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INDIAN LAKE, Pennsylvania—Eyewitness testimonies have generally been excluded from the official version of 9-11. In the Shanksville area, where many residents believe Flight 93 was shot down, there are scores of eyewitnesses whose testimonies contradict the government's claim that courageous passengers fought hijackers, forcing the jetliner to crash rather than be flown into a building.

Some local residents here are deeply offended by the official explanation of what supposedly happened to United Airlines Flight 93, calling it a patriotic pack of lies.

Fearful of retribution from federal agents, many eyewitnesses who spoke with American Free Press asked that their names not be published.

While differing on some details of the plane said to be Flight 93, which passed over Lambertsville, eyewitnesses agree that unexplained military aircraft were in the immediate vicinity when a huge explosive "fireball" occurred at the reclaimed coal mine near Shanksville.

Viola Saylor saw Flight 93 pass very low over her house in Lambertsville, which is a mile north of the official crash site. She was in her backyard when she heard a very loud noise and looked up to find herself "nose to nose" with Flight 93, which she says was flying "upside down" as it passed overhead. It was blue and silver, she said, and glistened in the sunlight. It was so low that it rustled the leaves of her 100-foot maple tree in her yard.

It flew southeastward for about three more seconds and even gained elevation before it crashed over the hill with a "thud," she said.

"It was really still for a second," she said. "Then all of a sudden" she saw a "very quiet" and low-flying white "military" plane coming from the area of the crash site, flying toward the northwest.

"It was flying very fast, like it was trying to get out of here," she said. "A second or two" behind the "military" plane were two other planes, which Saylor described as "normal" planes.

Shown a photograph of a Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt II, a low-flying combat aircraft commonly referred to as a "Warthog," Saylor identified it as the military plane she had seen. She said she recognized the two engines on the rear and the distinctive shape of the cockpit and nose of the plane.

Similar eyewitness reports of military planes over Shanksville on 9-11 remain censored by the U.S. corporate media, although they were reported in two leading British newspapers.

Susan McElwain, a local teacher, also reported seeing a white "military" plane at the scene of the crash before witnessing an explosion. Ms. Mcelwain told The Daily Mirror what she saw:

"It came right over me, I reckon just 40 or 50 feet above my mini-van," she recalled. "It was so low I ducked instinctively. It was traveling real fast, but hardly made any sound.

"Then it disappeared behind some trees. A few seconds later I heard this great explosion and saw this fireball rise up over the trees, so I figured the jet had crashed. The ground really shook. So I dialed 911 and told them what happened.

"I'd heard nothing about the other attacks and it was only when I got home and saw the TV that I realized it wasn't the white jet, but Flight 93.

"I didn't think much more about it until the authorities started to say there had been no other plane. The plane I saw was heading right to the point where Flight 93 crashed and must have been there at the very moment it came down.

"There's no way I imagined this plane—it was so low it was virtually on top of me. It was white with no markings but it was definitely military, it just had that look.

"It had two rear engines, a big fin on the back like a spoiler on the back of a car and with two upright fins at the side," Ms. McElwain said. "I haven't found one like it on the Internet. It definitely wasn't one of those executive jets.

[However,] the FBI came and talked to me and said there was no plane around."

The plane Ms. McElwain describes is similar to the Warthog seen by Saylor over Lambertsville.

"Then [FBI agents] changed their story and tried to say it was a plane taking pictures of the crash 3,000 feet up," she said. "But I saw it, and it was there before the crash, and it was 40 feet above my head. They did not want my story—nobody here did."

The U.S. media has only reported what Bill Crowley, FBI spokesman from Pittsburgh, said about other planes in the area: "Two other airplanes were flying near the hijacked United Airlines jet when it crashed, but neither had anything to do with the airliner's fate."

In an apparent slip of the tongue, Crowley said one of the planes, "a Fairchild Falcon 20 business jet," had been directed to the crash site to help rescuers. The Falcon 20, however, is made by Dassault of France while Fairchild made the A-10 Thunderbolt II, the plane described by Ms. Mcelwain and identified by other eyewitnesses.

The Daily American of nearby Somerset did not want Ms. McElwain's story. In fact, the local paper has never reported that at least 12 local residents saw several unexplained aircraft at the time of the crash.

Asked why the paper has not mentioned these eyewitness reports, managing editor Brian P. Whipkey told AFP "They could not be substantiated."

THE SCREAMING THING

At the horseshoe-shaped Indian Lake, about a mile east of the official crash site, several eyewitnesses recalled hearing "a screaming thing" that "screeched" as it passed over the golf course and lakeside community immediately before a huge explosion shook the ground.

Chris Smith, the groundskeeper at the golf course, said something with a "very loud screeching sound" passed over in the immediate vicinity of the golf course before he heard a huge explosion.

"It was like nothing I've ever heard before," Smith said.

The explosion that followed sounded like a "sonic boom," he said. Smith and others said they felt the shock wave from the explosion.

Smith said he was used to seeing a variety of military aircraft from the nearby Air National Guard bases in Johnstown and Cumberland, Md.

Another groundskeeper said he saw a silver plane pass overhead toward the crash site from the southeast after hearing the loud "screeching" sound. The large silver plane was at an elevation of several thousand feet, he said.

A local veteran who flew combat helicopters in the Vietnam War told AFP that the high-pitched screeching sound was indicative of a missile.

Shown a photo of an A-10 Warthog, the groundskeeper identified it as the kind of plane that circled the crash site at a very low altitude three times before flying away. He recognized the two vertical fins on the rear of the plane. "Nobody was interested in what we saw," he said. "They didn't even ask us."

Mobile telephones and satellite televisions in the Indian Lake area did not work at the time of the crash, he said. Paul Muro was in his yard in Lambertsville when Flight 93 passed overhead. Muro, who lives a half-mile closer to the crash site than Saylor, said the plane was flying rightside up and normally, although it was very low.

Muro told AFP that he also saw a large silver plane approaching from the south, the opposite direction of Flight 93, above the crash site at the time of the explosion.

The silver plane then turned and headed back in the direction from which it had come, he said.

Tom Spinelli works at the Indian Lake Marina. After 9- 11, he told a Pittsburgh television news reporter about the unexplained aircraft he saw. "I saw the white plane," he said.

"It was flying around all over the place like it was looking for something," he said. "I saw it before and after the crash."

AFP visited the marina and asked Spinelli about the planes he saw on 9-11.
"I'm sorry," Spinelli said. 'No comment' is all I can say."

An Indian Lake resident told AFP that federal agents had visited the marina after Spinelli had spoken to the Pittsburgh news channel, TV 4, and told him to stop talking about what he saw.

Local firefighters were also told not to talk about what they had seen at the crash site.

A Palestinian medical source in Qaryout village, south of the West Bank city of Nablus, reported on Wednesday evening that an extremist settlers group stabbed a child to death.

The settlers attacked Yazan Mohammad Mousa, 13 years old, and repeatedly stabbed him, the source stated.

Yazan was with another child he they were attacked. The second child managed to escape unharmed.

A source at a clinic in the neighboring village of Qabalan said that the child died of his wounds at the clinic in spite of extensive efforts to save his life.

The Israeli police believe that the assailants are from Shilu settlement, adjacent to the village.

The Israeli police initiated a probe in the incident, and claimed that the child was involved in a fight with settler youths.

Iraqi experts are saying that the recent car bomb that killed some 18 children was not the work of the anti-occupation fighters but of the U.S. occupation troops.

A traffic lieutenant who asked not to be identified said to a media source that U.S. solders crazily raced out of the street less than a minute before the explosion and that after the blast they did not return to the bomb scene but continued to hurry out of the area.

Furthermore, a captain in the fire department said the explosion was extremely powerful and left a big crater in the earth – something that other car bombs do not do. The captain stated that this was because the bombs used by the Iraqi resistance are made from Russian-made TNT that was in the possession of the Army of the Republic of Iraq before the U.S. occupation.

According to the captain former soldiers are very familiar with the effects of such explosives, and know that during an explosion it blows upwards, not downwards, and for this reason U.S. forces prohibit the taking of photographs from the scenes of attacks where the effects of explosions are obvious.

When the fire captain was asked to clarify his remarks and whether he was accusing the Americans of setting the blast, he replied, "The Traffic Stop Director for the area, Ahmad Kamal was fired because of his statement one hour after the explosion in which he said the U.S. forces were behind the blast. This was regarded as an 'irresponsible statement' by him and attributed to the fact that he had lost control of himself and had a breakdown after the bombing and to the fact that he is a Sunni and does not want to believe that what is happening in Iraq is 'terrorism'."

An independent investigation of the murder last week of 32 Iraqi children has been conducted by a local Iraqi news location (Mufakirat Al-Islam / Islamemo.cc) with results as follows:

http://www.islammemo.cc/taqrer/one_news.asp?IDnews=457

The writing is in Arabic, so I will translate some highlights for non-Arabic speakers:

- All major Iraqi Resistance groups issued joint written communiqué that was distributed on Thursday proclaiming that this operation was not undertaken by any of the groups neither in terms of execution or planning or involvement.

