Rolling out of my crib before dawn today (I was in it long before the charlatans Harris and Trump began their theatrical “debate”), it being another September 11th, I wondered where Dick Cheney was.
And I was still wondering where Elmer Gantry was, having received the previous day a form message from RFK, Jr.’s faith-based engagement team leader, Rev. Wendy Silvers, that she was conducting a “pop-up” prayer service for the great Ciceronians’ debate, with Bobby Kennedy in the press room, rooting for his boy Donald. Cheney and Harris vs. Kennedy and Trump. A tag-team match perfect for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF).
I had just dreamed, or so I thought, that Cheney was out night-riding his white stallion across the Wyoming hills, long gun tight aside his saddle, cowboy hat slung back with a full moon shining on his melonic noggin, sea-shells in his ears as he grooved from side-to-side to the music of that other Kamala Harris endorser, Taylor Swift. It’s always wonderful, wonderful, oh so wonderful to get political advice from a fully-clothed warmonger and a scantily-clad diva.
In my dream I heard another voice as night rider Dick ripped off his earphones and pulled back on the reins. “Dick, Dick,” an eerie voice rang out:
‘If you want to save your soul from hell a-riding on our range,
Then cowboy change your ways today or with us you will ride
-try’ng to catch the devil’s herd
Across these endless skies’
Yippee-yi-ay, yippee-yi-o,
The ghost herd in the sky.
That was it, I threw my old clothes on and headed up the hill to the lake to clear my mind of such a nasty flic. Dick hadn’t changed his ways since 2001, except to embrace Democratic war making instead of Republican. Actually, that’s wrong, for as Mr. Neocon, a signer of the bloodthirsty neo-conservative document the Project for the New American Century, he always welcomed and got bipartisan support to attack Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.
The neo-cons who run the Democrats and Republicans alike, and whose document “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” most interestingly stated long before COVID-19 that “advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.”
You don’t say.
There was no need for these neocons to mention the Palestinians, of course, for their slaughter was guaranteed, not only because so many neocons held dual Israeli-U.S. citizenship, but because of all the Israel Lobby money flowing into the pockets of Congress. As for the Russians, attacking them was as American as cherry pie, for they were always coming to get us, just as those sneaky Chinese had their eyes on seizing California.
It was still semi-dark as I walked, with just the fingertips of a rosy-fingered dawn raising its hand over East Mountain. At the lake’s edge, two men in woolen caps and parkas sat meditating facing the mist-rising lake. I wondered why. Were they seeking personal peace of mind or illumination about the ruthless ways of their government? As I walked, I talked to myself and my own ghosts, watching as I went the disappearing vapor and the sky slowly turning blue.
I remembered that September 11, 2001 was also a very blue day until the black clouds flew in and that sparkling morning turned to smoke and dust as the three World Trade Center buildings were brought down by controlled demolition, not airplanes.
But where was Dick Cheney that morning? Not out on the range, no siree. He was riding herd on another roundup. He had taken control of the U.S. government under a Continuity of Government (COG) declaration, as Peter Dale Scott has documented:
Within hours of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Dick Cheney in effect took command of the national security operations of the federal government.
Quickly and instinctively, he began to act in response to two longstanding beliefs: that the great dangers facing the United States justified almost any response, whether or not legal; and that the presidency needed vastly to enhance its authority, which had been unjustifiably and dangerously weakened in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate years.
James Mann has argued that COG implementation was the “hidden backdrop” to Cheney’s actions on 9/11, when he “urged President Bush to stay out of Washington,” and later removed himself to more than one “’undisclosed location’”.
Scott and authors James Mann and James Bamford further show how Cheney and his buddy Donald Rumsfeld of “unknown unknowns” fame were for a long time part of the permanent hidden national security apparatus that runs the country as presidents like Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden enter and exit the White House and are falsely held up as leading the nation. “Cheney and Rumsfeld had previously been preparing for almost two decades, as central figures in the secret agency planning for so-called Continuity of Government (COG),” writes Scott. “It was revealed in the 1980s that these plans aimed at granting a president emergency powers, uncurbed by congressional restraints, to intervene abroad, and also to detain large numbers of those who might protest such actions.”
