Tag: WMDs in Iraq

Novel Virus? mRNA Rx Helps? Knowing History Assists Us with Truer Perspectives About Reality

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

― C. S. Lewis

We are told, and most believe, a raft of lies since March 2020 (and truth be known, government has lied to its citizens since the beginning of time, it is what they do).

Why do we give government (and those that align themselves with that group of people) the benefit of the doubt when history itself serves to show that government is NO friend of the people.

Think WMDs in Iraq (triggering invasion of Iraq), Gulf of Tonkin incident (triggering Vietnam War ramp-up) and the “surprise” of Pearl Harbor attack (triggering the US to enter WWII). As Elaine on Seinfeld would say:

Fake, fake … fake

This is precisely why for our own health, government needs to do as little “for” us as possible. People simply die with too much government .. just ask the Chinese with Mao, Russia with Stalin and Germany with Hitler.

Apparently, the people still hold out that government is a good god and will deliver them into the land of safety .. via a boxcar if necessary:

Maybe now one can read the Tale of the Vax (parallel to the Tale of 9/11) that the recent 18 months has unveiled, and tell me you still trust the government:

Question– Have the mRNA vaccines been tested on animals?

Answer– Yes, they have.

Question– Were the animal trials successful?

Answer– Yes and no.

Yes, the experiments on mice showed that a low dose of the vaccine induces a robust antibody response to the infection.

But, no, the antibodies were not able to attack the spike protein from a different strain of the virus.

Question– I’m not sure what that means? Do you mean that the vaccine DOES provide some limited protection from the original (Wuhan) virus, but does not necessarily provide protection from the variants?

Answer– That’s right, but it’s a bit more complicated than that because– as the virus changes — the antibodies that helped to fight the original virus can actually enhance the “infectivity” of the variant. In other words, vaccine-generated antibodies can switch-sides and increase the severity of the illness. Simply put, they can make you sicker or kill you. Scientists have known this for a long time. Check out this clip from a 2005 research paper:

“A jab against one strain might worsen infection with others….

In the.. study, Gary Nabel of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.. injected mice with spike protein from a SARS virus taken from a human patient infected in early 2003. They then collected the antibodies the animals produced.

In lab experiments, they showed that these antibodies were unable to attack spike protein from a different strain of SARS, isolated from a patient infected in late 2003….The team next tested whether the antibodies would attack spike proteins from two SARS strains isolated from civets, from which the virus is thought to have originally jumped into humans. In this case, they found hints that the antibodies actually boosted the ability of the virus to infect cells.…

The results show that the virus changes over time, so that a strain that crops up in one outbreak might be quite different from that in a later outbreak. “This virus is not standing still and we need to take this into account,” Nabel says.

This raises the prospect that a vaccine against one strain of SARS virus could prove ineffective against others. Worse, a jab against one strain might even aggravate an infection with SARS virus from civets or another species. “It’s obviously a concern,” Nabel says..
This would not be the first case where exposure to one strain of a virus can worsen infection with another.” (“Caution raised over SARS vaccine”, Nature)

So much for the “novel” aspect of SARS-CoV-2 (note that this is not #1, but #2 duh). Scientists have known for over 15 years that the jab would do what it did this summer .. make the jabbed MORE prone towards dealing with infections worse than if one were NOT JABBED.

Get it?

It DOES make more sense when you understand they want to kill us!

I will let this article continue this thought …

Question– I’m still confused. Can you summarize what they’re saying?

Answer– Sure. They’re saying that scientists have known for nearly two decades that vaccines narrowly aimed at just one protein are bound to fail. They’re saying that the spike protein is highly-adaptable and capable of changing its shape to survive. They’re saying that vaccines aimed at the spike protein will inevitably produce variants that evade vaccine-generated antibodies. They’re saying that by narrowing the vaccine’s focus to the spike protein alone, the drug companies have ensured that previously helpful antibodies will do an about-face, allow the virus to enter healthy cells, replicate at will, and cause sickness or death. They are saying that the current crop of vaccines is in fact perpetuating the pandemic. And–since the science has been clear for the last 16 years– we can add one more observation to the list, that is, that the current approach to mass vaccination is neither haphazard, slapdash or random. It is intentional. The vaccination campaign managers are deliberately ignoring the science in order to sustain a permanent state of crisis. Science is being manipulated to achieve a political objective.

