Editorials

Dear Editors,

Saturday is the 9th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Thirty-nine years before the 9/11 attacks a top secret military plan called Operation Northwoods was proposed by the U.S. military Joint Chiefs of Staff. This was in 1962. The details of the plan were released to the public 35 years later in 1997 by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. I doubt that one person out of a thousand has heard of this operation because the Review Board release was censored by major news corporations. It was kept totally secret for so long because it revealed how top military leaders were planning to have innocent civilians including U.S. citizens murdered in order to wage a war with Cuba.

Operation Northwoods was an elaborate plan which, if implemented, would allow U.S. military leaders and CIA operatives to conduct covert false flag terrorist attacks on American ships and planes in Cuban waters and surrounding airspace. These attacks would be blamed on Cuba with the help of the corporate news media. It is obvious that some, perhaps many, American lives would be sacrificed in these attacks. The attacks would then be used to garner international backing for a war with Cuba.

The plan was submitted to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara by the Joint Chiefs of Staff headed by General Lyman Lemnitzer. President John F. Kennedy was not willing to carry out a plan that involved deception and murder of U.S. citizens. He removed General Lemnitzer as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kennedy also fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, along with other top CIA officials.

The following year JFK was assassinated. The generals never got their war with Cuba, but with war-friendly LBJ in power, they were able to convince the news media that U.S. destroyer Maddox had been attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on Aug 4, 1964. The attacks never happened but this did not prevent LBJ from using the Gulf of Tonkin hoax as an excuse to escalate the Vietnam war which then lasted 12 more years, killing 58,000 U.S. soldiers.

Who benefited from the war? Huge fortunes were made by weapons manufacturers, war equipment suppliers and war service corporations. Big banks profited enormously while financing the war effort. The long war vastly expanded U.S. military bases worldwide. Military leaders were rewarded with fast-track wartime promotions.

Who paid for the war? Taxpayers like you and me.

Public paranoia brought on by the 9/11 attacks enabled military and political leaders to wage war against Afghanistan and Iraq even though no convincing proof of who planned and executed the attacks was ever revealed to the public. The government provided no concrete proof that would stand up in a court of law. The 911 Commission consisted of members hand-picked by the Bush administration. The Bush Administration specified that the Commission’s primary goal was not to prove who was to blame but instead to determine what steps needed to be taken to avoid future attacks. Many think the 911 Commission was a whitewash patterned after the Warren Commission.

There are so many important questions that the 911 Commission ignored or refused to answer. How many more years will pass before we learn the truth about what happened on that day?

Details of Operation Northwoods plan can be found online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

Larry Payne

Castell

Additional reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Incident

http://www.911independentcommission.org/questions.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMUuHIuWtoU