Showing posts with label media manipulation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media manipulation. Show all posts

April 09, 2008

Breaking Through the News Filter

Breaking Through the News Filter
By: Peter Chamberlin

If it is true that the power belongs to the people in America, and Congress still answers to the people, then what force prevents the people from rising up to demand that Congress answer to the people’s will? The answer to that question is that the “silent majority” is only silent because they have been kept in the dark; they do not know the truth about the dire predicament we are in.

The American mainstream media has allowed itself to serve as a disinformation service for the promotion of neoconservative (Likud) propaganda to the American people, under the guise of the “free press.” American media dispenses misinformation which promotes the idea of world war against the Muslims, while systematically censoring international news content to propagate the idea of “bad Muslims.” This effectively insulates Americans from any truth that might leak out of the wire services, guaranteeing that graphic images of Iraqi or Palestinian children being pulled out of the American-made rubble or lying stacked-up like cordwood in a local morgue are not seen by many people. It is the powerful censored images of what is being done that will get ordinary, big-hearted Americans to pay attention to our own war crimes.

This is the real unseen war being fought mostly in population centers, where powerful bombs and armor rip through communities to flush-out all the proud patriotic young men who would dare to harbor ideas of self-defense or resistance. This is the cold reality of the war, that we are fighting a war against ideas with heavy bombers and tanks. This is what the self-anointed saints (neocons) describe as a “clash of civilizations.” That is the official story line that is fed to the American people by the nightly news, as they create an illusory vision of the war, in order to mislead.

News about the real war that leaks through the media filter undermines the fake publicity war. The revealed contradictions that seem to undermine “the mission” are written off as “mistakes” by reporters (which politicians immediately deny), even though they showed the real war unfolding according as planned. The war planners counted on chaos and sectarian violence to erupt after the overthrow of regimes. The plan had always been to trigger a series of wars of manageable size, by using local gangsters and mercenaries to foment divisive insurrections. The purpose of this strategy was to target local “extremists,” the official designation of those who would take up arms against the American proxies.

It is the job of the “news”/propaganda organ to build on this idea of self-defense=terrorism, as the foundation for waging the propaganda war against the American people. The American mercenaries become “linked to al Qaida” in the official deception, as they begin to assassinate the targeted leaders of those who resist the coming occupation. Once begun, any one of these local conflicts could be pumped-up into a real war. Eventually, one of these small wars would explode into the desired regional conflict, which would enable America to use of all the weapons in its arsenal, in a massive campaign to seize all the oil fields and potential supply routes.

In their pursuit of the imperial agenda, the mainstream media has used the campaign for president in a masterful stroke of misdirection, to distract the people with the “shiny object” (the false hope of our first “people’s president” since JFK). The false hope of our first independent president obfuscated the fact that today all political candidates are beholden to a foreign power (Israel), because of the power accumulated by the agents of that foreign government (AIPAC, the Israel lobby), as demonstrated in the “bi-partisan support” for an attack upon Iran.

It is because of this illusory national unity for expanding the war, which directly contradicts the common will among the people for shutting-down the war, that the people are becoming aware of the lies. As people begin to awaken to the truth about the war they start to understand that the “war” being described on television by reporters, politicians and military types is not the real war that is unfolding behind the curtain. When enough people awaken to this truth they will represent an irresistible force to the unwanted expansion. Once this new national consensus is created we will demonstrate to Cheney that we really do oppose his war, even though his opinion will once again be “So?”

Even though the American majority clearly wants this war ended now, that is not the intention of the ruling elite. Cheney’s minions have already set tripwires, beyond our reach in the countries that border Israel, for triggering a larger “defensive” conflict. That is the nature of trip wires; once some careless fool sets such a trap, he has no say about when it is who tripped, or by whom. Our fate has been placed in Israel’s paranoid hands, even though Israel is the only country in the world that has consistently pushed our government to attack Iran or its allies on their behalf.

This intolerable situation presents us with an overwhelming problem that must be dealt with immediately, if we are to avoid the accompanying military disruption of our lives that will come with it. How do we inspire the dazed American people to rise-up and stop this new aggression from happening in their name, against their will? How can you convince a nation that has buried its own conscience that it is in its own interest to take a stand against state genocide?

