http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/index.php/media/2006/08/14/jihad_by_any_ot her_name_still_reeks JIHAD BY ANY OTHER NAME STILL REEKS Headline of thumb-sucking analysis in yesterday's Week In Review section of the New York Times: "Does Calling It Jihad Make It So?" Apparently the jihadists think so, seeing how they can't go two sentences without a feverish declaration of waging, ah, jihad, preferably by killing large numbers of infidels. Among those quoted in the piece is Daniel Benjamin, author of "The Next Attack." "The tube bombers in Britain were clearly motivated in large measure by Iraq. They were obsessed by it," Benjamin tells the Times. "Clearly motivated in large measure by Iraq" -- much like the Sept. 11 hijackers and those planning the attack, although this is rarely acknowledged within the uncritical confines of much of the mainstream media. To do so risks deviating from the cast-in-cement narrative settled upon some time ago (surely you saw the memos) that Iraq Had Nothing To Do With Sept. 11. Agreed -- nothing to do with it in the sense that Saddam Hussein probably did not drive Mohammed Atta to Logan Airport that morning. Kneejerk legalisms aside, explicit involvement by Iraq in the mass slaughter of Sept. 11 is not needed to establish that the totalitarian regime played a pivotal role in the rationale for the attack itself. Here's what Osama bin Laden had to say about this in his videotaped message of Oct. 7, 2001 (as shown in photo with jihadist cohort Ayman al-Zawahiri), which aired the same day the US began attacking al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Only four paragraphs in, bin Laden states -- "A million innocent children are dying at this time as we speak, killed in Iraq without any guilt. In these days, Israeli tanks rampage across Palestine, in Ramallah, Rafah and Beit Jala and many other parts of the land of Islam, and we do not hear anyone raising his voice and reacting." Two of three reasons bin Laden cites as justifying Sept. 11 are contained in that paragraph: the deaths of "a million innocent children" in Iraq and the perennial dispute over Palestine. Not surprisingly, bin Laden neglects to mention the cause of those civilian deaths: economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations -- not the US -- for Iraqi failure to comply with conditions of the cease-fire ending the Persian Gulf war in 1991 (which we are virtually assured of seeing Hezbollah replicate after the cease-fire taking effect today in Lebanon). That Saddam Hussein chose to build scores of opulent "presidential palaces" with his oil wealth instead of feeding his own people, along with the vast cost of pursuing an illicit weapons program, surely contributed to the deaths of more than a few Iraqi children. The Persian Gulf war was precipitated by Hussein's brutal invasion and occupation of Kuwait, from which he was ousted by a coalition of three dozen nations led by the US and Great Britain. A coalition physically situated in large part in Saudi Arabia -- The Land of the Two Holy Places -- and the third component in the trilogy of reasons cited by bin Laden for Sept. 11. Here is how bin Laden ends his statement in October 2001 -- "Every Muslim must rise to defend his religion. The wind of faith is blowing and the wind of change is blowing to remove evil from the Peninsula of Muhammad, peace by upon you. "As to America, I say to it and its people a few words: I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him." Can any reasonable person believe that had Hussein not invaded Kuwait, and coalition forces not been deployed to Saudi Arabia, and sanctions not been imposed on Iraq, that al Qaeda still attacks America on Sept. 11? Only those as deluded as bin Laden can believe this. Then again, anyone who claims George W. Bush is a greater criminal than bin Laden and Hussein is capable of believing anything.
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