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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
What Role Did the U.S.-Israeli Relationship Play in 9-11?
By: Jeff Gates
On the day of the 9-11 attacks, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked what the attack would mean for US-Israeli relations. His quick reply was: “It’s very good….Well, it’s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel).¡
Intelligence wars rely on mathematical models to anticipate the response of ´the mark¡ to staged provocations. Reactions thereby become foreseeablewithin an acceptable range of probabilities. When Israeli mathematician Robert J. Aumann received the 2005 Nobel Prize in economic science, he conceded that ´the entire school of thought that we have developed here in Israel¡ has turned ´Israel into the leading authority in this field.¡
With a well-planned provocation, the anticipated response can even become a weapon in the arsenal of the agent provocateur. In response to 9-11, how difficult would it be to foresee that the U.S. would deploy its military to avenge that attack? With fixed intelligence, how difficult would it be to redirect that response to wage a long-planned war in Iraq not for U.S. interests but to advance the agenda for Greater Israel?
The emotionally wrenching component of a provocation plays a key role in the field of game theory war planning where Israel is the authority. With the televised murder of 3,000 Americans, a shared mindset of shock, grief and outrage made it easier for U.S. policy-makers to believe that a known Evil Doer in Iraq was responsible, regardless of the facts.
The strategic displacement of facts with induced beliefs, in turn, requires a period of ´preparing the mindset¡ so that ´the mark¡ will put their faith in a pre-staged fiction. Those who induced the March 2003 invasion of Iraq began ´laying mental threads¡ and creating agenda-advancing mental associations more than a decade earlier.
Notable among those threads was the 1993 publication in Foreign Affairs of an article by Harvard professor Samuel Huntington. By the time his analysis appeared in book-length form in 1996 as The Clash of Civilizations, more than 100 academies and think tanks were prepared to promote it, pre-staging a ´clash consensus¡five years before 9-11.
Also published in 1996 under the guidance of Richard Perle was A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (i.e., Israel). A member since 1987 of the U.S. Defense Policy Advisory Board, this self-professed Zionist became its chairman in 2001. As a key adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Perle’s senior Pentagon post helped lay the required foundation for removing Saddam Hussein as part of a Greater Israel strategy, a key theme of A Clean Break released five years before 9-11.
A mass murder, articles, books, think tanks and Pentagon insiders, however, are not enough to manage the variables in a ´probabilistic¡ war-planning model. Supportive policy makers are also required to lend the appearance of legitimacy and credibility to an operation justified by intelligence fixed around a pre-determined agenda.
That role was eagerly filled by Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, a Jewish Zionist from Connecticut, and Jon Kyl, a Christian Zionist from Arizona, when they co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Echoing Tel Aviv’s agenda in A Clean Break, their bill laid another mental thread in the public mindset by calling for the removal of Saddam Husseinthree years before 9-11.
The legislation also appropriated $97 million, largely to promote that Zionist agenda. Distracted by mid-term Congressional elections and by impeachment proceedings commenced in reaction to a well-timed presidential affair involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton signed that agenda into law October 31, 1998 five years before the U.S.-led invasion that removed Saddam Hussein.
After 9-11, John McCain and Joe Lieberman became inseparable travel companions and irrepressible advocates for the invasion of Iraq. Looking ´presidential¡ aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in January 2002, McCain laid another key thread when he waved an admiral’s cap while proclaiming, alongside Lieberman, ´On to Baghdad.¡
By Way of Deception
The chutzpah with which this game theory strategy progressed in plain sight could be seen in the behavior of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, another Zionist insider. Four days after 9-11, in a principals’ meeting at Camp David, he proposed that the U.S. invade Iraq. At that time, the intelligence did not yet point to Iraqi involvement and Osama bin Laden was thought to be hiding in a remote region of Afghanistan.
Frustrated that President George H.W. Bush declined to remove Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War, Wolfowitz proposed a No-Fly Zone in northern Iraq. By 2001, the Israeli Mossad had agents at work for a decade in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Intelligence reports of Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda also came from Mosul reports that later proved to be false. Mosul again emerged in November 2004 as a center of the insurgency that destabilized Iraq. That reaction precluded the speedy exit of coalition forces promised in Congressional testimony by senior war-planner Wolfowitz.
The common source of the fixed intelligence that induced America to war in Iraq has yet to be acknowledged even though intelligence experts agree that deception on such a scale required a decade to plan, staff, pre-stage, orchestrate and, to date, cover up. The two leaders of the 9-11 Commission report conceded they were stopped by Commission members from hearing testimony on the motivation for 9-11: the U.S.-Israeli relationship.
The fictions accepted as generally accepted truths included Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi meetings with Al Qaeda in Prague, Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories and Iraqi purchases of ´yellowcake¡ uranium from Niger. Only the last fact was conceded as phony in the relevant time frame. All the rest were disclosed as false, flawed or fixed only after the war began. An attempt to cover-up the yellowcake account led to the federal prosecution of vice-presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby, another well-placed Zionist insider.
Did game theory-modeled pre-staging also include the Israeli provocation that led to the Second Intifada? An intifada is an uprising or, literally, a ´shaking off¡ of an oppressor. The Second Intifada in Palestine dates from September 2000 when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led an armed march to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount one year before 9-11.
After a year of calmduring which Palestinians believed in the prospects for peacesuicide bombings recommenced after this high-profile provocation. In response to the uprising, Sharon and Netanyahu observed that only when Americans ´feel our pain¡ would they understand the plight of the victimized Israelis. Both Israeli leaders suggested that shared mindset (´feel our pain¡) would require in the U.S. a weighted body count of 4,500 to 5,000 Americans lost to terrorism, the initial estimate of those who died in the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Centerone year later.
The American Valkyrie?
When successful, game theory warfare strengthens the agent provocateur while leaving the mark discredited and depleted by the anticipated reaction to a well-timed provocation. By game theory standards, 9-11 was a strategic success because the U.S. was portrayed as irrational for its reaction the invasion of Iraq that triggered a deadly insurgency with devastating consequences both for Iraq and the U.S.
That insurgency, in turn, was an easily modeled reaction to the invasion of a nation that (a) played no role in the provocation, and (b) was known to be populated by three long-warring sects where an unstable peace was maintained by a former U.S. ally who was rebranded an Evil Doer. As the cost in blood and treasure expanded, the U.S. became overextended militarily, financially and diplomatically.
As ´the mark¡ (the U.S.) emerged in the foreground, the agent provocateur faded into the background. But only after catalyzing dynamics that steadily drained the U.S. of credibility, resources and resolve. This ´probabilistic¡ victory also ensured widespread cynicism, insecurity, distrust and disillusionment along with a declining capacity to defend its interests due to the duplicity of a game theory-savvy enemy within.
Meanwhile the American public fell under a regime of oversight, surveillance and intimidation marketed as ´homeland¡ security. This domestic operation even features rhetorical hints of a WWII ´fatherland¡ with clear signs of a force alien to the U.S. with its welcome embrace of open dissent. Is this operation meant to protect Americans or to shield those responsible for this insider operation from Americans?
By manipulating the shared mindset, skilled game theory war-planners can wage battles in plain sight and on multiple fronts with minimal resources. One proven strategy: Pose as an ally of a well-armed nation predisposed to deploy its military in response to a mass murder. In this case, the result destabilized Iraq, creating crises that could be exploited to strategic advantage by expanding the conflict to Iran, another key Israeli goal announced in A Clean Breakseven years before the invasion of Iraq.
Which nation benefitted from the deployment of coalition forces to the region? Today’s mathematically model-able outcome undermined U.S. national security by overextending its military, discrediting its leadership, degrading its financial condition and disabling its political will. In game theory terms, these results were ´perfectly predictable¡within an acceptable range of probabilities.
In the asymmetry that typifies today’s unconventional warfare, those who are few in numbers must wage war by way of deceptionnon-transparently and with means that leverage their impact. Which nationif not Israelfits that description?
