9/11: PNAC Motive and Opportunity as evidence of an inside job

WHATEVER THE RESULTS OF THAT SEARCH, it will continue to be the case that
the war was worth fighting, and that it was necessary. For the people of Iraq, the war put
an end to three decades of terror and suffering....The prospects for war in the region have been substantially diminished
by our action

For several months after the 9/11 attacks, no one, nor any group, claimed responsibility for the attacks, so the primary responsibility fell solely upon the hijackers, all of whom were killed and all of whom left no message or any claim of responsibility behind at explaining why they had carried the attacks out. As the media covered the 9/11 attacks unfolding, many quickly speculated that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks.[20]​ On the day of the attacks, the National Security Agency intercepted communications that pointed to Osama bin Laden,[21]​ as did German intelligence agencies.[22]​ This helped rule out other immediate suspects, such as Croatian nationalists, who had bombed Grand Central Terminal on September 11, 1976.[23]​Authorities in the United States and Britain also obtained electronic intercepts, including telephone conversations and electronic bank transfers, which indicate that Mohammed Atef, a bin Laden deputy, was a key figure in the planning of the 9/11 attacks. Intercepts were also obtained that revealed conversations that took place days before September 11 between bin Laden and an associate in Pakistan. In those conversations, the two referred to "an incident that would take place in America on, or around, September 11" and they discussed potential repercussions. In another conversation with an associate in Afghanistan, bin Laden discussed the "scale and effects of a forthcoming operation." These conversations did not specifically mention the World Trade Center or Pentagon, or other specifics.[24]
​
The investigators were quickly able to link the 19 men to the terrorist organization al-Qaeda, also by accessing material in their intelligence agency files. The New York Times reported on September 12 that: "Authorities said they had also identified accomplices in several cities who had helped plan and execute Tuesday’s attacks. Officials said they knew who these people were and important biographical details about many of them. They prepared biographies of each identified member of the hijack teams, and began tracing the recent movements of the men." FBI agents in Florida investigating the hijackers quickly "descended on flight schools, neighborhoods and restaurants in pursuit of leads." At one flight school, "students said investigators were there within hours of Tuesday’s attacks."[25]​ The Washington Post later reported that "In the hours after Tuesday’s bombings, investigators searched their files on [Satam] al-Suqami and [Ahmed] al-Ghamdi, noted the pair’s ties to [Nabil] al-Marabh and launched a hunt for him."[26]
​
Based on the evidence, authorities in the United States quickly asserted that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization were solely responsible for the attacks, and other suspects were ruled out. The Government of the United Kingdom reached the same conclusion.[27]​ Although he denied the attacks at first, Osama bin Laden had since claimed full responsibility.

Author Laurie Mylroie writing in the conservative political magazine The American Spectator in 2006 argued that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his family are the primary architects of 9/11 and similar attacks, and that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's association with Osama bin Laden is secondary and that Al-Qaeda's claim of responsibility for the attack is after the fact and opportunistic.[28]​ In an opposing point of view, former CIA officer Robert Baer, writing in Time magazine in 2007, asserted that George W. Bush Administration's publicizing of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's claims of responsibility for 9/11 and numerous other acts was a mendacious attempt to claim that all of the significant actors in 9/11 had been caught.[29]​

Khalid, who was indicted by a New York court in 1996 for a plot to blow up US airliners, said al-Qa'eda began planning "a martyrdom operation inside America" two and a half years before September 11.

"We first thought of striking at a couple of nuclear targets but decided against it for fear it would go out of control," he said.


"It was eventually decided to leave out nuclear targets - for now.


"The attacks were designed to cause as many deaths as possible and havoc and to be a big slap for America on American soil. We were never short of potential martyrs. Indeed we have a department called the Department of Martyrs."


He said that the department would remain active "as long as we are in jihad against the infidels and the Zionists.


"We have scores of volunteers. Our problem at the time was to select suitable people who are familiar with the West."

The following was transcribed from a Flashpoints broadcast of portions of journalist John Pilger's documentary film Breaking the Silence:
Truth and Lies in the War on Terror

http://pilger.carlton.com/

PILGER: Isn't there a problem for us in the West of honesty about the reason for going to war in Iraq � and that was weapons of mass destruction?

FEITH: I don't think that was a lie. We went to war in large part because of the concern that weapons of mass destruction in the ... in the hands of the Saddam Hussein regime ... a regime that used such weapons ... in particular nerve gas...

PILGER: ... and was supplied by the United States and Britain with these weapons of mass destruction ...

FEITH: No, I don't believe that's accurate.

PILGER: Well, yes they were. Most, most of the weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein weren't built by him. The machine tools and the ingredients for his biological weapons all came from other countries, many of them from this country and Britain.

FEITH: I don't think that's right. I think, I really think that the...

PILGER: Well, it's on the record...

FEITH: Well...

PILGER: ... in the Library of Congress...

FEITH: I think that... I think that the premise of your question is wrong.

[...]

PILGER: Why is it wrong for dictators and terrorists to kill innocent civilians, and right or excusable for the United States to do exactly the same.

FEITH: Well, the United States doesn't do it, and if we did it it would be as reprehensible as... as what the terrorists do.

PILGER: The United States doesn't kill... innocent civilians?

FEITH: No, the United States does not target civilians.

PILGER: Hmm. Those of us on the outside who look at September 11, where 3,000 people died in that tragedy, but then look at the thousands who have died since, wonder about double standards here. Could you address that?

FEITH: I think that the... I think that the... numbers that you're... talking about are... are questionable, so let's... let's leave aside your...

PILGER: Why are they questionable?

FEITH: I... I don't accept your assertion that we've killed thousands of... of innocent people. But... let me get...

PILGER: There's a lot of... There's a lot of studies... and examination of facts on the ground that suggest indeed thousands. I mean in Iraq at the moment... there are studies that are talking about 10,000. But I don't want to get into numbers, but certainly thousands seems a fair figure.

FEITH: I don't... I don't know that that's true, and... and I don't accept the assertion.

The PNAC was co-founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan in 1997[2]​, with roots in the 1992 Pentagon. PNAC's original 25 signatories were an eclectic mix of academics and neo-conservative politicians, several of whom have subsequently found positions in the presidential administration of George Walker Bush. PNAC is noteworthy for its focus on Iraq, a preoccupation that began before Bush became president and predates the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In 1998, the group wrote a letter to President Bill Clinton, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott (then Senate Majority Leader) and Newt Gingrich (then Speaker of the House of Representatives), demanding a harder line against Iraq. By then, the group had grown in numbers, adding individuals such as former Reagan-era U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, and long-time Washington cold warrior/pro-LikudRichard N. Perle.

According to William Rivers Pitt, "Two events brought PNAC into the mainstream of American government: the disputed election of George W. Bush and the attacks of September 11th. When Bush assumed the Presidency, the men who created and nurtured the imperial dreams of PNAC became the men who run the Pentagon, the Defense Department and the White House. When the Towers came down, these men saw, at long last, their chance to turn their White Papers into substantive policy."[3]​
Several original PNAC members, including Cheney, Khalilzad and the Bush family, have ties to the oil industry. Many other members have been long-time fixtures in the U.S. military establishment or Cold War "strategic studies," including Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, Paula Dobriansky, Aaron Friedberg, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald H. Rumsfeld, John R. Bolton, Vin Weber, and Paul Dundes Wolfowitz. It should not be surprising, therefore, that while the group devotes inordinate attention to Iraq, its most general focus has been on a need to "re-arm America." The prospect of mining oil riches may explain part of the group's focus on Iraq, but this motivation has been buried under the rhetoric of national security and the need for strong national defense.
To justify a need to "rearm" the country, however, reasons must be found. In the more peaceable world of the late 1990s, with no rival super-power in sight, Iraq and "ballistic missile defense" against "rogue states" were the main games in town. The group's links to advocacy for ballistic missile defense came through Donald Rumsfeld, who in 1998 chaired a bi-partisan commission on the "US Ballistic Missile Threat" and Vin Weber, a registered lobbyist for Lockheed Martin and other Fortune 500 companies.

The curious omission underscores the Justice Department's decision, so far, to not seek formal criminal charges against bin Laden for approving al-Qaeda's most notorious and successful terrorist attack. The notice says bin Laden is "a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world" but does not provide details.

The absence has also provided fodder for conspiracy theorists who think the U.S. government or another power was behind the Sept. 11 hijackings. From this point of view, the lack of a Sept. 11 reference suggests that the connection to al-Qaeda is uncertain.

Exhaustive government and independent investigations have concluded otherwise, of course, and bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders have proudly taken responsibility for the hijackings. FBI officials say the wanted poster merely reflects the government's long-standing practice of relying on actual criminal charges in the notices.

"There's no mystery here," said FBI spokesman Rex Tomb. "They could add 9/11 on there, but they have not because they don't need to at this point. . . . There is a logic to it."
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David N. Kelley, the former U.S. attorney in New York who oversaw terrorism cases when bin Laden was indicted for the embassy bombings there in 1998, said he is not at all surprised by the lack of a reference to Sept. 11 on the official wanted poster. Kelley said the issue is a matter of legal restrictions and the need to be fair to any defendant.

"It might seem a little strange from the outside, but it makes sense from a legal point of view," said Kelley, now in private practice. "If I were in government, I'd be troubled if I were asked to put up a wanted picture where no formal charges had been filed, no matter who it was."

Bin Laden was placed on the Ten Most Wanted list in June 1999 after being indicted for murder, conspiracy and other charges in connection with the embassy bombings, and a $5 million reward was put on his head at that time. The listing was updated after Sept. 11, 2001, to include a higher reward of $25 million, but no mention of the attacks was added.

The phrase petrodollar warfare refers to a hypothesis that one of the driving forces of United States foreign policy over recent decades[when?]​ has been the status of the United States dollar as the world's dominant reserve currency and as the currency in which oil is priced. The term was coined by William R. Clark, who has written a book with the same title. The phrase oil currency wars is sometimes used with the same meaning.

In 2000, Iraq converted all its oil transactions under the Oil for Food program to euros.[2]​ When U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it returned oil sales from the euro to the USD.[3]​

The Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran takes this theory as fact. As retaliation to this policy seen as neoimperialism, Iran has made an effort to create its own Iranian Oil Bourse which has sold oil in Gold, Euros, Dollars, and Japanese Yen since its opening. The theory is supported historically by Iranian intellectuals as a move made by the American elites after World War II with the Bretton Woods Act,