| FOR TOO LONG the full length 90 min. version of this documentary has been unavailable. Only a 20 minute version has been circulating. Here now as of January 10, 2007 this failure of access ends. Bill Moyers, the respected TV journalist, analyzes the threats to constitutional government posed by an illegitimate network operating from within the government but using secrecy to set itself up outside of the government / peoples oversight. All this back in 1987. This documentary gives a fascinating overview of what has actually happened in the last 50 years regarding the CIA and the Cold War (including Iran, Guatamala, Cuba, Vietnam and Chile). The foundation for the massive push towards greater secrecy in government going on today. | |
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Moyers: The Secret Government ... The Constitution in Crisis
VII Foro Social Mundial: Un diálogo a medias entre África y el mundo
Sally Burch
ALAI AMLATINA, 23/01/2007, Nairobi.- El VII Foro Social Mundial cerró su tercer día de actividades, el 23 de enero, en el estadio de Kasarani, en las afueras de Nairobi, Kenia, donde se reúnen cerca de 50.000 participantes. El ambiente del recinto vibra con las festivas manifestaciones -africanas e internacionales-, que marchan en círculo alrededor del estadio, al ritmo de música, bailes y consignas.
Es temprano aún para poder hacer un balance, pero los intercambios de impresiones permiten dibujar un esbozo de algunas de las facetas más destacadas del Foro. Entre los principales aciertos de esta séptima edición, se destaca la presencia africana, en números mucho mayores que en anteriores foros, y la evidente expectativa de las organizaciones africanas presentes de poder socializar sus luchas, a la vez que fortalecer lazos y conocer las de otros continentes. Tan es así que el hecho de que organizaciones populares del país sede hayan luchado por entrar sin pagar, evidencia que el FSM ha logrado generar expectativa y esperanzas.
Aun así, muchos/as participantes lamentan que la presencia de organizaciones kenianas haya sido menos numerosa de lo que hubiesen esperado. Para Geraldo Fontes del Movimiento Sin Tierra de Brasil, el costo de entrada no ha sido el único factor: hubiese sido necesario un mayor trabajo de movilización y preparación previa con las organizaciones del país, señala.
Por otra parte, llama la atención la fuerte presencia de las iglesias africanas (católica y protestantes), que han movilizado grandes delegaciones (especialmente de jóvenes, -grupos que predominan en el campamento de la juventud-), muchas de ellas con su propia agenda de temas y actividades, pero con poca participación e intercambio en otros espacios.
En determinados momentos, los encuentros se han dado en términos más confrontacionales, incluso entre africanos/as, como ciertas expresiones de homofobia o anti-aborto, frente a eventos en torno a los derechos sexuales. Para Phumi Mtetwa, del Diálogo Sur-Sur LGBT, ello no es necesariamente negativo, pues obliga al debate y la reflexión sobre las respectivas interpretaciones de la propia cultura.
De hecho, en numerosos eventos, se nota que el intercambio esperado con África no se produce, con excepción, entre otros, de los espacios de movimientos mundiales, como la Vía Campesina o la Marcha Mundial de Mujeres, que han movilizado sus bases principalmente desde el continente, con un temario centrado en la realidad africana.
"Talvez puede ser que el formato foro es una idea muy occidentalizada -en el sentido europeo-latinoamericano-, que no va con la cultura política y social de África", reconoció Gonzalo Berrón de la Alianza Social Continental. No obstante, Berrón saluda el hecho que el Foro esté permitiendo fortalecer alianzas Sur-Sur en torno a temas concretos, como la lucha contra el libre comercio y la Organización Mundial del Comercio, las transnacionales y la militarización.
La carpa del Foro Social Américas ha sido otro espacio que ha suscitado intercambios positivos, muchos de ellos espontáneamente con quienes la visitan. Se registra el especial interés desde los otros continentes del Sur por conocer más sobre el proceso de cambios políticos en la región y sus perspectivas.
Al igual que en los últimos foros muy grandes, se han generado frustraciones por los errores de programación, eventos cancelados o cambiados sin aviso, o que se realizan en condiciones difíciles por el ruido circundante. Por lo general se lo acepta con paciencia, sabiendo que el Foro se realiza en precarias condiciones económicas. No obstante, lo que sí ha generado protestas es el alto costo de las entradas y las comidas, inaccesible para la población pobre de Kenya. El precio de entrada de 500 shillings para los kenianos -más de US$7, equivalente a un salario mínimo semanal-, ha desatado cada día protestas e incluso ingresos masivas sin pagar, desde los barrios pobres de la ciudad, que cuentan con la simpatía de los demás participantes. Lo mismo ocurre con las comidas, que a 300 shillings están fuera del alcance de muchas personas. A estas críticas se suman la terciarización de la mayoría de los servicios a empresas comerciales, sin tener en cuenta el comercio justo, o imponiendo un precio de piso fuera del alcance de los pequeños vendedores.
Muchas personas consideran que tales políticas, adoptadas por el comité organizador local, -no obstante disidencias internas-, apuntan a la conveniencia de definir criterios más claros para que la realización de los foros sea consecuente con los principios de participación popular, manejo ecológico y economía solidaria, que son parte de la propuestas identificadas con este proceso; sin, por supuesto, que implique una carga financiera insoportable para quienes lo organizan.
ALAI AMLATINA, 23/01/2007, Nairobi.- El VII Foro Social Mundial cerró su tercer día de actividades, el 23 de enero, en el estadio de Kasarani, en las afueras de Nairobi, Kenia, donde se reúnen cerca de 50.000 participantes. El ambiente del recinto vibra con las festivas manifestaciones -africanas e internacionales-, que marchan en círculo alrededor del estadio, al ritmo de música, bailes y consignas.
Es temprano aún para poder hacer un balance, pero los intercambios de impresiones permiten dibujar un esbozo de algunas de las facetas más destacadas del Foro. Entre los principales aciertos de esta séptima edición, se destaca la presencia africana, en números mucho mayores que en anteriores foros, y la evidente expectativa de las organizaciones africanas presentes de poder socializar sus luchas, a la vez que fortalecer lazos y conocer las de otros continentes. Tan es así que el hecho de que organizaciones populares del país sede hayan luchado por entrar sin pagar, evidencia que el FSM ha logrado generar expectativa y esperanzas.
Aun así, muchos/as participantes lamentan que la presencia de organizaciones kenianas haya sido menos numerosa de lo que hubiesen esperado. Para Geraldo Fontes del Movimiento Sin Tierra de Brasil, el costo de entrada no ha sido el único factor: hubiese sido necesario un mayor trabajo de movilización y preparación previa con las organizaciones del país, señala.
Por otra parte, llama la atención la fuerte presencia de las iglesias africanas (católica y protestantes), que han movilizado grandes delegaciones (especialmente de jóvenes, -grupos que predominan en el campamento de la juventud-), muchas de ellas con su propia agenda de temas y actividades, pero con poca participación e intercambio en otros espacios.
En determinados momentos, los encuentros se han dado en términos más confrontacionales, incluso entre africanos/as, como ciertas expresiones de homofobia o anti-aborto, frente a eventos en torno a los derechos sexuales. Para Phumi Mtetwa, del Diálogo Sur-Sur LGBT, ello no es necesariamente negativo, pues obliga al debate y la reflexión sobre las respectivas interpretaciones de la propia cultura.
De hecho, en numerosos eventos, se nota que el intercambio esperado con África no se produce, con excepción, entre otros, de los espacios de movimientos mundiales, como la Vía Campesina o la Marcha Mundial de Mujeres, que han movilizado sus bases principalmente desde el continente, con un temario centrado en la realidad africana.
"Talvez puede ser que el formato foro es una idea muy occidentalizada -en el sentido europeo-latinoamericano-, que no va con la cultura política y social de África", reconoció Gonzalo Berrón de la Alianza Social Continental. No obstante, Berrón saluda el hecho que el Foro esté permitiendo fortalecer alianzas Sur-Sur en torno a temas concretos, como la lucha contra el libre comercio y la Organización Mundial del Comercio, las transnacionales y la militarización.
La carpa del Foro Social Américas ha sido otro espacio que ha suscitado intercambios positivos, muchos de ellos espontáneamente con quienes la visitan. Se registra el especial interés desde los otros continentes del Sur por conocer más sobre el proceso de cambios políticos en la región y sus perspectivas.
Al igual que en los últimos foros muy grandes, se han generado frustraciones por los errores de programación, eventos cancelados o cambiados sin aviso, o que se realizan en condiciones difíciles por el ruido circundante. Por lo general se lo acepta con paciencia, sabiendo que el Foro se realiza en precarias condiciones económicas. No obstante, lo que sí ha generado protestas es el alto costo de las entradas y las comidas, inaccesible para la población pobre de Kenya. El precio de entrada de 500 shillings para los kenianos -más de US$7, equivalente a un salario mínimo semanal-, ha desatado cada día protestas e incluso ingresos masivas sin pagar, desde los barrios pobres de la ciudad, que cuentan con la simpatía de los demás participantes. Lo mismo ocurre con las comidas, que a 300 shillings están fuera del alcance de muchas personas. A estas críticas se suman la terciarización de la mayoría de los servicios a empresas comerciales, sin tener en cuenta el comercio justo, o imponiendo un precio de piso fuera del alcance de los pequeños vendedores.
Muchas personas consideran que tales políticas, adoptadas por el comité organizador local, -no obstante disidencias internas-, apuntan a la conveniencia de definir criterios más claros para que la realización de los foros sea consecuente con los principios de participación popular, manejo ecológico y economía solidaria, que son parte de la propuestas identificadas con este proceso; sin, por supuesto, que implique una carga financiera insoportable para quienes lo organizan.
Mensaje de Evo Morales Aima, Presidente de Bolivia y candidato al Nobel de la Paz 2007, al VII Foro Social Mundial (Nairobi, Kenia).
Primero quiero saludar al Foro Social Mundial y a todos los compañeros y compañeras, hermanos y hermanas que participan para seguir dando línea programática, política e ideológica, para cambiar el mundo finalmente, este mundo de injusticias, de desigualdades. Los foros, los eventos internacionales, mundiales, siempre nos orientan a los líderes sindicales, y ahora -porqué no decir- a los presidentes. Espero que de este Foro salgan propuestas que permitan cambiar y aseverar cómo terminar con el modelo neoliberal que ha hecho mucho daño en mi país, Bolivia, como también en América latina y con seguridad en otros países del mundo.
Yo creo que en el mundo hay dos líneas: gobiernos, presidentes, que apuestan por la vida y hay presidentes y gobiernos que, con sus políticas, apuestan para acabar con vidas. En menos de un año de Presidente, yo he encontrado dos pueblos, dos gobiernos o dos programas, si somos más claros, unos gobiernos mandan tropas para salvar vidas y otros gobiernos mandan tropas para acabar con vidas. Esa es la profunda diferencia, unos están para buscar cierta hegemonía, otros para salvar vidas en el marco de la solidaridad, de la reciprocidad. Entonces, ¿a cual nos sumamos? Yo digo a los gobiernos de presidentes, comandantes, que salvan vidas, solidaria, incondicionalmente. Otros, en una cuestión de hegemonía, siguen pensado en cómo dominar el mundo con costos de vidas, irrespetando a los derechos humanos.
Por tanto aquí hay que pensar en la vida, hay que pensar en la humanidad, hay que pensar en cómo salvar a la humanidad, y eso es salvando al planeta Tierra; desde el movimiento indígena es un aporte importante cómo vivir en armonía con el planeta Tierra, como decimos en Bolivia, con la Pacha Mama, la madre tierra. Me alegra mucho que vayan creciendo movimientos ecologistas, movimientos llamados verdes, movimientos por la humanidad, movimientos humanistas. Todos debemos juntarnos en todo el mundo para salvar a la humanidad salvando al planeta Tierra, acabando con cualquier política militarista, intervencionista, soberbia. Pensar en dominar, bajo la militarización, no es la vía correcta sino es una forma mas bien de seguir atentando contra la vida, por tanto, contra los derechos humanos.
Por un momento había pensado que nuestros líderes sindicales, sociales, planteaban en la región que aprendieran inglés para ir a compartir experiencias de lucha en África. No se puede entender cómo en algunos países de África tengan tanta riqueza pero con más pobreza que en Bolivia, que Bolivia tiene tanta riqueza pero también tanta pobreza. Lamentablemente los recursos naturales están tan destruidos, que para recuperarlos es necesario prepararnos como pueblos, en base a la conciencia, a la conscientización, que los pueblos planteen la recuperación de sus recursos naturales para cambiar la situación social en los países del Sur.
Esta relación de Sur a Sur no solo es importante en acuerdos y contactos entre presidentes y gobiernos, sino entre los pueblos, lo que hay que gestar son esos encuentros, porque a mí me preocupa que en algunos países de África, los excluidos, los marginados, los discriminados, asuman la conducción del país, tal vez se liberen como seres humanos pero no están pensando en la liberación de los recursos naturales y mientras no liberemos los recursos naturales, no habrán cambios. Tal vez algunos grupos oligárquicos digan: bueno, pobrecitos, negros, indígenas, ya están en el gobierno; sí, gobernamos, pero si no afectamos los intereses económicos nos van a apoyar mas bien; si de lo que se trata es de liberar, de nacionalizar los recursos naturales.
Me parece importante este encuentro, las alianzas Sur Sur pero desde los pueblos fundamentalmente. Bien, siento que tenemos unos vacíos, en Latinoamérica, en Suramérica, somos campeones para expulsar presidentes, siento que ahora en estos países no hay esta situación y la tarea es cómo crear mayor conciencia para que juntos podamos luchar. Yo resaltaría un acuerdo Sur Sur, del Medio Oriente, África, África del Sur, con Sur América o Latinoamérica, para que sea una base para frenar la soberbia del imperio.
Yo creo que en el mundo hay dos líneas: gobiernos, presidentes, que apuestan por la vida y hay presidentes y gobiernos que, con sus políticas, apuestan para acabar con vidas. En menos de un año de Presidente, yo he encontrado dos pueblos, dos gobiernos o dos programas, si somos más claros, unos gobiernos mandan tropas para salvar vidas y otros gobiernos mandan tropas para acabar con vidas. Esa es la profunda diferencia, unos están para buscar cierta hegemonía, otros para salvar vidas en el marco de la solidaridad, de la reciprocidad. Entonces, ¿a cual nos sumamos? Yo digo a los gobiernos de presidentes, comandantes, que salvan vidas, solidaria, incondicionalmente. Otros, en una cuestión de hegemonía, siguen pensado en cómo dominar el mundo con costos de vidas, irrespetando a los derechos humanos.
Por tanto aquí hay que pensar en la vida, hay que pensar en la humanidad, hay que pensar en cómo salvar a la humanidad, y eso es salvando al planeta Tierra; desde el movimiento indígena es un aporte importante cómo vivir en armonía con el planeta Tierra, como decimos en Bolivia, con la Pacha Mama, la madre tierra. Me alegra mucho que vayan creciendo movimientos ecologistas, movimientos llamados verdes, movimientos por la humanidad, movimientos humanistas. Todos debemos juntarnos en todo el mundo para salvar a la humanidad salvando al planeta Tierra, acabando con cualquier política militarista, intervencionista, soberbia. Pensar en dominar, bajo la militarización, no es la vía correcta sino es una forma mas bien de seguir atentando contra la vida, por tanto, contra los derechos humanos.
Por un momento había pensado que nuestros líderes sindicales, sociales, planteaban en la región que aprendieran inglés para ir a compartir experiencias de lucha en África. No se puede entender cómo en algunos países de África tengan tanta riqueza pero con más pobreza que en Bolivia, que Bolivia tiene tanta riqueza pero también tanta pobreza. Lamentablemente los recursos naturales están tan destruidos, que para recuperarlos es necesario prepararnos como pueblos, en base a la conciencia, a la conscientización, que los pueblos planteen la recuperación de sus recursos naturales para cambiar la situación social en los países del Sur.
Esta relación de Sur a Sur no solo es importante en acuerdos y contactos entre presidentes y gobiernos, sino entre los pueblos, lo que hay que gestar son esos encuentros, porque a mí me preocupa que en algunos países de África, los excluidos, los marginados, los discriminados, asuman la conducción del país, tal vez se liberen como seres humanos pero no están pensando en la liberación de los recursos naturales y mientras no liberemos los recursos naturales, no habrán cambios. Tal vez algunos grupos oligárquicos digan: bueno, pobrecitos, negros, indígenas, ya están en el gobierno; sí, gobernamos, pero si no afectamos los intereses económicos nos van a apoyar mas bien; si de lo que se trata es de liberar, de nacionalizar los recursos naturales.
Me parece importante este encuentro, las alianzas Sur Sur pero desde los pueblos fundamentalmente. Bien, siento que tenemos unos vacíos, en Latinoamérica, en Suramérica, somos campeones para expulsar presidentes, siento que ahora en estos países no hay esta situación y la tarea es cómo crear mayor conciencia para que juntos podamos luchar. Yo resaltaría un acuerdo Sur Sur, del Medio Oriente, África, África del Sur, con Sur América o Latinoamérica, para que sea una base para frenar la soberbia del imperio.
Monday, January 22, 2007
The Strategy of Tension - NATO’s Hidden Terrorism by Silvia Cattori*
22 JANUARY 2007
From
Zurich (Suisse)
The Strategy of Tension
NATO’s Hidden Terrorism
by Silvia Cattori*
Daniele Ganser, professor of contemporary history at Bale University (France) and chairman of the ASPO - Switzerland, published a landmark book about "NATO’s Secret Armies." According to him, during the last 50 years the United States have organized bombings in Western Europe that they have falsely attributed to the left and the extreme left with the purpose of discrediting them in the eyes of their voters. This strategy is still present today, inspiring fear for the Islam and justifying wars on oil.
Silvia Cattori: Your book about NATO’s Secret Armies [1] explains that the strategy of tension [2] and the False Flag terrorism [3] imply great dangers. It teaches us how NATO - together with the intelligence services or the West European countries and the Pentagon - utilised secret armies during the Cold War, hired spies among the extreme right wing, and organized terrorist acts for which they blamed the left. Becoming aware of this, we can wonder about what is likely to happen today behind our back.
Daniele Ganser: It is extremely important to understand what the strategy of tension truly represents the way it works nowadays. This can help us clarify the present and to see more clearly to what extent it is still in action. Only a few people know what the expression ’strategy of tension’ means. It is very important to talk about it, to explain it. It is a tactic that involves carrying out criminal acts and attributing them to someone else. By the term ’tension’, we mean emotional tension, all that which creates a feeling of tension.
By ’strategy’ we make reference to that which increases people’s fear in regard to a determined group. These secret structures of NATO had been equipped, financed and trained by the CIA, in coordination with the M16 (the British secret service), to fight against the Army of the Soviet Union in a case of war, but also according to the information to which he have access today, to commit terrorist acts in several countries [4]. That is how, since the 70s, the Italian secret services have been using these armies to foment terrorist attacks, with the purpose of causing fear among the population, and later, to accuse the communists of being the authors. The strategy of tension was designed to serve the purpose or discrediting, weakening and stopping communism from reaching executive power.
Silvia Cattori: To learn what it means is one thing. But it is still difficult to believe that our government could have let NATO, the West European intelligence agencies and the CIA act in such a way that could threaten their own citizens’ security!
Daniele Ganser: NATO was at the core of this clandestine network linked to terror; the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) and the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) were two substructures of the Atlantic Alliance, and they are clearly identified today. But, now that this has been established, it is still hard to know who was doing what. There are not any documents proving who was at the head, who organized the strategy of tension, how NATO, the West European intelligence services, the CIA, M16, and the hired terrorists among the extreme right, distributed each other’s roles. The only certainty that we have is that there was, inside these clandestine structures, some elements that used the strategy of tension. The terrorists from the extreme right have explained in their statements that it was NATO’s secret services that had supported them in this clandestine war. But when we ask for explanations from some members of the CIA or NATO - which I have done for many years - they limit themselves to say that it could be possible that a few criminal elements might have managed to avoid control.
