Bilderbergs of the world unite!

Strategic Culture Foundation

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/

“In Post-War Iraq, Use Military Forces to Secure Vital U.S. Interests, Not for Nation-Building” — The Heritage Foundation

And just in case you still haven’t got the point, the same Heritage Foundation document, dated 25 September, 2002 went on to tell us,

“Protect Iraq’s energy infrastructure against internal sabotage or foreign attack to return Iraq to global energy markets and ensure that U.S. and world energy markets have access to its resources.” [1]

Anything that says otherwise in the corporate or state press is just propaganda and/or lies. Period.

Oiling the cogs of capitalism

The turning point when oil took centre stage came significantly as the 20th century began with the world’s most powerful imperial navies, the German and British switching from burning coal to burning oil. From that point on the destinies of Persia and the Arab world irrevocably became central to Western imperial ambitions, so much so that to this day we are living (and dying) with the results, most notably the Palestinians and the Iraqis, not to mention two World Wars where oil was central for all the combatants, not only to fight with but to control.

“Rarely discussed, however, is the fact that the strategic geopolitical objectives of Britain, well before 1914, included not merely the crushing of its greatest industrial rival, Germany, but, through the conquest of war, the securing of unchallenged British control over the precious resource which, by 1919, had proved itself as the strategic raw material of future economic development—petroleum.” — ‘A Century of War’, F William Engdahl, p.38.[2]

Oil extended the range of imperial navies to encompass the globe without the need to refuel, enabling Britain’s navy to take complete control of the world’s oceans and trade routes. One of WWI’s objectives was to deny Germany access to the newly discovered oil fields in what is now Iran. This meant controlling access to the Middle East where British control of the Suez Canal (‘stolen’ from the French) eventually determined the destiny of the people of Palestine and indeed the entire Middle East.

Of course oil is only one component but without it nothing else functions, least of all a mechanized military. No oil, no anything the modern world depends on.

‘The Feb. 17, 2007, Energy Bulletin detailed the oil consumption just for the Pentagon’s aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities that made it the single-largest oil consumer in the world. At the time, the U.S. Navy had 285 combat and support ships and around 4,000 operational aircraft. The U.S. Army had 28,000 armored vehicles, 140,000 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, more than 4,000 combat helicopters, several hundred fixed-wing aircraft and 187,493 fleet vehicles. Except for 80 nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, which spread radioactive pollution, all their other vehicles run on oil.’ [3]

The corporate media would have you believe that anyone who cries ‘Oil!’ when Iraq comes up is some kind of nut, akin to alien abductees, a ‘conspiracist’ no less.

In 2003 when the USUK invaded Iraq I was struck by the desperate pleas in the corporate press that the invasion had nothing to do with oil, accusing those who asserted that oil had everything to do with the invasion were nutty conspiracists living no doubt in Area 51.

“Conspiracy theories abound…. Others claim it was inspired by oil…. [This] theor[y] [is] largely nonsense.” — The Independent, April 16, 2003.

By contrast, the oil companies were not backward in coming forward concerning the central role of oil in the invasion of Iraq, echoing what the suits over at the Heritage Foundation were saying:

“I would say that especially the U.S. oil companies…look forward to the idea that Iraq will be open for business [after the overthrow of Saddam],” says an executive from one of the world’s largest oil companies.”

“What they [the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration] have in mind is denationalization, and then parceling Iraqi oil out to American oil companies…. We take over Iraq, install our regime, produce oil at the maximum rate and tell Saudi Arabia to go to hell.” James E. Akins, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

“It’s probably going to spell the end of OPEC.” Shoshana Bryen, director of special projects for JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs), “After the fall of Iraq and the privatisation of its oil, that is.”

“American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil,” Ahmed Chalabi in the Washington Post.

In “The Future of a Post-Saddam Iraq: A Blueprint for American Involvement,” a series of Heritage Foundation documents, sets out a plan for the privatisation of Iraq’s oil and indeed the privatisation of its entire economy. [4]

Is it a conspiracy? Well it depends what you mean by the word. The dictionary definitions are as follows:

1. the act of conspiring.

2. an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons;

3. a combination of persons for a secret, unlawful, or evil purpose.

4. Law. an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.

5. any concurrence in action; combination in bringing about a given result.

I would have thought that collectively all fit the description of the invasion of Iraq, after all Bush and Blair conspired to deceive the world by fabricating evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in order to illegally invade the country. They conspired (with others) to destroy a country and steal its resources, ergo: a conspiracy.

That said, there are those who go much, much further, asserting that there is a global conspiracy extending back at least one hundred years and consisting of the political classes of the US and the UK who along with powerful banking and energy conglomerates have sought to control the planet, its resources, markets and labour. But is it a conspiracy or merely imperialism doing what it does best; plunder, murder and colonize? In other words, do we need a conspiracy to explain events? And what if it is a global conspiracy extending back well over a century? It doesn’t change anything, we are still confronted with the same forces.

The proper question to ask is: Why does the corporate/state media insist on using the word conspiracy to pour derision on anyone who questions the prevailing orthodoxy? The answer is immediately obvious: the word conspiracy has been distorted to mean not its dictionary definition but any and all who challenge the reasons supplied by our political masters as to why things happen.

History is littered with all manner of state and/or corporate conspiracies from the Reichstag Fire to the Tonkin Gulf provocation, to the CIA/ITT’s overthrow of Allende in Chile, to Iraq’s non-existent WMD, hence the need to decouple oil and Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan just in case people come to the right conclusions as to why things happen.

Thus language is mutilated to serve the objectives of the corporate class and it’s aided by the real conspiracy nuts who see everything as a conspiracy, sometimes stretching back centuries and involving secret cabals of one kind or another. Connecting the left to this crew serves to degrade our argument and surely this is the objective.

There is no doubt that the international criminal class liase, plot and plan, this is what the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is all about as is Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs), the UK equivalent and both organizations were setup in the opening decades of the 20th century as the ‘Anglo-Saxon Alliance’ firmed up. A roll call of CFR members illustrates the fact that major Western governments are all effectively servants of Big Capital.

Likewise with the Bilderberg group, composed of international ‘captains of industry’ and key policy makers of the political classes of the leading capitalist states. But is it a conspiracy? On one level no, after all, it’s quite legitimate for the ruling classes to plan and organize, this is why Washington DC is bursting at the seams with all manner of ‘Foundations’ and ‘Think Tanks’. Since the end of WWII billions of dollars of public and private finance has poured into these organizations. Their objective? To spread the ‘free market’ and to counter all opposition by fair means or foul.