Unlike this morning when I saw Cheney riding the range, on the morning of September 11, 2001, Cheney was in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) beneath the White House.
What exactly he was doing there I will leave to the reader’s research initiative. The great researcher David Ray Griffin’s many books about the attacks of that day would be a good place to start. Let’s just say he wasn’t listening to pop music, not presidential recommender Taylor Swift anyway, for she was just eleven years old that day. She was probably dreaming of writing her political music, Phil Ochs style.
Have you ever noticed how in all the presidential debates since 2001, the truth about what happened on September 11, 2001 is never discussed?
It is just assumed that the government’s version of events is true. It is a third rail of American politics; mention it and your goose is cooked.
Just this morning at the 23rd anniversary memorial service of September 11th in NYC, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris shook hands. (Anthony Fauci would be outraged, having said that “I don’t think people should ever shake hands again.”)
Was that handshake some sort of tacit agreement never to broach the subject of September 11th during the campaign? To suggest that both the attacks of that day and the subsequent anthrax attacks were linked inside jobs sounds so conspiratorial. That’s a voter turnoff.
Even I find accusing the U.S. government of a false flag attack conspiratorial, since that’s exactly what it is, as I wrote years ago about the linguistic mind-control used to convince Americans that they are ruled by a secret cabal of ghost writers in the sky. My words:
In summary form, I will list the language I believe “made up the minds” of those who have refused to examine the government’s claims about the September 11 attacks and the subsequent anthrax attacks.
- Pearl Harbor. As pointed out by David Ray Griffin and others, this term was used in September 2000 in The Project for the New American Century’s report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (p.51). Its neo-con authors argued that the U.S. wouldn’t be able to attack Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. “absent some catastrophic event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” Coincidentally or not, the film Pearl Harbor, made with Pentagon assistance and a massive budget, was released on May 25, 2001 and was a box office hit. It was in the theatres throughout the summer. The thought of the attack on Pearl Harbor (not a surprise to the U.S. government, but presented as such) was in the air despite the fact that the 60th anniversary of that attack was not until December 7, 2001, a more likely release date. Once the September 11 attacks occurred, the Pearl Harbor comparison was “plucked out” of the social atmosphere and used innumerable times, beginning immediately. Even George W. Bush was widely reported to have had the time that night to allegedly use it in his diary. The examples of this comparison are manifold, but I am summarizing, so I will skip giving them. Any casual researcher can confirm this.
- Homeland. This strange un-American term, another WW II word associated with another enemy – Nazi Germany – was also used many times by the neo-con authors of “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” I doubt any average American referred to this country by that term before. Of course it became the moniker for The Department of Homeland Security, marrying home with security to form a comforting name that simultaneously and unconsciously suggests a defense against Hitler-like evil coming from the outside. Not coincidentally, Hitler introduced it into the Nazi propaganda vernacular at the 1934 Nuremberg rally. Both usages conjured up images of a home besieged by alien forces intent on its destruction; thus preemptive action was in order.
- Ground Zero. This is a third WWII (“the good war”) term first used at 11:55 A.M. on September 11 by Mark Walsh (aka “the Harley Guy” because he was wearing a Harley-Davidson tee shirt) in an interview on the street by a Fox News reporter, Rick Leventhal. Identified as a Fox free-lancer, Walsh also explained the Twin Towers collapse in a precise, well-rehearsed manner that would be the same illogical and anti-scientific explanation later given by the government: “mostly due to structural failure because the fire was too intense.” Ground zero – a nuclear bomb term first used by U.S. scientists to refer to the spot where they exploded the first nuclear bomb in New Mexico in 1945 – became another meme adopted by the media that suggested a nuclear attack had occurred or might in the future if the U.S. didn’t act. The nuclear scare was raised again and again by George W. Bush and U.S. officials in the days and months following the attacks, although nuclear weapons were beside the point. But the conjoining of “nuclear” with “ground zero” served to raise the fear factor dramatically. Ironically, the project to develop the nuclear bomb was called the Manhattan Project and was headquartered at 270 Broadway, NYC, a few short blocks north of the World Trade Center.
