Posted on 09/29/2001 11:00:50 AM PDT by classygreeneyedblonde
The terrible events of last week were anticipated by the work of security expert Yossef Bodansky. Readers are advised to study Bodansky's book, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America. Using Bodansky's basic outline, recent news stories, the excellent research of John K. Cooley's Unholy Wars and Samir al-Khalil's Republic of Fear, I attempt to describe the forces at work behind the destruction of the World Trade Center.
In October, 1998, Sudan's Islamist ideologue, Sheikh Hassan al-Turabi, sent a delegation of terrorist commanders to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Saddam's defiance of the United States had won much sympathy from the poor and humble folk of the Arab world. Turabi wanted to harness this sympathy. To do this, he envisioned a terrorist attack like none before, striking at the very heart of the United States. Since America is an open society governed by weak liberals, he argued, it would be helpless against a sustained terrorist onslaught.
Furthermore, once enraged by the first wave of strikes, the United States might be counted on to blunder its way into the Middle East and South Asia, killing indiscriminately. This, in turn, would inspire Islamic unity under new and more radical leaders. The Muslim world would then come together into a huge warlike coalition -- an effective fighting machine that would control the world's largest oil reserves. The West would be doomed and Israel would be driven into the sea.
The operational details of Turabi's plan were left to Osama bin Laden, a Saudi national hiding from U.S. authorities in the wilds of Afghanistan. Western intelligence knew little, except that the plan involved "spectacular terrorist attacks" aimed at New York and Washington.
Saddam Hussein was intrigued by Turabi's plan of campaign, and perhaps flattered to be offered a leading role. In late October, 1998, Saddam sent his son Qusay on a secret mission to Peshawar, Pakistan. There he made contact with an officer of the Pakistani secret service (ISI) who led him deep into Afghanistan for a meeting with Osama bin Laden. In that meeting Qusay Hussein and bin Laden discussed a joint strategy against America. The Islamic extremists, led by Turabi and bin Laden, would form an iron alliance with Baghdad. According to intelligence sources sited by Yossef Bodansky, "The use of chemical and biological weapons in the anticipated terrorist strikes was explicitly addressed."
All the resources of militant Islam would be mobilized for a crushing series of strikes against America. As agreed at the meeting in Afghanistan, Iraq was tasked with constructing special chemical and biological bombs for use by bin Laden's terrorists. Qusay Hussein promised that Iraq would deliver whatever bin Laden's group needed. True to his word, by December 1998, Hussein sent 12 chemical munitions experts to Afghanistan to build the bombs. Iraq also dispatched a team led by Abu-Walid, an intelligence expert who felt out Afghanistan's leader, Mullah Omar. The purpose of Abu-Walid's visit was to ascertain Afghanistan's willingness to stand up to the full force of American wrath in the wake of the planned terrorist attacks, and to stand by Baghdad when the Americans unleashed their full fury.
Due to Abu-Walid's efforts, Iraq and Afghanistan agreed to a quiet alliance that would unite their military forces and intelligence services. Sudan's Turabi simultaneously prepared terrorists for operations against the oil sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf. While the Iraqi's held out the prospect of supporting the Taliban against Iran, Turabi and bin Laden offered honeyed words to the Iranians. The war against America, they explained, would be "protracted." Many "martyrdom operations" would take place. There was lots of glory (and revenge) to be shared.
Why quarrel? Kill Americans.
In November, 1998, bin Laden openly described his strategic objectives in a note to Islamist organizers in Pakistan. He said that non-Muslims should be driven from Jerusalem and Saudi Arabia. He wrote of the day when Islamic law will be enforced "in the land of God." The Jews and Christians will be pushed out, he said.
As it is a religious obligation for every Muslim to support the mujahideen fighting for ... sacred places, similarly they are also obligated by their religion to support the Taliban government in Afghanistan, because by enforcing Sharia in Afghanistan, the Taliban have established the system of God on God's land.
In December 1998 the Ulema-i-Afghanistan, a key Islamic body in that country, declared an "armed jihad against America," saying that this was mandatory. "All Muslims are ordered to rise against America to kill Americans," said the decree, which was issued by leading Islamic clerics and scholars.
It is curious that the Taliban, which is fighting Russian-supported forces in Northern Afghanistan, does not think to declare war against Russia. After all, it was the Russians who killed a million Afghans in the 1980s. It was the Russians who devastated the country and its infrastructure. In fact, it was the Americans who helped the Afghans in their struggle. But no, Russia somehow escapes the wrath of these curious agents of fanatical misdirection -- men with fishy backgrounds and unreal objectives.
How do we explain Turabi and bin Laden's disinterest in Russia -- whose allies and surrogates the Taliban is ostensibly fighting? What is the real reason they have focused on America? Instead of avenging a million Islamic dead at the hands of Moscow, the Taliban looks to the other side of the globe, to Russia's "main enemy." How postively curious this is! Why should Turabi and bin Laden do Russia this favor? Why should they deliver crushing blows against the U.S. and not to Russia?
