| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 9:54 pm Post subject: Bush to Rice: "We gotta go to war!" -for Israel, H |
| Subj: Bush to Rice: "We gotta go to war!"
Date: 4/17/04 12:14:24 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: LAdams
HOST NOTE: Be sure to watch 60 Minutes this Sunday. Bob Woodward will be interviewed about his latest Bush book, Plan of Attack. L.A.
We're Going to Have to Go to War,' Bush Told Rice
By Bob Woodward
WASHINGTON POST
This is the first of five articles adapted from "Plan of Attack," a book by Bob Woodward that is a behind-the-scenes account of how and why President Bush decided to go to war against Iraq. (Copyright Simon & Schuster, 2004)
Shortly after New Year's Day 2003, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice had a private moment with President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Tex.
Bush felt the effort to get United Nations weapons inspections inside Iraq on an aggressive track to make Saddam Hussein crack was not working. "This pressure isn't holding together," Bush told her.
The media reports of smiling Iraqis leading inspectors around, opening up buildings and saying, "See, there's nothing here," infuriated Bush, who then would read intelligence reports showing the Iraqis were moving and concealing things. It wasn't clear what was being moved, but it looked to Bush as if Hussein was about to fool the world again. It looked as if the inspections effort was not sufficiently aggressive, would take months or longer, and was likely doomed to fail.
"I was concerned people would focus on not Saddam, not the danger that he posed, not his deception, but focus on the process and thereby Saddam would be able to kind of skate through once again," Bush recalled in an interview last December.
"I felt stressed," he added. All the holiday parties at the White House had not helped. "My jaw muscle got so tight. And it was not just because I was smiling and shaking so many hands. There was a lot of tension during that last holiday season."
There was another factor at work that was not publicly known. Sensitive intelligence coverage on U.N. inspections chief Hans Blix indicated that he was not reporting everything and not doing all the things he maintained he was doing. Some in Bush's war cabinet believed Blix was a liar.
"How is this happening?" Bush asked Rice. "Saddam is going to get stronger."
Blix had told Rice, "I have never complained about your military pressure. I think it's a good thing." She relayed this to the president.
"How long does he think I can do this?" Bush asked. "A year? I can't. The United States can't stay in this position while Saddam plays games with the inspectors."
"You have to follow through on your threat," Rice said. "If you're going to carry out coercive diplomacy, you have to live with that decision."
"He's getting more confident, not less," Bush said of Hussein. "He can manipulate the international system again. We're not winning.
"Time is not on our side here," Bush told Rice. "Probably going to have to, we're going to have to go to war."
In Rice's mind, this was the moment the president decided the United States would go to war with Iraq. Military planning had been underway for more than a year even as Bush sought a diplomatic solution through the United Nations. He would continue those efforts, at least publicly, for 10 more weeks, but he had reached a point of no return.
The president also informed Karl Rove, his chief political strategist, of his decision over the holidays. Rove had gone to Crawford to brief Bush on the confidential plan for Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. While Laura Bush sat reading a book, Rove gave a PowerPoint presentation on the campaign's strategy, themes and timetable.
Opening his laptop, he displayed for Bush in bold letters on a dark blue background:
PERSONA:
Strong Leader
Bold Action
Big Ideas
Peace in World
More Compassionate America
Cares About People Like Me
Leads a Strong Team
All things being equal, the president asked, when would you like to begin the campaign and active fundraising?
Rove said he wanted the president to start that February or March and begin raising the money, probably $200 million. He had a schedule. In February, March and April 2003, there would be between 12 and 16 fundraisers.
"We got a war coming," the president told Rove flatly, "and you're just going to have to wait." He had decided. "The moment is coming." The president did not give a date, but he left the impression with Rove that it would be January or February or March at the latest.
"Remember the problem with your dad's campaign," Rove replied. "A lot of people said he got started too late."
"I understand," Bush said. "I'll tell you when I'm comfortable with you starting."
Bush Orders a War Plan
Rice was the only member of his war cabinet whom Bush directly asked for a recommendation of whether to go to war.
"What do you think?" he had asked her a few weeks before. "Should we do this?"
"Yes," she said. "Because it isn't American credibility on the line, it is the credibility of everybody that this gangster can yet again beat the international system." As important as credibility was, she said, "Credibility should never drive you to do something you shouldn't do." But this was much bigger, she advised, something that should be done. "To let this threat in this part of the world play volleyball with the international community this way will come back to haunt us someday. That is the reason to do it."
Other than Rice, Bush said he didn't need to ask the principal advisers whether they thought he should go to war. He knew what Vice President Cheney thought, and he decided not to ask Secretary of State Colin L. Powell or Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"I could tell what they thought," the president recalled. "I didn't need to ask them their opinion about Saddam Hussein. If you were sitting where I sit, you could be pretty clear. I think we've got an environment where people feel free to express themselves."
One person not around was Karen Hughes, one of his top advisers and longtime communications director. Hughes, who had resigned the previous summer to return to Texas, probably knew how Bush thought and talked as much as anyone.
"I asked Karen," the president recalled. "She said if you go to war, exhaust all opportunities to achieve [regime change] peacefully. And she was right. She actually captured my own sentiments."
More than a year before -- on Nov. 21, 2001 -- Bush had told Rumsfeld that he wanted to develop a plan for war in Iraq. Since that time the defense secretary had been working closely with Gen. Tommy R. Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, and other U.S. commanders, as well as Bush and other members of the war cabinet to develop a plan even as Bush pursed diplomacy through the United Nations.
At times, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. thought of Bush as a circus rider with one foot on a "diplomacy" steed and his other on the "war" steed, both reins in his hands, leading down a path to regime change. Each horse had blinders on. It was now clear that diplomacy would not get him to his goal, so Bush had let go of that horse and was standing only on the war steed.
