The Failure to Investigate 9/11 Has Bankrupted America

Submitted by George Washington on 12/03/2011 12:38 -0500

Preface: This post does not discuss whether or not 9/11 was a “false flag” operation or an “inside job”.  Anything other than a discussion of the negligence of the Bush administration is unnecessary for the purposes of this essay, and is thus beyond the scope of this post.

In case you didn’t get the memo, we are currently in a depression. And see this
And given that American citizens can be indefinitely detained or assassinated at the whim of the president, it is pretty clear that we now live in a police state.

This post will demonstrate – without getting into discussions of an “inside job” one way or the other – that the failure to hold a real 9/11 investigation is a core cause of our loss of our prosperity and freedom.

THE FAILURE TO INVESTIGATE 9/11 HAS BANKRUPTED AMERICA

Top economists say that endless war bankrupts a nation.
For example, Nobel prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz says that the $3-5 trillion spent on the Iraq war alone has been very bad for the American economy. See this, this and this.

The endless wars have also been a main component of America’s soaring debt:



And huge debts exert a very real drag on the economy.

As shown below, we wouldn’t have launched the war against Iraq – or the endless panoply of wars throughout the Middle East and North America – if 9/11 had actually been in investigated.

(Even the 9/11 Commission itself admits that there was criminal obstruction of justice and a whitewash of the investigation. See this, this, this, this, and this. As such, there has never been a real investigation.)

THE POLICE STATE WAS CAUSED BY THE FAILURE TO INVESTIGATE 9/11

The police state started in 2001.

 Specifically, on 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney initiated Continuity of Government Plans that ended America’s constitutional form of government (at least for some undetermined period of time.)
On that same day, a national state of emergency was declared … and that state of emergency has continuously been in effect up to today.

It is beyond dispute that 9/11 was entirely foreseeable, but – due to the extreme negligence and incompetence or lack of caring of the Bush administration (remember, I’m not getting into any other theories in this post) it wasn’t stopped.  Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable.
If there had been a real 9/11 investigation, the Bush administration’s extreme negligence would have come to light.   And Americans would have learned that terrorism can largely be prevented if the military and intelligence officers are simply allowed to do their job.

As just one example, Dick Cheney was in charge of all counter-terrorism exercises, activities and responses on 9/11. See this Department of State announcement; this CNN article; and this essay.

The genius Mr. Cheney apparently scheduled 5 war games for the morning of 9/11. Specifically, on the very morning of September 11th, five war games and terror drills were being conducted by several U.S. defense agencies, purportedly including one “live fly” exercise using real planes. Then-Acting Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard B. Myers, admitted to 4 of the war games in congressional testimony — see transcript here or video here (6 minutes and 12 seconds into the video.

False radar blips to be inserted onto air traffic controllers’ screens as part of the war game exercises, which may have confused the heck out of them (see this December 9, 2001 Toronto Star article; pay-per-view; reprinted here).  Way to let that one slip through, Mr. in-charge-of-all-war-games.

The military – under the Vice President’s command that day – didn’t scramble enough fighter jets, and then scrambled jets far over the Atlantic Ocean, in what Senator Mark Dayton called:

The most gross incompetence and dereliction of responsibility and negligence that I’ve ever, under those extreme circumstances, witnessed in the public sector.

And the knucklehead personally watched flight 77 for many miles, but – according to Secretary of Transportation Norm Minetta – stopped it from being shot down before it hit the Pentagon (and see this).

Americans would have learned through any real 9/11 investigation that Cheney’s negligence and mucking around in what should have been the generals’ jobs was partly responsible for allowing 9/11 to happen.
In other words, a real 9/11 investigation would have shown Americans that 9/11 should of, could of, and would have been stopped – and that America can protect itself against future terrorist attacks – simply by playing goalie well in our country.

And Americans – instead of being scared into immobility – would have been mad at our government for dropping the ball. And we would have demanded accountability and effective service from our elected officials.  (Indeed, experts have repeatedly demonstrated that fear of terror makes people stupid … and makes them willing to accept a loss of liberty and other abuses they would never otherwise accept.)

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Instead, of course, Americans were led to believe that Al Qaeda was going to get us unless we took the fight to the Middle East and North Africa.  The administration pretended that Saddam Hussein had a hand in 9/11 – one of the main justifications for that war.

Had a real 9/11 investigation been conducted before we launched the Iraq war, it would have taken away one of the two main rationales for that war. (The FBI was also instructed to blame the anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda, and high-level government officials pointed towards Iraq as the source of the anthrax, even though there was absolutely no basis for those claims. But that’s another story.)

