War Without End

Alpha

Israel is the Problem (Our Problem as the 'A Clean Break' JINSA/PNAC Neoconservative document for wider war in the Middle East for Israel is linked in the following URL):

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=1032

Plan of Attack:

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=2340

George Bush: Neocon Napolean:

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=2325

** Analysis: US 'emulates' Israeli tactics **:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/14/analysis-us-emulates-israeli-tactics.php

The following is in accordance with the JINSA/PNAC Neocon ('A Clean Break' document which is linked in the first URL above) agenda of widening the Iraq war to Syria (with even more American soldiers/marines dying in the process as you can see the coffins coming home from Iraq in the picture at the top of www.whatreallyhappened.com -but the JINSA/CSP/PNAC Neocon 'Israel firsters' in the Pentagon don't have too much of a concern about Americans dying for Israel in Iraq and beyond -see the 'War Conceived in Israel' article which is linked under the map of 'greater Israel' after scrolling down to it on the left at http://www.nowarforisrael.com):

NO US SOLDIER SHOULD HAVE TO DIE IN IRAQ FOR ISRAEL TO GET OIL:

http://www.nogw.com/warforisrael.html

Eleven US soldiers die as revolt spreads to Syrian border

"Revolt"? How can the people revolt against a foreign government that claims to be liberating them????

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=512807

U.S. Marines engaged in 'silent war' near Syrian border:

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_9.html

Yep, Sharon (with the support of the JINSA/CSP/PNAC Zionist extremist Neocons at the Pentagon) is out to start a regional war!

Israel yesterday threatened to strike Damascus. It also warned that the Damascus-based political bureau chief of Hamas, Khalid Meshaal would meet "an identical" fate to the movement's assassinated leader in the Palestinian territories, Abdelaziz Rantissi. "When the opportunity comes to strike at Damascus, we will do it," Minister for Parliamentary Relations Gideon Erza was quoted as saying at Israel's cabinet meeting.
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Articles.asp?Article=79543&Sn=WORL

John Kerry - An Ultra Right Wing Zionist
Israel, more than any other factor or faction, including the oil industry and the WASP old guard, is presently controlling the American political agenda, through its network of influence in the media, the Congress, the policy think tanks and other centers of power."

http://rense.com/general51/kerry.htm

Are Bush and Neo-Cons Finished?

Not until it is revealed that Bush and the Neocons MADE 9-11 happen to jump-start their little war. The subversion of the US to fight a war of conquest for personal profit and for a foreign power is a crime against the people and the world. As commander-in-chief, Bush is personally responsible for the war crimes now being comitted in Iraq.

http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=716

Without Reservation

http://militaryweek.com/withoutreservation.shtml

by Karen Kwiatkowski, Lt. Col. USAF (ret.)

An Honest Appraisal, and the Way Ahead

"April is the cruelest month" is the first line of T.S. Eliot's 1922 epic The Wasteland. These days, our man in Baghdad, Civilian Administrator L. Paul Bremer III, must be wondering if his memoirs of the last year should start with the same line. Upon reflection, back home in Washington, Bremer may wish to appropriate Eliot's title as well.

This April is particularly cruel with bills coming due for a lack of post-invasion planning, failure to develop an exit strategy, and for a persistent glaring void between the ears of the Bush administration regarding Iraq's history, economy and culture. As of this writing, nearly 700 American soldiers have paid the ultimate price for these oversights.

Neoconservatives pleaded and postured for preemptive war in Iraq, but they under-estimated one of the few "successes" of Saddam Hussein's secular dictatorship. Saddam's costly, protracted war with Iran, his failed invasion of Kuwait and the resultant humiliation of a Versailles-esque settlement, plus a dozen years of global sanctions and U.S./U.K. bombings combined, have produced many negative effects. But these realities have transformed various religious and ethnic groups from the provinces into something new: Iraqis against the world.

Iraqi national identity need not be permanent to throw a monkey wrench into the U.S. self-help project in Mesopotamia. Violent civil war or a Czech and Slovak style "velvet divorce" are future options for Iraq. But this month, we've witnessed a predictable side effect of our military and political occupation. Iraqis have heard the words of Mr. Bush, and they seem to agree. You're either with us, or you're against us.

The lies and executive pressure that convinced Congress to grant the current president extraordinary war powers are now behind us. Indeed, politicians usually prove more adept at killing and maiming the younger generations than saving them.

Now is the time for practical, not political, minds to hold sway.

In discussing Iraq, Senator Ted Kennedy recalls Vietnam. He takes grief not for his facts, but because, as a natty neoconservative talking point goes, "Why, his own brother got us into Vietnam!" Robert Dreyfuss reminds us that in 1968, following the Tet Offensive, the party in the White House became traumatized by that war's reality, and fell into disarray. Perhaps this is the one dangerous parallel that agonizes 21st century Republicans. And Senator Robert Byrd equates Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade to the modern military blunders of the current administration in a moving address before a nearly empty Senate Chamber.

Conversely, the twenty most influential American newspapers editorialized this week: when it comes to Iraq, we need to stay the course. These editorial boards mean well. But it is clear that they either honestly don't know or perversely refuse to recognize the one fundamental reason why we have had over 135,000 American troops under deadly fire for the past year in Iraq.

Here's a hint: It isn't liberation, democracy, counter-terrorism, a search for weapons of mass destruction, humanitarian concerns, or even oil or Israel's security interests. It is simple geo-strategic military positioning, a classic Cold War model, aimed at punishing future enemies and rewarding allies by leveraging regional oil flow, water allocations, and weapons development. This, and nothing else, explains why the EU is nervous, the Russian President antsy, and the Chinese Prime Minister coy.

Fortunately, we don't have to take the self-serving advice of neoconservatives and editorial boards. We can save our working class sons and daughters from unnecessary death, disease, or lifelong debilitation courtesy this boutique war imposed on us by chickenhawk academics and lying old men. We do have options.

One option is to simply withdraw. Toss a key, or not, over the fence and redeploy home. Write off the whole experiment as a bad decision taken by a mediocre president unrestrained by a frightened Congress, a docile Supreme Court, a lazy domestic media, and a too-busy-to-pay-attention electorate.

