Conspiracies

[durutti]

Do you believe in any of the following "conspiracy theories" (for want of a better term)? Why or why not?

1. FDR let the attack on Pearl Harbor happen.

2. The JFK assassination was the product of a conspiracy.

3. The MLK assassination was the product of a conspiracy.

4. The RFK assassination was the product of a conspiracy.

5. The Reagan campaign met with the Iranians and arranged for the release of hostages on the day of Reagan's election (the October Surprise).

6. The CIA facillitated drug dealing in the American inner city in order to fund right-wing terrorists and paramilitaries in the Third World.

7. The U.S. government is trying to cover-up Gulf War syndrome.

8. At least some government officials knew in advance about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

9. TWA Flight 800 was downed by a missile from a U.S. navy ship.

10. At least some government officials knew in advance about 9/11.

[leftofthedial]

1. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10

nt

[Cleita]

20. Mine exactly too.

I do have some doubts about 1. It could have been a LIHOP scenario.

[durutti]

2. My Thoughts

1. FDR let the attack on Pearl Harbor happen.

Highly doubtful.

2. The JFK assassination was the product of a conspiracy.

Beats me. If people did conspire to kill him, it wasn't because he represented some kind of radical break from the foreign policy establishment.

I haven't read too much about it just because there's so much out there. It's hard to wade through.

3. The MLK assassination was the product of a conspiracy.

There are definitely some suspicious circumstances surrounding the event. But I need to read some opposing viewpoints before I reach a conclusion.

4. The RFK assassination was the product of a conspiracy.

Same as MLK.

5. The Reagan campaign met with the Iranians and arranged for the release of hostages on the day of Reagan's election (the October Surprise).

Definitely. Both former Reagan operatives and Iranian agents have admitted to it.

6. The CIA facillitated drug dealing in the American inner city in order to fund right-wing terrorists and paramilitaries in the Third World.

Yes. The evidence is so overwhelming that it's really sad it's still classified as a "conspiracy theory" by many people.

7. The U.S. government is trying to cover-up Gulf War syndrome.

I don't know enough about it. But I have had trouble finding a credible scientific professional who believes in Gulf War syndrome. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.

8. At least some government officials knew in advance about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Somewhat likely, from what I've seen. But I need to read more opposing viewpoints.

9. TWA Flight 800 was downed by a missile from a U.S. navy ship.

I don't know. The topic doesn't really interest me.

10. At least some government officials knew in advance about 9/11.

Doubtful. I haven't seen any convincing evidence to the contrary.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

7. I just watched Reagan at the 1980 debate talk about "secret plans"

about the hostages in Iraq - before he was president. So we have the Republican party going behind the back of the elected US federal government to trade arms for keeping the hostages until after the elections.

Isn't this worst kind of treason. How the hell did they get away with it?

http://www.lwv.org/media/debates/1980.html

[cosmicdot]

12. yep, treason

and, I'd like to know, too

of course, they've been getting away with it for at least 40 years ... ergo, the predicament we're currently in .... imho, of course

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

22. 5, 6, 7, 10 absolutely

[Jester_11218]

3. Don't confuse comspiracy theories with reasonable suspision.

I wrote an article about this. I think it applies here.

http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/fueling_conspiracy.html

[durutti]

4. I know.

That's why I said "for want of a better term".

[Jester_11218]

5. The term is "reasonable suspision"

I think that is more accurate.
Peace,
Jesse

[Wulfian]

6. You forgot conspiracy to pass the patriot act

by killing Democrats with anthrax

[Military Brat]

8. So when someone says, "OMG another conspiracy theory,"

Regarding 9/11, I just say, "Don't call it a conspiracy theory, then, just call it culpable negligence."

Remember, it only takes 2 to create a conspiracy, like two people in an office can conspire to drive someone else out who stands in the way of their getting a promotion, or might possibly have some damaging information on them. This whole idea of "conspiracy" being some sort of bugaboo untouchable word is precisely the control of language which the RW is so good at. Look what they did to the beautiful word "liberal."

And if you don't feel comfortable with the word "conspiracy," then use the word "scheme." The RW hasn't turned that one into a "nutcase" label yet.

[Vitruvius]

9. 1 - No; FDR had Marshall send Pearl Harbor a "war warning" a week before

the attack which stated that war with Japan was imminent. Adm. Kimmel & Gen'l Short ignored it, then blamed FDR for their own negligence for the rest of their lives.

In addition, at FDR's instigation, the Naval exercises in 1936 or '37 began with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. FDR knew that the Japanese Empire had a habit of beginning its' wars with sneak attacks -- as at Port Arthur, vs. Imperial Russia. The officers at Pearl were caught flat-footed in the exercise, and learned nothing, for they were caught again in 1941.

Finally, the actual casualties and true extent of the damage at Pearl was censored for years; the general public did not know how bad it had been until late in the war, when we were winning. The reason: the Roosevelt administration believed that it would have been too bad for morale.

