Worldwide Nightmare Theatre, Empire of Chaos Enhanced and Expanded

[xilman]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Re. your examples, here is Wikipedia on Purple:

9/11 is often described as its generation's Pearl Harbor ... the analogy is ironically better than intended, as both historic events represent huge intelligence failures.

Tell that to Yamamoto.

And, for that matter, to Osama bin Laden.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Some examples of non-policy-driven intelligence post-dating WW2 would be nice ... as this thread has shown over and over, the post-WW2 era is the one in which the U.S. well and truly morphed into an entity deserving the "Empire of Chaos" monicker.

Re. your examples, here is Wikipedia on Purple:

9/11 is often described as its generation's Pearl Harbor ... the analogy is ironically better than intended, as both historic events represent huge intelligence failures.

Pearl Harbor may have been a huge intelligence failure, but it was a resounding political and foreign policy success for FDR. Intelligence wasn't entirely necessary as he had been goading the Japanese with something like the sanctions game we see today by the US.

It was quite the stroke of fortune though that the carriers were elsewhere.

[kladner]

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/05/2...ies-1945-2019/

In this country, reactions to the Mueller report have been all-American beyond belief. Let’s face it, when it comes to election meddling, it’s been me, me, me, 24/7 here. Yes, in some fashion some set of Russians meddled in the last election campaign, whether it was, as Jared Kushner improbably claimed, “a couple of Facebook ads” or, as the Mueller report described it, “the Russian government interfer[ing]… in sweeping and systematic fashion.”

But let me mention just a few of the things that we didn’t learn from the Mueller report. We didn’t learn that Russian agents appeared at Republican Party headquarters in 2016 with millions of dollars in donations to influence the coming election. (Oops, my mistake! That was CIA agents in the Italian election of 1948!) We didn’t learn that a Russian intelligence agency in combination with Chinese intelligence, aided by a major Chinese oil company, overthrew an elected U.S. president and installed Donald Trump in the White House as their autocrat of choice. (Oops, my mistake again! That was the CIA, dispatched by an American president, and British intelligence, with the help of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later BP. In 1953, they overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, the elected prime minister of Iran, and installed the young Shah as an autocratic ruler, the very first — but hardly the last — time the CIA successfully ousted a foreign government.)

"World of Chaos Without End"

Let’s start with one thing that should have been (but wasn’t) obvious since the first reports on Russian meddling in the election campaign of 2016 began to appear. Historically speaking, such a plan fits well with a classic Russian tradition. As scholar Dov Levin discovered in studying “partisan election interventions” from 1946 to 2000, the Russians — the Soviet Union until 1991 — engaged in a staggering 36 of them globally.

If, however, you jumped to the conclusion that such an impressive cumulative figure gave the Russians the world’s record for election meddling, think again. In fact, it left them languishing in a distant second place when it came to interfering in other countries’ elections over more than four decades. The United States took the crown with, by Levin’s count, a distinctly imperial 81 interventions! (USA! USA!)

Put another way, the two Cold War superpowers together meddled in approximately “one of every nine competitive elections” in that era in at least 60 countries covering every part of the planet but Oceania. Moreover, only seven of them were in the same election in the same country at the same time.

And then, of course, came 9/11, that staggering act of blowback — in part from one of the great “successes” of CIA covert action in the Cold War, the decisive defeat of the Red Army in Afghanistan thanks to the funding and arming of a set of extremist Islamist militants, a war in which a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden gained a certain modest reputation. On that day in 2001, the last superpower, the one exceptional nation, became the planet’s greatest victim and all hell was let loose (just as bin Laden hoped it would be).

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by xilman

Tell that to Yamamoto.

And, for that matter, to Osama bin Laden.

An arsonist burns down your house. Several years later, the cops arrest the perp. After said perp goes to jail, cops tell you "check your property, sir - the house you lost will have magically reappeared now." Or are you saying the intel craft is primarily about catching the bad guys after they do the bad things said craft failed to prevent? That odd definition reminds me of this.