This option is typically rejected as immoral and bad for the Iraqi people. Of course, the Bush Doctrine of selective, preemptive, full-scale war based on jury-rigged or incompetent intelligence, and severely outmoded, but cherished, security paradigms gets first prize in the "immoral and bad for the Iraqi people" category.

In keeping with the Administration's preference that things be either/or, there is another option. Toss a hundred keys over a hundred city walls, and militarily pull back into a subset of friendly Guantanamo-style Iraqi outposts. In places like Kurdish Mosul or Shia Basra, we can pick our own friendly hosts and spend the bulk of the $67 billion base building and security money on these must-have facilities. As we withdraw to our friendly zones, we get to keep military access. As cities like Baghdad and Fallujah settle down, we might negotiate with the emergent leadership there for additional military access. Or not.

This is an approach that will save American lives and American tax dollars. It compromises on the American oil and infrastructure development contracts. It won't guarantee that the Mosul-to-Haifa oil pipeline – a booster for the Israeli economy – will be finished on schedule, if ever. It does not protect the right of expatriate crooks like Ahmad Chalabi to run the country under our tutelage.

The "hundred keys" option offers Iraq self rule, but it sacrifices the neoconservatives' adoration for overwhelmingly strong and centralized federal governments. Adding neoconservative insult to injury, this option also requires us to not only decentralize, but give up U.S. control over Iraqi banks and Iraqi oil production.

Yes, changes would have to be made. Doing so sooner rather than later will save American lives, while preserving at least some existing American contracts. It will, in a small way increase unemployment in Iraq, as the U.S. appointed Governing Council, the U.S. appointed bureaucratic Ministers, and the entire American staff of handlers will all be kicked off the rebuild Iraq gravy train funded by American tax dollars.

These are the types of choices that originate from an honest assessment of why we are in Iraq in the first place: military geo-strategic positioning, with a side of economic welfare for a few fat cat American companies. The neoconservative pipe dream of the reformation of Islam, and a stirring of the democratic heart of the Middle East is, as it always was, delusional window dressing.

April was the cruelest month for T.S. Eliot. It is a month of change; a month that breaks comfortable habits without kindness or remorse. When it comes to fixing our Iraq policy, we need only to appraise, with brutal honesty, what we really want and what we are really willing to spend to achieve it. The practical compromises are self-evident. One hopes we might make them before another April rolls around.
© 2004 Karen Kwiatkowski

Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski can be reached at karen@militaryweek.com.

Alpha

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17060 (see the links which are embedded in this URL):

'A Clean Break' is an embedded link at the following article and is a must read:

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j100603.html

http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles114.htm

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest

Notice how JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs)/PNAC (Project for the New American Century) Zionist extremists Richard Perle and Douglas Feith (who co-authored the 'A Clean Break' document for Likudite Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu back in 1996) are ardently in supportive of going after Hizbollah in Lebanon/Syria for Israel (be sure to read the 'War Conceived in Israel' article which is linked under the map of 'greater Israel' after scrolling down to it on the left at www.nowarforisrael.com as more about 'A Clean Break' is also linked after scrolling down to it at www.irmep.org):

Volume 51, Number 7 · April 29, 2004
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Review
In Search of Hezbollah
By Adam Shatz
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
(click for larger image)
WORKS DRAWN ON FOR THIS ARTICLE

Hizbollah: Rebel Without a Cause?
by the International Crisis Group
a briefing paper, July 30, 2003

My Life Is a Weapon: A Modern History of Suicide Bombing
by Christoph Reuter, translated from the German by Helena Ragg-Kirkby
Princeton University Press, 200 pp., $24.95

Hizbu'llah: Politics and Religion
by Amal Saad-Ghorayeb
Pluto, 254 pp., $69.95

Should Hezbollah Be Next?
by Daniel Byman
Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003

Hizballah of Lebanon: Extremist Ideals vs. Mundane Politics
a paper by Augustus Richard Norton
Council on Foreign Relations, 1999

Hezbollah: The Changing Face of Terrorism
by Judith Palmer Harik
I.B. Tauris, 241 pp., $24.95

Hizballah: Terrorism, National Liberation, or Menace?
a report by Sami G. Hajjar
Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, August 2002

1.
Beirut used to be known as the Paris of the Middle East, and in the well-to-do Christian and Sunni quarters of the city, the capital of Lebanon still manages to cast a spell. The central business district—a battleground on the dividing line between Christian East Beirut and Muslim West Beirut during the Lebanese civil war—has been rebuilt by a construction firm whose largest shareholder is Lebanon's prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, a billionaire entrepreneur. The cafés are thick with smoke and conversation in Arabic, English, and French, techno music blares from clubs until four in the morning, and everywhere there are women in miniskirts. The old, pre-war Beirut, the sophisticated world where it mattered to people to be seen, seems to have been resurrected.

But "Haririgrad," as downtown Beirut is sometimes called, is hardly representative of the country. If you take a ten-minute drive to the city's southern suburbs, a series of dingy, overcrowded slums, you will see another country, where hejabs are more common than miniskirts, liquor is hard to find, and you're less likely to see posters of Prime Minister Hariri than of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the forty-four-year-old secretary-general of Hezbollah, the Party of God. A prominent Shiite cleric, shrewd militia leader, and political strategist, Nasrallah is admired throughout the Arab world for leading a campaign of resistance to Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in May 2000, and for his successful dealings with the Israeli government. Most recently, after three years of on-and-off negotiations through a German mediator, Nasrallah persuaded Ariel Sharon to hand over 429 prisoners, as well as the bodies of fifty-nine Hezbollah fighters killed in combat, in exchange for freeing an Israeli businessman kidnapped by Hezbollah and returning the remains of three Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon. The deal sparked a day of national celebration in Lebanon, and has been seen by some as a vindication of Hezbollah's use of violence for political leverage.

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Most of the residents of southern Beirut, where Nasrallah has his headquarters, are Shiites, who account for 40 percent of Lebanon's population, outnumbering both Christians and Sunnis. Until the 1960s, Lebanon's Shiites were a neglected, invisible community, oppressed by feudal landlords and disdained by their fellow Lebanese. Today, they are a rising political force, thanks in large part to the militant political movement Hezbollah. It is now a virtual state-within-a-state, with an army of several thousand men, an extensive social service network, a popular satellite television station called al-Manar ("the Beacon of Light"), and an annual budget in excess of $100 million, much of which comes from Iran, Hezbollah's major patron.

