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PETER'S NEW Y0RK, July 22, 2011--It was a boiling hot day today in New York, as I turned my attention to the latest news hitting the computer screen: Oslo, the capital city of Norway, is bombed. A Reuters story attempted to sum up the essence of what transpired. Reuters reporters Walter Gibbs and Alister Doyle made sure the public was fed the official meme as speedily as possible: "There was no clear claim of responsibility," they wrote, "and while the attacks appeared to bear some, but by no means all, of the hallmarks of an Islamist militant assault, analysts said it was too early to draw any conclusions."
For many observers, however, the attacks must have smacked more of "payback" than Islamic extremism. Norway had ended its three month commitment to air strikes in conjunction with the NATO bombardment of Libya. It was about to substantially reduce its exposure to the effort. According to a Los Angeles Times story, "Norway, whose small air force has carried out a disproportionate 10% of the strikes with six fighter planes, last month became the first country to set an end date to its role.... Norway's Defense Ministry said it planned to reduce its contribution to four fighters and to withdraw entirely by Aug. 1."
Such a move would be a visible blow to NATO cohesion, while noticeably undercutting the intensity of the bombardment. A clear message had to be sent that a defection from the cause would not go unpunished. At the same time, the predictable but rarely, if ever, substantiated meme that Muslim extremists committed the act, would serve to generate public pressure to keep Norway in the fold.
This strategy, however clever it may seem, did not work in Spain, when the 2004 bombing of passenger trains, once again blamed on an extremist group by officialdom, provoked public outrage against the then-current administration and unexpectedly swept into office a left-of-center replacement in elections that took place only days after the attack.
It will be interesting to see Norway's reaction in terms of the country's stated intention to reduce support for the UN/NATO terror strikes against the Libyan population.
Gibbs's and Doyle's statement could just as well have been written, "There was no clear claim of responsibility and while the attacks appeared to bear some, but by no means all, of the hallmarks of a false flag assault by U.S., British and Israeli intelligence services, analysts said it was too early to draw any conclusions."
