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<br>I never heard of Guernica Magazine, so I suppose there's some slight chance<br>it's a hoax. <br><br>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><a href="http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/2652/noam_chomsky_my_reaction_to_os/">http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/2652/noam_chomsky_my_reaction_to_os/</a></p>
<br> It’s
increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination,
multiply violating<BR>elementary norms of international law. There appears
to have been no attempt to <br><BR>apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably
could have been done by 80<BR>commandos facing virtually no
opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who<BR>lunged towards them.
In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects<BR> are apprehended
and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the<BR> head
of the <span class="caps">FBI,</span> Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive <br><BR>investigation in history, the <span class="caps">FBI </span>could say no more than that it “believed” that the<BR> plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the <span class="caps">UAE </span>and
Germany. What <br><BR>they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t
know 8 months earlier, when <br><BR>Washington dismissed tentative offers by the
Taliban (how serious, we do not know, <br><BR>because they were instantly
dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented <br><BR>with
evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama
was <br><BR>simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we
quickly learned that <br><BR>the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”<br>
<br> Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin
Laden’s “confession,”<BR> but that is rather like my confession that I won
the Boston Marathon. He boasted of <br><BR>what he regarded as a great
achievement.<br>
<br>
There is also much media discussion of Washington’s anger that Pakistan
didn’t turn<BR> over bin Laden, though surely elements of the military and
security forces were aware<BR> of his presence in Abbottabad. Less is said
about Pakistani anger that the <span class="caps">U.S. </span>invaded <br><BR>
their territory to carry out a political assassination. Anti-American
fervor is already very <br><BR>high in Pakistan, and these events are likely to
exacerbate it. The decision to dump<BR> the body at sea is already,
predictably, provoking both anger and skepticism in much<BR> of the Muslim
world.<BR><br><BR>
We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos
landed at <br>George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his
body in the Atlantic.<br> Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin
Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but<br> uncontroversially the “decider”
who gave the orders to commit the “supreme <br>international crime differing
only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself <br>the
accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for
which Nazi <br>criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths,
millions of refugees,<br> destruction of much of the country, the bitter
sectarian conflict that has now <br>spread to the rest of the region.<br>
<br>
There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just
died <br>peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine”
that societies that<br> harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists
themselves and should be treated<br> accordingly. No one seemed to notice
that Bush was calling for invasion and<br> destruction of the <span class="caps">U.S. </span>and murder of its criminal president.<br>
<br>
Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so
profound, <br>throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they
are glorifying bin<br> Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance
against genocidal invaders.<br> It’s like naming our murder weapons after
victims of our crimes: Apache, <br>Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were
to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”
There is much more to say, but even the most obvious and elementary facts <br><BR>should provide us with a good deal to think about.<BR><br><BR><br><BR>----end of Chomsky statement---<br><BR><br><BR><br><BR>Last fall Dr. Chomsky told Iranian TV that at the time of the attack on Afghanistan,<BR>the US had no evidence that al Qaeda had done 9/11. There's a good 5-minute <br><BR>video about that here:<BR>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mprzq1mA9Jk">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mprzq1mA9Jk</a></p>
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