The movement first emerged during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, in which between twelve and nineteen thousand Lebanese died, most of them civilians and many of them Shiites. Militant followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Hezbollah's original cadres were organized and trained by a 1,500-member contingent of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, who arrived in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley in the summer of 1982, with the permission of the Syrian government. For Iran, whose efforts to spread the Islamic revolution to the Arab world had been stymied by its war with Iraq, Hezbollah provided a means of gaining a foothold in Middle East politics.

Syria's vehemently secular leader Hafez Assad, for his part, had no affection for Hezbollah's religious ideology but keenly grasped its potential as a proxy militia. For Syria, whose principal goal has been to reclaim the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the 1967 war, Hezbollah is the only "card" it has to pressure its far more powerful neighbor. Unlike the leftist Lebanese forces that, until that point, had led the resistance to the Israelis, Hezbollah guerrillas could not be penetrated by Israeli intelligence. And in their discipline and willingness to die for their cause they had few rivals, as the world was to discover the following year, when members of the clandestine "Islamic Resistance" (a precursor to Hezbollah, which did not yet officially exist) launched a series of terrifying suicide attacks in Lebanon against American, French, and Israeli targets.

Following the bombings, the Western forces made a fast exit from Beirut; in 1985, faced with fierce resistance from Hezbollah fighters, Israel withdrew to a so-called security zone, a strip of territory along Lebanon's southern border that soon became known as its "insecurity zone." Over the next fifteen years, Hezbollah waged an efficient, disciplined, and popular guerrilla war against the Israeli military.

In May 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak decided to bring an end to an occupation that had cost more than one thousand Israeli lives, and ordered a unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The withdrawal did not include a formal peace agreement with Lebanon, and the Israeli army continued to occupy the patch of border territory called the Shebaa Farms, which Hezbollah regards as part of Lebanon. But Lebanese Shiites (as well as a number of Barak's Israeli critics) saw the withdrawal as a major Hez- bollah victory—"the first Arab victory in the history of Arab-Israeli conflict," as Hezbollah often proclaims.[1] It is an event that has helped make Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, one of the most important men in Lebanon.

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Hezbollah now has some 100,000 supporters, about half of whom are party members. When Nasrallah raises his voice, the Lebanese pay close attention to what he says, whether or not they like him. Bashar Assad, Syria's young leader and Hezbollah's other major sponsor, is said to revere him.[2] Although Nasrallah depends on Iranian arms and Syria's support for his military operations, he has achieved a significant degree of autonomy from both parties, which may complicate future efforts to disband it. Hezbollah, which adheres to the principle of wilayat al-faqih, or rule by the Islamic jurist, regards Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as its ultimate leader, and maintains close ties to Iran's leadership, especially to the hard-line clerics who helped organize the party in the early 1980s.[3] It was Khamenei who reportedly influenced Hezbollah's decision to maintain its armed wing rather than devote all its energies to Lebanese politics after Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000. But Hezbollah has long ceased to be an Iranian-controlled militia. (The last remaining Revolutionary Guards left the Bekaa Valley in 1998.) Although Hezbollah is believed to coordinate foreign policy matters with Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the Lebanese and Western experts I've talked to say it reaches most of its everyday decisions without consulting Iran. Moreover, they say, Khamenei has never overruled Nasrallah.

Syria's control of Hezbollah has also declined, and it is widely believed that Bashar Assad—a weak, inexperienced leader who has inherited his father's airs but not his authority—depends more on Nasrallah's "endorsement" than Nasrallah does on his support. For, in the eyes of many Arabs, Hezbollah has succeeded where Syria, which has long prided itself on being a redoubtable opponent of Israeli ambitions, has failed: in defeating Israel on the battlefield. Nasrallah is one of the most resourceful adversaries Israel has ever faced, and his successful guerrilla war against Israel in southern Lebanon has strongly impressed Palestinians and made him a hero in the Occupied Territories, particularly in the refugee camps.

Although Lebanese Shiites have often regarded the Palestinian population in southern Lebanon with suspicion, Hezbollah's ties to Palestinian groups go back more than a decade. In late 1992, Israel expelled to Lebanon 415 leading members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and during the following year, they received training from Hezbollah in both combat strategies and the ideology of martyrdom. In the 1980s, Hezbollah had endorsed suicide attacks as a legitimate and efficient resistance strategy—and some experts argue that the group helped introduce the technique to Israel in 1993, while the exiled Palestinian extremists were in Lebanon.[4]

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More recently, Nasrallah has deepened his party's involvement in the second intifada. Hezbollah has offered logistical support and training in the use of explosives and anti-tank missiles to Palestinian extremists, particularly members of Islamic Jihad, and has attempted to smuggle arms into the Occupied Territories to various groups, from the Palestinian Authority to Hamas.[5] In June 2002, shortly after the Israeli government launched Operation Defensive Shield, which culminated in the invasion of the Jenin refugee camp, Nasrallah gave a speech in which he defended and praised suicide bombings of Israeli targets by members of Palestinian groups for "creating a deterrence and equalizing fear." Although he did not claim that Hezbollah had been directly involved in the attacks, he said, "We [Hezbollah] are trying to find a way for this weapon to become more developed, effective, and capable, leading the resistance movement in Palestine to a new and exceptional phase." He continued, "This weapon is today the most powerful weapon the Palestinian people...could ever have." Israeli officials have also alleged that Hezbollah is recruiting Israeli Arabs and trying to organize Iranian-funded terrorist cells in Palestine known as the Return Brigades, though no attacks have been tied to such a group.

Nasrallah's struggle with Israel did not end with the withdrawal of Israeli troops. On March 22, hours after the Israeli assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, Hezbollah demonstrated its solidarity with the Palestinian group by firing more than sixty-five rockets at six different Israeli military positions in the occupied Shebaa Farms. The Israeli air force responded by sending warplanes into Lebanon and firing at suspected Hezbollah bases, reportedly foiling in one case a second Hezbollah rocket attack. According to Haaretz, the Israeli Defense Force has also placed Nasrallah, along with Yasser Arafat, on a list of targets for future assassinations.

