PERSIAN GULF OF TONKIN...

Prison Planet asks what everyone's thinking--"Was The British-Iranian Hostage Crisis Staged?". However, the article basically seconds comments made on BBC NewsNight and exhorts people to watch it, which I started doing but the video wasn't synching very well to the audio and so forth...

I am of the mind that this event had to be staged, in the sense that the British knowingly entered Iranian waters and set themselves up to be captured in order to provoke Iran into doing something that the Brits can justify losing their cool about so that the bombing can begin.

But I admit I don't have a lot of evidence to feel that way--I just don't trust Blair/Bush. And why should anyone trust them after their outlandish claims about Iraqi WMD?

For instance, if the Brits were purposely going into Iranian waters, did they know they'd be captured and treated as well as they seem to have been treated? I would guess they couldn't know that for sure. Did they think they would be fired on by the Iranians? I'm sure they felt that was a possibility.

I mean, the Iranians have to feel threatened--the Western anti-Iran rhetoric has been building for at least the last couple of years, and now there are U.S. and British carrier strike groups doing war games supposedly in international waters in the Persian Gulf.

However, despite the threats, the Iranians have successfully thumbed their nose at Bush/Blair and basically thwarted all the neocon attempts to wrongfoot Tehran. But we know that Iran is/has been a target of the neocons and they must be getting desperate to gin something up against Iran since nothing so far has worked, i.e., the "reasonable offer" gambit or the fake "Iran-in-Iraq" dossier gambit.

So intentionally sending 15 soldiers into Iranian waters as bait to do one of the following:

1) Be taken hostage--in the planning meetings at 10 Downing St., this was probably the hoped-for scenario because a) no one dies b) it reminds the world of the '79 Iranian hostage crisis, and c) gives Blair a chance to huff and puff and go to the U.N. for--a resolution or something to be used against Iran and inch that much closer to war

2) Be fired upon and retreat/take casualties--in the planning meetings, this was second-best mostly because of the deaths or injuries involved, but also because it wouldn't put Blair on the world stage, pleading for Iran to just act right and follow international law, which will eventually make war with/bombing of Iran seem more justified in the long run. But drawing fire would've been the quickest way to get the war going.

At any rate, I have no trouble believing that these 15 Brits would do this, even with the full knowledge of what may happen to them. They're in the military--they follow orders. They want to be there--they believe in the mission. And all that jazz.


And the Iranians probably saw their chance to get back at the West but they're not stupid, so they just arrested the Brits. They were surely aware that firing on a British boat would be a very bad idea. And they of course knew that this exact same type of thing had happened in 2004 to no big fuss. But that was before Iran outmaneuvered Bush/Blair.

So was it staged?

I suspect yes, but we'll never know for sure--I can't prove it was, but there's no proof it wasn't. But at this point, it doesn't really matter whether or not this hostage-taking was staged or more accurately, I think, provoked. Now, the damage has been done--the media will unceasingly talk of this new "Iranian hostage crisis" and it will be painted as an act of "terrorism" despite the fact that the U.S. has itself taken Iranian hostages in the last few months and that the captured Brits are not civilians.

But however you look at it, this is still no casus belli. Faye Turney doesn't look as though she's been kept in stress positions or waterboarded or anything. The Iranians obviously gave her a pack of smokes. I'm not suggesting that she or any of the Britons are enjoying their captivity, but I am saying this is not something to go to war over.

A DEGREE IN HOMELAND SECURITY?

Anybody else seen this ad?



I clicked through and gave some bogus information to get to where they tell you what programs they offer and it took me to a University of Phoenix page, but there was no "Homeland Security" listed in the pulldown menu of degree offerings.

Is this shit really necessary? I find it interesting that the model in the ad is surreptitiously looking through some blinds, but you aren't shown who he's spying on. I imagined he was spying on vegans and antiwar protesters, but I got the feeling you were supposed to imagine him spying on "terror cells" made up of brown people.

I wonder what the courses are in the Homeland Security degree program. Gestapo 101?
Advanced Police State Tactics 403? False Flag 311 with a controlled demolitions lab? Do they have a "summer abroad" program at Guantanamo Bay?