The sleeping sheeple are blissfully unaware that world war may be imminent. They do not know that the day after Cheney visited the royal house, the Saudi Shura Council announced “national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards,” because of credible threats to Iran’s Bushehr reactor. Americans will not hear this from the national news, but they will hear every word of Petraeus’ upcoming testimony before Congress, where he will blame everything on Iran once again. This time he may provide the missing catalyst for igniting the war on Iran, since the government has not yet been able to provoke an Iranian misstep to their provocations in Iraq. Somebody has to be forced into fighting back, somewhere, before we can label them “al Qaida” and the use of the really big guns is authorized.

The forbidden reaction of self-defense (which we define as “terrorism”) is more likely to come from one of Israel’s ongoing military provocations against the feisty freedom-loving Arabs, than from Iran. Our government is deeply involved in supporting these Israeli attacks upon the Palestinians and their neighbors, in the hopes that one of these attacks will bring sufficient Muslim retaliation upon Israel to justify our waging a larger genocidal war against Islam, in defense of Israel. The centerpiece of this strategy is guaranteeing Israel’s security. That is the central rationalization for utilizing nuclear weapons to disarm Iran.

The fulfillment of the Likud plans of Ariel Sharon for the land of Palestine remains the central foreign policy goal of the Bush Administration. We are the primary diplomatic force pushing the other nations to support the medieval Israeli seige and strangulation of Gaza, as well as the illegal partitioning of the West Bank (Ariel Sharon called it making a “pastrami sandwich” of the territories). Our government has also intervened militarily, by parking the Fifth Fleet off Lebanon’s coast to support the next Israeli attempt to annex southern Lebanon and to eliminate Hezbollah and Syria along with it.

There is a third world war coming, with consequences for all living things. We have the legal authority under our Constitution to prevent our elected proxies from carrying-out this next planned war in support of Israel, yet the feeble American resistance movement cannot even agree on a common purpose. We all must decide whether we are in this volunteer freedom militia to stop the war machine before it becomes unstoppable, or just to validate our own pet theories and vindicate our own biases. The more time we waste fighting over the divisive questions that keep us apart (and keep us isolated from the American majority), the easier we make it for the enemy to bide their time, until their big opportunity arises.

For now, we must put aside all other divisive issues which separate us and make our message undeliverable to the American sheeple. This means that all issues that do not directly contribute to blocking the attack should be considered secondary issues. We cannot question our current course, which leads to the destruction of American democracy to save Israeli democracy, if we cannot get past distracting questions concerning 911.

Identifying the prominence of Israel in our war upon the world, will automatically repel many heavily-indoctrinated Americans, before they ever hear our arguments for opposing this war. It is true that American media is dominated by pro-Israeli interests who regularly censor pro-Palestinian, or pro-Muslim news. This is the nature of our national news filter, the obstacle that must be overcome. We will not be able to get questions out that cross the “red lines,” or use words like “Zionism, ethnic cleansing,” or “Israeli aggression.”

We cannot deal with the Israeli connections to the “mistakes” we have made in our own war on terrorism if we cannot separate the historical record of Israeli actions from ongoing speculation about Israeli connections made in 911 investigations. Going off on these diversionary tangents merely disrupts the debate about Israeli manipulation of American foreign policy, which is a hostile act that must not go unpunished. The temptation is to go off on side issues such as the “holocaust” or “Jewish supremacy” that are unrelated to stopping Israel’s war, only helps to validate charges of “anti-Semitism.”

The neocon war plan which flowed outward from the Vice President’s office, becoming American foreign policy, began in Israel’s Likud Party. Israel’s war on terror became the template followed in America’s terror war, from the Islamaphobic strategy at its core, to its indiscriminate policy of assassinations using large missiles on crowded streets. The placement of hundreds of neocon ideologues, many of them citizens of both the US and Israel, brought the Likud war plans for America directly into the heart of American government. This amounted to the wholesale infiltration of our government by elements of the Israeli government. This infiltration was by the aggressive party of the expansionist Zionists, the soldier-settlers who are at the center of the current settlement land grab controversy.

If Congress can be pressured into ignoring calls from the White House to attack Iran, because of the deterioration of Iraq, can the people then produce more pressure than the political pressure generated by the Israel lobby? We don’t have to produce a revolution to take back our country, we just have to be able to generate irresistible political pressure to wrestle control our Congress from the lobby’s hands. You see, they’ve all got it turned all around. It is we the people who control our government, not the other way around.

Questions like these are all over the Internet, but the answers given to them can only be enacted outside the Web, within the mainstream media. Our small minority cannot affect change of this magnitude without help from the silent majority (sheeple). The fact remains that we will never reach this mute/deaf majority until we get some of these questions into that controlled media. I believe that we will begin to successfully penetrate that media filter whenever we learn how to simplify our questions so that they fit within the boundaries that have been set by political correctness. If we focus on one all-important line of questioning, carefully choosing the words that we use (aimed at stopping the planned escalation of the war), we may avoid causing reactionary responses.

Find the right questions and hammer away at people like Brzezenski,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9pDY_ny6Qo

or search for the last real newsman, one with a conscience. The point is, the hammering must not stop. There can be no let-up, no peace for the enablers of our dysfunctional government, until they stop their war upon the world.

Contact author: chamberlin_peter [at] yahoo [dot] com


January 10, 2008

Let's talk boats and bombs .. IRAN and real TERROR

High Seas DRAMA in the Straits of Homuz
and other blood curdling adventures

The Civics questionnaire/study guide

Public safety 101 (for nondummies)

Who's watching the hen house in DC??

Background:

Besides, it's important to DEMONSTRATE that we can project power anywhere in the world with impunity...not just that we were not opposed, but that we could not be opposed.

~ Motto for a New American Nation
The enormous cost of the Iraq war, not to mention the loss of life on both sides, would seem to counsel against the idea of a similar operation elsewhere {Iraq]. Looking ahead, America needs a military centered not on occupying another country but on denying potential adversaries the ability to attack our interests. This is not a task for counterinsurgents, but rather for an unapologetically high-tech military that substitutes machines for the bodies of young Americans.
~ General Charles Dunlap in the NYT

Their mission is to provoke Iran, then smash them up a bit. That's part of a larger goal of politically subduing them. Should that fail, expect a full blockade of all Iranian ports and the destruction of all Iranian pipelines...and the destruction of any refining capacity. Should the Iranians shoot in earnest or try to close the Gulf, they'll be decapitated while the blockade continues. We have the ability to drive this to closure through blockade and regime decapitation...which includes the destruction of all Iranian military assets.
posted on 06/21/2007 1:37:02 PM PDT at this link:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1853885/posts?page=64

RICE: The question was...how long were you going to wait, given that it appeared that the situation was getting worse.

GEORGE S.: Well, looking back, do you think that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States?

RICE: I think that...uh...an imminent threat? Certainly Iraq posed a threat, and the question was, was it going to get worse over time, or was it going to get better?

~ Condeleeza Rice, National Security (??!!) Adviser, invoked "executive privilege" as a reason for not testifying before Henry Waxman's Committee, in April, 2007.

(Who's running from war crimes prosecution??)


"[N]ew information over the past three days suggests that the incident did not involve such a threat and that no U.S. commander was on the verge of firing at the Iranian boats."
-- IPS News, 1/10/08

Discuss amongst yourselves, the following:

- What oversight is there of the NSA in re these interceptions.
See executive order 12333,

What assurances do the public have that the fabricated attacks of Vietnam are not being orchestrated in this situation?

Why doesn't the US "know" who really sent the transmissions. (See link
for information on who actually makes the transmission equipment.)

- What is the plan of NSA to work with the public/Congress to find out who really sent the transmissions?

Why -- despite the reality that the Iranians were not sending the transmissions --


(a) were US commanders at Sea "almost" willing to assume that the transmissions were from the boats??
(b) If the Unitary Executive is in clear control of the US government is there something to be gained by getting all the attention focused on the national security deficiencies of "unliked" and "unwanted" presidential candidates??
OR (c) did BuZh and his advisers deliberately inflate the incident on the eve of President Bush’s visit to the Middle East to menace Iran and raise the political temperature in the volatile region.


What method will be used to ensure that US-allied forces are not sending false transmissions, as it appears occurred here, and what did appear to occur during Vietnam? (0r is any type of oversight unlikely to occur until impeachment takes place?)


EXTRA CREDIT QUESTION: What is required to ensure that future efforts to mislead US Naval Commanders are mitigated; that others cannot confuse the commanders; and that just because an Iranian boat gets near a US ship, others cannot send false signals to make the US believe its under attack. (See the last entries on recommendations made for controlling AEGIS warnings. See the current DoD thinking on IRAN, with it recommendations for Commanders.)

