The Terror Trap for Bush
| The "Global Coalition" Against Terrorism is No Substitute for Rebuilding our Intelligence Capability and Firing Those Officials Who Left America Vulnerable to Terrorist attack. Abandonment of Israel and Creation of a Palestinian State Won't Mollify Islamic Terrorists |
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prepared remarks of
Cliff Kincaid, President, America's Survival, Inc.
President Bush is reported to believe that God has put him in the oval office for the purpose of waging this war on global terrorism. It is widely reported that he has been "transformed" by the experience. Denounced during the campaign as an isolationist, he is now viewed as an internationalist. Our president, who opposed nation building, now endorses it in Afghanistan. American pilots drop leaflets on behalf of the "Partnership of Nations," whatever that is, and the U.S. says that we are acting with NATO under the United Nations charter. At the same time, Bush, who was endorsed for president by the American Muslim Political Coordinating Council Political Action Committee, meets with identified apologists for Islamic terrorism and proclaims Islam a religion of peace. Some of the worst terrorist regimes on earth, including Iran, Syria and Libya, are being rehabilitated by the State Department as part of this crusade. Even the name of the military operation, once "Infinite Justice," was changed to "Enduring Freedom" so as not to offend Muslims who associate God exclusively with the term "infinite."
Bush says he wants Osama bin Laden dead or alive and rules out negotiations with the Taliban but the State Department tells Israel to negotiate with its terrorist enemies. Israel is being carefully excluded from the "New World Order" that is supposed to demonstrate that Islam can co-exist with the West. The handwriting is on the wall: in response to the terror attacks, which are considered punishment for U.S. support of Israel, the Bush Administration is being moved toward supporting a Palestinian terrorist mini-state in the Middle East. This has been one of bin Laden's goals, but it is not the only one. He favors a global Islamic dictatorship. With U.S. support, it appears that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Europeans will take the lead in brokering a peace treaty between the Palestinian Authority and Israel that will lead to the deployment of U.N. or NATO troops, possibly in Jerusalem, with a U.S. contingent.
In a column headlined, "Wonders of a New World," Washington Post columnist David Broder quotes Senator Pete Domenici, "the thoughtful Republican from New Mexico," as saying, "We may have a 'new world order' without anyone having asked for it."
There is nothing wonderful, new or accidental about this.
In response to the attacks of September 11, we have NATO aircraft patrolling our skies, Russia poised to join NATO, the U.N. passing resolutions against terrorism (without defining the term) and set to manage the affairs of a new Afghanistan, and a war on terrorism joined by the genocidal Christian-killing regime in Sudan. On CNN's Larry King Live on October 15, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev hailed the performances of Presidents Bush and Vladimir Putin of Russia and said we were on the march to a "new international order."
The State Department has also enlisted the aid of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, putting one of the Islamic groups opposed to his dictatorship on a list of terrorist organizations. This reflects British policy. The British intelligence service recently hosted the murderous head of Libya's intelligence service.
So rather than identify and shun Gadhafi as the terrorist he is, the Bush Administration is now depicting his opposition as terrorists. This goes far beyond the Clinton policy of appeasing Gadhafi so that American oil firms can return to Libya and prop up the dictator. Rather than rehabilitate Gadhafi, the Bush Administration and Attorney General John Ashcroft have been urged by families of the Pan Am 103 victims to seek the indictment of Gadhafi on mass murder charges. An international trial in the Pan Am terrorism case resulted in the conviction of a top Libyan intelligence officer, thereby implicating Gadhafi himself in the scheme to murder 270 people, including 189 Americans.
In the case of Libya, it looks like the Bush Administration has taken him off the hook for this mass murder so he can help catch another mass murderer - bin Laden. Equally significant, the Bush Administration allowed the United Nations to lift travel restrictions placed on Sudanese officials for harboring the terrorists who tried to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995. The U.S., which could have vetoed the resolution, abstained. The regime in Sudan has been blamed for the murder of almost two million people, most of them Christians. Congress had been considering a bill called the Sudan Peace Act to crack down on business dealings with the regime. The Bush Administration opposes it.
A story by Jonathan Weisman in USA Today on September 20 said U.S. diplomats have "reached out" to six of seven nations identified by the State Department as terrorist. They were Sudan, Cuba, Syria, North Korea, Iran and Libya. Iraq was the only country left out. It looks suspiciously like those governments are going to be forgiven for their crimes against America. That's something many Americans can't accept.
The president may regard Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's comments about Israel being sold out at the expense of the Arabs as inappropriate, but the Bush talk about a Palestinian state and Blair's meeting with Palestinian chief Yasir Arafat on October 15 send powerful messages about how the terrorism on September 11 has paid big dividends. In terms of America's survival, Bush may be inspired by 90 percent approval ratings and flattering editorials in the Washington Post and New York Times but the American people wave their flags and rally around him because they want America - our national sovereignty -- to be strengthened. Bush's father, who talked openly about a "New World Order," knows those ratings can easily and rapidly decline.
Congress has given the president a blank check to wage this "war on terrorism" but the maintenance of the "global coalition" now seems almost as important as defeating terrorists. It could be like the never-ending no-win "war on drugs," in which real victory seems not to be achievable or even pursued. It may be another Persian Gulf War, giving the appearance of a momentary victory. We do know that, in the current crisis, much of America has been paralyzed by media coverage of anthrax letters, with federal authorities initially claiming they didn't know whether they were linked to September 11. Our leaders don't seem to have a clue. They seem only to know that more terrorism is coming and that they need more power over us to deal with it.
Clueless in Washington
The intelligence failure on September 11 has exposed the United States as extremely weak and compromised in security, intelligence and foreign affairs. The federal government had a constitutional obligation to protect our national security and it failed. Our own FBI has been forced to go on "America's Most Wanted" to try to nab foreign terrorists, and Attorney General John Ashcroft has called for a "National Neighborhood Watch" so we can help the government catch them. This is pitiful. The fact is that more than 5000 Americans would be alive today if the federal government had done its job and had protected our borders against foreign invaders. But nobody has been fired. Instead, the "answer" is to give those responsible for this catastrophe more power, money and authority.
The House of Representatives had proposed a "Commission on Preparedness and Performance of the Federal Government for the September 11 Acts of Terrorism" to assess the performance of U.S. intelligence agencies leading up to the September 11 terrorist attacks. But when the bill hit the House floor, Congressman Porter Goss, joined by most members of the House, moved to rename the commission and completely change its mission. The panel suddenly became a "Commission on National Security Readiness." Instead of assessing the performance of U.S. intelligence agencies leading up to the terrorist attacks, it will "review the national security readiness of the United States to identify structural impediments to the effective collection, analysis, and sharing of information on national security threats, particularly terrorism." The new commission won't be able to hold hearings to uncover wrongdoing, administer oaths to witnesses appearing before it, and won't have any subpoena power to obtain testimony or evidence.
Our intelligence agencies have given failure a bad name. And this weakness continues, masked in the rhetoric of assembling an international coalition to fight terrorism built on foreign aid, debt relief, and old "allies" who only give lip service to the war. There used to be a time when America led the world, rather than having to bribe countries to join our cause. Our key ally is an unstable Pakistani dictatorship with an Islamic nuclear bomb that helped create the problem in Afghanistan in the first place. Out of deference to Pakistan, we are now prolonging the war, refraining from destroying theTaliban. Guarantees have reportedly been made to other members of the coalition that we won't attack another Arab/Muslim country. Creation of a Palestinian state certainly won't be enough to satisfy bin Laden.
Our so-called "allies" created this problem. In testimony before Congress last February, CIA director and Clinton holdover George Tenet described Osama bin Laden and his network as "the most immediate and serious threat" to the United States. But he forgot to point out that our "ally," Saudi Arabia, was financing this network. Saudi Arabia, an Islamic dictatorship, is an ally for one reason - oil. Out of deference to Saudi Arabia, Clinton failed to pursue the Saudi and Iranian connection to the Khobar Towers bombing. Clinton also covered-up the cause of the TWA 800 crash and the real perpetrators of the Oklahoma City bombing and failed to avenge the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in October 2000. The attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan over the Africa embassy bombings were largely an ineffective diversion designed to get our attention off the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He made a deal through U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to let Libya's Moammar Gadhafi off the hook for the Pan Am 103 bombing that took 270 lives.