Silvia Cattori: Were these secret armies active in every Western European country?
Daniele Ganser: In my research, I put forward evidence that these secret armies not only existed in Italy, but also in all Western Europe: in France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Luxembourg and Germany. In the beginning, we thought that there existed only one guerrilla-structured organization, and therefore, that all these secret armies had participated in the strategy of tension, and therefore, in terrorist acts. However, it is important to know that not all these secret armies have been involved in attacks, and to understand what differentiated them.
What appears to be clear today, is that NATO’s clandestine structures, usually called ’Stay Behind groups’ [5], were created in the beginning to act as a guerrilla in case of an occupation of Western Europe by the Soviet Union. The United States stated that the guerrilla networks were necessary to overcome the lack of preparedness of the countries attacked by Germany.
Several of the countries that were occupied by the Germans, like Norway, wanted to learn the lessons of their incapacity to resist the occupier, and they said to themselves that, in case of a new occupation, they had to be better prepared, to have another option at hand and to count with a secret army in case that the official one were to be defeated. Inside these secret armies, there were honest people, sincere patriots, who only wanted to defend their countries from an occupation.
Silvia Cattori: If I understand well, these Stay Behind groups, whose original goal was to be prepared in case of a Soviet invasion, have been deviated from that goal and were reorganised to defeat the left. From that, it is difficult to understand why the left parties have not investigated this or denounced this earlier.
Daniele Ganser: When we take the case of Italy, it appears that, every time that the communist party has interviewed the government to find an explanation about the secret army that was operating in this country under the coded name of Gladio [6], there was never any answer, under the pretext that it was a ’state secret’. It wasn’t until 1990 that Giulio Andreotti [7] recognised the existence of Gladio and its direct links with NATO, the CIA, and M16 [8]. _ It is also during that time that the judge Felice Casson was able to prove that the true author of the bombing in Peteano in 1972, that had shocked Italy, and that had been attributed up to that moment to the extreme left militants, was Vincenzo Vinciguerra, linked to ’Ordine Nuovo’, a group of the extreme right wing. Vinciguerra avoided blame for the bombing in Peteano with the help of the Italian secret services. Vinciguerra also spoke about the existence of this secret army, Gladio. He explained that, during the Cold War, these clandestine acts had caused the death of women and children [9]. He stated as well that this secret army controlled by NATO, had branches all around Europe. When this information was released, there was a political crisis in Italy. And it is thanks to the investigations of the judge Felice Casson that we got to know about NATO’s secret armies.
In Germany, when in 1990 the SPDs (German Social Democrat Partisans) became aware that in their country - as well as in all the other European countries - there was a secret army, and that this structure was linked to the German secret services, they loudly denounced it as a scandal and accused the Christian democratic Party (CDU). This party reacted by saying: "If you accuse us, we are going to say that, you too, together with Willy Brandt, you have been involved in this conspiracy". This happened at the same time as the first elections of the reunified Germany, which the SPD hoped to win. The leaders of the SPD understood that that was not a good electoral subject; in the end, the story was twisted in such a way as to make the existence of these secret armies seem justified.
In the European Parliament, in November 1990, many members exclaimed that the existence of such clandestine armies could not be tolerated and that the European people needed to know the true origin of terrorist acts and that an inquiry was needed. Therefore, the European Parliament wrote a complaint to NATO and to president George Bush Senior. But nothing was done. It is only in Italy, Belgium and Switzerland that there have been public queries. And they are the only three countries that have set some order in this subject, and that have published a report about their secret armies.
Silvia Cattori: What about today ? Are these secret armies still active? Is it possible that there exist secret national structures which escape the control of each State?
Daniele Ganser: For a historian, it is difficult to answer that question. We haven’t got an official report of each country. In my books, I analyse some facts that I can prove. Concerning Italy, there is a report stating that the secret army Gladio has been destroyed. About the existence of the secret army P26 in Switzerland, a report was also issued by the Parliament, in November 1990. Therefore, these clandestine armies, which had stocked explosives in hidden places everywhere in Switzerland, have been dissolved.
But in the other countries, nothing was done. In France, while president François Mitterrand stated that all that belonged to the past, we discovered later that these secret structures had always been present when Giulio Andreotti suggested that the French president was lying: "You say that the secret armies do not exist anymore; but, during 1990’s secret meeting in the autumn, you, the French, were also present; don’t say that this doesn’t exist anymore." Mitterrand became quite angry with this Andreotti because, after this revelation, he was forced to rectify his statement. Later, the head of the French secret services, admiral Pierre Lacoste, confirmed that these secret armies existed in France as well, and that France had also been involved in terrorist attacks. [10]. It is therefore difficult to say whether all this has been solved or not. And, even if the Gladio structures have been dissolved, new armies might have been created, still utilizing this technique of the strategy of tension and the False flags.
Silvia Cattori: Can we speculate that, after the fall of the USSR, the United States and NATO have continued developing the strategy of tension and of the false flags in other fronts?
Daniele Ganser: My research is based in the period of the Cold War in Europe. But it is known that there have also been false flags in other places, where the States’ responsibility was proved. For example: the Iran bombings in 1953, for which the communist Iranians were blamed at first. So it happened that the CIA and the Mi6 had used some agents provocateurs to orchestrate the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh’s administration, within the framework of the war, to control the oil. Another example: the bombings in Egypt, in 1954, for which the Muslims were accused first. It was proved later that, in what was called the Lavon affair [11], it was the agents of Mossad who had been the perpetrators. This time, it was for Israel to stop the British troops from leaving Egypt, to make them stay there, and also to ensure the protection of Israel. Therefore, we have examples in history showing that the strategy of tension and the false flags have been used by the US, Great Britain and Israel. Given that throughout their history other countries have also used the same strategy, the research must continue in these fields.
Silvia Cattori: These clandestine structures of NATO, created after the Second World War, to supply the European countries with a guerrilla capable of resisting the Soviet invasion, ended up serving nothing but to build criminal operations against the European Citizens? Everything leads to the thought that the United States have another purpose!
Daniele Ganser: You are right in raising this question. The United States were interested in the political control. This political control is an essential element of Washington and London’s strategy. General Geraldo Serravalle, at the head of Gladio, the Italian network Stay-behind, gives an example of this in his book. He tells us that he understood that the United States were not interested in the preparation of the guerrillas against an eventual Soviet invasion, when he saw that, what interested the CIA agents who went to the training exercises of the secret army that he was leading, was to make sure that the army worked, could control the communist militants. Their fear was that the communists took the power in countries such a Greece, Italy and France. Therefore, the strategy of tension was meant to serve that purpose: to orient and influence the politics of certain countries of Western Europe.
Silvia Cattori: You have talked about an important emotional factor in the strategy of tension. Therefore, the terror, whose origin is vague, uncertain, the fear that it causes, all that helps to manipulate the public opinion. Are we not assisting today to the same kind of procedure? Yesterday, we fuelled the fear of communism, today aren’t we fuelling the fear of Islam?
Daniele Ganser: Yes, there is a very clear parallel. During the planning of the war in Iraq, it was said that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons in his possession, that there was a link between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda terrorists. But none of that turned out to be true. By means of these lies, it was intended to make people believe that Muslims wanted to spread terrorism all around, and that this war was necessary to fight against terror. However, the true reason for this war is the control of energy resources. This is due to the fact that the geology, the richness in gas and oil, are concentrated in the Muslim countries. He who wants to monopolize them, must hide behind this type of manipulations.
We cannot say that there is not a lot of oil left because the global production - the ’peak oil’ [12] - is going to arrive probably before 2020, and that therefore oil must be taken from Iraq, because people would say that children must not be killed to obtain oil. And they are right. They can’t be told, either, that in the Caspian Sea there are huge reserves and that there is a plan to create a pipeline that would go to the Indian Ocean but, given that it’s is not allowed to go through the South of Iran or the North of Russia, it must pass through the East, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, and therefore, this country must be under control. That is why Muslims are labelled as "terrorists". It is all a big lie, but if it is repeated a thousand times that Muslims are "terrorists", people will end up believing it and thinking that the wars against Muslims are useful; and to forget that there are several types of terrorism, that violence is not necessarily a feature of Islam.
Silvia Cattori: So, these clandestine structures might have well been dissolved, but the strategy of tension continues?
Daniele Ganser: Exactly. The structures might have been dissolved, and other ones could have been formed. It is important to explain how, in the strategy of tension, the tactic and manipulation work. None of that is legal. But, for the governments, it is easier to manipulate people than to tell them that they are trying to get hold of somebody else’s oil. Nevertheless, not all these attacks arise from the strategy of tension. But it is difficult to know which ones are the manipulated attacks. Even those who know the amount of attacks that have been manipulated by the governments to discredit a political enemy, can be confronted by a psychological obstacle. After every bombing, people are afraid, they feel confused. It is very difficult to accept the idea that the strategy of tension, the strategy of false flag, is a reality. It is easier to accept the manipulation and to say: "I have kept informed for 30 years, and I have never heard about these criminal armies. The Muslims are attacking us; this is why we fight against them."
Silvia Cattori: Since 2001, the European Union has created anti-terrorist measures. Later, is has been seen that these measures have allowed the CIA to kidnap people, to move them to secrete places and torture them. Have the European States become a sort of hostages to their submission to the United States?
Daniele Ganser: The European countries have had quite a weak attitude concerning the United States after the attacks on September 11th, 2001. After having confirmed that the secret prisons were illegal, they let them continue. The same happened with the prisoners in Guantanamo. Many voices stood up in Europe to say: "The prisoners cannot be deprived of a lawyer or defence." When Mrs. Angela Merkel mentioned this question, the United States clearly suggested that Germany was a little bit involved in Iraq, that its secret services had contributed to prepare this war, and therefore they must shut up.
Silvia Cattori: Within this context, where there are still many unclear areas, what type of security can NATO give to the peoples it is supposed to protect if it allows the secret services to manipulate in this way?
Daniele Ganser:Concerning the terrorist attacks carried out by the secret armies of the network Gladio during the Cold War, it is important that we are able to determine clearly which is the real implication of NATO in this, to know what really happened. Is this about isolated acts secretly organised by NATO? Until this day, NATO refuses to talk about the strategy of tension and terrorism during the Cold War. NATO refuses all questions related to Gladio.
Today, NATO is used as an offensive army, even though this organization was not created to play that role. It was activated in that sense on September 12th 2001, immediately after the attacks in New York. NATO’s leaders affirm that the reason for their involvement in the war against the Afghans is to fight against terrorism. However, NATO is in danger of losing that war. Therefore, when that happens they will be a big crisis, a debate. And this will allow us to know whether NATO is really fighting a war against terrorism, or if it is trying to create an analogous situation to that of the Cold War with the secret army Gladio, where she had a link to terror. The next few years will tell us if NATO has acted outside the mission that was accorded to it: to defend the European countries and the Unites States in case of Soviet invasion, an event that has never occurred. NATO was not funded to take over the oil and gas of the Muslim countries.
Silvia Cattori: We could understand that Israel, who is interested in widening the conflicts in the Arabic and Muslim countries, encourages the United States in that direction. But, we cannot see what it is that interests the European countries and that makes them engage their troops in the wars decided by the Pentagon, as was the case in Afghanistan.
Daniele Ganser: I think that Europe is confused. The United States are in a strong position, and the Europeans have a tendency to think that the best thing is to collaborate with the strongest one. But we would have to think about this more thoroughly. The European politicians give in easily to the pressure put by the US, who is always asking for more troops in this or that front. The more the European countries give in, the more they subordinate, and the more they will find themselves confronted to bigger and bigger problems. In Afghanistan the Germans and the British are under the command of the American army. Strategically, it is not an interesting position for these countries. Now, the US has asked the Germans to engage their soldiers in the South of Afghanistan as well, in the areas were the battle is the hardest. If the Germans accept, they take the risk of being massacred by the Afghan forces which refuse the presence of any king of occupier. _ Germany should ask itself seriously whether she should not rather withdraw their 3000 soldiers from Afghanistan. But, for the Germans, to disobey the US’ orders, to which they are a bit like lieges, it is a very hard step to make.
Silvia Cattori: How much do our current government know today about the strategy of tension ? Can they just let the war-doers foment coups d’état, kidnap and torture people without reacting? Have they any means to stop these criminal activities?
Daniele Ganser: I do not know. As an historian, I observe and take notes. As a political adviser, I always say that one must never give in to the manipulations that try to induce fear and to make people believe that the "terrorists" are always the Muslims; I say that this is about a struggle for controlling the energy resources; that some means of surviving the lack of energy must be found without needing to go to a militarization. Problems cannot be solved in this way; they only become worse.
Silvia Cattori: When we observe the demonisation of the Arabs and Muslims in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, we might think that this does not have anything to do with the oil.
Daniele Ganser: No. In this case not. But, in the US perspective, it is definitely about taking control of the energy reserves of the Eurasian block that is situated in a ’strategic ellipse’ that goes from Azerbaijan to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and the Persian Gulf, passing through Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. It is precisely over there, in that region where this false war ’against terrorism’ is taking place, that the biggest oil and gas reserves are concentrated. In my opinion, it is not about anything else but a geo-strategic game inside which the European Union can do nothing but lose. Because, if the US takes hold of the resources, and the energy crisis becomes worse, it will tell them: "You want gas, you want oil. Very well, in exchange we want this and that." The US is not going to give the oil and gas for free to the European countries. A few people know that the "peak oil", the maximum production of oil in Europe - the production to Norway and Great Britain - is declining.
The day when people will realise that these wars ’against terrorism’ are manipulated, and that the accusations against the Muslims are, among other things, propaganda, they are going to be surprised. The European countries must wake up and understand once and for all how the strategy of tension works. And they must also learn to say "no" to the US. Moreover, in the US also, there are many people who do not want this militarizing of the international relationships.
Silvia Cattori: You have also done some research on the attacks that took place in September 11th 2001 and you have signed a book [13] jointly with other intellectuals who worry about the inconsistencies and contradictions of the official version of these events, as well as the conclusions of the commission of survey ordered by Mr. Bush. Do you not fear being accused of being a "conspiracy theorist"?
Daniele Ganser: My students and other people have always asked me : if this "war against terrorism" concerns indeed the oil and gas, the 911 attacks have also been manipulated, haven’t they? Or is it a coincidence that Osama Ben Laden’s Muslims have struck exactly at the precise moment that the occidental countries were starting to understand that an oil crisis was announcing itself?
Therefore, I became interested in what had been written about September 11th and I also studied the official report that was presented in 2004. When we dig into this subject, we realize from the start that there is a big worldwide debate around what really happened on 911. The information that we have is not very precise. What makes one question this 600 page report is that the third tower that collapsed on that day is not even mentioned. The commission only talks about the collapsing of two towers, the Twin Towers. But there is a third 170 meters high tower that collapsed too; the WTC 7 tower. A small fire is mentioned concerning it. I have talked to professors who know very well the building structures; they say that a small fire cannot destroy such a big structure. The official story of 911 and the commission’s conclusions, are not reliable. This lack of clarity puts the researchers in a difficult situation. The confusion predominated as well about what really happened at the Pentagon. In the pictures that we have, it is very difficult to see a plane. We cannot see how a plane would have fallen there.
Silvia Cattori: The Venezuelan Government has asked the US for further explanations to clarify the origin of the attacks. Would this not be the example to follow?
Daniele Ganser: There are many uncertainties about September 11th. Politicians, members of the academia and citizens can all claim to explain what really happened. I think that it is important to continue asking questions. It is an event that no one can forget; everybody remembers where he/she was at that precise moment. It is unbelievable that five years later, we still cannot see clearly what happened.
Silvia Cattori: It is almost as if none of the structures created wanted to doubt the official version. Is it possible that they let themselves be manipulated by the lack of information organized by the ones who organize the strategy of the tension and the False flags?
Daniele Ganser: We are prone to manipulation if we are afraid. Afraid of losing the respect from the people that we love. We cannot go out of this spiral of violence and terror if we let the fear take over. It is normal to be afraid, but we must overtly talk about this fear and about the manipulations that generate it. Nobody can escape their consequences. This is even more serious when the politicians in charge react often under the effect of fear. One must find the strength to say: "Yes, I am afraid to know that these lies make people suffer; yes, I am afraid to think that there is less oil left; yes, I am afraid to think that this terrorism they talk about is the consequence of manipulations, but I will not let myself become intimidated."
Silvia Cattori: Up to what extent do countries like Switzerland participate, right now, in this strategy of tension?
Daniele Ganser: I do not think there is any strategy of tension in Switzerland. This country does not know any terrorist attacks. But, it is true that, in Switzerland as everywhere else, the politicians are afraid of the US and its strong position, and they have a tendency to say to themselves: "They are good friends, we’d better not fight against them."
Silvia Cattori: Doesn’t this way of thinking and of covering up the lies that arise from the strategy of tension make everyone an accomplice of the crimes that it causes? To start with the journalists and the political parties?
Daniele Ganser: I personally think that everyone - journalists, professors, politicians - must think about the implications of the strategy if tension and the false flag. Here we are, indeed, in presence of phenomena that escape from every kind of agreement. That is why, every time that there are terrorist attacks, we must ask questions and try to understand what that implies. It is only on the day that we officially admit that the false flags are a reality, that it will be possible for us to create a list of the false flags that took place in history and to agree upon what should be done.
The subject that interests me is how to achieve peace. It is important to open a debate on the strategy of tension and to take cognizance of the fact that this is a very real phenomenon. Since as long as we do not recognize its existence, we cannot act. That is why it is important to explain what the strategy of tension truly means. And, once we have understood, we must not let fear and hatred against one group win. We must say to ourselves that it is not only one country that is involved in this; that it is not only the United States, Italy, Israel or the Iranians, but that it occurs everywhere. Even if certain countries participate in a more intensive way than others. We must understand, without blaming one country or one person. Fear and hatred do not help us to advance, they paralyse the debate. I see many accusations against the Unites States, against Israel and against great Britain, or alternatively against Iran and Syria. But the search for peace teaches us that one must not get lost in accusations based on nationalism, and that neither hatred nor fear are needed; that the most important thing is to explain the reality. And this comprehension will be beneficial for everybody.
Silvia Cattori: Why is your book about NATO’s secret armies published in English, translated into English, Turk, Slovenian and soon Greek, but it is not published in French?
Daniele Ganser: I haven’t found any publisher in France, yet. If any publisher happens to be interested in publishing my book, I will be very pleased to see it being issued in French.
Silvia Cattori
Swiss journalist.
[1] Nato’s secret Armies: Terrorism in Western Europe par Daniele Ganser, preface by John Prados. Frank Cass ed., 2005. ISBN 07146850032005
[2] It is after the attack in Piazza Fontana in Milano in 1969 that the term strategy of tension was heard for the first time.
[3] False flag operations is the expression used to talk about terrorist acts, conducted secretly by governments or organizations, and which are made to be seen as having been conducted by somebody else.
[4] « Stay-behind : les réseaux d’ingérence américains » (« the American interfering networks ») par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, August 20th, 2001.
[5] Stay behind is the name given to the clandestine structures trained to conduct a partisans’ war.
[6] Gladio designates the group of European secret armies that were under the guidance of the CIA.
[7] President of the Council of Ministers, member of the Christian Democracy.
[8] « Rapport Andreotti sur l’Opération Gladio » ("Andreotti Report about the Gladio Operation") February 26th, 1991, Réseau Voltaire’s library.
[9] « 1980 : carnage à Bologne, 85 morts » (« 1980 :bloodshed in Bologne, 85 deaths ») Réseau Voltaire, March 12th, 2004.
[10] « La France autorise l’action des services US sur son territoire » (France authorises the US services to act on its territory ») by Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 8 mars 2004.
