More Neo-Cons for Giuliani
Republican presidential candidate and current front-runner, Rudi Giuliani, has named seven more people, including four prominent neo-conservatives, to his already-neocon-dominated foreign policy team. The neo-conservatives include Ruth Wedgwood of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies; “terrorism analyst” and free-lance writer often published in the Weekly Standard and the National Review Online, Thomas Joscelyn; and two “scholars” at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and protégés of Richard Perle – Michael Rubin and David Frum (with whom Perle wrote the ultra-hawkish “An End to Evil” in 2004). Combined with such incumbent team members as Norman Podhoretz, Martin Kramer, Daniel Pipes, and Robert Kasten, the team increasingly resembles the cheer-leading squad for the U.S. section of the international Bibi Netanyahu fan club.
...
In any event, Wedgwood, who worked with Perle on Rumsfeld’s Defense Policy Board and more recently published an impassioned defense of Paul Wolfowitz’s promotion of his girlfriend at the World Bank, is listed as an international law and organizations adviser, while Joscelyn, who is associated with ultra-Straussian Claremont Institute and holds a B.A. in economics from the University of Chicago, will act as Giuliani’s “senior terrorism advisor,” (presumably in place of the mayor’s old sidekick, the scandal-ridden former police commissioner, Bernard Kerik). Despite a total lack of foreign-policy-making experience, Frum, who also writes regularly for the National Review Online, will be a “senior foreign policy adviser,” while Rubin, who worked on the Iran and Iraq desks at the Pentagon under Douglas Feith before being sent to Baghdad after the invasion, will act as both the “senior Iran and Turkey Advisor,” as well as a member of the “Middle East Advisory Board.” (Like Rubin, a fifth new member of Giuliani’s team, John Agresto, also worked for Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) where he was assigned to rebuild the Iraqi higher education system, a job at which he reportedly failed utterly, as indicated by the name of his recent book, ‘Mugged by Reality.’ It’s comforting to note that he has been made a member of Giuliani’s “Iraqi (sic) Advisory Board.”) ...
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Sunday, October 07, 2007
David Wurmser: a neocon unbowed ... believe that regime change in Iran - and its proxy Syria - should be a key goal of US policy
David Wurmser: a neocon unbowed | Posted by Toby Harnden on 04 Oct 2007 at 23:33
Will the United States go to war with Iran? That's the question many here in the US and in Europe are asking as reports appear weekly of military plans and preparations. One of the best placed people to answer is David Wurmser, until very recently Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East adviser and a notorious "neoconservative".
The caricature of Wurmser as a wild-eyed Zionist madman hell bent on fomenting conflagration in the Middle East is more than a touch far fetched. But he does believe that regime change in Iran - and its proxy Syria - should be a key goal of US policy. And, if necessary, American military power should be used to achieve it.
...
On Iraq, Wurmser - a prime mover in the movement towards war in 2003 - was unrepentant, stating that "in counterfactual history one has to remember what would've happened if we hadn't done it". The effects of Saddam's demise in Libya and Lebanon, he said, had been positive while Iraq had become a magnet for al-Qa'eda, where the US was now in the process of defeating it.
Will the United States go to war with Iran? That's the question many here in the US and in Europe are asking as reports appear weekly of military plans and preparations. One of the best placed people to answer is David Wurmser, until very recently Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East adviser and a notorious "neoconservative".
The caricature of Wurmser as a wild-eyed Zionist madman hell bent on fomenting conflagration in the Middle East is more than a touch far fetched. But he does believe that regime change in Iran - and its proxy Syria - should be a key goal of US policy. And, if necessary, American military power should be used to achieve it.
...
On Iraq, Wurmser - a prime mover in the movement towards war in 2003 - was unrepentant, stating that "in counterfactual history one has to remember what would've happened if we hadn't done it". The effects of Saddam's demise in Libya and Lebanon, he said, had been positive while Iraq had become a magnet for al-Qa'eda, where the US was now in the process of defeating it.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Is neoconservatism a Jewish movement? Is it “anti-Semitic” to say so?
September 18, 2003 | Thinking About Neoconservatism | By Kevin MacDonald
Over the last year, there’s been a torrent of articles on neoconservatism raising (usually implicitly) some vexing issues: Are neoconservatives different from other conservatives? Is neoconservatism a Jewish movement? Is it “anti-Semitic” to say so?
...
Over the last year, there’s been a torrent of articles on neoconservatism raising (usually implicitly) some vexing issues: Are neoconservatives different from other conservatives? Is neoconservatism a Jewish movement? Is it “anti-Semitic” to say so?
...
For example, it is certainly true that the neocons’ foreign policy fits well with a plausible version of Jewish interests, but is arguably only tenuously related to the interests of the U.S. Also, neocons oppose the isolationism of important sections of traditional American conservatism. And neocon attitudes on issues like race and immigration differ profoundly from those of traditional mainstream conservatives — but resemble closely the common attitudes of the wider American Jewish community.
Count me among those who accept that the Jewish commitment of leading neoconservatives has become a critical influence on U.S. policies, and that the effectiveness of the neoconservatives is greatly enhanced by their alliance with the organized Jewish community. In my opinion, this conclusion is based on solid data and reasonable inferences. But like any other theory, of course, it is subject to reasoned discussion and disproof
....Current key leaders include an astonishing number of individuals well placed to influence the Bush Administration: (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis Libby, Elliott Abrams, David Wurmser, Abram Shulsky), interlocking media and thinktankdom (Bill Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Stephen Bryen, John Podhoretz, Daniel Pipes), and the academic world (Richard Pipes, Donald Kagan).
As the neoconservatives lost faith in radical leftism, several key neocons became attracted to the writings of Leo Strauss, a classicist and political philosopher at the University of Chicago. Strauss had a very strong Jewish identity and viewed his philosophy as a means of ensuring Jewish survival in the Diaspora. As he put it in a 1962 Hillel House lecture, later republished in Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker:
“I believe I can say, without any exaggeration, that since a very, very early time the main theme of my reflections has been what is called the ‘Jewish ‘Question’.”
Strauss has become a cult figure—the quintessential rabbinical guru with devoted disciples.
While Strauss and his followers have come to be known as neoconservatives — and have even claimed to be simply “conservatives”— there is nothing conservative about their goals. This is most obviously the case in foreign policy, where they are attempting to rearrange the entire Middle East in the interests of Israel. But it is also the case with domestic policy, where acceptance of rule by an aristocratic elite would require a complete political transformation. Strauss believed that this aristocracy would be compatible with Jewish interests. ...
Today, Podhoretz’s calls for bombing Iran are being echoed in the [Bush] administration.
Podhoretz Granted Secret Access To Lobby Bush On ‘The Case For Bombing Iran’
Norman Podhoretz, the “patriarch of neoconservatism,” recently published a book entitled “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism,” staunchly supporting the Iraq war and pushing for war with Iran. In June, Podhoretz published a controversial piece in Commentary magazine titled “The Case for Bombing Iran.”
The Politico reports today that President Bush has been listening to Podhoretz’s radical agenda, recently enlisting Podhoretz to discuss his views on Iran. In a meeting that “was not on the president’s public schedule,” Bush and Karl Rove “sat listening to Norman Podhoretz for roughly 45 minutes at the White House”:
...
President Bush has loyally supported Podhoretz’s agenda in the past. In 2004, he bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — on Podhoretz, calling him a “fierce intellectual man” with “fine writing and a “great love for our country.”
Today, Podhoretz’s calls for bombing Iran are being echoed in the administration. According to Newsweek, Vice President Cheney considered a plan to allow Israel to conduct missile strikes against Iran “in an effort to draw a military response from Iran, which could in turn spark a U.S. offensive against targets in the Islamic Republic.”
Podhoretz has argued that “if we were to bomb the Iranians as I hope and pray we will…we’ll unleash a wave of anti-Americanism all over the world that will make the anti-Americanism we’ve experienced so far look like a lovefest.” By enlisting Podhoretz’s advice, President Bush is demonstrating that there isn’t any idea too radical for him to consider.
Norman Podhoretz, the “patriarch of neoconservatism,” recently published a book entitled “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism,” staunchly supporting the Iraq war and pushing for war with Iran. In June, Podhoretz published a controversial piece in Commentary magazine titled “The Case for Bombing Iran.”
The Politico reports today that President Bush has been listening to Podhoretz’s radical agenda, recently enlisting Podhoretz to discuss his views on Iran. In a meeting that “was not on the president’s public schedule,” Bush and Karl Rove “sat listening to Norman Podhoretz for roughly 45 minutes at the White House”:
...
