| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2004 9:04 am Post subject: Richard Clarke's Bombshell |
| Subj: Richard Clarke's Bombshell
Date: 3/22/04 7:16:50 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
Friends,
Richard Clarke’s Bombshell
I watched Bush’s former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke on CBS TV’s "60 minutes" and his revelations were a bombshell. Let’s repeat: Clarke was not just some war critic or someone in the Bush administration who might not possess full information on American national security strategy--as was the much-smeared Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neil who said that Iraq was targeted from the start of the Bush administration, a claim that Clarke fully corroborates. Clarke was Bush’s top adviser on counter-terrorism in 2001. He was obviously a central figure in the Bush administration’s thinking about terrorism. His revelations provide more confirmation that Iraq was the target of attack by the Bush neocon war party long before September 11 and that they were grasping for a pretext to publicly justify such an attack. Clarke brings all this information out in his new book, "Against All Enemies."
I have included articles on this issue from "Newsweek," the "Washington Post," and by Justin Raimondo.
I’ll list the major points made by Clarke.
First, Clarke was concerned about al Qaeda early in the administration, but no one else showed interest. Newsweek: "Clarke recounts how on Jan. 24, 2001, he recommended that the new president's national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, convene the president's top advisers to discuss the Qaeda threat. One week later, Bush did. But according to Clarke, the meeting had nothing to do with bin Laden. The topic was how to get rid of Saddam Hussein. ‘What does that tell you?’ Clarke remarked to NEWSWEEK. ‘They thought there was something more urgent. It was Iraq. They came in there with their agenda, and [Al Qaeda] was not on it.’" Newsweek points out that Clarke’s contention that the administration downgraded al Qaeda is backed-up by the fact that "At the Justice Department, Attorney General John Ashcroft downgraded terrorism as a priority, choosing to place more emphasis on drug trafficking and gun violence."
Instead of wanting to deal with al Qaeda in the months prior toe 9/11, the administration wanted to focus on Saddam. Neocon Paul Wolfowitz took the lead in emphasizing Saddam, even though Clarke constantly reported that there was absolutely no evidence of Iraq sponsoring terrorism. Wolfowitz has been the brains behind Rumsfeld and has been called by Time Magazing, the "godfather of the Iraq war." Newsweek article: "Clarke sharply whacks Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as the leader of the Get Saddam squad. When the White House finally did convene a top-level meeting to discuss terrorism, in April 2001, Wolfowitz rebuffed Clarke's effort to focus on Al Qaeda. According to Clarke, Wolfowitz said, ‘Who cares about a little terrorist in Afghanistan?’ The real threat, Wolfowitz insisted, was state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam. In the meeting, says Clarke, Wolfowitz cited the writings of Laurie Mylroie, a controversial academic who had written a book advancing an elaborate conspiracy theory that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing." The Mylorie reference is very interesting. A little background: Mylorie is a neocon and her Iraq involvement thesis has been trumpeted by the neocons. She has claimed that al Qaeda is a front for Iraqi intelligence. She emphasizes Saddam’s WMD. Her book was originally published by AEI (American Enterprise Instute ) AEI is a leading neocon think tank. Then Regan Books, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers, released the book in paperback. Harper Collins is owned by pro-neocon/pro-Zionist Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the Fox News Channel, which booked Mylroie as an Iraq expert during the build-up to the war. Fox News was the leading media cheerleader for the war. Mylorie fulfilled the same war propaganda purpose as Ahmed Chalabi’s bogus intelligence.
http://slate.msn.com/id/116232/
In the July, 2001, Clarke said that there was considerable communications traffic among al Qaeda operatives, which signaled that some major terrorist event might be coming up. Clarke wanted the Bush administration to focus on this danger, but Bush and the administration did not take any precautionary actions..
When the attack occurred Rumsfeld was talking about attacking Iraq, even though there was no evidence that Iraq was involved in the terrorism attack.
After Sept. 11, the White House pressed Clarke to find evidence that Iraq was involved in the terrorism—Clarke could find none, but there was the implication that he should come up with something.
In the build-up to the attack on Iraq, the administration deceptively continued to suggest that there was a link between September 11 terrorism and Saddam, despite the fact that there was not evidence of Saddam’s involvement. The connection was obviously used for the propagandistic purpose of getting public support for the attack on Iraq. Wolfowitz is presented this view in a phone call to the "Washington Post" regarding Clarke’s statements. "Washington Post": "Wolfowitz, in a telephone interview last night, cited statements by CIA Director George J. Tenet and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell affirming that Iraq once trained al Qaeda operatives in bomb making and document forgery."
Clarke emphasizes that Bush’s focus on Iraq has actually served to increase the terrorist danger. Clarke writes that Bush "launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide."
The US attack on Iraq only confirmed what Osama and the Islamic extremists said about the US and thus simply strengthened the support for terrorism in the Muslim world. At the same time, by having American men and resources bogged down in Iraq, the United States is less able to counter terrorism elsewhere. As Clarke stated in his CBS "60 Minutes" interview: ""But frankly I find it outrageous that the president is running for reelection on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism."
The administration is out to discredit Clarke. Clarke is not a Democrat or in any sense anti-war per se. Clarke is a foreign policy hawk and career government official who served five Presidents – three of them Republicans. And the "Washington Post" points out: "Clarke's disputes with the White House are notable in part because his muscular national security views allied him often over the years with most of the leading figures advising Bush on terrorism and Iraq. As an assistant secretary of state in 1991, Clarke worked closely with Wolfowitz and then-Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney to marshal the 32-nation coalition that expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Clarke sided with Wolfowitz -- against Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- in a losing argument to extend that war long enough to destroy Iraq's Republican Guard. Later, Clarke was principal author of the hawkish U.S. plan to rid Iraq of its nonconventional weapons under threat of further military force."
This doesn’t stop the pro-Bush smearers, who have attacked every other official that has dared to reveal the deceptive inner workings of the Bush administration. Raimondo writes: "The Republican attack machine is trying to paint Clarke as some kind of partisan Democrat – an unlikely characterization of a 30-year career in government at the highest levels, starting out in the Reagan administration. What we are witnessing here is yet the latest episode in an extraordinary series of whistle-blowing accounts by government insiders: Ambassador Joe Wilson, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, and now Clarke, all patriotic Americans pointing to a dangerous vulnerability." One should add Greg Thielmann, who was director of the strategic, proliferation, and military issues office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill. Significantly the Bush smear machine attacked Paul O’Neill for saying that the pre-911 Bush administration was focused on Iraq, which Clarke has now confirmed. O’Neill was smeared for telling the obvious truth. And the all the members of the Bush administration allowed this smear of one of their former associates to take place without a peep!
But the fact of the matter is that what Clarke reports is not new. It simply confirms information that has come to the fore already. Of course, all this fits in with the fact that the neoconservatives who loomed large in the Bush administration had been planning to attack Iraq for years and simply needed a pretext. [All on the record books—see my piece "The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel http://www.thornwalker.com:16080/ditch/conc_toc.htm ]
Clarke provides additional evidence for the fact the Bush administration neocons sought to attack Iraq and merely looked for a pretext to gain the necessary public and congressional support. Thus they tried to connect Iraq to the September 11 terrorism in order to justify an attack but couldn’t completely achieve this end. While the Bush neocons couldn’t completely use September 11 involvement—though they did imply Saddam’s complicity—they moved on the WMD lies. That they wanted a justification for attacking Iraq would indicate that their fallacious WMD claims were not the result of error. They got the exact results that they wanted. And, of course, the neocons promoted much of the most extreme WMD propaganda through their Office of Special Plans and their touting of the deceptive Ahmed Chalabi. In short, all of the "intelligence errors" caused the neocon war party to get the attack on Iraq that they had ardently sought.
Beyond illustrating the pre-911 goal of attacking Iraq, it is also apparent that the refusal to consider the al Qaeda alerts might have precluded the prevention of this terrorist attack. This issue needs more analysis (and I have not read Clarke’s book), but it certainly could lead to the conclusion that the Bush administration’s relative indifference to this threat facilitated the success of the 911 terrorist act that ultimately set the stage for the attack on Iraq. One can wonder whether this indifference that served to achieve a major policy goal might have been deliberate rather than accidental. But much more evidence is needed for such a conclusion. Of course, the Bush administration is averse to releasing any relevant information dealing with the pre-911 period. And then you have the Mossad living on the same street as chief 911 terrorist Mohammed Atta, and then the Mossad agents taking pictures of the Trade Towers burning from across the Hudson River. And hey I’m moving into dangerous conspiratorial territory here, so I’d better end it all. [Justin Raimondo has put this information together in a short book, "The Terror Enigma: Israel and the September 11 Connection," a brief synopsis can be found at http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/August2003/0803CIA.html
I have written on Israeli involvement at: www.thornwalker.com/ditch/towers_5.htm
www.thornwalker.com/ditch/towers_6.htm ]
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4571338/
Storm Warnings
NewsweekMarch 29 issue
Bin Laden was a threat, but Clinton never pushed it and Bush seemed more interested in Saddam. What went wrong
David Hume Kennerly / Getty Images
Clear warnings: Clinton administration officials say they bluntly warned the incoming Bush administration of the imminent threat from Al Qaeda
By Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas
NewsweekMarch 29 issue - It was the day after 9/11, and President Bush, like many Americans, was looking for someone to bomb. Wandering into the White House Situation Room, the president pulled aside Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism chief of the national-security staff who had been held over from the Clinton years. According to Clarke, Bush asked: was Iraq responsible for the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington? Bush wanted the FBI and CIA to hunt for any evidence that pointed to Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. Clarke recalls that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was also looking for a justification to bomb Iraq. Soon after the 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld was arguing at a cabinet meeting that Afghanistan, home of Osama bin Laden's terrorist camps, did not offer "enough good targets." "We should do Iraq," Rumsfeld urged.
Clarke was skeptical in the extreme. Six days after the president's request, Clarke says, he turned in a classified memo concluding that there was no evidence of Iraqi complicity in 9/11—nor any relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The memo, says Clarke, was buried by an administration that was determined to get Iraq, sooner or later.
Clarke, who was interviewed by NEWSWEEK last week, is telling his story to the world: to "60 Minutes" on Sunday night, in testimony this week to the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks and in his new book, "Against All Enemies," just out. Clarke portrays the Bush White House as indifferent to the Qaeda threat before 9/11, then obsessed with punishing Iraq, regardless of what the evidence showed about Saddam's Qaeda ties, or lack of them.
