Posted on 02/09/2003 6:17:12 AM PST by Richard Poe
My blog entry, "Justin Raimondo -- Enemy Agent?" set off some fireworks last night on FreeRepublic.com. Raimondo defended his honor -- or at least attempted to -- in a nose-to-nose cyber-exchange with your faithful correspondent and various other FReepers.
At issue was Raimondo's patriotism and, more specifically, his motivation for opposing war with Iraq. As usual, Raimondo refused to entertain any suggestion that Iraq might have been involved in various terror attacks on the United States, such as the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the 1995 attack on the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. In the manner of a Soviet psychiatrist, Raimondo dismissed all such discussion as symptomatic of mental illness and kookery -- despite the fact that Iraq expert Laurie Mylroie has made a strong case for an Iraqi terror connection in her book The War Against America, and former CIA director R. James Woolsey has endorsed Mylroie's theory.
"[I]f this is the kind of `logic' involved in Richard Poe's contention that Iraq really bombed the World Trade Center (and, I guess, the Oklahoma City federal building), then I don't think `tinfoil hat' quite covers it: Poe's wacky screed is a Reynolds Wrap Special, for sure," Raimondo quipped.
Raimondo also denied that he ever had any formal connection with the "Red-Brown" Fascisto-Bolshevik Russian webzine Pravda.ru which used to run his columns. "Oh, right, I must be a Russian agent since Pravda took it upon themselves to reprint my work without my permission," he said.
This reply struck me as a bit disingenuous, so I wrote:
There seems to be some discrepancy between your account and Bill White's.
Pravda's former U.S. correspondent Bill White claims here and here that you were instrumental in forcing his resignation -- that you bombarded Pravda.ru's editors with angry letters and threatened to pull your columns in protest against their hiring of White.
All of this implies that you did indeed have some sort of editorial relationship with Pravda.ru.
Granted, White is not the most reliable source. But I'd like to know, for the record, whether you are calling him a liar.
Raimondo responded as follows:
I never gave my permission to Pravda to reprint my work. But if I spent my time tracking down and contacting every internet site that followed suit I wouldn't have time to write anything. When I discovered my articles on Pravda, next to articles by this Bill White nutball, I did contact Pravda and asked them what is up. They claimed to have received permission -- but not MY permission. They then ceased reprinting my stuff. Case closed.
There is something about that phrase "case closed" that always raises my hackles. I had to ask the obvious question. If Raimondo himself had not granted Pravda.ru permission to run his articles, then who had?
A like-minded FReeper named Bonaparte beat me to it. "So who did Pravda say gave them permission to print your stuff? Was that party entitled to give them permission? If so, why were you not consulted first?" asked Bonaparte.
"Who gave them permission?" I echoed.
Raimondo remained on the thread for some time after that. But he never answered the question.
"I guess Justin's not going to tell us who gave Pravda permission," Bonaparte concluded in the next-to-last post of the evening.
Evidently not. But we can always speculate. If I were Pravda.ru's editor, I would have contacted The Center for Libertarian Studies (CLS) which sponsors Raimondo's Antiwar.com Web site.
In any case, all of this is beside the point. The real point is that Raimondo needs to stop blowing smoke about "kooks" and "tinfoil hats" and address the serious issues I have raised, regarding the Laurie Mylroie and Jayna Davis investigations.
Raimondo insists that the only military action we ought to take in response to 9-11 should be to attack the entity known as "Al Qaeda" -- that nebulous, loosely-knit terrorist network whose leader Osama bin Laden appears to be a double, triple or perhaps quadruple agent who, at one time or another, appears to have rented out his services to just about every existing power bloc on the planet. Raimondo asks us to believe that this motley collection of religious fanatics and cutthroats-for-hire somehow managed to carry out the 9-11 attack all by itself, without anyone's help.
I don't buy that, and I don't think Raimondo does either.
Here's what I wrote last night on FreeRepublic.com regarding Mylroie's work:
Laurie Mylroie charges that global "terror networks" such as bin Laden's al Qaeda are nothing more than decoys, "false flag" operations which provide cover for our real enemies.
Mylroie is a leading expert on Iraq. She has taught at Harvard University and the U.S. Naval War College, and is currently an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. During the 1992 presidential campaign, she advised Bill Clinton on Iraqi affairs.
Former CIA director R. James Woolsey is one of several high-level intelligence officials who have endorsed Mylroie's theory that Iraq masterminded both World Trade Center attacks.
In her book The War Against America, Mylroie notes that James Fox, the FBI official in charge of investigating the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, fingered Iraq as the chief suspect. However, Fox noted that the bombing appeared to be a "false flag" operation -- an attack that is deliberately designed to appear as if someone else did it.
The rank-and-file terrorists involved in the plot were Muslim fanatics from Egypt and Palestine. They were true believers, men who followed orders and asked no questions. In short, they were the perfect patsies.
Former CIA director R. James Woolsey agrees that the 1993 World Trade Center attack bore all the earmarks of "a classic false flag operation," in which the mastermind escaped, while leaving "a handful of Muslim extremists behind to be arrested and take the full blame."