President Bush has loyally supported Podhoretz’s agenda in the past. In 2004, he bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — on Podhoretz, calling him a “fierce intellectual man” with “fine writing and a “great love for our country.”
Today, Podhoretz’s calls for bombing Iran are being echoed in the administration. According to Newsweek, Vice President Cheney considered a plan to allow Israel to conduct missile strikes against Iran “in an effort to draw a military response from Iran, which could in turn spark a U.S. offensive against targets in the Islamic Republic.”
Podhoretz has argued that “if we were to bomb the Iranians as I hope and pray we will…we’ll unleash a wave of anti-Americanism all over the world that will make the anti-Americanism we’ve experienced so far look like a lovefest.” By enlisting Podhoretz’s advice, President Bush is demonstrating that there isn’t any idea too radical for him to consider.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
FSp ... CSP ... neocon central "President Bush must overcome not just the situation in Iraq, but democratic government.
Group that advocated Bush become "President-for-Life" linked to Bush Administration itself
You can't find the story now, they removed it after DU'ers, and other people possibly, exposed the story a little group called Family Security Matters was running.
But, just because they removed it, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist anymore.
"FSM Must Reads
...
The simple truth that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide.Israel Iran , the Iranians will fulfill their boast and wipe Israel Israel
President Bush is reviled; he has become another victim of Democracy.
By elevating popular fancy over truth, Democracy is clearly an enemy of not just truth, but duty and justice, which makes it the worst form of government. President Bush must overcome not just the situation in Iraq, but democratic government.
However, President Bush has a valuable historical example that he could choose to follow.
When the ancient Roman general Julius Caesar was struggling to conquer ancient Gaul, he not only had to defeat the Gauls, but he also had to defeat his political enemies in Rome who would destroy him the moment his tenure as consul (president) ended.
Caesar pacified Gaul by mass slaughter; he then used his successful army to crush all political opposition at home and establish himself as permanent ruler of ancient Rome. This brilliant action not only ended the personal threat to Caesar, but ended the civil chaos that was threatening anarchy in ancient Rome – thus marking the start of the ancient Roman Empire that gave peace and prosperity to the known world.
If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.
...
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:cnnnSRimWmcJ:www.f...
Google's Caching Service, don't you love it?
Here is the link to the original BTW:
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/index.php?id=12085...
But, what about Family Security Matters?
Well, it turns out that "Family Security Matters (FSM) is a front group for the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a conservative Washington think tank "committed to the time-tested philosophy of promoting international peace through American strength." (The phone number listed on the FSM website is answered by the CSP.)
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Family_Secur...
So now we are led to the Center for Security Policy, and who's connected to that group?
Dick Cheney, Vice President of the U.S. under George W. Bush, was an early member of Center's Board of Advisors (which is now called the National Security Advisory Council).
Twenty-two CSP advisers -- including additional Reagan-era remnants like Elliott Abrams, Ken deGraffenreid, Paula Dobriansky, Sven Kraemer, Robert Joseph, Robert Andrews and J.D. Crouch -- have reoccupied key positions in the national security establishment, as have other true believers of more recent vintage."
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_S...
You can't find the story now, they removed it after DU'ers, and other people possibly, exposed the story a little group called Family Security Matters was running.
But, just because they removed it, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist anymore.
"FSM Must Reads
...
The simple truth that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide.
President Bush is reviled; he has become another victim of Democracy.
By elevating popular fancy over truth, Democracy is clearly an enemy of not just truth, but duty and justice, which makes it the worst form of government. President Bush must overcome not just the situation in Iraq, but democratic government.
However, President Bush has a valuable historical example that he could choose to follow.
When the ancient Roman general Julius Caesar was struggling to conquer ancient Gaul, he not only had to defeat the Gauls, but he also had to defeat his political enemies in Rome who would destroy him the moment his tenure as consul (president) ended.
Caesar pacified Gaul by mass slaughter; he then used his successful army to crush all political opposition at home and establish himself as permanent ruler of ancient Rome. This brilliant action not only ended the personal threat to Caesar, but ended the civil chaos that was threatening anarchy in ancient Rome – thus marking the start of the ancient Roman Empire that gave peace and prosperity to the known world.
If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.
...
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:cnnnSRimWmcJ:www.f...
Google's Caching Service, don't you love it?
Here is the link to the original BTW:
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/index.php?id=12085...
But, what about Family Security Matters?
Well, it turns out that "Family Security Matters (FSM) is a front group for the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a conservative Washington think tank "committed to the time-tested philosophy of promoting international peace through American strength." (The phone number listed on the FSM website is answered by the CSP.)
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Family_Secur...
So now we are led to the Center for Security Policy, and who's connected to that group?
Dick Cheney, Vice President of the U.S. under George W. Bush, was an early member of Center's Board of Advisors (which is now called the National Security Advisory Council).
Twenty-two CSP advisers -- including additional Reagan-era remnants like Elliott Abrams, Ken deGraffenreid, Paula Dobriansky, Sven Kraemer, Robert Joseph, Robert Andrews and J.D. Crouch -- have reoccupied key positions in the national security establishment, as have other true believers of more recent vintage."
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_S...
Friday, July 27, 2007
"Scooter" Libby (Leibowitz) has been a long-serving intelligence agent for Israel's Mossad, according to a veteran CIA "official cover" officer
Report: Libby a long-time Israeli intelligence agent | by Wayne Madsen | Global Research, July 7, 2007 | waynemadsenreport.com
Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby (Leibowitz) has been a long-serving intelligence agent for Israel's Mossad, according to a veteran CIA "official cover" officer who spoke to the Wayne Madsen Report on deep background. The CIA's Clandestine Service has, over the years, gathered a tremendous amount of intelligence on Libby's activities on behalf of Mossad.
...
Current British Lord Chancellor and former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that during Middle East peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, "It's a toss-up whether [Libby] is working for the Israelis or the Americans on any given day." Clinton 's Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Government Affairs Committee in 2001 that he discovered much more about Rich after Clinton 's pardon and said, "Knowing everything that I know now, I would not have recommended to the president that he grant the pardon."
It has also been reported that, in addition to pressure from leading neocons in the United States to keep Libby out of jail, Bush was urged by leading Israeli government officials to prevent Libby from going to prison. ...
Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby (Leibowitz) has been a long-serving intelligence agent for Israel's Mossad, according to a veteran CIA "official cover" officer who spoke to the Wayne Madsen Report on deep background. The CIA's Clandestine Service has, over the years, gathered a tremendous amount of intelligence on Libby's activities on behalf of Mossad.
...
Current British Lord Chancellor and former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that during Middle East peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, "It's a toss-up whether [Libby] is working for the Israelis or the Americans on any given day." Clinton 's Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Government Affairs Committee in 2001 that he discovered much more about Rich after Clinton 's pardon and said, "Knowing everything that I know now, I would not have recommended to the president that he grant the pardon."
It has also been reported that, in addition to pressure from leading neocons in the United States to keep Libby out of jail, Bush was urged by leading Israeli government officials to prevent Libby from going to prison. ...
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Wolfowitz Returns To Neocon Think Tank AEI ... neocon think tank
Saturday, June 30, 2007 Wolfowitz Returns To Neocon Think Tank AEI
Wolfowitz aims to stay in politicsBy Eoin Callan in WashingtonPublished: June 28 2007 22:15 Last updated: June 28 2007 22:15
Paul Wolfowitz vowed to continue in political life after he steps down as president of the World Bank this weekend following an internal revolt.The White House appointee and former deputy defence secretary is leaving his post midway through his term after being forced from office over an ethics scandal.
He said he would be joining the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington, as a visiting scholar, which would allow him to continue influencing public policy. ...
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
"The Case for Bombing Iran" with the deck, "I hope and pray that President Bush will do it."
'WSJ' Op-Ed: Bomb-bomb Iran | By E&P Staff | Published: May 30, 2007 10:30 AM ET
NEW YORK It was sort of funny last month when Sen. John McCain, in a takeoff on the old Beach Boys tune, sang, "Bomb-bomb-bomb Bomb-bomb Iran" but some conservatives aren't laughing -- and no one else should, either, it is now apparent.
In a lengthy op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, Norman Podhoretz, the neo-con legend (and father of columnist John Podhoretz) advocates just that, the sooner the better.
The op-ed is titled, "The Case for Bombing Iran" with the deck, "I hope and pray that President Bush will do it."
Here is the climax.
*
In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force--any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938.
