911review/terrorism

From the page: "A former head of MI5 today describes the response to the September 11 2001 attacks on the US as a "huge overreaction" and says the invasion of Iraq influenced young men in Britain who turned to terrorism.

[Stella Rimington has condemned the politicisation of national security since she left the secret service. (Photograph: Graeme Robertson)]In an interview with the Guardian, Stella Rimington calls al-Qaida's attack on the US "another terrorist incident" but not qualitatively different from any others.

"That's not how it struck me. I suppose I'd lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life and this was as far as I was concerned another one," she says.

In common with Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who retired as MI5's director general last year, Rimington, who left 12 years ago, has already made it clear she abhorred "war on terror" rhetoric and the government's abandoned plans to hold terrorism suspects for 42 days without charge.

Today, she goes further by criticising politicians including Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, for trying to outbid each other in their opposition to terrorism and making national security a partisan issue.

It all began, she suggests, with September 11. "National security has become much more of a political issue than it ever was in my day," she says. "Parties are tending to use it as a way of trying to get at the other side. You know, 'We're more tough on terrorism than you are.' I think that's a bad move, quite frankly."

Rimington mentions Guantánamo Bay, the practice of extraordinary rendition, and the invasion of Iraq - three issues which the majority in Britain's security and intelligence establishment opposed privately at the time.

She challenges claims, notably made by Tony Blair, that the war in Iraq was not related to the radicalisation of Muslim youth in Britain.

Asked what impact the war had on the terrorist threat, she replies: "Well, I think all one can do is look at what those people who've been arrested or have left suicide videos say about their motivation. And most of them, as far as I'm aware, say that the war in Iraq played a significant part in persuading them that this is the right course of action to take."

She adds: "So I think you can't write the war in Iraq out of history. If what we're looking at is groups of disaffected young men born in this country who turn to terrorism, then I think to ignore the effect of the war in Iraq is misleading.""

The lesson is not that we have weak border security. The lesson is not to throw another million dollars at it, so punks like me can't make you worry about Mohamed canoeing into the U.S. with a suitcase nuke.

That won't make you safer--because I didn't only test the DHS on the northern tip of Lake Erie. I wrote e-mails and text messages about my original plan to "sneak Anthrax into the U.S. by canoe" for months. I talked about it on cell phones and land lines as much as my friends could bear. And I thought the government was spying on us to protect us.

Again, to be thorough, the lesson is not that the government should give another billion in contracts to legally untouchable telecom companies. The lesson, simply, is that these security measures don't work, because they don't have to--they're not designed to. They're designed make the few rich at the expense of the many, under the pretense of security. That these costly follies can make us feel safer is moot, because the actual terrorist threat doesn't warrant our hyperbolic insecurity.

Already in this War of Terror, we've sacrificed over a trillion dollars, our civil liberties and thousands of lives. The more we spend, the less safe we become, the more we spend. Post 9/11 America is a national cuckoo's nest, terrified by a self-fulfilling prophecy that vast networks of evildoers are hell-bent on slipping over the border to kill our children.

Construction company by the Bin Laden Family with many ties to the oil- and military industry. Profits from the "war on terrorism"
as a partner of the Carlyle Group. Osama is one of more than 50 children of Mohammed bin Laden (->),
who built the family's $5 billion business, Saudi Binladin Group, largely with construction contracts from the Saudi government.

After the 1996 truck bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, that killed 19 U.S. servicemen, Saudi Binladin Group
built military barracks and airfields for U.S. troops. Source: Wall Street Journal