The never-ending Occupation: an imperial conspiracy?

A few weeks after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, writer Joshua Micah Marshall published a telling essay in the Washington Monthly: Practice to Deceive. Subtitled "Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario–it's their plan," It remains one of the most cogent exposes of Neocon origins, methods and madness. And it has proven eerily prophetic. Some excerpts:

"Every time a Western or non-Muslim country has put troops into Arab lands to stamp out violence and terror, it has awakened entire new terrorist organizations and a generation of recruits...

Its (the Bush administration's) preferred method has been to use deceit to create faits accomplis, facts on the ground that then make the administration's broader agenda almost impossible not to pursue...Strip away the presidential seal and the fancy titles, and it's just a straight-up con...

But the White House really has in mind an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public. The White House knows that. So it hasn't even tried. Instead, it's focused on getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind."

That agenda is permanent American military presence in the Middle East, engineered with this formula:

Invasion and "incompetent" occupation creates chaos.
Extended occupation is necessary to tame the chaos.
The occupation creates more chaos and never ends.

Which must be the goal if you’re investing in the world’s largest “embassy”—a Xanadu of air conditioned luxury larger than the Vatican, defended by 14 “enduring” military bases from Nasiriyah to Mosul. A unified and functioning sovereign government, representing the 70+% of Iraqis who want the U.S. gone, would never countenance the permanent squatting of foreign troops on native soil—the bete noir of genuine sovereignty.

The construction of these colonial fortresses has been effectively blacked out by our Pravda brothel of trick-turning pundits, who lament the supposed bungling responsible for the quagmire—ideological rigidity about laissez faire capitalism and democracy mistransplanted on hostile shores. "The Quiet American" sojourns in the Middle East with noble intentions, dashed by the fractious realities of tribal culture. The learning curve is steep, but with a few more tweaks, benchmarks and surges, our indefatigable “can-do” spirit will finally get it right and we’ll leave a friendly, grateful democracy in our wake. The litany of supposed blunders runs like this:

1. An occupation force of 450,000, recommended by Gen. Shinsheki as necessary to pacify the devastated country, is rejected for Rumsfeld's bargain basement force. CIA warnings about post-invasion anarchy are ignored. Only the oil ministry is defended by American troops—the rest of the government infrastructure is allowed to be completely destroyed by looting and vandalism.
2. The American army fails to secure Iraq's widespread munitions depots, the looting of which has supplied the insurgency's arsenal of IEDs, RPGs and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.
3. Against the advice of the occupation's first viceroy, Gen. Jay Garner, the Iraq army is disbanded and all Baath party officials cashiered, creating a legion of disgruntled desperadoes. How will they fight? See #2 above, and:
4. In August 07, the GAO reports that 190,000 weapons supplied to the Iraqi security forces have gone missing—more arms to fuel the militias’ internecine bloodletting.

Sorry, but I’m no longer buying the Keystone Cops’ rubric. Bush may be crazy, but like his mother told us, “Crazy like a fox.” The whole crusade was kicked off with what many believe to a false-flag operation on 9-11, and it’s likely that manufactured terror attacks have stoked the civil war. Referring to the bombing of the Shiite al-Askari mosque in Samarra in Feb. ‘06 that ignited it, former CIA official Ray McGovern speculated:

"The main question is Qui Bono? Who benefits from this kind of thing? You don't have to be very conspiratorial or even paranoid to suggest that there are a whole bunch of likely suspects out there and not only the Sunnis. You know, the British officers were arrested, dressed up in Arab garb, riding around in a car, so this stuff goes on."

MCGovern is referring to three British SAS soldiers arrested by Iraqi policeman in Basra in Sept. ‘05—dressed in Arab garb and wigs, with a car load of weapons and bombs. To prevent any further interrogation and publicity of this compromising disaster, regular British forces broke them out by bulldozing the jail with a tank.

