Responsibility


There were erroneous reports that the Palestinian group DFLP (Democratic
Front for the Liberation of Palestine) took responsibility for the crashes,
but this was denied by a senior officer of the group soon after. There were
reports of celebrations on the West Bank, but according articles in the
German magazine Stern and the Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter at
least one of them was staged. It is now accepted that there was the use of
archive film footage showing Palestinian civilians in a celebratory steet
scene, unrelated by both time and circumstance to the Sept 11 attacks. The
broadcast of this 'uncredited' archive footage was responsible for this
'misunderstanding' and it is certain that there is no known authentic
timelined footage showing any nationality 'celebrating' the attacks. A
persistent series of reports does, however, mention US law enforcement
arresting several middle eastern men of Jewish extraction, who were seen
video-taping the burning towers, and dancing, on a nearby rooftop. This,
along with other references to strange behaviours from this demographic
group, have been noticeably absent since early in the reportage.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat denounced the attacks, correctly stating
that it was counter-productive to any peace between Israelis and
Palestinians. It was, however, quite productive for the government in Tel
Aviv: Asked what the WTC attack meant for relations between the United
States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied,
"It's very good." Then he edited himself: "Well, not very good, but it will
generate immediate sympathy". And certainly the huge groundswell of public
support for America's attitude to "terrorism" made the job of the Tel Aviv
government a great deal easier when it came to managing their own
public-relations nightmare in Palestine.

Although bin Ladin's Al-Qaida organization has never explicitly claimed
responsibility, it has praised the attacks and hinted that it was behind
them and planning more. The group's spokesman, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, said in
a video sent to al-Jazeera and broadcast in October 2001: "Americans should
know, the storm of the planes will not stop. ... There are thousands of the
Islamic nation's youths who are eager to die just as the Americans are eager
to live."

Furthermore, intelligence experts speak of a "short list" of prime suspects
-- groups that possess both the means and the motive to carry out the crime.
It appears certain that all hijackers have Arabic origins, and none are
Afghani; moreover, both in their immense scale, careful planning and
refraining from claiming responsibility, the attacks are reminiscent of
Al-Qaida's previous attacks. It is curious and instructive to note that a
full majority of the hijackers that are claimed to have been on the planes
were from Saudi Arabia, yet no serious attention has been focused on this
country of origin. It is also instructive to note that shortly after the
list of hijackers names was made public, several of these men were
self-declared alive and well and still living in their country of origin and
peacefully going about their business. One would ask why the names used on
the passenger manifests for the hijacked flights did not contain any Arabic
names at all, and how any passenger of clear Arabic descent, who was found
boarding a plane with a distinctly non-Arabic name on his documents, could
not be treated with utmost caution.... LET ALONE four or five of these
hybrids PER FLIGHT. Something is definitely wrong with this picture.

Virtually all world leaders, including traditional enemies of the United
States such as Libyan president Qadhafi, Palestinian leader Arafat, Iranian
president Khatami and the Afghanistan Taliban government, denounced the
attacks and expressed sympathy for the American people. An exception was
Saddam Hussein, the ruler of Iraq who called the attacks the fruits of U.S.
crimes against humanity.

The White House has subsequently used the events of Sept 11th 2001 to build
a case for regime change in Iraq - despite there being absolutely no
connections in any manner between the homocidal secular Baathist regime of
Sadaam Hussein and the collective known as Al-Qaida. The use of the attacks
on the WTC by the Bush White House and the GOP machine to generate support
and sympathy for their agenda is now seen as deeply offensive, and has
regrettably led the American people to accept a terrifying loss of privacy
and freedom, as well as the desecration of the historic foundation
principles of the nation.

Various Arab- and Muslim-world news sources carried opinion pieces and
articles that pointed to some form of Zionist conspiracy to frame the Arab
world to the benefit of Israel. It is interesting to note that in a Gallup
survey of 10,000 inhabitants of sample countries with a Muslim majority,
only 18% believed that Arabs were responsible.

Worldwide, a significant minority see the attack as an outcome of past
United States involvement in the Middle East and surrounding area, and fear
that a violent response will only continue the cycle. The majority worldwide
viewpoint is that such acts of terrorism are only to be expected given the
economic and cultural imperialism of the United States and the multinational
corporations which are identified with it. The creation of pockets of
hatred, according to this viewpoint, is an inevitable consequence of the
overwhelming outside economic pressure placed on poor countries with minimal
control of their political destiny. Notwithstanding this, the majority of
people in most nations also believe that terrorism is an absolute evil, that
cause does not equal justification.