But there it is. The madmen of Islam have been led, step by step, to turn their enmity from Moscow and declare what the Ulema-i-Afghanistan says will be a "war of extermination" against the people of America. To be perfectly clear, this is not merely an effort to damage U.S. interests, but a declared campaign to eradicate America entirely -- to wipe the United States from the face of the earth.
"...no steps for the total elimination of America by force should be avoided," said the assembled scholars and holy men. "America is an enemy of the Islamic world and should be annihilated
In recent days we've heard that Pakistan has accepted U.S. proposals to cooperate in a war against Afghanistan. But can we trust Pakistan, whose secret service has been deeply involved in bin Laden's war preparations? American strategists should think this one over. If Pakistan appears to be our ally today, the tables may turn tomorrow. Radical Islamic groups in Pakistan are deeply committed to waging a jihad against America. You would think that these groups had fish to fry next door, in Kashmir -- against India. But here we go again. The immediate enemy, the historical enemy, is left in the lurch. The far away Americans, who don't even know where these people are on the map, are suddenly the main concern.
It is amazingly absurd
One is reminded of what Gustav Le Bon has written on the suggestability of crowds. "Whatever be the ideas suggested to crowds," wrote Le Bon, "they can only exercise effective influence on condition that they assume a very absolute, uncompromising and simple shape."
The Islamic crowd has fixated on an idea which has, in itself, become contagious. America is the root of all evil, and American must be destroyed. Who originated this infectious preoccupation with destroying America? Wasn't it Stalin and Mao?
The regime in Iraq has committed all its resources to backing Turabi and bin Laden's assault on America. In early 1999 Saddam Hussein asked for assurances that his Islamist allies would not stab him in the back. It is reported by Bodansky that they assured the Iraqi leader of their good faith; that as long as he supported the Islamists, they would not betray him or undermine his rule. It should also be noted that many Islamist training camps were then opened in Iraq. Saddam even ordered his son, Qusay, to create a new terrorist army under Iraqi command -- the al-Nida. This force would support bin Laden's terror campaign against America when the time was ripe.
It should be noted that Iraq has long been a client of Moscow. It is a complex and many-sided relationship, like the alliance between Saddam and the Islamists. As long as the Iraqi dictator was allied with Moscow, the communists would not attempt to undermine him.
The alliance began in 1973 when Saddam Hussein personally supervised the reorganization of Iraq's secret police. In order to guarantee his future control over the country, Saddam signed a secret intelligence agreement with KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov (who later became dictator of the Soviet Union). Building on key clauses of the Soviet-Iraqi Friendship Treaty of 1972, which Hussein negotiated, the Iraqi security services were reorganized to fit KGB specifications. According to extracts taken from stolen Iraqi documents and discussed by Samir al-Khalil in his book, "Republic of Fear," the KGB agreed to
(1) Supply sophisticated surveillance and interrogation equipment to the Iraqis
(2) Train Iraqi personnel in KGB and GRU schools in the Soviet Union.
3) Exchange intelligence information.
(4) Assist the USSR with spying on countries which did not then have diplomatic relations with the Kremlin.
It could be argued that by 1980 Iraqi intelligence had become the Arab-speaking branch of the KGB. That is why, despite Soviet support for the Gulf War coalition, Russian technicians were aiming SCUD missiles at Americans and others. Even more telling, a continuous convoy of supply trucks poured into Iraq via Iran from the Soviet Union during the conflict. It is no wonder that Iraq's capabilities are being built up today by Russia's new ally and friend -- the Chinese!
If Saddam has long been in Moscow's pocket, one is left to wonder about Turabi and bin Laden.
Journalist John K. Cooley, in his controversial book entitled "Unholy Wars," describes Sheikh Hassan al-Turabi as "brilliant, scholarly, elusive; profoundly opposed to American hegemony." What is most striking and unusual about Turabi, however, is his Western education. He was not brought up on the narrow and suffocating views of rustic holy men. He attended universities in France and England. He speaks French and English fluently.
Did his Islamic faith really survive his Western education
But the real dirt on Turabi has to do with drug trafficking. Both Turabi and bin Laden became involved with a double-dealing Afghan commander, Gulbaddin Hekmatiyar, who also distinguished himself a drug criminal -- exporting narcotics to the West. Those who are familiar with Joseph D. Douglass, Jr.'s work (see "Red Cocaine") will realize the significance of drug trafficking and organized crime as a conduit of corruption and control for KGB-sponsored gangsters. Since Hekmatiyar allegedly worked for the communists at times, leading holy fighters into ambushes, and since he ended up becoming Afghanistan's prime minister with the connivance of the CIA (and the KGB), his early financial relations with bin Laden and Turabi may provide the key to understanding Turabi and bin Laden's anti-American obsession.
