Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent
Saturday, 5 March 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudis-mobilise-thousands-of-troops-to-quell-growing-revolt-2232928.html
Saudi Arabia was yesterday drafting up to 10,000 security personnel into its north-eastern Shia Muslim provinces, clogging the highways into Dammam and other cities with busloads of troops in fear of next week's "day of rage" by what is now called the "Hunayn Revolution".
Saudi Arabia's worst nightmare – the arrival of the new Arab awakening of rebellion and insurrection in the kingdom – is now casting its long shadow over the House of Saud. Provoked by the Shia majority uprising in the neighbouring Sunni-dominated island of Bahrain, where protesters are calling for the overthrow of the ruling al-Khalifa family, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is widely reported to have told the Bahraini authorities that if they do not crush their Shia revolt, his own forces will.
The opposition is expecting at least 20,000 Saudis to gather in Riyadh and in the Shia Muslim provinces of the north-east of the country in six days, to demand an end to corruption and, if necessary, the overthrow of the House of Saud. Saudi security forces have deployed troops and armed police across the Qatif area – where most of Saudi Arabia's Shia Muslims live – and yesterday would-be protesters circulated photographs of armoured vehicles and buses of the state-security police on a highway near the port city of Dammam.
Although desperate to avoid any outside news of the extent of the protests spreading, Saudi security officials have known for more than a month that the revolt of Shia Muslims in the tiny island of Bahrain was expected to spread to Saudi Arabia. Within the Saudi kingdom, thousands of emails and Facebook messages have encouraged Saudi Sunni Muslims to join the planned demonstrations across the "conservative" and highly corrupt kingdom. They suggest – and this idea is clearly co-ordinated – that during confrontations with armed police or the army next Friday, Saudi women should be placed among the front ranks of the protesters to dissuade the Saudi security forces from opening fire.
If the Saudi royal family decides to use maximum violence against demonstrators, US President Barack Obama will be confronted by one of the most sensitive Middle East decisions of his administration. In Egypt, he only supported the demonstrators after the police used unrestrained firepower against protesters. But in Saudi Arabia – supposedly a "key ally" of the US and one of the world's principal oil producers – he will be loath to protect the innocent.
So far, the Saudi authorities have tried to dissuade their own people from supporting the 11 March demonstrations on the grounds that many protesters are "Iraqis and Iranians". It's the same old story used by Ben Ali of Tunisia and Mubarak of Egypt and Bouteflika of Algeria and Saleh of Yemen and the al-Khalifas of Bahrain: "foreign hands" are behind every democratic insurrection in the Middle East.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mr Obama will be gritting their teeth next Friday in the hope that either the protesters appear in small numbers or that the Saudis "restrain" their cops and security; history suggests this is unlikely. When Saudi academics have in the past merely called for reforms, they have been harassed or arrested. King Abdullah, albeit a very old man, does not brook rebel lords or restive serfs telling him to make concessions to youth. His £27bn bribe of improved education and housing subsidies is unlikely to meet their demands.
An indication of the seriousness of the revolt against the Saudi royal family comes in its chosen title: Hunayn. This is a valley near Mecca, the scene of one of the last major battles of the Prophet Mohamed against a confederation of Bedouins in AD630. The Prophet won a tight victory after his men were fearful of their opponents. The reference in the Koran, 9: 25-26, as translated by Tarif el-Khalidi, contains a lesson for the Saudi princes: "God gave you victory on many battlefields. Recall the day of Hunayn when you fancied your great numbers.
"So the earth, with all its wide expanse, narrowed before you and you turned tail and fled. Then God made his serenity to descend upon his Messenger and the believers, and sent down troops you did not see – and punished the unbelievers." The unbelievers, of course, are supposed – in the eyes of the Hunayn Revolution – to be the King and his thousand princes.
Like almost every other Arab potentate over the past three months, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia suddenly produced economic bribes and promised reforms when his enemy was at the gates. Can the Arabs be bribed? Their leaders can, perhaps, especially when, in the case of Egypt, Washington was offering it the largest handout of dollars – $1.5bn (£800m) – after Israel. But when the money rarely trickles down to impoverished and increasingly educated youth, past promises are recalled and mocked. With oil prices touching $120 a barrel and the Libyan debacle lowering its production by up to 75 per cent, the serious economic – and moral, should this interest the Western powers – question, is how long the "civilised world" can go on supporting the nation whose citizens made up almost all of the suicide killers of 9/11?
