Basra incident - a dot to connect (Rumsfeld's P2OG to foment terror)

[moodforaday]

Reading about the two UK SAS operatives in Basra yesterday reminded me of a report by Chris Floyd, originally from 2002, and updated this year.

The original article:
Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism
http://collectioncf72.blogspot.com/2005/04/into-dark-pentagon-plan-to-foment.html

Continued in 2005:
Darkness Visible: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism is Now in Operation (2005)
http://collectioncf72.blogspot.com/2005/04/darkness-visible-pentagon-plan-to.html

This is about the Pentagon, but there's no reason to believe the british would not develop their own version of the same game. You really have to read the articles in full, here's just a few introductory quotes:

From part 1:

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.

From part 2 (referring to Seymour Hersh's article, "The Coming Wars"):

This plan is now being activated.

In fact, it's being expanded, as the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh revealed last week. Not only will U.S.-directed agents infiltrate existing terrorist groups and provoke them into action; the Pentagon itself will create its own terrorist groups and "death squads." After establishing their terrorist "credentials" through various atrocities and crimes, these American-run groups will then be able to ally with – and ultimately undermine – existing terrorist groups.

Top-level officials in the Pentagon, the U.S. intelligence services and the Bush administration confirmed to Hersh that the plan is going forward, under the direction of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – just as we noted here in November 2002. Through a series of secret executive orders, George W. Bush has given Rumsfeld the authority to turn the entire world into "a global free-fire zone," a top Pentagon adviser says. (...)

The covert units – including the Pentagon-funded terrorist groups and hit squads – will be operating outside all constraints of law and morality. "We're going to be riding with the bad boys," one insider told Hersh. Another likened it to the palmy days of the Reagan-Bush years: "Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador? We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren't going to tell Congress about it." Indeed, we reported here last summer that Bush has already budgeted $500 million to fund local paramilitaries and guerrilla groups in the most volatile areas of the world, a measure guaranteed to produce needless bloodshed, destruction and suffering for innocent people already ravaged by conflict.

The Basra incident looks close enough to this scenario, doesn' it?

edit: corrected link

[pauldp]

1. Basra looks just like it.

Whatever the ultimate intentions of these British "commandos", they were trying to stimulate violence.

[DLnyc]

2. ??Second link seems to give same page as first??

Frustrating, because the first is really good!

[moodforaday]

3. Thanks, corrected

The second link should be
http://collectioncf72.blogspot.com/2005/04/darkness-visible-pentagon-plan-to.html

[DLnyc]

5. Ah. Much better.

and much scarier.

[democrank]

4. "Riding with the bad boys" indeed.

I`ve been giving the Bazra incident a lot of thought. Something smells rotten.

[hootinholler]

6. Bet Venezuela intel might have some info to share with Hersh.

We as a nation are SO fucked.

-Hoot

Edit: can't effin spell

[Nothing Without Hope]

7. Orwell foresaw it all. It's not just war profiteering & oil - it's a way

to grab more power domestically by terrifying the populace:

Here is an article written in Doc 2003 in response to Franks' amazing interview, the one in which he said that one more hit would be enough for them to suspend the Constitution. This entire article is excellent and prescient, but I'm going to quote the paragraph that especially grabbed my attention. The incitement of violence and fear, domestic or foreign, is a necessary part of the program:

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/12/07/Columns/From_Tommy_Franks__a_.shtml

It was the Nine Years' War in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World that facilitated the seizure of power by the world reformers who then took control of nearly all human and social development. In 1984, George Orwell described Oceania as in a constant state of war with a changeable enemy who "always represented absolute evil." These inventors of the great dystopias understood the way governments use war and its associative fear and instability to consolidate power. Despotism thrives on insecurity. Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs puts safety right behind food, water and sleep. Humans naturally crave stability and are willing to sacrifice values such as liberty in its pursuit.

And oh yes, they are trying to use Katrina as they have the 9/11 attacks and the Saddam WMD scare, to grab still MORE power. They want a military dictatorship, and that is no tinfoilhat theory. They have been working toward it step by step for years.

Please read this thread - ALL of it. It gives background on the Posse Comitatus Act that stands between us and martial law (and is being eroded), the outrageous POTUS powers under FEMA executive orders, and much more. It's clear that they will grab all they can from the Katrina aftermath. Here's the thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4790112
thread title: Missing A KEY POINT in *'s speech: POWER GRAB FOR POTUS AND MILITARY

[bleever]

8. God help us.

God helps those who help themselves.

Let's roll.

[stickdog]

9. And the bombing of the UN? The assassination of dozens of

journalists?

All part of the neocons' self-proclaimed agenda of "creative" destruction, IMHO.

[Beam Me Up]

10. Link to Hersh, The New Yorker article from Jan '05:

This should be a part of this thread as it is directly referred to by the second Floyd article:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact

George W. Bush’s reëlection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.

/snip/

In my interviews over the past two months, I was given a much harsher view. The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become clear that the Europeans’ negotiated approach cannot succeed, and that at that time the Administration will act. “We’re not dealing with a set of National Security Council option papers here,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “They’ve already passed that wicket. It’s not if we’re going to do anything against Iran. They’re doing it.”

/snip/

In late November, 2004, the Times reported that Bush had set up an interagency group to study whether it “would best serve the nation” to give the Pentagon complete control over the C.I.A.’s own élite paramilitary unit, which has operated covertly in trouble spots around the world for decades. The panel’s conclusions, due in February, are foregone, in the view of many former C.I.A. officers. “It seems like it’s going to happen,” Howard Hart, who was chief of the C.I.A.’s Paramilitary Operations Division before retiring in 1991, told me.

There was other evidence of Pentagon encroachment. Two former C.I.A. clandestine officers, Vince Cannistraro and Philip Giraldi, who publish Intelligence Brief, a newsletter for their business clients, reported last month on the existence of a broad counter-terrorism Presidential finding that permitted the Pentagon “to operate unilaterally in a number of countries where there is a perception of a clear and evident terrorist threat. . . . A number of the countries are friendly to the U.S. and are major trading partners. Most have been cooperating in the war on terrorism.” The two former officers listed some of the countries—Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, and Malaysia. (I was subsequently told by the former high-level intelligence official that Tunisia is also on the list.)

Giraldi, who served three years in military intelligence before joining the C.I.A., said that he was troubled by the military’s expanded covert assignment. “I don’t think they can handle the cover,” he told me. “They’ve got to have a different mind-set. They’ve got to handle new roles and get into foreign cultures and learn how other people think. If you’re going into a village and shooting people, it doesn’t matter,” Giraldi added. “But if you’re running operations that involve finesse and sensitivity, the military can’t do it. Which is why these kind of operations were always run out of the agency.” I was told that many Special Operations officers also have serious misgivings.

Rumsfeld and two of his key deputies, Stephen Cambone, the Under-secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Army Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin, will be part of the chain of command for the new commando operations. Relevant members of the House and Senate intelligence committees have been briefed on the Defense Department’s expanded role in covert affairs, a Pentagon adviser assured me, but he did not know how extensive the briefings had been.

Much more at link

[JohnyCanuck]

11. kick n/t

[slaveplanet]

12. kick

kevlar hat

[Beam Me Up]

13. .