Rumsfeld had been trying to put himself in the president's shoes, attempting to make sure that Bush didn't get so far out in words, body language or mental state that he couldn't get back from a decision to go to war as the United States built up forces around Iraq.
On the other hand, Rumsfeld felt there was a time when the president should not want to walk back, and really could not. That time would be well before Bush had to decide to put Special Operations Forces inside Iraq, the point of no return identified by Franks.
"I can remember trying to give him as early a clue as possible that that was coming down the road," Rumsfeld recalled in an interview.
"There comes a moment as all these things are happening," he added, "when we have to look a neighboring country in the eye, and they have to make a decision that puts them at risk. And at that moment, the president needs to know that."
Back in Washington in early January 2003, Bush took Rumsfeld aside.
"Look, we're going to have to do this, I'm afraid," he said. "I don't see how we're going to get him to a position where he will do something in a manner that's consistent with the U.N. requirements, and we've got to make an assumption that he will not."
It was enough of a decision for Rumsfeld. He asked to bring in some key foreign players.
The president gave his approval but pressed Rumsfeld again. When is my last decision point?
"When your people, Mr. President, look people in the eye and tell them you're going."
One of the key players that had to be notified and brought along was Saudi Arabia. U.S. forces would have to be sent through and from Saudi territory into Iraq. Rescue, communications and refueling support were not going to be enough. Of the five other countries on Iraq's border, only Kuwait and Jordan supported a military operation. The 500 miles of Saudi-Iraqi border were critical.
So on Saturday, Jan. 11, Cheney invited Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador, to his West Wing office. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were also there.
Prince Bandar had served during four American presidencies. At age 53, Bandar was almost a fifth estate in Washington, amplifying Saudi influence and wealth. He insisted on dealing directly with presidents and is almost family to Bush's father, former president George H. W. Bush. And he had maintained his special entree to the Oval Office under this President Bush.
Sitting on the edge of the table in Cheney's office, Myers took out a large map labeled TOP SECRET NOFORN. The NOFORN meant NO FOREIGN -- classified material not to be seen by any foreign nation.
Myers explained that the first part of the battle plan would be a massive aerial bombing campaign over several days against Iraq's Republican Guard divisions, the security services and command and control of Hussein's forces. A land attack would follow through Kuwait, plus a northern front through Turkey with the 4th Infantry Division if Turkey approved it. Included was massive use of Special Forces and intelligence paramilitary teams to secure every place in Iraq from which Hussein could launch a missile or airplane against Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Israel.
Special Forces and intelligence operatives would distribute $300 million to local Iraqi tribal leaders, religious leaders and the Iraqi armed forces.
The Saudi-Iraqi border would have to be covered. Special Forces, intelligence teams and other strikes would have to be launched from there. If there were alternatives, Myers said, they would not be asking the Saudis.
Bandar knew that his country could create a cover for the arrival of U.S. forces by closing a civilian airport at Al Jawf in the northern desert, flying Saudi helicopters day and night as a routine border patrol for a week, and then withdrawing. The U.S. Special Forces could set up a base there that might not attract much attention.
Staring intently at the 2-by-3-foot Top Secret map, Bandar, a former fighter pilot, asked a few questions about air operations. Could he have a copy of the large map so he could brief Crown Prince Abdullah? he asked, referring to the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia.
"Above my pay grade," Myers said.
"We'll give you all the information you want," Rumsfeld said. As for the map, he added, "I would rather not give it to you, but you can take notes if you want."
"No, no, it's not important. Just let me look at it," Bandar said. He tried to take it all in -- the large ground thrusts, the location of Special Forces or intelligence teams all designated on the map.
"You can count on this," Rumsfeld said, pointing to the map. "You can take that to the bank. This is going to happen."
"What is the chance of Saddam surviving this?" Bandar asked. He believed Hussein was intent on killing everyone involved at a high level with the 1991 Persian Gulf War, including himself.
Rumsfeld and Myers didn't answer.
"Saddam, this time, will be out, period?" Bandar asked skeptically. "What will happen to him?"
Cheney, who had been quiet as usual, replied, "Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast."
"I am convinced now that this is something I can take to my Prince Abdullah," Bandar said, "and think I can convince him. But I cannot go and tell him that Myers and Rumsfeld and you told me. I have to carry a message from the president."
"I'll get back to you," the vice president replied. After Bandar had left, Rumsfeld voiced some concern about the vice president's "toast" remark. "Jesus Christ, what was that all about, Dick?"
"I didn't want to leave any doubt in his mind what we're planning to do," Cheney said.
In his car, Bandar scribbled out details from what he had seen on the map. When he got home, he took a large blank map of the region that had been supplied by the CIA and began reconstructing the plan piece by piece.
The next day, Sunday, Rice called Bandar to invite him to meet with the president the following day, Monday, Jan. 13. At the meeting, the president told Bandar that he was receiving advice and reports from some in his administration that in the event of war he would have to contend with a massive Arab and Islamic reaction that would put American interests at risk.
"Mr. President, you're assuming you're attacking Saudi Arabia and trying to capture King Fahd," Bandar said. "This is Saddam Hussein. People are not going to shed tears over Saddam Hussein, but if he's attacked one more time by America and he survives and stays in power after you've finished this, whatever it is, yes, everybody will follow his word. If they say attack the American Embassy, they will go and attack it."
Before the Gulf War in 1991, Bandar recalled for the president, "Go back to look at what was said to your father -- the Arab world will rise from the Atlantic to the Gulf!" Well, that didn't happen then, and it would not happen this time, he said. The problem would be if Hussein survived. The Saudis needed assurance that Hussein was going to be toast.
"You got the briefing from Dick, Rummy and General Myers?" the president asked.
