New Report Says U.S. Intel Warned White House & NATO of Virus Outbreak in Wuhan in November

New Report Says U.S. Intel Warned White House & NATO of Virus Outbreak in Wuhan in November; Meanwhile, Neocons & National Security State Hacks Stoke China Hostility Over Coronavirus for Their Own Agenda

By Natalie Baldwin /Natylie's Place

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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hose of you who read my last book may recall coverage of a Cold War era group called The Committee on the Present Danger. It was a lobbying group started by a gaggle of neoconservatives during the Ford administration with the goal of spreading falsehoods about the Soviet Union involving violations of nuclear treaties that had been negotiated by the Nixon administration, led by Henry Kissinger. The neocons used defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld to convince president Ford to take these baseless accusations seriously for a time.

Fast forward to 2019 and The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) gets revived like Night of the Living Dead. Long-time neocon, PNAC veteran and all-around peddler of nonsense Frank Gaffney set up shop last year with Sinophobe Steve Bannon. According to an article by Dave DeCamp at Antiwar.com:

Members of the CPD refer to China as the greatest "existential threat" to the US. "The United States is likely to face in the foreseeable future a determined and aggressive superpower adversary, prepared and willing to use force, as well as nonmilitary forms of warfare, to defeat this country decisively," reads one of the CPD’s "guiding principles." Another principle says, "There is no hope of coexistence with China as long as the Communist Party governs the country." The Covid-19 pandemic is the perfect opportunity for this group to exploit the fears of Americans and push for a more hawkish policy towards China.

Steve Bannon played an influential role in President Trump’s campaign and the early days of the administration and pushed hard for tariffs on Chinese goods during his short-lived role as chief strategist. Bannon’s China ambitions do not stop with the trade war. "I think ultimate success is regime change [in China], and I realize in that regard I’m considered a radical," Bannon told NPR in May 2019.

Bannon has a podcast titled "Bannon’s War Room." Back in January, in the early days of the outbreak, Bannon changed the title to "War Room: Pandemic." In the show, Bannon rails against China’s response to the virus. Bannon frequently refers to the pandemic as a "Biological Chernobyl" and has said there will be a "Nuremberg-type trial" in Wuhan. Last week, Bannon appeared on Fox Business News and said, "Blood is on the hands of the Chinese Communist Party."

As I explained in a recent post, there is nothing constructive to be gained from this kind of vilifying rhetoric which has historically set the stage for escalation and even war. After all, in order to destroy someone you first must demonize and dehumanize them and those doing the demonizing usually play fast and loose with the facts while exploiting genuine concerns.

The "casus belli" if you will this time is China intentionally being deceptive about the coronavirus. In recent weeks, the usual politicians who can be counted on to beat the war drums every time have been out in full force about the dastardly China and its alleged partner in crime the WHO, exaggerating China's initial mistakes to excuse our own government's foot-dragging and lack of preparedness.

It has just come out via an article in the Times of Israel that American intelligence had discovered - through monitoring of internal Chinese communications - that a pandemic threat was possible and had passed this information onto the IDF, NATO, and the White House back in NOVEMBER.

US intelligence agencies alerted Israel to the coronavirus outbreak in China already in November, Israeli television reported Thursday.

According to Channel 12 news, the US intelligence community became aware of the emerging disease in Wuhan in the second week of that month and drew up a classified document.

...US intelligence informed the Trump administration, “which did not deem it of interest,” but the report said the Americans also decided to update two allies with the classified document: NATO and Israel, specifically the IDF.

...Last week, ABC News reported that US intelligence officials were warning about the coronavirus in a report prepared in November by the American military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence.

It was unclear if that was the same report that was said to have been shared with Israel.

The ABC report was denied by the NCMI.

It does appear that China dropped the ball in the early days of the outbreak in that country, but the fact of the matter is that our executive branch of government did not take the potential of a pandemic - something other agencies had discussed and tried to better prepare for - seriously. Trying to point the finger solely at China for our shortcomings is not much better than the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party cooking up Russiagate to cover and distract for its own failures. And it's about as reckless.

Furthermore, there is an active propaganda campaign at work in the State Department as publicly admitted by Daniel Blumenthal during recent testimony to Congress. Blumenthal co-wrote the propaganda blueprint with Nicholas Eberstadt. Both work at the neoconservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. Blumenthal was in charge of the Pentagon's China operations during the Bush II administration. During his testimony Blumenthal stated his desire to go back to a Cold War style propaganda offensive, citing the NGO's and media outlets that the national security state has at its disposal to manipulate the narrative. See video below.

Trump’s regime-change-the-WHO strategy follows a blueprint laid out by former Bush administration official @DAlexBlumenthal, who is calling for “political warfare” against China and deployment of State Department “information warriors”. Watch my latest: pic.twitter.com/wSF6U01zuZ

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) April 14, 2020

I'm not so naive as to believe that the Chinese government is filled with angels. I'm not against an intellectually honest critique of what China may have done wrong so the world can learn from it for the future. However, it's hard to undertake such a critique when so many who are given a platform by our corporate media to discuss China are linked to the national security state or are dangerous ideologues like the neocons. Moreover, there's an old saying about criticizing the splinter in your neighbor's eye while ignoring the log in your own. Did the Chinese government force Trump to not take the crisis seriously once the information was finally out in January?

Remember, neocons are not your friends and just because they are not as visible as they were during the Bush II administration does not mean they have gone away. Neocons are always warmongers and anything coming from them must be viewed with suspicion. Their very ideology necessitates the U.S. having to have an enemy in order to have a pure and meaningful identity since they believe there must always be a battle between good and evil. They must have a bogeyman for Americans to fear so they can maintain power. The bogeyman may be Russia, terrorism, or China. Neocons are imperialists who believe that the United States must have "full spectrum dominance" over the world - because they inherently represent good. For a refresher on who the neocons are, what they think, and the roots of their warped philosophy, watch the 2004 BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear.