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FTR #560 Economics 9/11

Record­ed July 9, 2006

Lis­ten: MP3  Side 1 [1] Side 2 [2]

REALAUDIO [3]

Intro­duc­tion: Ana­lyz­ing the eco­nom­ic impli­ca­tions of the events of 9/11, this pro­gram exam­ines sig­nif­i­cant areas of com­mon­al­i­ty between the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic forces con­trol­ling the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, as well as al-Qae­da and its par­ent orga­ni­za­tion the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The broad­cast begins with dis­cus­sion of the free-mar­ket eco­nom­ic phi­los­o­phy of the Mus­lim Brotherhood—a phi­los­o­phy con­sis­tent with the glob­al­iza­tion agen­da of the multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. The World Bank views Broth­er­hood eco­nom­ic inspi­ra­tion Ibn Khal­dun (a 14th cen­tu­ry the­o­reti­cian) as the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion! It is Mr. Emory’s view that the multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions intend the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as a force to replace state-con­trolled economies such as Iraq (under Sad­dam Hus­sein) and Syr­ia. The Broth­er­hood also appears to be receiv­ing West­ern sup­port (U.S. and Sau­di) for activ­i­ties in parts of Rus­sia and China—the appar­ent goal being to frag­ment those coun­tries and split off and exploit petro­le­um pro­duc­ing regions. In this respect, the behav­ior of the U.S. toward the Islam­o­fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is sim­i­lar to its con­duct dur­ing World War II. Even as U.S. fight­ing men and women were locked in mor­tal com­bat with the com­bat­ants of the fas­cist coun­tries, many Amer­i­can cor­po­rate ele­ments were in bed with their busi­ness and (in some cas­es) ide­o­log­i­cal part­ners in the Axis nations. The pro­gram notes that pow­er­ful GOP func­tionar­ies like Grover Norquist are deeply involved with Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ele­ments in the U.S. Tak­ing stock of the grim state of affairs in the Bush administration’s pros­e­cu­tion of the “war on ter­ror,” the pro­gram chron­i­cles indi­ca­tions that Osama bin Laden delib­er­ate­ly assist­ed George W. Bush’s re-elec­tion in 2004 and notes the view of promi­nent intel­li­gence spe­cial­ists that the U.S. is los­ing the war as a result of the inva­sion of Iraq.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Osama bin Laden’s plan to bank­rupt the U.S. econ­o­my by hit­ting petro­le­um infra­struc­ture tar­gets in order to dri­ve up the price of oil; dis­cus­sion of the com­mon­al­i­ty between bin Laden’s goal and the prof­it motive of the petro­le­um indus­try; review of the fact that “off­shore” finan­cial con­duits were used by both multi­na­tion­al cor­po­rate ele­ments and ter­ror­ists; the hypocrisy of the GOP attack on the New York Times for its dis­clo­sure of the Swift pro­gram aimed at fer­ret­ing out ter­ror­ist finances; the Shi­ite Iraqi government’s imple­men­ta­tion of Grover Norquist’s plan for pri­va­ti­za­tion of the Iraqi eco­nom­ic infra­struc­ture.

1. Begin­ning with an arti­cle about the lais­sez-faire com­mer­cial phi­los­o­phy of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the broad­cast notes that that organization’s eco­nom­ic ide­ol­o­gy is alto­geth­er con­sis­tent with the fun­da­men­tal goals of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions and the prac­tice of glob­al­iza­tion. (For more about the corporatist/fascist eco­nom­ic phi­los­o­phy of the Broth­er­hood, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#537 [4]. It is said that a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words. This pic­ture [5] of an Islam­ic Jihad cam­paign ral­ly from April of 2005 speaks vol­umes about the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. (Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad is a sub­group of the Broth­er­hood.) The Brotherhood’s pop­ulist pre­ten­sions and actu­al char­i­ta­ble accom­plish­ments should not blind one to the true nature of the orga­ni­za­tion. As dis­cussed in FTR#540 [6], the head of the Egypt­ian branch of the Broth­er­hood has denied the Holo­caust. Keep this in mind when read­ing dis­cus­sion of the Egypt­ian Broth­er­hood in the arti­cle below.

