Never before has one day had such a personal and political impact, and yet September 11, 2001 remains an enigma. Isn’t it time we asked the right questions and demanded answers? Questions such as: Why did top Pentagon officials cancel their travel plans for September 11 the day before?  Who sent warning text messages to an Israeli company? Why were Israeli spies caught videotaping the implosion of the Twin Towers allowed to go free? Why is nobody yelling: We want the truth?

    For Americans, September 11 signifies the day that their nation was attacked on its own soil. For the rest of us it heralds the birth, if not the gestation, of a disturbing New World Order with the U.S. calling the shots.

    In the months since 19 hijackers commandeered civilian aircraft and flew them into the symbols of American power, the Bush administration has extended its military footprint throughout Asia and invaded two sovereign nations Afghanistan and Iraq.

    The war with Afghanistan was ostensibly waged to get Osama bin Laden and to dismantle his Al Queda network. Bin Laden has never been found but America’s thirst to exact revenge was partially quenched.

    ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ was facilitated by 9-11 too. The American administration tried its best to link the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to Al Queda and failed dismally. This didn’t deter a US marine from covering the bronze face of the Iraqi leader in Firdous Square, Baghdad with the exact same flag, which had flown over the Pentagon on September 11.

    The US alleged that one of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta, met with an Iraqi secret service agent in Prague and that the anthrax attacks in the US were perpetrated by Iraq. Both these charges were proved false. The man pictured with the Iraqi in Prague turned out not to be Atta, and the anthrax started life in Fort Detrick, a US Army Weapons laboratory, with suspect number one being a former employee Lt. Colonel Philip Zack.

    Stymied, there was nothing for it but to charge the Iraqi regime with developing weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein is a danger to the United States they asserted.

    The US has yet to give a reasonable explanation as to why this ‘dangerous’ man did not use his chemical or biological weapons when his enemy was literally at the door.

    At the time of writing no proscribed weapons have been found in Iraq. In case they turn up in the future, the US is leaving itself open to accusations of having planted them. Unless the US finds WMD and subsequently destroys such weapons, there is no legal justification for lifting sanctions on Iraq when the ‘Oil for Food’ program could remain, leaving Iraq’s oil in the hands of the UN.

    It is looking more and more that Anglo-American invasion of Iraq was about regime change, not because Hussein posed a danger to anyone but because the Bush cabal, and companies associated with it, want to get their hands on Iraq’s precious valuable resources and reconstruction contracts. Regime change runs contrary to the UN charter and, therefore, the Coalition’s aggression against Iraq could well be adjudged as illegal. Since 9-11 the US has shown that it is unconcerned with such minor details as international laws and treaties on the pretext of America's security first and foremost.

US’ interests come first

    September 11 2001 caused the American Dr. Jekyll to change into a ruthless Mr. Hyde while nobody noticed. America drank the potion of pre-emption and emerged from its former relatively benign state to shred those international laws, treaties, and conventions which oppose its 1998 ‘Project for a New American Century’ agenda - the remoulding of the Arab world in its own image.

    America lost some 3,000 of its citizens on September 11 along with some important real estate, but since that tragic day its political, strategic and material gains have been substantial.

    Apart from a new military presence around the world, the U.S. is well placed to control Pakistan’s nuclear capability and its forces are strategically placed between Syria and Iran. It has gained control of the oil route from the Caspian to the Red Sea via Afghanistan as well as, potentially, the world’s second largest oil deposits lying under the ground of Iraq.

    Now that Iraqi oil will probably eventually come under its sphere of influence, America can weaken OPEC by terminating Iraq’s membership and selling its oil at a low price or flooding the market. Its dominant position in the region and the implied threat posed will ensure that the petrodollar will retain its hegemony, unchallenged by the Euro.

    Further, American companies are being awarded billions of dollars in reconstruction contracts without having to bid, some of those companies connected to prominent figures in the US government.

    Israel’s security benefits too now that its enemy number one Iraq has been kicked out of the playing field, further weakening the bargaining position of the Palestinian leadership concerning a Palestinian state. Ariel Sharon is pushing for Syria to suffer a similar fate as Iraq.

    Could any of this have taken place without those 19 hijackers on September 11 2001? Doubtful. Without a credible pretext the U.S. would never have managed to get its military foot through the crack in the security doors of other nations.

    Inside America, 9-11 has had an impact too. Paranoid Americans have willingly offered up their freedoms. The Patriot Act has given the government greater powers to monitor phone calls, emails, to search people’s homes and even to secretly investigate what library books they borrow. If Patriot II is passed into law, dissenting individuals could lose their citizenship for ‘giving comfort to the enemy’.

    There has been a revolution within and without America’s shores since 9-11 but it took intense pressure from the victims’ families before an ‘independent commission’ was set up to investigate the events of that world-changing day a year later.

Questions needing answers

    There are so many outstanding questions but so little political will to discover the truth in America’s new nationalistic, fear-based climate.

    Why, for example, were warnings about imminent terrorist attacks from Russia, Egypt and Israel ignored prior to that tragic September morning? 

    Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported on September 16, 2001: “two senior experts with the Mossad, the Israeli military intelligence service, were sent to Washington in August to alert the FBI and the CIA to the existence of a cell of as many as 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation”.

    Why were prominent figures alerted in advance about possible danger while the public wasn’t?

    On September 12, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown was advised not to fly eight hours before the September 11 attacks.

     Newsweek revealed on September 24, 2001: “On September 10 a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly cancelled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns”.

    The Washington Post revealed on September 27, 2001 that employees of Odigo, an Israeli company with offices in New York, received warning text messages two hours before the World Trade Center attacks.

