By Jeff Gates

In unconventional warfare, beliefs are deployed as weapons by those waging war by way of deception. Does anyone recall Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda? Iraq’s biological weapons laboratories? The Iraqi meetings in Prague with Al Qaeda? Iraq’s purchases of yellowcake uranium from Niger?

All were alleged true but later proven false or, worse, fabricated. Yet all were widely believed. In combination, those beliefs induced a consensus to wage war in Iraq in response to a mass murder on U.S. soil.

The battlefield has shifted. Ground warfare is secondary. Likewise for airstrikes, naval support and covert operations. Physical operations are all downstream of information operations. False beliefs come first. Psyops precede missiles, and bombs. Hardware ranks a distant third. Foremost are the consensus shapers who manipulate perceptions until a critical mass of phony intelligence is reached. Then comes war.

People are preeminent. Wars are won by those skilled at creating consensus opinions. Where is modern-day warfare waged? Not on the ground; nor in the air or on the seas. The shared mindset is this combatant’s theater of operations. Their battlefield is the shared field of consciousness. Deceit is not new to warfare. What’s new is the technology that enables psyops on a global scale.

The military remains subordinate to politics. But politics are subordinate to those skilled at manipulating consensus beliefs. Decision-making is no better than the information on which decisions depend. Likewise for decision-makers. That’s why U.S. lawmakers have long been targeted by the Israel lobby. [See How the Israel Lobby Took Control of the Congress.]

With law-making dependent on information, these mindset manipulators can operate atop the chain of command. In a system of law reliant on informed choice, self-governance can readily be replaced in plain sight by manipulated beliefs and consensus opinions. Thus the motivation for media dominance by Zionists in the U.S., Canada, Germany and elsewhere.

When waged across four key areas, such “Information Operations” can displace democratic lawmaking with a predetermined agenda. Here’s a quick look at each area: geopolitical, strategic, operational and tactical..

Duplicity in Plain Sight

The geopolitical realm is where the “framing” of future conflicts first emerges. The Clash of Civilizations first appeared in 1993 as an article in Foreign Affairs. Three years later, when this thematic framing emerged as a book, more than 100 NGOs were prepared to promote its conflict-of-opposites theme as a sequel to the Cold War—and a prequel to a “global war on terrorism.” That consensus belief emerged just as A Clean Break appeared with its proposal to “secure the realm” (Israel) by removing Saddam Hussein.

Strategically, to evoke a war requires a plausible Evil Doer and a credible provocation. The global branding of the Taliban emerged in the “field” in March 2001 with destruction of the ancient Buddhas at Bamiyan. Widely portrayed as a “cultural Holocaust,” that high-profile act put Afghanistan’s previously obscure Taliban on everyone’s list as certifiably evil. The missing piece: the mass murder of September 11, 2001.

Strongly provoked emotions facilitate the displacement of facts with what “the mark” can be induced to believe—particularly in the presence of Evil Doer pre-staging. The combination of (a) evocation (religious extremism), (b) provocation (911) and (c) association (the Axis of Evil) enhanced the capacity to deceive—fueled by false reports of Iraqi WMD and even ties between the secular Saddam and the fundamentalists of Al Qaeda (they detested each other).

When waging war on the public’s shared mindset, the power of association is one of the most effective weapons. Thus the potent imagery of the peaceful Buddhas at Bamiyan destroyed by violent extremists. Thus too the associative impact of Colin Powell’s appearance at the U.N. Security Council when his credibility was deployed—like a weapon—to spread lies about Iraq’s biological weapons. Not only was Powell “the mark” – so were the U.N. and the U.S.

Operationally, by the time the U.S. was induced to invade Iraq, 100-plus Israeli Mossad agents had been operating in Mosul for more than a decade. Soon after the invasion, several moderate clerics were murdered, enhancing the capacity to provoke a conflict-of-opposites between extremist Shias and more moderate Sunnis, a key to evoking the destabilizing insurgency.

As Information Operations proceed at the geopolitical, strategic and operational level, tactical deceit and misdirection provide key support. A recent provocation—the invasion of Gaza—was scheduled by Tel Aviv between Christmas and the inauguration of a U.S. President who promised change. That timing ensured minimal capacity to criticize.

As critics of Israeli policy emerged in universities, the Anti-Defamation League and its international network mounted an intimidation campaign on a high-profile campus that silenced academics worldwide. [See Treason in Plain Sight?]

To succeed, Information Operations require both deceit and denial of access to the facts required for informed consent. How else can anyone explain the perception that the Zionist state is a democracy—and even an ally?

Democracy assumes that all of us collectively are smarter than any of us individually. Thus the need for an unbiased media to provide the facts with which we can reason together. Thus, in turn, the need for pro-Israeli dominance of mainstream media by those skilled at waging war by way of deception. Thus what we now see portrayed in that domain: a world turned inside out where the aggressor is portrayed as victim and the predator as prey.

With consensus beliefs the upstream target, democracy becomes the downstream casualty. To protect the informed consent essential to liberty requires that those waging war on our shared mindset be made transparent. This method of warfare is ancient; only the means are modern.

The common source of this duplicity remains unknown to the public. There lies the strategic role for online media unadorned by conspiracy theories that obscure the clarity required to wage this battle with confidence.

– An attorney, educator and former counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, Jeff Gates has advised governments of 35 nations. He is author of Guilt By Association, Democracy at Risk and The Ownership Solution. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.criminalstate.com