President Bush was dealt a weak hand by Clinton and may feel this pro-Muslim "international coalition" is his best option. The problem is that Bin Laden, the Taliban and the "moderate" Saudis all represent a brand of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism, an ideology which forbids any form of music, dance or movies. This is the state religion in Saudi Arabia, which has been promoting it in religious schools and educational institutions around the world, including on the Pakistan-Afghan border. It is estimated that that 80 percent of the mosques in America are under the control of Imams or Muslim leaders committed to Wahhabism. This is a fifth column in our midst.
Tony Blair Lures Bush into "New World Order"
President Bush is taking guidance in this crisis from Clinton's old comrade, Britain's Socialist Prime Minister Tony Blair, who postures as a friend of America. This is a big mistake. Columnist Arnold Beichman notes that Blair in 1999 gave one of Britain's highest awards to Marxist Professor Eric Hobsbawn, a long-time member of the Communist Party who defended Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's crimes. Blair, in an October 2 speech, proposed a new world order as a memorial to the victims of September 11. He said it would uphold human dignity and social justice "from the slums of Gaza to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan." He said it would lead to America being brought in to solve problems such as global warming. Clearly, Blair wants to use the tragedy for his own benefit, indicating he will use his new international standing to take Britain into the single European currency, the euro.
Blair, an international Socialist, may believe this is appropriate for Britain. But it's lunacy for America. Blair and his fellow Socialists don't understand Islam any more than they understood communism. He wants America to clean up a mess he helped create. Britain, a post-Christian country, has a large Muslim population which has served as a base of operations for terrorists, including the network of Osama bin Laden. In an October 7 story, the Washington Post noted that Britain had a deliberate policy of hosting suspected terrorists. "By hosting the [Arab] dissidents, the theory went, Britain was also buying itself immunity from acts of terrorism on its soil," the paper reported. An Arab journalist said, "Britain has been playing this game in the Middle East for a very long time. It's a political game that can be effective as long as you know how to play it, but it can also come back to haunt you."
U.S. intelligence knew foreign Islamic terrorists were here. A congressional hearing was held on the matter in 1998, where the FBI confirmed the present of foreign terrorists in America, and a public television program aired in 1995 on "Jihad in America." But Clinton, like Blair, must have figured that the terrorists would not strike us at home if we collaborated with them abroad. The Clinton Administration had a policy of supporting radical Islamic terrorism if it could serve certain U.S. interests. The best book on this insidious policy was published abroad, Dollars For Terror, by journalist Richard Labeviere. This is bin Laden-gate - the geopolitical idea that the U.S. could manipulate, even control, the rise of radical Islam, including in such places as Bosnia and Kosovo. In a major speech, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher has provided further evidence showing this to be the case.
This helps explain why Clinton, who gave a famous speech to the United Nations saying the West and Islam could co-exist in peace, approved Iranian arms shipments to the Bosnian Muslims, support for the Albanian Muslims in Kosovo, and Saudi financing of the Taliban. A key Saudi businessman suspected of bankrolling bin Laden has a lawyer named Vernon Jordan, an old Clinton friend.
This policy came back to haunt us on September 11. Scotland Yard said that eleven of the men who hijacked U.S. airliners that hit New York and the Pentagon may have traveled to Britain for meetings or training. The lesson that Bush should have drawn from this is that America's wide open borders and loose immigration laws should be revised and strengthened. The answer is not Blair's "New World Order" but the restoration of American sovereignty.
