“He was in a trance”

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

In yet another example of unbelievable douchebaggery, our favorite Senator Joe Lieberman has decided, based on some guy trying to set his underwear on fire on a flight to Detroit, that we need to go to war with Yemen.


“Somebody in our government said to me in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday’s war,” Lieberman explained. “Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war. That’s the danger we face.”

Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA), also appearing on the program, seemed to agree, calling an attack against Yemen “something we should consider.”

What these two double-douchebags fail to mention is that we’ve already attacked Yemen.

Do they really think we’re that stupid?   I guess if you’re appearing on Fox, you can assume your audience IS that stupid, but c’mon.    Just a few days ago we sent Tomahawk missiles into Yemen, slaughtering dozens of civilians.  We also signed off on Saudi air strikes that had the same result — a slaughtering of civilians.

So yeah, let’s just ignore that for the time being, and maybe we can somehow retroactively justify something we’ve actually already done, based on some extremely flimsy evidence about this guy who tried to set his nutsack on fire on an airplane.   Flimsy evidence?  How can that be?   Why would CNN be reporting on this 24/7 with it’s “Fear! Fear! Fear!” tactics if the evidence was flimy?   Yemen is the enemy damnit!    I heard it on TV!

Well, check this out from Chris Floyd:


Wow, that didn’t take long at all. Scant days after the American war machine took the cloaking device off its direct military involvement in Yemen, we have an alleged attempted terrorist attack by an alleged attempted terrorist who, just scant hours after his capture, has allegedly confessed to getting his alleged attempted terrorist material from … wait for it … Yemen!

Yemen-trained terrorists on the loose in American airplanes! At Christmas! Great googily moogily! It’s a good thing our boys are on the case over there right now, pounding the holy hell outta some of them Al Qaeder ragheads! And to think, a few pipsqueaky fifth columnists had been starting to wonder why we were killing dozens of innocent civilians on behalf of an authoritarian regime embroiled in a three-way civil war on the other side of the world.

(snip)

And it must be true, right? I mean, just look at how well-sourced the NYT story is. “A law enforcement official” — Police captain? State trooper? G-Man? Traffic cop? — said that the alleged attempted terrorist said he’d got his “explosive chemicals” from Yemen. (Elsewhere in the paper, other unnamed officials told NYT reporters that the alleged material strapped to the alleged attempted terrorist was “incendiary,” not explosive. But who cares? “Bomb, Terror, Yemen!”)

Of course, the NYT noted that “authorities have not independently corroborated the Yemen connection claimed by the suspect” (nor, they could have added, have they independently corroborated that the claim was actually made), but still, the completely anonymous “law enforcement official” said that the suspect’s claim “was plausible,” and even added: “I see no reason to discount it.”

Well, it doesn’t get more solid than that, does it? They nailed that story down so tight you couldn’t pry it open with God’s own crowbar. An anonymous source confirmed the plausibility of his own claim.   Man, that’s ironclad. It’s certainly good enough to light up the media firmament with headlines linking “terror in the Heartland” with the empire’s newest killing field in a volatile foreign land.

So yeah, with that kind of evidence, let’s go bomb a new country!   Oh, wait, we already have.   Shhh!

Floyd’s point is that this is yet another case, just like in Iraq, where the facts will be fixed to fit the policy.    The really brazen and bizarre thing here is that we already attacked them.  


In any case, whatever facts about the case — or rather, shards and splinters of filtered information — that are allowed to emerge from the depths of the security apparat, you can be absolutely sure that, as always, the “facts will be fixed around the policy.”

And what is that policy? Why, endless war, of course! The American war machine (which now dominates most of “civilian” society as well) is like a shark: it must keep moving, and feeding, or die. “Terror, Bomb, Yemen!”

This whole thing also begs the question — why was this guy allowed to get on the plane?  Why wasn’t he on the no-fly list?   His own father tried to warn the U.S.   He was actually on the terrorist watch list, but was conveniently not on the “no fly” list.   Does that make any sense whatsoever?   I’m sure it will be attributed to yet another bout of convenient “incompetence” on the part of some fall guy agency.   The result will be even more erosion of our civil liberties and a justification for Patriot Act The Third, or whatever number they’re up to now.

These inconvenient facts are not lost upon certain people, notably not employees of, say, CNN.   This article, for instance, is from England:  


The revelation of Abdulmutallab’s background has confounded terror experts. Dr Magnus Ranstorp of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College said that the attempted bombing “didn’t square”.

“On the one hand, it seems he’s been on the terror watch list but not on the no-fly list,” he said. “That doesn’t square because the American Department for Homeland Security has pretty stringent data-mining capability. I don’t understand how he had a valid visa if he was known on the terror watch list.

Also from this article is a mention of the odd behavior of the suspect, from the man who dealt with him during the crisis:


Mr Schuringa said of the suspect: “He was shaking. He didn’t resist anything. It’s just hard to believe that he was trying to blow up this plane. He was in a trance. He was very afraid.”

In a trance?   It wouldn’t be the first time a perpetrator of a paradigm-shaking crime had been in a trance.    Doesn’t this strike anyone else as odd, and suspicious?  

But no, the propaganda “news” networks have been on their round the clock brainwashing cycle, with their repetetive chants of whatever the Powers That Be have told them to say.   And this is being engraved into the consciousness of Americans as “the truth”, even if it isn’t.   It doesn’t matter.  The truth is whatever they tell us it is, whatever you see on your TV.  

Glenn Greenwald’s been writing about this as well, and this article is a must-read.    Did you know this?


America’s commitment to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge was codified directly into U.S. law via 2008 legislation backed by AIPAC. This legislation requires the president to report to Congress periodically on actions taken by the administration to ensure Israel’s advantage.

I don’t think most people have any idea that we passed a freaking law, as Greenwald puts it, “making it a legal requirement for America to maintain “Israel’s qualitative military edge,” and — even more amazingly — that the President of the U.S. is required to report regularly to the U.S. Congress on the steps he’s taking to ensure Israel’s superiority. “

What does this have to do with terror attacks, and Yemen, and “endless war?”   Plenty.


Whatever else is true, and even if one believes it’s justified to lob cruise missiles into more countries where we claim “suspected Al Qaeda sites” are located, one thing seems clear:  all of the causes widely recognized as having led to 9/11 — excessive American interference in the Muslim world, our alliance with their most oppressive leaders, our responsibility for Israel’s military conflicts with its Muslim neighbors, and our own military attacks on Muslims — seem stronger than ever.  As we take more actions of this sort, we will create more Terrorists, which will in turn cause us to take more actions of this sort in a never-ending, self-perpetuating cycle.  The U.S. military, and the intelligence community, and its partners in the private contractor world will certainly remain busy, empowered, and well-funded in the extreme.

And that’s the whole point, right?   Endless war, of a low-level sort, ramped up just enough to keep the Military Contractors with lucrative long term contracts for the rest of their lives.    You and I would call it “job security”.

26 comments

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    • Inky99 on December 28, 2009 at 10:25
      Author

    Not now.

    And the media?   Forget about it.

    The Sirhan Sirhan model worked so well, why not keep doing it?   If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?   Right!

  1. Obama to call it a terrorist attack.  And people are still stupied enought to believe we in a full fledged war on terror.  I’m losing respect for George Orwell.  He is turning out to be a wimp compared with the shit our government can think up.  

  2. (including those, like Joe, pretending to be Dems) are always ready to go fight send other people to fight for the causes that Joe & Co. think it’s worth dying for other people dying for.

    Plus, look at what a boost yet another war would be for our economy war profiteers.

    • geomoo on December 29, 2009 at 04:25

    Sorry, but I don’t remember who I heard saying the following.  Some person in a position to hear, early in Bush’s prsidency, reported the crazy neo-con strategy of moving through the Middle East, taking one country after another.  Yemen was definitely in the plans.  You know how OCD psychopaths are–they just can’t stop themselves.

  3. To me, it’s same ole,’ same ole!’  

    It’s almost incredible that the very, exact same fear tactics of the Bush Administration are STILL in use!  

    Just look back a bit — for example, we had been bombing Iraq, covertly, since 2002, of May, and even earlier, bombing every possible strategic site possible, i.e., their farms, their hospitals, you name it.  THIS, along with all the sanctions they were living under.

    Someone in the AP media is extremely inventive is all I can say!

