Connecting Some Of The Dots, Some small pieces making one larger one Options

[Devilsadvocate]

I have been thinking about fitting some bits and pieces together which led me to not only accept that 9-11 was an inside job, but which had made me suspicious of the media and of "official versions" long before 9-11.
It will primarily deal with the period between the end of the Vietnam war and the invasion of Iraq; the actual event which took place in 2001 will only be touched on as far as is neccessary for now.
The main reason for looking at this period rather than the era before the end of the Vietnam war is because many of the main players are still very much around; gathering information pertaining to them may be more difficult in some ways then dealing with dead personages, but ultimately more rewarding as well: It would be nice to see them fall...
One of the biggest problems i am facing with a project like this is that most of the information i had at my disposal up to a few months ago came by way of magazine articles, some TV-footage and news-broadcasts by commercial shortwave radio stations. I still had copies of actual magazines and some notes up to a few years ago, when i was forced to move house; the flat we had to move to leaves no space for material like that- so i had no choice but to dispose of the lot.
This leaves me with a headache:
Much of the information i was basing my own assessments on may be new to you, and many of the connections i will make may not have occurred to you. At the same time, i have no idea how to check a news-article which was carried in a magazine like 'Time' or 'Der Spiegel' twenty years ago; not to mention info which i gleaned from shortwave radio stations (some of which even no longer operate a shortwave service).
Therefore i am going to do the 'Wikipedia'-thing, and mark items like that with >CITATION NEEDED<; hopefully there will be a way to check archive-material by way of public libraries, or the archives of the relevant news organisation.
In time this material could be supplemented by online-research or the library here in the forum.
I would like to ask everyone to help and contribute with this project; initially things you remember from news-broadcasts or print-media would be the most interesting-if verification is a problem, they can be marked >CITATION NEEDED< as before. If anything can be verified, the marking can be changed to the relevant bibliographical information.
If you have any suggestions- as to the execution of this project or otherwise- please share it!!!
Don't hold back in trying to punch holes into my arguments: If they can stand up to your criticism, they will stand up to criticism from visitors or expressed critics as well.
In time, the whole thing could be widened by looking at additional aspects, and of course the actual events of september 11th. 2001.
I need to explain that i got a huge amount of information, but *no written notes*-
in other words, much of it comes of the top of my head (and in case anyone is wondering: There are times when i can't remember my own birthday... (IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)
That's the price to be paid for having tons of information knocking about (IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) )
I also cannot emphasize enough that i *do not have a monopoly on the truth*:
Question what i am saying; that way mistakes will be caught early on, and mis-assessments prevented.
Look at it as a work in progress: Hopefully we'll end up with a few pieces of the puzzle forming a larger patch, a few additional pieces which can be added in, or even a piece large enough to make out the whole picture. Who knows...

This post has been edited by Devilsadvocate: Apr 25 2007, 10:52 AM

[painter]

Sounds like this would be very educational for us DA -- if you're up to it, go for it. Personally I'm very busy right now but I will be popping in off and on to check things out. Things are heating up.

[Devilsadvocate]

Sounds like this would be very educational for us DA -- if you're up to it, go for it. Personally I'm very busy right now but I will be popping in off and on to check things out. Things are heating up.

Thanks for the encouragement- i'll try my best.
First installment coming (hopefully) today or tommorrow.
And i agree- it's getting interesting...
(IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/cheers.gif)

[painter]

Sounds like this would be very educational for us DA -- if you're up to it, go for it. Personally I'm very busy right now but I will be popping in off and on to check things out. Things are heating up.

Thanks for the encouragement- i'll try my best.
First installment coming (hopefully) today or tommorrow.
And i agree- it's getting interesting...
(IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/cheers.gif)

Yeah, I've been stocking up: (IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/popcorn.gif) (IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/popcorn.gif) (IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/popcorn.gif)

[MichaelMR]

Go for broke, DA. I like this idea. (IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/salute.gif)

[jo56]

DA, I think that would be a great contribution.

If I can help you find anything, PM me.

I get the feeling you will see the same patterns the MEDIA used then (TO LIE) as you see currently, and in pre-IRAQ.

The only difference NOW IS - WE'RE WISE TO THE MEDIA'S TREASON! :ph43r:

This post has been edited by jo56: Apr 25 2007, 07:38 PM

[skywatcher]

Hello all
As regards old Der Spiegel, Time Magazines etc., these can often be found (or even requested) on Ebay. I will keep a lookout.
Cheers

Skywatcher

[Devilsadvocate]

Well- here goes nothing...

"I do the wrong- and first begin to brawl;
the secret mischiefs that i set abroach-
i lay unto the grievous charge of others...
...and thus i clothe my naked villainy
with odds and ends stolen out of holy writ,
and seem a saint- when most i play the devil..."
(William Shakespeare, 'Richard III')

Part 1:

INTO THE RABBIT-HOLE

The cold war- of which local conflicts like Vietnam were merely small component parts- created a vast universe of it's own; a universe governed by it's own laws, and with it's own mindset.
This 'universe' existed both in the west and in the east; the mindset was almost equal- regardless of ideologies. This was a universe pre-occupied by calculations of mega-tons and mega-deaths; one governed by doctrins like "Mutually Assured Destruction" (which yielded a wonderful acronym: MAD), one in which it was accepted and regarded as 'normal' to support this or that dictatorship politically or otherwise, and this or that faction with money, weapons or training.
There were some unwritten rules, though:
Yes- you could maintain spheres of influence, and even maintain them by acts of agression without kicking loose World war three;
Yes- you could do anything to further your own cause at the expense of third-world-countries like Angola or Chile or Vietnam;
Yes- you could make the other sides existance as miserable as possible by supporting "Liberation-movements".
However- there were things which were just not done.
No- you *never, ever* did anything which would really upset the applecart in earnest- like providing any of the above-mentioned with WMD's, for example.
In a world governed by MAD, that might just result in exactly that:
Mutually Assured Destruction.
In principle, neither of the super-powers ever cared much about those killed or maimed in the various little conflicts they kept cooking up while having their own interests at heart. Those people were not Americans, they were not Soviets.
But at the same time, any irrational action which would seriously disturb this precarious balance of terror could potentially result in the destruction of one's own country, one's own system. The result was that this 'universe' was in itself absolutely insane, but subject to a set of 'natural laws' based on pure sanity.
There may have been exceptions to those rules:

According to a book i have, the Jom Kippur-war 1973 resulted in Israel assembling nuclear warheads in their Dimona nuclear facility.
The Soviet Union, in response, threatened to intervene on the side of the Arabs if nuclear weapons should be used by Israel.
This situation was resolved by an agreement between presidents Nixon and Brezhnev: The USSR would accept that the US would provide massive weapons-shipments to Israel, which would allow for the repulsion of the Arab attackers by conventional means. They would also accept that Israel was not willing to abandon the nuclear weapons-program.
In return, the USSR provided a shipment of Scud-missiles with nuclear warheads to Egypt. Should nuclear weapons indeed be used in this conflict, neither of the superpowers would themselves intervene.

("Nuclear Dictionary", Michael Stephenson/John Weal, Longman-group ltd., 1985;
ISBN 0-582-89212-0)

The Vietnam war brought along a certain deterioration of the 'unwritten rules'; the methods applied had become harsher, and sometimes also more irrational.
It's aftermath left a changed world behind. People in the US had to accept that the image of the 'white knight' had become tarnished by the horrors of a bombing-campaign of unrivalled proportions, and even more so by the pictures of the massacre of Son-My-Lai.
The leadership of the USSR must have been left with a feeling of uncertainty and distrust. Not that they would have been very trusting before: But while being quite adept at playing dirty themselves on occasion, they had just discovered that the US were just as good at it as they were themselves. The various operations run by the CIA throughout the '60s and '70s are well documented; a series of disclosures and exposes uncovered anything from assassination-plots to drug-dealing.
The effect within the US was a series of investigations- mostly with the aim of preventing any more thorough investigations.
It was in this climate that George H. W. Bush became Director of Central intelligence, on January 30th 1976- a post he would hold for just under a year, until January 20th 1977.
A few weeks later, on February 28th 1977, President Gerald Ford issued executive order 11905:

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo11905.htm

It contained amongst other things a series of restrictions regarding the operations of the secret services:

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo11905.htm#SEC.%205.

I remember a report on German TV back then- not because i was so terribly interested in politics back then (i was interested in more important things, like coming to terms with adolescence, girls etc.), but simply because it struck me as odd.
Citing unnamed sources within the state-department and the CIA, the journalist back then said that there had been quite a lot of discontent within the CIA. One official was quoted as saying that "...Congress is nothing but a talking-shop; they should leave the running of the country to people who know something about it".
Back then, it had never occurred to me that anyone would hold a view like that in a supposedly 'democratic' society- at least not someone important-sounding like an "official from the state-department".
The fact is that the CIA must have been extremely unhappy with a situation in which their own activities were increasingly dragged out of the murky darkness to which they are accustomed and into the gaze of the general public, while being afflicted with soft-hearted concerns like the questions about the morality of political assassinations, and the resulting Presidential executive-order 11905. They were involved in an undeclared war- to their minds, those concerns belonged to a more peaceful era.
Executive order 11905 may well have served the purpose of damage-control; but it still inhibited the modus operandi they were accustomed to (even though it also allowed for the widening of the CIA's activities within the boundaries of the United states).
George Bush's term as Director of Central intelligence would however lay the foundations for a completely new modus operandi- one in which the intelligence-services could move freely, without fear of being dragged out of their comforting murky depths. It would ultimately allow them to defeat the dragon they were charged with fighting, and free them to turn towards entirely new goals.
The western cold-war-universe was about to evolve: The eastern version of that universe proved to be less adaptable, and ultimately incapable of evolution at the same rate as it's western counterpart.
He also used the opportunity to lay the groundwork for his own later carreer, in the 1980's.

