- The events of August and September 2007 now allow us
to evaluate the accuracy of the August 26 Kennebunkport Warning, which
generated much attention and controversy from the moment it was issued.
The preliminary verdict of history is now in, and establishes the Kennebunkport
Warning as one of the most remarkable successes of open source intelligence
forecasting in recent decades. It may even have directly helped to disrupt
Cheney's plan for a nuclear sneak attack on Iran.
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- The Kennebunkport Warning was written in the afternoon
of August 24, 2007. Support signatures were obtained in Kennebunkport,
Maine later on August 24, and primarily on August 25. The document was
sent out to a list of recipients in the US and abroad just before midnight
eastern time on Sunday, August 26. The first known internet posting was
on the Jeff Rense web site (www.rense.com), where the document appeared
before midnight Pacific time on Sunday, August 26. The Kennebunkport Warning
was thus in public view all day on Monday, August 27.
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- On Tuesday, August 28, Bush signaled an escalation of
tensions with Iran in a raving speech before the American Legion convention
in Kansas. Here he warned that the Middle East now lay in the shadow of
a "nuclear holocaust" because of the Iranian nuclear program.
He accused Iran of acting as a state sponsor of terrorism, intervening
against the US forces in Iraq, and also made allegations about Iran as
a backer of Hezbollah and Hamas. Diplomatic observers recognized that this
tirade constituted an important intensification of US threats against Iran.
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- On Wednesday, August 29, Bush's threats moved a step
towards fulfillment as US Air Force personnel loaded six cruise missiles
onto the wing mounts of a B-52 intercontinental strategic bomber at Minot
Air Force Base in North Dakota. Each of the missiles carried a nuclear
warhead of between 5 and 150 kilotons of explosive power. Reportedly because
of mechanical problems, the loading process took some 8 hours.
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- On Thursday, August 30, the rogue B-52, with its cargo
of six deadly nuclear-armed cruise missiles, made the 3.5 hour flight across
the US to Barksdale, Louisiana. Barksdale is the number two US headquarters
for nuclear warfighting, second only to Offutt AFB in Nebraska. Barksdale
is also the jumping-off base for direct B-52 bombing runs into the Middle
East, a role which Barksdale played in the shock and awe campaign in Iraq
in the spring of 2003. By the time the rogue B-52 reached Barksdale, cataclysmic
events were not far off. This was exactly the kind of situation which the
Kennebunkport Warning, which by that time had been circulating on the internet
for about three and a half days, had been concerned about.
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- At around this time, the rogue B-52 and its cargo appear
to have come to a halt. Between the late afternoon of August 30 and the
public announcement of the rogue B-52 incident on the afternoon of September
5, we enter a gray area which requires much further investigation. According
to Wayne Madsen, it was a "revolt and push-back" by Air Force
personnel determined to block a wider war in the Middle East from being
set off by a nuclear sneak attack, with support from elements of the intelligence
community, which blocked the rogue B-52 from proceeding towards a possible
appointment with Armageddon in Iran or elsewhere in that region. This was
exactly the case of loyal and patriotic military people refusing to obey
an illegal order which the Kennebunkport Warning had pointed to less than
four days earlier. As Madsen writes: "elements of the Air Force, supported
by US intelligence agency personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate
destination of the nuclear weapons and the mission was aborted due to internal
opposition within the Air Force and the US Intelligence Community."
("Air Force Refused to Fly Weapons to Middle East Theater," September
24, 2007, Wayne Madsen Report.)
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- The Kennebunkport Warning thus represents an exceptionally
successful effort to alert public opinion to a grave and imminent danger.
Precisely the dangerous situation the Kennebunkport Warning talked about
occurred in reality less than four days after the document had been posted
on the internet. The Kennebunkport Warning must be acknowledged as accurate,
timely, necessary, and indispensable for anyone seriously interested in
stopping a wider war with irreversible consequences.
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- On July 21, rense.com posted an analysis entitled "Cheney
Determined to Strike in US with WMD This Summer." This article was
published as the front page story of the Rock Creek Free Press, and was
displayed in news boxes in the Washington DC subway during August and into
September. With the exposure of the rogue B-52 affair, this warning was
also fully vindicated.
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- But there may be a further dimension. It cannot be excluded
that the loyal and patriotic military and intelligence people who blocked
the plan of the Cheney clique to use the nuclear cruise missiles in the
Middle East, or even against a target or targets in the United States,
had some how been encouraged to act by having seen the Kennebunkport Warning.
