Main japanese opposition party
questions 9/11
in parliament - broadcasted on public TV
for complete transcript in english
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Japan's prime minister and main opposition
rival clashed on Jan. 9th, 2008 over the controversial naval mission in support of U.S.-led forces in
Afghanistan as the ruling bloc prepared to force an enabling law
through parliament
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, squaring off in parliament with
Democratic Party leader Ichiro Ozawa for the first time since
taking office, praised the navy's refueling mission as helping
the global war on terrorism and urged the opposition-controlled
upper house to vote on it before parliament ends on Jan. 15.
Ozawa insists the refueling mission violates Japan's pacifist
constitution, and has not been approved formally by the
United Nationsa position Fukuda flatly rejected.
Ozawas Japan Democratic party which is in the opposition tried
to block the resumption of the mission, which supplies fuel
and water to US-led forces operating in the Indian Ocean.
It claims that oil supplied by Japanese ships has been diverted
for use in
operations in Iraq, an accusation the Americans deny.
On January 11th 2008 the opposition-controlled upper house
voted down the bill to restart the mission to refuel U.S. and
other ships patrolling the Indian Oceanmember of Parliament
Yukihisa Fujita of the Japan Democratic party, made a 20
minute long statement
at the House of Councillors, the upper house of the Diet
(parliament) of Japan, ahead of the voting
He questioned the official version of 9/11 presented
to the japanese government and the public by the US
administration in a session of the defence commission.
He asked the current Prime Minister Fukuda who was the Chief
Cabinet Secretary under Koizumi cabinet in 2001 .
Mr.Yukihisa Fujita stressed that of the 24 people that died on
9/11 only 13 were identified and 11 bodies remain unaccounted
for.
He pointed out that there was never an official police
investigation into the deaths of these japanese nationals.
He asked whether terrorism is crime or war. Some Japanese people
were killed, so he believes this was a crime and the japanese
police should investigate the
real suspects.
The Japanese government assumed that the suspect was Al-Queda
because Bush told then Prime minister Koizumi in 2001 after the
attacks of 9/11 had happened
and later did send the self-defense force to Iraq based on that
assumption.
US President George W Bush has recently pressed Japanese Prime
Minister Yasuo Fukuda to ensure
Tokyo resumes crucial naval operations to support the war in
Afghanistan.
Yukihisa Fujita did question Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and
Minister of Finance Fukushiro Nukaga about the way
in which the US government did inform the japanese government
about the people responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
He then explained that in the USA many people doubt the official
version of 9/11 and numerous websites and scientists
have collected evidence that contradicts the governments
version..
He presented several largescale photographs of: the Pentagon
entry and exit hole,the flight path towards the Pentagon,
the exploding WTC towers and the WTC 7 collapse.
He concluded that the japanese governments support of the
"war against terror" is solely
based on information provided by the US-administration. He
demanded further investigation in the face
of the governments drive to support the war more actively.
Yukihisa Fujita was elected to the House of Councillors for
the first time in 2007
The Democratic Party of Japan (Minshinto) is a social liberal
political party founded in 1998 by the merger of several smaller
parties.
It is the second-largest party in the House of Representatives
and the largest party in the House of Councillors,
and it constitutes the primary opposition to the long-dominant
Liberal Democratic Party.
broadcasted on public TV
Below is a transcript of testimony
in the Japanese Parliament that was broadcast live nationwide on
NHK television.
The Member of Parliament talking about 911 is Yukihisa Fujita
from the Democratic Party of Japan.
Head of the committee: We will now
begin the first session of the defense and foreign affairs
committee.
We will now start discussing the special anti-terror law. .We now
call on Mr. Yukihisa Fujita
Fujita standing in front of microphone: .
This will be the last televised broadcast of this committee for
so I would like to talk about the origin of the war on terrorism
which was the attacks of 911. On September 11 of 2002 I went to a
theater house for a charity concert to help build a school in
Afghanistan. They chose to have the charity concert on that day
as a gesture of respect for the dead. Normally 911 commemorative
events are for the people who died in New York but the people who
held this event decided that more innocent people died as a
result of 911 in Afghanistan than in New York. So they built a
grade school near where the statue of Buddha was destroyed in
Bamiyan. The name of the school is "the school of
hope." They also lit candles to commemorate the dead both in
Afghanistan and in New York in the year 2002, one year after the
attacks. So, when discussing these anti-terror laws we should ask
ourselves, what was 911, what is terrorism? So today, I would
like to talk about the beginning of the war on terror.
So, I would like to ask the people who call this law an
anti-terror law to realize that the biggest victim of the war on
terrorism has been Afghanistan so I believe helping the people of
Afghanistan should be our biggest priority. I would like to ask
Mr. Inuzuka about this.