Since a ground invasion of Iran must be ruled out for many different reasons, the job would have to be done, if it is to be done at all, by a campaign of air strikes. Furthermore, because Iran's nuclear facilities are dispersed, and because some of them are underground, many sorties and bunker-busting munitions would be required. And because such a campaign is beyond the capabilities of Israel, and the will, let alone the courage, of any of our other allies, it could be carried out only by the United States. ...
NEW YORK It was sort of funny last month when Sen. John McCain, in a takeoff on the old Beach Boys tune, sang, "Bomb-bomb-bomb Bomb-bomb Iran" but some conservatives aren't laughing -- and no one else should, either, it is now apparent.
In a lengthy op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, Norman Podhoretz, the neo-con legend (and father of columnist John Podhoretz) advocates just that, the sooner the better.
The op-ed is titled, "The Case for Bombing Iran" with the deck, "I hope and pray that President Bush will do it."
Here is the climax.
*
In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force--any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938.
Since a ground invasion of Iran must be ruled out for many different reasons, the job would have to be done, if it is to be done at all, by a campaign of air strikes. Furthermore, because Iran's nuclear facilities are dispersed, and because some of them are underground, many sorties and bunker-busting munitions would be required. And because such a campaign is beyond the capabilities of Israel, and the will, let alone the courage, of any of our other allies, it could be carried out only by the United States. ...
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Perle [leading neoconservative thinker ] Turns on Bush in Harsh Terms [appease rather than confront America's enemies]
Perle Turns on Bush in Harsh Terms | By NICHOLAS WAPSHOTT | Staff Reporter of the Sun
May 15, 2007
May 15, 2007
The Bush administration is beginning to appease rather than confront America's enemies, a former chairman of the Defense Policy Board and leading neoconservative thinker said yesterday, describing the president as "a failure" who is proving powerless to impose his views on his administration.
Richard Perle offered a withering assessment of the president's impotence at a meeting of the Hudson Institute in New York, saying American foreign policy is being applied by an out-of-control State Department.
...
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Office of Special Plans: acted "inappropriately" by cooking intelligence to reflect a "mature and symbiotic" relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida
Tenet Battled With the Office of Special Plans | By Matt Renner | t r u t h o u t | Report | Wednesday 02 May 2007
In his book, "At the Center of the Storm," former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet describes efforts by Pentagon and White House officials to subvert pre-Iraq war intelligence assessment by the CIA.
Tenet focuses on the actions of a group inside the Pentagon that sent the Bush administration bogus intelligence on Iraq's weapons program and ties to terrorist organizations that supported the administration's policy.
This group was recently criticized by a Department of Defense inspector general report from February 9, 2007, which found that a policy-shop known as "the Office of Special Plans," headed by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, acted "inappropriately" by cooking intelligence to reflect a "mature and symbiotic" relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida. This characterization was never supported by the CIA, but was presented as fact by Feith's office to White House policy makers in the run up to the Iraq war. ...
...
According to Tenet's book, when the bogus intelligence assessment was presented to Tenet in August, 2002, he told the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Vice Admiral Jake Jacoby, “This is entirely inappropriate. You get this back in intelligence channels. I want analysts talking to analysts, not people with agendas.” This instruction was not complied with. Instead, according to the Inspector General report, Feith fast-tracked the information and presented the findings to then Deputy National Security Director Steven Hadley and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney.
Tenet claims that he did not know that the briefings continued despite his direction to Jacoby. As head of the DIA, Jacoby had two bosses, Tenet and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Tenet points out this fact but does not explicitly say that Rumsfeld over-ruled his direction to Jacoby. The Inspector General report concluded that the “inappropriate” activities of Feith's office were authorized by Rumsfeld or his former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz.
...
According to Tenet, White House officials tried to prevent the CIA from publishing their own analysis of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida. A draft report of the CIA analysis of that relationship was sent to the White House in December 2002, resulting in "a series of calls from the White House" that asked the CIA to "revise or withdraw the paper." Tenet names the vice president's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley as two of the White House officials who made these calls. Tenet claims that a previous draft of this report was given to the DOD for their feedback. Tenet says that Feith's office responded saying it had objections, "but would make their views known through other channels."
Documents pointing to a close relationship between Iraq and al Qa'ida were discovered in Baghdad after the invasion. After analysis by the CIA and the Secret Service, the documents were proven to be forgeries. According to Tenet, even after being discredited, "These raw, unevaluated documents continued to show up in the hands of senior administration officials without having gone through normal intelligence channels."
In his book, "At the Center of the Storm," former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet describes efforts by Pentagon and White House officials to subvert pre-Iraq war intelligence assessment by the CIA.
Tenet focuses on the actions of a group inside the Pentagon that sent the Bush administration bogus intelligence on Iraq's weapons program and ties to terrorist organizations that supported the administration's policy.
This group was recently criticized by a Department of Defense inspector general report from February 9, 2007, which found that a policy-shop known as "the Office of Special Plans," headed by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, acted "inappropriately" by cooking intelligence to reflect a "mature and symbiotic" relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida. This characterization was never supported by the CIA, but was presented as fact by Feith's office to White House policy makers in the run up to the Iraq war. ...
...
According to Tenet's book, when the bogus intelligence assessment was presented to Tenet in August, 2002, he told the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Vice Admiral Jake Jacoby, “This is entirely inappropriate. You get this back in intelligence channels. I want analysts talking to analysts, not people with agendas.” This instruction was not complied with. Instead, according to the Inspector General report, Feith fast-tracked the information and presented the findings to then Deputy National Security Director Steven Hadley and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney.
Tenet claims that he did not know that the briefings continued despite his direction to Jacoby. As head of the DIA, Jacoby had two bosses, Tenet and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Tenet points out this fact but does not explicitly say that Rumsfeld over-ruled his direction to Jacoby. The Inspector General report concluded that the “inappropriate” activities of Feith's office were authorized by Rumsfeld or his former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz.
...
According to Tenet, White House officials tried to prevent the CIA from publishing their own analysis of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida. A draft report of the CIA analysis of that relationship was sent to the White House in December 2002, resulting in "a series of calls from the White House" that asked the CIA to "revise or withdraw the paper." Tenet names the vice president's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley as two of the White House officials who made these calls. Tenet claims that a previous draft of this report was given to the DOD for their feedback. Tenet says that Feith's office responded saying it had objections, "but would make their views known through other channels."
Documents pointing to a close relationship between Iraq and al Qa'ida were discovered in Baghdad after the invasion. After analysis by the CIA and the Secret Service, the documents were proven to be forgeries. According to Tenet, even after being discredited, "These raw, unevaluated documents continued to show up in the hands of senior administration officials without having gone through normal intelligence channels."
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Wolfie has behaved with a stupidity born of the arrogance of power ...
April 17, 2007 | Wolfie's Piggy Bank | by Patrick J. Buchanan
Barracks language edited out, Tommy Franks once referred to the Pentagon's No. 3, Doug Feith, as "the dumbest guy on the planet."
It now appears Gen. Franks' honorific better applies to Feith's boss, the Pentagon No. 2, Paul Wolfowitz. For a man once hailed as the brightest of the neocons, Wolfie has behaved with a stupidity born of the arrogance of power.
Hailed in 2003 as architect of the Iraq victory, Wolfowitz, by late 2004, was being singled out as the bumbler of postwar planning and the man most responsible for what Gen. William Odom was already calling the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history.
With the roster of U.S. dead and wounded rising, Wolfie was looking for a place to hide. George Bush, who had heeded his cawing for war on Iraq from the first hours after 9/11, took pity. And more than pity. Bush made him president of the World Bank, the post to which Robert McNamara retreated after seven years at the Pentagon plunging us into a another war, a war we later learned McNamara had come to believe we could not win. ...
...
A few weeks in Eden, and Wolfie went straight for the apple tree. From memos unearthed by the Financial Times, he gave bank officials specific instructions on the care and feeding of his romantic interest, a mid-level Libyan bank bureaucrat by the name of Shaha Riza.
Warned by the bank ethics committee he was to have no role in deciding Shaha's salary, Wolfie brushed the ethics rules aside.
He ordered Xavier Coll, bank vice president for human resources, to assign Riza to the State Department and raise her salary by some 50 percent, to $193,000 today, tax-free. She would take home more than Condi Rice. Coll was then directed to assure that Riza receive annual pay hikes of 8 percent and be put on a glide path to the highest position of any civil servant at the bank. By 2010, she would be making $245,000, tax-free.
And what has been Wolfowitz's big cause at the bank? Fighting corruption. ...