It may very well have been such a covert op team that blew up the Samarra mosque, and continues to foment strife. Because if the civil war ever ends, a strong Iraqi government will almost certainly send American troops packing. Many Americans, conditioned like Pavlovian dogs to growl and spit at anything labeled a “conspiracy theory,” will dismiss this possibility out of hand. America has a Constitution, after all, and it’s supposed to work just like we learned in grade school—everything by the book, on the up and up—none of that decadent skullduggery in God’s country!

But change the terminology, and it becomes more understandable—Machiavelli is alive and well in Iraq, simply practicing that most venerable and effective of imperial strategies: divide and conquer. And all the ineffectual, half-hearted opposition by Democrats and rogue Republicans (no defunding the war, no impeachment proceedings or even censure) is so much noise and thunder to pacify the public. There is no exit strategy, because there is no commitment to exit on either side of the aisle.

How To Get Your War On

Remember the Maine!

In 1898, the U.S.S. Maine exploded in Havana harbor, igniting the Spanish-American war. Hearst newspapers—the godfather of Fox News—declared it an act of war by Cuban saboteurs, but it may have been a drifting mine, a coal bunker explosion (common in those days), or even self-sabotage—yes, a conspiracy theory. Or false-flag theory. After 4 investigations, the evidence is inconclusive.

WWII

Hitler kicked it off with a pre-emptive strike against Poland, reacting to a border incursion of Polish soldiers—actually the bodies of executed German prisoners in Polish uniforms, planted for Goebbels’ megaphone. A false-flag op.

Pearl Harbor

Roosevelt, or members of his inner War Department circle, failed to dispatch decoded Japanese signal intelligence of an impending attack to the army and navy commanders on Pearl Harbor. The prize American carriers were all safely at sea. By negligence or design, the anti-war majority evaporated overnight.

Operation Northwoods

Desperate for a pretext to invade Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Pentagon hawks hatched a plan to fake Cuban terrorist attacks on American soil, including the shooting down of an American airliner. A false-flag op that never got off the ground—JFK shot it down. He would be the last president to stymie the war hawks.

Gulf of Tonkin

Progress has been made: you don’t have to actually sink a ship—just a few salvos at dolphins, repelling a Vietnamese attack that never happened, will work now to get the war fever going. Yes, it was a “conspiracy”—not a false-flag op, just a big lie requiring the complicity of Johnson, some naval officers, and a chorus of willing drumbeaters in the press and Congress.

Gulf War I

After a stern rebuke from Maggie Thatcher—envoy of Her Imperial Majesty, the Queen—George Bush, Sr. triggered the war with a classic British imperial strategem: Secretary of State James Baker instructed April Glaspie, the ambassador to Iraq, to relay the message to Sadam that the U.S. has "no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait." It was a green light—Sadam took the bait, and the very grave threat that the Iraqi military posed to control of its own fields was annihilated.

The "New Pearl Harbor"

Few people know that the latest WOT (War on Terror) upgrade is the 2005 release of GSAVE, (Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism), which completely replaces WOT. The merger was necessary to accommodate the vast new vision of the President—beyond merely extirpating the ancient tactic of terrorism, now we’re taking on the scourge of rebels, bread rioters, and soccer hooligans in every last frontier on Earth that might have some oil. The crusade was kicked off on 9/11, the “new Pearl Harbor” that Neocon manifestos had virtually prayed for. The prayers finally produced a miracle—the single most anomalous day in human history since the Resurrection, requiring even greater leaps of faith. The old standards of physics, precedent, probability, and gullibility were all broken that day—any absurdity could be retailed while the vast ignorati was in shock, fed a whole opus of Magic Bullet theories, stunning in their impossibility or sheer implausibility:

A gopher hole that swallows an entire 757, then belches out a debris field covering 15 sq. miles; the Pentagon plane completely vaporized and the Pentagon videos that recorded it still classified. All but 2 black boxes from 4 aircraft vaporized;, the Air Force that intercepted 67 off-course or incommunicative planes that year never even saw one of the 4 attack planes, even with an hour warning before the strike on the Pentagon; the precedent of no steel-framed skyscrapers ever collapsing due to fire is shattered—3 in one day! All pancake perfect, at free-fall speed.

