15 Years of Crime

The United States and their allies will be commemorating the 15-year anniversary of 9/11. For Thierry Meyssan, it’s the occasion to take an honest look at Washington’s policies since that date – it is not a pretty picture. There are two ways of looking at it – either the White House’s version of the 9/11 attacks is correct, in which case their response has been particularly counter-productive, or else it’s a lie, in which case they have succeeded in pillaging the Greater Middle East.

15 years ago, in the United States, on September 11, 2001, the «continuity of government plan» (COG) was activated at about 10 a.m. by the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism , Richard Clarke [1]. According to Clarke, this exceptional measure was necessary to respond to the exceptional situation of two aircraft which had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, and a third aircraft which had allegedly hit the Pentagon. However, this plan was to be used exclusively in the case of the total destruction of the democratic institutions, by a nuclear attack, for example. It had never been envisaged to activate this plan as long as the President, the vice-President and the Presidents of Assemblies were alive and able to assume their functions.

The activation of this plan transferred the responsibilities of the President of the United States to an alternative military authority situated at Mount Weather [2]. This authority only handed back his functions to President George W. Bush Jr, at the end of the day. The composition of this authority and the decisions they may have made have remained, and remain today, secret.

Since the President was divested of his functions for close to ten hours on September 11, 2001, in violation of the Constitution of the United States, it is technically correct to talk of a «coup d’état». Of course, the expression may shock some people, because we are talking about the United States, because it happened in exceptional circumstances, because the military authority never claimed responsibility for it, and because they gave back Constitutional power to the President without causing any trouble. Nonetheless, stricto sensu, it was indeed a «coup d’état».

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In a celebrated work published in 1968, (later re-edited), which became the bedside book of the neo-conservatives during the electoral campaign of 2000, the historian Edward Luttwak explained that a coup d’état is all the more successful if no-one notices it has happened, and therefore no-one has opposed it [3].

Six months after the attacks, I published a book about the political consequences of this day [4]. The media concentrated only on the first four chapters, in which I demonstrated that the official version of the events on that day was impossible. I was widely reproached for failing to give my own version of 9/11 – but I do not have one, and find myself today with more questions than answers.

However, the last fifteen years may enlighten us as to what happened on that day.

Since September 11, the Federal State is non-Constitutional

First of all, although certain dispositions were suspended for a moment in 2015, the United States still lives under the empire of the USA Patriot Act. Adopted in haste, 45 days after the coup d’état, this text constitutes a response to terrorism. Taking into account its volume, it would be more accurate to describe it as an anti-terrorist Code, rather than a simple law. The text had been prepared over the two previous years by the Federalist Society. Only 4 parliamentarians opposed it.

The text suspends Constitutional limitations, formulated by the «Declaration of Rights» – in other words, the first 10 amendments of the Constitution – for all State initiatives aimed at fighting terrorism. This is the principle of the permanent state of emergency. As a result, the Federal state may practise torture outside of its own territory, and spy massively on its population. After fifteen years of such practices, it is technically no longer possible for the United States to present itself as a «Constitutional state».

In order to apply the Patriot Act, the Federal state first of all created a new department, Homeland Security. The title of this administration is so shocking that it is translated all over the world as «Security of the Interior», which is inexact. Then the Federal state created a variety of political police forces which, according to a vast study by the Washington Post in 2010, employed at that time at least 850,000 new officials to spy on 315 million inhabitants [5].

The major institutional innovation of this period is the re-interpretation of the separation of powers. Until recently, we thought, like Montesquieu, that this would enable the maintenance of a balance between the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary, indispensable to the efficient functioning and preservation of democracy. The United States were once able to pride themselves on being the only State in the world to put this genuinely into practice. But now, on the contrary, the separation of powers means that the Legislative and the Judiciary no longer have any possibility of controlling the Executive. In fact, it is because of this new interpretation that Congress was not authorised to debate the conditions of the coup d’état of September 11.

Contrary to what I wrote in 2002, the Western European states have resisted this evolution. It was only eighteen months ago that France gave in, and adopted the principle of a permanent state of emergency, on the occasion of the assassination of the editors of Charlie-Hebdo. This transformation of the interior goes hand in hand with a radical change in its foreign policy.

