Aquarian Weekly 10/10/01
REALITY CHECK

9/11/01 Part IV
KASBAH ROCKING
Cooking the Great American Ass Whup

Right now a Columbian refugee is having dinner with an overtly effeminate Taliban gunrunner in a quaint bistro on the outskirts of Jalalabad, Afghanistan. They're discussing the coming ski season and desert fall fashions. Drinks are flowing and names are innocently exchanged. Every witty aside by the young gunrunner is met with hearty laughter, as a hidden tape recorder hums inside the Columbian's left breast pocket.

By morning the gunrunner will be missing. Word will spread through the sequestered Taliban offices, memos will be sent, and maybe a few more soldiers will defect to the Northern Alliance. But after a few days, there will be no mention of him. When his family comes calling, they will be sent to a briefing, and perhaps, also turn up missing.

A few days later maps and phone records will mysteriously disappear. There will be internal arguments and stepped-up security. Rankles officials will call for strip searches, and someone might be shot for treason. Word will spread that two or three training camp security personnel didn't show up for work that morning, and relative innocents will be tortured. The air of paranoia will thicken and the stench will spread quickly.

And what of the friendly Columbian gentlemen?

He will be enjoying a weekend in Paris by Halloween, and several other well-versed, highly cash-motivated ex-cons will take his place long before he boards the airplane.

This is just one of hundreds of stories that have transpired since the dark hours of 9/11/01. And it continues like clockwork, while we wave flags and watch the World Series.

There are speeches and confirmations by smokescreen politicians and tenuous international alliances bonded and broken. The media leaks info regarding "special forces" deployment. Ships are whisking their way to the Persian Gulf in teary ceremonies.

Soon there will be raids and bombings, and sad pictures of charred babies on CNN; but that is showbiz.

For this "new war" will be fought at card tables and brothels, airport bathrooms and opium dens, back-alleys and sand dunes, one-room apartments and railway stations.

It is happening while you read this.

Right now, as Arab officials and foreign diplomats chat with Tim Russert and Paula Zahn, and the president of the United States says all the right things about Islam and a cushy Palestinian State, there are militants being purchased, toilets being bugged and well-connected Syrian drug dealers being fed hot lead through tubes inserted into their colon.

It isn't pretty, but safety and freedom are two dangerous possessions. Both need protection by viable front men with Harvard degrees, power ties and sharp vocabularies, and those invisible others, who would think nothing of gouging the eyes out of a Pakistani student with a pair of pliers and rubbing alcohol.

That's how the good old OSS got things done in a bygone age of racial profiling and poison dispersion.

The days before all the fuck-ups in Cuba, and that sloppy JFK mess down in Dallas. Long before head-butts with the Pentagon in Korean and Viet Nam, miscommunication in Honduras and Grenada, the historically bad "plumbers" faus pax that ended in the Watergate fiasco, and a few miscalculated phone calls to the oval office during hostage brokering in Iran.

That was the era referred to at the FBI during the 90s' as "The Slump". Even victories seemed like hollow rewards during it.

But there was a time, not too long after WWII, and before Dwight Eisenhower took his part-time golf gig on Pennsylvania Avenue to a fulltime one in Gettysburg, that the U.S. intelligence community was all over it. Not one foreign government conducted business without the aid of the United States, surreptitiously or otherwise. Regimes crumbled and people got hurt, and the business of freedom thrived.

And none of it was accomplished overnight.

As early as 1944, months before the effects of D-Day had taken shape in Europe, American bankers were loading up imposter real estate firms and forging military documents at the Kremlin. Men in tailored gray flannel business attire were planting deadly bacteria into Tokyo's water supply. And French tourists, armed with hypodermic needles and a Swiss Bank account, were settling into condos on the coasts of South Vietnam.

The Mafia, using untraceable Native Americans, Cubans and displaced teamsters to export countless crimes on every continent, funded them. They were random and reprehensible, but they were our boys, and without them there would have been no A-bomb or Elvis or Cadillac.

And the sudden nostalgia for these feats of heroism was running strong in the State Department before the sun went down on 9/11/01. It became more and more obvious with each passing day when those paid to speak for all of it were silly with glee over the unfolding developments.

They were using phrases like "undesirable agents returning to the fold" and "removing the kid gloves in this operation." And they meant it.

And they are getting things done.

There are solid odds, dropping by the hour, that Osama bin Laden is already dead. They get smaller with every conflicting report of his whereabouts. Tank, our friend at State, sent an E-mail to The Desk last week explaining the heavy betting on his demise.

"Makes no sense why these people keep telling us he's there, then he's not; unless they have no fucking idea where he is," he wrote. "They keep saying they have him safely sequestered because they know we don't want to make him a martyr, and would rather see him get an eye-opening trial, so we won't bomb the shit out of them while he's there. But the word is that he's camel chum."

The White House confirmed last week that Special Forces had been in country for a few weeks, proving that operatives preceded them by at least a week. No way the military is risking an undermanned Special Forces unit unless ways were paved and locations were confirmed. Those were mistakes made in South East Asia a long time ago.

And the Attorney General knows all too well that key terrorist rings are already being gutted. This is why John Ashcroft goes on national television and warns about chemical warfare and hits on the Sears Tower and Disneyland.

What the attacks on 9/11/01 have done is unlock the morality box. All the sins of the CIA fathers have been forgiven. Even now they are erecting a bronze statue of Allen Welch Dulles and kissing its base in reverence.

America is back in the nasty business, and the result will be cultural and financial ruin for nations all over the place. It will be a lucky day if there is anything resembling a solvent economy in the Philippines by Christmas, and long before the Saudis can defect from the proceedings, members of OPEC will be armed with Sicarri swords and stun guns.

And by the Fourth of July, what was once something of sovereignty in Iraq will be landfill for the brand spanking new U.S. military base, crawling with strippers and stocked with finally aged scotch.

Nothing says victory quite like a drunken Marine with a hard-on puking all over a holy relic.

NEXT WEEK: Part V - HUMANITY LOST

Part I - 9/11/01

Part II - Enemies of Reason or The God Bullshit Must Cease

Part III - The Folly of Negotiating with Maniacs

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