The Bush administration is already pushing back. A White House official told NEWSWEEK that Bush has "no specific recollection" of the post 9/11 conversation described by Clarke, and that records show the president was not in the Situation Room at the time Clarke recalls. "His book might be called 'If Only They Had Listened to Dick Clarke'," said an administration official.
John Kerry wants everyone to listen to Clarke now. As soon as Clarke's charges began appearing in print, the Democrats' presumptive nominee put them on his campaign Web site. After a rough week when he was mocked by the Bush-Cheney campaign for flip-flopping on the Iraq war, Kerry is glad to turn the tables on Bush. The Bush campaign has been eager to make the election center on Bush's resolve to strike back after 9/11. But Kerry wants to bring the focus back to the nine months before 9/11, when the new president was paying only erratic attention to Al Qaeda.
For Kerry and the Democrats, the catch is that Bill Clinton did no better to tame the terrorist threat during his last years in office. As Washington Post managing editor Steve Coll recently showed in his book "Ghost Wars," those in the national-security bureaucracy under Clinton spent more time wringing their hands and squabbling with each other than going after Osama bin Laden. And Clinton never stepped in and ordered his troops to stop dickering and do the job.
The White House counterterror chief during the late ' 90s and through 9/11 was Dick Clarke. A career civil servant, Clarke was known for pounding the table to urge his counterparts at the CIA, FBI and Pentagon to do more about Al Qaeda. But he did not have much luck, in part because in both the Clinton and early Bush administrations, the top leadership did not back up Clarke and demand results.
Clarke does not absolve Clinton (or himself) of responsibility—the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa happened on Clinton's watch—but he saves his harshest criticism for Bush and his national-security team. In his new book, Clarke recounts how on Jan. 24, 2001, he recommended that the new president's national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, convene the president's top advisers to discuss the Qaeda threat. One week later, Bush did. But according to Clarke, the meeting had nothing to do with bin Laden. The topic was how to get rid of Saddam Hussein. "What does that tell you?" Clarke remarked to NEWSWEEK. "They thought there was something more urgent. It was Iraq. They came in there with their agenda, and [Al Qaeda] was not on it."
A White House official countered that the true fault lay with Clarke for failing to propose an effective plan to go after Al Qaeda. On Jan. 25, this official told NEWSWEEK, Clarke submitted proposals to "roll back" Al Qaeda in Afghanistan by boosting military aid to neighboring Uzbekistan, getting the CIA to arm its Predator spy planes and increasing funding for guerrillas fighting the Taliban. There was no need for a high-level meeting on terrorism until Clarke came up with a better plan, this official told NEWSWEEK. The official quoted President Bush as telling Condi Rice, "I'm tired of swatting flies." Bush, this official says, wanted an aggressive scheme to take bin Laden out.
Clarke sharply whacks Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as the leader of the Get Saddam squad. When the White House finally did convene a top-level meeting to discuss terrorism, in April 2001, Wolfowitz rebuffed Clarke's effort to focus on Al Qaeda. According to Clarke, Wolfowitz said, "Who cares about a little terrorist in Afghanistan?" The real threat, Wolfowitz insisted, was state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam. In the meeting, says Clarke, Wolfowitz cited the writings of Laurie Mylroie, a controversial academic who had written a book advancing an elaborate conspiracy theory that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Clarke says he tried to refute Wolfowitz. "We've investigated that five ways to Friday, and nobody [in the government] believes that," Clarke recalls saying. "It was Al Qaeda. It wasn't Saddam." A spokesman for Wolfowitz described Clarke's account as a "fabrication." Wolfowitz always regarded Al Qaeda as "a major threat," said this official.
If the Bush administration was sounding the alarm about Al Qaeda in its first few months in office, the national-security bureaucracy was not listening. At the Justice Department, Attorney General John Ashcroft downgraded terrorism as a priority, choosing to place more emphasis on drug trafficking and gun violence. That summer, a federal judge severely chastised the FBI for improperly seeking permission to wiretap terrorists; as a result, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called "Catcher's Mitt" to monitor Qaeda suspects in the United States. The CIA and Air Force were caught up in an endless wrangle over who would arm and fly the Predator spy plane (and pay for it, as well as take responsibility for shooting at terrorist targets).
NEWSWEEK RADIO | 3/21/
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13607-2004Mar21?language=printer
washingtonpost.com
Memoir Criticizes Bush 9/11 Response
President Pushed Iraq Link, Aide Says
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 22, 2004; Page A01
On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, according to a newly published memoir, President Bush wandered alone around the Situation Room in a White House emptied by the previous day's calamitous events.
Spotting Richard A. Clarke, his counterterrorism coordinator, Bush pulled him and a small group of aides into the dark paneled room.
"Go back over everything, everything," Bush said, according to Clarke's account. "See if Saddam did this."
"But Mr. President, al Qaeda did this," Clarke replied.
"I know, I know, but . . . see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred."
Reminded that the CIA, FBI and White House staffs had sought and found no such link before, Clarke said, Bush spoke "testily." As he left the room, Bush said a third time, "Look into Iraq, Saddam."
For Clarke, then in his 10th year as a top White House official, that day marked the transition from neglect to folly in the Bush administration's stewardship of war with Islamic extremists. His account -- in "Against All Enemies," which reaches bookstores today, and in interviews accompanying publication -- is the first detailed portrait of the Bush administration's wartime performance by a major participant. Acknowledged by foes and friends as a leading figure among career national security officials, Clarke served more than two years in the Bush White House after holding senior posts under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He resigned 13 months ago yesterday.
Although expressing points of disagreement with all four presidents, Clarke reserves by far his strongest language for George W. Bush. The president, he said, "failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from al Qaeda despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the attacks." The rapid shift of focus to Saddam Hussein, Clarke writes, "launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide."
Among the motives for the war, Clarke argues, were the politics of the 2002 midterm election. "The crisis was manufactured, and Bush political adviser Karl Rove was telling Republicans to 'run on the war,' " Clarke writes.
Clarke describes his book, in the preface, as "factual, not polemical," and he said in an interview that he was a registered Republican in the 2000 election. But the book arrives amid a general election campaign in which Bush asks to be judged as a wartime president, and Clarke has thrust himself loudly among the critics. Publication also coincides with politically sensitive public testimony this week by Clinton and Bush administration officials -- including Clarke -- before an independent commission investigating the events of Sept. 11.
"I'm sure I'll be criticized for lots of things, and I'm sure they'll launch their dogs on me," Clarke told CBS's "60 Minutes" in an interview broadcast last night. "But frankly I find it outrageous that the president is running for reelection on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism."
On the same broadcast, deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley said, "We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the president ever occurred." In interviews for this story, two people who were present confirmed Clarke's account. They said national security adviser Condoleezza Rice witnessed the exchange.
Rice, in an opinion article published opposite The Washington Post editorial page today, writes: "It would have been irresponsible not to ask a question about all possible links, including to Iraq -- a nation that had supported terrorism and had tried to kill a former president. Once advised that there was no evidence that Iraq was responsible for Sept. 11, the president told his National Security Council on Sept. 17 that Iraq was not on the agenda and that the initial U.S. response to Sept. 11 would be to target al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan."
White House and Pentagon officials who spoke only on the condition of anonymity described Clarke's public remarks as self-serving and politically motivated.
Like former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill, who spoke out in January, Clarke said some of Bush's leading advisers arrived in office determined to make war on Iraq. Nearly all of them, he said, believed Clinton had been "overly obsessed with al Qaeda."
During Bush's first week in office, Clarke asked urgently for a Cabinet-level meeting on al Qaeda. He did not get it -- or permission to brief the president directly on the threat -- for nearly eight months. When deputies to the Cabinet officials took up the subject in April, Clarke writes, the meeting "did not go well."
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Clarke wrote, scowled and asked, "why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden." When Clarke told him no foe but al Qaeda "poses an immediate and serious threat to the United States," Wolfowitz is said to have replied that Iraqi terrorism posed "at least as much" of a danger. FBI and CIA representatives backed Clarke in saying they had no such evidence.
"I could hardly believe," Clarke writes, that Wolfowitz pressed the "totally discredited" theory that Iraq was behind the 1993 truck bomb at the World Trade Center, "a theory that had been investigated for years and found to be totally untrue."
Wolfowitz, in a telephone interview last night, cited statements by CIA Director George J. Tenet and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell affirming that Iraq once trained al Qaeda operatives in bomb making and document forgery.
"Given what George Tenet and Colin Powell have said publicly about Iraqi links to al Qaeda, I just find it hard to understand how Dick Clarke can be so dismissive of the possibility that there were links between them," Wolfowitz said.
Like Tenet, Clarke was a Clinton holdover who faced initial skepticism from Bush loyalists. But Rice asked him to keep the counterterrorism portfolio and discouraged him from leaving in February 2003.
In the first minutes after hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, Rice placed Clarke in her chair in the Situation Room and asked him to direct the government's crisis response. The next day, Clarke returned to find the subject changed to Iraq.
"I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that [Defense Secretary Donald H.] Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq," he writes.
In discussions of military strikes, "Secretary Rumsfeld complained that there were no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan" -- where al Qaeda was based under protection of the Taliban -- "and that we should consider bombing Iraq."
Clarke's disputes with the White House are notable in part because his muscular national security views allied him often over the years with most of the leading figures advising Bush on terrorism and Iraq. As an assistant secretary of state in 1991, Clarke worked closely with Wolfowitz and then-Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney to marshal the 32-nation coalition that expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Clarke sided with Wolfowitz -- against Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- in a losing argument to extend that war long enough to destroy Iraq's Republican Guard. Later, Clarke was principal author of the hawkish U.S. plan to rid Iraq of its nonconventional weapons under threat of further military force.
In his experience, Clarke writes, Bush's description by critics as "a dumb, lazy rich kid" is "somewhat off the mark." Bush has "a results-oriented mind, but he looked for the simple solution, the bumper sticker description of the problem."
"Any leader whom one can imagine as president on September 11 would have declared a 'war on terrorism' and would have ended the Afghan sanctuary [for al Qaeda] by invading," Clarke writes. "What was unique about George Bush's reaction" was the additional choice to invade "not a country that had been engaging in anti-U.S. terrorism but one that had not been, Iraq." In so doing, he estranged allies, enraged potential friends in the Arab and Islamic worlds, and produced "more terrorists than we jail or shoot."
"It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting 'invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq,' " Clarke writes.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=2172
March 22, 2004
Is Anybody in Charge?