The period of August 30 to September 5, when the crucial actions regarding
the rogue B-52 would have had to occur, corresponds precisely to the maximum
diffusion of the Kennebunkport Warning on the internet. On September 1,
a Google search indicated that the Kennebunkport Warning was either posted
in full or was mentioned on 72,000 web sites worldwide. By September 2,
this figure had risen to 102,000 web sites. On September 3, the maximum
diffusion of 110,000 web sites was attained. These figures do not include
e-mailings and other forms of attention generated by the vast interest
and lively controversy generated by the document. In any case, those who
stopped the nukes from going to the Middle East are unsung heroes who deserve
recognition.
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- On September 5, the US Air Force made a public announcement
of the rogue B-52, which is quickly the subject of dispatches by Agence
France Presse, The Army Times, The Air Force Times, and other wire services
and web sites. Considerable press interest was generated, but, so far as
is known, not one member of Congress or presidential candidate of either
major party has lifted a finger to start the obviously imperative in-depth
investigation of the entire incident, including the half-dozen deaths which
may be a result of this incident. These deaths include:
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- Airman First Class Todd Blue, 20 years old, died Wyethville,
Virginia, September 12
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- Two people from Barksdale Air Force Base (names unknown),
died Caddo Parish, Louisiana, September 15
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- Airman Adam Barrs, aged 20, killed in an auto crash in
Minot, July 5
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- Air Force 1st Lt. Weston Kissel, 28, B-52 pilot assigned
to the 23rd Bomb Wing at the Minot base, killed in a motorcycle crash in
Tennessee (date unknown)
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- Air Force Capt. John Frueh (age unknown), found dead
in Skamania County, Washington state, September 2
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- On September 6, the Syrian News Agency SANA announced
that the Israeli Air Force had mounted an incursion into the air space
of northern Syria, and had jettisoned drop tanks and bombs along the Syrian-Turkish
border. The Turkish Foreign Ministry protested the objects that had fallen
on Turkish territory. The Israelis first denied, but later admitted, that
this illegal incursion, an ipso facto act of aggressive war, had taken
place. Middle East experts estimated that the Israelis had been probing
the Syrian and Iranian air defenses, but that they had been driven off
by the new and superior Russian air defense systems now fielded by these
two countries. This meant that the US-UK-Israeli model of air blitzkrieg
was now in crisis, just as the Israeli land blitzkrieg technique had been
defeated by Hezbollah in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. To cover up this
humiliating defeat, the Israelis later concocted a story that this had
been a successful air attack on a nuclear facility operating in Syria with
North Korean assistance; this silly tale was then retailed by neocon John
Bolton and also by warmonger Democrat Hillary Clinton in a candidates'
debate. But any bombing of a nuclear facility would have had to produce
a cloud of radioactive nuclear debris, which would have been registered
by Iran, Pakistan, India, Russia, China, Japan, or some other state in
the region. Since no such reports have ever come to light, it must be assumed
that the Israeli story was fabricated in an attempt to cover up the repulse
of the Israeli jets.
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- According to Madsen, the rogue B-52's cruise missiles
were very likely linked to the Israeli sneak attack: "WMR has learned
that a US attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional weapons was scheduled
to coincide with Israel's September 6 air attack on a reputed Syrian nuclear
facility in Dayr-az-Zwar, near the village of Tal Abyad, in northern Syria,
near the Turkish border. Israel's attack, code named OPERATION ORCHARD,
was to provide a reason for the US to strike Iran."
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- On Friday, September 7, Joseph Cirincione is interviewed
on the Bill Press morning show on Air America. Cirincione argues that transporting
nuclear missiles by air is an exceedingly rare occurrence. It emerges that
the US Air Force officially ceased air transport of nuclear weapons around
1968, partly as a result of crashes and lost bombs in the US, Spain, and
elsewhere.
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- Shortly after this, the US Air Force announced a highly
unusual stand-down of the entire USAF for Friday, September 14. The announced
goal was to have all units at all levels review operating procedures and
safeguards having to do with the handling of nuclear weapons.