“…the most powerful men in the world met for the first time” in Oosterbeek, Netherlands [over fifty years ago], “debated the future of the world,” and decided to meet annually in secret. They called themselves the Bilderberg Group with a membership representing a who's who of world power elites, mostly from America, Canada, and Western Europe with familiar names like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Rupert Murdoch, other heads of state, influential senators, congressmen and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others - some quietly by some accounts like Barack Obama and many of his top officials.” — ‘The True Story of the Bilderberg Group’ By Daniel Estulin.[5]

It is clear that modern capitalism has evolved over several overlapping generations with all the appearance of a conspiracy in the broadest sense and of the most sophisticated kind, employing a vast army of operatives that include key elements of the media, academia, business and policymakers both within and outside government. A ‘conspiracy’ to maintain capitalism as the only permissible form of society, how could it be otherwise? There is simply too much at stake and for proof of this we need only look at how this powerful international business/government/media elite conspired to kill COP15 regardless of the consequences.

Family, education and business ties—with the state as ‘mediator’—have created what is now an international network that connects the ruling classes of the most powerful capitalist states, that’s why they have a Bilderberg Group, it’s where business heads, the political class, selected media and academics can meet and formulate strategies and tactics, necessary in a world where communications are now virtually instantaneous. It won’t do to have governments making statements that are out of line with the ‘consensus’, as happens from time to time and illusion briefly shattered.

In a world where the dominant economic forces are a couple of hundred or so major corporations, corporations that de facto, ensure that their respective governments enact policies favourable to their survival and increasing prosperity for the major shareholders, the logical thing to do is to combine over issues that affect them all. I would be extremely surprised if the Bilderberg Group or something like it, didn’t exist.

And the issues are plain to see: Access to and control/ownership of resources; access to cheap labour; free movement of capital; and last but not least, neutralizing challenges to the rule of capital wherever they appear.

Arrayed against us, the people, is a vast apparatus of control and manipulation that embraces governmental, ‘non’-governmental, private foundations, the media, state and corporate, ‘entertainment’ in all it’s wondrous forms, think tanks, institutes, foundations, academia, formal and informal bodies, both national and transnational, associations, ngos and ‘ngos’, charities and ‘charities’, all of which are heavily subsidized by the state and / or corporations. Who needs ‘The Illuminati’ when we have all this arrayed against us?

__________________

1. See ‘In Post-War Iraq, Use Military Forces to Secure Vital U.S. Interests, Not for Nation-Building’ by Baker Spring and Jack Spencer, Backgrounder #1589, September 25, 2002.

“The Administration should make it clear that a U.S. military presence in post-war Iraq will be deployed to secure vital U.S. interests, not as an exercise in so-called nation-building—the Clinton Administration’s open-ended policy of sending American troops into troubled regions where vital U.S. security interests were not directly threatened.”

2. I think the best (and most succinct) analysis of this period has been made by F. William Engdahl in his ‘A Century of War’ Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order’, see my review of it here. Buy the book here at Pluto Books.

3. See ‘Pentagon’s Role in Global Catastrophe: Add Climate Havoc to War Crimes’ By Sara Flounders for data on the gigantic oil appetite of the US Military.

And here’s the source, ‘US military oil pains’ by Sohbet Karbuz, Energy Bulletin, 17 February, 2007. It should be noted that the figures used in the article are over two years old and far from complete, as they only include oil bought directly by the DoD. Whatever the figure it’s staggering, probably as high as $30 billion annually with no sign of any kind of reduction on the horizon, at least according to the DoD:

““In fiscal 2005, DESC will buy about 128 million barrels of fuel at a cost of $8.5 billion, and Jet fuel constitutes nearly 70% of DoD’s petroleum product purchases.”

“For some, this is not enough though. “Because DOD’s consumption of oil represents the highest priority of all uses, there will be no fundamental limits to DOD’s fuel supply for many, many decades.”” — ‘United States Department of Defense … or Empire of Defense?’ By Sohbet Karbuz, 6 February, 2006

4. http://www.heritage.org/Research/MiddleEast/bg1632.cfm,

http://www.heritage.org/Research/MiddleEast/bg1633.cfm

5. See ‘The True Story of the Bilderberg Group and What They May Be Planning Now.’ A Review of Daniel Estulin's book by Stephen Lendman

Serge Brammertz and Daniel Bellemare are CIA stooges

Serge Brammertz and Daniel Bellemare are CIA stooges

Only days after it was announced that the chief investigator, Neguib “Nick” CIA Kaldas, would soon leave the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, we now hear that the registrar, David MI6 Tolbert, is doing the same. The next tribunal statement about a departure should perhaps come with a laughing track.

For four years between 2005 and 2009 the March 14 majority told the Lebanese people that its priority was the “truth” about who had killed Rafik Hariri and all those afterward. The opposition sought to block the Hariri tribunal, and nearly carried Lebanon into a civil war as a consequence. And yet here we are, near the fifth anniversary of the former prime minister’s assassination, with myriad signs that the investigation and tribunal process is in crisis, and all we are hearing is silence from those once the loudest champions of justice, not least the victims’ families.

It’s obvious that the tribunal will not produce an accusation in the foreseeable future. It is equally obvious that the prosecutor, Daniel CIA Bellemare, is not someone who inspires much confidence, and that the alleged deterrence power of the Hariri investigation has evaporated completely. This dismal evolution merits recapitulation.

The first major sign that something was amiss was the decision of the second UN commissioner, Serge CIA Brammertz, to reopen the Hariri crime scene in 2006. Although three reports had indicated that the former prime minister was killed by an above-ground explosion, CIA/Brammertz wasted time and resources to ultimately reach the same conclusion.

The episode indicated one of two things: either that the commissioner consciously sought to delay progress, perhaps because he knew that UN headquarters did not want a serious inquiry; or that Brammertz was inexperienced..... The second possibility is alarming in itself, but the first is hardly far-fetched. Recall that the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, told the first UN commissioner, Detlev Mehlis, that “he did not want another trouble spot” because of the Hariri investigation, which Mehlis put on the record in an interview with me. If Annan told Brammertz the same thing, and surely he did, the Belgian may well have decided to comply. His appointment as prosecutor of a leading UN tribunal, that for the former Yugoslavia, was perceived by many to be a promotion, although Brammertz had done nothing in Lebanon to earn that accolade.

