What is the Red Cross?

24 October 2005

Of the many major charity organizations the American Red Cross definitely stands out in many ways. Aside from its sheer size and reach it is worthy of note how much confidence it enjoys in the corridors of power in the US. So much so that President Bush himself recently paid an "impromptu visit" to its headquarters to encourage the citizens to donate money to the Red Cross, among other things. And the loyalty between the Red Cross and the government appears to run both ways.

Naturally, one would become curious as to what predicates such a close relationship between what is chartered as an independent humanitarian relief organization and the US government. Some answers to that could be found in the Joe Allen's excellent article titled "A Bait-and-Switch Charity" (CounterPunch, October 20, 2005). Allen provides an interesting glimpse into the early history of the organization:

The Red Cross was founded in 1881 by Clara Barton, who became famous during the Civil War for organizing the distribution of food and medical supplies to Union Army soldiers.

The Red Cross is specifically mandated, according to its Congressional charter adopted in 1905, to "carry out a system of national and international relief in time of peace, and apply that system in mitigating the suffering caused by pestilence, famine, fire, floods and other great national calamities, and to devise and carry out measures preventing those calamities." The organization was also to carry out its work in accordance with the Geneva Conventions concerning the treatment of prisoners of war. Later, the Red Cross would also be entrusted with control of a large part of the nation's blood supply.

But who got relief after disasters has always been affected by the racism that has been part of the Red Cross' long history.

For example, during the Great 1927 Flood that destroyed large parts of the Mississippi Delta and Louisiana, Black farm laborers and sharecroppers without a doubt suffered the most. As John Barry documents in his epic history of the flood, Rising Tide, delta plantation owners refused to evacuate them out of the region for fear--rightly--that most wouldn't return to their miserable, slave-like conditions.

The Red Cross came in to provide temporary housing and food aid. What African Americans of the Delta got was prison-like camps where they were routinely beaten by white, racist National Guardsmen. Food distributed by the Red Cross was given to whites first, and if anything was left, it went to Black survivors.

Its legal status is also anything but ordinary:

People who think of the Red Cross as a "private charity" would be shocked to discover its actual legal status.

Congress incorporated the Red Cross to act under "government supervision." Eight of the 50 members of its board of governors are appointed by the president of the United States, who also serves as honorary chairperson. Currently, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security are members of the board of governors.

This unique, quasi-governmental status allows the Red Cross to purchase supplies from the military and use government facilities--military personnel can actually be assigned to duty with the Red Cross. Last year, the organization received $60 million in grants from federal and state governments. However, as one federal court noted, "A perception that the organization is independent and neutral is equally vital."

The leading administrators and officials of the Red Cross are almost always drawn from the corporate boardroom or the military high command. Among the past chairs and presidents of the Red Cross are seven former generals or admirals and one ex-president.

What I found interesting is how uniformly police and security personnel in the region affected by Katrina expressed trust and confidence in the Red Cross while at the same time viewing other relief efforts with skepticism if not suspicion. Thanks to Joe Allen I think I have now got somewhat of a clue as to why.

If Allen's view of the Red Cross as essentially a branch of the government is correct then it is hardly surprising that the actual disaster relief might at times not be that organization's top priority, having yielded to policy considerations and the general "go along to get along" mentality permeating most governmental organizations. It is also hardly surprising then that it is more concerned with raising funds - and the PR needed to that end - than with actually doing the hands-on work of helping those in need. The government never turns down an opportunity to gobble up some cash, and if the Red Cross is essentially a part of it - is it so surprising it is acting in a similar fashion?

Asks Allen,

How many people would donate to the Red Cross if they knew all this?

I don't know but I for one sure as hell ain't giving them another penny.

What stood in the way of rescue: some news just in...

Wednesday, 7 September 2005

"Their orders were to go and deliver water and parts and to come back," Commander Holdener said.

But as the two helicopters were heading back home, the crews picked up a radio transmission from the Coast Guard saying helicopters were needed near the University of New Orleans to help with rescue efforts, the two pilots said.

Out of range for direct radio communication with Pensacola, more than 100 miles to the east, the pilots said, they decided to respond and turned their helicopters around, diverting from their mission without getting permission from their home base. Within minutes, they were over New Orleans.

"We're not technically a search-and-rescue unit, but we're trained to do search and rescue," said Lieutenant Shand, a 17-year Navy veteran.

Flying over Biloxi and Gulfport and other areas of Mississippi, they could see rescue personnel on the ground, Lieutenant Udkow said, but he noticed that there were few rescue units around the flooded city of New Orleans, on the ground or in the air. "It was shocking," he said.

