“False Flag Terrorism” to Sustain America’s “Humanitarian” Agenda

Global Research

“False Flag Terrorism” to Sustain America’s “Humanitarian” Agenda

Sustaining the US Empire’s Killing Machine. The Modus Operandi of US Led Wars

By Joachim Hagopian  West Point graduate and former Army officer

Global Research, June 02, 2014

In late May 2014, President Obama rolled out his foreign policy initiatives at West Point and said nothing new. Every lie he uttered is just a retread cover for the same old, same old disastrous foreign policy the US has engaged in since the cold war began shortly after World War II. The fact is Washington has been regularly practicing this same modus operandi for over sixty years.

Through constant use of false flags deceptively blaming the designated enemy of the United States, starting with the dual threat of the Soviet Union and China’s spreading Communism in the early 1950’s, then in this century fabricating the al Qaeda enemy’s spreading terrorism and now back to a revitalized cold war stopping the expansionist spread of Russia and China again, the US has been busily justifying its aggressive interventionist policy throughout the world.

For nearly seven decades the US Central Intelligence Agency has been the chief operating engineer and primary culprit covertly orchestrating this entire diabolical front engaging in acts of terrorism to ensure that Obama’s unabashed exceptionalism in the form of an overstretched, morally bankrupt, imperialistic American Empire in decline reaches every corner of the planet. 

Though false flag terrorism has been utilized throughout human history, including Nero’s Great Fire as the Roman Empire literally went down in flames, its deployment in modern times has been increasingly frequent. By definition a false flag operation involves a government or organization committing egregious acts of violence on its own citizens or members in order to deceitfully blame its enemy and initiate wars. Though this presentation shall focus primarily on the US government’s false flag events committed within the last 60 years, many nations other than America have also engaged in false flag operations.

The term originated when wooden ships would purposely fly the enemy flag in order to launch an attack on another ship belonging to the same navy. Hence, falsely blaming the designated enemy for terrible murderous events unfortunately ever since as a common US tactic deployed to terrorize and sway public opinion has been used as a justified excuse to declare war on many nations and groups. A few passing historical examples are presented here, the first of which was the jingoistic media-induced frenzy “Remember the USS Maine!” after it sank in the Havana harbor in 1898. Though an internal explosion ripped open the hull causing the vessel to sink killing 270 sailors, it was then used to unfairly accuse Spain for a crime it clearly did not commit in order to trigger the start of the Spanish American War.

Though President Franklin D. Roosevelt was credited with lifting America out of the despair of the Great Depression, FDR willfully withheld information he had been privy to months in advance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Instead he chose to sacrifice most of the Pacific fleet though he ensured the fleet’s crucial three aircraft carriers were safely relocated. But most importantly the US President knowingly permitted the murder of 2,403 Americans and the wounding of another 1,178. All because he felt too weak to oppose the strong anti-war sentiment of the American public, FDR let the war come to him and all those dead and suffering Americans just to enter World War II. His deceitful actions willfully ensured that mass numbers of Americans would be murdered just to start America’s involvement in the most deadly war in human history.

Roosevelt’s false flag crime against humanity as the first and only attack on American soil since the War of 1812 ranks despicably high. That said, sixty years later the second and only other attack on the US homeland since resulted in the loss of even more American lives and ranks as the biggest, most disgraceful false flag of them all in the entire US history – 9/11. But more on that false flag later.

To demonstrate that the US does not have the cornerstone on such shameful human atrocities, Hitler regularly employed false flags. In Operation Himmler he ordered SS troopers to attack his own people among them a German radio station as antecedent events that led to blaming the Poles and invading their homeland in 1939 to ignite the Second World War. Six years earlier Hitler was responsible for setting fire to the German parliament building in order to pave his way to seizing power and suspending all liberties.

As false flag architects and firm believers in their effectiveness to stir national opinion, Gestapo commander Hermann Göring has an infamous quote illustrating this point:

“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”Unfortunately his words ring true for dozens of successful false flags in history. But once in awhile one will backfire. In the early 1950’s an Israeli terrorist cell planted evidence and set bombs off in several buildings including the US Embassy in Egypt to blame Egypt. But one of the bombs was accidentally detonated early enough for the Egyptian authorities to link Israel to the attacks, resulting in a scandal that brought down the then Israeli government.

Operation Gladio emerged and flourished throughout the cold war period from the early 1950’s through the 1980’s in reaction to both a potential Soviet invasion and the very real growth of the Communist Party within pockets of Western Europe, particularly Italy where at one time one third of the voting electorate consisted of Communists. Gladio evolved into right wing state sponsored terrorism funded by NATO and the American CIA. A strategy of tension designed to instill fear into the general population was created by carrying out various false flag events such as planting bombs in crowded public markets, train stations and targeted buildings killing dozens of innocent Italian citizens then blaming it on the leftist Red Brigade.

