Warning of new bin Laden attack

OSAMA bin Laden is planning an attack against the United States that will “outdo by far” September 11, an Arab newspaper in London has reported. Read more

Warnings from world leaders all within 72 hours

Australian PM Kevin Rudd - “Nuke strike would make 9/11 insignificant” and other weird warnings”

“Over the last 72 hours there has been a strange melange of cryptic messages leaked from world political leaders about what could be in store for America over the next few months.

These predictions of impending doom come from England, France, Australia and the United States. Read more

Redacts answers to Congress’ questions about contractors

As Americans focus on the Olympics and the 2008 presidential campaign, the Bush Administration is finalizing plans to establish yet another massive surveillance program — and has classified almost every single detail.

The Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative, established by National Security Presidential Directive 54 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 in January, is intended to improve the government’s ability to defend against cybersecurity attacks.

But the Bush Administration has refused to release details on the program’s budget, how contracts will be administered, or what contractors might be involved. A whopping $115 million was allocated for the program this year, without any disclosure of progress or accomplishment.

Earlier this week, the Senate Homeland Security Committee released vague details about the program, after receiving some documentation from the Administration following a hearing in March. But the Administration’s response redacted information regarding the contractors involved — despite a history of giving away massive no-bid Iraq reconstruction contractors to companies such as Halliburton, Vice President Cheney’s former firm.

“The response includes information on the National Cyber Security Center, how privacy will be protected under the CNCI, how success of the initiative will be measured, and how the Department views the private sector’s role in the initiative,” wrote the committee’s Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). “The Department chose to redact information relating to contracting at the National Cyber Security Division. The senators have asked DHS explain their reasons for the redactions.”

Among the redacted questions: “Why was the determination made that the contract will be for a 10-month period?” and “How will the DHS provide appropriate oversight to ensure that the contractors support efforts do not intrude on inherently governmental functions?”

According to CNET’s Stephanie Condon, the Administration won’t even related how the program’s “mission relates to Internet surveillance.”

In one of the few details actually known about the program, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced that it would be led by Internet entrepreneur Rod Beckström in March. According to The Washington Post, however, Beckström is not a cybersecurity expert. His background is in open source wikis and in risk management software.

The announcement was dubbed a faux pas by Sen. Collins, who said in a letter that she was under the impression that the entire National Cyber Security Center was classified.

“Prior to this announcement, committee staff had been instructed that the existence of the NCSC was itself classified,” Collins wrote.

“Their letter to DHS in May asked for a detailed account of the department’s role in the Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative, noting a lack of information from the department, in spite of the fact that the administration had claimed that cybersecurity was one of Chertoff’s ‘top four priorities for ‘08,’” Condon notes.

Chertoff has requested $83 million for the center for 2009 on top of the $115 awarded for 2008, pushing the entire budget for cybersecurity over $200 million.

Even the Wall Street Journal, generally a fan of privatized government, has questioned the program.

“Rod Beckstrom, the director of the national cyber security center in DHS, continued the pattern [of providing few details] during his keynote at the Black Hat security conference Thursday in Las Vegas,” the Journal’s Ben Worthen wrote Thursday. “Instead of getting into specifics-both examples of real threats and what the government is trying to do about it-he mainly talked in general terms about how businesses need to understand better the economics of security and the need to improve collaboration between people and governments throughout the world. He also talked at length about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, and how those two would have approached tech security.”

“Beckstrom started in March, so he’s still pretty new. Plus, this administration has gone through cyber chiefs like Spinal Tap goes through drummers,” Worthen added. “So we should cut him a little slack. Still, we couldn’t help but feel disappointed by what we consider another missed opportunity.”

According to reports, the cybersecurity initiative is aimed at securing the government’s cybernetworks across multiple federal agencies.

Raw Story | John Byrne | Friday, August 8, 2008

Cheney, Neocons Considered Killing Americans in Pretext to Attack Iran

In the video here, taped at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh reveals how the neocons convened around Dick Cheney and brainstormed ways to kick off World War IV, as they fondly call their pet project to take out the Muslims and foment a contrived “clash of civilizations.”

