Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey. (Reuters / Yuri Gripas)

TAGS: Iran, USA, Israel, War

The Federal Bureau of Investigation employs over 15,000 undercover agents with many of them earning as much as $100,000 per assignment.  Well paid and many in number, these undercover agents have been responsible for stopping a large amount of terrorist stings that have could have resulted in catastrophic events comparable to the 9/11 attacks.

These same agents are also responsible for plotting these terrorist schemes.

According to a story done by the Moscow based “RT TV” website, the FBI has in recent years used trained informants not just to snitch on suspected terrorists, but to set them up from the very beginning.  The RT website cited a report put together by Mother Jones and the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkley that reveals, “that the FBI regularly infiltrates communities where they suspect terrorist-minded individuals to be engaging with others.” and would encourage the suspects to carry out attacks by “providing weaponry, funds and a plan,” only to bust them before any of the events fully materialize.

The report goes on to state that this tactic has been used by the FBI to stop many of the high profile would-be terrorist attacks including “the Washington DC Metro bombing plot, the New York City subway plot, the attempt to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and dozens more were all orchestrated by FBI agents.”

Most of these “set-up” stings go purposefully unreported as many of the men set up by FBI informants to carry out attacks don’t actually go through with the attack, but are still sentenced upwards of 25 years.  “The problem with the cases we’re talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents” says Martin Stolar, who represented a suspect involved in a New York City bombing plot that was set-up by FBI agents; “They’re creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror.”

The FBI claims this method is a plan for “preemption,” “prevention” and “disruption.”

Title: FBI organizes almost all terror plots in the US

Publication: RT.com (RT TV), August 23, 2011

URL: http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-terror-report-plot-365-899/print/

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In the last few weeks the FBI, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, have sent out 25 flyers that label normal everyday activities as possible terrorist indicators.

These flyers also specifically target political speech and the belief that the CIA and others had a part in 9/11 in order to justify, among other things, multiple foreign wars.

That’s right, our government is teaching state and local law enforcement nationwide that 9/11 truthers should be immediately looked at as possible terrorists.

In an FBI, Bureau of Justice document on spotting potential sleeper cells within the United States it specifically states that someone may be a terrorist sleeper agent if they believe that the CIA had a hand in 9/11. (A fact that has been heavily documented by thousands of experts. Rogue elements does not mean the entire CIA)

Late last week Intel Hub contributing writer Madison Ruppert wrote an extensive article that highlighted the details of all the 25 flyers that were sent out.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has routinely released their “Communities Against Terrorism” advisories in the form of fliers which encourage the public to report suspicious activity, something which the DHS has heavily promoted under their “See Something, Say Something” citizen spying program.
 

Through releasing these fliers, the FBI has effectively made most activities possible indicators of terrorism. Many of these are so innocuous it is almost laughable to think of them as hints of terrorist activity.

These are intended to make the people of the United States live in a constant state of fear, constantly on the lookout for non-existent terrorists lurking behind every corner.

This also helps create a culture of citizen spying in which neighbors are reporting each other for what would otherwise never be considered noteworthy activities.

Thus, it makes it much easier for the government to track down supposed dissidents since just about everything they do is likely to be considered suspicious when applying all of the absurd guidelines promoted by the FBI.

Although all the supposed possible terrorists indicators are absolutely absurd, the fact that the FBI choose to specifically target 9/11 truthers shows how important, even after ten years, covering up the truth of the horrendous 9/11 attacks is to the powers that be.

In August 2011 a video report from media outlet Russia Today highlighted a bill introduced in Congress that would allow indefinite detention of any American that the government declares a terrorist or terrorists sympathizer. (which we now have with NDAA)

The report specifically spoke about the possibility of 9/11 truthers being locked up throughout the country and now, with an FBI flyer specifically stating this very thing, questioning 9/11 is becoming an increasingly dangerous use of free speech.

Meanwhile, the fact that the United States and Israel openly support and fund an al Qaeda affiliated terrorist group in Iran (MEK) is in the public domain yet everyday Americans are being labeled terrorists by the very officials who either indirectly or directly support terrorists themselves.

An article written by Tony Cartalucci on his Land Destroyer blog and syndicated on The Intel Hub outlined the documented facts that show that high levels US politicians and the Israeli government openly endorse and support the terrorist group MEK. (listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization)

It was also revealed in Seymour Hersh’s 2008 New Yorker article “Preparing the Battlefield,” that not only had MEK been considered for their role as a possible proxy, but that the US had already begun arming and financing them to wage war inside Iran:

“The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts—and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”

Seymore Hersh in an NPR interview, also claims that select MEK members have already received training in the US.

It was also revealed that US forces in Iraq had provided MEK’s main camp with security, and with the recent “withdrawal” of US troops from Iraq, the US State Department and even the UN have been scrambling to find a new safe haven for the US listed terrorist organization. Even more unimaginable is the fact that many of the foremost fearmongers and proponents of the “War on Terror” are engaged in desperate lobbying efforts to get MEK delisted by the US State Department. In October of 2011, a full page ad was taken out in the Washington Post on MEK’s behalf.

