The operation that would qualify Al Qaeda into the top tier of terrorists is 9/11. The official version contains many incongruent details, including puddles of molten steel which doesn’t yet melt at 1500F – the maximum temperature of kerosene burning, collapsing of the tower structures much after the kerosene burned away and in the absence of major afterfires, and the absurd story of Boeing plane’s wings liquefied before crushing into the Pentagon. It matters most that no terrorist group claimed the attack. That never happened before for any large general-purpose attack. On the contrary, often several groups claim one attack. Terrorism is about publicity, and refraining from publicizing one’s involvement in the major terrorist act is senseless. Terrorist leaders do not fear retaliation, but long for propaganda effect. It is unbelievable that no group claimed 9/11. Even in the doubtful videotapes, Osama never claimed organizing the event. He only praised it, as he praised many other terrorist acts both before and after 9/11. Osama’s praise is unrelated to his participation or even to Muslim involvement: he congratulated the Chechen fighters for terrorist attack on Moscow Nord-Ost theatre, which is widely viewed as KGB/FSB ploy to implicate the Chechens. Osama’s praise for 9/11 came out only on October 7, almost a month after the attack – an inexplicable delay – and unusually for Osama stressed liberation of Palestine before Mecca’s. The US government attributes to Osama only a few days’ advance knowledge of the attack; that’s not planning. Curiously, Osama’s family in Saudi Arabia denounced him four days after the attack – three weeks before his first comment on 9/11; under the American pressure, they somehow knew the culprit before he stepped forward. Osama was quick to claim responsibility for attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and even claimed credit for the USS Cole attack which he didn’t organize. Islamic terrorist groups often claim credit for others’ attacks – a practice facilitated by cross-membership; a whole bunch of terrorist organizations claimed three bombings in Taba in 2004. It is unbelievable that Osama refrained from claiming 9/11 attack fearing American retaliation. The very choice of date, the 9/11 for 911 emergency phone number, smacks of American black humor.
The Spain train bombings are also odd. Anyone living in Spain knows that local trains never arrive on time. The four trains just couldn’t converge at the train station to blow the roof. The attack was planned by someone living in a country where timely arrival of trains is a norm; that disqualifies Israel. All the suspects killed themselves rather than be arrested by Spanish police. That’s odd, since the terrorists could use the court hearings as media tribune and hoped to be exchanged in prisoner swap. Police found a lot of unused explosives; why didn’t the terrorists use them for train bombings but left that overwhelming evidence? Why did they stay in Spain after the bombings? No working relationship is proved between the dead terrorists and Al Qaeda.
Another Al Qaeda-related attack, that of the shoe bomber, is odd beyond measure. Jose Padilla might be an imbecile but someone sane had to assist him. Anyone who helped him to prepare the bomb understood that such bomb cannot cause a plane crash. The shoe bomber’s case smacks of a trailer show for 9/11.
A string of assaults is atypical for terrorists who have to go deep underground after strikes, but is extremely typical of sabotage planned by secret services. For example, Israeli secret service apparently organized a string of double murders in the settlements to greatly terrorize the local Jews, too active politically. In a typical case, two family members would be murdered ostensibly by Arabs in unrelated incidents within a short time – the very improbability of such event causing terror.
Then of course there’s Padilla’s acquaintance McVeigh who surprisingly demolished a huge building with low-yield ammonium explosive, but that’s another story.
Germans set Reichstag on fire to implicate fellow communists. Jews killed Rabin to implicate the right-wingers. Russians blew the apartment houses in Moscow to launch a retaliatory war in Chechnya. Staging an attack is a historically standard way of forging a casus belli.