Dan Rather was right when he wrote last week:

We have been so afraid; so hell bent on destroying enemies … both foreign and domestic … we have hurt ourselves and our democracy.

Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser also told the Senate in 2007 that the war on terror is so overblown that it is “a mythical historical narrative”.

And as I noted in 2008:

Former deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats, a 23-year senior CIA analyst, who “drafted or was involved in many of the government’s most senior assessments of the threats facing our country [and who] devoted years to understanding and combating the jihadist threat”, writes today in the Washington Post that the neocons have whipped us into an irrational fear of the terrorism. In reality, “Osama bin Laden and his disciples are small men and secondary threats whose shadows are made large by our fears” and our leaders.

This is no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. The BBC produced a documentary called The Power of Nightmares in 2005 that showed that politicians were greatly exaggerating the terrorist threat for political ends.

And unfortunately, many in government have intentionally whipped up fear in the American public for their own political purposes. For example, FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”.

And former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge admits that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection. Fear sells.

And because 9/11 was never really investigated, the government – instead of doing the things which could actually make us safer – are doing things which increase the risk of terrorism.


As such, the threats from terrorism form even more of a “justification” for a suspension of our Constitutional rights.

The failure to investigate 9/11 has bankrupted America financially and morally, and has allowed us to stand idly by while our liberty has been destroyed.

courtesy: ZERO HEDGE

Barclays Says Italy Is Finished: "Mathematically Beyond Point Of No Return"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/08/2011 20:13 -0500

Euphoria may have returned briefly courtesy of yet another promise for a resignation that will likely not be effectuated for weeks or months, if at all, and already someone has done the math on what the events in the past several days reveal for Italy. That someone is Barcalys, the math is not pretty, and the conclusion is that "Italy is now mathematically beyond point of no return."
Summary from Barclays Capital inst sales:

1) At this point, it seems Italy is now mathematically beyond point of no return
2) While reforms are necessary, in and of itself not be enough to prevent crisis
3) Reason? Simple math--growth and austerity not enough to offset cost of debt
4) On our ests, yields above 5.5% is inflection point where game is over
5) The danger:high rates reinforce stability concerns, leading to higher rates
6) and deeper conviction of a self sustaining credit event and eventual default
7) We think decisions at eurozone summit is step forward but EFSF not adequate
8) Time has run out--policy reforms not sufficient to break neg mkt dynamics
9) Investors do not have the patience to wait for austerity, growth to work
10) And rate of change in negatives not enuff to offset slow drip of positives
11) Conclusion: We think ECB needs to step up to the plate, print and buy bonds
12) At the moment ECB remains unwilling to be lender last resort on scale needed
13) But frankly will have hand forced by market given massive systemic risk

Hint:Not Good.Sell EUR, Buy Gold

The broader referenced report can be found here.
And the assocaited powerpoint is below:

Barclays Capital BARCAP Tuesday Credit Call Big Trouble in Big Italy

courtesy ZERO HEDGE

Giraldi: The Road to National Suicide

by Philip Giraldi, January 27, 2011

It is not often that one sees an entire nation marching in lockstep to go over a cliff into an abyss, but that is essentially what the United States is doing at the moment.

Not only have there been strong hints from the Obama Administration that the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan will go on into the dim future, but there is also no sign of any necessary course correction in other areas.  Israel, backed by Washington, continues its reckless policies and may be cranking up for a new war against Lebanon and Syria with the ultimate objective of involving its American patron in fighting against Iran.  Clearly President Obama is unwilling to take any risks by challenging existing policies.  He is edging towards what he perceives as the political center and is preparing to ride the status quo to electoral victory in 2012.

Consider the central dynamic of what the United States is engaged in.  Washington is committed to a series of asymmetrical wars that are literally taking place all over the world.  This is what the Obamaites now refer to as "overseas contingency operations."  One might well ask contingent on what, but the words themselves quite likely are not considered to be really meaningful and are rather designed to constitute a reassuring euphemism.  One of these wars, in Afghanistan, is costing the US taxpayer $10 billion a month and is tying up more than 100,000 American soldiers.  Casualties are rising, most of Afghanistan has become insecure in spite of the effort, corruption and drug cultivation are rampant, and there is no end in sight.  To put the cost of the war in some kind of perspective, Afghanistan’s gross domestic product for 2009 was $22 billion, meaning that it is costing nearly six times more to "defend" each year than its total economic activity.  Asymmetrical indeed. Colonial empires of the past would have at least figured out how to turn a buck from their imperial endeavors, highlighting the cluelessness of Washington.  If there has ever been an example of a war that makes no sense, Afghanistan is it.