- Interview with local residents of the bombing stated that US forces cordoned off the street under the pretence that a vehicle (a KIA) parked in the street was wired to explode.

- Local residents stated that the US soldiers began handing out candy and schoolbags attracting the children.

- When residents, fearing for their children, asked about the KIA car , the US soldiers said that it was a 'false alarm' and that there was no bomb (but that a couple of US soldiers remained fiddling with the car).

- Children from neighboring streets came upon hearing of the sweets and free bags (as well as a rumor that Pokemon toys were being given out).

- After a period of about 15 minutes from them entering the street, the US forces dumped the remaining toys/sweets in a pile in the middle of the street and frantically drove off hitting 4 children in the process with their vehicle.

- Seconds later, the KIA vehicle exploded killing 32 children and wounding about ten others who were gathered in the street.

- Residents also reported that, contrary to what the US military stated, there were no US casualties or injuries from this blast as the US forces had rushed out of the street just before the explosion took place.

- Information gathered from the Iraqi fire services stated that the explosion did not leave the signature traces of a TNT blast as used by the Resistance (being left over from Russian explosives used by the Iraqi army), as the TNT blast is always outward from the place of explosion and does not leave a crater as this car bomb did.

In conclusion, the evidence and interviews revealed what was obvious from the very start...That this evil crime was perpetrated by occupation forces with the objective of murdering Iraqi children and blaming the national Resistance so as to lessen its base of support (sounds like Vietnam tactics all over again - Phoenix).

May God grant peace to the dead, victory to the Resistance, and shame and retribution to the occupiers and their allies/supporters.

BAGHDAD - Drafting of Iraq's constitution appeared to be nearing its final stage, with preparations underway for an October referendum, as the Pentagon warned that insurgents remain "effective" in their attacks.

Iraqi leaders plan to put the constitution to parliament on August 1, two weeks ahead of a deadline, and hold a vote on it by October 15.

Meanwhile, rebels killed one Iraqi police commando and wounded eight more in a car bomb attack in Baghdad. Two civilians died in a separate attack in the capital.

US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday revealed the contents of the latest Pentagon assessment report on the situation on Iraq, acknowledging that rebels carry out "effective" attacks on Iraqis.

"Terrorists remain effective, adaptable, and intent on carrying out attacks on Iraqi civilians and Iraqi officials," Rumsfeld told reporters.

"Extremists continue to try to foment tension, ethnic strife, and indeed even civil war between Sunni and Shia through murders and attacks on religious sites," he said.

On Wednesday Iraq's constitutional committee chief said the charter would be ready despite the killing Tuesday of two of the Sunni Arab members of the panel, an incident that led to the resignation of four others.

The murders of Dhamin Hussein and Aziz Ibrahim, two of 17 Sunni Arabs working on the constitution, had cast a shadow over the chances of the committee producing the document before August 15, the deadline laid down for parliament to approve it.

"The time is not right for writing the constitution and we think it is not possible for us to continue working in such an atmosphere," said Salah al-Mutlaq, a spokesman for the Sunni-based National Dialogue Council, which groups a number of small Sunni parties.

In Washington, a US State Department spokesman called on Sunnis to rejoin the commission in spite of the killings. [...]

Minority Sunni Arabs, who were dominant under Saddam, and who are considered the backbone of the insurgency, are opposed to a federal Iraq.

The Shiites, who dominate parliament, are pushing to give Islam a prominent role in the constitution, while their Kurds allies want a federal system granting them autonomy and control of the northern oil hub of Kirkuk.

The constitution may turn controversial as reports emerged that it could curb the rights of Iraqi women, in line with Sharia religious law.

The New York Times on Wednesday said the draft curtailed women's rights, imposing Islamic Sharia law in personal matters like marriage, divorce and inheritance, and curbing their representation in parliament.

It said legal rights for women would be guaranteed, providing they do not "violate Sharia," meaning that Shiite women could not marry without their family's permission and that husbands could divorce them simply by saying so out loud three times. [...]

In the predominantly Sunni regions participation in January was low after rebels called for a boycott of the vote.

