July 18, 2005

"This is a religious ideology, a strain within the worldwide religion of Islam, as far removed from its essential decency and truth as Protestant gunmen who kill Catholics or vice versa are from Christianity." prime Minister Tony Blair

"The most outrageous lies that can be invented will find believers if a man only tells them with all his might" Mark Twain 1867

There are only two implements in the imperial tool-chest; fear and deception. So, we can forget about diplomacy, negotiation or, heaven help us, compromise. These are not part of the Bush-Blair repertoire so they can be dismissed as irrelevant. Any serious investigation of the London bombings must keep this in mind; fear and deception; the lone forces that animate the administration and move policy.

We must also address the issue of "motive"; who benefits (cui bono) from the bombing of innocent people in a London subway. For Bush, of course, 9-11 proved to be the catalyst for overturning long-held constitutional precedents, enacting regressive legislation (Patriot Act) and initiating a global resource war. In fact, there has been no downside to the Sept 11 attacks for Bush and Co. It almost seems like the entire tragedy was simply staged to meet the stated objectives of Bush’s neocon base.

For Blair the political situation is strikingly similar to that of Bush before 9-11. He’s presented a raft of regressive bills to Parliament; including more repressive anti-terror legislation and a fabulously unpopular National ID card bill analogous to those used in dictatorships. The bombings have strengthened Blair’s hand considerably; allowing him to traipse about affecting Churchillian poses and helping him pull his career out of the political ash-heap.

So, have the London attacks helped Blair reassert his role as leader and move forward the agenda of his paymasters?

It’s hardly a matter for debate, however, that does not imply that Blair is directly complicit in the bombings, only that there is a clearly recognizable motive for him to do so.

In the case of Bush, the official version of events simply makes no sense at all. Anyone who has studied 9-11 knows that the government account is utterly false. This may explain why Bush refused to appoint an investigative commission for more than a year, and then, insisted on "hand-picking" every member on the committee. The results proved to be the absurd "whitewash" that many expected from the beginning.

Does this mean that Bush was involved in 9-11?
No, it simply means that reasonable cannot exclude the possibility, especially when Bush and Co are the only ones to have clearly gained from the attacks.

As a matter of fact, there is a remarkable pattern to nearly all the bombings we have seen around the world since the Bush claque took office. If we revisit the Bali bombing we can see that it allowed Bush to strengthen ties with the repressive Indonesian government; ensuring aid to the brutal military and opening channels for direct action in Aceh and other parts of the theatre.

Similarly, the bombings in Beirut forced US’s enemy Syria to exit Lebanon, putting additional pressure on the Syrian regime.

Even the seemingly random bombings in Iraq have served the greater interests of the US. The administration no longer believes it can defeat the Iraqi resistance so they hope to provoke a civil war that will divert attention from the occupation. By sowing the seeds of unremitting chaos and death, the administration hopes to split Iraq up into more manageable parts. The Balkenizing of Iraq allows the multinational corporations to enter a safer provincial environment and precludes the likelihood that Iraq may rise again as a serious regional power.

In other words, the current rash of bombings has one unique characteristic; they invariably benefit the overall political goals of the US.

Coincidence?

In the case of the London bombings the same rule applies; Blair’s career is miraculously revitalized, personal liberties are compromised, and the global neocon war-agenda moves forward. It’s a "win-win" scenario for the party in power.

Blair is playing his role masterfully; spouting his racially-charged platitudes about "confronting an evil ideology"; invoking the same wearisome religious symbolism and posturing as his mentor in Crawford. So far, it’s impossible to know if people are being taken in by the PM’s fabrications and feigned piety. There’s reason to hope that Parliament will put up a greater struggle than Bush’s rubber-stamp Congress.

But, whether Parliament fights or not, we have incontrovertible evidence (from the Downing Street Memo, the "sexed up" dossier; the testimonies of Richard Clarke, Paul O’ Neill, Scott Ritter etc) that both Bush and Blair lied on every issue of consequence leading up to the war in Iraq. This means that neither should be trusted in the current investigation and that we should anticipate that they will pollute the evidence in a way that will advance their agenda.