“Judeo-Chris­t­ian scrip­ture offers lit­tle eco­nom­ic instruc­tion. The Book of Deuteron­o­my, for exam­ple, is loaded with edicts on how the faith­ful should pray, eat, bequeath, keep the holy fes­ti­vals and treat slaves and spous­es, but it is silent on trade and com­merce. In Matthew, when Christ admon­ish­es his fol­low­ers to ‘give to the emper­or the things that are the emper­or’s,’ he is effec­tive­ly con­ced­ing fis­cal and mon­e­tary author­i­ty to pagan Rome. Islam is dif­fer­ent. The prophet Muhammad—himself a trader—preached mer­chant hon­or, the only reg­u­la­tion that the bor­der­less Lev­an­tine mar­ket knew. In Mus­lim litur­gy, the deals cut in the souk become a metaphor for the con­tract between God and the faith­ful. And the busi­ness mod­el Muham­mad pre­scribed, accord­ing to Mus­lim schol­ars and econ­o­mists, is very much in the lais­sez-faire tra­di­tion lat­er embraced by the West. Prices were to be set by God alone—anticipating by more than a mil­len­ni­um Adam Smith’s ref­er­ence to the ‘invis­i­ble hand’ of mar­ket-based pric­ing. Mer­chants were not to cut deals out­side the souk, an ear­ly attempt to thwart insid­er trad­ing.”
(“Islam in Office” by Stephen Glain; Newsweek; 7/3–10/2006.) [7]

2. Note that the gov­ern­ment of Iraq has pre­served the free-mar­ket, lais­sez-faire eco­nom­ic mod­el craft­ed by Grover Norquist. Norquist’s author­ship of the post-inva­sion Iraqi econ­o­my is dis­cussed below.

“Today, with a spir­i­tu­al revival sweep­ing much of the Mus­lim world and with the Bush admin­is­tra­tion still keen on democ­ra­tiz­ing the region, it is worth ask­ing how an Islamist move­ment would man­age the econ­o­my. Since 2001, Islamist par­ties have made strong show­ings or won elec­tions in 10 Arab coun­tries (Moroc­co, Jor­dan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait and Pak­istan) and the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty. And none are clash­ing with the West on free-mar­ket eco­nom­ics. In Iraq, the sup­ply-side eco­nom­ic-reform plan sub­mit­ted in 2003 by for­mer U.S. admin­is­tra­tor Paul Bre­mer has sur­vived with only minor revi­sions under Bagh­dad’s new Shia-dom­i­nat­ed gov­ern­ment. [Empha­sis added.] An inter­est­ing test came in the Jan­u­ary elec­tion in Egypt, when the Mus­lim Brotherhood—the foun­tain­head of mod­ern Islamism—took a fifth of the seats in Par­lia­ment. Now the largest oppo­si­tion par­ty, much of the broth­er­hood’s appeal rests on its net­work of hos­pi­tals, schools and char­i­ties, which are often supe­ri­or to state ser­vices (and help explain why the sec­u­lar regime cracks down hard­er on the sec­u­lar oppo­si­tion than on the reli­gious one). For­tu­nate­ly for the reform-mind­ed prime min­is­ter, Ahmed Nazif, the broth­er­hood’s eco­nom­ic agen­da is large­ly con­sis­tent with his own, albeit with a more pop­ulist twist.” (Idem.)

3. “The broth­er­hood embraces free-trade deals in gen­er­al, but crit­i­cizes the gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to nego­ti­ate bet­ter terms for Egyp­tians. Though Islam tends to frown on tax col­lec­tion, the broth­er­hood sup­ports tax reform (not abo­li­tion) and oppos­es a pro­posed flat tax as regres­sive. It even endorsed the recent deci­sion to lift bud­get-bust­ing food and fuel sub­si­dies, but wants to use Egyp­t’s ample nat­ur­al-gas reserves to finance a less painful tran­si­tion to mar­ket prices. ‘It must be done gen­tly,’ says Moham­mad Habib, the broth­er­hood’s first deputy chair­man, ‘with the objec­tive of reduc­ing the gap between rich and poor.’ In the 1950s, as the broth­er­hood gained polit­i­cal momen­tum, it opposed Pres­i­dent Gamal Abdel Nass­er as much for his deci­sion to nation­al­ize the Egypt­ian econ­o­my as for his fierce sec­u­lar­ism. Muham­mad, says Yass­er Abdo, a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood mem­ber and a for­mer econ­o­mist at the Inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic Bank for Invest­ment and Devel­op­ment in Cairo, ‘believed in the pri­vate sec­tor as the basis of pro­duc­tive activ­i­ty,’ with a ‘lim­it­ed’ state role.” (Idem.)

