Russia’s Metro Bombings- Monsters from the American id?

[ARCHON]

Russia’s Metro Bombings- Monsters from the American id?

Justin Raimondo
antiwar.com


Those behind the bombing in Moscow’s Metro system, which took 39 lives – and shook the building that houses Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) – must be “scraped from the bottom of the sewers” and exposed, said Vladimir Putin. But what if that particular sewer leads all the way back to Washington and London?

Russia has accused Chechen rebels of planning and carrying out the suicide bombings, but that may be just the beginning of understanding who and what is behind a long line of terrorist attacks that started in the 1990s and continues to the present day. Last September, Russian-backed Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov told Reuters he had good reason to believe the US and Britain were covertly aiding the Chechen rebels: “We are fighting U.S. and British special services in the mountains,” said Kadyrov:

“There was a terrorist named Chitigov, he worked for the CIA. He had U.S. citizenship. He was a brigadier general under Khattab. When we destroyed him – I led the operation then – we found an American driving license on him, and his other documents were American.”

Rizvan Chitigov, the number three man in the Chechen insurgency, with the title of minister of defense and military intelligence in the insurgent “government,” was killed in a joint Russian-Chechen government operation when he returned to his native district of Shali in 2005. He was known as “the American,” because he had lived in the US for years; “the Chemist,” because he specialized in the procurement and deployment of poisons (ricin, poisonous gases, etc.), and “Marine,” because he is said to have been trained at a Marine camp during his American sojourn. As a young man, he was quite the macho, according to an account inKommersant, tearing around town in a fire engine and scaring the bejesus out of the villagers, who moved quickly out of his way:

“At the beginning of perestroika the young Shali fireman left for the USA with the help of some international Moslem foundation which had opened its representative office in Chechnya. What Rizvan Chitigov was actually doing during these four years abroad is unknown, but on his return to Shali in 1994 he explained to his compatriots that he had graduated from an elite subversive and reconnaissance school and had signed on to the marine squad. He said that a career in the US Navy had been awaiting him but in the strange land he had met a co-religionist Amir Hattab who had explained to the young Chechen that he should be in Chechnya in the hard times for his motherland, not in the US. So the two set off for Chechnya.”

Chitigov rose quickly to become the Chechen terrorists’ third-in-command, almost on the same level as the top commanders Shamil Basayev and Ibn Al-Khattab. Indeed, he seemed to have an independent source of funding, and the reach of his battalions stretched all the way to Russia’s urban centers – Moscow, Samara, Voronezh , and Rostov-on-Don – which were targets of suicide bombers dispatched at his command. In 1999, he was personally involved with the kidnapping and execution of four OSCE personnel. In 2001, Russian security services obtained information that Commander Chitigov had procured “weapons of mass destruction,” in this case the deadly poison ricin. This was reportedly the main topic at a meeting of the Chechen terrorist network in the United Arab Emirates, and the plan to deploy the deadly poison against Russian soldiers would have come to fruition if the FSB hadn’t discovered the ricin cache hidden in an underground bunker in the Gudermes region. Thus Chitigov acquired his nom de guerre “Chemist.”

This ruthless terrorist met his end when, according to Ria Novosti, Russian security services “intercepted a mobile telephone conversation and established where Chitigov could be hiding after spending the winter in Baku. A three-room flat was checked three times, but nobody was found. But when the security service officers were leaving the flat the fourth time, they heard a noise. It turned out that Chitigov had spent over three days in a small niche in a wall masked by tiles. The terrorist was in a hurry to leave the flat and dropped a tiled panel on the floor.” Chitigov was killed in the subsequent gunfight.

Chitigov’s links to the US include reports that, according to the Moscow News, “Chitigov had a green card — a permanent residence permit in the U.S.” The Russian government openly accused him of being a CIA agent. Aleksandr Zdanovich, head of Russia’s Federal Security Service directorate for cooperation programs, told “Russia Today”:

“Rezvan Chitigov, who I have named and whose photo I have shown you from the computer, lived in the USA for a long time. There are very serious grounds for suspecting him to be a CIA agent. He leads one of the most cruel group of terrorists. He is virtually [Ibn Al] Khattab’s security service head. I would say, in this respect, that he was a very well-trained person. Khattab would not have appointed a person to such a post if had not undergone some kind of professional training.”

Trained – by whom, and for what?