Politics kills .. and this whole Covid-thing is theater, from the masks to the social distancing to the “vaccine” .. it is just to distract from what is at the core of this tectonic change in societies around the world. From the “surprise” beginnings of vax production:

“The virus broke out in Wuhan…on Jan. 7, and less than a week later Moderna had a proposed sequence for an mRNA vaccine against it???

Really? Is that the same Moderna that had been playing-around with mRNA for over a decade but was never able to successfully bring a vaccine to market?

Yep, the very same company. Here’s more:

“And by Feb. 24, the team was shipping vials from a plant in Norwood, Mass??”

Wow! Another Covid miracle! You almost get whiplash watching these companies crank out their “wonder drugs” at record-breaking speed.

Keep in mind, there’s a very high probability that the virus was man-made, (In other words, it’s a bioweapon.) and the people who have been implicated in the funding and creation of that bioweapon are also closely aligned with the big drug companies that have produced the antidote in record time that has already netted tens of billions of dollars in profits for a drug for which there was no reliable animal testing, no long-term safety data, and no formal regulatory approval.

.. through the 56 day animal trials the ended WAY too soon and on to the “blowing up” the human trials:

The obvious purpose of the trials was to get the vaccines over the finish-line before anyone figured out what was going on. It’s the same reason why the drug companies “unblinded” their human trials after the vaccines got the green light from the FDA. Shortly after the trials were concluded, the people in the placebo arm were allowed to get vaccinated.

Why would they do that? Why would they vaccinate the people who willingly allowed themselves to be guinea pigs for the sake of public health, only to vaccinate them shortly after, thus, eliminating any chance of finding out what the long-term safety issues might be? It makes no sense, does it?

Take a look at this short clip from the British Medical Journal whose scientists are equally bewildered:

“The (drug) companies say they have an ethical obligation to unblind volunteers so they can receive the vaccine. But some experts are concerned about a “disastrous” loss of critical information if volunteers on a trial’s placebo arm are unblinded…

Although the FDA has granted the vaccines emergency use authorization, to get full license approval two years of follow-up data are needed. The data are now likely to be scanty and less reliable given that the trials are effectively being unblinded.

Consumer representative Sheldon Toubman, a lawyer and FDA advisory panel member, said that Pfizer and BioNTech had not proved that their vaccine prevents severe covid-19. “The FDA says all we can do is suggest protection from severe covid disease; we need to know that it does that,” he said.

He countered claims, based on experience with other vaccines, six weeks of follow-up was long enough to detect safety signals. Six weeks may not be long enough for this entirely new type of “untested” [mRNA] vaccine, Toubman said.

Goodman wants all companies to be held to the same standard and says they should not be allowed to make up their own rules about unblinding. He told The BMJ that, while he was “very optimistic” about the vaccines, “blowing up the trials” by allowing unblinding “will set a de facto standard for all vaccine trials to come.” And that, he said, “is dangerous.”

(“Covid-19: Should vaccine trials be unblinded?” The British Medical Journal)

.. this whole thing is a horrible show that kills so many people along the way … and politicians don’t bat an eye or shed a tear. The parasites are expendable.

Like I have said before, with 45 million getting the Swine Flu vaccine like I did in US Navy boot-camp in 1976, only 26 deaths among the vaccinated shut down that attempt to reduce deaths and hospitalizations when it was shown to be a solution that was worse than the disease. Unfortunately, common sense like that is in short supply these days.

In summary:

Is it really that hard to see the outline of a political agenda here? After all, aren’t the drug companies working with the regulatory agencies that are working with the public health officials that are working with the media that are working with the corrupted politicians that are working with the Intel agencies that are working with the meddling globalist billionaires that are working with the giant private equity firms that oversee the entire operation pulling the appropriate strings whenever needed? ..