The CIA’s active involvement in staging terrorism, coups and assassinations around the world has been proven beyond a doubt despite the US government’s standard official policy to cover-up, lie and deny. These state sponsored acts of terror were not limited to just Italy only but evidence exists that they were also committed in France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany and Switzerland and later expanded heavily in the 1990’s with Gladio B in Turkey and Central Asia as well. For many decades US State Department personnel along with CIA operatives covertly working behind the scenes with NATO and various right wing reactionary groups have included high ranking European politicians, judges, security forces, military officers and organized crime drug lords to repeatedly kill hundreds of innocent civilians en masse.

In 1997 declassified documents unveiled Operation Northwoods, among the most damaging evidence to date indicating just how low and pathologically ill US military megalomaniacs running America’s armed forces really are. The psychopathic killers who were the five Joint Chiefs of Staff, the very top generals of each of the military services back in 1962, conspired to execute terrorist attacks on innocent American civilians in order to blame it on Fidel Castro, thereby gaining public approval to start a war against Cuba. Perturbed over the failed Bay of Pigs debacle, the generals colluded with the CIA to propose highjacking and shooting down commercial airliners, attacks on both US Navy ships and other military targets, and bombing US citizens in Washington DC and Miami. When President John F. Kennedy learned of this sinister false flag plan just prior to its implementation, he cancelled it.

President Kennedy had inherited the CIA’s Bay of Pigs fiasco leftover from the Eisenhower administration. The president’s rejection of Operation Northwoods on top of his refusal to deploy the US military in the infamously botched attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro left in its wake a number of angry anti-Castro Cubans as well as miffed CIA agents and the highest ranking military officers. Conversely, the humiliating bitter pill that the Bay of Pigs forced Kennedy to swallow left a sour aftertaste, setting into motion a conflict between all parties that in retrospect have been cited as strong provocation behind Kennedy’s own demise.

Further recent evidence suggests that JFK was moving to reduce the CIA’s power by restructuring, not escalate a war in Vietnam and reduce the power of the privatized Federal Reserve Board that was/is the oligarch banking cabal and that these preeminent plans were the basis for his enemies within the government to assassinate him. Clearly enough evidence exists to incriminate elements within the CIA as major players in his untimely death. A number of recent investigators implicate elements of false flag operations through use of patsies in not only JFK’s but his brother Robert and Martin Luther King’s assassinations as well. Blaming a lone gunman with known ties to Communist enemies the Soviet Union and Cuba was used as a means to cover up the true perpetrators who were American agents within the US government.

Kennedy’s successor Lyndon B. Johnson with circumstantial links to the JFK assassination himself wasted no time as Commander-in-Chief in August 1964 employing another false flag to begin yet another war. The Gulf of Tonkin incident became LBJ’s immoral excuse to declare a bogus war against North Vietnam. Yet he, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and then military analyst later turned whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg knew it was a lie that North Vietnamese gunboats fired on the destroyer the USS Maddox that was sent by Washington on the mission to the Tonkin Gulf purposely to bait Hanoi into taking aggressive action. Johnson’s boldface lie that “our boys are floating in the water” swept America into its then longest running war in US history. 58,213 American lives lost later with an astounding total of between nearly one to over three million human additional lives violently ended, the Vietnam War was a total tragic waste in every aspect of the word. Absolutely nothing positive came out of the first official American war defeat in US history. But the senseless slaughter and shattered lives of so many innocent Southeast Asians who never deserved such an unforgivable horrendous fate based on another US president’s lie is impossible to fathom much less accept. No one can blame innocent war victims for never forgiving America for its countless brutal sins that only continue to rage against humanity uninterrupted to this very day.

To demonstrate that America is not alone as the only heavy using of false flags and that other current leaders also employ false flag operations on their own people, the September 1999 bombings of Russian apartment buildings killing 300 innocent people were falsely blamed on Chechen terrorists in order to bring about another war against Chechnya. A 2002 book written by former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko exposing the 9/99 false flag likely resulted in his poisoning death by Russian intelligence in 2006. A report from a Johns Hopkins study additionally concluded that the KGB and Russian government were in fact guilty of planting the bombs in order to ensure that Vladimir Putin would be elected the next Russian Federation president.

But perhaps the most unforgivable false flag crime against the human race committed by the most evil humans still alive on earth – the neocon insiders of the Bush-Cheney administration – pulled off the all time most egregious terrorist act of our lifetime – the inside job that is the horror of the 9/11 attacks. Massive evidence has been accumulating over the past 13 years since the attacks on New York’s World Trade Center twin towers and the Pentagon that highly incriminate the US government. President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney and their cast of neocon characters were responsible for murdering nearly 3000 Americans on September 11th, 2001 in order to justify their preplanned agenda of a permanent war on terror starting in Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent systematic dismantling of the US Constitution. Their day of infamy turns out far more diabolical than FDR’s own infamy day. A coup took place where a handful of neocons single handedly overthrew what was left of democracy in America, and overnight replaced it with a fascist despotic oligarchic dictatorship. With the Patriot Act and executive orders America woke up and found itself living in a real life Orwellian nightmare of tyranny from the top on down that now appears to be reigning even more supreme under the Obama regime.