Since September 11, the non-Constitutional Federal state has pillaged the Greater Middle East

In the days that followed, George W. Bush – now reinstated as President of the United States since the evening of September 11 – declared to the Press : «This crusade, this war on terrorism, will take time» [6]

. Even if he was obliged to apologise for having said it, the President’s choice of words clearly indicated that the enemy was of the Islamic culture and that the war would be a long one.

Indeed, for the first time in their history, the United States have been in a state of uninterrupted war for fifteen years. They defined their Strategy against terrorism [7] which the European Union made haste to copy [8].

While successive US administrations have presented this war as a chase from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Iraq to Africa, to Pakistan and the Philippines, then in Libya and Syria, the ex-Supreme Commander of NATO, General Wesley Clark has, on the contrary, confirmed the existence of a long-term plan. On September 11, the authors of the coup d’état decided to change all the friendly governments of the «Greater Middle East» and to make war on the seven governments who resisted them in that region. This order was activated by President Bush, four days later, during a meeting at Camp David. We are forced to note that this programme has indeed been put into play and that it is not over.

These régime changes in friendly powers by means of colour revolutions and wars against the régimes which resisted them were not aimed at conquering these countries in the classic imperial sense – Washington already controlled their allies – but to ransack them. In this area of the world, particularly in the Levant, the exploitation of these countries was not only hindered by the resistance of the populations, but also by the omnipresent existence of the ruins of antique civilisations. It was, therefore, impossible to organise plunder without «breaking eggs».

According to President Bush, the attacks of September 11 were perpetrated by al-Qaïda, which was a better excuse for attacking Afghanistan than the collapse of oil negotiations with the Taliban in July 2001. Bush’s theory was developed by his Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, who promised to present a report on this subject before the Security Council of the United Nations. Not only have the United States been unable to find the time, over the last fifteen years, to actually write this report, but on 4 June last, the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, confirmed that his US opposite number had asked him not to bomb US allies, al-Qaïda, in Syria – an astounding declaration which has not been denied.

Firstly, the non-Constitutional state has pursued its plan relentlessly by lying bare-faced to the rest of the world. After having promised a report on the role of Afghanistan in 9/11, the same Powell lied phrase after phrase, during a long speech to the Security Council in which he attempted to link the Iraqi government to the attacks, and accused them of wanting to continue with weapons of mass destruction [9].

In the space of a few days,the Federal state killed most of the Iraqi army, looted the seven main museums and burned the National Library [10]. It installed in power the Coalition Provisional Authority, which was not an organ of the Coalition of states against President Hussein, but a private company, held in the majority by Kissinger Associates, on the model of the sinister East India Company [11]. For a year, this company stole anything they could get their hands on. Finally, it handed power over to a puppet Iraqi government, after having demanded that they declare in writing that they would never ask for reparations and that for one hundred years, they would not contest the rapacious commercial laws drawn up by the Provisional Authority.

In 15 years, the United States have sacrificed more than 10,000 of their own citizens, while their wars have caused more than two million deaths in the «Greater Middle East» [12]. To squeeze victory from those they appointed as their enemies, they have spent more than 3500 billion dollars [13]. And they announce that the massacre and the chaos will continue.

Oddly enough, these thousands of billions of dollars have not economically weakened the United States. In fact, they were an investment which enabled them to pillage an entire region of the world, stealing far greater sums.

Contrary to the rhetoric concerning September 11, the idea driving the war on terror is logical. But it is based on a plethora of lies which are presented as proven facts. For example, the filiation between Daesh and al-Qaïda is explained by the personality of Abou Moussab al-Zarkaoui, to whom General Powell had dedicated much of his speech before the Security Council, in February 2003. However, the same Powell admitted to having lied through his teeth during this speech, and it is impossible to verify the slightest element of Zarkaoui’s CIA biography.

If we admit that al-Qaïda is the continuation of Ben Laden’s Arab Legion, integrated as a back-up force for NATO during the wars in Yugoslavia [14] and Libya, we must also admit that al-Qaïda in Iraq, which became the Islamic State in Iraq, then Daesh, is also part of the same continuation.