In Florida, GWB sits reading nonchalantly in a vulnerable schoolhouse for 30 minutes with a major airport 5 miles away and his schedule publicized days beforehand. “Didn’t want to frighten the children,” was his excuse. Bless you, George—you did everything you could not to frighten the adults with a 9/11 investigation, too.

WWIII

Most likely scapegoat—Iran. Either a Persian Gulf “incident” or a false-flag op against “coalition forces” or the Homeland. Other false flags likely to fly on this day: Patriotism and Christianity. Could go nuclear. Likely actors: the fundamentalist zealots of all faiths eager to make it happen. It’s Foretold—might as get the upper hand with another, bigger,and better pre-emptive strike against the Axis of Evil. Raytheon, Lockheed and Halliburton stock will soar like the winged bulls of Assyria! As long there's no business like war business, we can look forward, at long last, to the war to end all wars—Armageddon.

George the Blackhearted

Retrieved from the deep memory hole engineered by our Media Masters, a startling fact that focuses a stark beam of illumination on George Bush's character:

While presiding over a record number of executions as Guv of Texas (140), GWB granted clemency to only one death row inmate, commuting his sentence to life imprisonment. It wasn't Gary Graham, the candidate most likely to have been innocent. Nor any of the estimated 20% of death row inmates who may have been or are innocent, according to some statistical estimates based on post-conviction DNA exonerations (between 1976 and 2000, 87 wrongfully condemned prisoners had been freed from the nation's death rows, prompting the governor of Illinois to impose a moratorium on executions in his state, while GWB accelerated the pace).

George Bush's single act of mercy was reserved for one of the most prolific and horrific of serial killers—Henry Lee Lucas, whose confession to over 600 murders is controversial and surely exaggerated, but who was definitely guilty of multiple homicides, rape, torture, necrophilia and cannibalism.

This curious, little-known fact has been circulating on the web lately—news to a lot of people, including myself, who resided in Texas under both terms of Dubya's governorship (don't bother me with your suffering!). And no, Bubba, this is not a "conspiracy theory," or an urban legend—Texas newspapers reported it, briefly. Lucas was scheduled for execution on June 30th, 1998. Bush appealed for clemency on June 18, and the State Board of Pardons and Paroles uncharacteristically granted it. Lucas enjoyed his new lease on life until a heart attack claimed him in 2001.

Stranger still, the parallel fate of Lucas' accomplice in many grisly crimes, Otis Toole, who also resided on death row in a capital-punishment loving state, Florida. His sentence was also commuted to life imprisonment—by George's brother, Governor Jeb Bush.

What accounts for these singular anomalies? The answer may lie in an incredibly sordid tale of satanic death cults, supposedly involving more than your wayward Goth teenager or psychotic drifter. Journalist Dave McGown has explored it in depth: There's Something About Henry. Warning: do not go here if you're afraid of the dark.

For now, I'll focus on more verifiable evidence of the dark, sinister core of GWB's soul, prefaced with a Biblical adage modifed for the political sphere: "Not by their words, but by their vetoes, ye shall know them." Whether exercised or merely brandished, Bush vetoes are notable for their relative scarcity:

1. In 2002,he threatened to veto a defense bill, opposed to new pension benefits for disabled military veterans.

2. He threatened to veto Congress' bipartisan torture ban. When both the House and Senate approved the bill with veto-proof margins, Bush issued a signing statement stating that, as "unitary executive," he would be free to ignore it. Torture, it seems, is dear to GWB's heart.

3. He vetoed the bill for increased embryonic stem-cell research that could help cure many intractable diseases, such as the Alzheimer's that afflicted conservative idol Ronald Reagan.

4. He vetoed a defense spending bill that included a troop withdrawal mandate, after his de facto veto of the Iraq Study Commission's recommendations for solving the Iraq imbroglio. His "surge" strategy has resulted in the highest monthly casualties for the U.S. military since the war started.

5. He now threatens to veto a bill that would ban mercury in flu vaccines for children, despite it's proven links to autism and other neurological disorders.