[11] LavonAffair, from the name of the Israeli minister of Defense who had to quit his work when Mossad was found to have been involved in these criminal acts.
[12] See : « Odeurs de pétrole à la Maison-Blanche » (Smell of oil in the White House), Réseau Voltaire, Dec. 14 , 2001. « Les ombres du rapport Cheney » (the shadows of the Cheney rapport) by Arthur Lepic, March 30, 2004. « Le déplacement du pouvoir pétrolier » (the transfer of the power of oil) by Arthur Lepic, may 10th, 2004. « Dick Cheney, le pic pétrolier et le compte à rebours final » (Dick Cheney, the iol peak and the final downcount") by Kjell Aleklett, March 9, 2005.« L’adaptation économique à la raréfaction du pétrole » ( the economic adaptation to the rarefaction of oil) by Thierry Meyssan, June 9th, 2005.
[13] 9/11 American Empire : Intellectual speaks out, under the direction of David Ray Griffin, Olive Branch Press, 2006
From
Zurich (Suisse)
The Strategy of Tension
NATO’s Hidden Terrorism
by Silvia Cattori*
Daniele Ganser, professor of contemporary history at Bale University (France) and chairman of the ASPO - Switzerland, published a landmark book about "NATO’s Secret Armies." According to him, during the last 50 years the United States have organized bombings in Western Europe that they have falsely attributed to the left and the extreme left with the purpose of discrediting them in the eyes of their voters. This strategy is still present today, inspiring fear for the Islam and justifying wars on oil.
Silvia Cattori: Your book about NATO’s Secret Armies [1] explains that the strategy of tension [2] and the False Flag terrorism [3] imply great dangers. It teaches us how NATO - together with the intelligence services or the West European countries and the Pentagon - utilised secret armies during the Cold War, hired spies among the extreme right wing, and organized terrorist acts for which they blamed the left. Becoming aware of this, we can wonder about what is likely to happen today behind our back.
Daniele Ganser: It is extremely important to understand what the strategy of tension truly represents the way it works nowadays. This can help us clarify the present and to see more clearly to what extent it is still in action. Only a few people know what the expression ’strategy of tension’ means. It is very important to talk about it, to explain it. It is a tactic that involves carrying out criminal acts and attributing them to someone else. By the term ’tension’, we mean emotional tension, all that which creates a feeling of tension.
By ’strategy’ we make reference to that which increases people’s fear in regard to a determined group. These secret structures of NATO had been equipped, financed and trained by the CIA, in coordination with the M16 (the British secret service), to fight against the Army of the Soviet Union in a case of war, but also according to the information to which he have access today, to commit terrorist acts in several countries [4]. That is how, since the 70s, the Italian secret services have been using these armies to foment terrorist attacks, with the purpose of causing fear among the population, and later, to accuse the communists of being the authors. The strategy of tension was designed to serve the purpose or discrediting, weakening and stopping communism from reaching executive power.
Silvia Cattori: To learn what it means is one thing. But it is still difficult to believe that our government could have let NATO, the West European intelligence agencies and the CIA act in such a way that could threaten their own citizens’ security!
Daniele Ganser: NATO was at the core of this clandestine network linked to terror; the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) and the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) were two substructures of the Atlantic Alliance, and they are clearly identified today. But, now that this has been established, it is still hard to know who was doing what. There are not any documents proving who was at the head, who organized the strategy of tension, how NATO, the West European intelligence services, the CIA, M16, and the hired terrorists among the extreme right, distributed each other’s roles. The only certainty that we have is that there was, inside these clandestine structures, some elements that used the strategy of tension. The terrorists from the extreme right have explained in their statements that it was NATO’s secret services that had supported them in this clandestine war. But when we ask for explanations from some members of the CIA or NATO - which I have done for many years - they limit themselves to say that it could be possible that a few criminal elements might have managed to avoid control.
Silvia Cattori: Were these secret armies active in every Western European country?
Daniele Ganser: In my research, I put forward evidence that these secret armies not only existed in Italy, but also in all Western Europe: in France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Luxembourg and Germany. In the beginning, we thought that there existed only one guerrilla-structured organization, and therefore, that all these secret armies had participated in the strategy of tension, and therefore, in terrorist acts. However, it is important to know that not all these secret armies have been involved in attacks, and to understand what differentiated them.
What appears to be clear today, is that NATO’s clandestine structures, usually called ’Stay Behind groups’ [5], were created in the beginning to act as a guerrilla in case of an occupation of Western Europe by the Soviet Union. The United States stated that the guerrilla networks were necessary to overcome the lack of preparedness of the countries attacked by Germany.
Several of the countries that were occupied by the Germans, like Norway, wanted to learn the lessons of their incapacity to resist the occupier, and they said to themselves that, in case of a new occupation, they had to be better prepared, to have another option at hand and to count with a secret army in case that the official one were to be defeated. Inside these secret armies, there were honest people, sincere patriots, who only wanted to defend their countries from an occupation.
Silvia Cattori: If I understand well, these Stay Behind groups, whose original goal was to be prepared in case of a Soviet invasion, have been deviated from that goal and were reorganised to defeat the left. From that, it is difficult to understand why the left parties have not investigated this or denounced this earlier.
Daniele Ganser: When we take the case of Italy, it appears that, every time that the communist party has interviewed the government to find an explanation about the secret army that was operating in this country under the coded name of Gladio [6], there was never any answer, under the pretext that it was a ’state secret’. It wasn’t until 1990 that Giulio Andreotti [7] recognised the existence of Gladio and its direct links with NATO, the CIA, and M16 [8]. _ It is also during that time that the judge Felice Casson was able to prove that the true author of the bombing in Peteano in 1972, that had shocked Italy, and that had been attributed up to that moment to the extreme left militants, was Vincenzo Vinciguerra, linked to ’Ordine Nuovo’, a group of the extreme right wing. Vinciguerra avoided blame for the bombing in Peteano with the help of the Italian secret services. Vinciguerra also spoke about the existence of this secret army, Gladio. He explained that, during the Cold War, these clandestine acts had caused the death of women and children [9]. He stated as well that this secret army controlled by NATO, had branches all around Europe. When this information was released, there was a political crisis in Italy. And it is thanks to the investigations of the judge Felice Casson that we got to know about NATO’s secret armies.
In Germany, when in 1990 the SPDs (German Social Democrat Partisans) became aware that in their country - as well as in all the other European countries - there was a secret army, and that this structure was linked to the German secret services, they loudly denounced it as a scandal and accused the Christian democratic Party (CDU). This party reacted by saying: "If you accuse us, we are going to say that, you too, together with Willy Brandt, you have been involved in this conspiracy". This happened at the same time as the first elections of the reunified Germany, which the SPD hoped to win. The leaders of the SPD understood that that was not a good electoral subject; in the end, the story was twisted in such a way as to make the existence of these secret armies seem justified.
In the European Parliament, in November 1990, many members exclaimed that the existence of such clandestine armies could not be tolerated and that the European people needed to know the true origin of terrorist acts and that an inquiry was needed. Therefore, the European Parliament wrote a complaint to NATO and to president George Bush Senior. But nothing was done. It is only in Italy, Belgium and Switzerland that there have been public queries. And they are the only three countries that have set some order in this subject, and that have published a report about their secret armies.
Silvia Cattori: What about today ? Are these secret armies still active? Is it possible that there exist secret national structures which escape the control of each State?
Daniele Ganser: For a historian, it is difficult to answer that question. We haven’t got an official report of each country. In my books, I analyse some facts that I can prove. Concerning Italy, there is a report stating that the secret army Gladio has been destroyed. About the existence of the secret army P26 in Switzerland, a report was also issued by the Parliament, in November 1990. Therefore, these clandestine armies, which had stocked explosives in hidden places everywhere in Switzerland, have been dissolved.
But in the other countries, nothing was done. In France, while president François Mitterrand stated that all that belonged to the past, we discovered later that these secret structures had always been present when Giulio Andreotti suggested that the French president was lying: "You say that the secret armies do not exist anymore; but, during 1990’s secret meeting in the autumn, you, the French, were also present; don’t say that this doesn’t exist anymore." Mitterrand became quite angry with this Andreotti because, after this revelation, he was forced to rectify his statement. Later, the head of the French secret services, admiral Pierre Lacoste, confirmed that these secret armies existed in France as well, and that France had also been involved in terrorist attacks. [10]. It is therefore difficult to say whether all this has been solved or not. And, even if the Gladio structures have been dissolved, new armies might have been created, still utilizing this technique of the strategy of tension and the False flags.
Silvia Cattori: Can we speculate that, after the fall of the USSR, the United States and NATO have continued developing the strategy of tension and of the false flags in other fronts?
Daniele Ganser: My research is based in the period of the Cold War in Europe. But it is known that there have also been false flags in other places, where the States’ responsibility was proved. For example: the Iran bombings in 1953, for which the communist Iranians were blamed at first. So it happened that the CIA and the Mi6 had used some agents provocateurs to orchestrate the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh’s administration, within the framework of the war, to control the oil. Another example: the bombings in Egypt, in 1954, for which the Muslims were accused first. It was proved later that, in what was called the Lavon affair [11], it was the agents of Mossad who had been the perpetrators. This time, it was for Israel to stop the British troops from leaving Egypt, to make them stay there, and also to ensure the protection of Israel. Therefore, we have examples in history showing that the strategy of tension and the false flags have been used by the US, Great Britain and Israel. Given that throughout their history other countries have also used the same strategy, the research must continue in these fields.
Silvia Cattori: These clandestine structures of NATO, created after the Second World War, to supply the European countries with a guerrilla capable of resisting the Soviet invasion, ended up serving nothing but to build criminal operations against the European Citizens? Everything leads to the thought that the United States have another purpose!
Daniele Ganser: You are right in raising this question. The United States were interested in the political control. This political control is an essential element of Washington and London’s strategy. General Geraldo Serravalle, at the head of Gladio, the Italian network Stay-behind, gives an example of this in his book. He tells us that he understood that the United States were not interested in the preparation of the guerrillas against an eventual Soviet invasion, when he saw that, what interested the CIA agents who went to the training exercises of the secret army that he was leading, was to make sure that the army worked, could control the communist militants. Their fear was that the communists took the power in countries such a Greece, Italy and France. Therefore, the strategy of tension was meant to serve that purpose: to orient and influence the politics of certain countries of Western Europe.
Silvia Cattori: You have talked about an important emotional factor in the strategy of tension. Therefore, the terror, whose origin is vague, uncertain, the fear that it causes, all that helps to manipulate the public opinion. Are we not assisting today to the same kind of procedure? Yesterday, we fuelled the fear of communism, today aren’t we fuelling the fear of Islam?
Daniele Ganser: Yes, there is a very clear parallel. During the planning of the war in Iraq, it was said that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons in his possession, that there was a link between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda terrorists. But none of that turned out to be true. By means of these lies, it was intended to make people believe that Muslims wanted to spread terrorism all around, and that this war was necessary to fight against terror. However, the true reason for this war is the control of energy resources. This is due to the fact that the geology, the richness in gas and oil, are concentrated in the Muslim countries. He who wants to monopolize them, must hide behind this type of manipulations.
We cannot say that there is not a lot of oil left because the global production - the ’peak oil’ [12] - is going to arrive probably before 2020, and that therefore oil must be taken from Iraq, because people would say that children must not be killed to obtain oil. And they are right. They can’t be told, either, that in the Caspian Sea there are huge reserves and that there is a plan to create a pipeline that would go to the Indian Ocean but, given that it’s is not allowed to go through the South of Iran or the North of Russia, it must pass through the East, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, and therefore, this country must be under control. That is why Muslims are labelled as "terrorists". It is all a big lie, but if it is repeated a thousand times that Muslims are "terrorists", people will end up believing it and thinking that the wars against Muslims are useful; and to forget that there are several types of terrorism, that violence is not necessarily a feature of Islam.
Silvia Cattori: So, these clandestine structures might have well been dissolved, but the strategy of tension continues?
Daniele Ganser: Exactly. The structures might have been dissolved, and other ones could have been formed. It is important to explain how, in the strategy of tension, the tactic and manipulation work. None of that is legal. But, for the governments, it is easier to manipulate people than to tell them that they are trying to get hold of somebody else’s oil. Nevertheless, not all these attacks arise from the strategy of tension. But it is difficult to know which ones are the manipulated attacks. Even those who know the amount of attacks that have been manipulated by the governments to discredit a political enemy, can be confronted by a psychological obstacle. After every bombing, people are afraid, they feel confused. It is very difficult to accept the idea that the strategy of tension, the strategy of false flag, is a reality. It is easier to accept the manipulation and to say: "I have kept informed for 30 years, and I have never heard about these criminal armies. The Muslims are attacking us; this is why we fight against them."
Silvia Cattori: Since 2001, the European Union has created anti-terrorist measures. Later, is has been seen that these measures have allowed the CIA to kidnap people, to move them to secrete places and torture them. Have the European States become a sort of hostages to their submission to the United States?
Daniele Ganser: The European countries have had quite a weak attitude concerning the United States after the attacks on September 11th, 2001. After having confirmed that the secret prisons were illegal, they let them continue. The same happened with the prisoners in Guantanamo. Many voices stood up in Europe to say: "The prisoners cannot be deprived of a lawyer or defence." When Mrs. Angela Merkel mentioned this question, the United States clearly suggested that Germany was a little bit involved in Iraq, that its secret services had contributed to prepare this war, and therefore they must shut up.
Silvia Cattori: Within this context, where there are still many unclear areas, what type of security can NATO give to the peoples it is supposed to protect if it allows the secret services to manipulate in this way?
Daniele Ganser:Concerning the terrorist attacks carried out by the secret armies of the network Gladio during the Cold War, it is important that we are able to determine clearly which is the real implication of NATO in this, to know what really happened. Is this about isolated acts secretly organised by NATO? Until this day, NATO refuses to talk about the strategy of tension and terrorism during the Cold War. NATO refuses all questions related to Gladio.
Today, NATO is used as an offensive army, even though this organization was not created to play that role. It was activated in that sense on September 12th 2001, immediately after the attacks in New York. NATO’s leaders affirm that the reason for their involvement in the war against the Afghans is to fight against terrorism. However, NATO is in danger of losing that war. Therefore, when that happens they will be a big crisis, a debate. And this will allow us to know whether NATO is really fighting a war against terrorism, or if it is trying to create an analogous situation to that of the Cold War with the secret army Gladio, where she had a link to terror. The next few years will tell us if NATO has acted outside the mission that was accorded to it: to defend the European countries and the Unites States in case of Soviet invasion, an event that has never occurred. NATO was not funded to take over the oil and gas of the Muslim countries.
Silvia Cattori: We could understand that Israel, who is interested in widening the conflicts in the Arabic and Muslim countries, encourages the United States in that direction. But, we cannot see what it is that interests the European countries and that makes them engage their troops in the wars decided by the Pentagon, as was the case in Afghanistan.
Daniele Ganser: I think that Europe is confused. The United States are in a strong position, and the Europeans have a tendency to think that the best thing is to collaborate with the strongest one. But we would have to think about this more thoroughly. The European politicians give in easily to the pressure put by the US, who is always asking for more troops in this or that front. The more the European countries give in, the more they subordinate, and the more they will find themselves confronted to bigger and bigger problems. In Afghanistan the Germans and the British are under the command of the American army. Strategically, it is not an interesting position for these countries. Now, the US has asked the Germans to engage their soldiers in the South of Afghanistan as well, in the areas were the battle is the hardest. If the Germans accept, they take the risk of being massacred by the Afghan forces which refuse the presence of any king of occupier. _ Germany should ask itself seriously whether she should not rather withdraw their 3000 soldiers from Afghanistan. But, for the Germans, to disobey the US’ orders, to which they are a bit like lieges, it is a very hard step to make.
Silvia Cattori: How much do our current government know today about the strategy of tension ? Can they just let the war-doers foment coups d’état, kidnap and torture people without reacting? Have they any means to stop these criminal activities?
Daniele Ganser: I do not know. As an historian, I observe and take notes. As a political adviser, I always say that one must never give in to the manipulations that try to induce fear and to make people believe that the "terrorists" are always the Muslims; I say that this is about a struggle for controlling the energy resources; that some means of surviving the lack of energy must be found without needing to go to a militarization. Problems cannot be solved in this way; they only become worse.
Silvia Cattori: When we observe the demonisation of the Arabs and Muslims in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, we might think that this does not have anything to do with the oil.
Daniele Ganser: No. In this case not. But, in the US perspective, it is definitely about taking control of the energy reserves of the Eurasian block that is situated in a ’strategic ellipse’ that goes from Azerbaijan to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and the Persian Gulf, passing through Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. It is precisely over there, in that region where this false war ’against terrorism’ is taking place, that the biggest oil and gas reserves are concentrated. In my opinion, it is not about anything else but a geo-strategic game inside which the European Union can do nothing but lose. Because, if the US takes hold of the resources, and the energy crisis becomes worse, it will tell them: "You want gas, you want oil. Very well, in exchange we want this and that." The US is not going to give the oil and gas for free to the European countries. A few people know that the "peak oil", the maximum production of oil in Europe - the production to Norway and Great Britain - is declining.
The day when people will realise that these wars ’against terrorism’ are manipulated, and that the accusations against the Muslims are, among other things, propaganda, they are going to be surprised. The European countries must wake up and understand once and for all how the strategy of tension works. And they must also learn to say "no" to the US. Moreover, in the US also, there are many people who do not want this militarizing of the international relationships.
Silvia Cattori: You have also done some research on the attacks that took place in September 11th 2001 and you have signed a book [13] jointly with other intellectuals who worry about the inconsistencies and contradictions of the official version of these events, as well as the conclusions of the commission of survey ordered by Mr. Bush. Do you not fear being accused of being a "conspiracy theorist"?
Daniele Ganser: My students and other people have always asked me : if this "war against terrorism" concerns indeed the oil and gas, the 911 attacks have also been manipulated, haven’t they? Or is it a coincidence that Osama Ben Laden’s Muslims have struck exactly at the precise moment that the occidental countries were starting to understand that an oil crisis was announcing itself?
Therefore, I became interested in what had been written about September 11th and I also studied the official report that was presented in 2004. When we dig into this subject, we realize from the start that there is a big worldwide debate around what really happened on 911. The information that we have is not very precise. What makes one question this 600 page report is that the third tower that collapsed on that day is not even mentioned. The commission only talks about the collapsing of two towers, the Twin Towers. But there is a third 170 meters high tower that collapsed too; the WTC 7 tower. A small fire is mentioned concerning it. I have talked to professors who know very well the building structures; they say that a small fire cannot destroy such a big structure. The official story of 911 and the commission’s conclusions, are not reliable. This lack of clarity puts the researchers in a difficult situation. The confusion predominated as well about what really happened at the Pentagon. In the pictures that we have, it is very difficult to see a plane. We cannot see how a plane would have fallen there.
Silvia Cattori: The Venezuelan Government has asked the US for further explanations to clarify the origin of the attacks. Would this not be the example to follow?
Daniele Ganser: There are many uncertainties about September 11th. Politicians, members of the academia and citizens can all claim to explain what really happened. I think that it is important to continue asking questions. It is an event that no one can forget; everybody remembers where he/she was at that precise moment. It is unbelievable that five years later, we still cannot see clearly what happened.
Silvia Cattori: It is almost as if none of the structures created wanted to doubt the official version. Is it possible that they let themselves be manipulated by the lack of information organized by the ones who organize the strategy of the tension and the False flags?
Daniele Ganser: We are prone to manipulation if we are afraid. Afraid of losing the respect from the people that we love. We cannot go out of this spiral of violence and terror if we let the fear take over. It is normal to be afraid, but we must overtly talk about this fear and about the manipulations that generate it. Nobody can escape their consequences. This is even more serious when the politicians in charge react often under the effect of fear. One must find the strength to say: "Yes, I am afraid to know that these lies make people suffer; yes, I am afraid to think that there is less oil left; yes, I am afraid to think that this terrorism they talk about is the consequence of manipulations, but I will not let myself become intimidated."