The Arabian peninsula gave the world the Prophet and the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans and the Taliban and 9/11 and – let us speak the truth – al-Qa'ida. This week's protests in the kingdom will therefore affect us all – but none more so than the supposedly conservative and definitely hypocritical pseudo-state, run by a company without shareholders called the House of Saud.
Showing posts with label Robert Fisk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Fisk. Show all posts
Monday, March 14, 2011
Thursday, December 10, 2009
John Pilger: Tell Me No Lies
by Greg PalastI was in deep, deep, hot, hot water with my editors at The Guardian in London. The paper was facing a ruinous suit by George Bush Sr.'s business buddies because of one of my stories. Then a tall, Aussie of dramatic demeanor walked uninvited in my boss' offices and said, "Yes, Palast is trouble. But he's good trouble."
John Pilger's intervention helped save my sorry behind.
Now he's saved my stories, and the stories of Seymour Hersh, Edward Galenao, Edward R. Murrow, Robert Fisk, the assassinated investigator of the Chechen War, Anna Politkovskaya, and many others in a big, fat—626 pages!—book of what he says is, "Journalism that changed the world." It's called Tell Me No Lies.
For the holidays, make a donation (minimum $65) and I'll sign and send you a copy of this astonishing compendium of killer reporting.
"Secretive power loathes journalists who do their job: who push back screens, peer behind façades, lift rocks. Opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour."
You go, John!
Do you know someone who wants to lift rocks and push back screens of official BS? Get them Tell Me No Lies and I'll personalize it to them. Your support is my badge of honor.
And there's another compendium I recommend: The Secret Histories: Hidden Truths That Challenged The Past And Changed The World.
The greats are here: I.F. Stone, Neil Sheehan, Woodward and Bernstein on Watergate and two stories by your humble servant Palast.
Or go whole hog for the truth-hounds: Get both books, No Lies and Secret, signed for a minimum donation of $100.
Did you see our terrific report on Democracy Now this week? That report was made possible by you, our supporters, through your donations to our non-profit Investigative Journalism Fund. Thank you so much for your continued support during these difficult times.
More DVDs, audio CDs and copies of my books, including the story that almost got me fired—actually, several that almost got me fired—are available in time for the holidays at www.gregpalast.com/store
When you donate, Santa will give you a tax-deduction and our crew will send you our thanks.
For the holidays: Peace, good will and the truth.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Lessons in unity in the Dead Sea Scrolls
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-you-wont-find-any-lessons-in-unity-in-the-dead-sea-scrolls-1741943.html
Robert Fisk’s World:
You won't find any lessons in unity in the Dead Sea Scrolls
I looked at the texts in Toronto – a tale that was bound to pose a series of questions
Saturday, 11 July 2009
At last, I have seen the Dead Sea Scrolls. There they were, under their protective, cool-heated screens, the very words penned on to leather and papyrus 2,000 years ago, the world's most significant record of the Old Testament.
I guess you've got to see it to believe it. I can't read Hebrew – let alone ancient Hebrew (or Greek or Aramaic, the other languages of the scrolls) – but some of the letters are familiar to me from Arabic. The "seen" (s) of Arabic, and the "meem" (m) are almost the same as Hebrew and there they were, set down by some ancient who knew, as we do, only the past and nothing of the future. Most of the texts are in the Bible; several are not. "May God most high bless you, may he show you his face and may he open for you," it is written on the parchments. "For he will honour the pious upon the throne of an eternal kingdom."
The story of the discovery of the scrolls is, of course, well known. An Arab Bedouin boy, Mohamed el-Dib, found them at Khirbet Qumran in a cave in what is now the occupied West Bank of Palestine in 1947, and handed them over to a cobbler turned antiquities dealer called Khalil Eskander Shahin in Jerusalem; they eventually ended up in the hands of scholars – mostly American – in the Jordanian side of Jerusalem. Then came the 1967 war and the arrival of the Israeli army in East Jerusalem and... well, you can imagine the rest.
