On the eve of 9/11: Reality is weirder than... er, reality

I recall an old joke about a news in newspaper. It read:

"As our readers know, we always bring you the news before the other newspaper. Yesterday, for instance, we were to first to report that the President of the country was found to have links with an underworld don. Today, we are the first newspaper to tell you that that news was wrong."

And so, last week - after more than 3 years of ravaging a country, and after getting as many US soldiers killed in Iraq, as were killed in the 9/11 WTC attack (not to mention the uncounted tens of thousands of Iraqis), the US Senate Intelligence announced that there was no link between Al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, and that "Saddam Hussein rejected overtures from al-Qaida and believed Islamic extremists were a threat to his regime...."

Thanks! that is really revealing finding... Very intriguing too!!!... since:

more than 2 years back, in June 2004, even the Sept 11 commission had reached the same conclusion. As BBC had reported then: "The US national commission examining the 11 September 2001 attacks has found no "credible evidence" that Iraq helped al-Qaeda militants carry them out."

In fact, a month before Iraq invasion, in Feb 2003, bin Laden had called Saddam Hussein an "infidel" and had called on Iaqis to rise up and overthrow the "socialist" dictator (ironically, the same appeal was also made by GW Bush!!)

MSNBC had covered Osama bin Laden's taped message: "At the same time, the message also called on Iraqis to rise up and oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who is a secular leader.".... Of course, the channel soon scrubbed out it in favour of the Ministry of Truth!!!

Meanwhile...

"War on Terror", "9/11", "Osama bin Laden", "Democratisation of Middle-East", etc., have lost their "brand value"... And so a new term has got added to US foreign policy - "Islamofascism". An article in Newsweek reports:
"Last fall White House aides were grappling with a seemingly simple question that had eluded them for years: what should the president, in his many speeches on the war on terror, call the enemy? They were searching for a single clean phrase that could both define the foe and reassure Americans who were confused by a conflict that had grown much bigger than Osama bin Laden. But the answer was anything but simple. Some academics preferred the term "Islamism," but the aides thought that sounded too much as if America were fighting the entire religion. Another option: jihadism. But to many Muslims, it's a positive word that doesn't necessarily evoke bloodshed. Some preferred the conservative buzzword "Islamofascism," which was catchy and tied neatly into Bush's historical view of the struggle."

Last week, GW Bush acknowledged that "One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror"

...and also acknowledged that CIA prisons exist across the globe. According to one news report:
"President Bush finally confirmed that we have been running secret CIA prisons abroad since 2001, where detainees have been routinely tortured... Two of those tortured souls were the sole source for Secretary of State Colin Powell's 2003 statements before the United Nations on Iraq's connection with al-Qaida and Iraq's possession of WMDs. Both men have since recanted those statements. One was obtained when the CIA was doing a "mock burial" - i.e., burying him alive!"

Now, just in case, all this reminds you of a certain country in western Europe in 1930s-40s... of course, not!!... we are now living in civilised times, with a UN and an international community to safeguard against revival of those barbaric acts...

Reality, after all, cannot be weirder than reality.... or can it be?