When the government fights terror it should have just one purpose: the safety of the British people. This film will show how Tony Blair has used terror for his own political advantage. Even as the bodies were being pulled from the wreckage of the London bombings the authorities were started to spin. Dispatches: Spinning Terror, Channel 4 2006
Tony Blair and his ministers have not always told us the truth about terror. ibid.
Another Blair proposal brought even greater controversy. Tear up Habeas Corpus, Britain’s most fundamental civil right, and let the police retain terror suspects for ninety days without charging them with an offence. ibid.
The government had misled us about the very nature of the threat we face … Almost everything Colin Powell said and Tony Blair supported was wrong; no Al Qaeda factory was ever found in Iraq. ibid.
The Ricin trial provides powerful evidence of the way government ministers have deceived the British people over terror. ibid.
Police arrest a killer. Minutes earlier he has stabbed an MP, Sir David Amess. Later the man makes a chilling admission. For the last three months Dispatches has been investigating serious failings in the government’s scheme that’s supposed to help stop attacks like this. Dispatches: Are We Losing the War on Terror? Channel 4 2022
Extremists known to the scheme have carried out over half the terrorist attacks in the last five years. ibid.
Kabul, Afghanistan … a city of 3 million … This is a story about the seen and the unseen and things hidden in plain sight … I’d been working as a war reporter for more than a decade. Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, 2013
We were told that the battle for hearts and minds was being won. ibid.
‘This is the third raid in my district. 13 or 14 people have been killed in all. They were innocent people.’ ibid. local rozzer
‘We would rather die than sit back and do nothing.’ ibid. Afghani
‘The Americans used knives to dig the bullets out of their bodies.’ ibid.
Congress wasn’t going to investigate. ibid.
In the last three months there have been 1,700 night raids in Afghanistan … but not a single name. ibid.
I’d worked in Baghdad for years and had written countless stories there. Many from the front lines of the war … But I’d never heard of JSOC. I’d missed the most important story. In Iraq the US had fundamentally changed the way it fought war. The real story – JSOC – was hidden in the shadows, out of sight. ibid.
JSOC could now hit at will in countries beyond JSOC and Afghanistan. ibid.
In December 2009, 5 strikes with over 150 casualties in a country without a declared war: Yemen. ibid.
It was clearly a cruise missile that struck the Bedouin camp. ibid.
Awlaki began to see the expanding wars as part of a global attack against Islam. And his sermons reflected a growing anger. After 9/11 Awlaki was put under surveillance … he was locked up for a year and a half without charge and spent seventeen months in solitary confinement. When he was finally released Awlaki was a changed man. And after JSOC tried to kill him his transformation was complete. ibid.
The War on Terror was producing new enemies wherever it struck. How does a war like that ever end? ibid.
By Afghanistan there were thousands – but now the list itself was changing. Signature strikes, TADS, crowd killing … the global war on terror was spinning out of control … Algeria, Indonesia, Thailand, Panama, Jordan – the world was now a battlefield. ibid.
For over a decade JSOC and the CIA had free rein in Somalia. All their tactics were on display: drone strikes, night raids, mercenaries. As the War on Terror entered a second decade Somalia seemed like a laboratory of the future. And the future looked bleak. ibid.
These images were shot in 2004 in the city centre of Baghdad by a non-professional. A guerrilla ambush as it occurs almost every single day. Waging war inside these bullet-proof SUVs these men aren’t in any way armed forces but private security guards – they are in the front line. They even have their own helicopters. In Iraq there are 20,000 or so civilians who operate on behalf of private security companies. Private Armies aka Inside Blackwater: Iraq’s Most Controversial Private Military Contractor, 2007
Kabul: It’s one of the main operating grounds of these private companies throughout the world. ibid.
The United Kingdom systematically delegates the protection of its embassies located in risky countries to private companies. ibid.
Blackwater: the world’s largest private training centre. ibid.