http://www.padrak.com/alt/BUSHBOOK_6.html

The CIA had operated a number of lucrative 'fundraising'-operations during the Vietnam war; these however were primarily tied in with the war itself: The money obtained by way of drugs was used for dirty tricks and operations connected directly to the war; but i doubt that it had ocurred to anyone at that time to use illegal funds like that on a larger scale for investment.
That was about to change.
Executive order 11905 makes the kind of shenanigans which had brought it into existance in the first place illegal?
Then the shenanigans would be continued illegally.
(>These changes must have begun during Bush's term as DCI<)
Secret services, by their very nature, operate in a murky environment of distrust and amorality: Their operations must, by neccessity, include actions which normally would be seen as reprehensible, and the borderline between acceptable and unacceptable is particularly flowing.
When Francis Walsingham- chief minister of Queen Elisabeth I, and head of a very effective English secret service- was informed that one of the ships of the Spanish Armada, the 'San Juan de Sicilia', had found shelter in Argyll/Scotland, he send one of his agents there. The man managed to get on board of the Spanish ship, threw a burning rag into the ammunition-magazin and ran for his life.
The 'San Juan de Sicilia' blew up like a bomb; most of the 340 men aboard died. The ship burned out completely.
Nothing new under the sun. But Queen Elisabeth I was intelligent enough to balance Sir Francis Walsingham, the Hawk eager for a fight with Spain, with Lord Cecil Burghley- her prime minister, who tried to stifle any attempt to jeopardise the fragile peace with Spain: She frequently ignored Walsingham's advice, sound as it may have been. The main reason was that she simply could not afford open war with Spain, until the English fleet had been re-structured. At the same time, she knew it would ultimately be inevitable...
Elisabeth, however, had a sound knowledge of the situation she was dealing with; this situation was mainly concerned with the relations between England and Spain- it was easy for her to familiarise herself with the details.

When Jimmy Carter became President of the United States in 1976, he may well have had an idea of domestic issues; perhaps he was not an expressed liberal, but considering the era, he certainly was markedly different from his predeccessors Nixon and Ford. When George Bush sen. visited took him aside and told him something about "...presidents in the past occasionally holding on to their old CIA-directors", adding that he would make Carter look good if he were to do the same, he was shown a cold shoulder. Carter eventually replaced Bush with Admiral Stanfield Turner, and charged him with cleaning up the CIA. Carter also seems to have tried to repair some of the political porcellain which had been shattered by the CIA's less palatable activities. In 1978, he signed the Panama canal treaty with President Omar Torrijos, handing the canal back to Panama; he imposed sanctions against Chile, Argentinia and Brazil for human rights violations, and requested an aid-package of 75 million dollars from Congress for the new Sandinista government of Nicaragua after the overthrow of Anastasio Somoza. The request was turned down by Congress; the Sandinistas eventually got their aid from the Soviet Union and Cuba.

http://www.squadron13.com/JackDresser/seedsofterrorism.htm

All of this made sense: America's image abroad was tarnished, and Carter had a dislike for US-policies supporting "rightwing-monarchs and military dictators".
I would imagine that he had no difficulties fathoming the situation in South America: This area was, after all, regarded as America's backyard.
But you could ask the question "Exactly what would a man like Jimmy Carter know about the internal political situation of a place like Persia?"
The simple answer is- just about as much as you or me: Next to nothing.
Instead, he would have to rely on intelligence-reports and on the assessments of his advisors.
One- if not *the* most important one- of these advisors was Zbigniew Brzhezinski.
Jimmy Carter's cleanup of the CIA not only deprived George Bush sen. of a chance to hang on to his post a little longer; far more importantly it meant the- albeit temporary- removal of a number of figures whose names keep turning up again and again:
Ted Shackley,
Edwin P. Wilson,
William Francis Buckley,
Thomas Clines,
Carl E. Jenkins,
Felix Rodriguez,
Luis Posada Carriles,
Raphael 'Chi-Chi' Quintero,
Richard Armitage,
Erich von Marbod,
Harry Aderholt,
Frank Sturgis.

Ted Shackley was a major figur (he died December 9th. 2002, of cancer); in fact he was a figur of such fundamental importance that it's neccessary to take a closer look at him and his activities.
The events which have been unfolding for the last few years are inextricably linked with this man; by following his path through the years, we'll end up at the inevitable final destination- the attacks of 9-11.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKshackley.htm

Recruited into the CIA in 1951, he became associated with 'Operation 40'- a plan to carry out acts of sabotage, and later on also assassinations, within Cuba for the purpose of removing Fidel Castro:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKoperation40.htm

Thomas Clines, Carl Jenkins and Frank Sturgis were involved with Shackley from here on, as were Raphael Quintero, Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada Carriles.
An interesting point is that Carl Jenkins was mentioned in connection whith the assassination of John F. Kennedy:

In 1995 Gene Wheaton approached the Assassination Records Review Board with information on the death of John F. Kennedy. Anne Buttimer, Chief Investigator of the ARRB, recorded that: " Wheaton told me that from 1984 to 1987 he spent a lot of time in the Washington DC area and that starting in 1985 he was "recruited into Ollie North's network" by the CIA officer he has information about. He got to know this man and his wife, a "'super grade high level CIA officer" and kept a bedroom in their Virginia home. His friend was a Marine Corps liaison in New Orleans and was the CIA contact with Carlos Marcello. He had been responsible for "running people into Cuba before the Bay of Pigs." His friend is now 68 or 69 years of age... Over the course of a year or a year and one-half his friend told him about his activities with training Cuban insurgency groups. Wheaton said he also got to know many of the Cubans who had been his friend's soldiers/operatives when the Cubans visited in Virginia from their homes in Miami. His friend and the Cubans confirmed to Wheaton they assassinated JFK. Wheaton's friend said he trained the Cubans who pulled the triggers. Wheaton said the street level Cubans felt JFK was a traitor after the Bay of Pigs and wanted to kill him. People "above the Cubans" wanted JFK killed for other reasons." It was later revealed that Wheaton's friend was Carl Jenkins.
In an interview with William Law and Mark Sobel in 2005, Gene Wheaton claimed that Carl Jenkins and Rafael Quintero were both involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKjenkinsC.htm

By 1966, Shackley took charge of the CIA's secret war in Laos; in that capacity he became involved with the drugs-trade, by way of General Vang Pao, leader of the anti-communist forces in Laos:

In 1966 Shackley was placed in charge of the CIA secret war in Laos. He appointed Thomas G. Clines as his deputy. He also took Carl E. Jenkins, David Morales, Raphael Quintero, Felix Rodriguez and Edwin Wilson with him to Laos. According to Joel Bainerman it was at this point that Shackley and his "Secret Team" became involved in the drug trade. They did this via General Vang Pao, the leader of the anti-communist forces in Laos. Vang Pao was a major figure in the opium trade in Laos. To help him Shackley used his CIA officials and assets to sabotage the competitors. Eventually Vang Pao had a monopoly over the heroin trade in Laos. In 1967 Shackley and Clines helped Vang Pao to obtain financial backing to form his own airline, Zieng Khouang Air Transport Company, to transport opium and heroin between Long Tieng and Vientiane.

By 1969, Shackley was put in charge of 'Operation Phoenix'- a program designed to catch out Vietcong sympathizers in South Vietnam, which actually turned into a brutal assassination-program which killed tens of thousands of civilians, regardless of wether they really were sympathizers or not:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program

Two important figures brought into the drugs-trade by Shackley were Richard Armitage and Richard Secord. The latter was in charge of tactical bombing operations against the Pathet Lao; Armitage became involved with Shackley in 1973 after joining the office of the US defense attache to Saigon.
Initially, the funds obtained through the drugs-trade were evidently used to finance parts of Operation Phoenix; from 1973 to 1975, huge amounts of money were transferred to Australia by Richard Secord and Thomas Clines- money which had nothing to do with Operation Phoenix.
After the end of the Vietnam war, Armitage set up a secret "financial conduit" in Iran into which money from the Vang Pao-drug-deals was channelled. Shackley began to run a private "Black" operation by which communist and socialist sympathizers were sought out and assassinated which were viewed by Shackley as a threat to Shah Reza Pahlevi.
Armitage- who at the time was a consultant with the US department of defense- was forced to resign his post after an internal investigation by the state department, but continued to channel money from the southeast-Asian drugs trade to Australia and elsewhere.
Richard Secord, on the other hand, became Deputy Assistant Secretary of defense in Iran, being in charge of the Middle Eastern Division of the Defense Security Assistance Administration. He was in charge of foreign military sales to friendly nations in the middle east. His superior was Erich von Marbod.
(Interesting footnote, maybe: I couldn't find any info about any German family by that name; aristocratic titles were dispensed with in Germany after 1945, but aristocrats very often took parts of their former titles into their names- such as in "von Richthoven". Marbod was the name of a Marcomannian chief during the time of emperor Caesar Augustus; during the fight against the Romans led by Hermann- or Arminius, a Cheruscean chief who went on to defeat three full Roman legions and their auxiliary troops- Marbod worked against Hermann, eventually becoming a traitor.) Von Marbod had been a liaison-officer to Shackley's Phoenix-program in Vietnam; some sources claim that he had been connected to the Gehlen-operation (the West-German intelligence service BND developed out of that).
1973 also was the year Salvador Allende of Chile was replaced by Augusto Pinochet in a bloody military coup; Allende himself was killed. The coup had been organised by Shackley and his secret group.
The end of the Vietnam war was to spell trouble for the "blonde ghost" (Shackley's nickname; apparently he hated being photographed), but first one of his associates- Frank Sturgis- had another role to play: He was one of the agents arrested while breaking into the Watergate-building.
The Watergate-scandal and subsequent fall of Richard Nixon opened the way to questions being asked about the various activities of the CIA, and Gerald Ford was essentially trying to put the lid back on. Too many questions could have proven more than problematic; and Ford himself was hiding a few skeletons in his cellar:

http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/20...-watergate.html

(Scroll down to the pictures...)

