'Operation Against the Moon' mentioned at Pentagon News Briefings August 7th and 20th, 2002

[jose v]

Maybe someone can ask Richard Hoagland if he recalls the mention of an "operation against the moon," not just once but twice, by General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a news briefing with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on August 7, 2002. Was it a joke, or a slip of the tongue, or making a coded reference, or was Myers just using an interesting analogy?
Rumsfeld mentioned it a few times again during a news briefing on August 20, 2002. (See links below.)




DoD News Briefing - Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers
Wednesday, August 07, 2002 - 2 p.m. EDT

(snip) Myers: I'm just -- I'm just saying that if -- I mean the way things are portrayed in these articles simply haven't occurred in front of me, okay? And I can't talk about our operational plans or what our advice is, and so forth. But you can imagine if we were planning an operation against the moon, that we would have a lot of discussion about how best to do that and so forth. So there's obviously going to be discussion about how we go against the moon -- (snip)

Updated link to the 8-7-02 News Briefing. The entire transcript is interesting to skim through.

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=3578

Thirteen days later, on Aug. 20, 2002, Rumsfeld jokingly reminded reporters of what General Myers said about the moon a few days earlier, and then proceeded to mention "acting against the moon" three more times. However, this time Rumsfeld made clear this was an analogy about Iraq.

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(snip) Rumsfeld: We'll go to Dick Myers' "the moon." (Laughter.) Remember? Were you here for that when he -- theoretically, the --

Q: What makes a preemptive strike legal under international law, in your eyes?

Rumsfeld: Well, I'm not a lawyer, Pam. You know that. Don't give me that --

Q: Okay, skip the international law part. What makes a preemptive strike okay, acceptable?

Rumsfeld: Well, I would make the case that there are a whole series of things that ought to be looked at, and that there isn't a single one that's determinative, and that what one would have to do is to evaluate those and weigh them.

And the construct I would suggest would be what are the benefits -- what are the advantages and disadvantages of not acting? And of course, the advantage of not acting against the moon would be that no one could say that you acted; they would say, "Isn't that good, you didn't do anything against the moon." The other side of the coin, of not acting against the moon in the event that the moon posed a serious threat, would be that you'd then suffered a serious loss and you're sorry after that's over. And in weighing the things, you have to make a judgment; net, do you think that you're acting most responsibly by avoiding the threat that could be characterized -- X numbers of people dying, innocent people -- and it's that kind of an evaluation one would have to make. (snip)

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=3595

[tranceman]

very interesting that they see the moon as a threat. Is there something they know that we don't know...like maybe there is intelligent life on the moon they don't want us to know about.