According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organisation – the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) – will carry out secret missions designed to ‘stimulate reactions’ among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts that would then expose them to ‘counterattack’ by US forces.
In other words – and let’s say this plainly, clearly and soberly so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld’s plan – the US government is planning to use ‘cover and deception’ and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice. No, it seems the P2s have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action, they can then take measures against the ‘states/sub-state actors accountable’ for ‘harbouring’ the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? The Pentagon programme makes it clear: ‘Their sovereignty will be at risk.’
The Rumsfeld-Bush plan to employ murder and terrorism for political, financial and ideological gain does have historical roots. In 1963, the US’s top military brass presented JFK with plans for Operation Northwoods, calling for a phoney terrorist campaign – complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans – to provide ‘justification’ for an invasion of Cuba, the Mafia-corporate fiefdom which had recently been lost to Castro. Kennedy rejected the plan, and was killed a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but on a far grander scale – with resources at his disposal undreamed of by those brass of yore, with no counterbalancing global rival to restrain him....
From The Ecologist. Now, this treatment seems a bit incendiary compared to that from the Asian Times and Counterpunch (which has two...here is the second one). The bottom-line though is that this does seem to raise some troubling Constitutional questions, especially with the lack of oversight. Are we going overboard?
With that in mind, here is the original Defense Science Board PowerPoint presentation in regards to the P2OG, published by the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. Finally, here is the link to Arkin's article, on the rise of American Black Ops, that kicked it all off. Seems like we've rolled all the way back to the Reagan years already. Perhaps we should start a contest to see what to call the terrorist anti-terrorists this time around. Remember, "contras" is out, because that would be too audacious even for these guys.