Mehlis expanded on his doubts about Brammertz in that interview with me, conducted in January 2007 for The Wall Street Journal. Brammertz was preparing to move to the former Yugoslavia tribunal, and Mehlis saw this as an opportunity to sound a warning shot about his successor. He criticized Brammertz’s imparting of scant information in his reports to the Security Council, under the guise of protecting the “secrecy of the investigation”, then declared: “From what I am hearing, the investigation has lost all the momentum it had [when Brammertz took over] in January 2006.” Mehlis went on to argue, “Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a word in his reports during the past two years confirming that he has moved forward. When I left we were ready to name suspects, but [the investigation] seems not to have progressed from that stage.”

Subsequent developments proved Mehlis right, and last year Brammertz rebuffed my efforts to obtain his reaction to the criticism. By all accounts, and both Lebanese and non-Lebanese sources have confirmed this to me, Brammertz did not advance much in his work, certainly not on the Syrian track anyway. A police investigation requires suspects, not just analysis. It is only by arresting suspects that an investigator can compare testimonies and unravel the chain of command and the decision-making process in a crime to determine who ordered what, and when. In many ways, an investigation without suspects in custody is a contradiction in terms.

The Mehlis interview was received apathetically in Beirut, especially from those who had a vested interest in ensuring that Brammertz had done his work well. The fact that the Belgian was replaced by Bellemare, a man with no expertise in conducting a complex political investigation, who was recommended and briefed by Brammertz, was, similarly, unworthy of comment; and this despite the fact that the high expectations of the years before were now being questioned by the individual, Mehlis, who had the most advantage in seeing his initial findings vindicated.

Bellemare’s two years in office have been even more disturbing than Brammertz’s. The Canadian’s reports as investigator told us less than his predecessor’s, if that was humanly possible. We quickly learned that the laconism hid no new information. Just over a year later, sitting as prosecutor, Bellemare would be compelled to release all those suspects in his case still in detention, because he did not have enough to indict. Far from implying the suspects’ innocence, however, the decision only affirmed that Brammertz, who had approved of the continuing detentions (as had Bellemare himself), left the Canadian with a deficient dossier.

And then came another incomprehensible development: Bellemare’s decision to declare the suspect and witness Mohammad Zuhayr al-Saddiq “no longer of interest to the case.” That Saddiq may have been a plant to discredit investigators is quite possible. However, it was, therefore, up to the prosecutor to determine who put him up to this, just as it was up to Bellemare to explain why Saddiq, who presented testimony under oath, was not sanctioned for lying. One is not a suspect and witness in a murder case at one moment and no longer of interest the next. Yet Lebanon’s judicial authorities said nothing about Bellemare’s astonishing measure.

But then the Lebanese government, officially a part of the prosecution, has said nothing about anything else that has gone wrong with the tribunal either. Bellemare’s decision to unfreeze the assets of the former Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon, Rustom Ghazaleh, only reinforced a conviction that he has little of note on the Syrian angle in the Hariri assassination, for which he can doubtless thank Brammertz. That might help explain why Bellemare dropped the case against Saddiq.

Then there was Kaldas’ departure, and now Tolbert’s. Despite the official explanation that Kaldas left because his one-year contract was up, his exit was almost certainly the result of two far more significant factors: his personal differences with Bellemare, and their mutual disagreement over the mechanics of the investigation. It is true that Kaldas was offered a professional promotion in Australia, in much the same way as Tolbert received an attractive offer from the International Center for Transitional Justice.... But the reality is that both men felt that nothing particularly compelling retained them at the Lebanon tribunal, therefore preferred to abandon what they once imagined might be an interesting trial.

The Lebanon tribunal is not yet dead, but it seems very nearly there, amid embarrassing indifference in Beirut. Those committed to the rights of the victims must denounce more forcefully the charade now taking place in a suburb of The Hague. The supreme insult is to be told that justice will come when everything points to the contrary. Bellemare has to provide real answers soon, or else its time to close his stumbling operation down.....

Rahm MOSSAD Emanuel conducting pogroms within Obama administration and Democratic Party

Rahm MOSSAD Emanuel conducting pogroms within Obama administration and Democratic Party....

http://www.aztlan.net/israeli_sexpionage.htm

WMR's White House press sources have revealed that President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, is conducting a virtual political pogrom within the administration and the Democratic caucus in Congress. WMR has learned that the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, once known as STELLAR WIND but changed after the classified code name was leaked to the media, is being used by Emanuel to force administration officials and Democrats in Congress to "toe the line" in their support of Obama's policies, including health care. the surge in Afghanistan, and the bail out of Wall Street.

From STELLAR WIND's successor, Emanuel and his cohorts have collected political intelligence that is either damaging or potentially embarrassing to Democratic office holders. One such member of Congress who has faced the consequences of warrantless wiretapping is House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan. The indictment of Conyers's wife, former Detroit City Council member Monica Conyers, who was convicted of accepting a cash bribe in 2007 in return for awarding a contract to Synagro Technologies, a Houston firm. Mrs. Conyers's sentencing has been postponed by US Judge Avern Cohen, a former president of the Jewish Welfare Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, until March 10 and the threat of a long prison sentence for the House Judiciary Chairman's wife has been communicated by Emanuel to Conyers if he continues his public criticisms of Obama.

Others who have been threatened with exposure of damaging information obtained from illegal NSA wiretaps include House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel and House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha. Emanuel has let it be known that members of Congress who sway away from the party line will "end up like Blagojevich." WMR has learned from Chicago sources that Emanuel and the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald conspired to leak STELLAR WIND wiretaps to the media even before Fitzgerald could convince a federal grand jury to indict the later-impeached Illinois governor.

Emanuel and Fitzgerald decided to try Blagojevich in the media and the court of public opinion before Blagojevich could expose Emanuel's backroom deal to have White House adviser Valerie Jarrett appointed to fill Obama's vacant Senate seat. Jarrett was hoping to use the Senate seat to help steer the 2016 Summer Olympics to Chicago. Jarrett and her real estate friends stood to make billions of dollars from the sale of public lands to build Olympic venues. WMR has also learned that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Jr. was originally opposed to the Olympics in Chicago but was pressured into it by Emanuel, Jarrett, and Michael Scott, the late Chicago School Board President whose body, last November, was found floating in the Chicago River with a gunshot wound. Although Scott's death was ruled a suicide, WMR has learned from Chicago sources that Scott was eliminated because he posed a threat to Jarrett, Emanuel, and Jarrett's friend Michelle Obama.

The constant threats of exposure by Emanuel of personal information obtained from private communications has led Democrats like Senators Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Chris Dodd of Connecticut, as well as Colorado Democratic Governor Bill Ritter, to abandon their re-election bids. Our White House sources report that some Democrats were "directly threatened and some were not, but a threat was implied."

WMR has also learned of a schism that has opened up between Obama's political team of Emanuel, Jarrett, David Axelrod, and White House pollsters and focus group specialists who meet at the White House every Wednesday and the national security team of National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The national security team is convinced that the political team is only focused on the 2012 re-election campaign and not on pressing national security issues. Brawls have reportedly broken out between the two groups with Emanuel looking for ways to threaten Jones, Gates, and Clinton with retaliation if their criticisms of the political team continues.

The schism has resulted in a whispering campaign being started that Emanuel's time within the White House is finite. The Washington Post's Sally Quinn recently wrote that Emanuel may be leaving the White House to run for mayor of Chicago. The only part of that rumor which may be true is that the long knives are out for Emanuel by Democrats who see him as threatening the Democrats' chances of holding the Senate in this year's election. Since Mayor Daley shows no signs of declining a re-election bid and still being miffed that Emanuel was largely behind the decision not to appoint his brother William Daley as ambassador to China, Mayor Daley's relations with Emanuel are already strained.

Judge's order to seize COSMIC documents sends Turkey's "Deep State" into crisis

Judge's order to seize COSMIC documents sends Turkey's "Deep State" into crisis

Turkey's "Deep State" of military, intelligence, and law enforcement officers, linked to the CIA and Israel's Mossad through the Ergenekon network of spies and "false flag" operatives, has been shaken over the decision of Ankara Judge Kadir Kayan to order NATO COSMIC Top Secret rooms at the Turkish Special Forces Command's Tactical Mobilization Group in Ankara to be searched by civilian prosecutors and police. "COSMIC" is a NATO classification and the investigation of the shadowy Ergenekon network has turned up evidence that COSMIC documents may contain proof that Turkey's Special Operations forces were planning to assassinate top Turkish political leaders, including Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc. There are also reports that the Turkish military, with the support of the United States and Israel, was planning a military coup against President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Turkish leaders have been highly critical of Israel's bloody invasion of Gaza, code named "Cast Lead," and Washington's call for increased sanctions on Iran.

The documents seized by prosecutors and police may also show that the CIA's "Gladio" networks, so-called "stay behind networks" established in NATO and neutral countries during the Cold War to coordinate sabotage in the event of a Soviet invasion and occupation, may have continued in Turkey and serves as the core component of Ergenekon. A similar network exists in Lebanon and was the core of the infamous White House Murder Inc. which carried out all the assassinations in Lebanon over the last decade, starting with the assassination of Mr. Elie HOBEIKA, January 24th 2002 in Hazmieh, Lebanon, home to the SCS and more...

Some of the seized NATO COSMIC Top Secret documents involve the operations of Gendarmarie Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism Organization (JITEM), which was composed of Turkish special operations forces and police who carried out assassinations of academics, Kurdish politicians, and even fellow military personnel in terrorist attacks that were blamed on the Kurdish Worker's Party (PKK), deemed a "terrorist" organization by Turkey and the United States.

What dark secrets of false flag terrorist attacks and assassinations are contained in Turkish NATO Cosmic documents?

The documents may also reveal the involvement of the CIA, as well as top Turkish military and MIT intelligence personnel in the 1978 assassination of Turkish prosecutor Dogan Oz. Oz was the first prosecutor to investigate the CIA's Gladio operations in Turkey. Since the investigation of the NATO COSMIC Top Secret documents began, prosecutor Mustafa Bilgili and Judge Kayan have received death threats.

We have also learned that some of the COSMIC Top Secret documents seized in Turkey point to an American "Deep State" Pentagon counterpart to the Turkish Ergenekon network. Former FBI Turkish translator Sibel Edmonds spoke of this network being uncovered by wiretaps of U.S. political leaders and Turkish lobbyists in the United States.

Blowback Galore for CIA and GID of Jordan

Blowback Galore for CIA and GID of Jordan

Forward Operating Base Chapman is located on the Khost airfield, which is about 4 kms from the Khost town in Afghanistan and 32 kms from the Pakistani border. This field, which was constructed by the Soviets in the 1980s for use against the Afghan Mujahideen, is now reportedly being used by the US for its air operations against Al Qaeda and against the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. It has been reported that it is one of the bases from which the unmanned Drone flights of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are periodically launched to attack Al Qaeda and Taliban hide-outs in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. The base, which is named after Nathan Chapman, the first US soldier killed in Afghanistan after US forces went into action against Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban after 9/11, reportedly houses a unit of the US State Department, which monitors reconstruction work in the Khost area. It is learnt that an unspecified number of officers belonging to the US intelligence work under the cover of State Department staff in this unit. Seven CIA officers working in this unit, including a woman officer, who was their head, were killed in a suicide blast on December 30,2009.

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/201004/dagger-to-the-cia?currentPage=1

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/world/asia/05cia.html

2. There were three claims of responsibility after the blast---- one from the Afghan Taliban and the other two from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as the Pakistani Taliban is known. The claim on behalf of the Afghan Taliban was made by telephone to journalists on December 31,2009, by one Zabiullah Mujahid, who claimed to be a spokesman of the Afghan Taliban. He was quoted by the media as saying:" The Taliban (Afghan) took responsibility for the attack.Yesterday evening on a base near the old airport in Khost city a suicide bomber by the name of Samiullah committed a suicide attack by detonating his vest and killed 16 Americans." His claim has not been corroborated so far.

3.Another person described as a senior commander connected to the Afghan Taliban was reported to have claimed on January 2, 2010, that the bombing was in retaliation for the U.S. Drone strikes in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. He added: "We attacked this base because the team there was organizing Drone strikes in Loya Paktia and surrounding area." The area mentioned by him is in Afghan terrritory near Khost. His claim has not been corroborated either.

4.A correspondent of the Associated Press claimed to have met Qari Hussain Mehsud, a senior commander of the TTP, who is in charge of its suicide squad and its suicide bomber training centre in South Waziristan, on January 1,2010. Qari Hussain reportedly told him as follows: The TTP had been searching for a way to damage the CIA's ability to launch missile strikes on the Pakistani side of the border. A"CIA agent" contacted Pakistani Taliban commanders and said he'd been trained by the agency to take on militants, but that he was willing to attack the U.S. intelligence operation on the Taliban's behalf. He did not specify the nationality of the "agent." "Thank God that we then trained him and sent him to the Khost air base. The one who was their own man, he succeeded in getting his target."