Hezbollah has vigorously responded to other Israeli activity along the border. In January, a month after Israeli commandos killed two Lebanese men who had wandered into Israeli territory, Hezbollah guerrillas fired on an Israeli bulldozer which had crossed several yards into Lebanese territory to dismantle roadside bombs, and killed one Israeli soldier. As the Lebanese scholar Amal Saad-Ghorayeb underscores in her perceptive new book, Hizbu'llah: Politics and Ideology, Hezbollah views the conflict with Israel as "'an existential struggle' as opposed to 'a conflict over land.'" In the words of Sheikh Naim Qasim, Hezbollah's deputy secretary-general, "Even if hundreds of years pass by, Israel's existence will continue to be an illegal existence."

Although Hezbollah has denounced attacks on Western civilians—Nawaf al-Musawi, the party's foreign minister, told me in no uncertain terms that he viewed September 11 as an act of terrorism—it makes an exception in the case of Israel. As Nasrallah puts it, "in occupied Palestine there is no difference between a soldier and a civilian, for they are all invaders, occupiers and usurpers of the land." When Nasrallah was asked whether he was prepared to live with a two-state settlement between Israel and Palestine, he said in interviews with both Seymour Hersh and me that he would not sabotage what is finally a "Palestinian matter."[6] But until such a settlement is reached, he will, he said, continue to encourage Palestinian suicide bombers. Israel has found him to be a credible, although exasperatingly tough, negotiator. (Nasrallah has voiced similar respect for Israeli leaders, praising their determination to get back their soldiers' remains. "These values are our values too," he told his followers after the recent prisoner exchange.) It is clear, on the other hand, that he thrives on ambiguity about his intentions toward Israel, and enjoys the confusion it sows across Lebanon's southern border.

Some secular Palestinians, for their part, make plain their anger at the efforts of Nasrallah and Hezbollah to influence the Palestinian cause. I recently talked to a ranking Palestinian official who strongly disputed the analogy between occupied Palestine and South Lebanon. "There were no Israeli settlers in South Lebanon," the official said, and "Israel would have eventually left, with or without Hezbollah." The Palestinian, who declined to be identified, criticized Hezbollah for encouraging Hamas and Islamic Jihad to make suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. "I do not consider this resistance," the official said.

2.
Like most of Hezbollah's leaders, Nasrallah studied both at religious seminaries in Najaf, with Iraqi clerics close to the pro-Iranian Islamic Dawa party, and in the Iranian holy city of Qom, with Iranian disciples of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. But he is a modern Lebanese politician, and the language he speaks is that of nationalism, albeit one saturated with the elements of Shiite theology that emphasize resistance to persecution and martyrdom. The Shia cult of martyrdom is part of a tradition going back to Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, who was slaughtered, along with a small number of his followers, by the army of the hostile caliph Yazid at Karbala in 680 AD. During the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, Hezbollah used the cult of Hussein to glorify self-sacrifice among its fighters and to launch suicide attacks, or "martyrdom operations," against the Israeli army. Since the Israeli withdrawal, Hezbollah's culture of victimhood has given way to celebrations of victory, but the group has used its satellite channel, al-Manar, to promote the same ideology of resistance and martyrdom among Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

Nasrallah, who wears the full beard, dark turban, and robes of a Shia cleric, spoke with me in his office in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the so-called Belt of Misery. The office is in an apartment building in a gated courtyard on Abbas Musawi Street, named for Nasrallah's predecessor, who was assassinated in Lebanon in 1992 in an Israeli helicopter gunship attack that also killed his wife and son. The reception room where we spoke was decorated with portraits of Musawi, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and his successor Ayatollah Khamenei; all the blinds were drawn for security. On the wall just outside hung a portrait of Nasrallah's son, Hadi, who was killed six years ago at age eighteen while fighting Israeli soldiers.

A short, plump man with boyish features his beard does little to conceal, Nasrallah is not impressive-looking but he is a stirring speaker. His speeches —detailed examinations of Arab politics, and of Hezbollah strategy—are analytical rather than flowery. He seldom makes claims he cannot defend —a rarity in the region, where the relationship between words and deeds is sometimes comically tenuous. Nasrallah knows how to address ordinary Lebanese Shiites because he is one of them. Born in 1960 in East Beirut, he is the son of a grocer who was a follower of the Imam Musa Sadr, an Iranian cleric who settled in Lebanon in the late Fifties and awakened the long-quiescent Shiite population.

If Israel's leaders hoped that, by killing Sheikh Abbas Musawi, they would get a more pliable, or less capable, adversary, they badly miscalculated. Not only did Nasrallah prove to be a more effective military leader than Musawi, he has adroitly translated his military successes into political gains for Hezbollah and its Shiite constituents. Immediately upon assuming power in 1992, he decided that Hezbollah should openly take part in Lebanon's "confessional" political system, in which parliamentary seats are allocated according to religious identity. Radicals accused him of betraying his party's revolutionary principles, but Nasrallah argued that Hezbollah was better off working within the political system than protesting from the sidelines. His gamble paid off. Hezbollah became the biggest of Lebanon's many political factions, commanding the largest single bloc in the country's parliament, and its leader emerged stronger than ever.

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Today Hezbollah has nine of the twenty-seven seats reserved for Shiites in the 128-member Lebanese parliament; it also controls three additional seats held by allied parties and occupied, respectively, by a Christian and two Sunnis. Were it not for Syrian backing not only of Hezbollah but of Hezbollah's principal Shiite rival, Amal, Hezbollah would have even more. (The first major Shia organization in Lebanon, Amal was created in 1974 and, along with Hezbollah and other groups, fought against the Israeli occupation in the 1980s. Although it has shared Hezbollah's hostility toward Israel, Amal is far more secular in its politics. It was never as close to Iran, and fought a bloody turf war with Hezbollah over southern Lebanon between 1985 and 1989. Today it has eight delegates in the Lebanese parliament, and maintains a strong following among Shiite professionals, who depend on the extensive patronage network run by Amal's leader, Nabih Berri, the speaker of parliament.)

After Israel's withdrawal, some analysts predicted—and many Lebanese hoped—that Hezbollah would soon wind down its military operations and become a purely political party. But Nasrallah has greater ambitions than to win more seats in Lebanon's parliament, and he has had the firm backing of Iran and Syria. At once a determined radical and an astute pragmatist, he views Hezbollah both as a Lebanese party committed to assuring the welfare of its constituents and as a vanguard in the pan-Islamic struggle to destroy Israel and restore Palestine to its native inhabitants.