Don’t you think people are entitled to know what the government wants to inject into their bodies? Don’t you think they have a right to know how it will effect their immune systems, their vital organs and their overall health? Don’t you think they have the right to decide for themselves which drugs they will take and which they will refuse to take?

Forcing someone to take a drug he does not want, is not just wrong. It’s unAmerican. Which is why people should reject vaccine mandates as a matter of principle. They are an attack on personal liberty, the foundation of our constitutional system. It’s a principle worth dying for.

As for the mass vaccination campaign, it is the most maniacally-genocidal project ever concocted by man. There’s simply no way to calculate the amount of suffering and death we are about to face for trusting people whose policies were obviously shaped by their undiluted hatred of humanity. As German microbiologist Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi said:

“In the end, we’re going to see mass illness and deaths among people who normally would have had wonderful lives ahead of them.”

Sad.

Truth.

-SF1

From ‘War on Terror’ to ‘War on Covid’ – Lessons to be Learned

01MAY2003 – GWB declares victory in the War on Terror (too soon Bush II, too soon as Kabul, Afghanistan experiences a Saigon, Vietnam moment here in 2021)

I know this is extremely OLD news, but remember when the US Deep State accused Bin Laden and his gang (of 50-200) in Afghanistan of orchestrating 9/11? Remember when GW Bush accused Saddam Hussein of possessing WMDs (WMDs that we gave Iraq during the Iraq-Iran War 1984-1988)?

The RESPONSE to these two lies was excessively over the top. The response COULD have been a strategic targeted CIA/SpecialForces mission that involved 50 men in both countries to CSI. But no, the US decides to sacrifice our troops (both physical and mental death/PTSD) in both of these countries over the next two decades, sacrifice the innocent people in these counties (their life, their livelihood making many refugees while eradicating Christianity) while spending trillions of US taxpayer’s money.

What do we have to show for all that sacrifice here in 2021? Nothing!

The greater good was never achieved. Bringing “democracy” to the Middle East only brought death, heartache, pain and poverty.

So the US elite says: “Let’s bring this to the homeland”

Now consider the War on Covid.

Headlines read: “15 Days to Flatten the Curve”, “Hospitals are Overwhelmed” and “Vaccines are Totally Safe”

The RESPONSE domestically has again been over the top. Beginning with masks which Tony Fauci rightfully said initially as being a “comfort” mechanism before he went political and suggested 2x, this crowd submission method was a placeholder until the mRNA vaccines could be delivered less than a year later (thanks “Father of the Vaccine” Trump SARCASM).

When we think of the phases toward mandating the “vaccine”, I can’t help but think of the pressure the US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan accomplished when freedom fighters in those countries were hard pressed, they became ever increasingly resistant and resilient. “Terror” groups morphed overnight sporting names like Al Qaeda, Taliban and more. Geographic boundaries meant nothing as ISIS spread from Iraq to Syria. The result was opposite the stated goals of the US Empire’s CIA/Pentagon/MIC complex.

But no one remembers years later.

So too with this latest war. Fighting an obscure enemy (COVID is ONLY a set of ever evolving symptoms that can come from SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2, and other respiratory viruses like the flu), allows the fighters to shift their efforts while propping up their narrative, the “noble lie” (think Plato) that validates their forced mandates.

Consider the 1984 statement in the DHHS Federal Register, Vol 49 No 107 from June 1, 1984 in reference to the final rules concerning polio vaccination campaigns in the U.S.:

…any possible doubts, whether or not well founded, about the safety of the vaccine cannot be allowed to exist in view of the need to assure the vaccine will continue to be used to the maximum extent consistent with the nation’s public health objectives.

This is why the following narrative (propaganda) is enforced on the public by government, media, big tech, big pharma and large US corporations:

  • Herd immunity is required to enable economic and social recovery
  • Vaccines are the only route to achieving herd immunity
  • COVID-19 vaccines are perfectly safe
  • COVID-19 vaccines provide protective, durable immunity

This excessive push of mandatory vaccines is counter-intuitive and has some scary long-term effects not even thinking about the vaccine’s adverse effects themselves.

