21 November 2003
Wracking up the anté with a fortuitous bombing or two – given the parlous state of the ‘war on terror’ and global opposition to USUK operations – is an option we should not dismiss lightly.
Was the bombing in Istanbul a provocation? Before you accuse me of joining ‘conspiracy central’ consider that the CIA were tied directly to the terrorist group that bombed the US barracks in Beirut in 1982 through funding their operations and the use of provocations to destabilise and/or as a reason for intervention has a long tradition going all the way back to the Spanish-American War that led to the US colonising Cuba. Consider also the pretext for Reagan’s invasion of Grenada, the supposed threat to American students or that of the invasion of Panama, where CIA asset Manuel Noreiga was the pretext, or Cuban ‘arming’ of the Sandinistas in 1981. Need I go on?