in order to blackmail America into giving them what they want.

Republicans in Congress are operating as terrorists. Democrats in Congress are operating as diplomats. This has even caused some Dems to complain, they want to fight fire with fire. All that would do though is burn The House down.

Why is the plain truth of Republican terrorism obscured in the media? Why is that as reasonable a “side” as their “kill Granny” accusation against the ACA? The answer seems two-fold, conflict creates increased viewership and any lull in conflict or crises is bad for viewership and corporate earnings. The other element is that the Repubs’ demands come from and are intended to benefit these very same corporations.

How do you deal with a terrorist? It’s great rhetoric to say, “Don’t make deal with terrorists,” but when all of your relatives and friends, your entire community is being held hostage, rhetoric isn’t very consoling. If you refuse their demands, they could destroy everyone but if you give them what they want, there’s no guarantee they won’t snuff the hostages anyway or take them hostage again because they’ve seen that it works.

What should the Dems and Obama do?

Since this game has become dangerous and corrupt, I think it’s time to kick the game board over and let the pieces fall where they may. President Obama may or may not be on solid legal ground in declaring the debt ceiling unconstitutional or claiming authority to pay bills anyway but he should be prepared to do so at the end of this week if no reasonable deal can be reached.

The result could be a Constitutional crisis, some saying Congress would not have grounds to take Obama to court because they could not show harm to them, others saying they could. If it did go to the SCOTUS, an unfriendly majority may overrule his authority but…the debt ceiling will have been raised, the economy will have a repreive from destruction and the hottest crisis will be about Congress (Republicans in Congress that is) failing to uphold their responsibility to protect America vs. a President who was willing to take the heat for doing what they refused to do. This crisis is the discussion we should be having and it is one that Obama is likely to win.

The public wants this resolved, they don’t want another economic crash and I would guess that they don’t care as much about Congress whining that their authority to destroy our economy was usurped. If the Repubs fought against this and if they won in the SCOTUS to bar Obama from further protecting our nation and its economy, would they not lose support from all except for the Tea Party extremists? Fighting for the right to threaten and destroy our economy?

It may be unfair but President Obama may have to put himself on the line like this to defeat the GOP terrorists that threaten us all. In the end though, I think that the GOP will incur the lion’s share of damage and scorn and end up losing a great deal of power in 2012, as they should.

In this case, the best long term solution may be to fight one crisis with another crisis, the latter being a crisis only for the GOP terrorists in the House.