Nasrallah is not about to surrender power that he believes he might end up needing in the future. Although Hezbollah is a liability for Syria and Iran in their present efforts to improve relations with the American government, the party's arsenal of long-range Katyusha rockets provides it with a defensive shield against Israel. Instead of choosing between politics and "resistance," Nasrallah is pursuing both tracks at once, with a combination of extreme rhetoric and tactical caution that has made Hezbollah the most enigmatic and successful guerrilla organization in the Middle East. Which aspect of Hezbollah's identity he chooses to emphasize will depend, to a large extent, on what happens in the region.

If anything has convinced Nasrallah that now is not the time to disarm, it is intensified American hostility since September 11. In early September 2002, Richard Armitage, the US deputy secretary of state, characterized Hezbollah as "the A-team of terrorists," while "maybe al-Qaeda is actually the B-team," and promised to "go after them just like a high school wrestler goes after opponents." Before the US invasion of Iraq, Democratic senator Bob Graham, a former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, had told 60 Minutes that Hezbollah represented a graver threat than Saddam Hussein. Dick Cheney's new adviser on Syrian policy, David Wurmser, a pro-Likud ideologue, is an open advocate of preemptive war against Syria and Hezbollah, a position favored by neoconservatives in and close to the Bush admin- istration, such as Douglas Feith, John Bolton, and Richard Perle. Perhaps not coincidentally, there have also been lurid accounts of Hezbollah in the American press. Jeffrey Goldberg, writing in The New Yorker, called Hezbollah an "organization devoted to jihad, not to logic," one that "might attack American interests regardless of American interests in Lebanon."[7]

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Hezbollah's reputation for violence against the West is well deserved. The group was behind some of the worst attacks against Western military and diplomatic targets of the 1980s, including the October 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut (in which 241 servicemen died) and the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight (in which an American serviceman on board was brutally beaten, then killed and dumped on the tarmac). Western intelligence officials also believe that in the mid-1980s the group participated in the kidnapping and assassination of American citizens in Lebanon, such as Terry Anderson and CIA station chief William Buckley, who was tortured before he was killed. A Lebanese terrorist group called Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for many of these attacks, but the group shared many of the same leaders as Hezbollah, and US intelligence officials allege it was merely a cover for Hezbollah's military wing.

In the early 1990s, Hezbollah members were connected to two notorious attacks in Buenos Aires: the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy, which killed twenty-nine people, ostensibly in retaliation for Israel's assassination of Sheikh Musawi; and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center, which killed eighty-five civilians. American and Saudi officials have also implicated Hezbollah in the 1996 truck bombing of Khobar Towers, a US military base in Saudi Arabia, which killed nineteen US servicemen, although their evidence has been questioned by some experts.[8] According to Western officials, many of these attacks were organized by Imad Mughnieh, a shadowy pro-Iranian terrorist who is said at the time to have led Hezbollah's "external security apparatus," an extremist wing of the party that has organized Hezbollah cells and raised funds abroad. Reportedly based in Tehran, Mughnieh is one of three Hezbollah members who remain on the State Department's list of "23 Most Wanted Terrorists." He is alleged to run a network of terrorist cells and training camps in Asia, Europe, and along South America's "triple frontier," where the borders of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil intersect, and may have had some contact with al-Qaeda in the early 1990s.[9]

In view of these attacks, the concerns of the American government are understandable. And Hezbollah's ideology—a fiery mixture of revolutionary Khomeinism, Shiite nationalism, celebration of martyrdom, and militant anti-Zionism, occasionally accompanied by crude, neo-fascist anti-Semitism—only exacerbates concern about the organization's potential for violence. Nevertheless, there has been little evidence of violence sponsored by Hezbollah itself against Western targets in recent years and the extent of Mughnieh's current ties with Hezbollah's political leadership remains in doubt. Several experts on Hezbollah I spoke to believe that Mughnieh now works solely on behalf of Iran.

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Hezbollah's announced long-term objectives—the establishment of an Islamic republic in Lebanon, and the elimination of the State of Israel— have not changed. But it interprets its founding principles with considerable suppleness, as when Nasrallah says he will not sabotage an Israeli–Palestinian peace agreement. Today it is not only prominent in Lebanese politics; it is also a major provider of schools, where the principles of Islam according to Ayatollah Khamenei and Hezbollah ideology are folded into a normal curriculum that is approved by the Lebanese government. It also provides an impressive range of social services such as hospitals and job training to the Shiite community.

In a country mired in patronage and back-room dealing, Hezbollah is respected for its lack of corruption. Although the party's yellow-and-green flag—depicting a fist brandishing a Kalashnikov, posed against a globe— still advocates "the Islamic Revolution in Lebanon," Hezbollah has recently said little about an Islamic state, and begun to build alliances across religious lines, particularly at the municipal level and in professional unions. In 1999, for example, Hezbollah members of Lebanon's engineering syndicate formed a coalition with the Phalange Party, a rightist Christian group, and the National Liberal Party, both allies of Israel during the civil war. Another change that is impossible to ignore is the growing prominence of female activists in the party, a development that makes the party progressive by Islamist standards. "One would have to be blind not to notice the changes Hezbollah has undergone," says Joseph Samaha, a secular Christian writer for the daily as-Safir. "Has Hezbollah tried to ban books or impose sharia? Not once. Their electoral program is [an] almost social democratic [one]. So we're confronting a very different kind of Fundamentalist party."

Moreover, as Daniel Byman, an analyst at the Brookings Institution, points out in his article "Should Hezbollah Be Next?" in Foreign Affairs, over the last decade Hezbollah's military wing has concentrated most of its efforts on strengthening its defensive capacity; according to Byman, Hezbollah has not been linked to a "single attack on a US target" since the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers. In its guerrilla war with Israel in southern Lebanon, it targeted soldiers, not civilians, although it is said to provide both financing and training for Hamas.

While Iran continues to supply Hezbollah with money and arms, including Katyushas that arrive through Syrian ports, it has shown increasing restraint since the mid-1990s, when it used Hezbollah agents to strike at American and Jewish targets outside Israel. Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, has urged Nasrallah to avoid giving Israel a pretext for attacking Lebanon. Although American officials have called attention to the presence of about a hundred Hezbollah members in Iraq, few believe that they are organizing violent resistance.[10] Every Hezbollah official I spoke to vehemently denied such reports, some indicating that they would welcome diplomatic relations with the United States.