Image: Full-page treason – US politicians, many the most prominent proponents of the “War on Terror,” appeal to the President of the United States to delist MEK as a terrorist organization. While hand-wringing humanitarian concerns are cited, what the ad fails to mention is that MEK has long been sought after to serve as an armed US-proxy to be turned on Iran and carry out a campaign of terror, as stated clearly in the Brookings Institution “Which Path to Persia?” report. (click image to enlarge)

Among those signing the statement made in the ad were John Bolton, Howard Dean, Rudy Giuliani, Ed Rendell, and Tom Ridge. When reading the statement, it must be kept in mind that the Brookings Institution already confirmed that MEK was a terrorist organization and that it had verifiably killed US military personal and civilians.

Considering the fact that 99.9% of the so called 9/11 truth movement has been completly peaceful, the logical conclusion as to why 9/11 truthers and other everyday Americans are being labeled possible terrorists while certain American and Israeli officials publicly work with real terrorists is because of the threat they pose to the military industrial complex police state takeover plan that has been in the works long before 9/11.

You can view the full document here.

Anonymous speaks.

http://youtu.be/nrJ551FFWp0

Robert Fisk

The Independent, UK

Tuesday 07 February 2012

President Bashar al-Assad is not about to go. Not yet. Not, maybe, for quite a long time. Newspapers in the Middle East are filled with stories about whether or not this is Assad’s “Benghazi moment” – these reports are almost invariably written from Washington or London or Paris – but few in the region understand how we Westerners can get it so wrong.

The old saw has to be repeated and repeated: Egypt was not Tunisia; Bahrain was not Egypt; Yemen was not Bahrain; Libya was not Yemen. And Syria is very definitely not Libya.

by Tony Cartalucci

From the beginning, even for those wanting to believe the fairy tale that 9/11 was carried out by cave dwellers carrying box cutters directed by Osama Bin Laden, who by all accounts was dying or already dead from kidney failure in 2001 – “unfortunate blunders” in US foreign policy can still be blamed for the creation and perpetuation of the ubiquitous, unceasing terror organization known as Al Qaeda. However, in light of recent events in Libya, Syria, Iran, and Algeria, there is exposed a truth, many have known for over 10 years, and many more are catching onto now – that the “War on Terror” is an absolute fraud, started, fueled and simultaneously fought against by the same handful of corporate-financier interests for the sole purpose of spreading Wall Street and London’s hegemony across the globe.

Inception: Al Qaeda Made in USA

By all accounts, including admissions by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Osama Bin Laden’s organization that would become Al Qaeda was created during the Soviet-Afghan war in in the late 70′s and throughout the 80′s. The funding of these militants did not begin after the Soviet invasion, but actually several years before the invasion. US intervention in Afghanistan by training and arming Afghanistan’s Mujaheddin, along with Osama Bin Laden’s Arab fighters, is one of the leading factors that led to the murderous and protracted decade-long war, according to the Nation in an article titled, “Blowback, the Prequel.”

Photo: Former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski meeting with Osama Bin Laden, then leading the CIA’s Arab legionaries in Afghanistan. Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda would later spin off into regional terrorist organizations, covertly armed, trained, and protected by the CIA to this day, including LIFG in Libya, MEK in Iraq and Iran, and Baluchi terrorists in Pakistan.

Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda would continue to fight after the Soviets were expelled from Afghanistan, this time in Kosovo’s bid for independence from Serbia in the late 1990′s. Al Qaeda-trained Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) militants garnered a Serbian response which was then used by NATO as a pretext for intervention. NATO’s entry into the war led to the eventual carving up of the nation. Again, the CIA was found to be propping up Bin Laden’s terrorist legionaries. Serbia’s president, Slobodan Milošević would later be removed from power by yet another arm of American interventionism, the National Endowment for Democracy via Optor, now known as the infamous CANVAS organization which, with US funding, trained activists ahead of the now admittedly US-engineered “Arab Spring.”

Despite Al Qaeda quickly becoming America’s arch enemy, filling the void left by a collapsed Soviet Union, and justifying America’s continued absurd defense spending as well as its enormous tactical holdings overseas throughout the 90′s, it appears the organization was still very much a vehicle carrying forward US foreign policy. And despite accusations that it was a terrorist organization, it continued receiving covert support from US and British intelligence agencies, as did many other extremist groups which eventually were integrated with Al Qaeda after September 11, 2001.

From Heroes to Villains, and Back Again

In the 80′s when the CIA was fueling Afghanistan’s decade-long war with the Soviet Union, in part provoked by US meddling in the region years before the invasion even took place, the Mujaheddin were portrayed as heroes and freedom fighters quite publicly. No better example can be cited of how this image was nurtured by the West’s massive propaganda machine than Hollywood’s Rambo III, an entire movie literally dedicated to the “gallant people of Afghanistan.” Many of those that fought in Afghanistan, particularly foreign fighters armed, trained, and brought in by the CIA, would go on to become some of the world’s most notorious terrorist groups, many of which are listed to this day on the US and UK foreign terrorist organization lists.