Since the pillage and destruction of our historical heritage is illegal under international law, the non-Constitutional Federal state first of all sub-contracted its dirty work to private armies like Blackwater [15]. But its responsibility was still too visible [16]. It then sub-contracted the job to its new armed allies, the jihadists. From that point on, the pillage of oil – consumed by the Western world – became attributable to these extremists, and the destruction of our heritage to their religious fanaticism.

In order to understand the collaboration of NATO and the jihadists, we have to ask ourselves what would the influence of the United States be without the jihadists. The world would have become multipolar, and Washington would have closed most of its military bases throughout the world. The United States would have become one power among others.

This collaboration between NATO and the jihadists shocks many senior civil servants, like General Carter Ham, commander of AfriCom, who, in 2011, refused to work with al-Qaïda, and had to renounce his command of the attack on Libya; or General Michael T. Flynn, commander of the Defense Security Agency, who refused to support the creation of Daesh and was obliged to resign in 2014 [17]. This has become the real subject of the Presidential electoral campaign – on one side, Hillary Clinton, a member of The Family, the cult of the Chiefs of Staff [18], and on the other, Donald Trump, advised by Michael T. Flynn and 88 superior officers [19].

Just as during the Cold War, Washington controlled its European allies via «NATO’s Secret Armies», the Gladio network [20], so it is now controlling the Greater Middle East, the Caucasus, the Ferghana valley and as far as Xinjiang with «Gladio B» [21].

15 years later, the consequences of the coup d’état of September 11 are not coming from Muslims, nor the people of the United States, but from those who perpetrated the attacks and their allies. They are the ones who have banalised torture, generalised extra-judiciary executions anywhere in the world, weakened the United Nations, killed more than two million people, and pillaged and destroyed Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Notes

[1] Against All Enemies, Inside America’s War on Terror, Richard Clarke, Free Press, 2004. See the first chapter, «Evacuate the White House».

[2] A Pretext for War, James Bamford, Anchor Books, 2004. See chapter 4, «Site R».

[3] Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, Edward Luttwak, Allen Lane, 1968. With Richard Perle, Peter Wilson and Paul Wolfowitz, Luttwak was one of Dean Acheson’s «Four Musketeers».

[4] L’Effroyable imposture, Thierry Meyssan, Carnot, 2002. Réédition avecLe Pentagate, Demi-Lune. English version : 9/11: The Big Lie, Carnot, 2002.

[5] Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State, Dana Priest & William M. Arkin, Little, Brown and Company, 2011.

[6] «A Fight vs. Evil, Bush and Cabinet Tell U.S.», Kenneth R. Bazinet, Daily News, September 17th, 2001.

[7] National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, The White House, February 2003.

[8] European Security Strategy, Javier Solana, Council of the European union, December 8th, 2003.

[9] “Colin Powell Speech at the UN Security Council”, Colin L. Powell,Voltaire Network, 11 February 2003.

[10] « Discours du directeur général de l’Unesco», Koïchiro Matsuura,Réseau Voltaire, 6 juin 2003.

[11] The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA): Origin, Characteristics, and Institutional Authorities, Congressional Research Service, L. Elaine Halchin, April 29, 2004.

[12] Body Count, Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the “War on Terror”, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), March 2015.

[13] The Three Trillion Dollar War, Joseph Stiglitz & Linda Bilmes, W. W. Norton, 2008.

[14] Wie der Dschihad nach Europa Kam, Jürgen Elsässer, NP Verlag, 2005.

[15] Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, Jeremy Scahill, Avalon Publishing Group/Nation Books, 2007.

[16] The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9 11, War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account of the War on Terror, John Yoo, University Of Chicago Press, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006.

[17] DIA Declassified Report on ISIS, August 12, 2012.

[18] The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, Jeff Sharlet, Harper, 2008.

[19] “Open Letter From Military Leaders Supporting Donald Trump”,Voltaire Network, 9 September 2016.

[20] Nato’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Daniele Ganser, Frank Cass, 2004.

[21] Classified Woman, The Sibel Edmonds Story: A Memoir, Sibel D. Edmonds, SE 2012.

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