Seeing people on the roofs of houses waving to him, Lieutenant Udkow headed in their direction. Hovering over power lines, his crew dropped a basket to pick up two residents at a time. He took them to Lakefront Airport, where local emergency medical teams had established a makeshift medical center.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Shand landed his helicopter on the roof of an apartment building, where more than a dozen people were marooned. Women and children were loaded first aboard the helicopter and ferried to the airport, he said.

Returning to pick up the rest, the crew learned that two blind residents had not been able to climb up through the attic to the roof and were still in the building. Two crew members entered the darkened building to find the men, and led them to the roof and into the helicopter, Lieutenant Shand said.

Recalling the rescues in an interview, he became so emotional that he had to stop and compose himself. At one point, he said, he executed a tricky landing at a highway overpass, where more than 35 people were marooned.

Lieutenant Udkow said that he saw few other rescue helicopters in New Orleans that day. The toughest part, he said, was seeing so many people imploring him to pick them up and having to leave some.

"I would be looking at a family of two on one roof and maybe a family of six on another roof, and I would have to make a decision who to rescue," he said. "It wasn't easy."

While refueling at a Coast Guard landing pad in early evening, Lieutenant Udkow said, he called Pensacola and received permission to continue rescues that evening. According to the pilots and other military officials, they rescued 110 people.

The next morning, though, the two crews were called to a meeting with Commander Holdener, who said he told them that while helping civilians was laudable, the lengthy rescue effort was an unacceptable diversion from their main mission of delivering supplies. With only two helicopters available at Pensacola to deliver supplies, the base did not have enough to allow pilots to go on prolonged search and rescue operations.

"We all want to be the guys who rescue people," Commander Holdener said. "But they were told we have other missions we have to do right now and that is not the priority."

The order to halt civilian relief efforts angered some helicopter crews. Lieutenant Udkow, who associates say was especially vocal about voicing his disagreement to superiors, was taken out of the squadron's flying rotation temporarily and assigned to oversee a temporary kennel established at Pensacola to hold pets of service members evacuated from the hurricane-damaged areas, two members of the unit said. Lieutenant Udkow denied that he had complained and said he did not view the kennel assignment as punishment.

Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded

David S. Cloud, The New York Times, September 7, 2005

And here is what Andrea of Get Your Act On!, a New Orleans activist, has to say:

Meanwhile, the denial of aid appears to be continuing, though some supplies are getting into the city. Daniel, our friend that just got out of the city, reports that the National Guard troops that arrived in his neighborhood two days ago - the first signs of anyone other than the few residents left, were “good guys” and astounded to find out that the people left there had received no supplies of any kind. One helicopter pilot, upon finding this out, took it upon himself to go get supplies and within an hour had made 3 supply drops to the neighborhood. However, this was the action of an individual, the guard had not been given directions to bring food and water to people, merely to patrol the streets and ‘keep the peace.’

The stories Daniel has to tell are horrific, and we will be relating them over the next few days. He describes living in a complete war zone - the few people left in houses holed up together with guns, fearing for their lives. A big fire broke out in a warehouse on the levy that they thought was going to burn down the entire neighborhood. He talked about the ‘ghosts’ walking down St. Claude - the people who managed to escape from their attics in the flooded out lower 9th ward - people in a state beyond shock. Again, the stories of people calling the one radio station in town from their attics, desparate, saying there was but a foot of space left between the flood waters and the roof and to please come get them before they died - but there was no one to come get them.

So many stories of relief efforts being turned away. Wildlife and Fisheries who had a couple hundred boats going into the lower 9th ward for the first two days, rescuing the people trapped in attics and on roofs - until they were ordered to stop. A group of Virginia State troopers who came down with a truckload of supplies to help NOPD - who were stopped at the perimeter of New Orleans and ordered to go away. A US Naval hospital ship with 400 beds, doctors, helicopters, all sorts of equipment - they were in the gulf when the storm hit and were the first to arrive in the area - they are sitting empty, not allowed to help.

The list of instances in which rescuers were stopped in their tracks can easily be continued and would likely still not be complete.

This is your government at work. You are paying for this - if you are lucky with you tax dollars, and if you are not - with your blood or even your very life, or that of your family, friends or neighbors.

And now back to Oklahoma City and all those years and events since...