Image: (Top) Rambo meets the Afghan Mujaheddin, who aid him in his heroic exploits. These people would later fight US invaders after expelling the Soviets. (Bottom) The credits for Rambo III begin with this dedication to the “gallant people of Afghanistan.” Throughout the film, the Mujaheddin are depicted as “freedom fighters” much in the same light as the current Libyan rebels are. In short time, these “gallant” “freedom fighters” would become America’s arch enemies and the subject of a 10 year occupation that is still ongoing. More recently, Rambo IV featured Myanmar – still called “Burma” by neo-imperialists – and was used in a similar manner to portray an entire nation as the US State Department saw fit. The film is being used by US-backed youth group “Generation Wave” as propaganda, just as the US State Department intended.

These CIA-fostered terrorist groups include the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which was created in Afghanistan with Libyan militants previously armed and trained by the CIA to overthrow Qaddafi in the early 1980′s. After Afghanistan, and several failed attempts to seize Libya by force, these fighters would filter back into Afghanistan to fight US troops who were now invading the “gallant people of Afghanistan.” This time, the Afghans were no longer “gallant,” but rather medieval savages in need of Western democracy and UN sanctioned nation-building. The Libyans for their part would continue fighting the US in Afghanistan, and when the US invaded Iraq in 2003, they would begin fighting US troops there as well. This is of course, all according to a report from the West Point Combating Terror Center.

And even as US forces occupy Afghanistan for their tenth year, with fighting reaching unprecedented levels of violence, Afghanistan’s LIFG Libyan cohorts are receiving US and British air support, French and Qatari arms, billions in aid, NATO special forces assistance, and full diplomatic recognition by the US State Department and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as they rise up against Qaddafi in Libya. It must be noted that these Libyan rebels, who like the Afghan Mujahedin were portrayed as “freedom fighters,” are in fact led and consist almost entirely of LIFG militants, many of whom have spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan killing US troops. It should be noted that LIFG is listed by the US Stated Department (#26) and the UK Home Office as a foreign terrorist organization.

This is a narrative that first saw these militants as heroes, then the world’s most scorned villains for nearly a decade of war, before emerging out the other side once again as heroes. For the thousands of US troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, the tens of thousands maimed, and the hundreds of millions of Americans facing a bankrupted nation that has paid trillions for this “War on Terror” to unproportionately wealthy mega-corporations and banks, it is becoming clear that they were taken for a ride by a shadowy elite with an obscure agenda masked in a now unraveling veil of lies.

The War on Terror is Actively Kept Alive by the West

In Libya, Qaddafi has fought for nearly three decades to crush the extremist militants of Libya’s eastern region, centered on the cities of Darnah and the current epicenter of the NATO-backed rebellion, Benghazi. This eastern region is considered, according to West Point’s CTC report, as one of the highest concentrations of terrorists in the world. It is also a region the CIA and MI6 have helped fund, arm, and train over the same 30 years.

At one point, Qaddafi had almost entirely extinguished the movement, in particular LIFG, most of whose leadership fled, and ironically sought refuge in London, Langley, and Washington. Qaddafi would attempt to re-approach the West by abandoning his WMD programs and inviting Western intelligence agencies in to help counter the remnants of LIFG and other regional terror organizations. The CIA and MI6 instead, rearmed, reorganized, and redirected these terrorist organizations back at the Qaddafi regime culminating in the February 17, 2011 “Day of Rage” and the subsequent NATO intervention. Indeed, the US, UK, France, Qatar, and other NATO member states are overtly deposing Qaddafi in favor for a regime made up of hardcore terrorists.

In other words, a terrorist organization on its death bed, was intentionally brought back to life by NATO. Having done so, LIFG is already shipping weapons to another notorious terrorist organization in the region, Algeria’s Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM) (#37 on US State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations). Algeria, like Libya, has fought a long battle against terrorism at the cost of protracted unrest now known as the “lost decade.” After a failed attempt at stirring regime change in Algeria through Egyptian-style street protests and internal defections, it appears the US through NATO is attempting to revive AQIM and initiate a violent revolution.

Already, Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution policy wonk and co-author of the “Which Path to Persia?” report engineering the use of terrorism to destabilize Iran, is licking his chops over the prospects of Algeria “being next.” In a report, aptly titled, “Algeria will be next to fall,” Riedel sets the rhetorical stage, just as he helped to do with Libya, for another “spontaneous” “indigenous” uprising, with the prospect of NATO, and more specifically, French intervention looming over them. In reality, as we can clearly see, AQIM would not be in any position were it not for NATO arming and handing a neighboring nation to their allies amongst Libya’s LIFG.

Similarly in Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood was all but routed by Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad. Now, these militants are receiving covert arms, the full support of the Western media’s selective journalism, and both political and financial support by the US, UK, and EU. Should the West succeed, yet another extremist organization will be reanimated and unleashed on a population that has sacrificed much trying to burying it.

Iran has been fighting a battle against another State Department listed terrorist organization (list as #28), Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK.) US policy makers, after admitting MEK has the blood of US soldiers and civilians on its hands and that it has “undeniably” conducted terrorist attacks, shockingly wants to remove it from the US foreign terrorist organization list so that it can be worked with more closely in toppling the Iranian government. This is revealed in the Brookings Institution’s “Which Path to Persia?” report.