Where could graduates of this program even find work? I'm guessing private "security firms" like Blackwater. Because that's what America needs--a bunch of goons validated with an online degree selling their "security" to the highest bidder. Yeah, that's gonna be a big help.

IRAN: ANYTHING SEEM "FISHY" ABOUT THIS TO YOU?

Does this sound like a fisherman to you? The following sentence is attributed in quotes to a "fisherman":

"Two boats, each with a crew of six to eight multinational forces, were searching Iraqi and Iranian boats Friday morning in Ras al-Beesha area in the northern entrance of the Arab Gulf, but big Iranian boats came and took the two boats with their crews to the Iranian waters."

Here's the account of who the "fisherman" is and how he came to tell the official story in one detailed yet concise sentence:

"A fisherman who said he was with a group of Iraqis from the southern city of Basra fishing in Iraqi waters in the northern area of the Gulf said he saw the Iranian seizure. The fisherman, reached by telephone by an AP reporter in Basra, declined to be identified because of security concerns."

Does that seem the least bit, um, fishy to anyone else?



Border incidents

"Border incidents" are the perfect way to start illegal wars. Especially when the border is disputed! They're a perfect excuse for starting wars! Look how effectively they were used to start the Mexican War, the Israel-Lebanon War of last year, WWII (the Gleiwitz incident--Operation Himmler), and so forth and so on.

When we will frigging learn?

TOYS I WON'T BE BUYING/CREEPING FASCISM...




Also, I've been meaning to put these up for a while. This is a reminder of how the "threat" of "terr-ists" is always with us, even (especially?) at the credit union (posted at the main desk):















Notice how the connection is made between them maintaining records of IDs and "protecting our country." In other words, ve vill need to see your PAPERS!


There was another picture (that was too blurry) of a sign in the credit union lobby that said "Goodbye Float--Hello Check 21" and went on to talk about how the banking system was all fucked up after 9/11 so they had to tighten the reins on customers like you and like me! Hooray!

DOES BUSH THINK CONGRESS IS IRAN?

Here's Bush, telling Congress that his offer to let Rove and Miers be "interviewed" without oaths or notetaking is a "reasonable" offer:

"If the Democrats truly do want to move forward and find the right information, they ought to accept what I proposed," Bush said. "If scoring political points is the desire, then the rejection of this reasonable proposal will really be evident for the American people to see."

Bush is doing his opposite game! He knows very well that his offer is unreasonable, just like he did when he tried to get Iran to fall for his "reasonable" offer to get them to stop enriching uranium:

VIENNA (Reuters) - President Bush said on Wednesday Iran's plan to reply by late August to a big power offer of incentives to halt nuclear work was "an awful
long time for a reasonable answer".

"It should not take the Iranians that long to analyze what is a reasonable deal," Bush told a news conference after talks with European Union leaders in Vienna.

"It shouldn't take the Iranians that long to analyze what is a reasonable deal. I said weeks, not months. I believe that's what the other partners (say too)," he added, referring to Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.

Iran knew better than to accept Bush's bad faith deal--they told him to go fuck himself.

Will the Democrats have the same courage as Iran?

God, I hope so. This has the potential to bring down Bush's entire house of cards. Fingers crossed!

LIE BY LIE, or THIS WAR IS OLDER THAN MY SON

I've been doing battle on the forums today, so I'll post something from there. I can't let the 4th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war go by without comment, so here is one of my posts from today in response to a poster who said that Democrats also said Iraq was a threat:

"Bush pulled a fast one on the Congress and on America--he kept saying that Saddam must disarm while UNMOVIC was simultaneously demonstrating that Saddam had in fact disarmed.

The Blix report on March 7, 2003 contained these statements (interestingly enough, that was also the day that the head of the IAEA announced that the documents alleging Iraq's dealing with Niger were forgeries and that no Iraqi nuclear weapons or program had been found):

"No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found." (This was in reference to the accusation that WMD were moved around on trucks.)

"No underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage were found so far."

"There is a significant Iraqi effort underway to clarify a major source of uncertainty as to the quantities of biological and chemical weapons, which were unilaterally destroyed in 1991."

"In this [verifying the destruction of chem/bio weapons], as in other matters, inspection work is moving on and may yield results."