On the day of the London bombings, President Bush proclaimed: "The war on terror goes on." Through the 2004 campaign, his winning theme was terror. He achieved the logic of a unified field theory connecting Iraq to Afghanistan by threading terror through both, despite the absence of evidence. He insisted that if we didn't fight the terrorists there, we would be fighting them at home. In January, the CIA's thinktank, the National Intelligence Council, issued a report describing Iraq as the magnet and training and recruiting ground for terrorism. The false rationale for the invasion had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. With his popularity flagging, Bush returned to the formulations that succeeded in his campaign.

In Bush's "global war on terror" (Gwot), Iraq and Afghanistan present one extended battlefield against a common enemy - and the strategy is and must be the same. So far as Bush is concerned, it's always either the day after 9/11 or the day before the Iraq invasion. Time stands still at two ideal political moments. But his consequences since are barely managed chaos.

"I was horrified by the president's last speech [on the war on terror], so much unsaid, so much disingenuous, so many half truths," said James Dobbins, Bush's first envoy to Afghanistan, now director of international programmes at the Rand Corporation. Afghanistan is now the scene of a Taliban revival, chronic Pashtun violence, dominance by US-supported warlords who have become narco-lords, and a human rights black hole.

From the start, he said, the effort in Afghanistan was "grossly underfunded and undermanned". The military doctrine was the first error. "The US focus on force protection and substitution of firepower for manpower creates significant collateral damage." But the faith in firepower sustained the illusion that the mission could be "quicker, cheaper, easier". And that justification fitted with Afghanistan being relegated into a sideshow to Iraq.

According to Dobbins, there was also "a generally negative appreciation of peacekeeping and nation building as components of US policy, a disinclination to learn anything from ... Bosnia and Kosovo".

Lack of accountability began at the top and filtered down. On the day of President Hamid Karzai's inauguration in Afghanistan, in December 2001, Dobbins met General Tommy Franks, the Centcom commander, at the airport. As they drove to the ceremony, Dobbins informed Franks of press reports that US planes had mistakenly bombed a delegation of tribal leaders and killed perhaps several dozen. "It was the first time he heard about it. When he got out of the car, reporters asked him about it. He denied it happened. And he denied it happened for several days. It was classic deny first, investigate later. It turned out to be true. It was a normal reflex."

Democracy was an afterthought for the White House, which believed it had little application to Afghans. At the Bonn conference establishing international legitimacy for the Kabul government, "the word 'democracy' was introduced at the insistence of the Iranian delegation", Dobbins points out.

However, democracy - now the overriding rationale for the Gwot - does not include support for human rights. "In terms of the human rights situation in Afghanistan, Karzai is well meaning and moderate and thoroughly honourable," said Dobbins, "but he's overwhelmed."

Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon and the White House removed restraints on torture. "These were command failures, not just isolated incidents ... You didn't have the checks and balances. They've had consequences in terms of public image." In April, the US succeeded in abolishing the office of the UN rapporteur on human rights for Afghanistan.

Dobbins believes that the operation in Afghanistan has improved, but that the administration "hasn't readily acknowledged its mistakes, and corrected them only after losing a good deal of ground, irrecoverable ground ... most of the violence is not al-Qaida type, but Pashtun sectarian violence. It's not international terrorism."

Facts on the ground cannot alter Bush's stentorian summons to the Gwot. "This is a campaign conducted primarily, and should be, by law enforcement, diplomatic and intelligence means," Dobbins said. "The militarisation of the concept is a theme that mobilises the American public effectively, but it's not a theme that resonates well in the Middle East or with our allies elsewhere in the world."

"We're taking the fight to the terrorists abroad, so we don't have to face them here at home," Bush declared in June - and repeated endlessly - finally appearing vindicated with the London attacks. London, like Iraq and Afghanistan, is "there", not "here".

LONDON - Western foreign policy has fueled the Islamist radicalism behind the bomb attacks which killed more than 50 people in London, the British capital's mayor Ken Livingstone said on Wednesday.

Livingstone, who earned the nickname "Red Ken" for his left-wing views, won widespread praise for a defiant response which helped unite London after the bombings. But he has revived his reputation for courting controversy in recent days.

Asked on Wednesday what he thought had motivated the four suspected suicide bombers, Livingstone cited Western policy in the Middle East and early American backing for Osama bin Laden.

"A lot of young people see the double standards, they see what happens in (U.S. detention camp) Guantanamo Bay, and they just think that there isn't a just foreign policy," he said.

Police say they believe there is a clear link between bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the four British Muslims who blew up three underground trains and a double-decker bus on July 7.

"You've just had 80 years of Western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of a Western need for oil. We've propped up unsavory governments, we've overthrown ones that we didn't consider sympathetic," Livingstone said.

