Clash of Civilizations

The Hate Mongers Among Us – Part 3: The Use of Pliable and Reliable Assets to Advance a Narrative

Many of America’s most prominent political leaders were induced to comment on “International Burn A Koran Day”—a high profile provocation proposed by a Christian-Zionist preacher with a small congregation in a small town in Florida.

When U.S. General David Petraeus spoke out against the proposal, the issue immediately gained an international profile as did Pastor Terry Jones who quickly became an international celebrity.

One need not dig deep to identify who may have advised General Petraeus to grant a global profile to a provocation consistent with Israeli goals for the region.

In March, as head of Central Command, Petraeus offered testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee confirming facts that have long been obvious but are seldom mentioned: our “special relationship” with Israel and its oppressive occupation of Palestine undermine U.S. interests in the Middle East and endanger American personnel. Read it for yourself:

“The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests… Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the [region] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas….”

Petraeus is often spoken of as a potential Republican presidential candidate. Thus the chagrin among some in Washington when this high profile military leader appeared to curry favor with Max Boot, a former Wall Street Journal op-ed editor and outspoken Zionist. In an apparent attempt to soften the candor of his written testimony before the Senate, he wrote to Boot:

“Does it help if folks know that I hosted Elie Wiesel and his wife at our quarters last Sun night?!  And that I will be the speaker at?the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps in mid-Apr at the Capitol Dome…”

Boot wrote back to assure him that those comments were not necessary as Petraeus had not been described as anti-Semitic. Boot then posted a pro-Petraeus piece on the website for Commentary, a neoconservative publication, assuring readers that the general is not anti-Israel and dismissing his anti-Israel comments as inserted by staff in his statement—that Petraeus reviewed.

The Supporting Cast

After General Petraeus, now senior commander in Afghanistan, created a high profile for the Burn-A-Koran controversy, comments were offered by Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. With that, the provocation went viral.

These fuel-the-fire comments were followed by a personal appeal to Pastor Jones in a phone call from Defense Secretary Robert Gates that also went viral.

As any game theorist could predict, even the possibility of such a psy-ops (a Koran book burning) was guaranteed to galvanize anti-American sentiments and catalyze anti-American demonstrations. As the book burning gained steadily more profile, this provocation increased the probability of catalyzing long-lasting anti-American sentiments.

This stunt bears a remarkable resemblance to a Newsweek story alleging that a U.S. soldier flushed a Koran down the toilet. Though that May 2005 account by Michael Isikoff was later withdrawn in substantial part, its publication provoked an earlier well-timed response by setting off anti-American demonstrations in Muslim countries worldwide.

At first, the story gained only scant attention. That muted response changed dramatically when Pakistani cricket star Imran Khan gave Isikoff’s story an international profile by announcing from Islamabad that American military personnel had desecrated a holy Islamic text.

That’s when this Clash of Civilizations-catalyzing, U.S.-discrediting account went viral. In practical effect, Khan’s celebrity was appropriated to associate the U.S. military with conduct similar in its psy-ops effect to the profile given an American proposing to burn a Koran.

Newsweek was recently acquired by Sidney Harman, the husband of California Congresswoman Jane Harman, the Jewish Zionist chair of the Intelligence Subcommittee of the House Committee on Homeland Security. At the time of this provocation, Newsweek was a magazine affiliate of The Washington Post newspaper, an influential opinion-shaping newspaper based in the nation’s capital.

In the annals of “field-based warfare,” the Koran-flushing story will go down in history as a classic psy-ops for its success in targeting the minds of a built-in audience outside the U.S.—cricket fans—as a vulnerable and receptive shared field of consciousness.

When the high-profile Imran Khan described the alleged incident as factual, this operation transcended the literacy barrier as it provoked Muslims who did not even need to read in order to be reached—and provoked.

And because the story targeted cricket fans, its impact was disastrous to Americans while also remaining invisible to America where cricket is neither a well known activity nor a widely played sport.

In what passes for mainstream American media, the Isikoff story was called news. In national security parlance, the well-timed launch of that provocative storyline is called tactical psy-ops. So far, the Koran-burning story is being attributed solely to the whims of a southern preacher.

Stay tuned. It may be only a coincidence that Jones was a high school classmate of Rush Limbaugh, America’s most provocative radio talk show host.

Information Age Warfare

If this sounds familiar, it should. You may recall when the wartime role played by global media became apparent in the Clash-catalyzing “cartoon riots” that swept the world in February 2006. That reaction followed the publication in France, Germany, Italy and Spain of graphic images of the prophet Muhammad that first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September 2005.

Citing free speech as the rationale, cultural editor Flemming Rose published a compilation of cartoons certain to be seen by Muslims as blasphemous, including one featuring Muhammad with a bomb in place of a turban.

An Ashkenazi native of Ukraine, Rose worked as a reporter for five years in Moscow during the oligarchi-zation of Russia. As his contribution to that nationwide fraud, he translated into Danish a fawning 1990 autobiography (Against the Stream) of presidential candidate Boris Yeltsin whose administration enabled the wildly successful financial pillaging of Russia.

Six of the top seven Russian oligarchs were Ashkenazim who qualified for Israeli citizenship.

Rose’s career tracks the trajectory of a typical media asset. After Russia, he relocated to Washington, D.C. Again employed as a journalist, he traveled to China with Bill Clinton before returning to Moscow to work for Jyllands-Posten, a rightwing Danish publication known for its anti-immigrant news fare.

Before catalyzing the cartoon crisis, Rose published a flattering interview with the Islam-bashing Daniel Pipes who heads Campus Watch. This organization monitors, disrupts and seeks to intimidate pro-Palestinian speakers when they accept invitations to speak at U.S. colleges.

Pipes is the neoconservative, Jewish-Zionist son of “Team B” leader Richard Pipes a Polish emigre. Team B was a 1976 alternative intelligence assessment whose success with phony intelligence during the presidency of Gerald Ford (when G.H.W. Bush was C.I.A. Director) informed those who fixed the intelligence that enabled the U.S. to segue seamlessly from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism during the presidency of G.W. Bush.

After the promotion of Rose to cultural editor and publication of the provocative cartoons, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer featured Pipes on The Situation Room. By showcasing Pipes, Blitzer ensured the airwaves would carry his anti-Islam interpretation of the Rose-catalyzed, media-fueled crisis.

Blitzer elected not to inform the viewers of CNN (“the most trusted name in news”) that he (Blitzer) served as an editor of Near East Report, the Israel lobby’s in-house journal, or that he spent 17 years with The Jerusalem Post, or that he published a sympathetic book on Israeli super-spy Jonathan Pollard who did more than anyone in history to damage U.S. national security.

The ensuing crisis cost many lives while the reaction to that provocation consumed the public’s attention and polarized public opinion internationally. Appearing on television, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used the crisis to criticize Iran and Syria, adding American credibility and military authority to stoke The Clash of Civilizations as the post-Cold War narrative.

Overall, the response heightened tensions and made an attack on Iran appear more reasonable as scenes of widespread outrage by Muslims fueled Islamo-phobia in the West. To escape the media scrutiny, Rose fled to the U.S. where he vacationed in Miami.

Timing is Everything

The usual suspects stepped into the fray in support of Pastor Terry Jones’ First Amendment right to further outrage an already outraged Muslim population for whom the Koran is a sacred text.

Supporting cast for the Jones stunt included New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg who chose an annual Iftar dinner at Gracie Mansion to cite the U.S. Constitution in support of this provocation. Likewise for New York Times columnist Charles Blow whose prominently placed op-ed on September 11^th urged that “great American debates” should not be “tempered for terrorists.”

