Untitled Document
More than two years ago, we wrote here of a secret Pentagon plan to foment terrorism
by sending covert agents to infiltrate terrorist groups and goad them into action
-- in other words, committing acts of murder and destruction. The purpose was
two-fold: first, to bring the terrorist groups into the open, where they could
be counterattacked; and second, to justify U.S. military attacks on the countries
where the terrorists were operating -- attacks which, in the Pentagon’s
words, would put those nations’ "sovereignty at risk." It was
a plan that countenanced -- indeed, encouraged -- the deliberate murder of innocent
people and the imposition of U.S. military rule anywhere in the world that U.S.
leaders desired.
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, but 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. These secret operations will
be carried out with virtually no oversight; in many cases, even the top military
commanders in the affected regions will not be told about them. The American
people, of course, will never know what’s being done in their name.
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 activation of the Pentagon terrorist operation is part of Bush’s
second-term expansion of the "war on terror." Despite some obfuscating
rhetoric about "diplomacy," the Bush regime is pressing ahead with
a hard-line strategy aimed at opening new military fronts in the "global
free-fire zone." Any dissenting voices within the government are being
ruthlessly purged. The Pentagon’s secret forces are set for operations
in at least 10 countries, and Bush insiders "repeatedly" told Hersh
that "Iran is the next strategic target."
Iran has long been a focus of the small clique of "global dominationists"
-- led by Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and their acolytes -- who engineered
the invasion of Iraq. This group is determined to "whack Iran," as
one insider put it, and they’re not at all discouraged by the debacle
in Iraq; indeed, to them it’s a rousing success. Their first objective
-- openly stated years ago, before Bush took office -- was the overthrow of
Saddam Hussein’s regime and the planting of a U.S. "military footprint"
in Iraq. This has now been done. The fact that it has plunged the Iraqi people
into a hell of violence, chaos, terror and extremism is of no real concern to
the clique. Their lofty rhetoric about "freedom" and "liberation"
is meaningless sham, shuck and jive for the rubes. By the admission of the clique’s
own publications, they seek strategic control over the world’s energy
resources in order to preserve and expand American geopolitical and economic
hegemony in the new century. Everything else -- including the security of the
American people, put at increasing risk by the clique’s reckless policies
-- is of secondary importance.
U.S. forces are already conducting military reconnaissance inside Iran in preparation
for strikes on alleged nuclear weapons facilities, Hersh reports. The Pentagon
is feverishly updating war plans for a "maximum ground and air invasion
of Iran," incorporating the new staging areas now available in Iraq, Afghanistan
and Pakistan, while employing an Iranian terrorist group, MEK, to launch covert
ops and terrorist acts against Tehran. MEK was once given sanctuary by Hussein,
who used the group as a brutal enforcer against Kurd and Shiite insurgents.
Now Bush, "riding with the bad boys," has embraced the MEK murderers
as his own.
In their ignorance and arrogance, the Bushists will almost certainly strike
at Iran -- despite the fact that even Iranian dissidents support the effort
to make their nation a nuclear power and would join the mullahs in retaliation.
The result will be a conflict far surpassing the horror and magnitude of the
Iraq disaster.
In our original report on the Pentagon’s terror scheme, we wrote: "Bush
and his cohorts are plunging the world into an abyss, an endless night 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." Now
the night has come. Now the United States stands openly -- even proudly -- for
terrorism, torture and the Hitlerian principle of aggressive war. America has
fallen into the pit -- and the hopes of the world go with it.
Annotations
The Coming Wars New Yorker, Jan. 17, 2005
Into the Dark: The Pentagon’s Plan to Foment Terrorism CounterPunch,
Nov. 1, 2002 http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd1101.html.
Cry Havoc: Bush’s Own Personal Janjaweed CounterPunch, Sept. 7, 2004
American Dominance Bergen Record, Feb. 23, 2003
Preparing for an attack on Iran? Salon.com, Jan. 18, 2005
America’s Death Squads Antiwar.com, Jan. 10, 2005
Deadlier Face of Torture Emerges The Times, Jan. 16, 2005
Pro-Government Death Squad Surfaces in Irag Focus News, Jan. 11, 2005
Neocons turn their attention to Iran Financial Times, Jan. 18, 2005
Bush Planned Iraq ’Regime Change’ Before Becoming President Glasgow
Sunday Herald, Sept. 15, 2002
Rebuilding America’s Defenses Project for a New Century, September 2000
Statement of Principles Project for a New American Century, June 3, 1997
Seymour Hersh: Rumsfeld’s Dirty War on Terror The Guardian, Sept. 13,
2004
Osama: A Texas-Style Republican in Islamic Clothing Online Journal, Sept. 12,
2004
Bush Team Knew of Abuse at Guantanamo The Guardian, Sept. 13, 2004
The Hidden History of CIA Torture TomDispatch.com, Sept. 9, 2004