6. He plans to veto a bill to increase funding for S-CHIP (State’s Children Health Insurance Program), which subsidizes health care for children whose families are too poor to buy private insurance, yet do not qualify for Medicaid.

There is a pattern here: in every case, the veto would increase the sum of human suffering.

As the bloodshed in Iraq continues unabated and his approval ratings continue to plummet, reports from the inner circle describe Bush as "serene." When warned of the dire problems of post-war reconstruction in Iraq, he casually signed off on the catastrophic decisions of Paul Bremer in near total "detachment," according to aides.

He knows that many innocent men have been unjustly imprisoned in Guantanamo and the rendition gulags, yet he fought the Supreme Court's ruling and pushed through the Military Commissions Act to deny them any redress. Undoubtedly, as the new science of DNA analysis was coming to the fore in the '90s, he knew that many innocent men were probably being executed in the Texas death chamber, yet he remained "serenely confident" that all deserved their fate—except one.

Nurturing a genuine sympathy for the devil, George Bush is a cruel, callous, narcissistic sociopath, and only the tattered remnants of the Constitution restrain him from unleashing a greater whirlwind of misery upon the world. Before it's too late, we must pressure Congress to do their sworn duty and impeach the blackhearted sonofabitch.

Kamikaze Christians on the March!

Last week, an insurgency of radical lobbyists descended on our nation's capitol, pressing lawmakers to encourage Israeli expansion in the West Bank, ditch any Israeli-Palistinian peace plan, and launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran. Led by Christian ayatollah John Hagee, the jihadists of CUFI (Christians United for Israel), are hell-bent on fulfilling the Biblical prophecies of Revelations. (See Max Blumenthal's first-hand report, including video, here.)

Logic has never been a strong point of the faith-based brigades, and they demonstrate a profound deficiency of it here:

The Rapture will only occur after the climactic battle of Armageddon, when Jesus returns as mayor of Jerusalem. And this is why we must pre-emptively attack Iran--to prevent the Persian infidels from threatening Israel and kicking off Armageddon. Which leads to the question: do they really want it, or don't they?

I guess there may be some merely strategic calculation here, like the Japanese imperialists thought--if a big war is inevitable, might as well start if off with a sneak attack and get the upper hand. Compounding their crippled sense of logic, the faith-based zealots also wallow in historical ignorance--Tojo's gambit proved a disaster, almost resulting in total nuclear annihilation of his nation. And one glance at the developing trends in the Middle East should give the warmongers in both the U.S. and Israel qualms about igniting a wider war.

Mushariff's days are numbered in Pakistan, which already has the bomb, with an ineradicable Muslim fundamentalist insurgency in Waziristan. Another unprovoked Western attack on a Muslim nation--by Christians and/or Jews--would most probably crumble Mushariff's eroding foundation of support, and unite (at least temporarily) the Shiites and Sunnis worldwide in hatred for the heathen aggressors. That includes Hezbollah, still bunkered down and unbowed on Israel's northern frontier. Plenty of kamikaze fanatics willing to strap on a suitcase nuke in the event of all-out war.

For 4 years, the Iraqi insurgency has been learning how to defeat a technologically superior military force. Just as Hezbollah learned in Lebanon--lessons now being adopted by the Palestinians. The U.S. military--Israel's ultimate guarantor of security--is close to bankruptcy. Still plenty of hardware, but getting desperate for manpower.

In Israel, there are some religious zealots , convinced that the U.N. grant of 60% of Palestinian land in 1948 was insufficiently generous--the real deed to the whole property is registered in the Old Testament. But it is mainly secular Zionists in the both the U.S. and Israel, devoted to the concept of Jewish lebensraum, who are thrilled to employ the goofy CUFI crowd as useful idiots.

But they are dangerous idiots as well--their mission is mass suicide, embracing the horrors of the Apocalypse as desiderata, contemptuous of the higher brains God gave us (do nothing about global warming--it's His will), and absolutely thrilled with the prospect of a holocaust of Jews, Muslims, and Christians from non-sanctioned denominations alike. Their sick delusions are most blatantly manifest in this article of faith: that the Anti-Christ will be a peacemaker. Whereas the Prince of Peace, in his next incarnation, will be as merciless and bloodthirsty as a Mongol horseman.

