The US Government needed a “precipitous event”, otherwise know as a false-flag attack to make the US “look good in the eyes of the world” as the Clinton cabinet searched for an acceptable excuse for going to full scale war with Iraq. General Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during parts of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, has released his book, Without Hesitation that states: “Back in the late 1990s, Shelton says a member of Clinton’s cabinet asked him to allow Saddam Hussein to shoot down an American U2 spy plane over Iraq as a pretext for starting a war. The way Shelton tells the story, this was a serious request.”
At one of my very first breakfasts, while Berger and Cohen were engaged in a sidebar discussion down at one end of the table and Tenet and Richardson were preoccupied in another, one of the Cabinet members present leaned over to me and said, Hugh, I know I shouldnt even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough and slow enough so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?
The hair on the back of my neck bristled, my teeth clenched, and my fists tightened. I was so mad I was about to explode. I looked across the table, thinking about the pilot in the U-2 and responded, Of course we can … which prompted a big smile on the officials face.
You can? was the excited reply.
Why, of course we can, I countered. Just as soon as we get your ass qualified to fly it, I will have it flown just as low and slow as you want to go.
The official reeled back and immediately the smile disappeared. I knew I should not have asked that…
No, you should not have, I strongly agreed, still shocked at the disrespect and sheer audacity of the question. “Remember, there is one of our great Americans flying that U-2, and you are asking me to intentionally send him or her to their death for an opportunity to kick Saddam. The last time I checked, we dont operate like that here in America.
A false flag attack is defined as:
False flag operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one’s own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and can be used in peace-time.