National security may (at long last) be catching on to how those complicit in these psy-ops use our guaranteed freedoms (of speech, press, religion, etc.) to undermine our freedom. It’s no coincidence that those most concerned about domestic eavesdropping by national security are drawn from the same ranks as those complicit in this ongoing manipulation of public opinion.

The high profile nature of this latest 911 anniversary ensured that agent provocateurs would use the event to keep hate alive. The day prior, President Obama urged that Israel extend its “temporary partial freeze” on settlements for the sake of sustaining the peace talks.

Meanwhile Jewish Zionist Pamela Zeller sponsored a speech at Ground Zero by Dutch politician Geert Wilders who likens the Koran to Mein Kampf. A staunch supporter of Israel, Wilders is known for his incendiary speeches with a strong anti-Islam theme.

Geller, a disciple of Russian philosopher Ayn Rand (Alisa Rosenbaum), advocates measures to “Stop Islamization of America.” She emphasizes the role of Barack Obama in doing the bidding of “Islamic overlords” in what she calls “The Obama Administration’s War on America.”

An outspoken Jewish Zionist, Geller urges that Israel “give up nothing.” A regular commentator on Zionist-dominated media outlets (CNN, Fox News, The Washington Post, The New York Times), she insists that Israel should “take back Gaza” and “secure Judea and Samaria”—better known as the West Bank, the key area of contention on expansion of the settlements.

Geller is also a driving force behind anti-Islam hate groups working to scuttle plans for an Islamic  Cultural Center two blocks from the 911 site. Allied with others in the hate campaign, she was among the first in November 2009 to describe the shootings on Fort Hood, Texas as a “Muslim terror attack.”

Next: Staying on message to advance the narrative.

Clash of Civilizations

Is Pakistan the Next Evil Doer?

Who was surprised to find Pakistan associated with a “significant terrorist event” in New York? Was anyone surprised that this “car bomb” incident occurred in the same city as the last significant event? Or that news reports promptly featured the Taliban of Pakistan?

Who labeled it a significant terrorist event?  A “security analyst” with IntelCenter.  Visit the site and remember the old adage: Best Story Wins.

Was this a genuine terrorist event? Or was this an agent provocateur operation meant to freshen up a stale storyline: the Global War on Terrorism?

Remember the “Christmas Day Bomber”? Were you surprised to find that “significant terrorist event” was an Israeli operation? Or have you not yet realized its source? See Christmas Day Crotch Bomber Tied to Israel, FBI

Was anyone surprised at the post-event surge in the market value of firms that produce body-scanning equipment? Or that Israel is an industry leader?

Who was surprised to learn that the industry is represented by the law firm of former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff?

If none of this surprises you, read no further because you already have a grip on reality.

For everyone else, please reflect on the seductive fictions that induced us to invade Iraq. And recall the central role played by mainstream media in that successful deceit.

Facts are only valued by those who value a system of law based on facts.

Yet many of us were seduced to become True Believers in what we now know was phony intelligence that took us to war—based on that phony intelligence.

War By Deception

What are the facts of this latest “significant terrorist event”? Was this just a ruse? We don’t yet know. What we know is this: it fits a pattern of displacing facts with beliefs.

The facts are not the point. From a psy-ops perspective, the point is this: notice the impact of this event on what youbelieve to be true. Do you now associate Pakistan with Evil Doing?

What other associations came to mind? When you heard about possible Islamic terrorists in New York, did Iran come to mind? Did fear of a nuclear “event” come to mind?

Regardless of the facts, impressions were created along with mental associations, however subtle. Once again the public’s shared mind space was awash with Muslim Evil Doers.

Who better than the “Taliban of Pakistan” to advance the 911 narrative? The Taliban is Evil. Pakistan is Muslim. Therefore….

Did The Clash of Civilizations come to mind? Islamo-fascism? Images of Osama bin Laden?

What better way to sustain the narrative—regardless of the facts—than an “event” in Manhattan? As with the Crotch Bomber, the profile given the incident reinforces the need for a pricey and highly profitable Global War on Terrorism.

Facts are irrelevant. To advance the narrative is the point. Who better to portray as evil than nuclear-armed Pakistan?

We Americans are not known for our fluency in geography. But we know Pakistan is a neighbor of Iran who—we are constantly assured—is a certified Evil Doer and habitual Holocaust Denier with an agenda of nuclear terrorism.

Again, the facts are beside the point. The storyline is everything.

What’s a Storyteller to Do?

What happens when a storyline grows ragged around the edges? As the last Evil Doer narrative played out, we found ourselves watching on television the end of a storyline as Saddam Hussein, a former ally, dropped through a Baghdad gallows at the end of a rope.

While there’s no doubt he was an Evil Doer, he did not do the evil claimed as the rationale for war: Iraqi WMD, ties to Al Qaeda, mobile biological weapons laboratories, yellowcake uranium from Niger and so forth.

None of it was true.

Never mind. Let’s move on. Hit the reset button and gird your groins for the next Evil Doer. Iran would be nice but Pakistan will do in a pinch.

To punish a genuine Evil Doer would require that we hang those who fabricated the intelligence that induced us to war in Iraq on false pretenses.

To indict and prosecute those Evil Doers would also help restore U.S. national security. Dispatching more Americans to kill more Muslims seems unlikely to achieve that goal.

To convict and execute genuine Evil Doers requires that we do what the 911 Commission members implied: open a new investigation. Americans don’t yet know how this significant terrorist event succeeded. Nor do we know bywhom it was orchestrated. Or why.

With the storyline going stale, Americans are ready for the real facts to displace the report’s many fictions and glaring omissions—as conceded both by 911 Commission members and senior staff.

Those with a grip on reality will not be surprised if a good faith investigation uncovers the same transnational network of operatives as we found in the Crotch Bomber incident. We may find the same operatives at work in the shadows of this latest event.

All that’s required is a singular commitment: to follow the facts wherever they may lead. What a concept.

This time around our national security team is far more cautious. The White House press secretary aptly framed this latest provocation, conceding the Obama administration is “considering all possibilities regarding the motivation behind the bombing.”

One possibility is that this event was the work of the only nation with the requisite means, motivation and opportunity—plus the stable intelligence network—required to stage events such the Crotch Bomber attack and others too numerous to list.

That nation is not Pakistan. Nor is it Syria. Nor is Iran a possibility. However, don’t be surprised if someone uncovers an evidentiary trail pointing to Hezbollah and the Evil Doers of Iran. Or Pakistan.

For several analyses chronicling the “how” of such duplicity, see:

What’s Next From Israel – Entropy or Outrage?

When Will Israel Attack the U.S. – Again?

Can the U.S. Beat Israel at their Game?

Dual Loyalty Revisited

How Israel Wages War on the U.S.

How Israel Wages War in Plain Sight

How Israel Wages Game Theory Warfare

How the Israel Lobby Took Control of U.S. Foreign Policy

How Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal Endangers Us All

Was Israel Ever Legitimate?

A Common Enemy

Veterans Today chief editor Gordon Duff and I traveled to Pakistan in mid-February for ten days of briefings at the invitation of the Pakistani military. My 3-part message was simple:

1. Pakistan is being pre-staged as the next in a series of plausible Evil Doers. With traction slipping for an attack on Iran, Pakistan could well be next.
2. The U.S. was induced to invade Iraq on false pretenses. Pakistan is bearing much of the cost in blood and treasure.
3. We share a common enemy. Please be our friend and remind us who deceived us. Should you encounter any resistance, ask us: what part of this do you not yet understand?