"I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s ... the Americans recruited and trained Osama bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to kill the Russians to drive them out of Afghanistan.

"They didn't give any thought to the fact that once he'd done that, he might turn on his creators," he told BBC radio.

Comment: Another distinct possibility is that once the Neocons and their Zionist pals decided to start their war on terror, they needed to blame it all on someone. Who better than CIA asset Bin Laden?

ANGER OVER IRAQ

Prime Minister Tony Blair's government has insisted the bombings have no link to its foreign policy, particularly its decision to invade
Iraq alongside the United States.

But an opinion poll this week showed two-thirds of Britons see a connection between the Iraq war and the bombings. A top think tank and a leaked intelligence memo have also suggested the war has made Britain more of a target for terrorists.

That did not stop the right-wing Daily Telegraph castigating Livingstone, a maverick member of Blair's Labour party who was celebrating London's selection as host of the 2012 Olympics just hours before the bombers struck.

Wednesday's edition of the paper featured a picture of the mayor between photographs of two radical Muslim clerics under the headline: "The men who blame Britain."

Livingstone has made clear he condemns all killing, including suicide bombing. But he is also a long-standing critic of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.

"If you have been under foreign occupation, and denied the right to vote, denied the right to run your own affairs, often denied the right to work, for three generations, I suspect if it had happened here in England, we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves," he said on Wednesday.

Israel's ambassador to London Zvi Heifetz accused the mayor of expressing sympathy for Palestinian militants.

"It is outrageous that the same mayor who rightfully condemned the suicide bombing in London as perverted faith', defends those who, under the same extremist banner, kill Israelis," he said in a statement.

Omar Bakri Mohammed says he would never co-operate with police
Islamic cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed does not believe the London bombers were Muslims, he has told BBC News.

The UK-based Syrian-born preacher said there was no evidence four young Muslim men filmed at a station prior to the attacks were responsible for the bombs.

He condemned "any killing of innocent people here and abroad" but said he would never co-operate with police.

The cleric is facing demands for his deportation after making comments partly blaming Britain for the bombs.

Tabloids

In an interview with BBC News 24, he said the government, the public and the Muslim community were all to blame for not doing enough to prevent the 7 July attacks, in which 56 people died including the four bombing suspects.

And he blamed the tabloid press for "distorting" his views and those of other clerics, including Sheikh Abu Hamza, currently on trial for allegedly soliciting people to murder non-Muslims and inciting racial hatred.

But in another interview, with BBC1's 10 o'clock News, he said there was "no way" he would condemn Osama bin Laden.

He said: "Why I condemn Osama bin Laden for? I condemn Tony Blair, I condemn George Bush. I would never condemn Osama bin Laden or any Muslims."

And he blamed the UK government's "evil foreign policy and the war on terror" for pushing Muslims in "the wrong direction".

Word of God

The London-based preacher told BBC News 24 radical Muslims were "part of the solution" not part of the problem, because they were respected by Muslim youths.

By imposing restrictions on radical clerics, the government had reduced their ability to "hold back" young Muslims angry at events in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, the Palestinian territories and Kashmir, he said.

He distanced himself from "moderate" Muslims, who he said "cannot hold anyone back".

He added that he would not co-operate with the British police, even to alert them if he knew another terror attack was imminent.

"I believe co-operation with the British police would never ever prevent any action like this.

"The youth will leave us. The youth will see us, at that time, the voice, the eyes and the ears of the British government.

"The way to earn the heart of the British youth is by the divine text, to say God say it and ... Mohammed say it, 'Do not attack the people you live among.' Not to tell them, 'Tony Blair say it, the law say it, don't do so.'"

The cleric, who has lived in Britain for 20 years, indicated he would not resist if he were to be deported, saying: "If God destined for me to be deported, or to be imprisoned, nobody can save me."

Tony Blair is to hold talks with police and intelligence chiefs to establish what further powers they need in the wake of the London bombing atrocity.

Mr Blair's spokesman said the meeting was key "in terms of the pace and content" of any new measures.

The prime minister has indicated the issue of using phone intercept evidence in court will be discussed.

The meeting comes exactly two weeks after 52 people plus four bombers died in attacks on three trains and a bus.

Asked about the issue of intercept intelligence by Conservative leader Michael Howard at Wednesday's Prime Minister's Questions, the prime minister said he was happy to consider the idea.

Matter of principle?

"My own view has always been that if we possibly can use intercept evidence, we should because of the obvious value it can provide in certain cases," he told MPs.

