Is It High Treason Or Just A Simple Case Of Dereliction Of Duty?

One of our readers, Maher Osseiran, has brought one of his recent articles to our attention, and we feel its worth sharing with others. At the Lone Star Iconoclast, Osseiran writes,

On Dec. 13, 2001, the Pentagon released a tape of Bin Laden in which he confessed to his visitor, Khaled Al-Harbi, of prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.

The tape was billed as the smoking gun that proves Bin Laden’s guilt and in order to remove all suspicion of fowl play; the Pentagon released the tape in its entirety.

If Bin Laden, through his own words, implicated himself in the planning of the 9/11 operations that took 3,000 innocent lives, the rest of the tape, which is a Bin Laden family home video of a downed Special Forces helicopter, implicates the Bush administration in a premeditated act that resulted in the loss of thousands of innocent lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other corners of the world. ...

The Bush administration was the closest ever to Bin Laden and could have captured him on Sept. 26, 2001, the date of the taping; intelligence operatives were feet from him, had four days advance notice of the date of the meeting, 24 hours advance notice of the exact location, and knew that Bin Laden would be there for at least three hours if not longer since his family and his favorite son Hamza lived in that village and Bin Laden was very likely to stay overnight.

Read on.

It really is astounding (or perhaps that's an understatement) that the one man that should have been brought to justice for the murder of 3,000 American citizens is still on the loose. Instead of focusing on capturing the alleged mastermind of 9/11, George W. Bush essentially declared war on the world (or at least those who are deemed not "with us" in the "war on terror") and threw international law out the window. The US adopted a new policy of torture, "extraordinary rendition," and set up a network of secret prisons around the world.

Beyond that, we invaded Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, and unleashed an unprecedented level of chaos in the Middle East. The absurdity of this policy is only now coming fully into light. As Sy Hersh reports in his recent New Yorker piece, the US is now (indirectly) funneling money to Sunni groups that have ties to al Qaeda, in order to counter the growing Shiite influence that the US enabled by overthrowing the government of Saddam Hussein.

The policy has truly come full circle, and meanwhile the man allegedly responsible for the deaths of 3,000 Americans is still unaccounted for.

I was living in Denmark on 9/11, and I remember a few days after the attack, I had a conversation with a Muslim immigrant. I mentioned how I don't want to see the US go to war, but how I really wanted to see bin Laden brought to justice. In a thick Arabic accent, the man said, "Let me tell you something! You will never ever catch bin Laden. Bush does not want to catch bin Laden, because you need bin Laden to justify your wars!"

I think he may have been on to something.