I would give them, all of them--Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists alike--this advice: in a hurry to see the Savior, or the Mahdi? Just can't wait for it? And suicide is a sin? Fine. Go base jumping with a surplus WWII parachute. Go diving with sharks, a Sushi snack packed in your wetsuit. Sample some pet food from China. Whatever. You have the right to your own primitive, self-destructive beliefs. But you don't have the right to take the rest of us down with you.

Spanish Cartoon Scandal

The cover of a Spanish satirical magazine, El Jueves, has sent one Spanish judge into a Franco-like frenzy, sending gendarmes across the country to confiscate the whole edition. The offending cartoon, depicting the Royal couple, refers to a initiative by the Spanish government giving financial help to young couples who have children, to the tune of EUR 2500 (roughly US $3450) per child, in the form of tax discounts, etc. The caption reads: "Do you realize? If you get pregnant... This will be the closest thing to work I will have ever done in my life!"

The judge ordered all printing plates of the cover confiscated, unknowing that plates have not been used in modern digital printing for years. The cartoonist, Guillermo, joked: "The best thing would be for them to cut off my right hand."

Praying for Pearl Harbor III

“Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.

"Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of "executive orders" that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, "terrorist" events in the near future.”

—Paul Craig Roberts
Counterpunch, 7-16-2007

These refreshingly blunt words come from a former Asst. Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, and—former Republican. Roberts has been speaking and writing passionately about the Neocon criminals and imbeciles who’ve hijacked his party. He is joined by Bruce Fein, Pat Buchanan, William Normann Grigg and many other paleo-conservatives and former high-ranking government officials who are convinced that 9-11 was orchestrated or allowed to happen, answering the prayers of the Neocons for “a new Pearl Harbor” to ignite their imperial war. (see their testimony here: Patriots Question 9-11

And, Roberts argues, given that their train has nearly derailed, the Neocons desperately need a booster shot of terrorism:

"If the Bush administration wants to continue its wars in the Middle East and to entrench the "unitary executive" at home, it will have to conduct some false flag operations that will both frighten and anger the American people and make them accept Bush's declaration of "national emergency" and the return of the draft. Alternatively, the administration could simply allow any real terrorist plot to proceed without hindrance.

"A series of staged or permitted attacks would be spun by the captive media as a vindication of the neoconsevatives' Islamophobic policy, the intention of which is to destroy all Middle Eastern governments that are not American puppet states. Success would give the US control over oil, but the main purpose is to eliminate any resistance to Israel's complete absorption of Palestine into Greater Israel."

Indeed, the Republicans are virtually Praying for a Terrorist Strike, as conservative commentator William Norman Grigg writes, quoting Rick Santorum:

"Between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK. But I think the American public’s going to have a very different view."

And Arkansas Republican Party chairman Rick Milligan:

"At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001]."

And dark horse Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul recently opined:

"A contrived Gulf of Tonkin- type incident may occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran.”

But the leading indicator is Homeland Security Fuehrer Michael Chertoff’s gut, rumbling with intimations of a terrorist strike, based on… nothing specific he can cite.* Chertoff should undergo a colonoscopy to give us a better picture of this nebulous threat. Or maybe he should heroically fall on his sword, enabling a soothsayer to read his entrails for greater detail.

But that would be dangerous, not only to Mr. Chertoff, but to his sponsors and confederates—his bloody bowels might foretell this about the imminent strike: “Made in U.S.A.” Or “Made in Israel.”

* In a recent speech at the USC, Chertoff’s gut belched forth a speculation about a simultaneous L.A./San Francisco dirty bomb attack “that our enemy is surely planning.”

PS: Oregon representative Peter DeFrazio, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, recently attempted (as he is authorized to do) to review secret White House plans for operating the government after another terrorist attack. The answer, no doubt from Dick Cheney, who already may be hunkered in his bunker, was ACCESS DENIED.