While the Russians are no angels, and the puppet “government” they’ve set up in the breakaway province is hardly a paragon of liberal democracy, “President” Kadyrov may have a point when he says:

“The West is interested in separating the Caucasus from Russia. The Caucasus is a strategic frontier of Russia. Taking the Caucasus away from Russia will mean taking half of the country away from Russia. Now they are sending groups of foreigners to us. We are fighting U.S. and British special services in the mountains. Putin united Russia, took it out of chaos, removed Berezovsky, Gusinsky, Khodorkovsky. He took everything away from them. Did they forgive him? Now a new strike is being delivered against Putin, against Russia. Chechnya and Dagestan are weak, vulnerable links of the Russian state.”

America’s new cold war with Russia had its origins in the Bush era: the neoconservatives who then controlled US foreign policy had and still have a grudge against Putin’s Russia. When Putin refused to back the US invasion of Iraq, it was Richard Perle, the “dark prince” of the neocons, who called for their expulsion from the G-8. A list of prominent neocons – along with “liberal” window dressing such as Geraldine Ferraro – as long as your arm are featured as endorsers of the “American Committee for Peace in Chechnya,” now the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (ACPC), which has taken up the Chechen cause against Russian “imperialism” with characteristically neoconnish alacrity.

In addition, the British government has sheltered Chechen terrorists, refusing to extradite them to Russia on the grounds that the charges of terrorism are “politically motivated.” The Chechens have teamed up with exiled Russian oligarchs, who – when not spending their ill-gotten gains buying up London real estate – have been financing a Chechen terrorist “support” network that extends throughout Europe and reaches into the very heart of the former Soviet Union.

The propaganda network supportive of Chechen terrorism enjoys the complicity of the virulently anti-Russian British media. One of their major successes has been the legitimization of the laughable fantasies of Boris Berezovsky and his paid shills, who have created an entire corpus of literature devoted to the idea that virtually all of the terrorist attacks carried out inside Russia by Islamist terrorists were instead the work of the Russian FSB – a mirror image of the 9/11 “truther” thesis that 9/11 was an “inside job.”

Over on this side of the pond, the apologists for Chechen terrorism are far from idle. On the web site of the ACPC we are treated to an Al Jazeera interview with three alleged experts –including from the neoconservative Hudson Institute – two of whom hand out the “blame Russia” line – that the problem is not terrorism but the policies of the Putin administration. If Al Qaeda blew up the New York City subway, one wonders if the Hudson Institute and the ACPC would take the same tack. The ACPC claims Putin is not interested in promoting “moderate” Chechen leaders, and is only intent on crushing the insurgency by force. In promoting this point of view, they also post a “Radio Free Europe” (i.e. US government propaganda) piece headlined: “In Wake of Metro Bombings, Putin’s War on Terror is Under Fire.”

The “moderate” Chechen terrorists the Russian government is supposed to “reach out” to are nonexistent in the ranks of the Islamists who target civilians and yearn to establish an Islamic “Emirate” in the northern Caucasus. Whatever moderates there were in the separatist ranks have long since been absorbed into the present Chechen government: Kadyrov is himself a former separatist fighter. Yet “Freedom House,” Radio Free Europe, and the neoconservatives who want to destroy Russia are not interested in whatever concessions Putin has made to local sensitivities, nor do they care one whit about the economic rebuilding that has been a major part of the Russian counterinsurgency effort. Certainly the exiled Russian oligarchs, who are buying up British newspapers as well as real estate, couldn’t care less about the fate of the Chechen people. What they want is the complete breakup of the Russian “empire,” and its economic and political subordination to the West. If they have to make “martyrs” to “human rights” out of Islamist terrorists, well then that’s what the program calls for.

No one is saying the CIA and MI6 are behind the Metro bombings: what is likely, however, is that both have been deeply involved at some point in encouraging the Chechens and even providing them with some material aid. Certainly the anti-Russian rhetoric that was a staple of the Bush era did much to bolster the Chechen cause – and surely the British government’s policy of welcoming Chechen terrorists, and giving the pro-terrorist Chechen “government in exile” sanctuary, ought to focus attention on Britain’s possible involvement in the insurgency. Just as Putin turned over the task of stabilizing the region to local Chechen authorities, and closed his eyes to the brutality of their counterinsurgency campaign, so the West may very well have had a hand in creating a blunt instrument that subsequently veered out of their direct control.

Osama bin Laden, you’ll recall, was once a US ally, whose jihad in Afghanistan threw the Russians out and gave birth to Al-Qaeda. No doubt there are other such dubious “allies” roaming the earth, monsters from the American Id unleashed on an unsuspecting world. The Western connection to the Chechen insurgency is, perhaps, what needs to be “scraped from the bottom of the sewer,” as Putin put it, and exposed.

