9/11 Scholars Forum

Exposing Falsehoods and Revealing Truths

"9/11: What remains must be the truth" by Paul J. Balles

http://www.redress.cc/americas/pjballes20031216

9/11: What remains must be the truth
By Paul J. Balles*

16 December 2003

"When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains - however improbable - must be the truth." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Not long after 11 September 2001, a story surfaced on the Internet accusing the Israelis of taking part in a conspiracy that resulted in the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks. The origin of the story was attributed to Jordan's Al-Watan newspaper; and it was reported that Pakistani publications followed by Islamic clerics in the Middle East and Central Asia spread the story.

Another tragedy was born and reared out of those reports. A number of anti-Semitic bigots hopped on the bandwagon of that ill-considered, wild conjecture and misused it to feed their rant against Jews.

As might be expected, a number of people stormed onto the Internet to debunk the Israel conspiracy theories. That effectively put an end to questioning the official story of a plot generated by Osama bin Laden and executed by his Al-Qaeda operatives. No one dared ask the most important question: Who stood to benefit from the catastrophe that killed thousands on 11 September 2001?

Al-Qaeda? What benefit? Even terrorists need a cause. "They hate America" isn't a cause. "They're jealous of America's freedoms" isn't a cause.

Saudi Arabia? Michael Moore suggests this in Dude, Where's My Country. But why? If there were an affair between Bush and the Saudi royal family, how would 9/11 ever benefit the Saudis? No conceivable benefit accrues to either the Saudi royal family or the Saudi military.

America's oil interests? This seems to be a favourite among guessing pundits. However, if the Bush cabal and the Saudis are in cahoots, they already have Middle East oil interests sewn up. There's plenty of time to worry about Afghanistan gas pipes and Iraqi oil when supplies get dangerously low. Why burn up millions of gallons of fuel in a war to protect fuel supplies for control of Iraqi oil? For what? In order to pay for the war costs?

What about G.W. Bush and the Republican Party? While the "Patriot" theme and "fighting terrorism" undoubtedly aided the Republicans in the 2002 elections as well as their legislative agenda, the risk of prolonged occupations accompanied by deaths of military personnel argue against any long-term benefit to Bush and his party. Combine that with continued loss of credibility over the falsehoods used to justify unilateral attacks on Iraq, and any potential benefit seen earlier goes up in smoke.

The Bilderberg group and the financial interests of a "New World Order"? That international finance has been served by 9/11 seems obvious with the US being looted to serve a transnational elite with no allegiance to any nation. That they're organized enough to plan and execute a national disaster like 9/11 is impossible.

Israel? Without a sliver of doubt, Israel was/is the major benefactor of the 9/11 strike. How has Israel benefited? Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, believed that Iraq could have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and Israel wanted Iraq neutralized before they had a chance to use them against Israel.

Israeli hawks have, since the beginnings of their occupation of Palestine, wanted to rid Palestine of the Palestinians. So long as Palestinians remained in the occupied territories, an Iraqi missile strike that would kill more Palestinians than Israelis was impossible. So long as Iraq possessed a capacity to even develop WMDs it would be impossible for Israel to get rid of the Palestinians. Thus, getting control of Iraq facilitated Israel's ultimate desire to eliminate the Palestinians.

How does 9/11 fit into the Iraq-Israel scenario? 9/11 provided the clarion call for the so-called war against terrorism. Without 9/11, the US would have had no excuse for invading Afghanistan. The battle against Al-Qaeda and bin Laden was the precursor to the invasion of Iraq; and the trumped up connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda provided the excuse for invading Iraq.

There's no doubt that Israel's Mossad, the Middle East intelligence experts as far as America is concerned, provided the assessment of Iraq's WMDs to America. The following Associated Press report (8 December 2003) makes clear, though perhaps unwittingly, that Israelis believed that Iraq had WMDs.

"Israeli intelligence overplayed the threat posed by Iraq and reinforced an assumption by American and British counterparts that Saddam Hussein had large caches of weapons of mass destruction, a retired Israeli general said today, after studying the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq.

