What about possible misunderstandings, accidents or even deliberate "false-flag" operations designed precisely to engineer such an incident?
These might be carried out as "false flag" operations by local Shiite insurgents concentrated in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, but nobody would be fooled and the risks of escalation to large-scale conflict with Iran would be significant.
He ridiculed what he called the "personal choice" argument that government should stay out of people's kitchens, saying it was being promulgated by "AstroTurf false-flag operations" that are really supported by the soda industry.
His business dealings began to sour soon after the financial crisis hit, and regulators say that from the moment he took over Proton, he began looting it to prop up flagging operations.
The intelligence community's report makes a similar point, noting, "Russian influence campaigns are multifaceted and designed to be deniable because they use a mix of agents of influence, cutouts, front organizations, and false-flag operations".
When the exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky was still alive, officials would often claim he was behind various deaths as "false flag" operations that were made to appear as though they had been sponsored by the Kremlin; now he is dead, the claim is that the CIA or other western intelligence agencies were responsible.
But latecomers to the restructuring game, such as Mitsubishi Motors, the car company recently rescued by DaimlerChrysler, and Shiseido, a cosmetics company, have fallen into the red (in Shiseido's case, for the first time in 55 years).Overall, operating profits appear to be growing at a faster pace than sales, suggesting that companies may at last be turning round their flagging operations.
The government's case rests on a set of documents (mostly Word files) that describe in gory detail preparations for the coup (codenamed Sledgehammer), including false-flag operations to set the stage for the takeover and a list of cabinet members to be appointed.
Appearing under the heading "The Art of Deception", tactics discussed include "'false flag operations' (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting 'negative information' on various forums".
Thursday's set, gratefully, had no mention of any false-flag operations.
