General Kayani’s Extension :Brigadier F.B Ali

(This is an original piece written for pakpotpourri2)  

The 3-year extension of Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s term as army chief has aroused considerable comment. Many media pundits have pontificated gravely, using many words to say little. Others have criticized what they term a sell-out due to personal ambition. Quite a few well-meaning people have expressed regret that he did not follow the example of Gen Abdul Waheed (Kakar) and decline the offer. In view of the outsized role that the army chief plays in Pakistan, it matters a great deal what lies behind his acceptance of the extension. 

One obvious reason why anyone would willingly choose to continue presiding over Pakistan’s deadly downward spiral is that they are either a super-crook (like President Zardari) or a super-buffoon (like Prime Minister Gilani). Since Gen Kayani is neither a villain nor an idiot, we must look elsewhere. Another possible reason could be that he believes that no one else could steer the country safely through the treacherous shoals of the geopolitical and military conflicts roiling the region, as he has done for the last few years. The crowd of sycophantic courtiers that usually collects around powerful men in Pakistan makes it easy for them to believe such things. However, the general is reputed to be a simple, down-to-earth person ‒ and intelligent.

Thus, for the many who are desperately worried about the future of the country, there are some grounds to hope that he accepted the extension because he feels the need to do more than what he has done in his present tenure. Because he realises that, if he merely continues in his past role, down the road he may find himself one day commanding an army without a country. Or, that there could come about such a transformation in both army and country that they bear no resemblance to what they are now, likely followed thereafter by neither army nor country remaining.
Surely, Gen Kayani can see that the country is unravelling before his eyes. With this happening, what use is it to merely strengthen the army, or fight extremists, or manoeuvre cleverly around foreign friends and enemies? So far, he has been very circumspect about stepping outside the military sphere or that of national security (while firmly resisting any attempts by others to intrude into them). He rightly sees that the newly restored political process must be allowed to continue and gain strength and momentum, and that any heavy-handed military intrusion would be extremely detrimental in the long run. The dilemma he faces is that, left to their own devices, the people running the political process will run it, and the country, into the ground.
There is a way out of this dilemma. It is possible to stop this relentless slide downward without touching the political process, political structures or even a single politician. The two major (and related) causes of Pakistan’s breakdown are terminal misgovernance and megacorruption. In its terminal stage, misgovernance results in not only the absence of all governance but also the creation of centrifugal forces that tear apart the fabric of the country and its people. Megacorruption is very different, in both nature and effect, than ordinary corruption. It is the systematic looting of the country’s wealth and resources (both present and future) by those at the helm of affairs.
To save Pakistan, the essential pre-requisite is to put a stop to both these evils. It can be done ‒ and without touching the hair of any politician!
In every democratic country, there are two basic rules of governance. The first is that the politicians in power make government policy, while the civil service executes these policies within established laws and rules, andwithout political interference. To ensure that this works, the second rule is that the service conditions of civil servants (their hiring, promotions, assignments, etc) are insulated from political control and influence. (Dictators obviously don’t like this; that is why one of the first steps of ZA Bhutto, upon becoming President and CMLA in 1971, was to rescind the second rule. That is when the rot began).
If General Kayani wishes to end Pakistan’s terminal misgovernance, he has to get the government rules of business changed to reflect the first rule of governance in a democracy. To implement the second rule, the federal and provincial public service commissions should once again be given control of their respective civil services, as they used to have once. To achieve these he will need to exert some heavy pressure behind the scenes. He has done that before, when he felt the country faced a serious emergency or national security was at risk. This crisis is worse than any previous one, and national security is much more seriously at risk than it was then. Achieving these goals would not disrupt any valid political process, nor would it (publicly, at least) touch any politician.
Dealing with megacorruption would be a more delicate matter. Of course, ending the worst of misgovernance would automatically reduce it significantly. But the addiction is too firmly entrenched among the present rulers to end on its own. The most discreet method of sending the right signals is for the military to repeat the ‘Riaz Lalji tactic’ a few times. Politicians indulge in megacorruption through intermediaries and agents, who are well known to the ISI. If, every time some big ‘deal’ was being cooked up, the agent was escorted to a quiet place and given some friendly advice, the word would spread quickly, leading to a marked reduction in this profession’s numbers. And, all without mussing any political hair.
Those who have expressed regret that Gen Kayani did not follow the example of Gen Abdul Waheed focus on a minor aspect of his actions. Yes, he did refuse an extension, but he did that only after he had stopped the country’s slide into a crisis, and set it on a path to recovery (without gaining anything personally). It is this example that one hopes Gen Kayani is really following. Gen Waheed’s actions were a remarkable display of patriotism and personal character. It is sad that his shining example is largely forgotten while the despicable roles of adventurers or clowns like Ayub, Yahya, Zia and Musharraf figure so prominently in the recounting of Pakistan’s tragic 60-year history.


(The writer is a retired member of the armed forces).

War on Terror or War of Terror?By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO

Evidence Suggest U.S.-U.K. Wars Increase Global Terror Threat

(This is a cross post)

Critical evidence from the British government and other sources suggest that the “War on Terror” has actually destabilized the Middle East and increased the terror threat throughout the globe.  The former head of Britain’s MI5 – Baroness Manningham-Buller – finds that the Iraq war has dramatically contributed to the growing terror danger as directed against the United Kingdom and its citizens.  Britain has been forced to double the budget devoted to investigating terrorist plots following the 2003 invasion.  An official British inquiry into the proposed invasion warned of just such an increase in the terror threat.  This means that the destabilizing affects of Western attacks were predicted in advance of attacks that were seen as illegal under international law (as British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg recently conceded) .

Buller’s confession is an admission that the war in Iraq has further inflamed anti-U.S. and anti-U.K. sentiment.  When considering it along other critical studies, it looks as if the war has contributed to a greater hostility toward British foreign policy more generally among the majority of Middle Easterners, and among British nationals more specifically (Buller is most concerned with the latter group).  She concludes that “a whole generation of young people” have been “radicalized’ by what is perceived as an attack on Islam.  The Blair administration, Buller states, conceded that the war increased the terror threat at home: the budget increases for anti-terror operations were “unheard of, certainly unheard of today, but he (Blair) and the Treasury and the chancellor accepted that because I was able to demonstrate the scale of the problem that we were confronted by.”  The growing threat to Britain seems all the more plausible in light of the 7/7 2005 terrorist bombings in London, which killed more than 50 civilians and were motivated by anger at the British invasion of Iraq. 

