Northwoods Homeland Security.

[Matthew X]

Bush wrong to use pretext as excuse to invade Iraq
By James Bamford
As the Bush administration raises prospects of war with Iraq, USA TODAY 
asked experts to explore critical military, diplomatic and political 
factors involved and the possible consequences. This is part of that 
occasional series.
Vice President Cheney's speech this week showed that the administration has 
no new evidence to support its claim that Iraq poses an immediate threat to 
the United States. Instead, Cheney used standard, vague terms: "no doubt" 
Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction or will acquire nuclear 
weapons "fairly soon." The administration also points to the possible 
presence of fleeing al-Qaeda members in northern Iraq, perhaps of senior 
rank. But it has difficulty tying them directly to Saddam because the area 
is largely under the control of Kurdish opposition leader Jallal Tallabani, 
who has worked with the Bush administration against Saddam.
Without convincing evidence of imminent danger, administration officials 
have been dusting off old cases that hint at Iraqi plots and conspiracies, 
but are unsupported by facts. Many worry that such incidents will be 
exploited as pretexts to justify pre-emptive strikes. The Navy, for 
instance, is considering changing the status of a pilot shot down over Iraq 
during the Gulf War from missing in action to captured. But, given no known 
physical evidence to support that possibility nor any new facts, some see 
this as one more cynical political pretext for invasion.
Bush administration officials also have been reviving the old story that 
Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met in the Czech Republic capital of Prague 
with an Iraqi agent five months before the attacks — a possible link 
between Iraq and al-Qaeda. An unnamed senior administration official told 
the Los Angeles Times that evidence of such a meeting "holds up." A federal 
law enforcement official, the Times reported, said the FBI has been 
reviewing Atta's records with "renewed vigor" for a possible link to Iraq. 
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently added at a news conference that 
Iraq "had a relationship" with al-Qaeda.
But senior U.S. intelligence officials have discounted the meeting. "We ran 
down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we 
could get our hands on," said FBI Director Robert Mueller. The records 
revealed that Atta was in Virginia Beach during the time he supposedly met 
the Iraqi in Prague.
While the administration is under increasing pressure to make its case for 
invasion, using as pretexts supposed instances such as these carries grave 
dangers. The past holds lessons about pretext and making the right — and 
wrong — decisions.
One of the most outrageous uses of pretext took place during the Kennedy 
administration after the failed Bay of Pigs operation, in which the CIA 
wrongly underestimated the amount of internal support for Fidel Castro.
With the CIA out of the picture, the Joint Chiefs of Staff saw a grand 
opportunity for the military to launch an all-out war against Cuba. But 
they needed a pretext. The answer was Operation Northwoods: The Joint 
Chiefs would secretly launch a war of terror on the U.S. public — then 
blame it on Castro.
According to long-hidden top-secret documents I obtained from the National 
Archives, Operation Northwoods called for innocent people to be shot on 
U.S. streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk; for 
waves of terrorism in Washington, Miami and elsewhere. Using phony evidence 
to blame Castro, the Joint Chiefs would get their needed pretext.
Each member of the Joint Chiefs signed off on the plan. Then the chairman 
hand-carried it to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara — who promptly 
rejected it.
Two years later, U.S. generals were looking for another pretext to go to 
war, this time in Vietnam. In the summer of 1964, President Lyndon Johnson 
sought to escalate U.S. involvement in Vietnam's civil war. The decision 
was made to launch hit-and-run attacks against coastal North Vietnamese 
targets while a slow-moving destroyer, the USS Maddox, sat just off the 
shore in international waters. Knowing the North Vietnamese would associate 
the nearby warship with the attacks, the Pentagon likely hoped to provoke a 
retaliatory strike against the vessel — the perfect pretext for a 
declaration of war.
Indeed, North Vietnamese patrol boats fired torpedoes at the ship — but 
missed. The Maddox sailed safely away. McNamara ordered the largely useless 
coastal attacks to continue and sent the ship back to its original 
dangerous position.
Two nights after the first attack, the USS C. Turner Joy, escorting the 
Maddox, sent messages to Washington indicating the ship was under attack. 
It was later found that no such attack took place; the messages were blamed 
on nervous crewmembers and radar "ghost images." But it was the excuse 
Johnson and McNamara sought. They pressed Congress for a declaration of 
war. Captured by the moment's hysteria, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin 
resolution. An incident that never took place became the pretext for 
expanding a war that would claim the lives of more than 50,000 Americans as 
well as a million-plus Vietnamese.
"Many of the people who were associated with the war were looking for any 
excuse to initiate bombing," recalled George Ball, at the time a State 
undersecretary. "The sending of a destroyer up the Tonkin Gulf was 
primarily for provocation. ... There was a feeling that if the destroyer 
got into some trouble, that it would provide the provocation we needed."
History is layered with the bodies of those who have died when someone 
mistakes zealotry for patriotism and pretext for truth. If the Bush 
administration does embark on a bloody war in the Middle East, it should be 
based on certainty, not pretext.
James Bamford, author of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret 
National Security Agency, is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002-08-29-usat-opin-bamford_x.htm
Collapse of Govts cant be far off with the access to knowledge we all have 
now,its soft APster!