Obviously books have been written offering far more detailed accounts covering the hundreds of discrepancies that point to the sinister inside job. However, for the sake of brevity here a condensed version presenting only the most salient and glaring facts are included.

Hundreds of engineers analyzing how the twin towers came down concluded that they collapsed from internal explosionsfrom within, falling at an acceleration rate of two thirds that of freefall. Seven hours later at 5:20PM on 9/11 near the fallen towers, Building 7 never hit by a plane and only slightly damaged from fallen tower debris at half the height of the towers suddenly collapsed at absolute freefall in just 6.5 seconds. This strongly indicates that the buildings were brought down by detonations set off by explosives placed near the steel girders, and clearly not from the damage caused by jet fuel explosions near the top stories of the towers. If two planes flying into the top floors of the towers (one at the 78thfloor and the other between the 93rd and 99th floors) were to cause the buildings to collapse, which in itself is virtually impossible, the speed at which they came down would have been much slower and they would never have totally collapsed into all the dust and rubble that was left. Simple laws of physics prove that two planes and their fires could never have brought down those towers but only internal explosives carefully planted on every floor would cause the collapses the way all three buildings fell.

Larry Silverstein who leased the World Trade Center mistakenly referenced the collapse of Building 7 as “pulled it,” a common expression used in building demolitions. Silverstein who had only leased the towers six months before their collapse, stood to gain a quick 1.4 billion in profit on his six month turnaround investment. Also the head of security of the World Trade Center happened to be President Bush’s cousin. Additionally lots of illicit insider trading just before and after 9/11 prove certain unrevealed insiders were aware of the coming events.

Not unrelated, a BBC correspondent named Jane Standley actually reported the collapse of Building 7 over twenty minutes prior to its collapse.

Explosions resulting from burning jet fuel at near 800 degrees cannot possibly melt steel which requires temperatures of at least 1600 degrees. Yet the red-gray dust from the fallen rubble and debris shows that explosives that burn at far higher temperatures than jet fuel were used to cause the buildings to collapse. Overwhelming amounts of nano-thermite dust were detected at ground zero providing conclusive evidence that nano-thermite burning at high enough temperatures to effectively melt steel was the key ingredient in the explosives that must have been planted weeks prior to the planes colliding into the towers. The nano-thermite material in the planted explosives clearly brought the buildings down in a controlled demolition, and definitely not the planes.

Additionally there were survivors like Brian Clark who at the time of impact were on floors higher than the floor the plane flew into, yet they experienced no level of heat that prevented them from moving past the burning floor all the way down to ground level to escape to safety. This totally defies the official explanation that it was the jet fuel explosion and ensuing fire that caused the entire buildings to collapse a short time after the planes impact.

Another fact that strongly supports the contention that the buildings were brought down by an explosive demolition is the eyewitness testimony of hundreds of survivors who all heard a series of loud explosions at the ground floor level. Planes burning at the upper floor levels could never cause those explosions.

The Pentagon was never hit by a plane. No pieces or parts of the plane were ever found. And then the hole in the Pentagon was only 16 feet wide, far smaller than the size of a commercial aircraft. This provides indisputable evidence that Flight 77 never impacted the Pentagon building but that more than likely a missile did. Furthermore, the hard turn required for the alleged jetliner flown by an inexperienced terrorist could not possibly maneuver a large plane into the Pentagon. Lastly, the airspace over Washington DC is the most heavily guarded in the entire world and no plane could crash into the most defended military building on the planet. Far too much concrete evidence taken together makes the official story impossible.

With nearly a trillion dollar budget spent each year on defending the United States with the most sophisticated and powerful military and air defense in the world, yet the four jet airliners that supposedly were crashed by terrorists were somehow never intercepted by any fighter planes. There were 35 Air Force bases within close proximity on 9/11 to the four hijacked planes. Within minutes after planes go off the air traffic controller system an air defense protocol is in place to immediately release military fighter jets to intercept highjacked airliners. Yet not one fighter jet was on the scene the entire time. This implausible explanation that they could not respond in time is simply preposterous.

Another questionable phenomenon was all the military officers in charge of air defense operations near Washington on 9/11 that by tragic outcome clearly showed that they all failed to do their jobs properly. Yet to a man they were all mysteriously promoted just days after 9/11 when they ordinarily should have been demoted for clearly gross negligence… of course unless they were actually being rewarded for their complicit roles in the inside job.

Just three days after 9/11 the FBI had miraculously identified all nineteen of the alleged hijackers without providing any evidence that any were actually on the four flights. In contrast after the Pan Am flight went down over Lockerby, Scotland, two years into the investigation indictments were finally made. Then one day after 9/11 Attorney General Ashcroft announced that the intact passport of one of the alleged terrorists had been found a few blocks from ground zero. Yet the planes allegedly caused molten steel to pulverize and meltdown everything in sight into a fine powdery dust but somehow not even a burned and entirely intact undamaged passport was found. These lies would be laughable if they were not used to cover up the truth of how 2,977 victims’ deaths resulted from the worst false flag in history.

