This column stands foursquare with theHonorable Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Defense Secretary, when he warns thatthere will be more terrorist attacks against the American people andcivilization at large. We know, as does the Honorable DonaldRumsfeld, U.S. Defense Secretary, that this statement is anincontrovertible fact, a matter of scientific certainty. And how canwe and the Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Defense Secretary, be sosure that there will be more terrorist attacks against the Americanpeople and civilization at large?
Because these attacks will be instigated at theorder of the Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Defense Secretary.
This astonishing admission was buried deep in astory, which was itself submerged by mounds of gray newsprint andglossy underwear ads in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times. There -- inan article by military analyst William Arkin detailing the vastexpansion of the secret armies being massed by the former Nixonbureaucrat now lording it over the Pentagon -- came the revelation ofRumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity"that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, informationwarfare, intelligence and cover and deception."
According to a classified document prepared forRumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization -- the"Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" -- will carry outsecret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terroristgroups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would thenexpose 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 ofRumsfeld's plan -- the United States government is planning to use"cover and deception" and secret military operations to provokemurderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again:Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members ofthe unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment themurder 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 outterrorists and bring them to justice -- a laudable goal in itself,although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it ispure moral lunacy. (Or should we use the Regime's own preferredterminology and just call it "evil"?) No, it seems the Pee-Twos havebigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action --by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling themwith drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with theirmamas? or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groupsthen plan and direct the attacks themselves? -- they can then takemeasures 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: "Theirsovereignty will be at risk."
The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever theRegime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a newmilitary base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nestof violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant"justification" for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapineyou might desire. And what if the territory you fancy doesn'tactually harbor any convenient marauders to use for fun and profit?Well, surely a God-like "super-Intelligence Support Activity" iscapable of creation nihilo, yes?
The Rumsfeld-Bush plan to employ murder andterrorism for political, financial and ideological gain does havehistorical roots (besides al-Qaida, the Stern Gang, the SA, the SS,the KGB, the IRA, the UDF, Eta, Hamas, Shining Path and countlessother upholders of Bushian morality, decency and freedom). We referof course to Operations Northwoods, oft mentioned in these pages: theplan that America's top military brass presented to President JohnKennedy in 1963, calling for a phony terrorist campaign--completewith bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans--toprovide "justification" for an invasion of Cuba, the mafia/corporatefiefdom that had recently been lost to Castro.
Kennedy rejected the plan, and was killed a fewmonths later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but on a fargrander scale, with resources at his disposal undreamed of by thosebrass of yore, with no counterbalancing global rival to restrainhim--and with an ignorant, corrupt president who has shown himselfall too eager to embrace any means whatsoever that will augment thewealth and power of his own narrow, undemocratic, elitistclique.
There is prestuplyeniye here, transgression, astepping-over -- deliberately, with open eyes, with forethought,planning, and conscious will -- of lines that should never becrossed. 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 endlessnight of black ops, retribution, blowback, deceit, of murder andterror -- wholesale, retail, state-sponsored, privatized; of fear anddegradation, servility, chaos, and the perversion of all that's bestin us, of all that we've won from the bestiality of our primalnature, all that we've raised above the mindless ravening urges andimpulses still boiling in the mud of our monkey brains.
It's not a fight for freedom; it's a retreat intodarkness.
And the day will be a long time coming.
Los Angeles Times, Oct. 27, 2002
Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times