Former anti-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke exposes White House's criminal negligence
by Justin Raimondo
In today's world, where state-worship is the secular faith of our age, and the idea that "the government will take care of it" is the centerpiece and source of all political discourse, the revelations of Richard Clarke, former terrorism czar, are nothing less than terrifying:
Clarke, a foreign policy hawk and career government official who served 5 Presidents – 3 of them Republicans – served as Bush II's chief counter-terrorism adviser on the national security staff, and, according to Newsweek,
"Was known for pounding the table to urge his counterparts at the CIA, FBI and Pentagon to do more about Al Qaeda. But he did not have much luck, in part because in both the Clinton and early Bush administrations, the top leadership did not back up Clarke and demand results."
In his new book, Against All Enemies, Clarke recalls a high level meeting held in April, 2001, during which Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz scoffed at the threat posed by Osama bin Laden:
"'Who cares about a little terrorist in Afghanistan?' The real threat, Wolfowitz insisted, was state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam Hussein."
The meeting was supposed to have been about implementing Clarke's persistent efforts to do something about Al Qaeda. He had written to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, in late January, 2001, urgently requesting some attention be paid to the growing threat of domestic terrorism orchestrated by Al Qaeda. It wasn't until April, however, that a high-level meeting was convened, at which, according to Clarke, Wolfowitz cited as evidence to the contrary the writings of conspiracy theorist Laurie Mylroie, who has created an entire oeuvre around the idea that Saddam Hussein was responsible not only for the 1993 WTC bombing, but also the Oklahoma City terror incident – and, quite possibly global warming. "We've investigated that five ways to Friday, and nobody [in the government] believes that," replied Clarke. "It was Al Qaeda. It wasn't Saddam."
But facts weren't going to get in the way of the neoconservative drive to invade and conquer Iraq, no matter what the price to truth, common sense, or the national interest. The neocons' relentless single-tracked agenda didn't permit any other conclusion but the one pointing to Saddam as the main danger, even as Al Qaeda gathered in the shadows.
Ideological blindness is one thing: deliberate diversion is another. It is the difference between incompetence and treason. But that difference, in the context of the Clarke revelations, seems to disappear in light of the numerous warnings received by U.S. government officials in the months and days prior to 9/11: As the target date of the terrorists drew nearer, the alarm bells - sounded by foreign intelligence agencies, including the British, the French, the Argentineans, and the Israelis, and some of our own people – were getting louder. But was anybody listening? Was anybody in charge?
Well, er, yes, but they were too busy pursuing the florid fantasies of the eccentric Ms. Mylroie to worry about "a little terrorist in Afghanistan."
Even in the wake of 9/11, this administration's Iraqi-mania didn't abate: indeed, according to Clarke, it was emboldened. And let's be clear, it wasn't just the President's neocon advisors whispering in his ear, cutting him off from reality. As Clarke relates, Bush II was supremely uninterested in the truth:
"'The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.'
"'I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'
"He came back at me and said, 'Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer."
Clarke compiled a report, which he characterizes as "a serious look," concluding that Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the events of 9/11. The CIA and the FBI both signed off on it, but when it was sent up to Condie Rice's office on its way to the President's desk, Clarke's report was intercepted "by the National Security Advisor or Deputy" and sent back with the message: "Wrong answer. … Do it again."
With a deftly fortuitous sense of timing, Clarke's book is scheduled for release today [Monday], and is scheduled to testify before the 9/11 Commission on Tuesday. A Sunday night interview with Sixty Minutes fires the first shot in a pyrotechnic display of fireworks, an unprecedented assault directed on an incumbent White House by a disillusioned top official.
Three years after the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history, the seminal event of our era is still wreathed in mystery and mystification. While this administration uses 9/11 as a rationale for perpetual war, we are not supposed to examine the facts surrounding it too closely: having tried and failed to block the extension of the 9/11 Commission's deadline to submit a report, the White House has been parsimonious in doling out documents essential to the mission of the 9/11 investigating commission, which is charged with finding the proximate causes of the gigantic "intelligence failure" that made 9/11 possible. In spite of every attempt to narrow the Commission's mandate, however, Clarke's testimony is bound to elucidate the exact outlines of how and where that failure occurred.
What is interesting to note is that Clarke pinpoints the nixing of his post-9/11 report to the office of the National Security Advisor, run by Ms. Rice's chief deputy, Stephen J. Hadley – who, coincidentally, also played a similar role as bureaucratic bottleneck when it came to the Niger uranium allegations that somehow snuck into the President's 2003 State of the Union.
The Hadley connection doesn't end there, however. A Washington grand jury has recently subpoenaed all records of a heretofore little known entity, the White House Iraq Group, which met weekly in the Situation Room to coordinate the propaganda offensive in the run-up to war, with Hadley and other White House officials and advisors in regular attendance. He's also a source of the bogus "Mohammed Atta in Prague" story of a meeting between an Iraqi agent and one of the 9/11 plotters, a tall tale which he pushed, along with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, long after it had been discredited. There is hardly a lie told by this administration that doesn't have Mr. Hadley's name signed to it. It was therefore not at all surprising when the administration point man hauled out on Sixty Minutes to provide a counterpoint to Clarke was none other than … Hadley.
The Republican attack machine is trying to paint Clarke as some kind of partisan Democrat – an unlikely characterization of a 30-year career in government at the highest levels, starting out in the Reagan administration. What we are witnessing here is yet the latest episode in an extraordinary series of whistle-blowing accounts by government insiders: Ambassador Joe Wilson, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, and now Clarke, all patriotic Americans pointing to a dangerous vulnerability.
The neocon hijacking of American foreign policy was the cause of a significant area of blindness in this administration. The blinkered perspective of neocon apparatchiks, who routinely touted the crackpot theories of Laurie Mylroie as if they were sacred dogma, enabled Al Qaeda to hit at our soft underside, sight unseen until after the fact. This fatal loss of vision was due to the distorting effects of neocon ideology, specifically its Iraqi-centric view of the terrorist threat.
Aside from the folk tale of "The Emperor's New Clothes," the only precedent is Soviet Russia in the 1930s, when dictator Joe Stalin endorsed the theories of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko – who rejected Mendelian principles of heredity, and believed that acquired characteristics could be inherited. Since this meant that human beings could be molded by an act of will, and advanced the Soviet goal of creating a "New Soviet Man," Lysenkoism was deemed politically correct by Stalin, and therefore had to be scientifically valid. Lysenkoism halted the development of the science of genetics in the Soviet Union until the late 1950s, when Lysenko was criticized and forced to resign his positions. But the damage had already been done: the progress of Soviet biological science was severely retarded.
A similar retardation process took place in the U.S. when it came to the science – or, rather, the art – or intelligence in the crucial prelude to the 9/11 terror attacks. The neo-Lysenkoism of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, which posited, a priori, the primacy of a threat emanating from Iraq, could not permit the inclusion of contradictory data. Go back to the drawing board, Clarke, Kwiatkowski, and others were told, and come up with the "right" answers.
In the Soviet Union, such "scientific" methods" led to the famines that decimated the country: wheat bred by Lysenko's methods somehow failed to deliver a cornucopia. In the U.S., circa September 2001, however, the neo-Lysenkoism of the top leadership had more spectacular consequences.
CIA director Richard Tenet's extraordinary rebuke to Vice President Dick Cheney on promulgating phony "intelligence" about Iraqi WMD and links to Al Qaeda, coupled with Clarke's assault on the White House's credibility, amount to an intramural fight that is threatening to bring down the Bush White House – and expose the inner workings of a government that, far from taking care of us, appears to be at least as dangerous to us as Al Qaeda. The public-spirited and patriotic motives of these whistle-blowing ex-officials now coming forward was best expressed in a letter to the Washington Post by Karen Kwiatkowski, whose expose of the Office of Special Plans "cooking" of bogus "intelligence" to push us into war led to her smearing by neocon mouthpiece George Will:
"I understand that my speaking out about what I saw in the Pentagon during the run-up to the Iraq war is disconcerting to people who support the Bush administration's foreign policy. I expected to be questioned on the merit and detail of my observations and memories. Surprisingly, not one defender or advocate of our actions in Iraq and associated propaganda has done that. Instead, people so in love with war without having spent a single minute in a military uniform attack me for standing up to be counted. Vituperative? Try cowardly."
Smear and purge: that is the methodology of today's Lysenkoists in pushing their agenda. How like their Soviet predecessors. They cannot produce concrete results: they cannot successfully defend the country against terrorists with their mistaken and profoundly wrongheaded notions. But they sure can put up a fight against their accusers in the court of public opinion.
Oh, don't worry: the government will take care of it. If that is the faith that keeps us from believing in the inevitability of another 9/11, then God help us all.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
My review of John Le Carre's Absolute Friends, in the latest issue of The American Conservative, is out on newsstands today. They don't always put my pieces online, so if you'd like to read it you should go out and get yourself a copy.
A recent piece by Jacob Heilbrunn in the Los Angeles Times avers that Republicans of the "realist" school are getting antsy about the neoconservatives’ version of "liberation" theology:
"The most profound foreign affairs ideological divide in the 2004 election might not be so much between liberals and conservatives as it will be among conservatives themselves."
Heilbrunn correctly points out that Patrick J. Buchanan and writers for The American Conservative were the first on the Right to raise the banner of Robert A. Taft and a foreign policy that puts America – and not "global democracy" – first. TAC rightly deserves a lot of the credit for this heartening development, and I am proud to note that they have now made me a contributing editor of the magazine. Thank the gods for Taki Theodoracopoulos, and long live TAC!
–Justin Raimondo
_______________________________________ | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2004 9:17 am Post subject: Carter savages Blair and Bush: 'Their war was based on lies' |
| Carter savages Blair and Bush: 'Their war was based on lies'
By Andrew Buncombe in Atlanta
22 March 2004
Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has strongly criticised George Bush and Tony Blair for waging an unnecessary war to oust Saddam Hussein based on "lies or misinterpretations". The 2002 Nobel peace prize winner said Mr Blair had allowed his better judgement to be swayed by Mr Bush's desire to finish a war that his father had started.
In an interview with The Independent on the first anniversary of the American and British invasion of Iraq, Mr Carter, who was president from 1977 to 1981, said the two leaders probably knew that many of the claims being made about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were based on imperfect intelligence.
He said: "There was no reason for us to become involved in Iraq recently. That was a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and from Washington, claiming falsely that Saddam Hussein was responsible for [the] 9/11 attacks, claiming falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And I think that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair probably knew that many of the allegations were based on uncertain intelligence ... a decision was made to go to war [then people said] 'Let's find a reason to do so'."
Before the war Mr Carter made clear his opposition to a unilateral attack and said the US did not have the authority to create a "Pax Americana". During his Nobel prize acceptance speech in December 2002 he warned of the danger of "uncontrollable violence" if countries sought to resolve problems without United Nations input. | | | | foppe37 | | Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2004 6:58 pm Post subject: much is not good, good is much |
| Alpha,
a concise argument, maybe followed by the whole story for those interested, has more effect than endless statements about the same.
Anyone with some brains by now knows that the reasons Bushboy and B-liar gave for occupying Iraq are bullshit.
So why did they do it ?
As idiots and morons may have their phantasies we maybe never will know.
So more statements of the same by more expertologists add little.
The question remains, how is it possible that two countries that claim they are democratic went to war just because two conceited and moronic leaders wanted war ?
And the second question is, how does the world leave this quagmire without causing a nuclear holocaust ? | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2004 10:47 pm Post subject: Ahmed Chalabi's Ties To Mossad and Neocons |
| http://www.nowarforisrael.com
http://www.nogw.com/warforisrael.html
Ahmed Chalabi's Ties To
Mossad And Neocons
By Christopher Bollyn
RumorMillNews.com
4-26-3
When Gen. Abdul Karim Qasim ousted the Iraqi monarchy of King Faisal II in
July 1958, many Iraqis, like the family of Ahmed Chalabi, which had enjoyed close ties with the monarchy, were forced to flee the country.
Today, Chalabi is the man behind the self-declared government that has come
to power in Baghdad.
Chalabi, a non-practising Shia, is reportedly a close friend of the late Shah of Iran, the former Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan and Col. Oliver North of the Reagan
Administration, according to a recent paper on Chalabi for the South Asia Analysis Group titled "Ahmed Chalabi: The Janos Kadar of Iraq" by B. Raman, a Indian intelligence expert.
The head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), Chalabi comes from an
aristocratic Shiite family that was connected to the monarchy of Faisal. The
Iraqi monarchy had been installed by the British when they created the Iraqi
state after the first World War.
Chalabi's father was a member of the Faisal's Council of Ministers and
president of the senate nominated by Faisal and set up to provide the Iraqi monarchy with a democratic facade.
The Chalabi family fled to Jordan when King Faisal II was overthrown in 1958
by Qasim's group of army officers who had allegedly acted in collusion with the
Iraqi Communist Party.
Years later, Chalabi amassed a great deal of wealth as a banker in Jordan. However, in 1989, Chalabi was found guilty of embezzlement and fraud in a military court in Jordan and was sentenced to 22 years. Chalabi reportedly fled Jordan in the trunk of a car with over $20 million.
It was alleged that during his association with the bank Chalabi embezzled nearly $70 million and stashed it in secret Swiss bank accounts.
The financial improprieties that Chalabi was found to have been directly involved in led to the collapse the Jordanian bank he directed, Petra Bank.
At the time of its crash, Petra was the third-largest bank in Jordan, and the Jordanian government was forced to pay out $200 million to depositors who faced the loss of their savings.
In 1992, Mr Chalabi was tried in absentia and sentenced by a Jordanian court to 22 years jail on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of depositor funds and currency speculation.
A report by Arthur Andersen subsequently found that Chalabi's Petra Bank's assets had been overstated by some $200 million. Many of the bank's bad loans were to Chalabi-linked companies in Switzerland and Lebanon.
A detailed 500-page Technical Committee Report was subsequently compiled for the Jordanian military attorney-general on June 10, 1990.
In the report Chalabi was named as being the man at Petra Bank who was directly responsible for "fictitious deposits and entries to make the income ... appear larger."
To this day, Chalabi insists that the charges were politically charged and the fact that there has never been formal extradition attempts prove the case was not genuine.
Chalabi is considered by experts to be a long-time collaborator with the CIA
and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at the Pentagon.
After fleeing Jordan, Chalabi went to Europe and founded the INC in 1992 at a meeting of some anti-Saddam Hussein exiles held in Vienna, Austria. James Woolsey, who became the Director of the CIA under President Bill Clinton, made Chalabi's INC the cutting-edge of the CIA's operations against Saddam Hussein. Chalabi allegedly became Woolsey's blue-eyed boy and the INC became the most favored recipient of CIA funds meant for the overthrow of Saddam, according to Raman.
In the 1980s, when he was associated with the Petra Bank, Chalabi, who was allegedly helping the Mossad, the Israeli external intelligence agency, used to visit Israel secretly.
During those visits, he became close to the late Albert Wohlstetter, who is reputed to be "a godfather of the neoconservative movement in the US," according to Raman.
Chalabi had met Wohlstetter during his student days at the University of Chicago, Raman wrote, but the friendship became close only after their meetings in Israel. Through Wohlstetter, Chalabi became acquainted with Richard Perle, who was Under-Secretary of Defence for international-security policy under President Reagan, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom served under President Ronald Reagan.
Perle, as chief of the Defence Policy Advisory Board, has been a strong supporter of Chalabi, but the CIA and the State Department have serious reservations about him.
Chalabi's criminal past notwithstanding, Chalabi is today being presented as the possible head of an interim Iraqi authority to provide an Iraqi face for what is likely to become an extended U.S. military occupation of Iraq.
"He is tipped to occupy an important post in the US occupation regime in Baghdad to create a new Iraqi intelligence agency, which would be loyal to the USA and protect its national interests," Raman wrote.
On April 16, two close associates of Chalabi said they had been elected
mayor and governor of Baghdad by tribal and religious chiefs acting with the
consent of the U.S. government.
INC General Jaudat Obeidi who, prior to his return to Iraq, had reportedly
lived in exile in Oregon claimed he had been selected mayor of Baghdad. And, with a massive media entourage, Mohammed Mohsen Zubeidi, proclaimed himself governor of a new interim administration for Baghdad.
A spokesman for the U.S. Marines in Baghdad denied that the United States
has recognized anyone to head up a new Iraqi government.
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=31508 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2004 7:01 pm Post subject: Chalabi Poised to Rule Iraq |
| Subj: Chalabi Poised to Rule Iraq
Date: 4/3/04 5:15:11 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
To: hectorpv@comcast.net
Friends,
Chalabi Poised to Rule Iraq
Ahmed Chalabi, the tool of the neocons who spread the most extreme stories about Saddam’s non-existent WMD to bring the US into war, is now poised to achieve his goal: ruler of Iraq. Arnaud de Borchgrave writes that Chalabi is well-positioned to become the prime minister in the new government, which will be the most powerful governmental post.
It has been well-documented how Chalabi was long supported by the neocons and how the phony intelligence provided by his Iraqi group—the Iraqi National Congress (INC)—was used by the neocon-controlled Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the Defense Department and even by the CIA (pushed by Vice President Cheney).http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9890 http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7952660.htm
De Borchgrave writes: "Temporary constitutional arrangements are structured to give the future prime minister more power than the president. The role of the president will be limited because his decisions will have to be ratified by two deputy presidents, or vice presidents. Key ministries, such as Defense and Interior, will be taking orders from the prime minister."
De Borchgrave adds:
"If Mr. Chalabi's fast track to power is not derailed and he becomes prime minister in July, the president won't be able to fire him unless his two deputies agree. The provisional constitution seems tailor-made for Mr. Chalabi to call the shots into 2005.
"As head of the Governing Council's economic and finance committee, Mr. Chalabi already has maneuvered loyalists into key Cabinet positions in the provisional authority — finance, oil and trade. The Central Bank governor, the head of the trade bank and the managing director of the largest commercial bank also owe their positions to his influence."
Chalabi also has other sources of power. As head of the de-Ba'athification commission, he has tons of documents to use for blackmail purposes. "He also appears to have impressive amounts of cash at his disposal and a say in which companies get the nod for some of the $18.4 billion earmarked for reconstruction." Chalabi gets hefty kick-backs here. Furthermore, Chalabi "is still on the Defense Intelligence Agency's budget for a secret stipend of $340,000 a month."
De Borchgrave alludes to Chalabi’s role in getting the US to invade Iraq, though without connecting all the dots. "Referring to Mr. Chalabi, a former U.S. ambassador recently back from an extended trip to Iraq, said: ‘Anyone who can get the U.S. to invade Iraq must be a very clever politician. As for the people his INC coached in London to disinform the U.S. intelligence community about Saddam's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, you've got to hand it to the guy. Don't blame him. Blame the Pentagon for not seeing through him.’"
Of course, the neocons were using Chalabi and his lies for their own propaganda purposes, which De Borchgrave does hint at. "While in exile in London, Mr. Chalabi cultivated close contacts with Israeli officials."
"His strongest backers in Washington are Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and neoconservative theoretician ("An End to Evil") Richard Perle."
The fact of the matter is, of course, that Chalabi has been serving the interests of Israel and the neocons—in fact, he has been directly connected to the Israelis and the neocons—and has benefited immensely as a result.
Undoubtedly, Chalabi will be pursuing the neocon/Israel line as long as he can. He needs protection there in Iraq. And the more valuable he is, the greater protection he’ll get. Still it’s a lot safer in neocon think tanks in Washington or in Richard Perle’s villa in the south of France. The neocons are fortunate to have a mercenary on the scene in Iraq—sort of like when Israel had the South Lebanon Army (SLA) doing its dirty work in Lebanon. Of course, when Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon, the members of the SLA suffered the consequences from the enraged populace. But Chalabi is crafty and knows well the ways of the world.
_________________________________________________________
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040330-094240-7127r.htm
March 31, 2004
Chalabi poised to lead Iraq
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
With only three months to go before L. Paul Bremer trades in his Iraqi proconsul baton for beachwear and a hard-earned vacation, the country's most controversial politician is already well-positioned to become prime minister.
Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon's heartthrob and the State Department's and CIA's heartbreak, has taken the lead in a yearlong political marathon.
Temporary constitutional arrangements are structured to give the future prime minister more power than the president. The role of the president will be limited because his decisions will have to be ratified by two deputy presidents, or vice presidents. Key ministries, such as Defense and Interior, will be taking orders from the prime minister.
Mr. Chalabi holds the ultimate weapons — several dozen tons of documents and individual files seized by his Iraqi National Congress (INC) from Saddam Hussein's secret security apparatus.
Coupled with his position as head of the de-Ba'athification commission, Mr. Chalabi, barely a year after he returned to his homeland from 45 years of exile, has emerged as the power behind a vacant throne.
He also appears to have impressive amounts of cash at his disposal and a say in which companies get the nod for some of the $18.4 billion earmarked for reconstruction. One company executive who asked that both his and the company's name be withheld said: "The commission was steep even by Middle Eastern standards."
Mr. Chalabi is still on the Defense Intelligence Agency's budget for a secret stipend of $340,000 a month.
The $40 million the INC has received since 1994 from the U.S. government also covered the expenses of Iraqi military defectors' stories about weapons of mass destruction and the Iraqi regime's links with al Qaeda, which provided President Bush with a casus belli for the war on Iraq.
When Mr. Chalabi established the Petra Bank in Amman, Jordan, in the 1980s, he favored small loans to military officers, noncommissioned officers, royal guards and intelligence officers. He developed a close rapport with Crown Prince Hassan, who borrowed a total of $20 million. After Petra went belly up with a loss of $300 million at the end of the decade, Mr. Chalabi escaped to Syria in a car supplied by the crown prince — minutes ahead of the officers who had come to arrest him for embezzling his own bank. The Petra debacle left him sufficient funds to create the INC a few days later.
Today, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained mathematician says he has the documents that will prove he was framed by two Husseins — Saddam and the late king of Jordan — who wanted to put an end to his anti-Iraqi activities. Jordan used to get most of its oil from Iraq free of charge or heavily discounted, which explains why King Hussein declined to join the anti-Iraq coalition in the 1991 Gulf war.
Sentenced in absentia in Jordan to 22 years of hard labor for massive bank fraud, Mr. Chalabi hints he also has incriminating evidence of a close "subsidiary" relationship between Jordan's present King Abdullah and Saddam's sadistic elder son, Uday, killed last year in a shootout with U.S. troops.
Potentially embarrassing for prominent U.S. citizens, Mr. Chalabi's aides hint his treasure trove of Mukhabarat documents includes names of American "agents of influence" on Saddam's payroll, as well as several Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV news reporters who were working for Iraqi intelligence.
The final selection for prime minister will need the assent of the president and his two deputies — representing the country's three principal ethnic and religious groupings.
Standard-bearer for Iraq's 60 percent Shi'ite majority and free Iraq's first president will be Abdulaziz al-Hakim. He is the brother of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, killed last year with 90 worshippers when a car bomb rocked the country's holiest Shi'ite shrine in Najaf. With an Islamic green light from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, Mr. Hakim almost certainly will opt for Mr. Chalabi, a fellow Shi'ite, as prime minister.
Slated for one of the two vice-presidential slots is Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni octogenarian with a secular liberal outlook. He served as foreign minister and ambassador to the United Nations before the Ba'athists seized power in a military coup in 1968. Mr. Pachachi's nod also may go to Mr. Chalabi.
For the third leg of the troika, rival Kurdish parties have agreed to unite behind Jalal Talabani, chief of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. His vote, now believed to be favorable, would make it three out of three for Mr. Chalabi.
Referring to Mr. Chalabi, a former U.S. ambassador recently back from an extended trip to Iraq, said: "Anyone who can get the U.S. to invade Iraq must be a very clever politician. As for the people his INC coached in London to disinform the U.S. intelligence community about Saddam's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, you've got to hand it to the guy. Don't blame him. Blame the Pentagon for not seeing through him."
If Mr. Chalabi's fast track to power is not derailed and he becomes prime minister in July, the president won't be able to fire him unless his two deputies agree. The provisional constitution seems tailor-made for Mr. Chalabi to call the shots into 2005.
As head of the Governing Council's economic and finance committee, Mr. Chalabi already has maneuvered loyalists into key Cabinet positions in the provisional authority — finance, oil and trade. The Central Bank governor, the head of the trade bank and the managing director of the largest commercial bank also owe their positions to his influence.
While in exile in London, Mr. Chalabi cultivated close contacts with Israeli officials.
He also has visited Iran several times to confer with leading ayatollahs in a bid for their support. He was given permission to open an INC office in Tehran.
His strongest backers in Washington are Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and neoconservative theoretician ("An End to Evil") Richard Perle.
•Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2004 2:04 am Post subject: September 11: Prior Knowledge and Deliberate Inaction |
| Subj: September 11: Prior Knowledge and Deliberate Inaction
Date: 4/3/04 5:33:48 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
To: hectorpv@comcast.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Friends,
September 11: Prior Knowledge and Deliberate Inaction
I am including this piece by Doug Giebel only for its comments about the possibility that Bush administration insiders had foreknowledge of the 9/11 terrorism but deliberately allowed it to happen. It is a very cogent argument.
Giebel writes:
"Prior to 9/11, it seems plausible the Bush team in fact expected an attack, either at a U.S. installation overseas or on home ground. The air inside the Beltway was rife with warnings from many reliable sources. To believe no such attack could be on the horizon was to believe in the Tooth Fairy, and these Republicans are realists. There is no Santa Claus because THEY are Santa Claus. Bush insiders expected an attack, wherever it occurred, would be similar to earlier assaults on the World Trade Center or the <U.S.S>. Cole. In other words, the event would do damage, only not on a massive scale -- merely sufficient damage to justify pointing a finger at Iraq."
In short, US authorities did not have to have foreknowledge of the specifics of the impending attack. Rather, they simply wanted to allow any type to attack, which could be used to provide a pretext for war against Iraq. Thus, they deliberately ignored warnings about terrorism. However, there would be no reason for them to expect the great devastation that did occur, the probability of which was very low.
Giebel continues that "the Bush White House did not foresee the expected ‘event’ (in this case, 9/11) would exceed their expectations, giving them a sensational and emotional excuse for taking on Saddam Hussein. This is not to suggest the Bush Administration rejoiced (as bin Laden did) when the twin towers fell and the Pentagon burned; they simply took advantage of the situation. Unfortunately, with no link between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists, it became necessary to delay invading Iraq until action against bin Laden and the Taliban had satisfied the national desire for revenge."
Some individuals with considerable expertise, such as German intelligence expert Andreas von Bülow, have argued that the US government (and/or Israel) actually staged the entire attack. But if this were the case it would seem that the conspirators would have made it appear that it was committed by Iraqi agents. Since this was not the case, it would seem that the Al Qaeda terrorists were real. And it seems that Israel was aware of these terrorists. We know that some Mossad agents lived on the same street in Florida as Mohammed Atta and that other Mossad agents filmed the burning Trade Towers from across the Hudson. These occurrences would definitely seem to be other than pure coincidence. http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/August2003/0803CIA.html http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/towers_5.htm
It seems reasonable to assume that if the Mossad were keeping surveillance on the Islamic terrorists, Bush administration insiders were aware of this. (Naturally, President Bush would be totally unaware of what was going on.)
Does this theory attribute an impossible evil cynicism to the Bush administration insiders? Giebel writes: "Is it cynical to imply the Bush Administration had so little interest in the loss of human life it would tolerate a modest loss to terrorists in return for the capture of Iraq? Not according to the evidence. The Bush Administration has shown little interest in the loss of non-military lives in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our government avoids ‘body counts’ of ‘collateral damage.’ Similarly, there have been no major reservations about putting U.S. troops in harm's way; and the current plan to permanently keep approximately 100,000 of our troops in Iraq will result in more losses for years to come. To the Bush team, such losses are acceptable."
Given the numerous lies the Bush neocons have put out regarding the non-existent WMD and the non-existent Saddam-Al Qaeda ties, it is apparent that they believe that the ends justify the means.
__________________________
http://www.counterpunch.com/giebel03292004.html
March 29, 2004
Candide in the Wilderness
How Bush Administration Policy Was Made
By DOUG GIEBEL
In this best of all possible political worlds, might and money triumph over adversity. Until the dramatically expected appearance of Richard Clarke, Lady Luck was blowing almost daily on the dice of George W. Bush and the Bushvolk. How did they work their magic? Was the table rigged? Short of climbing into the skulls of Bush Administration brainiacs, it is possible to speculate as follows.
Not "All" About Oil
It is no secret. Some neo-conservatives in the Bush Administration pined for the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein well before George W. Bush began his first bid for the White House. The goal: to appropriate Iraq as a major foothold for U.S. military power and influence in the heart of the Middle East. In the years following the first Gulf War, Iraq had succumbed to inspections, sanctions and military strikes. There was virtually no chance Saddam Hussein would or could attack the United States. The problem: How to convince U.S. politicians and the public that an invasion of Iraq was an acceptable course to follow.
Contrary to conspiracy theorists, there is no evidence the Bush Administration war-seekers planned the terrorist crimes of 9/11; nor does it seem likely that those involved in carrying out the attacks knew (a) of the plans to take out Saddam Hussein's government; (b) how the administration would react to their September Surprise.
In the weeks before September 11, 2001, the Cheney-Rice-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz group ignored advice from Clinton Administration insiders. Instead, as Clarke, O'Neill and the record show, they had their sights on Saddam's Iraq. Warnings of impending terrorism in briefings given by members of the Clinton Administration to the incumbent Republicans were dismissed or ignored because the new kids on the block had a cocksure sense of their own self worth. They knew Iraq was where they were going. They weren't quite certain how to get there.
Prior to 9;/11, it seems plausible the Bush team in fact expected an attack, either at a U.S. installation overseas or on home ground. The air inside the Beltway was rife with warnings from many reliable sources. To believe no such attack could be on the horizon was to believe in the Tooth Fairy, and these Republicans are realists. There is no Santa Claus because THEY are Santa Claus. Bush insiders expected an attack, wherever it occurred, would be similar to earlier assaults on the World Trade Center or the <U.S.S>. Cole. In other words, the event would do damage, only not on a massive scale -- merely sufficient damage to justify pointing a finger at Iraq.
Lady Luck arrived unexpectedly for both George W. Bush and Usama bin Laden. Just as the terrorists could not have foreseen the complete collapse of the World Trade Center, so the Bush White House did not foresee the expected "event" (in this case, 9/11) would exceed their expectations, giving them a sensational and emotional excuse for taking on Saddam Hussein. This is not to suggest the Bush Administration rejoiced (as bin Laden did) when the twin towers fell and the Pentagon burned; they simply took advantage of the situation. Unfortunately, with no link between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists, it became necessary to delay invading Iraq until action against bin Laden and the Taliban had satisfied the national desire for revenge.
Is it cynical to imply the Bush Administration had so little interest in the loss of human life it would tolerate a modest loss to terrorists in return for the capture of Iraq? Not according to the evidence. The Bush Administration has shown little interest in the loss of non-military lives in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our government avoids "body counts" of "collateral damage." Similarly, there have been no major reservations about putting U.S. troops in harm's way; and the current plan to permanently keep approximately 100,000 of our troops in Iraq will result in more losses for years to come. To the Bush team, such losses are acceptable. On October 17, 2003,Rep. Tom Delay expressed the administration view, declaring, "We'll pay any price and bear any burden to advance the cause of human liberty. After the shock and of awe of major combat the price and burden of human hope shift from the battlefield to the town hall and the town market. And that hope Mr. Chairman cannot come in the form of a promissory note. It's our fight and now it's our job."