So,he issued executive order 11905 (It was to remain in place up to the time the anthrax-letters to Tom Daeschel were posted) and put George H.W. Bush into the position of DCI. Bush then appointed an old friend as deputy director for special operations: Ted Shackley. Any further investigations into the CIA were stonewalled from here on.
Shackley had hopes for succeeding Bush as DCI. Jimmy Carter's election 1976 put an end to these hopes. Carter was not impressed by the various "achievements" of people like Shackley. Bush tried to bamboozle him into allowing himself to stay on as DCI; Carter turned him down and appointed Admiral Stanfield Turner instead, with specific instructions to remove the various 'elephants' left over from the Shackley-era from the CIA and clean up the act. Shackley himself remained with the CIA until 1979.
He and his "secret team" had carried out the official policies of their time; in the course of doing so, they had broken the rules on more than one occasion in order to do what they saw as 'their job'.
Now their activities were seen as illegal, even criminal. They would have none of it.

Gene Wheaton later recalled: "This stuff goes back to the scandals of the 70s... of Watergate and Richard Helms, the CIA director, being convicted by Congress of lying to Congress, of Ted Shackley and Tom Clines and Dick Secord and a group of them being forced into retirement as a result of the scandal over Edmond P. Wilson’s training of Libyan terrorists in conjunction with these guys, and moving C-4 explosives to Libya. They decided way back when, ‘75-’76, during the Pike and Church Committee hearings, that the Congress was their enemy... Ted Shackley and Vernon Walters and Frank Carlucci and Ving West and a group of these guys used to have park-bench meetings in the late 70s in McClean, Virginia so nobody could overhear they conversations. They basically said, "With our expertise at placing dictators in power," I’m almost quoting verbatim one of their comments, "why don’t we treat the United States like the world’s biggest banana republic and take it over?" And the first thing they had to do was to get their man in the White House, and that was George Bush. Reagan never really was the president. He was the front man. They selected a guy that had charisma, who was popular, and just a good old boy, but they got George Bush in there to actually run the White House."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwheaton.htm

Shackley was still hoping to become DCI; his best hope lay in the defeat of Jimmy Carter. The latter was determined to right some of the wrongs committed in the name of the US. One particular thorn in his side was Reza Pahlevi, the Shah of Persia. Helped into power in a CIA-instigated coup in 1953, the Shah had become a highly oppressive and rather unpopular figure- he was no stranger to using the very methods Saddam Hussein was accused of at a later stage.
Carter stopped US-support for the Shah. Which brings us back to the question posed further above: What does a man like Carter know about the internal affairs of a country like Iran?
He had to rely on his advisors, Zbigniew Brzezhinski at the head of them.
Brzezhinski after all had to rely on the information supplied by the intelligence-services himself.
Carter wanted the Shah gone; but he must have asked the question "What will the result be?"
Theodore Shackley and his associates were in a prime position to tell him, having been involved in clandestine and illegal operations in Iran around that time. And he had no choice but to believe what they fed him- probably something along the lines of "...Oh, freedom and democracy will reign supreme once the Shah is gone...", while conveniantly forgetting to tell him that the only group strong enough to fill the resulting power-vacuum would be the Mullahs around the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini; the Shah left in January 1979. Once in power, the Mullahs demanded that the Shah be handed over to stand trial in Iran, and that the money he had stolen from the Iranian state be returned.
Carter certainly wanted to make up for past wrongs, but he could never allow a show-trial against a figure like the Shah: The political damage would have been enormous; he had to act in the best interest of the US.
The result was that a group of students seized the US-embassy in Teheran, taking the embassy staff hostage.
Shackley saw his chance. Using his contacts, he obtained the relevant information to Carter's plans regarding the hostages through his CIA-contacts and passed that information on to George Bush senior and Ronald Reagan: Both of the latter were about to stand for election.

Shackley had still not given up hope that he would eventually be appointed director of the CIA. His best hope was in getting Jimmy Carter defeated in 1980. Shackley had several secret meetings with George H. W. Bush as he campaigned for the Republican nomination (his wife, Hazel Shackley also worked for Bush). Ronald Reagan won the nomination but got the support of the CIA by selecting Bush as his vice president. According to Rafael Quintero, during the presidential campaign, Shackley met Bush almost every week.

It is believed that Shackley used his contacts in the CIA to provide information to Reagan and Bush. This included information that Carter was attempting to negotiate a deal with Iran to get the American hostages released. This was disastrous news for the Reagan/Bush campaign. If Carter got the hostages out before the election, the public perception of the man might change and he might be elected for a second-term.

According to Barbara Honegger, a researcher and policy analyst with the 1980 Reagan/Bush campaign, William Casey and other representatives of the Reagan presidential campaign made a deal at two sets of meetings in July and August at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid with Iranians to delay the release of Americans held hostage in Iran until after the November 1980 presidential elections. Reagan’s aides promised that they would get a better deal if they waited until Carter was defeated.

The failed attempt to free the hostages sealed Carter's fate; if Shackley and his crew had anything to do with it is impossible to say- but they certainly had a motive to help it along. And in charge of the operation was...

In April 1980, Secord was promoted to the rank of major general and was in charge of rescue efforts for U.S. hostages held in Iran. The following year Secord was appointed as deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. Soon afterwards, with the help of Oliver North, coordinated the campaign to win congressional approval for $8.5 billion AWACS sale to Saudi Arabia.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsecordR.htm

The hostages were eventually released just after Reagan's inauguration.
The Iran-Contra-deal would involve Shackley and members of his "secret team".
In the meantime, the fact that the Mullahs had come to power in Iran had a number of side-effects.
The Soviets were absolutely terrified by it; with millions of Muslims living in various parts of the Soviet Union bordering Iran and Afghanistan, they feared that the Islamic revolution could spill over the borders and into the USSR.
The Soviets had fostered a pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan from 1978 on- when it was already foreseeable that the Shah would not be in power for much longer.
Their assessment as to who might be a potential successor was somewhat more accurate then Carter's.
The latter in turn ordered US-support for the Mujahedin in Afghanistan; some say on advice from Brzezhinski. The Soviet reaction was foreseeable. The regime in Kabul may have been a rather inept puppet-regime, but the international treaties signed between them and the Soviets were still binding; when they could control the deteriorating situation (one of their own making, it has to be said) no longer, they asked the Soviets for a direct intervention, and got it. In december 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan.
One of the responses was an embargo which was to include -amongst other things-electronics. (>CITATION NEEDED< ...I can remember that embargo, and that it clearly included electronics- but, to my surprise, i can't find a word about that anywhere!)
At the same time, the new regime in Iran needed to be kept busy; this would be achieved by means of Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who took power in July 1979.
By september 1980, he attacked Iran.
Ronald Reagan became president by january 1981; he would become a fervent supporter of Saddam.
There is one last little piece to be added to the unfolding scenario in this part of my post:
At some point during the early 80's, a tiny article appeared in either "Newsweek" or "Time"- magazine. It stated that the CIA had announced that the entire military-industrial complex in the US was free of Soviet spies.

(>CITATION NEEDED< ...I know: couldn't be more specific, could i! I had that article for years, but it's gone; i can't even remember exactly which magazine it had appeared in, or the precise year it appeared. But that article is extremely important- if anyone can find it, please let me know).

It was treated as a footnote; but in effect it marked an event in history which was to have enormous consequences. It marked the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union...


End of part 1


(Edit: Part 1 split off into a separate post to make the whole thing a bit easier to follow. Part 2 now underway. DA)

This post has been edited by Devilsadvocate: Oct 1 2007, 05:40 PM

[amazed!]

Some recorded comments on the actions of the Military Industrial Complex.

Yep, Ike's worst suspicions, come true with a vengeneance. :ph43r:

[Devilsadvocate]

I have finished part 1; it may need a bit of finetuning, but i think you'll get the idea.
Up to a few days ago, i had never heard of Ted Shackley; so i had no choice but to change the way i intended to go about this and go further back to highlight the origins of this.
This is not just a can of worms- but a whole cannery, with cans the size and shape of oil-drums. You will find that Shackley and his motley crew are the ones who laid the groundwork. Shackley died in 2002, but he already got successors...

[Guinan]

Holy Cow DA ! A cannery of worms indeed!
And to think that the 50+ among us have all lived through these times conciously, watched the news, read the newspapers.. we all heard about Iran Contra, the Iranian Embassy, Alliende, we all heard (rumors at first) about the CIA-assasinations. I for one never dreamed of connecting all of it..

Thank you for your hard work, it's a fascinating read! (IMG:http://www.emcsmileys.com/smilies/bigemo_harabe_net-11.gif)

Guinan

[Devilsadvocate]

Part 2:

"HOW TO CREATE THE WORLD'S BIGGEST BANANA-REPUBLIC"


