Conspiracy theories

It is, perhaps, human nature that conspiracy theories abound. Simple explanations for earth-shattering events never seem quite enough; there has to be something bigger behind the scenes to give the big events their proper weight.

I'm reminded of the story that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor before the Japanese attacked and did nothing to stop it, calculating that America needed a shock like that to push the then-isolationist country into the war. (Read more here.) Or the various theories that claim the Bush administration was either aware of or behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks. (Read more here.)

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, journalist Seymour Hersh reports a story that some will no doubt include in these same ranks of conspiracy theories. But Hersh isn't a wild-eyed whack-job; he has a long and respected history of publishing truths that other reporters are either incapable of or unwilling to report. It's unlikely that this alleged conspiracy is fictional.

What Hersh reports is astonishing. According to his sources, the Israeli government plotted with higher-ups at the White House and the U.S. State Department to invade Lebanon and make war on Hezbollah, months before the recent military action. With these plans in hand, the Israelis only had to wait for the right pretext to go to war. It's FDR and Pearl Harbor all over again, except this really happened.

What did the U.S. get out of this? For Condi Rice and the State Department, the pending attack was "a way to strengthen the Lebanese government." For the White House (re: VP Cheney and his neocon cohorts; the President is apparently a non-factor when it comes to most international business), this was a test for their planned upcoming attack on Iran -- "the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran," as stated in the article.

And here's the thing. Despite the cries and uproar from the right-wing media, Hersh isn't a conspiracy theorist. He's a solid, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, responsible for exposing the My Lai massacre, the Abu Ghraib scandal, and other important stories. If Hersh says something is true, it probably is.

The fact that you probably haven't heard much about Hersh's report says something about the timidity of our country's mainstream media. This is an important story, global manipulation on a grand scale, and it deserves to be heard. Why isn't The New York Times reporting this story? Why do you have to go overseas (to the BBC and similar media) to find out about this? Our media ignoring this story is a conspiracy in and of itself.

Let's also not gloss over the most important part of this story: Cheney's White House is already planning an attack on Iran -- just as they planned an attack on Iraq long before 9/11 and the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. The 9/11 attacks were just the pretext that Cheney and his pals needed to give the green light to their Iraq invasion plans, just as the Israelis used the pretext of the kidnapping of two soldiers as justification to invade Lebanon. It's probably just a matter of time before some minor event serves as the trigger for the Bush administration's next war.

Makes you wonder about all those other conspiracy theories, doesn't it?

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.