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UK National Archives Divulge Secrets
Sunil Sood writes "Yes, its that time of year again - no, not the New Year but when the UK National Archives release a whole lot of previously "classified" information (many govt papers in the UK, with only a few exceptions, are classified secret for a 'standard' 30 years) As normal, you have the usual combination of the amusing: The design of a coin to mark the UK joining the EEC was changed, after Prince Philip said he did not like the 'little p', and the more serious: it was believed the USA had plans for US airborne troops to seize the oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1973."
You should listen to all the Nixon tapes - that guy had lots of crazy ideas. None where ever carried out though.
What do you think military think-tanks and war games are for? They think up possible scenarios for just about anything and then research ways to acheive the considered goals. The ideas that work are made into operation plans and filed away for the off-chance that such a situation might arise.
Yes, of course we have that... but I do not think that we are required to post the information after specific amount of time.
I was specifically talking about the 30 year rule.
AC
The British feared the US would invade. The report doesn't cite specific sources for this scenario. Likely it was the speculation of a few half-informed analysts. I'm sure there are reports circulating through classified networks arbout Libya's plan to join the EU and take it over. Or Syria's plan to grab the Golan Heights.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
What's the use of the Act if the government can just arbitrarily decide to deny requests made through it?
It should be noted that the intro to this piece -- and indeed, the BBC headline itself -- are a little misleading.
1. There is only one real fact in the piece: The British ambassador to Washington said that the American secretary of defense told him that "it was no longer obvious to him that the United States could not use force." Earthshaking, huh?
The rest of the piece is just more-or-less informed speculation.
2. Of course, I'm not trying to say American military planners *didn't* draw up contingency plans for seizing oil assets. In fact, quite the opposite: If they didn't, then they weren't doing their jobs. The BBC seems to consider this a remarkable revelation, but allow me to humbly suggest it would be more remarkable if military planners *didn't* include this fairly obvious scenario in their contingency planning.
- Alaska Jack
or at least hear about current plans about the Iraq situation. I could actually afford to bet at least 100€ on it, at least at the time of de-classification, that the US had planned more than they let us in on. And that would be BEFORE any claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction were even made.
So nice that, hopefully, not everything remains as a secret...
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
Still, the US haters are going to use this to highlight how US's policy was always about oil. I wonder what this will do to Bush in the elections, probably nothing, too bad.
Now they've erased "WMD" from our collective minds as well, and has reduced the reporting of "Iraq has WMD and is buying nukes" to a "small error" which "should've been left out of the speech", yeah a small error which has left thousands dead, on both sides.
I'm sure those people enjoy the fact that they are dead because of one erronous sentence in Dubya's speech.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Yes, but why don't we have plans to switch away from fossil fuels? Why don't we have plans to make a more self-reliant society? Why don't we have plans to benefit all of mankind?
It's kind of sad to look back at the ignoble plans we have made and realize that we haven't really changed.
The warplan devised in the 20's for the defeat of Japan...
Even though the so called secret plans are only supposition on the UK MOD's part, the USA certainly has plans for invading just about every country on earth. This is not due to sinister intent, just responsable planning. The world is a strange and dangereous place where allies of today can quickly turn into deadly ennemies (Japan of the 30's, Iran in the 70's, Panema in the 80's, etc). The price of being unprepared is just too high in this day & age.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Has it occured to anyone that our Government (and any other industrialized nation) has "plans" on the books for just about every imaginable scenario? And should?
It's called "preparedness", kids. Thats what you pay tax dollars for. You pay tax dollars so that your country won't be caught with it's pants down when the shit hits the fan. Any government worth it's shit draws up plans in advance, anticipating what may happen. Thousands of them. Some of these plans are too scary for normal citizens to know about. But they have to be made.
The Arab oil embargo could have seriously crippled the American economy. That alone is reason enough to go to war. There would be rioting in the streets if the gas pumps stopped flowing, the machines stopped working, and industry ground to a halt. Think about that for a moment before running off thinking an invasion of Saudi Arabia & Kuwait is the byproduct of some oooh-so-evil secret Military comittee tucked away inside a super-secret mountain fortress, controlled by the psychic vampire Illuminati Freemasons.
Put your little conspiracy thoery hat back under your chair and get a grip. The Government is made up of people like you and me. If you had access to the same information they did, you would have made exactly the same arrangements, and outlined exactly the same contingencies.
Bowie J. Poag
Yet the US continues to treat this tyrannical monarchy as a "partner". Its all about money folks. Most major political figures since the 70s have prospered in one way or another from Saudi money. From Frank Carlucci (fmr Defense official) to Kissinger (former Dr. Strangelove impersonator) to Will Kennard (former FCC Chair) to former UK PM John Major to former President George Bush have been deeply involved in lobbying, consulting, or arms deals with the Saudi government. Most of this is facillitated by the Carlyle Group, a defense firm selling arms and influence to the highest bidder.
