The Neo-Cons:  A Series Of “Unfortunate” Events
By Glen Clancy
Southeast Asia News
Australia Bureau

The neo-conservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), funded by three foundations closely tied to Persian Gulf oil and weapons and defense industries, produced a document in September 2000 entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century”.http://www.newamericancentury.org   The plan reveals that current members of Bush’s cabinet had planned for Gulf regional domination prior to Bush taking office.  The 90-page PNAC document signed by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz states, “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security.  While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”  A “core mission” for the transformed U.S. military is to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars,” according to the PNAC document.  “The process of transformation,” the plan said, “is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”
http://www.americanfreepress.net/12_24_02/America_Pearl_Harbored/america_pearl_harbored.html

On September 10th 2001, a day before 9/11, senior Bush officials finalised a report planning military action against Afghanistan.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4585010/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1550366.stm

Shortly after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, the US military approved the evacuation of hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaeda combatants airlifted from the Taliban-held city of Kunduz to Pakistan, according to US intelligence officials.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jan/21/afghanistan.usa
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3340165

Two weeks ago, the US military remained idle as a prison-break was facilitated by the detonation of what is estimated to have been up to 800 kilograms of explosives.

-AP

Experts in regional affairs believe that the escape of four-hundred Taliban soldiers was given the green-light from US forces.  "There are two opinions among Afghans following up the attack”, said Ahmad Saadat, a political expert, “non-political individuals say the Taliban managed to attack the prison with the help of God, while those more political believe that US forces helped them,".  Saadat concluded that the Afghans are tired of war and that only a few illiterate fighters continue to attack foreign forces.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=60249&sectionid=351020403
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7454021.stm (video)

This week, NATO officials declared that six-thousand troops are urgently needed in Afghanistan.  German NATO general, Egon Ramms claims "We need these soldiers now, very soon, because we need to hold specific areas.”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL2270089120080623

In 2006, the United Nations human rights chief in Iraq, John Pace revealed that a campaign of torture and murder is being conducted by U.S.-trained government police forces. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/03/AR2005120300881.html   Mr. Pace said that “the bulk are attributed to the agents of the Ministry of the Interior."  Figures from Baghdad Medico-Legal Institute, which is located next to the city's mortuary, showed that in one month the morgue received 1,100 bodies, about 900 of which had been tortured or summarily executed.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article347806.ece

Steve Casteel was assigned senior US advisor of the Interior Ministry in the fall of 2003.  Casteel is a former top official in the Drug Enforcement Administration who spent much of his professional life immersed in the drug wars of Latin America.  http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060410/10interior.htm.   In February 2005, General Adnan Thabit, a former member of Hussein's military intelligence service who was imprisoned in 1996 after he joined a U.S.-backed coup plot, was assigned leader of Iraq’s Special Police Commandos controlled by the Interior Ministry. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51781-2005Feb24.html.
“In a country of tough guys, Adnan Thabit may be the toughest of all,” writes Peter Maass of the New York Times.  “He was both a general and a death-row prisoner under Saddam Hussein.”  The Special Police Commandos principle US advisor is James Steele, who led a Special Forces mission in El Salvador during the 1980’s.  Steele headed a team of 55 Special Forces advisors accused of involvement in death squads and human rights abuses. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/magazine/01ARMY.html?pagewanted=2&ei=

5088&en=f0604488a64924cd&ex=1272686400

Gilles Peress/Magnum, The New York Times
General Adnan, center, and his American adviser, James Steele, at a meeting with local sheiks near Samarra.

The Los Angeles Times reported in July 2006 that Senior US military officials described US policy towards the Interior Ministry as confused and disengaged.  One senior official who asked not to be identified said US police trainers “sit up there on the 11th floor of the ministry building... they’re just doing nothing.  The MOI (Ministry of the Interior) is the most broken ministry in Iraq.” http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/09/world/fg-corrupt9

“I go into the Interior Ministry in Baghdad and I see lots and lots of armed men wearing black leather,” Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, said in a 2006 ABC Australia interview.  “Who is paying these guys?  Well, we are, of course.  The narrative that we're getting - that there are death squads and that the Iraqis are all going to kill each other, the idea that the whole society is going to commit mass suicide - is not possible, it's not logical.  There is something else going on in Iraq.”  http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1582067.htm

