Raimondo vs. Poe -- A Question of Patriotism

RichardPoe.com ^ | February 9, 2003 | Richard Poe

[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.

_________________________________
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.

[Sloth]

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.

Um, assuming you have the money for pilot training (per bin Laden) exactly how much help do you need to threaten people with a box knife?

[Richard Poe]

A Vast Rightwing Conspirator wrote:

< ...all kinds of terrorists have been arrested in Europe since 9/11. They were Saudis, Pakis, Algerian, Egyptian... etc. There were ZERO Iraqis among them. >>

Poe responded:

If the Iraqis are running false flag operations -- as Laurie Mylroie charges in her book -- then you would not expect Iraqis to be arrested. You would expect the patsies to be arrested.

Iron Jack responded:

Certainly that is one explanation. Another might be that no Iraqis have been involved. We'll let Occam's Razor decide which is more plausible. It seems logically "convenient" that the absence of something proves it.

Poe responds:

Well, IronJack, you can let Occam's Razor decide, if you wish. However, Occam's Razor is probably the worst analytical tool you could possibly employ in any game of strategy.

Take chess, for instance. If your opponent could read your mind and know in advance exactly how you plan to checkmate him, he could easily counter your every move.

The only way to win in chess is to deceive your opponent. You move your pieces in such a way as to make him think he knows what you are planning. But, in fact, you attack him in a different and unexpected way.

In chess, applying Occam's Razor -- that is, assuming that the most obvious explanation for your opponents' moves is the correct one -- will make it impossible for you to win. You will fall for your opponent's deceptions 100 percent of the time.

The same holds true in the eternal "chess game" of geopolitics. Applying Occam's Razor is the surest route to defeat. Whatever trap your opponent lays for you, you will walk right into it.

[TLBSHOW]

Please check your site it is not coming up! As of this post!

[Unadorned]

Looks like someone just got check-mated here, and I don't think it was Richard Poe.

[IronJack]

The hallmark of a good chess player is to leave your opponent no room to trap you, or any alternative but ultimate defeat. He can sometimes avoid the predictable defeat by making an unpredictable move. But generally, the unpredictable is so because it's so foolish no one would consider it. So you address it only cursorily, then devote your energies to the move most likely, the one that makes the most sense. Occam's Razor applies perfectly in chess, as well as geopolitics.

But I can only play devil's advocate so long before I weary of mouthing rhetoric I don't believe. My purpose here was to spark discussion, and I've either achieved that or I've failed. In either case, I doubt any minds will be changed.

[IronJack]

Look at your previous post. In one breath you praise and fawn over Raimondo for his supposedly coherent and well-supported positions. In the next breath you repudiate his conclusions as being wholly wrong. There is a disconnect here, unless you are praising him for his entertainment value only.

My goal here, as I stressed (apparently without your notice), was simply to provoke discussion of whether or not a person could oppose the war on Iraq in good conscience, or if all its opponents were simply America-haters who would never accept a war as justifiable. I felt -- and feel -- that Justin Raimondo's musings reflect the misgivings many Americans, including some highly notable conservatives, have about this action. I specifically stated my personal opinion, but felt that Mr. Raimondo's objections deserved better than ad hominem disregard. If that constitutes "fawning," then so be it.

[jedwardtremlett]

yes, it does.

Thanks! : )

[Richard Poe]

<< Occam's Razor applies perfectly in chess, as well as geopolitics. >>

Sorry, but you're dead wrong, both on chess and geopolitics.

Have you not read Sun Tzu's Art of War?

"All warfare is based on deception," wrote the great Chinese general. "Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near."

[IronJack]

How many wars did Sun Tzu win?

If you follow your own advice, the US military is in pretty poor position, since everybody knows where we are, what we're up to, and when we plan to do it. It would seem that the art of deception is at best impractical when you're amassing an armada halfway around the world.

And an ancient Chinese military philosopher's advice notwithstanding, there is scant evidence to support the "false flag" theory. However, I openly admit to not having read the Mylroie book.

At any rate, I'm resigning as resident pot stirrer. There's little to be gained from further conversation along these lines.

[Destro]

I will have you both know that I will buy Richard Poe's book "Black Spark, White Fire" - and I will buy Justin Raimondo's "The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection" when it comes out.

I like both your writtings and your articles about the Kosovo war and soon after were not so far apart.

Ahhh, the good old bad days when Clinton's united us all.

[Destro]

I also recommend you both read Evan Kohlmann's upcoming book "The Martyrs of Bosnia: Al-Qaida’s War of Terror in the Balkans". Evan Kohlmann is a senior terrorism analyst at the Investigative Project, a Washington D.C.-based counterterrorism think tank established in 1995.

You can't understand how 9/11 was able to happen unless you understand how the Balkans made us vulnerable to al-Qaeda.

Richard, you also agreed with Justin's position that the next result of this war would be a decent into a decadent empire so you two are not that far apart.

Justin, I hope you sell so many books you can afford to buy cigarettes in New York City. Richard, when will you delve into writing history again?

As, for my Iraqi position - I think Iraq should be taken down for violating the UN's resolutions -- BUT -- I know that this administration only views a UN resolution as a fig leaf. The problem is I do not trust the neo-cons. I know they would betray American policy for their ideology as soon as they can. The neo-cons cheered just as loud when Clinton bombed Kosovo, a policy which can only be called criminally insane.

Kosovo has stained my ability to cheer along any war, even a war that may need be fought like Iraq.