Now, I have to say that I looked at these original texts in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, a tale that was bound to engender a whole series of questions, not least of which is Canada's softly-softly approach to anything approaching controversy. At no point in the exhibition, jointly arranged with the professional (and brilliant) assistance of the Israel Antiquities Authority, is there any mention, hem hem, of the West Bank or occupation. Or how the documents found there came to be in the hands of the Israelis.
So cautious are the dear old Canadians – who should by now have learned that concealing unhappy truths will only create fire and pain – that they do not even mention that "Kando", the first recipient of the scrolls, was Armenian. Of course not. Because then they would have to explain why an Armenian was in Jerusalem, not in western Turkey. Which would mean that they would have to mention the Armenian Holocaust of 1915 (one and a half million Armenian civilians murdered by Ottoman Turks).
This would anger Canada's Turkish community, who are holocaust deniers. And in turn, it would anger the Israel Antiquities Authority, who do not acknowledge that the Armenian Holocaust ever happened, there being only one True Holocaust, which is that of the Jews of Europe. The Jewish Holocaust is a fact, but the Armenian variety – a trial run for Hitler's destruction of six million Jews – cannot be discussed in Canada. Nor indeed in America, where Obama gutlessly failed even to use the word "genocide" last April.
Then we come down to the exhibition itself. Poor old Canadians, they had to publicise the whole fandango as a form of "unity" – there being three monotheistic religions, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, geddit? – but alas, the scrolls are not written in Arabic and the sole gesture to the Islamic faith is a single 200-year-old illuminated Koran. The museum bookshop also devotes a small heap of books on Islam to bolster their claim to "unity". The exhibition, according to the museum's director, William Thorsell – in a lamentable piece of pseudo prose – "will launch provocative enlightening inter-faith discussions". Here I reach for my sick bag.
Because the message of most of the videos showing around the exhibition (this being the age of multitechnical as well as multicultural wellbeing) make it clear that Judea and Samaria (the West Bank to the rest of us) is originally Jewish. And so it was, by God. The poor old Philistines lived on the sea coast. But when I suggested a swap to a bunch of Israeli settlers some years ago – to be fair, they roared in good-humoured laughter at my horrible suggestion that Israel might be given to the Palestinians in return for the occupied West Bank – the idea did not commend itself to them. They wanted Tel Aviv and all of internationally recognised Israel plus the West Bank. (At the time, they also wanted to keep Gaza, partly on the grounds – according to one of them – that this was where Jonah was puked up by the whale.)
No such claims soil the Ontario exhibition. "Words that Changed the World" is how the organisers coyly entitle their exhibition, "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these historical treasures". But up come the spoilsports, namely the Canadian "Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid", to suggest that the scrolls, originally in the hands of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities and the Ecole Biblique Française, were "confiscated and illegally removed by Israel" in 1967. The Royal Ontario Museum, the protesters say, is showing "looted" property which it has no right to exhibit. The Palestinian Authority itself has intervened, arguing that the museum is "displaying artefacts removed from the Palestinian territories". (Let us not, O Reader, mention the Elgin marbles, albeit that the Brits don't occupy Greece.)
So the museum has started to clam up. "We're not granting any interviews," according to a snotty spokeswoman for this esteemed institution. I can well see why. The museum claims it has documents to prove the legality of the exhibition. But it won't show them. Nor will it consult Unesco for its opinion. Plenty of unity there, of course.
Needless to say, if the Saudi government were to exhibit its Islamic treasures in Toronto, I doubt very much if it would mention the large Jewish community that once lived in Arabia. Any more than a recent Turkish cultural exhibition at the Royal Academy mentioned the – ahem, ahem again – contribution of the Armenians to Turkish history. Mind you, given the fact that the photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls are infinitely clearer and more decipherable than the originals stared at by The Independent's Middle East correspondent, I do wonder if these precious documents really need to be flown around the world.
But I guess it's the same old story: seeing is believing. Providing you're not a Palestinian or an Armenian or anyone interested in property rights.
Robert Fisk’s World:
You won't find any lessons in unity in the Dead Sea Scrolls
I looked at the texts in Toronto – a tale that was bound to pose a series of questions
Saturday, 11 July 2009
At last, I have seen the Dead Sea Scrolls. There they were, under their protective, cool-heated screens, the very words penned on to leather and papyrus 2,000 years ago, the world's most significant record of the Old Testament.
I guess you've got to see it to believe it. I can't read Hebrew – let alone ancient Hebrew (or Greek or Aramaic, the other languages of the scrolls) – but some of the letters are familiar to me from Arabic. The "seen" (s) of Arabic, and the "meem" (m) are almost the same as Hebrew and there they were, set down by some ancient who knew, as we do, only the past and nothing of the future. Most of the texts are in the Bible; several are not. "May God most high bless you, may he show you his face and may he open for you," it is written on the parchments. "For he will honour the pious upon the throne of an eternal kingdom."
The story of the discovery of the scrolls is, of course, well known. An Arab Bedouin boy, Mohamed el-Dib, found them at Khirbet Qumran in a cave in what is now the occupied West Bank of Palestine in 1947, and handed them over to a cobbler turned antiquities dealer called Khalil Eskander Shahin in Jerusalem; they eventually ended up in the hands of scholars – mostly American – in the Jordanian side of Jerusalem. Then came the 1967 war and the arrival of the Israeli army in East Jerusalem and... well, you can imagine the rest.
Now, I have to say that I looked at these original texts in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, a tale that was bound to engender a whole series of questions, not least of which is Canada's softly-softly approach to anything approaching controversy. At no point in the exhibition, jointly arranged with the professional (and brilliant) assistance of the Israel Antiquities Authority, is there any mention, hem hem, of the West Bank or occupation. Or how the documents found there came to be in the hands of the Israelis.
So cautious are the dear old Canadians – who should by now have learned that concealing unhappy truths will only create fire and pain – that they do not even mention that "Kando", the first recipient of the scrolls, was Armenian. Of course not. Because then they would have to explain why an Armenian was in Jerusalem, not in western Turkey. Which would mean that they would have to mention the Armenian Holocaust of 1915 (one and a half million Armenian civilians murdered by Ottoman Turks).
This would anger Canada's Turkish community, who are holocaust deniers. And in turn, it would anger the Israel Antiquities Authority, who do not acknowledge that the Armenian Holocaust ever happened, there being only one True Holocaust, which is that of the Jews of Europe. The Jewish Holocaust is a fact, but the Armenian variety – a trial run for Hitler's destruction of six million Jews – cannot be discussed in Canada. Nor indeed in America, where Obama gutlessly failed even to use the word "genocide" last April.
Then we come down to the exhibition itself. Poor old Canadians, they had to publicise the whole fandango as a form of "unity" – there being three monotheistic religions, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, geddit? – but alas, the scrolls are not written in Arabic and the sole gesture to the Islamic faith is a single 200-year-old illuminated Koran. The museum bookshop also devotes a small heap of books on Islam to bolster their claim to "unity". The exhibition, according to the museum's director, William Thorsell – in a lamentable piece of pseudo prose – "will launch provocative enlightening inter-faith discussions". Here I reach for my sick bag.
Because the message of most of the videos showing around the exhibition (this being the age of multitechnical as well as multicultural wellbeing) make it clear that Judea and Samaria (the West Bank to the rest of us) is originally Jewish. And so it was, by God. The poor old Philistines lived on the sea coast. But when I suggested a swap to a bunch of Israeli settlers some years ago – to be fair, they roared in good-humoured laughter at my horrible suggestion that Israel might be given to the Palestinians in return for the occupied West Bank – the idea did not commend itself to them. They wanted Tel Aviv and all of internationally recognised Israel plus the West Bank. (At the time, they also wanted to keep Gaza, partly on the grounds – according to one of them – that this was where Jonah was puked up by the whale.)
No such claims soil the Ontario exhibition. "Words that Changed the World" is how the organisers coyly entitle their exhibition, "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these historical treasures". But up come the spoilsports, namely the Canadian "Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid", to suggest that the scrolls, originally in the hands of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities and the Ecole Biblique Française, were "confiscated and illegally removed by Israel" in 1967. The Royal Ontario Museum, the protesters say, is showing "looted" property which it has no right to exhibit. The Palestinian Authority itself has intervened, arguing that the museum is "displaying artefacts removed from the Palestinian territories". (Let us not, O Reader, mention the Elgin marbles, albeit that the Brits don't occupy Greece.)