The bottom line: the Roosevelt administration (including Gen'l Marshall) foresaw the likelihood of a Pearl Harbor attack, staged naval exercises simulating a Pearl Harbor attack in the mid 1930s, sent an imminent "war warning" a week before the attack, was stunned when Kimmel & Short allowed themselves to be caught flat-footed, then censored the casualties & damage from the attack because it would have destroyed civilian morale.

Kimmel & Short were dumb bureaucrats who fouled up & tried to pass the blame to others. If they had done their duty, been prepared, and repelled the attack, we would have entered WWII with a shining victory and not a wretched defeat.

Vitruvius

P.S: There is some confusion because we had already broken the Japanese "Purple" machine at the time of the attack. However, we could only decode about 10% of any given message because we had only begun to break the underlying codebook (the Japanese first used a codebook on each message, then ran it thru the machine). We simply hadn't accumulated enough intercepts to break the codebook at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack.

Bottom line: we could have fully decoded the Pearl Harbor attack messages in 1944, but we couldn't in 1941. In fact, they were decoded in 1946 -- because decoding current intercepts comes first during wartime; decoding messages of historical interest only has to wait until after the war.

[starroute]

10. The Pearl Harbor story was a product of right-wing revisionists

It was first published in 1944 by a bitterly anti-Roosevelt writer named John T. Flynn. After the war, Flynn became a devout McCarthyite. His latter books claimed that Roosevelt had brought communists into his administration and had deliberately sold Eastern Europe out to Stalin, that government officials under Truman had handed China over to the Communists, that Eisenhower was soft on communism, and that the United Nations was a headquarters of the communist conspiracy.

Flynn apparently picked up his ideas about Pearl Harbor from Harry Elmer Barnes. Barnes himself was not a right-winger, but a respectable anti-war historian of the 20's and 30's who became so fixated on the idea that there was no such thing as a good war that he felt he had to prove World War II was rigged (and even spent his later years promoting Holocaust revisionism.)

So although I'm not totally sure FDR didn't let Pearl Harbor happen -- he certainly wanted to bring the US into the war on the side of Britain and was frustrated by American isolationism -- I strongly tend to doubt it.

[ldoolin]

15. Flynn and Barnes

Good post on John Flynn and Harry Elmer Barnes.

Harry Elmer Barnes' pre-WWII work was highly praised by Socialists and other people on the left at the time, and he wrote regularly for publications like The Nation. It's a shame that he eventually drifted into Holocaust revisionism, but to his credit, as far as I know his brand of revisionism was relatively mild and it came before the neo-Nazis starting taking up that issue as a holy cause. Barnes had extensively researched World War I and concluded that many of the atrocity stories used to justify that war were fabricated by the U.S. government, so when WWII came along he automatically assumed the same about WWII. Unfortunately for him, the evidence for the Holocaust is unrefutable and Barnes eventually found himself a writer whose only remaining audience was on the far right.

John T. Flynn was a different sort altogether, he was part of that clique of paleoconservative anti-New Deal writers in the 1930s and 1940s, along with people like Albert Jay Nock and Rose Wilder Lane, who hated Roosevelt and everything he stood for. Flynn, Nock, and Lane were early influences on the Libertarian movement.

In any case, I see the conspiracy theory about FDR deliberately letting Pearl Harbor happen as yet another attempt by the right wing to discredit the legacy of FDR. FDR's legacy needs to be defended; in fact, it is precisely the legacy of FDR and the New Deal that the Bush regime is trying to dismantle as we speak.

[Vitruvius]

11. 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10 -- yes.

4.) Not sure, but likely, esp. in light of 2; the people who killed JFK could NOT allow RFK to become president.

5.) Yes. Conspiring with America's enemies to damage America during Democratic administrations is part of the Rethugnican playbook; Nixon did the same thing in 1968, when he derailed the Paris Peace Talks by telling the South Vietnamese gov't to refuse any and all settlements because a Nixon administration would give them a better deal.

7.) Yes, blatantly. And it's common knowledge in much of the medical profession, according to two relatives who are MDs.

9.) NO. The 747 has a design life of 15 years; Flight 800 was a 25-year-old junker. They kept flying that old airplane until it fell out of the sky.

10.) YES. It is public knowledge all over the world that the Bu$h administration had warnings re 9/11 from the French, Israeli, German, Egyptian, and Russian services. Almost the only people who do not know this (and that the Bu$h administration was criminally negligent at best) is the uninformed US public. Thanks to the US corporate media.

[durutti]

17. Sure they were warned.

10.) YES. It is public knowledge all over the world that the Bu$h administration had warnings re 9/11 from the French, Israeli, German, Egyptian, and Russian services. Almost the only people who do not know this (and that the Bu$h administration was criminally negligent at best) is the uninformed US public. Thanks to the US corporate media

Yes, but the government gets tens of thousands of similar warnings all the time. That they didn't take the aforementioned warnings seriously proves nothing.