Vaccine expert Geert Vanden Bossche explains:

As of the early days of the mass vaccination campaigns, at least a few experts have been warning against the catastrophic impact such a program could have on global and individual health. Mass vaccination in the middle of a pandemic is prone to promoting selection and adaptation of immune escape variants that are featured by increasing infectiousness and resistance to spike protein (S)-directed antibodies (Abs), thereby diminishing protection in vaccinees and threatening the unvaccinated

The “hard press” on the virus is fueling the variants.

The “hard press” on the ‘terrorists’ fueled the variants.

I guess when you have a hammer like government .. everything is a nail.

George Washington knew this first hand when he led 15,000 troops into Pennsylvania to put down the “Whiskey Rebellion” which he and Alexander Hamilton caused due to the heavy tax (8x higher than King George’s taxes on the American colonies) on whiskey that they themselves had authorized.

A reasonable approach to this “War on Covid” would be as mRNA inventor Robert W. Malone suggests:

  • Full and complete disclosure on the vaccines
  • Comprehension of risks that the vaccines bring
  • Full voluntary participation with no coercion and no enticement

A healthy approach would follow more like Sweden’s strategy that has resulted in ZERO deaths there from COVID in the past weeks. A balanced response that allows the virus to move through the healthy younger population while protecting the older more frail population.

  • Provide personal risk assessment tools/apps
  • Provide clear and complete data on vaccine trials
  • Offer vaccination to high risk individuals
  • Understand that COVID is complex with different stages which means that allowing physicians to practice evidence-based medicine guided by laboratory testing
  • Use sequence-independent stage-appropriate medicines like Ivermectin, Famotidine/Celecoxib, Fluvoxamine, Apixaban, Vitamin D, etc.
  • Emphasize treating patients as soon as they develop disease in outpatient stage
  • Stop censoring and blocking repurposed drug development

Only when a healthier medical-industrial complex emerges will public confidence in healthcare rebound:

  • Public campaigns should be positive, ethical, truthful and empathic
  • People should feel empowered when making health choices
  • In both actions and words it is important to steer clear of fear, coercion and questionable ethics
  • Obey the law and be transparent about risks while not circumventing time tested processes and ethics
  • Trust, educate and respect citizens right to choose
  • Avoid authoritarian demands, information censorship and psychological manipulation via big media and big tech

I am not holding my breath. It took 20 years to unravel the “War on Terror”, so how long will it be for the truth to emerge around the “War on Covid”?

-SF1

After the Shock and Awe, How About a Little CSI to Find Out the Origin of COVID-19?

OK, now that the panic has a chance to subside, and that toilet paper is once again is available in the marketplace, how about we all refuse to act like sheep and wait on the government to tell us what to think and do next. Let’s all do a little CSI in the weeks to come about how this all came about and why has it led to so much panic?

While the news of a virus spreading across the globe is a little disconcerting, it does reflect on a society’s character when panic sets in. This means that the people in general have placed their hope and faith in the government to keep them safe in all aspects right? Post-9/11, the last time the people were shocked to see death brought to the mainland, it was the government that stepped it up, grabbed much more control and said “we will keep you safe”. The majority of Americans rallied around Bush II from both political parties, churches also followed suit and the US military was allowed to INVADE Afghanistan and then Iraq to ….. what was their mission? Only later after a ton of CSI is was proven that the government’s own narrative for all this as well as their reaction was a lie. Interesting how the US is STILL in these two countries two decades later.

So this COVID-19 event has again allowed the government to ratchet up its control mechanisms and over-reach.

Once they have enabled the sheep to be scared, they can easily direct the sheep to the right pen to stay safe from the wolves. Never before has it been so important to educate the masses some way so they don’t continue to act like asses. This is indeed a teachable moment, because all it takes is for the government to over play their hand, the government’s real agenda can be revealed and its overreach scaled back peacefully and voluntarily in an ideal world.