Treason in Plain Sight?
Game theory war-planners manipulate the shared mental environment by shaping perceptions and creating impressions that become consensus opinions. With the aid of well-timed crises, policy-makers fall in line with a predetermined agendanot because they are Evil Doers or ´imperialists¡ but because the shared mindset has been pre-conditioned to respond not to the facts but to manipulated emotions and consensus beliefs. Without the murder of 3,000 on 9-11, America’s credibility would not now be damaged and the U.S. economy would be in far better shape.
By steadily displacing facts with what ´the mark¡ can be induced to believe, the few-within-the-few amplify the impact of their duplicity. By steady manipulation of the public’s mindset, game theory war-planners can defeat an opponent with vastly superior resources by inducing those decisions that ensure defeat.
Intelligence wars are waged in plain sight and under the cover of widely shared beliefs. By manipulating consensus opinion, such wars can be won from the inside out by inducing a people to freely choose the very forces that imperil their freedom. Thus in the Information Age the disproportionate power wielded by those with outsized influence in media, pop culture, think tanks, academia and politicsdomains where Zionist influence is most rampant.
Induced beliefs act as a force-multiplier to wage intelligence wars from the shadows. At the operational core of such warfare are those masterful at anticipating the mark’s response to a provocation and incorporating that response into their arsenal. For those who wage war in this fashion, facts are only a barrier to overcome. For those nations dependent on facts, the rule of law and informed consent to protect their freedom, such insider treachery poses the greatest possible threat to national security.
America is far less safe than before 9-11. Tel Aviv clearly intends to continue its serial provocations, as evidenced by its ongoing expansion of the settlements. Israel has shown no sign of a willingness to negotiate in good faith or to take the steps required to make peace a possibility. To date, Barack Obama appears unwilling to name senior appointees who are not either Zionists are strongly pro-Israeli. The greatest threat to world peace is not terrorists. The greatest threat is the U.S.-Israeli relationship.
In the same way that a decade of pre-staging was required to plausibly induce the U.S. to invade Iraq, a similar strategy is now underway to persuade the U.S. to invade Iran or to support and condone an attack by Israel. The same duplicity is again at work, including the high profile branding of the requisite Evil Doer. From its very outset, the Zionist enterprise focused on hegemony in the Middle East. Its entangled alliance with the U.S. enabled this enterprise to deploy American might for that purpose.
Only one nation had the means, motive, opportunity and stable nation state intelligence required to take the U.S. to war in the Middle East while also making it appear that Islam is the problem. If Barack Obama continues to defer to Tel Aviv, he can rightly be blamed when the next attack occurs in the U.S. or the European Union featuring the usual orgy of evidence pointing to a predetermined target. Should another mass murder occur, that event will be traceable directly to the U.S.-Israeli relationship and the failure of U.S policy-makers to free America from this enemy within.
Joachim's Comment
It is necessary to start thinking in terms of transnational politics instead of local, national, and international politics. A new framework should elucidate both transnational Jewish Zionist and transnational Arab-Islamic politics as well as other similar transnational political situations: Collision: Jewish-Zionist, Arab-Islamic Transnational Politics.
It is simply too limiting to believe that national consolidation must be territorial and linguistic as has generally been the case with modern European nationalism. Historically Jews constituted a metapopulation (a term from statistical population biology) united by an international trade network and commitment to a sacred law that served as a sort of universal commercial code. As faith declined in Europe, Jewish leaders looked for other means to maintain Jewish social economic networks of trust in order to maintain Jewish incomes. Commitment to building a Jewish state in Palestine was one of several proposed substitutes for commitment to sacred law.
From this standpoint, consolidating a virtual Jewish national consciousness is a Jewish Diaspora phenomenon that defines modern Jewish transnational politics: Herzl and Normalizing Jewish Power, Introduction: The Virtual Colonial Motherland as Political Innovation.
The concept of virtual state consolidation explains
- why there was an Israel Lobby for approximately four decades before there was a State of Israel and
- why Israeli politics often seems so much less important than Jewish Diaspora politics: peninsulares versus criollos.
Yet the crime perspective has much truth.
A lot of the behavior to which Jeff refers was normal operating procedures in international Jewish trade networks. As commercial codes evolved, as transparency became an economic requirement, and as the Jewish economic niche declined, traditional economic corruption, collusion, conspiracy, and manipulation became criminalized but hardly vanished. Hence a large part of the problem of traditional mathematical economics arises from a sort of conscious obliviousness to a major part of human economic activity.
For this reason game theoretic, behavioral, and other innovative approaches to economic seem quite promising: Economics of Intangibles, Conspiracies, Corruption.
Yet they are hardly as scary as some of the articles about Aumann suggest.
Game theory can tell us a lot about situations where multiple opponents are pitted against one another.
If Jeff and I each have a dollar and if we each bet a penny on successive coin tosses, eventually one of us will have two dollars (Gambler's Ruin), but game theory does not say which player will win even if in a more complex situation it might suggest strategies for cheating.
Back in the late 80s and early 90s I spent a lot of time in collaborating with an MIT research group looking at game theoretic approaches to investment strategies in the movie industry. There is at least one venture firm that has used some of that research very effectively. To use the strategy a fund has to have at least $200 million, and the strategy won't work in the absence of good screen writing, directing, acting, marketing, distribution, etc.
Herein lies one key to Israel Lobby success -- thorough mobilization and organizing that brings money and diverse skills together to work on numerous projects: Introduction: The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
An ability quickly to seize opportunities compliments good organizing. Zionists have become ever more involved in the Afpak region at least since 1974 when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto innaugurated the Pakistani nuclear program. When the founder of Arab Jihadism the Palestinian scholar Abdullah Azzam started to recruit Palestinians for the struggle against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Mossad probably assassinated him in Peshawar while it probably increased its surveillance in the region as Pakistan came closer to developing a nuclear device.
After the assassination of Azzam, Usama Bin Ladin became the primary leader of Arab Afghans, but there really is nothing in the way of a credible trail of evidence to connect UBL to attacks on US African embassies, on the USS Cole, or on 9/11.
Nowadays, the US government believes the Pakistani Khalid Shaikh Muhammad was the planner of 9/11, but he had one at most two brief meetings with UBL while religiously and ethnically he simply was not the sort of person with whom UBL would collaborate. Afghanistan and UBL almost certainly had as little connection to 9/11 as Iraq did, and there is no reason to take seriously KSM's confession obtained under torture.
In the 90s martyrdom operations were only common in the Palestinian-Israeli, the Russian-Chechen, and the Tamil-Sinhala conflicts while there were occasional armed suicide attacks associated with the Kashmir conflict.
Zionists had already had a lot of success in creating disdain for Palestinian martyrdom attacks, and there was a growing Muslim population becoming every angrier at the USA for its hypocritical support of the State of Israel.
American and Israeli Zionists feeling threatened by the growing and ever more vocal American Muslim population were desperately looking for ways to extend that anti-Palestinian animosity to all Muslims and primarily to American Muslims, Muslim investors (who could compete with Jewish investors), and Muslim philanthropists (who could compete with Jewish philanthropists).
Applying well-developed Zionist mobilizing and organizing skills to provoking angry Muslims into attacking the USA fits in well with historic Zionist opportunism and the record of Zionist false flag operations that go back at least as far as the Special Night Squads of the 1930s.
It probably does not have much connection to game theoretic approaches to stealth warfare, but one can almost visualize Zionist intelligence agents trying to find a way to add the icing to the cake by creating an Ann Frank for the war they were trying to foment between the US and the Islamic world when some asset reported the presence of Danny Pearl in Pakistan on a quest to gather information on the shoe bomber. It was probably a simple matter for an agent provocateur to pass along some information little known beyond DP's family and the Israeli government in order to enrage DP'S captors into beheading him. (For other musings on DP, see Robert Lindsay: Daniel Pearl’s Dad Takes On Anti-Zionism.)
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