Buller concedes what should be known by most in the U.S. and U.K. today – the terror threat has grown in the wake of the Iraq invasion, despite the fact that Iraq posed no real national security threat to the West.  Buller admits that MI5 had refused to contribute to the intelligence comprising the British government’s dossier against Iraq’s “WMD threat” in 2002.  The reason is clear enough: there was “no credible evidence” that Iraq was linked to the 9/11 attacks, and Saddam Hussein was “unlikely” to support any attacks against the U.S. or U.K. unless his regime’s survival was threatened.  These conclusions were shared with the Bush administration at the time, and promptly ignored by a U.S. administration whose members had been set on going to war for more than 10 years. 

Buller also discusses a point well known among critics of U.S. foreign policy on the left: the invasion of Iraq has actually served as one of the best recruiters for Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and loosely affiliated Islamist terror groups.  As Buller describes with regards to U.S.-U.K. actions in Iraq: “Arguably, we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad.”  In short, those throughout the Muslim world see the U.S.-allied occupation as motivated by imperial ambitions for oil; they see the torture and abuses in which American and British troops are responsible, and they are reacting critically.  Targeting of U.S. and allied forces has become far more common now than it was prior to 9/11. 

Buller’s MI5 based conclusions are not the first time it’s been conceded that the “War on Terror” actually increases the global terror threat.  Terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank found through their own statistical analysis that the 2003 invasion was accompanied by an “Iraq Effect” in which terrorist attacks escalated dramatically from 2003 to 2006 (the time period when the study was conducted).  More specifically, their report finds that: “the rate of terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups and the rate of fatalities in those attacks increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the average fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, which accounts for fully half of the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks in the post-Iraq War period. But even excluding Iraq, the average yearly number of jihadist terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities still rose sharply around the world by 265 percent and 58 percent respectively.”  Subsequent empirical studies of the decline of violence in Iraq after 2007 demonstrated that the reduction came about, not because of the success of the "surge" in promoting humanitarianism, but because the ethnic cleansing in cities like Baghdad had essentially succeeded (with the help of U.S. troops disarming Sunni communities in the name of "counter-insurgency"), and with the Shia militias winning the civil war against Iraq's Sunnis (for more, see: http://www.juancole.com/2008/07/social-history-of-surge.html anddimaggio02272009.html).  In short, violence declined because there were fewer people to kill following the successful ethnic cleansing.

Additional journalistic investigation finds that the policy of torture and mistreatment at Guantanamo, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan (often directed against those whose terrorist ties were questionable to non-existent, but were nonetheless picked up in blanket raids in Afghanistan and Iraq) led to a further intensification of anti-U.S. sentiment in the Muslim world.  As McClatchy Newspapers concluded in an eight month investigation in 11 countries, U.S. detainees were often kept “on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence…McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials in Afghanistan, and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program...This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers, or ordinary criminals.  At least seven had been working for the U.S. backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants…many of the detainees posed no danger to the U.S. or its allies”. 

Through its investigations, McClatchy found that “prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo…the investigation found that top Bush administration officials knew within months of opening the Guantanamo detention center that many of the prisoners there weren’t ‘the worst of the worst,’” as “it was obvious [from military administrators] that at least a third of the population didn’t belong there.”

American soldiers were often gullible in that they accepted “false reports passed along by informants and officials looking to settle old grudges in Afghanistan, a nation that had experienced more than two decades of occupation and civil war before U.S. troops arrived".  The lack of connections of many detainees to any terror operations looks especially tragic in hindsight, considering that the torture visited upon these individuals contributed to their radicalization against the United States.  As McClatchy reports, “U.S. detention policies fueled support for extremist Islamist groups.  For some detainees who went home far more militant than when they arrived, Guantanamo became a school for jihad.” 

The above evidence strongly suggests that the U.S. and U.K. primarily play a destabilizing role throughout the world, rather than fighting terrorism and ensuring world order out of chaos.  Global public opinion polls have long found that most throughout the world view the U.S. as one of the primary threats to global security, rather than the protector of world order.  These revelations are likely to elude many Americans, as the evidence above is not widely disseminated in the U.S. press.  American journalists have long been content to uncritically repeat statements from liberal and conservative political officials (typically accompanied with no evidence) that the “War on Terror” must continue in order to keep America, its allies, and the Middle East “safe.”  In reality, though, the U.S. and U.K. are not fighting a War on Terror, but a Warof Terror.

(Anthony DiMaggio is the editor of media-ocracy,a daily online magazine devoted to the study of media, public opinion, and current events.   He is the author of When Media Goes to War (2010) andMass Media, Mass Propaganda (2008) ).

The Big Disconnect : By JESSE JACKSON

Let's Give Congress Our Marching Orders  

(This is a cross post from Counterpunch)

Will the U.S. once more sacrifice economic justice at home for war abroad? Dr. King used to say that the bombs dropped over Vietnam exploded in America's cities. The war on poverty was lost in those jungles.

And now? The war in Afghanistan is now in its eighth year. Vice President Joe Biden told "This Week" that our policy is "going to work," but "all of this is just beginning. And we knew it was going to be a tough slog," so "it's much too premature to make a judgment" about how we are faring.

Just the beginning after eight years? We are spending $100 billion a year on Afghanistan, with U.S. casualties rising, and with no noticeable progress on the ground. The government that we support is noted for its corruption and ineffectiveness. Our military is trying to do nation-building in a country whose warring tribes unite only to expel outsiders.

The drones releasing bombs over Afghanistan are falling on our cities here at home. More than 20 million workers are unemployed or underemployed. States and localities are facing another round of severe cuts, with some 300,000 teachers and educational workers about to face layoffs. Unemployment of young African-American men without college nears 40 percent.

We desperately need Congress to act -- to extend unemployment benefits, to forestall debilitating cuts in schools, teachers, Medicaid and basic services, to finance the rebuilding of America in everything from bridges to fast trains to a smart electric grid that will make us more competitive and put people to work.

But war drains our Treasury, takes the lives of our citizens and requires the attention of our leaders. Now our politics is turning perverse. Conservatives rail against deficits and block action on jobs in the Senate. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell says that we don't have to offset tax cuts for the wealthy with spending cuts, but leads his party's filibuster against extending unemployment benefits unless they are "paid for." The supplemental for Afghanistan passes; the supplemental to keep teachers working is blocked.

Across the country, there is a growing divide between the elites in Washington and the American people. In a poll for Politico by the firm Penn Schoen Berland, the divide was apparent. Only 27 percent of people outside the Beltway think the country is headed in the right direction; among 227 Washington elites polled, 49 percent think it is on the right track compared with 45 percent who think it's going the wrong way.

