Have you ever heard about Operation Northwoods and why aren't history students learning about it?

Question

It was a 1962 draft drawn up by the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon that discussed staging terror attacks against Americans, including blowing up a plane, blowing up a military ship and setting gunmen loose in US cities, all as a pretext for war with Cuba, who would obviously be blamed for the attacks. Before you neocon hacks start screaming conspiracy theory and calling it urban legend, you should know that the existence of this program is beyond dispute, part of the National Archives. Kind of makes you look at things in a different light.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662&page=1
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf - the actual documents

Show me the evidence that Kennedy was assassinated by communists, and who would be the other. All your "evidence" of a communist plot in JFK's death was fabricated by the CIA's Mexico City office.

Answer 1

I hadn't heard of this, but I'm not surprised. It should be brought out of the shadows. Unfortunately, precious little history is actually being taught in our schools right now so the best place to teach about this is on television.

Two presidents assassinated by communists? I assume John Kennedy was one, but who was the other? Garfield was assassinated by a disappointed office seeker. Reagan was shot by a madman in love with an actress. Lincoln was shot by an actor seeking revenge for a failed war. I don't remember who else was assassinated.

Answer 2

It was a draft. It was never done as an exercise. There are thousand of drafts and contingency plans in the files of the Pentagon. One that I can recall was "Operation Graphic Hand" which called for the military takeover of the postal system if the postal workers went on strike.
It's called "crystal balling" or "spit balling". Some plans are there and are used. How do you think our aircraft find targets so quickly after we commence offensive military operations? It's because we have every target already located on aerial navigation maps. All this before current GPS technology came into vogue.
Hell, we even had a "secret government" setup. At least that's what the tin foil hat brigade calls it. It was placed underneath a resort in West Virginia and was designed to hold the Federal government together and functioning after an atomic attack.
It doesn't make me see things in a different light. It just makes me shake my head when I come to realize how little people know about military contingency planning and threat assessment. It also confirms to me that no member of the tin foil hat brigade should ever be in charge of target selection.

Answer 3

I've heard about it. I think it's horrible, but I can understand their desperation, and would tolerate the version of the plan that involved an unmanned ship being falsely bombed. Cuba really was a catastrophic threat at one time, and let's not forgot that we've had TWO presidents assassinated by communists out of the four that have been assassinated- albeit one AFTER Operation Northwoods, but that only confirmed their fears. I don't think it was necessary, because communism would inevitably implode on its own after butchering 100,000,000 of its own people and destroying its own economies, as always happens without fail due to the fact it's an ignorant, inherently flawed system of government. Nice overgeneralization about "neocon hacks", btw.