We buy their oil, they buy our weapons (and A LOT of them, no other arms buyng nation is even close) and they also enrich those making these deals happen - see again, the Carlyle Group. The word to people currently in office is clear - if you want to get rich when you retire, and I mean RICH, you make things easy for the Saudis now. They will take care of you later, typically to the tune of many millions of dollars.
Amazingly this means many people who were once US government officials spend their days brokering weapons deals with a nation that is deeply involved with terrorism abroad and despotism at home.
Things become declassified some time after it no longer serves any purpose to keep those things secret. There is no magical automatic expiration date on sensitive information. 50 years is probably quite long enough for most information to become irrelevant, but it would certainly be "ridiculous" to claim that all information should be declassified after fifty years. So long as the government has the authority to keep some things secret, it's well within that authority to keep things secret for fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand years. You may believe that fifty-year-old secrets are "ridiculous", but you can't justify that belief without knowing exactly what the secret is.
From the article:
In the event, there was no military action. The oil embargo faltered and was ended a few months later. Israel and Egypt went on to sign a peace agreement.
Wow, imagine the embargo not faltering on its own, and the U.S. rolling in to take some oil fields. That would have made life more interesting back then, especially if we went into Kuwait and the Soviets goaded the Iraqis into trying to throw us out. A variant of the Gulf War being fought in 1973, with the U.S. as aggressor and Iraq as pseudo-defender. Definite alternate-history novel fodder here.
~Philly
You don't think that people in every country have a right to know what enemy militaries (i.e. any military that isn't their own) were seriously considering?
If the USA released declassified documents that the UK was thinking of invading them, would you have a problem? It's easy to have double-standards; if any other country did to America what the American government is doing to the rest of the world (demanding that Galileo be put on a frequency they can jam; invading other countries without permission from the UN) would you be pleased? Of course not!
By giving the military too much control over secrets (especially, but not exclusively, those of other countryes) you're paving the way towards a police-state.
Effective democracy simply keeps as many groups as possible squabbling so that no one can assume complete unaudited control.
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
Are you kidding?
The way to a police state has already been paved, the sidewalk poured, the trees planted, and Americans are driving down it in droves!
Why doesn't the US do this?
Do what? Seize the oilfields? I thought we just did.
So why is it now such a big issue to you if Saddam had plans for WMD?
1973 - 1967 = 5 years. During which Israel occupied the Golan Heights and the Sinai, in which Egypt and Syria had massed troops for a 1967 invasion of Israel, which Israel anticipated and prevented. This is not a secret, as Egypt's Nasser had been posturing for his Arab buddies for months and years with a plan to attack. His mutual aggression pact with Syria, Jordan and Iraq is well documented, as they attempted to surround Israel in 1967. Israeli intelligence allowed their much weaker position to be well defended, and the underlying morale mismatch between the Israeli and Arab forces saw Israel turn the tide against the larger encircling force. In six days the Arab forces were defeated, with the Egyptian airforce destroyed. Israel was in a position to sieze much territory, inflict much damage, in the nearly unbroken military tradition since antiquity. Instead, Israel took control only of the territory used as a platform for the massed Arab armies. And the Sinai was reverted to Egypt after a reliable peace was forged between them.
In 1973, Israel was not so well informed, and the sneak attack by the recondite Egyptian and Syrian force was able to kill many civilians. But again the tide was turned. Egypt's government learned its lesson, and 7 years later Sadat was in power to forge the inevitable peace between the two neighbors. Syria has never accepted its obvious defeats, that it purchased with its own blood as well as its neighbors. Mainly because it covets Israeli reserviors, more strategic than oilfields in that desert region. Just ask the Lebanese, who have been subjugated by Syria for decades, their country used as a killing floor by Israeli-baiting Syrians, who use terrorists as a proxy army to kill Israeli civilians. And there's the value of Israel as a dump for Palestinians who have been penned in refugee camps in Syria and other Arab countries, without even the communities available in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Don't expect the conflict in the region to end until all these murderous hawks, from Assad to Arafat to Sharon, are replaced with actual representatives of their people, who actually benefit from peace, rather than the war machine which produced and perpetuated them.
--
make install -not war
Sigh. Iraq started selling oil for euros instead of oil for dollars. The US invaded. It's about control - the US dollar's value floats - if people stop trading oil for dollars, the dollar devalues. so the US, shortsightedly, invaded Iraq to "teach OPEC a lesson". Well, guess what, it did teach them a lesson, but perhaps not the one the US had in mind - and now Venezuela and several other countries are beginning to trade oil/euro instead of oil/dollar. The US just can't invade them all (a coup-engineering attempt in Venezuela already failed), and, while it hurts europe a little to have such a weak dollar, it hurts the US more.
If you can't address the issue head on, open the can of Israeli history (or propaganda, depends on who's reading it) with the the Theme from Exodus in the background.
The bottom line is that Israel did not make a formal declaration of war and wait for the Arabs to mobilize their defenses before making their first strike in '67. It does not change the fact that Israel's action was a "sneak" attack. It is why I perceive your characterization of the Arab's attack in '73 as being somewhat hypocritical.
