Cheney, Neocons Considered Killing Americans in Pretext to Attack Iran

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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