A decade of war started, and both fueled & fought by the same corporate-financier interests.

by Tony Cartalucci

Thursday, September 8, 2011

From the beginning, even for those wanting to believe the fairy tale that 9/11 was carried out by cave dwellers carrying box cutters directed by Osama Bin Laden, who by all accounts was dying or already dead from kidney failure in 2001 - "unfortunate blunders" in US foreign policy can still be blamed for the creation and perpetuation of the ubiquitous, unceasing terror organization known as Al Qaeda. However, in light of recent events in Libya, Syria, Iran, and Algeria, there is exposed a truth, many have known for over 10 years, and many more are catching onto now - that the "War on Terror" is an absolute fraud, started, fueled and simultaneously fought against by the same handful of corporate-financier interests for the sole purpose of spreading Wall Street and London's hegemony across the globe.

Inception: Al Qaeda Made in USA

By all accounts, including admissions by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Osama Bin Laden's organization that would become Al Qaeda was created during the Soviet-Afghan war in in the late 70's and throughout the 80's. The funding of these militants did not begin after the Soviet invasion, but actually several years before the invasion. US intervention in Afghanistan by training and arming Afghanistan's Mujaheddin, along with Osama Bin Laden's Arab fighters, is one of the leading factors that led to the murderous and protracted decade-long war, according to the Nation in an article titled, "Blowback, the Prequel."

Photo: Former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski meeting with Osama Bin Laden, then leading the CIA's Arab legionaries in Afghanistan. Bin Laden's Al Qaeda would later spin off into regional terrorist organizations, covertly armed, trained, and protected by the CIA to this day, including LIFG in Libya, MEK in Iraq and Iran, and Baluchi terrorists in Pakistan.

Bin Laden's Al Qaeda would continue to fight after the Soviets were expelled from Afghanistan, this time in Kosovo's bid for independence from Serbia in the late 1990's. Al Qaeda-trained Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) militants garnered a Serbian response which was then used by NATO as a pretext for intervention. NATO's entry into the war led to the eventual carving up of the nation. Again, the CIA was found to be propping up Bin Laden's terrorist legionaries. Serbia's president, Slobodan Milošević would later be removed from power by yet another arm of American interventionism, the National Endowment for Democracy via Optor, now known as the infamous CANVAS organization which, with US funding, trained activists ahead of the now admittedly US-engineered "Arab Spring."

Despite Al Qaeda quickly becoming America's arch enemy, filling the void left by a collapsed Soviet Union, and justifying America's continued absurd defense spending as well as its enormous tactical holdings overseas throughout the 90's, it appears the organization was still very much a vehicle carrying forward US foreign policy. And despite accusations that it was a terrorist organization, it continued receiving covert support from US and British intelligence agencies, as did many other extremist groups which eventually were integrated with Al Qaeda after September 11, 2001.

From Heroes to Villains, and Back Again

In the 80's when the CIA was fueling Afghanistan's decade-long war with the Soviet Union, in part provoked by US meddling in the region years before the invasion even took place, the Mujaheddin were portrayed as heroes and freedom fighters quite publicly. No better example can be cited of how this image was nurtured by the West's massive propaganda machine than Hollywood's Rambo III, an entire movie literally dedicated to the "gallant people of Afghanistan." Many of those that fought in Afghanistan, particularly foreign fighters armed, trained, and brought in by the CIA, would go on to become some of the world's most notorious terrorist groups, many of which are listed to this day on the US and UK foreign terrorist organization lists.



Image: (Top) Rambo meets the Afghan Mujaheddin, who aid him in his heroic exploits. These people would later fight US invaders after expelling the Soviets. (Bottom) The credits for Rambo III begin with this dedication to the "gallant people of Afghanistan." Throughout the film, the Mujaheddin are depicted as "freedom fighters" much in the same light as the current Libyan rebels are. In short time, these "gallant" "freedom fighters" would become America's arch enemies and the subject of a 10 year occupation that is still ongoing. More recently, Rambo IV featured Myanmar - still called "Burma" by neo-imperialists - and was used in a similar manner to portray an entire nation as the US State Department saw fit. The film is being used by US-backed youth group "Generation Wave" as propaganda, just as the US State Department intended.
These CIA-fostered terrorist groups include the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which was created in Afghanistan with Libyan militants previously armed and trained by the CIA to overthrow Qaddafi in the early 1980's. After Afghanistan, and several failed attempts to seize Libya by force, these fighters would filter back into Afghanistan to fight US troops who were now invading the "gallant people of Afghanistan." This time, the Afghans were no longer "gallant," but rather medieval savages in need of Western democracy and UN sanctioned nation-building. The Libyans for their part would continue fighting the US in Afghanistan, and when the US invaded Iraq in 2003, they would begin fighting US troops there as well. This is of course, all according to a report from the West Point Combating Terror Center.

And even as US forces occupy Afghanistan for their tenth year, with fighting reaching unprecedented levels of violence, Afghanistan's LIFG Libyan cohorts are receiving US and British air support, French and Qatari arms, billions in aid, NATO special forces assistance, and full diplomatic recognition by the US State Department and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as they rise up against Qaddafi in Libya. It must be noted that these Libyan rebels, who like the Afghan Mujahedin were portrayed as "freedom fighters," are in fact led and consist almost entirely of LIFG militants, many of whom have spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan killing US troops. It should be noted that LIFG is listed by the US Stated Department (#26) and the UK Home Office as a foreign terrorist organization.

This is a narrative that first saw these militants as heroes, then the world's most scorned villains for nearly a decade of war, before emerging out the other side once again as heroes. For the thousands of US troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, the tens of thousands maimed, and the hundreds of millions of Americans facing a bankrupted nation that has paid trillions for this "War on Terror" to unproportionately wealthy mega-corporations and banks, it is becoming clear that they were taken for a ride by a shadowy elite with an obscure agenda masked in a now unraveling veil of lies.

The War on Terror is Actively Kept Alive by the West

In Libya, Qaddafi has fought for nearly three decades to crush the extremist militants of Libya's eastern region, centered on the cities of Darnah and the current epicenter of the NATO-backed rebellion, Benghazi. This eastern region is considered, according to West Point's CTC report, as one of the highest concentrations of terrorists in the world. It is also a region the CIA and MI6 have helped fund, arm, and train over the same 30 years.

At one point, Qaddafi had almost entirely extinguished the movement, in particular LIFG, most of whose leadership fled, and ironically sought refuge in London, Langley, and Washington. Qaddafi would attempt to re-approach the West by abandoning his WMD programs and inviting Western intelligence agencies in to help counter the remnants of LIFG and other regional terror organizations. The CIA and MI6 instead, rearmed, reorganized, and redirected these terrorist organizations back at the Qaddafi regime culminating in the February 17, 2011 "Day of Rage" and the subsequent NATO intervention. Indeed, the US, UK, France, Qatar, and other NATO member states are overtly deposing Qaddafi in favor for a regime made up of hardcore terrorists.

In other words, a terrorist organization on its death bed, was intentionally brought back to life by NATO. Having done so, LIFG is already shipping weapons to another notorious terrorist organization in the region, Algeria's Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM) (#37 on US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations). Algeria, like Libya, has fought a long battle against terrorism at the cost of protracted unrest now known as the "lost decade." After a failed attempt at stirring regime change in Algeria through Egyptian-style street protests and internal defections, it appears the US through NATO is attempting to revive AQIM and initiate a violent revolution.

Already, Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution policy wonk and co-author of the "Which Path to Persia?" report engineering the use of terrorism to destabilize Iran, is licking his chops over the prospects of Algeria "being next." In a report, aptly titled, "Algeria will be next to fall," Riedel sets the rhetorical stage, just as he helped to do with Libya, for another "spontaneous" "indigenous" uprising, with the prospect of NATO, and more specifically, French intervention looming over them. In reality, as we can clearly see, AQIM would not be in any position were it not for NATO arming and handing a neighboring nation to their allies amongst Libya's LIFG.

Similarly in Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood was all but routed by Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad. Now, these militants are receiving covert arms, the full support of the Western media's selective journalism, and both political and financial support by the US, UK, and EU. Should the West succeed, yet another extremist organization will be reanimated and unleashed on a population that has sacrificed much trying to burying it.

Iran has been fighting a battle against another State Department listed terrorist organization (list as #28), Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK.) US policy makers, after admitting MEK has the blood of US soldiers and civilians on its hands and that it has "undeniably" conducted terrorist attacks, shockingly wants to remove it from the US foreign terrorist organization list so that it can be worked with more closely in toppling the Iranian government. This is revealed in the Brookings Institution's "Which Path to Persia?" report.

"Potential Ethnic Proxies," page 117-118 (page 130-131 of the PDF): "Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.

 

Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.

Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations."

 
It turns out that MEK is already receiving US funding, weapons, and other assistance to conduct a militant campaign against the government of Iran. This was revealed in Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article "Preparing the Battlefield," which stated:

"The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts—and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”

Moves have also been made to get MEK de-listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Department so that even more aid can be rendered to this admitted terrorist organization. Seymore Hersh in an NPR interview, also claims that select MEK members have received training in the US. Also implicated by Hersh in his article, were Kurdish militants straddling the Iranian, Syrian, and Iraqi borders and now wrecking havoc against Syria's Assad regime, and Baluchi militants based along the Iranian-Pakistani border. The Baluchi militants are also being directed toward the Pakistani government with US assistance.

In each instance, whether it is in Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iran, or Pakistan, immense efforts have been made by these governments to destroy entirely these organizations. In each case, the US purposely arms, trains, and shelters these organizations, with troupes of dissent leaders populating London, Washington, and Langley, Virginia, creating a "rouge's UN" of sorts. Careful observers who check the backgrounds of "experts" brought onto the duplicitous BBC, CNN, or Al Jazeera networks for interviews can see sometimes 2-3 of these exiled extremist leaders at a time being given airtime and dressed up as "freedom fighters." The threat of militant extremism is one the United States government and its allies have been purposefully perpetuating as a pretext for expanding military and economic power into sovereign nation-states disinterested in their Wall Street and London centric "globalization."

War on Terror: President X's War

While many may say the "War on Terror" was Bush's war, a legacy Obama has inherited, it is clear through Obama's "actions" that the war has continued on in earnest, even expanded, following the same path with all but superficial rhetoric affixed to give it a more "progressive' look. The current conflagration in the Middle East and North Africa was planned all the way back in the early 90's with each president since then, rubber stamping the steps necessary to push the plan for a "new Middle East" forward.

It was Bush Sr. who ravaged Iraq and left US troops permanently stationed in the Middle East. Clinton oversaw Al Qaeda's ushering in of NATO intervention in the Kosovo conflict. Bush Jr. of course was in office when Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded and occupied. Now, Obama is overseeing the "Arab Spring" for which activists were trained and bankrolled by the US State Department before he even came into office. He is also overseeing the destruction of Libya, and the destabilization of Syria (for more information, see Globalists Coming Full Circle).

As the 2012 US election nears, we are confronted with the obvious establishment candidate of choice, Rick Perry, facing off against another 4 years of Obama's servile obedience to the corporate-financier agenda driving American policy. Rick Perry assures us that he will bring change, stating that America "cannot afford four more years of this rudderless leadership." However, in reality, the same US policy makers that have engineered the last 10 years of the global "War on Terror" are already lined up behind Perry to ensure that indeed we do get "four more years of this rudderless leadership."

Foreign Policy recently reported that warmongering Neo-Conservatives including Douglas Feith, William Luti, Andrew McCarthy, Charles Stimson, and Daniel Fata, with the help of certified warmonger and corporate fascist Donald Rumsfeld, had been introduced to Rick Perry to help him "brush up" on foreign policy. Also meeting with Perry was Dan Blumenthal of the Neo-Con, Fortune 500-funded AEI, Peter Brookes of the Fortune 500-funded Heritage Foundation (page 35), and Zalmay Khalizad, a fellow Neo-Conservative warmonger, PNAC signatory, and a member of the extraterritorial meddling National Endowment for Democracy's board of directors, to help Perry define his "hawk internationalist" foreign policy stance.

By "hawk internationalist," Foreign Policy indicates that it means, "embracing American exceptionalism and the unique role we must play in confronting the many threats we face." In actual terms it means embracing more wars, more meddling abroad, and more corporate driven agendas to expand Wall Street and London's financial, military, and economic hegemony worldwide. Perry will simply take what both Bush and Obama have done, affix the appropriate spin, rhetoric, and propaganda, and continue spilling American blood and wasting American treasure. Perry is merely a public relations officer ready to take the heat for the next four years while the real policy makers continue operating out of the sight and mind of the American public.

The "War on Terror" is a Fraud

If Bush, Obama, and Perry are not making decisions, who is? Who are the chief proponents of this "War on Terror," who are the architects behind the policy and who is bankrolling them? More importantly, how can they have spent the last 10 years sending American kids to fight Al Qaeda and now are overtly handing them the nation of Libya?

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a corporate and US State Department-funded policy institute that claims to be dedicated to promoting "pluralism, defending democratic values, and fighting the ideologies that threaten democracy." It is decidedly "Neo-Conservative" and focuses almost exclusively on starting and maintaining wars at America's expense.

FDD's "executive team" includes James Woolsey and Clifford May, while its "leadership council" includes Bill Kristol - all signatories of a recent Foreign Policy Initiative letter addressed to House Republicans asking them to discard the UN mandate for NATO's Libyan intervention and commit more support specifically for regime change. Acting Senator Joseph Lieberman also can be found on FDD's "leadership council" and has been a chief proponent of war with Libya, as well as Syria and Iran, alongside John McCain. FDD has a myriad of publications expressing the elation of the "Neo-Conservative" establishment over current operations against Libya and the possible springboard the Libyan war serves toward US intervention in Syria and Iran. FDD's only criticism of Obama is that more should be done, faster, and at a greater expense to America. Michael Ledeen, a "freedom scholar," expresses this well in his article titled, "Lessons of Libya (and Syria, and, Some Day, Iran)," where he throws in his organization's collective desire to intervene in both Syria and Iran, for good measure.

The Atlantic article, "Al-Qaeda Is Winning," written by FDD "senior fellow" Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, expresses the true contempt these individuals have toward their audience. In this piece reflecting on the last 10 years of the "War on Terror," Gartenstein-Ross claims that Al Qaeda's ability to use cheap means to provoke the United States into a multi-billion dollar defense is rendering an Al Qaeda victory through a "strategy of a thousand cuts." Of course, the x-ray machines and other security apparatuses being installed across the United States and the tremendous amount of money being used to sustain combat operations around the world "hunting terrorists," doesn't go into a black hole. Instead, it goes into the pockets of the very people funding the work of Mr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and his peers throughout his and other US and British think-tanks.

Other notorious think-tanks promoting the "War on Terror" as well as literally engineering the latest war in Libya, and with extensive blueprints for destabilizing and overthrowing Syria and Iran, include the Brookings Institution mentioned above, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), and the Atlantic Council covered in depth in "Atlantic Council: Is Libya a "Global Con?"" All three are predictably funded, chaired, and directed by the largest banks, oil companies, and defense contractors on earth, as well as their representatives in the corporate-owned media, public relations and law firms, as well as acting corporate board members themselves.

The Brookings Institute who wrote the definitive blueprint for covert destabilization within a foreign sovereign nation, "Which Path to Persia?" is funded by, among many others, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, the Rothschilds, Citi, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Electric, Raytheon (makers of the Tomahawk cruise missile used extensively throughout NATO's Libya campaign), and Google (who has already renamed Libya's Green Square to the contrived "Martyr's Square" on Google Maps). One would assume those at Brookings would carry forward with shame and fear with such obvious conflicts of interest muddling their "policy making," instead they are beyond arrogant, bolstered by the ignorance and apathy of the masses. A full list of their corporate sponsors can be found in their 2010 annual report, starting on page 19.

Likewise the IISS was instrumental in analyzing, promoting, and guiding NATO's military intervention in Libya as well as maintaining the myth of "global terrorism" and the necessity of continuing the "War on Terror." They too are representatives of some of the largest corporate-financier interests on earth, all of whom have enriched themselves with their self-promoted, unending war, with their board of trustees containing current and former representatives from Rothschild, DeBeers, the Anglo American Corporation, Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney and Bankers, Rolls-Royce, Thales, the notorious Council on Foreign Relations, and ABC News.

We have seen how in nearly every case, national governments have attempted to crush Al Qaeda, and in every case the US and UK have propped them up again. We see how each war is explicitly engineered and promoted by the same corporate-financier interests capitalizing on them at everyone else's expense. In the 1930's United States Marine Corps General Smedley Butler stated, "war is a racket," and explained that a racket is best described "as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

Clearly today, this "racket" has become so advanced, so elaborate, so pervasive in politics and culture, that the label of "racket" doesn't quite suit it. A better term could be a, "scientific dictatorship" where teams of highly trained propagandists, in tandem with the corporate-owned media, including Hollywood, the music industry, publishing houses, and PR firms, all work to manage the public's perception on a global scale. It is both terrifying as it is perhaps overreaching. The "War on Terror" is a fraud, and one that is now unraveling. For every lie that is told, a vast amount of resources must be spent to sell it and continue propping it up. No matter how much is spent, if a mind wakes up to the fraud, it does so permanently. However vast the fraudulent "War on Terror" is, those speaking the truth face a downhill battle now reaching critical mass. Libya is being handed over to terrorists by the same exact people who told our sons and daughters to lay down their lives to fight these very same people. No amount of propaganda, however scientifically formulated, can obfuscate the treason that has taken place.

The next step of course, after speaking out about the truth, is to review the above mentioned corporate-financier interests, represented by corporations and banks we depend on daily, driving this treasonous agenda, and put each one out of business by boycotting and replacing them systematically. The "War on Terror" is an absolute fraud, fabricated in whole, and it is only our apathy and inaction coupled with our unwitting patronization of these corporate-financier interests that allows this fraud to continue on.