The following is a theory- not a series of proven facts. It must be left to the reader to determine in how far it makes sense when connected to the information contained in part 1, and that contained in the parts which are yet to follow.
THEORY:
Gene Wheaton spoke of secret meetings on park-benches; Ted Shackley and his motley crew would be as good as their word.
How do you turn a country like the United States of America into a banana-republic,
into a privately-owned enterprise run by goons and mafia-types?
Shackley had transferred large amounts of money from his drug-dealings in Southeast-Asia to Australia, and from there to Iran.
When the Mullahs took over, they demanded that the Shah be returned to stand trial, and that the money he had stolen be returned as well. When Jimmy Carter refused, they froze all American assets in Iran; in return the US froze all Iranian assets in the US.
But Shackley's drugs-money came from Australian banks, not American ones: I would be surprised if the Mullahs froze these assets as well. This would mean that the money was safe, and Shackley could still access it- without fear of US-institutions watching over his shoulder. It must have been a huge amount, considering that Shackley and his associates had been involved in the drugs-business in Laos for years.
George H.W. Bush on the other hand could look back at certain family-traditions, begun by his father Prescott; illegal activities were hardly new to him.
He was in contact with Shackley at least from the point were he became DCI; Shackley was his deputy director for special operations.
Up to then, business like the drugs was part of Shackley's repertoire of dirty tricks-
he probably intended to put aside some insurance for the time he would retire from this kind of business; but by and large it was a question of carrying out the kind of tasks he was charged to do.
From now on this would change.
Getting George H.W. Bush elected as president would have been the main goal; but having him as vice-president alongside Ronald Reagan was just as good.
Reagan would do as he was told; the real power would still be in George H.W. Bush's hands- who would be part of the conspiracy.
Bush had been a member of the Skull-and-Bones society at Yale university.
Membership would have helped him- by way of contacts- in his earlier years; but the strange student-organisation could prove useful in other ways too.
It had provided a much higher percentage of people joining the intelligence-community then any other student-society at Yale; contacts with the secret services must therefore be assumed as relatively normal.
Shackley and his crew used Bush and his contacts to the Skull and Bones to infiltrate the student-society and 'run' it.
The result was that the Skull and Bones would now churn out 15 graduates each year which would take up key positions in various important sectors of society.
There would be two areas of vital importance:
In order to undermine the existing structures, substantial amounts of money would be needed, and any potential investigations by curious journalists had to be prevented. This meant undermining the media.
Shackley had discovered the philosopher's stone of illegal fundraising long ago, back in Laos. All that needed to be done was to do the same as before- to raise illegal funds by way of drugs- in such a way that it would allow policies to be implemented which would serve to manipulate the public and open the way for more and more 'unusual' measures.
As for the media- in a country which prides itself in a free press, it's hardly possible to issue presidential decrees demanding allegiance from the media.
But- in a country which also happens to be a free-market-economy, something else is possible: You can simply buy the press (or, to be precise- you simply find someone with a lot of money who just happens to share your views; and then you have him buy the press for you).
It would also be neccessary to influence events abroad, especially in regard to the reactions of allies like those within NATO and the European Union. One way of gaining that influence would be by way of Britain- the weakest link in the chain, in a lot of ways.
Another important factor may have been the clandestine network known as "Gladio"; subverting this network would open the way to exerting influence where other methods would fail.
From then on, it would be possible to undermine the entire system step by step, and at the same time manipulate the general public into thinking that all of this was 'normal': After all, what is 'normality'- but what we are used to...?
So- this is the theory. Let's see how it holds up...
END OF THEORY

The prospect of an attempt by the Carter-administration to free the hostages in Teheran through the ill-fated rescue-attempt (which had been advised by Zbigniew Brzezhinski, and organised by General Richard Secord) had worried both the Reagan- and Bush-campaigns during the elections in 1980. Ted Shackley used his CIA-contacts to provide both campaigns with information about Carter's plans; but something more substantial would be needed to prevent Carter from succeeding:


QUOTE

A couple of days before the election Barry Goldwater was reported as saying that he had information that “two air force C-5 transports were being loaded with spare parts for Iran”. This was not true. However, this publicity had made it impossible for Jimmy Carter to do a deal. Ronald Reagan on the other hand, had promised the Iranian government that he would arrange for them to get all the arms they needed in exchange for the hostages. According to Mansur Rafizadeh, the former U.S. station chief of SAVAK, the Iranian secret police, CIA agents had persuaded Khomeini not to release the American hostages until Reagan was sworn in. In fact, they were released twenty minutes after his inaugural address (October Surprise). The arms the Iranians had demanded were delivered via Israel. By the end of 1982 all Regan’s promises to Iran had been made. With the deal completed, Iran was free to resort to acts of terrorism against the United States. In 1983, Iranian-backed terrorists blew up 241 marines in the CIA Middle-East headquarters.

The Iranians once again began taking American hostages in exchange for arms shipments. On 16th March, 1984, William Francis Buckley, a diplomat attached to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was kidnapped by the Hezbollah, a fundamentalist Shiite group with strong links to the Khomeini regime. Buckley was tortured and it was soon discovered that he was the CIA station chief in Beirut.

Shackley was horrified when he discovered that Buckley had been captured. Buckley was a member of Shackley’s Secret Team that had been involved with Edwin Wilson, Thomas Clines, Carl E. Jenkins, Raphael Quintero, Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada, in the CIA “assassination” program.

Buckley had also worked closely with William Casey (now the director of the CIA) in the secret negotiations with the Iranians in 1980. Buckley had a lot to tell the Iranians. He eventually signed a 400 page statement detailing his activities in the CIA. He was also videotaped making this confession. Casey asked Shackley for help in obtaining Buckley’s freedom.
Three weeks after Buckley’s disappearance, President Ronald Reagan signed the National Security Decision Directive 138. This directive was drafted by Oliver North and outlined plans on how to get the American hostages released from Iran and to “neutralize” terrorist threats from countries such as Nicaragua. This new secret counterterrorist task force was to be headed by Shackley’s old friend, General Richard Secord. This was the beginning of the Iran-Contra deal.
Talks had already started about exchanging American hostages for arms. On 30th August, 1985, Israel shipped 100 TOW missiles to Iran. On 14th September they received another 408 missiles from Israel. The Israelis made a profit of $3 million on the deal.

In October, 1985, Congress agreed to vote 27 million dollars in non-lethal aid for the Contras in Nicaragua. However, members of the Ronald Reagan administration decided to use this money to provide weapons to the Contras and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

The following month, Shackley traveled to Hamburg where he met General Manucher Hashemi, the former head of SAVAK’s counterintelligence division at the Atlantic Hotel. Also at the meeting on 22nd November was Manuchehr Ghorbanifar. According to the report of this meeting that Shackley sent to the CIA, Ghorbanifar had “fantastic” contacts with Iran.

At the meeting Shackley told Hashemi and Ghorbanifar that the United States was willing to discuss arms shipments in exchange for the four Americans kidnapped in Lebanon. The problem with the proposed deal was that William Francis Buckley was already dead (he had died of a heart-attack while being tortured).

Shackley recruited some of the former members of his CIA Secret Team to help him with these arm deals. This included Thomas Clines, Rafael Quintero, Ricardo Chavez and Edwin Wilson of API Distributors. Also involved was Carl E. Jenkins and Gene Wheaton of National Air. The plan was to use National Air to transport these weapons.



Then another detail emerged which was to turn the whole operation into a fully-blown scandal altogether:


QUOTE

On 5th October, 1986, a Sandinista patrol in Nicaragua shot down a C-123K cargo plane that was supplying the Contras. Eugene Hasenfus, an Air America veteran, survived the crash and told his captors that he thought the CIA was behind the operation. He also provided information on two Cuban-Americans running the operation in El Savador. This resulted in journalists being able to identify Rafael Quintero and Felix Rodriguez as the two Cuban-Americans mentioned by Hasenfus. It gradually emerged that Thomas Clines, Oliver North, Edwin Wilson and Richard Secord were also involved in this conspiracy to provide arms to the Contras.



This is what most people may remember from that period.
At some stage during the Iran-Contra-hearings, an intelligent question was asked- and was answered. Regrettably no one seems to have taken any further action.
The hearings were televised; RTE (Radio Telefis Eireann) broadcast short segments for a period back then.
(>CITATION NEEDED< I saw that broadcast back then, but i can't remember who was being questioned back then. If anyone can shed some light on that, please let me know)

"Question: There are ten million dollars from the transactions with Iran, which were supposedly earmarked for the Contra-rebels in Nicaragua.
Yet this money ended up in a secret Swiss bank-account.
Why did that money end up in a Swiss bank-account?"

"Answer: The money was earmarked for a small group within the CIA...The idea was to invest this money in regular companies; the income generated in this way was supposed to be used to finance the operations of that little group, independent and without authorisation or knowledge of Congress..."

The answer drew some gasps from those present; but outside of that, there was nothing. The problem was that Ronald Reagan's administration had not just been involved in illegal arms-sales to Iran and secret deals with the Contras and the Mujahedin.

Omar Efrain Torrijos Herrera had become de facto president of Panama following a coup by the national guard whose commanding officer he was at the time, in 1968.
By 1977, he and Jimmy Carter signed the Panama-canal-treaty.
He died in a plane-crash on August 1st. 1981.
Just three months prior to his death, the president of Ecuador Jaime Roldós Aguilera died in very similar circumstances, also in a plane-crash.
John Perkins alleges in his book "Confessions of an economic hitman" that both Roldós and Torrijos were assassinated by concealed bombs aboard their respective aircraft by elements of the CIA, and that these plots had been instigated by the Bechtel-corporation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_hit_men

Manuel Noriega's lawyer, Frank Rubino, claimed during the trial against Noriega that the latter was in possession of documents which would prove that Torrijos had not died in an accident, but that he had been assassinated by the CIA. The documents were subsequently disallowed by the presiding judge who agreed with the government's position that their public mention would violate the Classified Information Procedures Act.
In the meantime, Colombia was effectively taken over by the drugs cartells; one BBC-reporter back then pointed at a 1930's vintage car, riddled with bulletholes and propped up on a displaystand behind him, and explained that this car had once belonged to John Dillinger. "We are here in the mafia-museum; following down the road to my left, we will pass the mafia-zoo were we can look at the mafia-rhino and the mafia-zebra, and after passing the mafia-supermarket we will run straight into the mafia-bank...In fact, the mafia has undermined the police and the judiciary, and is effectively running this country..."
A somewhat amazing statement, considering that the whole of Middle- and South America used to be described as "America's backyard" back then.

Looking at a map, we can see the following:
Ecuador and Colombia- both drug-producing countries;
above that- Panama;
then Nicaragua and Honduras;
Guatemala, Mexico, and finally the United States.
Working on the premise that the importation of illegal drugs such as cocain or heroin is *not* in the interest of *any* general public in *any* country, we can pose the question just how it is possible that a Nation like Colombia can be taken over by a bunch of drug-barons and mafia-bosses without the CIA noticing, while even the democratic *election* of a Salvador Allende causes them enough of a belly-ache to decide to replace him with a more "co-operative" Augusto Pinochet.

Moving on to Panama, we find that while Torrijos' successors were Florencio Flores Aguilar and Rubén Darío Paredes, it was ultimately Manuel Noriega who was the true successor.
That Noriega worked for the CIA is undisputed; the nature of his involvement however has never been fully investigated.
Panama is a bottleneck; practically every grain of cocain or heroin produced in South America has to pass through here.
During the 1980's, it passed through Panama with the help and the support of Manuel Noriega.

