Is The Military Threatening To Kill Obama? Yes!
By John Hankey
21-02-2010
There is a financial oligarchy in this country, that tries, by every means available to it, to control all essential political activity, including the education of the citizens, their thinking, the information available to them, etc. Some politicians genuinely see themselves as public servants, and wish to serve the public good. They can give passionate and inspiring speeches, spoken truly from the heart - but they know good and well that if they want to get elected they must carry out the agenda of the elite.
All politicians, even those trying to make society more fair, must be brought to heel, one way or another. It is not a simple game. And the tools used to control politicians are varied: controlling the information they receive is often effective; some times bribery or a scandal is necessary. It was necessary to shoot John and Robert Kennedy in the head. The bloody deaths of the Kennedy brothers sent a message to every politician, that still echoes today. And I think the evidence shows that Obama received a reminder of this message recently.
The parallels between the administrations of Barack Obama and John Kennedy are stunning:
1) Both engaged in what might be called ‘Election Deception’. During the 1960 election, Kennedy attacked Nixon for being soft on communism, particularly Cuba. In his book, 6 Crises, Nixon complained, bitterly and accurately, that this was an unscrupulous deception on Kennedy's part. Kennedy had been briefed that Nixon and the CIA were planning a full scale invasion of Cuba. So, even though he knew it wasn't true, Kennedy attacked Nixon from the right, claiming that he, Kennedy, was more of a hawk on Cuba than Nixon. As soon as he got in, Kennedy told the CIA to forget their invasion plans; the CIA went ahead anyway at the Bay of Pigs; and Kennedy fired the top three men at CIA for disobeying his orders.*(1) The military shared Nixon's perception that Kennedy was a liar and a traitor. During the 2004 election, Obama surrounded himself with hawks like Zbigniew Brzezinski, and attacked Bush from the right, saying that he had neglected 'the right war', the war in Afghanistan, and that he, Obama, would transfer troops and treasure to the effort in Afghanistan. However, once he got in, Obama brought none of the Brzezinski people with him. None of them. Not Richard Clark. Not Anthony Lake (both of whom were very active in Obama's campaign, and are very deep-cover operatives for the darkest side of the Pentagon). And, as you will see, Obama fought bitterly with the military over their desire for more troops.
2) Both Kennedy and Obama experienced a dramatic change of attitude toward the military early in their presidencies. Even if Obama did not perpetrate a deception to win the election, after he was sworn in got in, his thinking and attitude toward the military began to change dramatically, sharpen and harden against them. This directly parallels what happened to Kennedy.
I don't regard Bob Woodward as a fundamentally reliable source, but to be an effective liar he has to tell important truths sometimes. And I believe there is good reason to credit the story he tells below, inadvertently revealing the development of Obama's thinking on the war in Afghanistan. It describes a briefing given by Obama's National Security Advisor, Jim Jones, to the military commanders in Afghanistan: During the briefing, [Marine Brigadier General] Nicholson had told Jones that he was "a little light," more than hinting that he could use more forces, probably thousands more. "We don't have enough force to go everywhere," Nicholson said. But Jones recalled how Obama had initially decided to deploy additional forces this year. "At a table much like this," Jones said, referring to the polished wood table in the White House Situation Room, "the president's principals met and agreed to recommend 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan." The principals - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Gates; Mullen; and the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair - made this recommendation in February during the first full month of the Obama administration. The president approved the deployments, which included Nicholson's Marines.
Soon after that, Jones said, the principals told the president, "oops," we need an additional 4,000 to help train the Afghan army. "They then said, 'If you do all that, we think we can turn this around,'" Jones said, reminding the Marines here that the president had quickly approved and publicly announced the additional 4,000. Now suppose you're the president, Jones told them, and the requests come into the White House for yet more force. How do you think Obama might look at this? Jones asked, casting his eyes around the colonels. How do you think he might feel? Jones let the question hang in the air-conditioned, fluorescent-lighted room.Nicholson and the colonels said nothing. "Well", Jones went on, "after all those additional troops, 17,000 plus 4,000 more, if there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have 'a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment'." Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to WTF - which in the military and elsewhere means "What The F#ck?"
- Bob Woodward; The Washington Post; Jul 1, 2009; A.1
My take on the above is that Obama came in somewhat open minded on Afghanistan. In his first month in office, he asked the military what they needed; they told him, and he gave them 17,000 troops without a blink. When they turned around and asked for another 4,000 just a few months later, Obama was disconcerted. If these guys knew what they were doing, they should have been right the first time about how many troops they needed. But without a complaint, he gave them another 4 thousand men. When the generals started to press for more, Obama had his ‘WTF’ moment, and sent Jones to straighten them out. Jones was telling the generals that requesting more troops would be showing Obama that they are clueless. Obama has tried to show his awareness that there are thousands of lives in the balance.
Kennedy had his Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment at the Bay of Pigs, and again during the Cuban Missile Crisis *(2). He came to see his military advisors and commanders as blind-to-the-point-of-insane ideologues. And the quote above I think shows that Obama's developing vision of the military has closely paralleled the development of Kennedy's vision of these professional killers.
3) Kennedy faced, and Obama faces a military full of ideologues. Curtis LeMay is the most infamous of the insanely rabid military advisors Kennedy had. LeMay, against specific orders, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, sent a U2 spy plane flying into Russian airspace, apparently hoping that the Russians would think this was an attack and push the red button. LeMay was confident that in the full-scale nuclear exchange that would follow, the US would suffer 30 to 50 million casualties, tops, but the Russians would be wiped out. Hurray! We'd win! LeMay and his peers were livid that Kennedy was refusing to send troops to Vietnam.
For the past eight years, Bush has forced into retirement those military leaders with an objective approach to fighting ‘terrorism’; and he has promoted Muslim-hating Christian ideologues who seek a new-age Christian Crusade against the Muslim heretics. *(22)
An objective military observer must question the idea of equating 'insurgents' with 'terrorists': There has never been even a suggestion that the Taliban were involved in attacks on the US. The Taliban government of Afghanistan offered to hand over Osama if the US could provide evidence of his guilt. But the US invaded instead of providing evidence. In this context, the 'insurgents' are, essentially and merely, patriots who oppose the domination of their country by foreign troops. This is a common view within the Obama administration: Supporters of (Vice-President Joe) Biden's view (that no more troops should be sent) argue that adding more troops would actually make the problem worse, not better, because the Taliban draw support from the fiercely nationalist Pashtun ethnic group in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who will mobilize to resist a long-term occupation. "The real fact is, the more people we put in, the more opposition there will be," says Selig Harrison, a long time observer of Afghanistan at the Center for International Policy. (Rolling Stone (*3)
One need not agree with this view to recognize that it is reasoned and legitimate. But this viewpoint is not represented in the military that Obama inherited from Bush. Senior officers with this point of view were forced into retirement under Bush. And Obama is faced with commanders such as Lt. Gen.David Barno, a 'counter-insurgency' advocate who served as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan: "We're going to be involved in this type of activity in a number of countries for the next 15 to 20 years." Barno does not just want to wipe out the Taliban. He wants to expand the conflict to other countries and carry it on for generations. What does Barno's plan, to kill Afghan patriots, have to do with eliminating 'terrorism'?
And a more terrifying question: These trained killers from the military currently have the blood of hundreds of thousands of Muslims on their hands. They have watched at close range as 1000's of young American soldiers have been slaughtered. How do you supposed they feel about a Black president, born to a Muslim father, trained in Muslim schools, telling them they can't have any more troops for their holy war against Muslims? "Rabid" seems a likely answer.
I am not the first to see the parallels between Kennedy's and Obama's conflicts with the military. The first article I saw on this topic was by Berkeley Professor Peter Dale Scott. (*3) Robert Parry has written importantly on the topic. Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell, observed in the Rolling Stone article (*3), "It's going to take John Kennedy-type courage to turn to his Curtis LeMay and say, 'No, we're not going to bomb Cuba'. It took a lot of courage on Kennedy's part to defy the Pentagon, defy the military - and do the right thing." I must assume that Wilkerson is not familiar with the details of how John Kennedy's conflict with the military ended. See section 8 below for some of those pertinent details. There can not be a reasonable doubt that the military killed JFK.