THINK ABOUT THIS:


- Why would the Iranians want to attack the US in _international_ waters;
and why was the "Fillipino Monkey" possibility not taken into account??

- What, if anything, were in those boxes; or was that a (misleading) fabrication,
designed to make people think that inside were mines to sink a ship??
How could they be construed as suicide bombers if they are wearing life jackets?

= Despite the US Navy-NSA capability, are we saying that there is such a hair trigger that the US Navy-NSA-JCS are unable to clear the smoke, and sort the wheat from the chaff real time?
These "incidents" have happened before! Is the answer that the governments of Iran and the United States have the ability to solve the incident through contacts and close co-operation. Consider this previous case between Iran and Great Britain.

- What about the AEGIS: Is there no system in place to ensure that the "attacking boat/ship" is or is not the source of the communicated threat? There are 600 contractors working with the Aegis System. Big buck$ are paid to them:
Did NO ONE work on ensuring that the source of threats could be tracked?.
Recall the US shoot down of the Iranian civilian aircraft: haven't we created systems that will ensure adequate identification real time?

Congress needs to look at this so the President does not, as it appears, use a bogus threat to attack Iran. Was nothing learned from the DoD investigation of Iran Airflight IR 655?
and why is that report missing off the internet and "been messed with" multiple times??

- Why is there not a "red phone" connecting the US Military Commanders and the Iranians? We have one with Russia to prevent reactions to false alarms over nuclear/military. why isn't there some sort of system like this to ensure the Strait of Hormuz doesn't become an unnecessary battle on the basis of false evidence/fabricated attacks?

Why is the United States looking more and more like a power on the way down??


Boys and grrrrls,

there seems to be deliberate and ongoing news leaks which might upset you and you are warned you must now be afraid; indeed, my precious ones, be very afraid. The blogosphere is erupting once again just as it did in March with news of an impending attack on Iran. We are being provoked. Although the plans for never came about on April 6th as predicted and although the Barksdale nuclear scare, a


incident seems to have come to a peaceful cover up ahem, conclusion, there are now new THREATS on the horizon.

Let's discuss those threats, what's lead up to it and made it SO damned, well, THREATENING.

The Emperor has well and truly lost his marbles, as we used to say in high school

The attack on Iran is taking shape. BuZh was watching the sun rise over the HOLY land two days ago, wearing a fetching bathrobe, his Dubya emblazened in gold thread, on the balcony of his $2,600 per night suite at the King David Hotel, guarded by no less than 10,000 Israeli troops. His asperatamed Coke (reg. TM) stood on a high-priced night table, keeping his addled brain fed, as is his wont.

The lights were turned off so he could see the real sun rise without streetlights, as befits our Great and Noble King who is off, not to start PEACE (diplomacy is WAY Too slow for our slithery friend), but to feel invigorated with prospects of WAR. We (wink, wink) all knew Annapolis was just a ploy. Lots of his Court, including Big Brother Jeb has been to Israel (very) recently to check out the real estate and visit their Trusted Allies and the Loyal Retainers.

So what's next??

Although we, The Plebes, bereft of uniforms and dignatariness, are to be distracted by the election boob tube -- the incessant daily round of the plug-in drug and -- the sounds of the sabers rattling is running under the broadcast band day and night!! People go off to work, they eat their dinners, and then settle for a long night in of babble - replete now with propaganda and planted disinfo stories and watching a plethora of of candidates who don't want to "spill the beans" on the State of Fantasyland

Nope, Our Candidates are just debating the days away,waiting for the Emperor to speak, as they have done throughout most of the Imperial Presidency. A cast of Candidates who are part of the ever present Infotainment brought to you by the corporate media .. a sort of adult Disneyland for all you fairy princesses and G. I. Joes still trying to squeeze into your jeans while consuming vast quantities of stimulants and downers, you choose.


In just a short period of months, Iran has become the enemy/the face of The Great Satan/the provoker of the Greatest War the World has ever known - the Evil Genie who is going to get us all blown to smithereens. And now, we can tune into some new visions of the next great Play Station in the Middle East. Why Iraq and now Iran?

For months, no less than five US attack groups have challenged Iran in the Persian gulf.

But in the mean time the US Dollar "value" has nose dived (it's "tanked"), the price for oil per barrel has hit the hundred dollar mark (eeks! it was 20 buck$ not THAT long ago) and even though the National Intelligence Estimate said that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003, it's not to be believed. It is a sort of Inconvenient Truth, written to the Imperial Presidency's displeasure, which sat long ignored for some (good?) reason.