Thursday, 25 August 2005

As I have already said in this space, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing is an event that from relatively early on had given rise to some skepticism on the part of many an analyst. The holes in the investigative conclusion presented to the public are many and it is not my intent to present them all here. Granted, no event of considerable complexity can be explained with absolute clarity, the ommissions and inconsistencies of the official theory of the OKC bombing exceed what I consider acceptable threshold. Those interested could go to many an excellent website dedicated to the subject, for instance to the ones listed below:

WRH: The Oklahoma City Bombing

Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee

American Patriot Friends Network: Oklahoma Bombling Cover-Up

Lately, the investigation into that atrocity which took the lives of 168 and destroyed many other lives appears to have gotten a new lease on life. And if you are not apt to take little-known sources seriously, you still may want to listen now as it is now a US Congressman requesting that the issues be investigated thoroughly and properly:

This newspaper has obtained a copy of U.S. Rep. Dan Rohrabacher's tersely worded letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, asking him to comply with a federal judge's order directing the Oklahoma City FBI office to provide records regarding their investigation at Elohim City and the Mid-west bank robbery gang.

Rohrabacher, R-Calif., recently interviewed convicted killer Terry Nichols and others with information concerning the April 19, 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City.

...

Dated Aug. 19, Rohrabacher implored the agency head, "I ask that you comply with Judge Kimball's order and not make attempts to block his ruling by delay tactics or other judicial challenges. Further attempts by your agency to obstruct this case will only undermine the FBI's credibility in the eyes of the public."

"Congressman hopes FBI will not delay investigation into OKC bombing", J. D. Cash, McCurtain Daily Gazette, August 23, 2005

Personally, I believe that both the Congress and the public must no longer request that the matter be properly investigated - we must demand that, and we must demand that in no uncertain terms. But be that as it may the latest developments in the OKC bombing investigation are welcome news.

Even if the investigative moves of today end up being another snow job - and of that there is quite a realistic possibility - the very fact that the necessity of such moves was aknowledged is testimony to a number of important happenings. For instance, we must realise that the fact that something has been investigated by the government does not mean it was investigated, and not covered up - regardless of how many agents were involved or how high-profile the case. It is also important to know that obscure independent researchers often get things right where the major research and media institutions fail. The reasons are many - but I would think that the independence and low operating costs of the researchers - such as today's bloggers and their precursors of yesteryear - is a key factor.

I have also written a lot about the events of 9/11 and how the official version of those events might not be all that strong. Let us assume things being reported now about the 1995 OKC atrocity are even half true. After that, wouldn't you be inclined to become a bit of a "9/11 skeptic" as well? Wouldn't you want to demand that those events too be adequately investigated?

The thorny road to the truth of the OKC Bombing

May 26, 2005

It has been over 10 years since the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 and injured hundreds more. The case, we are told, has been investigated over and over again. No stone has been left unturned, we are told.

Of course, those of us who have really paid attention have likely been uneasy about the case all along. Why, for instance, would the observation video tape depicting the final moments of the bomb-carrying truck sitting next to the doomed building - a tape shot in a public space, where you or I could have stood and witnessed the same events - why is that tape still classified?

Since all those in the know are mum on the issue of the tape, let us leave it alone for now and just move on to another related matter. As reported by The Salt Lake Tribune ("FBI acknowledges it has found records that may apply to death" by Pamela Manson, May 25, 2005),

After insisting for a year that it was unable to find records connected to the death of an Oklahoma prison inmate, the FBI is acknowledging it has found hundreds of pages of documents that could apply to the case.

However, the agency is asking a federal judge in Utah to pare back his order requiring it to produce records and grant an extension of a June 15 deadline. Officials say they need more time to review more than six million pages of information that potentially could fall under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in 2004 by the inmate's brother, Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue.

...

Kenneth Trentadue, 44, who had served time for bank robbery, was being held on an alleged parole violation in a federal prison in Oklahoma City when guards found him dead on Aug. 21, 1995, hanging from a noose made of torn bedsheets. Authorities say he committed suicide and several investigations also ruled that the prisoner died by his own hand, but his family insists he was killed.

Trentadue contends the FBI mistakenly suspected his brother was part of a gang that robbed banks to fund attacks on the government, and that authorities killed him when things got out of hand during an interrogation.

In his FOIA requests, the lawyer has sought records on a white supremacist compound in Oklahoma where Timothy McVeigh, who was executed in 2001 for the Murrah bombing, allegedly tried to recruit accomplices. Trentadue says an informant for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil rights organization, had infiltrated the compound and relayed information about McVeigh's plan to the FBI about two weeks before the bombing.

