From the Department of No Pain, No Gain
Given his direct involvement in the most vile policies and propaganda operations of the last 30 years, I think it is incumbent on any thinking person to take note of just what sort of things Michael "I Was Neocon When Neocon Wasn't Cool" Ledeen happens to say. He reflects the sick fuck underbelly of American foreign policy management - a management that frequently entails tweaking or, say, bludgeoning Americans' perception of reality.
You may think you don't know Ledeen from Adam, but you likely know his work. Consider the background of beliefs about the world that have been spoon-fed to you over the years, and there you'd find Ledeen's grubby fingerprints.
After all, this Neocon Goebbels (I'm sure he would prefer an Italian fascist comparison instead) was directly involved in marketing the fraudulent Bulgarian connection to the Pope shooting in 1981; something that certainly made the Cold War hotter than it would have been, increasing the likelihood of actual nuclear holocaust. Ya can't blame a guy for trying.
Then just a few years ago he had a direct hand in the forging of documents implicating designated-enemy Iraq in a scheme to purchase yellowcake uranium from the African nation of Niger; the capstone of the propaganda drive to rationalize aggression against Iraq, continuing bloodily (mostly for Iraqis) to this very minute. But then Ambassador Joseph Wilson said the Niger yellowcake documents were obviously faked, as did the International Atomic Energy Agency. Then the Bushies committed a felony (or treason, as the Proto-Neocon Reaganites who originally pushed the law against it would have said) by outing CIA agent and Wilson wife, Valerie Plame to get even. You wanna bet that was Ledeen's idea?
During the interim Ledeen had his hand in the Iran-Contra crimes of the 1980s, and the Project for a New American Century's agitation for a "new Pearl Harbor" in the 1990s, and other sociopath behavior.
He has even been an idea man for Karl Rove! The Black Heart of Bush's Brain, you might say.
But what is he up to just now?
In a recent Jewish World Review column (pubished also at National Review Online), 'Red Army Dreams: You're getting colder', Ledeen, while focusing on Vladimir Putin's likely mixed-feelings (to say the least) for the Iranians, digressively asks, "What does it take to galvanize the Americans? A nuke in Las Vegas?"
So there it is.
The neocon not-exactly-a-shadow government has its marching orders. Nuke an American city and blame it on the Iranians so that Americans, just in time for the Clinton and/or Guiliani version of the Long War, can at last become united under the banner of nationalist outrage in a way that the 3,000 dead of the faked September 11th couldn't quite manage.
"To be galvanized, some Americans must be vaporized," saith Michael "Faster, Please" Ledeen - before he edits himself for public. So watch your back, Las Vegas. Better safe, than sorry. If anyone besides Michael Ledeen was saying it, you might be forgiven for taking it as a sick joke. But it is Michael Ledeen, he of the Bulgarian Connection, and the Famous 16 words, so while it is in fact sick it is hardly a joke. He don't play that.
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