Later, when asked if the war was worth the lives of 564 U.S. soldiers killed, Secretary Rumsfeld said, "Oh, my goodness, yes. There's just no question ...25 million people in Iraq are free." (March 14, 2004)
My suggested scenario explains why the administration did not seem especially concerned about an impending event of terrorism and why alarms sounded by people in the field were ignored or under-valued. It also renders more clearly the possible reasons why President Bush would object to setting up the 9/11 Commission and why the commission has been stonewalled. Successful strategists take advantage when the unexpected arrives unexpectedly.
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Pre-invasion, their statements to the contrary, Bush Administration leaders knew there were few or no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In revving up the siren to wail that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD capable of killing "thousands" and "millions" of human beings, administration officials knew its fear-inducing claims were patently untrue.
Whatever their failings, those who led us into war may be risk-takers, but they are not foolhardy. The everyday behavior of President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others with membership in The Project for the New American Century demonstrates their collective interest in remaining in power through the re-election of George W. Bush and beyond. In politics, very little happens that is not calculated with at least one hand on the pulse of public opinion. Being there: that's what politics is all about.
In this context, the often-cited Wolfowitz statement in Vanity Fair makes sense. He said, "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason [for invading Iraq]." Still hurting from the criminal acts of 9/11, Americans would be more easily persuaded of Saddam Hussein's evil designs if he were portrayed as posing the most alarming threat possible: his possession of weapons of mass destruction to be used against U.S. cities and other targets. As we know, the argument, although quite absurd, carried the day. (Why "absurd"? Because Saddam's nation had been under sanctions, military overflights and attacks for a dozen years. Iraq had no air force and no navy capable of reaching the United States. The best our neo-con fear-mongers could muster was the specter of unmanned drone aircraft that were in reality incapable of flying from Iraq to the <U.S.A>.)
How much damage were Bushvolk willing to risk? Facing the potential use by Hussein's forces of tons of supposedly highly-lethal weapons of mass destruction would have meant taking extraordinary risks with the lives of U.S. and "coalition" troops. Invading forces met by such formidable opposition would likely have resulted in a nightmarish slaughter of the "liberators" and stain the Bush record for all time. Would these otherwise-circumspect political creatures really take that chance? Logically: no, they would not. And they didn't.
No WMD were used against coalition forces during the invasion, and they have not surfaced to be used against those forces during the occupation. Why not? Common sense would lead one to believe that if the weapons really existed and posed a threat so immediate that invasion was necessary, Saddam Hussein would have used those weapons in a heartbeat to repel invasion and to wipe out the occupiers.
Another major "clue" to the WMD mystery can be addressed by recalling the Pentagon's unusual strategy to "embed" reporters with the invading troops. According to some estimates, approximately 2,700 "embedded" reporters worked the march to Baghdad and beyond, a staggering number, especially if there were any real fear of encountering weapons of mass destruction. Embedded journalists were perhaps even more likely to be killed or injured than the troops engaged in actual combat. Their reports of battlefield casualties from WMD related-causes would have horrified the nation and the world. It seems certain this army of reporters would never have been invited along for the ride if invasion had not been viewed by Pentagon brass and others as the relative "cakewalk" it turned out to be.
Note also that on February 7, Australia's newspaper The Age reported, "Australian troops fighting in Iraq were told in an official briefing days before entering the country that Saddam Hussein did not have the capability to launch weapons of mass destruction against its neighbours." The news must have relieved anxiety for Aussie troops. Surely if Australia knew, the U.S. knew. This reinforces retired State Department weapons expert Greg Thielmann's statement to 60 Minutes that Saddam posed no real threat, not even to his immediate neighbors.
After considering those years of bombings, sanctions and intelligence gathering, the Bush Administration was quite certain an invasion of Iraq would be successful and would immeasurably enhance its prospects for a second four-year stint in the White House. At home, a "war budget" would block funding of social programs disfavored by the White House. The semi-secret plan to build permanent U.S. bases in Iraq would move forward following the selection of a "democratically-elected" group to govern Iraq according to U.S. needs and wishes. Today: Iraq. Tomorrow: The Middle East and beyond.
The unaccomplished mission went forward; Iraq was invaded as planned and desired.
Weapons of mass destruction had everything (and nothing) to do with it.
Protecting Iraq
On March 23, 2004, the Chicago Tribune ran a short article by foreign correspondent Christine Spolar in which she revealed the U.S. military is building "an enhanced system" of fourteen (14) "enduring bases" that are "designed to last for years.
Experts were correct to believe the U.S. should have employed a much larger military force when invading Iraq, especially for maintaining civil order once the occupation began. On the other hand, chaos has the advantage of demonstrating to occupation critics the need for a permanent U.S. military presence. It remains to be seen whether, under U.S. control, an effective Iraqi army and police force can ever be established. Although Iraq poses no real danger to the United States as a nation, a simmering Iraq gives the Bush Pentagon an excuse for maintaining a significant number of U.S. military bases on Iraqi soil. Better safe, they might argue, than sorry.
Two redundant questions regarding a "rebuilt" Iraqi military:
1. Will an Iraqi air force be re-established capable of repelling threats from outside the country?
2. Will the Iraqi military be independent and provided with military hardware (tanks, missiles, etc.) capable not only of repelling attacks from foreign entities and also capable of launching an invasion of neighboring nations?
Consider. In May 2003, Secretary Rumsfeld said, "We'll have as many forces in the country as is necessary to see that there is a secure environment.'' Nearly one year later Rumsfeld ruminated, "[M]y personal view is that the Iraqis are going to be better able to provide for their own security, more likely to make progress with respect to their economic and--and--and essential service side of the equation if, in fact, there's an Iraqi face on the government and that they have a voice and some important role in governing their country."
The Iraqi military will not be revived to the extent it could pose a "danger" or an "imminent threat" to anyone outside its borders. In all matters foreign and domestic, there will be an "Iraqi face" and they will have "some important role" in the nation's affairs.
Interviewed on ABC's This Week program, Secretary of State Powell said, "We will continue to have 100,000 troops there, helping them with their security as their own security forces show greater ability to protect the population. We'll also have a very large embassy." (March 14, 2004)
In February 2004, General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, seconded Rumsfeld, stating it is unlikely an Iraqi government will ask the U.S. to leave Iraq. Then Myers added, "And our help's going to be needed for some time. If nothing else, think about the external threats to Iraq. Certainly, the new Iraqi army's not going to be up to that in terms of size, or their training."
These revealing statements set forth Iraq's future, the performance of which will be stage managed by the United States, not for a year but, in Gen. Jay Garner's words, "the next few decades. (Congress Daily, February 6, 2004)
If Iraq is threatened from outside, the U.S. will come to the rescue with our military might including continued use of National Guard and Reserves. Should those forces dwindle, re-introduction of the military draft will follow. By means of this political strategy, employment figures at home will be boosted, giving President Bush a means of claiming an improved economy as new workers are hired to fill the shoes of those sent east in combat boots.
Rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure will drag on for years. The contracts granted to U.S. corporations will continue as long as our semi-privatized military and our palatial embassy remain in Iraq. Delaying and prolonging reconstruction has advantages. Men sitting endlessly in line to fill their cars' gas tanks will not be making mischief somewhere else. Families who must wait hours for electricity to come on are tied to their homes by necessity. Water is necessary for life. Its absence weakens the healthy and debilitates those who are ill. Unpurified water may cause sickness among those who are not immune to impurities. Negatively rationing water leads to restricted activity and cloudy mental processes. Our model here: the old Hollywood westerns: He who controls the energy and water supplies controls the territory.
The cowboys are in charge. To borrow from President Bush, we will be in Iraq "As long as it takes." Whether a compliant press will ever ask President Bush and John Kerry for their views on this issue seems doubtful. The cost of building and maintaining at least 100,000 troops on ground in Iraq is unknown, as are estimates of the number of lives that may (surely will) be lost over a period of (say) fifty years. Will our grandchildren and great-grandchildren be wounded or murdered in Baghdad? Perhaps these matters are not to be discussed in polite patriotic society. Is "Bring the Troops Home" already a lost cause?
How does the Bush Administration respond to the question of lives lost as a result of our good-will efforts to remake Iraq in our own image? Neo-con Bush booster William Kristol, Chairman of the Project for the New American Century, gave what might be the answer when he told the Diane Rehm Show, "I am very comfortable defending the morality of the current situation." Kristol's comfortable position is cold comfort to those who must serve in harms way and those who suffer loss as the war of occupation drags on for decades, draining money and blood from Americans.
The Bush Administration was quite aware no weapons of mass destruction posed a threat to our invading and occupying forces. The Big Lie was bigger than most folks realized. Contrary to critics who believe the administration has no "plan" for post-invasion Iraq, the plan is obvious to any willing to examine what has happened, what is happening and what is being said. The years those neo-conservatives spent dreaming of their golden opportunity to appropriate Iraq were not spent in idleness. The puzzle fits.
Oh, and one more thing . . .
Oil.
Doug Giebel is a writer and analyst who lives in Big Sandy, Montana. His essay "When Professors Cheat" is soon to be published by Mellen Press. He welcomes comments at dougcatz@ttc-cmc.net.
Weekend Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2004 3:05 pm Post subject: Head of Sept. 11 Commission Said Iraq War for Israel |
| Subj: Head of Sept. 11 Commission Said Iraq War for Israel
Date: 4/3/04 10:38:59 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
To: hectorpv@comcast.net
Friends,
Head of Sept. 11 Commission Said Iraq War for Israel
The neocons got the US into the war on Iraq for Israel’s sake, now the 9/11 commission is headed by a pro-Israeli neocon ( a fringe neocon) by the name of Philip Zelikow, who actually admits the Israeli motivation for the war. As the article by Paul Skerry points out:
"Though he has no vote, the former Texas lawyer arguably has more sway than any member, including the chairman. Zelikow picks the areas of investigation, the briefing materials, the topics for hearings, the witnesses, and the lines of questioning for witnesses. He also picks which fights are worth fighting, legally, with the White House, and was involved in the latest round of capitulations – er, negotiations – over Rice's testimony. And the commissioners for the most part follow his recommendations. In effect, he sets the agenda and runs the investigation."
It so happens that Zelikow is closely connected to the Bush administration and the neocons. Sperry points out that "In that capacity, Zelikow drafted a memo for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on reorganizing and restructuring the National Security Council (NSC) and prioritizing its work.." Philip Zelikow also co-authored a book on German reunification with Rice.
An article by Emad Mekay documents that Zelikow revealed that helping Israel was the real purpose of the war on Iraq.