Nicaragua had been ruled up to July 17th 1979 by Anastasio Somoza; by then his people had had enough and they threw him out- a move which prompted the the US-state department to demand that the "democratically elected lawful government be re-instated immediately".
What followed was a civil war fuelled by the CIA by way of the Contra-rebels.
During the Iran-Contra-hearings it emerged that the Contras had been involved in drug-smuggling operations on a large scale; the drugs passing through Panama were passed through Nicaragua in this way.

Honduras became the pivoting point for the covert support given to the Contras by the US; major centres for this form of support were the secret bases Mena and El Aguacarte. The drugs were passing through here as well...

Guatemala was ruled from 1978-1982 by Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, and after that by José Efraín Ríos Montt- both military dictators; the former was ousted through a CIA-instigated coup, which brought the latter to power.
Ríos Montt was effectively responsible for murdering more than 200000 people, mostly of Maya-descendancy. His daughter Zury Rios Sosa married republican congress-man Jerry Weller in 2006. Ríos Montt's successor Oscar Humberto Mejia Vixtores was not one bit less brutal in his treatment of political opponents; interesting to note that his coup was mainly directed against the evangelicalism of his predecessor. He nevertheless ruled by America's grace.
And the drugs were passing through here as well.

Mexico on the other hand is a pseudo-democracy were the same party has been ruling for decades without ever losing a single election.
By America's grace, of course.
And again- the drugs were passing through.

Until they reached the United States of America, were they caused mayhem on a massive scale.

So- how is it possible not only that drugs-cartells and mafiosi can take over a nation like Colombia, which is supposedly part of the US-sphere of influence, but that the drugs provided by those people can pass through several countries which are also part of that sphere of influence?

Let's go back to Eugene Hasenfuss and the plane piloted by him which was shot down in October 1986.
That plane belonged to a gentleman called Barry Seal.
Take a look at the picture in this article:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKseal.htm

In the aftermath of the Iran-Contra-scandal, some details of the involvement of the CIA into the murky world of the drugs-mafia came to light; however- no conclusive evidence was ever found to prove that the CIA itself had in any way benefitted.
The general conclusion was that the profits had usually been used to finance the CIA's covert operations.
However- figures like Theodore Shackley were at that time no longer affiliated with the CIA. At least not officially: Shackley had left the agency in 1979.
But he was also known to conduct "private" operations- and at least *some* of the proceeds of his involvement with General Vang Pao in Laos had ended up flowing into various channels controlled exclusively by Shackley.
It may very well be that part of the profits made during the Iran-Contra-era was used to finance the activities of the Contra-rebels.
But to assume that *all* of this money was used for this purpose would be extremely naive.
Let's take a look at the kind of figures involved.
The following Table shows average street-prices for cocain and heroin back to 1990:

http://www.swivel.com/data_columns/show/36..._direction=DESC

For 1990, it puts the average street-value for one gramme of cocain at 230 $ (strange enough that the prices for that sort of stuff seem to deteriorate the further we move into the future; the more hectars are eradicated, the cheaper it gets. The rules of supply and demand seem not to apply at all...)
It stands to reason that the mid-1980's prices would have been higher still; however, i couldn't find any information about that.
I have tried to figure out just how many tons of the stuff Mr. Seal and his associates really brought into the US., but that seems difficult.
Most sources state something about "...2-5 billion dollars worth"; but that figure is in all certainty too low. Another source suggested "...up to 40 tons per flight" (that one was a German article which has since been pulled; stupid me failed to back it up (IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/doh1.gif) ). That however seems a tad too much.
Quite interesting is the following article- and i would suggest that it should wind its way into the library:

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b6048f444f4.htm

Dated 07.26.01 --- *just over a month before the world's greatest magic-show hit town*...
The source for this one is weird enough; but the fact that publication of this article in the Washington Post was evidently blocked should send alarm-bells tumbling off the walls not just here, in this forum. (BTW- this time, i *did* back it up...)
The above article speaks of "...Duffle-bags...containing possibly hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocain". That would suggest possibly in excess of a ton of cocain- and Barry Seal is credited with more than 100 flights like that.
One of the replies in above FR-thread actually refers to an interview in 1993 on CBS "60 minutes":

"I really take great exception to the fact that 1,000 kilos came in, funded by U.S. taxpayer money."

DEA official Anabelle Grimm, during a 1993 interview on a CBS-TV "60 Minutes" segment entitled "The CIA's Cocaine." The 1991 CIA drug-smuggling event Ms. Grimm described was later found to be much larger. A Florida grand jury and the Wall Street Journal reported it to involve as much as 22 tons.

22 tons. 22000 kilos. 22000000 grams.
The table in the link above still gives 215$ per gram for 1991...
That's 4730000000 Dollars for that one load:
More than 4.7 Billion (!!!) Dollars...
It seems that some people are quite anxious that not too much light is shed on *this* particular part of history. All the more reason to do precisely that- because there is a very real possibility that good old Mr. Shackley- plus 'Barry and the boys'- were responsible for literally tens- if not hundreds- of billions of dollars worth of cocain finding its way into the United States: A bit much just for the purpose of financing the Contras. Doing that would have required just tens of millions...
Now- if someone wanted to "turn America into the world's biggest banana-republic" in order to take control, he would need money.
And the potential profits of this particular enterprise would be more than sufficient as starter-capital.
Once properly laundered, it could be invested in just about anything- from corrupt politicians and institutions right up to TV-stations and news-papers...
...and thus even create additional- and quite legal!- income on top of the benefits derived from bribery.
Not to mention the ability to control the media arising from the simple fact that a billion or two will go a long way in simply *buying* TV-stations and newspapers which otherwise would be impossible to control. Control comes with ownership...

It was these drug-deals which provided the starter-capital for one of the most immoral business-enterprises in human history.
But i believe that at that point, it was still primarily about undermining the various institutions within the US, for the purpose of gaining control over that country:
The main motive was power-hunger.
But developements on the worldstage would soon open ways to even more ambitious goals.
Why be content in turning one nation into the world's greatest banana-republic,
if you can turn the whole world into one gigantic banana-republic?
Throughout history, those who are hungry for power have never been content with their achievements. One thing always led to the next- wether it's an Alexander the great or a Genghis Khan, a Napoleon or a Hitler.
The hunger for power is never stilled.



(More to follow...)

[Sanders]

Great stuff, DA. Interesting and under-addressed topic, I'm very interested in this stuff... Thanks (IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/thumbsup.gif)

[Devilsadvocate]

PART 3:

"THE CONTROLLED DEMOLITION OF THE SOVIET UNION":

As i mentioned before, a small article turned up in a magazine in the early eighties.
It stated that the US-industrial complex, according to statements made by CIA-officials, was free of Soviet spies.
At the same time, the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 had brought the opportunity to introduce a trade-embargo against the USSR, which included an electronics-embargo.
(And i need to emphasize again that i don't have those articles any more- i still haven't found anything at all about that electronics-embargo. If anyone knows anything, please get in touch...DA)
So, what is your head of the KGB going to do in that kind of situation?
Without spies within the industrial complex in the US, he can't know what kind of technology is being developed, or actually installed in aircraft or tanks.
And an electronics-embargo means that he can't form a picture by analysing electronic components either...
He is effectively blind. But he is still charged with providing some kind of picture of the US-military's capabilities.
Under the circumstances, he will have to make do with what he can get:
Publications in the MSM, sales prospects issued by arms manufacturers, information he can gather during air-shows and the like. To this, he adds whatever data he can find in relation to US-military spending.
If he now tries to figure out roughly how much the production of the airframe for one F-16 jet will cost, how much for the engine, for the undercarriage aso., then whatever is left at the end has got to be the amount spend on the plane's electronics...
It will leave him with a shaky picture, but that- to him- may be still better then no picture at all.
There is a serious problem, however. He can never be sure if the 'other side' is not taking him by the hand, leading him to the edge of the abyss.
In the 1980's, a number of stories emerged relating to things like the famous coffee-machines installed on board of the C-5A Galaxy transport aircraft, or the wrench for the nose-wheel of the F-16 fighter jet.
Those items had been seriously over-priced; at the same time, the US-defense budget was growing to enormous proportions.
The aforementioned head of the KGB would only have seen general data, but not neccessarily been familiar with details.
If an F-16 back then cost 22 million dollars, then he would not have been aware that at least part of this figure derived from over-priced components such as the wrench (and no doubt the bolt for which it was intended as well, plus assorted other items...)
As a result, he would have come to the conclusion that the F-16 was equipped with far more costly (and therefore far more sophisticated) electronics than previously thought- or, at least, he would have formed a worst-case-scenario of the F-16 with far more sophisticated electronics than thought possible. And he would have had to act on it.
World war two cost the Russians between 20 and 30 million dead. As a result, they react extremely nervously to anything even remotely looking like a perceived threat.
And: Whenever they have been confronted by any technological superiority in the past, they tried to make up for it by way of a numerical superiority.
The prospect of being confronted in any potential conflict by highly sophisticated and potentially superior American equipment therefore resulted in an attempt to balance the supposed superior technology by building more tanks and aircraft.
The problem was that the Soviet equipment was not very good, but not all that far behind either- and while producing an aircraft may have been cheaper in the USSR than in any western country, it still cost real money. Building hundreds of cheap aircraft is then still far more costly then building a few expensive ones.
It must have had a serious effect on the Soviet economy, which ended up spending itself into oblivion.
At the same time, the "70000-odd tanks" of the eastern bloc were a perfect excuse to "modernise" the western forces, and increase defense-spending massively.
Eventually, the moment came when this state of affairs was no longer sustainable for the USSR: They needed to carry out reforms, simply because the existing structures could no longer cope. The hardliners within the USSR had fought any previous attempts to introduce changes tooth and claw- but they ended up having no choice but to step aside and allow alternatives to be explored.
These alternatives came in the shape of Mikhail Gorbatchev.
Unfortunately, while Gorbatchev may have had the best of intentions, the condition of the Soviet economy meant that he had to try and get outside help in the shape of foreign investment, while being highly dependant on international banks for loans.
The advent of his perestrojka and glasnost-policies signalled the beginning of another phase in the planning of the US, and- far more importantly- in the planning of the renegades within the CIA.
Up to then, they may well have been pre-occupied with their illegal fundraising-activities and the undermining of existing structures within the US.
But Gorbatchev's reforms were a definite sign that the USSR was in trouble.
The CIA, on the other hand, may well have done what they were charged to do up to then. But from here on, the interests of the official CIA and the renegades ran parallel.
The USSR was weak: All that was needed was a catalyst which would cause it's collapse. This catalyst was to be provided by Saddam Hussein.
But before that, there first was a small problem to be solved.
The Vietnam war had left the general public in the US dissillusioned and highly critical of any US-military operations. But without the option of fighting wars, the advantages gained over the USSR would sooner or later evaporate.
There would have been no way to get the protestors of the late 'sixties behind government-policies involving another war.
But their would be another generation- and that generation could be influenced. All that was needed was to gain control over the media.
In a society which prides itself in a free press, this may seem difficult; but it's not, if the same society also prides itself in a free economy.
Some of the first steps were, however, not taken in the US, but in Britain.
The Argentinian military had been a steadfast supporter of Ronald Reagan's policies- staunchly anti-communist, and brutal in their dealings with political opponents to the point were victims of the death-squads were secretly buried underneath the tiger-cages in the zoological garden of Buenos Aires. They had also provided training for the Contra-rebels on behalf of the US:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldo_Galtieri