Observing these changes, a growing number of American scholars, notably Augustus Richard Norton of Boston University, Judith Harik of the American University in Beirut, and Sami Hajjar of the US Army War College, argue that the party has undergone a genuine transformation, that it cannot be regarded as a terrorist group comparable to al-Qaeda, and that it would be pragmatic to engage in talks with Hezbollah and test its intentions. Their views are shared both by European diplomats such as Giandome-nico Picco, former assistant secretary-general for political affairs at the United Nations, and by retired American diplomats, such as Richard Murphy at the Council on Foreign Relations, and by some officials in the State Department. Dennis Ross, the Middle East envoy under the first Bush and Clinton administrations, has stated that Hezbollah's resistance to the Israeli occupation, unlike its past activities aimed at Western targets, is not terrorism.[11] While the United States, Israel, and Canada classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, European allies of the US, including Britain, say a distinction should be made between Hezbollah's political wing and the terrorist "external security apparatus." In their view Nasrallah and his Lebanese political organization are giving support to Palestinian extremists but are not directly involved in international terrorism.

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The difference between American and Arab perceptions of Hezbollah is even wider. Michel Samaha, Lebanon's minister of information, insists that Hezbollah has been an important ally in the war against terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. According to Samaha, who is close to the Syrian government and often meets with Nasrallah, Hezbollah has been providing the Lebanese government with intelligence on Sunni extremists operating in refugee camps in southern Lebanon. "What astonishes us is the American attempt to link Hez- bollah to al-Qaeda," Samaha said in his Beirut office. While al-Qaeda is known throughout the Arab world as a terrorist outfit, Hezbollah is just as widely seen as a legitimate resistance organization that has defended its land against the Israeli occupying force, and consistently stood up to the Israeli army.

Which is not to say that Hezbollah is universally well-liked in Lebanon. Although support runs high among Shiites, patience with the party is wearing thin among many Christians and some Sunnis. While they may have cheered Hezbollah's guerrilla war against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, they are decidedly less enthusiastic about Nasrallah's decision to continue "the resistance" after the Israeli withdrawal. Lebanon has been at peace since the signing of the Taif Accords in 1991, but at the price of losing its sovereignty to Syria, which maintains thousands of troops in the Bekaa Valley and exerts veto power over Lebanese foreign policy. By Syrian design, Hezbollah's is the only militia that was not dismantled after the Lebanese civil war ended, and its refusal to disarm after Israel's withdrawal is a cause of growing irritation among some Lebanese. "We want to go back to normal life," Samir Qassir, a journalist for the daily paper an-Nahar, told me. "Hezbollah is using the struggle with Israel as leverage to gain power in Lebanon."

Last August, a teenager in northern Israel was killed by a Hezbollah anti-aircraft missile, fired after Ali Hussein Saleh, a liaison between Hezbollah and radical Palestinian groups, died in a car bomb explosion in the southern suburbs of Beirut, an apparent "message" from Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service. Saleh, who was a Hezbollah security official and a driver for the Iranian embassy in Beirut, was suspected of channeling funds to Pal-estinian militants, possibly with Iranian assistance, although his actual role remains unclear. Within days, Israeli planes flew over Beirut and created a deafening "sonic boom." Many people in Beirut fled the city, terrified of an invasion. It was a false alarm, but the Lebanese fear that events such as this could easily spiral out of control.

If Hezbollah is, to many Lebanese, a painful reminder of their truncated sovereignty, it also raises more visceral fears of Iran's influence over young Shiites—some of whom march in Hezbollah demonstrations in full military dress, with red bandannas and rifles. "These people are an Iranian import," said Gebran Tuení, the conservative, Orthodox Christian editor of an-Nahar. "They have nothing to do with Arab civilization." Like many Christians, particularly Maronites who have seen their numbers and power decline in recent years, Tuení believes that Hezbollah's evolution is cosmetic, concealing a sinister long-term strategy to Islamicize Lebanon and lead it into a ruinous war with Israel. "Ask Mr. Nasrallah whether there would be a place for Christians in the Islamic Republic of Lebanon," he said, "You might remind him that we are not an external force. We've been here longer than the Muslims—we are not Afrikaners!"

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Tuení's fears are understandable, but they may be exaggerated. Although Hezbollah has repeatedly shown its readiness to engage in hostile action on the Israeli border, it has until now avoided large-scale attacks that might result in a broader conflict. Hezbollah's parliamentary representatives and mayors have avoided appeals to religion; they have worked instead to raise the standard of living in poor Shiite communities. After Israel's withdrawal, Nasrallah took steps to ensure that there were no revenge killings against Christians in the south, and that Christians who had fled to Israel during the war could return home safely, although some were sentenced to short terms in prison by the Lebanese government. When I asked Nasrallah about his views on an Islamic state, he said,

We believe the requirement for an Islamic state is to have an overwhelming popular desire, and we're not talking about fifty percent plus one, but a large majority. And this is not available in Lebanon and probably never will be.
While Nasrallah's pan-Islamic message of fighting the Israelis until the "liberation of Jerusalem" appeals to Hezbollah's soldiers, the roots of Hezbollah's popularity among Shiites lie elsewhere. Judith Harik's surveys of Shiite opinion have shown that "deep religiosity and strong support of Islamic goals were not significant as a determinant of popular support for Hezbollah." What is significant, in addition to the party's success in ending a hated occupation, are its social services, especially in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and in the south, a region of some 250 small villages recovering from two decades of war. By emphasizing public works over piety, Hezbollah has succeeded in embedding itself deeply into Lebanese society, a fact that anyone seeking to confront its military wing will have to face. Hezbollah's growing popularity in Lebanon will be the subject of a second article.

—March 31, 2004

Notes
[1] See, for example, "Hezbollah 2, Israel 0," by Israel's former defense minister Moshe Arens, Haaretz, February 16, 2004. "It is Hezbollah's second vic- tory over Israel," Arens wrote of the recent prisoner exchange. "Its first victory over Israel was when Ehud Barak decided to pull the IDF out of southern Lebanon."

