All I got is history on my side...you Babes in the woods got nuthin......
the strategy of tension
Sword Play: Attacking Civilians to Justify "Greater
Security"
Chris
Floyd | February 29 2005
'You had to attack civilians,
the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed
from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public
to turn to the state to ask for greater security."
This was the essence of Operation Gladio, a decades-long
covert campaign of terrorism and deceit directed by the intelligence services
of the West -- against their own populations. Hundreds of innocent people
were killed or maimed in terrorist attacks -- on train stations, supermarkets,
cafes and offices -- which were then blamed on "leftist subversives"
or other political opponents. The purpose, as stated above in sworn testimony
by Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra, was to demonize designated enemies
and frighten the public into supporting ever-increasing powers for government
leaders -- and their elitist cronies.
First revealed by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti
in 1991, Gladio (from the Latin for "sword") is still protected
to this day by its founding patrons, the CIA and MI6. Yet parliamentary
investigations in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have shaken out a few fragments
of the truth over the years. These have been gathered in a new book, "NATO's
Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe," by
Daniele Ganser, as Lila Rajiva reports on CommonDreams.org.
Originally set up as a network of clandestine cells
to be activated behind the lines in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western
Europe, Gladio quickly expanded into a tool for political repression and
manipulation, directed by NATO and Washington. Using right-wing militias,
underworld figures, government provocateurs and secret military units, Gladio
not only carried out widespread terrorism, assassinations and electoral
subversion in democratic states such as Italy, France and West Germany,
but also bolstered fascist tyrannies in Spain and Portugal, abetted the
military coup in Greece and aided Turkey's repression of the Kurds.
Among the "smoking guns" unearthed by Ganser
is a Pentagon document, Field Manual FM 30-31B, which details the methodology
for launching terrorist attacks in nations that "do not react with
sufficient effectiveness" against "communist subversion."
Ironically, the manual states that the most dangerous moment comes when
leftist groups "renounce the use of force" and embrace the democratic
process. It is then that "U.S. army intelligence must have the means
of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments
and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger." Naturally,
these peace-throttling "special operations must remain strictly secret,"
the document warns.
Indeed, it would not do for the families of the 85
people ripped apart by the Aug. 2, 1980 bombing of the Bologna train station
to know that their loved ones had been murdered by "men inside Italian
state institutions and ... men linked to the structures of United States
intelligence," as the Italian Senate concluded after its investigation
in 2000.
The Bologna atrocity is an example of what Gladio's
masters called "the strategy of tension" -- fomenting fear to
keep populations in thrall to "strong leaders" who will protect
the nation from the ever-present terrorist threat. And as Rajiva notes,
this strategy wasn't limited to Western Europe. It was applied, with gruesome
effectiveness, in Central America by the Reagan and Bush administrations.
During the 1980s, right-wing death squads, guerrilla armies and state security
forces -- armed, trained and supplied by the United States -- murdered tens
of thousands of people throughout the region, often acting with particular
savagery at those times when peaceful solutions to the conflicts seemed
about to take hold.
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