"The Israeli assessment may have been coloured by politics, including a desire to see Saddam Hussein toppled, said Shlomo Brom, once a senior Israeli military intelligence officer and now a researcher with Israel's top strategic think tank.

"Brom stopped short of accusing intelligence officials of intentionally misleading Britain and the United States...

"Brom said in an interview today that 'Israeli intelligence was a full partner with the United States and Britain in developing a false picture of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction capability'.

"He said Israeli intelligence 'badly overestimated the Iraqi threat to Israel and reinforced the American and British belief that the weapons existed'.

"Brom said the Israeli assessment might have been influenced by politics."

Brom's last comment was a gross understatement! And while he stopped short of accusing Mossad of intentionally misleading Britain and the United States, there's little doubt that's exactly what happened.

Considering again the answer to the question "who benefited from 9/11?" it becomes perfectly clear that Israel, and Israel alone, had reason to plot and execute the disaster that hit the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and the four flights involved in that fateful September day in 2001. Israel, however, couldn't possibly have executed such a plan alone without help from some US authorities. Who might possibly provide the means for accomplishing that genocidal goal?

The FBI and the CIA along with the general category of "the Bush administration" have been suggested in conjecture about possible accomplices in a conspiracy. "The Bush administration" is much too broad even to be nominated for serious consideration, with the ever-present possibility that somewhere among the ranks there might be a whistle blower with a conscience.

The FBI has certainly refused to cooperate with inquirers outside the government; but that refusal to release information in ongoing investigations cannot be logically interpreted as part of a cover-up. The same can be said for the CIA. Additionally, people in both agencies have revealed that they had advanced knowledge of the potential hijackings.

Apart from other considerations, the CIA, having shared intelligence with Mossad and having been burnt on a number of those occasions with false intelligence, would have no love lost for the deceivers among their Israeli counterparts. According to Gordon Thomas, "both the FBI and CIA regard Mossad as a clear and present danger to US national security".

Who's left as cooperative partners in the 9/11 executions that would form the basis for the American invasions against all objections from most of the rest of the world? The process of elimination leaves only the Department of Defence (DoD). Its leaders are secretive enough to keep its plans under wraps. To violate the top-secret code of silence, even by someone who later felt moved by conscience to disclose the truth, would be cause for court martial and a death sentence for treason, if not to an assassination made to look like a suicide.

Unlike the CIA, which has "never killed Americans" in its covert activities, the DoD has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, both in the military and among civilians considered as collateral damage. The DoD has no qualms about killing Americans when it serves its purpose.

For 60 years the DoD managed to cover up its prior knowledge of the planned Pearl Harbour attack by the Japanese that killed 4,575 US Navy personnel. The DoD also stopped US fighter jets from scrambling to end the Israeli massacre of US Navy personnel on the USS Liberty.

The DoD is the only body that could have kept the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) from performing its duty to scramble fighter jets to intercept the hijacked planes on 9/11. The DoD was in the position to stop the hijacked jets from performing their mission. They didn't, and they've never answered why they didn't.

Similarly, just as they were in a position to stop the attack on Pearl Harbour, they did not. There was no excuse for that failure other than using the attack to justify US entry into World War II. That the DoD did not intercept the hijacked aircraft on 9/11 is evidence that they wanted the end result to happen and participated in the attack.

Leading civilians in the DoD figure among US leaders serving Israel. Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith have been more devoted to Israeli interests than they have to those of America. At best, they have acted as "dual loyalists."

Some background on these dual loyalists of the DoD:

Paul Wolfowitz, United States secretary of defence: "The neo-conservative members of President Bush's cabinet led by Wolfowitz advocated pre-emptive strikes on terror cells in Afghanistan."

"Wolfowitz, a 'hawkish' conservative military analyst under Ronald Reagan, had in the 1990s, during the Clinton presidency formulated a new foreign policy with regard to Iraq and other 'potential aggressor states', dismissing 'containment' in favour of 'pre-emption'; strike first to eliminate threats." Such a strike could not be made without an attack like Pearl Harbour or like 9/11.

