Two Years After 9/11: 25 Things We Now Know

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught government & international relations at various universities, was a writer-editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly two decades, and is co-editor of the progressive political website www.crisispapers.org

Last year, close to the time of the first anniversary of the 2001 terror attacks, I wrote "Twenty Things We've Learned One Year After 9/11." Now we're approaching the second anniversary, and it's time for an update.

Things we could only speculate about a year ago have taken place - to name just three: an invasion and occupation of Iraq (based on misleading intelligence and outright lies), an administration that may have committed the treasonous act of deliberately revealing the identity of a CIA agent, and shocking revelations about the computer-screen voting system now being put into place around the country for the 2004 election.

The list below can be used both as a reminder to all of us why we're fighting this fight, and as a place to start from when organizing and talking to others about why you will be voting for someone other than George W. Bush in the presidential race next year.

The Iraq War

1. We know that a cabal of ideologically motivated Bush officials, on the rightwing fringe of the Republican Party, were calling for a military takeover of Iraq as early as 1991. This group included Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Woolsey, Bolton, Khalizad and others, all of whom are now located in positions of power in the Pentagon and State Department.

They helped found the Project for The New American Century (PNAC) in 1997; among their recommendations: "pre-emptively" attacking other countries devoid of imminent danger to the US, abrogating agreed-upon treaties when they conflict with US goals, making sure no other country (or organization, such as the United Nations) can ever achieve parity with the US, installing US-friendly governments to do America's will, using tactical nuclear weapons, and so on. In short, as they put it, the goal is "benevolent global hegemony."

All of these extreme suggestions, once regarded as lunatic, are now enshrined as official policy in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, published by the Bush Administration in late 2002.

2. We know that Bush and his highest officials - notably Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, and, to a lesser extent, Powell - lied outrageously about Iraq's weapons capabilities in order to get their war plans endorsed by the Congress and the American people. The biggest of many whoppers involved were the made-up stories about nuclear "mushroom clouds" over America, unleashed by the Iraqi drone air force.

These lies have fooled many Americans, but other countries, especially in Europe, smelled the rotten evidence and the imperial ambitions and would have nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, denouncing the Bush Administration to its face. Up to 10 million citizens (mostly organized via the internet) marched worldwide on the same day to try to stop the invasion before the war had even started; something that had never happened before in world history.

3. We know that Rumsfeld wanted to move on Iraq just hours after 9/11, even though he was informed that it was an al-Qaida operation and that there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement. When the CIA and other intelligence agencies said the same thing about a supposed al-Qaida link - and Iraq's alleged nuclear program and other WMD - Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence-gathering unit inside the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans, and installed a number of PNAC hardliners to tell him what he wanted to hear. Their cooked-books "intelligence" became the basis for invading Iraq.

4. We know that Bush and his highest officials, their lies having been exposed by their own contradictory words, first decided to blame others: The patsy this time was the CIA, and Tenet fell on his sword, sort of, in accepting the blame. (Angry elements in the CIA then began leaking damning information about administration involvement in other WMD lies.)

When Karl Rove and the others snookered the media into focusing on 16 words in Bush's State of the Union Speech about supposed uranium sales to Iraq, they looked at the polls showing a majority of Americans not caring about the lies as long as the evil Saddam had been removed, and began telling even more whoppers. (Meanwhile, in the UK, Tony Blair could lose his job because he lied even more blatantly than did Bush, if such is possible; he trumpeted that Iraq could launch biochemical agents at British sites within 45 minutes, and now he's been found out as well.)

5. We know that Bush and Blair felt compelled to "sex up" their justification for going to war against Iraq by focusing on the WMD issue because the real reason - to bomb and take over a weak nation in that area of the world as a demonstration warning to other Middle East, oil-rich countries that they'd better come on board or face the same consequence - would never win the support of the American people. Americans aren't big on overt imperial rule, and the bullying and arrogant militarism that go with such rule, preferring more subtle means of influence and control.

Read the other twenty at Dr. Weiner's website, The Crisis Papers.