It is interesting that the newly appointed Director of the CIA, Porter Goss, along with Senator Bob Graham, and Senator Jon Kyl, were in Islamabad, Pakistan, late August of 2001; they were meeting with Pakistan’s President Musharraf, General Mahmoud Ahmed (of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence), and Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef. Two weeks later, on September 11, 2001, Goss, Graham, and Kyl were having breakfast with General Ahmed in a top-secret conference room on the fourth floor of the U.S. Capitol.
Ahmed’s organization directly funded the Taliban. They also had ties with Osama bin Laden. A month after the attacks of the 11th of September, Ahmed was fired from his position within the Pakistani goverment. Abdul Zaeef’s authority was removed, also. On January 5th, 2002, he was taken into U.S. custody. He is in custody, still, at Guantanamo. The Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, were lead by Goss and Graham.
I watched Masterpiece Theatre the other night. It was the story of Henry the 8th. The saying, "truth is stranger than fiction," was illuminated by this amazing tale. The tangled webs of our deception often defy the imagination; thus, they render reality unbelievable. The convoluted correspondences are enough to shatter the mind, enough to make one deny all but the most simple perspective. It is of this we can be assured.
Writing this, I thought of a poem by Baudelaire. The correspondences the poet is talking about are a different variety than those mentioned above; nevertheless, it seems relevant (if for no other reason than it came to mind). Here is a translation of "Correspondences:"
Nature is a temple where living pillars
Sometimes let forth confused words,
In it man goes throught forests of symbols
Which watch him with familiar looks.
Like long echoes which from a distance mingle
Into a profound and shadowy unity,
As vast as the night and as clarity,
Scents, colours, and sounds reply to one another.
There are perfumes fresh as children’s flesh,
Sweet as oboes, green as meadows,
And others corrupt, rich and triumphant,
Sharing the capacity of expansion that infinite things have,
Such as amber, musk, balsam, and incense,
Which hymn the transports of the mind and the senses.
translator unknown
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