[2] By contrast, Bashar's father, the late dictator Hafez Assad, held Hezbollah officials at arm's length, punishing them harshly when they defied his wishes. In 1987, when Hezbollah refused to hand over its bases in West Beirut to Syria, Syrian troops killed twenty-three Hezbollah fighters.

[3] According to the International Crisis Group, in its briefing paper "Hizbollah: Rebel Without a Cause?," the Lebanese cleric Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah was considered Hezbollah's spiritual leader through the early 1990s but has distanced himself from the party's leadership in recent years. Fadlallah, who was the first cleric in the Islamic world to condemn publicly the attacks of September 11, is believed to agree with Hezbollah on most political issues but diverges on religious doctrine. According to some reports, he has emerged as a rival to Hezbollah for influence in the Lebanese Shiite community, although some experts believe he remains a mentor to members of Hezbollah.

[4] According to Christoph Reuter in My Life Is a Weapon, the first suicide attack in Israel took place in April 1993. Jessica Stern also suggests Hezbollah taught suicide bombing to the Palestinians in Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (Ecco, 2003), p. 47.

[5] In 2002, Israel intercepted a ship carrying arms that had embarked from Iran with a Hezbollah-trained crew, the so-called Karine A shipment; Hezbollah agents have also tried to smuggle wea-pons into the West Bank via Jordan.

[6] Seymour Hersh, "The Syrian Bet," The New Yorker, July 28, 2003.

[7] Jeffrey Goldberg, "In the Party of God," The New Yorker, July 14 and 21, 2002.

[8] Of all the charges made against Hezbollah, the connection to the Khobar bombing is the least persuasive. In his recent book Against All Enemies (Free Press, 2004), Richard A. Clarke cites a Saudi who claimed to the FBI that the Khobar attack was partly directed by a leader of "Saudi Hezbollah" —an Iranian-sponsored Saudi Shiite group; although Clarke suggests that some members of Saudi Hezbollah may have received training in the Bekaa Valley, he does not accuse the Lebanese party of planning the Khobar attack. When I spoke to Robert Baer, a former CIA analyst stationed in Beirut and an expert on terrorism, he expressed strong doubts that Lebanese Hezbollah participated in Khobar, which he believes to have been the work of Saudi Hezbollah, backed by Iran and possibly al-Qaeda as well.

[9] According to court testimony by Alie Abdelseoud Mohammed, an al-Qaeda member and former US Army sergeant who was arrested in September 1998, Mughnieh met with Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s.

[10] "Hezbollah, in Iraq, Refrains from Attacks on Americans," The New York Times, November 24, 2003.

[11] Ross stated in the daily as-Safir that the US included Hezbollah on its list of terrorist groups for Hezbollah's past activities, not for its ongoing resistance to Israel. See Sami Hajjar, "Hizballah: Terrorism, National Liberation, or Menace?," p. 48.

Alpha · Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2004 9:37 pm Post subject: Seen One Killer, Seen 'em All?

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-shatz15apr15,1,3155260.story

April 15, 2004
COMMENTARY
Seen One Killer, Seen 'em All?
Bush's lumping together of dissimilar militant groups is a dangerous mistake.

COMMENTARY

By Adam Shatz

"The violence we are seeing in Iraq is familiar," President Bush argued, with seductive simplicity, in Tuesday's press conference.

"The terrorist who takes hostages or plants a roadside bomb near Baghdad," he continued, "is serving the same ideology of murder that kills innocent people on trains in Madrid and murders children on buses in Jerusalem and blows up a nightclub in Bali and cuts the throat of a young reporter for being a Jew. We've seen the same ideology of murder in the killing of 241 Marines in Beirut, the first attack on the World Trade Center, in the destruction of two embassies in Africa, in the attack on the U.S.S. Cole and in the merciless horror inflicted upon thousands of innocent men and women and children on Sept. 11, 2001."

Bush's argument boiled down to this: A terrorist is a terrorist, whether he is a member of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas or of an Iraqi resistance organization fighting American troops — and, whatever their differences, they are all inflamed by the "same ideology of murder." Intended as an expression of "moral clarity," it's likely to convince many Americans. But does it hold up? Are such groups all the same, and are they actually driven by an identical ideology?

Let's start by defining terrorism. It's a notoriously slippery concept: As the cliche goes, one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. But the most widely accepted and neutral definition is that it is violence against civilians to achieve political aims.

Do all of Bush's examples pass the test? Certainly the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and in Bali and Madrid, do. But what about the bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983 by Lebanese militants belonging to Islamic Jihad (the precursor to Hezbollah), which Bush also referred to? However appalling, this was directed at a military target in the midst of a civil war. The Marines landed in Beirut as peacekeepers, but they came in the aftermath of Israel's invasion and were perceived by the Shiite community as intervening on the side of Israel and its Christian Falangist allies.

Likewise, however much one deplores the roadside bombings of American soldiers by Iraqi fighters, such acts scarcely qualify as "terrorism." The aim is not to kill American civilians but to target soldiers and thereby drive the American army out of Iraq. Whether you support it or oppose it, it's not terrorism; it's resistance to occupation.

As for the horrifying suicide attacks by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade on buses and in restaurants in Israel, they certainly qualify as terrorism — i.e., violence against civilians to achieve political aims. But it is unfair (and misleading) to say that these attacks are motivated by a diffuse "ideology of murder." In fact, they're motivated by long-simmering nationalist rage against a 37-year-old occupation that shows few signs of abating; despite the similarity in methods, they are distinct from Al Qaeda's attacks on trains and resorts. This does not excuse such attacks, but it does distinguish them.

Unlike Al Qaeda, moreover, Palestinian militants are not at war with the U.S. Hamas' arena of operations is limited, and so are its aims: Its struggle is with Israel, not with the West.

Giandomenico Picco, the former U.N. diplomat who helped secure the release of the Western hostages held by Shiite militants in Lebanon in the late 1980s, believes it is important to draw a careful distinction between "tactical" and "strategic" terrorism. Tactical terror, however murderous, is a means of pursuing concrete territorial goals that — whether we agree with them or not — are at least real goals. Strategic terror, by contrast, is an end in itself.