“Potential Ethnic Proxies,” page 117-118 (page 130-131 of the PDF): “Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.

Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.
Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.”

It turns out that MEK is already receiving US funding, weapons, and other assistance to conduct a militant campaign against the government of Iran. This was revealed in Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article “Preparing the Battlefield,” which stated:

“The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts—and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”

Moves have also been made to get MEK de-listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Department so that even more aid can be rendered to this admitted terrorist organization. Seymore Hersh in an NPR interview, also claims that select MEK members have received training in the US. Also implicated by Hersh in his article, were Kurdish militants straddling the Iranian, Syrian, and Iraqi borders and now wrecking havoc against Syria’s Assad regime, and Baluchi militants based along the Iranian-Pakistani border. The Baluchi militants are also being directed toward the Pakistani government with US assistance.

In each instance, whether it is in Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iran, or Pakistan, immense efforts have been made by these governments to destroy entirely these organizations. In each case, the US purposely arms, trains, and shelters these organizations, with troupes of dissent leaders populating London, Washington, and Langley, Virginia, creating a “rouge’s UN” of sorts. Careful observers who check the backgrounds of “experts” brought onto the duplicitous BBC, CNN, or Al Jazeera networks for interviews can see sometimes 2-3 of these exiled extremist leaders at a time being given airtime and dressed up as “freedom fighters.” The threat of militant extremism is one the United States government and its allies have been purposefully perpetuating as a pretext for expanding military and economic power into sovereign nation-states disinterested in their Wall Street and London centric “globalization.”

War on Terror: President X’s War

While many may say the “War on Terror” was Bush’s war, a legacy Obama has inherited, it is clear through Obama’s “actions” that the war has continued on in earnest, even expanded, following the same path with all but superficial rhetoric affixed to give it a more “progressive’ look. The current conflagration in the Middle East and North Africa was planned all the way back in the early 90′s with each president since then, rubber stamping the steps necessary to push the plan for a “new Middle East” forward.

It was Bush Sr. who ravaged Iraq and left US troops permanently stationed in the Middle East. Clinton oversaw Al Qaeda’s ushering in of NATO intervention in the Kosovo conflict. Bush Jr. of course was in office when Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded and occupied. Now, Obama is overseeing the “Arab Spring” for which activists were trained and bankrolled by the US State Department before he even came into office. He is also overseeing the destruction of Libya, and the destabilization of Syria (for more information, see Globalists Coming Full Circle).

As the 2012 US election nears, we are confronted with the obvious establishment candidate of choice, Rick Perry, facing off against another 4 years of Obama’s servile obedience to the corporate-financier agenda driving American policy. Rick Perry assures us that he will bring change, stating that America “cannot afford four more years of this rudderless leadership.” However, in reality, the same US policy makers that have engineered the last 10 years of the global “War on Terror” are already lined up behind Perry to ensure that indeed we do get “four more years of this rudderless leadership.”

Foreign Policy recently reported that warmongering Neo-Conservatives including Douglas Feith, William Luti, Andrew McCarthy, Charles Stimson, and Daniel Fata, with the help of certified warmonger and corporate fascist Donald Rumsfeld, had been introduced to Rick Perry to help him “brush up” on foreign policy. Also meeting with Perry was Dan Blumenthal of the Neo-Con, Fortune 500-funded AEI, Peter Brookes of the Fortune 500-funded Heritage Foundation (page 35), and Zalmay Khalizad, a fellow Neo-Conservative warmonger, PNAC signatory, and a member of the extraterritorial meddling National Endowment for Democracy’s board of directors, to help Perry define his “hawk internationalist” foreign policy stance.

By “hawk internationalist,” Foreign Policy indicates that it means, “embracing American exceptionalism and the unique role we must play in confronting the many threats we face.” In actual terms it means embracing more wars, more meddling abroad, and more corporate driven agendas to expand Wall Street and London’s financial, military, and economic hegemony worldwide. Perry will simply take what both Bush and Obama have done, affix the appropriate spin, rhetoric, and propaganda, and continue spilling American blood and wasting American treasure. Perry is merely a public relations officer ready to take the heat for the next four years while the real policy makers continue operating out of the sight and mind of the American public.

The “War on Terror” is a Fraud

If Bush, Obama, and Perry are not making decisions, who is? Who are the chief proponents of this “War on Terror,” who are the architects behind the policy and who is bankrolling them? More importantly, how can they have spent the last 10 years sending American kids to fight Al Qaeda and now are overtly handing them the nation of Libya?

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a corporate and US State Department-funded policy institute that claims to be dedicated to promoting “pluralism, defending democratic values, and fighting the ideologies that threaten democracy.” It is decidedly “Neo-Conservative” and focuses almost exclusively on starting and maintaining wars at America’s expense.

