9/11

Biden’s Legacy: Enhancing The ‘State Secrets Privilege’ To Protect The National Security State

December 8, 2024 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Educate! 9/11, Anti-Muslim, CIA, FBI, Guantanamo Bay, Joe Biden, Mass Surveillance

Abu Zubaydah, a high-profile detainee at Guantanamo Bay, was tortured by the CIA. He attempted to subpoena James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, both architects of the agency’s torture program who interrogated him at a black site in Poland. However, the CIA invoked the “state secrets privilege” to block Zubaydah from seeking testimony that could be used in a Polish criminal investigation. The case involving the state secrets privilege was eventually heard by the United States Supreme Court, and the court not only ruled in favor of the CIA but also expanded the privilege.

The CIA And The 9/11 Plea Deals

August 3, 2024 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! 9/11, CIA, Congress, Guantanamo, Mitch McConnell, Plea Bargain

The U.S. Defense Department announced Wednesday that Khalid Shaikh Muhammad (KSM), the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as two co-defendants, had agreed to plead guilty to multiple charges of terrorism and would escape execution, serving consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole instead. The agreement brings to an end, at least for KSM, Walid bin Attash, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, an odyssey through uncharted and unprecedented Defense Department legal territory. The announcement led to mixed feelings from many of the 9/11 victim families, human rights activists and the legal community, and there are certainly lessons to be learned.

Suicide Squad

August 1, 2024 Nick Turse, Consortium News. Educate! 9/11, Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Bin Laden, Health Care, History, Iraq, Iraq War, Saudi Arabia, Suicides, Wars and Militarism

At the end of the last century, hoping to drive the United States from Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden sought to draw in the American military. He reportedly wanted to “bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil,” provoking savage asymmetric conflicts that would send home a stream of “wooden boxes and coffins” and weaken American resolve. As lethal as those Islamist fighters have been, however, another “enemy” has proven far more deadly for American forces: themselves. A recent Pentagon study found suicide to be the leading cause of death among active-duty U.S. Army personnel.

The September 11 Legacy: Forever Wars, Patriot Act, And Loss Of Legal Rights

September 15, 2023 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! 9/11, AUMF, Patriot Act, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

Everyone should know what happened in Washington on September 14, 2001, even though there is an exhortation to remember the attacks which took place on September 11, 2001. On September 14 the Senate and the House of Representatives passed joint resolutions which resulted in the Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001 (AUMF) , which President George W. Bush signed into law on September 18. Just three days after September 11, when senators and members of congress should have been asking hard questions about what happened on that fateful date, they instead chose to give President Bush carte blanche to wage war whenever and wherever he chose.

Teaching September 11

September 13, 2023 Jeremy Stoddard and Diana Hess, Consortium News. Educate! 9/11, Afghanistan, History, Iran, Iraq, Media, Middle East, Propaganda, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

The phrase “Never Forget” is often associated with the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But what does this phrase mean for U.S. students who are too young to remember? What are they being asked to never forget? As education researchers in curriculum and instruction, we have studied since 2002 how the events of 9/11 and the global war on terror are integrated into secondary level U.S. classrooms and curricula. What we have found is a relatively consistent narrative that focuses on 9/11 as an unprecedented and shocking attack, the heroism of the firefighters and other first responders and a global community that stood behind the U.S. in its pursuit of terrorists.

Bombshell Filing: 9/11 Hijackers Were CIA Recruits

April 28, 2023 Kit Klarenberg, The Grayzone. Educate! 9/11, CIA, Coverup, Saudi Arabia

A newly-released court filing raises grave questions about the relationship between Alec Station, a CIA unit set up to track Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his associates, and two 9/11 hijackers leading up to the attacks, which was subject to a coverup at the highest levels of the FBI. Obtained by SpyTalk, the filing is a 21-page declaration by Don Canestraro, a lead investigator for the Office of Military Commissions, the legal body overseeing the cases of 9/11 defendants. It summarizes classified government discovery disclosures, and private interviews he conducted with anonymous high-ranking CIA and FBI officials. Many agents who spoke to Canestraro headed up Operation Encore, the Bureau’s aborted, long-running probe into Saudi government connections to the 9/11 attack.

America Plea Bargains For Its Crimes Of Torture

March 28, 2022 John Kiriakou, Scheer Post. Educate! 9/11, Al-Qaeda, C.I.A., Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights, Terrorism, Torture

The Guardian reported last week that a recently-declassified CIA Inspector General’s report from 2008 found that CIA officers at a covert detention site in Afghanistan used a prisoner, Ammar al-Baluch, as a “training prop,” taking turns smashing his head against a plywood wall and leaving him with permanent brain damage. Baluch is currently one of five defendants before a military tribunal at the US military prison at Guantanamo charged with participating in the planning for the September 11 attacks. The case has been stuck in the pre-trial phase for 10 years, in part because much of the information that the government wants to use against the defendants was collected using torture.

Biden’s $7 Billion Afghan Heist

February 17, 2022 Cheryl Benard, Medea Benjamin And Masuda Sultan, Responsible Statecraft. Educate! 9/11, Afghanistan, Joe Biden, US Imperialism, US Sanctions

With his Executive Order redefining Afghanistan’s Fiscal Reserve as a slush fund to be disbursed on his whim and with the stroke of his pen, President Biden has taken what may well be the final step in an experiment gone amok. The U.S. first attempted to make Afghanistan into a Western democracy, instead installed a kleptocracy, made Afghans endure 20 years of violence and then left in a whirlwind of chaos. With Biden’s latest move to deprive Afghanistan of its monetary reserves, the nation is likely to come full circle, turning once again into a failed state that, in the absence of economic recovery, will become a breeding ground for extremism and the recruitment of terrorists.