It does seem that all the crazy preppers don’t seem so crazy anymore. It does seem like those who doubted the government’s intentions on a list of things over the past decades are now finally smiling and are not looked on as outcasts of society, marginalized by the sheeple.

For this post, I do think that people would welcome some distraction from the pressing things of life as the normal is gone for a time. Maybe doing a little research can help us all stay balanced and less reactive to a world we think is out of control.

On resource that is Open Source is found at https://nextstrain.org/ where:

Nextstrain is an open-source project to harness the scientific and public health potential of pathogen genome data. We provide a continually-updated view of publicly available data alongside powerful analytic and visualization tools for use by the community. Our goal is to aid epidemiological understanding and improve outbreak response.

Almost 500 genomes of COVID-19 are being tracked:

There are plenty of job-aids to help anyone understand the jargon used in this field, this might be a great learning opportunity as we should all know this will NOT be the last NOVEL virus to accomplish this feat of global spread. With the Internet, one can find SO many graphs that help display what is REALLY going on that the government will not share, so as to keep the fear level high and the herd’s desire to have government make them safe again.

Thomas DiLorenzo directed me this morning to remember what Randolph Bornne said over 100 years ago:

“It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups of individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties, the minorities are either intimidated into silence or brought slowly around by a subtle process of persuasion.”

“There is . . . in the feeling toward the State a large element of pure filial mysticism. This sense of insecurity, the desire for protection, sends one’s desire back to the father and mother, with whom is associated the earliest feeling of protection . . . .  [I]n Uncle Sam we have a symbol of protecting, kindly authority, and in the many Mother-posts of the Red Cross, we see how easily . . . the ruling organization is conceived in family terms.  [People become] obedient, respectful, trustful children again, full of that naïve faith in the all-wisdom and all-power of the adult who takes care of them, imposes his mild but necessary rule upon them and in whom they lose their responsibility and anxieties.  In this recrudescence of the child, there is great comfort.”

“On most people the strain of being an independent adult weights heavily.”  The State provides a way of eliminating “the psychic burden of adulthood.”

— Randolph Bourne, writing about the effects of the national emergency of war on the population in his famous 1918 essay, “War is the Health of the State.”

With all this in mind, I would like to share with you a little tidbit of what I have found in the past few weeks that are very enlightening.

Media (i.e. the US Government and Deep State) have been pushing the China origin of COVID-19 as being in China now for a couple months, this is not unlike how the US Government did the same thing regarding Iraq’s WMDs in the lead up to the Iraq invasion and occupation almost 20 years ago. Sheep are highly resilient to any contrary thought than the one they were told first!

Larry Romanoff from Global Research has been doing his own research around some very good CSI work that lays out the COVID-19 timeline a bit further back than the US Government wants to allow. What if we go back to this event on 08AUG2019?

Now let us look at a couple of events in the fall of 2019 that happened after this:

  1. Taiwanese physician noted that in August of 2019 the US had a flurry of lung pneumonias or similar, which the Americans blamed on ‘vaping’ from e-cigarettes, but which, according to the scientist, the symptoms and conditions could not be explained by e-cigarettes. He said he wrote to the US officials telling them he suspected those deaths were likely due to the coronavirus. He claims his warnings were ignored.
  2. Japanese citizens [were] infected in September of 2019, in Hawaii, people who had never been to China, these infections occurring on US soil long before the outbreak in Wuhan but only shortly after the locking down of Fort Detrick.
  3. Five “foreign” athletes or other personnel visiting Wuhan for the World Military Games (October 18-27, 2019) were hospitalised in Wuhan for an undetermined infection.
  4. The first 41 hospitalized patients who had confirmed infections with what has been dubbed 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). In the earliest case, the patient became ill on 1 December 2019 and had no reported link to the seafood market, the authors report. “No epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases”, they state. Their data also show that, in total, 13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace.
  5. Earlier reports from Chinese health authorities and the World Health Organization had said the first patient had onset of symptoms on 8 December 2019 – and those reports simply said “most” cases had links to the seafood market, which was closed on 1 January.

