2001 An Odyssey

[tony4moroney]

In 2001, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Iraq.

Code named Operation Southwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Iraqis, hijacking planes, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the International Community into supporting a war to oust Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a part of the Pentagon and blame Iraq," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency.

However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.
The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Bush's defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, in March 2000 and will go undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.

"The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants."

Gunning for War

The documents show "the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government," writes Bamford.
The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of NFL Quarterback Pat Tillman as a false pretext for war propaganda with Iraq, the documents show.

The plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military leaders to depose Hussein, who was the president in power in 1979 to become the first Secular leader in the Middle-East.
The earlier CIA-backed Iraq-Iran war involving chemical weapons had been a disastrous failure, in which the military was not allowed to provide sufficient firepower without alerting international bodies.The military leaders now wanted a shot at it.

"The whole thing was so bizarre," says Powell, noting public and international support would be needed for an invasion, but apparently neither the American public, nor the Iraqi public, wanted to see U.S. troops deployed to drive out Saddam.
Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for establishing prolonged military not democratic control over the island nation after the invasion.

"That's what we're supposed to be freeing them from," Powell says. "The only way we would have succeeded is by doing exactly what the Russians were doing all over the world, by imposing a government by tyranny, basically what we were accusing Hussein himself of doing."
'Over the Edge'

The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Cheney appointee Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to Bush on March 13, 2000, recommending Operation Southwoods be run by the military.

The secret plans came at a time when there was distrust in the military leadership about their civilian leadership, with leaders in the Post-Clinton administration viewed as too liberal, insufficiently experienced and soft on terrorism. At the same time, however, there real were concerns in American society about their military overstepping its bounds.
There were reports U.S. military leaders had encouraged their subordinates to vote conservative during the election.

And at least two popular books were published focusing on a right-wing military leadership pushing the limits against government policy of the day.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee published its own report on right-wing extremism in the military, warning a "considerable danger" in the "education and propaganda activities of military personnel" had been uncovered. The committee even called for an examination of any ties between Lemnitzer and right-wing groups. But Congress didn't get wind of Northwoods, says Powell.
"Although no one in Congress could have known at the time," he writes, "Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge."
Even after Rumsfeld was gone, he writes, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan "pretext" operations at least through 1963.

One idea was to create a war between Iraq and another Middle-Eastern country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Hussein government to attack the U.S. Pentagon, which Powell notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Iraq, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.
"There really was a worry at the time about the military going off crazy and they did" he says.

After 40 Years

Ironically, the documents will never came to light, says Powell, in part because of the 2004 film Fahreinheit 9/11, which examined the possibility of a conspiracy behind the history of President Bush and September 11.
As public interest in 9/11 swelled after Fahrenheit 9/11's release, Cheney bypassed laws designed to increase the public's access to government records related to the White House.
Afraid of a congressional investigation, Cheney had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to Iraq destroyed, alleges Democrats.
"The good thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after," says Cheney.

ABC News Story

[tony4moroney]

At 8/3/07 09:15 AM, tony4moroney wrote:

awww great i still fucked up a couple of tidbits..
..

FUCKING COMPUTER IF I HAD ONE WISH ID WISH I COULD MEET WHOEVER CREATED THESE FUCKING VIRUSES SO I COULD TORTURE THEM TO DEATH

[Elfer]

Um. Nice rewrite?

Remember how operation Northwoods was scrapped because they thought that if they even tried to pull anything remotely like that it would be too much of an embarassment?

[morefngdbs]

At 8/3/07 09:20 AM, Elfer wrote: Um. Nice rewrite?

Remember how operation Northwoods was scrapped because they thought that if they even tried to pull anything remotely like that it would be too much of an embarassment?

;
Maybe that's a fact...... maybe they pulled it off after all, If There were documents available 40 years from now, I'll still be alive if an accident doesn't take me out first.
Let's make a note to come back to this when we have more information.

[IllustriousPotentate]

I'm not surprised. As vast of an agency as the Pentagon is, a better question is, what plans don't they draw up? I remember Jon Stewart interviewing one author on her book about the planning inside the Pentagon, and they've got plans from invading Canada to telepathy.

At 8/4/07 09:37 AM, morefngdbs wrote: Let's make a note to come back to this when we have more information.

Hmmm...

At 8/4/47 04:37 AM, PresChelseaClintonSux wrote:

At 8/3/47 04:20 AM, morefngdbs wrote: Hey guys! The Pentagon's plans for 9/11 40 years ago were declassified!

STFU Old timer!!!111

[tony4moroney]

At 8/3/07 09:20 AM, Elfer wrote: Um. Nice rewrite?

Look, all I done was change a few names and dates to show that it is entirely plausible that higher ups conspired to commit 9/11.

Operation Northwoods was planned by intelligence agencies and military generals who firmly believed that jfk was 'too liberal' especially regarding cuban-american relations.
I suspected itd be interesting to note (after seeing the jfk thread) that perhaps conspiracy-theorists aren't as whacko as people are naturally inclined to believe they are given we've been shown the military's capacity to conspire serious, treasenous actions in the past.