EXPLOITING 9-11

The Bush administration is again exploiting the attacks of 9/11. US vice-president Cheney only sees progress although everything is going wrong

By Florian Roetzer

[This article “Alles noch einmal genau so” published 9/11/2006 in the German-English cyber journal Telepolis is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.telepolis.de/r4/artikel/23/23527/1.html.]




US president Bush is using the fifth anniversary to appear as the rescuer and protector of the US, freedom, democracy and civilization. With his wife, he already visited the scenes of the attacks and gave several speeches. In them, everything leads to the election campaign. People cannot wait to find out what themes will be emphasized to turn the tide again and get the people behind him. Vice-president Cheney who acts as an agitator set the main points in an interview (1). Other governments will now also decry the shameless exploitation of the attacks that has made the world more insecure contrary to the mantra of the Bush administration.

The Bush administration has bound itself with the attacks of 9/11 independent of any conspiracy theory. The president unlucky until then who was not even sure he actually won the election experienced an acknowledgment with the attacks that allowed his government to revolutionize the world and the US – all in the name of national security in the war against evil. Everything seemed to go his way with a paralyzed opposition, a largely uncritical media and a world spellbound after the attacks and through the aggressive response of the US administration. A war justified with a web of lies that had nothing to do with 9/11 and a war in Afghanistan that did not appear any better can not convince people in the US any more. The whole region is plunged in chaos and the Islamists are aided considerably.. The persons presumed responsible for the attacks on 9/11 are still free and propagandistically active. This is astonishing since many millions of blood money are offered for persons like Bin Laden or Sawahiri. At the moment, Bin Laden seems to have fallen completely off the radar.

Vice-president Cheney says the US government is making “significant progress” in catching or killing the terrorists responsible for 9/11. This protected Bush after the attacks. As long as Bin Laden can operate freely, all the killings and captures have to be seen as failures. This was surely one of the reasons why the US government on the anniversary brought 14 terror suspects to Guantanamo who were detained and tortured in secret prisons. At least some wirepullers should be taken to court to make up for the offenses against human rights, the American constitution, international treaties and the strange inactivity toward the main responsible culprits. Critics and conspiracy theorists live either from the 9/11 plot or the anthrax attacks. Even if the US government only wants to put pressure on Congress and particularly the democrats with the rapid establishment of military courts, trials – unlike commissions – would actually be a chance for exposing inconsistencies. However military courts were always the wrong instruments. Terrorists must be persecuted and sentenced according to the criminal law. The Bush administration preferred war. Cheney always tries to defend this without naming any understandable reasons:

“And I think part of what we did right was to take the fight to the enemy, to treat this as a war, not a law enforcement problem, which is the way these things have been treated before we arrived; to actively and aggressively go after the state sponsors of terror, as we did, for example, in Afghanistan and Iraq; aggressively go after those places where the terrorists might be able to lay their hands on that deadly technology they'd like to use in that next attack. So I think we got it right.”

Cheney tries to see progress everywhere and justify the actions of the government. In his opinion, the Afghans and above all the Iraqis are better off than before.

“Five years ago, Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq. Iraq was a major state sponsor of terror. Saddam Hussein was providing payments, bonuses to the families of suicide bombers. He had a history of starting two wars. He had produced and used weapons of mass destruction. It was one of the worst regimes of modern times. We moved aggressively against Saddam Hussein. Today you've got Saddam in jail where he's being prosecuted for having butchered thousands of people. You've a democratically elected government. There have been three nationwide elections, there has been a new constitution written. We've got almost 300,000 Iraqis now trained and equipped in the security forces. And we are -- that's significant progress by anybody's standards. It's still difficult. It's still obviously major, major work to do ahead of us. But the fact is, the world is much better off today with Saddam Hussein out of power.”

That Hussein allegedly had weapons of mass destruction, a claim offensively defended by Cheney with all possible means, is now blamed on false secret service information and CIA director Tenet. Cheney obviously cannot play a good role concerning the alleged connections between Al Qaida and Hussein. That was also the CIA’s problem, Cheney says. His excuses are embarrassing given the different solutions of the North Korean and Iranian problems. Facing critical questions that he obviously cannot really answer, Cheney attempts to save himself by claiming the government would do the same thing again. After the many mistakes, this is actually a declaration of bankruptcy but is played out as a trump even if Cheney had to admit the strong resistance was not expected.

“The world is better off because Saddam Hussein is in jail instead of in power in Baghdad. It was the right thing to do, and if we had to do it over again we would do exactly the same thing.”

Without any hint of self-criticism, the US government according to Cheney did everything right and lawfully from surveillance to identification and treatment of “enemy combatants.” He appeals to the authority of the president whose powers were considerably expanded after 9/11 because the US saw itself at war with the terrorists in relation to the Congress. But the president’s actual authority and how far the adversary can be grasped are unexplained.

“We set up the terrorist surveillance program which has been instrumental in identifying key communications involving our adversaries, just as the financial tracking program has been vital in terms of tracking the money, and the detainee program, which has allowed us to collect some extraordinarily valuable intelligence from the terrorists we capture. It's all been done in a manner that's consistent with the President's authorities, with the Constitution, with our treaty obligations, and with the blessing of the lawyers.”

Typically enough, Cheney was silent about which torture techniques were allowed. However he justified all the methods used on Khalid Sheik Mohammed because they brought important results. The vice president thereby contradicted his president who said explicitly again and again that he did not approve torture. What one understands as torture is crucial. For that, the White House has its legal advisors or distorters who then can even rise to Attorney General.

Links

(1) http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060910.html

(2) (2) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/09/AR2006090901105.html

Telepolis Artikel-URL: http://www.telepolis.de/r4/artikel/23/23527/1.html