Silvia Cattori: Up to what extent do countries like Switzerland participate, right now, in this strategy of tension?
Daniele Ganser: I do not think there is any strategy of tension in Switzerland. This country does not know any terrorist attacks. But, it is true that, in Switzerland as everywhere else, the politicians are afraid of the US and its strong position, and they have a tendency to say to themselves: "They are good friends, we’d better not fight against them."
Silvia Cattori: Doesn’t this way of thinking and of covering up the lies that arise from the strategy of tension make everyone an accomplice of the crimes that it causes? To start with the journalists and the political parties?
Daniele Ganser: I personally think that everyone - journalists, professors, politicians - must think about the implications of the strategy if tension and the false flag. Here we are, indeed, in presence of phenomena that escape from every kind of agreement. That is why, every time that there are terrorist attacks, we must ask questions and try to understand what that implies. It is only on the day that we officially admit that the false flags are a reality, that it will be possible for us to create a list of the false flags that took place in history and to agree upon what should be done.
The subject that interests me is how to achieve peace. It is important to open a debate on the strategy of tension and to take cognizance of the fact that this is a very real phenomenon. Since as long as we do not recognize its existence, we cannot act. That is why it is important to explain what the strategy of tension truly means. And, once we have understood, we must not let fear and hatred against one group win. We must say to ourselves that it is not only one country that is involved in this; that it is not only the United States, Italy, Israel or the Iranians, but that it occurs everywhere. Even if certain countries participate in a more intensive way than others. We must understand, without blaming one country or one person. Fear and hatred do not help us to advance, they paralyse the debate. I see many accusations against the Unites States, against Israel and against great Britain, or alternatively against Iran and Syria. But the search for peace teaches us that one must not get lost in accusations based on nationalism, and that neither hatred nor fear are needed; that the most important thing is to explain the reality. And this comprehension will be beneficial for everybody.
Silvia Cattori: Why is your book about NATO’s secret armies published in English, translated into English, Turk, Slovenian and soon Greek, but it is not published in French?
Daniele Ganser: I haven’t found any publisher in France, yet. If any publisher happens to be interested in publishing my book, I will be very pleased to see it being issued in French.
Silvia Cattori
Swiss journalist.
[1] Nato’s secret Armies: Terrorism in Western Europe par Daniele Ganser, preface by John Prados. Frank Cass ed., 2005. ISBN 07146850032005
[2] It is after the attack in Piazza Fontana in Milano in 1969 that the term strategy of tension was heard for the first time.
[3] False flag operations is the expression used to talk about terrorist acts, conducted secretly by governments or organizations, and which are made to be seen as having been conducted by somebody else.
[4] « Stay-behind : les réseaux d’ingérence américains » (« the American interfering networks ») par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, August 20th, 2001.
[5] Stay behind is the name given to the clandestine structures trained to conduct a partisans’ war.
[6] Gladio designates the group of European secret armies that were under the guidance of the CIA.
[7] President of the Council of Ministers, member of the Christian Democracy.
[8] « Rapport Andreotti sur l’Opération Gladio » ("Andreotti Report about the Gladio Operation") February 26th, 1991, Réseau Voltaire’s library.
[9] « 1980 : carnage à Bologne, 85 morts » (« 1980 :bloodshed in Bologne, 85 deaths ») Réseau Voltaire, March 12th, 2004.
[10] « La France autorise l’action des services US sur son territoire » (France authorises the US services to act on its territory ») by Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 8 mars 2004.
[11] LavonAffair, from the name of the Israeli minister of Defense who had to quit his work when Mossad was found to have been involved in these criminal acts.
[12] See : « Odeurs de pétrole à la Maison-Blanche » (Smell of oil in the White House), Réseau Voltaire, Dec. 14 , 2001. « Les ombres du rapport Cheney » (the shadows of the Cheney rapport) by Arthur Lepic, March 30, 2004. « Le déplacement du pouvoir pétrolier » (the transfer of the power of oil) by Arthur Lepic, may 10th, 2004. « Dick Cheney, le pic pétrolier et le compte à rebours final » (Dick Cheney, the iol peak and the final downcount") by Kjell Aleklett, March 9, 2005.« L’adaptation économique à la raréfaction du pétrole » ( the economic adaptation to the rarefaction of oil) by Thierry Meyssan, June 9th, 2005.
[13] 9/11 American Empire : Intellectual speaks out, under the direction of David Ray Griffin, Olive Branch Press, 2006
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Show Me The Intelligence By Ray McGovern
Have you noticed? Neither President George W. Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney have cited any U.S. intelligence assessments to support their fateful decision to send 21,500 more troops to referee the civil war in Iraq. This is a far cry from October 2002, when a formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was rushed through in order to trick Congress into giving its nihil obstat for the attack on Iraq.
Why no intelligence justification this time around? Because there is none.
Having successfully cooked intelligence four years ago to get authorization for war, the Bush administration has zero incentive to try a repeat performance. Nor is there any sign that the new Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees will even think to ask the intelligence community to state its views on the likely effect of the planned “surge” in troop strength. This, even though an NIE on Iraq has been “almost ready” for months.
For the Bush administration, it has been difficult enough whipping its fickle but ultimately malleable generals into line. The civilian intelligence chiefs have proven more resistant. So the White House is playing it safe, avoiding like the plague any estimate that would raise doubts about the wisdom of the decision to surge. And that is precisely what an honest estimate would do. With “sham-dunk” former CIA director George Tenet and his accomplices no longer in place as intelligence enablers, the White House clearly prefers no NIE to one that would inevitably highlight the fecklessness of throwing 21,5000 more troops into harm’s way for the dubious purpose of holding off defeat for two more years.
From Mushroom Cloud to Lead Balloon
The NIE, which leaned so far forward to support the White House’s warnings of a made-in-Iraq “mushroom cloud,” remains the negative example par excellence of corrupted intelligence. The good news is that Tenet and his lackeys were replaced by officers who, by all indications, take their job of speaking truth to power seriously. Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, Tom Fingar, is a State Department professional not given to professionally selling out. And his boss, John Negroponte, is too smart to end his government career by following the example of his servile predecessors in conjuring up “intelligence” to please the president—not even for a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Unvarnished NIEs sent to the White House by the Negroponte/Fingar team have not shied away from unwelcome conclusions undercutting administration claims, and have gone over like proverbial lead balloons. An estimate on Iran completed in early 2005, for example, concluded that the Iranians will not be able to produce a nuclear weapon before “early to mid-next decade,” exposing Cheney’s fanciful claims of more proximate danger. And an NIE produced in April ‘06 on global terrorism concluded that the invasion of Iraq led to a marked increase in terrorism, belying administration claims that the invasion and occupation had made us “safer.”
Worse still from the administration’s point of view, patriotic truth-tellers (aka leakers) inside the government apparently decided that administration rhetoric on both of these key issues had deliberately misled the American people, who were entitled to know the truth.
The two unwelcome estimates meant two strikes on Negroponte. Then the White House learned of an impending strike-three—this one an NIE assessing the future in Iraq and apparently casting doubt on the advisability of U.S. escalation. In a classic Cheneyesque pre-emptive strike, the estimate was put on hold; Negroponte was given a pink slip and assigned back to the State Department. There are rumors that Fingar is clearing out his desk as well.
NIEs Can Be Important
National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative genre of analytical product, embodying substantive judgments on key national security issues. They are coordinated throughout the 16-agency intelligence community and then signed by the Director of National Intelligence in his statutory capacity as chief intelligence adviser to the president. In times past, presidents and their senior advisers actually read them and often took their judgments into account in the decision making process.
There have been good estimates, and bad ones. In the latter category, an NIE of Sept. 19, 1962, entitled “The Military Build-Up in Cuba” estimated that the Soviet Union would not introduce strategic offensive missiles into Cuba (even while such missiles were en route). Embarrassing, but an honest mistake. The NIE issued on Oct. 1, 2002, 10 days before the congressional vote on the war, was dishonest from the get-go. It was prepared by spineless functionaries eager to please their boss (Tenet) and his boss (Bush) by parroting the faith-based analysis of senior analyst Dick Cheney. It is by far the worst NIE ever produced by the U.S. intelligence community. But, hey, it achieved its primary purpose of scaring Congress into approving a war of aggression.
In the wake of that debacle, few of us intelligence alumni harbored much hope that honesty could be re-introduced into the estimative process any time soon. Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner went so far as to tell a TV host that he thought the CIA should be “dismantled.” Thus, it was a very welcome surprise to learn, thanks to patriotic truth-tellers, of the gutsy judgments of more recent NIEs—and to discover that a remnant of analysts of the old truth-to-power school have been able to ply their trade unencumbered under Fingar and Negroponte.
Some History: Estimates on Vietnam
As one of the intelligence analysts watching Vietnam in the sixties and seventies, I worked on several of the NIEs produced before and during the war. All too many bore this title: “Probable Reactions to Various Courses of Action With Respect to North Vietnam.” Typical of the kinds of question the president and his advisers wanted addressed: Can we seal off the Ho Chi Minh Trail by bombing it? If the U.S. were to introduce X thousand additional troops into South Vietnam, will Hanoi quit? Okay, how about XX thousand?
Our answers regularly earned us brickbats from the White House for not being “good team players.” But in those days we labored under a strong ethos dictating that we give it to policymakers straight, without fear or favor. We had career protection for doing that. And—truth be told—we often took a perverse delight in it.
Our judgments (the unwelcome ones, anyway) were pooh-poohed as negativism; and policymakers, of course, were in no way obliged to take them into account. The point is that they continued to be sought. Not even Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon would be likely to decide on a significant escalation without seeking our best guess as to how U.S. adversaries would likely react to this or that escalatory step
What About Now?
As noted above, an intelligence estimate on Iraq has been in process for months—and months—and months. It is not that the analysts are slower these days; it is that the White House has decided that, for political reasons, no estimate at all is better than an unwelcome one. The White House thought process seems to be this:
With Fingar and Negroponte and their benighted ideas about fact-based, rather than faith-based, intelligence analysis, it is far better to duck the issue altogether—at least for as long as the congressional oversight committees continue to slumber. Besides, if Cheneyesque pressure were again to be applied to intelligence analysts, there is a growing risk that this might turn some of them into patriotic truth-tellers. Besides, we already have the needed authorization—and even enough funding to send 21,500 additional troops.
It seems quite clear that the additional troop decision was made without any formal input from the intelligence community. There would be no NIE on “Probable Reactions to Various Courses of Action With Respect to Iraq”—no formal paper that could make the president’s decision appear highly questionable. Let the on-again-off-again NIE on prospects for Iraq languish.
And let former CIA director, now Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pretend, as he did on Jan. 12 before the Senate Armed Services Committee, that he is “unaware” of the existence of an NIE draft on prospects for Iraq. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., raised the subject with Gates, saying that Negroponte had assured him the NIE would be issued at the end of the month.
Don’t hold your breath.
Ray McGovern chaired NIEs and prepared the President’s Daily Brief during his 27-year career as a CIA analyst. He now works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C.
This article was first published at TomPaine.com
Why no intelligence justification this time around? Because there is none.
Having successfully cooked intelligence four years ago to get authorization for war, the Bush administration has zero incentive to try a repeat performance. Nor is there any sign that the new Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees will even think to ask the intelligence community to state its views on the likely effect of the planned “surge” in troop strength. This, even though an NIE on Iraq has been “almost ready” for months.
For the Bush administration, it has been difficult enough whipping its fickle but ultimately malleable generals into line. The civilian intelligence chiefs have proven more resistant. So the White House is playing it safe, avoiding like the plague any estimate that would raise doubts about the wisdom of the decision to surge. And that is precisely what an honest estimate would do. With “sham-dunk” former CIA director George Tenet and his accomplices no longer in place as intelligence enablers, the White House clearly prefers no NIE to one that would inevitably highlight the fecklessness of throwing 21,5000 more troops into harm’s way for the dubious purpose of holding off defeat for two more years.
From Mushroom Cloud to Lead Balloon
The NIE, which leaned so far forward to support the White House’s warnings of a made-in-Iraq “mushroom cloud,” remains the negative example par excellence of corrupted intelligence. The good news is that Tenet and his lackeys were replaced by officers who, by all indications, take their job of speaking truth to power seriously. Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, Tom Fingar, is a State Department professional not given to professionally selling out. And his boss, John Negroponte, is too smart to end his government career by following the example of his servile predecessors in conjuring up “intelligence” to please the president—not even for a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Unvarnished NIEs sent to the White House by the Negroponte/Fingar team have not shied away from unwelcome conclusions undercutting administration claims, and have gone over like proverbial lead balloons. An estimate on Iran completed in early 2005, for example, concluded that the Iranians will not be able to produce a nuclear weapon before “early to mid-next decade,” exposing Cheney’s fanciful claims of more proximate danger. And an NIE produced in April ‘06 on global terrorism concluded that the invasion of Iraq led to a marked increase in terrorism, belying administration claims that the invasion and occupation had made us “safer.”
Worse still from the administration’s point of view, patriotic truth-tellers (aka leakers) inside the government apparently decided that administration rhetoric on both of these key issues had deliberately misled the American people, who were entitled to know the truth.
The two unwelcome estimates meant two strikes on Negroponte. Then the White House learned of an impending strike-three—this one an NIE assessing the future in Iraq and apparently casting doubt on the advisability of U.S. escalation. In a classic Cheneyesque pre-emptive strike, the estimate was put on hold; Negroponte was given a pink slip and assigned back to the State Department. There are rumors that Fingar is clearing out his desk as well.
NIEs Can Be Important
National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative genre of analytical product, embodying substantive judgments on key national security issues. They are coordinated throughout the 16-agency intelligence community and then signed by the Director of National Intelligence in his statutory capacity as chief intelligence adviser to the president. In times past, presidents and their senior advisers actually read them and often took their judgments into account in the decision making process.
There have been good estimates, and bad ones. In the latter category, an NIE of Sept. 19, 1962, entitled “The Military Build-Up in Cuba” estimated that the Soviet Union would not introduce strategic offensive missiles into Cuba (even while such missiles were en route). Embarrassing, but an honest mistake. The NIE issued on Oct. 1, 2002, 10 days before the congressional vote on the war, was dishonest from the get-go. It was prepared by spineless functionaries eager to please their boss (Tenet) and his boss (Bush) by parroting the faith-based analysis of senior analyst Dick Cheney. It is by far the worst NIE ever produced by the U.S. intelligence community. But, hey, it achieved its primary purpose of scaring Congress into approving a war of aggression.
In the wake of that debacle, few of us intelligence alumni harbored much hope that honesty could be re-introduced into the estimative process any time soon. Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner went so far as to tell a TV host that he thought the CIA should be “dismantled.” Thus, it was a very welcome surprise to learn, thanks to patriotic truth-tellers, of the gutsy judgments of more recent NIEs—and to discover that a remnant of analysts of the old truth-to-power school have been able to ply their trade unencumbered under Fingar and Negroponte.
Some History: Estimates on Vietnam
As one of the intelligence analysts watching Vietnam in the sixties and seventies, I worked on several of the NIEs produced before and during the war. All too many bore this title: “Probable Reactions to Various Courses of Action With Respect to North Vietnam.” Typical of the kinds of question the president and his advisers wanted addressed: Can we seal off the Ho Chi Minh Trail by bombing it? If the U.S. were to introduce X thousand additional troops into South Vietnam, will Hanoi quit? Okay, how about XX thousand?
Our answers regularly earned us brickbats from the White House for not being “good team players.” But in those days we labored under a strong ethos dictating that we give it to policymakers straight, without fear or favor. We had career protection for doing that. And—truth be told—we often took a perverse delight in it.
Our judgments (the unwelcome ones, anyway) were pooh-poohed as negativism; and policymakers, of course, were in no way obliged to take them into account. The point is that they continued to be sought. Not even Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon would be likely to decide on a significant escalation without seeking our best guess as to how U.S. adversaries would likely react to this or that escalatory step
What About Now?
As noted above, an intelligence estimate on Iraq has been in process for months—and months—and months. It is not that the analysts are slower these days; it is that the White House has decided that, for political reasons, no estimate at all is better than an unwelcome one. The White House thought process seems to be this:
With Fingar and Negroponte and their benighted ideas about fact-based, rather than faith-based, intelligence analysis, it is far better to duck the issue altogether—at least for as long as the congressional oversight committees continue to slumber. Besides, if Cheneyesque pressure were again to be applied to intelligence analysts, there is a growing risk that this might turn some of them into patriotic truth-tellers. Besides, we already have the needed authorization—and even enough funding to send 21,500 additional troops.
It seems quite clear that the additional troop decision was made without any formal input from the intelligence community. There would be no NIE on “Probable Reactions to Various Courses of Action With Respect to Iraq”—no formal paper that could make the president’s decision appear highly questionable. Let the on-again-off-again NIE on prospects for Iraq languish.
And let former CIA director, now Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pretend, as he did on Jan. 12 before the Senate Armed Services Committee, that he is “unaware” of the existence of an NIE draft on prospects for Iraq. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., raised the subject with Gates, saying that Negroponte had assured him the NIE would be issued at the end of the month.
Don’t hold your breath.
Ray McGovern chaired NIEs and prepared the President’s Daily Brief during his 27-year career as a CIA analyst. He now works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C.
This article was first published at TomPaine.com
Bush’s War on Perception, or perhaps the CIA/Mi5 really blew up the Golden Mosque
Bush’s War on Perception
The bombing of the Golden Mosque
By Mike Whitney
01/20/07 "ICHBlog" -- - We’ve heard a lot about the bombing of Samarra’s Golden Mosque lately. Bush has brought it up twice in the last week alone. It’s a critical part of the administration’s rationale for the occupation of Iraq, so we can expect to be reminded of it nearly as often as 9-11.
The destruction of the Golden-dome Mosque took place in February 2005 and has been identified as the “catalyzing event” that plunged the country into sectarian violence. That, at least, is just the official version. No one knows really what happened because the administration refused to conduct an independent investigation and the media excluded any account that didn’t square with the Pentagon’s spin on events.
What we’re left with is mere speculation.
Here's what we know: Less than 4 hours after the explosion, the Bush public relations team cobbled together a statement that the bombing was the work of Sunni extremists or al Qaida terrorists. But, how did they know? They didn’t have witnesses on the ground in Samarra and they’ve never produced a scintilla of evidence to support their claims. It may be that the administration simply saw the bombing as an opportunity to twist the facts to suit their own purposes?
After all, the incident has been a propaganda-bonanza for the Bush team. They’ve used it to support their theory that Iraq is “the central battle in the war on terror” and that “we must fight them there if we don’t want to fight them over here”. It’s become one of the main justifications for the occupation; implying that the US military is needed as a referee to keep the warring factions from killing each other. It’s all just nonsense that’s designed to advance the administration’s political agenda.
If there had been an investigation, it would have shown whether the perpetrators were experts or not by the placement of the explosives. There’s a good chance they would’ve found bomb-residue which could have determined the composition of the material used. Forensics experts could have easily ascertained whether the explosives came from Iraqi munitions-dumps (as suggested) or from outside the country (like the USA, perhaps?)
The incident may well have been a “false flag” operation carried out by US intelligence agencies to provoke sectarian violence and, thus, reduce the number of attacks on American troops.
In any event, as soon as the mosque was destroyed the media swung into action focusing all of its attention on sectarian violence and the prospect of civil war. The media’s incessant “cheerleading” for civil war was suspicious, to say the least.
In the first 30 hours after the blast, more than 1,500 articles appeared on Google News providing the government version of events without deviation and without any corroborating evidence; just fluff that reiterated the Pentagon’s account verbatim and without challenge.
