Part 17,  LURE TO WAR: Bush Sucks Saddam Into Kuwait [Agee]
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  PRODUCING THE PROPER CRISIS
    A speech by former CIA official Philip Agee
      Transcribed from the Oct. 1990 issue of Z Magazine,

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                       (continuation)
For a month South Korean forces retreated, practically without
fighting, in effect, inviting the North Koreans to follow them
south. Meanwhile, Truman rushed in U.S. military forces under a
United Nations command, and he made a dramatic appeal to Congress
for an additional ten billion dollars, beyond requirements for 
Korea, for U.S. and European military expansion. Congress refused.

Truman then made a fateful decision. In September, 1950,
about three months after the conflict began, U.S., South Korean
and token forces from other countries, under the United Nations
banner, began to push back the North Koreans. Within three weeks 
the North Koreans had been pushed north to the border, the 38th
Parallel, in defeat. That would have been the end of the matter,
at least the military action, if the U.S. had accepted a Soviet
U.N. resolution for a cease-fire and U.N. supervised countrywide
elections. Truman, however, needed to prolong the crisis in order
to overcome Congressional and public resistance to his plans for
U.S. and European rearmament. Although the U.N. resolution under
which U.S. forces were fighting called only for "repelling" 
aggression from the north, Truman had another plan. 

In early October, U.S. and South Korean forces crossed the 38th
Parallel heading north, and rapidly advanced toward the Yalu River,
North Korea's border with China where only the year before, the 
communists had defeated the U.S.-backed Kuomintang regime. The 
Chinese communist government threatened to intervene, but Truman
had decided to overthrow the communist government in North Korea
and unite the country under the anti-communist South Korean 
dictatorship. 

As predicted, the Chinese entered the war in November and forced
the U.S. and its allies to retreat once again southward. The
following month, with the media full of stories and pictures of 
American soldiers retreating through snow and ice before hordes 
of advancing Chinese troops, Truman went on national radio,
declared a state of national emergency, and said what Bush's
remarks about "our way of life at stake" recalled. Truman mustered
all the hype and emotion he could, and said: "Our homes, our
nation, all the things that we believe in are in great danger.
This danger has been created by the rulers of the Soviet Union."
He also called again for massive increases in military spending
for U.S. and European forces, apart from needs in Korea.

Of course, there was no threat of war with the Soviet Union at all.
Truman attributed the Korean situation to the Russians in order 
to create emotional hysteria, a false threat, and to get the
leverage over Congress needed for approval of the huge amounts of
money that Congress had refused. As we know, Truman's deceit
worked. Congress went along in its so-called bi-partisan spirit,
like the sheep in the same offices today. 

The U.S. military budget more than tripled from thirteen billion
dollars in 1950 to forty-four billion in 1952, while U.S. military
forces doubled to 3.6 million. The Korean War continued for three
more years after it could have ended, with the final casualty
count in the millions, including thirty-four thousand U.S. dead
and more than one hundred thousand wounded. But in the United 
States, Korea made the PERMANENT war economy a reality, and we
have lived with it for forty years.   

What are the parallels with the current Gulf crisis? First, Korea
in June, 1950 was already a crisis of borders and unification
demands simply waiting for escalation. Second, less than six 
months before the war began, Secretary of State Dean Acheson 
publicly placed South Korea outside the U.S. defense perimeter in 
Asia, just as Assistant Secretary of State Kelly denied any U.S. 
defense commitment to Kuwait. Third, the U.S. obtained quick U.N.
justification for a massive military intervention, but only for
repelling the North Koreans, not for conquest of that country. 
Similarly, the U.N. resolutions call for defense of Saudi Arabia,
not for military conquest of Iraq -- contrary to the war mongers
who daily suggest that the U.S. may be "forced" to attack Iraq,
presumably without U.N. sanction or declaration of war by Congress.
Fourth, both crises came at a time of U.S. economic weakness with
a recession or even worse downturn threatening ahead. Fifth, and
we will probably see this with the Gulf, the Korean crisis was 
deliberately prolonged in order to establish military expenditures
as the motor of the U.S. economy. Proceeding in the same manner
now would be an adjustment to allow a continuation of what began 
in 1950. NSC-68 required a significant expansion of C.I.A. 
operations around the world in order to fight the secret political
Cold War -- a war against socialist economic programs, against
communist parties, against left social democrats, against
neutralism, against disarmament, against relaxation of tensions,
and against the peace offensive then being waged by the Soviet Union.

In Western Europe, through a vast network of political action and
propaganda operations, the C.I.A. was called upon to create in the
public mind the spectre of imminent Soviet invasion combined with
the intention of the European left to enslave the population under
Soviet dominion. By 1953, as a result of NSC-68, the C.I.A. had
major covert action programs underway in forty-eight countries,
consisting of propaganda, paramilitary, and political action
operations -- such as buying elections and subsidizing political
parties. Tbe bureacracy grew accordingly: in mid-1949, the covert
action arm of the C.I.A. had about three hundred employees and 
seven overseas field stations. Three years later, there were 
two thousand and eight hundred employees and forty-seven field 
stations. In the same period, the covert action budget grew from 
4.7 million dollars to 82 million dollars.

By the mid-1950's the name for the enemy was no longer just the 
Soviet Union. The wider concept of "International Communism" better
expressed the global view of secret conspiracies run from Moscow 
to undermine the U.S. and its allies. One previously secret
document from 1955 outlines the C.I.A.'s tasks: 

   "Create and exploit problems for International Communism.
    Discredit International Communism and reduce the strength of
    its parties and organization. Reduce International Communist
    control over any area of the world .... Specifically, such
    operations shall include any covert activities related to 
    propaganda, political action, economic warfare, preventive
    direct action (including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition,
    escape, and invasion and evacuation measures), subversion against
    hostile states or groups (including assistance to underground
    resistance movements, guerillas and refugee liberation groups,
    support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened
    countries of the free world), deception plans and all compatible
    activities necessary to accomplish the foregoing."
                      (to be continued)
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        The American Public is evidently in dire need of the truth, 
        for when the plutocracy feeds us sweet lies instead of the 
        bitter truth that would evoke remedial action by the People,
        then we are in peril of sinking inextricably into despotism.

        So, please post the episodes of this ongoing series to 
        computer bulletin boards, and post hardcopies in public places,
        both on and off campus. The need for concerned people, alerting
        their neighbors to overshadowing dangers, still exists, as it 
        did in the era of Paul Revere. That need is as enduring as
        society itself.
      
             John DiNardo

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