According to Hersh, this meeting occurred after the neocons failed miserably to stage a rehashed version of the Gulf of Tonkin incident in the Strait of Hormuz, mostly because it is no longer 1964 and such Big Lies — thanks to the internet and bloggers — are far more difficult to float. “For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there,” quipped LBJ about the imaginary act of North Vietnamese boats supposedly attacking U.S. ships, leading to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and undeclared war in Southeast Asia, ultimately resulting in the death of nearly 60,000 Americans and around 3 million Southeast Asians.

In an exclusive Think Progress story, we learn the meeting took place in Cheney’s office and the subject on the table was “how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,” part of an ongoing effort to provide an excuse to attack Iran. “There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war,” Hersh explains. “The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.”

Hersh would have us believe this scenario did not play out because “you can’t have Americans killing Americans,” an absurd explanation considering the fact the attacks of September 11 were just that — “Americans killing Americans,” a calculated and cold-blooded act of mass murder carried out by elements in the U.S. government as a “new Pearl Harbor,” a cynical pretext to launch the “war on terror,” now grinding into its seventh year.

Ominously, these “ideas” hark back to Operation Northwoods, the JSC plan to stage a false flag terror event — or a number of events — designed to provide a pretext to invade Cuba and take out Fidel Castro. Such “ideas” included “friendly Cubans” attacking the U.S. base at Guantanamo, shooting down a drone disguised as a chartered civil airliner and blaming it on Cuba, inciting riots and staging terror attacks in Miami, and other terrorist acts. Fortunately, then Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, put a kibosh to this insane plan.

More recently, in January, 2003, in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion George Bush and Tony Blair discussed painting planes in United Nations colors “in order to provoke an attack which could then be used to justify material breach” and thus set in motion an invasion, according to Philippe Sands, a leading British human rights lawyer (see Revealed: Bush and Blair discussed using American Spyplane in UN colors to lure Saddam into war, Channel Four News).

In fact, the neocons have not rested in their effort to foment war and force the support of the American people by way of deception. On May 16, 2008, Paul Joseph Watson, writing for Prison Planet, noted confidential recordings released under the Freedom of Information Act revealing the efforts of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and top military analysts to cook up another terrorist attack on America in order to gain support for their ambitious plans to decimate Muslim culture. “The most extraordinary exchange takes place when Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong bemoans shrinking political support for Neo-Con war plans on Capitol Hill and suggests that sympathy for the Bush administration’s agenda will only be achieved after a new terror attack,” writes Watson. “Rumsfeld agrees that the psychological impact of 9/11 is wearing off and the ‘behavior pattern’ of citizens in both the U.S. and Europe suggests that they are unconcerned about the threat of terror.” Rumsfeld characterizes Bush as “a victim of success” because America has not suffered “an attack in five years” and for Rumsfeld and the neocons this state of affairs is indeed lamentable.

Obviously, the neocons will stop at nothing — including the murder of more Americans in a false flag terror attack — to realize their agenda.

Finally, Sy Hersh casts suspicion on himself during the interview when he admits he did not bother to write an article on the neocon casus belli brainstorming session because it did not go forward. “So I can understand the argument for not writing something that was rejected — uh maybe. My attitude always towards editors is they’re mice training to be rats…. But the point is jejune, if you know what that means.” It was “jejune” because Hersh believes the “American public, if you get the right incident, the American public will support bang-bang-kiss-kiss. You know, we’re into it.”

Of course, that may be true for some of the American public, even a large segment, but for those of us up to speed on the master plan of the neocons — total war, so the children of the neocons will “sing great songs about us years from now,” as Richard Perle once said — this comment stinks of irresponsibility. It avoids discussion of the criminal mindset of the neocons, who are determined to start WW IV, even if such a conflict leads to the distinct possibility the Prince of Darkness’ children may not be around to sing great songs.