Barracks language edited out, Tommy Franks once referred to the Pentagon's No. 3, Doug Feith, as "the dumbest guy on the planet."
It now appears Gen. Franks' honorific better applies to Feith's boss, the Pentagon No. 2, Paul Wolfowitz. For a man once hailed as the brightest of the neocons, Wolfie has behaved with a stupidity born of the arrogance of power.
Hailed in 2003 as architect of the Iraq victory, Wolfowitz, by late 2004, was being singled out as the bumbler of postwar planning and the man most responsible for what Gen. William Odom was already calling the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history.
With the roster of U.S. dead and wounded rising, Wolfie was looking for a place to hide. George Bush, who had heeded his cawing for war on Iraq from the first hours after 9/11, took pity. And more than pity. Bush made him president of the World Bank, the post to which Robert McNamara retreated after seven years at the Pentagon plunging us into a another war, a war we later learned McNamara had come to believe we could not win. ...
...
A few weeks in Eden, and Wolfie went straight for the apple tree. From memos unearthed by the Financial Times, he gave bank officials specific instructions on the care and feeding of his romantic interest, a mid-level Libyan bank bureaucrat by the name of Shaha Riza.
Warned by the bank ethics committee he was to have no role in deciding Shaha's salary, Wolfie brushed the ethics rules aside.
He ordered Xavier Coll, bank vice president for human resources, to assign Riza to the State Department and raise her salary by some 50 percent, to $193,000 today, tax-free. She would take home more than Condi Rice. Coll was then directed to assure that Riza receive annual pay hikes of 8 percent and be put on a glide path to the highest position of any civil servant at the bank. By 2010, she would be making $245,000, tax-free.
And what has been Wolfowitz's big cause at the bank? Fighting corruption. ...
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
secret plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel
The rape of Iraq's oil | March 22, 2007 1:30 PM | Printable version
The Baghdad government has caved in to a damaging plan that will enrich western companies.
The recent cabinet agreement in Baghdad on the new draft oil law was hailed as a landmark deal bringing together the warring factions in the allocation of the country's oil wealth. What was concealed was that this is being forced through by relentless pressure from the US and will sow the seeds of intense future conflict, with serious knock-on impacts on the world economy.
The draft law, now before the Iraqi parliament, sets up "production sharing partnerships" to allow the US and British oil majors to extract Iraqi oil for up to 30 years. While Iraq would retain legal ownership of its oil, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP that invest in the infrastructure and refineries would get a large share of the profits.
No other Middle Eastern oil producer has ever offered such a hugely lucrative concession to the big oil companies, since Opec has always run its oil business through tightly-controlled state companies. Only Iraq in its present dire condition, dependent on US troops for the survival of the government, lacks the bargaining capacity to resist.
This is not a new plan. According to documents obtained from the US State Department by BBC Newsnight under the US Freedom of Information Act, the US oil industry plan drafted early in 2001 for takeover of the Iraqi oilfields (after the removal of Saddam) was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, calling for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oilfields.
This secret plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas. However, Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA, who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme. As Ariel Cohen of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation later told Newsnight, an opportunity had been missed to privatise Iraq's oilfields. ...
The Baghdad government has caved in to a damaging plan that will enrich western companies.
The recent cabinet agreement in Baghdad on the new draft oil law was hailed as a landmark deal bringing together the warring factions in the allocation of the country's oil wealth. What was concealed was that this is being forced through by relentless pressure from the US and will sow the seeds of intense future conflict, with serious knock-on impacts on the world economy.
The draft law, now before the Iraqi parliament, sets up "production sharing partnerships" to allow the US and British oil majors to extract Iraqi oil for up to 30 years. While Iraq would retain legal ownership of its oil, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP that invest in the infrastructure and refineries would get a large share of the profits.
No other Middle Eastern oil producer has ever offered such a hugely lucrative concession to the big oil companies, since Opec has always run its oil business through tightly-controlled state companies. Only Iraq in its present dire condition, dependent on US troops for the survival of the government, lacks the bargaining capacity to resist.
This is not a new plan. According to documents obtained from the US State Department by BBC Newsnight under the US Freedom of Information Act, the US oil industry plan drafted early in 2001 for takeover of the Iraqi oilfields (after the removal of Saddam) was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, calling for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oilfields.
This secret plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas. However, Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA, who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme. As Ariel Cohen of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation later told Newsnight, an opportunity had been missed to privatise Iraq's oilfields. ...
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Neoconservative radicalism: it touts a radical and authoritarian nanny-statism that seeks, at its core, to provide feelings of protection, safety, an
Thursday March 29, 2007 08:59 EST | Neoconservative radicalism has reshaped our political spectrum
David Brooks' column in The New York Times this morning contains several important observations. It would maximize clarity in our political discussions if journalists could just ingest Brooks' central point: the dominant right-wing political movement in this country that has spawned and driven the Bush presidency has nothing to do with -- it is in fact overtly hostile to -- the ostensible principles of Goldwater/Reagan small-government conservatism. Though today's so-called "conservatives" exploit the Goldwater/Reagan mythology as a political prop, they don't believe in those principles in any way. That movement is the very antithesis of those principles.
Brooks comes out and explicitly declares the twin icons of "conservatism" to be every bit as quaint and obsolete as the Geneva Conventions: "Goldwater and Reagan were important leaders, but they're not models for the future."
Brooks admits what has been crystal clear for some time -- namely, that so-called "conservatives" (meaning the contemporary political "Right") no longer believe (if they ever did) that government power should be restrained in order to maximize freedom. That belief system, says Brooks, is an obsolete relic which arose out of the the 1970s, and has been replaced by the opposite desire -- for expanded government power on every front. ...
...
But neoconservatism -- which is really what the right-wing pro-Bush movement has become -- doesn't believe in any of that, and Brooks' column demonstrates that they are admitting that more and more explicitly. Instead, it touts a radical and authoritarian nanny-statism that seeks, at its core, to provide feelings of protection, safety, and moralistic clarity -- "security leads to freedom" -- all delivered by political leaders using ever-increasing federal government power and limitless militarism. Whether one believes in that radical and warped vision of the American federal government is, more than any other factor, what now determines one's political orientation.
I have argued several times before that the radicalism of the Bush presidency and the neoconservatism on which it is based has resulted in a fundamental political re-alignment. As Brooks points out, the issues that shape our political spectrum and determine one's political orientation have changed fundamentally -- Brooks contrasts today's predominant issues with those of the 1970s in order to demonstrate this shift, but the shift is just as drastic even when one compares today's predominant political issues to those that drove the key political dispustes as recently as the 1990s. ...
David Brooks' column in The New York Times this morning contains several important observations. It would maximize clarity in our political discussions if journalists could just ingest Brooks' central point: the dominant right-wing political movement in this country that has spawned and driven the Bush presidency has nothing to do with -- it is in fact overtly hostile to -- the ostensible principles of Goldwater/Reagan small-government conservatism. Though today's so-called "conservatives" exploit the Goldwater/Reagan mythology as a political prop, they don't believe in those principles in any way. That movement is the very antithesis of those principles.
Brooks comes out and explicitly declares the twin icons of "conservatism" to be every bit as quaint and obsolete as the Geneva Conventions: "Goldwater and Reagan were important leaders, but they're not models for the future."
Brooks admits what has been crystal clear for some time -- namely, that so-called "conservatives" (meaning the contemporary political "Right") no longer believe (if they ever did) that government power should be restrained in order to maximize freedom. That belief system, says Brooks, is an obsolete relic which arose out of the the 1970s, and has been replaced by the opposite desire -- for expanded government power on every front. ...
...
But neoconservatism -- which is really what the right-wing pro-Bush movement has become -- doesn't believe in any of that, and Brooks' column demonstrates that they are admitting that more and more explicitly. Instead, it touts a radical and authoritarian nanny-statism that seeks, at its core, to provide feelings of protection, safety, and moralistic clarity -- "security leads to freedom" -- all delivered by political leaders using ever-increasing federal government power and limitless militarism. Whether one believes in that radical and warped vision of the American federal government is, more than any other factor, what now determines one's political orientation.
I have argued several times before that the radicalism of the Bush presidency and the neoconservatism on which it is based has resulted in a fundamental political re-alignment. As Brooks points out, the issues that shape our political spectrum and determine one's political orientation have changed fundamentally -- Brooks contrasts today's predominant issues with those of the 1970s in order to demonstrate this shift, but the shift is just as drastic even when one compares today's predominant political issues to those that drove the key political dispustes as recently as the 1990s. ...
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Many backed Bush thinking we were supporting a moderate small-c conservative with a humble approach to the rest of the world ...
