by B. R. GOWANI
Ted Koppel PHOTO/WBRZ2
On September 12, 1970, Henry Kissinger the United States National Security Advisor (1969 – 1975) declared to the CIA director Richard Helms that,
“We will not let Chile go down the drain.”
“You did a great service to the west in overthrowing [President Salvador] Allende.”
In December 1970, Kissinger had ordered,
“A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”
The highest estimate for the people killed in that bombing was 800,000.
Cambodia, Laos, and specially, Vietnam suffered a great deal. Fred Branfman, who was there and wrote a book about it, had this to say about Kissinger’s role:
“Nearly 4 million tons of bombs were dropped on the people of Southeast Asia while Kissinger orchestrated the war, over 1 million tons more than was dropped during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson and twice the tonnage dropped on all of Europe and the entire Pacific theater in World War II. More than 1 million Indochinese perished and 10 million were wounded and made homeless.”
This criminal had a friend in the news media named Ted Koppel, one of the top persons in the electronic media for many decades. When he was ABC correspondent at the US State Department, he befriended Kissinger, who was, at that time, also the US Secretary of State (1973 – 1977). They are still friends. He once bemoaned that the US establishment was not utilizing his services.
“I’m proud to be a friend of Henry Kissinger. He is an extraordinary man. This country has lost a lot by not having him in a position of influence and authority.”
Kissinger was a mass murderer and so one can only deduce from Koppel’s lament that he missed the blood and dead bodies of brown and black peoples.
Once Koppel suggested that Kissinger should be sent to Russia to probe Putin’s thinking:
“And I’m going to say it up front, I don’t give advice obviously, I report on what others do. But I would send Henry Kissinger tonight to Moscow to talk to Putin and see what he can find out and decide where we should go from there.”
As if Putin was mentally an unstable person and needed treatment by this sick person! But then again, anyone refusing to join the US camp is right away assigned to the mad category.
Koppel, like Kissinger is totally pro-Israel – that is, blaming the occupied Palestinian victims rather than the occupying Israeli criminals. On his show, Chris Mathews told Koppel about Adelson with an expectation of a response.
Sheldon Adelson is very pro-Israeli. No surprise. He has a cause. He`s one to double-down with one candidate, because he believes Israel, the state of Israel, is in danger.
Koppel talked about other issues but kept mum on Adelson. But it was not so in 1990 when he had invited Nelson Mandela for a town-hall meeting at the City College of New York. Instead of saying sorry to Mandela on behalf of the United States because it was the US CIA on whose tip Mandela was arrested by the white minority government of South Africa, Koppel let loose some pro-Israel dogs on Mandela. Why? What was Mandela’s crime? Mandela’s crime was that he had supported the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom. (Mandela spent 27 years ion prison.)
South Africa’s Nelson Mandela with Cuba’s Revolutionary Leader Fidel Castro PHOTO/United States Hypocrisy
One of the jobs Koppel was best at is scaring the hell out of his audience on his show NightLine by coming up with some or other scary idea/plot which the US enemies must be hatching to harm the US. The show ended in 2005 after 25 years. This time Koppel is back with a book Lights Out.
In an interview he gave to Gwen Iffil of PBS TV, he said:
“We are accustomed to cyber-attacks that result in grand larceny. We are accustomed to cyber-attacks that amount to huge vacuuming of intelligence information.
What we have never had is a cyber-attack that amounts to a weapon of mass destruction. And my point is that, if someone succeeds in taking down one of our power grids — and the Russians and the Chinese can do it and maybe the Iranians and the North Koreans — it would be devastating.”
As if the US is without any plan to retaliate if – it’s a big IF – it was really attacked in such a manner. Anything is possible, but then again almost all (which are very few in comparison to the US actions) the actions against the US are nothing vis-a-vis the US crimes.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com