4. Note that although the Broth­er­hood offi­cial­ly dis­claims monop­o­list eco­nom­ics, it does not ques­tion the OPEC car­tel.

“Today, broth­er­hood par­lia­men­tar­i­ans remain anti-sta­tist and staunch­ly antitrust, cit­ing a verse in the Qur’an: ‘He who brings com­modi­ties to the mar­ket is good, but he who prac­tices monop­o­lies is evil.’ Not that any mem­ber goes as far as ques­tion­ing the OPEC car­tel. As Cairo Uni­ver­si­ty econ­o­mist Abdel Hamid Abuzaid puts it, Islam pro­motes ‘com­pe­ti­tion of a coop­er­a­tive’ nature, not the ‘cut­throat’ West­ern kind. Polit­i­cal­ly, at least, the objec­tive of fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam is to restore the Islam­ic caliphate, the uni­fied Mus­lim king­dom of the 7th to the ear­ly 20th cen­turies that stretched from the Hin­du Kush to the Strait of Gibral­tar. This rhetoric turns more prac­ti­cal on the sub­ject of trade. ‘If the ancient caliphate can revive itself,’ says Habib, who has a U.S. doc­tor­ate in geol­o­gy, ‘it will hap­pen through region­al com­merce.’ A broth­er­hood in pow­er, says Habib, would respect Cairo’s free-trade agreements—though the group appears to be divid­ed over whether it would hon­or one with Israel.” (Idem.)

5. Note that no less an author­i­ty than the World Bank views Ibn Khaldun—revered by the Brotherhood—as “the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion”!

“In the days of the caliphate, Islam devel­oped the most sophis­ti­cat­ed mon­e­tary sys­tem the world had yet known. Today, some econ­o­mists cite Islam­ic bank­ing as fur­ther evi­dence of an intrin­sic Islam­ic prag­ma­tism. Though still guid­ed by a Qur’an­ic ban on riba, or inter­est, Islam­ic bank­ing has adapt­ed to the needs of a boom­ing oil region for liq­uid­i­ty. In recent years, some 500 Islam­ic banks and invest­ment firms hold­ing $2 tril­lion in assets have emerged in the Gulf States, with more in Islam­ic com­mu­ni­ties of the West. British Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer Gor­don Brown wants to make Lon­don a glob­al cen­ter for Islam­ic finance—and elic­its no howl of protest from fun­da­men­tal­ists. How Islamists might run a cen­tral bank is more prob­lem­at­ic: schol­ars say they would manip­u­late cur­ren­cy reserves, not inter­est rates. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood hails 14th cen­tu­ry philoso­pher Ibn Khal­dun as its eco­nom­ic guide. Antic­i­pat­ing sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics, Khal­dun argued that cut­ting tax­es rais­es pro­duc­tion and tax rev­enues, and that state con­trol should be lim­it­ed to pro­vid­ing water, fire and free graz­ing land, the util­i­ties of the ancient world. The World Bank has called Ibn Khal­dun the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion. [Empha­sis added.] His found­ing influ­ence is a sign of mod­er­a­tion. If Islamists in pow­er ever do clash with the West, it won’t be over com­merce.” (Idem.)

6. The free-mar­ket eco­nom­ic mod­el imposed on Iraq after the U.S. inva­sion was craft­ed by Grover Norquist, one of the lynch­pins of the GOP right wing. Norquist devel­oped the Islam­ic Insti­tute, in effect a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-linked wing of the GOP. One should not fail to note that Norquist’s Islam­ic Insti­tute had active links with ter­ror­ist-linked Mus­lim Broth­er­hood mem­bers. (For more about Norquist’s link to the Broth­er­hood and ter­ror­ists, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 435 [8], 454 [9], 515 [10].)

“ . . . It was more like a cor­po­rate takeover, except with Abrams tanks instead of junk bonds. It didn’t strike me as the work of a Kosher Cabal for an Impe­r­i­al Israel. In fact, it smelled of pork—Pig Heav­en for cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca look­ing for a slice of Iraq, and I sus­pect­ed its porcine source. I gave it a big sniff and, sure enough, I smelled Grover Norquist. Norquist is the capo di capi of right-wing, big-mon­ey influ­ence ped­dlers in Wash­ing­ton. Those jeal­ous of his inside track to the White House call him ‘Gopher Nose-Twist.’ A devout Chris­t­ian, Norquist chan­neled a mil­lion dol­lars to the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion to fight the devil’s tool, legal­ized gam­bling. He didn’t tell the Coali­tion that the loot came from an Indi­an tribe rep­re­sent­ed by Norquist’s asso­ciate, Jack Abramoff. (The tribe didn’t want com­pe­ti­tion for its own casi­no oper­a­tions.) I took a chance and dropped in on Norquist’s L Street office, and under a poster of his idol [‘NIXON— NOW MORE THAN EVER’], Norquist took a look at the ‘recov­ery’ plan for Iraq and prac­ti­cal­ly jumped over my desk to sign it, filled with pride at see­ing his baby. Yes, he pro­mot­ed the pri­va­ti­za­tions, the tax lim­it for the rich, and the change in copy­right law, all con­cerns close to the hearts and wal­lets of his clients. . . .”
(“Was the Inva­sion of Iraq A Jew­ish Con­spir­a­cy?” by Greg Palast; Tikkun; July/August/2006.) [11]

7. Revis­it­ing the sub­ject of ter­ror­ist financ­ing and the [abortive] attempts at inter­dict­ing the mon­ey flow, the pro­gram touch­es on the furor launched by the GOP over The New York Times’ dis­clo­sure of the Swift pro­gram to mon­i­tor ter­ror­ist mon­ey trans­ac­tions. It is iron­ic that the GOP is screech­ing over the dis­clo­sure, because the orig­i­nal Oper­a­tion Green Quest pro­gram uncov­ered pro­found links between the GOP hier­ar­chy and the net­works involved in financ­ing Al Qae­da. At the cen­ter of the dis­clo­sures con­cern­ing Oper­a­tion Green Quest was the afore­men­tioned Grover Norquist. (For more about the frus­tra­tion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#462 [12], 464 [13], 495 [14], 500 [15], 513 [16], 514 [17], 556 [18]. For infor­ma­tion about the links between the Bank Al Taqwa, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the GOP, and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, see FTR#’s 454 [19], 495 [14], 500 [15], 515 [20].) As dis­cussed in FTR#367 [21], the finan­cial indus­try opposed many of the reg­u­la­tions the U.S. imposed in order to inter­dict ter­ror financ­ing net­works, because sig­nif­i­cant ele­ments of the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty uti­lized the same networks—cracking down on the ter­ror­ists also com­pro­mised the “off­shore” mon­ey chan­nels used by the cor­po­ra­tions. Could this be one of the rea­sons for the oppo­si­tion to the Swift pro­gram in cer­tain cir­cles? Note, also, that the Sul­li­van & Cromwell law firm, the old Dulles law firm, led much of the oppo­si­tion to anti-ter­ror reg­u­la­tions.

“Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have been lin­ing up to con­demn The New York Times for reveal­ing a pro­gram to track finan­cial trans­ac­tions as part of the war on ter­ror­ism. But if the Times’ rev­e­la­tion about a pro­gram to mon­i­tor inter­na­tion­al exchanges is so dam­ag­ing, why has the admin­is­tra­tion been chat­ter­ing about efforts to mon­i­tor domes­tic trans­ac­tions for near­ly five years? Short­ly after the 9/11 attacks, many jour­nal­ists — includ­ing this one — were briefed by U.S. Cus­toms offi­cials on Oper­a­tion Green Quest, an effort to roll up ter­ror­ist financiers by mon­i­tor­ing, among oth­er things, ‘sus­pi­cious’ bank trans­fers and ancient mon­ey lend­ing pro­grams favored by peo­ple of Mid­dle East­ern descent. . . .”
(“White House NYT Bash­ers: Hyp­ocrites” by Shane Har­ris; Defensetech.org; 6/28/2006.) [22]

8. “Since [9/11], the Trea­sury Depart­ment has pro­duced dozens of news releas­es and pub­lic reports detail­ing its efforts. Though offi­cials appear nev­er to have men­tioned the Swift pro­gram, they have repeat­ed­ly described their coop­er­a­tion with finan­cial net­works to iden­ti­fy accounts held by peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions linked to ter­ror­ism... Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Peter T. King, Repub­li­can of New York, con­vened a hear­ing in 2004 [23] where Trea­sury offi­cials described at length their efforts, assist­ed by finan­cial insti­tu­tions, to trace ter­ror­ists’ mon­ey. But he has been among the most vehe­ment crit­ics of the dis­clo­sures about the Swift pro­gram, say­ing edi­tors and reporters of The New York Times should be impris­oned for pub­lish­ing gov­ern­ment secrets.” (Idem.)

9. Next, the broad­cast sets forth the view of CIA experts that an address released by bin Laden four days before the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was delib­er­ate­ly intend­ed to help Bush win the elec­tion! Al-Qae­da in Iraq and an al-Qae­da affil­i­ate called the Abu Hafs al-Mas­ri Brigade had issued state­ments in the run-up to the 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion indi­cat­ing that they thought Bush’s re-elec­tion would help the Islamist cause and that they would do noth­ing to impede that re-elec­tion. Are both Bush and bin Laden actu­al­ly work­ing (albeit unin­ten­tion­al­ly) toward the same goals?! Is this because the same macro­eco­nom­ic forces are con­trol­ling both of them? Mr. Emory believes that such is the case, and that the con­trol­ling eco­nom­ic enti­ty is the Under­ground Reich, in con­trol of the multi­na­tion­al cor­po­rate land­scape. A banker said to the late Paul Man­ning, author of Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile [24], that the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work is the great­est con­cen­tra­tion of mon­ey pow­er under a sin­gle con­trol in all of his­to­ry. It is this “mon­ey pow­er” that is deter­min­ing the course of events.

“On Oct. 29, 2004, just four days before the U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, al-Qae­da leader Osama bin-Laden released a video­tape denounc­ing George W. Bush. Some Bush sup­port­ers quick­ly spun the dia­tribe as ‘Osama’s endorse­ment of John Ker­ry.’ But behind the walls of the CIA, ana­lysts had con­clud­ed the oppo­site: that bin-Laden was try­ing to help Bush gain a sec­ond term. This stun­ning CIA dis­clo­sure is tucked away in a brief pas­sage near the end of Ron Suskind’s The One Per­cent Doc­trine, which draws heav­i­ly from CIA insid­ers. Suskind wrote that the CIA ana­lysts based their trou­bling assess­ment on clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, but the ana­lysts still puz­zled over exact­ly why bin-Laden want­ed Bush to stay in office. Accord­ing to Suskind’s book, CIA ana­lysts had spent years ‘pars­ing each expressed word of the al-Qae­da leader and his deputy, [Ayman] Zawahiri. What they’d learned over near­ly a decade is that bin-Laden speaks only for strate­gic rea­sons.”
(“CIA: Osama Helped Bush in ‘04” by Robert Par­ry; Consortiumnews.com; 7/4/2006; p. 1.) [25]

