Chapter One
Existential Evasions
You got yer
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
You got yer dead skunk in the middle of the road
Stinkin' to high Heaven!
Loudon Wainwright III
A friend of mine once said that Loudon had captured the existential moment in his ode to a dead skunk. There it was laying dead and stinking right in the middle of the road. While one could hold one's nose and speed past it as fast as possible, one simply could not eliminate its existence. The singular apodictic fact that in all four hijacked planes on that day a small group of terrorists crossed over the barrier between passengers and pilots, displaced the pilots, took over the controls and in effect turned a transportation device into a high tech smart bomb was a reality far too terrible to confront directly. It was a black and white glaring weakness that became an indispensable link in the chain of events that led directly to the deaths of 2,710 people. Those in charge of responding could not bear to stay in the presence of those dead bodies and see themselves as part of the process that killed them. Nothing that simple, that real, could be countenanced.
Faced with events impossible to assimilate, our bellwethers began to create a pseudo reality they could provisionally accept. They immediately concluded that the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was masterminded by Osama Bin Ladin, the very personification of evil. It was carried out by fanatical cowards who hated our freedom, our democratic way of life. Our leaders quickly pictured the world in black and white, good and evil, the rest of the world was either for us or against us.
Our leaders refused to understand or utilize the science of profiling. Instead, they simply reached into their bag of ready made devils and motivations and set us on a path that may prove to be one of the worst tactical errors we have ever made, but that is another story. Once again, just as it was on the morning of the 11th., we are left alone to fend for ourselves. Television tends to present profilers as mystical entities that somehow use their psychic powers to get inside the mind of the criminals they seek to understand. Viewed in this light, it is little wonder that profilers run into suspicion and criticism by traditional law enforcement theory. Indeed, the most successful profilers do seem to possess an uncanny ability to describe and predict the behavior of their subjects. Their ability does not come from some mysterious otherworldly source, it comes from the same place and for the same reasons that enabled Lance Armstrong to achieve an unprecedented sixth Tour de France victory-- solid science, clear vision, fearless determination and practice, practice, practice.
The critical process that evolved into present day profiling began in the 1970's. The FBI had a group of nine agents from their Behavioral Sciences unit that went around the country lecturing law enforcement agencies on Criminal Psychology. John Douglas was one member of the task force and he and some of the other members wondered what it would be like to go into prisons and talk to criminals face to face. It would have been difficult to get official sanction for what they envisioned - the status quo held that criminals would either not talk or lie, so they just did it anyway. To their relief and surprise even hardened mass murderers opened up to them as they developed techniques to encourage them to talk. Under the right circumstances, these people seemed eager to talk about their secret world. It wasn't just that the process was unprecedented, it was initially very intimidating. As John Douglas described his first meeting with Charles Mason at San Quentin
"Imagine visiting Charles Manson at San Quentin. He sits on the back of a chair, looking down at you. You start talking. You can't help but stare at that swastika on his forehead. The way he ducks responsibility for the grisly Tate-LaBianca murders sickens you. Thinking about the nearly full-term unborn child that Manson's followers murdered chokes you up. You sweat, or become angry, or squirm in your seat".
To sit alone in a cell with a monster, to listen dispassionately as you hear him calmly describe gruesome acts that make you want to vomit or run away, to know that you are hearing things so despicable that you will not be able to sleep that night; to not interfere, to simply pay attention and understand, requires a level of dedication and skill that few of us could muster. Yet out of these interviews a body of data began to emerge that allowed the agents who came to be called profilers to think like the criminals they studied. We are not going to learn how to become professional profilers sitting here on our cold metal seats, no more so than learning to ride a bicycle would enable us to duplicate Lance Armstrong's feats. But we can, and we must, draw on some of the techniques and skills they developed. We don't have to build a flashlight, just turn it on and open our eyes.