The official report would lead the public to believe that fifteen of the nineteen hijacking terrorists were Saudi fundamentalist Islamists practicing the strictest form of Islam called Solafist. Yet the former American girlfriend of their alleged ringleader Mohammed Atta and his fellow terrorists were always drinking alcohol and using cocaine. While staying in Florida near NSA offices Atta is on record as an actual roommate of a CIA pilot who flew drugs during the Iran-Contra scandal in South America. While living in Hamburg Atta is also known to have met with German intelligence.

Atta and another alleged hijacker flew from Florida to Boston a couple days prior to 9/11 and left a known trail of traveling onto Portland Maine and staying out late partying and drinking at a club in Portland the night of September 10th. On the morning of 9/11 they then flew from Portland into Boston on a flight that landed a mere half hour before their alleged flight they supposedly hijacked was taking off. The FBI released a photo of them captured on an airport camera the FBI claimed was proof that they boarded the flight at Boston’s Logan Airport. However, it was actually a photo of the two boarding their flight in Portland. Thus no evidence showed them ever on the flight of the plane they were purported to crash into the New York tower. In fact no evidence of any of the 19 alleged terrorists ever boarding any of the four flights on 9/11 was ever produced.

In the days and weeks following 9/11, the UK’s Telegraph and CBS news tracked down several of the identified terrorists still alive in Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Newsweek reported that Atta was on record of having had a phone conversation with his father on September 12th. One by one a number of the supposed dead hijackers began showing up alive and well faraway from the 9/11 crash sites. All of these pieces of damning evidence make the official US government accounts of the September 11th attacks even more suspect and weak, only adding to the mounting strength proving that a cover-up to a very sloppy inside job was perpetrated on the American public.

The fact is the neocon network is far more America’s enemy than any so called al Qaeda network. Long before 9/11, the Bushes (with roots traced back to financing Nazi Germany), Cheney and Rumsfeld all had their indelible grubby fingerprints all over US foreign policy as far back as the 70’s and 80’s. George Bush senior was CIA Director during the mid 1970’s and on 9/11 met with the bin Laden family in another major business transaction. Later when all planes were grounded in the US, the bin Ladens were safely flown home to Saudi Arabia. There is a more than casual linkage between Osama’s family and the neocons responsible for 9/11.

Donald Rumsfeld was Defense Secretary during the Ford administration. And Dick Cheney began working for Rumsfeld in 1969. From 1979-89 Cheney served as a Wyoming Congressman until President George Bush senior promoted Cheney to Secretary of Defense where he oversaw military operations in both Panama and the first Gulf War, rewarded by his boss with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. From 1995 Cheney was CEO at Halliburton, a huge and corrupt defense contractor until 2000 when he became George junior’s Vice President and more the front end mastermind behind 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars than less endowed figurehead George junior. Their lives and careers have long been intertwined in government and corporate cronyism. Along with a handful of other notable neocons like Paul Wolfowitz who was Deputy Secretary of Defense under Rumsfeld and later World Bank President. These 9/11 figures saw the opportunity to use Osama bin Laden as their wanted milk carton face to their global war on terror.

The label al Qaeda was eventually attached to Osama’s Islamic freedom fighters whose mission was to support fellow Moslems everywhere oppressed by Western imperialism. As the young emerging leader of the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, the US with CIA support had been financing, arming and training Osama and his randy brand of terrorists since the late 1980’s and continued sponsoring their terrorist activities throughout the 1990’s in Bosnia and Kosovo. Many of the Mujahideen fighters were on the US payroll. A Pentagon subcontractor called Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI) employed many of the Mujahideen terrorists in the Balkans.

Michael Springman, Chief of Visa Section at the US General Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia from 1987 to 1989 disclosed that many CIA personnel worked undercover issuing US visas to a number of the same terrorists later allegedly involved in the 9/11 attacks. The CIA was sponsoring state supported terrorism bringing them to the US and training them at various US military schools, fine tuning their terror skills. After 9/11 from an LA Times article Springman recognized a number of the terrorist hijackers amongst those freely receiving visas years before and promptly informed the FBI. In fact 15 visas belonging to the alleged 9/11 terrorists had been attained in Jeddah. But not surprisingly, the FBI never bothered getting back to Springman.

A similar story was heard from Sibel Edmonds a former FBI translator and government whistleblower who became aware of an Iranian FBI informant who had been on the payroll for ten years in April 2001 warning the FBI that al Qaeda terrorists were planning to fly airplanes into key buildings in several US cities.

Two FBI agents independent of each other, one in Arizona and the another in Minnesota, also contacted central FBI headquarters in Washington reporting a flurry of activity involving a number of Arabs enrolling in flight schools. Attorney General Ashcroft in August 2001 was approached by the FBI over reports of increasing signs of potential terrorism and Ashcroft emphatically replied that terrorism was lowest on his priority list and did not want to hear any more about impending threats. There were numerous warnings that had been reported to the federal government but obviously went unheeded. Meanwhile, since 1999 the Air Force had been doing training exercises four times a year in preparation for just such a scenario of terrorists flying planes into buildings.