    Of course, now, that we’re about to put 30,000 U.S. troops in harm’s way and all the war-funding that will be required — we absolutely MUST trump up our need for all of it.  Voila!  Yemen, as well as airplane plots enter the scene — yep, Americans, you gotta’ fuckin’ wake TFU — don’t you understand — the “terrists” gonna’ get ya! Yeh, yeh, yeh!  So, be a f..kin” Amerikan — give up your salaries, your savings, your Social Security, and any hidden assets you might got — give it up, you fuckers, support the “war on terra!

  4. but we have another nut case (pun intended) who lit his dick on fire on a plane.  That’s all we got.  I saw the burnt underwear, with the burned part right on the naughty bits.  

    Everything else I’ve been told is open to speculation.  Except one fact: any attack was thwarted by a passenger.  those are the only things we should even know right now.  Why are all these anonymous ‘facts’ being  fed to the media?      

  5. The bombing took place in the final minutes of the flight. As in, when the plane was landing.

    This was not an act that was done to kill people. Maximum casualties and effectiveness would have occurred if the bombing had taken place over the ocean or at a higher altitude. This was an act done to scare people.

    And if that wasn’t enough, they did it AGAIN on the SAME flight the next day, with a person of the same nationality, only this guy’s crime was that he stayed too long in the bathroom.

    Fear fear fear fear, terrah terrah terrah terrah.

    Immediately the Department of Hopeless Insecurity pundits – Napolitano and that complete waste of space parasite Petey King – step forward almost as if they were claiming responsibility (!!!) to take a bow and launch their prefabricated “cry wolf” platitudes to try to justify their existences.

    These people are running a protection racket in my own country and it makes me want to fucking puke. Who are the terrorists? Look a little closer to home – they’re the guy squeezing badly needed pennies out of your wallet in the dead of winter while ominously telling you “dat it wud be a SHAME if SUMPTIN’ wuz ta HAPPEN…!”

    If Obama had half a clue and the coglioni of a man, he’d be kicking these asstards up and down the street for UTTERLY FAILING TO DO THEIR JOBS AND WASTING – AT BEST – BILLIONS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS.

    • Inky99 on December 29, 2009 at 09:50
      Author

    http://original.antiwar.com/ju

    “An Indian man in a nicely dressed suit around age 50 approached the check in counter with the terrorist and said ‘This man needs to get on this flight and he has no passport.’ The two of them were an odd pair as the terrorist is a short, black man that looked like he was very poor and looks around age 17(Although I think he is 23 he doesn’t look it). It did not cross my mind that they were terrorists, only that the two looked weird together. The ticket taker said ‘you can’t board without a passport.’ The Indian man then replied, ‘He is from Sudan, we do this all the time.’. I can only take from this to mean that it is difficult to get passports from Sudan and this was some sort of sympathy ploy. The ticket taker then said ‘You will have to talk to my manager,’ and sent the two down a hallway. I never saw the Indian man again as he wasn’t on the flight. It was also weird that the terrorist never said a word in this exchange. Anyway, somehow, the terrorist still made it onto the plane. I am not sure if it was a bribe or just sympathy from the security manager.”

    This goes way beyond weird, all the way to sinister. Perhaps we should take Janet Napolitano’s assurance that “right now we have no indication that it is part of anything larger” with a gargantuan grain of salt. Not only that, but maybe we should simply make a new rule, as follows: anything Madame Napolitano or any government official says about this or any other similar incident should be considered, at the outset, an outright lie. Assuming deception as the default, we might be better off believing the exact opposite. This argument is especially compelling in light of what Mr. Haskell has to say about the aftermath of the Christmas bomb attempt:

    “FBI also arrested a different Indian man while we were held in customs after a bomb sniffing dog detected a bomb in his carry on bag and he was searched after we landed. This was later confirmed while we were in customs when an FBI agent said to us ‘You are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. Read between the lines. Some of you saw what just happened.'(The arrest of the other Indian man). I am not sure why this hasn’t made it into any news story, but I stood about 15-20 feet away from the other Indian man when he was cuffed and arrested after his search.”

    Why isn’t the “mainstream” media reporting this? Well, perhaps they just don’t know about it: or it could be they do know and have been asked to keep a lid on it by the authorities, not the first time such a thing has happened when it comes to the dissemination of “sensitive” information.

    In any case, given the veracity of Haskell’s account, it is clear that, contrary to news reports, Umar was no “lone nut,” but had at least one accomplice with him on board the plane. Furthermore, both of his accomplices – the one who got him on the plane without a passport, and the one nabbed by the bomb-sniffing dog – may have been Indians.