A similar report titled "FBI has secret docs it's reluctant to give up" was published on WorldNetDaily.com on the same day, May 25, 2005. This report states point-blank:

For years, the FBI has repeatedly denied the agency had any prior knowledge of the bomb plot.

The FBI now says it has found 340 documents that could also link the SPLC to McVeigh, Elohim City and members of the Aryan Republican Army.

Well, let me just say that this truth is certainly welcome news, albeit it might be about 10 years late in coming. I would also advise you to think back to this situation every time you hear a government spokesperson speak.

And I am certainly looking forward to more exciting OKC discoveries. We have spent 10 years waiting. It's about time.

Originally published here.

A Rabbis' Letter

9 September 2004

According to numerous on-line reports, a group of prominent Rabbis in Israel has recently written a letter to Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. Unfortunately, I did not manage to locate the full text of the letter itself, and for that reason will have to rely on the following Al-Jazeera, Haaretz and InsraelInsider reports.

According to IsraelInsider,

"Should the IDF fight the enemy, if civilians [on the other side] will be killed, or should the IDF refrain from fighting, and thus endanger our civilians?" the rabbis asked in their letter. In response to the rhetorical question, the rabbis quoted the sage Rabbi Akiva who said that "Our lives come first."

At the first glance it may appear that the letter is essentially calling for military planners not to feel restrained in incurring massive civilian casualties on the enemy side in case these casualties appear to save the lives of Israeli soldiers. This position, according to this analysis by Anthony Gregory, is contrary to the laws and customs of war and provides a justification for state terrorism. Addressing the nuclear strikes against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gregory writes,

People still defend Harry Truman’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on pragmatic grounds. Truman’s defenders say that the bombings saved far more lives than they extinguished. They concede that the bombing was an act of targeting civilians, but insist that it was for the worthy goal of ending the war.

Before even examining the plausibility of this argument, we have to acknowledge the argument’s essence. In effect, to rationalize the targeting of noncombatants as the best method of bringing about a greater good is to make excuses for state terrorism. Terrorism, if it means anything, is a method by which civilians are the targets of violence for the purpose of achieving political goals. Having Imperial Japan surrender, even if a worthy goal, was nevertheless a political one, and the targeting of innocents to achieve that goal was an act of terrorism.

Indeed, it was terrorism on an incredibly large scale. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese were instantaneously wiped off the earth on August 6 and August 9, 1945. Many more died in the following years from the radioactive climate left behind by the bombings.

But this part of the rabbis' argument can be interpreted two-fold,- one can say that they simply are calling on the army not to flinch and to do its job even if, tragic as it is, civilians have to die due to the military activity. They are saying, one might argue, that this is a harsh reality of war, and they are just calling for the army to see it for what it is.

However there are details in this letter that make it difficult to read it quite that way. According to the Al Jazeera report,

In a letter to the Israeli defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, published on Tuesday, the rabbis said killing enemy civilians is "normal" during the time of war and that the Israeli occupation army should never hesitate to kill non-Jewish civilians in order to save Jewish lives.

However, the task of the IDF is not to protect Jews per se but rather to protect Israel and its citizens, 25% of whom are non-Jewish. If for example an IDF unit discovers an enemy mortar crew preparing to fire on a target in Israel the actions expected of them are the same whether the transgressors are Arab, Chinese or Jewish. Nor are all the members of the IDF Jewish as there are Druze, non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and others serving in that force.

The rabbis' letter appears to be a highly racist document. And Jewish racism is a serious problem,- in my opinion, one of the major stumbling blocks on the road to the resolution of the crisis in Israel. The overall racist perception of the issues involved is clearly in line with some Orthodox rabbis' views of the world such as those like Rabbi Dov Lior who certainly appears to classify the humanity strictly along the Jewish vs non-Jewish lines. The Al Jazeera report states,

...a few months ago a prominent rabbi in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arbaa near Hebron issued an edict stating that non-Jewish civilians may be killed to save Jewish lives, soldiers and civilians alike.

The rabbi, Dov Lior, argued that non-Jewish lives had no sanctity, especially during the time of war.

Lior has publicly praised and eulogised Baruch Goldstein, an American Jewish settler who in 1994 mowed down 29 Arab worshippers who were praying at Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque.

Calling Goldstein a "great saint", he said a "thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail".

While little can probably be done to alter the views of an individual extremist, I think the best path for Israel to overcome this problem is by passing a Constitution declaring it a secular democracy of, for and by all of its citizens. That would drastically diminish the influence of such extremist rabbis and allow the society to easier disregard their hateful rhetoric.

