Verrrry Interesting. Pay attention, Viet Vets, Iraq Vets, Afghanistan Vets

Here's a nifty little writeup from January 2000 Volume 69, Number 1, of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, by Gary J. Rohen M.S., of "Exercise 'Baseline,' Training for Terrorism."

Drawing upon composite profiles of likely domestic terrorists, the the group developed characters of four disgruntled Vietnam War veterans. The characters possessed a military background in special operations or health service and supposedly had met and formed friendships at veterans events and shared their views on the failure of the government to acknowledge and provide medical care for veterans exposed to Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome (GWS). Additionally, they each had children who suffered from GWS symptoms. Because of their backgrounds and beliefs, the characters [those "four disgruntled Vietnam War veterans] demanded immediate government acknowledgment of GWS and paid medical treatment for veterans and their families. (I'm wondering why the four Viet vets have "children who suffered from GWS symptoms"--unless they followed their patriotic fathers into the military and were old enough for Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL)--or was it "Iraqi Mistaken Military Operation w/ Ridiculous Acronyms, Like" (or IMMORAL)?

Does this remind anyone of the memo from the Denver, CO office of the FBI shortly after 9/11/2001, I think it was, that gave tips to people about what to watch out for in spotting "terrorists" in our midst? A couple of the tips were about "people who keep referring to the US Constitution," and "people who keep demanding their rights" or "insisting that they have rights" or "insisting that they have constitutional rights." And of course we know from real live history that the Pentagon and the Veterans Administration waffled, denied, stonewalled for YEARS on Agent Orange, and ditto Gulf War Syndrome (and a little bit less on Traumatic Brain Injury and Battle Fatigue, Shell-shocked (now known as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome--could also be called the SSBDADOFCAOIPALFUBIP--pronounced "Ess-bee-dad, off-ca-oipal-foobip", or the Shell-Shocked By Death And Destruction Of Friends, Children And Other Indigenous Persons And Lastingly F****d Up By It Problem).

Here They Go Again, the FBI, using the fact that someone has:

1) Fought in an illegal war or two, (i.e., is a veteran who did not dodge the draft, who actually enlisted and "served their country")

2) Returned home injured, poisoned, sick,

3) And is asserting this or her enumerated right to

a) Speak

b) Peaceably assemble, and even (gasp!)

c) Petition his/her government employees for a redress of grievances. (Remember, we're the boss of them, not them of us. Or we could put it like my kids used to, around bedtime, "You're not the boss of me, Meng!!!" Seems like the appropriate Constitutional response to those claiming to be "the authorities," is actually built into our genes. Like the bumper sticker has it: Question Authority.

For reference: First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

(Don't forget to remember, as older we grow and newer forget, that because of our insufficient number of troops and/or incompetent leadership (or a combo of both) in the March 19, 2003 invasion of Iraq, from the Unitary Liar-In-Chief on down, we allowed the looting of something like 1,000 ammo dumps in Iraq, by caravans of pickup trucks, etc., which provided an arsenal of enough conventional explosives to make enough roadside bombs, land-mines, booby-traps and other "improvised explosive devices" to last the "insurgents" for thirty or forty years, I'd estimate. And it's these bombs, artillery shells, mortar rounds, small arms ammo, detonation chord, blasting caps, plastic explosive (etc.)—just plain old conventional ordnance (Weapons of Group Destruction), that have been doing 75% of the work of killing or maiming our troops. Troops who’re forced to ride around in glorified tin-can death-traps (Humvees, even “up-armored” Humvees — are still vertically flat-sided and flat-bottomed horizontally death traps, because they take the FULL force of blasts from below and rifle-propelled grenade blasts from the sides), because there still aren't enough "MRAPs" (V-hulled, bomb-deflecting armored personnel carriers) so that NO soldier ever has to leave base in the glorified thin-skinned boxy jeeps called Humvees.)

