It's tough to admit now, knowing now what I didn't know back then. And I can only speak for myself, or perhaps not, when I say that the unconscionable attacks on 9-11 delivered a severe shock to my conscious - existentially - not previously experienced in my lifetime. Decades earlier, when the JFK assassination happened, I had only felt emotional pain through extended, osmotic contact with family members who were old enough to fully understand both the assassination itself, and its effectual, epochal consequences it would have for the future of both the nation and the world. But I humbly digress.
Needless to say, immediately after 9-11, I found myself awash in feelings of a blinding nature; an overwhelming confluence of horror, sympathy and rage... all in equal measure, and all demanding equal, visceral space in both my heart and my mind. My attitude regarding al-Qa'ida went from that of a generically disdainful and ambivalent nature after the first WTC attacks to an instant, overwhelming and expedited combination of fear and loathing -- once again, in equal measure -- after the second.
During the days, weeks and months that followed, we were all imbued with a drive for revenge; a vindictive motivation to enable our government to avenge the attacks. Both collectively and singularly; as American citizens, everything short of nuclear strikes was on the debate table in search of ways to take out the entire al-Qa'ida network - if it somehow meant the fear, pain and sorrow we felt at the time could be magically erased from our collective conscious. That's how much pain we felt at the time.
Please continue reading below...
After a brief period of political awareness and activism in the early 'eighties, I, like many people around my age kinda put that heightened sense of awareness on the proverbial back burner in favor of other gratuitous, self-indulging interests. I fell asleep at the wheel. And I was not alone. It was the Monica Lewinsky affair and subsequent Clinton impeachment trial that prompted a rude awakening to what was going on in this country.
By the time 9-11 happened, I had already become addicted to cable-news and traditional media in general. Believe me, it was a complicated, love/hate-but-necessary-evil-type of relationship but it was indeed a close one. I spent just about all of my off-time watching CNN and the nascent MSNBC cable-news channel, and searching for the latest news and politically-oriented outrage from both sides of the political aisle. In my insatiable thirst for information, I even bought subscriptions to the NY Times and Washington Post newspapers, not to mention Time, U.S. News & World Report and Newsweek magazines all in my insatiable thirst for information. In the end, all of those major contributors to the ethos in D.C. and the beltway dialogue between the serious people. They all told artfully insidious untruths regarding both the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, and the subsequent [misguided] run up to the invasion of Iraq. But as it turns out, one of those named publications was more blatantly dishonest and misleading in its reporting and op-ed columns than even their competitors.
Newsweek Magazine
On March 3rd, 2003, Newsweek Magazine published an article titled "The Defector's Secrets" written by reporter John Barry. (the link provided above directs you to Commondreams.org where a writeup of the original, archived article appears today. I absolutely refuse to send any additional hits to the Newsweek website. Now or ever)
Here's a portion:
Hussein Kamel, the highest-ranking Iraqi official ever to defect from Saddam Hussein’s inner circle, told CIA and British intelligence officers and U.N. inspectors in the summer of 1995 that after the gulf war, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them.
Hussein Kamel, former Iraqi minister of military industry and Hussein's son-in-law. He had direct knowledge of what he claimed: for 10 years he had run Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs. Kamel told his Western interrogators that he hoped his revelations would trigger Saddam's overthrow. But after six months in exile in Jordan, Kamel realized the United States would not support his dream of becoming Iraq's ruler after Saddam's demise. He chose to return to Iraq where he was promptly killed.
Kamel's revelations about the destruction of Iraq's WMD stocks were hushed up by the U.N. inspectors, sources say, for two reasons. Saddam did not know how much Kamel had revealed, and the inspectors hoped to bluff Saddam into disclosing still more. And Iraq has never shown the documentation to support Kamel's story. Still, the defector's tale raises questions about whether the WMD stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist.
Kamel goes on to say that Iraq had not completely given up on future WMD-producing endeavors. But they were NEVER an immediate threat. Not to their neighbors. And certainly not to America. The stockpiles had been destroyed to trow water in the face of the neocons in D.C. who were hellbent on regime-change in Baghdad ever since the end of hostilities in the Gulf War. He also admitted that Hussein had kept the WMD blueprints and microfiches loaded with related engineering data in case an opportunity presented itself in the future in which they were no longer being closely monitored for weapons-making activity.
Newsweek obtained the notes of Kamel's coordinated CIA/MI6/U.N. debriefing and verified the documents.
So, Saddam Hussein certainly presented challenges. But Clinton policy directives had the situation under control with the combination of U.N. inspectors and an ongoing no-fly zone. And everyone in Washington knew that. And that included Newsweek Magazine, who actually had the verified documents to prove it.
Here's a bit more:
The notes of the U.N. interrogation's three-hour stretch one August evening in 1995 show that Kamel was a gold mine of information. He had a good memory and, piece by piece, he laid out the main personnel, sites and progress of each WMD program. Kamel was a manager not a scientist or engineer and, sources say, some of his technical assertions were later found to be faulty. (A military aide who defected with Kamel was apparently a more reliable source of technical data. This aide backed Kamel's assertions about the destruction of WMD stocks.) But, overall, Kamel's information was almost embarrassing, it was so extensive, Ekeus recalled, including the fact that Ekeus's own Arabic translator, a Syrian, was, according to Kamel, an Iraqi agent who had been reporting to Kamel himself all along.
Now,
that's a fine example of honest, fact-driven reporting. Except, we never heard much more about this Kamel character. Hmm, I wonder why.
A scant 13 days later, Newsweek drastically changed their attitude regarding Iraq's weapons capabilities. Whether corporate heads armed with dreams of expropriation and untapped sources of profit intervened at the magazine - or - it was the Bush/Cheney regime driven by their own lust for profit (*cough* Halliburton) combined with an underlying hatred for Saddam due to a [fictitious] assassination plot supposedly aimed at shrub's father after the Gulf war... we'll probably never know. But we do now know Newsweek went from truth-telling to telling hideous lies in little less than two-week's time.
This subsequent article appears at The Daily Beast: (once again, I refuse to link to the original Newsweek article written by Evan Thomas on March 16, 2003)
Warning: keeping in mind the content of the first article, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. the following jujitsu move should be attempted only by the most skilled, professional media manipulators in the country.
The most pressing--and disturbing--question is whether and when Saddam will use weapons of mass destruction. Saddam may want to hold off, at least for a while. If he uses bio-chem weapons, he "crosses a very important psychological threshold," points out Brookings's Pollack. The Iraqi leader could no longer claim in the court of world opinion that he has no WMD; he would, in effect, be justifying the American invasion. U.S. intelligence officials are sharply divided over Saddam's intentions. In some ways, they say, chem-bio weapons are more of a scary bluff than a true threat. Properly trained and equipped troops, especially those riding in airtight tanks, can slip unscathed through a toxic cloud. Still, Saddam may use the WMD he is said to possess, and poison gas can cause chaos and possibly panic among support troops in rear areas. Even the most gung-ho soldiers could be unnerved by a gas attack as they waited to ford a river or crash through a berm.
Hmm, I wonder which kind of WMDs Saddam would have chosen... IF HE ACTUALLY HAD ANY WMDS?
"Fool me once, shame, shame on you..... It fooled me you can't get fooled again".
And as they say... the rest is history.
These people are sick.