In early 1981 Galtieri visited the United States and was warmly received, as the Reagan administration viewed his regime as a bulwark against communism. National Security Advisor Richard V. Allen described him as a "majestic general." Galtieri's strength was sufficient to allow him to remove a number of rival generals and, in December 1981, he rose to the presidency of Argentina by means of a coup, ousting interim President Roberto Viola.

By 1982, Galtieri discovered that the Flakland-islands should really be called "Islas Malvinas", and had them captured. Interesting that he got that idea into his head to begin with; even more interesting that Reagan's staunchest supporter, Maggie Thatcher (who otherwise seems to have no problems with the various 'friends' acquired during that period- such as Augusto Pinotchet) would lash out at this particular 'friend' with such fervour: She insisted that the 'Malvinas' were the 'Falklands' and decided to defend the sheep there by military force.
The most important aspect of that war was the fact that, for the first time, so-called "Press pools" were introduced. Journalists could not be allowed to roam around and report what they saw freely, since nobody could guarantee their safety. Therefore, they would stay aboard a Royal Navy-warship and report what they were told during the press-briefings. That way there could be no 'accidents'...
The same principle was to be employed a year later, when Ronald Reagan discovered his love for the sunny island of Grenada. No 'accidents' were to happen there, either. One journalist who had chartered a fishing-trawler back then described how the boat was overflown by a 'Skywarrior'-bomber, which then dropped a buoy with a notice in front of the boat: "You are entering a zone of military operations. We can not guarantee your safety if you proceed; we urge you therefore to turn back immediately". The bomber then overflew the boat again, this time with it's bomb bay doors open. The skipper of the trawler decided that it would be better to sail towards a destination where their safety could be guaranteed...
1986 followed the bombing of Libya. People were beginning to get used to occasional little military operations.
By then, the media were by far not as free anymore than people liked to believe.
In Britain, Rupert Murdoch had decided the same year that the operations of his London papers needed modernising. While this had the effect that the power of the unions was effectively broken (by way of getting rid of the pesky type-setters), it had far more far-reaching consequences.
Fleet street had been a community: Journalists, even though they had been working for competing papers, had met each other regularily and had known each other quite well. And though their respective papers were in competition with each other, they had known the value of exchanging information: The interpretation of the material thus exchanged might have differed as greatly as the outlook of the paper or even the individual journalist, but all benefitted by this kind of exchange.
This community was broken up; the papers would now primarily reflect Rupert Murdoch's views.

http://www.eastlondonhistory.com/fortress%20wapping.htm

Two years before, the BBC had been hit by a scandal when it emerged that practically all editors had been replaced by officers of MI5. (CITATION NEEDED: Absolutely amazingly, i can't find a word about that scandal anywhere. I can remember it quite well- i was reading about it in an Irish paper while sitting in front of my tent, shortly after arriving in Ireland...)
After the scandal broke, the editors were in fact fired and replaced with the original editors.
Meanwhile Murdoch had collected British papers like stamps, and in the US the same was happening with TV-stations.
Getting people used to military operations is one thing; but to control their way of thinking a few other ingredients would be needed. Those ingredients would be provided by the entertainment-industry, by way of TV-shows like "Major Dad", starting in time (1989) to have some effect before the great showdown in the Gulf in 1990:
The main premise of the series was the relationship between a military officer and father (Major Dad), conservative (meaning republican), and his wife- a liberal (i.e., democratic) journalist. (Those distinctions all but dissappeared quite fast, as the liberal journalist very quickly became almost indistinguishable from the conservative Major Dad).
In one episode, the daughter returns from school with a bad grade in history- so Granddad (the "Colonel") is drafted in to provide a grind in history.
Quote:
(Granddad): "...and we could see those Vietcong transports on the other side of the border, but we couldn't do anything about them...In hindsight, i have to say that even though it was quite controversial at the time, bombing Cambodia was the right decision..."
(Daughter): "Wow- Granddad! It's not boring at all, like that stuff in the history-books! I bet you won't find that in any of those books!"

Yep. Far more entertaining then those boring books...
Never mind that the reason why it was a controversial decision was because they conveniantly forgot to inform Congress that they were going to war with a neutral country after destabilizing the same country, and that the larger part of the bombardments were directed against the very Khmer Rouge which their puppet Lon Nol could not keep in check, and which they eventually chose to support simply because they were against the Vietnamese. John Pilger wrote a few very poignant things about that entire sorry episode: He entered Cambodia when the Vietnamese army invaded the country, after the Khmer Rouge had taken to wiping out Vietnamese villages as well as murdering their own people. It was him who provided the pictures which proved that the reports about 'mountains of dead bodies' were not merely Vietnamese propaganda.
By the time that TV-series was aired, the children of those who had protested against the Vietnam war where young adults who had grown up on a diet of "Top Gun" (1986) and "Die Hard" (1988). Meanwhile Ronald Reagan had been credited with "...leading the United States out of the Vietnam syndrome".
Just how well the combined stratagem of official security-services and renegade CIA-officials worked can be measured by two occurences:
Firstly, the Iran-Contra-scandal which should have resulted in Ronald Reagan's impeachment, followed by some serious house-cleaning- and which, instead, resulted in some collective eyebrow-raising followed by the fall-guy of the affair, Colonel Oliver North, turning into a national hero. Reagan himself at that time was practically a sacred figure who could be touched by nothing.
Eugene Hasenfuss' aircraft was shot down by the Sandinistas in early October 1986; Reagan signed a new drug enforcement bill into law just three weeks later and opened his 'War on drugs'.
The findings of the Kerry commission were simply ignored by the media altogether.

Secondly- when Manuel Noriega became a potential embarrassment, it was decided that he needed to be brought under control. Noriega himself seems to have been so self-assured by the expected protection through his CIA-handlers that he loudly declared war on the United States.
The resulting military intervention resulted in a bloodbath.

(Link will follow later- can't find it right now.)

Several thousand dead- several thousand simply swept under the carpet as if they had never existed: Something like that is only possible if the media are well and truly under control.
With this, the stage was set for the final chapter of the cold war, and the first of a new era.

The Mullahs in Iran had left a host of unlikely allies with a common problem:
The oil-emirates in the Gulf- all united during the OPEC-crisis- were worried that the new regime in Iran might decide to spread their brand of political Islam; practically all of them are governed by corrupt regimes which are not exactly beloved by their own people. Under the circumstances, they were looking for a 'protector', and they got Saddam Hussein and the US for that purpose.
The Soviets and the Chinese were worried because they both had large muslim minorities; the prospect of fundamentalist-sponsored uprisings were a haunting prospect to them.
The European Union was worried about any potential threat to their oil-supplies, and the US had a bone to pick over the hostage-crisis (at least on the surface).
So, they all sat in one boat.
Saddam was to be supported in order to keep the mullahs busy.
He was provided with weapons and military assistance; and in order to allow him to pay for this party, he was given huge loans- by, among others, the Amir of Kuwait.
After the war with Iran had started over a trivial border-conflict, he received huge weapons-shipments- including a number of South-African 155mm-guns provided by the man who had designed them: Gerald Bull, who was to become Saddam's favourite arms-dealer.

http://www.geocities.com/sa_bushwar4/artillerie2

Credits and loans provided, however, only a part of the financial means Saddam needed to pay for the veritable toy-store provided to him. By the mid-1980's, a massive pipeline was build between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. 1100km long, it only opereated between September 1989 and August 1990, the point at which Saddam ordered the invasion of Kuwait.
Strategic oil-pipelines are subject to international law:
Delivering installations like that to a nation at war is prohibited under these laws.
This means that the pipeline in question was sold to Iraq illegally- like most of the material Saddam received around that time. Faked end-user agreements saw to it that he would still get whatever he wanted.
Being Saddam's favourite arms-dealer, Gerald Bull was in a prime position to get most of these illegal deals under way; it may be difficult to prove, but i strongly suspect that the pipeline was also included in those dealings.
It must be understood that Iraq had been a somewhat under-developed country at the time Saddam became president; as negative a figure as he may have been, the modernisation-programs carried out go to his credit: The educational system was turned into one of the most sophisticated in the whole of the middle east, analphabetism was eradicated, the health-system was highly modern- and above all, the oil-industry which had played only a minor part in Iraq's economy before was now developed.
However- the war with Iran quickly became a hindrance to further developement; by the time the war ended, Iraq only had two major pipelines, as well as a minor one to Turkey. Most Iraqi crude was still shipped by tanker, from Basra through the Shatt-el-Arab, the Indian ocean, and the Red Sea up to the Suez canal.
Apart from the fact that these tanker-transports were costly to begin with, they were a serious weakness in the Iraq's war against Iran.
The arrival of Mikhail Gorbatchev and Perestrojka signalled a shift- the moment had arrived to bring the Iran-Iraq-war to an end.
That war had not been going well for Saddam at all. He had received plenty of weapons to fight with, but little useful training. Tanks were used as infantry-support-vehicles, meaning that they accompanied soldiers on foot at the same speed as those soldiers, while at the same time the Iraqi army was trained in trench-warfare: A throwback to World War One.
Towards the end of the war, the Iranians were beginning to make gains; Basra was threatened for a while, then the oil-fields around Kirkuk.
But then a number of incidents occurred which changed the situation fundamentally.
As part of the war against the Iraqi economy, the Iranians had taken to attacks on international shipping in the gulf. One of the effects was that insurance-rates went through the ceiling; at the same time, tanker-crews demanded (and received) massive pay-increases due to the danger involved: Another problem for Saddam Hussein, and one which in time proved to be crucial.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War