Bush and Security Council Condoleezza Rice have both repeatedly gone on record denying that there were any advance warnings to alert and possibly prepare them for planes used by terrorists for this purpose… more lies. But then since 9/11 was a false flag operation, of course the neocons would ignore all warnings however obvious and blatant that the attack was about to occur… like another day of infamy.

The Patriot Act was written before 9/11 and signed into law on October 26th, 2001. Congressman Ron Paul asked about it being prepared so quickly and was told it had been sitting in the Justice Department waiting for the right time to be brought to a vote for the last twenty years.

Many in US Congress both past and current members along with numerous retired US military officers and scientists and professors from academia have questioned publicly the whitewashed bogus findings of the 9/11 Commission that the Bush administration resisted for well over a year before it was finally formed. Then he and Cheney resisted having to even testify. Yet that said, the government has conveniently dismissed those believing Washington insiders bear culpability and responsibility for 9/11 by calling them “conspiracy theorists.” The derogatory name calling designed to eliminate credibility over time is offering less credence to their stonewalling lies and cover-up cracks. Instead more Americans are realizing the depth of moral depravity and evil in their resistance to truth. Movement to ultimately hold the war criminals accountable at the Hague are in process.

Two weeks after 9/11 General Wesley Clark learned of the neocon agenda formulated prior to 9/11 to take down seven sovereign nations in the Middle East and North Africa within five years. Americans learned that the myth of Saddam Hussein holding weapons of mass destruction was a complete lie. That willful deception along with the other false accusation that Hussein had direct links to terrorism became the basis for invading Iraq in March 2003. Lies perpetrated on both America and Iraq resulted in a million and a half Iraqi citizens dying in a decade long war under US occupation that has left the nation permanently embroiled in sectarian civil war violence the last two and a half years since US departure. Al Qaeda holds more of the country’s territory now than ever before. Genetically deformed babies and cancer rates have soared exponentially due to US military deploying depleted uranium and flesh burning white phosphorus chemicals. US blood for oil wars decimate and destroy nations, installing regime changes with weak, corrupt puppet governments, indefinite sectarian violence and untold human misery. Meanwhile, shut out of the nation with the world’s fifth largest oil reserves until the US invasion, now ExxonMobil, BP and Shell are making huge profits.

Though fortunately no US false flag has come close to reeking the same level of damage, human suffering and horrible consequences since 9/11, the US government has persisted in engaging in more recent false flag operations. Last August 21st in a Damascus suburb a chemical weapons attack launched by US and Saudi backed al Qaeda militants killed many innocent Syrian civilians with many children among the casualties. At the time, President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry were aggressively pushing to launch air strikes on Syria convinced that it was Assad’s government forces that committed the attack. Yet they refused to produce any evidence because they had none. They were giving it their best psychopathic shot to inflict more death and destruction on more innocent humans knowing they were spewing more lies of deception in their thinly veiled imperialistic would-be intervention. Obama was willing to risk starting World War III as Russia and China moved their naval fleets into the area in support of their allies Syria and Iran. And Syria and Iran remain the last of those seven nations on that neocon list for regime changes.

Fortunately Kerry made an offhand rhetorical comment that Russian President Putin opportunistically seized to successfully broker a face saving deal where Assad has now turned over 92% of his chemical weapons. Of course no one ever insisted that the al Qaeda rebels who were responsible for the heinous atrocity turn over their chemical weapons likely shipped to them from Saudi Arabia.

Despite Obama’s weakened position as a world leader from his grandstanding fiasco, he has not given up his goal to remove Assad from power with a recent renewed commitment to supplying al Qaeda militants with even more sophisticated weaponry that at some point risks being used against Americans. Meanwhile, the Syrian government forces are gaining the upper hand in a stalemate that has perhaps killed over 160,000 and displaced over 2.58 millionSyrian refugees from their homes. The number in Lebanon alone is up to 1.3 million in a growing international humanitarian and political crisis.

In this last year several other false flags have occurred with US-NATO involvement and support. Two months ago a planned false flag operation was uncovered when a few months earlier the Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary, a National Intelligence Organization staff and a Turkish general were secretly taped while openly discussing a proposed false flag attack on its own citizens and soil in Turkey that would then be falsely blamed on Syrian government military as a precursor to a Turkish invasion into Syria. There also has been a Turkish government representative making reference to being repeatedly asked by John Kerry about whether a false flag had been executed.

Al Qaeda rebels fighting in Syria have also been instructed to destroy and desecrate holy mosques in order to be able to blame Assad forces, thereby swaying the Syrian population against their government. All these incidents demonstrate continued US commitment to using the false flag strategies with US-NATO allies as proxy perpetrators.

Finally, in every sovereign nation targeted by the US for destabilization and regime change, as recently in Ukraine, Venezuela and Syria among other nations, the US-NATO secret security and intelligence forces have trained mercenarysnipers on using the false flag tactic by posing as enemy personnel and murdering their own citizens as well as police. Back in February in both Ukraine and Venezuela during the weeks leading up to the US-NATO supported Ukrainian fascist coup and the violent unrest in Venezuela, snipers shot and killed protestors in the streets. In both situations the cold-blooded killing was designed to turn public sentiment against the alleged oppressive government security forces that were being falsely blamed. Then in both nations photos were quickly posted on social media websites to enflame citizens to openly oppose and actively overthrow their existing government, which of course with US backing did occur in Ukraine. This same tactic continues currently in Ukraine where in Odessa several weeks ago murderous thugs posing as pro-Russian militants killed many victims in a building and then set fire killing even more.

The fact is the US has always had al Qaeda on its payroll spanning the last twenty-five years. For over three years al Qaeda mercenaries have been active in both Libya and Syria, fighting US proxy wars for regime changes in Libya against the overthrow of Muammar Kaddafi and in what now appears to be a losing cause in Syria to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Therefore, it should not come as much of a surprise that the US government merely used Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda to be the patsies in a false flag operation to launch the war on terror on the false pretext of invading Afghanistan and Iraq.

Al Qaeda from the start has been a mere invention by US intelligence to declare war on a new enemy once the Soviet Union was dissolved nearly a quarter century ago. America was left as the sole world superpower but without an identifiable enemy. Hence, out of expedience, America’s military and CIA must always justify their need for constant war with a known enemy to demonize and fight, in effect justifying their very existence, not to mention being the prime beneficiaries of so much allocated US taxpayer funding. Obviously much is at stake for the military security complex to lay claim to so many hard earned taxpayer dollars.

For instance in 2011 alone, $845 billion dollars were spent on defense, security and veterans benefits, comprising about 25% of the total annual budget, nearly as much as the rest of the entire world spends on its military and defense combined! And this does not include much of the secret discretionary funds allocated carte blanche without oversight to covert Special Operations training death squads for more terrorism and enemies around the world. Thus it is imperative if the theft of so much taxpayer revenue is to continue or even increase in the future, the US government must continue to engage in false flag terrorism on its own people in order to condition the American population into actually believing there remains a very real and dangerous external threat to their very survival. Once the public reaches critical mass in catching on to the US government’s ponzi scam of global deceit, tragic waste and mass murder, enough angry and fed up Americans will revolt, refusing to any longer support the US Empire’s killing machine. It will be then that another false flag will be foisted on citizens that will in turn lead to martial law, FEMA roundups and a probable second American civil war.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former Army officer. His written manuscript based on his military experience examines leadership and national security issues and can be consulted at http://www.redredsea.net/westpointhagopian/. After the military, Joachim earned a masters degree in psychology and became a licensed therapist working in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now focuses on writing.

The Anti-Empire Report #127: Indoctrinating a new generation

William Blum

The Anti-Empire Report #127

 

By William Blum – Published April 7th, 2014

Indoctrinating a new generation

Is there anyone out there who still believes that Barack Obama, when he’s speaking about American foreign policy, is capable of being anything like an honest man? In a March 26 talk in Belgium to “European youth”, the president fed his audience one falsehood, half-truth, blatant omission, or hypocrisy after another. If George W. Bush had made some of these statements, Obama supporters would not hesitate to shake their head, roll their eyes, or smirk. Here’s a sample:

– “In defending its actions, Russian leaders have further claimed Kosovo as a precedent – an example they say of the West interfering in the affairs of a smaller country, just as they’re doing now. But NATO only intervened after the people of Kosovo were systematically brutalized and killed for years.”

Most people who follow such things are convinced that the 1999 US/NATO bombing of the Serbian province of Kosovo took place only after the Serbian-forced deportation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo was well underway; which is to say that the bombing was launched to stop this “ethnic cleansing”. In actuality, the systematic deportations of large numbers of people did not begin until a few days after the bombing began, and was clearly a reaction to it, born of Serbia’s extreme anger and powerlessness over the bombing. This is easily verified by looking at a daily newspaper for the few days before the bombing began the night of March 23/24, 1999, and the few days following. Or simply look at the New York Times of March 26, page 1, which reads:

… with the NATO bombing already begun, a deepening sense of fear took hold in Pristina [the main city of Kosovo] that the Serbs would now vent their rage against ethnic Albanian civilians in retaliation. [emphasis added]

On March 27, we find the first reference to a “forced march” or anything of that nature.

But the propaganda version is already set in marble.

– “And Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized, not outside the boundaries of international law, but in careful cooperation with the United Nations and with Kosovo’s neighbors. None of that even came close to happening in Crimea.”

None of that even came close to happening in Kosovo either. The story is false. The referendum the president speaks of never happened. Did the mainstream media pick up on this or on the previous example? If any reader comes across such I’d appreciate being informed.