FDD’s “executive team” includes James Woolsey and Clifford May, while its “leadership council” includes Bill Kristol – all signatories of a recent Foreign Policy Initiative letter addressed to House Republicans asking them to discard the UN mandate for NATO’s Libyan intervention and commit more support specifically for regime change. Acting Senator Joseph Lieberman also can be found on FDD’s “leadership council” and has been a chief proponent of war with Libya, as well as Syria and Iran, alongside John McCain. FDD has a myriad of publications expressing the elation of the “Neo-Conservative” establishment over current operations against Libya and the possible springboard the Libyan war serves toward US intervention in Syria and Iran. FDD’s only criticism of Obama is that more should be done, faster, and at a greater expense to America. Michael Ledeen, a “freedom scholar,” expresses this well in his article titled, “Lessons of Libya (and Syria, and, Some Day, Iran),” where he throws in his organization’s collective desire to intervene in both Syria and Iran, for good measure.

The Atlantic article, “Al-Qaeda Is Winning,” written by FDD “senior fellow” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, expresses the true contempt these individuals have toward their audience. In this piece reflecting on the last 10 years of the “War on Terror,” Gartenstein-Ross claims that Al Qaeda’s ability to use cheap means to provoke the United States into a multi-billion dollar defense is rendering an Al Qaeda victory through a “strategy of a thousand cuts.” Of course, the x-ray machines and other security apparatuses being installed across the United States and the tremendous amount of money being used to sustain combat operations around the world “hunting terrorists,” doesn’t go into a black hole. Instead, it goes into the pockets of the very people funding the work of Mr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and his peers throughout his and other US and British think-tanks.

Other notorious think-tanks promoting the “War on Terror” as well as literally engineering the latest war in Libya, and with extensive blueprints for destabilizing and overthrowing Syria and Iran, include the Brookings Institution mentioned above, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), and the Atlantic Council covered in depth in “Atlantic Council: Is Libya a “Global Con?”” All three are predictably funded, chaired, and directed by the largest banks, oil companies, and defense contractors on earth, as well as their representatives in the corporate-owned media, public relations and law firms, as well as acting corporate board members themselves.

The Brookings Institute who wrote the definitive blueprint for covert destabilization within a foreign sovereign nation, “Which Path to Persia?” is funded by, among many others, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, the Rothschilds, Citi, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Electric, Raytheon (makers of the Tomahawk cruise missile used extensively throughout NATO’s Libya campaign), and Google (who has already renamed Libya’s Green Square to the contrived “Martyr’s Square” on Google Maps). One would assume those at Brookings would carry forward with shame and fear with such obvious conflicts of interest muddling their “policy making,” instead they are beyond arrogant, bolstered by the ignorance and apathy of the masses. A full list of their corporate sponsors can be found in their 2010 annual report, starting on page 19.

Likewise the IISS was instrumental in analyzing, promoting, and guiding NATO’s military intervention in Libya as well as maintaining the myth of “global terrorism” and the necessity of continuing the “War on Terror.” They too are representatives of some of the largest corporate-financier interests on earth, all of whom have enriched themselves with their self-promoted, unending war, with their board of trustees containing current and former representatives from Rothschild, DeBeers, the Anglo American Corporation, Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney and Bankers, Rolls-Royce, Thales, the notorious Council on Foreign Relations, and ABC News.

We have seen how in nearly every case, national governments have attempted to crush Al Qaeda, and in every case the US and UK have propped them up again. We see how each war is explicitly engineered and promoted by the same corporate-financier interests capitalizing on them at everyone else’s expense. In the 1930′s United States Marine Corps General Smedley Butler stated, “war is a racket,” and explained that a racket is best described “as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”

Clearly today, this “racket” has become so advanced, so elaborate, so pervasive in politics and culture, that the label of “racket” doesn’t quite suit it. A better term could be a, “scientific dictatorship” where teams of highly trained propagandists, in tandem with the corporate-owned media, including Hollywood, the music industry, publishing houses, and PR firms, all work to manage the public’s perception on a global scale. It is both terrifying as it is perhaps overreaching. The “War on Terror” is a fraud, and one that is now unraveling. For every lie that is told, a vast amount of resources must be spent to sell it and continue propping it up. No matter how much is spent, if a mind wakes up to the fraud, it does so permanently. However vast the fraudulent “War on Terror” is, those speaking the truth face a downhill battle now reaching critical mass. Libya is being handed over to terrorists by the same exact people who told our sons and daughters to lay down their lives to fight these very same people. No amount of propaganda, however scientifically formulated, can obfuscate the treason that has taken place.

The next step of course, after speaking out about the truth, is to review the above mentioned corporate-financier interests, represented by corporations and banks we depend on daily, driving this treasonous agenda, and put each one out of business by boycotting and replacing them systematically. The “War on Terror” is an absolute fraud, fabricated in whole, and it is only our apathy and inaction coupled with our unwitting patronization of these corporate-financier interests that allows this fraud to continue on.

January 20th, 2012

Franklin Lamb
Tripoli

This observer was stunned late last week, during a meeting in a Maghreb country with three high ranking former Libyan officials, among hundreds currently in hiding  in countries bordering Libya. One of them, in all earnestness, asked me, “Do you believe there will be a counter revolution soon in the “Jamarariya (state of the masses)?”

The reason I was so surprised is that I was about to ask that very question.