And the part Bush least wanted to hear:

"While cooperation can and is to be immediate, disarmament and at any rate the verification of it cannot be instant. Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items, analyse documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It would not take years, nor weeks, but months."

------------------------------
So Blix was saying that the Iraqis were cooperating, the inspectors weren't finding anything, and that they'd need more time to actually verify disarmament (inspections had only restarted on 11/27/02).

And that's what Bush didn't want to happen--after all, he'd already cooked up the war, put the troops in place, put his con job over on the Congress and the public--the last thing he wanted was for UNMOVIC to confirm what Kay and Duelfer later found, which was that Iraq had in fact disarmed after the Gulf War and had no WMD or programs to produce them.

HOWEVER, even as late as March 16, 2003, Bush was still suggesting that military action against Iraq was not a given when asked point-blank, "Aren't we going to war?":

"Tomorrow is the day that we will determine whether or not diplomacy can work."

And the 17th was the day that the US, UK and Spain abandoned the attempt to get the UN to ratify the war. It was, surely by sheer coincidence, also the day that Bush announced that Saddam had 48 hours to leave Iraq.

Bush pulled a fast one, implying to the very end that war wasn't inevitable. Very good Iraq war timeline called "Lie By Lie" here."

9/11: FIRES AND COVER-UPS

Commenter LarryG comments on my comments about his comment...

Larry takes exception to the idea that fire was not the cause of the WTC collapses. He points out that "full tanks of jet fuel were burning inside these buildings at temperatures higher than normal building fires." To that I say: 1) bollocks and 2) there were no full tanks of jet fuel burning inside WTC 7. Because no plane hit WTC 7.

The WTC tower fires didn't burn anywhere near as long as the Windsor Tower in Madrid did in 2005. The Windsor Tower burned for 24 hours and even though some floors collapsed, a crane remained on the roof of the building. In contrast, the South Tower was hit at 9:03 and collapsed less than an hour later at 9:59--and it fell in less than 30 seconds.

Not only that, but there had been a fire in the North Tower in 1975 that burned for 3 hours (three times as long as the South Tower on 9/11!) and spread over the majority of the 11th floor and into the core but no serious structural damage was done. This fire burned in excess of 700 degrees C.

The twin towers did not collapse due to fire--it was a controlled demolition.

LarryG argues that setting up a controlled demolition in the WTC buildings would require the permission and foreknowledge of "the ENTIRE government." He also feels that the cover-up of the crime would require the cooperation of a "massive" amount of people. To which I say, maybe--or maybe not.

As an example of how sneaky our government can be, we heard Valerie Plame testify today about the lengths to which the CIA would go to make her appear to do something other than what she did:

"The CIA goes to great lengths to protect all of its employees, providing at significant taxpayers' expense, painstakingly devised and creative covers for its most sensitive staffers."

Is it not conceivable that the same "great lengths" could have been gone to in order to keep everyone involved in the 9/11 plot from knowing exactly what they were doing or knowing exactly what the final results of their actions would be and so forth?

Also, consider the Manhattan Project--it was worked on by thousands of scientists in many sites across the country, but even then vice-president Truman didn't know about it until he became President. Information can be compartmentalized and provided only on a need-to-know basis, and people that helped 9/11 along may not even be aware that they were involved. They were just doing their jobs.

9/11 IN CONTEXT

There was a comment--the only one, I might add--on my last post that I wanted to address. Just so you don't have to click away from here, here's the comment:

So, I guess that means the moon landings in '69 were fake as well...?

Are you suggesting that the Bush administration orchestrated the entire 9/11 disaster or that they were complicit in helping Al-Qaeda kill thousands of Americans?

What would be the benefit for Bush to do that? Surely the repercussions of being caught far outweigh the benefits of pulling off something like that...

I just don't get it...

I have never said that the Bush administration orchestrated the entire 9/11 disaster. I would not put it past the Bushies, but the only people who know who is responsible for 9/11 are the people who did it, and I am not one of them.

However, I think the argument the commenter makes about the cost-benefit analysis is not that strong. People are always doing things they'll suffer for if caught--that fact is almost what makes the deed even more delicious.