Crimea, by the way, did have a referendum. A real one.

– “Workers and engineers gave life to the Marshall Plan … As the Iron Curtain fell here in Europe, the iron fist of apartheid was unclenched, and Nelson Mandela emerged upright, proud, from prison to lead a multiracial democracy. Latin American nations rejected dictatorship and built new democracies … “
The president might have mentioned that the main beneficiary of the Marshall Plan was US corporations , that the United States played an indispensable role in Mandela being caught and imprisoned, and that virtually all the Latin American dictatorships owed their very existence to Washington. Instead, the European youth were fed the same party line that their parents were fed, as were all Americans.

– “Yes, we believe in democracy – with elections that are free and fair.”
In this talk, the main purpose of which was to lambaste the Russians for their actions concerning Ukraine, there was no mention that the government overthrown in that country with the clear support of the United States had been democratically elected.

– “Moreover, Russia has pointed to America’s decision to go into Iraq as an example of Western hypocrisy. … But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory. We did not grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state that could make decisions about its own future.”

The US did not get UN Security Council approval for its invasion, the only approval that could legitimize the action. It occupied Iraq from one end of the country to the other for 8 years, forcing the government to privatize the oil industry and accept multinational – largely U.S.-based, oil companies’ – ownership. This endeavor was less than successful because of the violence unleashed by the invasion. The US military finally was forced to leave because the Iraqi government refused to give immunity to American soldiers for their many crimes.

Here is a brief summary of what Barack Obama is attempting to present as America’s moral superiority to the Russians:

The modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state … the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly … the people of that unhappy land lost everything – their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lying in wait for children to pick them up … a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again. … “It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,” reported the Washington Post. (May 5, 2007)

How can all these mistakes, such arrogance, hypocrisy and absurdity find their way into a single international speech by the president of the United States? Is the White House budget not sufficient to hire a decent fact checker? Someone with an intellect and a social conscience? Or does the desire to score propaganda points trump everything else? Is this another symptom of the Banana-Republicization of America?

Long live the Cold War

In 1933 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union after some 15 years of severed relations following the Bolshevik Revolution. On a day in December of that year, a train was passing through Poland carrying the first American diplomats dispatched to Moscow. Amongst their number was a 29 year-old Foreign Service Officer, later to become famous as a diplomat and scholar, George Kennan. Though he was already deemed a government expert on Russia, the train provided Kennan’s first actual exposure to the Soviet Union. As he listened to his group’s escort, Russian Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, reminisce about growing up in a village the train was passing close by, and his dreams of becoming a librarian, the Princeton-educated Kennan was astonished: “We suddenly realized, or at least I did, that these people we were dealing with were human beings like ourselves, that they had been born somewhere, that they had their childhood ambitions as we had. It seemed for a brief moment we could break through and embrace these people.”


It hasn’t happened yet.

One would think that the absence in Russia of communism, of socialism, of the basic threat or challenge to the capitalist system, would be sufficient to write finis to the 70-year Cold War mentality. But the United States is virtually as hostile to 21st-century Russia as it was to 20th-century Soviet Union, surrounding Moscow with military bases, missile sites, and NATO members. Why should that be? Ideology is no longer a factor. But power remains one, specifically America’s perpetual lust for world hegemony. Russia is the only nation that (a) is a military powerhouse, and (b) doesn’t believe that the United States has a god-given-American-exceptionalism right to rule the world, and says so. By these criteria, China might qualify as a poor second. But there are no others.

Washington pretends that it doesn’t understand why Moscow should be upset by Western military encroachment, but it has no such problem when roles are reversed. Secretary of State John Kerry recently stated that Russian troops poised near eastern Ukraine are “creating a climate of fear and intimidation in Ukraine” and raising questions about Russia’s next moves and its commitment to diplomacy.


NATO – ever in need of finding a raison d’être – has now issued a declaration of [cold] war, which reads in part:

“NATO foreign ministers on Tuesday [April 1, 2014] reaffirmed their commitment to enhance the Alliance’s collective defence, agreed to further support Ukraine and to suspend NATO’s practical cooperation with Russia. ‘NATO’s greatest responsibility is to protect and defend our territory and our people. And make no mistake, this is what we will do,’ NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. … Ministers directed Allied military authorities to develop additional measures to strengthen collective defence and deterrence against any threat of aggression against the Alliance, Mr. Fogh Rasmussen said. ‘We will make sure we have updated military plans, enhanced exercises and appropriate deployments,’ he said. NATO has already reinforced its presence on the eastern border of the Alliance, including surveillance patrols over Poland and Romania and increased numbers of fighter aircraft allocated to the NATO air policing mission in the Baltic States. … NATO Foreign Ministers also agreed to suspend all of NATO’s practical cooperation with Russia.”