"The difficulty is that up to now we have been advised by the security services that the disadvantages outweigh the benefits.

"However, I think in the light of what has happened, it is obviously sensible to go back and consult them again."

He added that as a "matter of principle" he would prefer to have the use of intercept evidence in court proceedings available.

Former M15 officer Michael Flint told BBC News the security services are not equipped to cope with the new kind of threat.

"You need people with ethnic backgrounds to conduct the surveillance operation. The people that they had before, white young males and females, would simply stand out."

He said in the four or five years of the current raised threat there had not been time to build up close links with intelligence services in the Middle East and South Asia.

Professor Anthony Glees, director of Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Services, said intelligence officers needed to return to "elementary tasks" like monitoring subversion, and other "Cold War tactics".

Mr Blair has also said he wants an international conference about issues arising from Islamic extremism.

He told MPs: "Though the terrorists will use all sorts of issues to justify what they do, the roots of it do go deep, they are often not found in this country alone therefore international action is also necessary."

'Indirect incitement'

On Wednesday Home Secretary Charles Clarke revealed he has asked the Home Office, Foreign Office and the intelligence agencies to establish a full database of extremists.

Anyone wanting to enter the UK would be checked against the list - and if they are on it they may be refused permission to enter the country.

In a statement on the aftermath of the London bombing, Mr Clarke also said he planned a new offence of "indirect incitement to terrorism", to add to the current offence of direct incitement.

He said it "targets those who, while not directly inciting, glorify and condone terrorist acts knowing full well that the effect on their listeners will be to encourage them to turn to terrorism".

Mr Clarke told MPs he wanted to apply more widely the home secretary's powers to exclude an individual from the UK if their presence is deemed "not conducive to the public interest".

"I intend to draw up a list of unacceptable behaviours which would fall into this - for example preaching, running websites or writing articles which are intended to foment or provoke terrorism."

The government has also announced that task force to tackle Islamic extremism "head on" is being set up in the wake of the bombings.

On Thursday, victims of the London attacks will be remembered at the British Medical Association in Tavistock Square - where a bus was blown up, killing 14 people.

A service will take place in the courtyard of the BMA's headquarters where many of the injured people were treated.

WASHINGTON - One agency should be in charge of confronting planes that venture into restricted airspace, say congressional investigators who counted 3,400 such intrusions nationwide since the government expanded no-fly zones after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The chairman of a House committee looking into the problem said it was essential for agencies that oversee the skies to work together.

"A quick, coordinated response is absolutely vital if we are faced with a pilot or a plane with hostile intent," Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., said in a statement ahead of a hearing Thursday of his House Government Reform Committee.

The Federal Aviation Administration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the Transportation Security Administration are responsible for making sure pilots don't fly where they shouldn't.

Jets have been scrambled more than 2,000 times since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, including several well-publicized incidents during which private planes strayed into the restricted zone over Washington, causing the evacuation of the White House, the Capitol and other government buildings.

There is no single leader of the airspace security effort, according to a report prepared for the committee by the Government Accountability Office. [...]

Since the terrorist attacks, the government has vastly expanded the amount of airspace it restricts. Aircraft aren't allowed to fly over nuclear power plants, chemical storage areas, military facilities, the nation's capital or any area where the president is traveling, or events such as the Super Bowl.

On Wednesday, the FAA restricted airspace above wildfires in the West to ensure the safety of airborne firefighting efforts.

The report noted that airspace violations are almost all inadvertent, because a pilot is trying to avoid bad weather or doesn't check for notices of the restrictions, as they're required to do.

Pilots flying private planes are responsible for 88 percent of the violations, and most occur in the eastern United States, where air traffic is heavy and there's a lot of restricted airspace.

Almost half the violations occur around Washington, where pilots aren't allowed to fly in an area of about 2,000 square miles unless they have a special identifying signal and maintain radio contact with the FAA.

Three years ago, I wrote an article entitled "Bush's Grim Vision." It began with the observation that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, "George W. Bush has put the United States on a course that is so bleak that few analysts have – as the saying goes – connected the dots. If they had, they would see an outline of a future that mixes constant war overseas with abridgement of constitutional freedoms at home."

Since then, the dots have not only been connected, but many of the shapes have been colored in. The immediate fear and anger following the Sept. 11 attacks have given way to the grinding permanence of a never-ending state of emergency. In many ways, the reality has turned out worse than the article's expectations.

For the last two-plus years, the bloody war in Iraq has raged with no end in sight, as more evidence emerges daily that the Bush administration misled the nation into the invasion through a mix of false intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and clever juxtapositions that blurred Iraq's Saddam Hussein with al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden.