Our first task as we begin to unravel the secrets held within the cockpit entrance is without a doubt the hardest. It is counter to the way we do things. Why that is so, will be the subject of a later chapter. For now, we have to put who we are, what we believe, our judgment aside. They won't go away or be harmed if left alone for a few minutes. In order to understand the terrorists we have to start where they are. In order to understand where they are we have to listen to what they say. Listen to this speaker, his initials are OBL, but for now it is just the words we must pay attention to.
"America and its allies are massacring us in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir and Iraq. The Muslims have the right to attack America in reprisal...
The people of Islam awakened and realised that they are the main target for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusaders alliance. All false claims and propaganda about "Human Rights" were hammered down and exposed by the massacres that took place against the Muslims in every part of the world...
If there are more than one duty to be carried out, then the most important one should receive priority. Clearly after Belief (Imaan) there is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land...fighting the enemy who is corrupting the life and the religion. There is no preconditions for this duty and the enemy should be fought with one best abilities.
My Muslim Brothers (particularly those of the Arab Peninsula): The money you pay to buy American goods will be transformed into bullets and used against our brothers in Palestine and tomorrow (future) against our sons in the land of the two Holy places. By buying these goods we are strengthening their economy while our dispossession and poverty increases...
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples...
The people of Islam awakened and realised that they are the main target for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusaders alliance. All false claims and propaganda about "Human Rights" were hammered down and exposed by the massacres that took place against the Muslims in every part of the world...
If there are more than one duty to be carried out, then the most important one should receive priority. Clearly after Belief (Imaan) there is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land...fighting the enemy who is corrupting the life and the religion. There is no preconditions for this duty and the enemy should be fought with one best abilities.
My Muslim Brothers (particularly those of the Arab Peninsula): The money you pay to buy American goods will be transformed into bullets and used against our brothers in Palestine and tomorrow (future) against our sons in the land of the two Holy places. By buying these goods we are strengthening their economy while our dispossession and poverty increases...
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples...
My interpretation of Bin Ladens motivation is not relevant here. My goal is only to encourage you to hear the words, to then use your new found profiler skills to conclude something about what makes Ben Laden tick based on the words he spoke. In case my choice of quotes is suspect, I will cite the analysis of another. The following was published on October 8, 2001, by David Duke, whose political orientation appears to be somewhere to the right of Attila The Hun.
"In May of 1998 Bin Laden was interviewed by reporter John Miller of ABC. Bin Laden talks about why he seeks to attack America. You can find it on the ABC and the PBS websites. In the interview, Laden never said one word about opposing democratic principles, nor has he ever done so in his lifetime. So, now we know Laden's true motivation. He attacked us not because he 'hates democracy', but because he thinks Israel controls and uses America to attack his people. If Laden turns out to be the one behind the terrorism, there is no defense of what he did. As far as I am concerned, he deserves to be blown to hell for killing so many Americans. But why must the media and government create this huge, absurd lie about why we were attacked on September 11".
Before we tackle Ben Laden ourselves we need to examine Duke's analysis in terms of profiling. While our leaders heard nothing Ben Laden said, Duke heard the part where Ben accuses us of being co-conspirators with the Jews. Duke simply did not hear Ben Laden's outrage over our desecrating the holy lands of his people. How this process of information filtering comes about will be the subject later on. But for now...
Measure the words of Osama bin Laden for yourself. Remember the things you heard about why September 11th. happened. The purpose of our doing so is singular- to understand. See if you can find basis for what you heard from our leaders and the media within the words quoted above or in any statements directly attributed to Osama. The purpose of understanding him has nothing to do with forgiving him, or excusing his actions. Nor does it, as some say, give comfort to the enemy, or fail to honor our soldiers. Its goal is simple- to help us understand what we need to watch out for. Why he is doing it is separate from how to prevent him from doing it again.