Sunday, April 1, 2007 | The Conscience of a Bushie | 01 Apr 2007 06:20 am
The NYT's debriefing - degriefing? - of Matthew Dowd strikes a chord with me, as you might imagine. Many of us backed Bush in 2000 with the thought that we were supporting a moderate, inclusive Republican with a pragmatic small-c conservative domestic policy, and a humble approach to the rest of the world. We were wrong, but we bonded with the president we'd picked through the trauma of 9/11, and it took many of us time to come to terms with what it was we had ultimately enabled. It was in front of our noses, of course. But what Dowd calls a "love-affair" is sometimes hard to walk away from cleanly or even recognize as a nightmare before it is too late. I worried about spending rather quickly, but the war soon took precedence over everything else. For me, the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, the complete lack of planning, and the refusal to budge was the clincher. But Abu Ghraib - and the non-response to Abu Ghraib - made me realize that Bush was a danger to America, not an asset. The Federal Marriage Amendment obviously hit me in the solar plexus as well. It felt like a gratuitously vicious attack on a minority and a violation of conservatism. I knew my relationship with this president was over by the beginning of 2004. Some of us were mocked for backing John Kerry that year, and I can understand the mockery. Kerry? But yes, Bush really was that bad, that incompetent and that dangerous.
Dowd, it seems, took longer to recognize this. So have others. But what strikes me about the more thoughtful Bush alums - Matthew Dowd and David Kuo spring to mind - is their yearning for spiritual atonement. I think that for many the reckoning with these past few years may take longer to arrive. But there will be a wider reckoning. And it won't be pretty. ...
The NYT's debriefing - degriefing? - of Matthew Dowd strikes a chord with me, as you might imagine. Many of us backed Bush in 2000 with the thought that we were supporting a moderate, inclusive Republican with a pragmatic small-c conservative domestic policy, and a humble approach to the rest of the world. We were wrong, but we bonded with the president we'd picked through the trauma of 9/11, and it took many of us time to come to terms with what it was we had ultimately enabled. It was in front of our noses, of course. But what Dowd calls a "love-affair" is sometimes hard to walk away from cleanly or even recognize as a nightmare before it is too late. I worried about spending rather quickly, but the war soon took precedence over everything else. For me, the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, the complete lack of planning, and the refusal to budge was the clincher. But Abu Ghraib - and the non-response to Abu Ghraib - made me realize that Bush was a danger to America, not an asset. The Federal Marriage Amendment obviously hit me in the solar plexus as well. It felt like a gratuitously vicious attack on a minority and a violation of conservatism. I knew my relationship with this president was over by the beginning of 2004. Some of us were mocked for backing John Kerry that year, and I can understand the mockery. Kerry? But yes, Bush really was that bad, that incompetent and that dangerous.
Dowd, it seems, took longer to recognize this. So have others. But what strikes me about the more thoughtful Bush alums - Matthew Dowd and David Kuo spring to mind - is their yearning for spiritual atonement. I think that for many the reckoning with these past few years may take longer to arrive. But there will be a wider reckoning. And it won't be pretty. ...
Monday, March 19, 2007
Neo-Conservative Architects of Military Escalation
"Surge" or "Involuntary" Military Conscription: The Neo-Conservative Architects of Military Escalation | by Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research, January 26, 2007
...
The decision to substantially increase US forces in Iraq is not a makeshift initiative, which emerged in response to the evolving crisis in Iraq. It is part of a carefully formulated NeoCon agenda to increase the size of US forces and reinstate "involuntary" forms of military conscription.
Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute is credited as being one of the main architects of Bush 's "Surge". Fred Kagan together with General (ret) Jack Keane, argue that "any troop increase must be large and lasting"... [involving] a surge of at least 30,000 combat troops lasting 18 months or so". (Quoted in the the Financial Times, 2 January 2007).
"Kagan was arguing that while "the high end of estimates" suggested the need for another 80,000 US troops to stage an effective counter-insurgency operation in Iraq, "it is very likely that a surge of 50,000 troops would be sufficient to stabilise the capital". In the event, it seems unlikely that Mr Bush will commit even half that number".(Ibid)
Frederick Kagan is the brother of Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who coincidentally is also on the board of Directors of the Project of the New American Century (PNAC). The latter is a Washington based think tank headed by William Kristol, with direct ties to the Bush Cabinet.
William Kristol is the son of Irving Kristol, one of the main founding figures of Neoconservatism. Irving Kristol sits on the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR). He is also a Senior Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
William Kristol is editor of the influential Washington based Weekly Standard. Robert Kagan is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard. All of these people are firmly committed to America's "long war", a war without borders, inspired by the teachings of the late Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago.
Surge and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)
An overall expansion of US forces worldwide is an integral part of the NeoConservatives mission, as formulated in the Project of the New American Century's key document entitled Rebuilding American Defenses.
Bush's "Surge" is essentially derived from this document, which constitutes the PNAC's manifesto. The authors of Rebuilding American Defenses are Donald Kagan, (Professor of History at Yale University and father of Frederick Kagan and Robert Kagan)., Gary Schmitt (PNAC Project Coordinator together with Donald Kagan) and Thomas Donnelly (main author), Both Schmitt and Donnelly are resident fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and colleagues of Frederick Kagan.
In Part IV of Rebuilding American Defenses, the PNAC recommends an overall expansion of "active-duty strength" from 475,000 (2000 figure) to 525,000. It also points to the reinforcement of the Army National Guard as:
"a hedge against the need for a larger-than-anticipated force in combat.... It should not be used primarily to provide combat service support to active Army units engaged in current operations"
The Army National Guard should according to the PNAC "play its essential role in fighting large scale wars", while minimizing its civilian functions. ...
...
The decision to substantially increase US forces in Iraq is not a makeshift initiative, which emerged in response to the evolving crisis in Iraq. It is part of a carefully formulated NeoCon agenda to increase the size of US forces and reinstate "involuntary" forms of military conscription.
Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute is credited as being one of the main architects of Bush 's "Surge". Fred Kagan together with General (ret) Jack Keane, argue that "any troop increase must be large and lasting"... [involving] a surge of at least 30,000 combat troops lasting 18 months or so". (Quoted in the the Financial Times, 2 January 2007).
"Kagan was arguing that while "the high end of estimates" suggested the need for another 80,000 US troops to stage an effective counter-insurgency operation in Iraq, "it is very likely that a surge of 50,000 troops would be sufficient to stabilise the capital". In the event, it seems unlikely that Mr Bush will commit even half that number".(Ibid)
Frederick Kagan is the brother of Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who coincidentally is also on the board of Directors of the Project of the New American Century (PNAC). The latter is a Washington based think tank headed by William Kristol, with direct ties to the Bush Cabinet.
William Kristol is the son of Irving Kristol, one of the main founding figures of Neoconservatism. Irving Kristol sits on the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR). He is also a Senior Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
William Kristol is editor of the influential Washington based Weekly Standard. Robert Kagan is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard. All of these people are firmly committed to America's "long war", a war without borders, inspired by the teachings of the late Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago.
Surge and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)
An overall expansion of US forces worldwide is an integral part of the NeoConservatives mission, as formulated in the Project of the New American Century's key document entitled Rebuilding American Defenses.
Bush's "Surge" is essentially derived from this document, which constitutes the PNAC's manifesto. The authors of Rebuilding American Defenses are Donald Kagan, (Professor of History at Yale University and father of Frederick Kagan and Robert Kagan)., Gary Schmitt (PNAC Project Coordinator together with Donald Kagan) and Thomas Donnelly (main author), Both Schmitt and Donnelly are resident fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and colleagues of Frederick Kagan.
In Part IV of Rebuilding American Defenses, the PNAC recommends an overall expansion of "active-duty strength" from 475,000 (2000 figure) to 525,000. It also points to the reinforcement of the Army National Guard as:
"a hedge against the need for a larger-than-anticipated force in combat.... It should not be used primarily to provide combat service support to active Army units engaged in current operations"
The Army National Guard should according to the PNAC "play its essential role in fighting large scale wars", while minimizing its civilian functions. ...
White House case for invading Iraq included "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the political views of administration
Official's Key Report On Iraq Is Faulted | 'Dubious' Intelligence Fueled Push for War | By Walter Pincus and R. Jeffrey Smith | Washington Post Staff Writers | Friday, February 9, 2007; Page A01
Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector general.
Feith's office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," according to portions of the report, released yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). The inspector general described Feith's activities as "an alternative intelligence assessment process."
...