"’Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel,’ Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.
"‘And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell,’ said Zelikow."
Zelikow was not telling the exact truth here. Iraq was never a military danger to Israel. But the neocons/Likudniks planned to attack Iraq because the destabilization/disarmament/occupation of Israel’s Middle East enemies would enhance Israel’s security even in regard to the Palestinian demographic threat.
So here you have it: the head of the September 11 commission once publicly acknowledged that the Iraq war was fought for Israel, but held that the government wanted to hide that motive. Obviously, as head of the commission he will do his best to keep that motive hidden.
Let’s summarize a bit here.
Israeli Likudniks developed the idea of a plan to destabilize the Middle East through a war that would begin with Iraq.
Neocons had been pushing for a US war against Iraq throughout the 1990s.
Bush administration neocons such as Wolfowitz focused on attacking Iraq from the very start of the Bush administration.
Neocons used September 11 to push the Al Qaeda/Saddam connection lie.
Neocons pushed the WMD lie—especially relying on the neocon controlled Office of Special Plans to provide bogus intelligence derived from neocon tool Ahmed Chalabi and from Israel itself.
Now it appears that an individual who openly admitted that the Iraq war was for the sake of Israel directs the 9/11 commission.
But despite all of this evidence, it is still deemed "anti-Semitic" to point out that neocons or Israel had anything to do with the war on Iraq. Needless to say, it is the neocons who are pushing this lie too.
_________________________
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FC31Aa01.html
March 31, 2004
Iraq was invaded 'to protect Israel' - US official
By Emad Mekay
http://www.atimes.com
Front Page
Iraq was invaded 'to protect Israel' - US official
By Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON - Iraq under Saddam Hussein did not pose a threat to the United States, but it did to Israel, which is one reason why Washington invaded the Arab country, according to a speech made by a member of a top-level White House intelligence group.
Inter Press Service uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001 - the 9/11 commission - in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch US ally in the Middle East.
Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of US President George W Bush and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of Saddam and its concern for Israel's security.
The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate the Iraqi people, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to protect the United States.
Zelikow made his statements about "the unstated threat" during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president. He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.
"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat [is] and actually has been since 1990 - it's the threat against Israel," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on September 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of September 11 and the future of the war on al-Qaeda.
"And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell," said Zelikow.
The statements are the first to surface from a source closely linked to the Bush administration acknowledging that the war, which has so far cost the lives of nearly 600 US troops and thousands of Iraqis, was motivated by Washington's desire to defend the Jewish state.
The administration, which is surrounded by staunch pro-Israel, neo-conservative hawks, is currently fighting an extensive campaign to ward off accusations that it derailed the "war on terrorism" it launched after September 11 by taking a detour to Iraq, which appears to have posed no direct threat to the US.
Israel is Washington's biggest ally in the Middle East, receiving annual direct aid of US$3-4 billion.
Even though members of the 16-person PFIAB come from outside government, they enjoy the confidence of the president and have access to all information related to foreign intelligence that they need to play their vital advisory role. Known in intelligence circles as "Piffy-ab", the board is supposed to evaluate the nation's intelligence agencies and probe any mistakes they make. The unpaid appointees on the board require a security clearance known as "code word" that is higher than top secret.
The national security adviser to former president George H W Bush (1989-93) Brent Scowcroft, currently chairs the board in its work overseeing a number of intelligence bodies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the various military intelligence groups and the Pentagon's National Reconnaissance Office.
Neither Scowcroft nor Zelikow returned numerous phone calls and e-mail messages from IPS for this story.
Zelikow has long-established ties to the Bush administration. Before his appointment to PFIAB in October 2001, he was part of the current president's transition team in January 2001. In that capacity, Zelikow drafted a memo for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on reorganizing and restructuring the National Security Council (NSC) and prioritizing its work.
Richard A Clarke, who was counter-terrorism coordinator for Bush's predecessor president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) also worked for Bush senior, and has recently accused the current administration of not heeding his terrorism warnings. Clarke said that Zelikow was among those he briefed about the urgent threat from al-Qaeda in December 2000.
Rice herself had served in the NSC during the first Bush administration, and subsequently teamed up with Zelikow on a 1995 book about the unification of Germany.
Zelikow had ties with another senior Bush administration official - Robert Zoellick, the current trade representative. The two wrote three books together, including one in 1998 on the United States and the Muslim Middle East.
Aside from his position on the 9/11 commission, Zelikow is now also director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia. His close ties to the administration prompted accusations of a conflict of interest in 2002 from families of victims of the September attacks, who protested his appointment to the investigative body.
In his university speech, Zelikow, who strongly backed attacking the Iraqi dictator, also explained the threat to Israel by arguing that Baghdad was preparing in 1990-91 to spend huge amounts of "scarce hard currency" to harness "communications against electromagnetic pulse", a side-effect of a nuclear explosion that could sever radio, electronic and electrical communications.
That was "a perfectly absurd expenditure unless you were going to ride out a nuclear exchange - they [Iraqi officials] were not preparing to ride out a nuclear exchange with us. Those were preparations to ride out a nuclear exchange with the Israelis," according to Zelikow.
He also suggested that the danger of biological weapons falling into the hands of the anti-Israeli Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, would threaten Israel rather than the US, and that those weapons could have been developed to the point where they could deter Washington from attacking Hamas.
"Play out those scenarios," he told his audience, "and I will tell you, people have thought about that, but they are just not talking very much about it".
"Don't look at the links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but then ask yourself the question, 'gee, is Iraq tied to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the people who are carrying out suicide bombings in Israel?' Easy question to answer; the evidence is abundant."
To date, the possibility of the US attacking Iraq to protect Israel has been only timidly raised by some intellectuals and writers, with few public acknowledgements from sources close to the administration. Analysts who reviewed Zelikow's statements said that they are concrete evidence of one factor in the rationale for going to war, which has been hushed up.
"Those of us speaking about it sort of routinely referred to the protection of Israel as a component," said Phyllis Bennis of the Washington-based Institute of Policy Studies. "But this is a very good piece of evidence of that."
Others say that the administration should be blamed for not making known to the public its true intentions and real motives for invading Iraq. "They [the administration] made a decision to invade Iraq, and then started to search for a policy to justify it. It was a decision in search of a policy and because of the odd way they went about it, people are trying to read something into it," said Nathan Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University and an expert on the Middle East.
But he downplayed the Israel link. "In terms of securing Israel, it doesn't make sense to me because the Israelis are probably more concerned about Iran than they were about Iraq in terms of the long-term strategic threat," he said.
Still, Brown says that Zelikow's words carried weight. "Certainly his position would allow him to speak with a little bit more expertise about the thinking of the Bush administration, but it doesn't strike me that he is any more authoritative than [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz, or Rice or [Secretary of State Colin] Powell or anybody else. All of them were sort of fishing about for justification for a decision that has already been made," Brown said.
(Inter Press Service)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ahmed Chalabi's Ties To Mossad and the Neocons:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/01/ahmed-chalabi-s-ties-to-mossad-and-the-neocons.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2004 3:13 pm Post subject: Re: Head of Sept. 11 Commission Said Iraq War for Israel |
| | Alpha wrote: | Subj: Head of Sept. 11 Commission Said Iraq War for Israel
Date: 4/3/04 10:38:59 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
To: hectorpv@comcast.net
Friends,
Head of Sept. 11 Commission Said Iraq War for Israel
The neocons got the US into the war on Iraq for Israel’s sake, now the 9/11 commission is headed by a pro-Israeli neocon ( a fringe neocon) by the name of Philip Zelikow, who actually admits the Israeli motivation for the war. As the article by Paul Skerry points out:
"Though he has no vote, the former Texas lawyer arguably has more sway than any member, including the chairman. Zelikow picks the areas of investigation, the briefing materials, the topics for hearings, the witnesses, and the lines of questioning for witnesses. He also picks which fights are worth fighting, legally, with the White House, and was involved in the latest round of capitulations – er, negotiations – over Rice's testimony. And the commissioners for the most part follow his recommendations. In effect, he sets the agenda and runs the investigation."
It so happens that Zelikow is closely connected to the Bush administration and the neocons. Sperry points out that "In that capacity, Zelikow drafted a memo for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on reorganizing and restructuring the National Security Council (NSC) and prioritizing its work.." Philip Zelikow also co-authored a book on German reunification with Rice.
An article by Emad Mekay documents that Zelikow revealed that helping Israel was the real purpose of the war on Iraq.
"’Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel,’ Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.
"‘And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell,’ said Zelikow."
Zelikow was not telling the exact truth here. Iraq was never a military danger to Israel. But the neocons/Likudniks planned to attack Iraq because the destabilization/disarmament/occupation of Israel’s Middle East enemies would enhance Israel’s security even in regard to the Palestinian demographic threat.
So here you have it: the head of the September 11 commission once publicly acknowledged that the Iraq war was fought for Israel, but held that the government wanted to hide that motive. Obviously, as head of the commission he will do his best to keep that motive hidden.
Let’s summarize a bit here.
Israeli Likudniks developed the idea of a plan to destabilize the Middle East through a war that would begin with Iraq.
Neocons had been pushing for a US war against Iraq throughout the 1990s.
Bush administration neocons such as Wolfowitz focused on attacking Iraq from the very start of the Bush administration.
Neocons used September 11 to push the Al Qaeda/Saddam connection lie.
Neocons pushed the WMD lie—especially relying on the neocon controlled Office of Special Plans to provide bogus intelligence derived from neocon tool Ahmed Chalabi and from Israel itself.
Now it appears that an individual who openly admitted that the Iraq war was for the sake of Israel directs the 9/11 commission.
But despite all of this evidence, it is still deemed "anti-Semitic" to point out that neocons or Israel had anything to do with the war on Iraq. Needless to say, it is the neocons who are pushing this lie too.
_________________________
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FC31Aa01.html
March 31, 2004
Iraq was invaded 'to protect Israel' - US official
By Emad Mekay
http://www.atimes.com
Front Page
Iraq was invaded 'to protect Israel' - US official
By Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON - Iraq under Saddam Hussein did not pose a threat to the United States, but it did to Israel, which is one reason why Washington invaded the Arab country, according to a speech made by a member of a top-level White House intelligence group.
Inter Press Service uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001 - the 9/11 commission - in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch US ally in the Middle East.
Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of US President George W Bush and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of Saddam and its concern for Israel's security.
The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate the Iraqi people, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to protect the United States.
Zelikow made his statements about "the unstated threat" during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president. He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.
"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat [is] and actually has been since 1990 - it's the threat against Israel," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on September 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of September 11 and the future of the war on al-Qaeda.
