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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."
We do. It's called the Freedom of Information Act.
And it makes refrence that British Intel thought it would be likely that the US would invade, not that they were planning a direct attack. Its kind of a misleading headline.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
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.
We do.
Read, L
GRRRR. Why is /. so UK centric? Aren't the editors aware that there are people in other countries that read this site?
I have a shitty sig!
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
Here are some related links:
US ready to seize Gulf oil in 1973
Was America preparing a war for the Gulf oil in 1973?
Britain Warned of U.S. Plans After War
U.S. Mulled Seizing Oil Fields In '73 British Memo Cites Notion of Sending Airborne to Mideast
And this news item found originally on Reuters ties up nicely to the above:
U.S. OIL (Operation Iraqi Liberation) Imports Set Record in 2003, Trend Seen Up
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.
Unfortunately we'll have to wait until 2031 to learn from the UK archives just who signed the British intelligence report that claimed Iraq was buying uranium from Niger. Sure, Bush blabbed those lies in the 2002 State of the Union address, "knowing" the at least the CIA said it wasn't credible. But apparently someone in the UK forged the Niger letter itself, and claimed it was real, before handing it up to eager hands in the US. With all the British people in the streets demanding peace, I wish they could move up the declassification deadline on the culprits. But I guess it will have to wait for their grandchildren to learn of it, when it has all the relevance as the 1973 oil embargo counterstrike currently under discussion.
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make install -not war
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.
Oh, get over it. This is information that is 30 years old.
If you want to bitch about revealing the confidences of an ally, let's talk about the detailed briefings the US forces in Afghanistan gave about SAS operations there. In one briefing the US Army disclosed more about an SAS operation in the field than the British government has ever done.
One of the reasons the SAS is so successful is that they keep their tactics very close to their chests. Certainly they never reveal specifics, such as the strength of their assault forces, enemy kills and captures, objectives achieved, casualties sustained, etc. It's so nice of the US Army to fill in the blanks and piss away the concept of operational security for them though.
And I haven't even mentioned "friendly fire" incidents and the subsequent cover-ups with which any related investigations are almost always tainted.
You were saying something about the UK letting the US down?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
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.
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make install -not war
The funny thing about using Iran and Panama in the context you used them is that the US was more or less involved in creating the governments that created the problem. Come to think of it we also went pretty far in antagonizing Japan into going to war with us. So really maybe you should say the world is a fairly predictable place where countries go around invading each other and overthrowing each other's governments, which causes conflict.
I think you overestimate the logic of the Military/Government leaders. Our Government still denied having the B-2 while they were selling models of the damn thing at K-Mart.
I have two friends who were "nuke troops" in the military (one worked at Whitman AFB and the other was on the USS Maine) -- their standard line was always something like "I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of nuclear weapons at...."
Hell, all the official stats for our ships/planes/weapons are either classified outright or "dumbed down" for the consumption of the general population (our subs dive "in excess of" 500ft and go "in excess of" 20kts) -- even though Janes has information that is somewhat closer to reality. If they have it do you really think the Russians/Chinese/whoever don't?
Just because it's classified doesn't mean there's a reason. Likewise just because it's classified/not acknowledged doesn't mean it isn't already common knowledge. If it was a large corporation we'd be talking about PHBs and bureaucracy. But because it's the Government it must be a conspiracy of some sort.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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".
Proof of what?
All he's saying is that fifty year old military documents are being witheld by the government -- which is true. In fact, many documents are being held back. The FOIA has been weakened greatly since Bush took office, simply by the adminstration's outright refusal to release documents.
The only proof we have is that the government has documents which they are unwilling to release. The fact that we can't prove anything is exactly the point because we don't have the information to do so.
There's no conspiracy theory, because there's no information that a conspiracy exists, other than the suspicious reticence of the government. If you can hide all proof that your conspiracy exists, does to not exist anymore?
You're right to be skeptical of any conspiracy theory claims. But you're foolish to believe that no conspiracy exists because the only information that could prove or disprove it is in the guarded posession of those who would be involved in the conspiracy.
The FOIA is one of the greatest Acts in American history, IMHO. Information is the ultimate power, and that power should be held by the people. When the government witholds that power, you should be afraid.
The enemies of Democracy are
Nuke the Russian tank divisions with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles while they're still in the process of occupying Finland. Provide military assistance to Sweden and make a stand in Norway and in the northernmost Sweden (for Kiruna and the other mines).
This is why I am amazed why our last two governments have been talking the public to accept that we must NATO for our safety's sake.
The owls are not what they seem
The US gave Japan an ultimatum: withdraw your troops from China or we'll stop selling you oil. Realpolitik considerations about American business in China aside, pressuring Japan to end their war of conquest and exploit in China was the right thing to do. Japan could have forsworn militarism and ensured their oil supply from America; instead, they chose to expand the war by attacking the US. This was a decision that led to the eventually ruin of Japan. It was a decision made by Japan, not America. It's easy to say "America should have known they'd make that decision" but it apparently wasn't so obvious at the time.
I'm not generally an apologist for US foreign policy. But in the specific instance you mention, I feel obliged to set the record straight. Whatever the root causes of WWII, America was not trying to goad Japan into war. Japan chose to attack America as part of an expansionist campaign to secure the resources of the East Asia and the Pacific; the terrible consequences of that decision must be laid first and foremost on Japan.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Try googling for Opereration Northwood, one that did get declassified. Basically, your gov. wanted to shoot down civilian planes and shipping to justify a pre-emtive invasion of Cuba. It went all the way up to Kennedy, who was the only one that thought it morally reprehensible, and stopped it.
Quote from the original document:
The sad thing is, this all sounds strangely familiar...
And remember, this is one of the few that did get declassified. God knows what else your country has done. Despite the image presented by Hollywood, the USA is one of the most morally reprehensible countries on the planet. Your self-denial and ignorance of the problem makes it even worse.
What other outcome? Maybe that they'd actually comply with the entirely reasonable demands that they cease their war against China. Hey, it's easy to say in hindsight that the Japanese would never do that, but there was actually a debate within the Japanese government about whether to do just that in response to the threatened embargo.
The lack of radio silence (sources?) wouldn't mean all that much--the US didn't have the same signal intelligence infrastructure it does today.
Since I'm trying very hard not to consider your post an uninformed troll, I won't go for a cheap shot like "if it weren't for us you'd all be speaking German".
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.