President Barack Obama

Who Will Rescue Us From Post 9-11 Thinking?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Who-Will-Rescue-Us-From-Po-by-Curt-Day-120517-134.html

Who Will Rescue Us From Post 9-11 Thinking?

By Curt Day (about the author)

opednews.com

What is Post 9-11 thinking? What preceded it? Do inquiring minds really want to know?

Well, in case they do, we will start with pre 9-11 thinking. With pre 9-11 thinking, we treated terrorism like crime in that we didn't react to it until it occurred. And because we didn't pre-emptively act against terrorism, we didn't act against American citizens with today's surveillance. Thus, pre 9-11 thinking granted American citizens a few more rights and privacy than post 9-11 thinking did. However, pure pre 9-11 thinking really didn't exist. For example, our government had acted pre-emptively to stop "millenium" terrorist attacks in 1999. Regardless of how the would-be attacks were discovered, the Clinton Administration acted pre-emptively.

Then, tragically, the 9-11 atrocities occurred and we were asked to think in a new way, which was not really new to some in the Bush Administration or the rest of the country. The "new" way of thinking included more than just pre-emption, it meant that America could assume this dominating position over the rest of the world so that no rival would emerge. And a side benefit was that we would have more access to important resources and our products would have more access to markets around the world.

This new 9-11 thinking was based on then President Bush's analysis of the attacks. He claimed we were attacked because those who want our destruction were jealous of our freedoms thus implying that future attacks were a fixed cost. But Chalmers Johnson and others pointed out that our foreign policies, including our history of covert actions, gave more than adequate motivation to many groups, let alone Al-Qaida, for attacking us. In addition, interviews with Bin Laden pointed to policies like the Iraq sanctions, which caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, along with our unbalanced support for Israel in its brutal occupation and taking of Palestinian land as reasons for the attack.

Obama moves to curb federal secrets

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091230/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_classified_documents

Obama moves to curb federal secrets
By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer
Wed Dec 30, 3:06 am ET

WASHINGTON – More than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents could be declassified as the federal government responds to President Barack Obama's order to rethink the way it protects the nation's secrets.

Paul Craig Roberts: "The Obama Puppet"

December 2, 2009
The World's Least Powerful Man
The Obama Puppet

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

It didn’t take the Israel Lobby very long to bring President Obama to heel regarding his prohibition against further illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama discovered that a mere American president is powerless when confronted by the Israel Lobby and that the United States simply is not allowed a Middle East policy separate from Israel’s.

Obama also found out that he cannot change anything else either, if he ever intended to do so.

The military/security lobby has war and a domestic police state on its agenda, and a mere American president can’t do anything about it.

President Obama can order the Guantanamo torture chamber closed and kidnapping and rendition and torture to be halted, but no one carries out the order.

Essentially, Obama is irrelevant.

A Sorry Indictment by Nick Mollo

This is a personal view of the attacks of 9/11 from the perspective of a UK national.

A Sorry Indictment by Nick Mollo

The first time I came to believe that something might be suspect about the horrendous events of September 11th was with a live on-site report by Channel 4 News in England. The journalist stated that the downed plane (Flight 93) in Shanksville could conceivably have been shot down by an American fighter plane. This assumption was made by the reporter because the wreckage of Flight 93 was spread over what appeared to be a large area. This live report, to my knowledge, was not aired again and the official version of the passengers bringing down the plane to save further lives started to emerge and subsequently became the established unquestionable truth.

Other than my own controversial opinion, that Flight 93 was shot down by an American fighter, I never questioned the official version of events; that 19 terrorists masterminded by Osama Bin Laden had attacked America. The shock and awe of that terrible day was so convincing and the images so powerful that any alternative to the official version was out of the question.

Obama's speech in Egypt warns not to challenge official 9/11 story

President Obama's speech in Egypt echoes Bush's speech to the UN, in its warning not to challenge the 9/11 story.

Obama's remarks:

"But let us be clear: Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with," he said.

Bush's remarks:

"We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th, malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists themselves, away from the guilty. To inflame ethnic hatred is to advance the cause of terror."

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