Does anyone recall what NATO said in 2003 when the United States bombed and invaded Iraq with “shock and awe”, compared to the Russians now not firing a single known shot at anyone? And neither Russia nor Ukraine is even a member of NATO. Does NATO have a word to say about the right-wing coup in Ukraine, openly supported by the United States, overthrowing the elected government? Did the hypocrisy get any worse during the Cold War? Imagine that NATO had not been created in 1949. Imagine that it has never existed. What reason could one give today for its creation? Other than to provide a multi-national cover for Washington’s interventions.

One of the main differences between now and the Cold War period is that Americans at home are (not yet) persecuted or prosecuted for supporting Russia or things Russian.

But don’t worry, folks, there won’t be a big US-Russian war. For the same reason there wasn’t one during the Cold War. The United States doesn’t pick on any country which can defend itself.

Cuba … Again … Still … Forever

Is there actually a limit? Will the United States ever stop trying to overthrow the Cuban government? Entire books have been written documenting the unrelenting ways Washington has tried to get rid of tiny Cuba’s horrid socialism – from military invasion to repeated assassination attempts to an embargo that President Clinton’s National Security Advisor called “the most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a nation in the history of mankind”. But nothing has ever come even close to succeeding. The horrid socialism keeps on inspiring people all over the world. It’s the darnedest thing. Can providing people free or remarkably affordable health care, education, housing, food and culture be all that important?

And now it’s “Cuban Twitter” – an elaborately complex system set up by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to disguise its American origins and financing, aiming to bring about a “Cuban Spring” uprising. USAID sought to first “build a Cuban audience, mostly young people; then the plan was to push them toward dissent”, hoping the messaging network “would reach critical mass so that dissidents could organize ‘smart mobs’ – mass gatherings called at a moment’s notice – that might trigger political demonstrations or ‘renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society’.” It’s too bad it’s now been exposed, because we all know how wonderful the Egyptian, Syrian, Libyan, and other “Arab Springs” have turned out.

Here’s USAID speaking after their scheme was revealed on April 3: “Cubans were able to talk among themselves, and we are proud of that.” We are thus asked to believe that normally the poor downtrodden Cubans have no good or safe way to communicate with each other. Is the US National Security Agency working for the Cuban government now?

The Associated Press, which broke the story, asks us further to believe that the “truth” about most things important in the world is being kept from the Cuban people by the Castro regime, and that the “Cuban Twitter” would have opened people’s eyes. But what information might a Cuban citizen discover online that the government would not want him to know about? I can’t imagine. Cubans are in constant touch with relatives in the US, by mail and in person. They get US television programs from Miami and other southern cities; both CNN and Telesur (Venezuela, covering Latin America) are seen regularly on Cuban television”; international conferences on all manner of political, economic and social issues are held regularly in Cuba. I’ve spoken at more than one myself. What – it must be asked – does USAID, as well as the American media, think are the great dark secrets being kept from the Cuban people by the nasty commie government?

Those who push this line sometimes point to the serious difficulty of using the Internet in Cuba. The problem is that it’s extremely slow, making certain desired usages often impractical. From an American friend living in Havana: “It’s not a question of getting or not getting internet. I get internet here. The problem is downloading something or connecting to a link takes too long on the very slow connection that exists here, so usually I/we get ‘timed out’.” But the USAID’s “Cuban Twitter”, after all, could not have functioned at all without the Internet.
Places like universities, upscale hotels, and Internet cafés get better connections, at least some of the time; however, it’s rather expensive to use at the hotels and cafés.

In any event, this isn’t a government plot to hide dangerous information. It’s a matter of technical availability and prohibitive cost, both things at least partly in the hands of the United States and American corporations. Microsoft, for example, at one point, if not at present, barred Cuba from using its Messenger instant messaging service.

Cuba and Venezuela have jointly built a fiber optic underwater cable connection that they hope will make them less reliant on the gringos; the outcome of this has not yet been reported in much detail.

The grandly named Agency for International Development does not have an honorable history; this can perhaps be captured by a couple of examples: In 1981, the agency’s director, John Gilligan, stated: “At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind.”


On June 21, 2012, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) issued a resolution calling for the immediate expulsion of USAID from their nine member countries, “due to the fact that we consider their presence and actions to constitute an interference which threatens the sovereignty and stability of our nations.”

USAID, the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy (and the latter’s subsidiaries), together or singly, continue to be present at regime changes, or attempts at same, favorable to Washington, from “color revolutions” to “spring” uprisings, producing a large measure of chaos and suffering for our tired old world.

Notes

1. William Blum, America’s Deadliest Export – Democracy: The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else, p.22-5
2. Walter Isaacson & Evan Thomas, The Wise Men (1986), p.158
3. Washington Post, March 31, 2014
4. “NATO takes measures to reinforce collective defence, agrees on support for Ukraine”, NATO website, April 1, 2014
5. Sandy Berger, White House press briefing, November 14, 1997, US Newswire transcript
6. Associated Press, April 3 & 4, 2014
7. Washington Post, April 4, 2014
8. Associated Press, June 2, 2009
9. George Cotter, “Spies, strings and missionaries”, The Christian Century (Chicago), March 25, 1981, p.321

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this website are given.