This disconnect between Washington and the American people is dangerous. Ironically, most out of touch are the Republican conservatives who may well benefit politically from the economic distress. The vast majority have obstructed everything Obama has tried to do. They made the recovery plan weaker and larded it with tax cuts for the upper middle class. They are prepared to increase the deficit to fight the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and to sustain tax cuts for the wealthy, while they impede even basic steps to put people to work.

America is coming once more to a crossroads. We need to rebuild our strength from the inside out. In the short term, we need to put people to work. We need to regain our position on the cutting edge of science and technology. We have to begin making things in America once more.

This will take focus, finances and management. And each of these will be starved so long as our soldiers are mired in wars across the other side of the world. That is why it is time for citizens of conscience to come together and challenge the elite consensus before it is too late. On Aug. 28, the UAW and Rainbow PUSH Coalition and dozens of other groups will convene demonstrations in Detroit and elsewhere to call for action on jobs. On Oct. 2, the one nation coalition led by the NAACP, La Raza and the AFL-CIO will convene a march on Washington with the focus on jobs and justice. This is the beginning of what must be a "tough slog" to put America on the right course.

(The writer is a a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives representing Illinois's 2nd congressional district).

AMERICA’S TARNISHED MILITARY PARTNERSHIP WITH ISRAEL: GORDON DUFF

OUR UNREPORTED ”COLD WAR” WITH ISRAEL 

(This is a cross post by Veterans Today)

9/11 was like Pearl Harbor to America, uniting many, awakening bitter skepticism in a few.  Where Pearl Harbor began America’s official role in crushing the Fascist juggernaut that threatened to dominate the world, 9/11 had quite the opposite effect.  America’s response to 9/11 was oppression at home and a tirade of frenzied phobic reactions around the world.  No American institution suffered more than the military.  The team of Cheney and Rumsfeld, together since the disastrous Nixon years, began a process of purging America’s military of talent and leadership, instead building a force to serve a sinister agenda of religious heresy and extremist politics.

Nearly a decade later, it isn’t the economic collapse or the discredited military adventures that have now embittered a military leadership infrastructure that now sees itself as duped, dishonored and discarded.  A number of factors can be attributed, the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” as it were but it is 9/11 where things begin to fall apart.  The cover story, a group of Muslims with box cutters and a few remarkably unproductive hours of pilot training, simply hasn’t held up.  America has had many airline hijackings, starting with the 1960s and was under strict terror alert on 9/11, despite the obfuscations of Donald Rumsfeld.  Top military pilots, among themselves and their fellow officers, voiced doubts about the “twin towers” scenario, doubts that began reaching a quiet crescendo pointing to 9/11 as an “inside job.”

With the dozens of conspiracy theories and a weak and implausible cover story, one the 9/11 Commission itself eventually rejected, only one plausible answer was left, an answer very much “not for public consumption.”  Few Americans know that a team of Israeli intelligence agents were arrested on 9/11 after being observed using “video” equipment to record the planes crashing into the towers.  After the disaster, the Mossad agents, soon to be arrested and released by the FBI, began celebrating as though they had completed a successful operation.  This enraged New Yorkers who mistook them for terrorists.  In fact, New Yorkers weren’t wrong.

Only top members of America’s military knew the truth, the “dancing Israelis” had remotely guided the two planes into the World Trade Center, not simply videoing, itself proof of guilt.  Military pilots, in particular, knew the planes were nearly impossible to maneuver at those speeds without Israeli designed auto-pilot systems, not unlike those used on Tomahawk/Cruise missiles.  Behind a flurry of “conspiracy theories,” many totally implausible, some obvious to military leaders as part of an elaborate deception plan requiring widespread control of media assets, more subtext came to light. 

Though warned of “career suicide” for speaking up, members of the military and, in particular, the intelligence community began putting the pieces together.  9/11 was an intelligence operation involving the United States, Great Britain, Israel and Saudi Arabia.  Everything was there, finance, private “black ops” contractors, but mostly, a pre-staged media frenzy on the front end, counterfeit intelligence on Iraq in the middle and a rigged investigation, the “9/11 Commission coverup” on the backside.  It didn’t take FBI and intelligence agency officials long to track 9/11 planning back to 1999, not in Afghanistan but much closer to home. 

Not a word of this would ever hit the press and any “conspiracy” group that got close to the truth would be shut down or infiltrated quickly.  By 2007, undeniable and overwhelming evidence of 9/11 wrongdoing, massive corruption in every aspect of defense and security and the attrition of America’s readiness response capabilities began turning the tide.  What had been only “grumbling” about incompetence, political interference with the military and Washington’s “blind eye” to Israeli abuses became a quiet revolt.

The “Minot-Barksdale” nuclear weapon incident that year, one forgotten, unexplained but one haunting us still may tell us how close we came.  Nuclear weapons were loaded onto a B-52 at Minot AFB, loaded illegally, bypassing layer after layer of security and control with dozens of military personnel involved in one of the most serious criminal conspiracies in our history.  When the plane was recalled and returned to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, carrying at least six nuclear weapons, possibly as many as twelve, America’s nuclear arsenal had been proven to have fallen into the hands of extremist elements.

70 of those involved, Air Force personnel with the highest security clearances in the country, the most heavily screen group in America’s entire military, were discharged for wrongdoing.  Since that time, seven more of those involved have died in accidents or by “suicide” including one 4 star general.  A cult within the American military, Christian Zionists, had hijacked a plane load of nuclear weapons and were heading to the Middle East on a “mission from G-d.”  Was Israel directly involved and, if so, what were the targets?

The military and intelligence community had, for some time, stopped looking on Israel as an asset or even a benign liability.  As early as the 1950s, Israel had organized terror campaigns against Americans in Egypt in order to establish the myth of a worldwide anti-American Islamic terrorist movement.  The “Lavon Affair” is suppressed in America’s news, torn out of the history books as is the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967.  Israeli warplanes, initially disguised to appear as Egyptian, tried to sink an American warship in the Eastern Mediterranean in an attempt to force the United States to invade Syria and Egypt.  When the ship failed to sink, all hands aboard, as planned, more planes, these with Israeli markings, were called in followed by torpedo boats.  After hours of attack, with 201 of 296 crew members dead or wounded, the ship was still afloat, tattered American flag flying proud.  Except for the actions of President Johnson and Admiral Sidney McCain, America might well have gone to war against Israel in 1967.

