Addendum to Whodunnit?

Indirectly and by coincidence, a recent item at Information Clearinghouse provided support for my thesis that there was no White House conspiracy to allow 9/11 to happen. It was to be found in an article by military researcher William Arkin. Originally published in the Los Angeles Times on October 27, 2002, it can be found here.

Writing more than a year after 9/11, Arkin describes "what may well be the largest expansion of covert action by the armed forces since the Vietnam era." You can (and should) read the full text yourself, but I wanted to point out two things.

The new apparatus for covert operations and the growing government secrecy associated with the war on terrorism reflect the way the Bush administration's most senior officials see today's world:

First, they see fighting terrorism and its challenge to U.S. interests and values as the 21st century equivalent of the Cold War crusade against communism.

That is, they are, as I described them, "Cold War people with a Cold War mindset." That attitude is reflected clearly in a briefing paper prepared by the Defense Science Board, which proposed

creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group, (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception.

Among other things, this body would launch secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction - that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to "quick-response" attacks by U.S. forces.

Such tactics would hold "states/sub-state actors accountable" and "signal to harboring states that their sovereignty will be at risk," the briefing paper declares.

Grit your teeth and ignore for the moment that what's being suggested is a policy of provoking terrorist attacks in order to give us a better target to shoot at. Look at the attitudes: It's about "states/sub-state actors" and putting at risk the "sovereignty" of "harboring states."

A year after 9/11, a large part of the focus was still on nations rather than groups, on sovereignty, on governments and borders, rather than on networks of like-minded groups. If they were thinking that way even then, how much more likely is it that their thinking was even more rigid on the matter before?