1500! Now that’s a well-oiled propaganda system!
Most of the articles were “cookie cutter-type” stories which used the same buzzwords and talking points as all the others; no interviews, no facts, no second opinions; simple, straightforward stenography---nothing more.
The story was repeated for weeks on end never veering from the same speculative theory. Clearly, a great amount of effort was being exerted to convince the American people that this was a significant event that would reshape the whole context of the war in Iraq. In fact, the media blitz that followed was grander than anything since 9-11; a spectacular display of the media’s power to manipulate public opinion.
There were a few articles that didn’t follow the party-line, but they quickly disappeared into a cyber-“black hole” or were dismissed as conspiracy theories. One report in AFP said that the bombing “was the work of specialists” and the “placing of explosives must have taken at least 12 hours”. The article continued:
“Construction Minister Mohammed Jaafar said, ‘Holes were dug into the mausoleum’s four main pillars and packed with explosives. Then charges were connected together and linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to a detonator which was triggered at a distance.”
Of course, what does that prove? Perhaps, al Qaida has skilled explosives experts? But why not investigate? After all, if this was the “catalyzing event” which was thrusting the country towards civil war; why not have the FBI come in and have a look-around?
A professional team of investigators could have quickly determined whether highly-trained saboteurs were operating in the area. (which meant that American troops would be at greater risk) Isn’t that worth checking out?
Nope. The Pentagon did nothing. There was no effort at all to find out who might have been involved. It was an open and shut case; wrapped up before the dust had even settled in Samarra.
Very strange.
Apparently, there was at least one witness who was interviewed shortly after the bombing. He said that he heard cars running outside the mosque “the whole night until morning” but, he was warned “to stay in your shop and don’t leave until morning”.
At 6:30 AM the next morning, the vehicles outside the mosque left. 10 minutes later the bombs exploded.
None of the people living in the vicinity of the mosque were ever questioned. Likewise, the Construction Minister Mohammed Jaafar has never resurfaced in the news again. I expect that his comments in the newspaper may have had something to do with his sudden disappearance, but then maybe not.
The Golden Mosque; truth or psy-ops?
The Bush administration is very serious about controlling information. That’s why they launched the Pentagon’s Dept of Strategic Information. The military is now deeply engaged in “full spectrum dominance” of all information technologies. Consequently, “controlling the narrative” is more important than one might think. Propaganda is the cheapest and most effective way to control public behavior. The growth in public relations illustrates the importance that political leaders put on managing perception in a way that compels the masses to conform to an elite agenda. That’s why the administration has spent zillions on PR campaigns and inserted themselves into every area of human communication. They are forever looking for the right combination of patriotic and religious imagery that will get the public to march along in harmony.
The Bush administration has made some notable contributions to the traditional propaganda-paradigm. In fact, former Counselor at the State Dept, Philip Zelikow, (who was also executive director of the 9-11 Commission and author of the National Security Strategy NSS) is an expert in “the creation and maintenance of ‘public myths’ or ‘public presumptions’, which he defines as beliefs thought to be true although not necessarily known to be true with certainty, shared in common with the relevant political community (sounds like Rumsfeld)….He has taken a special interest in ‘searing’ or ‘molding’ events that take on ‘transcendent’ importance and, therefore, retain there power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene”. (“Thinking about Political History” Miller Center report; winter 1999)
“Searing’ or ‘molding’ events that take on ‘transcendent’ importance”?!? Like 9-11, for example?
“In the Nov-Dec 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs he co-authored an article called ‘Catastrophic Terrorism’ in which he speculated that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade center had succeeded ‘the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. ‘It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet bomb test in 1949. The US might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or US counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently”. (Wikipedia)
The previous paragraph is certainly worth rereading 2 or 3 times KEEPING IN MIND THAT ZELIKOW'S ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN 1998!?! 3 YEARS BEFORE 9-11!
Where, one might ask, did Zelikow get his crystal ball?
Zelikow correctly assumed that if a “catastrophic” event were to take place in America, it would trigger a massive revaluation of all our ideological commitments; “civil liberties, surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force”.
History would be divided into "pre 9-11 and post 9-11." And, all the restrictions on presidential power, inalienable rights, and aggressive war could be swept away in an instant.
Isn’t this the exact blueprint for what is taking place right now? What part of Zelikow’s dark-vision has not been actualized?
This theory is the intellectual foundation for the creeping fascism that has infected our country. Its evil-brilliance is that it goes beyond propaganda’s limited ability to shape public opinion and actually creates history by fabricating events that have a “searing” or “molding” effect on the collective psyche.
Zelikow has figured out that the real essence of controlling behavior is not simply “propagating” ideas but understanding how humans process information and, then, corrupting that process so it meets the objectives of the ruling elite.
Both 9-11 and the blowing up of the Golden dome Mosque are examples of how this theory works. 9-11 has been used to erase 200 years of legal precedent and establish a “unitary president” who has absolute power. The destruction of the mosque transforms a brutal colonial occupation into a "humanitarian intervention" which requires the US military to stay on indefinitely to prevent Iraqis from killing each other. In both cases, the “catastrophic” event creates the internal logic for the subsequent response.
Doesn’t this explain why the administration has devoted so much energy to controlling the narrative?
The Salvador Option and the Bush Caliphate
The Defense Department developed its strategy for counterinsurgency in Iraq with the assumption that they were “fighting a new kind of war”. The days of large land-based armies and conventional weapons-systems are over. The coming century will require new skills for overpowering loosely-configured “indigenous” resistance organizations who can undermine the goal of seizing dwindling resources.
The war on terror conceals the fact that the US is presently engaged in a global resource war.
An article by Michael Hirsh in Newsweek magazine, “The Salvador Option” (Jan 2005), summarized the details of the strategy saying:
“Newsweek has learned the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against a leftist guerilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the US government funded or supported ‘nationalist’ forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers.”
The same pattern of terrorizing the public through “the application of extreme violence” has reemerged in Iraq with many of the same US leaders supervising the covert operations. The plan was clearly designed to eliminate the need for more US troops to provide security and, instead, aimed at “pacifying” the resistance through a well-coordinated and fully-funded campaign of terror.
The (predominantly) Shiite militias operating out of the Interior Ministry were armed and trained by the CIA and were used to secretly to carry out assassinations and torture of suspected “Sunni insurgents.” In his recent article “The Battle of Baghdad”, Chris Sanders expands on this point:
“Even more important is the fact that it has been the Americans in the form of one Colonel James Steel, who, reporting to then ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, oversaw the training of the Shia death squads a.k.a. “security forces” that have been turned loose on the Sunni population, a project called the “Salvador Option”. This is not a civil war…so much as deliberate mayhem incited, aided and abetted by the occupying power with the objective of forcing the disintegration of the country.”
There’s nothing new in Sander’s observations although they are scrupulously omitted in the mainstream press. The Bush administration set out to apply its neoconservative theories in Iraq by deliberately destroying the social fabric of Iraqi society so they could rebuild the country according to their “free market” neoliberal ideology. The neocon principle of “creative destruction” was used with lethal precision and with devastating effects; the country is now in a state of total ruin.
The Pentagon’s counterinsurgency strategy was developed long before the mutilated bodies of Sunni men began showing up daily bobbing along the Euphrates River. It’s part of a broader plan to dominate the entire region through military force. The purpose is to extend the Bush Caliphate--the “new world order”-- throughout the entire Middle East.
Somewhere along the line, things went horribly wrong and the Pentagon warlords lost control of their “brainchild” in the Interior Ministry. Now the Shiite death squads operate independent of their American overlords purging Baghdad of its Sunni population and laying the foundation for a future Islamic state. Events are simply beyond Bush’s control. As author William Lind said recently, “The forces our invasion and destruction of the Iraqi state unleashed, far overpower any army we can deploy to Iraq, surge or no surge.”
The neocon plan to decimate Iraqi society by inciting sectarian violence (divide and conquer) was concocted long before the destruction of the Golden dome Mosque. In fact, the blowing up of the mosque was probably an attempt to disguise US involvement in the random bombings (markets, mosques, busy streets etc.) and death squad activity which soon spread throughout the Sunni heartland.
Consider Bush’s comments in his speech to the nation last week:
“The violence in Iraq has overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made. Al Qaida terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that Iraq’s election posed for their cause. And they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis…They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam—the Golden Mosque of Samarra—in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq’s Shia population to retaliate. Their strategy worked Radical Shia elements; some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.”
Is that what happened or is this just a clever way of shifting the blame from the real perpetrators of the bloodshed to the victims of Washington’s dirty war?
Zelikow’s theories have provided a master-plan for shaping public opinion around “searing” events. He is right to assume that people will accept all manner of absurdities if they are assembled in the context of a larger catastrophe. Clearly, the Bush administration is venturing into uncharted waters, proactively fabricating “historical events” to create their own reality and, thus, support the narrow objectives of an elite agenda.
The destruction of the Golden dome Mosque bears the same bloody fingerprints as do the victims of the occupation’s unrelenting violence. The guilty parties may have escaped accountability so far, but when the smoke clears, we’ll know whose bombs they really were.
The bombing of the Golden Mosque
By Mike Whitney
01/20/07 "ICHBlog" -- - We’ve heard a lot about the bombing of Samarra’s Golden Mosque lately. Bush has brought it up twice in the last week alone. It’s a critical part of the administration’s rationale for the occupation of Iraq, so we can expect to be reminded of it nearly as often as 9-11.
The destruction of the Golden-dome Mosque took place in February 2005 and has been identified as the “catalyzing event” that plunged the country into sectarian violence. That, at least, is just the official version. No one knows really what happened because the administration refused to conduct an independent investigation and the media excluded any account that didn’t square with the Pentagon’s spin on events.
What we’re left with is mere speculation.
Here's what we know: Less than 4 hours after the explosion, the Bush public relations team cobbled together a statement that the bombing was the work of Sunni extremists or al Qaida terrorists. But, how did they know? They didn’t have witnesses on the ground in Samarra and they’ve never produced a scintilla of evidence to support their claims. It may be that the administration simply saw the bombing as an opportunity to twist the facts to suit their own purposes?
After all, the incident has been a propaganda-bonanza for the Bush team. They’ve used it to support their theory that Iraq is “the central battle in the war on terror” and that “we must fight them there if we don’t want to fight them over here”. It’s become one of the main justifications for the occupation; implying that the US military is needed as a referee to keep the warring factions from killing each other. It’s all just nonsense that’s designed to advance the administration’s political agenda.
If there had been an investigation, it would have shown whether the perpetrators were experts or not by the placement of the explosives. There’s a good chance they would’ve found bomb-residue which could have determined the composition of the material used. Forensics experts could have easily ascertained whether the explosives came from Iraqi munitions-dumps (as suggested) or from outside the country (like the USA, perhaps?)
The incident may well have been a “false flag” operation carried out by US intelligence agencies to provoke sectarian violence and, thus, reduce the number of attacks on American troops.
In any event, as soon as the mosque was destroyed the media swung into action focusing all of its attention on sectarian violence and the prospect of civil war. The media’s incessant “cheerleading” for civil war was suspicious, to say the least.
In the first 30 hours after the blast, more than 1,500 articles appeared on Google News providing the government version of events without deviation and without any corroborating evidence; just fluff that reiterated the Pentagon’s account verbatim and without challenge.
1500! Now that’s a well-oiled propaganda system!
Most of the articles were “cookie cutter-type” stories which used the same buzzwords and talking points as all the others; no interviews, no facts, no second opinions; simple, straightforward stenography---nothing more.
The story was repeated for weeks on end never veering from the same speculative theory. Clearly, a great amount of effort was being exerted to convince the American people that this was a significant event that would reshape the whole context of the war in Iraq. In fact, the media blitz that followed was grander than anything since 9-11; a spectacular display of the media’s power to manipulate public opinion.
There were a few articles that didn’t follow the party-line, but they quickly disappeared into a cyber-“black hole” or were dismissed as conspiracy theories. One report in AFP said that the bombing “was the work of specialists” and the “placing of explosives must have taken at least 12 hours”. The article continued:
“Construction Minister Mohammed Jaafar said, ‘Holes were dug into the mausoleum’s four main pillars and packed with explosives. Then charges were connected together and linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to a detonator which was triggered at a distance.”
Of course, what does that prove? Perhaps, al Qaida has skilled explosives experts? But why not investigate? After all, if this was the “catalyzing event” which was thrusting the country towards civil war; why not have the FBI come in and have a look-around?
A professional team of investigators could have quickly determined whether highly-trained saboteurs were operating in the area. (which meant that American troops would be at greater risk) Isn’t that worth checking out?
Nope. The Pentagon did nothing. There was no effort at all to find out who might have been involved. It was an open and shut case; wrapped up before the dust had even settled in Samarra.
Very strange.
Apparently, there was at least one witness who was interviewed shortly after the bombing. He said that he heard cars running outside the mosque “the whole night until morning” but, he was warned “to stay in your shop and don’t leave until morning”.
At 6:30 AM the next morning, the vehicles outside the mosque left. 10 minutes later the bombs exploded.
None of the people living in the vicinity of the mosque were ever questioned. Likewise, the Construction Minister Mohammed Jaafar has never resurfaced in the news again. I expect that his comments in the newspaper may have had something to do with his sudden disappearance, but then maybe not.
The Golden Mosque; truth or psy-ops?
The Bush administration is very serious about controlling information. That’s why they launched the Pentagon’s Dept of Strategic Information. The military is now deeply engaged in “full spectrum dominance” of all information technologies. Consequently, “controlling the narrative” is more important than one might think. Propaganda is the cheapest and most effective way to control public behavior. The growth in public relations illustrates the importance that political leaders put on managing perception in a way that compels the masses to conform to an elite agenda. That’s why the administration has spent zillions on PR campaigns and inserted themselves into every area of human communication. They are forever looking for the right combination of patriotic and religious imagery that will get the public to march along in harmony.
The Bush administration has made some notable contributions to the traditional propaganda-paradigm. In fact, former Counselor at the State Dept, Philip Zelikow, (who was also executive director of the 9-11 Commission and author of the National Security Strategy NSS) is an expert in “the creation and maintenance of ‘public myths’ or ‘public presumptions’, which he defines as beliefs thought to be true although not necessarily known to be true with certainty, shared in common with the relevant political community (sounds like Rumsfeld)….He has taken a special interest in ‘searing’ or ‘molding’ events that take on ‘transcendent’ importance and, therefore, retain there power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene”. (“Thinking about Political History” Miller Center report; winter 1999)
“Searing’ or ‘molding’ events that take on ‘transcendent’ importance”?!? Like 9-11, for example?
“In the Nov-Dec 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs he co-authored an article called ‘Catastrophic Terrorism’ in which he speculated that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade center had succeeded ‘the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. ‘It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet bomb test in 1949. The US might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or US counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently”. (Wikipedia)
The previous paragraph is certainly worth rereading 2 or 3 times KEEPING IN MIND THAT ZELIKOW'S ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN 1998!?! 3 YEARS BEFORE 9-11!
Where, one might ask, did Zelikow get his crystal ball?
Zelikow correctly assumed that if a “catastrophic” event were to take place in America, it would trigger a massive revaluation of all our ideological commitments; “civil liberties, surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force”.
History would be divided into "pre 9-11 and post 9-11." And, all the restrictions on presidential power, inalienable rights, and aggressive war could be swept away in an instant.
Isn’t this the exact blueprint for what is taking place right now? What part of Zelikow’s dark-vision has not been actualized?
This theory is the intellectual foundation for the creeping fascism that has infected our country. Its evil-brilliance is that it goes beyond propaganda’s limited ability to shape public opinion and actually creates history by fabricating events that have a “searing” or “molding” effect on the collective psyche.
Zelikow has figured out that the real essence of controlling behavior is not simply “propagating” ideas but understanding how humans process information and, then, corrupting that process so it meets the objectives of the ruling elite.
Both 9-11 and the blowing up of the Golden dome Mosque are examples of how this theory works. 9-11 has been used to erase 200 years of legal precedent and establish a “unitary president” who has absolute power. The destruction of the mosque transforms a brutal colonial occupation into a "humanitarian intervention" which requires the US military to stay on indefinitely to prevent Iraqis from killing each other. In both cases, the “catastrophic” event creates the internal logic for the subsequent response.
Doesn’t this explain why the administration has devoted so much energy to controlling the narrative?
The Salvador Option and the Bush Caliphate
The Defense Department developed its strategy for counterinsurgency in Iraq with the assumption that they were “fighting a new kind of war”. The days of large land-based armies and conventional weapons-systems are over. The coming century will require new skills for overpowering loosely-configured “indigenous” resistance organizations who can undermine the goal of seizing dwindling resources.
The war on terror conceals the fact that the US is presently engaged in a global resource war.
An article by Michael Hirsh in Newsweek magazine, “The Salvador Option” (Jan 2005), summarized the details of the strategy saying:
“Newsweek has learned the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against a leftist guerilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the US government funded or supported ‘nationalist’ forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers.”
The same pattern of terrorizing the public through “the application of extreme violence” has reemerged in Iraq with many of the same US leaders supervising the covert operations. The plan was clearly designed to eliminate the need for more US troops to provide security and, instead, aimed at “pacifying” the resistance through a well-coordinated and fully-funded campaign of terror.
The (predominantly) Shiite militias operating out of the Interior Ministry were armed and trained by the CIA and were used to secretly to carry out assassinations and torture of suspected “Sunni insurgents.” In his recent article “The Battle of Baghdad”, Chris Sanders expands on this point:
“Even more important is the fact that it has been the Americans in the form of one Colonel James Steel, who, reporting to then ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, oversaw the training of the Shia death squads a.k.a. “security forces” that have been turned loose on the Sunni population, a project called the “Salvador Option”. This is not a civil war…so much as deliberate mayhem incited, aided and abetted by the occupying power with the objective of forcing the disintegration of the country.”
There’s nothing new in Sander’s observations although they are scrupulously omitted in the mainstream press. The Bush administration set out to apply its neoconservative theories in Iraq by deliberately destroying the social fabric of Iraqi society so they could rebuild the country according to their “free market” neoliberal ideology. The neocon principle of “creative destruction” was used with lethal precision and with devastating effects; the country is now in a state of total ruin.
The Pentagon’s counterinsurgency strategy was developed long before the mutilated bodies of Sunni men began showing up daily bobbing along the Euphrates River. It’s part of a broader plan to dominate the entire region through military force. The purpose is to extend the Bush Caliphate--the “new world order”-- throughout the entire Middle East.
Somewhere along the line, things went horribly wrong and the Pentagon warlords lost control of their “brainchild” in the Interior Ministry. Now the Shiite death squads operate independent of their American overlords purging Baghdad of its Sunni population and laying the foundation for a future Islamic state. Events are simply beyond Bush’s control. As author William Lind said recently, “The forces our invasion and destruction of the Iraqi state unleashed, far overpower any army we can deploy to Iraq, surge or no surge.”
The neocon plan to decimate Iraqi society by inciting sectarian violence (divide and conquer) was concocted long before the destruction of the Golden dome Mosque. In fact, the blowing up of the mosque was probably an attempt to disguise US involvement in the random bombings (markets, mosques, busy streets etc.) and death squad activity which soon spread throughout the Sunni heartland.
Consider Bush’s comments in his speech to the nation last week:
“The violence in Iraq has overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made. Al Qaida terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that Iraq’s election posed for their cause. And they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis…They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam—the Golden Mosque of Samarra—in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq’s Shia population to retaliate. Their strategy worked Radical Shia elements; some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.”
Is that what happened or is this just a clever way of shifting the blame from the real perpetrators of the bloodshed to the victims of Washington’s dirty war?