The war – and the animosities it engendered – have, in turn, added to the likelihood of terrorist attacks, like the July 7 bombings in London, which provide further justification for more security and greater encroachments on individual liberties.

Deformed Democracy

Already, the Iraq War has deformed the democratic process in the United States, even as Bush claims that his goal is to spread democracy in the Middle East. At home, his operatives have demonstrated that when fear-mongering isn't enough to scare the American people into line, bare-knuckled bullying is in store for those who speak out.

That is the real back story of the investigation into whether Karl Rove and other senior Bush aides unmasked CIA officer Valerie Plame in retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for being one of the first mainstream figures to accuse Bush of twisting the intelligence about Iraq and nuclear weapons.

Bush's "grim vision" always recognized that the "war on terror" abroad would require restricted freedoms at home – as well as expanded powers for the police and military. So, just as in 2002, when the "Bush Doctrine" on preemptive wars laid the intellectual groundwork for invading Iraq, new doctrines are now being promulgated to justify the creation of a full-scale "security state" inside the United States.

One Defense Department document, called the "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support," sets out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions an "active, layered defense" both inside and outside U.S. territory.

As a kind of domestic corollary to the Bush Doctrine, the Pentagon strategy paper also has a preemptive element, calling for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to "defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States." The plan "maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us."

Global War

Besides lifting the traditional limits on military operations on U.S. soil, the document makes clear that global warfare will be the reality for at least the next decade.

"The likelihood of U.S. military operations overseas will be high throughout the next 10 years," the document said, adding that the Pentagon fully expects terrorists to carry out "multiple, simultaneous mass casualty (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive) attacks against the U.S. homeland."

The primary response will be "projecting power across the globe … in ways that an enemy cannot predict," the paper said, promising "an unpredictable web of land, maritime, and air assets that are arrayed to detect, deter, and defeat hostile action."

For any American suspected of collaborating with terrorists, Bush has already revealed what's in store. In May 2002, the FBI arrested U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in Chicago on suspicion that he might be an al-Qaeda operative planning an attack.

Rather than bring criminal charges, Bush designated Padilla an "enemy combatant" and had him imprisoned indefinitely without benefit of due process. Now, Bush is asking the federal courts to recognize the president's sole right to strip American citizens of their constitutional protections.

"In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the Nation learned all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part of the battlefield, " Bush's lawyers have argued in briefs to the federal courts. [Washington Post, July 19, 2005]

A Harsh 'Cure'

In effect, the Bush administration is prescribing a large dose of military action and political repression as the cure for Islamic terrorism.

Besides the question of civil liberties, the strategy represents a rejection of advice from counterinsurgency experts who warn that an over-reliance on warfare and inadequate attention to the root causes of Middle East anger could perpetuate terrorism indefinitely, rather than reduce it to a manageable problem that can be handled by law enforcement.

But Bush's "you're with us or with the terrorists" rhetoric has left little space in the U.S. political world for a frank, realistic discussion about the best counter-terrorism strategy. The bellicose conservative news media and pro-Bush operatives continue to shout down or ridicule anyone who suggests any subtlety in U.S. policy.

On June 22, for instance, Bush unleashed deputy chief of staff Rove to mock "liberals" for supposedly demonstrating a cowardly naivety in the face of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Rove said in a speech to the Conservative Party of New York State. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Baiting, Not Debating."]

This truncated public debate jumped the Atlantic after the July 7 terror bombings in London. British Prime Minister Tony Blair went ballistic whenever someone noted that Great Britain's participation in the war in Iraq was a factor in radicalizing the four suicide bombers who attacked three subway cars and a double-decker bus.

Instead of facing that reality, Blair adopted Bush's black-and-white rhetoric about "evil" terrorists. Blair's government lashed out at one private research group when it pointed out the obvious: that Great Britain had made itself a more likely target for terror attacks by becoming a "pillion passenger" to Bush's Middle East policies, using a phrase for the person who sits behind the driver of a motorcycle.

"The time for excuses over terrorism is over," snapped Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in chastising the Chatham House for its report.

But the report actually was in line with the thinking of British security services, which had noted before the July 7 attacks that the war in Iraq was worsening the terrorist threat in Great Britain. "Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist-related activity in the U.K.," a confidential British terror threat assessment had said. [NYT, July 19, 2005]

Despite Blair's bluster, the British public appears to have made this obvious connection, too. According to a poll conducted after the attacks, 75 percent of Britons believe that the bombings were the result of the U.K.'s participation in the Iraq War.