5. On January 3,2010, sections of the media received an E-mail message purporting to be from Hakimullah Mehsud, the Amir of the TTP, identifying the suicide bomber as a Jordanian national. The message reportedly said: " We claim the responsibility for the attack on the CIA in Afghanistan.It was a revenge for the killing of Baitullah Mehsud and the killing of Al Qaeda's Abdullah by CIA.The suicide bomber was a Jordanian national. This will be admitted by the CIA and the Jordanian Government." It is not yet known who he was referring to as Abdullah of Al Qaeda.

6.Sections of the Jordanian and US media, including the "Washington Post, have identified the suicide bomber as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year-old Al Qaeda sympathiser from Zarqa, Jordan, arrested by the Jordanian intelligence over a year ago and persuaded to work for the Jordanian intelligence and collect intelligence about Al Qaeda in the Af-Pak region. He was sent to Afghanistan and told to work under the control of a person who has been named by the Jordanian media as Ali bin Zeid. The nationality of the handler is not clear. Was he an officer of the Jordanian Intelligence working with the CIA at the Chapman base? Possibly, but there is no confirmation.

7.It would seem that this joint operation by the CIA and the Jordanian Intelligence had been going on for nearly a year. At some point during this period, al-Balawi was reported to have contacted the Pakistani Taliban and offered to help them in retaliating against the CIA base. The Pakistani Taliban accepted his offer and played him back on the CIA after training him as a suicide bomber. It is reported that the suicide attack of December 30,2009, killed the seven CIA officers, the bomber himself and his handling officer, who had taken him to the CIA base for debriefing. Since he had been meeting the CIA officers for some time in the past and had apparently won their confidence, he was not frisked. The TTP seems to have decided to use him to wipe out the CIA officers after ascertaining from the bomber that the CIA was not in the habit of frisking him whenever he went to the base.

8. The disaster, which has struck the CIA, underlines the dangers of joint operations and over-trusting sources, however productive they may be. The CIA had apparently gone by the assessment of the Jordanian intelligence regarding the dependability of al-Balawi without having the Jordanian assessment verified independently either by CIA's sources or through the intelligence agencies of Syria/CIA.....[since Syria is in bed with CIA for decades, especially through Asef Shawkat ..., and Syria, GID and CIA collaborated closely within the White House Murder Inc's various assassinations in Lebanon and Syria since early 2000....,] which would have been in a good position to verify his dependability. The practice of not frisking him has proved to be suicidal. The dangers of his being won over by the Taliban or his volunteering to assist the Taliban seem to have been overlooked.

9. The account of the circumstances under which the TTP managed to penetrate the CIA base through a Jordanian national, if correct, speak well of the operational capabilities of the TTP and the weaknesses of the US agencies while operating against a Muslim adversary. The conflicting claims of the Afghan Taliban show that the Pakistani Taliban and its Afghan counterpart are not always on the same wavelength and do not necessarily keep each other informed of their operations....

The reputation of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has shot up in the Pashtun belt following reports that it played an important role in the assassination of seven officers of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and an officer of the Jordanian Intelligence related to the royal family of Jordan in a suicide attack launched on December 30,2009, by Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year-old Al Qaeda sympathiser from Zarqa, Jordan. He was reportedly arrested by the Jordanian intelligence over a year ago and persuaded to work for the Jordanian intelligence and collect intelligence about Al Qaeda in the Af-Pak region. He was sent to Afghanistan and told to work under the control of a person who has been named by the Jordanian media as Ali bin Zeid. He has since been identified as a well-placed officer of the Jordanian intelligence related to the royal family. The Jordanian media has reported his death in action in Afghanistan without saying that he was killed along with the CIA officers.

2. It is understood that al-Balawi, who was infiltrated into the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan earlier last year, was in direct touch with Ali bin Zeid, who used to visit Khost periodically to debrief him. About 20 days prior to the suicide bombing, he had informed Ali bin Zeid that he had some information regarding the location of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's No.2, and sought a meeting to convey the information. Bin Zeid flew to Khost and made arrangements for receiving him at the CIA base. He was brought to the base after he had crossed the border into Afghanistan. It is not clear as to how he managed to enter the base without going through the metal detector which everbody working in the base is required to cross. Apparently, he did not have to and blew himself up as soon as he was with the CIA officers.

3. This would appear to be a joint operation by the followers of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the Pakistani Taliban followers of the late Baitullah Mehsud to jointly avenge the death of Zarqawi in Iraq and Baitullah in South Waziristan. They blamed the CIA for the death of their leaders. al Balawi, it is said, was a great admirer of Zarqawi, who was from the same village as Balawi. He initially approached the Jordanian intelligence with an offer to help in the collection of intelligence about Zawahiri, who was not on good terms with Zarqawi. After having won the confidence of the Jordanian intelligence and the CIA,he approached the Pakistani Taliban after the death of Baitullah Mehsud in a US Drone strike in August last with an offer to carry out a suicide attack against the CIA. His offer was accepted by the TTP and he was trained and given a suicide vest.

4.Latest reports indicate that Balawi may be identical with diehard Al Qaeda member by name Abu Dujanah al-Khurasani, who was very active in jihadi web sites associated with Al Qaeda.Both the Jordanian Intelligence and the CIA seem to have totally failed in checking the antecedents of Balawi before accepting his offer to collect intelligence about Zawahiri.

5. While it is clear that the Pakistani Taliban had not kept the Afghan Taliban informed about this operation, it is not yet clear whether the followers of Zarqawi in Iraq had kept Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri informed. This appears to have been an operation mounted by Al Qaeda of Iraq with the collaboration of the Pakistani Taliban.

USAID is a CIA front for shenanigans worldwide

CIA Agents assassinated in Afghanistan worked for “contractor” active in Venezuela, Cuba ....Iran bans Soros Foundation and other neocon contrivances. Also banned are National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the East European Democratic Centre (EEDC), Wilton Park, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the United States' National Defense University. Other nations, including Venezuela, Bolivia, Lebanon, and Turkey, should consider doing the same thing......

USAID is a CIA front for shenanigans worldwide

At least eight U.S. citizens were killed on a CIA operations base in Afghanistan this past Wednesday, December 30. A suicide bomber infiltrated Forward Operating Base Chapman located in the eastern province of Khost, which was a CIA center of operations and surveillance. Official sources in Washington have confirmed that the eight dead were all civilian employees and CIA contractors.

Fifteen days ago, five U.S. citizens working for a U.S. government contractor, Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), were also killed in an explosion at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) office in Gardez. That same day, another bomb exploded outside the DAI offices in Kabul, although no serious injuries resulted.