Moazzam Begg has been detained under suspicion of terrorism in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cuba and Britain. In 2002, in Bagram, he confessed to being a member of Al Qaeda. He has never been convicted of any crime. Storyville: Moazzam Begg: Living the War on Terror, BBC 2016
I have drawn the inescapable conclusion that you can’t participate in something like that [drone strike] without being corrupted. Homegrown: The Counter-Terror Dilemma, Sky Atlantic 2018, drone operator
Why is it that ten years after, more than a decade after, 9/11, American citizens are signing up for an Al-Qaeda group? ibid. analyst
Muslims are easy targets right now. ibid. lawyer
It’s like if you established an Islamic society all the problems in the world will go away. ibid. Muslim
Terrorism has a minuscule, a near-Zero impact. ibid. analyst
26 days after the first diagnosed case of anthrax, widely reported as a possible 2nd wave of terrorism, October 31st 2001, Robert Kagan appears on C-Span … ‘Are we going to create people who are angry as a result of our bombing? Yes.’ A Very Heavy Agenda I: A Catalyzing Event, 2015
‘It could well require the use of American military power in multiple places simultaneously. It is going to resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone has hoped to avoid.’ ibid. Robert Kagan newspaper article
President Bush eventually called the anthrax mailings ‘terrorism’, which caused the media to speculate on a link to 9/11. ibid.
A handful of influential and loyal Neo-Conservatives surrounding the administration took on the task of speculating publicly. In frequent media appearances, Bush’s Neo-Conservative allies continued to assert connections between 9/11, Iraq and the anthrax mailings. ibid.
August 6 2008: The FBI announces that the anthrax letters originated from a US bioweapons lab in Maryland. ibid.
PNAC: ‘The elimination of state like Iraq features prominently in this grand vision’. ibid. Rebuilding America’s Defenses
‘Absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event … like a new Pearl Habor.’ ibid.
Robert Kagan is chosen by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her Foreign Affairs Policy Board. ibid.
‘I will devote myself to an American century.’ ibid. Mitt Romney
Obama promised to usher in a major change from the old ways of the Bush administration: no more cowboy diplomacy, no more pre-emptive war or secret prisons, no more illegal domestic spying without a warrant … Unfortunately, Obama ended up carrying over most of Bush’s policies in regards to fighting the logically problematic war on terror. Obama even increased the use of illegally dubious methods of stemming terrorists such as targeted drone assassinations and domestic digital surveillance dragnets. A Very Heavy Agenda II: How We Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Neo-Cons
George W Bush’s Neo-Con colleagues praised Obama’s foreign policy actions during his first term as president. ibid.
Project for the New American Century: The think tank that served as the blueprint for the Bush foreign policy closed and reopened under a new name – the Foreign Policy Initiative. ibid.
Did the warmakers find the War on Terror not useful any more? Did we need a new enemy, but really an old enemy? ibid.
The PNAC Neo-Cons were invited on television to plead for more NATO posturing, stronger sanctions, more aggressive rhetoric and essentially all the ingredients for having a confrontation with Russia either by proxy or directly. ibid.
Why did there seem to be so little dissenting voices from the new Cold War rhetoric in the American media landscape if we indeed had a free and independent press? ibid.
Only three days after the 9/11 attacks, Congress held a vote for Bill titled The Authorization to Use Military Force. This Bill was designed as retaliation for the 9/11 attacks and allowed the US not only the power to wage war in Afghanistan, but also endless war in the Middle East, essentially what was labelled the War on Terror. A Very Heavy Agenda III: Maintaining the World Order
The Project for the American Century had been associated with the failures of the Iraq War. ibid.
Kagan received [Nicaraguan/Iran] dirty money funnelled inside the US State Department to fund these propaganda campaigns. ibid.
‘When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families.’ ibid. Donald Trump
‘I would bomb the shit out of ’em.’ ibid.
I’ve been meaning to talk with you. It’s terrifying isn’t it? The president and I have a simple request: tell us what you see. If anything in your environment strikes you as a bit odd, a bit off, pick up the phone, whether it’s a package or a person that seems out of place, we’d love you to let us know … My husband and I want to protect you. House of Cards s5e1: Chapter 53, Claire, Netflix 2017
It’s amazing how ready people are to be afraid. ibid.
These masks will be distributed to all MTA engineers, conductors and maintenance workers, and this model is highly effective in case of chemical attack. House of Cards s5e2: Chapter 43, Claire
President Enacts Border Restrictions: Conway Campaign Responds To President’s Comments. ibid. Fox News banner headline