ratitor's note: With all Mr. le Carré's exceptionally lucid observations
stated herein, he misses the point where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are
concerned. Two points need constant declaration: (1) the "proof" that Osama
bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 bombings was never publically
established, and (2) bin Laden does not possess the capabilities for such an
operation. As international law professor Francis Boyle writes in his book,
The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence (Clarity Press:2002, pp.18-19),
"Secretary of State Colin Powell publicly promised that they were
going to produce a `White Paper' documenting their case against
Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda organization concerning September
11. . . . We never received a "White Paper" produced by the Untied
States government as publicly promised by Secretary Powell, who
was later overridden by President Bush Jr. What we got instead was
a so-called White Paper produced by British Prime Minister Tony
Blair. Obviously, Blair was acting as Bush Jr's surrogate . . .
neither an elected or administrative official of the U.S.
government, not even an American citizen. Conveniently, no
American could be brought to task for or even questioned about
whatever errors of inadequacies Blair might purvey.
"The Powell/Blair White Paper fell into that hallowed
tradition of a "White Paper" based upon insinuation, allegation,
rumors, propaganda, lies, half-truths, etc. Even unnamed British
government officials on an off-the-record basis admitted that the
case against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda would not stand up in court."
Note that the preamble to this white paper -- "Responsibility for the
terrorist atrocities in the United States," 10/4/01 -- explicitly confirms
Professor Boyle's assertion:
"This document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case
against Usama Bin Laden in a court of law. Intelligence often
cannot be used evidentially, due both to the strict rules of
admissibility and to the need to protect the safety of sources.
But on the basis of all the information available HMG is confident
of its conclusions as expressed in this document."
(http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/page3554.asp)
Writing in his essay, The Enemy Within, Gore Vidal cites Mohammed Heikal's
understanding of 9/11 sponsorship:
Mohammed Heikal is a brilliant Egyptian journalist-observer, and
sometime Foreign Minister. On 10 October 2001, he said to the
Guardian: `Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an
operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about
al-Qaeda as if it were Nazi Germany or the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is there. Bin Laden has
been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was
monitored and al-Qaeda has been penetrated by US intelligence,
Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence.
They could not have kept secret an operation that required such a
degree of organisation and sophistication.'
The following is mirrored from its source at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0115-01.htm
The United States of America Has Gone Mad
by John le Carré
15 January 2003
The Times of London
America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but
this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse
than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more
disastrous than the Vietnam War.
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have
hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the
freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being
systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and
vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate
that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the
loftier columns of the East Coast press.
The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it
was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta
would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it
came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless
favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the
world's poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated
international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why
they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN
resolutions.
But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The
Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the
war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another
$60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of
nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy.
Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting
is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in
American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer's pocket? At
what cost -- because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly
decent and humane people -- in Iraqi lives?
How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger
from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public
relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent
poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was
responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the
American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten
and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully
orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow
conspirators nicely into the next election.
Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are
with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I
would love to see Saddam's downfall -- just not on Bush's terms
and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such
outrageous hypocrisy.
The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is
perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush
has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political
opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that
suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America's
Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea
is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a
terrorist.
God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men
are equal in His sight, if not in one another's, the Bush family
numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA,
the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.
Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior
executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company;
1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney,
1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company.
Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil
company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none
of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God's
work.
In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the
ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating
them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that "somebody"
was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr's cry: "That man tried to kill my
Daddy." But it's still not personal, this war. It's still
necessary. It's still God's work. It's still about bringing
freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.
To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good
and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends,
family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush
won't tell us is the truth about why we're going to war. What is
at stake is not an Axis of Evil -- but oil, money and people's
lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest
oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it
will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn't, won't.
If Saddam didn't have the oil, he could torture his citizens to
his heart's content. Other leaders do it every day -- think Saudi
Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.
Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours,
and none to the US or Britain. Saddam's weapons of mass
destruction, if he's still got them, will be peanuts by comparison
with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five
minutes' notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or
terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What
is at stake is America's need to demonstrate its military power to
all of us -- to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little
North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America
at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.
The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair's part in all
this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer
it. He can't. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a
smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a
corner, and he can't get out. It is utterly laughable that, at a
time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of
Britain's opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that's
Britain's tragedy, as it is America's: as our Governments spin,
lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and
looks the other way. Blair's best chance of personal survival must
be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably
emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster
unfired. But what happens when the world's greatest cowboy rides
back into town without a tyrant's head to wave at the boys?
Blair's worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag
us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had
ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no
more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or
at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations
with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have
helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic
unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the
party of the ethical foreign policy.
There is a middle way, but it's a tough one: Bush dives in without
UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special
relationship.
I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect's
sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties
about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can't explain is
how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial
assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure
the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the
oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in
Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.
"But will we win, Daddy?"
"Of course, child. It will all be over while you're still in bed."
"Why?"
"Because otherwise Mr Bush's voters will get terribly impatient
and may decide not to vote for him."
"But will people be killed, Daddy?"
"Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people."
"Can I watch it on television?"
"Only if Mr Bush says you can."
"And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do
anything horrid any more?"
"Hush child, and go to sleep."
Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local
supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: "Peace is also
Patriotic". It was gone by the time he'd finished shopping.
Copyright © 2003 Times Newspapers Ltd
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