Lies, damned lies, and more lies abound. Those Iranian Jihadists (alarm bells! you should be programmed to start sweating when you read that by now!) are arming insurgents in Irak, just waiting to undo the "peace" we've bought to those "warring tribe" with the successful SURGE. Yeah, the little jerks didn't meet the benchmarks, but by printing more more money we can deal with that little peccadillo. (wink! wink! Nudge! Nudge!)

Let's see if we can set up a provocation, or better yet, perhaps we can plant some evidence of them provoking US. Great idea!! Good plan. When all else fails, then beef up and bully THEM. That's the history of the United States in the Middle East.

But wait!

The US is financially bankrupt and needs to have the world continue purchasing oil in US Dollars and come hell or high water, so that is what it's gonna BE!

SEE - If the Iranians manage to block off the straits of Hormuz by sinking a ship or two 60%

of world oil would stop immediately and gas would rocket in price to who knows where, creating hyper inflation especially in America which will reduce their long standing national debt from 9 Trillion to almost nothing. While the fight ensues, the printing press can just go on eating up the proceeds of the vast US forests before the Chinese get them for a payoff on all the T-bills they bought up. The US elite never had the LEAST intention of paying of debt, for heaven's sake!

That's part of the Straussite creed: take what you like and leave the rest, which in this case the latter is STAGGERING debt. Debt so crippling a naval base or air force base or two or a hundred will have to close out of the 1000 identified bases.

And let's face facts .. the US and Israel cannot afford to keep them planes flying to scare everyone UNLESS we come up with a PLAN. Right? That's why we hired Admiral William "Fox" Fallon to replace Gen. John Abizaid as head honcho at the Central Command to complete the Mission of combining air and naval power strategies to completely decimate the country who could give us a whole bunch of easy access oil. As Linda McQuaig says ... it's about the crude, dude! And Fallon is Patreas' boss .. won't he look swell sitting in Congress 'splaining himself and his brave young lads and lassies?? And don't they just "need" democracy?? They don't seem to have the brains to leave our big, bad boats alone in international waters . or so they SAY.

Now, here's the HARD part .. we have hit cognitive dissonance. You see, boyz and grrlz, it's not surprising if you been feeling tired and out of sorts ..

What we are told is happening, versus what we think is happening and what is really happening is all at odds. Oh! Oh! that ole cognitive dissonance is back with the resulting overwhelm spinning around in our gutz and our brainz. Yikes!

But a juicy, well run 'hit' with all the Right Players at the ready, would save Henry Paulson's ass, Dick's ass and George's ass would it not?? The War Criminals. The corporatocracy could go on sucking up profit$. Their role in producing The Movie, Endgame, would be served. So here we go!

Before "buy" in, perhaps we could take a look at fear, fakery and history

Weren't we JUST told that the US is good at setting up excuses for war? Not only was the attack on Pearl Harbor fully revealed for the sneaky manoveuring of the US public that it was, but didn't we just hear this week that the Gulf of Tonkin was ALSO a "government racket" to further justify the US presence in Southeast Asia and satisfy South Vietnam we were their "friend" - good ole trustworthy Uncle Sam???

Iran Accuses U.S. of Faking Persian Gulf Video

Here are the CNN videos of the incident. Iranian AND American.

ESSAY QUESTION: What conclusion do YOU draw??

US video was fabricated
and maybe a look at the politics of fear is in order.

The psychology of the politics of fear:

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/ 01/the_psycholog y_of_th.html











Newsweek has a fantastic article on the psychology and neuroscience behind the politics of fear which draws directly on examples from the current and past US elections.

American politics in particular it seems, has, in recent years, used fear as a way of trying to motivate voters and support particular candidates.

The Newsweek article looks at why fear is such a potent force in decision-making and what psychology research has shown us about how invoking concepts of death or threat actually affects our reasoning and desires.
"When we're insecure, we want our leaders to have what's called an 'unconflicted personality' ," says political psychologist Jeff Greenberg of the University of Arizona. "Bush was very clear in his beliefs and had no doubts, but Kerry was painted as a flip-flopper. ..