10. “‘Their [the CIA’s] assess­ments, at day’s end, are a dis­til­late of the kind of secret, inter­nal con­ver­sa­tions that the Amer­i­can pub­lic [was] not sanc­tioned to hear: strate­gic analy­sis. Today’s con­clu­sion: bin-Laden’s mes­sage was clear­ly designed to assist the President’s reelec­tion. ‘At the five o’clock meet­ing, [deputy CIA direc­tor] John McLaugh­lin opened the issue with the con­sen­sus view: ‘Bin-Laden cer­tain­ly did a nice favor today for the Pres­i­dent.’’ McLaughlin’s com­ment drew nods from CIA offi­cers at the table. Jami Mis­cik, CIA deputy asso­ciate direc­tor for intel­li­gence, sug­gest­ed that the al-Qae­da founder may have come to Bush’s aid because bin-Laden felt threat­ened by the rise in Iraq of Jor­dan­ian ter­ror­ist Abu Musab al-Zar­qawi; bin-Laden might have thought his lead­er­ship would be dimin­ished if Bush lost the White House and their ‘eye-to-eye strug­gle’ end­ed. But the CIA ana­lysts also felt that bin-Laden might have rec­og­nized how Bush’s poli­cies – includ­ing the Guan­tanamo prison camp, the Abu Ghraib scan­dal and the end­less blood­shed in Iraq – were serv­ing al-Qaeda’s strate­gic goals for recruit­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of jihadists.” (Idem.)

11. “‘Cer­tain­ly,’ the CIA’s Mis­cik said, ‘he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years,’ accord­ing to Suskind’s account of the meet­ing. As their inter­nal assess­ment sank in, the CIA ana­lysts drift­ed into silence, trou­bled by the impli­ca­tions of their own con­clu­sions. ‘An ocean of hard truths before them – such as what did it say about U.S. poli­cies that bin-Laden would want Bush reelect­ed – remained untouched,’ Suskind wrote. One imme­di­ate con­se­quence of bin-Laden break­ing near­ly a year of silence to issue the video­tape the week­end before the U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was to give the Bush cam­paign a much need­ed boost. From a vir­tu­al dead heat, Bush opened up a six-point lead, accord­ing to one poll.” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

12. “The impli­ca­tions of this new evi­dence are trou­bling, too, for the Amer­i­can peo­ple as they head toward anoth­er elec­tion in Novem­ber 2006 that also is viewed as a ref­er­en­dum on Bush’s pros­e­cu­tion of the ‘war on ter­ror.’ As we have report­ed pre­vi­ous­ly at Consortiumnews.com, a large body of evi­dence already exist­ed sup­port­ing the view that the Bush­es and the bin-Ladens have long oper­at­ed with a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship that may be entire­ly unspo­ken but nev­er­the­less has been a case of each fam­i­ly act­ing in ways that advance the inter­ests of the oth­er.” [See “Osama’s Bri­ar Patch” [26] or “Is Bush al-Qaeda’s ‘Use­ful Idiot?‘” [27]] (Ibid.; p. 2.)

13. Author Par­ry notes that, before the 9/11 attacks, the polit­i­cal for­tunes of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and bin Laden’s forces were grow­ing dim quick­ly. The attacks changed all of that.

“Before al-Qae­da launched the Sept. 11, 2001, ter­ror attacks against New York and Wash­ing­ton, Bush was stum­bling in a pres­i­den­cy that many Amer­i­cans felt was head­ed nowhere. As Bush took a month-long vaca­tion at his Texas ranch in August 2001, his big issue was a plan to restrict stem-cell research on moral grounds. Pri­vate­ly, Bush’s neo­con­ser­v­a­tive advis­ers were chaf­ing under what they saw as the com­pla­cen­cy of the Amer­i­can peo­ple unwill­ing to take on the man­tle of glob­al police­man as the world’s sole super­pow­er. The neo­cons hoped for some ‘Pearl Har­bor’ inci­dent that would gal­va­nize a pub­lic con­sen­sus for action against Iraq and oth­er ‘rogue states.’ Oth­er senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials, such as Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney, dreamed of the restora­tion of the impe­r­i­al pres­i­den­cy that – after Richard Nixon’s Water­gate scan­dal – had been cut down to size by Con­gress, the courts and the press. Only a nation­al cri­sis would cre­ate a cov­er for a new asser­tion of pres­i­den­tial pow­er.” (Idem.)