Zelikow’s theories have provided a master-plan for shaping public opinion around “searing” events. He is right to assume that people will accept all manner of absurdities if they are assembled in the context of a larger catastrophe. Clearly, the Bush administration is venturing into uncharted waters, proactively fabricating “historical events” to create their own reality and, thus, support the narrow objectives of an elite agenda.
The destruction of the Golden dome Mosque bears the same bloody fingerprints as do the victims of the occupation’s unrelenting violence. The guilty parties may have escaped accountability so far, but when the smoke clears, we’ll know whose bombs they really were.
African tyrant: The truth about who really installed (Mi5) Idi Amin
Like the young British doctor in 'The Last King of Scotland', Richard Dowden was living in Uganda when Idi Amin seized power. But he says the film is wrong to blame the UK for the coup that brought the tyrant to power
Published: 16 January 2007
The first time I saw Idi Amin was when - as in the film - he leapt on to a platform in my local town to address the people. He used much the same words as he does in the film. "I am one of you, I know you, we are going to make life better..." And, like Nicholas Garrigan, the film's young Scottish doctor, I was swept along by Amin's ebullient enthusiasm, joining the crowd to shout a huge "O ye" in answer to his. He then picked us white muzungus out of the crowd and praised us, telling the people we had come to help Uganda, and Ugandans should welcome us and respect us. We got a huge cheer too. If he had offered me a job at that moment...
Forest Whitaker is a brilliant Idi Amin. The voice, the stance but most of all the eyes flicking this way and that until he chooses his mood: smile or smite. Seconds tick by as he weighs the choice, and then the huge smile lights up his face; or the storm breaks, menacing, murderous.
My challenges to the film are factual. The first concerns who put Amin in power. There is a moment when he confides in Garrigan: "Who put me here? - It was British." The assertion is repeated by Stone, a British diplomat, who says: "Given we were so intimately involved in him coming to power..."
Most Brits in Uganda believed their government organised the coup in 1971. Amin had been a loyal sergeant in the King's African Rifles, doing Britain's dirty work against the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s. It was assumed he was still "their boy". I too believed it was the British, until I read papers concerning the coup at the Public Record Office at Kew in London.
If the British did have a hand in the events of 25 January 1971, the plotters neglected to tell the British high commissioner in Kampala, Richard Slater. Foreign Office telegrams reveal a man shocked and confused at reports of shooting in the streets. As the day rolls on, Slater reports that the man who knows all about the coup is Colonel Bar-Lev, the Israeli defence attaché - the ambassador was away. Quoting Bar-Lev as the source, Slater reports: "In the course of last night, General Amin caused to be arrested all officers in the armed forces sympathetic to Obote ... Amin is now firmly in control of all elements of [the] army ... the Israeli defence attaché discounts any possibility of moves against Amin."
In the following days, the Israelis take the lead. Bar-Lev is in constant contact with Amin. Slater tells London that Bar-Lev has explained to him "in considerable detail [how] ... all potential foci of resistance, both up-country and in Kampala, had been eliminated." How does he know this? The Uganda military radio network had been provided by the Israelis. Soon afterwards, Amin made his first trip as president - to Israel.
At the time of the coup, Slater had recently declared that Amin had "just enough intelligence to realise he couldn't run the country". He also said that he was fed up with the president, Milton Obote, who had taken a strong stand against British arms sales to South Africa, and was threatening to nationalise British companies in Uganda.
The suspicion at the time was that the British prime minister, Edward Heath, wanted Obote out of the way at the Commonwealth Conference then taking place in Singapore, where arms sales to South Africa would be a hot topic. But elsewhere in Africa, Britain tolerated critics. In Tanzania, President Julius Nyerere had nationalised British companies and was even more anti-apartheid than Obote. But when he had been threatened by a coup, the British sent in the Marines to keep him to power. The British never tried to remove President Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia, despite his critical stance on South Africa.
But why should Israel be interested in Uganda? Slater never directly accused Israel of being behind the coup, but he did explain why they might have been. In the Six-Day War, Sudan had backed the Arab cause, and Israel wanted to take the fight to its enemies. They were supporting rebellion in southern Sudan, supplying the Anya-Nya fighters with weapons. As Slater said: "They do not want the rebels to win. They want to keep them fighting."
Obote had been trying to make peace in Sudan, but, unknown to him, Amin, then head of his army, had been secretly supplying the Israeli weapons to the rebels. Amin had good friends in Israel, and suddenly the Israelis had the opportunity to remove the man who was trying to broker peace, and put their man in power.
But if the British did not organise the coup, they were quick to take advantage of it. Bruce McKenzie, MI6's senior Africa operator, was also the Kenyan president's foreign affairs adviser. (Perhaps that was a deal they had made with Jomo Kenyatta. The British would keep him in power if he accepted that one of their agents was in the heart of his government.) McKenzie urged London to support Amin. His first trip after the coup was also to Israel, where he met the prime minister, Golda Meir. She was said to be shocked at Amin's shopping list for arms.
McKenzie reported to the Foreign Secretary, Alec Douglas-Home: "The way is now clear for our high commission in Kampala to get close to Amin." The British press also welcomed Amin. The Financial Times declared him "Man of the Week"; The Daily Telegraph called him "a welcome contrast to other African leaders and a staunch friend of Britain".
In Kampala, however, Slater - who comes across in the records as a decent and honest man - is worried about Amin, and wants to keep a distance. But, urged on by McKenzie, Douglas-Home gives Slater his orders: "The PM will be watching this and will, I am sure, want us to take quick advantage of any opportunity of selling arms. Don't overdo the caution."
Despite the reports of mass murder of the ethnic groups who had supported Obote, and the assassination or disappearance of anyone who spoke out, the Heath government invited Amin to London for a state visit, where he rode with the Queen in an open carriage, and dined at Buckingham Palace. He was also taken on visits to army camps and invited to buy whatever weapons he wanted. Sell before the Israelis do, was the message.
Around the end of 1971, Amin visited Libya and came away a changed man - not in character but in political direction. Perhaps they gave him nicer weapons, or did not charge him. Maybe he felt patronised by the British, as he had been all his life. Not even now he was president did they really respect him. Perhaps he was persuaded that Africans should stand with the Palestinians. He was not alone. Arab countries did a deal with Africa: support the Palestinians, and we will support you against apartheid in South Africa. So Amin turned on his British supporters, and on the British in Uganda. In 1972, he expelled Uganda's Asians and took hostages. Life became difficult for whites even out in the villages, and when Amin declared that we were all British spies, I decided it was time to leave.
My second problem is with the film's ending, which announces on screen that Idi Amin was overthrown by the Tanzanian army in 1979, having killed 300,000 people, as if that was the end of the nightmare. In fact, it was only half way through.
When I arrived, he was very popular among the Baganda people, whohad hated Obote. He also had that streak of populism the film captures perfectly. He could move crowds to cheer and dance and sing. In a strange way, many Ugandans learned to duck and weave and live with him. I had become a journalist then, and Ugandan friends begged me not to write bad things about Amin because that would enrage him - and when he was enraged he was dangerous.
How many people he killed can only be speculation, but the terrible truth is that things got worse. In the next months there were three presidents and Milton Obote, Uganda's first president, was returned to power in a fraudulent election in 1980. To its eternal shame, the Commonwealth gave it a stamp of approval. That is when southern Uganda's nightmare begun.
Amin had killed anyone who threatened him, and purged the army with massacres of ethnic groups that he thought did not support him, but on the whole he left the little people alone. His successor was very different. Between 1980 and 1985 in the Luwero triangle around Kampala, the number of civilians murdered by Obote's British-trained soldiers approached genocidal levels, as whole villages were exterminated.
And that war has, in a way, continued until today in the north. In Acholi district the Lord's Resistance Army, which never accepted President Yoweri Museveni's rule, has killed tens of thousands, but many more have died in disease-ridden camps they have been forced to live in. That war is hopefully coming to an end with peace talks in Sudan, and this could heal the rift between the northern and southern peoples of Uganda that politicians have kept open since colonial times.
Later this year, the Commonwealth will be able to make amends, holding its heads of government meeting in Uganda. They will meet in the conference centre - the very one that, in the film, Amin is shown smiling over Dr Gilligan. (It had just been built at that stage).
I nearly met Amin in Jeddah in 1986. The Saudis had caged him there in a comfortable house, as he was a Muslim. Through an Ethiopian journalist who knew him, I sent him a message, and he invited me for lunch. But as I approached his house, the Saudi secret police politely turned me back. A few months later he escaped, flying to Nigeria in pink robes. He still looked in perfect health - British-spread rumours that he was dying of syphilis and alcoholism turned out to be untrue. He finally died in Jeddah in 2003. He will never be rehabilitated, but to this day when you mention his name many Ugandans laugh rather than weep.
Richard Dowden is the director of the Royal African Society
Published: 16 January 2007
The first time I saw Idi Amin was when - as in the film - he leapt on to a platform in my local town to address the people. He used much the same words as he does in the film. "I am one of you, I know you, we are going to make life better..." And, like Nicholas Garrigan, the film's young Scottish doctor, I was swept along by Amin's ebullient enthusiasm, joining the crowd to shout a huge "O ye" in answer to his. He then picked us white muzungus out of the crowd and praised us, telling the people we had come to help Uganda, and Ugandans should welcome us and respect us. We got a huge cheer too. If he had offered me a job at that moment...
Forest Whitaker is a brilliant Idi Amin. The voice, the stance but most of all the eyes flicking this way and that until he chooses his mood: smile or smite. Seconds tick by as he weighs the choice, and then the huge smile lights up his face; or the storm breaks, menacing, murderous.
My challenges to the film are factual. The first concerns who put Amin in power. There is a moment when he confides in Garrigan: "Who put me here? - It was British." The assertion is repeated by Stone, a British diplomat, who says: "Given we were so intimately involved in him coming to power..."
Most Brits in Uganda believed their government organised the coup in 1971. Amin had been a loyal sergeant in the King's African Rifles, doing Britain's dirty work against the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s. It was assumed he was still "their boy". I too believed it was the British, until I read papers concerning the coup at the Public Record Office at Kew in London.
If the British did have a hand in the events of 25 January 1971, the plotters neglected to tell the British high commissioner in Kampala, Richard Slater. Foreign Office telegrams reveal a man shocked and confused at reports of shooting in the streets. As the day rolls on, Slater reports that the man who knows all about the coup is Colonel Bar-Lev, the Israeli defence attaché - the ambassador was away. Quoting Bar-Lev as the source, Slater reports: "In the course of last night, General Amin caused to be arrested all officers in the armed forces sympathetic to Obote ... Amin is now firmly in control of all elements of [the] army ... the Israeli defence attaché discounts any possibility of moves against Amin."
In the following days, the Israelis take the lead. Bar-Lev is in constant contact with Amin. Slater tells London that Bar-Lev has explained to him "in considerable detail [how] ... all potential foci of resistance, both up-country and in Kampala, had been eliminated." How does he know this? The Uganda military radio network had been provided by the Israelis. Soon afterwards, Amin made his first trip as president - to Israel.
At the time of the coup, Slater had recently declared that Amin had "just enough intelligence to realise he couldn't run the country". He also said that he was fed up with the president, Milton Obote, who had taken a strong stand against British arms sales to South Africa, and was threatening to nationalise British companies in Uganda.
The suspicion at the time was that the British prime minister, Edward Heath, wanted Obote out of the way at the Commonwealth Conference then taking place in Singapore, where arms sales to South Africa would be a hot topic. But elsewhere in Africa, Britain tolerated critics. In Tanzania, President Julius Nyerere had nationalised British companies and was even more anti-apartheid than Obote. But when he had been threatened by a coup, the British sent in the Marines to keep him to power. The British never tried to remove President Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia, despite his critical stance on South Africa.
But why should Israel be interested in Uganda? Slater never directly accused Israel of being behind the coup, but he did explain why they might have been. In the Six-Day War, Sudan had backed the Arab cause, and Israel wanted to take the fight to its enemies. They were supporting rebellion in southern Sudan, supplying the Anya-Nya fighters with weapons. As Slater said: "They do not want the rebels to win. They want to keep them fighting."
Obote had been trying to make peace in Sudan, but, unknown to him, Amin, then head of his army, had been secretly supplying the Israeli weapons to the rebels. Amin had good friends in Israel, and suddenly the Israelis had the opportunity to remove the man who was trying to broker peace, and put their man in power.
But if the British did not organise the coup, they were quick to take advantage of it. Bruce McKenzie, MI6's senior Africa operator, was also the Kenyan president's foreign affairs adviser. (Perhaps that was a deal they had made with Jomo Kenyatta. The British would keep him in power if he accepted that one of their agents was in the heart of his government.) McKenzie urged London to support Amin. His first trip after the coup was also to Israel, where he met the prime minister, Golda Meir. She was said to be shocked at Amin's shopping list for arms.
McKenzie reported to the Foreign Secretary, Alec Douglas-Home: "The way is now clear for our high commission in Kampala to get close to Amin." The British press also welcomed Amin. The Financial Times declared him "Man of the Week"; The Daily Telegraph called him "a welcome contrast to other African leaders and a staunch friend of Britain".
In Kampala, however, Slater - who comes across in the records as a decent and honest man - is worried about Amin, and wants to keep a distance. But, urged on by McKenzie, Douglas-Home gives Slater his orders: "The PM will be watching this and will, I am sure, want us to take quick advantage of any opportunity of selling arms. Don't overdo the caution."
Despite the reports of mass murder of the ethnic groups who had supported Obote, and the assassination or disappearance of anyone who spoke out, the Heath government invited Amin to London for a state visit, where he rode with the Queen in an open carriage, and dined at Buckingham Palace. He was also taken on visits to army camps and invited to buy whatever weapons he wanted. Sell before the Israelis do, was the message.
Around the end of 1971, Amin visited Libya and came away a changed man - not in character but in political direction. Perhaps they gave him nicer weapons, or did not charge him. Maybe he felt patronised by the British, as he had been all his life. Not even now he was president did they really respect him. Perhaps he was persuaded that Africans should stand with the Palestinians. He was not alone. Arab countries did a deal with Africa: support the Palestinians, and we will support you against apartheid in South Africa. So Amin turned on his British supporters, and on the British in Uganda. In 1972, he expelled Uganda's Asians and took hostages. Life became difficult for whites even out in the villages, and when Amin declared that we were all British spies, I decided it was time to leave.
My second problem is with the film's ending, which announces on screen that Idi Amin was overthrown by the Tanzanian army in 1979, having killed 300,000 people, as if that was the end of the nightmare. In fact, it was only half way through.
When I arrived, he was very popular among the Baganda people, whohad hated Obote. He also had that streak of populism the film captures perfectly. He could move crowds to cheer and dance and sing. In a strange way, many Ugandans learned to duck and weave and live with him. I had become a journalist then, and Ugandan friends begged me not to write bad things about Amin because that would enrage him - and when he was enraged he was dangerous.
How many people he killed can only be speculation, but the terrible truth is that things got worse. In the next months there were three presidents and Milton Obote, Uganda's first president, was returned to power in a fraudulent election in 1980. To its eternal shame, the Commonwealth gave it a stamp of approval. That is when southern Uganda's nightmare begun.
Amin had killed anyone who threatened him, and purged the army with massacres of ethnic groups that he thought did not support him, but on the whole he left the little people alone. His successor was very different. Between 1980 and 1985 in the Luwero triangle around Kampala, the number of civilians murdered by Obote's British-trained soldiers approached genocidal levels, as whole villages were exterminated.
And that war has, in a way, continued until today in the north. In Acholi district the Lord's Resistance Army, which never accepted President Yoweri Museveni's rule, has killed tens of thousands, but many more have died in disease-ridden camps they have been forced to live in. That war is hopefully coming to an end with peace talks in Sudan, and this could heal the rift between the northern and southern peoples of Uganda that politicians have kept open since colonial times.
Later this year, the Commonwealth will be able to make amends, holding its heads of government meeting in Uganda. They will meet in the conference centre - the very one that, in the film, Amin is shown smiling over Dr Gilligan. (It had just been built at that stage).
I nearly met Amin in Jeddah in 1986. The Saudis had caged him there in a comfortable house, as he was a Muslim. Through an Ethiopian journalist who knew him, I sent him a message, and he invited me for lunch. But as I approached his house, the Saudi secret police politely turned me back. A few months later he escaped, flying to Nigeria in pink robes. He still looked in perfect health - British-spread rumours that he was dying of syphilis and alcoholism turned out to be untrue. He finally died in Jeddah in 2003. He will never be rehabilitated, but to this day when you mention his name many Ugandans laugh rather than weep.
Richard Dowden is the director of the Royal African Society
How Congress Can Stop the Iran Attack or be Complicit in Nuclear War Crimes by Prof. Jorge Hirsch
Global Research, January 20, 2007
President Bush is invoking his "commander in chief" authority to escalate the war in Iraq, and he will likely also invoke it to launch an aerial attack against Iran. Congress has long ago abdicated and delegated to the President its constitutional responsibility to initiate wars. Yet Congress still has one surefire way to influence events: it has the constitutional authority to make the "nuclear option" against Iran illegal. In so doing, it would stop the relentless drive to war against Iran dead in its tracks.
Notwithstanding Joe Biden's threat of a "constitutional confrontation" if Bush attacks Iran without Congressional authorization, the fact is that such an attack would be perfectly legal: the War Powers Act gives the US President legal authority to wage war against any country for 60 days. It would also be legal for Bush to order nuclear strikes against Iran: under NSC-30 of 1948, "the decision as to the employment of atomic weapons in the event of war is to be made by the Chief Executive". Neither Congressional "resolutions" nor votes to withold funding will have any effect on preventing such events.
However, Congress could pass a law making a nuclear attack on a non-nuclear nation in the absence of Congressional authorization illegal. In so doing, Congress would effectively be preventing Bush from launching any attack against Iran without its authorization, thus reclaiming its broader constitutionally assigned duties. Because Bush will not dare putting 150,000 American lives in Iraq at risk of Iranian retaliation without having the nuclear option on the table. By removing the nuclear option from the Bush toolkit, Congress would be forcefully imposing its will and that of the American people on an administration gone mad.
If Congress chooses not to face the fact that US military action against Iran is likely to lead to the first US use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki, each one of its members will share responsibility for the nefarious chain of events that is likely to follow, and should be preparing to face his/her very own nuclear Nuremberg trial.
Preparations for the Iran attack
The following recent events have led to widespread suspicions that a US/ Israeli attack on Iran is imminent:
Additional aircraft carriers deployed to the Persian Gulf.
US Patriot missiles just deployed to the Persian Gulf.
F16 fighter planes just deployed to the Incirlik base in Turkey.
Increased number of US nuclear submarines in Persian Gulf.
Admiral Fallon named Centcom commander.
Israeli pilots training for Iran bombing mission.
Increased rethoric and provocations against Iran.
The F-16's can deliver B61-11 nuclear bunker busters, and there may be such bombs at Incirlik.
A conventional aerial attack against Iran will not destroy the underground facilities that Israel and the US have set their sight on. And it will provoke a violent Iranian response, with missiles targeting US forces in Iraq and Israeli cities. The US administration will argue that these missiles could potentially carry chemical or biological warheads as "justification" for nuclear strikes on Iran, as anticipated in the new US nuclear weapons policies, to achieve "rapid and favorable war termination on US terms".
How Congress can act
Congress can pass a law that will have a real, immediate and historic effect: outlaw the US use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states . Article I, Sect. 8, Clause 14 of the US constitution empowers Congress to regulate the Armed Forces. Congress cannot micromanage the conduct of war, that is up to the President, the Commander in Chief. But Congress can outlaw broad war practices, such as torture, or the use of nuclear weapons in any or all circumstances, by regulating what US Armed Forces can and cannot do. An example of such a bill, vetted by prominent constitutional law experts, is given here.
Critics will say that nuclear weapons may be necessary against countries on the verge of acquiring them. The law can allow for it: it should specify that Congress has the authority to designate any country it chooses as a "nuclear weapon state", not subject to this restriction.