4) Kennedy sought out Military advisors not committed to or dominated by the Pentagon. Obama has done likewise. The 'Jim Jones' from the long quote (in section 2 above), is a familiar figure; that is, he reminds me of the kind of man that Kennedy brought in to advise him. He is a former Marine general. He has impeccable 'toughness' credentials. But he is not a Muslim-hating ideologue, out to wage a modern crusade against Islam, to win back the holy land, I mean the holy oil, for Jesus. So, he was forced into retirement by Bush. But Obama picked him up out of retirement and made him National Security Advisor. Kennedy had such people in his administration. Roger Hillsman was a WWII hero, who Kennedy made his undersecretary for South East Asian affairs. Hillsman looked at Vietnam, and saw what Kennedy saw; and he saw what many observers of Afghanistan see today: 1) an utterly corrupt, inept, cowardly, self-interested puppet regime with no constituency among the local people; 2) a dedicated, heroic, entrenched opposition with roots 1000 years deep among the locals; and 3) an ideology-driven military willing to make ridiculous promises of success, "if only we can get just one more troop increase"; with a nearly unlimited thirst for 'insurgent' blood; and with no understanding of the limits of their power.
5. The military overtly challenged Kennedy's right as commander-in-chief to set policy. Their treatment of Obama has been similarly outrageous.
Kennedy rejected the military's recommendation for an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs; and the military, led by the CIA, went ahead with it anyway. JFK rejected the military's suggestion that the US should overthrow Diem, the president of South Vietnam; the military not only organized Diem's overthrow, they assassinated him. And of course, for three years Kennedy steadfastly refused their pressure to commit combat troops to Vietnam. Obama's military has similarly challenged his right to set military policy.
After Obama sent Jim Jones to Afghanistan to let his generals know that they had gotten all the troops they were going to get (as described in section 2 above) Stanley McChrystal began a campaign for more troops that was insubordinate to the point of being illegal. The endnote below (*3) contains the full story as outlined in Rolling Stone. McChrystal responded to Jones' visit and message by writing a demand for 40,000 troops, which he immediately, and illegally, leaked it to the press. The Republican leadership demanded that McChrystal be brought before the Senate to have a national stage for his defiance of Obama's attempts to set policy. McChrystal went on 60 Minutes to complain that Obama was not listening to him; and then flew into London to publicly call Obama 'shortsighted'. Obama flew to Europe and ordered McChrystal to meet with him on his plane. Two days later, Jim Jones rebuked McChrystal for failing to "follow the chain of command."
But on December 1st, Obama caved in to McChrystal and committed to send an additional 30,000 troops; even though the American public, the Democratic leadership in the Congress, and his closest advisors were overwhelmingly dead set against it. WTF?! What happened? Obama tried, in this speech, to maintain a shred of dignity and authority by saying that the primary role of these troops would be to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people; and he promised that they would begin to head home in 18 months. Eight days later, he was roundly contradicted on every score, simultaneously, by a quartet of men we ought to regard as his underlings: Hamid Karzai, the US installed, officially illegitimate 'president' of Afghanistan, who owes his position, security, and daily bread to the US, overtly contradicted Obama's statements about the limits of the US commitment, telling a press conference that "Afghanistan's security forces will need U.S. support for another 15 to 20 years" (*5)
On the same podium, on the same day, Robert M. Gates, US Secretary of Defense (and Karzai's apparent puppet master) echoed this same affront to Obama, saying "it will be some time before Afghanistan is able to sustain its security forces entirely on its own ... whether that's 15 or 20 years". (*5) (It should be noted in red letters that Gates was appointed by Bush, and carried over by Obama.)
On the same day, the LA Times reports McChrystal told the Senate, "that the U.S. needed to signal a long-term commitment in Afghanistan".(*5) Such calls for a long term US commitment not only contradict the stated policy of the President, but they are overt provocations to legitimate Afghan nationalists. They not only undermine official US policy, but they serve the recruiting efforts of the 'insurgents'; thereby putting the lives of American soldiers at greater risk; and not only constitute insubordination, but speeches by the military constitute an illegal and anti-democratic attempt by unelected military officials to dictate political policy, a virtual military coup of the President's powers and duties.
6. Both Obama and JFK were faced with faced with overt threats of assassination. On November 22, 1963, Dallas was filled with wanted posters calling for Kennedy to be given the death penalty for treason. The NY Times carried an op-ed on September 29, 2009 talking about the "very dangerous" climate now in America, "the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination." Four days later, on October 3rd, the Wall Street Journal pointed to three overt physical threats to Obama: a poll on Facebook asking whether the president should be assassinated, a column on a conservative Web site suggesting a military coup is in the works and Rep. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.) calling Mr. Obama "an enemy of humanity." (*7)
JFK felt, and Obama feels, threatened by the military
JFK encouraged and assisted Hollywood in the making of 'Seven Days in May', a fictional account of a military coup in the US. Kennedy wanted this story to be told. He thought the American people needed to be alerted to the threat to democracy posed by the military. No one knows what went on in his head, but it is reasonable to conclude that he felt this was a real and important threat. Robert Parry has written that Obama had a 'Seven Days In May moment', meaning that he felt the threat of a military coup, when he began trying to withdraw troops from Iraq. (This is another critically important news article. see (*12) The Rolling Stone article says that in October, "the Pentagon and top military brass were trying to make the President an offer he couldn't refuse." Now - "an offer he can't refuse" is a reference to the movie, The Godfather. In the movie, the man who receives the "offer he can't refuse" wakes up and finds that the head of his prized horse has been cut off and put in the bed next to him while he was asleep; in order to send the message: "We are brutal. We are killers. We got into your bedroom. If we had wanted to kill you, we would have. Next time we will. If you want to live, don't let there be an next time." The author of the Rolling Stone article does not have superhuman powers of perception. But he has written a detailed article on the relations between Obama and his military. And he has included this suggestion of overt threats of death made to Obama by the military. And the article goes on, "They (the generals) wanted the president to escalate the war - go all in by committing 40,000 more troops and another trillion dollars to a Vietnam-like quagmire - or face a full-scale mutiny by his generals." And what is "a full-scale mutiny"? It means a coup. That is what it means, clearly, plainly, and simply. The insightful author of this insightful article, Robert Dreyfus, clearly feels that the military wants Obama to feel threatened.
7. Kennedy was plagued, and Obama is plagued, with a Secret Service that is grossly incompetent. If you need proof beyond Kennedy's murder, see the endnote. (*8) The failures of the Secret Service to protect Obama are worse. At the very least, it can be said in favor of Kennedy's Secret Service that they did not allow the shooters onto the White House grounds. The incident of the so-called 'Party Crashers', has to give Obama pause. The Salahis, the uninvited guests, the husband and wife team who walked into the White House reception for the Indian Prime Minister, easily penetrated the most high-security affair to take place at the White House in recent memory. The Indian Prime Minister is regarded as a prime target for Muslim extremists, and everyone present could be considered at great risk from a security lapse. Whatever else can be said of the Salahis, they presented a starkly clear message to Obama: "you are not protected. Your Secret Service is criminally negligent, if not just criminal."
8. Is the Military threatening to kill Obama? The evidence of the involvement of the military in the assassination of JFK is, I think, beyond dispute. (*9) Certainly, this evidence has given every president since Kennedy nightmares about the risks involved in taking on the military Kennedy, like Obama, was under fierce pressure to send troops to Vietnam. (*10) And as you will see, the military has taken steps to make Obama feel that his life is in grave danger at their hands.
Vice president Biden, and Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, have both been outspoken in their opposition to sending troops to Afghanistan. They are both Obama spokesmen. It may be assumed that at all times they speak for the president. And yet they spent the 10 months before the President's Dec. 1 speech, undercutting the President's final decision to send troops. (*11) Does that make any sense?
Two weeks before the President's speech, Obama's ambassador to Afghanistan wrote Obama a memo in which he warned against sending troops to support a regime so corrupt that it enjoyed no popular support. This ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, is a retired Army general and former commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan. He is one of the not-insane commanders that Bush pushed into retirement; and Obama brought back him back in. Eikenberry's memo against sending troops was immediately leaked to the press, and showed up on the front pages of the LA Times and NY Times. There was no outcry from the White House about the leak, suggesting that Obama approved it. Does that make any sense? It appears that the President was undercutting his own position, 2 weeks before taking it?