I'm almost afraid to note that the Preamble to the Constitution sets up the relationship between “We the People” and our government this way: “We the People of the United States…do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The deal was that, the people in the aggregate, have all the power and, to form a federal republic (not a democracy, guys ’n’ gals--never was and never will be a “democracy”), We the People of the States United delegated just some of our power to that new government (or gummint).  By the way, the late Howard Zinn, both in person and in his A People's History of the United States, suggested that both the Preamble and the Bill of Rights were just window dressing, to prettify the formation of a government large enough and decentralized enough to put down any further Shays’ or Whiskey Rebellions. On the other hand, hey, the words are right there in plain sight, so  we might as well try to make the best of them, while they're still there.

Anyway, we are a  r e p u b l i c.   Period. Not a democracy. The closest we get to living in a “democracy” is in the direct election of Representatives and Senators to the House of Representatives & Senate, or generally, “Congress.” The gerrymandered election districts, of course, essentially nullify any given voter's impact. And the rigged voting machines, the illegally purged registered voters' lists, etc., further reduce voter choice.

Back to the FBI Terror Theater Script: Notice the characterization of the so-called malefactors, evil-doers, the roles of the “terrorists” who are to be cast for these "war games." Who are they? Guys who have served in the military. Or veterans, as we are sometimes called. [This characterization, or rather, demonization, of veterans seems to fit with the overall effort to disarm the American populace, with extra attention given to men (and women) who have actually been trained to use, and have practiced using, said firearms.

So, as in that Denver pamphlet, “You can tell a terrorist if he insists that citizens have rights” (when I find it, I'll post it here), we see the FBI working up a mock “exercise” (but they've REALLY built little bombs to distribute rabies, ’cuz we FEAR it), with FEMA, local hospitals, police, fire-emergency crews, local ambulance folks--built around Veterans who are petitioning their government for a redress of grievances--that is, characterizing as “terrorists” people who assert their constitutional rights against those in their own government who wish to abridge those rights.

Whoa, Nelly!!! What is wrong with this picture? Who is it that's attempting to ABRIDGE the constitutional rights of a veteran? Who is it that's using, in a public exercise involving governmental and quasi-governmental personnel a cast of “fictional” Vietnam Veterans who replicate all the NON-fictional veterans who were FOBARed-over, in real life, real people, real Pentagon, real Vets' Administration, by these NON-fictional Agent Orange poisonings, Gulf War I poisonings (maybe chemical agents, undoubtedly depleted uranium in artillery shells that were stored in the Gulf soldiers' tanks, that burst into radioactive dust for the soldiers to breathe when they inspected each enemy tank, howitzer, truck, jeep that had been hit by our depleted-uranium ammunition to make certain their job was done.

Imagine the gall it would take on the part of a government official (in this case, our author, our Mr. Gary J. Rohan, M.S.) to use a situation in which "our" government has provably wronged our own veterans, to label those wronged veterans, even in a "fictional" exercise, as Terrorists.  

[As an aside, this is nothing particularly new. I read in The Medusa File, by Craig Roberts, © 1997 (in Part III, "The Boys We Left Behind"—about 80 pages'-worth), that our military left behind, knowingly, some 25,000 soldiers in WWII, held by the Russians, similar numbers, held by Russia, from the Korean "UN peace-keeping exercise," US pilots shot down during the cold war, pilots shot down over North Vietnam (sightings as late as 1992), in Laos & the Soviet Union. There was an episode of the BBC's "Foyle's War" on the forced repatriation of Russian POWs, held in the UK, in exchange for Allied POWs. Roberts reports on a a bit of the prisoner exchange in Reisa, May 25, 1945, of 3,000 Allied POWs for 3,000 Russian POWs. After the newsreel cameras were stopped and as the Allied POWs were boarding their trucks, the Russian POWs were marched a little way to a quarry and machine-gunned to death.

Is it that our FBI/Gov't officials know that the wars they start are wrong? And that people who die in them, or return alive but maimed from them, or poisoned, or their reproductive system damaged, will be really pissed off? And is it that they know the returning veterans will be EVEN MORE PISSED OFF if their grievances go ignored, stonewalled, unanswered? Are they just itching for these angry citizen soldiers to "go off" like the Bonus Marchers did during the Depression, peaceably assembled in Washington to demand their promised WWI bonuses--so they can call them all "terrorists" and mow 'em down with machine guns?
Why wouldn't our "law enforcement" (or is it "law avoidance" and "law-breaking"?) officials use "radical Muslims" as their fictional terrorists? Already, before 2000 when this exercise was prepared (at least according to the pub date above), there had been the embassy bombings in Africa, the hostage-takings in Iran, the bombing attempt on one of the three WTC buildings that were taken down on 9/11/2001. Why use as "examples" or "characters," the very soldiers who were being denied care for their war-induced maladys? Should they have never served in the military? Should all of our soldiers just get up and go home if they're characterized as "terrorists" because of the way their own government responds to them, treats them? Remember the Walter Reed Army Hospital scandals?

Remember that Rumsfeld, Cheney & Bush were trying to do these wars "on the cheap" (except for hiring Halliburton and their other Military-Industrial-Legislative Complex buddies to do, for four and five times the cost of having our own soldiers do it)?

Are they creating situations that WILL piss us all off, so that they can call us "terrorists" for saying so out loud, for writing about it, for petitioning for a redress of the conditions our own government is causing that are making us pissed off? Smells like a set-up to me. Howzabout to you?

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And just as a little desert, a "lagniappe," for you, if you will, there's this paragraph from the "exercise":

…From a psychological perspective, the general public almost universally recognizes and fears rabies, adding to the scenario’s reality. In addition, a technician working with bomb experts devised, produced, and tested a realistic, practical delivery system at the FBI Academy. Each delivery device contained liquid rabies, placed in 20-ounce soda bottles and separated by a contoured freezer pack containing plastic explosives, all of which was packed inside a soft, six-pack-size beverage cooler. The device used a blasting cap and a standard antipersonnel mine to generate a charge. Upon command detonation, the device would release an aerosol mist of the deadly rabies virus.

So, the FBI Academy has plastic explosives ready to hand? Has “standard antipersonnel mines” ready to hand? Has “devised, produced and tested [this] realistic, practical delivery system at the FBI Academy?”

I sure as hell don't have such things ready to hand. Do you? And I was trained in ammunition storage, although, because I could type, I spent all my time as a clerk, and actually never saw an ammo dump in all my months of service.

Which makes me wonder, just who are the folks we should be labeling as "terrorists" here? Engaging in "exercises" which use devices that "the general public almost universally recognizes and fears"? (This would include all the participants in the exercises, we can safely assert.)

So, really: Who are the terrorists here? Seems like our government. Once again. And this was BEFORE all the "color alert status," the long-after-the-fact announcements of "terrorists arrested, their really, really, really scary terrorist plot short-circuited."

(Remember how Cheney and Bush, Ashcroft and Gonzales and Rice insisted that all the torture bore fruit, that "ticking time-bombs" were discovered. But they can't prove it to us because the documents are "classified," and would "harm national security" if revealed.)

Seems to me this is all horse pucky, barnyard animal product. Or, to use a shorter word: Lies. Once again.

Seems to me that these boys (and a girl or two--Rice and Christine Todd "Ground Zero Air is Safe To Breathe" Whitman) need to be put on trial for their lies, for the illegal wars they started.

And at the same time, we need to begin the public federal trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, or KSM, the survivor of 166 almost-fatal drownings. To convict KSM, the prosecution, our government, will have to prove just who is behind the 9/11/2001 attacks; who planted the explosives in World Trade Center Tower #7, #2 and #1, at the very, very least.

Does anyone think these events are NOT linked? This is double-plus un-good. I'm just sayin'.