Re. Bin Laden, there is the heroic MSM-touted account, but Seymour Hersh www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden]tells a quite different story:

The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions, including one by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times Magazine of 19 March 2014. Gall, who spent 12 years as the Times correspondent in Afghanistan, wrote that she’d been told by a ‘Pakistani official’ that Pasha had known before the raid that bin Laden was in Abbottabad. The story was denied by US and Pakistani officials, and went no further. In his book Pakistan: Before and after Osama (2012), Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad, wrote that he’d spoken to four undercover intelligence officers who – reflecting a widely held local view – asserted that the Pakistani military must have had knowledge of the operation. The issue was raised again in February, when a retired general, Asad Durrani, who was head of the ISI in the early 1990s, told an al-Jazeera interviewer that it was ‘quite possible’ that the senior officers of the ISI did not know where bin Laden had been hiding, ‘but it was more probable that they did [know]. And the idea was that, at the right time, his location would be revealed. And the right time would have been when you can get the necessary quid pro quo – if you have someone like Osama bin Laden, you are not going to simply hand him over to the United States.’

This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.

Whichever version one believes is actually irrelevant, though - the fact remains that the credible intel the US *did* have in advance of 9/11 was ignored as a result of feckless intel bureaucrats, and by the time OBL was finally "brought to justice" he was entirely irrelevant to the terror network he had helped create, with generous seed funding from the US, as kladner points out above. The real issue is not the intel, but rather the *policies* which have helped stoke so much terror and resentment around the world, the ongoing and massively funded "terrorist creation program", if you will.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

The real issue is not the intel, but rather the *policies* which have helped stoke so much terror and resentment around the world, the ongoing and massively funded "terrorist creation program", if you will.

As I said, the article was over simplistic. Good to see we agree.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by kladner

That was then, this is now. The acts of the Soviets were in a different time under different circumstances. That is not to excuse them, but context is important.
<snip>

Speaking of context, here you -- albeit rhetorically and indirectly -- accuse the US of "surrounding Russia with hostile neighbors."

I submit that these neighbors' memories of the USSR's approximately 45-year hegemony over them (to say nothing of others' previous experiences going back to being part of the Czarist Russian Empire) are not entirely fond ones. That is, it is Russia and the USSR's hegemony over the countries of Eastern Europe that is largely responsible for their present hostility toward Russia.

The notion that the US could -- somehow -- have engendered hostility toward Russia in all its neighbors, without there being any historical basis for it, is profoundly disrespectful toward the people living in these countries. It says they are a bunch of benighted, gullible fools who pay more heed to what the US says, than to the facts of their own history.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Speaking of context, here you -- albeit rhetorically and indirectly -- accuse the US of "surrounding Russia with hostile neighbors."

I submit that these neighbors' memories of the USSR's approximately 45-year hegemony over them (to say nothing of others' previous experiences going back to being part of the Czarist Russian Empire) are not entirely fond ones. That is, it is Russia and the USSR's hegemony over the countries of Eastern Europe that is largely responsible for their present hostility toward Russia.

The notion that the US could -- somehow -- have engendered hostility toward Russia in all its neighbors, without there being any historical basis for it, is profoundly disrespectful toward the people living in these countries. It says they are a bunch of benighted, gullible fools who pay more heed to what the US says, than to the facts of their own history.

Whatever.

[kladner]

https://politics.theonion.com/bleedi...cla-1834847900

WASHINGTON—Bursting through the Congressional chamber doors while moaning and clutching his shoulder, John Bolton reportedly stumbled into the Capitol building Friday claiming that he’d been shot by Iran. “Help, help, I’ve just been attacked by a large Middle Eastern country around 636,000 square miles in size,” said the national security advisor, telling those assembled that he’d just been minding his own business when an aggressive Islamic Republic had thrown him on the ground and shot him with a long-range missile.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by kladner

https://politics.theonion.com/bleedi...cla-1834847900

Yes, I've noted the recent US statements blaming Iran for a bunch of other stuff as well as the recent attacks on oil tankers. I am also extremely leery of finger pointing based on the "level of sophistication" ascribed to an operation.

I must say, however, that the notion that "flying objects" said by the owners of the Kokuka Courageous to have been seen by the crew before the attack had anything to the explosions, is something that I would not accept uncritically. Especially if the ship was holed below the water line. Assuming the "flying object(s)" did cause the explosion(s), I'm not sure what kind of flying bomb would be consistent with both (1) a flight speed slow enough that it could be seen, and (2) the size(s) and location(s) of the hole(s) in the ship.