Pelosi and the other Democratic leaders have taken similar positions as Eikenberry. They might be accused of pandering to the American people, who are broadly opposed to sending more troops; but it would be unusual for congressional Democratic leaders to undercut their president in this way. The Bob Woodward article, presented in section 2 above, reveals a President with no plans to send troops, taking steps to confront those military leaders with desires for more troops, and telling them to forget it. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!! What happened? Why did Obama suddenly change the position that his spokesmen had been taking for nearly a year; the position that he was promoting, through his ambassador, just two weeks before; that other leading Democrats had been promoting; and that he had stated so forcefully to his commanders in the field? Why did he suddenly decide to send 30,000 troops to kill and be killed in a cause he knows to be hopeless?
This is NOT a small deal. No? It can't have been a whimsical decision on his part. It must have been based on something. We should be able, then, to look at the events in the news and identify some major occurrence that would cause such a shift. No? Let's see. The central feature behind Biden's and Emmanuel's position was that the Afghan puppet regime was too corrupt to win popular support. (*13) Just recently, the regime proved too corrupt to even stage an election, even after the UN ruled the last election fraudulent and illegitimate. Could this miserable failure, to stage an election, have changed Obama's mind? No. In fact, reports from Afghanistan are that the corruption and incompetence of the puppet regime have only gotten worse. (*14)
When you come up with an answer, for any of these questions, I would be very grateful if you would let me know. Because I don't like my answer. But here it is: A military coup, of sorts, has taken place. This coup, this wresting by force of power from the hands of the President was accomplished in two separate events.
The first event involves the so-called ‘Party Crashers’. The Salahis managed, not only to enter, but they proceeded to first shake hands with the two most outspoken opponents of sending more troops: Joe Biden, and Rahm Emanuel. And the Salahis then they shook hands with Obama himself. They had gained entrance through the intercession of the Pentagon. (*21) Whether or not they told the President, "Send troops or die", they unquestionably told him, through their actions, "The Secret Service can't, or won't, protect you. Your life is over when the Pentagon says it's over." This is not speculation; or interpretation. It is clear; unequivocal; basic. No?
But wait! There's more! The Rolling Stone article is so much better than the author intended! I know that he did not mean a ‘coup’ when he wrote that the generals were threatening a "full scale revolt". I don't think he meant a death threat when he wrote "an offer he couldn't refuse". And I don't think he grasped the import of this remark: Even worse, the administration has to take into account the possibility of a terrorist attack, which would allow the GOP to put the blame on the White House. "All it would take is one terrorist attack, vaguely linked to Afghanistan, for the military and his opponents to pounce all over him," says Pillar.
Robert Dreyfuss, the Rolling Stone writer, is saying that Obama caved because of the threat of another ‘terrorist’ attack. Now. The suggestion that US military was complicit in the crimes of 9/11 is similar to saying that the Secret Service was complicit in the crashing of the Obama's White House party: it's indisputable. The Salahis could not have entered if the White House had the Secret Service not let them in. Indisputably. And none of the planes could have hit any of the buildings on 9/11 if the US air defences had not gone completely to sleep. The Pentagon attack is particularly egregious. The official story is that 50 minutes after the 1st plane hit the World Trade Center, US air defences, on flaming red alert, designed to defend against supersonic missiles and jet fighters, not only failed to stop a slow moving humongous 757, they failed to get off a shot! Not a single shot in defence of the most highly defended building on the planet. The following week, Richard Meyers, who was in charge of US air defences on 9/11, instead of being court-marshalled and shot, as he clearly ought to have been, was promoted, to the highest position in the military: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (*15)
So, the military, under the Bush administration, was indisputably complicit in the events of 9/11, if only by the most jaw-dropping incompetence; incompetence that was warmly rewarded by the Republican White House. So when the Republican leadership says Obama's attempts to reduce troops and spending in Iraq and Afghanistan threaten to unleash a new terrorist attack, this is a genuine threat from genuine blood-covered terrorists.
The Fort Hood shooting is this 'terrorist' threat made real. There is much in the story of Malik
Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, to suggest that he was a Manchurian Candidate, that he was ‘programmed’, through hypnosis, to do what he did. Though such a thing can never, by it's very nature be proved. (If you have ever seen a demonstration by a professional hypnotist, you already know that anyone will do anything under hypnosis and that they will have no recollection afterward) (*16) However, there are a number of things about the case of Malik Hasan that are especially persuasive that he was under military control: (*17)
1) Hasan had at least 13 email contacts with a radical Muslim imam. The Imam told Al JaZeera that the first of these emails, sent 11 months before the shooting, sought the Imam's approval for Hasan's shooting his fellow soldiers. (*17b) Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee's intelligence subcommittee, said that he has confirmed that Hasan wired money to Pakistan.(*18) There has been much discussion in the ‘news’ about the fact that the FBI took no steps to apprehend or otherwise stop Hasan. But the contents of his emails have not been released. That is highly suspicious. Can we conjecture that if the contents were innocuous,
that they would have been released? Sure we can. The Imam found his house under attack within 24 hours of his publicizing the contents of those emails. But this discussion is a distraction from the flashing red light: the FBI did not even open a file on Hasan. That is not preposterous. It is very clear in its meaning.
There is only one conceivable explanation, and an obvious one. If the FBI failed to take steps as basic as opening a file, it is because they were ordered not to do so; by another agency of the federal government. Again, that is hardly speculative. It should be basic common knowledge: if a drug dealer gets picked up by some police agency in possession of a bag full of drugs; and walks out the door, without being arrested, with his bag of drugs, and without a file being opened, it's because he's undercover. Apparently some agency of the federal government ordered Hasan to send these emails. That is speculative, but no other explanation will suffice. (*19) And certainly, the FBI was ordered not to open a file. Of this there cannot be any doubt.
2) Similarly, the FBI's excuse for not opening a file, was that they discovered that Hasan was doing research on the attitudes of Muslims serving in the US military. How they made this determination, without opening a file, is a mystery to me. But let that alone for the moment. For whom was Hasan doing this research? Duh. No? But the attitude of the media to such obvious questions is "don't ask, don't tell."
3) Lee Harvey Oswald had been set up by the CIA to appear to be an agent of Fidel Castro. But the FBI investigated all this evidence and determined that it was a fraud. (*20) So for Hasan to have been set-up in a similar fashion would be part for the course. Fletcher Prouty (see endnote 11) was tipped off that Kennedy's murder was a military plot by the fact that Oswald's entire bio appeared in the papers in Australia, where Prouty was when he learned of the crime, before Oswald was even charged. The NY Times and Fox news were spreading the contents of the FBI's non-files / non-investigation, showing Hasan to be an Arab terrorist, while they were still reporting that he was dead, before they knew that he was still alive. That is, someone on the inside was distributing this insider knowledge about a guy who supposedly was of no interest. It seems clear as day to me that it was a set-up.
4) Now, this is my favorite part. In the 1944 detective movie, ‘Double Indemnity’, Edward G. Robinson, the detective, is alerted that something foul is going on because the insured dead man had an insurance policy with disability as well as death benefits; but when he broke his leg, he didn't try to use the disability benefits in his policy. Why didn't he use it? He must not have known he had an insurance policy. His wife purchased the policy behind his back, and then killed him. OK. Now answer this: If Obama actually wanted to send troops to Afghanistan; if he actually wanted to move the American people to see the necessity of "fighting terrorism there before it becomes terrorism here;" why did he not wave the bloody shirt from the Fort Hood shooting? Why did he not claim Hasan to be a terrorist? Why did he not use him as an example of the continued threat? Obviously, then, Obama was not part of any plot to kill soldiers at Fort Hood to justify a continued war on ‘terror’.
And now, you do the math. Add 1 + 1. Add ‘Party Crashers’ to ‘programmed shooter’ and what do you get? You get Nancy Pelosi as president.
But things have changed since 1963, haven't they? The military has matured. It is not so rabid, blood thirsty, and wild, as it used to be. They wouldn't overtly threaten to kill the President in this way, would they? The threats to which Obama caved were political threats, not physical ones. No?
1) Obama is a master politician. He's not afraid of a political fight. He is more capable of winning support for his position than any of his opponents. And besides, the American people are against sending troops, so this is an easy victory. I don't see how political threats could force him to send young men and women to their deaths, for a cause he and everyone around him knows is hopeless. Counter insurgency in support of a corrupt regime is killing for the sake of killing.