"The bottom line is that intelligence relating to the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high-ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the administration's decision to invade Iraq," Levin said yesterday. "The inspector general's report is a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities in the DOD policy office that helped take this nation to war."
The summary document confirmed a range of accusations that Levin had leveled against Feith's office, alleging inaccurate work.
Feith's office, it said, drew on "both reliable and unreliable" intelligence reports in 2002 to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq "that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration."
It stated that the office produced intelligence assessments "inconsistent" with the U.S. intelligence community consensus, calling those actions "inappropriate" because the assessments purported to be "intelligence products" but were far more conclusive than the consensus view. ...
Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector general.
Feith's office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," according to portions of the report, released yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). The inspector general described Feith's activities as "an alternative intelligence assessment process."
...
"The bottom line is that intelligence relating to the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high-ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the administration's decision to invade Iraq," Levin said yesterday. "The inspector general's report is a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities in the DOD policy office that helped take this nation to war."
The summary document confirmed a range of accusations that Levin had leveled against Feith's office, alleging inaccurate work.
Feith's office, it said, drew on "both reliable and unreliable" intelligence reports in 2002 to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq "that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration."
It stated that the office produced intelligence assessments "inconsistent" with the U.S. intelligence community consensus, calling those actions "inappropriate" because the assessments purported to be "intelligence products" but were far more conclusive than the consensus view. ...
called the report “a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities” carried out by Douglas J. Feith, who was under secretary of defense for pol
Senate Panel Debates Iraq Intelligence | By DAVID STOUT | Published: February 9, 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 -- Senate Democrats and Republicans differed sharply today on whether Pentagon officials deliberately used faulty intelligence to justify the Bush administration’s war against Iraq.
The debate before the Senate Armed Services Committee was touched off by a report by the Pentagon inspector general’s office, which investigated the Pentagon’s intelligence-gathering and found it seriously flawed, especially in its search for links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the committee, called the report “a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities” carried out by Douglas J. Feith, who was under secretary of defense for policy just before the invasion of Iraq early in 2003.
“Well, unfortunately, the damage has already been done,” Mr. Levin said. “Senior administration officials used the twisted intelligence produced by the Feith office in making the case for the Iraq war.”
But Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican on the committee, immediately disagreed, setting the stage for a series of partisan exchanges. “First of all, you can read the same report and come up with different conclusions, which is quite obvious and will be obvious,” Mr. Inhofe said, adding that the report cannot easily be interpreted as “a devastating condemnation,” as Mr. Levin asserted.
The long-awaited report by Thomas F. Gimble, the Pentagon’s acting inspector general, concluded that, while the Feith team did not violate any laws or knowingly mislead Congress, it developed dubious intelligence that was inconsistent with the findings of the wider intelligence community. ...
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 -- Senate Democrats and Republicans differed sharply today on whether Pentagon officials deliberately used faulty intelligence to justify the Bush administration’s war against Iraq.
The debate before the Senate Armed Services Committee was touched off by a report by the Pentagon inspector general’s office, which investigated the Pentagon’s intelligence-gathering and found it seriously flawed, especially in its search for links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the committee, called the report “a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities” carried out by Douglas J. Feith, who was under secretary of defense for policy just before the invasion of Iraq early in 2003.
“Well, unfortunately, the damage has already been done,” Mr. Levin said. “Senior administration officials used the twisted intelligence produced by the Feith office in making the case for the Iraq war.”
But Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican on the committee, immediately disagreed, setting the stage for a series of partisan exchanges. “First of all, you can read the same report and come up with different conclusions, which is quite obvious and will be obvious,” Mr. Inhofe said, adding that the report cannot easily be interpreted as “a devastating condemnation,” as Mr. Levin asserted.
The long-awaited report by Thomas F. Gimble, the Pentagon’s acting inspector general, concluded that, while the Feith team did not violate any laws or knowingly mislead Congress, it developed dubious intelligence that was inconsistent with the findings of the wider intelligence community. ...
Since the first Bush administration, Feith had been advising the Israeli government to pressure Washington to remove Saddam Hussein
March 12, 2007 Issue | Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative | Saving Feith |
A new report gives the Pentagon intelligence peddler a pass. | by Philip Giraldi
Pentagon Inspector General Thomas Gimble’s narrow report on the activities of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans was not quite a whitewash, but neither was it an indictment. The report, presented to Congress on Feb. 9, rightly condemned Feith’s attempt to create what it charitably called “an alternative intelligence assessment process,” lacking the checks and balances observed by the CIA, DIA, and INR. But no punishment was recommended for anyone involved in the relentless advocacy that enabled the slide to war. Nor did the investigation seek to determine possible involvement of the Office of Special Plans in the Niger uranium forgeries and cover-up, or in the generation and dissemination of false intelligence derived from foreign sources.
Per Gimble’s careful parsing, Feith’s activities were deemed “inappropriate” but “not illegal or unauthorized.” And his investigation’s scope was curiously limited: the year-long inquiry only examined one of the many questionable activities carried out by the Office of Special Plans, the purported link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The role of Feith’s office in hatching the imaginary meeting between Mohammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague was significant, but it was only a single element in the much broader pattern of deception that provided the “evidence” President Bush used to persuade the American people that Saddam’s Iraq was an existential threat akin to Hitler’s Germany.
At best, any investigation conducted in-house, as this one was, will be more collegial than adversarial, and Gimble took pains not to speculate about motive. But Feith didn’t come to the Pentagon without an agenda. The IG report found that his OSP “was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda,” and those who know Feith’s history understand why.
Since the first Bush administration, Feith had been advising the Israeli government to pressure Washington to remove Saddam Hussein. So it was unsurprising when he joined Richard Perle, David Wurmser, and others in July 1996 to develop a position paper that had Iraqi regime change as its centerpiece. Intended for incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the document, entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” pushed the new government to launch pre-emptive war against Israel’s Arab neighbors. “Israel has the opportunity to make a clean break,” the paper said, “to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism.” Baghdad was first on the hit list—“Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically,” they wrote—followed by attacks on Syria and Lebanon. To secure American support for “rolling back” Arab regimes, the group recommended phony motives for the invasions—in Syria’s case counterfeiting, drug running, and WMD development. ...
A new report gives the Pentagon intelligence peddler a pass. | by Philip Giraldi
Pentagon Inspector General Thomas Gimble’s narrow report on the activities of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans was not quite a whitewash, but neither was it an indictment. The report, presented to Congress on Feb. 9, rightly condemned Feith’s attempt to create what it charitably called “an alternative intelligence assessment process,” lacking the checks and balances observed by the CIA, DIA, and INR. But no punishment was recommended for anyone involved in the relentless advocacy that enabled the slide to war. Nor did the investigation seek to determine possible involvement of the Office of Special Plans in the Niger uranium forgeries and cover-up, or in the generation and dissemination of false intelligence derived from foreign sources.
Per Gimble’s careful parsing, Feith’s activities were deemed “inappropriate” but “not illegal or unauthorized.” And his investigation’s scope was curiously limited: the year-long inquiry only examined one of the many questionable activities carried out by the Office of Special Plans, the purported link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The role of Feith’s office in hatching the imaginary meeting between Mohammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague was significant, but it was only a single element in the much broader pattern of deception that provided the “evidence” President Bush used to persuade the American people that Saddam’s Iraq was an existential threat akin to Hitler’s Germany.
At best, any investigation conducted in-house, as this one was, will be more collegial than adversarial, and Gimble took pains not to speculate about motive. But Feith didn’t come to the Pentagon without an agenda. The IG report found that his OSP “was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda,” and those who know Feith’s history understand why.
Since the first Bush administration, Feith had been advising the Israeli government to pressure Washington to remove Saddam Hussein. So it was unsurprising when he joined Richard Perle, David Wurmser, and others in July 1996 to develop a position paper that had Iraqi regime change as its centerpiece. Intended for incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the document, entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” pushed the new government to launch pre-emptive war against Israel’s Arab neighbors. “Israel has the opportunity to make a clean break,” the paper said, “to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism.” Baghdad was first on the hit list—“Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically,” they wrote—followed by attacks on Syria and Lebanon. To secure American support for “rolling back” Arab regimes, the group recommended phony motives for the invasions—in Syria’s case counterfeiting, drug running, and WMD development. ...
Saturday, February 17, 2007
The Anti-Neocon
The Anti-Neocon | David Corn | July 20, 2005
David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers).
"I'm the anti-neocon." That's how Robert Merry recently described himself to me. After reading his new book—Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition —I have to say: He got that right.