I left behind several dozen copies of Guilt By Association – How Deception and Self Deceit Took America to War.

The invitation was triggered by a 7-part series that first appeared on Opinion-Maker.org, a Pakistani website where the first analysis generated 25,000 reads in the first 24 hours. See:What is Israel’s Role in the Destabilization of Pakistan?

Pakistanis did not seem to recall how long ago this guilt-by-association storyline began. Every story must have a beginning, a middle and an end.

This story began no later than October 10, 2001 when, one month after 911, two Israelis were arrested with guns and grenades inside the Mexican Congress. What passports were found on them? Answer: Pakistani.

Had that operation succeeded, would those passports have been left behind? Will an investigation of this latest incident uncover evidence that points to Pakistan?

Just prior to our departure for Lahore, Pakistan was routinely referenced on the front page of our national newspapers. Those reports included a high-profile account of the arrest of five young Muslim students from Virginia who flew to Pakistan, reportedly for training.

Two weeks prior to this latest “significant terrorist event,” Jewish-Zionist commentator Charles Krauthammer ridiculed President Obama for the outcome of a nuclear weapons conference convened in mid-April. Portraying the result as “nuke misdirection,” Krauthammer charged that the real concern should be Pakistan and, implied by association, Iran.

Two days prior to this incident, Khalid Khawaja was found dead in Pakistan. The Taliban took credit for the murder of this former Pakistani intelligence agent.

Reportedly he and a colleague were working to strike an accord between the Taliban and the Pakistani military as a means to stop the violence before a massive U.S.-Pakistan assault creates more violence and provokes, in response, more hatred of the U.S.

Preparing the Minds

Such “associative” news accounts typically precede “significant terrorist events.” Those events prepare the public to draw a conclusion announced soon after the event. Just four days after 911, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a Jewish Zionist, argued in a principal’s meeting at Camp David that the U.S. should invade Iraq even though Osama bin Laden was then thought to be the culprit and was hiding in caves in Afghanistan.

Our briefings in Pakistan were conducted largely for senior military leaders, including General Mirza Aslam Beg, former Pakistani Army chief. Included in that meeting was Sultan Amir Tarar (aka Colonel Imam) who has even stronger credibility with the Taliban than Khawaja with whom he was traveling. Colonel Imam’s fate is presently unknown.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Tarar ran CIA-funded camps for fighters resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Among his backers was the late U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson. Among his charges was Mohammad Omar who in the mid-1990s became leader of the Taliban.

Trained in guerrilla tactics as a U.S. Army Ranger at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Tarar was invited to the White House where he was presented a brick from the Berlin Wall by President George H.W. Bush. In recognition of his heroism and his commitment to freedom, the brick signified his role in helping defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan and bring down that wall.

Four days after our return from Pakistan, The New York Times ran a front page article that sought to discredit Colonel Imam by suggesting he was working against U.S. interests by working with the Taliban.

The facts suggest just the opposite: Colonel Imam worked with the Taliban in an attempt to broker a peace that would bring stability to the area—consistent with our interests—while also hastening an early exit of American troops, consistent with U.S. policy.

By derailing that mission, whose interests are advanced? As this analysis is published, it remains unclear whether Colonel Imam is dead or alive.

Nor is it clear who catalyzed this latest “significant terrorist event” that associated the Pakistani Taliban with Evil Doing. In truth, peace requires that we negotiate in good faith with those closest to the situation on the ground in an environment that has long proven a graveyard for foreign invaders.

If not Colonel Imam, who better to broker such a truce with the Taliban? If not, in effect, a U.S. trained Army Ranger with decades of on-the-ground experience, who does the U.S. have that could ease the withdrawal of U.S. troops from this environment?

If not Israel and its surrogates, who had the motivation to create yet another well timed round of impressions hostile to Pakistan? Whose interests are advanced by an event that advances the storyline: the need for a Global War on Terrorism against “Islamo” fascism?

We may yet be surprised when the facts surrounding this incident are clarified. The result, however, is no surprise. To restore U.S. national security requires a reality check. Who are our friends, who are our allies and who—really—is the enemy?

Clash of Civilizations

Today’s Ancient Warfare: Facts vs. Beliefs

In unconventional warfare, manipulated beliefs are used to displace inconvenient facts. When waging war by way of deception, false beliefs are an oft-deployed weapon.

Recall Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda? Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories? Iraqi meetings in Prague with Al Qaeda? Iraqi purchases of yellowcake uranium from Niger?

All these claims were reported as true. All were later proven false or, worse, fabricated. Yet all were widely believed. Only the yellowcake uranium was conceded as bogus before the invasion of Iraq. As the U.S. crafted its response to the provocation of a mass murder on U.S. soil, those widely shared beliefs shaped a consensus to wage war on a nation that had no hand in it.

A similar deception—traceable to the same source—is now working to expand this war to Iran. Based on fast-emerging events, the next conflict could include Pakistan.

The modern battlefield has shifted. Ground warfare is now secondary. Likewise air strikes, combat troops, naval support and even covert operations. Those physical operations are all downstream of information operations. Manipulated beliefs come first. Psyops precede bombs and bullets. Hardware ranks a distant third.

First and foremost are the consensus shapers and thought manipulators who target perceptions and opinions until a critical mass of agreement is reached. Then comes war. Those skilled at such duplicity induced coalition troops to war in Iraq. Knowledge was their target. Manipulate thought and all else was downstream.

Unconventional warfare is waged “upstream” with the assistance of those with the means, motive and opportunity to massage consensus opinion. Where are modern-day battles fought? Not on the ground nor in the air nor on the seas.

The mindset is the primary theater of operations. The first battlefield is the public’s shared field of consciousness. The death and destruction come later.

Deceit is not new to warfare. What’s new is the reach of the technologies—including modern media technologies—that now enable deception on a global scale

Military action remains subordinate to politics. Politics, in turn, are subordinate to those skilled at inducing consensus beliefs. Regardless whether command is civilian or military, decision-making is no better than the information on which decisions depend. That’s why the Israel lobby has long targeted U.S. lawmakers as a strategic force-multiplier by the Israel lobby. [See: “How the Israel Lobby Took Control of U.S. Foreign Policy”]

With lawmaking dependent on information, those skilled at the manipulation of knowledge can operate atop the chain of command. As a system of law reliant on informed choice, democracy can be dislodged in plain sight by those skilled at inducing a shared mindset—a consensus—by manipulating thought, belief and emotion.

Thus the strategic motivation for media dominance by the Masters of Deceit in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., Germany, India and other key nations that comprise the “coalition of the willing” induced to invade Iraq. Overlay media ownership with member states of this coalition and a common undisclosed bias becomes apparent.

When coordinated across four key areas, such “Information Operations” can displace informed decision-making with an undisclosed agenda. In retrospect, that systemic duplicity explains how the U.S. was deceived to lead this coalition to war in the Middle East. Here’s a brief look at each area: geopolitical, strategic, operational and tactical.

Duplicity in Plain Sight

The geopolitical realm is where the “framing” of future conflicts often first emerges. The Clash of Civilizations appeared in 1993 as an article in Foreign Affairs. When this premise was published as a book in 1996, more than 100 non-governmental organizations were prepared to promote its thematic conflict-of-opposites.

That agreed-to consensus facilitated the seamless transition from the Cold War to a perpetual Global War on Terrorism. Thus the fate of the post-Cold War “peace dividend.”