So the museum has started to clam up. "We're not granting any interviews," according to a snotty spokeswoman for this esteemed institution. I can well see why. The museum claims it has documents to prove the legality of the exhibition. But it won't show them. Nor will it consult Unesco for its opinion. Plenty of unity there, of course.
Needless to say, if the Saudi government were to exhibit its Islamic treasures in Toronto, I doubt very much if it would mention the large Jewish community that once lived in Arabia. Any more than a recent Turkish cultural exhibition at the Royal Academy mentioned the – ahem, ahem again – contribution of the Armenians to Turkish history. Mind you, given the fact that the photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls are infinitely clearer and more decipherable than the originals stared at by The Independent's Middle East correspondent, I do wonder if these precious documents really need to be flown around the world.
But I guess it's the same old story: seeing is believing. Providing you're not a Palestinian or an Armenian or anyone interested in property rights.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2893860.ece
Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11
Robert Fisk, Independent
25 August 2007
Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the "raver". Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the "raver" is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a "raver".
His – or her – question goes like this. Why, if you believe you're a free journalist, don't you report what you really know about 9/11? Why don't you tell the truth – that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers? Why don't you reveal the secrets behind 9/11? The assumption in each case is that Fisk knows – that Fisk has an absolute concrete, copper-bottomed fact-filled desk containing final proof of what "all the world knows" (that usually is the phrase) – who destroyed the twin towers. Sometimes the "raver" is clearly distressed. One man in Cork screamed his question at me, and then – the moment I suggested that his version of the plot was a bit odd – left the hall, shouting abuse and kicking over chairs.
Usually, I have tried to tell the "truth"; that while there are unanswered questions about 9/11, I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; that I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?
Well, I still hold to that view. Any military which can claim – as the Americans did two days ago – that al-Qa'ida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11. "We disrupted al-Qa'ida, causing them to run," Colonel David Sutherland said of the preposterously code-named "Operation Lightning Hammer" in Iraq's Diyala province. "Their fear of facing our forces proves the terrorists know there is no safe haven for them." And more of the same, all of it untrue.
Within hours, al-Qa'ida attacked Baquba in battalion strength and slaughtered all the local sheikhs who had thrown in their hand with the Americans. It reminds me of Vietnam, the war which George Bush watched from the skies over Texas – which may account for why he this week mixed up the end of the Vietnam war with the genocide in a different country called Cambodia, whose population was eventually rescued by the same Vietnamese whom Mr Bush's more courageous colleagues had been fighting all along.
But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.
I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the "raver" bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".
Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.
But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.
Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now – we create our own reality". True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.
Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11
Robert Fisk, Independent
25 August 2007
Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the "raver". Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the "raver" is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a "raver".
His – or her – question goes like this. Why, if you believe you're a free journalist, don't you report what you really know about 9/11? Why don't you tell the truth – that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers? Why don't you reveal the secrets behind 9/11? The assumption in each case is that Fisk knows – that Fisk has an absolute concrete, copper-bottomed fact-filled desk containing final proof of what "all the world knows" (that usually is the phrase) – who destroyed the twin towers. Sometimes the "raver" is clearly distressed. One man in Cork screamed his question at me, and then – the moment I suggested that his version of the plot was a bit odd – left the hall, shouting abuse and kicking over chairs.
Usually, I have tried to tell the "truth"; that while there are unanswered questions about 9/11, I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; that I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?
Well, I still hold to that view. Any military which can claim – as the Americans did two days ago – that al-Qa'ida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11. "We disrupted al-Qa'ida, causing them to run," Colonel David Sutherland said of the preposterously code-named "Operation Lightning Hammer" in Iraq's Diyala province. "Their fear of facing our forces proves the terrorists know there is no safe haven for them." And more of the same, all of it untrue.
Within hours, al-Qa'ida attacked Baquba in battalion strength and slaughtered all the local sheikhs who had thrown in their hand with the Americans. It reminds me of Vietnam, the war which George Bush watched from the skies over Texas – which may account for why he this week mixed up the end of the Vietnam war with the genocide in a different country called Cambodia, whose population was eventually rescued by the same Vietnamese whom Mr Bush's more courageous colleagues had been fighting all along.
But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.
I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the "raver" bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".
Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.
But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.
Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now – we create our own reality". True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.
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