Congress could even outlaw the US "first use of nuclear weapons" against anybody without "the prior, explicit authorization of Congress". Such legislation was considered and voted down by the US Senate in 1972, and it was considered again in hearings in the House of Representatives in 1976: "First use of nuclear weapons: preserving responsible control". We are suggesting here a much milder restriction on presidential authority.
Would the passage of such a law implicitly condone a conventional attack on Iran? In no way. On the contrary, it would instantly bring the drive to attack Iran to a screeching halt, because Bush will not dare attacking Iran without having his "nuclear option" on the table. Such a law will absolutely constrain the choices the President has. No matter how much "Commander in Chief" power President Bush thinks he has, he would not be able to ignore such a law without committing an impeachable offense. If Congress decides that attacking Iran is a good idea, Congress can vote to declare that Iran is a nuclear-weapon state, subject to US nuclear attack, putting the nuclear option back on the table (and by showing its determination, making the "nuclear option" a more credible "deterrent"). The President, however, would be forced to bring his case to Congress.
Would the passing of such a law "embolden" Iran? Not likely. Iran has not been deterred from continuing enrichment by US threats, UN sanctions, nor statements that the "nuclear option" is on the table. A forceful statement by the US that it will use overwhelming conventional force against Iran if necessary, and reserving the right to declare Iran a nuclear country subject to US nuclear attack at any time, should be more than enough to keep Iran in check.
Such a bill would put the momentous decision to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states in the hands of Congress, closer to the American people, where it belongs, rather than at the sole discretion of an Executive gone mad. More sweeping measures such as "abolishing nuclear weapons" are unrealistic and have no chance of succeeding, hence they are counterproductive.
Majority vote of both chambers, then overturning the presidential veto: a mere 2/3 of Congress willing to avert a course of action that would bring humanity to the brink, is all that's needed. Which Congressperson will have the courage to step up to the plate and get the ball rolling? Dennis Kucinich? Ron Paul? Robert Byrd? Chuck Hagel? Russ Feingold? John Murtha? Jim Webb?
Or, Congressmembers can choose to continue the posturing, make lofty speeches, write letters to the President, pass "sense of Congress" resolutions, even cut funding, all the while balancing their individual aspirations for 2008. None of it will stop this administration.
US nuclear weapons use
This column and others have been exposing for many months the evidence that this administration has been carrying out a deliberate plan to set up the conditions that will lead to the US use of nuclear weapons against Iran, and its motivations for it [1], [2], [3].
Congress is on notice and cannot claim ignorance. The President has publicly refused to take the "nuclear option" against Iran off the table. US nuclear weapons policies have undergone sweeping changes in the last 6 years, laying the doctrinal foundations that invite US nuclear strikes against non-nuclear adversaries under a variety of easily satisfied conditions. Military command structure and Pentagon guidelines have been "transformed" by Rumsfeld for that purpose. The B61-11 nuclear bunker busters are in the stockpile, ready to be used. The President has sole full authority to order their use, Congress has no say.
Congress knows full well what this President is capable of doing. By not acting, Congress is condoning this state of affairs, effectively putting its seal of approval on what is about to happen. America will hold each member of Congress fully responsible for it.
The German Reichstag in 1933 formally voted to transfer its powers to the Executive, thus avoiding being complicit in the impending war crimes. The US Congress has not had such good sense, even while abdicating its powers in practice, and it will face the consequences of its inaction. Time is running out.
Crimes against humanity
Using nuclear weapons against Iran, even just destroying one Iranian underground facility with nuclear bunker busters, with minimal "collateral damage", is a crime against humanity because:
It will break the 60-year old taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. Once a nuclear weapon is used again, it will invite use by others. There is no sharp line dividing small from large nuclear weapons, nor between nuclear weapons targeting facilities and those targeting humans, civilians or military.
Iran is years away from the capability of acquiring nuclear weapons by any estimate, hence it is a "non-nuclear-weapon state" (NNWS).
A US or Israeli use of a nuclear weapon against a NNWS will instantly destroy the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and lead to widespread nuclear proliferation.
" Weight for weight, the energy produced by a nuclear explosion is millions of times more powerful than a conventional explosion". So is the number of people it kills.
With no NPT and many more nuclear countries the potential for escalating nuclear war will be exponentially enhanced.
Nuclear war can lead to hundreds of millions of deaths, to the destruction of civilization and to the destruction of all life on earth.
The American Physical Society, representing the community of scientists that brought nuclear weapons into existence, has recently for the first time in its history issued a statement of deep concern about "the possible use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states" and its consequences for the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and some of America's most eminent scientists recently wrote to President Bush that such action would be "gravely irresponsible" and lead to "disastrous consequences".
Does Iran share responsibility?
Iran is pursuing a civilian nuclear program, allowed under the NPT. There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, only "suspicions". It is always possible to interpret any action by Iran in a negative way. If Iran slows down its enrichment activity, the press reports that "diplomats in Vienna began to worry that there was so little activity at Iran's main nuclear site that perhaps work had started on a secret site elsewhere in the country". (Of course no mention on who those "diplomats in Vienna" are). If Iran accelerates its enrichment activity, "Iran heightened international concerns by announcing April 11 that it had enriched uranium with 164 centrifuges". Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Saddam Hussein "chose war" by not being able to allay "concerns" that he didn't have the weapons he didn't have.
Vice-President Cheney stated last Sunday on national TV "There's no reason in the world why Iran needs to continue to pursue nuclear weapons". This is the same Vice-President that stated in 2002 "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." His statements then were as categorical and as unsubstantiated as his statements today, and the 2002 statements were proven categorically false. Why doesn't Congress demand that Cheney substantiate his statements today or else shut up or else step down? Isn't lying on matters of national security an impeachable offense?
Iran bears no responsibility for the rising tensions. When Cheney states "Iran's a problem in a much larger sense. At the same time, of course, they're pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons. They are in a position where they sit astride the Straits of Hormuz, where over 20 percent of the world's supply of oil transits every single day, over 18 million barrels a day. So the threat that Iran represents is growing, it's multi- dimensional, and it is, in fact, of concern to everybody in the region" he is candidly stating the Bush administration agenda, just as he did in 2002. And Fox news' Chris Wallace is happy to spell it out: "In fact, it was the basis of the Bush doctrine: You will not allow the world's most dangerous powers to get access to the world's most dangerous weapons. Can you pledge that, before you and the president leave office, you will take care of the threat of Iran?" Cheney's ominous answer: "I think we're working right now, today, as we speak, on key elements of that problem", as America is massing up its military power in the Persian Gulf, just like it did at this same time of the year in 2003.
On March 6, 2003, when asked whether or not the US would attack Iraq, President Bush answered "we're days away from resolving this issue at the Security Council", and "we're working with Security Council members to resolve this issue at the Security Council". 14 days later the US attacked Iraq, without Security Council's approval. Watch for a similar script in the weeks ahead.
Congress' guilt
Each member of Congress knows that the US President has full legal authority today to launch a nuclear attack against any country in the world. Each member of Congress knows that the Constitution assigns Congress the responsibility to regulate the Armed Forces, and that Congress has the authority to regulate the use of nuclear weapons. Each member of Congress knows the sweeping changes in US nuclear weapons policies and planning undertaken during this administration.
Any private assurances that Bush may have given to members of Congress that he will not order the use of nuclear weapons against Iran without congressional authorization are worthless. He can legally do it, and he will.
Any arguments the administration may put forth that legislating over nuclear weapons use will have a detrimental effect on the diplomatic effort vis-a-vis Iran will be as disingenuous as the arguments in September 2002 that Congress should authorize the use of force against Iraq so that diplomacy could succeed: "I've asked for Congress' support to enable the administration to keep the peace"; "If you want to keep the peace, you've got to have the authorization to use force. But it's -- this will be -- this is a chance for Congress to indicate support. It's a chance for Congress to say, we support the administration's ability to keep the peace. That's what this is all about."
Crimes of omission are punishable under international [1] and US domestic law. Principle VII of the Nuremberg tribunal stated "Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law."
If Congress doesn't legislate on the US use of nuclear weapons, and President Bush orders the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, he will be doing it in the name of each and every member of the 110th Congress.
The United States will have instantly offered the world 535 new defendants for future war crimes tribunals. Nuclear weapons are million-times more powerful than conventional weapons. If 535 million people die in ensuing nuclear conflicts, each member of the 110th Congress will have 1 million human lives on his/her own personal account.
Saddam Hussein and Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti went to the gallows for a mere 148.
Jorge Hirsch is Professor of physics at the University of California San Diego and a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Global Research Articles by Jorge Hirsch
President Bush is invoking his "commander in chief" authority to escalate the war in Iraq, and he will likely also invoke it to launch an aerial attack against Iran. Congress has long ago abdicated and delegated to the President its constitutional responsibility to initiate wars. Yet Congress still has one surefire way to influence events: it has the constitutional authority to make the "nuclear option" against Iran illegal. In so doing, it would stop the relentless drive to war against Iran dead in its tracks.
Notwithstanding Joe Biden's threat of a "constitutional confrontation" if Bush attacks Iran without Congressional authorization, the fact is that such an attack would be perfectly legal: the War Powers Act gives the US President legal authority to wage war against any country for 60 days. It would also be legal for Bush to order nuclear strikes against Iran: under NSC-30 of 1948, "the decision as to the employment of atomic weapons in the event of war is to be made by the Chief Executive". Neither Congressional "resolutions" nor votes to withold funding will have any effect on preventing such events.
However, Congress could pass a law making a nuclear attack on a non-nuclear nation in the absence of Congressional authorization illegal. In so doing, Congress would effectively be preventing Bush from launching any attack against Iran without its authorization, thus reclaiming its broader constitutionally assigned duties. Because Bush will not dare putting 150,000 American lives in Iraq at risk of Iranian retaliation without having the nuclear option on the table. By removing the nuclear option from the Bush toolkit, Congress would be forcefully imposing its will and that of the American people on an administration gone mad.
If Congress chooses not to face the fact that US military action against Iran is likely to lead to the first US use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki, each one of its members will share responsibility for the nefarious chain of events that is likely to follow, and should be preparing to face his/her very own nuclear Nuremberg trial.
Preparations for the Iran attack
The following recent events have led to widespread suspicions that a US/ Israeli attack on Iran is imminent:
Additional aircraft carriers deployed to the Persian Gulf.
US Patriot missiles just deployed to the Persian Gulf.
F16 fighter planes just deployed to the Incirlik base in Turkey.
Increased number of US nuclear submarines in Persian Gulf.
Admiral Fallon named Centcom commander.
Israeli pilots training for Iran bombing mission.
Increased rethoric and provocations against Iran.
The F-16's can deliver B61-11 nuclear bunker busters, and there may be such bombs at Incirlik.
A conventional aerial attack against Iran will not destroy the underground facilities that Israel and the US have set their sight on. And it will provoke a violent Iranian response, with missiles targeting US forces in Iraq and Israeli cities. The US administration will argue that these missiles could potentially carry chemical or biological warheads as "justification" for nuclear strikes on Iran, as anticipated in the new US nuclear weapons policies, to achieve "rapid and favorable war termination on US terms".
How Congress can act
Congress can pass a law that will have a real, immediate and historic effect: outlaw the US use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states . Article I, Sect. 8, Clause 14 of the US constitution empowers Congress to regulate the Armed Forces. Congress cannot micromanage the conduct of war, that is up to the President, the Commander in Chief. But Congress can outlaw broad war practices, such as torture, or the use of nuclear weapons in any or all circumstances, by regulating what US Armed Forces can and cannot do. An example of such a bill, vetted by prominent constitutional law experts, is given here.
Critics will say that nuclear weapons may be necessary against countries on the verge of acquiring them. The law can allow for it: it should specify that Congress has the authority to designate any country it chooses as a "nuclear weapon state", not subject to this restriction.
Congress could even outlaw the US "first use of nuclear weapons" against anybody without "the prior, explicit authorization of Congress". Such legislation was considered and voted down by the US Senate in 1972, and it was considered again in hearings in the House of Representatives in 1976: "First use of nuclear weapons: preserving responsible control". We are suggesting here a much milder restriction on presidential authority.
Would the passage of such a law implicitly condone a conventional attack on Iran? In no way. On the contrary, it would instantly bring the drive to attack Iran to a screeching halt, because Bush will not dare attacking Iran without having his "nuclear option" on the table. Such a law will absolutely constrain the choices the President has. No matter how much "Commander in Chief" power President Bush thinks he has, he would not be able to ignore such a law without committing an impeachable offense. If Congress decides that attacking Iran is a good idea, Congress can vote to declare that Iran is a nuclear-weapon state, subject to US nuclear attack, putting the nuclear option back on the table (and by showing its determination, making the "nuclear option" a more credible "deterrent"). The President, however, would be forced to bring his case to Congress.
Would the passing of such a law "embolden" Iran? Not likely. Iran has not been deterred from continuing enrichment by US threats, UN sanctions, nor statements that the "nuclear option" is on the table. A forceful statement by the US that it will use overwhelming conventional force against Iran if necessary, and reserving the right to declare Iran a nuclear country subject to US nuclear attack at any time, should be more than enough to keep Iran in check.
Such a bill would put the momentous decision to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states in the hands of Congress, closer to the American people, where it belongs, rather than at the sole discretion of an Executive gone mad. More sweeping measures such as "abolishing nuclear weapons" are unrealistic and have no chance of succeeding, hence they are counterproductive.
Majority vote of both chambers, then overturning the presidential veto: a mere 2/3 of Congress willing to avert a course of action that would bring humanity to the brink, is all that's needed. Which Congressperson will have the courage to step up to the plate and get the ball rolling? Dennis Kucinich? Ron Paul? Robert Byrd? Chuck Hagel? Russ Feingold? John Murtha? Jim Webb?
Or, Congressmembers can choose to continue the posturing, make lofty speeches, write letters to the President, pass "sense of Congress" resolutions, even cut funding, all the while balancing their individual aspirations for 2008. None of it will stop this administration.
US nuclear weapons use
This column and others have been exposing for many months the evidence that this administration has been carrying out a deliberate plan to set up the conditions that will lead to the US use of nuclear weapons against Iran, and its motivations for it [1], [2], [3].
Congress is on notice and cannot claim ignorance. The President has publicly refused to take the "nuclear option" against Iran off the table. US nuclear weapons policies have undergone sweeping changes in the last 6 years, laying the doctrinal foundations that invite US nuclear strikes against non-nuclear adversaries under a variety of easily satisfied conditions. Military command structure and Pentagon guidelines have been "transformed" by Rumsfeld for that purpose. The B61-11 nuclear bunker busters are in the stockpile, ready to be used. The President has sole full authority to order their use, Congress has no say.
Congress knows full well what this President is capable of doing. By not acting, Congress is condoning this state of affairs, effectively putting its seal of approval on what is about to happen. America will hold each member of Congress fully responsible for it.
The German Reichstag in 1933 formally voted to transfer its powers to the Executive, thus avoiding being complicit in the impending war crimes. The US Congress has not had such good sense, even while abdicating its powers in practice, and it will face the consequences of its inaction. Time is running out.
Crimes against humanity
Using nuclear weapons against Iran, even just destroying one Iranian underground facility with nuclear bunker busters, with minimal "collateral damage", is a crime against humanity because:
It will break the 60-year old taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. Once a nuclear weapon is used again, it will invite use by others. There is no sharp line dividing small from large nuclear weapons, nor between nuclear weapons targeting facilities and those targeting humans, civilians or military.
Iran is years away from the capability of acquiring nuclear weapons by any estimate, hence it is a "non-nuclear-weapon state" (NNWS).
A US or Israeli use of a nuclear weapon against a NNWS will instantly destroy the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and lead to widespread nuclear proliferation.
" Weight for weight, the energy produced by a nuclear explosion is millions of times more powerful than a conventional explosion". So is the number of people it kills.
With no NPT and many more nuclear countries the potential for escalating nuclear war will be exponentially enhanced.
Nuclear war can lead to hundreds of millions of deaths, to the destruction of civilization and to the destruction of all life on earth.
The American Physical Society, representing the community of scientists that brought nuclear weapons into existence, has recently for the first time in its history issued a statement of deep concern about "the possible use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states" and its consequences for the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and some of America's most eminent scientists recently wrote to President Bush that such action would be "gravely irresponsible" and lead to "disastrous consequences".
Does Iran share responsibility?
Iran is pursuing a civilian nuclear program, allowed under the NPT. There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, only "suspicions". It is always possible to interpret any action by Iran in a negative way. If Iran slows down its enrichment activity, the press reports that "diplomats in Vienna began to worry that there was so little activity at Iran's main nuclear site that perhaps work had started on a secret site elsewhere in the country". (Of course no mention on who those "diplomats in Vienna" are). If Iran accelerates its enrichment activity, "Iran heightened international concerns by announcing April 11 that it had enriched uranium with 164 centrifuges". Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Saddam Hussein "chose war" by not being able to allay "concerns" that he didn't have the weapons he didn't have.
Vice-President Cheney stated last Sunday on national TV "There's no reason in the world why Iran needs to continue to pursue nuclear weapons". This is the same Vice-President that stated in 2002 "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." His statements then were as categorical and as unsubstantiated as his statements today, and the 2002 statements were proven categorically false. Why doesn't Congress demand that Cheney substantiate his statements today or else shut up or else step down? Isn't lying on matters of national security an impeachable offense?
Iran bears no responsibility for the rising tensions. When Cheney states "Iran's a problem in a much larger sense. At the same time, of course, they're pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons. They are in a position where they sit astride the Straits of Hormuz, where over 20 percent of the world's supply of oil transits every single day, over 18 million barrels a day. So the threat that Iran represents is growing, it's multi- dimensional, and it is, in fact, of concern to everybody in the region" he is candidly stating the Bush administration agenda, just as he did in 2002. And Fox news' Chris Wallace is happy to spell it out: "In fact, it was the basis of the Bush doctrine: You will not allow the world's most dangerous powers to get access to the world's most dangerous weapons. Can you pledge that, before you and the president leave office, you will take care of the threat of Iran?" Cheney's ominous answer: "I think we're working right now, today, as we speak, on key elements of that problem", as America is massing up its military power in the Persian Gulf, just like it did at this same time of the year in 2003.
On March 6, 2003, when asked whether or not the US would attack Iraq, President Bush answered "we're days away from resolving this issue at the Security Council", and "we're working with Security Council members to resolve this issue at the Security Council". 14 days later the US attacked Iraq, without Security Council's approval. Watch for a similar script in the weeks ahead.
Congress' guilt
Each member of Congress knows that the US President has full legal authority today to launch a nuclear attack against any country in the world. Each member of Congress knows that the Constitution assigns Congress the responsibility to regulate the Armed Forces, and that Congress has the authority to regulate the use of nuclear weapons. Each member of Congress knows the sweeping changes in US nuclear weapons policies and planning undertaken during this administration.
Any private assurances that Bush may have given to members of Congress that he will not order the use of nuclear weapons against Iran without congressional authorization are worthless. He can legally do it, and he will.
Any arguments the administration may put forth that legislating over nuclear weapons use will have a detrimental effect on the diplomatic effort vis-a-vis Iran will be as disingenuous as the arguments in September 2002 that Congress should authorize the use of force against Iraq so that diplomacy could succeed: "I've asked for Congress' support to enable the administration to keep the peace"; "If you want to keep the peace, you've got to have the authorization to use force. But it's -- this will be -- this is a chance for Congress to indicate support. It's a chance for Congress to say, we support the administration's ability to keep the peace. That's what this is all about."
Crimes of omission are punishable under international [1] and US domestic law. Principle VII of the Nuremberg tribunal stated "Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law."
If Congress doesn't legislate on the US use of nuclear weapons, and President Bush orders the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, he will be doing it in the name of each and every member of the 110th Congress.
The United States will have instantly offered the world 535 new defendants for future war crimes tribunals. Nuclear weapons are million-times more powerful than conventional weapons. If 535 million people die in ensuing nuclear conflicts, each member of the 110th Congress will have 1 million human lives on his/her own personal account.
Saddam Hussein and Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti went to the gallows for a mere 148.
Jorge Hirsch is Professor of physics at the University of California San Diego and a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Global Research Articles by Jorge Hirsch
Palestine 2007: Genocide in Gaza, Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank
Palestine 2007: Genocide in Gaza, Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank
by Ilan Pappe
January 18, 2007
On this stage, not so long ago, I claimed that Israel is conducting genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. I hesitated a lot before using this very charged term and yet decided to adopt it. Indeed, the responses I received, including from some leading human rights activists, indicated a certain unease over the usage of such a term. I was inclined to rethink the term for a while, but came back to employing it today with even stronger conviction: it is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip.
On 28 December 2006, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem published its annual report about the Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories. Israeli forces killed this last year six hundred and sixty citizens. The number of Palestinians killed by Israel last year tripled in comparison to the previous year (around two hundred). According to B'Tselem, the Israelis killed one hundred and forty one children in the last year. Most of the dead are from the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli forces demolished almost 300 houses and slew entire families. This means that since 2000, Israeli forces killed almost four thousand Palestinians, half of them children; more than twenty thousand were wounded.
B'Tselem is a conservative organization, and the numbers may be higher. But the point is not just about the escalating intentional killing, it is about the trend and the strategy. As 2007 commences, Israeli policymakers are facing two very different realities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the former, they are closer than ever to finishing the construction of their eastern border. Their internal ideological debate is over and their master plan for annexing half of the West Bank is being implemented at an ever-growing speed. The last phase was delayed due to the promises made by Israel, under the Road Map, not to build new settlements. Israel found two ways of circumventing this alleged prohibition. First, it defined a third of the West Bank as Greater Jerusalem, which allowed it to build within this new annexed area towns and community centers. Secondly, it expanded old settlements to such proportions so that there was no need to build new ones. This trend was given an additional push in 2006 (hundreds of caravans were installed to mark the border of the expansions, the planning schemes for the new towns and neighborhoods were finalized and the apartheid bypass roads and highway system completed). In all, the settlements, the army bases, the roads and the wall will allow Israel to annex almost half of the West Bank by 2010. Within these territories there will be a considerable number of Palestinians, against whom the Israeli authorities will continue to implement slow and creeping transfer policies -- too boring as a subject for the western media to bother with and too elusive for human rights organizations to make a general point about them. There is no rush; as far as the Israelis are concerned, they have the upper hand there: the daily abusive and dehumanizing mixed mechanisms of army and bureaucracy is as effective as ever in contributing its own share to the dispossession process.
The strategic thinking of Ariel Sharon that this policy is far better than the one offered by the blunt 'transferists' or ethnic cleansers, such as Avigdor Liberman's advocacy, is accepted by everyone in the government, from Labor to Kadima. The petit crimes of state terrorism are also effective as they enable liberal Zionists around the world to softly condemn Israel and yet categorize any genuine criticism on Israel's criminal policies as anti-Semitism.
On the other hand, there is no clear Israeli strategy as yet for the Gaza Strip; but there is a daily experiment with one. Gaza, in the eyes of the Israelis, is a very different geo-political entity from that of the West Bank. Hamas controls Gaza, while Abu Mazen seems to run the fragmented West Bank with Israeli and American blessing. There is no chunk of land in Gaza that Israel covets and there is no hinterland, like Jordan, to which the Palestinians of Gaza can be expelled. Ethnic cleansing is ineffective here.
The earlier strategy in Gaza was ghettoizing the Palestinians there, but this is not working. The ghettoized community continues to express its will for life by firing primitive missiles into Israel. Ghettoizing or quarantining unwanted communities, even if they were regarded as sub-human or dangerous, never worked in history as a solution. The Jews know it best from their own history. The next stages against such communities in the past were even more horrific and barbaric. It is difficult to tell what the future holds for the Gaza population, ghettoized, quarantined, unwanted and demonized. Will it be a repeat of the ominous historical examples or is a better fate still possible?
Creating the prison and throwing the key to the sea, as UN Special Reporter John Dugard has put it, was an option the Palestinians in Gaza reacted against with force as soon as September 2005. They were determined to show at the very least that they were still part of the West Bank and Palestine. In that month, they launched the first significant, in number and not quality, barrage of missiles into the Western Negev. The shelling was a response to an Israeli campaign of mass arrests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in the Tul Karem area. The Israelis responded with operation 'First Rain'. It is worth dwelling for a moment on the nature of that operation. It was inspired by the punitive measures inflicted first by colonialist powers, and then by dictatorships, against rebellious imprisoned or banished communities. A frightening show of the oppressor's power to intimidate preceded all kind of collective and brutal punishments, ending with a large number of dead and wounded among the victims. In 'First Rain', supersonic flights were flown over Gaza to terrorize the entire population, succeeded by the heavy bombardment of vast areas from the sea, sky and land. The logic, the Israeli army explained, was to create pressure so as to weaken the Gaza community's support for the rocket launchers. As was expected, by the Israelis as well, the operation only increased the support for the rocket launchers and gave impetus to their next attempt. The real purpose of that particular operation was experimental. The Israeli generals wished to know how such operations would be received at home, in the region and in the world. And it seems that instantly the answer was 'very well'; namely, no one took an interest in the scores of dead and hundreds of wounded Palestinians left behind after the 'First Rain' subsided.
And hence since 'First Rain' and until June 2006, all the following operations were similarly modeled. The difference was in their escalation: more firepower, more causalities and more collateral damage and, as to be expected, more Qassam missiles in response. Accompanying measures in 2006 were more sinister means of ensuring the full imprisonment of the people of Gaza through boycott and blockade, with which the EU is still shamefully collaborating.
The capture of Gilad Shalit in June 2006 was irrelevant in the general scheme of things, but nonetheless provided an opportunity for the Israelis to escalate even more the components of the tactical and allegedly punitive missions. After all, there was still no strategy that followed the tactical decision of Ariel Sharon to take out 8,000 settlers whose presence complicated 'punitive' missions and whose eviction made him almost a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, the 'punitive' actions continue and become themselves a strategy.
The Israeli army loves drama and therefore also escalated the language. 'First Rain' was replaced by 'Summer Rains', a general name that was given to the 'punitive' operations since June 2006 (in a country where there is no rain in the summer, the only precipitation that one can expect are showers of F-16 bombs and artillery shells hitting people of Gaza).
'Summer Rains' brought a novel component: the land invasion into parts of the Gaza Strip. This enabled the army to kill citizens even more effectively and to present it as a result of heavy fighting within dense populated areas, an inevitable result of the circumstances and not of Israeli policies. With the close of summer came operation 'Autumn Clouds' which was even more efficient: on 1 November 2006, in less than 48 hours, the Israelis killed seventy civilians; by the end of that month, with additional mini operations accompanying it, almost two hundred were killed, half of them children and women. As one can see from the dates, some of the activity was parallel to the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, making it easier to complete the operations without much external attention, let alone criticism.
From 'First Rain' to 'Autumn Clouds' one can see escalation in every parameter. The first is the disappearance of the distinction between civilian and non-civilian targets: the senseless killing has turned the population at large to the main target for the army's operation. The second one is the escalation in the means: employment of every possible killing machines the Israeli army possesses. Thirdly, the escalation is conspicuous in the number of casualties: with each operation, and each future operation, a much larger number of people are likely to be killed and wounded. Finally, and most importantly, the operations become a strategy -- the way Israel intends to solve the problem of the Gaza Strip.
A creeping transfer in the West Bank and a measured genocidal policy in the Gaza Strip are the two strategies Israel employs today. From an electoral point of view, the one in Gaza is problematic as it does not reap any tangible results; the West Bank under Abu Mazen is yielding to Israeli pressure and there is no significant force that arrests the Israeli strategy of annexation and dispossession. But Gaza continues to fire back. On the one hand, this would enable the Israeli army to initiate more massive genocidal operations in the future. But there is also the great danger, on the other, that as happened in 1948, the army would demand a more drastic and systematic 'punitive' and collateral action against the besieged people of the Gaza Strip.
Ironically, the Israeli killing machine has rested lately. Even relatively large number of Qassam missiles, including one or two quite deadly ones, did not stir the army to action. Though the army's spokesmen say it shows 'restraint', it never did in the past and is not likely to do so in the future. The army rests, as its generals are content with the internal killing that rages on in Gaza and does the job for them. They watch with satisfaction the emerging civil war in Gaza, which Israel foments and encourages. From Israel's point of view it does not really mater how Gaza would eventually be demographically downsized, be it by internal or Israeli slaying. The responsibility of ending the internal fighting lies of course with the Palestinian groups themselves, but the American and Israeli interference, the continued imprisonment, the starvation and strangulation of Gaza are all factors that make such an internal peace process very difficult. But it will take place soon and then with the first early sign that it subsided, the Israeli 'Summer Rains' will fall down again on the people of Gaza, wreaking havoc and death.
And one should never tire of stating the inevitable political conclusions from this dismal reality of the year we left behind and in the face of the one that awaits us. There is still no other way of stopping Israel than besides boycott, divestment and sanctions. We should all support it clearly, openly, unconditionally, regardless of what the gurus of our world tell us about the efficiency or raison d'etre of such actions. The UN would not intervene in Gaza as it does in Africa; the Nobel peace laureates would not enlist to its defense as they do for causes in Southeast Asia. The numbers of people killed there are not staggering as far as other calamities are concerned, and it is not a new story -- it is dangerously old and troubling. The only soft point of this killing machine is its oxygen lines to 'western' civilization and public opinion. It is still possible to puncture them and make it at least more difficult for the Israelis to implement their future strategy of eliminating the Palestinian people either by cleansing them in the West Bank or genociding them in the Gaza Strip.
Ilan Pappe is senior lecturer in the University of Haifa Department of political Science and Chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies in Haifa. His books include, among others, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London and New York 1992), The Israel/Palestine Question (London and New York 1999), A History of Modern Palestine (Cambridge 2003), The Modern Middle East (London and New York 2005) and his latest, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).
by Ilan Pappe
January 18, 2007
On this stage, not so long ago, I claimed that Israel is conducting genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. I hesitated a lot before using this very charged term and yet decided to adopt it. Indeed, the responses I received, including from some leading human rights activists, indicated a certain unease over the usage of such a term. I was inclined to rethink the term for a while, but came back to employing it today with even stronger conviction: it is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip.
On 28 December 2006, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem published its annual report about the Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories. Israeli forces killed this last year six hundred and sixty citizens. The number of Palestinians killed by Israel last year tripled in comparison to the previous year (around two hundred). According to B'Tselem, the Israelis killed one hundred and forty one children in the last year. Most of the dead are from the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli forces demolished almost 300 houses and slew entire families. This means that since 2000, Israeli forces killed almost four thousand Palestinians, half of them children; more than twenty thousand were wounded.
B'Tselem is a conservative organization, and the numbers may be higher. But the point is not just about the escalating intentional killing, it is about the trend and the strategy. As 2007 commences, Israeli policymakers are facing two very different realities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the former, they are closer than ever to finishing the construction of their eastern border. Their internal ideological debate is over and their master plan for annexing half of the West Bank is being implemented at an ever-growing speed. The last phase was delayed due to the promises made by Israel, under the Road Map, not to build new settlements. Israel found two ways of circumventing this alleged prohibition. First, it defined a third of the West Bank as Greater Jerusalem, which allowed it to build within this new annexed area towns and community centers. Secondly, it expanded old settlements to such proportions so that there was no need to build new ones. This trend was given an additional push in 2006 (hundreds of caravans were installed to mark the border of the expansions, the planning schemes for the new towns and neighborhoods were finalized and the apartheid bypass roads and highway system completed). In all, the settlements, the army bases, the roads and the wall will allow Israel to annex almost half of the West Bank by 2010. Within these territories there will be a considerable number of Palestinians, against whom the Israeli authorities will continue to implement slow and creeping transfer policies -- too boring as a subject for the western media to bother with and too elusive for human rights organizations to make a general point about them. There is no rush; as far as the Israelis are concerned, they have the upper hand there: the daily abusive and dehumanizing mixed mechanisms of army and bureaucracy is as effective as ever in contributing its own share to the dispossession process.
The strategic thinking of Ariel Sharon that this policy is far better than the one offered by the blunt 'transferists' or ethnic cleansers, such as Avigdor Liberman's advocacy, is accepted by everyone in the government, from Labor to Kadima. The petit crimes of state terrorism are also effective as they enable liberal Zionists around the world to softly condemn Israel and yet categorize any genuine criticism on Israel's criminal policies as anti-Semitism.
On the other hand, there is no clear Israeli strategy as yet for the Gaza Strip; but there is a daily experiment with one. Gaza, in the eyes of the Israelis, is a very different geo-political entity from that of the West Bank. Hamas controls Gaza, while Abu Mazen seems to run the fragmented West Bank with Israeli and American blessing. There is no chunk of land in Gaza that Israel covets and there is no hinterland, like Jordan, to which the Palestinians of Gaza can be expelled. Ethnic cleansing is ineffective here.
The earlier strategy in Gaza was ghettoizing the Palestinians there, but this is not working. The ghettoized community continues to express its will for life by firing primitive missiles into Israel. Ghettoizing or quarantining unwanted communities, even if they were regarded as sub-human or dangerous, never worked in history as a solution. The Jews know it best from their own history. The next stages against such communities in the past were even more horrific and barbaric. It is difficult to tell what the future holds for the Gaza population, ghettoized, quarantined, unwanted and demonized. Will it be a repeat of the ominous historical examples or is a better fate still possible?
Creating the prison and throwing the key to the sea, as UN Special Reporter John Dugard has put it, was an option the Palestinians in Gaza reacted against with force as soon as September 2005. They were determined to show at the very least that they were still part of the West Bank and Palestine. In that month, they launched the first significant, in number and not quality, barrage of missiles into the Western Negev. The shelling was a response to an Israeli campaign of mass arrests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in the Tul Karem area. The Israelis responded with operation 'First Rain'. It is worth dwelling for a moment on the nature of that operation. It was inspired by the punitive measures inflicted first by colonialist powers, and then by dictatorships, against rebellious imprisoned or banished communities. A frightening show of the oppressor's power to intimidate preceded all kind of collective and brutal punishments, ending with a large number of dead and wounded among the victims. In 'First Rain', supersonic flights were flown over Gaza to terrorize the entire population, succeeded by the heavy bombardment of vast areas from the sea, sky and land. The logic, the Israeli army explained, was to create pressure so as to weaken the Gaza community's support for the rocket launchers. As was expected, by the Israelis as well, the operation only increased the support for the rocket launchers and gave impetus to their next attempt. The real purpose of that particular operation was experimental. The Israeli generals wished to know how such operations would be received at home, in the region and in the world. And it seems that instantly the answer was 'very well'; namely, no one took an interest in the scores of dead and hundreds of wounded Palestinians left behind after the 'First Rain' subsided.
And hence since 'First Rain' and until June 2006, all the following operations were similarly modeled. The difference was in their escalation: more firepower, more causalities and more collateral damage and, as to be expected, more Qassam missiles in response. Accompanying measures in 2006 were more sinister means of ensuring the full imprisonment of the people of Gaza through boycott and blockade, with which the EU is still shamefully collaborating.
The capture of Gilad Shalit in June 2006 was irrelevant in the general scheme of things, but nonetheless provided an opportunity for the Israelis to escalate even more the components of the tactical and allegedly punitive missions. After all, there was still no strategy that followed the tactical decision of Ariel Sharon to take out 8,000 settlers whose presence complicated 'punitive' missions and whose eviction made him almost a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, the 'punitive' actions continue and become themselves a strategy.
The Israeli army loves drama and therefore also escalated the language. 'First Rain' was replaced by 'Summer Rains', a general name that was given to the 'punitive' operations since June 2006 (in a country where there is no rain in the summer, the only precipitation that one can expect are showers of F-16 bombs and artillery shells hitting people of Gaza).
'Summer Rains' brought a novel component: the land invasion into parts of the Gaza Strip. This enabled the army to kill citizens even more effectively and to present it as a result of heavy fighting within dense populated areas, an inevitable result of the circumstances and not of Israeli policies. With the close of summer came operation 'Autumn Clouds' which was even more efficient: on 1 November 2006, in less than 48 hours, the Israelis killed seventy civilians; by the end of that month, with additional mini operations accompanying it, almost two hundred were killed, half of them children and women. As one can see from the dates, some of the activity was parallel to the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, making it easier to complete the operations without much external attention, let alone criticism.
From 'First Rain' to 'Autumn Clouds' one can see escalation in every parameter. The first is the disappearance of the distinction between civilian and non-civilian targets: the senseless killing has turned the population at large to the main target for the army's operation. The second one is the escalation in the means: employment of every possible killing machines the Israeli army possesses. Thirdly, the escalation is conspicuous in the number of casualties: with each operation, and each future operation, a much larger number of people are likely to be killed and wounded. Finally, and most importantly, the operations become a strategy -- the way Israel intends to solve the problem of the Gaza Strip.
A creeping transfer in the West Bank and a measured genocidal policy in the Gaza Strip are the two strategies Israel employs today. From an electoral point of view, the one in Gaza is problematic as it does not reap any tangible results; the West Bank under Abu Mazen is yielding to Israeli pressure and there is no significant force that arrests the Israeli strategy of annexation and dispossession. But Gaza continues to fire back. On the one hand, this would enable the Israeli army to initiate more massive genocidal operations in the future. But there is also the great danger, on the other, that as happened in 1948, the army would demand a more drastic and systematic 'punitive' and collateral action against the besieged people of the Gaza Strip.
Ironically, the Israeli killing machine has rested lately. Even relatively large number of Qassam missiles, including one or two quite deadly ones, did not stir the army to action. Though the army's spokesmen say it shows 'restraint', it never did in the past and is not likely to do so in the future. The army rests, as its generals are content with the internal killing that rages on in Gaza and does the job for them. They watch with satisfaction the emerging civil war in Gaza, which Israel foments and encourages. From Israel's point of view it does not really mater how Gaza would eventually be demographically downsized, be it by internal or Israeli slaying. The responsibility of ending the internal fighting lies of course with the Palestinian groups themselves, but the American and Israeli interference, the continued imprisonment, the starvation and strangulation of Gaza are all factors that make such an internal peace process very difficult. But it will take place soon and then with the first early sign that it subsided, the Israeli 'Summer Rains' will fall down again on the people of Gaza, wreaking havoc and death.
And one should never tire of stating the inevitable political conclusions from this dismal reality of the year we left behind and in the face of the one that awaits us. There is still no other way of stopping Israel than besides boycott, divestment and sanctions. We should all support it clearly, openly, unconditionally, regardless of what the gurus of our world tell us about the efficiency or raison d'etre of such actions. The UN would not intervene in Gaza as it does in Africa; the Nobel peace laureates would not enlist to its defense as they do for causes in Southeast Asia. The numbers of people killed there are not staggering as far as other calamities are concerned, and it is not a new story -- it is dangerously old and troubling. The only soft point of this killing machine is its oxygen lines to 'western' civilization and public opinion. It is still possible to puncture them and make it at least more difficult for the Israelis to implement their future strategy of eliminating the Palestinian people either by cleansing them in the West Bank or genociding them in the Gaza Strip.
Ilan Pappe is senior lecturer in the University of Haifa Department of political Science and Chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies in Haifa. His books include, among others, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London and New York 1992), The Israel/Palestine Question (London and New York 1999), A History of Modern Palestine (Cambridge 2003), The Modern Middle East (London and New York 2005) and his latest, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).
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