The Context Part

But anyway, here's why I have no problem believing that 9/11 was an inside job and why you shouldn't have a problem with it, either--governments always have and always will lie to get what they want, even if they kill their fellow citizens to get it. The United States government is no different.

Just because our grade school history books fail to mention things like the Top 10 False Flags That Changed The World doesn't mean those 10 things and many more like them never happened:

10. Nero, Christians, and the Great Fire of Rome
9. Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain
8. The Manchurian Incident
7. Secrets of the Reichstag Fire
6. Fake Invasion at Gleiwitz
5. The Myth of Pearl Harbor
4. Israeli Terrorist Cell Uncovered in Egypt
3. U.S.-Sponsored Terrorism: Operation Northwoods
2. Phantoms in the Gulf of Tonkin
1. The September 11, 2001 Attacks

Remember how they started a war almost exactly 4 years ago because they said there were WMD in Iraq? And remember how we knew before the war that wasn't true because UN inspectors went to every site the U.S. told them to go to and found nothing? And then remember how we went to war with Iraq anyway because somehow not finding WMD proved their existence? And remember how we're still there, wasting lives and money?

Most people who buy the official 9/11 story are probably skeptical about a lot of other things. There are a lot of liberals who cling to the official story but despise Bush and his war and his policies in general. And that's what I don't get--why question everything except 9/11?

Forget about the question of whether Bush did it--we can't answer that because we don't have enough information. But we do have some very simple, Occam's Razor-type facts in play concerning 9/11:

1. The WTC collapses all looked exactly like controlled demolitions
2. The second tower hit was the first to fall--i.e., it burned for a shorter period of time yet fell more quickly
3. No modern, steel-reinforced building before or since 9/11 has ever collapsed due to fire
4. Reporters were given foreknowledge of the collapse of at least WTC 7
5. Larry Silverstein admitted that he had WTC 7 demolished or "pulled"

And on and on. Put two and two together--just getting the facts doesn't mean that you hate Bush or hate America. It doesn't necessarily mean that George Bush pressed the buttons that pulled the buildings down. The facts mentioned above don't prove that the Bush administration had anything to do with it--they just prove that all the destruction was not caused by the planes that hit the buildings. Don't forget that WTC 7 wasn't even hit by a plane!

9/11 OFFICIAL CONSPIRACY THEORY: THE "CONFESSION" OF KSM

The headline of this Yahoo story says it all: "9/11 mastermind confesses in Guantanamo." Sean Hannity would confess to being gay if, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he'd been tortured in secret CIA prisons and "Gitmo" for the last 4 years.

I don't know why the Feds are even worried about trying to convince the public that 9/11 wasn't an inside job of some sort. Everyone knows we tortured a "confession" out of KSM--it doesn't prove anything. The World Trade Center buildings were brought down by controlled demolition--that much is clear, and I kinda doubt KSM had anything to do with that.

WHY THEY REALLY HATE US

Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit (now dismantled) and author of "Imperial Hubris", has been lauded by Justin Raimondo for a long time. I had read a few pieces of his and a few interviews with him, but what he said yesterday on the Sam Seder show was absolutely right on. He laid out what was wrong with American intertwining foreign and domestic policy with a clarity and succintness that one doesn't hear very often.

I'm going to transcribe a few of his comments below...

SS: How does, as a whole, the Iraq endeavor [i.e., the war] affect our safety in this regard? I mean, is this genuinely the central front in the "war on terror?" If we weren't "there" [in Iraq] would that free them up to attack us in the United States?

MS: No, I think that's kind of a canard that's been used by a lot of people...What Iraq has done to make it more dangerous for us is to accelerate the transition of bin Laden and al Qaeda into "bin Laden-ism" and "al Qaeda-ism." Instead of a man and an organization, we now have a philosophy and a movement...

...What we did by invading Iraq was to successfully accomplish the definition for a defensive jihad in Islam--an infidel power invading a Muslim country without provocation and then occupying it. It is something that lifts the onus from bin Laden in the sense of him calling the jihad because so many now well-credentialed clerics have said "Yes, we have to fight a jihad against the Americans because of Iraq...

SS: So it's almost as if he [bin Laden] no longer has to make the case, we're making the case for him...

MS:We've very much validated his argument, sir.

