Re: bin Laden's ambitions

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Austin, Andrew crossposted from the NY Times:
>The mention of "Hiroshima" by a group that had
>repeatedly struck United States interests around
>the world since 1998 set off an immediate but
>fruitless search for further evidence. But
>intelligence officials now acknowledge that they
>never imagined that Mr.
>bin Laden's organization had the ability to kill
>thousands of people in coordinated attacks on
>the American homeland.

Two things. One technical, the other political. Andrew Austin just
posted an entire article from the NY Times that is available online.
If he does that again, I will suspend him.

Now to the political. The NY Times article is boilerplate war office
bullshit of the kind that reminds us that the first casualty in
wartime is the truth.

Even now, the bourgeois media is tailoring its message to the
developing requirements of the US war office, namely that Al-Queda
could not have carried this out on its own. Who helped them? Iraq, of
course.

===
The Independent, 14 October 2001

The suicide bomber and the Baghdad conspiracy

Evidence that the hijacker Mohamed Atta repeatedly met an Iraqi
diplomat has split the alliance and put Saddam Hussein in the firing
line.

By Chris Blackhurst

Unfortunately for them, and alarmingly for all of us, there is
mounting evidence of an Iraqi role in the suicide attacks. Senator
Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on both the Senate intelligence and
judiciary committees, and a recipient of high-level briefings since
11 September, said he is "very confident" that Iraq played a role in
11 September. He refused to elaborate but added: "Iraq has been
harbouring these terrorists for a long time ... I believe that Iraq
is ultimately going to be proven to have been a part of this."

Investigators are convinced Mr bin Laden did not have the financial
and logistical capacity to organise 11 September. There is some
truth, they acknowledge, in the Taliban assertion that he was holed
up in the Afghan mountains, unable to draw upon the resources
necessary to mount such an onslaught. Everything they are coming
across points to the participation of intelligence machinery from a
state, probably Iraq. The amount of false documentation the hijackers
carried suggests they must have been sponsored by a state: one
individual on his own, no matter how powerful, could not have
arranged all those bogus IDs and passports.

Full story:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=99399



--
Louis Proyect, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx on 10/14/2001

Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org


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