"Yes."
"Any questions for me?"
No, Mr. President.
"That is the message I want you to carry for me to the crown prince," Bush said. "The message you're taking is mine, Bandar."
"That's fine, Mr. President."
Bandar believed it was exactly what Cheney had told Bush to say.
"Anything else for me?"
No, Mr. President.
Bandar Told Ahead of Powell
One of Rice's jobs was, as she called it, "to read the secretaries": Powell and Rumsfeld. Since the president had told Rumsfeld about his decision to go to war, he had better tell Powell, and fast. Powell was close to Prince Bandar, who now was informed of the decision.
"Mr. President," Rice said, "if you're getting to a place that you really think this might happen, you need to call Colin in and talk to him." Powell had the most difficult job, keeping the diplomatic track alive.
So that Monday, Jan. 13, Powell and Bush met in the Oval Office. The president was sitting in his regular chair in front of the fireplace, and the secretary was in the chair reserved for the visiting leader or most senior U.S. official. For once, neither Cheney nor Rice was hovering.
Bush complimented Powell for his hard work on the diplomatic front. "The inspections are not getting us there," the president said, getting down to business. The U.N. inspectors were just sort of stumbling around, and Hussein was showing no intention of real compliance. "I really think I'm going to have to do this." The president said he had made up his mind on war. The United States should go to war.
"You're sure?" Powell asked.
Yes, said Bush.
"You understand the consequences," Powell said in a half question. For nearly six months, he had been hammering on this theme -- that the United States would be taking down a regime, would have to govern Iraq, and the ripple effect in the Middle East and the world could not be predicted. The run-up to war had sucked nearly all the oxygen from every other issue in foreign relations. War would surely get all the air and attention.
Yeah, I do, the president answered.
"You know that you're going to be owning this place?" Powell said, reminding Bush of what he had told him at a dinner the previous August in which Powell had made the case against military action in Iraq. An invasion would mean assuming the hopes, aspirations and all the troubles of Iraq. Powell wasn't sure whether Bush had fully understood the meaning and consequences of total ownership.
But I think I have to do this, the president said.
Right, Powell said.
I just want to let you know that, Bush said, making it clear this was not a discussion, but the president informing one of his Cabinet members of his decision. The fork in the road had been reached and Bush had chosen war.
As the only person in Bush's inner circle who was seriously and actively pressing the diplomatic track, Powell figured the president wanted to make sure he would support the war. It was in some way a gut check, but Powell didn't feel the president was making a loyalty check. No way on God's earth could he walk away at that point. It would have been an unthinkable act of disloyalty to the president, to Powell's own soldier's code, to the United States military, and mostly to the several hundred thousand who would be going to war.
"Are you with me on this?" the president asked him now. "I think I have to do this. I want you with me."
"I'll do the best I can," Powell answered. "Yes, sir, I will support you. I'm with you, Mr. President."
"Time to put your war uniform on," the president said to the retired general.
In all the discussions, meetings, chats and back-and-forth, in Powell's grueling duels with Rumsfeld and Defense, the president had never once asked Powell, Would you do this? What's your overall advice? The bottom line?
Perhaps the president feared the answer. Perhaps Powell feared giving it. It would, after all, have been an opportunity to say he disagreed. But they had not reached that core question, and Powell would not push. He would not intrude on that most private of presidential space -- where a president made decisions of war and peace -- unless he was invited. He had not been invited.
Bush's meeting with Powell lasted 12 minutes. "It was a very cordial conversation," the president recalled. "It wasn't a long conversation," he noted. "There wasn't much debate: It looks like we're headed to war."
The president stated emphatically that though he had asked Powell to be with him and support him in a war, "I didn't need his permission."
Poland Signs On to the War
Before a meeting with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski the next day, Jan. 14, Bush's frustration again flared in public as he shifted position on the time remaining to Hussein. While eight days earlier he had said publicly that the Iraqi president has "got time," he told reporters that morning, "Time is running out on Saddam Hussein."
Bush knew he had no better friend on the European continent than the popular, second-term Polish president who had agreed to send troops to the war. The Bushes had hosted Kwasniewski and his wife for a rare State Dinner the previous July.
"The level of anti-Americanism is extremely high," Kwasniewski said at their private meeting. He had a serious political problem because of his support for Bush.
"Success helps change public opinion," Bush said. "Should we commit troops, we'll feed the people of Iraq." He said it as if that humanitarian gesture might have an impact on public opinion in Poland. He said there was a protocol a country could follow to show the world that it was ridding itself of unconventional weapons -- one that South Africa had followed, visibly and aggressively opening up records and facilities for inspections. Hussein had not.
"In my judgment it's time to move soon, but we won't act precipitously," Bush said, adding, "but time is running out. It's sooner rather than later."
"We will win," the Polish president said, but sounding like Colin Powell, he added plaintively, "but what are the consequences?" After a pause, he continued, "You need wide, broad international support. We are with you, don't worry about it. The risk is the U.N. will collapse. What will replace it?"
These were hard questions that Bush sidestepped, saying only, "We believe that Islam like Christianity can grow in a free and democratic manner."
For Bush, the important things were that Poland would be with him and would supply troops.
Mark Malseed contributed to this report. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 9:56 pm Post subject: Powell: "Mr. President, Iraq will turn into a quagmire& |
| Subj: Powell: "Mr. President, Iraq will turn into a quagmire"
Date: 4/17/04 11:20:40 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: LAdams727
Powell Said to Have Warned Bush Before the War, a New Book Says
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: April 17, 2004, NY Times
WASHINGTON, April 16 — Two months before the invasion of Iraq, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warned President Bush about the potential negative consequences of a war, citing what Mr. Powell privately called the "you break it, you own it" rule of military action, according to a new book.