Richard Perle, previously chairman, now member of the Defence Policy Board for the DoD: together with Douglas Feith and Richard Wurmser, Perle authored a paper "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," in 1996 which declared that "removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq' was an "important Israeli strategic objective..." That removal could not be accomplished without a 'casus belli' (an event used to justify war).

Douglas Feith, undersecretary of policy at the US Department of Defence: "A prolific writer, Feith has left a long paper trail of anti-Arab tracts and diatribes against those who challenge or seek to compromise Israel's strength and as he defines it, 'moral superiority' over the Arabs." Feith would participate in any plot to advance Israel's interests at the expense of the Arabs.

Along with the DoD triumvirate, add the two white house controllers. First, David Wurmser, whose Israeli wife and his close friend Richard Perle make him the perfect conduit to Vice President Richard Cheney. "... it was precisely because of the strategic importance of the Levant that Wurmser advocated overthrowing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in favour of an Iraqi National Congress.... 'Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically,' he wrote in one 1996 paper for the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies." Iraq could not be "inherited" without 9/11 as an excuse for a pre-emptive strike.

The second, Elliot Abrams, described in The Nation as "the nastiest policy warrior as Washington has seen in decades", was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran Contra affair and he serves Israel in the National Security Council. As Jim Lobe observed in Tom Paine "Israel's Likud Scores Big With White House Appointment". Abrams would have no qualms about sacrificing American lives for Israel's benefit.

All of these Likudite Bush aides are unequivocal supporters of Israel's conservative Likud party, now headed by the "Butcher of Sabra and Shatilla" Ariel Sharon; and the dual loyalists have past ties either to Likud or to Israeli companies.

Having eliminated the impossible, what remains is not as improbable as it might have looked at first. What remains are people in the DoD with a motive. Combine that with the history of deception of both Mossad and the DoD as well as their proven willingness to sacrifice American lives for their causes.

Victor Ostrovsky (By Way of Deception and The Other Side of Deception) made it perfectly clear that Mossad often infiltrated any organization it wanted to watch and/or control. For them, infiltrating Al-Qaeda cells would be a cinch; and getting a number of Arabs to hijack planes under any ruse would be normal Mossad behaviour. Ostrovsky, former Mossad agent, revealed how Mossad got America to bomb Libya and fight Iraq. There's plenty of evidence of Mossad agents posing as Arabs, thus supplying the "means" for the attacks and blaming Al-Qaeda and the Arabs.

There's no reason to believe that the Arabs involved in the hijacking, who were not the expert flyers with the skills required to accomplish the flying feats of 9/11, had a clue about where they would end up in planes guided by remote control. All the hijackers had to do was turn over the guidance to ground control in the hands of the DoD.

Since the supposed Arab hijackers couldn't even fly small planes solo, according to the testimony of their flight instructors, and since remote control devices had proven effective, the process of elimination again points to the only conclusion remaining: 9/11 was planned and executed by Mossad and the DoD in order to justify military action in the Middle East for the major benefactor, Israel.

Until now, the belief that Israel could have anything to do with planning or executing the atrocities of 9/11 have been arbitrarily dismissed as "conspiracy theory". The Anti Defamation League (ADL) in America has labelled any such beliefs as anti-Semitic. Conveniently, the ADL has chosen to ignore the fact that Arabs are also Semites. Furthermore, presenting a well-reasoned case against Israel - even when it or its agent's activities are criminal - does not constitute anti-Semitism. Israel, through its admittedly deceptive intelligence arm, Mossad, in tandem with a DoD run by "dual loyalists", had all that it takes to establish a case in a court of law: the means, the motive and the opportunity.

If the ADL or any other group wishes to protect its followers from the dangers of spreading anti-Semitism, they need to closely examine the activities of the war hawks in both Tel Aviv (or Jerusalem) and Washington. Most importantly, they need to ask and seek an honest answer to the question: who benefited from the catastrophe that killed thousands on 11 September 2001?

*Paul Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for 34 years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.

Views: 27

Comment

You need to be a member of 9/11 Scholars Forum to add comments!

Join 9/11 Scholars Forum

© 2024   Created by James H. Fetzer.   Powered by

Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service