While Russian tanks were crushing Chechnya there was no thought in Turabi or bin Laden's circle of eradicating Russia or declaring a war of extermination against the Kremlin murderers. And here is where the linkages become even more curious. The best observers on the ground in Chechnya believe that the Islamists in Chechnya were planted in the country by the Russian General Staff for reasons unknown and perhaps unfathomable. In fact, before 1996 there was no significant Islamist presence in Chechnya, and no Islamic power base. The religion of Chechnya is not the religion of Iran, Afghanistan or Arabia. Yet there suddenly appear these Arab gunman who -- with the help of the Russian Interior Ministry -- conducted an incursion into Dagestan during the summer of 1999. And this is what triggered the Russian invasion.
Even more frightening, in December 1999 it was reported that the Chechin Islamists had smuggled suitcase nuclear bombs out of the former Soviet Union to Osama bin Laden. It was even alleged (by Yossef Bodansky) that Russian special forces commandos were being recruited to deploy these stolen Soviet nukes against the United States. It is with this stretching of the story that a fishy aroma reaches the suspecting nostril. As a wise old Chechin observer told French journalist Anne Nivat in 1999, "[Chechin leader] Maskhadov and all the others you hear about in the West, none of them has any power. We are all victims, manipulated by the politicians in Moscow."
How could the former Soviet killers of Afghan woman and children, of Chechin women and children, become the "paid mercenaries" of drug-running Islamic fanatics bent on destroying America -- as opposed to Russia? The absurdity of these "pious" individuals -- Turabi and bin Laden -- supporting the Godless Iraqi dictator is almost humorous.
Given such curious details, whatever the sincere beliefs of Turabi, bin Laden and Hussein, we see the hand of Moscow in the Iraqi security organs. Is it possible that Moscow's Arab pupils knew nothing of last week's terrorist strike in advance?
As you watch TV and learn of the virtual non-existence of U.S. "Human Intelligence" assets in the Middle East, you should also realize that the Russians are the world's masters in "Human Intelligence." They are the ones who have, historically, penetrated the British Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA -- even Hitler's bunker during World War II.
The West has never had equivalent successes against Russia or its clients. And that is the reason last week's terrorist attack met with success. American intelligence is weak. We do not have a winning team at the FBI and CIA. Without timely intelligence information, America cannot forestall major plots and conspiracies directed against our leaders, our economy or our citizens. And that's exactly what we're confronting today.
There is another Russian aspect to all this, as well. And it shouldn't go without being mentioned
Through most of the summer, Russian analysts have been buzzing with talk of America’s coming economic crash. The collapse of the U.S. dollar has been anticipated. Russian economist Tatyana Koryagina, for example, testified on this before the Duma. According to Koryagina, the American dollar will soon be used as “wallpaper for toilet stalls.”
Is this notion based on some solid bit of analysis, or does it derive from the necessities of Russian state propaganda -- as an excuse to move Russia out of dollars and into gold or other currencies?
In anticipation of the U.S. crash, on July 10, the Russian Federation officially adopted the gold chervonet as legal tender. This was an odd move, similar to what Lenin did 79 years ago in order to stem the tide of ruble inflation in the early Bolshevik economy.
Now that the twin towers are down, the dollar is falling (or will be). Hundreds of thousands will be thrown out of work here in America. The capitalist system will be severely challenged. Karl Marx might even emerge from his moldy grave, along with the "undead" Lenin, and point an accusing finger at the money-men. "It is time to try a new system," the old worm-eaten ghoul will say with satisfaction.
A spectre is haunting the Middle East, I fear.
Readers should note that Col. Stanislav Lunev, the highest ranking defector from the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff, has issued a firm warning to all Americans. When he defected several years ago Lunev tried to warn the FBI, CIA and DIA "that the Russians already had elaborate war plans against the U.S. I suggested that such a war might begin with a diversion, some sort of terrorst attack. With people's attention focused elsewhere, special troops could storm Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, the White House -- to kill American leaders."
Lunev went on to emphasize something that many Americans don't fully appreciate. "I have no doubt," said Lunev, "that Russia has been behind many of these terrorist groups, financing and equipping them."
Yes, that's right. You heard it from a high ranking defector who has knowledge of Moscow's military plans. As it happens, Russia and China have been supporting rogue states all over the map. And now these states, in league with terrorist organizations, have killed thousands of Americans -- striking a real blow against our economy. "These terrorist groups," stated Lunev, "want nothing less than war against Western Civilization."
And that is what, in my opinion, the leaders in Beijing and Moscow also want. The only thing holding them back all these decades has been their relative weakness. And today, after many years of reduced vigilance and severe military cuts on the American side, Russia and China's weakness may be at an end
It is good that Americans are rallying to their country. It is important that we pull together. The struggle ahead may be far more difficult and dangerous than any of us imagine.
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