The stated purpose of fighting in Afghanistan is to keep the country from becoming a base for terrorism but the premise is deeply flawed.  Terrorists can literally go anywhere and do not necessarily need a geographic base.  If they choose, they can even disappear for a time, sitting quietly and waiting for the situation to change in their favor.  Also, fighting them in a foreign country is a fool’s errand, and not only because American soldiers and their leaders rarely grasp what is going on in any alien environment and nearly always make things worse rather than better.  No, the salient issue is that the militants will always have the upper hand in such an engagement because they benefit from three realities that give them a major advantage.  First, they are not bound to strategies coming out of a training manual and can actually learn and develop as they go along.  This has been described as "open source warfare."  If you need a better and simpler improvised explosive device (IED), instructions for making one will soon appear on the internet as militant groups refine their tactics and share information.  When the advanced IED appears, the US government and its military industrial contractors will panic and overreact to the threat by building a newer and heavier vehicle to resist it.  The new vehicle will cost three times as much as the old vehicle, will take two years to design, and will get 300 yards per gallon of gas, which has to be trucked over the Hindu Kush mountains, where it is subject to attack by the insurgents.  As is frequently the case, that means that the conventional army is always finding itself at a disadvantage fighting the last war with the last war’s weapons waiting for the new weapons that will be obsolete when they arrive.
The foreign army will also invariably adhere to standard doctrine, which is to defend itself as a first priority.  That means it will always overreact when it is attacked.  Given the nature of guerrilla warfare, it will unleash its power against areas in which militants have inserted themselves among civilians, leading to avoidable deaths that will be used to win the propaganda war.  This serves as a recruiting poster for the insurgency.  So in the long run, with the invader beggaring himself fighting the wrong war and killing civilians, who is going to win the exchange?

Second, militants do not have to waste manpower and materiel by defending anything that could be attacked by the overwhelming force possessed by the conventional army.  They can concentrate on conserving resources by taking the offensive to hit soft targets, secure in the knowledge that even 100,000 highly trained and well equipped foreign soldiers cannot be everywhere.  When some contractor hired by USAID builds bridges or schools at great cost, it is a lot easier to blow them up a week or a month later than it was to build them.  The ability to do that type of damage produces a disproportionate result, sending a message that the government and its foreign allies are ineffective and cannot provide security.  It also tells the local population who is going to win in the long run and it won’t be the boys from Washington.  They understand that eventually the Great Power will lose its will to fight, will go broke, and will go home.

Third is the issue of overall strategy.  Modern conventional armies are designed to inflict devastating damage on a concentrated opponent with the intention of causing mass casualties and ending the enemy’s ability to continue to resist.  When the enemy army is soundly defeated it surrenders, generally followed by the surrender of the national government that it represents.  But none of that applies in war against an insurgency or a group of militants, with the result that an aircraft carrier or a strategic bomber or a ballistic missile becomes worthless.  Such groups normally have only limited internal organization, operate essentially as "leader-less," and a militant who is killed is quickly replaced at the local level.  If an operating base is destroyed or overrun, it is a simple matter to pick up one’s weapons and move to another.  If the war spreads to another region or country, it is also relatively easy to replicate the insurgency and its structure in the new area.  That is why there is no worldwide al-Qaeda movement, only national and regional groups that share the philosophy and methods of the parent organization.  The local franchises are driven by their own national and religious agendas, are self funding, and generally locally recruited.  They fade away when the local government or the US comes after them and then resurface when the pressure eases.  That is why they cannot be defeated, even if the United States spends the next twenty years trying to do so.

So what is the solution to the tactical and strategic challenges posed by terrorists and other militants?  Well, we could leave Iraq and Afghanistan and eschew any interest in intervening in Somalia and Yemen.  Instead of telling half the world how to run their governments, we could wish them all luck and announce our intention to disengage from foreign entanglements as quickly as possible.  There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that any terrorist group would then follow us back home to wreak havoc.  On the contrary, it is most likely that we would be left alone.  And we could be saving all that money we are spending accomplishing absolutely nothing overseas and begin to put our own economy back together by cutting defense spending by a half or even more.  Minus an international threat, we could also disband the Department of Homeland Security, starting with the odious Transportation Security Administration.  Yes, that would do it.  An America at peace with itself and putting its own house in order.  I rather suspect that the entire world would applaud such a change.  Of course, if we don’t do it, we can continue to be the lemmings charging over the cliff.

 Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and executive director of the Council for the National Interest. 

courtesy Antiwar.com