This widely shared mindset emerged just as A Clean Break appeared in print with its proposal for removing Saddam Hussein as part of a Colonial Zionist strategy for “securing the realm”—an expanded Greater Israel. Richard Perle, then a member of the U.S. Defense Policy Board, led the All-Ashkenazi team who prepared that 1996 report for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In 2001, Perle became chairman of the Pentagon’s policy board. Strategically, that’s a good example of working “upstream” to frame U.S national security issues around a preset agenda—for a foreign nation. Perle left the Board in February 2004 after 17 years of wielding insider influence. When your numbers are small but your ambitions large, what choice do you have but to wage war by way of deception?

Strategically, to evoke a new global war required a plausible Evil Doer linked to a credible provocation. The branding of the Taliban did not emerge in the “field” until March 2001 with their destruction of the ancient Buddhas at Bamiyan. Widely portrayed in mainstream media as a “cultural Holocaust,” that high-profile deed put Afghanistan’s previously obscure Taliban on a global Top-Ten list as certifiably evil.

The missing piece in marketing The Clash premise: the mass murder of September 11, 2001. Strongly provoked emotions, as with 9-11, facilitate the displacement of facts with what a targeted mindset can be induced to believe. That process was enhanced by the presence of a pre-staged Evil Doer and pre-staged intelligence that was flawed, false or outright fixed—but nevertheless widely reported as fact by mainstream media.

The capacity to succeed with such an operation is enhanced by the combined presence of: (a) evocation (images of religious extremism), (b) provocation (a mass murder), (c) association (a Doer of Evil), and (d) manipulation—as mainstream media parroted phony intelligence with virtually no investigative journalism.

This psyops campaign was facilitated by plausibly credible political leaders who dutifully read their lines from fear-evoking scripts written by this same insider network of agenda-shapers. That emotional manipulation included not only the “Axis of Evil” framing but also a widely broadcast WMD sound bite: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

Mainstream media even reported as credible false accounts of “high-level links” between the secular Iraqi government and the religious fundamentalists of Al Qaeda. Yet anyone familiar with the region knew they despised each other. Truth was not the point. Nor facts. Informed consent was only an obstacle to overcome.

Deception on such a scale required a capacity to sustain a veneer of plausibility and credibility – i.e., believability. Thus the critical role played by mainstream media.

The Power of Association

When waging war on the public’s shared mindset, the power of association is one of the most effective weapons. Thus the potent imagery of the peaceful Buddhas at Bamiyan when associated with destruction, violence and religious extremism.

Thus the ease with which evil doing Al Qaeda extremists were associated in the American mindset with the Taliban – and the evil of 9-11 with known Evil Doer Saddam Hussein even though the intelligence was proven false.

Thus too the associative impact of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 2003 testimony before the U.N. Security Council. His credibility as a globally recognizable military leader (the Powell “brand”) was deployed—as a weapon—to lend the appearance of truth to lies about Iraq’s possession of mobile biological weapons.

Akin to showcasing the celebrity endorsement of a consumer product, this testimonial by a trusted military leader was broadcast worldwide in the lead-up to war. Powell was not the only “mark” in this operation. So were the U.N., the U.S. military and a global public. Both aggressor and aggrieved became casualties of this duplicitous “field-based” warfare. Meanwhile the source of this deception once again faded into the background.

Operationally, by the time the U.S. was induced to invade Iraq, 100-plus Israeli Mossad agents had been operating in Mosul for more than a decade. Soon after the invasion, several moderate clerics were murdered. Their elimination enhanced the capacity to provoke a conflict-of-opposites between long-warring Shias and Sunnis.

That conflict-within-a-conflict helped catalyze an insurgency that converted a clash into a quagmire. That result was mathematically model-able by an Israeli cadre of game theory war-planners. [See: “How Israel Wages Game Theory Warfare.”]

As Information Operations proceed at the geopolitical, strategic and operational level, tactical deceit and misdirection provide essential support akin to reserve forces deployed on an as-needed basis. Serial provocations are required to sustain the serial conflicts essential to maintain the faux plausibility of the mega-theme: The Clash.

The recurring use of crises to catalyze and maintain instability should be of immediate concern to Islamabad. A long-standing Indo-Israel alliance may well be coordinating the frequency of violent incidents that continue to strain relationships between nuclear-armed Pakistan and its neighbor Iran.

Reflecting similar tactics, the most recent Israeli assault on Gaza was scheduled between Christmas 2008 and the January 2009 inauguration of a new U.S. commander-in-chief elected on a platform of hope and a promise of change. The timing of that murderous incursion minimized the capacity to criticize. President-elect Obama said nothing.

Meanwhile this serial agent provocateur set the stage with that assault for another delayed reaction from those brutalized by six decades of occupation. And from those in the broader Muslim community outraged at the U.S. for enabling this behavior.

When that reaction emerges—as it will—Tel Aviv will again assert the moral high ground as a perennial victim living in a hostile anti-Semitic neighborhood. By deploying U.S. weaponry, Israeli aggression will again make Americans appear guilty by association—endangering the U.S. while enhancing the plausibility of the narrative: The Clash of Civilizations.

The uncomfortable truth is that the U.S. is guilty—for continuing to condone this treachery—to its own detriment. Meanwhile the only change is in the presidency with no substantive change in U.S.-Israeli policies. And no hope for those most affected by this duplicity—including both the U.S. military and those it was induced to target.

As critics of Israeli policy in Gaza emerged in academia, the Anti-Defamation League and its international network mounted an intimidation campaign to silence a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. By advertising that campaign widely, the ADL silenced thoughtful academics worldwide. [See:  “Treason in Plain Sight?” and “Education: The Ultimate Battlefield” ]

By Way of Deception

To succeed, Information Operations require both deceit and denial of access to the facts required for informed consent. How else can anyone explain the enduring perception that Israel is a democracy? Even now, a majority of Americans believe that Israel is an ally despite more than six decades of nonstop deceit, spying, treachery and ongoing treason.

Any observer of recent events in Pakistan should be concerned at the duplicitous history of those who have an “existential” stake in sustaining The Clash storyline. With any semblance of stability, an investigation will confirm that the intelligence fixed to induce the U.S. to war originated with a transnational network of pro-Israeli operatives.

Democracy assumes that all of us collectively are smarter than any of us individually. Thus the need for an educated electorate informed by an unbiased media providing the facts required to reason together.

Thus too the strategic need to dominate mainstream media by those with an undisclosed bias who are skilled at waging war by way of deception. We now see portrayed in that opinion-shaping domain a world turned inside out where the victim is cast as aggressor and the predator as prey.

The facts in the recent Goldstone Report confirm a need to investigate dozens of Israeli war crimes in Gaza as well as crimes against humanity. Instead of following the facts wherever they lead—consistent with the rule of law—on November 3^rd, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 334-36 in favor of a resolution describing the report as “irredeemably biased” and opposing any further consideration.

That resolution was proposed by Howard Berman, Ashkenazim chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, senior Republican on the panel and also Ashkenazim. Meanwhile Nita Lowey, the Ashkenazim chairwoman of the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee warned, by implication, that her colleagues in the Congress would jeopardize funding for their projects if “further consideration” was given to the Goldstone Report.

The House vote came one day before the U.N. General Assembly discussed the report. A day later, on November 5^th, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, a Muslim, killed 13 and wounded 29 preparing for deployment to Afghanistan. Within 24 hours, more than 250 media personnel appeared at Fort Hood, the nation’s largest military base, to report on the event.

