Below is the fifth installment in a 6-part series written for Opinion Maker by Jeff Gates, author of Guilt By Association.
To assassinate an American president with impunity requires pre-staging. For Israel to succeed would require an Evil Doer on whom the deed could plausibly be blamed. The emerging fact patterns suggest that such pre-staging is well underway and that a Pakistani could be the perceived culprit. The recent history of Evil Doer branding offers insight into what to expect.
Over the course of several years, Saddam Hussein, a brutal tyrant, morphed from a loyal and valued U.S. ally to the leader of a state portrayed as a member of the Axis of Evil ready and able to deploy weapons of mass destruction on a moment’s notice. Though that depiction was a lie; a plausible lie sufficed in the creation of a credible Evil Doer to help justify the invasion of Iraq.
Similarly, the Taliban in all its many forms have long been religious fundamentalists with an intolerant streak exceeded only by their ferocity in defense of their severe version of Islam. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, they were celebrated as the fierce Mujahideen and heralded as heroic freedom fighters by President Ronald Reagan.
In the run-up to the provocation of 9-11, that positive “branding” abruptly changed when, six months prior to that mass murder, Afghanistan’s ancient Buddhas at Bamiyan were destroyed. When the Taliban took responsibility, they were rebranded worldwide as certifiably evil for what mainstream media portrayed as a “cultural holocaust.” When staging such power-of-association operations, timing is everything. By 9-11, the Taliban were seen as world-class Evil Doers.
A similar pre-staging is underway in the U.S as manipulated impressions become the mental building blocks to create a plausible culprit from an Islamic nation. Keep in mind that repeated reports of Iraqi WMD created a generally accepted “consensus” truth—regardless of the facts.
In a similar fashion, oft-repeated reports of the threat of Iranian WMD have steadily created the impression of a nuclear weapons capability with no basis in fact. But facts are not the point when pre-staging an Evil Doer. The point is what a targeted population can be induced to believe.
Five Muslim students in the U.S. traveled to Pakistan in mid-December, setting off a flurry of reports about the threat of “homegrown terrorism.” Every report mentioned the recent shootings at Fort Hood, Texas by a Muslim psychiatrist. A series of other incidents helped enhance the plausibility of a violent event traceable to the requisite Islamic Evil Doer.
The Justice Department announced this month that the trial of a 9-11 suspect will be held in Manhattan, with a second trial in nearby Brooklyn. In explaining the projected $150 million cost, local officials likened the extensive security to what is required for a New Year’s Eve celebration—only lasting for months. These trials are akin to a high profile publicity campaign certain to keep Americans on edge while enhancing the plausibility of “Islamic” violence.
Insecurity, Plausibility & Accessibility
Yet how could an assassin reach the most closely guarded president of modern times? The plausibility of a security breach has already been pre-staged. At the first state dinner by Obama, two aspiring contestants for a reality television show foiled White House security to come within handshake distance of the president. Though no one has yet conceded how that could have happened, both the president and the First Lady have an Ashkenazi chief of staff.
Bodyguards were protecting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when in November 1995 a Likud Party member shot him at close range. Assassin Yigal Amir invoked a concept from ultra-orthodox Judaism to justify his murder of Rabin as a threat to Jews living in the settlements. Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu led a series of rallies that Rabin described as provoking violence. Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister in June 1996 and immediately sought to inhibit implementation of the Oslo land-for-peace process agreed to by Rabin.
That same year, Richard Perle led a Jewish-American team to prepare for Netanyahu a new policy titled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (i.e., Israel). Then a member of the U.S. Defense Policy Board, Perle became its chairman in 2001. The central theme of A Clean Break: Israel should halt the return of Palestinian land and instead pursue an aggressive strategy that included as a priority the removal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Should pro-Israeli extremists detect an inclination by Barack Obama to endorse a return of Palestinian land to the Palestinians, the likelihood of his assassination will greatly increase. For his death to appear plausibly due to an Islamic source requires pre-staging akin to what is now ongoing. To displace facts with what the public can be induced to believe requires a period of mental preparation in order to make misdirection believable.
In July 2006, for instance, authors Jim Gilchrist and Jerome Corsi published Minutemen claiming that Hezbollah terrorists are sneaking across the Mexican border and plotting another 9-11. Minutemen was launched at Ground Zero, the site of the 9-11 attack, 14 days after Israel invaded Lebanon—in pursuit of Hezbollah. Had the U.S. suffered another attack, Iran-backed Hezbollah would have been the perceived culprit, providing a plausible rationale attack Iran.
Corsi remains a prolific source of prepare-the-minds publications, including Atomic Iran released in early 2005 and calling for either the U.S. or Israel to preemptively bomb the “mad mullahs of Iran.” His latest release is The Obama Nation. With a first print run of 475,000, his attack on the presidential contender immediately topped The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. Should Obama be murdered, Corsi’s book will provide an incremental component of plausibility that the assassin was opposed not to his changed policies on Israel but to his “socialism.”
An Agenda in Need of a Crisis
Other recent incidents enhance the plausibility that an assassin could enter the U.S. from abroad. Homeland Security conceded this month that a sensitive transportation security screening manual was posted on the Internet. The ordering of more troops to Afghanistan enhances the plausibility that extremists will be driven across the border into Pakistan, only to travel from there to the U.S.
Obama’s Nobel Prize associated him with peace laureate Martin Luther King Jr. Were Obama also to die at the hands of an assassin, his “brand” has now been sufficiently enhanced that he would become an iconic figure. If Zionist extremists fail to provoke a crisis in the Middle East or South Asia, the murder of America’s first Black president would suffice as an attention-diverting crisis—particularly if those who produced his candidacy use his death to catalyze hatred between whites and blacks in the same way that they now market hatred for Muslims.
So long as Barack Obama continues to serve Israeli interests, he will continue to live a charmed life. Should he hint that justice—say for the Palestinians—is a worthy goal, the pre-staging is in place to eliminate that threat. Likewise should he seek to shut down the ongoing oligarch-ization of America and the steady piling on of disabling debt.
Should his death provoke race riots, the Department of Homeland Security is prepared to protect the agent provocateurs—under the guise of defending the perpetrators from anti-Semitism.
Would Israel assassinate a U.S. president? What kind of world would we now inhabit if Senator William Fulbright and Attorney General Robert Kennedy had succeeded in 1962 in forcing the Israel Lobby to register as a foreign agent? How would the world be different if John F. Kennedy had succeeded in 1963 in forcing international inspections of Israel’s nuclear facility?
When Robert Kennedy announced for the presidency in 1968, Tel Aviv did not know if he would revive JFK’s campaign to prevent Israel from igniting a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Nor did anyone know if he and Fulbright would again seek transparency for Israeli operations disguised as domestic lobbying.
When RFK was murdered in June 1968, the gunman was Palestinian. That lesson should not be lost on Pakistan. In dealing with Washington, Islamabad should also recall Senator Fulbright’s candid assessment in 1973: “Israel controls the U.S. Senate.” He was gone by 1974, twenty-five influence-imbedding years ago. J Gates