Certainly many complaints are heard today in Libya about the do-nothing “non-government.” Increasingly, people in all walks of life are boldly complaining. What I have observed personally is that many reports on events in Libya  are false.  One recent false claims reports that Saif al Islam has married a Zintan tribe woman, and that he has been seen taking walks with his captors, who are defecting to his leadership. The Zintan military command categorically denies it.

There is clear and growing pro-Gadhafi political and military activity around Libya.  It accounts for why NTC leader Mustapha Abdul Jalil warned the Gadhafi children against raising an insurrection. Given Saif’s current incarceration, Aisha Gadhafi  is perhaps the most likely leader, given her intelligence, energy and strong commitment to replace “NATO’s rebels”, vindicate her father, preserve his correct legacy, and organize a reform movement along the lines that she and some loyalists were working towards –with the approval, she claims, of her father before his death.

Every night more pro-Gadhafi graffiti appears on street walls, buildings and around Green (Martyrs) Square.  More activists appear every day. They assert that so far the NTC has not attacked them and they feel fairly free to speak out and even organize. It is anyone’s guess how long this situation will exist before a violent crackdown and open fighting begin.

It is difficult to gage the anti-NTC/ pro-Gadhafi mix and the extent to which each is propelling the increasingly unpredictable events in Libya.

Yet, with the elimination of Muammar Gadhafi, which was NATO’s clear intension from March 19, NATO correctly concluded that without Gadhafi’s charismatic leadership in Libya, any “Green counter-revolution” would be very difficult. That is what we are seeing today.

While the restive Libyan population appears to be rebelling against the NTC for a variety of reasons, today the urinating by NATO forces on the bodies of dead Afghanis is dominating the news and discussions is this pious Muslim country.

NATO has already lost much of its claimed public relations boost following its Halloween night end of the bombing. This is because of an accumulation of reports about NATO bombing of civilians in Libya, which are now becoming public knowledge.  Libyan people are increasingly furious because more and more cases are coming to light concerning the high numbers of children killed by NATO.

In addition to the fury caused by the urinating NATO forces, NATO officials are being ridiculed for refusing to acknowledge that  more than 11,000 bombing missions  caused civilians deaths. They are scorned for claiming that NATO forces conducted themselves according to the higher moral and military standards, and sometimes put themselves at risk to avoid civilian casualties. The claims remind some of a similar ludicrous public relations campaign undertaken regularly by the Israeli government.

Signs from Libya point to continued volatility. Contrary to NATO claims that it put into place a “new democratic Libya,” the predictable next chapter is starting to unfold. It may bring the end of the NTC before the coming June elections, when it is scheduled to be replaced.

Franklin Lamb in doing research in Libya and can be reached c/o fplamb@gmail.com

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Sorman, Libya

It was a warm early Monday morning along the Libyan coast on June 20, 2011.

At approximately 0200 GMT in NATO Headquarters in Brussels and 30 minutes later in its media center in Naples, staffers finished tabulating NATO’s 92nd day of aerial attacks on Libya, and began to post the data on its website (www.nato.int).

Twenty four hours earlier an Atlantic Alliance command unit, located approximately 30 miles off the Libyan coast, had signed off on 49 bombing missions for June 20th, the last day of spring and the last day of NATO’s original UN bombing mandate.

The two UN Security Council Resolutions were insisted upon by France, the UK, Italy and the US, which claimed ”a limited no-fly zone would protect Libya’s civilian population from the wrath of the government of Libya’s leader, Muammar Kaddafi.” NATO  was granted two additional 90 days extensions to continue its Libyan mission which gave its air force until the end of 2011 to continue Operation Unified Protector.

It was early Monday morning, June 20, 2011.

Sorman Libya.

A quiet and peaceful Libyan town, Sorman is located 45 miles west of Tripoli, near the Mediterranean coast, in the Zawiya District of the Tripolitania region in northwestern Libya. Many of the town’s children grew up exploring the magnificent 3rd Century  Roman Ruins at nearby Sabratha. Some archaeologists consider Sabratha, located almost in direct line with Rome across the Mediterranean, and built on a high cliff above the sea, as the most complete extant Roman architecture. Only a small part of this large Roman city has been excavated.

This observer has visited Sabratha a few times since the mid-1980’s, and each visit presents more awe. Families from Sorman and nearby villages regularly visit and picnic there.

In the early hours of June 20, 2011 it was dark in Sorman except for some muted half-moon light. A few dim street lights provided some light as residents began to rise and prepare for the Al Fajr (“Dawn”) prayers.

At the homestead of Khaled K. El-Hamedi, the 37 year old President of the International Organization for Peace, Care & Relief (IOPCR), one of Libya’s most active social service organizations, everyone was asleep following a rambunctious birthday party for his three year old son. The Hamedi family members included Khaled’s three year old son Khweldi, five year old daughter Khaleda, his beautiful pregnant wife Safa, his aunt Najia, and his six year old niece Salam, among others.

At NATO’s Control and Command Center, the 49 bombing missions planned for early morning of June 20, included a target at Sorman, which would push the number of NATO reconnaissance sorties over Libya to 11,930. This number would become 26,500 by midnight on October 31, when NATO officially ended  its air campaign.

