US revealing plans to invade Arab States in 1973

[Shadow]

Interesting articles:
BBC link (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3333995.stm)
CNN link (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/01/01/britain.nixon.ap/index.html)

A British intelligence committee report from December 1973 said America was so angry over Arab nations' earlier decision to cut oil production and impose an embargo on the United States that seizing oil-producing areas in the region was "the possibility uppermost in American thinking"

The committee of intelligence service directors calculated that the United States could guarantee sufficient oil supplies for themselves and their allies by taking oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, with total reserves of more than 28 billion tons.

The force required for the initial operation would be of the order of two brigades, one for the Saudi operation, one for Kuwait and possibly a third for Abu Dhabi. Two divisions would then be flown in but the report gives a warning that the occupation might have to last 10 years. It would alienate the Arab world and provoke a confrontation with the Soviet Union, though the JIC did not think that Moscow would use military force itself.

[Eisuke]

That's interesting. This news doesn't really suprise me though.

[Shadow]

Yeah, although it's 30 years late; it's pretty interesting that the media can actually release stuff this this. Kind of makes me wonder what the superpowers are actually planning right now...

[howabe]

Originally posted by Eisuke
This news doesn't really suprise me though.
Me either.

[senseiman]

Originally posted by Shadow
Yeah, although it's 30 years late; it's pretty interesting that the media can actually release stuff this this. Kind of makes me wonder what the superpowers are actually planning right now...

Given the fact that the US just invaded a major middle eastern country on what is generally conceded to have been false pretenses, whatever they must be planning in secret must truly be terrifying.

[noyhauser]

Yeah you gotta remember who was in power at the time.... Nixon, one paranoid bastard. He did all that kind of stuff cloak and dagger kind of stuff. In 1969 he did what was called a "madman" nuclear alert where he increased the readiness of the strategic nuclear forces to scaremonger the Russians to stop supporting the Vietnamese. It was kept from the public knowedge and even congress. Only last year did the information that he did this came out.

I honestly think that now there is far more accountability iand transperancy in government about issues like these. Media scrutiny is 100 times the level of what it was during the nixon era.. and that was pretty well because of the screwed up things Nixon did. Because of nixon the intelligence services like the NSA were barred from having a domestic focus at all (and still don't) and were heavily regulated by FISA. Nixon used the NSA to spy on ordinary Americans, (no we are nowhere as close now to what Nixon was doing... he was rounding up political dissidents in the USA and using the NSA to spy on them... today the NSA can only provide information through a circuitous process that includes the FISA court, and it must be done through a federal search warrant... nothing like that existed during Nixon's time)

Before Nixon there was no real leaks in the government. Then watergate came along and "deep throat". Now you can't go a day without a senior government official telling something. Although some are probably purposely done, many are not, like the David Kelly episode in the UK demonstrates. Because controlling information is nearly impossible these days, Governments have moved from trying to control the flow of information to spinning it, putting it in the best possible context. Thats a revolution of sorts.