That real-world observation has been replicated in lab studies. In one experiment Greenberg and colleagues ran during the 2004 campaign, volunteers who completed a questionnaire that reminded them about their own inevitable death (how thoughts of their own death made them feel and what they thought would happen to them physically after they died) expressed greater support for Bush than voters of similar leanings who were not reminded of mortality. The researchers also found that subliminal reminders of death increased support for Bush

(and decreased support for Kerry)

even among liberals. It's not clear if such responses in the lab would endure in an actual voting booth. So perhaps one should not be too cynical about the decision by the Department of Homeland Security to raise the terror-threat level on Election Day 2004. "Political use of fear is not something new," says NYU's LeDoux. "But certainly the ante has been upped. We've gone from 'vote for me or you'll end up poor' to 'vote for me or you'll end up dead'."
Documentary maker Adam Curtis argued in his three-part series The Power of Nightmares (video: parts one, two, three) that since the cold war politicians across the globe have been attempting to promote the idea of foreign threats so they can then promise to deliver us from them.

Curtis is by no means a neutral commentator, but as he's demonstrated with a number of his documentaries, his analysis of politics as an essentially psychological process is an interesting take on world affairs.

My only reservation about the Newsweek piece is that it takes the somewhat simplistic line that the amygdala equals fear in the brain.

The amygdala must have the worst PR of all of the brain structures, but to set the record straight, there's more to the amygdala than fear, and more to fear than the amygdala.

Neurophilosophy has a guide to the neurobiology of fear if you want an overview of the wider fear circuits in the brain, and Current Biology has a freely available article which is a primer on the amygdala.

You may be interested to know that this almond shaped brain area is also involved in a range of positive emotional states, so it's not all doom and gloom.
Link to Newsweek article 'The Roots of Fear' (via Schneier).
¡ªVaughan.





Mind Hacks is a book by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb. Find out more, or buy it:

<<:>> <<:>> <<:>>


And a Comment for our out of touch Commander in Chief:
“Iran was a threat, Iran is a threat and Iran will be a threat to world peace if the international community does not come together and prevent that nation from the development of the knowledge to build a nuclear weapon
Bush declared,
A country that once had a secret program can easily restart a secret program. A country which can enrich [uranium] for civilian purposes can easily transfer that knowledge to a military program.”
<<:>> <<:>> <<:>>

The original attack plan against Iran and note that this is reliant on a land/sea attack strategy:



Among the other outcomes, General Ivashov pointed to a partition of Iran along the same lines as Iraq, and a subsequent carving up of the Near and Middle East into smaller regions, what I refer to as Balkanization, something Dick Cheney and his foreign policy "adviser" hope to accomplish as this would give them great political control.

<<:>> <<:>> <<:>>

Terrorist swan paddle boats wipe out US Navy:Iran-'US video was fabricated '

This was on TV.. not one of the big three, but maybe it was CBS news or ABC news. I did see it.. and it sounded fake and the whole things actually smells like shit. It's embarrassing to belong to a country that does this foolish stuff.. especially when it was just so fake and lousy.


Tourists Terrorists in swan paddle boats wipe out US Navy


Recommendations by the DoD regarding use of the AEGIS system

A. General

1. (U) (b)(5) .

{1988 text:}

1. No disciplinary or administrative action should be taken against any US naval personnel associated with this incident.

2. (S U) Since it appears that combat induced stress on personnel may have played a significant role in this incident, it is recommended the CNO direct further study be undertaken into the stress factors impacting on personnel in modern warships with highly sophisticated command, control, communications and intelligence systems, such as AEGIS. This study should also address the possibility of establishing a psychological profile for personnel who must function in this environment. Additionally, it is recommended CNO task the Surgeon General of the Navy with the responsibility of providing any necessary psychological/psychiatric assistance to crewmembers of the USS Vincennes in anticipation of possible post-traumatic stress syndrome. This should be done at the earliest possible time to ensure best results. (Enclosure 23 pertains).

3. (S U) (b)(5) .