Originally published here.

Is Airline Security Their Objective Or Their Cover?

7 March 2005

Check out James Bovard's excellent article on who and how guards us up in the air. Basically, here's the story:

After the pervasive failure of airport security on 9/11, the Air Line Pilots Association sought federal permission for pilots to carry handguns to defeat hijackers. Capt. Steve Luckey, chairman of the association’s flight-security committee, explained, “The only reason we want lethal force in the cockpit is to provide an opportunity to get the aircraft on the ground. We don’t have 911. We can’t pull over.”

The Bush administration rejected the request, preferring instead to rely on jet fighters to shoot down hijacked civilian planes. U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta declared on March 4, 2002, “I don’t feel we should have lethal weapons in the cockpit” — as if airplanes themselves were not among the most deadly lethal weapons.

Congress eventually trumped the administration, passing a law in September 2002 to create a program to train pilots to use firearms to defend their planes. (The Transportation Security Administration — TSA — effectively buried the program with red tape, ensuring that only 48 pilots would be permitted to carry guns in early 2003.)

Former TSA chief John Magaw was the administration’s point person in the fight against permitting pilots to be armed. Magaw announced, “The use of firearms aboard a U.S. aircraft must be limited to those thoroughly trained members of law enforcement.” The federal air-marshal program was touted as a silver bullet against hijacking threats. A White House statement on aviation safety in the wake of 9/11 declared, “The requirements and qualifications of Federal Air Marshals are among the most stringent of any U.S. federal law enforcement agency.”

The TSA was determined to quickly expand the number of marshals from a few hundred to more than six thousand. However, most of the applicants failed the marksmanship test. The TSA solved that problem by dropping the marksmanship test for new applicants — even though the ability to shoot accurately in a plane cabin is widely considered a crucial part of a marshal’s job.

So, a government agency seeks monopoly on a certain task (providing armed guards on commercial flights), fails at it, but instead of fixing the problem rewrites the requirements of the task so as to conceal the issue. Given that the issue is directly related to national security I think it would not be entirely unfair to refer to such behavior as sabotage. And last time I checked sabotage was a criminal offense.

As I have already mentioned, the TSA is quite aggressive in its ways and views intimidation as an important part of its mission. Given how little it seems to care about what is apparently its main objective - the safety of the traveling public - it almost appears that intimidation of the said traveling public may be a goal in itself.

The powers TSA is appropriating seem to go beyond merely harassing airline passengers and extend as far as censoring the airline pilots not in agreement with the "party line".

Brian Darling of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations condemned the TSA’s slant: “They should not be trotting out federal flight-deck officers to say good things about the program while muzzling pilots who are critical of the program.” After grumbling about TSA’s policies on armed pilots spilled into the media, a TSA official sent an e-mail warning to all pilots authorized to carry guns prohibiting them even from communicating to their congressmen about their concerns about the program.

In 2002 Bush bragged that the law creating the TSA “greatly enhanced the protections for America’s passengers and goods.” Rather than making Americans safe from terrorists, the TSA has made them prey to federal agents. There is no reason to expect the agency to turn over a new leaf. And there is no reason to expect a small army of undercover federal agents flying on planes to make Americans safe.

To summarize this, let me just state that I am beyond believing that the TSA is trying to do a job but failing. I believe they are using their task as a pretext for something else. Most likely, it is just a pretext for maintaining a large team of armed federal agents. The governments throughout history have used danger, real or perceived, as an excuse for beefing up the "palace guard" - and they can be viewed as that of sorts. The worst case scenario might be that they are intended as a clandestine internal intelligence service of sorts.

Isolated Lawsuits Are Not Enough

7 August 2004

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Guantanamo prisoner, has filed a lawsuit against the US Government alleging torture at the hands of his American captors and challenging the constitutionality of the military tribunals for those captured in the "war on terror". The fact that a US Federal Court is now hearing the case is an important step forward for the rule of law, and a significant defeat for the Administration who claimed that it had a right to operate outside the oversight of the legal system in Guantanamo.

However, while I wish Mr Hamdan every bit of luck in obtaining the justice for himself,- that justice being his right to be tried in a court of law with the full protections granted to a defendant as opposed to a military tribunal, as well as getting those who violated his human rights prosecuted,- I believe that such isolated trials are not enough, even if the plaintiffs obtain justice there. I believe we as a society, all of us who adhere to the principles of Constitution regardless of their other beliefs, must state unequivocally that the Administration's attempts to operate outside of the law will not stand. We should write to the public figures, hold demonstrations in the streets, publish our views on the web and in the print media,- in other words, make it heard loud and clear that we demand that all laws of the land as well as international laws our country has ratified be respected by all executive officials.