Infowars | Kurt Nimmo | Thursday, July 31, 2008

Propaganda Exclusive: Major Events on the Horizon Prompt a Surge in Anti-Terror Efforts

Government officials have been quietly stepping up counterterror efforts out of a growing concern that al Qaeda or similar organizations might try to capitalize on the spate of extremely high-profile events in the coming months, sources tell ABC News.

Security experts point to next month’s Olympics as evidence that high profile events attract threats of terrorism, like the one issued this past weekend from a Chinese Muslim minority group that warned of its intent to attack the games.

Anti-terror officials in the U.S. cite this summer and fall’s line up of two major political parties’ conventions, November’s general election and months of transition into a new presidential administration as cause for heightened awareness and action.

This is what the Department of Homeland Security is quietly calling a Period of Heightened Alert, or POHA, a time frame when terrorists may have more incentive to attack.

According to drafts of government memos described to ABC News, the period would run roughly from this August through July 2009.

During this time, homeland security analysts will be asked to redouble efforts to study terrorism leads. And a number of agencies will be asked to review emergency response plans to a variety of attacks, from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to biological weapons.

Officials also are being asked to make sure they are prepared for all contingencies during the transition from the Bush administration to that of the next president.

In a recent interview, FBI director Robert Mueller told ABC News of his concerns for homeland security.

“When you have a series of events like this which are very public, where you have a number of people that are congregated together, we take additional precautions,” he said.

“That means identifying, focusing on the intelligence that’s available and scrutinizing it to pieces and running it to ground, to putting in place the precautions to assure the particular events go according to plan and free from terrorist attacks,” he said.

At the moment, the nation’s public threat level will remain at yellow, or “elevated,” but not orange, or “high.”

The reasons: There are no specifics indicating an attack on the U.S. is imminent, and U.S. officials do not want to be accused of trying to inject themselves into the presidential campaign.

“That’s a balancing act,” said Jerry Hauer, former Homeland Security official and ABC News consultant. “They really have to focus on these events and this critical time we’re going through as a nation, but they have to be very careful about the public message to not make it look political or like they’re fearmongering.”

Government officials point to the Sept. 11 attacks, which happened just nine months into a new administration, and the Madrid train bombings, which were carried out just three days before Spain’s 2004 general election.

They say history suggests a need to take potential threats seriously — especially in the very near future.

ABC | PIERRE THOMAS | Monday, July 28, 2008

Candidates’ Terror Policies Tough To Distinguish

Morning Edition, July 18, 2008 · U.S. elections since Sept. 11, 2001, have featured many debates about terrorism and how to counter it. This year, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have had sharp exchanges over the issue, with each accusing the other of taking the wrong approach.

Given that McCain consistently polls better than Obama on the question of how to fight terrorism, it is in McCain’s interest to highlight the policy differences he has with Obama. But there aren’t many, according to Michael Sheehan.

What Policy Differences?

Sheehan, who served in senior counterterrorism posts in both Republican and Democratic administrations, has been looking for major disagreements between McCain and Obama in this area. “There haven’t been a whole lot of them,” Sheehan says. “Most of these issues are issues of professional agencies doing the job that they’re required to do. Most of the politics are purely designed to score points from one side or the other.”

Policy differences may not be key here. The last ABC News/Washington Post poll with a question on terrorism asked people which candidate they trusted more to deal with terrorism, not which had the best position.

To the extent that there is a debate, several questions come up. One is whether fighting terrorism is a law enforcement challenge (find, arrest and prosecute the bad guys) or a military mission - to hunt down and kill them.

Another question is whether the U.S. should pursue terrorists on its own or work with other governments.

McCain has challenged Obama on both fronts, though not always consistently.

Obama once said he might order a military strike inside Pakistan against al-Qaida without the consent of the Pakistani government.

In February, McCain reminded voters of Obama’s statement. McCain posed the question: Does America want a president with national security experience and good judgment, or “will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan?”

Law Enforcement Vs. Military Approaches

In that case, McCain seemed to be suggesting that Obama was inclined to take reckless military action. But last month, McCain and his spokesmen went after Obama for not being ready to use military force against al-Qaida.

