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CounterPunch
November
1, 2002
Into the
Dark
The Pentagon Plan to Provoke Terrorist Attacks
by CHRIS FLOYD
This age: layers of lime harden in the
sick son's blood... There's nowhere to run from the tyrant-epoch...
Who else will you kill? Who else glorify? What other lies will
you invent?
Osip Mandelshtam,
"1 January 1924"
This column stands foursquare with the Honorable
Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, when he warns
that there will be more terrorist attacks against the
American people and civilization at large. We know, as does the
Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, that
this statement is an incontrovertible fact, a matter of scientific
certainty. And how can we and the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld,
U.S. Secretary of Defense, be so sure that there will be more
terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization
at large?
Because these attacks will be instigated
at the order of the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary
of Defense.
This astonishing admission was buried
deep in a story which was itself submerged by mounds of gray
newsprint and glossy underwear ads in last Sunday's Los Angeles
Times. There--in an article by military analyst William Arkin,
detailing the vast expansion of the secret armies being massed
by the former Nixon bureaucrat now lording it over the Pentagon--came
the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence
Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and
military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and
cover and deception."
According to a classified document prepared
for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization--the
"Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)"--will
carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions"
among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent
acts which would then expose them to "counterattack"
by U.S. forces.
In other words--and let's say this plainly,
clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention
of Rumsfeld's plan--the United States government is planning
to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations
to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's
say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and
the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan
to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people--your family,
your friends, your lovers, you--in order to further their geopolitical
ambitions.
For P2OG is not designed solely to flush
out terrorists and bring them to justice--a laudable goal in
itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by
causing it is pure moral lunacy. (Or should we use the Regime's
own preferred terminology and just call it "evil"?)
No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they
have sparked terrorists into action--by killing their family
members? luring them with loot? fueling them with drugs? plying
them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or with
agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then
plan and direct the attacks themselves?--they can then take measures
against the "states/sub-state actors accountable" for
"harboring" the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of
measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts
it this way: "Their sovereignty will be at risk."
The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy
whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate
or a new military base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio.
Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick,
and presto: instant "justification" for whatever level
of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire. And what if
the territory you fancy doesn't actually harbor any convenient
marauders to use for fun and profit? Well, surely a God-like
"super-Intelligence Support Activity" is capable of
creation ex nihilo, yes?
The Rumsfeld-Bush plan to employ murder
and terrorism for political, financial and ideological gain does
have historical roots (besides al Qaeda, the Stern Gang, the
SA, the SS, the KGB, the IRA, the UDF, Eta, Hamas, Shining Path
and countless other upholders of Bushian morality, decency and
freedom). We refer of course to Operations Northwoods, oft mentioned
in these pages: the plan that America's top military brass presented
to President John Kennedy in 1963, calling for a phony terrorist
campaign--complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and
dead Americans--to provide "justification" for an invasion
of Cuba, the Mafia/Corporate fiefdom which had recently been
lost to Castro.
Kennedy rejected the plan, and was killed
a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods,
but on a far grander scale, with resources at his disposal undreamed
of by those brass of yore, with no counterbalancing global rival
to restrain him--and with an ignorant, corrupt president who
has shown himself all too eager to embrace any means whatsoever
that will augment the wealth and power of his own narrow, undemocratic,
elitist clique.
There is prestuplyeniye here,
transgression, a stepping-over--deliberately, with open eyes,
with forethought, planning, and conscious will--of lines that
should never be crossed. Acting in deadly symbiosis with rage-maddened
killers, God-crazed ranters and those supreme "sub-state
actors," the mafias, Bush and his cohorts are plunging the
world into an abyss, an endless night of black ops, retribution,
blowback, deceit, of murder and terror--wholesale, retail, state-sponsored,
privatized; of fear and degradation, servility, chaos, and the
perversion of all that's best in us, of all that we've won from
the bestiality of our primal nature, all that we've raised above
the mindless ravening urges and impulses still boiling in the
mud of our monkey brains.
It's not a fight for freedom; it's a
retreat into darkness.
And the day will be a long time coming.
Chris Floyd
is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor
to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
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