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- On Sunday, September 23, the Washington Post published
a front page article above the fold which offered a sanitized version of
the rogue B-52 story. Even in this sanitized form, an article of this sort
would normally have been enough to trigger a congressional investigation,
with hearings and witnesses subpoenaed to testify under oath. But the Democratic
leadership has done nothing to force such a probe meaning in effect
that the Cheney clique has paid no real price for an attempt to start a
nuclear war! This active complicity of the Democratic Party in war and
genocide, typified by the neocon-warmonger candidacy of Mrs. Clinton (the
new Thatcher) mightily encourages the Cheney clique to have another go
at World War III.
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- On Monday, September 24, Wayne Madsen Report posted a
story which concluded that "the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129
Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on
August 30, was destined for the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base
in Louisiana. [] It is now apparent that the command and control breakdown,
reported as a BENT SPEAR incident to the Secretary of Defense and White
House, was not the result of command and control chain-of-command 'failures,'
but the result of a revolt and push back by various echelons within the
Air Force and intelligence agencies against a planned US attack on Iran
using nuclear weapons."
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- This report does not however mention the possibility
that one or more of the cruise missiles was destined to be used against
an American city, as prescribed by the Cheney Doctrine. A stealth cruise
missile fired at night would be almost undetectable; all the public would
see would be a nuclear fireball. Predictably, the target city would be
swarming with patsies and dupes carrying large suitcases or trunks with
"Al Qaeda" or "Osama Bin Laden" monograms. At that
point, Cheney would have the "suitcase bomb" pretext he so ardently
desires. Madsen also does not discuss the half-dozen people connected to
the Minot or Barksdale Air Bases who had perished under mysterious circumstances
between July and September 2007. But Madsen does stress one critical fact:
according to reliable sources, one of the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles
was reported missing in the course of the incident, and there was some
indication that it was never found: "WMR has been informed by a knowledgeable
source that one of the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles was, and still
may be, unaccounted for. In that case, the nuclear reporting incident would
have gone far beyond BENT SPEAR to a National Command Authority alert known
as EMPTY QUIVER, with the special classification of PINNACLE."
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- On October 2, David Swanson, an early critic of the Kennebunkport
Warning, issued a statement on Iran entitled "Leading Americans,"
with the signatures of a number of well-known personalities from politics,
entertainment, and the arts. This belated statement is of course to be
welcomed, but at the same time its weakness and narrowness, especially
if compared to the Kennebunkport Warning, must also be pointed out. As
soon as the Kennebunkport Warning had been published, Swanson challenged
the notion that there was "massive evidence" of a false flag
provocation by Cheney, to be used as a pretext to launch war with Iran.
This new statement, coming five weeks after the Kennebunkport Warning,
and thus too late to influence the rogue B-52 affair, now acknowledges
the danger of an attack, and urges US military personnel to refuse to obey
illegal orders. So far, so good. There is, however, no reference to the
rogue B-52 incident, in which Air Force personnel have apparently done
just what the statement urges. There is no reference to the question of
a false flag attack. There are warnings against a "preemptive"
attack on Iran, but Bush and Cheney, as well as their accomplice Mrs. Clinton,
are already presenting the attack on Iran as retaliatory, aimed at stopping
Iranian interference in Iran. Any US attack on Iran predicated on a false
flag terror attack inside the US (as noted by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his
Feb. 1 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) would be portrayed
as purely defensive. The Swanson statement therefore has an escape clause
in it big enough for Cheney to sail an aircraft carrier battle group through.
Instead of such an uncertain trumpet, we must state unequivocally: NO ATTACK
ON IRAN, SYRIA, PAKISTAN, SUDAN, LEBANON, VENEZUELA, NORTH KOREA or any
other country, including the United States, for any reason. False flag
events must be attributed to Cheney, and not to the governments or forces
accused and scapegoated by US-UK propaganda.
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- As for the scurrilous "Cosmos," "Colonel
Jenny Sparks," "Arabesque," and Michael Wolsey, to say nothing
of their comrade in arms, the Ford Foundation's favorite Chip Berlet, they
have no interest in doing anything to stop the new 9/11 and the threatened
war with Iran. Their sole focus is to harass and sabotage those who are
undertaking action in that regard and remarkably effective action
it has turned out to be, despite the exertions of the wreckers.
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- We urge all persons of good will to support, endorse,
and distribute the Kennebunkport Warning, which is fully as relevant today
as when it was issued. Above all, it is necessary to agitate in every way
possible to force a public investigation of the rogue B-52 case, which
allows us to address both the impeachment of the current executive branch
and blocking the planned war with Iran. In addition, all investigate journalists
are called upon to contribute to the findings of the research written herein.
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