In 2008, President Bush signed the Naval Vessel Transfer Act, insuring that Israel have a more advanced navy than any country in the region, guaranteed by US law.  Israel has only had two naval engagements in its history, one against an American ship and the other against the unarmed Mavi Marmara.  Both attacks, causing the deaths of American citizens, were performed using American weapons.

In 1987, Israeli spy, Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison for the single most devastating assault on America’s security in her history.  110 CIA agents behind the Iron Curtain were captured, tortured and executed, destroying America’s intelligence network at the height of the Cold War.  Military experts from the former Soviet Union claim that information they received from Israel, information stolen by Pollard, nearly pushed Russia to starting a nuclear war against the United States, a war Russia knew they could easily win using information supplied by Israel.

Despite the fact that Israel has made Pollard’s birthday a national holiday, history books in the United States still claim Pollard was working for South Africa and Pakistan.  Did the undercurrent of suspicion and hatred of Israel by the military and intelligence services because of Pollard create the need to stage 9/11?

In 1991, three nuclear weapons, nearly identical in size to the Hiroshima bomb, “went missing” in the Middle East.  These weapons had been built, between 1975 and 1988, by Armscor , a South African/Israeli company, part of ten that were to make up the nuclear portion of apartheid South Africa’s illegal inventory of weapons of mass destruction.  South Africa and Israel, aided by the Soviets, built, not only these nuclear weapons but an extensive array of biological and chemical weapons as well, some of which were used in Africa by the South African military.  Israel and South Africa tested one of these nukes on September 22, 1979.  The VELA satellite system detected the blast, confirmed by acoustic sensors, and established a detailed analysis of the materials and design.

These missing nukes were hijacked while being shipped to British forces in Oman, part of a convoluted deal arranged by Margaret Thatcher and involving current Prime Minister David Cameron, then 28, and Dr. David Kelly, British weapons scientist now believed murdered after threatening to go public about these missing weapons.  These three missing nuclear weapons, now believed to have been stolen by Israel, were the secret rationale for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  When they weren’t located, Israel claimed they had been shipped via ambulance to, first Syria and then Lebanon to be hidden in an X-ray facility to avoid detection.  America wasn’t fooled by these ploys and those privy to the “lost nukes,” those at the highest levels, had caught Israel again.

Then, in 2009, something utterly unforgivable happened.  On May 25, 2009, North Korea tested its first successful nuclear weapon.  It was confirmed to be one of the three missing nukes believed held by Israel, built in South Africa.  Did Israel, third largest arms exporter in the world, sell a nuclear weapon to North Korea?  Israel, known for peddling military technology to rogue nations, technology begged, borrowed or stolen from the United States, had crossed a line.

The military had long been resentful of Israel’s habit of selling off munitions the United States ”stored” in Israel for “safe keeping.”  Several billion dollars worth of munitions stores had been shipped to Israel under a loose agreement allowing Israel to replenish her stocks from US supplies.  This “off the books” military aid to Israel, was supposed to make Israel more secure.  In fact, however, Israel has been selling these  American owned munitions around the world, some to America’s potential adversaries including Venezuela.

Military contracts themselves have been a bone of contention.  With US unemployment levels at their highest  since the Great Depression, billions in defense and ”Homeland Security” contracts are going to Israel, a country importing labor from Africa and Asia to keep its arms factories manned.  American companies that complain about being “run over” by Israeli lobbyists are quickly silenced.  Not only is the American economy being negatively impacted but America’s defense industries as well.  American companies, some involved in our most secret projects, are being forced by the Israeli lobby in Congress to take on partners in Israel, sharing technologies that soon end up in China, Singapore or India.

Currently, Israel has received a $1.8 billion stockpile of munitions for a war on Iran they will never fight or, perhaps a new assault on Gaza, weapons from the depleted stockpiles of the American military.  Even more American munitions have been offloaded in Georgia and, perhaps shipped to forward bases in Azerbaijan to support an Israeli sneak attack on Iran.  At risk, of course, are American troops in Iraq and American ships in the Persian Gulf.  There are no Israeli forces within striking distance of Iran.

Our military is more than aware of this fact.

Today the Washington Post reported the following:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year – a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

What isn’t being mentioned is the fact that hundreds of the government organizations are run by dual citizens, Americans holding Israeli passports or that a significant number of the private companies are Israeli owned or managed by individuals with strong ties to Israel, ties that, if examined, would represent a clear conflict of interest and security threat.  If America was allowed to openly acknowledge the areas of adversariality with Israel that have long existed, a significant number of the 854,000 people holding top-secret security clearances would immediately be deemed a risk.

Thus, terrorist plots that show the obvious signature of the Mossad, such as the Christmas 2009 ”crotch bomber” in Detroit, can never be properly investigated.  Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent with one purpose, support Israel’s political and economic aims even if it endangers the security of the United States.

Israeli involvement in weapons deals, Venezuela, North Korea, Turkey, India, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and dozens of other nations, creating a complex web of conflicting alliances makes the run up to World War I child’s play in comparison.  With allegations of Israel managing, not only the money laundering but transshipment of $65 billion in heroin from Afghanistan into Russia and the west,  the penetration of Americas intelligence and defense infrastructure has become obvious, particularly to the military, long resentful and suspicious of the CIA-Mossad alliance.

With years of dominance of both Defense and Homeland Security by Israeli-Americans and, not only the top levels of the Pentagon staffed by Christian Zionists but service academy admissions stacked from the rolls of this same extremist minority, abuses were meant to continue for years unchallenged.  This, however, has not been the case.  Continual rumblings, always quickly denied, flow out of the Pentagon, challenging our perception of Israel as an ally or strategic partner.  In fact, numerous reports citing Israel as a threat have been quashed. 

With two missing nuclear weapons in play and heavy handed interference in Washington politics and the American media, the current push for war with Iran has many military leaders increasingly watchful of staged incidents.  With no serious intelligence backing Iran’s nuclear capabilities and the recent revelations from a kidnapped Iranian student purported to be one of their leading nuclear scientists, the scenario intended to duplicate the US invasion of Iraq is not progressing well.  Evidence of the Saudi-Israeli connection, made public by this incident, has been suppressed in the media but is carefully noted by military intelligence analysts.

A “timely” attack on the US, by necessity devastating in nature and tied to Iran, perhaps using more kidnapped Iranian citizens, is expected.   With congress and the press in lockstep with Israel, will the military be enough to stand up for American security and independence?

