Don't kill the Leaker, Kill the Leaker's Information
The particularly nasty end of the spear of IC clandestine services, the part that kills people, may be out of a big part of their job thanks to technology, in the light of the terrifying but deeply interesting article by Peter Van Buren. They don't don't have to kill Snowden or any other whistle blower who leaks information critical for the public to know. They just have to get Google and others to automate the deletion and deep-sixing of any new or old leaked information: don't kill the leaker, kill the leaker's information.
“What if Edward Snowden was made to disappear? No, I’m not suggesting some future CIA rendition effort or a who-killed-Snowden conspiracy theory of a disappearance, but a more ominous kind.What if everything a whistleblower had ever exposed could simply be made to go away? What if every National Security Agency (NSA) document Snowden released, every interview he gave, every documented trace of a national security state careening out of control could be made to disappear in real-time? What if the very posting of such revelations could be turned into a fruitless, record-less endeavor?”
Barack Obama is daring the terrorists. He's standing in their front yard. He's calling them out.
Of course, that's not how it's reported. “U.S. ‘nowhere near' decision to pull all troops out of Afghanistan,” was the understated Reuters headline. Under negotiation is an agreement keeping 8,000 to 10,000 American troops in Afghanistan “through 2024 and beyond.” Also on the table are night raids and drone strikes that Afghan President Hamid Karzai refuses to allow.
Remember the thumping of Obama’s war drums for a US attack on Syria last August and September, including his spokesmen’s absurd invocations of Kosovo as a precedent for a limited cruise missile strike on Syria? The trigger for hyping that war fever was a sarin gas attack in Eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, on August 21. Obama was quick to blame Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for crossing Obama’s bizarre Netanyahu-esque “red line.”
Individual soldiers deserted in huge numbers, whole units refused to fight, there was rebellion in some Barracks, and numerous incidents of fragging, some preceded by warnings to officers and non-coms to back off, others not.
There were large mass demonstrations at home in America and the situation became so dire, that President Lyndon Johnson was told by his advisers and the Ruling Cabal that he must step aside and could not run for a second term.
Most of this was kept from the American public by a Controlled Major Mass Media (CMMM) which served in most cases as official USG propaganda dispensers.
Henry Kissinger was the interface between the Ruling Cabal, the Secret Shadow Government (SSG) and President Nixon and basically ran Nixon’s foreign policy.
Nixon was elected and seemed to be led around by the nose by his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger who is now viewed by many as a hardened war criminal for his many dealings in Vietnam, Myanmar and other places which directly resulted in mass death. He is also blamed for his manipulative, botched negotiations and recommendation to leave so many American POW/MIAs behind with secret plans to have them assassinated in jungle prison camps by special Observation Groups (SOGs), actually Special Operations Groups and aircraft dispensed poisonous VX gas when that failed.
It’s important to note that because JFK was Assassinated by a high military Cabal including LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, GHWB, Dulles, Lansdale, Lemnitzer, etc. that Vietnam became possible as an illegal perpetual, un-winnable war for profits in the first place. Once JFK was out of the way, the US Military and the defense industry and banks surrounding became the Secret Shadow Government, and began ruling the visible, ceremonial government which actually became a hired prostitute of the SSG.
It takes creative Psyops by the top Policy-Makers to elicit a nation’s support for any new war.
No nation’s citizens are eager to send their children to war to be maimed and die in mass, and it take special high level psychological operations (Psyops) to process the society’s group mind to motivate them adequately to want revenge against another nation or group.
Through the prism of operations in Afghanistan, the author examines how the U.S. Government’s Strategic Communication (SC) and, in particular, the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Information Operations (IO) and Military Information Support to Operations (MISO) programs, have contributed to U.S. strategic and foreign policy objectives. It assesses whether current practice, which is largely predicated on ideas of positively shaping audiences perceptions and attitudes towards the United States, is actually fit for purpose. Indeed, it finds that the United States has for many years now been encouraged by large contractors to approach communications objectives through techniques heavily influenced by civilian advertising and marketing, which attempt to change hostile attitudes to the United States and its foreign policy in the belief that this will subsequently reduce hostile behavior. While an attitudinal approach may work in convincing U.S. citizens to buy consumer products, it does not easily translate to the conflict- and crisis-riven societies to which it has been routinely applied since September 11, 2001.
Donors in Saudi Arabia have notoriously played a pivotal role in creating and maintaining Sunni jihadist groups over the past 30 years. But, for all the supposed determination of the United States and its allies since 9/11 to fight “the war on terror”, they have showed astonishing restraint when it comes to pressuring Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies to turn off the financial tap that keeps the jihadists in business.
The United States bears a moral responsibility for the murderous state of affairs in Iraq, but contemporary American grand strategy has become a self-referencing mix of arrogance, narcissism, and exceptionalism; so it is not surprising that most Americans have dismissed Iraq their minds (as they are now dismissing Afghanistan). Below is an excellent reminder of the situation in Iraq.
Patrick Cockburn, one of the very best journalists now covering conflicts in the Arab World and Central Asia interviews Muqtada al-Sadr, one of the most influential Shia clerics in Iraq and leader of the Mehdi Army, a powerful Shia faction. Sadr is now a member of the Shia dominated Iraqi government, but he is becoming increasingly alienated from its leader, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Sadr argues that a toxic mix of (1) sectarianism, (2) governmental incompetence and corruption, and (3) external interference by the U.S. and U.K. and Iran is plunging Iraq into an ever-deepening state of chaos, with no light at the end of the tunnel. (Note: I inserted a few clarifying comments in red.)
In a rare interview at his headquarters in Najaf, he tells Patrick Cockburn of his fears for a nation growing ever more divided on sectarian lines.
The future of Iraq as a united and independent country is endangered by sectarian Shia-Sunni hostility says Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia religious leader whose Mehdi Army militia fought the US and British armies and who remains a powerful figure in Iraqi politics. He warns of the danger that[1] “the Iraqi people will disintegrate, [2] its government will disintegrate, and [3] it will be easy for external powers to control the country”.
In an interview with The Independent in the holy city of Najaf, 100 miles south-west of Baghdad – the first interview Mr Sadr has given face-to-face with a Western journalist for almost 10 years – he expressed pessimism about the immediate prospects for Iraq, saying: “The near future is dark.”