“If you wish to destroy an area, how do you do it?  Well there are two ways – you can go in there and bomb it and so forth but that is not very efficient, what you do is try to get the people in that area to kill each other and to destroy their own territory, their own farms… The way in which you destroy an opponent is get him to destroy himself, by dividing his ranks against one another.  Then you feed both sides- you have agents feeding both sides; inflaming both sides.”
Zeitgeist - http://zeitgeistmovie.com/

    In 2005, two British SAS elite Special Forces agents were arrested and detained by Iraqi police after being caught driving around in their car shooting at Iraqi civilians, while dressed up as Arabs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4264614.stm 
 

The Interior ministry ordered the immediate release of the captured men.  When the Basra government refused, British tanks backed up by helicopters burst through the Iraqi jail walls and freed the SAS agents.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091900572.html

 
-Atef Hassan, Reuters

The Boston Globe claims President Bush has broken 750 laws since he took office. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/

articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws/ .   Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush on June 9, 2008 including:

Article 1
CREATING A SECRET PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN TO MANUFACTURE A FALSE CASE FOR WAR AGAINST IRAQ;

Article 11
ESTABLISHMENT OF PERMANENT U.S. MILITARY BASES IN IRAQ;

Article 18
TORTURE: SECRETLY AUTHORIZING, AND ENCOURAGING THE USE OF TORTURE AGAINST CAPTIVES IN AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ, AND OTHER PLACES, AS A MATTER OF OFFICIAL POLICY.  http://impeachment.kucinich.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68&Itemid=30.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo4Dov4QYE0&feature=related (video)

This month, the origins of US torture programs were revealed by the Senate Armed Services Committee.  The committee detailed how senior Pentagon officials transformed a program for Special Forces troops to resist torture (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape, or SERE) into a blueprint for torturing terrorism detainees.  http://washingtonindependent.com/view/sere-sucker.  

Robert Grenier, head of the CIA counter-terrorism centre, was fired in early 2006 for opposing such torture programs.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article729944.ece.

Guantanamo Bay detainees

A Physicians for Human Rights report released this month, in which retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba expresses grave concerns, details eleven case studies of lives damaged by US torture programs.  “After years of disclosures by government investigations," Taguba writes, "media accounts and reports from human-rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes."
http://washingtonindependent.com/view/report-lives-damaged.

Maj. Gen. Antonio Mario Taguba

Impeachment Article 21, introduced by Kucinich, details the Bush administrations attempts to portray Iran as a nuclear threat while supporting terrorist groups within Iran.

Article 21
MISLEADING CONGRESS AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ABOUT THREATS FROM IRAN, AND SUPPORTING TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS WITHIN IRAN, WITH THE GOAL OF OVERTHROWING THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT

In the lead up to the Iraq war President George Bush admitted to Tony Blair that "the US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours.  If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach", according to the now infamous leaked memorandum.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1605157.htm
http://www.infowars.net/articles/november2006/241106Iraq.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20060203/ai_n16054895  This plan never eventuated. Conventional propaganda was sufficient enough to initiate the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.  Will it be sufficient for an attack on Iran? 

Gary Hart, former Senator and Council on Foreign Relations member, published an article in late 2007 entitled, Unsolicited Advice to the Government of Iran; outlining historical false-flag events exploited by the US government.  On August 7th 1964, the US congress passed a joint resolution, titled The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia.  In 2005, NSA declassified reports confirmed that the Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened.  “You might be well advised,” Gary Hart suggests to the Iranian government, “to read the history of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 and the history of the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964.”  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/unsolicited-advice-to-the_b_65984.html.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r7htckec-U

In the current political atmosphere, President Bush now faces the threat of war crimes charges.  Progressing PNAC plans of Middle East domination and spreading the “theater wars” to Iran, with the possibility of radical social and political repercussions, seems too irresistible for Bush and the neo-cons to refuse.

In the event of another major terrorist attack akin to 9/11, the President Bush will take total control of the government, bypassing “state, local, territorial, and tribal governments.”  In May 2007, legislation was passed granting the President of the United States unprecedented dictatorial powers in the event of a “catastrophic emergency.”  http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html

    With the approval rating of President Bush reaching an all-time low, conventional propaganda may not be sufficient to advance the neo-con PNAC plan.  The world may bear witness to another Gulf of Tonkin incident; an “unfortunate” event that triggers war with Iran. Unless the American people take Gary Hart’s advice and read the history of false-flag events, a war with Iran seems inevitable.