"You're sure?" Mr. Powell is quoted as asking Mr. Bush in the Oval Office on Jan. 13, 2003, as the president told him he had made the decision to go forward. "You understand the consequences," he is said to have stated in a half-question. "You know you're going to be owning this place?"
The book, "Plan of Attack," by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, reconstructs that and other private conversations between senior Bush administration officials during the 16-month period of planning and preparation that ended with the attack on Iraq last March.
It has been well known that Mr. Powell was the most skeptical among Mr. Bush's senior advisers about the wisdom of invading Iraq. But the new details described in the book, at a time when the American occupation has met with new perils, add considerably to a portrait of a secretary of state who expressed private reservations about the administration's policy but never issued a public protest about the administration's course.
"Force should always be a last resort; I have preached this for most of my professional life as a soldier and as a diplomat; but it must be a resort," Mr. Powell told the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 14, 2003. "We cannot allow this process to be endlessly strung out, as Iraq is trying to do now."
Mr. Powell is described as having clashed in particular with Vice President Dick Cheney, whom Mr. Woodward describes as a "powerful, steamrolling force" advocating the war who was preoccupied with reports of links between Saddam Hussein and the Qaeda terrorist network. Mr. Powell regarded Mr. Cheney's intense focus on Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda as a "fever," the book says, and he believed that the vice president misread and exaggerated intelligence about the Iraq threat and supposed terrorist ties.
Mr. Woodward's account quickly provoked speculation in Washington that Mr. Powell might have cooperated with Mr. Woodward as the book was being prepared in an effort to distance himself from the Iraq war.
A spokesman for Mr. Powell said Friday night that he could not determine whether the secretary had spoken with Mr. Woodward.
Mr. Powell has made no secret in the past that he has helped Mr. Woodward with other books. Only Mr. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld are identified by the author as having given on-the-record interviews for the book. But conversations between Mr. Powell and Mr. Bush are quoted verbatim in the book, and in the account of the January 2003 conversation, Mr. Bush is identified only as a corroborating source.
Richard A. Boucher, Mr. Powell's spokesman, declined to comment on the book, saying he had not read it and adding: `We won't do book reviews. I promise." Asked if it were true that Mr. Powell and Mr. Cheney were barely on speaking terms, Mr. Boucher said, "I think that's not true."
An official in Mr. Cheney's office said Friday that the vice president and his spokesman were flying back to the United States from a weeklong trip to Asia and would not be available for comment on Friday evening.
The 443-page book, published by Simon & Schuster and to be available in bookstores next week, provides the most detailed account to date of debate and tension within the administration before the war, but it does not add any broad new story lines. The Associated Press published an account of the book's contents on Friday morning; The New York Times also obtained a copy.
In a note to readers, Mr. Woodward writes that he based the book on information "from more than 75 key people directly involved in the events," a model he has used in other books. Following that model, the book does not include footnotes or otherwise identify the source of specific information. When he attributed thoughts, judgments or feelings to participants, Mr. Woodward writes, he obtained them from the person, a colleague with firsthand knowledge, or the written record.
In Mr. Woodward's account of the meeting between Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell in January 2003, the president is described as having simply informed the secretary of state of his decision to go to war in Iraq, as part of a 12-minute meeting in which Mr. Bush made a conscious decision not to ask Mr. Powell for advice.
But, according to the book, Mr. Bush did ask Mr. Powell "Are you with me on this?" and told him, "I want you with me." Mr. Powell is quoted as having replied: "I'll do the best I can. Yes sir, I will support you. I'm with you, Mr. President." (sender's comment: Without regard for the lives of OUR children? That's NOT "integrity," Mr. Powell!)
The book discloses that Mr. Bush privately asked Mr. Rumsfeld in November 2001, just 72 days after the Sept. 11 attacks, to direct his commanders to begin planning for a possible war against Iraq. But it says that Mr. Bush did not make his final decision to start the war until January 2003. (In a televised news conference on March 6, Mr. Bush said, "I've not made up our mind about military action.")
Asked about the account on Friday at a joint appearance with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, Mr. Bush said it was difficult for him to recall specific dates that far back. But he called attention to a meeting at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, on Sept. 15, 2001, the Saturday after the attacks.
"I sat down with my national security team to discuss the response, and the subject of Iraq came up," Mr. Bush told reporters. "And I said as plainly as I possibly could: `We'll focus on Afghanistan. That's where we'll focus."'
The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, confirmed on Friday that Mr. Bush had raised the issue of Iraq with Mr. Rumsfeld in November 2001, at a time when American forces were still heavily engaged in the war in Afghanistan. But Mr. McClellan sought to minimize the significance of those discussions, saying that "there is a difference between planning and making a decision."
The exact timing of Mr. Bush's request to Mr. Rumsfeld to begin war planning had not been publicly known, and it had not been known that, as the book reports, Mr. Bush kept that request secret from other top advisers, including Mr. Powell, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.
But the general time line for war planning that is presented in the book is broadly consistent with other recent accounts, including public statements by Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the retired commander of the Iraq war. It generally upholds the insistence by Mr. Bush and his top advisers that they did not begin their war planning for Iraq until well after the Sept. 11 attacks, even if their attention was fixed on Iraq from early in the administration, as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has written in a recent book.
In an interview with Mr. Woodward in December 2003, Mr. Bush said he had kept the early war-planning directive secret because if news of it had leaked out, it would have caused "enormous international angst and domestic speculation," the book says.
The book also provides new details about the hurriedly arranged airstrike on March 19, 2003, in which the White House jump-started the war with a bomb and missile strike on the Dora Farms compound near Baghdad in a failed attempt to kill Mr. Hussein.