Many of them framed the event as confirming The Clash premise and even the on-base presence of “Islamo-fascism.” Suggesting the act of a “home-grown terrorist,” Jewish-Zionist Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, called for Congressional hearings into whether the U.S. military could have prevented it.

Interviewed in Palestine, the grandfather of U.S.-born and educated psychiatrist Nidal Hasan spoke of his grandson’s love of the U.S. and said simply, “America made him what he is.” While that comment hardly excuses this conduct, that poignant statement includes a point that Americans find difficult to contemplate. Yet we also found it uncomfortable to consider that the U.S.-Israeli relationship was a key motivation behind 9-11 and other attacks on Americans and American facilities.

The Goldstone Report called for an investigation of facts suggesting criminal conduct both by Israelis and Palestinians. Written by an eminent South African Jewish jurist, Richard Goldstone’s daughter conceded that her father’s findings would have been far harsher had he not been a Zionist.

Yet even the possibility that unfavorable facts could seep into the “field” required that the Israel lobby unleash its compliant Congressional forces in a litmus test of legislative loyalty—regardless of the facts. Or, indeed, because of the facts. It’s difficult to imagine a vote more clearly indicative of how a pro-Israeli bias has corrupted the rule of law.

Other disturbing facts also posed a danger of gaining traction, including a November 5th report that the International Atomic Energy Agency found “nothing to be worried about” in Iran’s recently revealed uranium enrichment site. That fact was preemptively displaced from the “field” the day before with reports of a well-timed Israeli boarding of a ship in international waters where weapons were found that were allegedly bound for Iran-supported Hezbollah.

When waging field-based warfare, timing is everything. That’s particularly the case when, as here, a belief-manipulating adversary is faced with the greatest danger of its six decade life: facts that conflict with the narrative required to sustain The Clash storyline.

Best Story Wins

With consensus beliefs the upstream target, democracy becomes the downstream casualty. When manipulated beliefs displace facts, the rule of law degenerates into a faith-based parody of self-governance. To protect the informed consent essential to freedom requires that those waging war on the public’s shared mindset become transparent so that those complicit can be made apparent.

How old is this form or warfare? Answer: How long has behavior been manipulated with beliefs? How long has faith been deployed to displace facts? The form of warfare is ancient; only the means are modern.

Upstream warfare and strategic deceit are only “unconventional” for the target. For Jewish extremists, such duplicity is business-as-usual.

This analysis describes how warfare is waged in plain sight in the Information Age. Without the complicity of mainstream media, this deceit could not have succeeded on such a scale.

In the Information Age, duplicity is how treason can be taken to scale—in plain view and, to date, with legal impunity—both in the U.S. and in the coalition member nations whose citizens were also targeted by those chronicled in this account.

The common source of this deceit remains little known either to the American public or the people in those nations the U.S. led to war. Here in the U.S., the tattered remnants of our system of informed consent are held hostage by this media-induced duplicity—and by legislators more inclined to protect their personal interests than the national interest.

There lies the strategic role for online media free of conspiracy theories that obscure the analytical clarity required to wage this battle with confidence. What’s described here is warfare being waged on knowledge by an enemy within. Liberty faces no greater danger than those targeting its foundation of informed consent.

What has been made of the U.S. due to our “special relationship” with this extremist enclave is not the form of governance to which our civilian and military leaders swore their allegiance. With our civilian leadership compromised by the Israel lobby, to whom do U.S. military leaders owe their allegiance—to this latest in a series of corrupted presidencies or to the people whose freedom they took an oath to protect from all enemies, both foreign and domestic?

Despite appearances, it is not America that is at war in the Middle East but Americans loyal to this nation who were sent to war by a foreign government imbedded inside what remains of “our” government.

With trans-generational premeditation, Ashkenazim elites and extremists lured the U.S. into an entangled alliance in order to manipulate Americans to wage their expansionist wars and to secure their “realm.” Only as the common source of this treason became transparent could those complicit now be held accountable.

For Americans to restore the fact-based rule of law requires sustained pressure from abroad. Our true allies will hold us accountable for what we allowed these extremists to do in our name. As the how of this treason becomes transparent, we Americans will see as our true enemies those who enabled this duplicity—to our long-term detriment. The best way to befriend us is to hold us true to the values we espouse.

Clash of Civilizations

Will Israel Ensure that History Repeats Itself?

The lead-up to the first U.S.-Iran talks in three decades saw a replay of the same modus operandi that induced the U.S. and its allies to invade Iraq in March 2003. Then as now, the invasion of Iran is consistent with a regime change agenda for Greater Israel described in a 1996 strategy document prepared by Jewish-Americans for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As with Iraq, the threat of weapons of mass destruction is again marketed as a causa belli. As with Iraq, the claim is disputed by weapons inspectors and intelligence analysts. The Iraqi program had been shut down a dozen years before the invasion. In Iran, there is no evidence that uranium is being enriched beyond the low levels required for energy and medical purposes.

Reports of a “secret” processing plant failed to note that Iran suspended uranium enrichment from 2003 until 2005. Seeing no change in the political climate except more sanctions and more Israeli threats to bomb its nuclear sites, Iran began building and equipping a new facility.

As with Iraq, there is no direct threat to the U.S. As with Iraq, mainstream U.S. media focused not on Israel—the only nation in the region known to have nuclear weapons—but on Iran. Enrichment is relatively easy compared to the steps required to design, build and reliably deliver a nuclear warhead. Activity around each of those steps can be readily detected.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged that even if Iran were attacked, that does nothing to alter Iran’s nuclear prospects—except provoke them to develop the very weapons that the evidence suggests are not now being produced. Is this a calculated move to exert pressure on Tehran? Or to provoke them? Or is this a move by Washington to buy time from an “ally” that threatens an attack—with disastrous effects on U.S. interests and those of its genuine allies?

To catalyze a climate of insecurity among Jews, pro-Israelis periodically claim that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proposes to “wipe Israel off the map.” A correct translation confirms that what he urged is that “this occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time.” Akin to the widely sought demise of the oppressive Soviet regime, that proposal enjoys the support of many moderate, secular and non-Zionist Jews who have long recognized the threat that Jewish extremists pose to the broader Jewish community.

No one can explain why Iran, even if nuclear armed, would attack Israel with its vast nuclear arsenal estimated at 200-400 warheads, including several nuclear-armed submarines. In mid-July, Israeli warships deployed to the Red Sea to rehearse attacks on Iran. As in the lead-up to war with Iraq, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is again beating the war drums. This is the same adviser who, four days after 9-11, advised G.W. Bush to invade Iraq.

Citing Iran’s “covert” facility, Wolfowitz claims it is “clear that Iran’s rulers are pursuing nuclear weapons.…Time is running out.” Without a hint of irony, he argues that Iran (not Israel) “is a crucial test of whether the path to a nuclear-free world is a realistic one or simply a dangerous pipe dream.” In calling for “crippling sanctions,” Howard Berman, Jewish chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, expressed similar concerns as did Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, senior Republican on the Committee and also Jewish.

If pro-Israelis cannot induce a war with Iran, the ensuing stability will enable people to identify who fixed the intelligence that deceived the U.S. to invade Iraq. Only one nation possesses the means, motive, opportunity and stable nation state intelligence to mount a covert operation over the lengthy period required to pre-stage, staff, orchestrate and successfully cover-up such an act.