14. “Mean­while, halfway around the world, bin-Laden and his al-Qae­da mil­i­tants were fac­ing defeat after defeat. Their brand of Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism had been reject­ed in Mus­lim soci­eties from Alge­ria and Egypt to Sau­di Ara­bia and Jor­dan. Bin-Laden and his lieu­tenants had even been expelled from the Sudan. Bin-Laden’s extrem­ists had been chased to the far­thest cor­ners of the plan­et, in this case the caves of Afghanistan. At this crit­i­cal junc­ture, al-Qaeda’s brain trust decid­ed that their best hope was to strike at the Unit­ed States and count on a clum­sy reac­tion that would offend the Islam­ic world and ral­ly angry young Mus­lims to al-Qaeda’s ban­ner. So, by ear­ly sum­mer 2001, the clock ticked down to 9/11 as 19 al-Qae­da oper­a­tives posi­tioned them­selves inside the Unit­ed States and pre­pared to attack. But U.S. intel­li­gence ana­lysts picked up evi­dence of al-Qaeda’s plans by sift­ing through the ‘chat­ter’ of elec­tron­ic inter­cepts. The U.S. warn­ing sys­tem was ‘blink­ing red.’” (Idem.)

15. “Over the week­end of July Fourth 2001, a well-placed U.S. intel­li­gence source passed on a dis­turb­ing piece of infor­ma­tion to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who lat­er recount­ed the inci­dent in an inter­view with Alter­net [28]. ‘The per­son told me that there was some con­cern about an inter­cept that had been picked up,’ Miller said. ‘The inci­dent that had got­ten everyone’s atten­tion was a con­ver­sa­tion between two mem­bers of al-Qae­da. And they had been talk­ing to one anoth­er, sup­pos­ed­ly express­ing dis­ap­point­ment that the Unit­ed States had not cho­sen to retal­i­ate more seri­ous­ly against what had hap­pened to the [destroy­er USS] Cole [which was bombed on Oct. 12, 2000]. ‘And one al-Qae­da oper­a­tive was over­heard say­ing to the oth­er, ‘Don’t wor­ry; we’re plan­ning some­thing so big now that the U.S. will have to respond.’ . . . ” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

16. A con­sor­tium of intel­li­gence and nation­al secu­ri­ty experts feel that the U.S. is los­ing the “war on ter­ror” because of the inva­sion of Iraq. Mr. Emory has expressed this same view for a num­ber of years. It is also Mr. Emory’s con­sid­ered opin­ion that, with the inva­sion of Iraq, the U.S. was lured into a trap by the Under­ground Reich—a view expressed in –among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 471 [29], 502 [30], 527 [31], 535 [32].

“The Unit­ed States is los­ing its fight against ter­ror­ism, and the Iraq war is the biggest rea­son, more than 8 of 10 Amer­i­can ter­ror­ism and nation­al secu­ri­ty experts con­clud­ed in a poll released Wednes­day. One par­tic­i­pant in the sur­vey, a for­mer CIA offi­cial who describes him­self as a con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can, said the war in Iraq has pro­vid­ed glob­al ter­ror­ist groups with a recruit­ing bonan­za, a valu­able train­ing ground and a strate­gic beach­head at the cross­roads of the oil-rich Per­sian Gulf and Turkey, the tra­di­tion­al land bridge link­ing the Mid­dle East to Europe. ‘The war in Iraq broke our back in the war on ter­ror,’ said the for­mer offi­cial, Michael Scheuer, the author of Impe­r­i­al Hubris, a book high­ly crit­i­cal of the administration’s anti-ter­ror­ism strat­e­gy and tac­tics. ‘It has made every­thing more dif­fi­cult and the threat more exis­ten­tial.’ . . . .”
(“U.S. Los­ing Fight Against Ter­ror­ism, Secu­ri­ty Experts Say” by Bob Deans [Cox News Ser­vice]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 6/29/2006; p. A15.)