Tadashi Inuzuka walking to the microphone:
As Mr. Fujita says the main purpose of this law is to provide
peace and security to Afghanistan. And, as he says, the biggest
sufferers have been the people of Afghanistan. Afghanistan has
1.7 times the land area of Japan and 20 some million people live
there. Also, because of a drought on the Eurasian continent close
to 5 million have died due to water shortages. Even now 1 million
people live close to the main battlegrounds. So, the main purpose
is to provide stability to those war zones so in that context
what should Japan do? However, instead of providing support by
providing fuel to the U.S. forces we at the Democratic Party have
decided that providing water is more important. The philosophy
behind our anti-terror law is to get the ruling party to help
deal with this problem.
Head of the committee: Mr. Fujita
Mr. Fujita:
I would like to talk about the origins of this war on terrorism.
You may recall that in November I asked you if terrorism was war
or if it was a crime. And the whole start of this war on
terrorism was 911. What I
want to know is if this event was caused by Al Qaeda or not. So
far the only thing the government has said is that we think it
was caused by Al Qaeda because President Bush told us so. We have
not seen any real proof that it was Al Qaeda. I would like to
know why the Prime Minister thinks it was the Taliban who was
responsible for 911. Committee Chief, I
want to ask the Prime Minister because he was chief cabinet
officer at the time.
Prime Minister Fukuda:
Since the attacks we have communicated with the U.S. government
and other governments at different levels and exchanged
information. According to
secret information obtained by our government and reports put
together by foreign governments the 911 attacks were carried out
by the international terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda.
Mr. Fujita:
So, you are talking about
both secret and disclosed information. My question is has the
Japanese government carried out its own investigation using the
police and other resources? It is a crime so surely an
investigation needs to be carried out. When a Japanese journalist
was shot in Myanmar you carried out an investigation. In the same
way over 20 Japanese people died on 911 so surely the government
carried out its own investigation and decided that Al Qaeda was
responsible. So, what kind of investigation did you carry out? At the time you were Chief Cabinet Secretary so surely
you would know better than anybody so I want to ask you about
your investigation.
Prime Minister Fukuda:
After the 911 attacks the National Police Agency sent an
emergency anti-terror team to New York. They met with U.S.
government officials and gathered information about missing
Japanese.
Mr. Fujita:
So you are saying over 20 people died as a result of a crime and
most of those people were working in New York. Also there were
some Japanese who died in the four airplanes that were hijacked.
I would like to know exactly how many people died in the
buildings and how many died in the airplanes. I also want to know
how you confirmed this. I would like the Foreign Minister to
answer for me.
Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura standing at right in
front of microphone:
We found the bodies of over a dozen Japanese following the
simultaneous terror attacks carried out on September 11 2001. We
were also informed about the death of 11 more people by the U.S.
authorities. In total 24 Japanese died in those attacks. Of those
2 were in the airplanes.
Mr. Fujita:
I would like to ask what flights the two Japanese who died in the
airplanes were on and how you determined who they were. If the
foreign minister does not know it is OK to get a bureaucrat to
answer:
Foreign Ministry division chief Ryoji Tanizaki:
Since this a question of fact, I will answer. As the Foreign
Minister said, of the 24 people who died two were on the
airplanes. One of them was on United Flight 93 and the other was
on American airlines flight 11.As for how we know this, well I do
not have the information in front of me but we were told by U.S.
authorities and, in general, they use DNA testing. So we believe
that is how we know about those two people.
Mr. Fujita:
So you are saying you do
not know because you do not have the documents. Also, you say you
believe there was DNA testing but you do not know. So what I want
to say today is that this was a crime and crimes are supposed to
be investigated. So the government needs to inform the victims
families of the results of their investigation. Also, instead of just observing the anniversary of 911
every year you must be gathering information and reacting to it.
So, during the past six years have you been supplying the
families of the deceased with information? I would like to ask
the Foreign Minister to answer.
Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura:
So you do not want to ask any more about how we confirmed the
deaths of Japanese but want to know about reports to the victims
families? We provided the families with information about the
bodies and about compensation funds. Also, for the 13 Japanese
whose remains we found, we helped the families deal with the
bodies. We also financial support visits to the World Trade
Center site for the families on every anniversary.
Mr. Fujita:
Since I do not have much time I would like to ask about the suspicious information
being uncovered and the doubts people world wide are having about
the events of 911. Many of these doubters are very influential
people. In such circumstances I believe the Japanese government,
which claims the attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda, should be providing the victims families with this new
information. In that context I would like to ask several
questions.