(The writer is Senior Editor Veterans Today USA)     

LESS IS MORE : Arnaud de Borchgrave

 (This is a cross post )


America’s global commitments, from Japan to Germany, from NATO to Afghanistan, from EUCOM to AFRICOM, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Persian Gulf, from USPACOM in Honolulu to CENTCOM in Tampa, Fl., all are being reassessed – at home and abroad. Can a superpower whose infrastructure is rapidly decaying to third world standards in many sectors, and in need of a $1 trillion facelift, afford to be the free world’s gendarme, spending more on defense than the rest of the world put together? 
From a no-win Afghan war, where Pakistan, a “major non-NATO ally,” would be happy to see a reformed Taliban regime rule the tribal roost (sans Al Qaeda); to the perceived need for some 700 U.S. military bases and outposts at home and abroad; to the presence of 75,000 troops in Germany, a country that is cutting defense spending to 2 percent of GDP; to the very purpose of NATO if many of the allies see little value in collective defense -- everything is bound to be part of an agonizing reappraisal.
All these questions should not lead people to conclude the United States can afford to be isolationist. Clearly U.S. military presence is required in Japan, a major power that worries about being left in the lurch with big brother China, well on its way to superpowerdom in Asia. Also in South Korea as a deterrent, or tripwire to the dangerous antics of dictator Kim Jong-il, clearly a cruel despot who could be tempted to end it all by launching a nuclear missile or bomb on Seoul in a final “Gotterdammerung.”
The Persian Gulf is critically important to Western security and an over-the-horizon U.S. carrier task force may not deter Iran but it would go a long way to reassuring our Gulf friends, as it did throughout the Cold War.
A Muslim fanatic with a British passport said on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN/GPS Sunday program that in a free election in most Muslim countries today, Osama Bin Laden would probably win. This is one of the reasons most Gulf leaders would welcome US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities as well as the capture and execution of OBL.
The F-35 will be the last manned fighter built by the U.S. for the U.S. and many of its friends and allies. Military commitments in the 21^st century will be less visible and less expensive.
Remote controlled aircraft, beginning with the Predator and the Rapier, are the first entrants in robotic wars of the future. Pilot and co-pilot sit in a mock cockpit in Nevada and fly drones over Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal border areas and press a button, instead of squeezing a trigger, as they see via satellite relay hostile guerrillas with AK-47s slung over their shoulder. Soon unmanned bombers and fighter-bombers will succeed many of today’s manned military aircraft.
Robotic wars of the future are in the planning stages. But the U.S. is still spending countless billions on legacy systems. It is now hard to imagine the U.S. involved in tank warfare thousands of miles from home base, as it was briefly in Iraq in February 1991.Yet we still have to pay for the maintenance of almost 9,000 tanks.
Can the U.S. afford $6 billion destroyers that can’t operate in shallow coastal waters? More useful would be World War II-type PT-Boats – but with devastating firepower.
All manner of UCAVs are now on everything from drawing board to production line to flight line. Last week, the British defense contractor BAE Systems unveiled Tiranis. Named after the Celtic god of thunder, the Tiranis takes unmanned fighting aircraft to a new level of robotic warfare. It can fly anywhere in the world guided and operated by satellite to spy, drop precision-guided bombs or missiles – and even fight back like a fighter-bomber if attacked by another drone or by a manned aircraft.
Tiranis is leading the charge into robotic warfare. 
Next to fly will be Boeing’s Phantom Eye that can operate for four days at 66,000 feet (20,000 meters). Already available are tiny UCAVs that can be carried as part of a soldier’s backpack and used for an overhead view of an enemy attack. Some are the size of a large beetle that fly into an enemy HQ, settle on a wall and transmit conversations. Flocks of bird-sized MAVs (Micro-Air Vehicles) can swarm all over a target. Already, UCAVs are a $5 billion business that is grounding pilots. 
UUVs (Underwater Unmanned Vehicles) are already in the water. Autonomous perimeter security mobile robots are also deployed. How long before terrorists get their hands on the same technology?
The Terrafugia (Latin for escape from land) company Bloomberg Businessweek reported, produced a car-cum-aircraft, the flying automobile many fantasize about when stuck in barely moving commuter traffic. The FAA recently gave the car-plane an exemption so it can carry air bags and other car safety features. This puts the “Transition” at 1,430 pounds, or half as much as a Mini Cooper, that can be pre-ordered for $194,000 (delivery by the end of 2011
The Transition goes from car to plane or vice versa in about the time it takes to lower the top on a convertible, says Carl Dietrich, the co-founder of Terrafugia in Woburn, Mass. The company plans to produce 300 to 400 a year. It must take off and land at an airport and can fly 460 miles at a speed of 110 mph. On the ground, wings folded alongside, it can easily cruise at 60mph.
The latest Quadrennial Defense Review looks ahead about five years, instead of 20 years as was the original intent, say House and Senate lawmakers, both Republican and Democrat, who are focused on defense issues. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is looking for savings in the $100 billion range in a $861 billion defense budget, or 22 percent of the total federal budget, which propels the deficit to a record $1.6 trillion in 2010.
The deepest and longest recession since World War II is bound to produce an agonizing reappraisal of America’s global commitments. 


(Arnaud de Borchgrave is the UPI Editor at large).

Osama: Dead or Alive? Yasmeen Ali

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on her recent visit to Pakistan that she believed Osama bin Laden was still in Pakistan, in a television interview between high-level talks in Islamabad.  

“I believe (bin Laden) is here in Pakistan and it would be very helpful if we could take them (al-Qaeda leaders),” Clinton said. The US secretary of state sought tougher action from Islamabad to combat militants ahead of a key conference in Afghanistan.

The information that Osama Bin Laden is dead, first came from sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan  many years ago,the fugitive died in December [2001] and was buried in the mountains of southeast Afghanistan.

With an ego the size of Mount Everest, Osama bin Laden would not have, could not have, remained silent for so long if he were still alive. He always liked to take credit even for things he had nothing to do with. Would he remain silent for nine months and not trumpet his own survival? [New York Times. July 11, 2002]. Bin Laden has often been reported to be in poor health. Some accounts claim that he is suffering from Hepatitis C, and can expect to live for only two more years. According to Le Figaro, lin [2000] he ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to his base at Kandahar in Afghanistan. [Guardian]. FBI: Bin Laden 'probably' dead; The US Federal Bureau of Investigation's counter-terrorism chief, Dale Watson, says he thinks Osama bin Laden is "probably" dead. [BBC]. The editor-in-chief of a London-based Arab news magazine said a purported will it published in the year [2001] by Osama bin Laden, and shows "he's dying or he's going to die soon." [CNN]. Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader. "The Coalition troops are engaged in a mad search operation but they would never be able to fulfill their cherished goal of getting Usama alive or dead," the source said. [FOX News].
Yet, Secretary Clinton, has decided, to claim, that not only Osama Bin Laden is alive and kicking, but in Pakistan. Yet, Secretary Clinton gives no proof as to why, suddenly, she thinks he is alive. If there are clues, they must surely be shared with Pakistan for them to not only ascertain the veracity of the claim but to help them “find” Osama.
Secretary Clinton  is in  a position where irresponsible statements can be ill afforded.
Many claim, this desire to revive Osama is to justify the continuation of the War on Terrorism. Gordon Duff, Senior Editor Veteran News, USA,  in a recent article states,” Has the United States established exactly what its strategic interests are in the region? Oil is flowing freely as is heroin. Money is flowing into the region by the plane load and back out, into banks in Dubai, Tel Aviv and Switzerland. Is $500 billion a year being spent to defend Israel from invasion by, well, we aren’t sure? What is being spent to secure Israel, or empower Israeli recklessness, is nearly one third of America’s entire budget. Wouldn’t it simply be cheaper to give Israel the United States or do they own it already? “
The Pakistani public is wary of these statements, as issued by Secretary Clinton, and are widely interpreted as self serving and nothing to do with ground realities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIO8B6fpFSQ

Pakistan is a country that has suffered tremendously in this War on Terror. If America has a genuine appreciation of the sacrifices made by Pakistan, she should make an effort to solve the issues being faced by Pakistan. One of the foremost is to intercede and stop India from violating the 1960 Indus Water Treaty. To this, Secretary Clinton has given her flat denial.
The West  needs to review its arrogant policies followed in this part of the world. They need to answer some questions: what has been the ratio of suicide attempts since the invasion of Afghanistan?  How sharply have the terrorist attacks risen since then? How many US soldiers have actually been killed on ground as compared to the soldiers, civilians: women, old people and children from other side of the fence?
At the end of the day, what political and military victory has USA achieved by attacking and invading Afghanistan? USA is once again contemplating reaching an understanding with the Taliban in Afghanistan. So what were these eight years all about? Or is, Gordon Duff, right after all?




(The writer is a lawyer and based in Lahore).
NOTE:This article was later carried by Opinion Maker & Pakistan Observer ( Newspaper). Link:
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=43240

The Politics of Fear: How Fighting Terrorism is Bankrupting the World and Making Us Less Safe

The likelihood that bin Laden will destroy us is extremely low; the likelihood that finance will do so is, on the other hand, extremely high -- a virtual certainty.

he following is an excerpt from Loretta Napoleoni's new book, Terrorism and the Economy: How the War on Terror is Bankrupting the World,(This is a cross post from AlterNet.com)

The Arrogance of Simpletons 

The credit crunch is the latest chapter in the sad story of contemporary capitalism, a tale characterized by the arrogance and simplemindedness of its main protagonists, which became apparent while the entire world was concentrated on the threat posed by al-Qaeda. It seems absurd that an economic system powerful enough to cause revolutions and fratricidal wars, which has inspired whole generations and given life to one of the most potent ideologies of modern times, has disintegrated before our eyes because of the lies of its leaders and the lack of sophistication of its captains. The "Masters of the Universe" are really simpletons, people who have undermined the world economy for the sake of easy profits, thereby destroying the very system that supported them without even being aware of what they were doing. The politicians, too, are simpletons, making us believe that al-Qaeda was able to crush our world in order to pursue its hidden agenda when, in reality, those who were destroying it were prospering within it.

The financial sector that brought us to the credit crunch cannot, however, be defined as capitalism; Marx would be quick to point this out. It is rather a mix of political magicians, Monopoly players, and swindlers. True, authentic capitalism--that of the Industrial Revolution and the early 1900s--was an adversary worthy of respect, which exploited but neither stole nor swindled. It was also a shrewd and intelligent rival. This is the fundamental difference with the past: today those made rich by globalization are either thieves or simpletons.

However, we citizens of the global village, upon whom falls the tragic consequences of this crisis, also have behaved with arrogance and a lack of common sense. We have allowed the politicians to convince us to overextend ourselves in order to realize all our consumerist dreams: the house, the car, the vacations, the branded clothes and accessories, the high-tech gadgets, and more. This spending frenzy led us to believe that we were rich and powerful when, in reality, high finance was sucking our accounts dry and leaving us ever poorer. We acclaimed those who sold us these fantasies, the first and foremost of which was the fear of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism. How can we forget the popularity indices of Bush, Blair, Jose Maria Aznar, and Silvio Berlusconi when they incited the world to bomb Baghdad? Terrorized by the thought of losing our "place in the sun," we permitted the politics of fear to replace real politics and the act of governance to become a media event. We shouldn't be surprised when today we are called upon to pay the consequences.

The Anatomy of the Cold War

The world we live in is a labyrinth of fantasy, and politicians are the twenty-first century's greatmagicians, who sell fear and fabricate the truth. Among their greatest performances are Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and Iraq's professed ability to launch a nuclear warhead that could strike Europe in forty-five minutes.

Political lies are incredibly potent, all the more so because these illusions seem to be more easily digested. The initial broad consensus in the West regarding the invasion of Iraq stemmed from the a priori certainty that what politicians tell us is the truth. It is this very point that requires analysis in order to properly understand why we ended up in this economic quagmire and, above all, how we can extricate ourselves.

In the case of Iraq, it seemed remarkable that so few felt compelled to pose some serious questions. First, if Saddam really had WMDs that could actually strike London, Paris, or Brussels within forty-five minutes, why was it that the spy satellites, which buzz around the planet like wasps, could not photograph them? Why had no one been able to provide the slightest shred of evidence to incontrovertibly support this alarming allegation? Moreover, if Saddam really had those weapons, why didn't he use them when he was attacked?

These are the questions that so few asked at the time. We all fell into the fantastical trap of the 007-style underground launch pads and the tanks laden with chemical weapons perpetually cruising the Iraqi highways. When it finally became clear that everybody had lied to us, we didn't have the courage to call to task the politicians who had sold us this pack of lies.

Politicians have always used a strategy of fear to achieve their goals and often have done so in a fashion very similar to that used by armed groups seeking to terrorize the population. Propaganda is the name of the game. Far from being a new phenomenon, the politics of fear is a traditional and highly effective instrument for gaining consensus, especially in the face of unpopular choices. Out of fear, we accepted as fact a series of unsubstantiated lies. Governments manipulated the apprehensiveness of their citizens in order to achieve their own political aims.