The air raid, advocated by Mr. Tenet, had initially been opposed by General Franks, the book says, but was approved by President Bush and Vice President Cheney after they asked other advisers to leave the Oval Office.
The strike was launched, the book says, on the basis of first-hand reports from Iraqi sources at Dora Farms enlisted by a network of 87 Iraqi spies, designated with the code name DB/ROCKSTARS, who had been recruited by a C.I.A. team that had infiltrated northern Iraq in the months before the war.
In calls by satellite phone to the C.I.A. team, the Iraqi sources reported that Mr. Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay were at the compound, and that Mr. Hussein himself would return there. After the strike, the book says, one Iraqi source reported Mr. Hussein's body had been removed from the wreckage, prompting Mr. Tenet to celebrate what he thought had been a success.
Even now, it is still not clear whether Mr. Hussein was at the site at all, though a C.I.A. official said on Friday that the agency maintained that Mr. Hussein was "probably" there and survived the American raid. Mr. Woodward's book reports that the Iraqi security guard who was the main source of the intelligence was killed in the American attack, but a C.I.A. official said that the Iraqi agents recruited by the agency had proved "extraordinarily productive."
Over a period that began in early 2002, Mr. Powell is depicted as having cautioned Mr. Bush and other advisers repeatedly about the potential drawbacks of military action in Iraq. The "you break it, you own it" principle he cited in delivering those warnings was privately known to Mr. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, as "the Pottery Barn rule," the book says.
"You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," Mr. Powell is said to have told Mr. Bush in the summer of 2002. "You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems. You'll own it all."
Conservatives have long accused Mr. Powell of pursuing his own agenda, and of being more interested in depicting himself as right on the issues than as loyal to his president.
Among the previously unknown episodes presented in the book was a White House meeting in December 2002 in which Mr. Tenet and his deputy, John McLaughlin, met with Mr. Bush and his top advisers for what was intended as a dress rehearsal for a public presentation of the administration's claim that Iraq possessed illicit weapons.
Mr. Bush was not impressed by the presentation, the book reports, and urged that it be refined to make a stronger case to "Joe Public." He is said to have turned to Mr. Tenet and said, "I've been told all this intelligence about having W.M.D. and this is the best we've got?"(sender's comment: Even Bush was skeptical!)
In response, Mr. Tenet is described in the book as having twice assured Mr. Bush that the intelligence information supporting the American claims meant that the case was a "slam dunk." A C.I.A. official said that Mr. Tenet was reflecting an assessment spelled out in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that declared unambiguously that Iraq possessed both chemical and biological weapons. | | | | Alpha | | | | Abbadean | | Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 10:40 pm Post subject: Re: Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming Presid |
| | Alpha wrote: | Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President:
Same old tired song!
| | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 11:06 pm Post subject: Bush: Ayatollah or Useful Idiot? |
| Subj: Bush: Ayatollah or Useful Idiot?
Date: 4/17/04 3:45:26 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
To: hectorpv@comcast.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Friends,
Bush: Ayatollah or Useful Idiot?
I have included two contrasting articles on Bush’s motives and role by war liberal Richard Cohen. The first deals with Bush’s recent press conference, in which Cohen perceives Bush as a fanatical believer in "changing the world." The second article comes from last July, in which Cohen describes Bush as a "useful idiot." Guess, which belief I tend to hold. I will begin by focusing on Cohen’s most recent piece.
Remember that Richard Cohen is a war liberal; he supported the Iraq war with a little wringing of the hands. Cohen, now in his hand-wringing stage, manages to isolate the central idiocies of Bush’s press conference but then completely neglects to explain the background of that thinking—or whatever passes for thinking for Dubya.
"What matters more is the phrase Bush used five times in one way or another: ‘We're changing the world.’ He used it always in reference to the war in Iraq and he used it in ways that would make even Woodrow Wilson, that presidential personification of naive morality, shake his head in bemusement. In Bush's rhetoric, a war to rid Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction, a war to ensure that Condoleezza Rice's ‘mushroom cloud’ did not appear over an American city, has mutated into an effort to reorder the world."
Cohen continues. "Some people might consider this religious drivel and others might find it stirring, but whatever it is, it cannot be the basis for foreign policy, not to mention a war. Yet it explains, as nothing else can, just why Bush is so adamantly steadfast about Iraq and why he simply asserts what is not proved or just plain untrue -- the purported connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, for instance, or why Hussein was such a threat, when we have it on the word of David Kay and countless weapons inspectors that he manifestly was not. Bush talks as if only an atheist would demand proof when faith alone more than suffices. He is America's own ayatollah."
"Ayatollah!" Ayatollahs are Muslim leaders with strongly-held views who lead others by virtue of their sincerity. But is there any evidence that "changing the world" has been a long-held Bush view? During the 2000 campaign Bush took just the opposite view, expressing strong opposition to "nation-building." "Changing the world" was, of course, not the reason the US went to war against Iraq. The US went to war because Iraq supposedly was a grave threat the to US—it was preemptive war. It would appear that as other war explanations have proven untrue—threatening WMD, Saddam’s terrorist ties to Osama—the "democratic change" explanation has moved to the front and center by a process of elimination and substitution.
Cohen continues:
"But what really has to be examined is how a single man, the president, took the nation and part of the world to war because, as he essentially put it Tuesday night, he was ‘called’ to do it." Can Cohen really believe this—that it was Bush, the great leader, who single-handedly took the country to war? Can one be both extremely ignorant and unintelligent and successfully impose one’s vision on others a la Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Lenin? Though these evil men sanctioned mass murder, they were obviously intelligent and focused on ideas--and single-mindedly sought to shape society according to their own views. Clearly Bush was not the major figure in preparing the US for war. Obviously, Cheney and the numerous neocons inside and outside the Administration played the major role in pushing the US to war.