In an interview with ABC in June, Obama noted that the U.S. was able to arrest and prosecute the terrorists responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. If the Bush administration had done “the exact same thing” in going after terrorists following the Sept. 11 attacks, Obama said, that approach would have upheld “the rule of law.” To McCain and his advisers, this sounded like the old law enforcement approach.

The following day, McCain’s campaign organized a telephone conference call to denounce Obama’s statement. Former CIA director James Woolsey, a McCain adviser, took the lead, saying, “The approach that Sen. Obama is suggesting - that we do everything through the law enforcement system - is precisely what failed in the 1990s.”

“I was director of central intelligence for the first two years of the first Clinton administration,” Woolsey said. “And, of course, just a few months into that, we had the first World Trade Center bombing, and the administration proceeded with an almost complete law enforcement focus. It did not work.”

Points Of Agreement

Michael Sheehan, who coordinated counterterrorism efforts for both the State Department and the New York Police Department, finds the dispute a little silly. Fighting terrorism successfully, Sheehan argues, requires both military and law enforcement methods, both based on good intelligence. He says McCain and Obama each recognize that point.

“Both campaigns have talked about using both instruments, and the argument of whether it’s a military or just a law enforcement issue, in my view, are political talking points,” Sheehan says.

Obama, meanwhile, has been using the terrorism issue to challenge McCain on Iraq. He argues that maintaining the war effort, as McCain wants to do, diverts resources from counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Obama has not recently threatened to take unilateral action against al-Qaida. In a speech last week, he emphasized cooperative approaches.

“Terrorism, unfortunately, has gone transnational and can strike anywhere, because they are able to harness technology just like businesses do,” Obama said. “And so what that means is that we’ve got to spend time thinking about building alliances and restoring relationships with countries all around the world in order to deal with our national security.”

McCain would not disagree. Sheehan, who describes himself as “fiercely” independent, thinks the campaign could actually draw the candidates together, embracing practical approaches to fighting terrorism.

“There’s a great opportunity with a new administration next January to rebuild a consensus around some of these issues,” Sheehan says. “And people can get away from these hot-button issues and political point-scoring and get down to a consensus on what makes sense.”

One other factor could lower the heat in this debate: Terrorism worries are actually on the decline. Another attack could change that, but a CNN poll released this month showed that voters’ concerns about terrorism are the lowest they’ve been since Sept. 11, 2001.

NPR | Tom Gjelten | Friday, July 18, 2008

Chertoff: European terrorists trying to enter US

European terrorists are trying to enter the United States with European Union passports, and there is no guarantee officials will catch them every time, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday.

Chertoff’s comments on Capitol Hill comes as the country is entering a potentially vulnerable period with the presidential nominating conventions coming up next month; the presidential election in November; and the transition to a new administration in January - all of which may be attractive targets for terrorists.

In his last scheduled appearance before the House Homeland Security Committee, Chertoff said that the more time and space al-Qaida and its allies have to recruit, train, experiment and plan, the more problems the U.S. and Europe will face down the road.

“The terrorists are deliberately focusing on people who have legitimate Western European passports, who don’t appear to have records as terrorists,” Chertoff told lawmakers. “I have a good degree of confidence we can catch people coming in. But I have to tell you … there’s no guarantee. And they are working very hard to slip by us.”

Chertoff and other intelligence officials have delivered similar warnings before, and he offered no new information about specific threats or an imminent attack.

Chertoff reiterated his concern that terrorists could sneak radiological material into the country on small boats or private aircraft. This material could be used to create an explosive device known as a “dirty bomb.”

The Homeland Security Department has a strategy to protect against this small boat vulnerability and is testing radiation detection equipment in Seattle and San Diego ports.

Chertoff said that getting out a regulation to prescreen and enhance security of general aviation aircraft coming to the U.S. from overseas is one of his top priorities.

He also said he expects to approve new radiation detection technology this fall.

Responding to a question from Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, Chertoff dismissed any rumor that he is on a list of potential running mates for Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Chertoff quipped that the only list he has for next year is a list of vacations.

