More Thoughts

Alright, so when I first thought about what I was going to write next, I figured I would talk about all of the stuff I have been up to -- the Peter Gabriel concert last night, the really cool club we went to on Friday, school, and the upcoming week. The thing is, I'm reading a really interesting book my Dad got me for Christmas, Brothers, a book about the Kennedy's, by David Talbot, and I came upon a few passages that I thought were too interesting not to share.

The first one is describing a memo that Sherman Kent, chairman of the CIA's Board of National Estimates, wrote in 1962 (1962!) to describe the likely outcome of a full-scale Cuban invasion. See if it doesn't seem just like a memo that could have been sent accurate 8 years ago:


" The good news, Kent wrote McCone, is that the initial resistance from Castro's forces would melt within a few days of the U.S. invasion. Euphoria would reign as Washington promised to turn over control of the nation as soon as possible to a government that was representative of the Cuban people. Then the situation would quickly deteriorate, Kent predicted. 'Substantial numbers' of Castro's forces would survive the initial U.S. assault and 'would continue a guerrilla resistance' in the country's interior. Much of the Cuban population would support this resistance against what they would perceive as a U.S. attempt to 'reimpose upon the Cuban people the yoke of 'Yankee Imperialism''. Establishment of a pro-U.S. government would be 'greatly hindered' by the persistence of 'terroristic underground resistance in the cities' and guerrilla resistance in the countryside. 'Pacification of the country, to the extent necessary to permit the development of a credible . . . regime, might be long delayed,' Kent noted. As a result, the U.S. military would be forced in a 'prolonger' role as an occupation force, which would become a sitting target for terrorist violence. This would provoke American soldiers to take 'arbitrary measures against the general population,' deepening resentments against the U.S. occupation and adding fuel to the resistance. Meanwhile, the United States' international standing would suffer badly as a resuilt of its unilateral military action, isolating the country from its allies in NATO and Latin America and heightening suspicions about U.S. power in the rest of the world. "

Reading things like that, one can't help but see where the truism "if we don't learn from history we are doomed to repeat it" comes from. Really interesting stuff.

The second passage is a more sensitive subject, but I think that everyone has seen the Loose Change videos by now, and if they haven't they definitely know someone who has. The movie, which I believe can be found on Youtube and Google video, has a lot of interesting evidence about how 9/11 could have been an "inside job". I don't have NEARLY enough information to buy into such a controversial theory, but these quotations I'm about to copy provide an eye-opening example of just how shady these types of things can get.


"the top-secret memo, which was signed by the country's highest military commanders, urged the administration to stage a variety of shoking incidents to create a rationale for invading Cuba. Among these were ... simulating Cuban shoot-downs of U.S. civilian and military aircraft (phony "casualty lists" in the U.S. newspapers would "cause a helpful wave of national indignation," noted the memo); and blowing up an American ship in Guantanamo Bay and pinning it on Cuba, an incident the memo compared to the mysterious explosion of the U.S. battleship Maine in havana harbor in 1898, which helped spark the Spanish-American War " ... "But the Joint Chiefs' most cold-blooded suggestion was to mount a terror campaign in Miami and other Florida cities, and 'even in Washington' that would create international revulsion against the Castro regime. The violent campaign would be directed at Cuban refugees in America, the chilling memo read. 'We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of the Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government." The book also mentions that: "The military leaders did not spell out how their exploding bombs would only be limited to wounding, not killing, their unsuspecting victims."

Crazy stuff. All I know is that I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of the guy who decides what is and isn't morally permissible when you are talking about deciding what is best for a country of 300 million people in the middle of The Cold War.

Anyways, hopefully you thought those were interesting and thought-provoking. I need to be getting to sleep, but I'll try to write a normal blog about my life tomorrow.

Take care,

Mike.