His book is the most scorching mainstream critique of the neocons and their misadventure in Iraq that I have encountered. Merry, the publisher of Congressional Quarterly and a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, rips apart that small band of ideologically driven chickenhawks and leaves their bones scattered on the floor of a Council of Foreign Relations conference room. Merry is a hard-ass practitioner of global realpolitik. There is not a smidgeon of sentiment in a single sentence of this book. He's certainly not keeping company with one-worlders and those who would identify (or misidentify, in his view) American national security interests with feel-good global humanitarianism. But in a classic example of that old Middle East cliché—the enemy of my enemy is my friend—he has produced a book that liberal-minded foreign policy folks ought to gobble up. And I would dare the neocons to enter Merry's knife-throwing gallery. ...
David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers).
"I'm the anti-neocon." That's how Robert Merry recently described himself to me. After reading his new book—Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition —I have to say: He got that right.
His book is the most scorching mainstream critique of the neocons and their misadventure in Iraq that I have encountered. Merry, the publisher of Congressional Quarterly and a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, rips apart that small band of ideologically driven chickenhawks and leaves their bones scattered on the floor of a Council of Foreign Relations conference room. Merry is a hard-ass practitioner of global realpolitik. There is not a smidgeon of sentiment in a single sentence of this book. He's certainly not keeping company with one-worlders and those who would identify (or misidentify, in his view) American national security interests with feel-good global humanitarianism. But in a classic example of that old Middle East cliché—the enemy of my enemy is my friend—he has produced a book that liberal-minded foreign policy folks ought to gobble up. And I would dare the neocons to enter Merry's knife-throwing gallery. ...
Anti-Neocons
Anti-Neocons No More Wars for Israel
Basics for new people. There are a lot of people who would like to know more about Zionism, the Neocons, MIC, NWO, CFR, BIS, CIA, MI6, Mossad, DSM, OSP, AIPAC, DOD, WHIG, MSM, ISCB, PNAC, and so forth. It is hard to swallow for regualr people with regular jobs who do not have the time to do the reasearch and who were not told a thing in School. This section is for breaking people into the movement.
Basics for new people. There are a lot of people who would like to know more about Zionism, the Neocons, MIC, NWO, CFR, BIS, CIA, MI6, Mossad, DSM, OSP, AIPAC, DOD, WHIG, MSM, ISCB, PNAC, and so forth. It is hard to swallow for regualr people with regular jobs who do not have the time to do the reasearch and who were not told a thing in School. This section is for breaking people into the movement.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
choice of Abrams as a top expert on the Middle East ... speaks volumes
Abrams in Jerusalem | Tom Barry, IRC | August 23, 2006 | IRC Right Web | rightweb.irc-online.org
During the 35-day conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was accompanied on her shuttle diplomacy to the region by Elliott Abrams. Abrams, who serves as President George W. Bush's adviser for “Global Democracy Strategy,” is a former Reagan administration figure who was convicted (and later pardoned) for his role in the Iran-Contra affair. Now ensconced in the National Security Council (NSC), Abrams' portfolio also includes advising on policies related to the Middle East.
It was in this capacity that Abrams was put to use during—and before—the recent conflict. According to an unnamed U.S. government consultant “with close ties to Israel” who was interviewed by journalist Seymour Hersh, Israel had put together bombing plans long before Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, which ostensibly set off the conflict. As they developed their plans early this summer, said the consultant, Israeli officials went to Washington “to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear … Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council.” In other words, the Israelis wanted the imprimatur of Elliott Abrams.
The choice of Abrams as a top expert on the Middle East and as the administration's point man in the recent conflict in southern Lebanon speaks volumes about the president's views on “global democracy” and Mideast affairs. It also points to the White House's high comfort level with the foreign policy agenda being promoted by the neoconservative camp.
As a deputy to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Abrams' main focus has been the Israeli-Palestinian friction—which Abrams insists is an “Israel-Arab” conflict disguised as a self-determination conflict. After a couple of weeks of watching Israel clash against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Abrams traveled to Jerusalem as part of a three-person, high-level delegation led by Rice and also including C. David Welch, a career diplomat who is assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs. Abrams travels regularly between Jerusalem and Washington and plays a key role in holding together the neoconservative-militarist Washington consensus on policy related to Israel and Iran and Arab states.
Abrams, a self-declared “neoconservative and neo-Reaganite,” is the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, an activist couple who played a leading role in establishing neoconservatism as an influential political tendency in the 1970s. There's no doubting Abrams' neoconservative and neo-Reaganite credentials. Like many other second-generation neocons, Abrams got his political start as member of the right-wing Social Democrats USA and as legal counsel to the hawkish and avidly pro-Israel Democratic Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson. In the late 1970s Abrams worked with other right-wing Democrats in the Coalition for a Democratic Majority as part of an unsuccessful attempt to turn the post-Vietnam War Democratic Party back toward hardline anti-communism; then, along with other Cold Warrior Democrats, Abrams became a Ronald Reagan supporter and a Republican.
When not in government service, Abrams has been affiliated with key neoconservative institutes and pressure groups, including the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), Center for Security Policy, Committee for U.S. Interests in the Middle East, Committee for the Free World, and the Nicaraguan Resistance Foundation.
As a Reaganite, Abrams served in President Reagan's State Department, in the first term as assistant secretary of state for human rights and then as assistant secretary for inter-American affairs. As a State Department diplomat, Abrams helped coordinate illegal government support for the Nicaraguan Contras (known by Reaganites as “freedom fighters”). He worked with Lt. Col. Oliver North to triangulate arms sales through Israel to Iran with the proceeds channeled to the Contras—an illegal operation about which he falsely denied knowledge in congressional testimony, resulting in his criminal conviction.
As befitting his neo-Reaganite identity, Abrams argued in the 1990s for a renewal of Reagan's “peace through strength” foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. In 1992 he helped form the Committee for U.S. Interests in the Middle East, which was actually a committee to ensure that U.S. policy was aligned with the Likud party in Israel. Other members of the committee included Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, and John Lehman, among dozens of other neoconservatives and pro-Israel hawks. The committee spoke out against what it perceived as a dangerous distancing between the George H.W. Bush administration and Israel that was supposedly evident in U.S. pressure for Israel to pull out of some occupied territories and halt its campaign to expand settlements in these zones. ...
Saturday, November 04, 2006
[Bush / ] war's neoconservative boosters turned sharply on Bush administration, grand designs undermined by White House incompetence
Vanity Fair Exclusive: Now They Tell Us | Neo Culpa | by David Rose VF.COM November 3, 2006
As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.
...
According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.… I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."
Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' … I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."
...
To David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who co-wrote Bush's 2002 State of the Union address that accused Iraq of being part of an "axis of evil," it now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them." This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on "failure at the center"—starting with President Bush....
As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.
...
According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.… I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."
Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' … I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."
...
To David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who co-wrote Bush's 2002 State of the Union address that accused Iraq of being part of an "axis of evil," it now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them." This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on "failure at the center"—starting with President Bush....
Sunday, July 23, 2006
the neocons as "so untethered from reality as to defy caricature."
Neonuts: "Neonuts"
For them, Afghanistan and Iraq will not suffice. They want to take out Syria and Iran, and speed full steam ahead towards World Wars III and IV. The Weekly Standard asks simply, "Why wait?"
According to Newt Gingrich, there is no need to wait at all. On Meet the Press this past Sunday he offered that the Israel-Hezbollah conflict "… is, in fact, World War III" and "the U.S. ought to be helping...."
And how might the US help fight Newt's World War? The Weekly Standard provides the answer: "It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions – and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."
George Will – not exactly your run-of-the-mill, card-carrying liberal – describes the neocons as "so untethered from reality as to defy caricature." ...
For them, Afghanistan and Iraq will not suffice. They want to take out Syria and Iran, and speed full steam ahead towards World Wars III and IV. The Weekly Standard asks simply, "Why wait?"
According to Newt Gingrich, there is no need to wait at all. On Meet the Press this past Sunday he offered that the Israel-Hezbollah conflict "… is, in fact, World War III" and "the U.S. ought to be helping...."
And how might the US help fight Newt's World War? The Weekly Standard provides the answer: "It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions – and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."
George Will – not exactly your run-of-the-mill, card-carrying liberal – describes the neocons as "so untethered from reality as to defy caricature." ...
Saturday, April 22, 2006
THE ARCHITECTS OF WAR: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Think Progress � THE ARCHITECTS OF WAR: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?: "...
President Bush has not fired any of the architects of the Iraq war. In fact, a review of the key planners of the conflict reveals that they have been rewarded – not blamed – for their incompetence."