{1988 text:}

3. Visual identification (VID) is the only positive means to distinguish friendly or commercial aircraft from potentially hostile aircraft. Since there is insufficient U.S. land or carrier based tactical aircraft to provide continuous VID duties in the Persian Gulf, the USG should immediately convey the following to the Government of Iran:

“To minimize the risk of another accidental shoot down of a commercial airliner, the Government of Iran should be aware that any fixed-wing aircraft flying over the waters of the Persian Gulf to or from Iran is suspect as to its intentions towards U.S. Naval Units. Neither United States Naval Forces, nor those of any other nation, are capable of assessing the intentions of an aircraft in flight. Accordingly, to avoid the possibility of an accident, and to preclude possible defensive actions by U.S. warships and aircraft in the Persian Gulf, United States naval forces will presume that any aircraft entering or exiting over Persian Gulf waters to or from Iranian Air Space will be considered a non-threat to U.S. forces only if it transits over the Gulf waters at an altitude greater than 25,000 feet. Small aircraft incapable of reaching 25,000 feet and rotary wing aircraft should make their intentions known by radio at least five miles from any U.S. unit.” {p.70} (b)(5) .

4. (U) That no changes be made to the existing ROE. {p.52-1988}

5. (U) To prevent the possibility that commercial aircraft could become innocent victims in this area of armed conflict, the USG should seek ICAO’s immediate attention to revise the existing commercial air route structure over the waters of the Persian Gulf. The State Department should direct our embassies to urge affected countries to cooperate in this endeavor. Pending the results of this request, the USG should also urge ICAO to promulgate an immediate NOTAM that all flights climb to at least 25,000 feet over land prior to crossing the Gulf and begin their descent over land.

6. (U) (b)(5) .

{1988 text:}

6. Concur with the measures taken by USCINCENT to enhance commercial air safety over the Persian Gulf with the exception of paragraph l.C.(l)(B), relative to voice warnings. It is recommended that this paragraph be revised as follows:

“Unidentified air/surface contact squawking (Ex: Mod III-XXXX), at (positional reference to some geographical point), at altitude, on course , speed , you are approaching U.S, warship operating in international waters. Your identity is not known/your intentions are unclear (one or both), you are standing into danger and may be subject to United States defensive measures. Request you alter your course immediately to remain clear of me.”

7. (U) That CJTFME strengthen the MEF “inchop brief” to include an in depth review of the unique problems associated with COMAIR within the Persian Gulf Area.

8. (U) That CJTFME continue to liaise with Air Traffic Control agencies and American embassies to resolve the COMAIR problems unique to the Persian Gulf Area (e.g., identification, communications, ICAO procedures, etc.).

B. USS Vincennes Battle Organization

1. (U) That the Commanding Officer, USS Vincennes, take action as required to strengthen the AAWC position in the USS Vincennes’ CIC organization. {p.71}

2. (U) That the Commanding Officer, USS Vincennes, document any CIC organization modifications required by Persian Gulf operations in the existing Battle Doctrine. If the USS Vincennes uses a split warfare TAO CIC organization e.g., surface and air, “GW” should not be given MEF execution net responsibility as a radio telephone talker. {p.53-1988}

C. Aegis System Recommendations

1. (U) It is recommended the CNO:

a. (U) Determine the cause of reported STC-2/IVCS net 15/16 degradation (due to loading), and issue a class advisory if required.

b. (U) Reassess the design of the AEGIS large screen display (LSD) to allow the option of displaying altitude information directly on the LSD.

c. (U) Investigate the best means of providing a mode in the UPX-29 which will slave the RCI challenge gate to a hooked track.

D. Training Enhancements

1. (U) If we must operate in a low intensity conflict and in the presence of COMAIR, we must train to that environment, real or simulated. Request the CNO develop a fleet wide identification matrix for dense air traffic environments in third world/low intensity conflicts. Battle Group training doctrines, AAW procedures, numbered Fleet Commander Fighting Instructions, and workups should reflect consensus on ID matrices to deconflict COMAIR within war zones, when being used as “cover” for military aircraft, or when being used as suicide attackers. For example, live missile exercises could include a percentage of the inbound drones be flown on COMAIR profiles, with proper modes and codes, in close proximity of simulated hostile targets. Another method would be to have aggressor aircraft act as COMAIR to challenge the deconfliction capabilities of surface ships with/without VID capability.

2. (U) Request CNO review AEGIS IFF operator training procedures and provide a class advisory to ensure operator familiarity of pros and cons of various RCI selectable modes.


{Signature}


William M. Fogarty {p.72}


Could US Personnel, stationed in the Gulf, brainwashed, told that the attack on Iran was imminent for months, possibly, possibly be under stress? Check out

http://www.freerepublic.com

and see for yourself how totally crazy they have become.

May God protect us ALL and sanity prevail.

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