Last week, ConsortiumNews.com published “On the Brink of Nuclear War,” an essay by William R. Polk, veteran foreign policy consultant, author and professor.
Polk began his career in 1955 as a professor at Harvard. He went on to serve in the Kennedy Administration’s State Department where he was a member of a Policy Planning Council helping Kennedy defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis. Polk has hard-won credibility and I encourage you to read his essay about the US and North Korea.
His analysis focuses on the gap between “the national interest”—which certainly rejects a nuclear weapons exchange—and the interests of the people in government making the decisions. He illustrates this gap with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when both President Kennedy and Soviet leader Khrushchev were determined to avoid nuclear war, but each was under intense pressure from close associates who thought such a war was winnable.
Polk explains:
“We were lucky that at least Kennedy realized this dilemma and took steps to protect himself. What he did is not well understood so I will briefly summarize the main points. First, he identified General Lyman Lemnitzer, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), as the main hawk. Lemnitzer was pushing him toward a nuclear war and had shown his hand by presenting a ‘black’ plan (‘Operation Northwoods’) to be carried out by the JCS to trigger war with Cuba.
“[Curiously, ‘Operation Northwoods’ is hardly known even today. It was described by the eminent scholar on intelligence James Bamford in Body of Secrets (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 82 ff, as the ‘launching [of] a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an-ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.’ Provocations were to be manufactured: hijacking of aircraft, murders and the explosion of the rocket that was carrying astronaut John Glenn into space. Lemnitzer lied to Congress, denying the plan’s existence, and had many of documents destroyed. Although he was dismissed as chairman of the JCS by Kennedy, the organization he formed within the JCS continued to plan covert actions. It would have been surprising if Kennedy did not worry about a possible attempt on his government.]
“Apparently realizing that the plan could easily have been turned into a coup d’état, Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as far from Washington as he could (to Europe to be the NATO commander).”
Operation Northwoods? Do you know about it? Go back and read that paragraph again: “a secret and bloody war of terrorism (launched) against their own country in order to trick the American public . . .” It was designed to put the blame on Cuba, but was cooked up entirely by the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the leadership of General Lemnitzer.
That’s right, like the plan Lemnitzer put together, I’m persuaded the terror attacks of 9/11 were scripted (“manufactured”) by insiders within the US government “in order to trick the American public.”
Since 9/11 we have been reaping the harvest of this deceit. We see it in continuous war, out-of-control Pentagon spending, a covert intelligence system that uses “national security” to eviscerate the protections of the Bill of Rights, a dysfunctional Congress, a corrupted media, a deep cynicism all across society about “truth,” an inexorable slide toward a police state.
This is not something to talk about if you fancy yourself “a cheerful person” or if you wish to be highly regarded by “important people.” The entire subject has been effectively stigmatized. If you speak about it publicly, you will be shut out of important conversations and shunted to the side of public life. Don’t blunder into this unless you are prepared to “lose your life,” as Jesus put it (Matthew 10:39).
This helps explain why we no longer see courageous leaders on the national stage. Only people who first swallow the deceit of 9/11 are given a turn at the microphone.
Want to know more? Again, be forewarned: learning about 9/11 entails not general essays such as this blog, but detailed, sometimes tedious materials such as one would expect from a fact-oriented investigation into an event that involves many moving pieces of a technical nature.
Here are a few up-to-date resources.
WTC7 Evaluation Progress Report: Video presentation of the results to date of a two-year study by Dr. J Leroy Hulsey, Chair of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks’ Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and two Ph.D. research assistants into the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on the afternoon of 9/11.
"Will the 9/11 Case Finally Go toTrial?" by Andrew Cockburn (Harpers, Sept.10, 2017), surveys the many obstructions erected to block the case against Saudi Arabia for financing intrnational terrorism and the 9/11 attacks.
9/11 in the Academic Community, a collection of nearly 30 peer-reviewed studies and papers prepared and published 2006-2017 by 9/11 researchers.
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, the group leading the campaign for a new and independent investigation of the destruction of the three World Trade Center towers on 9/11.
Dig Within, the blog of researcher, Kevin Ryan. Ryan is a former senior manager with Environmental Health Laboratories, a subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories Inc.
Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World by David Ray Griffin (Olive Branch Press, 2017). Griffin is a Christian theologian distinguished by his work in process theology. His book discusses the world altering events that occurred 2000-2008 and closes with a brief summary of the “miracles” on 9/11 that energized and justified those events.
What should readers do with information gleaned from such resources? In my view, nothing in particular. What's important is that we understand our world--including the distortions required by the empire--and live accordingly.
And yet, Kennedy's White House career as a sexual satyr was covered up by a courtier Camelot press - and he arguably won the election due to the faked missile gap propaganda his campaign pumped out against the Eisenhower/Nixon administration. The web one becomes entangled in from deception not only makes truth in governance rare, but creates consequent complex problems.
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