Take a hypothetical profiling example of a mass murderer. A number of gruesome murders have been committed. Newspapers dub the killer The Midnight Maniac. The killer leaves cryptic messages at the sight of each slaying. A profiler is brought in. She reasons [ Willie Nelson was busy that week] that the killer is a white male in his mid thirties, he is obsessed with the occult and believes himself to be guided by the heavens. The profiler reasons that the killer is highly likely to strike next Friday night outside the Blue Moon Café. The police are waiting, arrest him as he is approaching his next victim, and the village is saved. This point may be a little abstract, but the fact is that no matter how bizarre the killers thinking, it is still human thought, and the profiler understood it only because she listened to the human logic of the information she had, her only guide was patterns of human thought she had learned from other human murderers, not her preacher, or her school teacher or her government.
Whether Osama bin Laden, was really the mastermind behind the September 11 attack (he claims that he was not) he does claim to be one of those labeled as terrorists, and nothing from terrorist communications would indicate otherwise. He says he is upset because we are occupying sacred land intended only for Muslims, that God (er, I mean Allah) requires that true believers cast out the infidels, that to fail to do so is a sin, and that death in the attempt to expel us from holy lands is a heroic goal to be rewarded with the ability to intercede on the behalf of one's family in the afterlife , and to obtain the services of up to 72 virgins.[ [I haven't read the full Islamic heavenly reward system, so I am not sure what reward awaits women warriors killed in the struggle. Maybe they are all turned into virgins again, [though I'm not sure they would consider that a reward] , otherwise it seems to me that heaven would run out of virgins in short order]]. Osama also states that we are handmaidens to the Jews in Israel attempting to destroy Islam; that we are only after their oil and to impose our beliefs on the rest of the world. Nothing in there about hating freedom, or democracy, or our way of life as long as we keep it to ourselves, or our freedom of movement in our own land. He claims to not have as a goal the slaughtering of our innocent women and children (he doesn't state whether he considers their deaths to be collateral damage), or the destruction of our form of government, but rather to punish us for sins we have committed against his people.
We profilers are a pesky bunch because we not only listen to Ben Laden and hear what he has to say, but we insist on doing the same thing to our own leaders. We are all familiar with what we heard. They (we) said the terrorists were out to destroy our most precious things- our freedom, our way of life, that is, things that we would rather die than give up. If we take those words at face value we are left without a choice, it's kill or be killed. If we listen to our leaders and analyze what they say rather than just believe them, we begin to understand things that we can use to help ourselves. Ben Laden gives his followers no choice but to destroy us, George Bush (and I say George Bush only because he is our current president, if I had written four years earlier I would have said Bill Clinton) gives us no choice but to destroy them. They both mean what they say, question is they are saying the same thing?
Homework assignment:
Hear the words of George and Bin. Apply what they say to the physical/ political evidence. Start to build a picture of what they are likely to do, the likely outcome of actions consistent with what they say. In other words, does the flashlight come on? Now hear what you have to say- not what you heard, what you say. You can cheat a little bit because you not only have what you say but you have access to what you think.
That's just a brief glance at profiling. At this point I think the next chapter may be A Brief History of Warfare, or It's the Economy? Stupid ! Not sure yet because I haven't read what I have to say.
"In May of 1998 Bin Laden was interviewed by reporter John Miller of ABC. Bin Laden talks about why he seeks to attack America. You can find it on the ABC and the PBS websites. In the interview, Laden never said one word about opposing democratic principles, nor has he ever done so in his lifetime. So, now we know Laden's true motivation. He attacked us not because he 'hates democracy', but because he thinks Israel controls and uses America to attack his people. If Laden turns out to be the one behind the terrorism, there is no defense of what he did. As far as I am concerned, he deserves to be blown to hell for killing so many Americans. But why must the media and government create this huge, absurd lie about why we were attacked on September 11".
Before we tackle Ben Laden ourselves we need to examine Duke's analysis in terms of profiling. While our leaders heard nothing Ben Laden said, Duke heard the part where Ben accuses us of being co-conspirators with the Jews. Duke simply did not hear Ben Laden's outrage over our desecrating the holy lands of his people. How this process of information filtering comes about will be the subject later on. But for now...
