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All They Needed Was A Pretext: War Plans Were Ready Before 9/11

Bush Administration Waited for a Catastrophe

By Fred Goldstein

The latest political crisis of the Bush administration over what it knew about an impending attack on U.S. targets in the late summer of 2001 has commanded the attention of the people. Anti-war activists, especially, are rightfully suspicious and skeptical about the behavior and explanations of the war makers in the White House.

Ever since May 15, when CBS News revealed that the CIA had briefed President George W. Bush last Aug. 6 about possible plane hijackings-- five weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks-- the air has been thick with charges and accusations. They have ranged from negligence to incompetence to bureaucratic rivalry between the FBI and CIA to systemic problems of "not connecting the dots" because the administration did not act on FBI alerts of July 10 and Aug. 13.

It is notable that in this scandal the Democrats have finally broken with the Bush administration--but not over the war. The prospect of the spoils of office in the coming elections has finally overcome their subservience. Their demands for investigations and inquiries dovetail with the demands of sections of the capitalist establishment who are truly appalled and want to get to the bottom of the matter so that it does not happen again.

But the last thing in the world the anti-war movement, or for that matter the workers and the oppressed, should do is follow the path of the Democratic Party leadership and make the issue in this crisis the question of "who knew what, when" about intelligence information. This question sidesteps the most fundamental issue of significance to the vast majority of the people at home and abroad. It also plays into the hands of those who want to strengthen the repressive forces of the state.

The real issue that needs exposure is the conspiracy of the Bush administration and the ruling class behind it to enter a new bloody era of expanding war around the globe. During the debate over what Bush knew and should have done, there have been momentary references to a war plan that was drawn up and on his desk on Sept. 10. This was put forward briefly when National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was defending him, and it has been cited a few times in the big business press, but never really was followed up from an anti-war point of view.

There is little information about this plan, but the veil was slightly lifted in a sanitized version as part of a lengthy series in January in the Washington Post by Bob Woodward and Dan Balz. The series recounted the immediate post-Sept. 11 day-by-day decision-making process in the Bush administration that led to the war on Afghanistan.

CIA TAKES THE LEAD

According to Woodward and Balz, CIA director George Tenet played the lead position in the planning. Tenet was the only holdover from the Clinton administration at such a high level in the Bush administration. He had all the strings to global operations and fit right in with the Bush forces. At a crucial meeting at Camp David on Saturday, Sept. 15, after a series of previous morning meetings of the "war cabinet," Tenet showed up "with a briefcase stuffed with top-secret documents and plans, in many respects the culmination of four years of work.

"The briefing packet he handed to President Bush and other members of the war cabinet carried a cover sheet entitled 'Going to War.' Tenet flipped past the cover to the first page, which read 'Initial Hook: Destroying Al Qaeda, Closing the Safe Haven.' The haven was Afghanistan." (Washington Post, Jan. 31)

The series had explained two days earlier that, "Tenet's concept called for bringing together expanded intelligence- gathering resources, covert action, sophisticated technology, agency paramilitary teams and opposition forces in Afghanistan. They would then be combined with U.S. military power and Special Forces into an elaborate and lethal package.

"Tenet said that the United States already had a 'large asset base,' given the work the CIA had been doing in countries near Afghanistan. "The unmanned Predator surveillance aircraft that was now armed with Hellfire missiles had been operating for more than a year out of Uzbekistan to provide real-time video of Afghanistan. ... In addition the U.S. should seek to work closely with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan to stop the travel of Al Qaeda leaders and 'close all borders.'

"A key portion of Tenet's briefing," continued the Post, "covered operations inside Afghanistan." He described mobilizing the Northern Alliance, which was "a potentially powerful force but was desperate for money, weapons and intelligence." He also described the creation of a "northern front, closing the safe haven," and how the U.S. "would move first against the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif" and open up the border of Uzbekistan.

Tenet also "described a role for the opposition tribes in the southern part of Afghanistan, groups hostile to the northern opposition forces but crucial to the campaign. ... Tenet said the CIA had begun working with a number of tribal leaders in the south the previous year. ... Some would try to play both sides but once the war began, they could be enticed by money, food, ammunition and supplies to join the U.S.-led campaign."

BUSH TAKES PENTAGON OPTION THREE

The Post described how, at the Camp David meeting, "Tenet then turned to another top secret document, called 'Worldwide Attack Matrix,' which described covert operations in 80 countries that were either under way or that he was now recommending. The actions ranged from routine propaganda to lethal covert action in preparation for military attacks.

