SIDEQUESTS: ICTS'S B-SIDES, PART 2 - THE NAUGHTY AUGHTS

Richard Reid proved the have-problem-invent-patsy strategy had legs. ICTS took them on a decade-long walk

In Part 1 we tackled ICTS midwifing 9/11-era synthetic terror. Today we reckon with its spinning-plate implementation once Iraq went sideways. It’s grim, grimy, galling.

Come in if you dare, boys and girls. Water’s fine...

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Don’t you dare blame sweet Roísín. This pictorial butchery’s all Coxey

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...ASIDE FROM THAT, MR. HUSSEIN, HOW WAS THE PLAY?

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Poor Richard left us in the damn lurch, sans almanac.

ICTS’s 9/11-shoebomber 1-2 punch supercharged the terror Victrola to a breakneck tempo. The US started bombing Afghanistan before it even put out the WTC basement fires.¹ Before long, that war begat another. Didn’t matter Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 or anthrax, or that the whole world staged the biggest antiwar protests in history. They were going, dammit.

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IYKYK

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That going was hell on Earth.

2003’s Iraqi Holocaust Overture made Flight of the Valkyries sound like chopsticks. The U.S. annihilated civilian infrastructure, did Abu Ghraib and Gaza 1.0 Fallujah with ease. Just one problem:

No domestic attacks.

There’d been attempts, sure. The 2002 shootings by Army snipers,² a couple other piddling joints. Since the invasion, though? Nada. The fight-them-there-so-we-don’t-here pretext was wearing mighty thin by 2005 - we were fighting them there, for not a whole hell of a lot. U.S., and increasingly UK, grunts were filling bodybags at an alarming rate.³ People weren’t scared; they were pissed. The coalition needed to remind them of the stakes, fast.

When in doubt, fire up the wurlitzer. Stop us if you recognize the beat...

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A. UNLUCKY NUMBER SEVEN

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This was so cool when we were twelve

Conspiracy legends Webster Tarpley and Dan Hopsicker have a saying:

Watch what they say early.

The first couple days after a deep event⁴ are revelatory - so many things are happening all at once the cover story can’t quite congeal just yet. That Goldilocks zone’s flooded with crucial tells: “Middle Eastern men” hightailing it out of Oklahoma City before McVeigh was nabbed. “Angel is next” on 9/11.⁵ The man on a motorcycle from the recent Isra*li embassy shooting.

The types of giveaways in those first forty-eight hours are legion - real culprits, conflicting narratives, forensic irregularities. Sometimes certain players jump the gun with details they shouldn’t know yet, like Copperfield’s lovely assistant squealing “Queen of Hearts!” before he can fan the deck.

The London bombings were just such an assistant-malfunction moment. 7/7’s shockwave pulverized Britons’ idyllic presumption of safety, and the farcical coverup shattered their trust in Parliament.⁶ Just like 9/11 everyone, including Isra*l, is implicated. She was in on 7/7 when the meta-event really began - two years before, on a beach in Tel Aviv.