I'll let you in on a secret: most of this was pre-written, and this part of a planned release, when I felt the time was right, with minor edits for current events.
Deeply researched? The war is over twenty years old. Others have been on the vanguard covering this mess for over twenty years! As if Mike has suddenly produced some astounding insights
Be that as it may I find his series of articles breaking down and analyzing "this mess" very helpful. I appreciate clarity and well articulated arguments and insights wherever I find them.
Fair enough. At least you dont go about bagging the left while doing it , who incidentally happen to have had the correct stance Mike now espouses but can't stand it.
Unless it comes clothed in principled empathy, hard worked for intelligence and ethical anger it is always vulnerable to those with a hard nose for the gullible.
"9/11 was a conspiracy. It happened. The conspirators were named, the network was mapped, the protectors were identified. The documentary record is complete."
Mike Brock do you believe the attacks on 9/11 are "a closed case" and the "9/11 Commission Report documents this"?
In this historian's opinion, the 9/11 Report has aged worse than the Warren Report.
I lived in NYC in 2001, knew and trained with many first responders and in law enforcement. They, especially the firemen, whose ranks were culled on 9/11, tell, a much more ambiguous story.
British newsman of the year Ed Vulliamy who lived near ground zero and was there on 9/11.
Peter, I watched the towers fall from my window in Brooklyn. Half the firefighters from the local firehouse, familiars from my favorite bar, perished. Office papers fell on Brooklyn from air filled with the stench of death. Now, I haven't read the 9/11 Commission's work. The article you link is good, but doen't question the facts of the attack as generally understood. What are you intending to imply?
Nobody is denying that three building collapsed and thousands of Americans died on September 11, 2001. The 9/11 Commission Report, like Warren Commission Report, was, at the very least, unsatisfactory. Let’s start with the fact that Henry Kissinger was appointed the 9/11 Commission’s first chair. When it became clear to the Bush administration that would not hunt, they appointed one of their own, Phillip Zelikow. In 1998 Zelikow wrote, "Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger": “Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and the use of deadly force. More violence could follow either future terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks." Zelikow was described by members of the 9/11 commission as a “White House mole.” Senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, John Farmer Jr. said that the 9/11 Commission, "discovered that...what government and military officials had told Congress, the Commission, the media, and the public about who knew what when — was almost entirely, and inexplicably, untrue." Farmer also said, "At some level of the government, at some point in time, a decision was made not to tell the truth about the national response to the attacks on the morning of 9/11 ... The [NORAD] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public.” Even Thomas Kean, the head of the 9/11 Commission, agreed, "We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth.” Kean also called CIA director Tenet’s testimony, “obviously not forthcoming." Then there were the 28 pages about the Saudis involvement that were finally released, heavily redacted, in 2021. Add to this the forbidden question of Israeli foreknowledge of the attack. Ironically, Britt Hume and Carl Cameron of Fox News broke this story in December 2001 in a four part series. If nothing else, 25 years later, we can see that there were numerous anomalies about both the attacks that the 9/11 Commission Report failed to answer. Not just my opinion, see legendary NYT reporter Phillip Shennon’s book The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (2008). As I’ve said before and will say again, America needs a truth and reconciliation commission.
Thanks for the details. In response to: "Then there were the 28 pages about the Saudis involvement that were finally released, heavily redacted, in 2021. Add to this the forbidden question of Israeli foreknowledge of the attack."
Right. There's good evidence it was a Saudi operation. And understandable reasons why our government would have suppressed that.
On the other hand, New York's population was about 9% Jewish, as were the victims when the towers came down. Are you basing your suspicion of Mossad on something more than the false claim that Jews were warned to stay out of work that day? As we can see from more recent history, Mossad is far less competent than its reputation would have it.
"Are you basing your suspicion of Mossad on something more than the false claim that Jews were warned to stay out of work that day?"
No, I never said or implied this.
This is what I was referring to:
Fox News 12/01
"CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: "Since Sept. 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States."
Thanks for the clarification, Peter. On the face of it, this could be nothing more than (1) a new law allows a new category of arrests, and (2) some of the spies in this category were Israeli. Do you have anything supporting an implication these Mossad agents had knowledge beyond what Bush already knew, "Bin Laden determined to attack in US"?
Yes, it is much more complex and well documented than that. I do not know where ground truth lies. Watch it for yourself, if you can still find it on the internet. My point is a simple one. Mr Brock's conclusion that 9/11 is a closed case is erroneous. Like COVID and many other things, we were never even allowed to debate it. To raise questions was to risk being labeled a lunatic or "conspiracy theorist."
