harging it with collusion in the September 11th tragedy.

Until today, September 11th conspiracy theories, besides the main theory advocated by the US government that a band of cave dwellers in Afghanistan conspired to carry out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, had been the domain of strange Internet websites, French authors, and the whisperings on the streets of many world capitals.

But no longer.

Now, an experienced politician who was at the highest levels of power in the UK, the staunchest ally of the United States in its war on terrorism, has--in no uncertain terms--accused elements within the US government of foreknowledge of the September 11th attacks and a determination not to stop them in order to implement a pre-planned agenda of domination in the world political stage, the invasion and occupation of Iraq being the most recent element on that agenda.

In response, a US embassy spokesperson in London said Meacher's allegations "would be monstrous, and monstrously offensive, if they came from someone serious or credible."

Not only was Meacher serious and credible enough to have been picked by Tony Blair to serve in his government, and to have been elected by his West Oldham contituency since 1970, but the BBC called him earlier this year the Labor Party's "most experienced minister."

Here is a summary of Meacher's charges in the article:

The blueprint for America's military adventures around the world was contained in documents prepared in September 2000 by the neconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century, which included Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and other Bush luminaries as members. US authorities ignored advance warnings by at least 11 countries. The warnings included a list provided by senior Israeli intelligence that named four of the 9/11 hijackers, but none were arrested.

Plans to crashland airliners into Washington buildings had been known since 1996. In 1999, one such intelligence report warned that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House."

The CIA had a long record, acknowledged by the former head of the US visa bureau in Jeddah, of issuing US visas to unqualified Saudi applicants for terrorism training in the US for the Afghan war. Fifteen of the hijackers had obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia.

When Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested in August 2001, one FBI agent wrote that he may have been planning to crash into the Twin Towers. But the FBI turned down warrant requests to search his computer for information which may have led to other potential hijackers.

Although the first hijacking was reported as early as 8:20 am on September 11th, no fighter planes were scrambled to intercept from Andrews Air Force Base until after the third plane hit the Pentagon at 9:38 am. This violated standard FAA procedures--Meacher quotes an AP report that between September 2000 and June 2001, US fighter aircraft were launched on 67 occasions to chase suspicious planes.

Between September and November 2001, the US actually avoided capturing or killing Usama Bin Laden and senior Al Qaida leaders, despite having had many opportunities.

"The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies," Meacher writes. "By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity."

Meacher concludes that "the 'global war on terrorism' has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project.

Posted by editor at September 6, 2003 08:56 AM | TrackBack

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------