If anyone asks what we're doing wasting, yes wasting, American lives in Iraq, you can say that we are validating bin Laden's argument--we are proving his point. The "sleeping giant" is also very clumsy and slow-witted, as it turns out.

How to "embolden terrorists"

In other words, we are "emboldening terrorists" by continuing to occupy Iraq, not the other way around. The Boehners and the Liebermans of the War Party have it exactly backwards. But the pro-war crowd has really turned that truth on its head by continuously repeating that if we leave, we will look weak and like losers and terrorists will be heartened.

And the Boehners and Liebermans have it exactly backward on purpose--war is business and war is the health of the state, and right now business is the state and vice versa. Whatever the pro-war crowd warns will happen, the opposite will be true--and that's why they issue such warnings. They know that the insurgency is caused by our presence and would have no reason to exist if we left, so they say we can't leave because if we do, the insurgency will get worse.

And such pronouncements make sense on the surface, especially to Fox News watchers who don't have a clear understanding of the way we were lied into war in the first place.

Anyway, back to Scheuer and Seder, because the best is yet to come...

MS: ...When you claim you've killed 2/3 of the leadership of al Qaeda, it's both true and irrelevant. Al Qaeda is an insurgent organization that grew up in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets. It always makes plans to replace its leadership. That's one of the main activities they engage in is preparing for leadership losses. And so every time we kill or capture a senior leader, whoever replaces him has been an understudy...

I'm not sure that what any of what we're fighting is "terrorism." I can tell you, at least from the intelligence officer's perspective, if al Qaeda was a terrorist group, the CIA would have destroyed it before 9/11. It's an insurgent organization that's spread worldwide and the president keeps saying "We're gonna arrest them one person at a time"--we're never gonna get the job done that way. They're really more insurgents than they are terrorists and by calling them "terrorists" I'm afraid the American people have not gotten a clear view of the danger that threatens our country.

Insurgents, not terrorists

Exactly, al Qaeda are insurgents, not terrorists. That means if we don't fuck with them, they don't fuck with us. But as has always been the case, the label of "terrorist" is misused on purpose to conceal the racket of war. To call someone a terrorist is to try to de-legitimize, marginalize, and de-sympathize (and de-empathize) with the person or group so labeled.

OK, a little more, and saving the best for last:

SS: What does it mean that [al Qaeda] is a worldwide insurgency as opposed to being a terrorist organization?

MS: A terrorist organization by definition has to be a small organization that's very tightly compartmented...what we're looking at is, from southern Thailand to Chechnya to Afghanistan to Kashmir to the Philippines are a number of localized Islamist insurgencies, most of them driven by local grievances. But, bin Laden has been, by the impact of our foreign policy in the Islamic world, able to focus some section of each of those insurgencies against the Americans. And so we're facing threats on virtually every continent and ones we're just not equipped over the long run to defeat.

The Crux of The Biscuit

MS: Partially we're in a hole of our own making because for the last 15 years--at least--our presidents and policymakers in both parties have told the American people that "they hate us because of our freedoms and liberties and gender equality and R-rated movies" and that has almost nothing to do with this war.

The reason bin Laden has been able to focus these Islamist insurgents on the United States is because of the impact of what our government does in the Muslim world.

SS: Specifically...

MS: Our ability to keep oil prices low, our support for Israel, our military presence on the Arabian peninsula, our presence now in Iraq and Yemen and Afghanistan. Probably most painful for the United States is our support for tyranny across the Arab world. The really spectacular hypocrisy between urging democracy in one place and supporting the al-Saud tyranny in Saudia Arabia is not lost, even on illiterate people.

SS: So what needs to be done at this point?

MS: Well, we're slowly turning into Israel at the moment. Because our leaders have lied about the motivation of the enemy, we are left with military and intelligence operations to defend ourselves. Once--if they ever get to the point, and I don't think it will occur until we get attacked again inside of this country--once they get to the point and say, "Well listen, these people are motivated not by the nonsense of R-rate movies and draft beer but by the fact that we're doing things in their part of the world," we can begin to discuss whether the policies we have and have had for the past thirty years are protecting America.

