Objectives of the U.S. War against Terror [Archives:2002/05/Law & Diplomacy]

(Part 7 of 10)
Ahmad M. Abdulghani
Chairman of the al-Jazeera & al-Khaleej Center for Studies
The September 11 attacks on New York and Washington are outrageous terrorist attacks and those responsible for them should be tracked down and brought to justice. But, there are still some doubts if the cavemen of Afghanistan are capable of carrying out operations of that scale. This has been in fact confirmed by Linden Larouche, a leader of the US Democratic Party, in his interview published on September 18. “Firstly, what happened in the United States on September 11 are well-orchestrated attacks by unknown force. He said the attacks were carried out in a very cunning way and attackers were from the US security authorities themselves. He added that some perpetrators of other nationalities might be involved but the operation was a highly sophisticated one and that nobody from outside the USA could do it. (For full text visit www- Larouche in 2004.net).
It sounds that the US administration does not have the time to listen for different views on the incidents whether from inside or outside the United States, especially from Europe. The US has declared its anti-terror campaign and put the whole world in front of a new situation. Nobody has the right to discuss this issue and a person who is not with the US is against it, according to top US officials. The finger of blame has been pointed, from the beginning, at Arabs and Muslims as mentioned in the previous episodes. Many political analysts regard the US hastiness in accusing foreign entities of the attacks as an attempt to divert the world’s attention from the failure within the US internal security. The perpetrators of these sophisticated operations, even if they are not from the States, have for sure got security facilities from the US authorities.
Osama bin Laden has been declared as suspect No. one for the attacks but not responsible No. one. Based on US views the attacks should be linked to al-Qaeda organization and the Taliban regime. On my part I would like to make the following remarks concerning the September 11 attacks.
US airline companies declared the list of passengers aboard the airliners that crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon, which did not include any Arab names. However, a new list was released thereafter including names of 19 Arabs. How did this happen and who was responsible for it?! Interestingly, It has been confirmed that some names mentioned on the new list died 2 years ago and that some other are still alive and are not in the US. US-based reports unearthed that the hijackers used stolen or lost Arab identities that were issued 11 years ago, i.e. prior to the creation of al-Qaeda organization. Then, how the perpetrators could purchase ticket with expired passports and how can credit cards be used with stolen or expired identity documents?
The alarming devices installed across the United States entirely came to a halt for almost one hour the time of the attacks, though they have been programmed since the cold war era to work automatically, particularly the devices installed at the Pentagon. Taking in mind that it took 45 minutes between the attacks targeting the WTC and these which targeted the Pentagon. So, who has the capability to decipher the codes of all those devices and is it possible to divert 4 airliners simultaneously without any contact between the monitoring towers and the pilots? And why there had been no information about the black boxes of the airplanes? In criminology there is a famous statement that reads, “There is no full crime.” This means that a criminal should leave identifications during committing the crime; however, the US authorities have not so far disclosed any thing of that sort to the international public opinion.
The US anti-terror war in Afghanistan started on October 7, in other words, 25 days after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Is this period enough for planning and preparing for such an all-out war against Afghanistan. Isn’t evident that the war’s decision was taken long time ago before the September 11 attacks, especially if compared to the second Gulf war (1999), as the period between the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the US-led war (the desert storm) took more that 5 and half months.

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