Durban And 9/11

September 19, 2021 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. Educate! 9/11, Durban, Racism, Wars and Militarism

The World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) was a watershed conference for a number of reasons. Coming at the end of a decade-long series of gatherings of global civil society sponsored by the United Nations, the WCAR represented a continuation of a progressive trend, which brought thousands of activists together to participate in the NGO forum of a UN gathering and to participate, in a much-limited manner, in the official State proceedings. However, from the time that the WCAR was announced, it also became clear that this conference would be different. The explosive nature of the WCAR process became apparent at the first world preparatory meeting of activists and State representatives in Geneva in 1999.

20 Years Of Post-9/11 Amnesia

September 16, 2021 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! 9/11, Afghanistan, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

The constant demand that we “Never forget!,” the events of September 11, 2001 is rather laughable. Forgetting is difficult after enduring 20 years of war propaganda. News stories about that day are plentiful albeit useless, that is to say they add nothing to our understanding of why the U.S. was attacked and depend upon sentiment, jingoism, and tried and true claims of exceptionalism to maintain fear, hatred, and support for war. The aftermath of September 11 gets surprisingly short shrift but it is just as important as the who, what, when, where, why, and how of that date. It was just three days later that the Senate and House of Representatives voted to begin what are now called the forever wars. On September 14, 2001 California’s congresswoman Barbara Lee cast the lone vote against the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Congress Responded To 9/11 By Giving The White House A Blank Check

September 15, 2021 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Educate! 9/11, George W. Bush, Pentagon Budget, Wars and Militarism

The authorization for military use of force (AUMF), which gave President George W. Bush’s administration a blank check for war after the September 11th attacks, still has not been repealed. On September 14, 2001, Representative Barbara Lee cast the sole vote in the House of Representatives against the AUMF resolution. “However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint,” Lee declared on the House floor. “Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, let us step back for a moment. Let us just pause for a minute and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control.” But very few representatives and senators contemplated what could go wrong if they voted for the resolution.

Calculating The Full Cost Of War

September 14, 2021 Suzanne Gordon, The American Prospect. Create! 9/11, Afghanistan War, Veterans, Veterans Health Administration

The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks that were used to justify multiple Middle Eastern interventions is a fitting occasion to consider the ultimate cost of military combat. Thanks to advances in military medicine, soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan have had a much higher survival rate, recovering from wounds that would have been fatal decades earlier in Vietnam. As a result, far more post-9/11 combat veterans carry wounds of war, both visible and invisible, for the rest of their lives. Many news reports cite the trillions of dollars that have been spent directly by the Department of Defense and related agencies on two simultaneous occupations and other global war on terror operations.

Never Forget: Lessons Of The Post-9/11 Warpath

September 14, 2021 AbMartin, Empire Files. Resistance Report 9/11, Afghanistan, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

As the US Empire tries to leave its 9/11 warpath on Afghanistan & Iraq in the past, Abby Martin reviews the core lessons. "We've witnessed a striking conclusion to the Afghanistan War, where for twenty years the US fought to make the country a neo-colony for bases and resource extraction only to suffer a historic embarrassment. Two trillion dollars and tens of thousands of lives lost couldn't tamp down an insurgency that was bred by the CIA decades prior. As the war will fade into memory for most Americans, the Biden administration and the US government as a whole is already starting to rewrite the true legacy of the occupation. They want you to forget the real lessons of the post-9/11 warpath. Historical amnesia is the doorway to the new wars they want to wage."

Report: State Of Insecurity – The Cost Of Militarization Since 9/11

September 14, 2021 Lindsay Koshgarian, Ashik Siddique, And Lorah Steichen, IPS. Educate! 9/11, Pentagon Budget, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

Twenty years after 9/11, the war on terror has remade the U.S. into a far more militarized actor, both around the world and at home. The human costs of this evolution are many — including mass incarceration, widespread surveillance, the violent repression of immigrant communities, and hundreds of thousands of lives lost to war and violence. But of course, this militarization also has financial costs too. Over 20 years, the U.S. has spent more than $21 trillion on militarization, surveillance, and repression — all in the name of security. These investments have shown us that the U.S. has the capacity and political will to invest in our biggest priorities. But the COVID-19 pandemic, the January 6 Capitol insurrection, wildfires raging in the West, and even the fall of Afghanistan have shown us that these investments cannot buy us safety.

A 9/11 Excerpt From ‘The Management Of Savagery’

September 13, 2021 Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone. Educate! 9/11, CIA, Saudi Arabia, US Empire

Two hours’ drive from Kandahar, in the southern Afghan desert city where the Taliban were born and where Osama bin Laden maintained his operational base, a February 2001 wedding ceremony became the stage for bin Laden’s first public appearance in several years. Seated in the shade of palm trees was the Al Qaeda leader’s seventeen-year-old son, Mohammed, his father’s personal protector and likely successor. To his left was Mohammed Atef, an Egyptian comrade of Zawahiri who acted as the chief military strategist of Al Qaeda—the brains behind its operations. To Mohammed’s right sat his father, who smiled proudly as his son prepared to marry Atef’s fourteen-year-old daughter. Ahmad Zaidan, a correspondent for the Qatari outlet Al Jazeera, was ferried to the wedding with a camera crew in an effort to provide bin Laden with the publicity he had been denied by the Taliban.

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