Measure the words of Osama bin Laden for yourself. Remember the things you heard about why September 11th. happened. The purpose of our doing so is singular- to understand. See if you can find basis for what you heard from our leaders and the media within the words quoted above or in any statements directly attributed to Osama. The purpose of understanding him has nothing to do with forgiving him, or excusing his actions. Nor does it, as some say, give comfort to the enemy, or fail to honor our soldiers. Its goal is simple- to help us understand what we need to watch out for. Why he is doing it is separate from how to prevent him from doing it again.
Take a hypothetical profiling example of a mass murderer. A number of gruesome murders have been committed. Newspapers dub the killer The Midnight Maniac. The killer leaves cryptic messages at the sight of each slaying. A profiler is brought in. She reasons [ Willie Nelson was busy that week] that the killer is a white male in his mid thirties, he is obsessed with the occult and believes himself to be guided by the heavens. The profiler reasons that the killer is highly likely to strike next Friday night outside the Blue Moon Café. The police are waiting, arrest him as he is approaching his next victim, and the village is saved. This point may be a little abstract, but the fact is that no matter how bizarre the killers thinking, it is still human thought, and the profiler understood it only because she listened to the human logic of the information she had, her only guide was patterns of human thought she had learned from other human murderers, not her preacher, or her school teacher or her government.
Whether Osama bin Laden, was really the mastermind behind the September 11 attack (he claims that he was not) he does claim to be one of those labeled as terrorists, and nothing from terrorist communications would indicate otherwise. He says he is upset because we are occupying sacred land intended only for Muslims, that God (er, I mean Allah) requires that true believers cast out the infidels, that to fail to do so is a sin, and that death in the attempt to expel us from holy lands is a heroic goal to be rewarded with the ability to intercede on the behalf of one's family in the afterlife , and to obtain the services of up to 72 virgins.[ [I haven't read the full Islamic heavenly reward system, so I am not sure what reward awaits women warriors killed in the struggle. Maybe they are all turned into virgins again, [though I'm not sure they would consider that a reward] , otherwise it seems to me that heaven would run out of virgins in short order]]. Osama also states that we are handmaidens to the Jews in Israel attempting to destroy Islam; that we are only after their oil and to impose our beliefs on the rest of the world. Nothing in there about hating freedom, or democracy, or our way of life as long as we keep it to ourselves, or our freedom of movement in our own land. He claims to not have as a goal the slaughtering of our innocent women and children (he doesn't state whether he considers their deaths to be collateral damage), or the destruction of our form of government, but rather to punish us for sins we have committed against his people.
We profilers are a pesky bunch because we not only listen to Ben Laden and hear what he has to say, but we insist on doing the same thing to our own leaders. We are all familiar with what we heard. They (we) said the terrorists were out to destroy our most precious things- our freedom, our way of life, that is, things that we would rather die than give up. If we take those words at face value we are left without a choice, it's kill or be killed. If we listen to our leaders and analyze what they say rather than just believe them, we begin to understand things that we can use to help ourselves. Ben Laden gives his followers no choice but to destroy us, George Bush (and I say George Bush only because he is our current president, if I had written four years earlier I would have said Bill Clinton) gives us no choice but to destroy them. They both mean what they say, question is they are saying the same thing?
Homework assignment:
Hear the words of George and Bin. Apply what they say to the physical/ political evidence. Start to build a picture of what they are likely to do, the likely outcome of actions consistent with what they say. In other words, does the flashlight come on? Now hear what you have to say- not what you heard, what you say. You can cheat a little bit because you not only have what you say but you have access to what you think.
That's just a brief glance at profiling. At this point I think the next chapter may be A Brief History of Warfare, or It's the Economy? Stupid ! Not sure yet because I haven't read what I have to say.
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