Metropolis

Global Eye -- Memory Lane

By Chris Floyd

Long before Genghis W. Bush and his Boardroom Horde launched their campaign of rapine against the clapped-out Iraqi regime, there was a little incident involving hijacked planes, famous buildings and the mass slaughter of innocent people on American soil that caused a good deal of commotion at the time. You might remember; it happened on Sept. 11 a couple of years back.

True, Genghis does mention it occasionally, as part of his successful bamboozling of the shell-shocked American people into blaming Iraq for the atrocity, which was of course financed and carried out by faithful followers of the extremist variant of Islam propagated worldwide by the Bush Family's longtime pals and patrons, the Saudi royals. The attacks were also facilitated at least in part (and perhaps -- let's be charitable -- indirectly) by extremist elements in the Pakistani secret service, the ISI, longtime ally of the Bush family firm, the CIA.

Of course, the American public is told nothing of this record. Their own history -- even the recent horror that exploded live on their TV screens that fateful September morning -- is being falsified and obliterated by the Bush Regime and its cowed, corrupted and ignorant enablers in the media. Dazzled by the glitzy video-game graphics of the wardrumming television networks, and battered by a ceaseless barrage of lies from their leaders -- even from the sainted Colin Powell, whose much-ballyhooed "case for the prosecution" at the UN has since been revealed as a farrago of fake documents, doctored tapes and plagiarized schoolwork -- a full 45 percent of Americans now believe the transparent lie that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet in the first months after the assault -- before the Bush fog machine went to work -- only 3 percent of the public believed this lunatic conspiracy theory, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

This week we saw how the national amnesia induced by the Bush blizzard of bull is serving another useful purpose for the un-elected junta: obscuring its hugger-mugger strangulation of the "Independent Commission" appointed to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks.

Of course, Genghis long resisted any outside probe into the catastrophic failure of his beloved secret services to thwart the plotters -- not to mention the Horde's strangely tepid response to the attack itself. Even after severe public pressure forced Bush to convene an independent panel, he tried to sandbag the proceedings by appointing accused war criminal and self-proclaimed master of the public lie, Henry Kissinger, as chairman. But Hank exited the scene rather than submit to disclosure rules that would have revealed the extent of his role as bagman for the Saudis and other interested parties.

Finally, a less controversial bagman for Saudi interests, Thomas Keane -- an oil business partner of Osama bin Laden's financier and brother-in-law, Saudi magnate Khalid bin Mahfouz -- was appointed to head the panel. At last it seemed the commission's Establishment worthies could actually get down to work. But one should never underestimate -- or even mis-underestimate -- the ingenuity of professional liars like the Bush boys. For they quietly found another way to hobble the commission: subjecting the panel members -- who were picked, remember, because of their reputations for impeachable probity and public service -- to months-long security checks before allowing them access to the secret documents at the heart of the probe, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.

Most commissioners already have security clearance from their previous government service, but the Horde has decided to put many of them -- those not directly appointed by Bush, apparently -- through the glacially paced FBI background checks yet again. How long will this take? Coy FBI officials will say only that the usual length for such checks is 10 months. But here's the beauty part: The panel is required to deliver its report to Congress in just 14 months -- leaving only enough time for the kind of rush-rush, hush-hush whitewash the Horde has always wanted.

Family Quarrel

Of course, America's carefully cultivated amnesia also covers the entire background history of the Bush rampage in Iraq. Few Homeland folks realize that the current "war of liberation" is nothing more than a falling out among thieves, old comrades in crime. For just like Osama and Daddy Bush's former punching bag, Panama's Manuel Noreiga, Saddam is a son of the CIA: He and his brutal Baathist Party were put in power by the American spy agency in 1963, as historian Roger Morris detailed last week in The New York Times.

Operating from secret bases in Kuwait (where future CIA boss Daddy Bush was drilling for oil with his business partners, the Kuwaiti royals), the Agency directed Baathist rebels as they laid some "regime change" on an Iraqi strongman who'd gotten a bit too uppity for Washington's refined sensibilities. After seizing power, Saddam and his fellow CIA proxies launched a blood-Baath, systematically murdering hundreds of people from lists supplied by helpful American agents. Five years later, the CIA gave Saddam and his family another boost, helping their faction oust rivals in an internal power struggle. And still later, that future CIA boss would be the most lavish and fawning of Saddam's many American sugar daddies -- even after Hussein "gassed his own people."

No, these dark forces -- these secret agencies, these corrupt political families, who gorge themselves on plunder and proxy murder -- have never been "liberators." They are not liberators now.

A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making
New York Times, March 14, 2003

Gordon Still Hasn't Received Security Clearance
Seattle Times, March 12, 2003

The Impact of Bush Linking Saddam and 9/11
Christian Science Monitor, March 14, 2003 (fee required)

Fake Iraq Documents Embarrassing for US
CNN, March 14, 2003

Senator Seeks FBI Probe of Faked Iraqi Documents
Associated Press, March 14, 2003

Dubious Claims Erode US Credibility
Boston Globe, March 16, 2003

CIA Worked in Tandem With Pakistan to Create Taliban
The Times of India, March 7, 2001

Pakistani Scientists Briefed bin Laden On Nukes
Sify News (India), March 15, 2003

Shine, Perishing Republic
Robinson Jeffers, 1963,

9/11 Chairman's Business Ties with bin Laden's Brother-in-Law
Scoop, Dec. 27, 2002

Five Degrees of Osama
Fortune, Jan. 22, 2003

9/11 Chairman's Business Ties with bin Laden's Brother-in-Law
Scoop, Dec. 27, 2002