“W” might not be an evil person, but what happened in Iraq was evil. He is at the very least a man who was swayed easily by evil people, has a Texan rural naivety as his core being, and is too willingly embedded with born again Christianity which lets bygones be bygones and uses “forgiveness of our sins” as a rationalization for lack of character and principle.
He is a weak man and he will go down in history as a weak POTUS.
"The decent man at the head of the country wanted to respond, and the response he would have made, on his own, would likely have been the destruction of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and the dismantlement of the Taliban government that sheltered them."
Worse was the fact that the Taliban offered to give up Bin Laden before the war started, but the President's men were determined to go to war, and that despite the fact that "fifteen of [the terrorists were] Saudi nationals", no sanctions, cutting of ties, or other such punishments were handed to our "good friends" in Saudi Arabia. Pardon the guilty, punish the innocent, and make a good profit off the affair! It's the American Way!
In 1989, I read a book about Saddam's Iraq titled Republic of Fear. For some reason, I had become interested in that part of the world. It was shortly thereafter that Saddam invaded Kuwait, and from that time I followed the Iraq story more closely, largely from watching Ted Koppel's Nightline. By the time of G.W. Bush's presidency, I had a pretty solid understanding of Iraq, and so was flabbergasted by what I was seeing in 2001 even before 9/11.
So your retrospective felt like a reliving of what I had observed in those days. It was obvious from the start that GWB had already made up his mind to overthrow Saddam, and I felt it was for the most inane and puerile of reasons -- because right-wing commentators had criticized his dad for not "finishing the job." When analysts like Richard Clarke warned him about al Qaeda, his comment was that he wasn't interested in "swatting at flies," which to me meant he didn't take non-state groups seriously but thought only nations mattered. One nation in particular.
It was obvious, even to an amateur like me watching Nightline episodes, that the whole WMD narrative was bullshit.
Reading your whole piece, it aligns precisely with my interpretation of what ensued in Iraq. There is only one thing that doesn't quite align with my impressions: your characterization of GWB as a "decent man." As shallow as his intellect was, I still can't believe that he never knew this whole operation was fraudulent. There was a press event in 2004 where he joked about the search for WMDs, with pictures of himself looking under furniture. That incident sickened me more than I can describe, given the tens of thousand of innocent lives that were ripped apart in that invasion.
But setting that aside -- who can say for sure what goes on in a man's soul? -- everything you write about the post-invasion role of those neocons in our nation's history ring true.
And I can't thank you enough for putting it all back in front of today's audiences. It makes me personally feel good because it reflects my feelings about that horrible episode in our history -- horrible in a way that we have never properly reckoned with.
Today even some of those neocons will go so far as to characterize the 2003 invasion as a "mistake." It was much, much more than a "mistake." Let's never stop making that correction, as best we can.
All that, and yet you still don’t think it was an INSIDE JOB?!? The USA is the most protected airspace in the world. Someone told those fighter jets to stand down.
I’m not willing to say or believe it was an inside job, but I will say that if it were an inside job I would not be surprised in the least (although I would be completely repulsed.)
Saddam and Osama may not have been communicating but both were antiWestern zealots plotting to destroy the west — via scud missiles or otherwise. Saddam was also a violent sadistic autocratic totalitarian. He and his sons were known for raping women though otherwise Iraqi women did usually have more rights than women in more conservative Muslim countries. So even if Saddam was not directly affiliated with Osama — because one was secular and the other “religious,” — they had both drawn large targets on their backs which Baby Bush’s handlers used to lead us to war not for the stated reason of 9/11 retribution but mainly for their profit and also for their misguided profit-seeking method of destroying our enemies. Beware the MIC. But now we do hold bake sales to help Ukraine make drones ..
My brother in law died in 9/11 - he was trying to escape the second tower before it collapsed. You are being too kind to George Bush - he was following in his father’s footsteps. And too kind to Colin Powell - I don’t think history will excuse them - whether for their incompetence or for being played.
Dick Cheney did not endorse Liz's primary opponent. Where did you get that from? Cheney filmed an ad strongly endorsing Liz. He also endorsed Harris, as did Liz. Fact checking something like that is easy. I've no love for Dick, despite sharing some ancestry in (Puritan) Haverhill, Mass. back in the 1600s. But he did stand by his daughter Liz -- as well as his other, gay daughter.
Dude! You are producing so much so fast. I hope you are protecting your health and well-being. Great stuff!
I concur! An unbelievable volume of deeply researched, brilliant writing.
I'll let you in on a secret: most of this was pre-written, and this part of a planned release, when I felt the time was right, with minor edits for current events.
All the same, I stand in awe--and appreciation--of the work.