First of all I would like to get all members of the committee to
look at this panel and look at the pictures I have provided you
with. This is concrete
evidence in the form of photographs and other types of
information. The first photograph has computer graphics attached
to show how large the plane that hit the Pentagon was. A 757 is
quite a large airplane with a width of 38 meters. So as you can
see even though such a large plane hit the pentagon there is only
a hole that is too small for the airplane. This is a photograph
taken of firemen at work and you can also see there is no damage
of the sort an airplane that large should make. I would also like
you to look at the lawn in front and notice that there are no
airplane parts on it. Let us now look at the third picture, which
is also of the pentagon taken from a U.S. TV news report has
captions that show the roof of the Pentagon is still intact.
Again even though a huge airplane is supposed to have hit, there
is not enough corresponding damage. Now let us move to the next
photograph. Here is a photograph of a hole, as Minister Komura
knows the Pentagon is a very strong building with many walls. Yet
the airplane has pierced them. But as you know, airplanes are
made of the lightest possible material. An airplane made of such
light material could not make a hole like that. Next I would like
to show a photograph of how the airplane hit the building. The
airplane made a U-turn, avoiding the Defense Secretary's office
and hitting the only part of the Pentagon that had been specially
reinforced to withstand a bomb attack.
Also, in the middle of page five we have a comment from a U.S.
airforce official. He says I have flown the two types of airplane
used on 911 and I cannot believe it would be possible for someone
who is flying one for the first time to be able to carry out such
a maneuver. Also, as you know, they have not recovered the flight
recorders from most of these 4 airplanes. Also, there were more
than 80 security cameras at the Pentagon but they have refused to
release almost all of the footage. In any case, as you have just
seen there is no picture of the airplane or of its wreckage in
any of these photographs. It is very strange that no such
pictures have been shown to us.
As you know Japan's self-defense forces have their headquarters
in Ichigaya. Can you imagine if an airplane hit a major city, if
an hour and a half after an airplane hit New York that an
airplane could hit the Pentagon? In such a situation how could
our allies allow such an attack to take place. I would like the
Defense Minister to answer this.
Defense Minister Fuyushiba Ishiba:
I have not prepared so I will have to answer ad-lib. If such a
situation took place then the airforce would send fighters up to
shoot down any airplanes. This is what happened with an attack on
the German constitutional court. In the case of Japan our
reaction would depend on what kind of airplane it was, who was
flying it and what their purpose was. However, according to our
laws it might be hard to order an airplane to be shot down just
because it was flying at a low level. We would probably have
self-defense forces fly with it and ask for a cabinet decision.
Since an airplane would have many people on board we would have
do discuss what to do. This happened a long time ago but a Cesna
airplane was flown into the house of a person called Yoshio
Kodama. There was also an All Japan Airways flight bound for
Hakodate that was hijacked and had the pilot killed. It would be
best if such a thing never happened but we need to prepare new
laws for such situations and discuss them in Parliament.
Mr. Fujita:
Since we are running out of time I would like to present a new
piece of evidence. Please
look at this panel. The first picture is one you see often of the
two towers that were hit by hijacked airplanes. I could
understand if this happened right after the airplanes hit but
here we can see large piece of material flying a large distance
through the air. Some flew 150 meters. You can objects flying in
this picture as if there was an explosion. Here is a picture I
took from a book. This lets you see how far the objects flew. The
third picture is of a fireman who was involved in the rescue
talking about a series of explosions in the building that sounded
like a professional demolition. We cannot present video today so
I have written a translation of what the fireman said. Here his
is saying "it went boom boom boom like explosions were going
off."
Here is something said by a
Japanese research team of officials from the fire department and
the construction ministry. The interviewed a Japanese survivor
who said that while she was fleeing there were explosions. This
testimony appears in a report prepared with the aid of the
construction ministry and the fire department. Now I would like
you to see the following picture. Normally it is said that the
twin towers collapsed because they were hit by airplanes.
However, one block away from the twin towers is building number
7. It can be seen in the following map a block away from the WTC.
This building collapsed 7 hours after the WTC buildings were
attacked. If I could show you a video it would be easy to
understand but take a look at this photograph. This is a 47 story
building that fell in this manner (He drops and object to
demonstrate). The building falls in five or six seconds. It is
about the same speed as an object would fall in a vacuum. This
building falls like something you would see in a Kabuki show.
Also if falls while keeping its shape. Remember it was not hit by
an airplane. You have to ask yourself if a building could fall in
that manner due to a fire after 7 hours. Here we have a copy of
the 911 commission report. This is a report put out by the U.S.
government in July of 2004 but this report does not mention the
collapse of the building I just described. It is not mentioned at
all in here (he waves the book). FEMA also issued a report but
they also fail to mention this building. Many people believe,
especially after seeing the story about building number 7, that
something is strange. Since this is an incident where many people
died people think is should be investigated.