2) The military was, at the very least, complicit in the 9-11 murders of 3,000 Americans.
3) They were apparently involved in the murder of 13 soldiers at Ft. Hood.
4) So it doesn't seem times have changed for the better. Eisenhower said that the greatest threat to our national security came from what he called "the military industrial complex" in this country; a ruling elite with enormous political power.
These people had the deepest support for Hitler during WWII. And they orchestrated a performance by the media, the Secret Service, the FBI, the mafia, and the military that murdered JFK; and they have kept the truth suppressed ever since, the ridiculousness of their cove-story not withstanding. They just passed a 630 billion dollar defence budget, in a world where the primary threat is a few hundred men with hand-held weapons. What reason is there to think that they would hesitate to kill Obama? Do you suppose they like having a Black man as President?
So. Perhaps you are convinced that Obama was persuaded, by threats against his life, to send troops. If so, there is a more terrible question lurking out there. Were they threatening? Or were they practicing? Or both?
When I was first confronted with these ideas, my impulse was to see Obama as a coward, as lacking the courage that Lawrence Wilkerson suggests Obama needs to stand up to the generals (see the end of segment 3 above). But a ‘full scale revolt’ of the generals does not merely imply the death of Obama. A military seizure of the government would entail far more deaths than his, certainly many thousands. President Johnson, in choosing not to pursue Kennedy's killers (no-doubt well known to him), faced a similar choice: the threat of a full scale revolt - that is, a military coup; civil war, death and prison camps for many thousands, if not millions. But Johnson and Obama are not the only ones confronted with difficult choices. The information presented here suggests that your democratic government has already been seized. It is not in the hands of your democratically elected President. And what are YOU going to do about it, Patriot? Are you going to be a sheep and a traitor, a collaborator? Or an insurgent?
In our political system, it is virtually a given that all politicians are corrupt. The politician wants to get elected; so he takes money from thieves; the best do small things to help the people; but they all do what they think they have to keep the money flowing in. But people are people. They occasionally get carried away by an idea, or by the moment, and they get inspired to think that real virtue is possible, even for them. And for such people, at such times, there are other forms of coercion. Blackmail, for example. Further, all politicians know, and the media too, that to admit certain truths means, at least, political death. And on occasion, there is the real murder of an individual who thinks he can, and does, serve the interests of the people. John Kennedy was such a one. And such a murder is a great lesson to all the living about the facts of life.
My point is that "coercion with the threat of death" is a real tool used by the ruling elite. Typically its use is extremely low key, I'm sure. But on occasion its use may be sufficiently high profile to be identified. And I think we can see this clearly with Obama. I believe that the evidence shows that the military has overtly threatened, at the very least, to kill Obama. I believe they are also, in preparation for the day that he stands up to them, practicing to kill him. I would ask you please to disseminate this as widely as possible, as the most practical way to oppose their ability to do this. I apologize for its length.
There is a wide effort to color Republicans and Democrats as being exactly the same. It may not be an important difference, but Democrats don't murder Republican Presidents and Senators (*23); and there is no Democratic equivalent to 9-11. Democrats have never killed Americans and blamed it on the people of some country they wanted to invade. (*24) Perhaps these differences are not important. Perhaps they are. But they are very very real.
Two months ago this article ended here. I have had to make additions.
The fact that Obama has refused to waive the bloody shirt from Ft. Hood shows clearly that he did not authorize the shooting. However, your are likely unaware that the moment the FBI concluded their initial investigation of the Ft. Hood shooting, Obama rejected it out of hand and called William Webster out of retirement to oversee a new investigation. (*25) This has received no attention from any quarter. And, again, it closely parallels Kennedy: after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy called Maxwell Taylor out of retirement to supervise the investigation (referred to in footnote *1) of how the invasion occurred when Kennedy had cancelled it. The investigation lasted two months. The results were kept secret for twenty years. Kennedy knew in April that the CIA had betrayed him, launching the Bay of Pigs invasion against his specific orders. But he didn't fire Dulles until September, six months later. Obama certainly is aware of the complicity of his intelligence agencies in the Fort Hood shootings. Whether William Webster's investigation will be as effective as Maxwell Taylor's is impossible to tell. But Obama is trying to collect the evidence; and he is biding his time. Which brings us to the ‘Underwear Bomber’.
I swear, ‘conspiracy theories’ are not my natural inclination. I have been very slow to recognize the Detroit plane ‘bombing’ as a plot of the intelligence agencies. But the following, entirely suppressed from the media, settles the question, I think. Patrick Kennedy, State Department Under-Secretary for Management testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security on January 27. His purpose was to explain in detail how it was that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Crotch Bomber, was not put on the no-fly list, despite his father's warnings to the State Department that his son was being recruited by terrorists. Kennedy testified:
"We ask our law enforcement and intelligence community partners, 'Do you have eyes on this person and do you want us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may potentially break a larger plot?'" He added: "And one of the members [of the intelligence community] - and we'd be glad to give you that out of [open session] - in private - said, 'Please, do not revoke this visa. We have eyes on this person. We are following this person who has the visa for the purpose of trying to roll up an entire network, not just
stop one person.'" (*26)
Abdulmutallab has not been water-boarded. His family has been brought in. At their urging, he is cooperating. The Republicans are screaming that he shouldn't have a trial. And the prosecutors are collecting evidence. What if the succeed in identifying ‘the entire network’? What next? Is anyone paying attention besides Cheney and his network? Not that I've noticed.
Finally - the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed
When Obama was questioned by 9-11 ‘Truthers’ about the evidence of an inside job, he commented: "we need to investigate a whole range of options, although some of the issues you guys have raised I'm not entirely confident are the case." (*27) This is not an endorsement. But it is as good as anything Ron Paul has said publicly. And it is far from a condemnation.
His decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) in open court in New York City was a brilliantly casual knife to the throat of the perpetrators: It presents a spotlighted stage, a platform, for the 9-11 Truth movement to demonstrate, raise issues, and bring attention to the glaring facts. And what better argument could the defence make, that Mohammed was not responsible for the attacks, than to show the jury footage of building 7 coming down in a classic controlled demolition?
Thus, the prospect of a public trial for KSM presents Cheney and the other perpetrators with an everything-to-lose situation. The decision was announced to stage the public trial, and, in the words of Newsweek magazine: As if on cue, a Nigerian man with explosives in his crotch nearly brought down an American airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day, leaving the neocons feeling further ‘vindicated and energized’; and leaving Obama, "mugged by reality," as the Neocons themselves put it. (*30) These ‘energized neocons’ are the signatories of the Project for a New American Century, who called for the ‘new Pearl Harbor’ just before the 9-11 attacks; their fingerprints are all over the 9-11 attacks.
When Cheney objects to having a public trial for KSM out of one side of his mouth, (*30) and threatens biological and nuclear attacks out of the other, (*31) he must be taken seriously. And unless Obama feels that he has the cards in his hand to arrest Cheney and his cohorts, what can he do?
It is worth noting, I think, that after JFK's murder, RFK and Roger Hillsman resigned. I'm not aware of any other resignations from Kennedy's administration. It is not too much to suggest that all who stayed on were collaborators with the killers; and I have a very difficult time distinguishing
between those who were accessories to the murder, and those who were merely accessories after the fact. Obama is very likely in a similar situation, surrounded by would-be assassins (this is certainly the case with his secretary of defence, virtually everyone at the Pentagon, the FBI, Secret Service, and CIA).
Late last year, Holder accompanied Obama on a middle-of-the-night visit to Dover Air Force Base. An Air Force plane had just delivered eighteen bodies of soldiers and Drug Enforcement Administration officials who had been killed that week, in Afghanistan. Holder said that Obama, after seeing a hangar filled with caskets, sat alone in a nearby room. Holder added that he "was
struck by the fact that this guy has the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders." (*33)
John Hankey is the author of 'JFKII, the Bush Connection'; a 103-minute documentary detailing the evidence linking George Bush Sr. to the assassination of John Kennedy. The video is available for free on the web, at BushKilledJFK.com, and at Amazon.com. You can reach him at xjhankeyx@yahoo.com
By John Hankey
21-02-2010
There is a financial oligarchy in this country, that tries, by every means available to it, to control all essential political activity, including the education of the citizens, their thinking, the information available to them, etc. Some politicians genuinely see themselves as public servants, and wish to serve the public good. They can give passionate and inspiring speeches, spoken truly from the heart - but they know good and well that if they want to get elected they must carry out the agenda of the elite.
All politicians, even those trying to make society more fair, must be brought to heel, one way or another. It is not a simple game. And the tools used to control politicians are varied: controlling the information they receive is often effective; some times bribery or a scandal is necessary. It was necessary to shoot John and Robert Kennedy in the head. The bloody deaths of the Kennedy brothers sent a message to every politician, that still echoes today. And I think the evidence shows that Obama received a reminder of this message recently.
The parallels between the administrations of Barack Obama and John Kennedy are stunning:
1) Both engaged in what might be called ‘Election Deception’. During the 1960 election, Kennedy attacked Nixon for being soft on communism, particularly Cuba. In his book, 6 Crises, Nixon complained, bitterly and accurately, that this was an unscrupulous deception on Kennedy's part. Kennedy had been briefed that Nixon and the CIA were planning a full scale invasion of Cuba. So, even though he knew it wasn't true, Kennedy attacked Nixon from the right, claiming that he, Kennedy, was more of a hawk on Cuba than Nixon. As soon as he got in, Kennedy told the CIA to forget their invasion plans; the CIA went ahead anyway at the Bay of Pigs; and Kennedy fired the top three men at CIA for disobeying his orders.*(1) The military shared Nixon's perception that Kennedy was a liar and a traitor. During the 2004 election, Obama surrounded himself with hawks like Zbigniew Brzezinski, and attacked Bush from the right, saying that he had neglected 'the right war', the war in Afghanistan, and that he, Obama, would transfer troops and treasure to the effort in Afghanistan. However, once he got in, Obama brought none of the Brzezinski people with him. None of them. Not Richard Clark. Not Anthony Lake (both of whom were very active in Obama's campaign, and are very deep-cover operatives for the darkest side of the Pentagon). And, as you will see, Obama fought bitterly with the military over their desire for more troops.
2) Both Kennedy and Obama experienced a dramatic change of attitude toward the military early in their presidencies. Even if Obama did not perpetrate a deception to win the election, after he was sworn in got in, his thinking and attitude toward the military began to change dramatically, sharpen and harden against them. This directly parallels what happened to Kennedy.
I don't regard Bob Woodward as a fundamentally reliable source, but to be an effective liar he has to tell important truths sometimes. And I believe there is good reason to credit the story he tells below, inadvertently revealing the development of Obama's thinking on the war in Afghanistan. It describes a briefing given by Obama's National Security Advisor, Jim Jones, to the military commanders in Afghanistan: During the briefing, [Marine Brigadier General] Nicholson had told Jones that he was "a little light," more than hinting that he could use more forces, probably thousands more. "We don't have enough force to go everywhere," Nicholson said. But Jones recalled how Obama had initially decided to deploy additional forces this year. "At a table much like this," Jones said, referring to the polished wood table in the White House Situation Room, "the president's principals met and agreed to recommend 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan." The principals - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Gates; Mullen; and the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair - made this recommendation in February during the first full month of the Obama administration. The president approved the deployments, which included Nicholson's Marines.
Soon after that, Jones said, the principals told the president, "oops," we need an additional 4,000 to help train the Afghan army. "They then said, 'If you do all that, we think we can turn this around,'" Jones said, reminding the Marines here that the president had quickly approved and publicly announced the additional 4,000. Now suppose you're the president, Jones told them, and the requests come into the White House for yet more force. How do you think Obama might look at this? Jones asked, casting his eyes around the colonels. How do you think he might feel? Jones let the question hang in the air-conditioned, fluorescent-lighted room.Nicholson and the colonels said nothing. "Well", Jones went on, "after all those additional troops, 17,000 plus 4,000 more, if there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have 'a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment'." Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to WTF - which in the military and elsewhere means "What The F#ck?"
- Bob Woodward; The Washington Post; Jul 1, 2009; A.1
My take on the above is that Obama came in somewhat open minded on Afghanistan. In his first month in office, he asked the military what they needed; they told him, and he gave them 17,000 troops without a blink. When they turned around and asked for another 4,000 just a few months later, Obama was disconcerted. If these guys knew what they were doing, they should have been right the first time about how many troops they needed. But without a complaint, he gave them another 4 thousand men. When the generals started to press for more, Obama had his ‘WTF’ moment, and sent Jones to straighten them out. Jones was telling the generals that requesting more troops would be showing Obama that they are clueless. Obama has tried to show his awareness that there are thousands of lives in the balance.
Kennedy had his Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment at the Bay of Pigs, and again during the Cuban Missile Crisis *(2). He came to see his military advisors and commanders as blind-to-the-point-of-insane ideologues. And the quote above I think shows that Obama's developing vision of the military has closely paralleled the development of Kennedy's vision of these professional killers.
3) Kennedy faced, and Obama faces a military full of ideologues. Curtis LeMay is the most infamous of the insanely rabid military advisors Kennedy had. LeMay, against specific orders, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, sent a U2 spy plane flying into Russian airspace, apparently hoping that the Russians would think this was an attack and push the red button. LeMay was confident that in the full-scale nuclear exchange that would follow, the US would suffer 30 to 50 million casualties, tops, but the Russians would be wiped out. Hurray! We'd win! LeMay and his peers were livid that Kennedy was refusing to send troops to Vietnam.
For the past eight years, Bush has forced into retirement those military leaders with an objective approach to fighting ‘terrorism’; and he has promoted Muslim-hating Christian ideologues who seek a new-age Christian Crusade against the Muslim heretics. *(22)
An objective military observer must question the idea of equating 'insurgents' with 'terrorists': There has never been even a suggestion that the Taliban were involved in attacks on the US. The Taliban government of Afghanistan offered to hand over Osama if the US could provide evidence of his guilt. But the US invaded instead of providing evidence. In this context, the 'insurgents' are, essentially and merely, patriots who oppose the domination of their country by foreign troops. This is a common view within the Obama administration: Supporters of (Vice-President Joe) Biden's view (that no more troops should be sent) argue that adding more troops would actually make the problem worse, not better, because the Taliban draw support from the fiercely nationalist Pashtun ethnic group in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who will mobilize to resist a long-term occupation. "The real fact is, the more people we put in, the more opposition there will be," says Selig Harrison, a long time observer of Afghanistan at the Center for International Policy. (Rolling Stone (*3)
One need not agree with this view to recognize that it is reasoned and legitimate. But this viewpoint is not represented in the military that Obama inherited from Bush. Senior officers with this point of view were forced into retirement under Bush. And Obama is faced with commanders such as Lt. Gen.David Barno, a 'counter-insurgency' advocate who served as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan: "We're going to be involved in this type of activity in a number of countries for the next 15 to 20 years." Barno does not just want to wipe out the Taliban. He wants to expand the conflict to other countries and carry it on for generations. What does Barno's plan, to kill Afghan patriots, have to do with eliminating 'terrorism'?
And a more terrifying question: These trained killers from the military currently have the blood of hundreds of thousands of Muslims on their hands. They have watched at close range as 1000's of young American soldiers have been slaughtered. How do you supposed they feel about a Black president, born to a Muslim father, trained in Muslim schools, telling them they can't have any more troops for their holy war against Muslims? "Rabid" seems a likely answer.
I am not the first to see the parallels between Kennedy's and Obama's conflicts with the military. The first article I saw on this topic was by Berkeley Professor Peter Dale Scott. (*3) Robert Parry has written importantly on the topic. Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell, observed in the Rolling Stone article (*3), "It's going to take John Kennedy-type courage to turn to his Curtis LeMay and say, 'No, we're not going to bomb Cuba'. It took a lot of courage on Kennedy's part to defy the Pentagon, defy the military - and do the right thing." I must assume that Wilkerson is not familiar with the details of how John Kennedy's conflict with the military ended. See section 8 below for some of those pertinent details. There can not be a reasonable doubt that the military killed JFK.
4) Kennedy sought out Military advisors not committed to or dominated by the Pentagon. Obama has done likewise. The 'Jim Jones' from the long quote (in section 2 above), is a familiar figure; that is, he reminds me of the kind of man that Kennedy brought in to advise him. He is a former Marine general. He has impeccable 'toughness' credentials. But he is not a Muslim-hating ideologue, out to wage a modern crusade against Islam, to win back the holy land, I mean the holy oil, for Jesus. So, he was forced into retirement by Bush. But Obama picked him up out of retirement and made him National Security Advisor. Kennedy had such people in his administration. Roger Hillsman was a WWII hero, who Kennedy made his undersecretary for South East Asian affairs. Hillsman looked at Vietnam, and saw what Kennedy saw; and he saw what many observers of Afghanistan see today: 1) an utterly corrupt, inept, cowardly, self-interested puppet regime with no constituency among the local people; 2) a dedicated, heroic, entrenched opposition with roots 1000 years deep among the locals; and 3) an ideology-driven military willing to make ridiculous promises of success, "if only we can get just one more troop increase"; with a nearly unlimited thirst for 'insurgent' blood; and with no understanding of the limits of their power.
5. The military overtly challenged Kennedy's right as commander-in-chief to set policy. Their treatment of Obama has been similarly outrageous.
Kennedy rejected the military's recommendation for an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs; and the military, led by the CIA, went ahead with it anyway. JFK rejected the military's suggestion that the US should overthrow Diem, the president of South Vietnam; the military not only organized Diem's overthrow, they assassinated him. And of course, for three years Kennedy steadfastly refused their pressure to commit combat troops to Vietnam. Obama's military has similarly challenged his right to set military policy.
After Obama sent Jim Jones to Afghanistan to let his generals know that they had gotten all the troops they were going to get (as described in section 2 above) Stanley McChrystal began a campaign for more troops that was insubordinate to the point of being illegal. The endnote below (*3) contains the full story as outlined in Rolling Stone. McChrystal responded to Jones' visit and message by writing a demand for 40,000 troops, which he immediately, and illegally, leaked it to the press. The Republican leadership demanded that McChrystal be brought before the Senate to have a national stage for his defiance of Obama's attempts to set policy. McChrystal went on 60 Minutes to complain that Obama was not listening to him; and then flew into London to publicly call Obama 'shortsighted'. Obama flew to Europe and ordered McChrystal to meet with him on his plane. Two days later, Jim Jones rebuked McChrystal for failing to "follow the chain of command."
But on December 1st, Obama caved in to McChrystal and committed to send an additional 30,000 troops; even though the American public, the Democratic leadership in the Congress, and his closest advisors were overwhelmingly dead set against it. WTF?! What happened? Obama tried, in this speech, to maintain a shred of dignity and authority by saying that the primary role of these troops would be to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people; and he promised that they would begin to head home in 18 months. Eight days later, he was roundly contradicted on every score, simultaneously, by a quartet of men we ought to regard as his underlings: Hamid Karzai, the US installed, officially illegitimate 'president' of Afghanistan, who owes his position, security, and daily bread to the US, overtly contradicted Obama's statements about the limits of the US commitment, telling a press conference that "Afghanistan's security forces will need U.S. support for another 15 to 20 years" (*5)
On the same podium, on the same day, Robert M. Gates, US Secretary of Defense (and Karzai's apparent puppet master) echoed this same affront to Obama, saying "it will be some time before Afghanistan is able to sustain its security forces entirely on its own ... whether that's 15 or 20 years". (*5) (It should be noted in red letters that Gates was appointed by Bush, and carried over by Obama.)
On the same day, the LA Times reports McChrystal told the Senate, "that the U.S. needed to signal a long-term commitment in Afghanistan".(*5) Such calls for a long term US commitment not only contradict the stated policy of the President, but they are overt provocations to legitimate Afghan nationalists. They not only undermine official US policy, but they serve the recruiting efforts of the 'insurgents'; thereby putting the lives of American soldiers at greater risk; and not only constitute insubordination, but speeches by the military constitute an illegal and anti-democratic attempt by unelected military officials to dictate political policy, a virtual military coup of the President's powers and duties.
6. Both Obama and JFK were faced with faced with overt threats of assassination. On November 22, 1963, Dallas was filled with wanted posters calling for Kennedy to be given the death penalty for treason. The NY Times carried an op-ed on September 29, 2009 talking about the "very dangerous" climate now in America, "the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination." Four days later, on October 3rd, the Wall Street Journal pointed to three overt physical threats to Obama: a poll on Facebook asking whether the president should be assassinated, a column on a conservative Web site suggesting a military coup is in the works and Rep. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.) calling Mr. Obama "an enemy of humanity." (*7)
JFK felt, and Obama feels, threatened by the military
JFK encouraged and assisted Hollywood in the making of 'Seven Days in May', a fictional account of a military coup in the US. Kennedy wanted this story to be told. He thought the American people needed to be alerted to the threat to democracy posed by the military. No one knows what went on in his head, but it is reasonable to conclude that he felt this was a real and important threat. Robert Parry has written that Obama had a 'Seven Days In May moment', meaning that he felt the threat of a military coup, when he began trying to withdraw troops from Iraq. (This is another critically important news article. see (*12) The Rolling Stone article says that in October, "the Pentagon and top military brass were trying to make the President an offer he couldn't refuse." Now - "an offer he can't refuse" is a reference to the movie, The Godfather. In the movie, the man who receives the "offer he can't refuse" wakes up and finds that the head of his prized horse has been cut off and put in the bed next to him while he was asleep; in order to send the message: "We are brutal. We are killers. We got into your bedroom. If we had wanted to kill you, we would have. Next time we will. If you want to live, don't let there be an next time." The author of the Rolling Stone article does not have superhuman powers of perception. But he has written a detailed article on the relations between Obama and his military. And he has included this suggestion of overt threats of death made to Obama by the military. And the article goes on, "They (the generals) wanted the president to escalate the war - go all in by committing 40,000 more troops and another trillion dollars to a Vietnam-like quagmire - or face a full-scale mutiny by his generals." And what is "a full-scale mutiny"? It means a coup. That is what it means, clearly, plainly, and simply. The insightful author of this insightful article, Robert Dreyfus, clearly feels that the military wants Obama to feel threatened.
7. Kennedy was plagued, and Obama is plagued, with a Secret Service that is grossly incompetent. If you need proof beyond Kennedy's murder, see the endnote. (*8) The failures of the Secret Service to protect Obama are worse. At the very least, it can be said in favor of Kennedy's Secret Service that they did not allow the shooters onto the White House grounds. The incident of the so-called 'Party Crashers', has to give Obama pause. The Salahis, the uninvited guests, the husband and wife team who walked into the White House reception for the Indian Prime Minister, easily penetrated the most high-security affair to take place at the White House in recent memory. The Indian Prime Minister is regarded as a prime target for Muslim extremists, and everyone present could be considered at great risk from a security lapse. Whatever else can be said of the Salahis, they presented a starkly clear message to Obama: "you are not protected. Your Secret Service is criminally negligent, if not just criminal."
8. Is the Military threatening to kill Obama? The evidence of the involvement of the military in the assassination of JFK is, I think, beyond dispute. (*9) Certainly, this evidence has given every president since Kennedy nightmares about the risks involved in taking on the military Kennedy, like Obama, was under fierce pressure to send troops to Vietnam. (*10) And as you will see, the military has taken steps to make Obama feel that his life is in grave danger at their hands.
Vice president Biden, and Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, have both been outspoken in their opposition to sending troops to Afghanistan. They are both Obama spokesmen. It may be assumed that at all times they speak for the president. And yet they spent the 10 months before the President's Dec. 1 speech, undercutting the President's final decision to send troops. (*11) Does that make any sense?
Two weeks before the President's speech, Obama's ambassador to Afghanistan wrote Obama a memo in which he warned against sending troops to support a regime so corrupt that it enjoyed no popular support. This ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, is a retired Army general and former commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan. He is one of the not-insane commanders that Bush pushed into retirement; and Obama brought back him back in. Eikenberry's memo against sending troops was immediately leaked to the press, and showed up on the front pages of the LA Times and NY Times. There was no outcry from the White House about the leak, suggesting that Obama approved it. Does that make any sense? It appears that the President was undercutting his own position, 2 weeks before taking it?