The '73 "sneak" attack was pretty much inevitable. Israel was occupying lands that 5 years ago belonged to Syria and Egypt. If one is going to dictate borders on the political theory of "I can beat your ass if you try to take it back", one shouldn't be wailing with shocked outrage when the other side actually makes the attempt.
I don't think the conflict will end until the United States makes credible moves towards removing its economic support of Israel or cease meddling in Israeli politics. They are indirectly culpable for the current political state as all the other actors.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
From the BBC article:
"It was thought that US airborne troops would seize the oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait "
The fact is that as the only superpower, America is the dominant country and is making the same mistakes that us Europeans made when we were in control. Unfortunately, whereas the last 500 years saw defeat on the batlefield as being the ultimate cost, we now see weapons of mass distruction. Look at the Europeans attempts to solve terrorism in Northern Ireland, the Basques or Schleswig-Holstein, and then see how unhelpful voilent "solutions" have been.
We know (sadly all too well) that you cannot fight terrorism with a gun - killing people only creates a new generation of terrorists - you can fight a country but you cannot fight ideas. I might suggest that the money that the US gives to Israel would be better spent on sending the Arab worlds brightest students to good American universities so thay can learn science over religion and take their ideas back with them.
>Panema in the 80's
Panama was NEVER an enemy of the US... they sold drugs when they were "friends". They just stopped sending the profits to CIA black ops, and then they became enemies.
Enemies of the United States are usually a matter of political convenience: from what country did the Sept 11 hijackers -- and their funding -- come from?
Was it Iraq? Or was it Saudi Arabia?
Which country has contributed money to the GW Bush election campaign via "multinational" oil companies?
You never hear this in the US "fair and balanced" supposedly "liberal media".
With the quick excuse thing, when the invisible Niger Uranium failed to turn up to line seemed to be "it's all about regime change" - but changing a military dictatorship into a military dictatorship doesn't sound so good either.
After 9/11 I thought it was good to see that the US did not act like a cut snake (eg. like bombing Libya after Iran organised blowing up an airliner) - but in the end some elements just reacted like a slow cut snake. Things will even out, those that created the mess will leave and become elder statesmen while someone else has to clean up the mess. Eventually, someone will actually go looking for Bin Laden, instead of pissing people off and giving him more allies. The great minds that gave you "freedom fries" need to be replaced by someone that can think - there must be some competant people in both parties.Why the defensiveness? Why the apologetic tone? Of course the headline is misleading, British intelligence believed there was some good probabilities, given the situation at the time, that the US was considering seizing the oil fields. But why apologize if indeed the Nixon Administration HAD seriously considered invasion if (as the article points out) the oil embargo was unreasonably prolonged and/or the Arab-Israeli conflict reignited into war?
Most of Slashdot's readership was not born in 1973, I think it's fair to say. And probably haven't even considered the impact of the 1973 oil embargo on the West, from a national security standpoint. As Carter would declare later in the decade, the use of oil as an economic weapon to harm the United States is the "moral equivalent of war." In the event of an intractible OPEC causing severe economic, and thus political, upheaval, it is in the interest of the United States, and any other nation, to take steps necessary to resolve the situation, by force if necessary.
In 1973, the oil embargo was extremely dangerous. Today, largely as a result of the 73 and 78 crises, the world has diversified its energy suppliers and this is far less of an issue. Oil is a fungible commodity, a lesson the Arabs have learned since. Saudi Arabia for instance, has publicly renounced the use of oil as an economic weapon, as have the Iranians. In hindsight, the embargo was folly, as the end result was a DECREASE in the market share of Middle East oil as an energy source. Today, the oil producing Gulf states need the West more than the West needs the Gulf. So no more embargos from OPEC.
Have you TRIED FOIA lately?
First off, Ashcroft has made it clear to all governmental agencies that if a FOIA request can be rejected for any reason, it will be rejected. Secondly, since the requester of the information has to PAY for the information that is being requested although there is no set amount per page, many places are getting around FOIA by charging exhorbitant fees ($125 a page, for example,) for requests.
-- Funksaw
A muslim scholar that I know personally as a noble man (a rich consultant yet well-educated in Islam, preaches to people and help the poor) was arrested by Indonesian police for planning to do terrorism.
He was arrested by police staffs without uniform and without any warrant.
After interrogating and beating him for days and not able to proof their accusations (it keeps on changing), they just let him go. Not even with a single apology.
But I'm still happy for him, some just gone missing forever.
And this is happening a LOT in Indonesia nowadays, the Christian extrimists (I know there are a lot of peaceful Christians, but the radical ones are unfortunately have managed to secure some high places in Indonesian gov) in the police force are arresting local muslim figures with false accusations.
These only started to happen after the US gov pressured Megawati (our president) "to do something about the terrorists in Indonesia".
And what then the US gov, the human rights defender, have to say about these things? None, nada, zip, zilch.
And it's still going on.
And people are wondering why muslims are pissed off to the Americans ?