- The Unthinkable. This is another nuclear term whose usage as linguistic mind control and propaganda is analyzed by Graeme MacQueen in the penultimate chapter of the very important The 2001 Anthrax Deception. He notes the patterned use of this term before and after September 11, while saying “the pattern may not signify a grand plan …. It deserves investigation and contemplation.” He then presents a convincing case that the use of this term couldn’t be accidental. He notes how George W. Bush, in a major foreign policy speech on May 1, 2001, “gave informal public notice that the United States intended to withdraw unilaterally from the ABM Treaty”; Bush said the U.S. must be willing to “rethink the unthinkable.” This was necessary because of terrorism and rogue states with “weapons of mass destruction.” PNAC also argued that the U.S. should withdraw from the treaty. A signatory to the treaty could only withdraw after giving six months notice and because of “extraordinary events” that “jeopardized its supreme interests.” Once the September 11 attacks occurred, Bush rethought the unthinkable and officially gave formal notice on December 13 to withdraw the U.S. from the ABM Treaty. MacQueen specifies the many times different media used the term “unthinkable” in October 2001 in reference to the anthrax attacks. He explicates its usage in one of the anthrax letters – “The Unthinkabel” [sic]. He explains how the media that used the term so often were at the time unaware of its usage in the anthrax letter since that letter’s content had not yet been revealed, and how the letter writer had mailed the letter before the media started using the word. He makes a rock solid case showing the U.S. government’s complicity in the anthrax attacks and therefore in the Sept 11 attacks. While calling the use of the term “unthinkable” in all its iterations “problematic,” he writes, “The truth is that the employment of ‘the unthinkable’ in this letter, when weight is given both to the meaning of this term in U.S. strategic circles and to the other relevant uses of the term in 2001, points us in the direction of the U.S. military and intelligence communities.” I am reminded of Orwell’s point in 1984: “a heretical thought – that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc – should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on words.” Thus the government and media’s use of “unthinkable” becomes a classic case of “doublethink.” The unthinkable is unthinkable.
- 9/11. This is the key usage that has reverberated down the years around which the others revolve. It is an anomalous numerical designation applied to an historical event, and obviously also the emergency telephone number. Try to think of another numerical appellation for an important event in American history. The future editor of The New York Times and Iraq war promoter, Bill Keller, introduced this connection the following morning in a NY Times op-ed piece, “America’s Emergency Line: 911.” The linkage of the attacks to a permanent national emergency was thus subliminally introduced, as Keller mentioned Israel nine times and seven times compared the U.S. situation to that of Israel as a target for terrorists. His first sentence reads: “An Israeli response to America’s aptly dated wake-up call might well be, ‘Now you know.’” By referring to September 11 as 9/11, an endless national emergency became wedded to an endless war on terror aimed at preventing Hitler-like terrorists from obliterating us with nuclear weapons that could create another ground zero or holocaust. It is a term that pushes all the right buttons evoking unending social fear and anxiety. It is language as sorcery; it is propaganda at its best. Even well-respected critics of the U.S. government’s explanation use the term that has become a fixture of public consciousness through endless repetition. As George W. Bush would later put it as he connected Saddam Hussein to “9/11” and pushed for the Iraq war, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” All the ingredients for a linguistic mind-control smoothie had been blended.
It’s getting dark now, the sun is setting and shimmering across the lake. Shadows are falling, but to quote Dylan, “it’s not dark yet but it’s getting there.” I hope to dream again tonight as I rock in my crib, not about Cheney and his ilk, not about Trump or Harris and the Spectacle, but maybe just about the lovely lapping lake I listened to today, thinking of Yeats’ poem, “The Lake of Innisfree,” set in the land of my ancestors, hearing its cadence that flows like a prayer.
It is always the poets who remind us that words can be used to traumatize or transport one into a beautiful dreamer.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.
Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