The day’s bombing sorties would raise the tally of rocket and bombing targets to 4,521. This figure would increase to more than 11,781 by late fall, when NATO was instructed to end Operation Unified Protector.

NATO’s prepares to bomb Dorman’s “command and control center”

Before the bombs were fired at Khaled K. al-Hamedi compound, NATO staff conducted a six step process the first of which was surveillance using the MQ-9 Reaper UAV, which sometimes is also used to fire missiles. Also above Sorman was the Predator drone with full-motion video. During June 19 and the early hours of June 20, the drones locked on the Hamedi homestead target and relayed updated information to NATO’s command center.

The Hamedi home was not what NATO labels a “time-critical target,” so there was plenty of time to transmit information about the site from unmanned reconnaissance aircraft to intelligence analysts. Almost certainly, according to a source at Jane’s Weekly, NATO UAV’s watched the Hamedi compound over a period of days, and presumably observed part of the birthday party being held for three old Huweldi, the day before the order to bomb was issued.

NATO Rules of Engagement for Operation United Protector constitute a set of classified documents, which present specific and detailed instructions about what is a legitimate target and who can approve the target, whether pre-planned or “on the fly” when a pilot happens upon a target of opportunity.

The Sorman attack on the Hamedi home was planned as part of what NATO calls its Joint Air Tasking Cycle.  A target development team put the Hamedi home on the June 20th daily list of targets. The team used a report from NATO intelligence analysts who determined that retired officer Khaled al Huweldi, Hamedi, one of the original members of the Gadhafi led 1969 coup against King Idris in 1969, and a former member of the Al Fatah Revolution’s Revolutionary Command Council was living on the property. His assassination had been ordered by NATO because they hoped to weaken the regime in some way, even though the senior Hamedi was retired and had no decision making role in Libya.

On June 19, the day before the bombing attack on the Hamedi family at Sorman, NATO was obliged by international law to conduct a “potential for collateral damage review” of this mission.

There is no evidence that this was ever done.

A requested US Congressional NATO Liaison Office review of the Sorman bombing, initially requested from Libya on August 2, was completed in early September 2011 and found no documentary evidence that Bouchard or anyone in NATO’s Target Selection Unit, evaluated, discussed, or even considered the subject of potential civilian casualties at the Hamedi home in Sorman.

Following Bouchard’s green light to bomb the Hamedi home, the coordinates were fixed at 32°45′24″N 12°34′18″E . Specific aim points on the Hamedi property were chosen and eight bombs and missiles were readied and attached to the strike aircraft.

At Sorman, NATO used a variety of bombs and missiles, including the “bunker busting” BLU-109 (Bomb Live Unit) which is designed to penetrate 18 feet of concrete. NATO also used the American MK series of 500 lb, (MK 81) 1000 lb, (MK-82) and the 2000 lb (MK-84) that Israel used so widely during its 2006 invasion of Lebanon. The MK series and the BLU-109 are reportedly being stockpiled in Israel in preparation for both countries anticipated next war in this region.

Following the inferno at Sorman, NATO denied responsibility. But the next day NATO admitted carrying out an air strike somewhere in Sorman. They continued to deny there were civilian deaths even as its drones filmed the scene close up. NATO’s media office in Naples issued a statement claiming “A precision air strike was launched against a high-level command and control node in the Sorman area without collateral damage.”

NATO spokespersons also told Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that “the facility was a legitimate military target, and all necessary precautions were taken before conducting the strike which minimized any potential risk of causing unnecessary casualties”.

The official NATO record of its bombing of Libya for June 20, 2011 reads as follows and remains unchanged:

“Over the past 24 hours, NATO has conducted the following activities associated with Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR:

Air Operations Sorties conducted 20 JUNE: 149

Strike sorties conducted 20 JUNE: 52

Key Hits

20 JUNE: In the vicinity of Tripoli: 1 Command & Control Node, 8 Surface-To-Air Missile Launchers,

1 Surface-To-Air Missile Transport Vehicle. In the vicinity of Misratah: 3 Truck-Mounted Guns, 2 Self-

Propelled Anti-Aircraft Guns, 1 Tank. In the vicinity of Tarhunah: 1 Military Equipment Storage Facility. In the vicinity of Al-Khums: 1 Military Vehicle Storage Facility. In the vicinity of Zintan: 1 Rocket Launcher.”

Oddly, NATO records have never included the bombing attack on Sorman or the attack on the Al-Hamedi residence, which indisputably killed 15 civilians, including several children age 5 and under.

Just before the bombs hit, eye witnesses, reported seeing red specks in the sky and flashes of intense light, immediately followed by thunderous ear splitting blasts as eight American bombs and rockets pulverized their neighbors homestead.

In an instant Khaled El-Hamedi’s family was dead. The children were crushed, blown apart or shredded into pieces, along with friends and extended family members who had slept overnight.

Khaled was working late, attending meetings with displaced Libyans driven from their homes and urgently in need of IOPCR help. As he returned home, Khaled saw from his car window the sky light up and heard exploding bombs. He was frozen in horror as entered his home,  and observed rescue workers frantically digging and futilely trying to move the thick concrete slabs of his house, hoping against hope that they would miraculously find survivors.