The FBI and CIA were ordered to ignore, even assist, the rise of radical Islamic movements. This helps explain the bureau's performance in the 1994 Oklahoma City bombing. Stephen Jones, a lawyer for executed bomber Timothy McVeigh, devotes several pages in his book to possible connections between Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and the other convicted bomber, Terry Nichols. He cites an eyewitness account of Nichols, who was married to a Filipino, meeting with Yousef and associates of the bin Laden network in the Philippines in the early 1990s. But Jones says, "At some point after they'd caught McVeigh and Nichols, and certainly by the time of the grand jury indictment in August 1995, someone high up in the government had ordered they they were simply going to drop all the rest. And by 1996, the last words anyone on the prosecution side wanted to hear were others unknown." The government had insisted it was pursuing "others unknown" involved in the plot but it stopped at McVeigh and Nichols.
Former FBI agent Ivian Smith says he never understood why the bureau dropped its pursuit of "John Doe Number Two," an accomplice of McVeigh. The same witness who identified McVeigh had also identified John Doe Number Two. A report from the Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee says several witnesses described John Doe Number Two as Middle Eastern, Arabic or with a dark-complexion. An All Points Bulletin for him was cancelled on the same day it was issued. McVeigh and Nichols were then denounced as right-wingers and President Clinton launched a campaign against conservative talk radio.
In a September 21st Washington Post column, Charles Krauthammer said, "America conducted three wars in the 1990s. The Gulf War saved the Kuwaiti people from Saddam. American intervention in the Balkans saved Bosnia. And then we saved Kosovo from Serbia. What do these three military campaigns have in common? In every one we saved a Muslim people. And then there was Somalia, a military operation of unadulterated altruism. Its sole purpose was to save the starving people of Somalia. Muslims all. For such alliances and actions, we get more than 5,000 Americans murdered…" Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has made a similar point, and Congressman Henry Hyde, appearing on NBC's Meet the Press, indicated the U.S. needs to mount a public relations campaign to tell the world how we've done so much for Islamic people.
But the true nature of this pro-Muslim policy, which has backfired, was concealed from the American people. It is only now coming into clear public view - and it is continuing. When Clinton got the U.S. involved in the war over Kosovo, he didn't frame the issue in terms of protecting Muslims. Rather, he said we were fighting a dictator committing massive human rights violations. However, Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, did let the cat out the bag in a May 7, 1999 speech to the American Muslim Council. Berger said, "….Bosnia and Kosovo have refuted the claim that Islam and the West are locked in a clash of civilizations. What Kosovo proves, beyond a doubt, is that Western and Islamic nations can unite to fight evil and protect innocent people no matter what their background."
In 1995, bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is now on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list, raised around $500,000 during a visit to San Francisco. But overzealous agents who tried to probe foreign terrorists in America were accused of anti-Muslim bias. Meantime, the FBI, as part of its "Project Megiddo" report, announced that Christian fundamentalist cults devoted to the second amendment and opposed to the U.N. constituted a major internal threat. Clinton CIA director and holdover George Tenet hired open homosexuals as agents, held a "Gay Pride Day" featuring Barney Frank, and worked to polish its image by consulting on TV programs such as "The Agency" on CBS, where, in the first episode, CIA agents saved the life of Fidel Castro. Other episodes featured CIA agents capturing Arab terrorists and stopping anthrax attacks on America. If only that were true.
NATO is no substitute for good intelligence. It is now dominated by unscrupulous international European Socialists like Tony Blair who think they can rule the world. But they had turned a blind eye to the menace of Soviet-sponsored terrorist networks, the danger of Soviet Communism, and continued Russian and Chinese support of terrorist regimes. Joschka Fischer, the foreign minister of Germany, another key NATO member, was recently honored at the Pentagon, even though he has a background as a violent Marxist, having been photographed beating a policeman. He recently testified in connection with the arrest of an associate who was part of the international terror network run by Carlos the Jackal.
Just one day after the September 11 terror attacks, NATO announced that it wanted a global war on terror, that an attack on the U.S. was an attack on NATO. This was news to NATO member Turkey, the target of terrorism over a 15-year period that cost an estimated 30,000 lives. NATO never intervened to stop that. The offer of help to America after September 11 was designed to entice President Bush into joining with the international Socialist vision of their "New World Order." But this is not the old NATO that contained the Soviet Union. And it is not the Britain whose head of state was the "Iron Lady" and strong conservative Margaret Thatcher.
