Monday 22 September 2003

Cheney's Role In 911 Put On Center Stage By British MP

Meacher for PM!!!

For the first time, a prominent British political figure has aired his suspicions, that the group around U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney may have intentionally caused, or allowed to happen, the mega-terrorism in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, to set into motion an era of neo-imperial wars. Labour Party Member of Parliament Michael Meacher wrote a major feature focussing on Cheney's Project for a New American Century grouping, in the London Guardian on Sept. 6. Meacher had resigned in June as Environment Minister, a post he held in Tony Blair's government for six years. This Summer's political wars in Britain, as EIR forecast they would, are drawing ever closer to Cheney. This is the context in which Meacher took Blair to task for subordinating Britain's interests to Cheney and his neo-conservative gang in Washington.

Ever since Lyndon LaRouche first affirmed, early in the morning of 9/11, that the attacks were an "inside job," it has been taboo in Britain to publicly discuss this possibility, especially as Blair's Britain joined in the neo-conservatives' wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, becoming the Cheney-acs' main prop overseas. And although Meacher's polemic narrows the motive of Cheney et al. to an oil grab, his intervention is timely.

On Sept. 7, just ahead of the second anniversary of 9/11, London was the scene of huge "anti-terror exercises," including contingency plans for the mass evacuation of the city. During that week, there was heavy police presence and Londoners were very nervous. One European strategist warned EIR Sept. 9, that London is the most likely target for a new act of mega-terrorism. But a London insider cautioned EIR, on the same day, that Blair and his minions are determined to stoke alarm, to "justify" his war policies and to divert attention from his political woes.

Those woes are bound to get worse. The Lord Hutton inquiry into the July 17 death of weapons expert Dr. David Kelly had produced startling revelations by Sept. 8, blowing apart the case Blair made last year for war against Iraq. One informed source affirmed Sept. 8: "This is only the beginning, and when the inquiry resumes next Monday [Sept. 15], things are going to get a lot tougher, when the process of cross-examining leading officials begins."

Other Labourites are joining the attack on Blair, including former International Development Secretary Clare Short, and former Leader of the House of Commons and former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. On Sept. 8, Cook drew gasps from MPs, when he blasted Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon for having ignored the reservations of his own Defense Intelligence Staff (DIS), about the fraudulent September 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) issued by Blair's 10 Downing Street. Hoon was then jeered, when he tried to pass off responsibility for the dossier to Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). The next day, it was revealed that Hoon had given misleading evidence to the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee investigating the dossier in July, flatly denying that DIS experts had expressed such concerns. It is widely assumed that Hoon will soon bite the dust, closely following the Aug. 29 resignation of Downing Street chief spin doctor Alastair Campbell.

On Sept. 8, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw came into the Hutton inquiry fire, as documents were released, showing his role in bringing Kelly's name into the public light, as the source for a BBC report that intelligence experts had regarded the September 2002 dossier as "sexed up." Kelly's death followed shortly after his name was made public. It also came out that Hoon had played a role in "sexing up" that dossier, urging that references to Iraqi WMDs be strengthened and demanding a "killer paragraph" to make the case against Iraq stronger.

A U.K. intelligence expert told EIR Sept. 8, that these eruptions are creating a fertile environment, in which the issues Meacher has raised can now be "openly debated and considered.... The Hutton inquiry, and other factors, have raised enormous questions about why Tony Blair, in reality, wanted this Iraqi weapons dossier, and that, in turn, is focussing attention on the motives of the administration in Washington, in starting the war in Iraq."

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