Deeply researched? The war is over twenty years old. Others have been on the vanguard covering this mess for over twenty years! As if Mike has suddenly produced some astounding insights
Be that as it may I find his series of articles breaking down and analyzing "this mess" very helpful. I appreciate clarity and well articulated arguments and insights wherever I find them.
Fair enough. At least you dont go about bagging the left while doing it , who incidentally happen to have had the correct stance Mike now espouses but can't stand it.
Decency is simply not enough.
Unless it comes clothed in principled empathy, hard worked for intelligence and ethical anger it is always vulnerable to those with a hard nose for the gullible.
"9/11 was a conspiracy. It happened. The conspirators were named, the network was mapped, the protectors were identified. The documentary record is complete."
Mike Brock do you believe the attacks on 9/11 are "a closed case" and the "9/11 Commission Report documents this"?
In this historian's opinion, the 9/11 Report has aged worse than the Warren Report.
I lived in NYC in 2001, knew and trained with many first responders and in law enforcement. They, especially the firemen, whose ranks were culled on 9/11, tell, a much more ambiguous story.
British newsman of the year Ed Vulliamy who lived near ground zero and was there on 9/11.
Below is his account:
https://petermaguire.substack.com/p/lest-we-forget-sour-milks-911-memorial
Peter, I watched the towers fall from my window in Brooklyn. Half the firefighters from the local firehouse, familiars from my favorite bar, perished. Office papers fell on Brooklyn from air filled with the stench of death. Now, I haven't read the 9/11 Commission's work. The article you link is good, but doen't question the facts of the attack as generally understood. What are you intending to imply?
Nobody is denying that three building collapsed and thousands of Americans died on September 11, 2001. The 9/11 Commission Report, like Warren Commission Report, was, at the very least, unsatisfactory. Let’s start with the fact that Henry Kissinger was appointed the 9/11 Commission’s first chair. When it became clear to the Bush administration that would not hunt, they appointed one of their own, Phillip Zelikow. In 1998 Zelikow wrote, "Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger": “Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and the use of deadly force. More violence could follow either future terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks." Zelikow was described by members of the 9/11 commission as a “White House mole.” Senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, John Farmer Jr. said that the 9/11 Commission, "discovered that...what government and military officials had told Congress, the Commission, the media, and the public about who knew what when — was almost entirely, and inexplicably, untrue." Farmer also said, "At some level of the government, at some point in time, a decision was made not to tell the truth about the national response to the attacks on the morning of 9/11 ... The [NORAD] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public.” Even Thomas Kean, the head of the 9/11 Commission, agreed, "We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth.” Kean also called CIA director Tenet’s testimony, “obviously not forthcoming." Then there were the 28 pages about the Saudis involvement that were finally released, heavily redacted, in 2021. Add to this the forbidden question of Israeli foreknowledge of the attack. Ironically, Britt Hume and Carl Cameron of Fox News broke this story in December 2001 in a four part series. If nothing else, 25 years later, we can see that there were numerous anomalies about both the attacks that the 9/11 Commission Report failed to answer. Not just my opinion, see legendary NYT reporter Phillip Shennon’s book The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (2008). As I’ve said before and will say again, America needs a truth and reconciliation commission.
Thanks for the details. In response to: "Then there were the 28 pages about the Saudis involvement that were finally released, heavily redacted, in 2021. Add to this the forbidden question of Israeli foreknowledge of the attack."
Right. There's good evidence it was a Saudi operation. And understandable reasons why our government would have suppressed that.
On the other hand, New York's population was about 9% Jewish, as were the victims when the towers came down. Are you basing your suspicion of Mossad on something more than the false claim that Jews were warned to stay out of work that day? As we can see from more recent history, Mossad is far less competent than its reputation would have it.
"Are you basing your suspicion of Mossad on something more than the false claim that Jews were warned to stay out of work that day?"
No, I never said or implied this.
This is what I was referring to:
Fox News 12/01
"CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: "Since Sept. 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States."
Thanks for the clarification, Peter. On the face of it, this could be nothing more than (1) a new law allows a new category of arrests, and (2) some of the spies in this category were Israeli. Do you have anything supporting an implication these Mossad agents had knowledge beyond what Bush already knew, "Bin Laden determined to attack in US"?
Yes, it is much more complex and well documented than that. I do not know where ground truth lies. Watch it for yourself, if you can still find it on the internet. My point is a simple one. Mr Brock's conclusion that 9/11 is a closed case is erroneous. Like COVID and many other things, we were never even allowed to debate it. To raise questions was to risk being labeled a lunatic or "conspiracy theorist."
“W” might not be an evil person, but what happened in Iraq was evil. He is at the very least a man who was swayed easily by evil people, has a Texan rural naivety as his core being, and is too willingly embedded with born again Christianity which lets bygones be bygones and uses “forgiveness of our sins” as a rationalization for lack of character and principle.
