spinbadz own

Bill Clinton, and his proxy-cum-beneficiary Hillary, are past and present grand masters of modern politico-media arts. One of these is skill at conjuring the specious, and theneceforth feeding the apocryphal, especially where specious-cum-apocryphal serves to deflect from Clinton culpability.

We might wish upon George Bush some of this particular genius, as well as some of the love and admiration his predecessor commands in the liberal media world. The latter ensures that when one of the Clintons hissies on-air about vast right-wing Clinton-scapegoating conspiracies, as in Bill's latest spat at Chris Wallace on Fox, the hissied position is whitewashed into credible form.

For the whitewashing to be effective, that which is (a) gormless must be quashed; and (b) credibly headlinable headlined.

Part of the gormless in the present case is the notion that 9/11 was conceptualised, justified, plotted, planned, funded and bought and paid for, set in motion, practised and reviewed, approved for get-go and finally executed all within the first 8 months of W. Bush's presidency.

We all know it wasn't so.

Most realise the plot itself must have been hatched sometime before Bush took office. Tell-tale flags dot the plausible scenario:

The World Trade Centre was first attacked during Bill's tenure. Bin Ladin's anti-American jihad was already aflame through that tenure. Clinton's US - unlike Bush's -quantified jihad attacks under the "criminal" legal banner. Bush's US - unlike Clinton's - was from the get-go fashioned weak and isolated following a disputed presidential election, aggressive Chirac grandstanding at the head of a new trans-European assertiveness, and 'world opinion' uproar post-Kyoto.

I say 'fashioned' because:

(a) the US may be argued not to have then actually been especially weak or isolated;
(b) Chirac may not have been seen by confreres to have been any kind of real trans-European messiah, just as
(c) Europe may not have been especially homogonous or
(d) Kyoto especially apt as a device to save the world from greenhouse toxicity, or
(e) the world especially in need of saving from said toxicity.

'World opinion', however, was based at the time of 9/11 upon such shibboleths.

Their validity or otherwise would have had little weight with Bin Ladin and Qaeda, who we now know to place much weight on utilising images and propaganda as a conjunctive to activity.

9/11 was a made-for-television event, complete with its live second plane crash. Bin Ladin videos and tapes since that time, and the assortment of snuff slayings and fear clips put out by his comrades, are also made for television. Bin Ladin's letter to America on the eve of Bush's re-election was timed for television, and conceived as if by Michael Moore, designed to tap into the popular far left propaganda of the time.

Such is the modus operandi of an agitator militarily inferior to its enemy. It must project power beyond means, hence propaganda is an essential tool in its armoury.

There is nothing new or exceptional to Bin Ladin in the MO itself - the scale of activity (atativity?) he figureheads is historic. Given the givens, we can safely say that a zeitgeist Muslim world perception of American weakness probably influenced the timing of 9/11, just as the perception of Clinton corruption and hubris probably influenced the attack's conception.

What would someone like Bin Ladin have made of President Clinton's infamous 'Monica bombs' - those astounding sudden rocket attacks on countries in the traditional Islamic belt that coincided with US Congressional deliberations over the Clinton impeachment?

Surely this is something he would have been rather upset about, and uninclined to whitewash or forgive, coming from the hated country that spun the Mossadeq web, that inherited Sykes-Picot, that produced Capone, "The Godfather" and the JFK kerfuffle. That befriends and protects Israel.

Further, what would Qaeda members and their leader-in-cave have made of the reasons for the Clinton impeachment, the sexual proclivities and actions of the married sitting President with a near-minor, or of the matters investigated by the Starr committee in the lead-up to the impeachment, including - for this was part of the core meat of Starr's original mandate - the alleged trade of political favours and information for money?

All of the above-implied allegations against Clinton can be argued, in a western sense, to be unexceptional products of realpolitic.

Bin Ladin, however, is of course not a person with western sensibilities.

The conception of the American-led west as rife with corruption and immorality is germane to Islamist hatred: when Shiite Khomeini called the US "The Great Satan" and when Sunni ideologue Sayyid Qutb coined that term, they were referring not to the political or the military, but to matters of morality and integrity, to the sexual, to the religious, to Q'uranic categorisation of Satan as "tempter".

Many in the west regard the morally suspect Bill Clinton as perhaps merely more and even more-admirably Machiavelian than assorted predecessors, as a product of 'the system', as a complex good-and-bad - but hey, at least potent - character of the type found in a James Ellroy novel. The Islamist world cannot be expected to entertain similar ideals or accepted bounds of perceived villainy, particularly where, as in the case of the 'Monica bombs' - or in the continuing presence of US soldiers near Mecca, the reddest (greenest?) of flags in Islamist eyes - their own world can be seen to figure in the consequences of such villainy.

It was on such terms - their terms - that the 9/11 action was conceived and justified.

Whether one agrees with them or not, we must have regard to their views if we are to honestly understand the process by which the 9/11 attacks became reality, and President Clinton's latest rejection of responsibility neither helps in that regard, nor serves to relieve the impression that self-interest appears to dictate his proferrings on this and most subjects.