But what about Dubya and ideas? He doesn’t read. He relies on his advisors for information. So guess where he got the view about democratic transformation? He got it from the same source where he got the ideas about threatening WMD and Saddam's close ties to Al Qaida. And I think you know what that source is—the NEOCONS. Yes, those ideas have loomed large among the neocons for years. Neocons and their close associate Dick Cheney served as Bush’s advisors. They pushed much of the WMD war propaganda—think of the Office of Special Plans. They were the major force were pushing for war. And they have now persuaded Bush that it was a war for freedom. And Bush just repeats the neocon mantras without thinking about them—a la Orwellian duckspeak, which means to repeat slogans without any thinking, just like the quacking of ducks. Duckspeak had not yet been achieved in the "1984" dystopia but now we are in 2004 and Dubya is a very advanced non-thinker.
If it were OK to attack non-free countries then few nations would be safe from attack. The US deals with non-free nations all the time—and it is finding new tyrannies to support in central Asia. And, of course, a military occupation—which involves martial law and censorship—is hard to square with freedom and democracy. And certainly Dubya lacks the intellectual irony to speak the words of Dostoyevsky’s revolutionary character Shigalov in "The Possessed": "I have started out with the idea of unrestricted freedom and I have arrived at unrestricted despotism."
In Dubya’s repetition of America’s war for freedom mantra, he never conceives the need to account for the innumerable violations of this alleged freedom approach in American foreign policy. But then he obviously can’t see them; he is simply engaging in duckspeak.
It was not single man who took the country to war. Rather, Bush was simply a neocon tool, repeating the views that they had placed into his empty head. Interesting enough, Cohen said something very much like this in a July 2003 article, where he wrote:
"Is George Bush the Iraq war's ‘useful idiot’?
The phrase was coined by Vladimir Lenin to refer to gullible communist sympathizers who swallowed whole the party line. They believed what they were told, and what they were told was mostly lies."
Cohen concluded in this piece: "More likely, he [Bush] is merely an uncritical man who believed what he was told. Lenin knew the type." One caveat: Lenin probably did not conceive of someone as mentally challenged as Bush.
Stylistically, it would have been nice to end with the previous paragraph, but I know there are unbelievers in Bush’s stupidity out there. So let me add this quasi-caveat. Bush knows nothing about intellectual subject matter dealing with foreign relations and other broader ideas. He can’t seem to conceptualize. He can’t speak English. He seems totally incurious about what is going on. However, Dubya likes to have popular praise and support. He likes to win election victories. He likes to hold himself in high esteem. I think that even if he loses the upcoming election, he can be made to feel good as a martyr for the cause of righteousness by his many supporters in the war party. In contrast, Lenin’s "useful idiots" would ultimately be morally and physically destroyed by the triumph of Communism.
And while Cohen in 2002 noted that the neocons were behind the war on Iraq, dubbing it "Kristol’s War," for arch-neocon publicist Bill Kristol, he supported it nonetheless. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A28737-2002Jun10¬Found=true
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13298-2004Apr14?language=printer
washingtonpost.com
America's Ayatollah
By Richard Cohen
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A25
The term of the moment in Washington is "the wall." This is the legal barrier that once separated the CIA and its investigators from the FBI and its investigators, and which may have contributed to the confusion that enabled the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A more interesting wall, however, was on view Tuesday evening in President Bush's prime-time news conference. It's the one between him and reality.
Never mind that even for Bush, this was a poor performance -- answers that resembled a frantic scavenger hunt for the right (or any) word or, too often, a thought. Never mind that he really had very little to say -- no exit plan for Iraq, no second thoughts about Sept. 11, no wonderment, even, at the apparent disappearance of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and how that might have happened. Like a kid who has been told otherwise, Bush persists in believing in his own version of Santa Claus. The weapons are there, somewhere -- in a North Pole of his mind.
What matters more is the phrase Bush used five times in one way or another: "We're changing the world." He used it always in reference to the war in Iraq and he used it in ways that would make even Woodrow Wilson, that presidential personification of naive morality, shake his head in bemusement. In Bush's rhetoric, a war to rid Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction, a war to ensure that Condoleezza Rice's "mushroom cloud" did not appear over an American city, has mutated into an effort to reorder the world.
"I also know that there's an historic opportunity here to change the world," Bush said of the effort in Iraq. But the next sentence was even more disquieting. "And it's very important for the loved ones of our troops to understand that the mission is an important, vital mission for the security of America and for the ability to change the world for the better." It is one thing to die to defend your country. It is quite another to do that for a single man's impossible dream. What Bush wants is admirable. It is not, however, attainable.
Shortly after Sept. 11, Bush used the word "crusade" to characterize his response to the attacks. The Islamic world, remembering countless crusades on behalf of Christianity, protested, and Bush quickly interred the word in the National Archives or someplace. Nonetheless, that is pretty much what Bush described in his news conference -- not a crusade for Christ and not one to oust the Muslims from Jerusalem but an American one that would eradicate terrorism and, in short, "change the world." The United States, the president said, had been "called" for that task.
Some people might consider this religious drivel and others might find it stirring, but whatever it is, it cannot be the basis for foreign policy, not to mention a war. Yet it explains, as nothing else can, just why Bush is so adamantly steadfast about Iraq and why he simply asserts what is not proved or just plain untrue -- the purported connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, for instance, or why Hussein was such a threat, when we have it on the word of David Kay and countless weapons inspectors that he manifestly was not. Bush talks as if only an atheist would demand proof when faith alone more than suffices. He is America's own ayatollah.
Several investigative commissions are now meeting in Washington, looking into intelligence failures -- everything from the failure to detect and intercept the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to the assertion that Iraq was armed to the teeth with all sorts of awful stuff. But what really has to be examined is how a single man, the president, took the nation and part of the world to war because, as he essentially put it Tuesday night, he was "called" to do it.
