New Chomsky Interview: "U.S. Is A Leading Terrorist State"

[The_Baron]

Approved by the Joint Chiefs. Okay, what exactly was approved? An Implementation Study? A Feasability Study? Mission Tasking? Order of Battle? War Order? Operations Order?
Saying the JCS approved it doesn't say what action was approved. While I have no doubt we've had Chairmen of the JCS who've been fundamentally evil, I do know that they're universally inclined to covering their asses. Did JCS approve a Mission Development Team and then rescind the order? Did they approve the actual deployment of personel and materiel assets?
As I said before, I don't have the documents Bamford used and I seriously doubt he has all of the documentation involved in the operation development. Just as an example, when the 1/509 Airborne Combat Team deployed to Germany for their winter training exercies in 1982, I was exiled to the S2(Intelligence) shop for several days. The Batallion secure document index listed something like 14,500 separate pages of formal, written documentation. That was just the stuff that was classified high enough that it had to be stored or destroyed under direct supervision of the Bn. S2. Counting personel rosters, equipment maintanence orders, shipment orders and all of the rest of the paper crap needed for a batallion sized military operation, there was literally a stack of paper four or five sheets wide and over six feet tall. Several hundred pounds worth. And this was for an operation that takes place yearly and is prescheduled literally a decade in advance.
If you've got a list of Bamford's actual resources, I'd like to take a look at them.
As an aside, in 1983, there was an operation approved by the JCS as well as NATO High Command and the liaisons of non-affiliated nations to include the UN's Security Council.
I'm not certain of the operation's name though I believe it was , "Pipecap Racer". This operation mandated the deployment of a NATO aircraft sortie of four aircraft to deliver two B-61(Mod-7) set for yield onto Caserme Ederle, the SETAF Basic Load Storage Area and each of the Nike missile sites in northern Italy. This was to be followed on by a B-61(Mod-7) set to the highest yield fused for air burst to disperse the, "surviving infrastructural remnants", after the first bombs. That's something like 26 10kt nukes dropped at five to seven minute intervals in and around Vicenza and Verona, Italy. These were to be followed by 13(not sure how many missile sites there were so don't hold me to the exact number of warheads) 340+/-kt nukes dropped as air bursts five to seven minutes after the last of the ground bursts went off. Their purpose was to "sterilize" the NATO/SETAF facilities to prevent them from providing equipment or intelligence to Soviet forces in the event of an invasion. That's almost fifty low to medium yield nuclear bombs that were to be dropped on Italian population centers. This was not only approved by the Italian government, but was actually mandated by them. They were willing to accept the losses from the operation in question rather than risk the invading Soviet forces aquiring the equipment and personel assigned to those sites.
While I've never seen the Operation Plans, I have very little doubt there are equivalent operations laid out for every strategic military facility in the continental US. Given a government that will advocate the nuking of one of its allies as well as its own troops to prevent compromise by opposition forces, I have no doubt that somewhere in that government there are people who advocate lesser acts of aggression in order to precipitate a military action against an opposition force that's perceived to be developing a larger and more virulent threat.
Regardless, approval by the JCS doesn't say much more than somewhere in the E-Ring of the Pentagon, a signature went onto a piece of paper. What that paper was actually proposing is still up for grabs. For whatever it's worth, organizations such as the Rand Foundation are awarded tens of millions of dollars a year to do nothing but play, "what if", and then send their what-ifs off to some Colonel or General to develop a counter strategy. It's part of the nature of government since man first banded his clans and tribes into nations.
I'm not saying Bamford is wrong, he's very possibly right. I'm saying I don't have enough information to make a judgement as to exactly what it is that he's "exposed" to the people of the United States.