MS: Especially energy--everything is tied to energy. As long as we are dependent, and our allies are dependent on oil that comes out of the Persian Gulf, we are gonna have to support tyranny across the Arab world. And that keeps us locked--it leaves us with no options.

...We are not the main target of these people [al Qaeda and the worldwide insurgency]. What they've decided is that the tyrannies that rule the Arab world and Israel surive only because of the support of the United States. Whether or not that's true, that's their strategy. They believe that we're so much softer than the Israelis or the Egyptians or the Saudis, that they can drive us out of the area through economic damage to our country. And so we're not even the main target--we're just simply in the way of what they want to accomplish.

He said a few more things, but above are the things that just really caught my ear when I was listening to the podcast today. I'm exhausted...good night!

DON'T FALL FOR IRAN PROPAGANDA

That was the headline they came up with for my letter to the editor that was printed today in the Hattiesburg American. I'll post it as published with the parts they edited out in italics...

Don't fall for Iran propaganda

The Bush administration is gearing up for an attack on Iran on the grounds that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon and that Iran is "meddling" with our meddling in Iraq.

However, our own intelligence agencies have stated that Iran will not be able to produce nuclear weapons before 2015 if at all. Iran says its uranium enrichment is for peaceful purposes, and they are entitled to pursue this course under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which they are a signatory.


In the past two weeks, the U.S. has produced supposed evidence that Iran is providing insurgents in Iraq with weapons that only Iranians can produce. However, this supposed "evidence" falls apart under the slightest scrutiny [as the weapons use devices readily available at Radio Shack or similar electronics stores and copper discs that can be produced by anyone with the proper machine tools].

Various administration officials have stated that the United States has no plans for war with Iran and no plans to attack Iran. However, so far we have moved at least two aircraft carrier groups into the Persian Gulf which would provide us easy access to Iran.

There is no reason for us to have a military confrontation with Iran - they pose no threat to us. Iran even tried to enter into negotiations with the Bush administration in 2003 but their overtures were ignored. A war with Iran would be a disaster for our country and the Middle East, indeed, for the whole world.

We must act to stop the war with Iran before it starts. Then it will be used as an excuse to keep it going so as to save face and not "embolden terrorists." [This was originally one sentence which read: We must act to stop the war with Iran before it starts, because if and when it starts, the fact that it has started will be used as an excuse to keep it going so as to save face and not “embolden terrorists” and so forth.] I hope that everyone will urge their friends and family not to fall for administration propaganda designed to take us into another war to divert attention away from the current illegal and immoral war in Iraq.

Clinton Kirby

Hattiesburg

Nice editing job--can't complain too much. I wish the copper disc and Radio Shack parts had been left in, but that's okay...

OFFICIAL 9/11 STORY IMPLODING LIKE WTC 7

I can't say this better than the guys at Prison Planet, who have done great job of investigating 9/11 in general and the "clairvoyance" of the BBC and CNN concerning their early announcement that WTC 7 would collapse or had collapsed.





Here's a quick rundown:

Someone found footage of a BBC World News reporter reporting live from New York on 9/11. As she is reporting that WTC 7 has already collapsed, the building is in fact still visible over her left shoulder. WTC 7 did not actually fall until between 20 and 30 minutes later.

CNN's Aaron Brown also announced that WTC 7 "has collapsed or is collapsing" a full hour before it actually happened. And WTC 7 was clearly visible behind him as well.

Loose Change

WTC 7 was the main thing that convinced me that 9/11 was inside job after I watched "Loose Change." I didn't really know much about its collapse before watching the documentary, but it's clear the official story about 9/11 or WTC 7 is true when you extrapolate from the uniform collapse of WTC 7 neatly into its own footprint and from Silverstein's comments that he had it "pulled." After all, there is no way to set up a controlled demolition the same day one decides to bring a building down, so if Silverstein had the building "pulled" on 9/11, that necessarily means the building had been set with explosives prior to 9/11.

And now that it has come out that both CNN and the BBC reported WTC 7's collapse 20 minutes to an hour in advance of the building actually coming down, it's perfectly clear that the building did not collapse unexpectedly, to say the least.

How could anyone alert news outlets that a building was going to collapse at least 30 minutes in advance of its collapse unless that event was already planned?