Nancy Pelosi vs. Cindy Sheehan

The punditocracy may laugh now at this possible match-up (Sheehan announcing that she may run against the Speaker), a titled heavyweight against a scrawny street punk on the scales of campaign funding. But as a majority of the public demands, with increasing stridency, the end of this hemorrhaging in Iraq, Pelosi’s and Reid’s approval ratings are hovering near Dick Cheney’s—elected to abort the war, they have presided over its escalation. Meanwhile, Sheehan is hardly an unknown, has a massive base of support among Democrats, and after camping outside the fantasy ranch in Crawford during the blistering Texas summer, it’s not likely she’ll wilt under the heat of King George’s stubborn smirk.

Pelosi makes all the good gestures, but then capitulates in the final quarter. In March, yet another war funding bill ($100 billion) was about to be approved by the House that included a provision forbidding military operations against Iran without congressional approval (“You may continue this bollixed war, but don’t start another one!”). A few days later, Pelosi attended the annual conference of one of her and her party’s largest investors—AIPAC—where her speech defending the bill was roundly booed. I don’t know if the runny mascara was from nervous perspiration, or actual tears, as she hurriedly fled to Capitol Hill for emergency surgery. By dawn, she had removed the offending tumor about Iran, and stitched up the bill with a realpolitick rationalization: “Of course, we’re not really going to attack Iran. Mercy, no! I abhor any kind of unseemly aggressiveness. But to prod Iran forward, we must not take the stick off the table.”

If only Ms. Pelosi would apply this same strategem to the domestic front, she might successfully contain our own fundamentalist megalomaniac—but no, the impeachment stick is off this table. Here, too, she is bucking the trend: 46% of the public, in a recent poll, is all for impeaching the Evil Cretin. But it will never happen with this reverse Teddy Roosevelt philosophy: Speak loudly, and drop your stick.

The House did just pass a resolution for withdrawal by Spring 2008 (CNN, almost as “fair and balanced” as Fox, megaphoned this belligerent headline: “Bush Blasts the House!”). The King will certainly veto it. Then Pelosi and Reid will dance another mournful jig, pleading, “Oh, we tried. We really, really tried!”

Nancy, dear, your heart’s in the right place, but your purse is plumped by foreign lobbies who would like nothing better than a perpetually escalating Crusade in the Middle East, whatever the cost in American blood and treasure. But the nation is begging for a virgin warrior with the moxy to wield the big sticks in the Homeland—defunding the war, impeachment. As has been said about many of our adversaries, "Force is the only language he understands." There is no better candidate than Cindy Sheehan to lead that insurgency, for many reasons, but one overriding one. His name is Casey.

Whatever Cindy Sheehan's prospects for election, her candidacy just may be the stick to prod Nancy Pelosi forward, or at least arrest her unseemly backpedaling.

Two Posthumous Confessions: JFK and Roswell

Perhaps the favorite shibboleth wielded by skeptics or “debunkers” against conspiracy theorists is this: “No conspiracy could endure this long without exposure. Surely, somebody would have spilled the beans by now”—typically uttered by the average Clueless Clark who has never bothered to crack a single tome in the often vast literature generated by certain conspiratorial subjects. The elusive inside bean-spiller can be found in many of these pages—and that’s where he stays, quarantined from broader exposure by the powerful clergy of American mainstream media editors. If the panjandrums of the NY Times do not hear the tree falling, then it has not been felled.

Two recent cases in point, totally blacked out by our presshood: 1) E. Howard Hunt’s posthumous confession about the JFK assassination. 2) Lt. Walter Haut’s posthumous affidavit about the alleged Roswell UFO crash (reported in the British Daily Mail). First:

Lt. Walter Haut
who died last year (2006), and whose sworn affidavit dated Dec. 2002, to be opened only after his death, was so revealed this June. (read it here) Lt. Haut was the public relations officer at the Roswell Army Air Field in 1947, year of the infamous crash. He issued the original press releases about the crash being no more than a weather balloon, on the order of the base commander, Col. William Blanchard. Haut’s affidavit now claims that was a cover story, and that he observed the recovered wreckage in a tightly guarded hangar:

“It was approx. 12 to 15 feet in length, not quite as wide, about 6 feet high, and more of an egg shape. Lighting was poor, but its surface did appear metallic. No windows, portholes, wings, tail section, or landing gear were visible… Also from a distance, I was able to see a couple of bodies under a canvas tarpaulin. Only the heads extended beyond the covering, and I was not able to make out any features. The heads did appear larger than normal and the contour of the canvas suggested the size of a 10-year-old child. At a later date in Blanchard's office, he would extend his arm about 4 feet above the floor to indicate the height…

“I am convinced that what I personally observed was some type of craft and its crew from outer space… I have not been paid nor given anything of value to make this statement, and it is the truth to the best of my recollection.”

The hardcore debunker will aver that the affidavit could have—or must have—been forged. Or that the whole hangar scene was staged to bedazzle Haut and others in some kind of psywar/disinfo campaign by Army intelligence (the UFO phenomenon was a serious concern within the Cold War defense establishment, with documented discussions of how to either exploit it, or defend against possible mass hysteria). But the debunker himself becomes a conspiracy theorist himself at this point, and may be hoisted on his own petard: where’s your proof?

The reflexive skeptic often argues from certain faith-based presumptions: Aliens do not exist. Political assassinations are impossible in God’s country. Hence evidence of either is, ipso facto, fraudulent or misconstrued. A standard accusation, or slander—that the conspiracy/cover-up author is a charlatan, retailing sensationalist fables for fame and profit—is hard to pin on Lt. Haut. He avoided all publicity about the matter during his lifetime, the affidavit is not generating any profit, and the only fame accruing to him is in the afterlife.

E. Howard Hunt
has been an alleged conspirator in the JFK assassination almost since the beginning, when he was accused of being one of the three tramps arrested in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22. In 1985, he lost a libel trial—Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby—that was successfully turned into a virtual trial of the JFK assassination by defendant attorney Mark Lane, who also represented Lee Harvey Oswald before his untimely murder by mobster Jack Ruby. Lane brilliantly dissected Hunt on the witness stand, exposing the multiple, contradictory lies about his whereabouts on Nov. 22 (in Dallas, acting as paymaster of the hit, according to witness Marita Lorenz), and convincing the jury that the CIA (Hunt’s longtime employer before he joined Nixon’s plumbers’ squad) participated in the assassination.

It should be one of the most famous trials in American history, but it also was successfully quarantined by our own Pravda poodles, never making headlines beyond the local Miami news (see Lane’s book about the trial, Plausible Denial).

Hunt died in January of this year. In April, his handwritten and taped confession, delivered to his son, was published in Rolling Stone, alleging a chain of command with LBJ at the top, and CIA operatives Cord Meyer and David Atlee Phillips as the two main capos organizing the JFK hit. Hunt’s own role, according to the confession, was only as a “benchwarmer.”

True believers have heralded the confession as the long-awaited lost gospel, while the debunkers and MSM have simply ignored it, diverting the public’s attention to Vincent Bugliosi’s massive defense of the Warren Commission, the just published Reclaiming History. Like the 16 volumes of the Warren Commission, it attempts to awe by sheer weight (1600 pages!), but it must struggle against the Himalayan mass of pro-conspiracy literature (much of it exceptionally well-researched) over the last 45 years. I have yet to read his account of the Magic Bullet theory (concocted by Arlen Specter), but I’m sure it’s as risible as all the other absurd rationalizations.

As a longtime student of the JFK assassination, I judge Hunt’s confession to be a mixture of truth and disinformation—typical of spook work, and typical of Hunt himself, who published numerous James Bond-like novels, and forged documents to implicate JFK in the Diem assassination. LBJ and Phillips—I would rate their involvement as 90% certain (along with Hoover and a few other characters from military intelligence and the radical anti-Castro exile community). But Cord Meyer’s involvement, and Hunt’s role as “benchwarmer” are doubtful. Meyer was a liberal, accused of Communist sympathies by McCarthy, while Hunt evinced a visceral hatred of JFK, even claiming years after the event that the Soviet missiles were never removed from Cuba after the October crisis.