"The final presentation of the morning came from Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had also brought a big brief case to Camp David." Shelton described three options to Bush, each one more deadly than the last. The third option, which Bush chose, "combined cruise missiles, manned bomber attacks" and "boots on the ground." It also included U.S. Special Forces and possibly Army and Marines being deployed inside Afghanistan.

In other words, Tenet and Shelton described a long-planned, ground and air campaign in all its precision, including the battle of Mazar-e-Sharif- -which later took place, prompting a great massacre carried out by the Northern Alliance. In the campaign in the southern region, the present puppet president, Hamid Karzai, played the key role of liaison with the CIA. The diplomatic groundwork with neighboring states; the use of smart bombs and cruise missiles; the use of the Predator as a key instrument of war; and many other minutiae - all these elements had required lengthy planning.

Condoleezza Rice, referring to the plan when she was defending Bush against charges of negligence, made it appear that it had been hurriedly thrown together as a response to warnings in July and August. Woodward and Balz, however, said they had learned that for several months before Sept. 11, as part of the administration's review of its policy, "Tenet and Rice and other officials had been working on a plan to vastly expand covert action in Afghanistan and throughout the world."

BUSH AT THE CITADEL: PENTAGON'S WAR DREAMS

During the election campaign Bush had given an outline of his belligerent military policy in an infamous speech at the Citadel on Sept. 23, 1999. It was written by Richard Armitage, now undersecretary of state, who was then bucking for the post of secretary of defense. In it Bush foreshadowed the Pentagon's dreams that were to be carried out over the bodies of the Afghan people. Bush spoke of how "our forces in the next century must be agile, lethal, readily deployable, and require a minimum of logistical support. We must be able to project power over long distances, in days or weeks rather than months. Our military must be able to identify targets by a variety of means-from a Marine patrol to a satellite. Then be able to destroy those targets almost instantly, with an array of weapons."

Bush continued, "In the air, we must be able to strike from across the world with pinpoint accuracy-with long-range aircraft and perhaps with unmanned systems."

From this perspective the U.S. destruction of Afghanistan can be viewed as a weapons and strategy testing program for the Pentagon. All the information coming out now about prior warnings of an attack on some U.S. installation only confirms the theory that the warlike group of Bush, Tenet, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, with Colin Powell reluctantly tagging along behind, knew full well that there would be a strike. They were coiled like a spring, waiting for it to happen, so they could use it as a pretext to open a massive worldwide offensive.

RUMSFELD: DISCIPLINE THE WORLD

The Post articles described how "many months earlier, in the formative stages of his new administration, Bush had talked with his prospective secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, about their shared belief that America's deterrent strength had been eroded through misapplication of the country's military power. Rumsfeld recalls saying to Bush that whenever the United States was attacked or threatened, the Clinton administration had followed a pattern of 'reflexive pullback.'

Rumsfeld said he believed that U.S. power was needed to help �discipline the world." They considered President Bill Clinton's 1998 bombing of Afghanistan with 48 cruise missiles and the destruction of a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan with another cruise missile as "weak and provocative," according to the Post. The massive bombing of Belgrade and other Yugoslav cities by Clinton in a flagrant war of aggression was limited child's play to the Bush group, although Tenet was a Clinton appointee.

WAITING FOR A CATASTROPHE

The fact of the matter is that Sept. 11 did not cause the war in Afghanistan. As horrendous as it was, Sept. 11 turned out to be only a pretext, one the Bush forces knew would come sooner or later. They were all cynically waiting for a catastrophe in order to pounce. The war was followed by the declaration of an "axis of evil"- -Iran, Iraq and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

This was followed by the leak of plans called the Bush Nuclear Posture Review, which threaten the development and use of battlefield nuclear weapons. Then came the U.S. backing of Israel's massive offensive against the Palestinian Authority and the attempted destruction of the Palestine national movement.

Meanwhile the FARC liberation force in Colombia that has been fighting the U.S.-backed death squad government for 30 years was declared a "terrorist" organization; $1.3 billion was given to the Colombian government to fight them. Some 3,000 U.S. troops are now on the ground in the Philippines fighting and guiding puppet forces in a war that is really against the liberation forces of the New People's Army; the fight against the miniscule Abu Sayyef group is just a cover for intervention.

