Operation Vigilant Shield, running from Nov 12-18, 2008, is much too big to ignore, as it will link multiple concurrent exercises including USSTRATCOM Global Lightning 09, Bulwark Defender 09, Canada Command Determined Dragon, California National Guard Vigilant Guard, and State of California Golden Guardian. Unfortunately, according to USNORTHCOM, specific information about Vigilant Shield scenarios will not be available for weeks, permitting less time to analyze the situation.

Once an urban area has been designated an exercise target, that designation increases its odds of actually experiencing a future false flag attack. It takes considerable resources to corrupt an area, and false flag insiders like to get a return on investment. Since Houston, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, and Phoenix have already been “prepared” in prior exercises, they remain especially vulnerable. In addition, Vigilant Shield will probably add new areas in northern California to the potential target list.

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Iran rounded up hundreds of Arabs to help the United States counter al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 attack after they crossed the border from Afghanistan, a former Bush administration official said Tuesday. Many were expelled, Hillary Mann Leverett said, and the Iranians made copies of almost 300 of their passports.

The copies were sent to Kofi Annan, then the secretary-general of the United Nations, who passed them to the United States, and U.S. interrogators were given a chance by Iran to question some of the detainees, Leverett said in an Associated Press interview.

New evidence from former U.S. officials reveals that the George W. Bush administration failed to adopt any plan to block the retreat of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders from Afghanistan to Pakistan in the first weeks after 9/11.

That failure was directly related to the fact that top administration officials gave priority to planning for war with Iraq over military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

As a result, the United States had far too few troops and strategic airlift capacity in the theatre to cover the large number of possible exit routes through the border area when bin Laden escaped in late 2001.

It is very unusual that a prominent — and controversial– 9/11 witness would die only days before the release of NIST’s report on WTC7 and shortly after a firestorm erupted over his testimony that he heard explosions inside the building prior to collapse of either tower and that there were dead bodies in the building’s blown-out lobby.

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