If that is the case, and it sure seems so at the moment, then this commission has to ask us all -- and I don't exclude myself -- how much of Congress and the press went to war with an air of juvenile glee. The Commission on Credulous Stupidity may call me as its first witness, but after that it has to examine how, despite our vaunted separation of powers, a barely elected president opted for a war that need not have been fought. This is Bush's cause, a noble but irrational effort much like the one that set off for Jerusalem in the year 1212. It was known as the Children's Crusade.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26010-2003Jul21?language=printer
Bush the Believer
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, July 22, 2003; Page A17
Is George Bush the Iraq war's "useful idiot"?
The phrase was coined by Vladimir Lenin to refer to gullible communist sympathizers who swallowed whole the party line. They believed what they were told, and what they were told was mostly lies.
It could be somewhat the same with Bush. He may well be the last person to believe that the Iraq war was waged virtually in self-defense. He believes that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons. He believes Hussein had other weapons of mass destruction and that he was linked somehow -- don't ask how -- to Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and the events of Sept. 11.
The evidence is nowhere to be found. No weapons of mass destruction have turned up. An advanced Iraqi nuclear program seems to be, well, not so advanced. The evidence for it is either bogus or so tenuous as to be far from convincing. Ties to al Qaeda -- "bulletproof evidence," in the words of Don Rumsfeld -- have not been proved and never made much sense anyway. Al Qaeda is not well disposed toward secular leaders.
What evidence exists suggests, in fact, that the United States was hankering for a war no matter what. Intelligence -- no matter how fragmentary or inconclusive -- was shaped, molded and goosed until it could be used to prove that Hussein had to be taken out swiftly. The bogus uranium from Niger is a mere detail in this regard -- a smoking gun, yes, but one in the hands of White House aides for whom truth meant less than impact.
The real mystery is whether Bush himself realized how weak the evidence for a preemptive war was or was being manipulated by a cadre of disciplined administration aides who long had sought a war with Iraq. These are some of the very same people who in 1998 wrote a letter to President Clinton arguing that America should abandon containment, "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power." Ten of the 18 signatories -- including Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz -- are now in the Bush administration and were among the most vigorous proponents of war. Rumsfeld, Bob Woodward tells us, argued at the first Cabinet meeting after the Sept. 11 attacks for war on Iraq.
They may have been right then and they may be right now -- and in my view, a pretty good case can still be made for the war. But that's not really the case Bush made. Instead of arguing that down the road Iraq might have a nuclear weapons program or that eventually the United Nations would lose interest in maintaining sanctions, he raised the rhetorical danger to one of virtual imminence: Hit Iraq quick -- before Hussein could hit us.
That was a bogus argument. The war could have waited. But Bush could not. My guess is that his tendency to see things in black and white and an un-Clintonian determination to eschew micromanaging led him astray. The president "is not a fact-checker," an administration aide told the media last week in explaining why Bush used weak evidence in his State of the Union message.
But neither is Colin Powell. Yet he went over the evidence carefully, discarding some of it before he made his own presentation to the United Nations. Powell might have suspected what Bush apparently did not -- that some administration officials were so intent on war they were cooking the books.
The proposals contained in the 1998 letter to Clinton were either bold or reckless, depending on your point of view. Whatever the case, Bush essentially adopted them. But in choosing an unconventional course, he persisted in using the conventional language of self-defense. In fact, he opted for a discretionary war, one waged not so much to preempt terrorism -- although that was part of the mix -- as to reorder the Middle East.
Had Bush made the same case for war that his aides did in 1998, that could have been debated. But it was a hard case to make, because Hussein really and truly did not pose an imminent threat to the United States. He posed a distant or theoretical threat -- and not really to America but to our interests and allies.
Now Bush stands abandoned by events. No weapons of mass destruction. No nuclear program. No links to al Qaeda. His judgment and his competence are being questioned -- his honesty as well. But the president is no liar. More likely, he is merely an uncritical man who believed what he was told. Lenin knew the type. | | | | Abbadean | | Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 11:12 pm Post subject: Re: Bush: Ayatollah or Useful Idiot? |
| | Alpha the Muslim Terrorist spokesman wrote: | | S.O.S (same old shit.) |  | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 11:29 pm Post subject: Re: Bush: Ayatollah or Useful Idiot? |
| | Abbadean wrote: | | Alpha the Muslim Terrorist spokesman wrote: | | S.O.S (same old shit.) | |
I am no Muslim, but you are definitely a Zionist Jew (as you have already admitted such in another message thread). The Palestinians have every right to resist the continued Zionist land grab (to include the illegal Jewish colony of Ariel on Palestinian land). So what did you not understand about the following:
Weekend Edition
April 16 / 18, 2004
Sharon's "Courageous" Plan
Bush Legitimizes Terrorism
By ROBERT FISK
The Independent
So President George Bush tears up the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan and that's okay. Israeli settlements for Jews and Jews only on the West Bank. That's okay. Taking land from Palestinians who have owned that land for generations, that's okay. UN Security Council Resolution 242 says that land cannot be acquired by war. Forget it. That's okay.
Does President George Bush actually work for al-Qa'ida? What does this mean? That George Bush cares more about his re-election than he does about the Middle East? Or that George Bush is more frightened of the Israeli lobby than he is of his own electorate. Fear not, it is the latter.
His language, his narrative, his discourse on history, has been such a lie these past three weeks that I wonder why we bother to listen to his boring press conferences. Ariel Sharon, the perpetrator of the Sabra and Shatila massacre (1,700 Palestinian civilians dead) is a "man of peace" - even though the official 1993 Israeli report on the massacre said he was "personally responsible" for it. Now, Mr Bush is praising Mr Sharon's plan to steal yet more Palestinian land as a "historic and courageous act".