"And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell," said Zelikow.
The statements are the first to surface from a source closely linked to the Bush administration acknowledging that the war, which has so far cost the lives of nearly 600 US troops and thousands of Iraqis, was motivated by Washington's desire to defend the Jewish state.
The administration, which is surrounded by staunch pro-Israel, neo-conservative hawks, is currently fighting an extensive campaign to ward off accusations that it derailed the "war on terrorism" it launched after September 11 by taking a detour to Iraq, which appears to have posed no direct threat to the US.
Israel is Washington's biggest ally in the Middle East, receiving annual direct aid of US$3-4 billion.
Even though members of the 16-person PFIAB come from outside government, they enjoy the confidence of the president and have access to all information related to foreign intelligence that they need to play their vital advisory role. Known in intelligence circles as "Piffy-ab", the board is supposed to evaluate the nation's intelligence agencies and probe any mistakes they make. The unpaid appointees on the board require a security clearance known as "code word" that is higher than top secret.
The national security adviser to former president George H W Bush (1989-93) Brent Scowcroft, currently chairs the board in its work overseeing a number of intelligence bodies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the various military intelligence groups and the Pentagon's National Reconnaissance Office.
Neither Scowcroft nor Zelikow returned numerous phone calls and e-mail messages from IPS for this story.
Zelikow has long-established ties to the Bush administration. Before his appointment to PFIAB in October 2001, he was part of the current president's transition team in January 2001. In that capacity, Zelikow drafted a memo for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on reorganizing and restructuring the National Security Council (NSC) and prioritizing its work.
Richard A Clarke, who was counter-terrorism coordinator for Bush's predecessor president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) also worked for Bush senior, and has recently accused the current administration of not heeding his terrorism warnings. Clarke said that Zelikow was among those he briefed about the urgent threat from al-Qaeda in December 2000.
Rice herself had served in the NSC during the first Bush administration, and subsequently teamed up with Zelikow on a 1995 book about the unification of Germany.
Zelikow had ties with another senior Bush administration official - Robert Zoellick, the current trade representative. The two wrote three books together, including one in 1998 on the United States and the Muslim Middle East.
Aside from his position on the 9/11 commission, Zelikow is now also director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia. His close ties to the administration prompted accusations of a conflict of interest in 2002 from families of victims of the September attacks, who protested his appointment to the investigative body.
In his university speech, Zelikow, who strongly backed attacking the Iraqi dictator, also explained the threat to Israel by arguing that Baghdad was preparing in 1990-91 to spend huge amounts of "scarce hard currency" to harness "communications against electromagnetic pulse", a side-effect of a nuclear explosion that could sever radio, electronic and electrical communications.
That was "a perfectly absurd expenditure unless you were going to ride out a nuclear exchange - they [Iraqi officials] were not preparing to ride out a nuclear exchange with us. Those were preparations to ride out a nuclear exchange with the Israelis," according to Zelikow.
He also suggested that the danger of biological weapons falling into the hands of the anti-Israeli Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, would threaten Israel rather than the US, and that those weapons could have been developed to the point where they could deter Washington from attacking Hamas.
"Play out those scenarios," he told his audience, "and I will tell you, people have thought about that, but they are just not talking very much about it".
"Don't look at the links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but then ask yourself the question, 'gee, is Iraq tied to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the people who are carrying out suicide bombings in Israel?' Easy question to answer; the evidence is abundant."
To date, the possibility of the US attacking Iraq to protect Israel has been only timidly raised by some intellectuals and writers, with few public acknowledgements from sources close to the administration. Analysts who reviewed Zelikow's statements said that they are concrete evidence of one factor in the rationale for going to war, which has been hushed up.
"Those of us speaking about it sort of routinely referred to the protection of Israel as a component," said Phyllis Bennis of the Washington-based Institute of Policy Studies. "But this is a very good piece of evidence of that."
Others say that the administration should be blamed for not making known to the public its true intentions and real motives for invading Iraq. "They [the administration] made a decision to invade Iraq, and then started to search for a policy to justify it. It was a decision in search of a policy and because of the odd way they went about it, people are trying to read something into it," said Nathan Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University and an expert on the Middle East.
But he downplayed the Israel link. "In terms of securing Israel, it doesn't make sense to me because the Israelis are probably more concerned about Iran than they were about Iraq in terms of the long-term strategic threat," he said.
Still, Brown says that Zelikow's words carried weight. "Certainly his position would allow him to speak with a little bit more expertise about the thinking of the Bush administration, but it doesn't strike me that he is any more authoritative than [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz, or Rice or [Secretary of State Colin] Powell or anybody else. All of them were sort of fishing about for justification for a decision that has already been made," Brown said.
(Inter Press Service)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ahmed Chalabi's Ties To Mossad and the Neocons:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/01/ahmed-chalabi-s-ties-to-mossad-and-the-neocons.php |
Here is the Sperry article which Steve mentions above:
http://www.antiwar.com/sperry/index.php?articleid=2209
March 31, 2004
Is Fix in at 9/11 Commission?
by Paul Sperry
In finally accepting the 9/11 Commission's request for public testimony under oath from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, the White House was not the one that flinched. It was the 9/11 Commission.
The fine print of the deal takes the chance of the commission taking sworn public testimony from any other White House official – including Rice's deputy Stephen Hadley, Bush's political adviser Karl Rove, President Bush himself or Vice President Dick Cheney – completely off the table. It also precludes the panel from having the option of calling Rice, who's made media statements contradicting evidence and sworn statements by other officials, back to testify.
It's a one-shot deal. And it stinks.
Even under oath, Rice can dodge tough questions by claiming her answers would jeopardize national security or the war on terror. "I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman, but again, that's a classified area, and I just can't get into it," she could say. Or she could come down with Washington amnesia – "I have no recollection of that." And she and everyone else in the White House could skate. The commission has no recourse at that point.
Other compromises are curious. Why did the panel, which has subpoena power and could compel Rice to testify, originally bow to White House demands not to even tape-record the statements they were "allowed" to take from her in private? Why will it let Bush tag-team with Cheney in a joint Q&A in the White House without oaths or even tape recorders? Why has it agreed to let just four panel officials lay eyes on a key intelligence briefing Bush got a month before the 9/11 attacks?
Why is the commission bending over backwards to please the White House when it's supposed to be fiercely independent and bipartisan, made up of five Republicans and five Democrats?
The answer may lie in the little-known fact that the White House has a friend on the inside. And not just any friend, either.
His name is Philip D. Zelikow, the executive director of the commission. Though he has no vote, the former Texas lawyer arguably has more sway than any member, including the chairman. Zelikow picks the areas of investigation, the briefing materials, the topics for hearings, the witnesses, and the lines of questioning for witnesses. He also picks which fights are worth fighting, legally, with the White House, and was involved in the latest round of capitulations – er, negotiations – over Rice's testimony. And the commissioners for the most part follow his recommendations. In effect, he sets the agenda and runs the investigation.
He also carries with him a downright obnoxious conflict-of-interest odor, one that somehow went undetected by the lawyers who vetted him for one of the most important investigative positions in U.S. history.
There's a raft of evidence to suggest that Zelikow has personal, professional and political reasons not to see the commission hold Rice and other Bush officials accountable for pre-9/11 failings, and may be the de facto swing vote for Republicans on the panel. Here are just a few of them:
Philip D. Zelikow
He and Rice worked closely together in the first Bush White House as aides to former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. Zelikow was director of European security affairs, and Rice was senior director of Soviet and East European affairs, as well as special assistant to the president. Rice reportedly hired Zelikow. Both started in 1989 and left in 1991.
A few years after leaving the White House, Zelikow and Rice wrote a book together called, "Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft."
The two associated again when Zelikow directed the Aspen Strategy Group, a foreign-policy strategy body co-chaired by Rice's mentor Scowcroft. Rice, along with Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, were members.
Zelikow also directed the Markle Foundation's Task Force on National Security in the Information Age under co-chairman James Barksdale, a Bush adviser and major Bush-Cheney donor. A 9/11 commissioner, Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, also served with Zelikow on the task force. (Interestingly, the pair serves together on yet another panel – The National Commission on Federal Election Reform – with Gorton acting as vice-chairman and Zelikow as executive director.)
After the 2000 election, Zelikow and Rice were reunited when George W. Bush named him to his transition team for the National Security Council. Rice reportedly asked Zelikow to help organize the NSC under the Scowcroft model, which was insular and steeped in Cold War worldview.
Former White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke says he briefed not only Rice and Hadley, but also Zelikow about the growing al-Qaida threat during the transition period. Zelikow sat in on the briefings, he says.
A month after the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks, President Bush appointed Zelikow to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which is chaired by Scowcroft.
Zelikow's regular job, the one he'll return to after the commission releases it final report in late July, is director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. The center is dedicated to the study of the presidency, and maintains contact with the Bush White House, which fought the creation of the commission.
Kristen Breitweiser, a 9/11 widow, insists Zelikow has a "clear conflict of interest." And she suspects he is in touch with Bush's political adviser, Rove, which she says would explain why the White House granted him, along with just one other commission official, the greatest access to the intelligence briefing Bush got a month before the 9/11 suicide hijackings.
The two-page memo in question mentions "al-Qaida" and "hijackings," that much we know. What we don't know is if it gets any more specific about the threat. And the White House won't let us find out. It refuses to declassify any of the August memo (or any of the other briefings Bush got before 9/11, for that matter), and it won't even let most commissioners review it.
Bush and his top security adviser insist they have nothing to hide.
Rice pal Zelikow, for his part, says he's recused himself from any part of the probe that deals with the roughly one-month period after the election when he worked with Rice on the transition, as if any potential conflicts he might have would end there. Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg doesn't understand the fuss over Zelikow. "He has not served in the Bush administration," he argues more technically than convincingly.
The fuss, Mr. Felzenberg, is that 9/11 relatives like the wife of the late Ronald Breitweiser want to know they are getting an honest investigation into what their government did to protect their loved ones from a foreign-ordered attack on American soil.
But the way key pre-9/11 documents and sworn testimony from top officials are being denied the public, it looks like the fix is in.
To be sure, Zelikow could be a remarkably objective fellow and not let his close ties to the Bush administration influence his final report in any way.
But with the commission still refusing to subpoena the documents and caving to White House ground rules on testimony, the stench of political bias has become too strong, and Zelikow should nonetheless step down, immediately, for the sake of the families, many of whom are demanding his resignation. And the commission should vote to further extend its deadline while it finds a more politically detached replacement for him and redoubles its efforts to deliver the "full and complete" and "independent" investigation it originally promised the country. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