    What India has to do with all this is sheer speculation. While India’s foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), stands accused by Pakistanis of being behind much of the sectarian strife that riles the region, it’s unclear – to me, at least – what interest they would have in stirring the pot in faraway Yemen, the supposed source of the plot. If, however, it should suddenly be discovered that the “real” source of all this lies in the tribal regions of Pakistan, where Washington insists Osama bin Laden & Co. have set up their world headquarters, the Indian connection would make sense.

    Haskell concludes his account as follows:

    “What also didn’t make the news is that we were held on the plane for 20 minutes after it landed! A bomb could have gone off then. This wasn’t too smart of security to not let us off the plane immediately.

    “You can see what time I am writing this as I am having a hard time sleeping tonight. Just thought some of you would like to know what I saw, Merry Christmas.”

    A telling note of authenticity there: clueless bureaucrats keep him on a plane that might be about to explode, and a Merry Christmas to all – and to all a good night!

    No wonder the poor guy couldn’t sleep. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t sleep for a week. And if, somehow, I did manage to take a cat nap or two, I’d dream of Umar being led onto the plane, passport-less, escorted by his mysterious helpers, including several demonic figures lurking in the background, chortling and rubbing their hands together in gleeful anticipation.

    We are asked to believe that a highly privileged young man, with everything to live for, was suddenly seized with a desire to commit suicide as an act of jihad: that he disappeared from his life of ease, on a street lined with Mercedes Benzes and Ferraris, in a fashionable district of London, and traveled to Yemen, where he received what may have been a defective bomb, which was sewn into his underwear by his jihadist trainers. This bomb then went undetected in Amsterdam airport, where the security arrangements are said to be tight (and a personal interview is conducted), and where he was let on a plane headed for the US in spite of explicit warnings given by his own father.

    I’m not buying it, and, furthermore, in the context of Haskell’s testimony, another narrative seems just as likely: that this was a staged incident, a false flag operation, launched by those who have everything to gain by ramping up the atmosphere of hysteria and fear that regularly precedes America’s wars. This – admittedly speculative – scenario, of which I am equally skeptical, is buttressed, however, by the testimony of Jasper Schuringa – the passenger who leapt out of his seat on the other side of the plane, put out the fire, and secured Umar in a headlock – who says of the alleged terrorist:

    “He was shaking. He didn’t resist anything. It’s just hard to believe that he was trying to blow up this plane. He was in a trance. He was very afraid.”

    He didn’t resist? This hardly seems like the behavior one might expect of some fanatic jihadist bent on destruction and meeting those virgins in the afterlife.

    The simplistic narrative that took shape as the news broke is already beginning to break up into something a bit more complicated, as additional information comes out, including this brief news item that just came across the wires:

    “A passenger aboard the same Northwest Airlines flight that was attacked on Christmas Day was taken into custody here Sunday after becoming verbally disruptive upon landing, officials said.

    “A law enforcement official said the man was Nigerian and had locked himself in the airliner’s bathroom. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

    “Delta Air Lines spokeswoman Susan Elliott said crew members requested that security remove the man from Flight 253 after he became disruptive. The remaining 255 passengers got off safely, she said.

    “Airport spokesman Scott Wintner said it was the same flight on which a man tried to set off an explosive on Christmas Day.

    “‘The pilot requested emergency assistance upon arrival,’ he said. Security and airline personnel are on edge since the attempted terror attack on Christmas Day, and the law enforcement official said that lesser incidents had been reported on other flights arriving in Detroit, but the incident with the Nigerian man had sparked the most concern.”

    Whether Nigerian, or Indian, something is up here, and it seems to have little to do with al-Qaeda, which – breaking its past habit of promptly taking “credit” – has yet to claim responsibility for the attempted attack. More grounds for suspicion: allegations that the Detroit incident was planned and carried out by al-Qaeda in Yemen can be traced back to “IntelCenter,” a mysterious private contractor with a dubious reputation [.pdf] (see frames 89-100) that does business with the intelligence community.

    So a Nigerian guy without a passport, a man whose own father talked to the CIA about his son, manages to get onto an international flight bound for America with the help of at least one mysterious “Indian”-looking fellow.

    Okaaaaay …..

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