Timid Debate

In the United States, a few public commentators have gingerly approached this link between the Iraq War and the worsening terrorist threat. Time magazine observed that it was "bad manners" to criticize anyone besides the London bombers, but added, "we need to ask why the attacks keep coming."

Time said the link to the Iraq War couldn't be ignored. "Invading Iraq, however noble the U.S. believed its intentions, provided the best possible confirmation of the jihadist claims," Time wrote. [Time, July 18, 2005, issue]

United for Peace and Justice, a U.S.-based anti-war coalition, said it was "horrified by the senseless death and destruction caused by the bombings in London" but added that the attacks can be seen as a consequence of the Iraq invasion.

"We were told by the Bush administration that our nation had to go to war in Iraq in order to fight terrorism, to make us and the world safer," a UFPJ statement said. "Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, none of us is more secure since the Bush administration launched its so-called war on terror."

Of course, dire predictions that the Iraq invasion would backfire – and become a boon to al-Qaeda – were a big part of the argument from anti-war protesters in late 2002 and early 2003. But that analysis was largely excluded from the mainstream pre-war debate, as U.S. politicians and pundits competed to out-macho each other on TV talk shows.

Even now, almost four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration and its allies continue to seek a national "group think" that permits Americans only to explain terrorism by asserting that the perpetrators hate America's freedoms and want to impose their "evil" ideology on the United States.[...]

Cementing 'Security'

Yet, instead of a serious policy reevaluation, the Republican-controlled Congress is moving toward rubber-stamping Bush's "security state" plans both at home and abroad.

Beyond the expanded domestic role for the Pentagon, the powers of the FBI are increasing. The Senate Intelligence Committee approved legislation to reauthorize and expand the Patriot Act, which was passed in the hectic days after the Sept. 11 attacks with emergency provisions that were designed to expire.

Now, Congress is not only reauthorizing many of those stop-gap powers but adding new ones. "Administrative subpoena" authority, for instance, would allow the FBI to execute its own search orders for intelligence investigations, without judicial review.

The legislation also would give agents the authority to seize personal records from medical facilities, libraries, hotels, gun dealers, banks and any other businesses without any specific facts connecting those records to any criminal activity or a foreign agent.

Bush also recently ordered the creation of a domestic spy service within the FBI, called the National Security Service. Intended to centralize authority and remove barriers between the FBI and the CIA, the NSS will combine the Justice Department's intelligence, counter-terrorism and espionage units.

The NSS will have the authority to bypass traditional due-process when seizing assets of people or companies thought to be aiding the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

The new police powers come on top of guidelines for intelligence-gathering that Attorney General John Ashcroft established in 2002 when he loosened restrictions that were put the FBI after the COINTELPRO political-spying scandal of the 1970s.

Under the Ashcroft guidelines, the FBI must only have a reasonable indication that "two or more persons are engaged in an enterprise for the purpose of … furthering political or social goals wholly or in part through activities that involve force or violence and a violation of federal criminal law."

The investigation does not need to be approved by FBI headquarters, but rather, may be authorized by a special agent in charge of an FBI field office.

Defining Terrorism

Critics argue that the authority to investigate domestic terrorism invites political abuses because the Patriot Act adopted a broad definition of terrorism. Section 802 of the law defines terrorism as acts that "appear to be intended ... to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion," which could include confrontational protests and civil disobedience.

Civil libertarians have warned that rather than improving security or combating terrorism, the new laws and guidelines may be more useful in silencing critics of the Bush administration and chilling political dissent.

One early indication of how the government might use its expanded powers came in 2003, when the FBI sent a memorandum to local law enforcement agencies before planned demonstrations against the war in Iraq. The memo detailed protesters' tactics and analyzed activities such as the recruitment of protesters over the Internet.

The FBI instructed local law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for "possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force."

Since then, there have been many stories about the FBI's Joint-Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) harassing and intimidating political activists engaged in lawful protests. Before last summer's demonstrations at the Democratic and Republican national conventions, for instance, the JTTF visited the homes of activists, while FBI agents in Missouri, Kansas and Colorado spied on and interrogated activists.

One target of these visits, Sarah Bardwell of Denver, Colorado, said, "The message I took from it was that they were trying to intimidate us into not going to any protests and to let us know that, 'hey, we're watching you.'" [NYT, Aug. 16, 2004]

Over the past few years, the FBI also has collected thousands of pages of internal documents on civil rights and antiwar protest groups. "