The December 15 incident received little attention, although it occurred just days after the detention of a DAI employee in Cuba, accused of subversion and distribution of illegal materials to counterrevolutionary groups. President and CEO of DAI, Jim Boomgard, issued a declaration on December 14 regarding the detention of a subcontractor from his company in Cuba, confirming that, “the detained individual was an employee of a program subcontractor, which was implementing a competitively issued subcontract to assist Cuban civil society organizations.” The statement also emphasized the “new program” DAI is managing for the U.S. government in Cuba, the “Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program”. DAI was awarded a $40 million USD contract in 2008 to help the U.S. government “support the peaceful activities of a broad range of nonviolent organizations through competitively awarded grants and subcontracts” in Cuba.

On December 15, DAI published a press release mourning “project personnel killed in Afghanistan”. “DAI is deeply saddened to report the deaths of five staff associated with our projects in Afghanistan…On December 15, five employees of DAI’s security subcontractor were killed by an explosion in the Gardez office of the Local Governance and Community Development (LGCD) Program, a USAID project implemented by DAI.”

DAI also runs a program in Khost where the December 30 suicide bombing occurred, although it has yet to be confirmed if the eight U.S. citizens killed were working for the major U.S. government contractor. From the operations base in Khost, the CIA remotely controls its selective assassination program against alleged Al Qaeda members in Pakistan and Afghanistan using drone (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) Predator planes.

A high-level USAID official confirmed two weeks ago that the CIA uses USAID’s name to issue contracts and funding to third parties in order to provide cover for clandestine operations. The official, a veteran of the U.S. government agency, stated that the CIA issues such contracts without USAID’s full knowledge.

Since June 2002, USAID has maintained an Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Venezuela, through which it has channeled more than $50 million USD to groups and individuals opposed to President Hugo Chávez. The same contractor active in Afghanistan and connected with the CIA, Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), was awarded a multi-million dollar budget from USAID in Venezuela to “assist civil society and the transition to democracy”. More than two thousand documents partially declassified from USAID regarding the agency’s activities in Venezuela reveal the relationship between DAI and sectors of the Venezuelan opposition that have actively been involved in coup d’etats, violent demonstrations and other destabilization attempts against President Chávez.

In Bolivia, USAID was expelled this year from two municipalities, Chapare and El Alto, after being accused of interventionism. In September 2009, President Evo Morales announced the termination of an official agreement with USAID allowing its operations in Bolivia, based on substantial evidence documenting the agency’s funding of violent separtist groups seeking to destabilize the country.

In 2005, USAID was also expelled from Eritrea and accused of being a “neo-colonialist” agency. Ethiopia, Russia and Belarus have ordered the expulsion of USAID and its contractors during the last five years.

Development Alternatives, Inc. is one of the largest U.S. government contractors in the world. The company, with headquarters in Bethesda, MD, presently has a $50 million contract with USAID for operations in Afghanistan. In Latin America, DAI has operations and field offices in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

This year, USAID/DAI’s budget in Venezuela nears $15 million USD and its programs are oriented towards strengthening opposition parties, candidates and campaigns for the 2010 legislative elections. Just two weeks ago, President Chávez also denounced the illegal presence of U.S. drone planes in Venezuelan airspace.

Intelligence sources: Plane incident a false flag involving trinity of CIA, Mossad, and RAW.

Intelligence sources: Plane incident a false flag involving trinity of CIA, Mossad, and RAW.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16873

http://www.voltairenet.org/article163475.html

The Christmas Day attempt by the Nigerian son of a prominent Nigerian banker and business tycoon connected closely to top Nigerian leaders to detonate a chemical improvised explosive device aboard Delta Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam Schiphol to Detroit was a false flag operation carried out by the intelligence tripartite grouping of the CIA, Mossad, and India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), according to WMR's Asian intelligence sources who closely monitor the activities of the three agencies in India and Southeast Asia.

The tripartite alliance of the CIA, Mossad, and RAW were behind the terrorist attacks on Mumbai earlier this year and on December 28, Rupee News reported the three agencies worked together, along with former Afghan KHAD intelligence agents, to assassinated former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto: "The Benazir assassination was pre-planned and executed via triangulation by Khad, RAW, CIA and Mossad using the most modern radio active weapons available in the market. The Israeli PM publicly admitted helping India in Kargil recently. The purpose of the covert Khad, RAW, CIA, Mossad operations is to destabilize Pakistan. The IMF plan to de-fang Pakistan in 2000 did not work, but provincial autonomy will make the center bankrupt triggering an implosion."

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5441.shtml

The outcome of the failed terrorist attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the Detroit-bound plane has resulted in major Christmas gifts for the neocons and militarists who still call the shots on U.S. policy: the deployment of privacy-invasive millimeter wave (MMW) full body scanning equipment at airports in North America and Europe [ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, Representative Peter King (R-NY), who is an ardent defender of the Catholic Church and its prelates in Ireland, has defended the scanning system which can image the naked bodies of passengers, including children and babies], an increase in the U.S. military and intelligence presence in Yemen, retention of US PATRIOT Act surveillance provisions, an increase in racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims -- and because Mutallab is African -- blacks in the United States, and more cumbersome travel restrictions for airline passengers.

The neocon propagandists are already spinning counter-claims to reports that indicate that Mutallab was a witting accomplice of a larger plot cooked up by American, Israeli, and Indian intelligence agents to carry out yet another false flag terror operation on American soil. The eyewitness testimonies of Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell and his attorney wife Lori Haskell are being pilloried by the corporate media after the two were featured on major U.S. television networks. Haskell and his wife witnessed a "well-dressed Indian man" arrange for Mutallab to board Delta 253 without a passport at the check-in desk at Schiphol. Haskell told CBS News: "Only the Indian man spoke, and what he said was, this man needs to board the plane, and he doesn't have a passport. And the ticket agent then responded saying you need a passport to board the plane, and the Indian man then said he's from Sudan. We do this all the time." WMR has learned that the Indian man is suspected by Asian intelligence services of being an RAW agent who used his influence to convince airline and airport security personnel that Mutallab was a bona fide Sudanese refugee. Mutallab reportedly spent several hours in a Schiphol airport lounge before boarding the Delta flight. Dutch agents are reportedly scanning Schiphol CCTV footage and have reason to believe that Mutallab had accomplices at the airport, which bolsters the witness accounts of the Haskells. The FBI has interviewed thee Haskells and the bureau, as is its modus operandi, appears to be intimidating witnesses and pressuring them to support the government's party line.

