war on terrorism

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The overwhelming evidence shows that al-Qaeda planned and executed the 9/11 attacks. The main role of the Bush administration in the 9/11 attacks was to stupidly ignore all warnings of the attack and to be taken completely off guard by an attack that they should have been able to prevent. Incompetence, not conspiracy, is the scandal. We don't like censoring, but some of what is presented in this diary does not fit the facts as known regarding 9/11.]

Next Step to 9/11 Justice

Joel S. Hirschhorn

Everyone thinks of terrorism and homeland security for lessons learned from 9/11. There is another opportunity. Make our government trustworthy and truthful.

The 9/11 truth movement is stronger than ever, though it is generally derided by politicians and ignored by the mainstream media. It is fueled by people passionate about alternative explanations to the official 9/11 story. Understandable, considering that the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission admitted: “We were set up to fail.”

In 2006 Time magazine said: “The population of [the 9/11 truth movement] is larger than you might think. A Scripps-Howard poll of 1,010 adults last month found that 36% of Americans consider it ‘very likely’ or ‘somewhat likely’ that government officials either allowed the attacks to be carried out or carried out the attacks themselves. Thirty-six percent adds up to a lot of people. This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a mainstream political reality.”

So, the depth of Bush's failure in containing terrorism gets worse. I have been reporting how on every front Islamic fundamentalists, often linked to al-Qaeda, are expanding and thriving while Bush diddles in Iraq.

We were attacked by al-Qaeda on 9/11. Bush's first actions were taken against al-Qaeda, primarily in Afghanistan. This was reasonable. Everyone, even Lybia, agreed we were justified.

Then Bush left the war against al-Qaeda unfinished and invaded Iraq. Why? We know the WMD excuse was a bald faced lie. We also know, as many of us knew at the time, that there never was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda and, in fact, Hussein, as a secular leader, was keeping fundamentalism at bay in Iraq. Doesn't change the fact that he was a violent dictator, but when it comes to fighting al-Qaeda, the people who attacked us, invading Iraq was counter productive. And I said so at the time.

Now Iraq is opened up to al-Qaeda thanks to the fact we removed the secular power...and put nothing effective in return. Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise in a place it never had been before.

As I have been covering almost constantly, Islamic fundamentalism, often linked to al-Qaeda, is on the rise throughout the Muslim world. I have discussed its rise in Pakistan and Afghanistan thanks to Bush's failure to finish the job there before invading Iraq. I have discussed the victory of what I call the Somali Taliban. Somalia is now a battle ground with warlords fighting Islamists with Ethiopia intervening, which has threatened to bring Eritrea into the fray on the side of the Islamists. The Somali civil war is something Bush did nothing to prevent and it threatens to create a regional war with al-Qaeda linked Islamists gaining ground. I have covered the rise to power of fundamentalists in Bahrain, formerly a bastion of moderate Islam. In Bangladesh, foremerly one of the more democratic Muslim states, corruption and the rise of a previously absent fundamentalist terrorist group has led to the military to take control and declare democracy a failed experiment. So Bangladesh, like Pakistan and now Iraq, becomes yet another battle ground between military strongmen and fundamentalist Islam with democracy the loser. And just yesterday I discussed a wave of bombings in Morocco, usually a fairly quiet Middle Eastern nation.

Current TV, Al Gore's innovative TV channel, has done some pretty amazing things. They got film crews into North Korea, into places in Iraq far from the Green Zone, and were the first journalists into a Somalia arms market before the Islamic Fundamentalists took Mogadishu. It is their willingness to go where most journalists don't have the balls to go that makes the network worth watching.

Back when they went in to film Mogadishu in chaos, with battling warlords and their factions making arms dealing a major industry, it was astonishing the constant aura of threat that permeated Mogadishu under the warlords. These are the people Clinton had nearly defeated, but lack of Congressional support led to a withdrawal that allowed a resurgence of chaos. And Bush sat back allowing that chaos to happen, making the Islamic Fundamentalists the ONLY option Somalis had for stability.

When I participated in a live radio broadcast some months back discussing the initial takeover by the Islamic Fundamentalists, most of the Somalis who participated considered the Islamic takeover a good thing for one reason: it promised stability. They expressed their appreciation for the American intervention and a sense of betrayal at the American withdrawal. In the absence of American influence, they saw the fundamentalists as the only way to end the chaos.

And so Mogadishu and the whole Southern half of Somalia fell to fundamentalists and Bush did nothing. By and large the Western Press did nothing but report from a distance. But CurrentTV went in to see what life was like under the Somali Taliban.