Pelosi and the other Democratic leaders have taken similar positions as Eikenberry. They might be accused of pandering to the American people, who are broadly opposed to sending more troops; but it would be unusual for congressional Democratic leaders to undercut their president in this way. The Bob Woodward article, presented in section 2 above, reveals a President with no plans to send troops, taking steps to confront those military leaders with desires for more troops, and telling them to forget it. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!! What happened? Why did Obama suddenly change the position that his spokesmen had been taking for nearly a year; the position that he was promoting, through his ambassador, just two weeks before; that other leading Democrats had been promoting; and that he had stated so forcefully to his commanders in the field? Why did he suddenly decide to send 30,000 troops to kill and be killed in a cause he knows to be hopeless?
This is NOT a small deal. No? It can't have been a whimsical decision on his part. It must have been based on something. We should be able, then, to look at the events in the news and identify some major occurrence that would cause such a shift. No? Let's see. The central feature behind Biden's and Emmanuel's position was that the Afghan puppet regime was too corrupt to win popular support. (*13) Just recently, the regime proved too corrupt to even stage an election, even after the UN ruled the last election fraudulent and illegitimate. Could this miserable failure, to stage an election, have changed Obama's mind? No. In fact, reports from Afghanistan are that the corruption and incompetence of the puppet regime have only gotten worse. (*14)
When you come up with an answer, for any of these questions, I would be very grateful if you would let me know. Because I don't like my answer. But here it is: A military coup, of sorts, has taken place. This coup, this wresting by force of power from the hands of the President was accomplished in two separate events.
The first event involves the so-called ‘Party Crashers’. The Salahis managed, not only to enter, but they proceeded to first shake hands with the two most outspoken opponents of sending more troops: Joe Biden, and Rahm Emanuel. And the Salahis then they shook hands with Obama himself. They had gained entrance through the intercession of the Pentagon. (*21) Whether or not they told the President, "Send troops or die", they unquestionably told him, through their actions, "The Secret Service can't, or won't, protect you. Your life is over when the Pentagon says it's over." This is not speculation; or interpretation. It is clear; unequivocal; basic. No?
But wait! There's more! The Rolling Stone article is so much better than the author intended! I know that he did not mean a ‘coup’ when he wrote that the generals were threatening a "full scale revolt". I don't think he meant a death threat when he wrote "an offer he couldn't refuse". And I don't think he grasped the import of this remark: Even worse, the administration has to take into account the possibility of a terrorist attack, which would allow the GOP to put the blame on the White House. "All it would take is one terrorist attack, vaguely linked to Afghanistan, for the military and his opponents to pounce all over him," says Pillar.
Robert Dreyfuss, the Rolling Stone writer, is saying that Obama caved because of the threat of another ‘terrorist’ attack. Now. The suggestion that US military was complicit in the crimes of 9/11 is similar to saying that the Secret Service was complicit in the crashing of the Obama's White House party: it's indisputable. The Salahis could not have entered if the White House had the Secret Service not let them in. Indisputably. And none of the planes could have hit any of the buildings on 9/11 if the US air defences had not gone completely to sleep. The Pentagon attack is particularly egregious. The official story is that 50 minutes after the 1st plane hit the World Trade Center, US air defences, on flaming red alert, designed to defend against supersonic missiles and jet fighters, not only failed to stop a slow moving humongous 757, they failed to get off a shot! Not a single shot in defence of the most highly defended building on the planet. The following week, Richard Meyers, who was in charge of US air defences on 9/11, instead of being court-marshalled and shot, as he clearly ought to have been, was promoted, to the highest position in the military: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (*15)
So, the military, under the Bush administration, was indisputably complicit in the events of 9/11, if only by the most jaw-dropping incompetence; incompetence that was warmly rewarded by the Republican White House. So when the Republican leadership says Obama's attempts to reduce troops and spending in Iraq and Afghanistan threaten to unleash a new terrorist attack, this is a genuine threat from genuine blood-covered terrorists.
The Fort Hood shooting is this 'terrorist' threat made real. There is much in the story of Malik
Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, to suggest that he was a Manchurian Candidate, that he was ‘programmed’, through hypnosis, to do what he did. Though such a thing can never, by it's very nature be proved. (If you have ever seen a demonstration by a professional hypnotist, you already know that anyone will do anything under hypnosis and that they will have no recollection afterward) (*16) However, there are a number of things about the case of Malik Hasan that are especially persuasive that he was under military control: (*17)
1) Hasan had at least 13 email contacts with a radical Muslim imam. The Imam told Al JaZeera that the first of these emails, sent 11 months before the shooting, sought the Imam's approval for Hasan's shooting his fellow soldiers. (*17b) Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee's intelligence subcommittee, said that he has confirmed that Hasan wired money to Pakistan.(*18) There has been much discussion in the ‘news’ about the fact that the FBI took no steps to apprehend or otherwise stop Hasan. But the contents of his emails have not been released. That is highly suspicious. Can we conjecture that if the contents were innocuous,
that they would have been released? Sure we can. The Imam found his house under attack within 24 hours of his publicizing the contents of those emails. But this discussion is a distraction from the flashing red light: the FBI did not even open a file on Hasan. That is not preposterous. It is very clear in its meaning.
There is only one conceivable explanation, and an obvious one. If the FBI failed to take steps as basic as opening a file, it is because they were ordered not to do so; by another agency of the federal government. Again, that is hardly speculative. It should be basic common knowledge: if a drug dealer gets picked up by some police agency in possession of a bag full of drugs; and walks out the door, without being arrested, with his bag of drugs, and without a file being opened, it's because he's undercover. Apparently some agency of the federal government ordered Hasan to send these emails. That is speculative, but no other explanation will suffice. (*19) And certainly, the FBI was ordered not to open a file. Of this there cannot be any doubt.
2) Similarly, the FBI's excuse for not opening a file, was that they discovered that Hasan was doing research on the attitudes of Muslims serving in the US military. How they made this determination, without opening a file, is a mystery to me. But let that alone for the moment. For whom was Hasan doing this research? Duh. No? But the attitude of the media to such obvious questions is "don't ask, don't tell."
3) Lee Harvey Oswald had been set up by the CIA to appear to be an agent of Fidel Castro. But the FBI investigated all this evidence and determined that it was a fraud. (*20) So for Hasan to have been set-up in a similar fashion would be part for the course. Fletcher Prouty (see endnote 11) was tipped off that Kennedy's murder was a military plot by the fact that Oswald's entire bio appeared in the papers in Australia, where Prouty was when he learned of the crime, before Oswald was even charged. The NY Times and Fox news were spreading the contents of the FBI's non-files / non-investigation, showing Hasan to be an Arab terrorist, while they were still reporting that he was dead, before they knew that he was still alive. That is, someone on the inside was distributing this insider knowledge about a guy who supposedly was of no interest. It seems clear as day to me that it was a set-up.
4) Now, this is my favorite part. In the 1944 detective movie, ‘Double Indemnity’, Edward G. Robinson, the detective, is alerted that something foul is going on because the insured dead man had an insurance policy with disability as well as death benefits; but when he broke his leg, he didn't try to use the disability benefits in his policy. Why didn't he use it? He must not have known he had an insurance policy. His wife purchased the policy behind his back, and then killed him. OK. Now answer this: If Obama actually wanted to send troops to Afghanistan; if he actually wanted to move the American people to see the necessity of "fighting terrorism there before it becomes terrorism here;" why did he not wave the bloody shirt from the Fort Hood shooting? Why did he not claim Hasan to be a terrorist? Why did he not use him as an example of the continued threat? Obviously, then, Obama was not part of any plot to kill soldiers at Fort Hood to justify a continued war on ‘terror’.
And now, you do the math. Add 1 + 1. Add ‘Party Crashers’ to ‘programmed shooter’ and what do you get? You get Nancy Pelosi as president.
But things have changed since 1963, haven't they? The military has matured. It is not so rabid, blood thirsty, and wild, as it used to be. They wouldn't overtly threaten to kill the President in this way, would they? The threats to which Obama caved were political threats, not physical ones. No?
1) Obama is a master politician. He's not afraid of a political fight. He is more capable of winning support for his position than any of his opponents. And besides, the American people are against sending troops, so this is an easy victory. I don't see how political threats could force him to send young men and women to their deaths, for a cause he and everyone around him knows is hopeless. Counter insurgency in support of a corrupt regime is killing for the sake of killing.
2) The military was, at the very least, complicit in the 9-11 murders of 3,000 Americans.
3) They were apparently involved in the murder of 13 soldiers at Ft. Hood.
4) So it doesn't seem times have changed for the better. Eisenhower said that the greatest threat to our national security came from what he called "the military industrial complex" in this country; a ruling elite with enormous political power.
