Home > Blogger bares Rumsfeld’s post 9/11 orders
Attack-Terrorism Governments USA
by Julian Borger
Hours after a commercial plane struck the Pentagon on September 11 2001 the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was issuing rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of Iraqi involvement, according to notes taken by one of them.
"Hard to get good case. Need to move swiftly," the notes say. "Near term target needs - go massive - sweep it all up, things related and not."
The handwritten notes, with some parts blanked out, were declassified this month in response to a request by a law student and blogger, Thad Anderson, under the US Freedom of Information Act. Anderson has posted them on his blog at outragedmoderates.org.
The Pentagon confirmed the notes had been taken by Stephen Cambone, now undersecretary of defence for intelligence and then a senior policy official. "His notes were fulfilling his role as a plans guy," said a spokesman, Greg Hicks.
"He was responsible for crisis planning, and he was with the secretary in that role that afternoon."
The report said: "On the afternoon of 9/11, according to contemporaneous notes, Secretary Rumsfeld instructed General Myers [the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff] to obtain quickly as much information as possible. The notes indicate that he also told Myers that he was not simply interested in striking empty training sites. He thought the US response should consider a wide range of options.
"The secretary said his instinct was to hit Saddam Hussein at the same time, not only Bin Laden. Secretary Rumsfeld later explained that at the time he had been considering either one of them, or perhaps someone else, as the responsible party."
The actual notes suggest a focus on Saddam. "Best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit SH at same time - not only UBL [Pentagon shorthand for Usama/Osama bin Laden]," the notes say. "Tasks. Jim Haynes [Pentagon lawyer] to talk with PW [probably Paul Wolfowitz, then Mr Rumsfeld’s deputy] for additional support ... connection with UBL."
Mr Wolfowitz, now the head of the World Bank, advocated regime change in Iraq before 2001. But, according to an account of the days after September 11 in Bob Woodward’s book Plan of Attack, a decision was taken to put off consideration of an attack on Iraq until after the Taliban had been toppled in Afghanistan.
But these notes confirm that Baghdad was in the Pentagon’s sights almost as soon as the hijackers struck.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1716842,00.html
Forum posts
14 March 2006, 10:04
According to other evidence, Baghdad was in the neocons’ sights before 9/11.
14 March 2006, 17:11
That is called pre-meditated murder and for that he should go to jail for the rest of his life..
15 March 2006, 06:13
Yes, and all wishful thinking.
There is no one on earth that can bring these people to justice.
These people have not only destroyed Iraq but the history of where peoples of other lands came from as well. I understand that the U.S. forces destroyed the Iraqi National Library containing some 70 million pieces of text dating back some 6000 years.
How is that for genicide of knowledge?
I have also learned that the Iraqis can no longer grow crops from their own seed stocks as the rules now call for seeds to be purchased from the U.S. firms like Monsanto. Historical Iraq has seen some of first recorded plant cultivation in the history of man — dating back to 8000 B.C.
The Iraqi farmers also cannot save any seeds from year to year (as is custom of farmers from Iraq and other lands) but must buy fresh from U.S. firms. If they do so they are under penelty of laws set by L. Paul Bremer III.
These seeds that America is foisting on Iraq are genetically modified strains that have been shown to be harmful to living things — such as reduced kidney sizes in fetuses and children; complete metabolic breakdown in catepillars, butterflies and raised toxins in birds which feed on them. That is, the plants coming from these seed strains effect the whole food web. An added effect is that these imported seeds will alter the progeny of the native Iraqi seed/plant strains in uncontrollable ways.
So not only is America killing off the living people of Iraq, but they have destroyed a huge knowledge base and is going to destroy the gene pool of native plant strains.
(And here I am not even including the DU contaminated land and crops.)
Has the American street even thought about this — and I don’t mean Wall Street?