Chertoff’s term as the country’s second Homeland Security Secretary ends when a new administration takes over the White House in January.

AP | Eileen Sullivan | Friday, July 18, 2008

McCain strategist: Terrorist attack ‘would be a big advantage’ in election

As part of a series on “The candidates and your money,” Fortune Magazine asked Senator John McCain what he perceived as the single greatest economic threat to the United States. McCain’s reply, after several seconds of staring “into the void,” was “radical Islamic extremism.”

According to top McCain strategist Charlie Black, this response was no error. National security is McCain’s winning answer, no matter what the question.

For example, Black told Fortune that even though the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto last December was an “unfortunate event,” it was useful to McCain in the New Hampshire primary, because “his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.”

The Fortune interviewer goes on to say that “Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue” that McCain would also be helped by “another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. ‘Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,’ says Black.”

Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum was scathing in his comments on McCain’s response. “It’s as if McCain is trying to become a parody of himself here,” writes Drum. “Is his answer to every question ‘Islamic extremism’? … Two things are remarkable here. First, that McCain genuinely seems to believe that Islamic extremism poses not just a threat, but a threat to the very existence of the West. This is science fiction territory. Second, that he apparently can’t come up with any better answer to Fortune’s question about economic threats.”

“It’s been pretty obvious for a while that McCain is going to try and turn the entire election into a referendum on national security, painting Obama as a 21st century Neville Chamberlain,” Drum concludes. “This seems like an early sign of just how far he’s planning to take this.”

For his part, Sen. McCain later expressed his disapproval of Black’s comments, saying, “If he said that — and I do not know the context — I strenuously disagree. … I cannot imagine why he would say it. It’s not true.”

UPDATE: CNN’s Jack Cafferty picked up Black’s exchange for his daily question to viewers.

“Should McCain adviser Charlie Black be fired for saying a terrorist attack would help McCain’s chances?” he asked. Answers will be read on air during the Situation Room, which airs at 4 p.m.

This video is from CNN’s Situation Room, broadcast June 23, 2008.

U.S. terror attack seen apt to follow ‘08 vote

Extremists view transition as window of opportunity, say intelligence experts.

When the next president takes office in January, he or she will likely receive an intelligence brief warning that Islamic terrorists will attempt to exploit the transition in power by planning an attack on America, intelligence experts say.

After all, that is what happened to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush at a time when their national security teams and their counterterrorism plans were in flux.

Islamic terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in February 1993, in Mr. Clinton’s second month as president. Al Qaeda’s Sept. 11 attacks came in the Bush presidency’s first year. The strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon happened as the White House national security director was formulating a comprehensive plan for combating Osama bin Laden’s terror network, which had declared war on the United States.

The pattern is clear to some national security experts. Terrorists pay particular attention to a government in transition as the most opportune window to launch an attack.

“If I were asked by the newly elected president, I would strongly encourage him to be extremely vigilant during the transition period and within the first six months of his administration against an attack by al Qaeda on American interests at home or abroad,” said Bart Bechtel, a retired CIA operations officer and assistant chief academic officer at Henley-Putnam University.

Mr. Bechtel said he thinks al Qaeda operatives will debate a future course based on who is elected.

Both Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain, a former Navy fighter pilot, have had extensive exposure to military security issues.

Both have attacked first-term Sen. Barack Obama’s ability to handle national security.

Mr. McCain, Arizona Republican, has focused on Mr. Obama’s stated willingness to meet with any world leader, including Iran’s, without preconditions. Mrs. Clinton, New York Democrat, ran TV ads implying Mr. Obama is not qualified to manage an international crisis.

“I could see al Qaeda waiting to determine who was going to be the president and depending on which it is, taking an initial measure,” Mr. Bechtel said. “For instance, Obama may be viewed as someone who will accomplish what al Qaeda would like him to do, which is get out of the Middle East, and give him an opportunity to move in that direction. Failing that, they may decide to test him with a substantial attack on America or some American interest and see how he reacts.”

