"I want to ask a question. I don't care whether you answer me or not. I just need to ask this aloud... The question that I have to ask is: what if the worst and most horrifying attack in this country's history was not the work of religious extremists?
"...If our own government was responsible--was responsible for the deaths of almost 100,000 people, would you really want to know?"
-- Detective Finch from the movie "V for Vendetta"
For me this seems to be the quintessential quote for our times. Leave it for the Walchowski's brothers, who are usually more subtle, to ask such prescient questions.
I thought of starting out this essay with the premise that I should present the government's "War on Terror" as if it were an actual legitimate reality, and then I thought to myself "but why?" -- they've got their Steve Emerson's, Bill Kristol's, Glenn Beck's and Bill O'Reilly's on message, day-in and day-out. And, since, I don't believe that "islamofascists" actually carried out 9/11, or that the "War on Terror" is anything but a marketing tool created by some Hill and Knowlton-like PR firm, then it's not necessary for me to play that game -- I don't have an editor to please or a job to lose.
So, the question begs: What if, and, would you really want to know?
But, before we answer these questions, let's contemplate these excerpts from the Washington Post about the new 9/11-inspired National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC)lab at Fort Detrick, Md:
"The heart of the lab is a cluster of sealed chambers built to contain the world's deadliest bacteria and viruses. There, scientists will spend their days simulating the unthinkable: bioterrorism attacks in the form of lethal anthrax spores rendered as wispy powders that can drift for miles on a summer breeze, or common viruses turned into deadly superbugs that ordinary drugs and vaccines cannot stop.
The work at this new lab, at Fort Detrick, Md., could someday save thousands of lives -- or, some fear, create new risks and place the United States in violation of international treaties. In either case, much of what transpires at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) may never be publicly known, because the Bush administration intends to operate the facility largely in secret."
and...
"NBACC's close ties to the U.S. intelligence community have also caused concern among the agency's critics. The CIA has assigned advisers to the lab, including at least one member of the "Z-Division," an elite group jointly operated with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that specializes in analyzing and duplicating weapons systems of potential adversaries, officials familiar with the program confirm...
"Other government agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, study disease threats such as smallpox to discover cures. By contrast, NBACC (pronounced EN-back) attempts to get inside the head of a bioterrorist. It considers the wide array of potential weapons available. It looks for the holes in society's defenses where an attacker might achieve the maximum harm. It explores the risks posed by emerging technologies, such as new DNA synthesizing techniques that allow the creation of genetically altered or man-made viruses. And it tries in some cases to test the weapon or delivery device that terrorists might use."
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/29/AR2006072900592_pf.html
Yes, these are scary times indeed, and, anything the Bush administration does in secrecy should be a major cause for concern for humanity, especially when their not so secret plans, like Project for the New American Century's "Rebuilding America's Defences" are the stuff of nightmares. We can only surmise that what they are doing in secret must be something only Dante could contemplate.
If you are not familiar with this document "Rebuilding America's Defences," here it is in all its dystopian majesty: www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf. And, on page 60, you will find this bit of horror: "And advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."
Signatory members of PNAC include Dick Cheney, Richard Armitage, William Kristol, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Gary Bauer, Eliot Cohen, Stephen Cambone and Paul Wolfowitz.
www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Project_for_the_New_American_Century
Now, I don't like to raise unwarranted fears, but one would think that with the PNAC document spelling out the plans and desires of certain individuals in our government to develop and use biological warfare would raise a bit of concern by us mere mortals who may not have Wolfowitz's or Cheney's particular genotype.
It's a document of strangeloving madmen, and for the most part, Americans are oblivious to its existence. For the few that have been made aware of it, many go into instant 'doublethink' mode because it is such an unpalatable, inconvenient truth.
Here's another inconvenient truth that our media has done a doublethink with. Remember that weaponized anthrax that showed up on Daschle's and Leahy's desk, which also killed a few mail carriers right after 9/11, it wasn't manufactured in Osama's cave -- it came from Fort Detrick, Md. The FBI has still not solved this crime. Why not? Are they hiding something from the American people?