[bpilgrim]

19. they were warned at the HIGHEST LEVELS not just the usual 'chatter'

these were form heads of state directly to our own.

thats what folks have a hard time with :hi:

peace

[bobthedrummer]

21. Deep cover moles do exsist-rarely taking the risk of exposure

but always communicating what the inner circle is up to IMHO.

[ldoolin]

13. Some of them, maybe.

1. No. That one came from the extreme right wing, who have always hated FDR and everything he stood for.

2. Maybe.

3. Maybe.

4. Maybe.

5. That one's pretty well documented.

6. Maybe. There's definitely good documentation that the CIA looked the other way when their boys (Noriega, the Contras, etc.) were running drugs. The evidence that the CIA deliberately distributed them in the inner city is spotty though.

7. Maybe.

8. Doubtful.

9. No. I don't buy that one at all.

10. Doubtful - but the Bush regime is so criminal that nothing would surprise me anymore.

[knowledgeispower]

14. I don't like the term "conspiracy theories"

It has a negative connotation to it that helps people to dismiss the notion without a second look. I would refer to them more as "strategic plans" or something like that. But anyway, here goes:

1. Interesting theory, because WWII did have the end result of the U.S. becoming an Empire. However, I don't think that or the Pearl Harbor attack was planned.

2. It seems very likely, but one thing that nobody has ever been able to explain to me is a reason why the FBI/CIA/whatever would want to kill Kennedy. My best guess is that he wanted to end the Cold War, but you can't tell if that is true or not.

3. Of course. It has been well documented that MLK's life was threatened by the FBI, among others. Also, a civil trial in the 90's had the jury conclude that there was a government conspiracy to kill MLK.

4. Very likely. The whole Sirhan Sirhan thing has just never seemed believable.

5. This is known to be true.

6. I don't know. I've heard it, and it makes sense, but I haven't done any research on the subject.

7. Of course. The only question is: "what is 'gulf war syndrome'?" It could be something as simple as post-traumatic stress disorder, but that doesn't make it any less real.

8. I hadn't even heard of this theory before.

9. Who knows? It seems extremely unlikely though.

10. YES! France, Germany, Russia, and other nations gave the Bush administration very explicit warnings of 9/11 and they did nothing. At first I thought it was just gross negligence but since then the Bush administration has proven their utter depravity time and time again.

[bpilgrim]

16. The only thing new in this world is the history you don't know - H. Truman

Number one has now been shown to be true due to the fact that we were monitoring ALL - even their most secret - their radio communications by that time.

Also documents have been declassified that shows we at least talked about provking the japanese into attacking us though most don't blame FDR due to the domestic situation at home and that facism had to be defeated at all cost.


this is relatively new information so it is not suprising that most haven't heard about it not to mention the corporate media doing their level best to keep us ignorant.

see...

DAY OF DECEIT: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor

by by Robert B. Stinnett

Pearl Harbor was not an accident, a mere failure of American intelligence, or a brilliant Japanese military coup. It was the result of a carefully orchestrated design, initiated at the highest levels of our government. According to a key memorandum, eight steps were taken to make sure we would enter the war by this means. Pearl Harbor was the only way, leading officials felt, to galvanize the reluctant American public into action.

more...
http://www.liberty-tree.org/ltn/dayofdeceit.html
http://www.independent.org/tii/news/001207Stinnett.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743201299/104-5760669-4700706?v=glance

if you want a good overall feel for what uncle sam is really all about read this short online book by one of the most respected minds on the left noam chomsky...

What Uncle Sam Really Wants

Noam Chomsky

The main goals of US foreign policy

1. Protecting our turf
2. The liberal extreme
3. The "Grand Area"
4. Restoring the traditional order
5. Our commitment to democracy
6. The threat of a good example
7. The three-sided world

Devastation abroad

1. Our Good Neighbor policy
2. The crucifixion of El Salvador
3. Teaching Nicaragua a lesson
4. Making Guatemala a killing field
5. The invasion of Panama



6. Inoculating Southeast Asia
7. The Gulf War
8. The Iran/contra cover-up
9. The prospects for Eastern Europe
10. The world's rent-a-thug

Brainwashing at home

1. How the Cold War worked
2. The war on (certain) drugs
3. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
4. Socialism, real and fake
5. The media

The Future

1. Things have changed
2. What you can do
3. The struggle continues
4. Notes

more...
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-contents.html

the main conspiracy that concerns me now is what happened on 911... for instance what happened to wtc7 :shrug:
http://globalfreepress.net/911/wt7/flash_8fps/wtc7.8fps.swf

and SOP?

so i started a newspaper...
http://GlobalFreePress.net check out the 911 section for lots more

:hi:

peace

[bobthedrummer]

18. JFK, MLK, RFK all have serious unanswered questions

after all of these years-still unanswered--and quite possibly conspiracies, especially JFK IMO.