Finally we have reached the “official narrative’s” first data-point. So there is a LOT more to this COVID-19 story isn’t there? Just like 9/11!!!

Additional things that spark curiosity include:

Kristian Andersen is an evolutionary biologist at the Scripps Research Institute who has analyzed sequences of 2019-nCoV to try to clarify its origin ..  “Andersen posted his analysis of 27 available genomes of 2019-nCoV on 25 January on a virology research website. It suggests they had a “most recent common ancestor” – meaning a common source – as early as 1 October 2019.”

OK, so is there precedent to having a wrong narrative early in the rollout of a major health crisis? Yes, of course:

It was interesting that Lucey also noted that MERS was originally believed to have come from a patient in Saudi Arabia in June of 2012, but later and more thorough studies traced it back to an earlier hospital outbreak of unexplained pneumonia in Jordan in April of that year. Lucey said that from stored samples from people who died in Jordan, medical authorities confirmed they had been infected with the MERS virus.

This would provide impetus for caution among the public in accepting the “official standard narrative” that the Western media are always so eager to provide – as they did with SARS, MERS, and ZIKA, all of which ‘official narratives’ were later proven to have been entirely wrong.

How about that. Do you remember hearing from our media that all the earlier thoughts on the origin of previous viruses might have been in error? No! We never hear this because this would be in fine print or on page 35 of the traditional newspaper. This is the same MO as government when they make a mistake, they NEVER apologize.

Larry’s summary paragraph should prompt some independent research on any critical thinker’s part:

It would seem the only possibility for origination is the US because only that country has the “tree trunk” of all the varieties. And it may therefore be true that the original source of the COVID-19 virus was the US military bio-warfare lab at Fort Detrick. This would not be a surprise, given that the CDC completely shut down Fort Detrick, but also because, as I related in an earlier article, between 2005 and 2012 the US had experienced 1,059 events where pathogens had been either stolen or escaped from American bio-labs during the prior ten years – an average of one every three days.

No you know, so get out there in nature and think for yourself what might really be happening around you. Fear should not be your reaction, sheep do that, you might want to take in what you see and compare it to the truth like we seen in the movie “Shooter” many years ago:

Peace out.

-SF1

War Can Be Avoided – Even for the US Empire! (Rarely) – Retro 1983

Service members pick through the rubble following the bombing of the USMC barracks in Beirut, Lebanon on Oct. 23, 1983. The terror attack resulted in the deaths of 220 Marines. File Photo by USMC/UPI

You can count on one hand the times that the United States of America refrained from its drive for war. While its third president said on 04MAR1801:

… peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none …

… in hindsight, presidents that followed Thomas Jefferson did not have those ideals and/or could not resist the unity that happens when the war path is decided on. War is good for the state as well, which statesmen back in the day and politicians today realize clearly. The state was meant for war.

However, there was a time in the early 1980s when the US backed off from the war path. It was tempting, but at the end of the day, cooler heads prevailed. As Kenny Rogers sang

He said, “If you’re gonna play the game, boy
You gotta learn to play it right
You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run

In this article, the details emerge from a time in 1983-1984 when the US Empire acted more like a man of character than that of a bully. Confident that knowing when “to hold them, and knowing when to run” displayed more meekness, power under control, than most Presidential administrations to date.

While Reagan’s administration piled on the debt more than Carter’s, engaged in the drug trafficking trade called the Iran-Contra Affair, and also ratcheted up “gun-control”, this event in Lebanon and the US response is something that needs to be remembered and admired.

Setting the stage:

In October of 1983, a truck filled with explosives leveled the four-story U.S. Marine Barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 American military personnel. The intelligence community laid responsibility for the act at the feet of Tehran’s mullahs, who’d tasked Hezbollah, their proxy in Lebanon, with pushing the U.S. (which had deployed the Marines as part of a multinational peacekeeping mission) out of the region. The incident (the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War Two, as we were told at the time), touched off a legendary internal Reagan Administration dispute over how, and whether, the U.S. should retaliate.