Escalation in Iraq

In the last week we have seen a serious intensification of the war in Iraq. The week began with reports that "Ten Sunni Muslim tribesmen died after American-trained Iraqi police commandos kept them in an airtight container for more than six hours in 115 degree heat, because they belonged to the same tribe as the leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars" ( http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P2227 ) None of the men had been charged with a crime.

This regrettable incident was followed by 13 unidentified men being dumped at the Baghdad morgue after having been brutally tortured and murdered "gangland style" with a single shot to the back of the head. It is assumed that the men are Sunnis and that their deaths are part of a larger crackdown against the resistance by the reconstructed Mukhabarat (secret police)

Then on Friday 32 Iraqi children were killed when a Marine patrol entered a Baghdad neighborhood and inexplicably began handing out candy to children during a bomb alert. 32 children were killed when a truck loaded with explosives drove into the crowd and detonated.

The Friday incident was followed by the bloodiest weekend since the war began in 2003. "On Saturday evening, a man detonated an explosive belt in a crowded marketplace in the highway town of Musayyib - 35 miles south of Baghdad. The explosion erupted just as a tanker containing cooking gas was passing by. The blast triggered an inferno that destroyed dozens of buildings, including a nearby Shiite mosque where worshipers were emerging from evening prayers." (Democracy Now) The blast killed more than 100 people.

Iraq has descended into utter chaos; a scenario that fits nicely with the neocon vision of "creative destruction". As neocon theorist Michael Ledeen said, "Creative destruction is our middle name…We tear down the old order every day….We must destroy (them) to advance our historic mission".

Ledeen’s fanaticism underscores the prevailing US policy in Iraq today. Rumsfeld admitted just 2 weeks ago that "coalition forces are not going to repress the insurgency," and that the resistance may continue indefinitely. This means that the Bush team no longer entertains the notion that the conflict can be won, so they have embarked on a different strategy entirely. The current plan is to submerge Iraq into absolute anarchy; implementing the many resources the military has at their disposal to ensure that the Iraqi public can be managed thorough a "no-holds-barred" campaign of terror. This, in fact, is where Rumsfeld and his colleagues, who matriculated in the El Salvador and Nicaragua terror-wars, really excel. This also guarantees that Iraqi society will be laid to waste behind an iron-curtain of media silence.

Would the architects of this barbarity, with all of its attendant torture, cruelty and death, have any problem planting bombs in a London subway if their primary objectives were at risk?

Perhaps, covert agents are already involved in such nefarious activity?

Investigative reporter Chris Floyd has written three insightful articles (Yoo Hoo: Peeling Back a Layer of the Bush Faction's Terrorist Connections; http://www.uruknet.info/?p=13799 ) on "Pentagon operatives (penetrating) existing groups and 'provoke terrorists into action’" Floyd continues, "All of these operations take place in a shadowland, where "terrorists" are actually "police informers" and vice versa, where "security agencies" and "terrorist groups" operate in impenetrable knots of interpenetration."… "In the fallen world of the 'war on terror,’ neither government pronouncements nor terrorist claims can be taken at face value."

"Can never be taken at face value."

So, we will never completely know the level of government involvement in the London bombings, nor do we need to. We know that terror serves the greater interests of the state, props up the flagging careers of inept politicians, savages civil liberties, incites violence against minorities, divides society into hostile political encampments and vindicates the war agenda. We also know that Blair’s fear mongering on the attacks has enhanced his standing with the British people and increased his ability to manipulate public opinion. This is consistent with our original thesis that that the imperial tool-chest contains only two implements; fear and deception. Blair is a master of both.

We also know that the government version of events is unadulterated fakery; a hopeless tangle of loose-ends, spurious allegations and blatant propaganda. This has left many people believing that if we looked hard enough we’d probably find that the bloody footprints from last weeks bombing lead straight to the front door at 10 Downing Street.

Courtesy and copyright © Mike Whitney