Hunt asserts the affair between Mary Pinchot Meyer, Cord’s ex-wife, as a motive for his involvement, but the Meyers were divorced in 1958 and the affair began in 1960. Mary was murdered in 1964 and the case remains unsolved. In a 2001 interview with writer David Heymann, Cord was asked about Mary’s murder—who could have done it? Cord replied, “The same sons of bitches that killed John F. Kennedy.” (Read the full story about Mary Meyer including her acid trips with JFK here.)

One of those SOBs was probably E. Howard Hunt. I credit the information brought out in the Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby trial. Replace Hunt himself for Cord Meyer at some level, and the amended confession rings true.

Cell Phone Cyborgs

One sure symptom of incipient geezerhood is becoming a Luddite—an old crank, suspicious and hostile towards newfangled technology. This worries me, as I have been grousing lately about the cell phone. But there are objective factors to consider:

I don’t deny their great utility and convenience for travel, emergencies, and urgent communication, but for too many people they have become a social pacemaker—life is impossible without them! Every 15 minutes, the CP junkie must check for messages and respond immediately, and if there are none, then some traffic must be stimulated by sending out feelers: calls, text messages or snapshots. When a call is received, all other input stimuli must be backburnered: the highway at 70 mph, a dinner conversation, an organ about to be transplanted in the operating room.

I have friends and relatives who flip open while leaning out of the shower, sitting on the throne, riding a bicycle, cooking, eating… there are no boundaries. I suspect that for many a cell phone is integral to their sex life: “Talk to me dirty, then hang up and call back. I’ll switch to vibration mode.”

Then there are the CP prima donnas: frustrated thespians who find a captive audience in a packed airport, bus, or ticket line, and regale the crowd with some personal drama or impressive power talk: “Jensen’s still in Norway?! Then how is he going to meet me in Bangkok? You tell him to call me in Monaco tomorrow, or the deal’s off!” Pity the poor bored soul stuck in an airline layover without a cell phone! The problem is, the poor bored soul is often the CP junkie’s companion, fiddling idly while the junkie conducts business or pleasure far more urgent or compelling than your miserable company.

I would suggest that unless you are on-call in some official capacity, following behind POTUS with the nuclear launch codes, or expecting ransom instructions from a kidnapper, you don’t need to be tethered to your device as permanently as a parolee to an ankle monitor. But that’s the way it’s evolving: on an overnight train ride recently, I groggily awakened to glimpse the woman opposite the aisle, town lights strobing her eerily through the windows, a large Bluetooth headset grafted to her ear as she snoozed in her chair…and for a minute I thought I was experiencing a sci-fi nightmare about futuristic cyborgs, perpetually tuned to bogus Homeland Security alerts and subliminal mind-control messages from the Ministry of Truth (aka Corporate Media): “Terrorists are stalking you this very moment! You have everything to fear, except fear itself. They want to control your body and soul with diabolical national health insurance. But don’t panic—Big Bubba is planning a pre-emptive strike. Vote for Big Bubba.”

Of course, I don’t have a cell phone, which makes it easy for me to decry their sins as I am not enjoying their virtues (the source of all moral self-righteousness). But if I ever do succumb to the CP seduction, I’m going to do it in a big way: when the technology advances, I will dive to the Andrea Doria wreck, 240 ft. down in the Atlantic, with my Divemaster iPhone and text message a climber on the peak of Mt. Everest, setting new records for both vertical distance and wireless histrionics. I imagine it would go like this:

ME: How goes up there?
CLIMBER: White-out. Can’t C thing. U?
ME: Black-out. Can’t C thing. Cold, scary.
CLIMBER: Dittoooooo… sorry, fingers freezing.
ME: Glimpsed 10tacles giant squid!
CLIMBER: Snapshot me?
ME: 10-4. Got my leg!
CLIMBER: Montsteeerrr!... Hands & brain freezzzzig now…
ME: At least we have each other.
CLIMBER: Ditttttooo…