These people had the deepest support for Hitler during WWII. And they orchestrated a performance by the media, the Secret Service, the FBI, the mafia, and the military that murdered JFK; and they have kept the truth suppressed ever since, the ridiculousness of their cove-story not withstanding. They just passed a 630 billion dollar defence budget, in a world where the primary threat is a few hundred men with hand-held weapons. What reason is there to think that they would hesitate to kill Obama? Do you suppose they like having a Black man as President?
So. Perhaps you are convinced that Obama was persuaded, by threats against his life, to send troops. If so, there is a more terrible question lurking out there. Were they threatening? Or were they practicing? Or both?
When I was first confronted with these ideas, my impulse was to see Obama as a coward, as lacking the courage that Lawrence Wilkerson suggests Obama needs to stand up to the generals (see the end of segment 3 above). But a ‘full scale revolt’ of the generals does not merely imply the death of Obama. A military seizure of the government would entail far more deaths than his, certainly many thousands. President Johnson, in choosing not to pursue Kennedy's killers (no-doubt well known to him), faced a similar choice: the threat of a full scale revolt - that is, a military coup; civil war, death and prison camps for many thousands, if not millions. But Johnson and Obama are not the only ones confronted with difficult choices. The information presented here suggests that your democratic government has already been seized. It is not in the hands of your democratically elected President. And what are YOU going to do about it, Patriot? Are you going to be a sheep and a traitor, a collaborator? Or an insurgent?
In our political system, it is virtually a given that all politicians are corrupt. The politician wants to get elected; so he takes money from thieves; the best do small things to help the people; but they all do what they think they have to keep the money flowing in. But people are people. They occasionally get carried away by an idea, or by the moment, and they get inspired to think that real virtue is possible, even for them. And for such people, at such times, there are other forms of coercion. Blackmail, for example. Further, all politicians know, and the media too, that to admit certain truths means, at least, political death. And on occasion, there is the real murder of an individual who thinks he can, and does, serve the interests of the people. John Kennedy was such a one. And such a murder is a great lesson to all the living about the facts of life.
My point is that "coercion with the threat of death" is a real tool used by the ruling elite. Typically its use is extremely low key, I'm sure. But on occasion its use may be sufficiently high profile to be identified. And I think we can see this clearly with Obama. I believe that the evidence shows that the military has overtly threatened, at the very least, to kill Obama. I believe they are also, in preparation for the day that he stands up to them, practicing to kill him. I would ask you please to disseminate this as widely as possible, as the most practical way to oppose their ability to do this. I apologize for its length.
There is a wide effort to color Republicans and Democrats as being exactly the same. It may not be an important difference, but Democrats don't murder Republican Presidents and Senators (*23); and there is no Democratic equivalent to 9-11. Democrats have never killed Americans and blamed it on the people of some country they wanted to invade. (*24) Perhaps these differences are not important. Perhaps they are. But they are very very real.
Two months ago this article ended here. I have had to make additions.
The fact that Obama has refused to waive the bloody shirt from Ft. Hood shows clearly that he did not authorize the shooting. However, your are likely unaware that the moment the FBI concluded their initial investigation of the Ft. Hood shooting, Obama rejected it out of hand and called William Webster out of retirement to oversee a new investigation. (*25) This has received no attention from any quarter. And, again, it closely parallels Kennedy: after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy called Maxwell Taylor out of retirement to supervise the investigation (referred to in footnote *1) of how the invasion occurred when Kennedy had cancelled it. The investigation lasted two months. The results were kept secret for twenty years. Kennedy knew in April that the CIA had betrayed him, launching the Bay of Pigs invasion against his specific orders. But he didn't fire Dulles until September, six months later. Obama certainly is aware of the complicity of his intelligence agencies in the Fort Hood shootings. Whether William Webster's investigation will be as effective as Maxwell Taylor's is impossible to tell. But Obama is trying to collect the evidence; and he is biding his time. Which brings us to the ‘Underwear Bomber’.
I swear, ‘conspiracy theories’ are not my natural inclination. I have been very slow to recognize the Detroit plane ‘bombing’ as a plot of the intelligence agencies. But the following, entirely suppressed from the media, settles the question, I think. Patrick Kennedy, State Department Under-Secretary for Management testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security on January 27. His purpose was to explain in detail how it was that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Crotch Bomber, was not put on the no-fly list, despite his father's warnings to the State Department that his son was being recruited by terrorists. Kennedy testified:
"We ask our law enforcement and intelligence community partners, 'Do you have eyes on this person and do you want us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may potentially break a larger plot?'" He added: "And one of the members [of the intelligence community] - and we'd be glad to give you that out of [open session] - in private - said, 'Please, do not revoke this visa. We have eyes on this person. We are following this person who has the visa for the purpose of trying to roll up an entire network, not just
stop one person.'" (*26)
Abdulmutallab has not been water-boarded. His family has been brought in. At their urging, he is cooperating. The Republicans are screaming that he shouldn't have a trial. And the prosecutors are collecting evidence. What if the succeed in identifying ‘the entire network’? What next? Is anyone paying attention besides Cheney and his network? Not that I've noticed.
Finally - the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed
When Obama was questioned by 9-11 ‘Truthers’ about the evidence of an inside job, he commented: "we need to investigate a whole range of options, although some of the issues you guys have raised I'm not entirely confident are the case." (*27) This is not an endorsement. But it is as good as anything Ron Paul has said publicly. And it is far from a condemnation.
His decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) in open court in New York City was a brilliantly casual knife to the throat of the perpetrators: It presents a spotlighted stage, a platform, for the 9-11 Truth movement to demonstrate, raise issues, and bring attention to the glaring facts. And what better argument could the defence make, that Mohammed was not responsible for the attacks, than to show the jury footage of building 7 coming down in a classic controlled demolition?
Thus, the prospect of a public trial for KSM presents Cheney and the other perpetrators with an everything-to-lose situation. The decision was announced to stage the public trial, and, in the words of Newsweek magazine: As if on cue, a Nigerian man with explosives in his crotch nearly brought down an American airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day, leaving the neocons feeling further ‘vindicated and energized’; and leaving Obama, "mugged by reality," as the Neocons themselves put it. (*30) These ‘energized neocons’ are the signatories of the Project for a New American Century, who called for the ‘new Pearl Harbor’ just before the 9-11 attacks; their fingerprints are all over the 9-11 attacks.
When Cheney objects to having a public trial for KSM out of one side of his mouth, (*30) and threatens biological and nuclear attacks out of the other, (*31) he must be taken seriously. And unless Obama feels that he has the cards in his hand to arrest Cheney and his cohorts, what can he do?
It is worth noting, I think, that after JFK's murder, RFK and Roger Hillsman resigned. I'm not aware of any other resignations from Kennedy's administration. It is not too much to suggest that all who stayed on were collaborators with the killers; and I have a very difficult time distinguishing
between those who were accessories to the murder, and those who were merely accessories after the fact. Obama is very likely in a similar situation, surrounded by would-be assassins (this is certainly the case with his secretary of defence, virtually everyone at the Pentagon, the FBI, Secret Service, and CIA).
Late last year, Holder accompanied Obama on a middle-of-the-night visit to Dover Air Force Base. An Air Force plane had just delivered eighteen bodies of soldiers and Drug Enforcement Administration officials who had been killed that week, in Afghanistan. Holder said that Obama, after seeing a hangar filled with caskets, sat alone in a nearby room. Holder added that he "was
struck by the fact that this guy has the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders." (*33)
John Hankey is the author of 'JFKII, the Bush Connection'; a 103-minute documentary detailing the evidence linking George Bush Sr. to the assassination of John Kennedy. The video is available for free on the web, at BushKilledJFK.com, and at Amazon.com. You can reach him at xjhankeyx@yahoo.com
Last edited by TRANCOSO on Thu Apr 15, 2010 5:38 pm; edited 3 times in total
The secret service manual requires the planners of a motorcade to pour on extra protection when there is a sharp turn in the route, which requires that the car slow down. Agents should, therefore, have been positioned all over Dealey Plaza to insure that there were no open windows. That is standard procedure. Instead, there were no secret service agents at all on the ground in Dealey Plaza. The protective motorcycle escort was ordered to stay behind the President's vehicle.