...
Bush promoted Wolfowitz to head the World Bank in March 2005. [Washington Post, 3/17/05]
President Bush has not fired any of the architects of the Iraq war. In fact, a review of the key planners of the conflict reveals that they have been rewarded – not blamed – for their incompetence."
...
Bush promoted Wolfowitz to head the World Bank in March 2005. [Washington Post, 3/17/05]
Key Quote: “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.” [Wolfowitz, 3/27/03]
...
Feith voluntarily resigned from the Defense Department shortly after Bush’s reelection. He is co-chairman of a project at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government to write an academic book on how to fight terrorism. Feith’s secretive groups at the Pentagon are under investigation by the Pentagon and the Senate Intelligence Committee for intelligence failures. [Washington Post, 1/27/05, 11/18/05; Washington Times, 3/3/06]
Key Quote: “I am not asserting to you that I know that the answer is — we did it right. What I am saying is it’s an extremely complex judgment to know whether the course that we chose with its pros and cons was more sensible.” [Washington Post, 7/13/05]
...
On January 26, 2005, Stephen Hadley was promoted to National Security Advisor. [White House bio]
Key Quote: “I should have recalled at the time of the State of the Union speech that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue. … And it is now clear to me that I failed in that responsibility in connection with the inclusion of these 16 words in the speech that he gave on the 28th of January.” [Hadley, 7/22/03]
...
Perle is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he specializes in national security and defense issues. He has been investigated for ethical violations concerning war profiteering and other conflicts of interest. [Washington Post, 9/1/04]
Key Quote: “And a year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they’ve been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.” [Perle, 9/22/03]
...
Abrams was promoted to deputy national security adviser in February of 2005. [Slate, 2/17/05]
Key Quote: “We recognize that military action in Iraq, if necessary, will have adverse humanitarian consequences. We have been planning over the last several months, across all relevant agencies, to limit any such consequences and provide relief quickly.” [CNN, 2/25/03]
...
Wurmser was promoted to Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs; he is in charge of coordinating Middle East strategy. His name has been associated with the Plame Affair and with an FBI investigation into the passing of classified information to Chalabi and AIPAC. [Raw Story, 10/19/05; Washington Post, 9/4/04]
Key Quote: “Syria, Iran, Iraq, the PLO and Sudan are playing a skillful game, but have consistently worked to undermine US interests and influence in the region for years, and certainly will continue to do so now, even if they momentarily, out of fear, seem more forthcoming.” [Washington Post, 9/24/01]
...
Natsios stepped down as the head of USAID in January and is currently teaching at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh’s School of Foreign Service as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy and Advisor on International Development. [AP, 2/20/06; Georgetown, 12/2/05]
Key Quote: “[T]he American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.” [Nightline, 4/23/03]
...
Bartlett was promoted to Counselor to the President on January 5, 2005, and is responsible for the formulation of policy and implementation of the President’s agenda. [White House]
Key Quote: “President Bush understands that the need to disarm Saddam Hussein is necessary. He has made that case to the United Nations Security Council. He’s made that case to the United States Congress. The entire world rallied behind this resolution that gives him one last chance. He has that chance, but time is running out.” [CNN, 1/26/03]
...
In 2004, Daniels was elected Governor of Indiana. [USA Today, 11/3/04]
Key Quote: Mitch Daniels had said the war would be an “affordable endeavor” and rejected an estimate by the chief White House economic adviser that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion as “very, very high.” [Christian Science Monitor, 1/10/06]
...
Tenet voluntarily resigned from the administration on June 3, 2004. He was later awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom. [Washington Post, 6/3/04]
Key Quote: “It’s a slam dunk case.” [CNN, 4/19/04 ...
Thursday, March 09, 2006
These are the right-wing intellectuals who demanded George Bush invade Iraq. Now they admit they got it wrong. Are you listening, Mr President?
Independent Online Edition > Americas: "9 March 2006 07:06 | NeoCon allies desert Bush over Iraq
These are the right-wing intellectuals who demanded George Bush invade Iraq. Now they admit they got it wrong. Are you listening, Mr President?
Published: 09 March 2006
William Buckley Jnr
INFLUENTIAL CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST AND TV PUNDIT
'One can't doubt the objective in Iraq has failed ... Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an army of 130,000 Americans. Different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.'
Francis Fukuyama
AUTHOR AND LONG-TERM ADVOCATE OF TOPPLING SADDAM
'By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at.'
Richard Perle
ARCH-WARMONGER AND PIVOTAL REPUBLICAN HAWK
'The military campaign and its political aftermath were both passionately debated within the Bush administration. It got the war right and the aftermath wrong We should have understood that we needed Iraqi partners.'
Andrew Sullivan
PROMINENT COMMENTATOR AND INFLUENTIAL BLOGGER
'The world has learnt a tough lesson, and it has been a lot tougher for those tens of thousands of dead, innocent Iraqis ... than for a few humiliated pundits. The correct response is not more spin but a sense of shame and sorrow.'
George Will
RIGHT-WING COLUMNIST ON 'THE WASHINGTON POST' AND TV PUNDIT
'Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation. And after two elections and a referendum on the constitution, Iraq barely has a government.'
William Buckley Jnr
INFLUENTIAL CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST AND TV PUNDIT
'One can't doubt the objective in Iraq has failed ... Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an army of 130,000 Americans. Different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.'
Francis Fukuyama
AUTHOR AND LONG-TERM ADVOCATE OF TOPPLING SADDAM
'By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at.'
Richard Perle
ARCH-WARMONGER AND PIVOTAL REPUBLICAN HAWK
'The military campaign and its political aftermath were both passionately debated within the Bush administration. It got the war right and the aftermath wrong We should have understood that we needed Iraqi partners.'
Andrew Sullivan
PROMINENT COMMENTATOR AND INFLUENTIAL BLOGGER
'The world has learnt a tough lesson, and it has been a lot tougher for those tens of thousands of dead, innocent Iraqis ... than for a few humiliated pundits. The correct response is not more spin but a sense of shame and sorrow.'
George Will
RIGHT-WING COLUMNIST ON 'THE WASHINGTON POST' AND TV PUNDIT
'Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation. And after two elections and a referendum on the constitution, Iraq barely has a government.'" ...
These are the right-wing intellectuals who demanded George Bush invade Iraq. Now they admit they got it wrong. Are you listening, Mr President?
Published: 09 March 2006
William Buckley Jnr
INFLUENTIAL CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST AND TV PUNDIT
'One can't doubt the objective in Iraq has failed ... Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an army of 130,000 Americans. Different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.'
Francis Fukuyama
AUTHOR AND LONG-TERM ADVOCATE OF TOPPLING SADDAM
'By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at.'
Richard Perle
ARCH-WARMONGER AND PIVOTAL REPUBLICAN HAWK
'The military campaign and its political aftermath were both passionately debated within the Bush administration. It got the war right and the aftermath wrong We should have understood that we needed Iraqi partners.'
Andrew Sullivan
PROMINENT COMMENTATOR AND INFLUENTIAL BLOGGER
'The world has learnt a tough lesson, and it has been a lot tougher for those tens of thousands of dead, innocent Iraqis ... than for a few humiliated pundits. The correct response is not more spin but a sense of shame and sorrow.'
George Will
RIGHT-WING COLUMNIST ON 'THE WASHINGTON POST' AND TV PUNDIT
'Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation. And after two elections and a referendum on the constitution, Iraq barely has a government.'
William Buckley Jnr
INFLUENTIAL CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST AND TV PUNDIT
'One can't doubt the objective in Iraq has failed ... Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an army of 130,000 Americans. Different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.'
Francis Fukuyama
AUTHOR AND LONG-TERM ADVOCATE OF TOPPLING SADDAM
'By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at.'
Richard Perle
ARCH-WARMONGER AND PIVOTAL REPUBLICAN HAWK
'The military campaign and its political aftermath were both passionately debated within the Bush administration. It got the war right and the aftermath wrong We should have understood that we needed Iraqi partners.'
Andrew Sullivan
PROMINENT COMMENTATOR AND INFLUENTIAL BLOGGER
'The world has learnt a tough lesson, and it has been a lot tougher for those tens of thousands of dead, innocent Iraqis ... than for a few humiliated pundits. The correct response is not more spin but a sense of shame and sorrow.'
George Will
RIGHT-WING COLUMNIST ON 'THE WASHINGTON POST' AND TV PUNDIT
'Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation. And after two elections and a referendum on the constitution, Iraq barely has a government.'" ...