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton recently accused Cuba of having the capacity to manufacture and distribute biological weapons material. Washington sponsored a coup d'etat against the popular government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, but it failed. When the smoke cleared after the initial big offensive in Afghanistan, the Pentagon had new military bases in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgizstan.

It has the dominant position in the oil rich region of the Caspian Sea. It has expanded its power to the southern rim of Russia and the southwestern flank of China. And it is in a strategic position to dominate the Arabian Sea and wage long-range war in the Persian Gulf if it has to.

Equally important, the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex got a massive infusion of present and future profits from a trillion-dollar five-year spending plan-a plan which comes at the expense of schools, housing, child care, medical care and every other social need of the workers.

It is only possible to evaluate Sept. 11 fully in light of what followed. To be sure, it is highly probable that the Bush forces had no idea that such devastation to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon would result from sitting and waiting for a military pretext. But as disastrous as those attacks were, with all the death and destruction they caused, the Bush forces went to war not because innocent lives were lost but because they were hell bent on expanding the world domination of U.S. imperialism. They wanted to terrorize the world and send a threatening message of destruction to any government or force that even contemplates resisting that domination.

DON'T FIX THE FORCES OF REPRESSION--FIGHT THEM

Seen in this light, it would be folly to jump on the bandwagon and demand to find out "who knew what" in the government. What they knew is that they wanted to go to war against the oppressed people of the world. If there is going to be any investigation, it should be of the conspiracy to go to war. As far as improving the efficiency of coordination among the FBI, the CIA and the Pentagon, in the name of protecting lives, any such proposal should be rejected out of hand.

The FBI is a proven racist force that was behind the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover waged a vicious campaign against King and the entire civil rights movement. The FBI under President Richard Nixon carried out COINTELPRO, which murdered and framed up Black Panther Party leaders and members. It also attacked the Young Lords, the Chicano movement and the American Indian Movement, sentencing Leonard Peltier to jail for life.

In the 1980s the FBI carried out a campaign of frame-ups against Black elected officials. It is now engaged in a witch-hunt against people of Middle Eastern descent. During the 1950s the FBI carried out a similar witch-hunt against communists and progressives, particularly in the union movement. It is now coordinating with local police departments in an "improvement" of repressive efficiency.

As for the CIA, it is akin to an international Murder Incorporated, carrying out assassinations and attempted assassinations of leaders; overthrowing popular governments from Guatemala to Iran, from Congo to Chile. It was part of the recent coup attempt in Venezuela through the National Endowment for Democracy.

The Pentagon, of course, is the enemy of the world's people. Any effort to improve the "efficiency" of these repressive institutions can only increase their efficiency in repression of the movement worldwide. Not only should the movement shun any attempt to improve these institutions, it should have as its aim to push them back, to interfere with their functioning through mass mobilization against all forms of repression and, ultimately, to break them up and replace them with a popular power.

WASHINGTON, WALL STREET AND THE WORLD TRADE CENTER

As far as protecting the safety of the people in the U.S., it must be recalled that, however misguided and condemnable the Sept. 11 attack was, it was nevertheless the result of decades of aggression against the peoples of the Middle East by the U.S. and its proxy Israel. The U.S. war in the Persian Gulf killed 200,000 Iraqis. The cities of Baghdad and Basra as well as villages and towns were mercilessly bombed. The U.S.-imposed sanctions have killed 1.5 million people, including hundreds of thousands of children.

The U.S. government has backed the hated dictatorship of the feudal monarchy in Saudi Arabia for decades and made the country into an oil and military satellite of Washington and Wall Street. For decades the U.S. backed the hated dictatorial Shah of Iran. Washington has supplied and financed the 50-year enforcement of the cruel Israeli occupation of Palestine, including many massacres of Palestinians carried out by Ariel Sharon. It financed the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon in which 14,000 people died under Israeli bombs.

U.S. oil companies control the vast oil wealth of the Persian Gulf while only a few rich monarchs, emirs and sultans live high and the mass of the people live in poverty. U.S. warships and military aircraft are everywhere threatening all who rebel against this intolerable situation. Under these conditions it is clear that the safety of the people of the U.S. can only be guaranteed by the withdrawal of the U.S. government, its military and the multinational corporations from the region. The safety of the workers here at home can only be guaranteed when the people of the Middle East are safe from U.S. domination.

Via Workers World News Service

Reprinted from the May 30, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper

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