Libyan government spokesman Mousa Ibrahim announced the death of 15 people, including three children, were killed at Sorman. He slammed the NATO bombing as a “cowardly terrorist act which cannot be justified.”

Investigators, who visited Sabratha hospital, saw nine bodies, including three young children. They also saw body parts including a child’s head.

For those who visited the Al-Hamidi family compound  in June following the NATO bombings, as this observer did a week after the crime as part of an international delegation, the scene was one of total devastation.

Collapsed and blown apart concrete and tiled homes. Small body parts, and bits of family belongings and memorabilia. Trees blown over and denuded of their foliage. Dead, terrified and dying petting zoo animals, including exotic birds, Ostrich, Deer, small animals and large moose killed or left near death, most in a blind stupor staring blankly from what remained of their shelters while dying of wounds and trauma.

Outside one of the bombed houses, I noticed crushed cartons of spaghetti pasta and cans of tomato sauce, stockpiled for distribution to the needy as part of the work of IOPCR and in preparation for the coming Holy month of Ramadan, which includes charitable works and individual humanitarian acts.

Under growing pressure from the international community, including NATO member states, NATO HQ claimed equipment malfunction, missed target, poor intelligence and pilot errors. Finally US Defense secretaries Gates and his replacement, Leon Panetta admitted that NATO lacked effective intelligence on the ground to identify military targets with certainty.

Former Defense Secretary Gates, in criticizing NATO’s operation in Libya implied that NATO used a bomb first ask questions later paradigm in Libya. And this appears to have been the case. These excuses in no way absolve NATO and its 28 NATO member states of responsibility.

Canadian Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard insists to this day that only Libya’s military was targeted: “This important strike will greatly degrade Gadhafi regime forces’ ability to carry on their barbaric assault against the Libyan people,” he told the media from his office in Brussels. The civilian deaths at Sorman came just hours after NATO acknowledged that one of its missiles had gone astray early on Sunday, hitting a residential neighborhood of Tripoli.

At the request of Khaled al-Hamedi, himself being sought by Libya’s new government,  I made my way to Sorman, to his loved ones gravesites on the family homestead, where he and I first met. I went  to deliver a message from him to his loved ones.

Picking my way through debris in the dark, under the cold and suspicious eyes of a couple of local militiamen, I stood at the same spot, where his family’s graves bore witness to the horror and hellfire that NATO unleashed upon his family.

Back in June I had moved to the rear of our group as Khaled spoke to us about the loss of his babies, his beauties and his precious pregnant wife. I was embarrassed because for some reason, uncontrollable tears would not stop streaming down my face.  Despite averting my eyes, I saw that Khaled noticed. I was touched when this young man, approached me — a total stranger– and put his arm around my shoulder in comfort.

Later, as I learned more about Khaled’s family and saw their most expressive and revealing photos, I came to believe that Najia, Safa, Salam, Khaleda, and Khweldi, and the others slaughtered at Sorman, are forever iconic representatives of all the innocent civilians who were slaughtered in Libya since March 2011.

During my recent visit to Sorman, I stood at the same location as last June. I surveyed the area and then approached the graves of Najia, Safa, Salam, Khaleda, and Khweldi.

I knelt close, felt a strange source of warmth and looked over my shoulder.

I whispered in the silent night that I had a message from your loving Husband, Father, Uncle and Nephew.

I read to them the message entrusted to me. And I left a copy in Arabic, pinned to a bouquet of flowers:

The message read:

“Please say a very big hello to them and tell them I am coming.

Please tell them “I won’t leave you alone.

 I miss each of you so very much.”

And please write them each a note.

Najia, Safa, Salam, Khaleda, and Khweldi.

Franklin, Tell them, “You are my life.

You are my love.

I miss you very, very much.

Life without you is so painful, so hard and completely empty.

I won’t stay and live away from you. I promise.

I’ll return and be close to you. Baba will be back.

I love you.

As I made my way back to the main road in search of a taxi, a militiaman stopped me and interrogated me about why I was there, confiscated my camera and ordered me to leave the area at once.

I paused for a moment and looked back toward what had been a loving family home, a petting zoo and bird sanctuary that had delighted the children in this neighborhood.

A little boy and girl, perhaps siblings, maybe six or seven years old, approached me with their Ethiopian nanny and asked: “Wien, (where is) Khaleda? Wien Khweldi? metta yargeoun ila Al Bayt (when will they come home?)

“When will they come home?”

Unable to speak, I kissed and patted their sweet heads and continued on my way.

Khaled K. Al-Hamedi is strong, deeply religious, and fatalistic. He has pledged to family and friends around the world that he will continue his work with the International Organization for Peace, Care & Relief in spite of the life shattering loss of his loved ones.

An honorable family, a peaceful and welcoming town, a devastated country, and a shocked and angry international community demand justice from those who sent ‘Unified Protector’ and NATO’s no-fly zone to destroy Libya in order to “protect the civilian population.”

*************Franklin Lamb is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com