Heaven spare us all. Give up the puny illegal Jewish settlements in Gaza and everything's okay: the theft of land by colonial settlers, the denial of any right of return to Israel by those Palestinians who lived there, that's okay. Mr Bush, who claimed he changed the Middle East by invading Iraq, says he is now changing the world by invading Iraq! Okay! Is there no one to cry "Stop! Enough!"?
Two nights ago, this most dangerous man, George Bush, talked about "freedom in Iraq". Not "democracy" in Iraq. No, "democracy" was no longer mentioned. "Democracy" was simply left out of the equation. Now it was just "freedom"--freedom from Saddam rather than freedom to have elections. And what is this "freedom" supposed to involve? One group of American-appointed Iraqis will cede power to another group of American-appointed Iraqis. That will be the "historic handover" of Iraqi "sovereignty". Yes, I can well see why George Bush wants to witness a "handover" of sovereignty. "Our boys" must be out of the firing line--let the Iraqis be the sandbags.
Iraqi history is already being written. In revenge for the brutal killing of four American mercenaries - for that is what they were - US Marines carried out a massacre of hundreds of women and children and guerillas in the Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah. The US military says that the vast majority of the dead were militants. Untrue, say the doctors. But the hundreds of dead, many of whom were indeed civilians, were a shameful reflection on the rabble of American soldiery who conducted these undisciplined attacks on Fallujah. Many Baghdadi Sunnis say that in the "New Iraq"--the Iraqi version, not the Paul Bremer version - Fallujah should be given the status of a new Iraqi capital.
Vast areas of the Palestinian West Bank will now become Israel, courtesy of President Bush. Land which belongs to people other than Israelis must now be stolen by Israelis because it is "unrealistic" to accept otherwise. Is Mr Bush a thief? Is he a criminal? Can he be charged with abetting a criminal act? Can Iraq now claim to Kuwait that it is "unrealistic" that the Ottoman borders can be changed? Palestinian land once included all of what is now Israel. It is not, apparently, "realistic" to change this, even to two per cent?
Is Saddam Hussein to be re-bottled and put back in charge of Iraq on the basis that his 1990 invasion of Kuwait was "realistic"? Or that his invasion of Iran--when we helped him try to destroy Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution--was "realistic" because he initially attacked only the Arabic-speaking (and thus "Iraqi") parts of Iran?
Or, since President Bush now seems to be a history buff, are the Germans to be given back Danzig or the Sudetenland? Or Austria? Or should we perhaps recreate the colonial possessions of the past 100 years? Is it not "realistic" that the French should retake Algeria - or part of Algeria - on the basis that the people all speak French, on the basis that this was once part of the French nation? Or should the British retake Cyprus? Or Aden? Or Egypt? Shouldn't the French be allowed to take back Lebanon and Syria? Why shouldn't the British re-take America and boot out those pesky "terrorists" who oppose the rule of King George's democracy well over 200 years ago?
Because this is what George Bush's lunacy and weakness can lead to. We all have lands that "God" gave us. Didn't Queen Mary die with "Calais" engraved on her heart? Doesn't Spain have a legitimate right to the Netherlands? Or Sweden the right to Norway and Denmark? Every colonial power, including Israel can put forward these preposterous demands.
What Bush has actually done is give way to the crazed world of Christian Zionism. The fundamentalist Christians who support Israel's theft of the West Bank on the grounds that the state of Israel must exist there according to God's law until the second coming, believe that Jesus will return to earth and the Israelis--for this is the Bush "Christian Sundie" belief--will then have to convert to Christianity or die in the battle of Amargeddon.
I kid thee not. This is the Christian fundamentalist belief, which even the Israeli embassy in Washington go along with--without comment, of course--in their weekly Christian Zionist prayer meetings. Every claim by Osama bin Laden, every statement that the United States represents Zionism and supports the theft of Arab lands will now have been proved true to millions of Arabs, even those who had no time for Bin Laden. What better recruiting sergeant could Bin Laden have than George Bush. Doesn't he realise what this means for young American soldiers in Iraq or are Israelis more important than American lives in Mesopotamia?
Everything the US government has done to preserve its name as a "middle-man" in the Middle East has now been thrown away by this gutless, cowardly US President, George W Bush. That it will place his soldiers at greater risk doesn't worry him--anyway, he doesn't do funerals. That it goes against natural justice doesn't worry him. That his statements are against international law is of no consequence.
And still we have to cow-tow to this man. If we are struck by al-Qa'ida it is our fault. And if 90 per cent of the population of Spain point out that they opposed the war, then they are pro-terrorists to complain that 200 of their civilians were killed by al-Qa'ida. First the Spanish complain about the war, then they are made to suffer for it--and then they are condemned as "appeasers" by the Bush regime and its craven journalists when they complain that their husbands and wives and sons did not deserve to die.
If this is to be their fate, excuse me, but I would like to have a Spanish passport so that I can share the Spanish people's "cowardice"! If Mr Sharon is "historic" and "courageous", then the murderers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad will be able to claim the same. Mr Bush legitimised "terrorism" this week--and everyone who loses a limb or a life can thank him for his yellow streak. And, I fear, they can thank Mr Blair for his cowardice too.
http://www.counterpunch.com/fisk04162004.html | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Abbadean | | Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 12:31 am Post subject: Re: Israeli 'Homicide Helicopter' Pilots Train in Iowa |
| | Alpha The Terrorist Wanabee wrote: | | Same ole Bovine Fecal Matter. |
Hey Retardo, A zionist is anyone who believes Israel has a right to exist where it is! Calling me a Zionist is a compliment!
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