This is an update/revision of a diary originally posted 10/24/2009. This is the final 12/30/2010 version.
Injustice in American foreign policy is a primary cause of the terror against us. We will not end terror without justice and a return to American ideals. (1)
Terror must be fought with law enforcement. It is not primarily a military problem (2). A million men-at-arms are required to fight conventional wars and insurgencies as in Afghanistan and Iraq. The FBI, CIA, other intelligence services, and the military’s Special Forces are required to fight terror. The deployment of hundreds of thousands of our troops indicates we are fighting for some purposes other than stopping terror – purposes such as empire, cheap natural resources, and war profits for those who have contrived this war on terror.
We cannot now bring many Guantanamo detainees to trial because we did not build the legal cases necessary to prosecute them. Only 23 of 770 Guantanamo detainees had been charged with war crimes as of October 2008 (3).
Torture was used to build the lie. It is unreliable, counter-productive, and not a means to the truth. Torture was used to get Guantanamo detainees to confess and implicate others whether or not they and those they implicated were guilty. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi’s torture in Egypt produced the lie that Saddam Hussein trained al Qaeda in biological and chemical weapons (4). Abu Zubaydah while subjected to torture/ waterboarding told his interrogators that al-Qaeda had links with Saddam Hussein (5). These lies helped rationalize the Iraq war.
The Bush administration refused to fight and win the war on terror. They intentionally allowed al-Qaeda and bin Laden to escape Afghanistan in December 2001 and subsequently refused to take the actions necessary to capture or destroy them. The Administration, after being clearly briefed that “the back door was open,” refused to send 1,200 marines to Tora Bora (6), refused to authorize 800 Rangers or alternately mines to block the passes at Tora Bora, and then fired the CIA station chief in the middle of the operation. (7,8) If al-Qaeda and bin Laden had been captured or destroyed in December 2001, the war on terror would have come to a premature end, leaving no quasi-rationalization for perpetual war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and less quasi-rationalization for a possible future attack on Iran.
Conclusion: The “war on terror” as a lie. It was used as cover for other purposes in a gross contravention of American ideals. America is existentially threatened by those who have contrived this war on terror - our domestic enemies, not by foreign terrorists.
See the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s 11/30/2009 Report on Tora Bora at:
http://foreign.senate.gov/...
The Committee concluded the escape from Tora Bora was a senior management failure, but the senior managers they faulted were Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and CentCom General Franks not President Bush and Vice President Cheney who were fully informed of the situation. See footnotes 6, 7, and 8 on Tora Bora.
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