A U.S. intelligence official declined to comment on how the next president will be briefed.

Mr. Obama, Illinois Democrat, has vowed to remove all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months. He regularly has referred to the war against terror as centered in Afghanistan, while the Bush administration takes a broader view and sees Iraq as an opportunity to inflict a battlefield loss on al Qaeda. The White House has trumpeted the fact that the county has suffered no homeland terror strikes since Sept. 11, 2001.

Retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, a former Air Force chief of staff and an Obama campaign co-chairman, told The Washington Times that Mr. Obama’s rivals are underestimating his ability to meet a challenge. Gen. McPeak likened him to Abraham Lincoln.

“I think people are only now beginning to realize that Barack is not your run-of-the-mill, ordinary Illinois politician,” he said. “He’s more like another Illinois politician who everybody underestimated.”

Gen. McPeak added, “I feel bad about giving Barack advice because every time I do, I know that he’s thought about it already. So I would draw him aside and say, ‘The minute you’re inaugurated, you will be tested.’ He’ll say, ‘Oh, you mean like Kennedy was with the Bay of Pigs?’ He’ll show me some way that he’s thought about that some time ago. The guy is absolutely scary smart. The real mistake al Qaeda can make is the one everybody else makes of underestimating the man.”

Mr. Bechtel said bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders are likely weighing their next step right now.

“They are in a wait-and-see situation right now,” he said. “They run the risk, if they attack before the election, of really influencing the way the election goes, to their detriment. If there’s an attack, I really believe McCain is going to run away with the election, and I don’t think they want that. I think they really would like Obama as their first choice and Clinton as their second.”

Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said “Al Qaeda has a pattern of testing new American leaders.”

“Even now, al Qaeda is probably trying to plan something for after the U.S. inauguration,” he said. “I think to a certain extent, al Qaeda tested President Clinton’s administration several times. The response was ineffective. I think al Qaeda concluded it could attempt something as ambitious as 9/11, but concluded the time was better after a new president, who would not have time to review his strategy on al Qaeda. The time settled on was the summer or early fall, after a new president was inaugurated. They chose September because they wanted all the officials to be back at their desks from summer vacations.”

A Congressional Research Service report last month noted that January will mark the first change in administrations since the 2001 al Qaeda attacks.

“Whether an incident of national security significance occurs just before or soon after the presidential transition, the actions or inactions of the outgoing administration may have a long-lasting effect on the new president’s ability to effectively safeguard U.S. interests and may affect the legacy of the outgoing president,” the report states.

The report urges the Bush administration to deliver extensive threat briefings to the president-elect’s national security team.

Congress foresaw such a need when it wrote the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. The law allows for presidential candidates to obtain pre-election security clearances for its chosen transition officials so they can immediately be briefed on security threats by the outgoing administration.

On al Qaeda’s ability to attack America again, Mr. Bechtel said, “I think they are still somewhat fractured. If you want to look at it as a piece of window glass, it’s broken, but there are lots of sharp pieces out there. I think within the tribal areas of Pakistan, they feel pretty darn comfortable.”

Washington Times | Rowan Scarborough | Monday, May 26, 2008

Rumsfeld On Tape: Terror Attack Could Restore Neo-Con Agenda

Shocking excerpts of confidential recordings recently released under the Freedom of Information Act feature former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talking with top military analysts about how a flagging Neo-Con political agenda could be successfully restored with the aid of another terrorist attack on America.

The tape also includes a conversation where Rumsfeld and the military analysts agree on the possible necessity of installing a brutal dictator in Iraq to oversee U.S. interests.

The tapes were released as part of the investigation into the Pentagon’s “message force multipliers” program in which top military analysts were hired to propagandize for the Iraq war in the corporate media.

In attendance at the valedictory luncheon Rumsfeld hosted on December 12, 2006 were David L. Grange, Donald W. Sheppard, James Marks, Rick Francona, Wayne Downing, and Robert H. Scales, Jr. among others.

