The day Uncle sam created his own Pearl Harbour

Brzezinski wrote in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, “America’s primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space (of Central Asia) and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it.” Brzezinski acknowledged in his book that, “the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public’s sense of domestic well-being.” He also wrote that, “The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.”
In 1999 Andrew Krepinevich, Executive Director of the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, testified before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. He stated that the US faces an “unprecedented challenge”.
“The need to transform our armed forces into a very different kind of military from that which exists today, while sustaining the military’s ability to play a very active role in supporting US near-term efforts to preserve global stability within a national security strategy of engagement and enlargement,” he said.
After advocating a massive re-imagining of the role and nature of US military might, pushing the notion of a “revolution in military affairs” and an acceleration of imperial ambitions, he told the Senate Committee: “There appears to be general agreement concerning the need to transform the US military into a significantly different kind of force from that which emerged victorious from the Cold and Gulf Wars.
“Yet this verbal support has not been translated into a defence program supporting transformation.”
While there is growing support in Congress for transformation, the “critical mass” (for instance, public support) needed to effect it has not yet been achieved.
One may conclude that, in the absence of a strong external shock to the United States — a latter-day “Pearl Harbour” of sorts — surmounting the barriers to transformation will likely prove a long, arduous process. In 1999, Graham Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA’s National Council on Intelligence advocated using Muslim forces to further US interests in Central Asia. He stated that, “The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvellously well in Afghanistan against (the Russians).
“The same doctrines can still be used to destabilise what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.”
In June of 2000, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Pentagon released Joint Vision 2020, outlining the American military strategy that the Department of Defence “will follow in the future.” The emphasis in the report was put on the notion of “Full Spectrum Dominance,” which means “the ability of US forces, operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations.”
Joint Vision 2020 addresses full-spectrum dominance across the range of conflicts from nuclear war to major theatre wars to smaller-scale contingencies. It also addresses amorphous situations like peacekeeping and non-combat humanitarian relief.
The neo-conservative think-tank the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) released a report in September of 2000 called Rebuilding America’s Defences in which they advocated a massive expansion of America’s empire and “full spectrum dominance” as well as the necessity to undertake a “Revolution in military affairs,” and undertake multiple simultaneous wars in different regions of the world.
Several members of the think tank and authors of the report would go on to enter key policy positions within the Bush administration several months later (including, but not limited to Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Zalmay Khalilzad). While acknowledging the massive undertaking this “project” would be, the report stated: “Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event — like a new Pearl Harbour.”
In January of 2001, the Rumsfeld Commission, which was set up to analyse the US National Security Space Management and Organisation, chaired by incoming US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld (who had also been a signatory to and member of the Project for the New American Century at the same time). It advocated an expansion of military capabilities in Space and a total reorganisation of the armed forces and intelligence agencies of the United States. The report stated that:
History is replete with instances in which warning signs were ignored and change resisted until an external, “improbable” event forced resistant bureaucracies to take action. The question is whether the US will be wise enough to act responsibly and soon enough to reduce US space vulnerability.
Or whether, as in the past, a disabling attack against the country and its people — a “Space Pearl Harbour” — will be the only event able to galvanise the nation and cause the US Government to act.
As early as 1998, the President was warned in his CIA daily briefing that, “bin Laden and his allies are preparing for an attack in the US, including an aircraft hijacking.” Norad, the “North American Aerospace Defence command, also conducted an exercise to counter a terrorist attack involving smashing an airplane into a building.”
In August 1999, “the Federal Aviation Administration’s intelligence branch warned of a possible “suicide hijacking operation” by Osama Bin Laden.”
In October of 2000, the Pentagon undertook an emergency response exercise in which “there was a mock terrorist incident at the Pentagon Metro stop and a construction accident,” and it further envisioned a “downed passenger aircraft” in the Pentagon courtyard.
For years, Norad had been conducting military exercises and drills in which it envisioned planes being hijacked and flown into buildings in the United States.
One of the intended targets in the Norad drills was the World Trade Centre. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defence officials said it was unrealistic.
As the Guardian revealed in April of 2004: Five months before the September 11 attacks, US military planners suggested a war game to practise a response to a terrorist attack using a commercial airliner flown into the Pentagon, but senior officers rejected the scenario as “too unrealistic”. In May of 2001, an exercise involving US Central Command, US Special Operations Command and US Joint Forces Command took place in which the military establishment “forecasted” the first war of the 21st century so closely that, “Nostradamus couldn’t have nailed the first battle of the next war any closer than we did,” as articulated by a former top official with the exercise, Dave Ozolek.
The exercise, Unified Vision 2001: Grew out of the realisation that the threat was changing. Ozolek said the scenario was a major regional threat emanating from the Middle East. The scenario called for global deployment into a landlocked country with hostile terrain and a lack of basing and agreements with neighbouring countries for US access.
l ‘‘The threat we portrayed was an unstable and hostile state, but the primary enemy was not the state itself but a transnational actor based out of that area, globally connected, capable and willing to conduct terrorist attacks in the US as part of that campaign.
l “Many of the participants in Unified Vision, 100 days later, were war planners,” Ozolek said. They took their experiences in Unified Vision back to their commands and put them to use as the commands created plans for operations Enduring Freedom and Noble Eagle, he said. They had an idea of the tactics, techniques and procedures needed to operate against such an enemy, he noted.
Ozolek said Unified Vision refutes the pundits who make a living out of critiquing the Department of Defence. “The first thing they like to talk about is that we always dwell on the last battle of the last war,” he said. “What we’re showing them is that this time we got it right: We really were looking at the first battle of the next war, and we nailed it pretty darned close.”
After 9/11, in May of 2002, Condoleezza Rice stated that, “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that   . . . they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.” So Condi is a fool or a liar, because that statement is nothing if not entirely and utterly false. The national security apparatus had fully anticipated, and even war-gamed and drilled this very scenario. It was expected, planned for, and no less with war plans waiting in the wings.
Of critical importance in understanding the events of 9/11 is taking note of the funding for the operation.
The 9/11 Commission itself stated: “to date the US government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance.’’ However, one should take issue with this claim. The fact is that any comprehensive investigation, criminal or otherwise, should pay special attention to the role of financing; follow the money. This is not the only failure of the 9/11 Commission, as has been amply documented.
From its inception, the 9/11 Commission was plagued with problems. The Bush administration had resisted attempts to form a commission to investigate the attacks of 9/11 for over a year, even pressuring Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle not to launch an inquiry. In May of 2002, President Bush voiced his opposition to the formation of a 9/11 commission.
In September of 2002, Bush reversed his previous decision and backed the proposal to form an “independent” commission to investigate the attacks. Within a month of this statement, the White House began undermining the process, as “an almost completed Congressional deal was suddenly undone in October after a Republican lawmaker involved in the final negotiations received a call from Vice President Dick Cheney,” which led to a stalling of the process.
In mid-November, Congress approved the creation of a bi-partisan 9/11 Commission to investigate the attacks, with 10 Congressmen, 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans, with the Chairman appointed by the Bush administration and the Vice Chair appointed by the Democrats.
The Bush administration chose as the Chairman none other than Henry Kissinger, former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State for Nixon and Ford, “a consummate Washington insider,” not to mention war criminal. It is also within this context, of understanding the deep nexus of intelligence and terrorism in international relations and imperial stratagems (that is, strategic deception), that we must view the rise, role, evolution and purpose of the “Global War on Terror,” now in its 9th year, spending trillions to send poor Americans to kill poor Muslims in nations across the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South Asia.

Andrew Gavin Marshall is a Research Associate with the Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG). He is co-editor, with Michel Chossudovsky, of the recent book, “The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.” This is part of his article reproduced from www.globalresearch.ca