He is a weak man and he will go down in history as a weak POTUS.
Wait. Is the deep state basically just conservative war mongers and war profiteers?
"The decent man at the head of the country wanted to respond, and the response he would have made, on his own, would likely have been the destruction of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and the dismantlement of the Taliban government that sheltered them."
Worse was the fact that the Taliban offered to give up Bin Laden before the war started, but the President's men were determined to go to war, and that despite the fact that "fifteen of [the terrorists were] Saudi nationals", no sanctions, cutting of ties, or other such punishments were handed to our "good friends" in Saudi Arabia. Pardon the guilty, punish the innocent, and make a good profit off the affair! It's the American Way!
Too late to the party
https://youtu.be/w-QnXMf2G4o?si=m2dSxDZ6v9hPyvgC
In 1989, I read a book about Saddam's Iraq titled Republic of Fear. For some reason, I had become interested in that part of the world. It was shortly thereafter that Saddam invaded Kuwait, and from that time I followed the Iraq story more closely, largely from watching Ted Koppel's Nightline. By the time of G.W. Bush's presidency, I had a pretty solid understanding of Iraq, and so was flabbergasted by what I was seeing in 2001 even before 9/11.
So your retrospective felt like a reliving of what I had observed in those days. It was obvious from the start that GWB had already made up his mind to overthrow Saddam, and I felt it was for the most inane and puerile of reasons -- because right-wing commentators had criticized his dad for not "finishing the job." When analysts like Richard Clarke warned him about al Qaeda, his comment was that he wasn't interested in "swatting at flies," which to me meant he didn't take non-state groups seriously but thought only nations mattered. One nation in particular.
It was obvious, even to an amateur like me watching Nightline episodes, that the whole WMD narrative was bullshit.
Reading your whole piece, it aligns precisely with my interpretation of what ensued in Iraq. There is only one thing that doesn't quite align with my impressions: your characterization of GWB as a "decent man." As shallow as his intellect was, I still can't believe that he never knew this whole operation was fraudulent. There was a press event in 2004 where he joked about the search for WMDs, with pictures of himself looking under furniture. That incident sickened me more than I can describe, given the tens of thousand of innocent lives that were ripped apart in that invasion.
But setting that aside -- who can say for sure what goes on in a man's soul? -- everything you write about the post-invasion role of those neocons in our nation's history ring true.
And I can't thank you enough for putting it all back in front of today's audiences. It makes me personally feel good because it reflects my feelings about that horrible episode in our history -- horrible in a way that we have never properly reckoned with.
Today even some of those neocons will go so far as to characterize the 2003 invasion as a "mistake." It was much, much more than a "mistake." Let's never stop making that correction, as best we can.
All that, and yet you still don’t think it was an INSIDE JOB?!? The USA is the most protected airspace in the world. Someone told those fighter jets to stand down.
I’m not willing to say or believe it was an inside job, but I will say that if it were an inside job I would not be surprised in the least (although I would be completely repulsed.)
Saddam and Osama may not have been communicating but both were antiWestern zealots plotting to destroy the west — via scud missiles or otherwise. Saddam was also a violent sadistic autocratic totalitarian. He and his sons were known for raping women though otherwise Iraqi women did usually have more rights than women in more conservative Muslim countries. So even if Saddam was not directly affiliated with Osama — because one was secular and the other “religious,” — they had both drawn large targets on their backs which Baby Bush’s handlers used to lead us to war not for the stated reason of 9/11 retribution but mainly for their profit and also for their misguided profit-seeking method of destroying our enemies. Beware the MIC. But now we do hold bake sales to help Ukraine make drones ..
My brother in law died in 9/11 - he was trying to escape the second tower before it collapsed. You are being too kind to George Bush - he was following in his father’s footsteps. And too kind to Colin Powell - I don’t think history will excuse them - whether for their incompetence or for being played.
Dick Cheney did not endorse Liz's primary opponent. Where did you get that from? Cheney filmed an ad strongly endorsing Liz. He also endorsed Harris, as did Liz. Fact checking something like that is easy. I've no love for Dick, despite sharing some ancestry in (Puritan) Haverhill, Mass. back in the 1600s. But he did stand by his daughter Liz -- as well as his other, gay daughter.
Bad edit. Thanks for catch. Fixed.
"Dick Cheney lived to repudiate Trump, in a small way, and to endorse his daughter’s primary opponent."
Every source I can find indicates that Dick Cheney supported Liz Cheney in the 2022 Wyoming House Republican primary, not Harriet Hageman.
This was a mistaken edit.