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/01/26/assaad/index.html
But, before we get too distracted by identifying potential terrorists (which could be an essay all by itself) we should get back to issue of scenarios for martial law.
In 2005, the Washington Post published a report detailing pentagon war plans within the continental United States called CONPLAN 2002 and CONPLAN 0500, which provide a overview of what a post- and pre-attack situations would look like.
CONPLAN 0500, details the 15 scenarios and the actions associated with them and CONPLAN 2002 is "said to be a sort of umbrella document that draws together previously issued orders for homeland missions and covers air, sea and land operations." (Don't you just love these names, CONPLAN is supposed to be abbreviated for "concept plan", but I believe the more traditional definition of the word 'con' is more apropos -- i.e., "as to swindle; trick: That crook conned me out of all my savings.")
from the Post...
"The U.S. military has devised its first-ever war plans for guarding against and responding to terrorist attacks in the United States, envisioning 15 potential crisis scenarios and anticipating several simultaneous strikes around the country, according to officers who drafted the plans.
The classified plans, developed here at Northern Command headquarters, outline a variety of possible roles for quick-reaction forces estimated at as many as 3,000 ground troops per attack, a number that could easily grow depending on the extent of the damage and the abilities of civilian response teams.
The possible scenarios range from "low end," relatively modest crowd-control missions to "high-end," full-scale disaster management after catastrophic attacks such as the release of a deadly biological agent or the explosion of a radiological device, several officers said."
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/07/AR2005080700843_pf.html"
Okay, so what this is telling us is that the government is seriously working out scenarios and logistics in anticipation of a major disaster on American soil, and we also know that they are working on plans and enforcement for martial law (see previous Part 2 in this series), and now have laws they need to carry it out (see Part 1).
Let's go back to that "what if, and, would you really want to know?" question. Isn't the PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defences" really just a terrorist manifesto? And, is it just a coincidence that the government has expanded the Fort Detrick lab, and spent billions to open more level 4, and 5 bioweapons labs all around the country to work on similar projects as advocated in the manifesto?
According to Francis Boyle, a professor of international law responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, this research isn't going to be used for defensive purposes:
"The enormous amounts of money" purportedly dedicated to "civilian defense" that are now "dramatically and increasingly" being spent," Boyle writes, "betray this administration's effort to be able to embark on offensive campaigns using biowarfare."
www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/67/24622
What's really strange about this is that the alleged al Queda terrorists have never used anything remotely like this, preferring more conventional methods like airplanes and tennis shoes bombs, so why such a massive, secretive program, unless, like Professor Boyle postulates, it is being developed for offensive purposes.
This is very distasteful stuff and it makes some people very angry when you present it to them. Some want to discredit you and your information, which is why I am very careful about my sources here. Some have called me a fear-monger, and maybe I am insofar that I hope to wake people up to what our government is doing with our tax dollars. After all, I am not making this up. My sources come from the Washington Post, Francis Boyle and PNAC's own documents. I am just putting them into context.
Anyway, I do believe that we need to embrace this way of thinking if we are going to understand the nature of the beast and their version of reality that they have constructed for us. We need to refuse this 'reality' and construct a new, life-affirming one: scientists can refuse to work on these bioweapons projects and instead using their talents to create cures for the myriad of diseases around the world; soldiers can refuse to fight for lies and instead use their health and youth to clean up pollution and build non-destructive, renewable energy projects; and, parents can refuse to indoctrinate their children to service to a state that uses them like slaves and cannon fodder, and instead teach them to question authority and respect the planet and all its creatures.
Until we do this, we will keep getting fooled again by the Machiavellians in our government who will ask us to sacrifice our blood, and those of others, for their imperial gain.
As V says: "If you want to see who is responsible for the terror you feel, for who is responsible for the loss of your freedom, simply look in the mirror...."