The evidence points to the same network of government insiders and media proponents now hyping Iran. Who benefitted from war with Iraq? Who benefits from war with Iran? Not the U.S. or its allies unless, despite the evidence, Israel is viewed as an ally–rather than an enemy within.

Can the U.S. Muster a Breakthrough Strategy?

Like Afghanistan, Iran does not have a military solution. Nor does Iraq. Geopolitically, the greatest casualty of war in the region was the United States – its credibility tattered, its military overextended and its finances devastated by a debt-financed war that Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz projects could reach $3,000 billion. Compare that with the speedy exit and a $50 billion outlay that Wolfowitz assured policy-makers could be recovered from sales of Iraqi oil.

Those who induced that invasion persuaded Americans to commit economic and geopolitical hari-kari. No external force could have defeated the sole remaining super power. Instead the U.S. was deceived—by a purported ally—to defeat itself by an ill-advised reaction to the provocation of a mass murder on U.S. soil.

The only sensible and sustainable solution is one that serves unmet needs in the region while also restoring the credibility of the U.S. as a proponent of informed choice and free enterprise. While making transparent the common source of the deceit that induced the U.S. to war, policy-makers can also lay the foundation to preclude such duplicity in the future. That requires consultation among the U.S., its true allies and those nations in the region most affected by this treachery.

Only a design solution can counter today’s systemic sources of conflict, including the extremism fueled by extremes in education, opportunity, wealth and income. As with the fixed intelligence that induced the U.S. to war in Iraq, those sources of conflict are obscured by a compliant and complicit media with an undisclosed pro-Israeli bias.

A transnational network of think tanks could expose in real time how facts are displaced by what “the mark” can be deceived to believe. With the media dominance of pro-Israelis in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany and other Western allies, that task must include the capacity to show how this deceit operates in plain sight yet, to date, with impunity. Absent such transparency, systems of governance reliant on informed consent will continue to be manipulated to their detriment by those who hide behind the very freedoms that such systems are meant to protect.

Running parallel with that transparency initiative must be an education program that deploys the best available technology to close the gaps in learning that sustain extremes in opportunity. Only a truly international effort can succeed in that essential task. Only trans-cultural education can preempt the mental manipulation that induced war in Iraq and now pursues war with Iran as proponents of The Clash of Civilizations gradually transform that concept into a reality.

What we now see emerging is yet another example of how wars are induced in the Information Age. Why would anyone expect modern warfare to be waged in any other way? As the common source of this duplicity becomes transparent, the solution will become apparent.

Lasting peace requires a Marshall Plan able to accelerate the transition to the Knowledge Society. This systemic challenge cannot be addressed absent a systemic strategy. The restoration of friendly and cooperative relations must include the practical steps required to heal this widening divide with education at the core.

Clash of Civilizations

How Israel Wages Game Theory Warfare

In 2005, the Nobel Prize in Economic Science was awarded to Israeli mathematician and game theory specialist Robert J. Aumann, co-founder of the Center for Rationality at Hebrew University. This Jerusalem resident explains: “the entire school of thought that we have developed here in Israel” has turned “Israel into the leading authority in this field.”

Israeli strategists rely on game theory models to ensure the intended response to staged provocations and manipulated crises. With the use of game theory algorithms, those responses become predictable, even foreseeable—within an acceptable range of probabilities. The waging of war “by way of deception” is now a mathematical discipline.

Such “probabilistic” war planning enables Tel Aviv to deploy serial provocations and well-timed crises as a force multiplier to project Israeli influence worldwide. For a skilled agent provocateur, the target can be a person, a company, an economy, a legislature, a nation or an entire culture—such as Islam. With a well-modeled provocation, the anticipated reaction can even become a powerful weapon in the Israeli arsenal.

For instance, a skilled game theorist could foresee that, in response to a 911-type mass murder, “the mark” (the U.S.) would deploy its military to avenge that attack. With phony intelligence fixed around a preset goal, a game theory algorithm could anticipate that those forces might well be redirected to invade Iraq—not to avenge 911 but to pursue the expansionist goals of Greater Israel.

To provoke that invasion required the displacement of an inconvenient truth (Iraq played no role in 911) with what lawmakers and the public could be deceived to believe. The emotionally wrenching nature of that incident was essential in order to induce Americans to abandon rational analysis and to facilitate their reliance on false intelligence.

Americans were (predictably) provoked by that mass murder. The foreseeable reaction—shock, grief and outrage—made it easier for them to believe that an infamous Iraqi Evil Doer was to blame. The displacement of facts with beliefs lies at heart of how Israel, the world’s leading authority in game theory, induces other nations to wage their wars.

False but Plausible

To displace facts with credible fiction requires a period of “preparing the minds” so that the mark will believe a pre-staged storyline. Thus the essential role of a complicit media to promote: (a) a plausible present danger (Iraqi weapons of mass destruction), (b) a plausible villain (a former ally rebranded as an Evil Doer), and (c) a plausible post-Cold War threat to national security (The Clash of Civilizations and “Islamo-fascism”).

Reports from inside Israeli intelligence suggest that the war-planners who induced the 2003 invasion of Iraq began their psyops campaign no later than 1986 when an Israeli Mossad operation (Operation Trojan) made it appear that the Libyan leadership was transmitting terrorist directives from Tripoli to their embassies worldwide. Soon thereafter, two U.S. soldiers were killed by a terrorist attack in a Berlin discotheque. Ten days later, U.S., British and German aircraft dropped 60 tons of bombs on Libya.

The following is a senior Mossad operative’s assessment (published in 1994 in The Other Side of Deception) of that 1986 operation—five years before the Gulf War and 15 years before the murderous provocation that preceded the invasion of Iraq:

After the bombing of Libya, our friend Qadhafi is sure to stay out of the picture for some time. Iraq and Saddam Hussein are the next target. We’re starting now to build him up as the big villain. It will take some time, but in the end, there’s no doubt that it’ll work.

Could this account by former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky be correct? If so, Tel Aviv’s Iraqi operation required more pre-staging than its relatively simple Libyan deception.

America the Mark

From a game theory perspective, what is the probability of a violent reaction in the Middle East after more than a half-century of serial Israeli provocations—in an environment where the U.S. is identified (correctly) as the Zionist state’s special friend and protector?

During the 1967 War, the Israeli killing of 34 Americans aboard the USS Liberty confirmed that a U.S. president (Democrat Lyndon Johnson) could be induced to condone murderous behavior by Israel. Two decades later, Operation Trojan confirmed that a U.S. president (Republican Ronald Reagan) could be induced to attack an Arab nation based on intelligence fixed by Israel.

For more than six decades, the U.S. has armed, financed, befriended and defended Zionism. This “special relationship” includes the U.S.-discrediting veto of dozens of U.N. resolutions critical of Israeli conduct. From a game theory perspective, how difficult was it to anticipate that—out of a worldwide population of 1.3 billion Muslims—19 Muslim men could be induced to perpetrate a murderous act in response to U.S support for Israel’s lengthy mistreatment of Arabs and Muslims, particularly Palestinians?

Israeli game theorists operate not from the Center for Morality or the Center for Justice but from the Center for Rationality. As modeled by Zionist war planners, game theory is devoid of all values except one: the ability to anticipate—within an acceptable range of probabilities—how “the mark” will react when provoked. Thus we see the force-multiplier potential for those who wage war with well-planned provocations and well-timed crises.

Israeli behavior is often immoral and unjust but that does not mean it is irrational. For Colonial Zionists committed to the pursuit of an expansionist agenda, even murderous provocations are rational because the response can be mathematically modeled, ensuring the results are reasonably foreseeable. That alone is sufficient for a people who, as God’s chosen, consider it their right to operate above the rule of law.