 

[SinoIndusFriendship]

Fascinating read. I agree the Yankees and Brits and Zionists are deeply involved in orchestrating this as well. We've seen their "works" many times before.

 

[waldo41]

I usually read your Forum with interest but don't comment unless I feel my contribution can clarify or be constructive. As a retired Colonel, who can claim to be a Brigadier, I still retain sufficient intelligence to know what disinformation and black propaganda looks like.

Firstly, check Antiwar.com for yourselves. It is an American-based 'peacenik' group, the origins of which lie in opposition to the Vietnam War. It is very much part of the hate America first lobby and in reprinting their articles, you are only going to get the same rehash: America is to blame for everything evil in the world and the CIA and Mossad are behind every terrorist incident.

I am not an American and sometimes, I'm quite proud of the fact but I'm not sure of the nationality of Justin Raimondo who wrote the article to minor acclamation from readers thus far. Anyone with a background in the politics of post-Soviet Russia will know that the Russian Federation is extremely diverse and contains a wide mix of languages, religions and race. The Chechens, for whom I hold no brief, are governed by a Russian puppet and opposed by Islamic fundamentalist insurgents. The metro attack in Moscow was an extremely sophisticated operation and if it proves anything at all, it is that this time, the suicide bombers did not dress in Muslim clothing. The official reports describe two young females who were dressed much like the average Muscovite. It appears they traveled with two young men and when they got off at the respective stations, they waited and the bombs were detonated remotely, presumably by the young men. There was an attempt to whip up a 'black widow' conspiracy and indeed, tragically, one of the bombers was very young but the widow of a Chechen separatist, killed by Russian special forces. Whether suicide bombing is viable in asymmetric warfare depends on your point of view. What is clearly anathema to some is martyrdom to others.

However, to examine the article in terms of content and context, any reader with above-average intelligence can find the biases and distortions. The antiwar.com website is part of a network which is apparently dedicated to anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism, anti-capitalism and for the most part, the writers are well-educated but nihilistic. Other sites include ICH (Information Clearing House) www.global research.ca which pretends to be Canadian but comprises mainly extreme left wing expatriates from America, Dandelion Salad, Infowars Ireland and a host of others, especially www.antifascist calling.com, an organization steeped in treason.

My experience was in the Cold War which threatened to grow hot on a number of occasions, most of which never made the headlines or even public release. The tension between America and Russia is inevitable. When the USSR imploded, the Clinton administration sent a team to introduce market reform to Russia in the mistaken belief that a feudal society can be turned into a modern, market-based, property owning democracy virtually overnight. The net result was to propel certain groups into power. Some were known as the "oligarchs" for obvious reasons - they had money, power and influence.

The second group was the siloviki, literally 'men of power' who are used to having power and wielding it. The siloviki is best described as a somewhat loose grouping based on former and serving KGB, GRU, armed forces officers and apparatchiks of the more useful variety from the CPSU. When I looked at the US delegation, and its actions which are covered in a report of 106th Congress of the US government, the title speaks for itself "Russia's road to corruption" subtitled "How the Clinton administration exported government instead of free enterprise and failed the Russian people." Strangely, this document is hard to find on official websites but it is still available for the interested. it has been removed from the official website.

Having read the document several times, I concluded rather sadly that the Clinton group, led by the noted Democrat Al Gore, acted more like carpetbaggers after the US Civil War. They went in to make money and get out, leaving an economic shambles in their wake. It was this unhappy outcome that led right-wing fanatics in America such as Pat Buchanan to claim that the West lost Russia. This is arrant nonsense: Russia is a sovereign nation and it was never the West's property, and therefore, talk of losing it was nothing more than rhetoric and in no way related to anything approximating reality.

The fact has to be faced that Russia is essentially still undeveloped in so many areas. Moscow and St. Petersburg stand out as cultural equivalents of many cities around the world and not just Western. I would include most of the capital cities on every continent. However, I believe it was an Indian philosopher who said that talking to Russians about democracy was like trying to describe the difference between black and white to a blind man. To a certain extent, Russians are like Germans and, in the main, they like order not chaos: they like predictability and strong government. After the embarrassing period of rule by Boris Yeltsin, it was probably inevitable that a strong government would rise and its nature would be basically authoritarian. There is a very strong argument to suggest that such a government is required at least in the short term. Nature abhors a vacuum and it so happens that Vladimir Putin, a former lieutenant colonel in the KGB, became Yeltsin's successor and set about restoring Russian pride. Unlike the Communists, he permitted freedom of religion and movement and at present is engaged on what some have described as a modernization program. This involves the reestablishment of links with old allies and looking for new. Inevitably, a resurgent Russia will be looking for a world role.

