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.

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?

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!

BRZEZINSKI: "A PLAUSIBLE SCENARIO" FOR STARTING WAR WITH IRAN

The most important part of this video starts at 54 seconds in (partial transcript below):



Transcript:

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

He's talking about something like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Operation Northwoods, or even 9/11--flimsy pretexts at best and false-flag operations at worst--but this time we "do" Iran. And Republicans and even a lot of Democrats will come out to tell us exactly what happened even though it won't be quite clear just what went down. The official story/conventional wisdom about evil, aggressive Iran attacking the poor, well-meaning United States will harden into stone and be pumped 24 hours a day through every possible medium, making anyone questioning what happened seem disloyal, unpatriotic, treasonous, insane, or all of those.

However, it will then come out in 20 or 30 years, just like in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, that, well, what do you know--they played the public for suckers and got a lot of people killed and it turns out that the pretext the whole thing was based on didn't even happen or didn't happen at all like they said it did. When will we learn?

RICE DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH

Rice says "We're not planning to attack Iran." That can mean one (or all) of five things:

1. "We" are planning to attack Iran. Remember the Bush administration's tendency toward "oppositism."
2. We are have already planned to attack Iran, but not currently doing so at the time of this response of hers
3. We are provoking Iran, just not planning to attack them.
4. We are planning on going to full-scale war with them, not simply "attack" them.
5. We are orchestrating a false-flag attack that we can use an excuse to go to war with Iran.

With this statement of Rice's and the "we're not planning a war with Iran" statement a few days ago of Robert Gates, the Bushies are protesting too much, methinks. But the question Rice responded to fulfills one of my wishes from a while back. I just wish this question had been asked way back then...

She denies seeing the 2003 fax from the Iranians about wanting to open a dialogue with the US about everything from their nuclear program to recognition of Israel. Of course, she also couldn't imagine that anyone would use planes as weapons, even though that had been raised by the government over and over again as a distinct possibility.