We are running out of time
but I would also like to mention the put options. Just before the
911 attacks, ie on September 6th, 7th and 8th there were put
options put out on the stocks of the two airlines United and
American that were hit by hijackers. There were also put options
on Merril Lynch, one of the biggest WTC tenants. In other words
somebody had insider information and made a fortune selling put
options of these stocks. The head of Germany's Bundesbank at the
time, who is equivalent to the Governor of the Bank of Japan,
said there are lots of facts to prove the people involved in the
terror attacks profited from insider information. He said there
was lots of suspicious trading involving financial companies etc
prior to the attacks. The had of the Bundesbank was willing to
say this much. I would like to ask the Finance Minster about
these put options. Did the government of Japan know about this,
and what do you think about this? I would like to ask Finance
Minister Nukaga about this.
Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga:
I was in Burkina Fasso in Africa when I heard about this
incident. I decided to fly immediately to the U.S. but when I got
to Paris I was told there were no flights to America. So I only
heard what was reported later about the facts. I know there have
been reports about the points you raise. So we made it obligatory
that people provide ID for securities transactions and for
suspicious transactions to be reported and we made it a crime to
provide money to terrorist organizations. We believe the
international financial system should not be abused. In any case,
terrorism is a horrible thing and must be condemned. This type of
terrorism cannot be stopped by one country but needs to be
stopped by international society.
Mr. Fujita:
I would like to ask finance
specialist Mr. Asao to tell me about put options. A group of
people with large amounts of money, clear insider information and
financial expertise would have been necessary for such a thing to
take place. Could a few terrorists in Afghanistand and Pakistan
carry out such a sophisticated and large scale set of
transactions? I would like to ask Mr. Asao to respond.
Keiichiro Asao:
I understand put options
are a deal to sell stocks at a fixed price. In this case somebody
must have had insider information to carry out such transactions
because nobody could normally predict these airlines would have
their planes hijacked. So, I believe this was certainly a case of
insider trading.
Mr. Fujita:
Prime Minister, you were Chief Cabinet Secretary at the time and
as somebody has already noted, this was an incident of the sort
that humanity had never previously experienced. Also, there appears to be a lot more
information about this incident coming out now than came out in
the months after the attacks. Now that we are an internet and
visual society, this information is being made public so if we
look at the situation now, the whole starting point for these two
laws , the start of the war on terror itself, as you have seen
from the information I have presented, has not been properly
investigated or analyzed. So I do not believe the government has
acted properly by investigating this incident or asking the U.S.
government for an explanation. So far we
have not started refueling U.S. ships yet so I think we need to go back to the
beginning and not just simply and blindly trust the U.S.
government explanation and indirect information provided by them.
There were too many victims so I think we need to start again
from the beginning. We need to ask who the real victims of this
war on terrorism are. I think the citizens of the world are its
victims. Here in Japan we have disappearing
pensions and disappearing records about victims of Hepatitis C
contaminated blood but everything I have presented on facts and
confirmable evidence. Let
us talk about the vanishing black boxes, vanishing airplanes and
vanishing remains. Also lots of the remains of these buildings
have disappeared. Even FEMA says that prevented it from carrying
out a proper investigation. We need to look at this evidence and
ask ourselves what the war on terrorism really is. I can see the
ministers nodding in agreement but I would like to ask Prime
Minister Fukuda. Please look at me. I have heard that when you
were Chief Cabinet Minister at the time you felt many strange
things about these attacks. Do you not think it was strange?
Prime Minister Fukuda:
I never said I thought it
was strange.
Mr. Fujita:
Prime Minister what about
the origin of the war on terror and the idea of whether it is
right or wrong to participate in it? Is there really a reason to
participate in this war on terror? Do we really need to
participate? I would also like to ask about how to really stop
terrorism.
Prime Minister Fukuda:
We believe based on evidence provided to us by the U.S.
government that the attacks of 911 were carried out by Al Qaeda.
We need to put an end to Al Qaeda terrorism. That is why
international society is united in the fight against terrorism.
Here, concerning a law passed by the Democratic Party last year
and based on UN resolution 16595. This is a resolution passed in
response to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. So you passed the
law agreeing with the UN didn't you?
Mr Fujita:
Did you confirm about the
bodies and the facts behind the resolution because that is why
you claim to be participating in this war on terrorism. So I
believe to end terrorism we need to pass a law that actually
helps the people of Afghanistan. I would
like Mr. Inuzuka to talk about the law and about the fight
against terrorism.
Tadashi Inuzuka:
Among the many problems raised by MP Fujita the thing we need to
worry most about is that the people in Afghanistan can live in
peace and without worries. That is the core of the issue of
ending terrorism. Without discussing this but just operating
behind the back lines by supplying oil and not thinking about the
entire situation or the people involved it is nonsense to debate
this law. This law should be made for peace and security in
Afghanistan. Our country needs to pass a real anti-terror law.
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