17. The pro­gram con­cludes with an inter­est­ing look at al-Qae­da strat­e­gy with regard to the world petro­le­um mar­kets. Osama bin Laden has pre­vi­ous­ly expressed his intent to col­lapse the U.S. econ­o­my. The for­mer head of the CIA’s al-Qae­da task force believes that this strat­e­gy will involve attacks on the petro­le­um infra­struc­ture in the U.S. and elsewhere—not destruc­tion of oil wells them­selves. It is inter­est­ing to note how the strat­e­gy of bin Laden and oth­er Islamist ter­ror­ists dove­tails with the goals of the oil industry—driving up prices and, as a result, max­i­miz­ing prof­its. As will be dis­cussed at greater length in FTR#561 [33], the glob­al increase in oil is effect­ing an enor­mous trans­fer of wealth from the accounts of every indi­vid­ual and insti­tu­tion on earth—both pri­vate and public—into the cof­fers of the petro­le­um relat­ed inter­ests, both nations and com­mer­cial enter­pris­es. (Remem­ber in this regard that vir­tu­al­ly every­one and every­thing uses petro­le­um, either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly. This trans­fer of wealth is an alto­geth­er pro­found phe­nom­e­non, and one that will prove deci­sive in the course of human affairs if it is not altered.

“The US and its Arab allies must expect an increase in attacks on their oil infra­struc­ture in the next phase of the war by al-Qae­da tar­get­ing the US econ­o­my, the for­mer Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency offi­cial who was respon­si­ble for hunt­ing down Osama bin Laden warns today. Writ­ing for the Jamestown Foun­da­tion, a Wash­ing­ton secu­ri­ty think-tank, Michael Scheuer says Mr. Bin Laden’s inten­tion to bank­rupt the US econ­o­my by dri­ving up world oil prices is very like­ly to lead to attacks inside the US by al-Qae­da, its allies or unre­lat­ed groups. Houston’s gas refiner­ies, oil import facil­i­ties and ship canal and pipeline sys­tems, and the trans-Alas­ka pipeline are poten­tial tar­gets.”
(“US ‘Must Beware’ Rise in al-Qae­da Oil Strikes” by Guy Din­more; Finan­cial Times; 5/15/2006; p. 6.) [34]

18. “Al-Qaeda’s failed attack on Sau­di Arabia’s Abdaiq facil­i­ty on Feb­ru­ary 24, which led to a $2 a bar­rel jump in world oil prices, should also be seen as the begin­ning of a new and more sys­tem­at­ic phase of tar­get­ing of the kingdom’s oil infra­struc­ture. Two days after the attack, an al-Qae­da-affil­i­at­ed cler­ic issued a reli­gious jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for attack­ing oil-pro­cess­ing instal­la­tions. The cler­ic, using the Inter­net, also claimed that attacks on promi­nent Mus­lim oil offi­cials were jus­ti­fied. The mil­i­tant organization’s media appa­ra­tus is also being used ‘to stir the trou­bled pot of oil-relat­ed inter­na­tion­al wor­ries,’ Mr. Scheuer writes, not­ing encour­age­ment for Niger­ian insur­gents in the Niger Delta and ‘mujahideen’ in the Caspi­an Sea region.” (Idem.)

19. Note that bin Laden’s strat­e­gy dove­tails nice­ly with the agen­da of the oil indus­try. Note also how the admin­is­tra­tion of George W. Bush is doing an excel­lent job of real­iz­ing bin Laden’s goal of col­laps­ing the U.S. econ­o­my. It is Mr. Emory’s long-held view that the Under­ground Reich is manip­u­lat­ing both “W” and bin Laden.

“Trac­ing al-Qaeda’s evolv­ing strat­e­gy, Mr. Scheuer, who left the CIA in 2004, notes that Mr. bin Laden has nev­er threat­ened to cut oil sup­plies to the US. Instead he is dri­ven by the belief that Mus­lim oil is bought too cheap­ly. In Decem­ber 2004, Mr. bin Laden wrote that a min­i­mum of $100 a bar­rel was a ‘fair price.’ In his Sep­tem­ber 1996 ‘Dec­la­ra­tion of War against Amer­i­cans,’ Mr. bin Laden argues that oil in the Islam­ic world is a trea­sure to be pre­served for future gen­er­a­tions of Mus­lims and thus should not be wast­ed through attacks. As a result, Mr. Scheuer says al-Qaeda’s plans rule out attacks on oil wells but focus on the infra­struc­ture need­ed for refin­ing and trans­port­ing oil, as well as indus­try per­son­nel.” (Idem.)