SYRIA: Killing Innocent Civilians
Mobilizing Public Support
for a R2P War against Syria
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, May 30, 2012
US military doctrine envisages the central role of "massive casualty producing events" in which innocent civilians are killed.
The killings are deliberately carried out as part of a covert operation. The enemy is blamed for the resulting atrocities.
The objective is to justify a military agenda on humanitarian grounds. The doctrine dates back to 1962: Operation Northwoods.
Under a secret 1962 Pentagon Plan entitled Operation Northwoods, civilians in the Cuban community in Miami were to be killed as part of a covert operation.
The objective was to trigger a "helpful wave of indignation in US newspapers". The killings and "acts of terrorism" were then to be blamed on the Cuban government of Fidel Castro.
The objective of this sinister plan --which Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and President J. F. Kennedy-- refused to carry out, was to drum up public support for a war against Cuba:
"In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba."
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.
America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
.... The documents show "the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government," writes Bamford. (U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba - ABC News emphasis added. This Secret Pentagon document was declassified and can be readily consulted (See Operation Northwoods, See also National Security Archive, 30 April 2001)
The Northwoods 1962 document was titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba". ”The Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),” faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage."
(http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/doc1.pdf, emphasis added)
Flash Forward, Cuba 1962, Syria 2012...
While the implementation of Operation Northwoods was shelved, its fundamental premise of using civilian deaths (described by the Pentagon as a "massive casuality producing event") as a pretext for intervention (on humanitarian grounds) has been applied on several occasions in the post 9/11 era.
The fundamental question: Were the May 2012 killings of civilians in the city of Houla part of a carefully planned covert operation, with the intent to drum up public support for a war on Syria. ?
The deaths are blamed on the Al Assad government, with "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers causing a helpful wave of indignation.". Meanwhile, several European countries, Canada and Australia have cut off diplomatic relations with Syria. This decision to isolate Syria was carried similtaneously by several governments. It was taken prior to the conduct of an investigation.
A military intervention by NATO --which is already on the drawing board-- is now being contemplated, following the statement of France's newly elected president Francois Hollande.
An outright war on Syria could potentially evolve towards a broader regional war extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia. It is, therefore, crucial that World public opinion take cognizance of the media lies and war propaganda pertaining to the Houla massacre, not to mention the insidious role of the US-NATO sponsored death squads.
Was the Houla massacre part of a sinister covert operation bearing the fingerprints of Operation Northwoods?
There is absolutely no evidence that the Syrian government was behind these killings.
There are indications as well as documentary evidence that, from the outset of the insurgency in the border city of Daraa in mid-March 2011, terrorists supported by foreign powers have been involved in the killings of innocent civilians. Israeli intelligence sources (August 2011) confirm an organized process of recruitment of terrorist fighters by NATO:
NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters ...
Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011, emphasis added)