The most extraordinary exchange takes place when Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong bemoans shrinking political support for Neo-Con war plans on Capitol Hill and suggests that sympathy for the Bush administration’s agenda will only be achieved after a new terror attack.

Rumsfeld agrees that the psychological impact of 9/11 is wearing off and the “behavior pattern” of citizens in both the U.S. and Europe suggests that they are unconcerned about the threat of terror.

DELONG: Politically, what are the challenges because you’re not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there until it [a terror attack] happens.

RUMSFELD: That’s what I was just going to say. This President’s pretty much a victim of success. We haven’t had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it’s not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing’s in Europe, there’s a low threat perception. The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack. And when that happens, then everyone gets energized for another [inaudible] and it’s a shame we don’t have the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats…the lethality, the carnage, that can be imposed on our society is so real and so present and so serious that you’d think we’d be able to understand it, but as a society, the longer you get away from 9/11, the less…the less…

Click here for the audio clip.

In another exchange, after assuring that comments are “off the record,” Rumsfeld and one of the military analysts agree that Iraq could use a “Syngman Rhee” to take control of Iraq. Syngman Rhee was the ruthless authoritarian dictator of South Korea from after World War II through the Korean War to 1960. If the invasion of Iraq was about liberating the Iraqis from a tyrant in the form of Saddam Hussein why is Rumsfeld talking about installing an even more brutal dictator?

Click here for the audio clip. Newsvine has the recording in full.

Rumsfeld’s admission that the correction for dwindling support of the Neo-Con imperial crusade is another terror attack is perhaps the most startling and blatant indication that 9/11 was an inside job.

How much more evidence do we need to confirm that the Neo-Con hierarchy in control of the U.S. government are instigating and exploiting terror in the pursuit of their own domestic and geopolitical agenda?

As Jerry Mazza writes today, “In the seven years since the day, exhaustive and still growing evidence proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the US government, spearheaded by the Bush administration, planned, orchestrated and executed the 9/11 false flag operation. As openly advocated by wide swaths of elites, from the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), of which Rumsfeld has been a member, to the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski (in his The Grand Chessboard), only an attack “on the order of Pearl Harbor” would, in Brzezinski’s words, cause the American people to support an “imperial mobilization,” and a world war.”

Placing the new evidence against previously revealed 9/11-related acts on the part of Rumsfeld, his guilt is overt and obvious. Recall that it was Rumsfeld who enthusiastically penned the “Go Massive” memo, gleefully declaring the Bush administration finally had the green light to kill: “Not only UBL (Usama bin Laden). Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

The longing for a new terror attack to corral the masses back behind the Neo-Con agenda is a shared fetish amongst Neo-Cons, policy wonks and academics alike.

In August last year Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky openly called for “another 9/11″ that “would help America” restore a “community of outrage and national resolve”.

Lt.-Col. Doug Delaney, chair of the war studies program at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, told the Toronto Star last July that “The key to bolstering Western resolve is another terrorist attack like 9/11 or the London transit bombings of two years ago.”

The same sentiment was also explicitly expressed in a 2005 GOP memo, which yearned for new attacks that would “validate” the President’s war on terror and “restore his image as a leader of the American people.”

Also in July 2007, former Republican Senator Rick Santorum suggested that a series of “unfortunate events,” namely terrorist attacks, will occur within the next year and change American citizen’s perception of the war.

And the month before that, the new chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party Dennis Milligan said that there needed to be more attacks on American soil for President Bush to regain popular approval.

Comments posted on the left-wing Huffington Post website in response to the Rumsfeld tape indicate that even some of the most hardcore conspiracy debunkers have had their beliefs shaken to the core by the former Defense Secretary’s admission.

“I have been a very staunch opponent of conspiracy theories,” writes one, “but to hear the man most responsible for stopping foreign threats to American lives musing that a successful attack on the USA is somehow a “cure” for us… it almost makes me want to make a tinfoil hat with the nuts I made fun of.

Prison Planet | Paul Joseph Watson | Friday, May 16, 2008

Next Page »