We should not feel singled out by history. This is certainly not the first time that politicians have manipulated public opinion. During the cold war, the United States built a nightmarish doomsday scenario around the specter of a potential victory by the Soviet enemy. This threat became the reference point upon which they leveraged a strategy of fear, a propaganda of fear that the US subsequently exported to Europe. The Americans do it, and so do their adversaries. Within the Communist Bloc, the Soviet Union carried out a similar operation to maintain the status quo and safeguard its own survival, painting an image of the United States as a sinister power that would not hesitate to unleash another atomic bomb, thereby decimating hundreds of thousands of Russians and Eastern Europeans.

In reality, neither of the two superpowers had the slightest intention of using nuclear arms. The truth is that proliferation proved to be the best guarantee against nuclear tragedy. Confirmation of this can be seen in the way the two most serious nuclear crises of the postwar period--the tension leading to the erection of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis--played themselves out. In both cases, the USA and the USSR used the impending nuclear menace as a means for consolidating their own spheres of influence, while taking great care to keep an appropriate distance from one another. The version sold to the general public is not this chronicle of a strategic battle carried out by cunning political chess players but rather the dramatic and anguished recounting of an event on the verge of the apocalypse.

The propaganda of fear has always been easily disseminated. Before the advent of the Internet, it traveled on the wings of documentaries and television spots--more basic and less widespread, but nonetheless more penetrating than the more ubiquitous Internet propaganda of today. During the 1960s, children watched short films produced by the US government, in particular by the Federal Civil Defense Administration, in which Bert the Turtle, a lively animated character, warned them that an atomic explosion could occur at any time without warning. "When you see the flash," said Bert with a sinister laugh, "you should duck down and find cover under the desk or in the school hallway." While Bert the Turtle pulled his head into his shell, the narrator's voice warned: "After the bomb explodes there might no longer be any adults around. Then you'll have to fend for yourselves." Politicians manufactured this equally scary nightmare for the youngest citizens, who would grow into adulthood with the constant perception of an enemy who, from one moment to the next, could turn their universe into dust.

Through the media, key political figures contributed to the spread of fear of a nuclear attack, especially in critical moments heightened tension. In July 1961, during the Berlin Wall crisis, President John F. Kennedy gave a televised speech exhorting American families to build bomb shelters to "protect the nation." White House advertising was obviously employed skillfully in the marketing of these products; everyone rushed to buy their own bunker. In Prince George's County, Maryland, people did their "nuclear shopping"--already quite an unsettling activity-- while listening to a male voice over the loudspeaker, exclaiming against a background of bombing and air-raid sirens: "My wife, my children . . . if I had only listened to the Civil Defense . . . now I'd be in the shelter." Sales grew exponentially.

Among the pillars of the cold war one finds fear of a nuclear attack, just as the fear of a terrorist nuclear attack became the leitmotif of Bush's war on terror. Right after 9/11, Washington dusted off the potent and terrifying image of the atomic mushroom cloud rising over a Western city. Not coincidentally, the most common motivation used to justify the war in Iraq rested on the danger posed by weapons of mass destruction. History tends to repeat itself even in its least virtuous chapters. Just as before, this fear is based on false information. The politicians know it; we don't.

Only now do we have at our disposal the information confirming that Saddam Hussein no longer had weapons of mass destruction, much less the intention to sell them to al-Qaeda. The Iraqi president pretended to possess a nuclear program, partly to support his megalomaniac propaganda machine and partly to scare off Iran. In his distorted vision, he believed he could keep his enemies at bay with these lies.

If it is indeed true that the CIA, the Pentagon, and the European secret services did not know his strategy, then one should wonder whether these organizations are at all capable of doing their work. Many people have their doubts, although few have the courage to admit it. And still fewer people ask themselves another question: is it true that even in the absence of Saddam Hussein a nuclear attack by some armed group is still possible? The politicians and the media would have us believe that the answer is yes.

In 2006, when it became apparent that Saddam did not have nuclear weapons, Peter Zimmermann and Jeffrey Lewis wrote--in "The Bomb in the Backyard," an article published in the journal Foreign Policy, complete with a hypothetical model of a clandestine nuclear complex--that bin Laden could have attacked the US with an atomic bomb built secretly in a minicomplex in the style of Los Alamos in the United States.

No one questioned this absurd scenario! Any nuclear technology expert could have done so. It would have sufficed to mention just one obstacle: even supposing that the terrorists had been able to get their hands on the uranium and plutonium required to produce the bomb, they would have needed to be enriched to bomb grade, an operation alone that would have required energy sufficient to black out the entire northeastern United States.

We need to ask ourselves these questions: why do the media continue to transmit apocalyptic messages, and why do we continue to believe them? Perhaps that is the same explanation for why there was no questioning or doubting of the chilling declarations by politicians in the aftermath of 9/11. Though the media's and the politicians' common interests in the construction of catastrophic scenarios rest on the fact that what frightens us also draws our attention, clearly increasing media audiences and newspaper sales, what is harder to explain is the public's lack of skepticism. Why did we believe everything we were told? Why did so few ask why, if it was so easy to get hold of nuclear weapons, has not one terrorist done it yet?

The Danger Behind the Fear of Terrorism

The illusions created to terrorize us don't end here. Even the belief that Westerners are more exposed than ever to the risk of terrorism relies on a series of falsehoods: data demonstrate that, in the West, the armed struggle reached its apex in the late 1970s and early '80s and has been in decline ever since. Even taking into account 9/11, Westerners have a higher risk of being hit by lightning than of dying in a terrorist attack.

In the Muslim world, we find a different scenario. Since 9/11, violence has risen. MIPT-RAND, considered the most reliable data bank on terrorism, confirms that the number of attacks in the region defined as the Middle East/Persian Gulf rose from fifty prior to 9/11 to 4,800 in the year 2006. In the same period, deaths from terrorism in the region soared from less than a hundred to 9,800.

Therefore, the real primary victim of terrorism is the Muslim world, that which we believe poses a threat, the world the Crusades destroyed. The invasion of Iraq marks an important watershed because, instead of slowing terrorist activity in the region, the invasion fed it. "The Iraq Effect"--a study of the consequences of the war, published in 2006 in Mother Jones magazine--shows that since the official beginning of the war in 2003, the incidence of terrorist attacks and the average level of consequent deaths on a global scale increased by 607 and 237 percent respectively.

Therefore, death at the hands of terrorists is always found more in areas far from the West, and in Iraq the death toll has reached shocking levels. According to the respected British medical journal the Lancet, in the first two years of the war over 100,000 perished--more than the combined worldwide total of victims of terrorism during the entire twentieth century.