The so-called second Cold War is somewhat problematic. In the aftermath of 9/11, a great deal of goodwill evaporated on both sides and for various reasons which I will not elaborate in this piece. However, the Russian government promised to cooperate with the US government on fighting international terrorism. I have never seen details of information passed by the FSB, successor to the KGB, to the FBI on terrorists. And it is almost impossible to know what reliability can be accorded to Russian sources. It is an established fact, not Zionist propaganda that the Russians continue to arm and possibly train terrorist groups in Asia, the Middle East and possibly South America.

The people at Antiwar.com believe that the Jews, the CIA and other elements were involved in 9/11. In terms of content analysis of that and other sites, it has become more than a flourishing cottage industry for the chronically underemployed with a highly developed over-imagination. Taking the global view, which is something I have to do as a matter of course, the attack on the Moscow metro resembled the attack on the London underground, known as 7/7 and there are similarities in the case of the expatriate Afghani, Najibullah Zazi which is currently before the courts in New York. This is yet another case of a displaced person who has migrated to a Western country, obtained citizenship and then proceeded to participate in terrorist attacks. If you come to the West to live then you should abide by the norms and values of the host society. If it's not to your liking, then you should return home. Western societies are liberal, democratic and permit activities that some religions and nationalities find highly disturbing but it is not their job to impose standards on their own on the country to which they have migrated.

The major charges made by antiwar.com are pretty much par for the course. Firstly, it asserts that parts of the British press are pro-Chechen separatists or independence fighters -- call them what you will but they are anti-Moscow and it stands to reason that a Moscow backed president of Chechnya will use the same tired old language to describe insurgents. In the good old days of the Soviet Union it was traditional to call such people 'bandits' and in what might be described as a slip of the modern Russian tongue, the head of the FSB described the Chechen rebels in those terms. I particularly liked one phrase in the article about was: "No one is saying that the CIA and MI6 are behind the Metro bombings: what is likely, however is that both have been deeply involved at some point in encouraging the Chechens and even providing them with material aid." Who do they think they're fooling with this asinine statement when that is exactly what they are charging the British and US governments with doing: it falls into the category of providing material aid and assistance to insurgents. And furthermore, to show how much the US government supports the so-called Chechen Emirate, Washington has declined to put this body on its updated terrorist list. The principal reason would appear to be that the group is somewhat limited in objectives and is more intent on killing Russians than having a broader view.

There is no doubt that the Russian government will respond with proportionate force and as usual, with asymmetrical warfare, innocent civilians will be among the slaughtered. Just to make life interesting, antiwar.com manages to drag in Osama bin Laden and the jihad in Afghanistan against the Russian (Soviet) forces. Anyone with any knowledge of the situation knows that during the Cold War, my enemy's enemy was my friend. The mujahedin would not have been as successful without support from the CIA, MI6 and Pakistan's ISI. The principal objective was to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan and it succeeded, leaving in its wake a shattered country still gripped by feudal infighting and a rather large and anguished group of the bereaved in Russia: parents who couldn't understand why their conscript sons had been sent off to die in an obscure and unpopular war. And that sounds very familiar.

I would assume that the Pakistan Defence Forum contains among its members, many who are opposed to the West being involved in Afghanistan; some former and serving ISI officers and so on. The fact that the whole situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a test of loyalties and in many respects highly unpopular because of foreign involvement is beside the point. I would not presume to advise the Pakistani government on any policy. However, what I would ask is that the Pakistan Defence Forum exercises greater judgment on what it publishes. The same people who write in antiwar.com and related publications have no love for Pakistan and very little understanding of legitimate national aspirations. These are the same people who on the one hand will condemn minority populations within the Russian Federation who take aggressive military action against the government and yet on the other support Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, the Castroites in Cuba and any other anti-US body or government.

They believe in nothing except they are against everything. It is a hallmark of Western society that it permits dissidence and dissidents without censorship and most find a home on the Internet. It never seems to dawn on these people that if the terrible nexus of conspirators which involves the CIA, Mossad, MI6, neocons and neofascists had any real power, they would not be free to poison the atmosphere with propaganda.