I also recall that, during the Reagan Administration, Iran did engage in a mining campaign against tankers navigating the Persian Gulf. Now as then, Iran's oil shipping is being interrupted. Now as then, they can't make a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. So if they want to strike back by interrupting other countries' shipping through the Persian Gulf, sabotage, particularly using mines, is an obvious approach.

One of the things that really impressed me during the 1980's "tanker war" was, just how tough those tankers were. They were already being built double-hulled, to mitigate the risk of a tanker losing its contents if it ran aground or collided with another ship. This design feature served them well when they were hit by mines.

A present concern about the escalating tension is a military conflict (AKA "war") arising from miscalculation.

Just how unexpected such a miscalculation can be, is shown by a military incident and a tragedy from the 1980's "tanker war" described in a current AP article which, alas, also points out that Il Duce's minions are not the only ones ratcheting up the bellicosity.

Oil tanker attacks echo Persian Gulf’s 1980s 'Tanker War'

<snip>

Ultimately, the U.S. tied Iran to the mining when it captured the Ajr, an Iranian ship loaded with mines in 1987. When the USS Samuel B. Roberts struck a mine and nearly sank the next year, the Navy matched it to those seized from the Ajr.

The attack on the Roberts sparked a daylong naval battle between Iran and the U.S., known as Operation Praying Mantis. American forces attacked two Iranian oil rigs and sank or damaged six Iranian vessels.

Several months later, tragedy struck. The USS Vincennes, after chasing Guard vessels into Iranian territorial waters, mistook an Iran Air commercial jetliner for an Iranian F-14, shooting it down and killing all 290 people onboard.

Thirty years later, events of the "Tanker War" still resonate in Iran.

A recent billboard put up in Tehran’s Vali-e-Asr Square shows U.S. and Israeli ships afire and sinking, with captions in English, Farsi, Arabic and Hebrew reading: "We Drowned Them All."

While the billboard is meant to show support for the Palestinians — it prominently features Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque — it came just days after the Fujairah attack.

Around this time as well, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave an address to university students, who gave him a portrait of Nader Mahdavi, a Revolutionary Guard soldier killed in a U.S. attack amid the "Tanker War."

"The supreme leader asked whose picture it was and I replied, `Mahdavi,'" the semi-official ANA news agency quoted the student who gave the portrait to Khamenei as saying. "The supreme leader smiled and said, 'Excellent, very timely.'"

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by kladner

https://politics.theonion.com/bleedi...cla-1834847900

Duffel Blog - very funny USMil analog to The Onion - also weighs in:

Chief of Naval Operations lauds return to tradition of 'false flag' operations | Duffel Blog

According to [naval warfare expert Bill] Roberts, in the last several decades the CIA had increasingly taken over responsibility for all false flag operations.

“Ever since the DoD botched Operation Northwoods during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the ’60s, which was a plan to blame Fidel for CIA-orchestrated terrorist attacks, the boys at Langley have liked to keep uniform personnel far away from this kind of stuff,” he noted.

“I can’t think of a single occasion since Vietnam where military personnel have faked a terrorist attack. It’s great the Navy’s getting back into it.”

Richardson’s remarks came as American leaders sought to assign blame for attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, which they claim were likely a covert action by Iran.

When asked for more information by reporters, Pentagon officials said the American public would just have to “trust us.”

(Vietnam is a reference to the Gulf of Tonkin 'attack', for those unfamiliar with that particular bit of false-flaggery).

OTOH, I don't rule our Iran choosing to 'send a message' in this regard - they were not the one who unilaterally pulled out of the Obama-era treaty and imposed an illegal sanctions regime based on "because we can", after all. The chief leverage they have is the asymmetric-warfare one of closing the Strait of Hormuz. But the latest 'attack' strikes me as a dubious candidate in that regard.

[kladner]

Duffel Blog - very funny USMil analog to The Onion - also weighs in:

Chief of Naval Operations lauds return to tradition of 'false flag' operations | Duffel Blog

Ah! The Good Old Days of Empire!