It is perhaps worthwhile to stop for a moment to analyze the intellectual arrogance and indifference of Westerners when it comes to the tragedy befalling certain Muslim countries. Few of us are concerned about what happens outside the confines of our own worlds. Why should we be surprised? These have been years of great plenty, of a collective inebriation during which we have passed the time spending money we didn't have while all around us wars were raging. Now that the money has run out, we have become forcibly aware of our mistakes. In the global village, we no longer have the luxury of ignoring anything because we are all part of the same economy.

Herein lies the deep contradiction of modern politics: these are leaders who, on one hand, frighten us to death and who, on the other hand, sell us the ephemeral illusion of a wealth that does not exist, exhorting us to spend and enjoy what we do not possess.

What if the lack of critical thought with which we accepted the post-9/11 multiple apocalyptic scenarios--what if the real root of our fear--is not the fear of dying in a terrorist attack but rather the idea of losing our comfort, our well-being, the wealth accumulated since the fall of the Berlin Wall? This is an uncomfortable question we should ask ourselves.

The fact remains, however, that we are scared and that Westerners feel more exposed to the risks of terrorism today than in the past. How can one still be shocked when one has viewed history's most devastating and globally unifying reality show? Watching the destruction of the twin towers on live TV profoundly damaged our subconscious. Thanks to CNN and other networks that brought the tragedy in real time to the four corners of the globe, the fear became immediate, shared, and planetary. From Beijing to Sao Paulo, from Rome to Reykjavik, we all felt personally involved.

Even though nobody could deny that those distressing images forced us to confront the tragic consequences of terrorism, it is equally true that the media emphasis and manipulation of the events have so shaken our sensitivities as to cause us to internalize the fear of terrorism, transforming an exceptional and extraordinary event into a daily anxiety.

Once more, let us try to stop, take a deep breath, recover our rationality, and ask ourselves: What are we really scared of? Of dying like the victims of 9/11 or of losing, at the hands of this frightening enemy, the primacy that we have maintained over the world for centuries? What scares us more: the spectacular terrorist act or the rhetoric of the clash of civilizations?

If our sincere response is adherence to Samuel Huntington's theory of the clash of civilizations, then the political magicians have done a good job and we are doubly naive; the events of the last eight years confirm it. This is exactly what we have been trying to understand from the beginning of this book. The destruction of the primacy of the richest economies has not come at the hands of Osama bin Laden but rather as a result of our ignorance, our superficiality, our greed--traits we share with globalized finance--and, of course, the arrogance of those who govern us.

So here, in sum, is how we ended up in this trap: For the average inhabitant of the global village, the internalization of terrorism took place when it ceased to be regarded as a crime and became a form of total war against one's way of life. The conflict, not the exceptional criminal event, puts one's life at risk. There is nothing as terrifying as war, and nothing frightens us more than an adversary who looks different from us. After 9/11, the absurd theory of the clash of civilizations reinvoked memories of the racial violence of the Holocaust. This time the enemy is Muslim but the objective is still genocide.

We hear again the most terrifying mantra of all: they hate us because we are not like them. Difference, not politics, is the main source of fear generated by Islamic terrorism.

With great skill, politicians and the media built a politics of fear around this psychosis, presenting al-Qaeda as the new Nazi movement and Osama bin Laden as the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. This was enough to convince the population that the survival of Western culture was again at risk. And all this while the ones who were really chipping away, destroying piece by piece our world and our well-being, were neither living in the tribal regions of Pakistan nor were dressed in rags, but rather were living on Wall Street and in the city of London. Wearing bespoke pin-striped suits and flying in their private jets, the destroyers of modern capitalism were flattered by the politicians and acclaimed by the media.

The Industry of Terrorism

Another unsettling reality to emerge from this situation is that we know so little about what has really happened. No one has tried to tell us that, before 9/11, al-Qaeda was a little organization rife with internal fighting, completely absent from the West and its message unknown to the world. Why has it been hidden from us that the majority of its members did not share the racial and religious hatred bin Laden felt toward America?

Constructing a series of lies and dressing them up with a mythology of terrorism has been relatively easy because, until 9/11, this phenomenon had been practically unknown. Until that moment, a bibliographic search of the term "terrorism" would have turned up a mere handful of titles, essays, and articles; today, there are thousands.

Until 2001, the international community of experts on terrorism was very small and the academic community smaller still; no university offered any degree courses on this topic. Overall, there were but a handful of private security agencies handling the phenomenon. In the US, for example, there were only five, while today there are more than 40,000. The politics of fear has been good business for those in a position to take economic advantage of its spread. The industry of fear, fed and maintained by new apocalyptic stories, was quick to prosper. But we must not forget the accomplices of the political classes: the ranks of experts, consultants, professors, and, alas, even charlatans, who have supplied the fuel to create a gigantic bonfire.

The Internet has shown itself to be the principal means of propaganda. There are thousands of consulting companies that exist solely online. After 9/11, with expert groups at conferences, academics, contractors, newspapers, blogs, terrorist websites, and more offering information on what there is to know and do to prevent terrorist attacks, online services became the heart of a flourishing sector. Terrorism experts, sprouting like mushrooms after a rain, confirmed the gloomiest declarations of the leaders and the apocalyptic scenarios painted on TV and radio, manipulating data to provide proof of the strengthening of armed organizations and publishing reports online.

The statistics and false information satisfied the media's unquenchable thirst for "frightening news." The politicians altered the facts, uttering inflated truths and sometimes out and out lies. The media broadcasted them. We got upset, starting to fear anyone who had features, dress, and customs different from ours. Yet it never occurred to us to pay attention to what was happening on Wall Street, where it was said that they were making money by the bucket load. On the contrary, we did everything we could to scrape up a few crumbs ourselves from that treasure trove, and it never entered our minds that it was there that our peace and our system of values were suffering the most threatening attack.

The likelihood that bin Laden will destroy us is extremely low; the likelihood that finance will do so is, on the other hand, extremely high, a virtual certainty.

(Loretta Napoleoni is an Italian economist and author who has served as London correspondent and columnist for LA STAMPA, LA REPUBBLICA, EL PAÍS, and LE MONDE. She is an expert on the financing of terrorism and is well known internationally for having calculated the size of the terror economy. Rogue Economics was named a “best book of the year” in 2008 by Publishers Weekly and translated into fourteen languages. Her most recent book is Terrorism and the Economy: How the War on Terror is Bankrupting the World from Seven Stories Press).