I would conclude by saying that the monsters involved in the metro bombings are not a product of the id of conspiracy theorists: they represent another stick with which to beat the US government.

 

[Parashuram1]

I usually read your Forum with interest but don't comment unless I feel my contribution can clarify or be constructive. As a retired Colonel, who can claim to be a Brigadier, I still retain sufficient intelligence to know what disinformation and black propaganda looks like.

Firstly, check Antiwar.com for yourselves. It is an American-based 'peacenik' group, the origins of which lie in opposition to the Vietnam War. It is very much part of the hate America first lobby and in reprinting their articles, you are only going to get the same rehash: America is to blame for everything evil in the world and the CIA and Mossad are behind every terrorist incident.

I am not an American and sometimes, I'm quite proud of the fact but I'm not sure of the nationality of Justin Raimondo who wrote the article to minor acclamation from readers thus far. Anyone with a background in the politics of post-Soviet Russia will know that the Russian Federation is extremely diverse and contains a wide mix of languages, religions and race. The Chechens, for whom I hold no brief, are governed by a Russian puppet and opposed by Islamic fundamentalist insurgents. The metro attack in Moscow was an extremely sophisticated operation and if it proves anything at all, it is that this time, the suicide bombers did not dress in Muslim clothing. The official reports describe two young females who were dressed much like the average Muscovite. It appears they traveled with two young men and when they got off at the respective stations, they waited and the bombs were detonated remotely, presumably by the young men. There was an attempt to whip up a 'black widow' conspiracy and indeed, tragically, one of the bombers was very young but the widow of a Chechen separatist, killed by Russian special forces. Whether suicide bombing is viable in asymmetric warfare depends on your point of view. What is clearly anathema to some is martyrdom to others.

However, to examine the article in terms of content and context, any reader with above-average intelligence can find the biases and distortions. The antiwar.com website is part of a network which is apparently dedicated to anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism, anti-capitalism and for the most part, the writers are well-educated but nihilistic. Other sites include ICH (Information Clearing House) www.global research.ca which pretends to be Canadian but comprises mainly extreme left wing expatriates from America, Dandelion Salad, Infowars Ireland and a host of others, especially www.antifascist calling.com, an organization steeped in treason.

My experience was in the Cold War which threatened to grow hot on a number of occasions, most of which never made the headlines or even public release. The tension between America and Russia is inevitable. When the USSR imploded, the Clinton administration sent a team to introduce market reform to Russia in the mistaken belief that a feudal society can be turned into a modern, market-based, property owning democracy virtually overnight. The net result was to propel certain groups into power. Some were known as the "oligarchs" for obvious reasons - they had money, power and influence.

The second group was the siloviki, literally 'men of power' who are used to having power and wielding it. The siloviki is best described as a somewhat loose grouping based on former and serving KGB, GRU, armed forces officers and apparatchiks of the more useful variety from the CPSU. When I looked at the US delegation, and its actions which are covered in a report of 106th Congress of the US government, the title speaks for itself "Russia's road to corruption" subtitled "How the Clinton administration exported government instead of free enterprise and failed the Russian people." Strangely, this document is hard to find on official websites but it is still available for the interested. it has been removed from the official website.

Having read the document several times, I concluded rather sadly that the Clinton group, led by the noted Democrat Al Gore, acted more like carpetbaggers after the US Civil War. They went in to make money and get out, leaving an economic shambles in their wake. It was this unhappy outcome that led right-wing fanatics in America such as Pat Buchanan to claim that the West lost Russia. This is arrant nonsense: Russia is a sovereign nation and it was never the West's property, and therefore, talk of losing it was nothing more than rhetoric and in no way related to anything approximating reality.

The fact has to be faced that Russia is essentially still undeveloped in so many areas. Moscow and St. Petersburg stand out as cultural equivalents of many cities around the world and not just Western. I would include most of the capital cities on every continent. However, I believe it was an Indian philosopher who said that talking to Russians about democracy was like trying to describe the difference between black and white to a blind man. To a certain extent, Russians are like Germans and, in the main, they like order not chaos: they like predictability and strong government. After the embarrassing period of rule by Boris Yeltsin, it was probably inevitable that a strong government would rise and its nature would be basically authoritarian. There is a very strong argument to suggest that such a government is required at least in the short term. Nature abhors a vacuum and it so happens that Vladimir Putin, a former lieutenant colonel in the KGB, became Yeltsin's successor and set about restoring Russian pride. Unlike the Communists, he permitted freedom of religion and movement and at present is engaged on what some have described as a modernization program. This involves the reestablishment of links with old allies and looking for new. Inevitably, a resurgent Russia will be looking for a world role.

