Expect False Flag Attack Before War On Iran

By Paul Craig Roberts

According to news reports, the U.S. military is shipping
"bunker-buster" bombs to the U.S. Air Force base at Diego
Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Herald Scotland reports that
 experts say the bombs are being assembled for

an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

The newspaper quotes Dan Piesch, director of the Centre for
International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London:
"They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran."


The next step will be a staged "terrorist attack," a "false flag"
operation as per Operation Northwoods, for which Iran will
be blamed. As Iran and its leadership have already been
demonized, the "false flag" attack will suffice to obtain US
and European public support for bombing Iran. The bombing
will include more than the nuclear facilities and will continue
until the Iranians agree to regime change and the installation of
a puppet government. The corrupt American media will present
the new puppet as "freedom and democracy."




If the past is a guide, Americans will fall for the deception. In the

February issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, a scholarly journal,

Professor Lance DeHaven-Smith writes that state crimes against democracy

(SCAD) involve government officials, often in combination with private

interests, that engage in covert activities in order to implement an

agenda. Examples include McCarthyism or the fabrication of evidence of

communist infiltration, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution based on false claims

of President Johnson and Pentagon chief McNamara that North Vietnam

attacked a U.S. naval vessel, the burglary of the office of Daniel

Ellsberg's psychiatrist in order to discredit Ellsberg (the Pentagon

Papers) as "disturbed," and the falsified "intelligence" that Iraq

possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the U.S. invasion

of Iraq.



There are many other examples. I have always regarded the 1995 bombing of

the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City as a SCAD. Allegedly, a

disturbed Tim McVeigh used a fertilizer bomb in a truck parked outside the

building. More likely, McVeigh was a patsy, whose fertilizer bomb was a

cover for explosives planted inside the building.



A number of experts dismissed the possibility of McVeigh's bomb producing

such structural damage. For example, General Benton K. Partin, who was in

charge of U.S. Air Force munitions design and testing, produced a thick

report on the Murrah building bombing which concluded that the building

blew up from the inside out. Gen. Partin concluded that "the pattern of

damage would have been technically impossible without supplementary

demolition charges at some of the reinforced concrete bases inside the

building, a standard demolition technique. For a simplistic blast truck

bomb, of the size and composition reported, to be able to reach out on the

order of 60 feet and collapse a reinforced column base the size of column

A7 is beyond credulity."



Gen. Partin dismissed the official report as "a massive cover-up of immense

proportions."



Of course, the general's unquestionable expertise had no bearing on the

outcome. One reason is that his and other expert voices were drowned out by

media pumping the official story. Another reason is that public beliefs in

a democracy run counter to suspicion of government as a terrorist agent.

Professor Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph says that "false flag"

operations have the advantage over truth: "research shows that people are

far less willing to examine information that disputes, rather than

confirms, their beliefs." Professor Steven Hoffman agrees: "Our data shows

substantial support for a cognitive theory known as 'motivated reasoning,'

which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that

either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek

out information that confirms what they already believe. In fact, for the

most part people completely ignore contrary information." Even when hard

evidence turns up, it can be discredited as a "conspiracy theory."



All that is necessary for success of "false flag" or "black ops" events is

for the government to have its story ready and to have a reliable and

compliant media. Once an official story is in place, thought and

investigation are precluded. Any formal inquiry that is convened serves to

buttress the already provided explanation.



An explanation ready-at-hand is almost a give-away that an incident is a

"black ops" event. Notice how quickly the U.S. government, allegedly so

totally deceived by al Qaida, provided the explanation for 9/11. When

President Kennedy was assassinated, the government produced the culprit

immediately. The alleged culprit was conveniently shot inside a jail by a

civilian before he could be questioned. But the official story was ready,

and it held.



Professors Manwell and Hoffman's research resonates with me. I remember

reading in my graduate studies that the Czarist secret police set off bombs

in order to create excuses to arrest their targets. My inclination was to

dismiss the accounts as anti-Czarist propaganda by pro-communist

historians. It was only later when Robert Conquest confirmed to me that

this was indeed the practice of the Czarist secret police that the scales

fell from my eyes.



Former CIA official Philip Giraldi in his article, "The Rogue Nation,"

makes it clear that the U.S. government has a hegemonic agenda that it is

pursuing without congressional or public awareness. The agenda unfolds

piecemeal as a response to "terrorism," and the big picture is not

understood by the public or by most in Congress. Giraldi protests that the

agenda is illegal under both U.S. and international law, but that the

illegality of the agenda does not serve as a barrier. Only a naif could

believe that such a government would not employ "false flag" operations

that advance the agenda.



The U.S. population, it seems, is comprised of naifs whose lack of

comprehension is bringing ruin to other lands.