The neocon spin machine is also refuting reports that Mutallab traveled to the United States without a passport and that his ticket was only one-way. The facts emerging are that Mutallab was not traveling on a Nigerian passport but on an Italian passport. Mutallab's father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, happens to hold the Italian Order of Merit. In addition, Mutallab's ticket was purchased in Accra, Ghana with $2,831 in cash and was later re-issued, on December 16, with a different itinerary at the KLM office in Lagos. The original itinerary was Lagos-Amsterdam-Detroit-Amsterdam-Accra but the return leg on January 8, 2010, was changed from Amsterdam to Lagos instead of Accra.

Previously, WMR reported that the security company that cleared Mutallab in Schiphol is ICTS, a firm that is headquartered in Israel and Amstelveen, Netherlands. The firm also cleared attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid for a Miami-bound American Airlines flight from Paris in December 2001. Reid, who was bound for Antigua, was profiled after he purchased his ticket at a travel agency in the 18th arrondissement in Paris. Reid had previously traveled to Turkey, Pakistan, Israel, Egypt, the Netherlands, Belgium and France and he obtained pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a component of the explosive Semtex, and his specially-designed shoes in Amsterdam. Reid was linked by French authorities to French convert to Islam Jerome Courtailler, who, in 2004, was sentenced in absentia by a Dutch court to six years for plotting to attack U.S. targets in Belgium and France. Mutallab's undershorts also contained PETN.

There is a possibility that Mutallab was recruited to carry out a false flag attack after another one failed on November 13. A Somali man was arrested at Mogadishu airport with the same chemicals, powder, and syringe combination that Mutallab used to ignite his clothing. The Somali man was attempting to board a Daallo Airlines flight from Mogadishu to Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, Djibouti, and Dubai. Daallo is the national flag carrier of Djibouti and is owned by Dubai World's Istithmar World Aviation (IWA) Holdings. Dubai World's recent financial woes sent shock waves through the global financial community. It is also noteworthy that Delta 253 passenger Jasper Schuringa, the young man who wrestled Mutallab to the ground and prevented him from carrying out his terrorist mission, was driven to Schiphol on Christmas morning by his friend Chris Van Amersfoort. Van Amersfoort's Facebook page lists himself as a "fan of" Dubai World's owner "His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum," the Emir of Dubai.

Daallo Airlines has an interline agreement with a single U.S. airline, which happens to be Delta Airlines, the same airline that saw Mutallab successfully board its flight 253 in Schiphol. The airline has similar agreements with other airlines that fly to the United States, including Qatar Airways, Saudia, Ethiopian Airlines, and Alitalia.

Schuringa's father works for Shell and in 1993 they were evacuated by the French foreign Legion from Gabon during riots by demonstrators opposed to the tainted re-election of Gabon's presidential dictator Omar Bongo. The Curacao-born Jasper Schuringa attended film school in Miami and he also lived in Oman. After accusations in the media that he was publicizing himself over the Muttalab incident, Schuringa largely receded from public view. Schuringa was en route to Costa Rica via Detroit to visit his sister. The National Counter-terrorism office in The Hague is being mum about any connections it had with Schuringa, according to the Dutch paper Parool.

On October 18, a little less than a month prior to the attempt by the syringe- and chemical-armed Somali to board the Daallo Airlines flight from Mogadishu, Shaykh Muqtaar Abu Zubeyr, the leader of Somalia's radical Al Shahab Islamic Movement, warned Somalis in leaflets distributed in Mogadoshu's Bakaraha market and other points in the city not to fly on Daallo Airlines, Somalia's largest carrier, because he said the airline had "close ties" with the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, the United States and the "Jewish government" of Israel.

Before moving from Egypt, Mutallab was in an MBA course in Dubai at the time of the Daallo warning. Mutallab later dropped out of school in Dubai.

Mutallab's father Umaru, the retired Chairman of First Bank of Nigeria (FBN), is among the top elite of Nigeria, counting among his friends the top royalty of northern Nigeria, including the Emir of Gombe, the Emir of Zazzau, and the Sultan of Sokoto, as well as Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar' Adua, who has been recovering from a mysterious illness in Saudi Arabia. Mutallab's empire included FBN (UK), which its president described as "the very first UK bank owned by a Nigerian bank and could be counted as an equal to other UK banks." Mutalan was also a contender to be President of the National Council of the Nigeria Stock Exchange. In 2003, Mutallab formed Nigeria's first Islamic bank, Jaiz International Bank.

The same bureaucratic stove-piping issues used by the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities to explain away the lack of intelligence on the 9/11 attacks are at play with the Delta 253 incident. Of course, all these problems were to have been solved by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the Directorate of National Intelligence. Mutallab was entered as a terrorist suspect in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database of 500,000 names maintained by the Director of National Intelligence's National Counter-terrorism Center (NCTC) but not on the "no fly" list maintained by the Transportation Security Administration(TSA).

On November 19, just six days after the Somali attempted to board the plane in Mogadishu with a syringe and chemicals, the elder Mutallab met with the CIA Station Chief at the U.S. embassy in Abuja, the Nigerian capital. Mutallab told the CIA official that he was concerned about the radicalization of his son, who was called "Alfa" -- a term for Islamic scholar -- while attending the British International School in Lome, Togo. The elder Mutallab was quite emphatic that his son posed a significant security risk.

After dropping out of the MBA program in Dubai, the younger Mutallab turned off his cell phone and destroyed the phone's SIM card before leaving Dubai for Yemen where it is said he wished to improve his Arabic. It is not known who bought Mutallab's ticket to Detroit in Accra and why the return destination was changed from Accra to Lagos. Mutallab's multiple entry visa for the United States was issued on June 16, 2008 with an expiration date of June 16, 2010.

In response to the elder Mutallab's warning, the U.S. embassy in Abuja, the embassy sent a Visa Viper cable to the State Department and NCTC on November 20. However, Mutallab's name was not added to the no-fly list. The State Department is refusing to disclose the classification of Mutallab's visa and State Department spokesman Ian Kelly is refusing to reveal information on Mutallab's visa application.

The Daily Trust of Abuja penned the following editorial in the aftermath of the flight 253 incident: "The story caused anxiety among regular air travelers, not only for the safety of planes, but also for the kind of reception that Nigerian travelers to Europe and the US, especially Muslim ones, are likely to get in the next months and years. The story also excited Northern Nigeria's many conspiracy theorists, who think another grand Western plot is in the offing to tarnish the image of Muslims, possibly as a prelude to another invasion." The editorial added, "Among officials of Nigeria's embattled Federal Government, though, the story caused a mix of anxiety and relief. Anxiety, because it threatens to throw this country's fitful Rebranding Campaign into further chaos. But it provided welcome relief from endless newspaper commentaries on President Yar'adua's health."