Under Clinton, without the benefit of a treaty, the new NATO became an offensive force that intervened against the "Christian Serb" to show solidarity with Islam. It was transformed from an anti-Communist alliance into a military, political and economic organization manipulated by Marxists and Socialists with anti-American records. The former Secretary-General of NATO, Spanish Marxist Javier Solana, who now handles security and foreign policy for the European Union, opposed Spanish membership in NATO when NATO served to contain the Soviet Union. But he gave the order for NATO to go to war in Kosovo on behalf of the bin Laden-linked Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, a Socialist, said on October 12 that NATO should be reshaped to fight terrorism and all major world powers should join NATO. In an opinion article published in Sweden's leading daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Peres said, "Naturally the present NATO coalition must be changed to include Russia, India, China and Japan," noting that all these countries had voiced support for the United States and Europe after the September 11 attacks. But Israel is not a NATO member.
Almost on cue, the U.N. jumped on the bandwagon, passing resolutions denouncing the terror attacks on America. But Annan, who supervised the Rwanda genocide of almost one million people as director of U.N. peacekeeping, has functioned as a foreign agent for such terror sponsors as Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi, brokering deals with both dictators to help them avoid responsibility for their crimes of war and terrorism. Syria, listed by our State Department as a sponsor of terrorism, wins election to the U.N. Security Council with 160 out of a possible 177 votes, demonstrating that the Muslim bloc of nations, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which now has 55 members, dominates the U.N. itself. The U.N. and Annan play host to Syria and every other terrorist regime in the world, except the Taliban, but receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The fact is that U.N. diplomats with "diplomatic immunity" who are in fact representatives of terrorist regimes may be communicating instructions to foreign terrorists in the United States.
The 1989 book, A Mandate for Terror: The United Nations and the PLO, describes how, in the name of fighting terrorism, the world body came to embrace the PLO's terror campaign, culminating in the 1974 visit by Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat to the U.N. General Assembly wearing a gun. U.N. pressure is one reason why the government of Israel was eventually compelled to recognize the PLO and treat Arafat as a partner in peace talks. Terrorists who have carried out suicide bombing attacks against Israel have been students at a United Nations-run institution in the West Bank.
"Experts" On Terrorism and Biowarfare
Several top Clinton administration officials have appeared on television to express their surprise and anger over the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. We have also been given leaks of information to the effect that Clinton had ordered the apprehension or assassination of bin Laden. But just two years ago, the Clinton Administration was assisting the Kosovo Liberation Army, some of whose fighters were trained by bin Laden in his camps in Afghanistan. Like the U.S. and NATO, Bin Laden assisted the Muslims in Bosnia, hailing the war against the "Christian Serb."
Clinton's NATO Commander Wesley Clark, a fellow Rhodes scholar born in Little Rock who is now an expert on terrorism on CNN and in Time magazine, is never asked to explain NATO's collaboration with the KLA and bin Laden, and no one mentions that Clark has gone to work for Arkansas billionaire and Clinton sugar daddy Jackson Stephens. That's a nice pay-off for one of Clinton's favorite generals. Another Clinton crony, Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr., former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, may get paid in another way. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Bioport, a foreign-owned company based in Lansing, Michigan, and the only licensed manufacturer of anthrax vaccine in the country. Crowe, an early supporter of President Clinton who was appointed by Clinton as Ambassador to England, invested nothing in the company but owns more than 20 percent of it. The anthrax scare guarantees a growing market for the vaccine, once production problems are cleared-up and if the public is reassured about its safety. That's a big "if." Many believe the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease.
President Bush should break with the past and the Clinton policies and personnel. If he wants to engage in nation building, he should start with our own. A nation begins with defensible borders. Intelligence officials such as George Tenet should be fired and our intelligence capability should be greatly strengthened. The President should recognize that the war between Islam and the West threatens our very survival. These terrorists view Islam as the successor to communism in the effort to topple Judeo/Christian-based Western civilization.