The so-called second Cold War is somewhat problematic. In the aftermath of 9/11, a great deal of goodwill evaporated on both sides and for various reasons which I will not elaborate in this piece. However, the Russian government promised to cooperate with the US government on fighting international terrorism. I have never seen details of information passed by the FSB, successor to the KGB, to the FBI on terrorists. And it is almost impossible to know what reliability can be accorded to Russian sources. It is an established fact, not Zionist propaganda that the Russians continue to arm and possibly train terrorist groups in Asia, the Middle East and possibly South America.

The people at Antiwar.com believe that the Jews, the CIA and other elements were involved in 9/11. In terms of content analysis of that and other sites, it has become more than a flourishing cottage industry for the chronically underemployed with a highly developed over-imagination. Taking the global view, which is something I have to do as a matter of course, the attack on the Moscow metro resembled the attack on the London underground, known as 7/7 and there are similarities in the case of the expatriate Afghani, Najibullah Zazi which is currently before the courts in New York. This is yet another case of a displaced person who has migrated to a Western country, obtained citizenship and then proceeded to participate in terrorist attacks. If you come to the West to live then you should abide by the norms and values of the host society. If it's not to your liking, then you should return home. Western societies are liberal, democratic and permit activities that some religions and nationalities find highly disturbing but it is not their job to impose standards on their own on the country to which they have migrated.

The major charges made by antiwar.com are pretty much par for the course. Firstly, it asserts that parts of the British press are pro-Chechen separatists or independence fighters -- call them what you will but they are anti-Moscow and it stands to reason that a Moscow backed president of Chechnya will use the same tired old language to describe insurgents. In the good old days of the Soviet Union it was traditional to call such people 'bandits' and in what might be described as a slip of the modern Russian tongue, the head of the FSB described the Chechen rebels in those terms. I particularly liked one phrase in the article about was: "No one is saying that the CIA and MI6 are behind the Metro bombings: what is likely, however is that both have been deeply involved at some point in encouraging the Chechens and even providing them with material aid." Who do they think they're fooling with this asinine statement when that is exactly what they are charging the British and US governments with doing: it falls into the category of providing material aid and assistance to insurgents. And furthermore, to show how much the US government supports the so-called Chechen Emirate, Washington has declined to put this body on its updated terrorist list. The principal reason would appear to be that the group is somewhat limited in objectives and is more intent on killing Russians than having a broader view.

There is no doubt that the Russian government will respond with proportionate force and as usual, with asymmetrical warfare, innocent civilians will be among the slaughtered. Just to make life interesting, antiwar.com manages to drag in Osama bin Laden and the jihad in Afghanistan against the Russian (Soviet) forces. Anyone with any knowledge of the situation knows that during the Cold War, my enemy's enemy was my friend. The mujahedin would not have been as successful without support from the CIA, MI6 and Pakistan's ISI. The principal objective was to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan and it succeeded, leaving in its wake a shattered country still gripped by feudal infighting and a rather large and anguished group of the bereaved in Russia: parents who couldn't understand why their conscript sons had been sent off to die in an obscure and unpopular war. And that sounds very familiar.

I would assume that the Pakistan Defence Forum contains among its members, many who are opposed to the West being involved in Afghanistan; some former and serving ISI officers and so on. The fact that the whole situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a test of loyalties and in many respects highly unpopular because of foreign involvement is beside the point. I would not presume to advise the Pakistani government on any policy. However, what I would ask is that the Pakistan Defence Forum exercises greater judgment on what it publishes. The same people who write in antiwar.com and related publications have no love for Pakistan and very little understanding of legitimate national aspirations. These are the same people who on the one hand will condemn minority populations within the Russian Federation who take aggressive military action against the government and yet on the other support Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, the Castroites in Cuba and any other anti-US body or government.

They believe in nothing except they are against everything. It is a hallmark of Western society that it permits dissidence and dissidents without censorship and most find a home on the Internet. It never seems to dawn on these people that if the terrible nexus of conspirators which involves the CIA, Mossad, MI6, neocons and neofascists had any real power, they would not be free to poison the atmosphere with propaganda.

I would conclude by saying that the monsters involved in the metro bombings are not a product of the id of conspiracy theorists: they represent another stick with which to beat the US government.

Excellent post, sir. Thanks.