Dishonesty about 9/11 motives robs Americans

Dishonesty about 9/11 motives robs Americans of the freedom to decide for ourselves if we want to put our lives at risk over specific foreign policies.

The latest attempt to dupe Americans about why we were attacked on 9/11 comes from Brendan O'Neill, a writer based in London, in his article The Shocking Truth About Osama bin Laden Apparently, he reads our blogs.

Here is my email in response:

Brendan,

You wrote, "Here's a more plausible account: Numerous commentators in the West presumed that 9/11 was payback for American policy in the Middle East, and especially its support for Israel against Palestine, so bin Laden, previously a Saudi obsessive, adopted those arguments as his own. Even before 9/11, Al Qaeda's occasional nods to Palestine were at best a cynical attempt to connect with the Arab masses through the Arab media. Bin Laden’s justifications for 9/11 also changed in tune with Western theories."

What motivated you to write such a thing? Bin Laden has been clear and consistent for years. Your "more plausible account" is absurd. Your nonsense is as irritating as the crap about "controlled demolition" of the World Trade Center. You seem to resent that "numerous commentators" correctly identified the motives that bin Laden has been clearly stating for years. Could it have been more crystal clear? "The International Islamic Front for Jihad against the U.S. and Israel has issued a crystal-clear fatwa calling on the Islamic nation to carry on jihad aimed at liberating holy sites. The nation of Muhammad has responded to this appeal. If the instigation for jihad against the Jews and the Americans in order to liberate Al-Aksa Mosque and the Holy Ka'aba Islamic shrines in the Middle East is considered a crime, then let history be a witness that I am a criminal." - Osama bin Laden May 1999

"Your position against Muslims in Palestine is despicable and disgraceful. America has no shame. ... We believe that the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. Nothing could stop you except perhaps retaliation in kind. We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets, and this is what the fatwah says ... . The fatwah is general (comprehensive) and it includes all those who participate in, or help the Jewish occupiers in killing Muslims. " - Osama bin Laden May 1998

"For over half a century, Muslims in Palestine have been slaughtered and assaulted and robbed of their honor and of their property. Their houses have been blasted, their crops destroyed. And the strange thing is that any act on their part to avenge themselves or to lift the injustice befalling them causes great agitation in the United Nations which hastens to call for an emergency meeting only to convict the victim and to censure the wronged and the tyrannized whose children have been killed and whose crops have been destroyed and whose farms have been pulverized " - Osama bin Laden May 1998

These statements are all before 9/11.

Your attempt to deny the 9/11 motives is insulting and manipulative. The crystal clear 1998 Fatwa says: "No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone: "
It then lists three clear motives:

1. U.S. occupation of the Arabian Peninsula.

"First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless."

2. U.S. aggression against the Iraqi people.

"Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors."

3. U.S. support of Israel.

"Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula."

You article misrepresents the history. What is your agenda? I live in America and I don't appreciate someone trying to con me and my fellow citizens about why our lives are being threatened. Don't try to rob Americans of the freedom to decide for ourselves if we want to put our lives at risk over specific foreign policies.

Look at the facts. The 9/11 Commission reported on the motive of the "mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks." On page 147 of the 9/11 Commission Report, it says "By his own account, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel. "" see Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's motivation was his objection to the US foreign policy of supporting Israel said the final report of the Sept. 11 Commission.

The two terrorist pilots who crashed the two planes into the WTC shared the same motivation. Mohammed Atta, who flew into WTC 1, was described by one Ralph Bodenstein, who traveled, worked and talked with him, as "most imbued actually about Israeli politics in the region and about U.S. protection of these Israeli politics in the region. And he was to a degree personally suffering from that." Marwan al-Shehhi, the pilot who flew into WTC 2, was focused on the same thing, "when someone asked why he and Atta never laughed, Shehhi retorted,"How can you laugh when people are dying in Palestine?"" - page 162 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT

These facts point to a motive for attacking the WTC in 2001 that is consistent with the motive expressed by terrorists in a letter sent to the New York Times after the 1993 bombing attack of the WTC, "We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region." Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 WTC bomber, was motivated to attack the US because of US support of Israel: He had no other motivation, no other issue.

It is also the same motive that Mir Aimal Kasi had for killing CIA employees Frank Darling and Lansing Bennett outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia in 1993 . Mir Aimal Kasi said, "What I did was a retaliation against the US government for American policy in the Middle East and its support of Israel."

http://www.representativepress.org/whylie.html
http://www.representativepress.org/1998Fatwa.html
http://www.representativepress.org/Motivesfor911.html
http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/04/main-issue-was-us-support-of-israel.html
http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2005/08/gorilla-in-room-is-us-support-for.html
http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2005/09/no-other-motivation-no-other.html
http://www.representativepress.org/BowingDebunksExplosives.html
http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/05/911-conspiracy-people-are-still-at-it.html

We don't deserve to be lied to. You should do the right thing and apologize to your readers for either being ignorant or dishonest. To deceive people about why their countrymen have been killed and to dupe others into continuing to put their lives at risk over policies that you protect is one of the lowest things a person can do. Perhaps you can suggest to Reason that my letter be run as a rebuttal column for which I could get paid. I need money to get the facts out to the public and undo the damage people like you have done.

-Tom

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