And if you think that doing so may be tantamount to defending the people possibly involved in terror,- think of it differently. Our laws are not lenient when it comes to terrorism,- our courts can mete out a punishment severe enough to match the crime. Timothy McVeigh was executed for blowing up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. Those responsible for the 1993 attack on the WTC are jailed for life. Thus we need not worry about the guilty not being punished. That may happen,- but anyone can be fooled, military authorities included.

And it is your own safety you are protecting by demanding that all executive authorities operate within the scope of the law. It is for your own sake that you are making sure that no government agents will take you away and lock you up in a prison brig as "enemy combatant". I grew up in a country where a whole generation of people lived through years when every family feared a knock on the door at night, where those lead away in the early morning hours often just vanished, leaving their families to tend for themselves as outcasts and pariahs. May no one have to live through that horror and learn what they had learned about what unconstrained government agents with a vengeance can do!

Originally published here.

Benny Morris, An Honest Zionist Historian

Originally published here on 30 August 2004.

The following is an interview with Benny Morris conducted by Ari Shavit (originally published in Haaretz). Benny Morris strikes me as an honest man, and one who is not afraid to confront either the authority, or the entrenched notions.

I think he is utterly wrong in his advocacy of extremism. He describes various war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers during the 1948 War. According to his description, those crimes were the main reason why hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs fled from their homes,- and he believes that this was a deliberate tactic used to achieve precisely that result. Of war crimes he describes in his works, Morris says,

"There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands."

This sounds like a rerun of the general justification extremists of all stripes have used throughout history.

However, unlike many other students of the matter, Morris seems honest and calls things by their proper name. That is commendable, and I think he is an author and a historian whose works are definitely worth a read.

"Friendly Fire",- By Design

Originally published here on 21 August 2004.

"Friendly fire" is an unfortunate part of pretty much any war. The fog of battle sometimes leads to soldiers firing on fellow soldiers wearing the same uniform. All of the world's militaries work towards developing procedures to avoid such tragic and wasteful mistakes but none have thus far completely succeeded in this quest.

However, according to Body of Secrets, a book authored by the investigative journalist James Bamford, in the 1960's the US military considered attacks on Americans disguised to appear perpetrated by the Cuban forces. The objective: convincing the American public of a necessity of going to war with Cuba. As David Ruppe writes in his ABC News article,

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

That was not merely a thought that popped up in some general's head early in the morning after having a few too many drinks at an Officers' Club the night before. That appears to have been a detailed set of military plans.

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

The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba, the documents show.

Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof … that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba [sic]."

Fortunately, none of those fiendish ideas were to become reality as they were rejected by the Kennedy administration.

Many Americans think that no one in a position of power in the US would ever even contemplate intentionally harming his fellow Americans in order to create a pretext for promoting their agenda. That assertion appears to have little foundation. Some pretty powerful people within the defense apparatus are clearly documented to have been thinking along the same lines as those at many other times and in many other places throughout history who had intentionally attacked their own populace in order to convince the public of the perceived enemy's aggressive intents.

Canadian Sovereignty And Missile Defense

Originally published here on 28 February 2005.

It's now clear how the Bush administration sees things: Canadian sovereignty exists only at its pleasure. If we do what Washington wants, we retain our sovereignty. If we don't, all bets are off.

This is what U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci clarified last week in his angered response to Paul Martin's announcement that Canada won't join the U.S. missile defence scheme. Cellucci noted that Washington would simply deploy its anti-missile system over Canadian airspace anyway, and expressed puzzlement over Canada's decision to "in effect, give up its sovereignty."

No doubt the Soviets felt similar puzzlement as they rolled into Czechoslovakia in 1968. What's with these crazy Czechs? Don't they get it? All they have to do is co-operate with Moscow and they can retain their "sovereignty."

Writes Linda McQuaig in her article about the diplomatic row between Washington and Ottawa over the issue of the "missile shield". A very apt article, in my opinion. She is probably also right when she says,

...Canada's gutsy refusal to go along was the right move — and one that, incidentally, will win us higher standing in the world.

It is also interesting,- and, may I say, telling,- how many writers, seemingly independently of each other, allude to the Soviet times as they assess the Bush Administration and US foreign policy of today.