As today, there were members of the administration that were more war-hawk in nature, and others who have been in combat, and acutely know what the unintentional consequences might be in ordering a retaliation.

I do like Caspar Weinberger’s (US Army veteran of some intense Pacific fighting in WWII) angle:

Secretary of Defense [Weinberger] had opposed the deployment of the Marines to begin with, and had the support of the military. Colin Powell, Weinberger’s senior military assistant, spoke for many of the military’s leaders when he described the Lebanon deployment “goofy from the beginning.”

On the other side was Secretary of State George Shultz:

For Shultz, however, revisiting the deployment decision was a waste of time. In a series of knock-down-drag-outs that pitted him against Weinberger, the Secretary of State argued that “American credibility” (that old standby), was being tested and that, therefore, the deaths of 241 U.S. Marines was cause enough for a military escalation.

The kicker comes here where Weinberger’s wisdom is revealed:

Weinberger disagreed: “retaliation against who?” he asked. Slow-rolling the president, he argued that the U.S. needed better intelligence before deciding who to punish. Weinberger was adamant: the U.S. had just left one unwinnable conflict (in Vietnam), and shouldn’t be so quick to start another. He dug in.

I do wish that this effort could be made today. Instead of lashing out like a bully swinging wildly to and fro, connecting here, connecting there mainly with innocent people and missing the real culprits, can’t today’s US government ever take time and wisely ascertain what is really happening? No more “WMD’s in Iraq”, no more Colin Powell holding some “chemical weapon” in his fingers at the UN, no more stories of babies in incubators left to die. The CIA/MI6/Mossad deep state “evidence” needs to be compared to truly independent science, if one can every practically get there.

Maybe, just maybe today’s announcement that Sen. Rand Paul has been chosen to be a point of dialog with the regime in Iran, is a rare piece of good news that I myself have been waiting years if not decades for.

Back to 1983.

It seems that the Vietnam War was not too far in the rear-view mirror as men with war experience from WWII in the South Pacific, who started as PRIVATES, who have seen the elephant, could wisely speak into:

NOTE: “Weinberger was a Harvard-educated lawyer, his formative experience came in World War II, where he served as an infantry officer during the 1942 Battle of Buna—a fetid, leech-infested Japanese base on the rim of northern New Guinea. For those who survived, including Weinberger, the swamp-slogging battle was an unrelenting nightmare: at its end, the Japanese resorted to cannibalism and used the bodies of the dead to reinforce their defenses. ”

Staying strong:

The Shultz-Weinberger tilt dragged on until February of 1984, when Reagan decided to “redeploy” the Marines to U.S. ships on station in the Mediterranean. The “redeployment” was seen by Shultz as an ignominious retreat, a sign of American weakness. But, as capably rendered by Marine Colonel and historian David Crist in The Twilight War, that’s not the way the Pentagon viewed it.

Only the insecure thinks this is a loss. The mature and secure person can see better the big picture and risk the possibility of this reaction to be seen as week.

Then the truth is unearthed, something that the US Empire struggles with to this very day:

The problem with American policy in the Middle East, Koch implied, was American hypocrisy—and our selective use of the word terrorism: when our friends plant bombs we say it’s because they’re defending our values, but when our enemies do it, it’s terrorism.

The entangling alliances will always cause hypocrisy. We had been warned from over 200 years ago and we (especially our leaders) still don’t get it.

Over reaction to the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor, or to anything we might see in the Persian Gulf in the coming weeks and months is a recipe for a disaster that will over-shadow Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Things were very different even 5, 10, 15 and even 20 years ago. The world has changed, Russia and China have not only survived US sanctions and tariff wars, but they also have allies in other countries that have been bullied by the US Empire especially since the end of WWII.

.. striking back, killing who you can because you can (and simply to assuage your own anger) is not only “beneath our dignity”—it’s a signpost on the road to unwinnable wars.

Don’t we know it. The US Empire legacy lives on, and it ain’t a pretty sight.

-SF1