Also in keeping with the "classic" false flag pattern, the mastermind of this attack had little in common with the co-conspirators. His name was Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and he was no Muslim fanatic. Yousef was a professional intelligence operative, indifferent to religion, a dapper dresser, womanizer and dedicated nightclubber, who often cursed like a longshoreman in fluent English when annoyed.
He was also an Iraqi agent, according to Mylroie.
I think Raimondo should read Mylroie's book before dismissing it. Either that, or he should just drop the facade and admit that he really doesn't care whether Iraq attacked us or not.
Naturally, Raimondo did not respond to this post. However, a nervous little homunculus calling himself Byron_the_Aussie flitted around the thread like a mosquito, accusing me of being a "Joe McCarthy clone" and urging me to "address the issues."
I'm not sure what qualifies as an "issue" in Byron_the_Aussie's mind, but where I come from, Iraq's possible role in the slaughter of thousands of my countrymen looms mighty large.
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Richard Poe is a New York Times bestselling author and cyberjournalist. His latest book The New Underground: How Conservatives Conquered the Internet is scheduled for April 2003 release. Poe's previous book is The Seven Myths of Gun Control.
I wish that were true! Sadly, I seem to have even less time now than when I was working for Horowitz.
But why do you say I was "purged" from FrontPage? I thought I resigned. Do you know something I don't? What would have been the reason for this purge?
<< fighting Al Qaeda is not something that interests either you or this administration... >>
Well, no, it doesn't, for the reasons explained in the article posted above. I believe -- with Laurie Mylroie -- that "Al Qaeda" is a red herring. If we simply fight them and "get out," we will have accomplished nothing, and our true enemies will have escaped unscathed.
<< ...the administration... has been taken over by neoconservatives whose foreign policy goals are to make the U.S. military a cat's-paw for Israel's Likud party. ... >>
Well, if that is true, that would mean that Israel now effectively controls the United States. It's no small feat to make a "hyperpower" go to war against its own interests.
By what means or mechanism did Israel and the neocons pull off this extraordinary coup?
<< So, why not drop the crap about my alleged lack of "patriotism" and start discussing the more substantive issues? >>
Okay, let's. Here are two substantive questions:
1. What makes you so sure that Al Qaeda alone -- without any helpers -- is solely responsible for 9-11? You appear to be so sure of this fact that you are willing to bet your nation's very survival on it. The evidence must be extraordinarily compelling. Let's hear it.
2. What makes you so sure that the U.S. government has no reasons of its own for undertaking this war? Why do you assume with apparently 100-percent certainty that our foreign policy is being dictated from Tel Aviv?
I beg to differ.
My use of the term "enemy agent" was an admittedly provocative preamble to an 1,143-word argument in which I attempted -- however imperfectly -- to justify the charge.
Raimondo's use of such phrases as "tin-foil hat material" is genuinely dismissive, because he seeks to end all argument by the mere utterance of them.
Of course.
Depends.
In the old Soviet Union, incarceration in a state mental health facility for the politically "insane" could arguably have been worse than a quick bullet to the back of the head.
Please forgive me for not attempting to post a link, but you can cut and paste to go to this:
http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/fallacy/attack.htm
Well, that's the $64,000 question, isn't it?
The "flag" they flew was that of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. If we content ourselves with the mass media version of events -- as Raimondo appears to have done -- that pretty much ends the matter.
It was Al Qaeda and only Al Qaeda. How do we know? Because ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Justin Raimondo and our good friends in the gummint told us so.
I'm trying hard to believe that Al Qaeda acted alone. I really am. I don't want to be a thought criminal.
But, jeepers, the idea of Osama bin Laden and his gang of Keystone cutthroats pulling this off all by themselves is just so damn ridiculous. Maybe I'd better just head over to the Ministry of Truth and turn myself in.
But you don't have to apologize for being new or lurking. Neither affects the quality of your argument.
The only unwritten "rules" I can think of are that ad hominem arguments used by people who agree with the moderator are overlooked, while ad hominem arguments used by people who do not agree with the moderator are usually dealt with promptly and, sometimes, severely.
I think you meant to say that I got the facts wrong, didn't you?
In any case, if you read the article posted above a bit more carefully, you will see that the issue of Raimondo's relationship to Pravda.ru remains murky, at best, and certain key questions have been left conspicuously unanswered.
This is just a well-articulated way of saying "How come Johnny gets to stay up late and I don't?" You're better than this. Raimondo's flip dismissals of your points will be seen for what they are. That doesn't excuse your indulgence in equally bankrupt tactics.
I think your argument has its weak points too, but there seems to be little principled discussion going on and a whole lot of squabbling.
Why don't you try restating your criticisms, and call on Justin to rebut them one by one?
Did Rothbard really say that?
Why, that's... disgusting!
That's what I'm doing now. Haven't you noticed?
It seems to have scared Raimondo away. Or at least stunned him into temporary silence.
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