On March 17th. 1987, an American warship- the USS Stark- was involved in an incident during which an Iraqi Mirageaircraft fired an Exocet-missile at the ship.
Dozens of American sailors were killed in the attack; the Iraqis apologised, and the whole incident was quickly declared to have been an accident.

http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id344.htm

In the aftermath of this "accident", it was quickly determined that the AWACS-aircraft in the Gulf were not sufficient to protect US-warships.
Somewhere along the line, the point was completely overlooked that these aircraft *had not been in the Gulf to protect US-warships* to begin with.
They had been there to guide Iraqi bombers.
The navigational skills of the average Iraqi pilot had been so impressive that they had not even be able to find a target the size of Teheran; hence a number of AWACS-aircraft had been send to Saudi Arabia, where they operated with US-airforce-crews and CIA-operatives, but with Saudi markings.
The planes provided radio-beams similar to the HFDF-system ("HuffDuff") used by the British during World War Two, guiding the Iraqi planes to their targets.
This particular Iraqi pilot flew a Mirage-aircraft specifically geared for anti-shipping-strikes with Exocet-missiles.
The problem was that the Iranian navy only had three ships which would have warranted an Exocet-strike: Three old frigates dating to the time of the Shah.
Three ships like that are useless from a military point of view; but losing one to an Iraqi attack would have meant a huge propaganda-victory for the Iraqis.
Deutsche Welle carried a report back then, which stated that these ships never left port- for the entire duration of the war with Iraq.
That would suggest that this pilot spend the war doing exercises- but rarely ever any live attack (unless Exocets were used for strikes on tankers.)
But that day, he took off to find an Iranian frigate, found his target, and Bullseye...
No one ever asked how he was able to find his target.
The consequences of the attack included that, since the AWACS-planes were not sufficient, some additional measures needed to be taken to prevent future accidents like that.
Thus, the USS Vincennes was send into the Gulf.
The ship is described as a "CG" (Cruiser, Guided Missile) these days.
But the "Vincennes" belongs to a class of ship effectively build around a computer-system:

Rogers was the second commanding officer of Vincennes and assumed command April 11, 1987. At the time, Vincennes was one of only five cruisers commissioned that carried the new Aegis combat system, a billion dollar computerized integrated battle management system and the first such cruiser to join the Pacific fleet. The heart of Aegis is an advanced, automatic detect-and-track, multi-function three-dimensional phased array radar, the AN/SPY-1. Known as "the Shield of the Fleet", the high-powered radar is able to perform search, tracking, and missile guidance functions simultaneously with a track capacity of over 100 targets at more than 100 nautical miles (200 km).[6] Command of an Aegis cruiser was considered to be very prestigious at the time.[2] On April 25, 1988, Vincennes was deployed on a six month cruise in support of Operation Earnest Will, the reflagging and escort of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_C._Rogers_III

En route to the Gulf, Commander Rogers gave a press-conference during which he explained that he was not at all happy with the idea of his ship "...being send into the confined waters of the Persian Gulf...With all that civilian air traffic going on, accidents can happen..."
(Deutschlandfunk, report at the time)
Within days, the "Vincennes" shot down an Iranian airliner. "Deutschlandfunk" back then: "...Off course, it must be assumed to have been an accident... The Us navy would never do such a thing on purpose".
Why Captain Rogers, who had been part of a navy think tank assessing electronic weapons systems and who, it has to be assumed, would have been perfectly able to assess the capabilities of the computers and radar-systems of his ship, should have nothing better to do than to bring his ship into Iranian territorial waters, chase a handful of open motor-launches with outboard-engines and play Captain Hornblower, when he could have dispatched his escort-destroyer if those boats were so important to him;
why he would endanger a ship which at the time was described as "the eyes and ears of an entire fleet" for such a purpose;
and why he consistently ignored the warnings radioed to him by the Commander of his escort-destroyer that the approaching aircraft was definitely a civilian airliner- while later claiming that the computer-displays on board of the "Vincennes" had not allowed for any way of knowing which size the radar-contact really was-
has never been investigated.
Within weeks, the Iranians agreed to a ceasefire- at a time when, for the first time in that war, they were beginning to make significant gains.
Some time after, an article appeared in "Der Spiegel", according to which a conference had taken place in a house in a suburb of Teheran, shortly before the ceasefire.
Taking part in that conference were:
Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani (who would later become Prime minister of Iran),
Ali Khamenei- the religious leader;
Ali Khomeini- the son of the Ayatollah;
and various military officers and officials.
The idea was to put pressure on Ali Khomeini- they wanted him to try and armwrestle his father into agreeing to a ceasefire.
Rafsanjani was quoted as saying "...There is no point in conducting a war which the Americans will never allow us to win".
And so, the war between Iran and Iraq came to an end.
It left both countries with huge problems.
In the case of Iraq, these problems were added to by the fact that Saddam's former creditors began to demand re-payment of the loans they had provided to him. He needed ways of generating additional income. Instead, he was credited with trying to throw good money after bad, in a vain attempt to obtain a gigantic artillery-gun. Or so they said.
At the time of the Iranian attacks on tankers, a BBC-reporter explained that those attacks were hurting Iraq badly: Insurance, crew-costs, operating-costs and losses due to mines or attacks meant that Iraq badly needed another pipeline.
According to that report, Iraq had two major pipelines to Saudi-Arabia, and a minor one to Turkey. Saddam needed another one, to Syria.
Instead, he is supposed to have tried to buy that gun- which was promptly confiscated in a joint operation between the British, Dutch and Greek authorities.
Strangely, he had been able to obtain a strategic pipeline at a time when he shouldn't have, while the "gun" was impounded after the war with Iran had ended.
Let's assume for a moment that this "gun" was a pipeline...
The man responsible for setting up the deal was Gerald Bull, who was an expert for artillery, and who had experimented with guns which were to have a huge range. Granted. But he also was an international arms-dealer, and Saddam Hussein's favourite one. Saddam didn't need a gun. He needed a pipeline- and badly. So- if Gerald Bull had helped to set up the routes by which Saddam had managed to get all kinds of weaponry and other contraband before, why not rely on him for the purpose of obtaining a piece of equipment like that at a time when it would be perfectly legal?
The pipeline which was constructed in the 1980's had been 1100 km long: If the individual sections are around 10 to 15 meters long, between 73000 and 110000 sections will be needed. That's an awful lot of material to be smuggled into a warzone. Pipelines like that are high-tech installations, requiring sensor-points, pumps and monitoring-stations all along. Any accident is not only an environmental hazard, but makes for a huge financial loss.
A proposed pipeline to Syria may be somewhat shorter, but it would still be as complicated and massive a project, not to mention costly.
But it would have had huge advantages- cutting the cost of transporting crude oil to the Mediterranean, making Iraq independant from tankers and the Shat-al Arab,
and getting rid of a strategic Achilles-heel at the same time.
If it was a pipeline (and i have no doubt about that), Saddam never received the whole thing.
When the OPEC-conference in 1990 took place, Saddam bitterly complained about Kuwait exceeding it's production-quota (thus lowering world prices); he accused the Amir of Kuwait of stealing oil from Iraqi oil-fields as well. He got no concessions whatsoever. (Strangely, that story has changed somewhat these days: In 2000, Deutsche Welle carried a report about the tenth aniversary of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait; back then, the story was that Saddam had made all kinds of demands, all of which were supposed to have been fulfilled, and he still invaded Kuwait...)
The resulting sabre-rattling was shrugged of by the various delegates at that conference, and by international diplomacy.
Days later, Saddam lived up to his reputation of never making empty threats, and invaded Kuwait- after Ambassador April Glaspie had effectively told him that the US won't interfere in standing border-conflicts, and left for her holidays.
European governments have a long tradition of simply "doing as they are told" when it comes to the US; impounding a pipeline and declaring it to be a gun may not be as strange as it may seem. I don't think Saddam Hussein had much insight into anything outside the Middle east; the administration of George H.W. Bush would have told him that "that just those stupid Europeans"- he would have believed it, on the grounds that Bush and his backers were the best friends he ever had. (Shortly after the pictures of Abu Ghraib appeared, there was a report on Deutsche Welle, which contained an interview with the mayor of a small town in Iraq. Asked what he felt about those pictures, he produced a package- carefully wrapped into a cloth-, which contained a walnut disply-case with a very valuable Colt pistol, complete with accessories. He said that the pistol had been a present from an American officer, and added "...I can't understand why the Americans have treated me with such kindness, while they are treating my country-men like dirt..."
It may seem naive, but it's not. Where this man is from, a bribe comes in a brown paper-envelope. If you give someone a weapon, it's a sign of friendship- undying friendship: Centuries ago, it would have been something like a valuable Dagger.
It's based on the premise that you would not give a Dagger like that to an enemy, since he would most likely cut your throat with it. Thus, it becomes a symbol of extreme trust.
Saddam received not just a Dagger- but even something which *none* of the various satellite-states had ever received from any of the super-powers: Chemical weapons; Bio-warfare-agents; even components for a nuclear program...
*Undying friendship*. Bush senior may have been the only person Saddam Hussein ever trusted- blindly.)
Saddam had spent years fighting Iran, in the interest of the oil-emirates, of Saudi Arabia, of the West, the Soviet Union, the Chinese, the EU.
When the Amir of Kuwait (described by a Swiss business man back then as "extremely greedy...that man is only interested in one single thing in life, and that's money") apparently turned against him, he lashed out.
That the "greedy" Amir should do that is not surprising. Exceeding his OPEC-quota meant that the major oil-companies in the US could buy the oil cheaply, which they would refine to petrol and Diesel and sell with a veritable profit-margin.
He was a major stock-holder in most of those companies; thus he ultimately profited by means of the returns on his shares.
On another front, victory was easily obtained for George H.W.:
The United Nations had been steadfastly dismantled throughout the eighties; at the time a resolution was sought which would be elastic enough as to interpret it as a blanco-cheque for war, Mikhail Gorbatchev badly needed foreign loans and investment. He had no choice but to comply.
Once the Russians played along, everyone else played along as well- simply because no one wanted to be accused of undermining the UN- just as it was "really working" for the first time in it's history...
A Journalist for WDR radio (West-Deutscher Rundfunk) in Moscow was asked back
then what he thought the reaction of the Soviets would be.
He replied "That will depend...If the Americans stick to the resolution to the letter and just remove the Iraqi troops from Kuwait, nothing will happen. If the first bombs should drop on Baghdad, however, a clock will start to tick: From that moment on, the Soviets will loose their credit-worthiness with all international banks. They will be able to sustain that for a few weeks, but when the pain-barrier is reached, they will begin to act up..."
Gorbatchev "acted up" shortly before the ground-offensive in Kuwait began- by working out an agreement with Saddam Hussein which included a complete withdrawal from Kuwait, on condition of a cease-fire. The proposal was brushed aside by Master Bush immediately, on the grounds that "...we are way past that moment...The Iraqis had their chance, and didn't take it..."
It was this temporary loss of the international loans which caused the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The outcome of the war itself was a largely forgone conclusion:
The media tried to make a lot of the supposed "fact" that Iraq possessed the world's fourth largest army; but even if that statement was true (which would be questionable- the first three would have been the United States, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China) Saddam's army was decidedly a paper-tiger.
Most of the 500000 soldiers of that army were purely infantry-troops, riding onto the battlefield on the back of un-armoured trucks; the reported 7500 armoured personel carriers would only have had the capacity to carry about 60000 to 75000 soldiers. The 5000 tanks looked good on paper, but apart from the fact- already mentioned- that they were used as infantry-support-vehicles, travelling at the speed of a foot-soldier, they were technically outdated for the most part.
(The T-72 tanks of the Republican Guards- the only noteworthy ones- were actually similar to the ones with which the East-German NVA had been equipped. After re-unification, the West-German Bundeswehr tested the vehicles, declared them to be a "mis-construction", and phased them out).
The interesting part of this war was really it's duration.
If the US had taken out the water-trucks which brought drinking-water up to the Iraqi positions in Kuwait on a regular basis, the Iraqi troops would have surrendered in masses within days.
But the trucks were left intact; instead- while the "Coalition-forces" were almost alone in actually attacking the Iraqi forces in Kuwait, the US-aircraft were bombing Iraq itself.
After about five weeks of bombardment, the moment had arrived when the pain-barrier of the Soviets was reached. Gorbatchev tried to work out an agreement with Saddam Hussein which would have meant that the Iraqi troops would have left Kuwait- on condition of a ceasefire. The proposal was dismissed by George Bush senior immediately, on the principle that "...They've had their chance...too little too late".
Gorbatchev's proposal was the signal that the war needed to be concluded fast, since otherwise it may have resultet in some other, less diplomatic reaction on the part of the Soviets.
The Al Amiriya airraid-shelter was to be the means by which the justification for a ground-offensive (which was un-popular in the US at the time) could be created.

Reporters at the scene in Baghdad back then described two things:
The bunker had only TV-aerials, but no broadcasting-antennae whatsoever.
It was purely a shelter for the civilian population; the claim that US-intelligence had monitored any increase in communications, and that this had led to the conclusion that the bunker was being used as a command-center, were completely nonsensical. One reporter back then stated that "...everyone her knew that this was just an airraid-shelter; the decision to bomb it is inexplicable".
Another reporter back then described the following:
The bunker had a total of seven storeys. The bottom two (below ground) were used by the families of officials of the Baath-party.
The upper three were used by civilians from the surrounding neighbourhood.
The last two in between- and this is the important part- were used by the families
of (and i'm quoting what he said back then literally) of "...Soldiers serving with the Republican Guard in Kuwait City".
The same reporter also explained some details of the attack.
The first bomb had been an armor-piercing round, which penetrated the roof and exploded inside the building. This resulted in a large number of casualties on the upper floors, while at the same time the sudden rise in pressure inside warped the steel-doors, effectively blocking all exits.
The second round was a Thermite-bomb, dropped through the hole left by the first round a few minutes later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite

When ignited in a confined space, Thermite not only creates extremely high temperatures, but uses up all available oxygen very rapidly. The result is a vacuum. The people in that bunker therefore not only burned to death; those who were at the lower levels either choked to death, or had their internal organs pulled out through all the body's orifices.
Around that time, a rather strange and gruesome report appeared on the news here in Ireland.(CITATION NEEDED)
A woman, sitting in a darkened room with her face completely obscured, claimed that she had been a nurse in a Kuwaiti hospital (not the first one- Nurse Nayirah gained a sad kind of fame with her fake story:

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cohen1.html

Propaganda is certainly nothing new- but on this occsion, the fake nurse appeared before members of the US house of representatives. In other words- the propaganda was applied to the elected representatives in order to mislead them)

This particular nurse was however quite different. She claimed to have treated wounded Iraqi soldiers in that hospital, and that- whenever nobody was watching-
she had quickly injected some of those soldiers with air, causing a heart-attack.
According to her own admission, she had killed dozens of Iraqis that way.
What must be understood is that the Iraqi troops in Kuwait had access to satellite-television. They were watching this kind of stuff.
On the day the Al Amiriya-shelter was bombed, they were also watching- and they virtually saw their own women and children being carried out of that bunker.
The result was that they went berserk- killing people in the streets of Kuwait, and especially doctors and nurses from the hospital.
I wonder why.
The response- in the shape of the ground-offensive- followed quickly. The killing-spree was the perfect excuse for it.
In principle, it was the concept of "Blitzkrieg" brought up-to-date. The only major addition was, i believe, an add-on which derived from Saddam's statements that the US-troops would be "...buried in the desert". It consisted of Bulldozer-shield which had been jerry-rigged to the American tanks.
As those tanks approached the Iraqi positions, they opened fire- causing the Iraqi soldiers to take cover inside their trenches. The tanks would- at that point- still have been out of range of the weapons at their disposal.
After closing to a certain distance, the barrage was joined by the machine-cannon fitted to the arored personel-carriers. It would have been absolutely impossible for anyone to leave one of those trenches from here on.
At a distance of about 20 - 30 meters, the Bulldozer-shields were lowered, and the trenches were filled in with sand before anyone could react.
The only survivors would have been located near the gaps between every two tanks.
One commander back then (his name, if i remember correctly, was McClusky) stated that his unit had attacked a stretch of frontline which had been held by around 8000 Iraqi soldiers. When his command-tank arrived at the trenches, all he could see were arms sticking out of the ground. There were very few survivors.
Asking the question as to why they decided on this course of action as opposed to taking out the water-tankers and allowing the Iraqis to surrender in their tens of thousands, the answer is quite simple.
Had they taken out the tankers, the war would have been over too soon: The Soviet economy might have been able to recover.
On the other hand- once the ground-offensive started, large numbers of prisoners were not what was wanted. Prisoners need to be looked after, they need water and medical attention, and they need to be evacuated from the battle-field.
This would have slowed the US-advance down to a crawl.
The ruse with the Bulldozer-shields eliminated this problem. The tanks could keep moving- resulting in the Iraqi front-line simply disintegrating.
From a military point of view, it may have been absolutely brilliant.
Regrettably, soldiers sometimes forget that they do not cease to be members of humankind simply because they wear a uniform. From any other point of view but the military one, it was quite and simply inhumanity based on an indescribable contempt for humanity.
It was to be matched days later, when the Iraqis were told they could withdraw if they left their heavy weapons behind. The promise was not kept; Iraqi troops, along with hundreds of Kuwaiti hostages they were carrying along, were slaughtered in what some commentators described as a "Turkey-shoot".
The final part of this drama came when the Marsh-Arabs, the Kurds and the Shiites in Iraq were told by George H.W. Bush to rise up- "...We will support you!"
The support never came; George senior's intention had been to ruin the Soviet economy, destroy about 40 to 50% of Iraq's army and infrastructure, and leave Saddam Hussein intact. The resulting massacres could serve as an excuse for a later military operation- when the time was right.

(More to follow...)

This post has been edited by Devilsadvocate: Sep 8 2007, 09:07 PM

[juggle]

Excellent reading devilsadvocate.
Thank you for time preparing and providing this info as it has greatly reduced the time it will take for me to get up to speed piecing the puzzle together.

Albert Pike would be proud of the Bush family i bet.

[p.w.rapp]

thx DA
It was good to bring this thread up again with your link in http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum...showtopic=9316
Very interesting read.

@juggle - welcome to the forums.
you'll find many more pieces of the puzzle in our Library.
greetings from an antipode of yours
Zap

[Devilsadvocate]

Excellent reading devilsadvocate.
Thank you for time preparing and providing this info as it has greatly reduced the time it will take for me to get up to speed piecing the puzzle together.

Albert Pike would be proud of the Bush family i bet.

You're welcome.
Good to have you here:
The scariest website on the net.
We wear our tinfoil-hats like a badge of honor.
Fasten your seatbelt...
This will be a bumpy ride.
You'll have to provide your own sickbags, I'm afraid;
Believe me- you'll need quite a few of those...
(IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/welcome.gif)