ANTI-WAR.COM:  SLYLY JUSTIFYING THE WAR ON ISLAM

by Carol A. Valentine

"Back to Paradise"

Curator, Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum

http://www.public-action.com/

December 12, 2001 — Justin Raimondo of anti-war.com claims to be a great skeptic of the government, a libertarian. Many consider Raimondo the Internet's leading anti-war voice. Still more people go to anti-war.com for their news, believing that anti-war.com is an alternate to the shamelessly pro-war American news media. But I believe Raimondo and anti-war.com are part of the fake opposition.

* Fake Opposition? What's That? *

For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. This is true in physics and true in warfare.

When a war is planned, the designers know some will oppose the war effort. The designers want to control the opposition so that it does not get out of hand. Their aim is to squash it, to mute it, or to see that the opposition is led into futile activities.

In advance, those planning the war covertly set up conduits to channel opposition. We can call these channels "designated" opposition, or fake opposition.

When the war starts, the fake opposition is already in place, well-funded and able to reach vast numbers of would-be resisters. The fake opposition deplores the war, but covertly promotes war propaganda. "Osama bin Laden and his people were responsible for the 9-11 attacks" is war propaganda. This lie is the basis upon which the war is justified.

The resisters, believing the fake opposition to be genuine, unwittingly swallow the pro-war propaganda. Their outrage over the war is neutralized: After all, Osama and his people were responsible for the 9-11 attacks, right?

Now back to Justin Raimondo and anti-war.com.

For the three months since September 11, I have been reading Raimondo's columns. To my knowledge, that great skeptic and libertarian has never questioned the US claim that Osama bin Laden and his people directed the 9-11 attacks, even though that claim justifies the war Raimondo says he hates.

Moreover, Raimondo continually promotes the US government's lie that justifies the war. Witness his December 7, 2001, column: "Fear Has Its Uses." http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j120701.html Deploring the endless alerts of terrorist attacks issuing forth from Tom Ridge's Office of Homeland Security, Raimondo says:

"The government claims these warnings are not based on thin air, but on intercepted messages exchanged by the terrorists. This raises all sorts of questions, the first one being: don't the terrorists realize they're being eavesdropped on? Surely they do. In that case, it seems this might be a tactic to instill fear and demoralize the American populace."

Then Raimondo says:

"By trumpeting these threats, Ridge is merely playing into their hands. Just as the Bin Ladenites used our vaunted technology against us, turning airliners into deadly weapons ..."

See? According to Raimondo, the Bin Ladenites did it ... Now, would it occur to Raimondo that the beneficiaries of the 9-11 attack — the Israelis — might have pulled the job off, and set the Arabs up as fall guys? Never. While Raimondo criticizes Israel, he never broaches the BIG question.

Just one day before the attack, the Washington Times ran a story in which the Army's School of Advanced Military Studies was quoted, predicting the Mossad might just pull off such a caper — pull off a terrorist attack on the US and blame the Arabs. ("US troops would enforce peace under Army study," Washington Times, September 10, 2001.) The story was broadly circulated on the Internet, but somehow the story escaped Raimondo's attention.

When the fake al-Jazeera video of bin Laden was released in early October (see "Taliban Home Video," below) Raimondo swallowed it hook, line and sinker. He said bin Laden's remarks were tantamount to a confession. Yet just a week before, the Pakistani newspaper, the Daily Ummat, published an authentic interview with bin Laden, in which bin Laden deplored the 9-11 attacks. Curiously, anti-war.com news coverage did not pick up the Daily Ummat interview. Readers of anti-war.com remained ignorant. So anti-war.com readers got news of the fake (incriminating) interview, the fake interview was accorded credibility, and news of the real (exonerating) interview was squashed.

In fact, anti-war.com and Raimondo have ignored many well-researched and documented articles on the 9-11 attacks — articles which have flooded the Internet in the last several months. These articles demolish the following US claims:

* That the US Air Force was caught unawares and was unable to intercept the renegade flights.

* That the 9-11 airline jets were flown by suicide pilots.

* That the World Trade Center collapse was caused by fires ignited by jet fuel.

* That Osama bin Laden praised the attacks and/or claimed responsibility for those attacks.

Here are some URLs Raimondo & company ignore:

* Operation 911: NO SUICIDE PILOTS http://www.public-action.com/911/robotplane.html

* The Taliban Home Video http://www.public-action.com/911/hvideo.html

* Bin Laden: AUTHENTIC INTERVIEW http://www.public-action.com/911/oblintrv.html

* MUSLIMS SUSPEND LAWS OF PHYSICS http://www.public-action.com/911/mcmichael.html

* Osama bin Surplus http://www.public-action.com/911/obsurplus.html

* Osama bin CIA Agent http://www.public-action.com/911/ob_cia.html

* Guilty for 9-11: Bush, Rumsfeld, Myers http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-1.htm

Remember: Raimondo presents himself as a skeptic of the government. Does he act like one? No, he acts like a member of the fake opposition.

Anti-war.com is a well-organized, expensive operation. I wonder who pays for it?

— Carol A. Valentine

President, Public Action, Inc.

http://www.public-action.com/

An elite U.S. Army study center has devised a plan for enforcing a major Israeli-Palestinian peace accord that would require about 20,000 well-armed troops stationed throughout Israel and a newly created Palestinian state.

There are no plans by the Bush administration to put American soldiers into the Middle East to police an agreement forged by the longtime warring parties. In fact, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is searching for ways to reduce U.S. peacekeeping efforts abroad, rather than increasing such missions.

But a 68-page paper by the Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) does provide a look at the daunting task any international peacekeeping force would face if the United Nations authorized it, and Israel and the Palestinians ever reached a peace agreement. Located at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., the School for Advanced Military Studies is both a training ground and a think tank for some of the Army's brightest officers. Officials say the Army chief of staff, and sometimes the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ask SAMS to develop contingency plans for future military operations. During the 1991 Persian Gulf war, SAMS personnel helped plan the coalition ground attack that avoided a strike up the middle of Iraqi positions and instead executed a "left hook" that routed the enemy in 100 hours.

The cover page for the recent SAMS project said it was done for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But Maj. Chris Garver, a Fort Leavenworth spokesman, said the study was not requested by Washington.

"This was just an academic exercise," said Maj. Garver. "They were trying to take a current situation and get some training out of it."

The exercise was done by 60 officers dubbed "Jedi Knights," as all second-year SAMS students are nicknamed.

The SAMS paper attempts to predict events in the first year of a peace-enforcement operation, and sees possible dangers for U.S. troops from both sides.

It calls Israel's armed forces a "500-pound gorilla in Israel. Well armed and trained. Operates in both Gaza and the West Bank. Known to disregard international law to accomplish mission. Very unlikely to fire on American forces. Fratricide a concern especially in air space management."

Of the MOSSAD, the Israeli intelligence service, the SAMS officers say: "Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act."

On the Palestinian side, the paper describes their youth as "loose cannons; under no control, sometimes violent." The study lists five Arab terrorist groups that could target American troops for assassination and hostage-taking.

The study recommends "neutrality in word and deed" as one way to protect U.S. soldiers from any attack. It also says Syria, Egypt and Jordan must be warned "we will act decisively in response to external attack."

It is unlikely either of the three would mount an attack. Of Syria's military, the report says: "Syrian army quantitatively larger than Israeli Defense Forces, but largely seen as qualitatively inferior. More likely, however, Syrians would provide financial and political support to the Palestinians, as well as increase covert support to terrorism acts through Lebanon."

Of Egypt's military, the paper says, "Egyptians also maintain a large army but have little to gain by attacking Israel."

The plan does not specify a full order of battle. An Army source who reviewed the SAMS work said each of a possible three brigades would require about 100 Bradley fighting vehicles, 25 tanks, 12 self-propelled howitzers, Apache attack helicopters, Kiowa Warrior reconnaissance helicopters and Predator spy drones.

The report predicts that non-lethal weapons would be used to quell unrest.

U.S. European Command, which is headed by NATO's supreme allied commander, would oversee the peacekeeping operation. Commanders would maintain areas of operation, or AOs, around Nablus, Jerusalem, Hebron and the Gaza strip.

The study sets out a list of goals for U.S. troops to accomplish in the first 30 days. They include: "create conditions for development of Palestinian State and security of Israel "; ensure "equal distribution of contract value or equivalent aid" . . . that would help legitimize the peacekeeping force and stimulate economic growth; "promote U.S. investment in Palestine"; "encourage reconciliation between entities based on acceptance of new national identities"; and "build lasting relationship based on new legal borders and not religious-territorial claims."

Maj. Garver said the officers who completed the exercise will hold major planning jobs once they graduate. "There is an application process" for students, he said. "They screen their records, and there are several tests they go through before they are accepted by the program. The bright planners of the future come out of this program."

James Phillips, a Middle East analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said it would be a mistake to put peacekeepers in Israel, given the "poor record of previous monitors."

"In general, the Bush administration policy is to discourage a large American presence," he said. "But it has been rumored that one of the possibilities might be an expanded CIA role."

"It would be a very different environment than Bosnia," said Mr. Phillips, referring to America's six-year peacekeeping role in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "The Palestinian Authority is pushing for this as part of its strategy to internationalize the conflict. Bring in the Europeans and Russia and China. But such monitors or peacekeeping forces are not going to be able to bring peace. Only a decision by the Palestinians to stop the violence and restart talks could possibly do that."

Return to Table of Contents