    Why did NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) allow four passenger planes allowed to deviate from their respective scheduled flight for such a long period?  Air traffic controllers monitored the deviant paths of those flights and yet fighter jets were only scrambled after the attacks, even though Andrew’s Air Force Base is only 10 miles from the Pentagon.

    Why did Arie Fleischer the President’s spokesman say after the event that America’s intelligence community was caught off guard, as the possibility of passenger planes being flown into buildings had never before been contemplated? FBI Director Robert Mueller echoed this message, as did the President’s Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

    A report on CNN’s website contradicted the above assertions alleging that the FBI was warned “six years ago of a terrorist plot to hijack commercial planes and slam them into the Pentagon, the CIA headquarters and other buildings”. This warning was issued by the Philippines after a raid by its security forces on a Manila terrorist hideout.

    As far back as October 2000, the Pentagon conducted a series of simulations designed to test the response to a commercial airliner crashing into its headquarters, an event, which further challenges the credibility and honesty of US government post-9-11 statements.

    Experts also doubt that such inexperienced pilots as the hijackers could have undertaken such precise challenges.

    Andreas von Bulow, former head of the commission that overseas Germany’s secret services, told the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel: “The planning of the attacks was technically and organisationally a master achievement.” He went on to say that such a feat would be unthinkable, without years of support from state intelligence services.

    There have been questions about whether the towers collapsed due to the impact of the aircraft or did the perpetrators also use bombs. A surviving firefighter Louie Cacchioli told People Magazine: “ we think there were bombs set in the building.”

    Examination of the melted steel by experts could have proved the contention of Cacchioli and others one way or the other, but the steel beams were quickly recycled or shipped off to China and India before they could be studied.

    Experts have never been allowed to view the architects’ plans and building specifications relating to the World Trade Center either. These might have shown whether or not the towers were built to withstand the impact of a passenger plane, as some experts believe they were.

    When 65 per cent of Americans - according to a poll - were weeping as the twin towers fell, why, for example were five men of Middle Eastern appearance cheering and whooping on the roof of a nearby building as they videotaped their disintegration? A suspicious neighbour reported them to the FBI. They were found to be carrying box cutters, European passports and almost $5,000 hidden in a sock.

    Fox News publicized this story until it was discovered that the men, who purported to work for a removal company, were Israeli intelligence officers. Their ‘boss’ Dominick Suter abandoned his removals firm and left for Israel on September 14 while his men were allowed to follow close behind.

    And why were more than 100 young Israeli spies, masquerading as art students, allowed to leave America’s shores after September 11 without being charged?

Coincidences and discrepancies

    Apart from glaring discrepancies, there is a wealth of ‘coincidences’ surrounding 9-11 too. Just hours after the attacks the FBI found an Al Queda manual and an Arabic language flight instruction book conveniently left in a hire car at Boston’s Logan Airport.

    A suitcase ‘accidentally’ fails to board the flight taken by Mohammed Atta and inside, is a Quran and a Will. Why would anyone put the Holy Quran and his Last Will and Testament in baggage designated for destruction?

    Later, a passport belonging to one of the 19 was conveniently discovered near to Ground Zero, and at the Pennsylvania site the passport of Lebanese hijacker Ziad Jarrah was found, along with a business card conveniently linking the ‘terrorists’ to Zacharias Moussoui, who was taken into US custody prior to 9-11. Few of the planes’ eight black boxes, however, were ever recovered, or so we are told.

    We should also take a look at the strange characters of some of the 19 supposed Islamic fundamentalists who were seemingly ready to lose their lives for their religious beliefs.

    Jarrah, for example, son of a well-to-do prominent family, had cohabited with his Turkish girlfriend in Germany and enjoyed, by all accounts, partying and drinking. Hardly the profile of a would-be shaheed!

    Mohammed Atta was the well-educated son of an Egyptian lawyer. A  few days before the attacks, Atta and his two cousins visited Shuckums Oyster Bar and Restaurant in Hollywood, Florida and according to the manager were hard drinkers. Atta portrayed by the U.S. media as being tight-lipped and secretive - made it known that he was a pilot.

    The same ‘Islamic Fundamentalist’ trio spent their last night on earth in a Florida club where according to a September 14 CBS News report they “spewed anti-American sentiments in a bar and talked of impending bloodshed in New York and Washington.”

    Wouldn’t religious extremists be far more likely to visit mosques prior to their demise rather than spending approximately $300 each on vodka and voyeurism?

    A report on the BBC News website dated 23^rd September 2001 suggested that the identities of at least four of the 19 suspects were in doubt. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm

    Saudi pilot Waleed Al Shehri, for example, protested his innocence from Morocco. Abdulaziz Al Omari, a Saudi engineer, said that he lost his passport while studying in Denver.

    The BBC report quotes the London-based Arabic daily Al Sharq Al Awsat as having interviewed Saeed Al-Ghamdi, purportedly one of the hijackers on the flight, which crashed in Pennsylvania and suggests that Khaled Al Midhar could also be alive.

    Passenger lists relating to all four aircraft published by CNN did not include any Arab-sounding names.

    Unless future incumbents of the White House decide to investigate these anomalies, we may never know what really happened and why. Bush signed an Executive Order on November 1, 2001 sealing the presidential papers of himself, his father George H. Bush, and former President Ronald Reagan for 100 years and seems more interested in waging serial wars than shining a spotlight on the truth.

 
    One thing is sure: since 9-11, our beautiful planet has become a dangerous place. The United Nations is weakened, NATO in disarray, and the European Union is divided. Relations between much of the Arab world and the US have never been worse while on the street anti-Americanism is rife. The real danger today comes not from Bin Laden and his ilk but from the imbalance caused by our new unipolar world. Our leaders are just waking up to that fact. What transpires is anyone’s guess.