Clash of Civilizations

Iran’s Rafsanjani – The Grey Eminence

In Iranian politics, few loom larger that Hashemi Rafsanjani. Yet for whom does he work—really?
As chairman of the Assembly of Experts, he oversees the selection, monitoring and dismissal of Iran’s Supreme Leader. As Chair of the Expediency Council, he mediates legislative conflicts. As President of Iran from 1989-1997, he created a power base dating back to his study of theology with Ayatollah Khomeini. But that was then; what about now?

To grasp his role in this “election” requires a reflection on whose interests are best served by crises in the region. Serial crises are essential to sustain the plausibility of the much-touted Clash of Civilizations as a means to justify a “global war on terrorism.” When Mahmoud Ahmadenijad won out over Rafsanjani in a 2005 bid for the presidency, the result was a spokesperson with little political power but a high-profile platform.

In today’s media-saturated politics, candidates are akin to brands. Soon after their release in the market, each is identified with a message. Ahmadenijad was quickly branded the world’s most famous anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. As the academics say: Cui bono—who benefits? Which nation gained most from that branding? Iran? Or Israel?

For an enclave dependent for support on branding itself the unwitting victim of a hostile, anti-Semitic world, who better to freshen up that brand? If so, what role does Rafsanjani play in a nation whose leaders have long collaborated with Israel in duplicitous operations?

Those operations, too numerous to describe, include the Israeli-enabled, presidency-discrediting Iran-Contra affair that Ronald Reagan denied and then was forced to admit. That clumsy arms-for-hostages exchange aided Iran in its war with Iraq, then a U.S. ally, and resulted in 11 federal convictions for Reagan-era officials. All were pardoned.

What role does Rafsanjani play in the casting for a real life drama that, if events continue on course, is poised to discredit another U.S. president? What we know is this. Ahmadinejad charged the Grey Eminence and his family with massive corruption, including racketeering, embezzlement and money laundering. That appears accurate. The Rafsanjani clan emerged wealthy beyond measure, including one son who is allegedly a billionaire in a nation long plagued with the ravages of poverty and false piety.

We also know that Rafsanjani, a billionaire also known as “the shark,” financed the campaign of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. As Prime Minister, Mousavi was Tehran’s go-between for Iran-Contra. He also reportedly served as Iran’s middleman for the October 1983 bombing in Beirut that killed 241 Marines.

The question remains: for whom was he a middleman—really? For the bombing, was he the go-between with Hezbollah terrorists blamed for the attack? That may well be true. Yet former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky insists that Israeli intelligence had a complete description of the truck used in that attack—and chose not to alert their ally.

That mass murder prompted the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region, leaving the Middle East vulnerable to political manipulation by whatever nation proved most adept at the craft. Cui bono? Did Iran benefit from that bombing? Lebanon? Or Israel?

Any conclusions must remain conjectural until more is known about the role played by Israel and pro-Israelis in fixing the intelligence that induced the U.S. to invade Iraq. And may yet induce an attack on Iran aided by a well-timed crisis that may deter the direct negotiations that Washington proposed—and Tel Aviv opposed.

Readers of Guilt By Association know that analysis pivots off a person identified as “John Doe.” He encountered the Grey Eminence two decades ago while profiling the transnational criminal syndicate chronicled there. Rafsanjani was then selling an office building in Manhattan built by the Shah of Iran.

The top floors were occupied by arbitrageur Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken’s co-conspirator in securities frauds for which both were convicted. Boesky spent two years in Iran for purposes that remain obscure. Doe negotiated the sale with Pincus Green, the partner of Marc Rich who was then illegally trading oil with Iran—when Rafsanjani was president.

Rich’s defense team was led by Nixon White House counsel Leonard Garment and Lewis Libby who then worked in the Pentagon for Paul Wolfowitz in the G.H.W. Bush era. All four men are Ashkenazim. For G.W. Bush, Libby emerged as Chief of Staff for Vice President Dick Cheney when Wolfowitz, as Deputy Secretary of Defense, became a lead advocate for invading Iraq in response to the mass murder of 911.

In May 2007, Libby was found guilty on four federal charges for his attempts to obscure the fixing of intelligence that induced the invasion in pursuit of the expansionist goals for Greater Israel. The neoconservatives who advanced that agenda have since confirmed that their primary target was—and remains—Iran.

History is best understood in hindsight. Yet where, as here, behavior patterns repeat over multiple decades, Americans who continue to put their faith in false friends may find themselves repeating past tragedies. To avoid future calamities, Iranians had best grasp that neither this election—nor the Grey Eminence—may be what they seem.

Clash of Civilizations

The Obama Presidency’s War in Iran

President Obama’s decision to release top-secret torture memos was reached in the office of Rahm Emanuel over protests from the Director of Central Intelligence. Former Vice President Dick Cheney defended the practice, claiming America is safer for it. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi then sought to defend her criticism despite early knowledge of it.

Caught lying, Pelosi attacked the CIA. Director Leon Panetta defended Agency briefers and their detailed records of what Pelosi was told. Needing the Speaker’s help to spearhead his ambitious legislative agenda, Obama’s team brokered a peace between Democrats Pelosi and Panetta.

Why did both Republican Cheney and Democrat Pelosi support the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on one particular “high value” detainee? Answer: the case for war required a plausible “high-level link” between the secular Saddam—who hated religious fundamentalists—and the religious fundamentalists of Al Qaeda—who hated him. After 83 waterboardings, the link emerged in a confession.

Akin to the Inquisition, this detainee was “put to the question.” When proposing to wage a global crusade on false pretenses (The Clash of Civilizations), war-planners required One True Faith in that linkage. As in the Dark Ages, the confession was later recanted and the case collapsed—but only after the war in Iraq was well underway.

Even now that link remains an article of faith—alongside weapons of mass destruction, meetings in Prague and mobile biological weapons laboratories. All were bogus. But without this key link, the case would have been exposed as phony, even treasonous. However, the worst was yet to come—a November 18 White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a two-hour Oval Office encounter with this hawkish right-winger, an untested U.S. commander in chief met his Monica Lewinsky. Distracted by a promiscuous White House intern, Bill Clinton found himself embroiled in impeachment proceedings when he should have been keeping a closer eye on Al Qaeda. The allure of Netanyahu differs in kind but not in its impact on national security—and potentially on the Obama presidency.

The day before their meeting, Netanyahu met with an ebullient American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee. Obama’s Justice Department had not only withdrawn its espionage case against two AIPAC spies, the lobby had also silenced Obama while they savaged Charles Freeman, forcing him to withdraw his acceptance as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. A known skeptic of Israeli designs on the region, Freeman would have overseen the National Intelligence Estimate, coordinating the views of all 16 intelligence agencies.

By the time Netanyahu appeared alongside Obama, a U.S. president looked like he was a visitor in the office of the Israeli Prime Minister. Rather than issue photographs of their meeting as he did days earlier with Israeli president Shimon Peres, Obama granted Netanyahu a widely reported press conference in which he failed to press Israel’s new prime minister to end the four-decade occupation of Palestine as the top priority for achieving peace in the region.

Instead, he allowed the Israeli leader to use the White House as a pulpit to announce that peace with the Palestinians was a distant second to the risks posed by Iran. Romanced by Netanyahu and the pro-Israelis who populate his presidency, Obama once again fulfilled AIPAC’s wish list. By allowing pro-Israelis to control the White House agenda and Israelis to control the message, Obama signaled a go-ahead to those long determined to expand to Iran the war in Iraq.