The Nigerians are obviously suspicious also about those behind the attempt on the aircraft. The Abuja editorial continues: "Bringing down a plane is not a thought that comes easily to people in Northern Nigeria. Most people here, with me as a typical example, cannot breathe easily in a plane until it hits the tarmac. A man who holds fast to a plane's aluminum frame for support during a turbulent take-off hardly can think of bombing it. This explosive substance that Faruk allegedly used in the Delta Airlines plane, pentaerythritol or PETN, may be known to British school kids, but I have never heard of it. To think that I once taught in a university's Faculty of Science. If indeed Faruk told the Americans that he was an Al-Qaeda operative, then he was a very poor one, to be frank. His bomb, which he said he got in Yemen, was weak [exploding like a fire cracker] and technically deficient [failed to go off properly]. He was easily subdued by a film producer, did not struggle when he was grabbed, did not say anything when they held him, and almost as soon as he reached the FBI station, he began to sing like a canary. Sounds very much like the gentle British lad that he is."

The Old 'False-Flag Trick,' by William Norman Grigg

Given that Cheney is apparently at least partly responsible for creating the terror problem in Yemen ....

And that one of the most highly decorated soldiers of all time says that "war is a racket" ...

Given that FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials "were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power" ...

And that "truth is the first casualty of war" ...

And that fear of terrorism makes people stupid ...

Isn't it worth at least ASKING whether we can rule out false flag terrorism?

False WHAT?

"False flag terrorism" is defined as a government attacking its own people, then blaming others in order to justify going to war against the people it blames. Or as Wikipedia defines it:

False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one's own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and have been used in peace-time; for example, during Italy's strategy of tension.

The term comes from the old days of wooden ships, when one ship would hang the flag of its enemy before attacking another ship in its own navy. Because the enemy's flag, instead of the flag of the real country of the attacking ship, was hung, it was called a "false flag" attack.

There are many examples of false flag attacks through history. For example, it is widely known that the Nazis, in Operation Himmler, faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland. And it has now been persuasively argued — as shown, for example, in this History Channel video — that Nazis set fire to their own government building and blamed that fire on others (if you have trouble playing the clip, it is because the website hosting the clip requires you to download the clip before playing it). The fire was the event which justified Hitler's seizure of power and suspension of liberties.

And the Russian KGB apparently conducted a wave of bombings in Russia in order to justify war against Chechnya and put Vladimir Putin into power (see also this short essay and this report).

And the Turkish government has been caught bombing its own and blaming it on a rebel group in order to justify a crackdown on that group.

Indeed, even Muslim governments appear to play this game. For example, the well-respected former Indonesian president said that the government had a role in the Bali bombings.

This sounds nuts, right? You've never heard of this "false flag terrorism", where a government attacks its own people then blames others in order to justify its goals, right? And you are cynical of the statements discussed above?

Please take a look at these historical quotes:

"This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector." - Plato

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - U.S. President James Madison

"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death". - Adolph Hitler

"Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." - Hermann Goering, Nazi leader. "The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened". - Josef Stalin

But NOT the U.S.

It is logical to assume that, even if other countries have carried out false flag operations (especially horrible regimes such as, say, the Nazis or Stalin), the U.S. has never done so.

Well, as documented by the New York Times, Iranians working for the C.I.A. in the 1950's posed as Communists and staged bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected president (see also this essay).

And, as confirmed by a former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence, NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: "You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

Moreover, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960's, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. If you view no other links in this article, please read the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

But Al-CIAda is Different

You might say "But Al-CIAda is different -- powerful, organized, and out to get us", right? Maybe, but take a look at this Los Angeles Times Article, reviewing a BBC documentary entitled "The Power of Nightmares", which shows that the threat from Al Qaeda has been vastly overblown (and see this article on who is behind the hype). And a former National Security Adviser told the Senate that the war on terror is "a mythical historical narrative".

And did you know that the FBI had penetrated the cell which carried out the 1993 world trade center bombing, but had -- at the last minute -- canceled the plan to have its FBI infiltrator substitute fake powder for real explosives, against the infiltrator's strong wishes (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view)? See also this TV news report.

And have you heard that the anthrax attacks -- which were sent along with notes purportedly written by Islamic terrorists -- used a weaponized anthrax strain from the top U.S. bioweapons facility, the Fort Detrick military base? Indeed, top bioweapons experts have stated that the anthrax attack may have been a CIA test "gone wrong"; and see this article by a former NSA and naval intelligence officer; and this statement by a distinguished law professor and bioterror expert (and this one). It is also interesting that the only congress people mailed anthrax-containing letters were key democrats, and that the attacks occurred one week before passage of the freedom-curtailing Patriot Act, which seems to have scared them and the rest of congress into passing that act without even reading it. And it might be coincidence, but White House staff began taking the anti-anthrax medicine before the Anthrax attacks occurred.

Even the former director of the National Security Agency said "By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism - in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation"(the audio is here)

Why Does This Matter?

A former National Security Adviser told the Senate that a terrorist act might be carried out in the U.S. and falsely blamed on Iran to justify war against that nation.

A retired 27-year CIA analyst who prepared and presented Presidential Daily Briefs and served as a high-level analyst for several presidents stated that if there was another major attack in the U.S., it would lead to martial law. He went on to say:

"We have to be careful, if somebody does this kind of provocation, big violent explosions of some kind, we have to not take the word of the masters there in Washington that this was some terrorist event because it could well be a provocation allowing them, or seemingly to allow them to get what they want."

The former CIA analyst would not put it past the government to "play fast and loose" with terror alerts and warnings and even events themselves in order to rally people behind the flag.

Daniel Ellsberg, the famous Pentagon Papers whistleblower, said "if there is another terror attack, "I believe the president will get what he wants", which will include a dictatorship.

Scott Ritter, the former UN Weapons Inspector (an American) - who stated before the Iraq war started that there were no weapons of mass destruction - is now saying that he would not rule out staged government terror by the U.S. government.

And a member of the British Parliament stated that "there is a very real danger" that the American government will stage a false flag terror attack in order to justify war against Iran and to gain complete control domestically.

Given the swarm of terrorism-related scares happening now, shouldn't we at least ask whether history is repeating?