Underreported Stories You Need To Know

Some of today's newspapers must be trying to protect the public from dangerous information. Following are some of the news stories crucially underreported:

* The two biggest sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East in our time are Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; the Saudi ruling coterie, or part of it, finances training, arms and development at facilities provided and staffed by Pakistan. The kidnapping-murder in Pakistan of a Wall Street Journal reporter is only the most recent incident in a pattern reaching back more than a decade.

* Bombing pitiful Afghanistan is not fighting terrorism. Afghanistan (called "Pipeline-istan" for good reason) is a big vacant lot dominated by squabblers with guns; its training camps and similar operations were staffed, equipped and financed largely by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

* That fourth plane attacking on September 11, 2001, brought down in Pennsylvania by passengers, was almost undoubtedly headed for the Pentagon. For years, hijacker/bombers have struck in pairs where possible, with symmetrically paired, parallel attacks either on two targets simultaneously or paired on a single target. They did so in New York, and they intended to do so in Washington. Why the psychological denial that the Pentagon was a target?

* After spending a trillion dollars, we've come up with a military that -- so we are given to understand, at least by implication -- did not know the Pentagon could be a target. Is anyone asking why the air space over it was not defended? Didn't they have radar? Satellite surveillance? Video monitors?

* Those anthrax letters were sent by someone who had anthrax samples and a grudge. Forget about looking for Dr. No. Instead, check out every military-installation employee who (a) received the anthrax vaccine but (b) didn't like it. Stealing at military installations is easy; courts-martial for theft are conducted every year. Find the guy with the attitude, "Hey, let's see whether this [expletive] vaccine works . . ."

* The investigation of the September attacks and the anthrax mailings has been coordinated at the national level directly from the White House. Not the FBI; the White House. White House operatives are good at what they do -- manipulating the press, the opinion polls, Congress, and judges -- but they are not trained investigators. This is one reason why the anthrax mailer, the Taliban's Mullah Omar, and Osama bin Laden have not been found.

* Another reason is that Osama bin Laden is dead. You don't bounce back from renal shutdown, and anyway if he were alive, we'd be hearing from him. This tidbit has been outed in Pakistan, which supported bin Laden and the Taliban. Here, it was fed to the supermarket tabloids.

* Osama bin Laden did not "mastermind" the September attacks. Virtually no Arabic writer considers him a mastermind; his "nuclear weapons" documents turned out to be a well-known Internet hoax. His pleased claim of responsibility was the shallow tactic of a dying man.

* The September 11 attacks were halfbaked and vicious, but they were neither random nor "symbolic." A bunch of young Saudi (mostly) wannabe professionals went for broke trying to knock out the US stock market and the Pentagon. Even President Bush has said that the attackers were trying to destroy the markets.

* The attacks of September 11 were supported, passively and otherwise, by the so-called secret services of our allies. Terrorist operations throughout the Middle East and Europe for years have been enabled or supported or carried out by the secret service of Pakistan, the Gulf nations, Russia and Israel. Forget the shortcut analysis of "religious fundamentalism," and start looking into agency complicity.

* The brownshirt phrase "Homeland Security" was invented well before September 11. Some sources for it were the Anser Institute for Homeland Security, in northern Virginia, the rightwing think tank CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies, funded partly by Richard Mellon Scaife), and the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Insight Magazine. The Anser Institute - a nonprofit, despite its patents and its large government contracts - and Insight Magazine were touting "Homeland Security" and a "second Pearl Harbor," and spending on same, before September 11.

* The attacks of September 11 were not an "act of war," they were a mass crime. Calling them acts of war gives them undeserved dignity; calling them mass murder, or major crime - and, as the United Nations calls them, a breach of security - would enable investigation. Calling them "war" prevents investigation under a "wartime" guise of secrecy.

* We're not at war. If we were at war, the CIA wouldn't be funneling self-justificatory articles through one of the most visible reporters in the US (Bob Woodward of Woodward and Bernstein), purporting to show the innermost workings of the CIA and the White House in crisis, to the front page of the Washington Post. They would be security breaches.

* Only Congress has the power to declare war in this country, and it does not have the power to give that power away. --September 17, 2002