While Netanyahu met with Obama, Israelis were pouring the foundations for settlement expansion, that conduct sent a clear signal to those waiting to see who controls foreign policy in the Obama administration. Only the next day did Secretary of State Clinton call for a halt to the settlements.

When Israeli jets bombed Gaza the next day, that conduct reconfirmed who controls U.S. policy. Only after their meeting did CIA Director Panetta urge that Israel not attack Iran. By then it was too late. America’s commander-in-chief had tipped his hand: what AIPAC wants, Israel gets.

Within 24 hours of their meeting, a letter was delivered to Obama by 76 Senators warning, “We must take into account the risks (Israel) will face in any peace agreement.” Within 48 hours, a 90-6 Senate vote denied Obama the funds required to close detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay. In a resounding rebuke, both Democrats and Republicans decried his inexperience in national security—making the militaristic Netanyahu look “presidential” by comparison.

The vote tally was known well beforehand by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, Obama’s top political strategist. Both played key roles in producing this presidency. Both Obama and national security were victims of this sophisticated operation.

In stage-managing this series of back-to-back political debacles, Obama’s pro-Israeli advisers worked hand-in-glove with the Israel lobby to ensure he was left with few options but to support Israel’s designs on the region. Forced to prove his mettle, the commander-in-chief will find he has no hope of managing his way through the crises now awaiting him—except to back Israel’s expansionist agenda for the Middle East, ensuring more hatred for the U.S. while fueling The Clash. In the pursuit of Israel’s agenda, the Obama presidency is proving itself the missing link.

Clash of Civilizations

Is Israel Pre-Staging War with Iran?

Is Israel Pre-Staging War with Iran?

credited to Savannah Red

Visitors to the Criminal State website know how well-timed crises are deployed by those skilled at displacing facts with what people can be induced to believe. Thus the use of staged crises linked to fixed intelligence as a way to influence decision-makers. That behavior was on display when policy-makers were persuaded to invade Iraq in response to the mass murder of 9/11—buttressed by an induced belief in Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, mobile biological weapons laboratories, meetings in Prague, and so forth.

Fast-emerging events suggest pre-staging meant to make an attack on Iran appear reasonable, even desirable. Agent provocateur operations require the staging of collateral events to induce the intended main event. Does that suggest the US and the EU should expect another crisis on the scale of 9/11 as a means to catalyze that attack?

Throughout history, dedicated groups have seen their beliefs manipulated to serve the interests of others. Thus the need to consider the possibility that seemingly unrelated incidents are being staged to create a critical mass of opinion in support of war with Iran.

Consider the cumulative impact of incidents over the past 14 months:

• December 2007 saw the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Mark Siegel, her biographer and lobbyist, assured U.S. diplomats that Bhutto’s return to Pakistan was “the only possible way that we could guarantee stability and keep the presidency of Musharraf intact.” President Pervez Musharraf had earlier announced that resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict was the key to solving conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• During her two terms as prime minister, Bhutto funded the Taliban as a means to wield influence in Afghanistan and catalyze conflicts in Kashmir, fueling tension with India. Meanwhile Israel allied with India and sent an emergency shipment of artillery shells during Islamabad’s armed conflict with New Delhi over the Kirpal region of Kashmir.

• In August 2008, General David Kezerashvili returned to Georgia from Israel to lead an assault on South Ossetia backed with Israeli arms and training. That crisis ignited Cold War tensions between the U.S. and Russia, key members of the Quartet (along with the EU and the UN) committed to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict.

• The murder of Benazir Bhutto facilitated the replacement of Musharaff with Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s notoriously corrupt husband.

• In late November 2008, a terrorist attack in Mumbai, India’s financial center, renewed fears of nuclear tension between India and Pakistan. When the attackers struck a hostel run by an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect from Brooklyn, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced from Tel Aviv: “Our world is under attack.” By early December, Israeli journalists urged that we “fortify the security of Jewish institutions worldwide.”

As “India’s 9/11” was proven to originate from Pakistan’s western tribal region, Zardari announced an agreement with the Taliban to allow Islamic (Sharia) law to govern a large swath of the North West Frontier Province where Al Qaeda leaders have free rein. With anti-Americanism on the rise, Islamabad’s capitulation to Islamic extremists endangered U.S. interests and made U.S. allies more vulnerable, including member countries of the EU.

With the Taliban and Al Qaeda allowed to operate freely in a nuclear-armed nation, Tel Aviv gained traction for its claim that a nuclear Tehran poses an “existential threat.” With the increased political clout gained by a nationalist-religious coalition in Israel’s February 10th elections, any chance of resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict became remote.

That political development is destined to fuel more Islamic extremism and gain more traction for those marketing the “global war on terrorism.” As Tzipi Livni argued in the aftermath of the murderous assault on Mumbai: “Israel, India and the rest of the free world are positioned in the forefront of the battle against terrorists and extremism.”

In Barack Obama’s first presidential press conference, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas asked which nation in the Middle East has nuclear weapons. Side-stepping any mention of Israel, Obama spoke instead of the need for nuclear non-proliferation. As Islamic extremists were portrayed as gaining access to nuclear weapons, the case for Israeli compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty lost ground. With tensions heightened between a nuclear India and extremist-riddled Pakistan, the case for a global war on “Islamo” fascism gained ground—along with the thematic Clash of Civilizations.

Meanwhile Israel’s brutal incursion into Gaza—staged between Christmas and the Obama inaugural—drew criticism worldwide as Israeli troops killed more than 1,300 Palestinians. Student activists at Hampshire College, a leader in ending apartheid in South Africa, urged the College to divest its interest in companies complicit in Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Harvard-Zionist law professor Alan Dershowitz portrayed the students as a “rabidly anti-Israel group” and “anti-Semitic.” That same day the Jerusalem Post cited Martin Luther King for the premise that to be “anti-Zionist” is “anti-Semitism.” Those statements followed an announcement that Israel had formed “an army of bloggers” to combat anti-Zionist websites.

Questions that can only be answered by future events include the following:

• Were the murders in Mumbai a form of geopolitical misdirection that served both the tactical goals of the Muslim attackers and the strategic goals of the Jewish state?

• When Bhutto’s murder, Musharraf’s removal, and the attack on Mumbai drew Pakistani forces to the border of India—and away from its western tribal region—did the response to those incidents heighten the risk of nuclear-armed extremism?

• As another extremist government gains influence in Tel Aviv, will these incidents be cited to again postpone settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict?

• Is Israel’s four-decade delay in ending the occupation of Palestine—despite repeated assurances it will do so—part of Tel Aviv’s agent provocateur strategy?

• Was Israel’s preemptive Six-Day War (in 1967) the provocation required to pre-stage the region-wide outrage now directed at the U.S. due to this entangled alliance?

In retrospect, each of these incidents advanced the Zionist state’s expansionist goals for Greater Israel. Is it possible that these murderous events trace their agent provocateur origins to a common source: those marketing the next main event—war with Iran?

Was the public’s intuitive grasp of this recurring behavior accurately reflected in an October 2003 poll of 7,500 people in EU member nations? That 15-country survey found that Israel is viewed EU-wide as the top threat to world peace. Is terrorism a tool limited to Islamo-fascists? Or is it also a means of geopolitical manipulation deployed from the shadows by what Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt described as “Jewish fascists”?

February 18, 2009

MP George Kaufman re Israeli Nazis