Many nationalist groups have used tactical terrorism, from Algeria's National Liberation Front to South Africa's African National Congress to the Irish Republican Army to the Irgun and Stern Gang in Palestine during the British mandate period. Once they achieved independence, these groups generally abandoned terrorism, and many former "terrorists" have become statesmen, among them Nelson Mandela (the leader of a group long classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department) and Menachem Begin (who, as the leader of the Irgun militia, presided over the July 22, 1946, bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that killed 91 civilians).

Since the end of Israel's 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon four years ago, Hezbollah has largely followed this pattern. The organization now has nine deputies in the Lebanese parliament, where it has focused its efforts on improving the lives of its Shiite constituents. Although the party continues to exchange fire with Israeli soldiers on the border and to offer rhetorical and logistical support for Palestinian militants, it has not been implicated in an attack on Western civilians in more than a decade. The first Islamic cleric to denounce 9/11 was none other than Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon's senior Shiite cleric who served as Hezbollah's spiritual guide at the time of the 1983 bombings. Like most Shiites, he loathes the Sunni fundamentalists of Al Qaeda, who in turn revile the Shiites.

Al Qaeda, by contrast, has declared war on the United States and the West, and its terrorism is strategic: not simply a means to an end but an end in itself. Its ideology is fanatical, apocalyptic and expansionist, and its goal — the restoration of an Islamic caliphate and the elimination of "Crusaders and Zionists" — is a recipe for endless war.

Far from being an expression of moral clarity, Bush's promiscuous definition of terrorism blinds us to the distinctions among groups with very different and often-clashing agendas and threatens to drag us into further unnecessary wars.

To insist upon these distinctions is not to excuse the murder of civilians, which must be condemned, or to endorse the agenda of nationalist insurgencies that use "tactical terror." Rather, it is to acknowledge that terror comes in different forms, and that in order to combat it successfully, we need to know which kind we're confronting.

Adam Shatz is literary editor of The Nation.

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Fisk: Bush Legitimizes Terrorism:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/17/fisk-bush-legitimizes-terrorism.php

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BUSH BLOWS IT AGAIN

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/21/bush-blows-it-again.php

Alpha

American Jews Now Complicitous With Militant Israel As Never Before

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/21/american-jews-now-complicitous-with-militant-israel-as-never.php

Alpha

Subj: Bush threatens to attack Iran to protect Israel
Date: 4/21/04 2:53:39 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: BGJDAVID

The idiot cowboy in the White House came out today and threatened to attack Iran if it builds a nuclear bomb since it would be a threat to Israel. I hope the American people come to their senses and realize that American blood will spill forever if it meant protecting Israel. As long as Israel has America fighting its wars, the Jewish State will continue to grab as much of the Arab land as she can and continue to ignore any UN Resoultion imposed upon her. George Bush is leading this nation into a catastrophe. Will somebody tell Bush that Iran wouldn't be needing a nuclear bomb if Israel didn't have more than 200 of them. There will never be peace in the Middle East as long as Israel is the only nuclear power. Disarm Israel and see how fast things improve.

Nuclear-armed Iran would be "intolerable" - Bush

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON, April 21 (Reuters) - A nuclear-armed Iran would pose an intolerable threat to peace in the Middle East and a mortal danger to Israel, President George W. Bush said on Wednesday, adding that any such threat would be "dealt with" by the United States and its allies.

In strongly worded remarks before an audience of newspaper editors and publishers, the Republican president pressed the secretive leadership of the Islamic republic to heed U.S. and European demands not to pursue a nuclear weapons program.

"It would be intolerable to peace and stability in the Middle East if they get a nuclear weapon, particularly since their stated objective is the destruction of Israel," Bush said in answer to a question about international cooperation against militant attacks.

"The development of a nuclear weapon in Iran is intolerable. And a program is intolerable. Otherwise they will be dealt with, starting through the United Nations."

The United States accuses Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program, but Tehran says its nuclear ambitions are confined to generating electricity. Washington hard-liners have been pressing for U.N. sanctions against the Islamic state.

The president's remarks come at a time of turmoil for U.S. policy in the Middle East, including Iran's neighbor Iraq, which the United States invaded last year after a stormy U.N. Security Council debate over whether the Arab nation possessed weapons of mass destruction.

No such weapons have been found and deteriorating conditions marked by a heightened insurgency have been followed by troop withdrawal announcements from Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

Poland, a key U.S. ally in Iraq, has also placed its position under review, while Thailand has said it will withdraw medical and engineering troops if they are attacked. But the White House points to continued support from nations like Britain, Japan, Italy and Portugal as evidence the coalition remains strong.

Meanwhile, Washington is facing a backlash from the Arab world over Bush's decision to endorse Israeli plans to retain Jewish settlements on West Bank land captured during the 1967 Middle East war.

On Wednesday, Bush rejected international criticism and said world leaders should be grateful for what he described as the "chance to begin the construction of a peaceful Palestinian state."

04/21/04 16:23 ET

Alpha

Subj: Raimondo: War on Iraq as a "Covert Operation"
Date: 4/21/04 4:27:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
To: hectorpv@comcast.net

Friends,

Raimondo: War on Iraq as a "Covert Operation"

Raimondo asks and answers the question that mainstream Bob Woodward dares not consider. "Bob Woodward says the neocons set up a 'separate government' – but to what purpose?" I am not even sure Woodward dared to utter the word "neocon," but that was the cast of characters he identified. Raimondo writes: "While mind-reading George W. Bush is like trying to discern the hidden meaning of a blank page, the neoconservative mindset is hardly a state secret. In understanding what motivates them in their relentless pursuit of ‘regime change,’ not only in Iraq but throughout the Middle East, one only has to ask: Who benefits, and who pays?" Of course, America pays, Sharon’s Israel benefits.

Regarding the benefits to Sharon’s Israel, Raimondo points out:

"Israel's West Bank annexation – piously described as a ‘unilateral withdrawal’ by Sharon and his amen corner in the West – is the first big payoff"

"The de facto disintegration and break-up of Iraq as a unitary nation, an increasingly likely consequence of the U.S. invasion, is an outcome that, again, benefits Israel, to the detriment of American interests. A campaign to similarly atomize Syria is next, with economic sanctions already in place, and a border incident waiting to happen. But the War Party's agenda doesn't end in Damascus: it's on to Tehran, Riyadh, and, eventually, Cairo."

Of course, destabilization of the Middle East was long time Likudnik policy—Oded Yinon’s policy paper entitled, "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," proposed a plan for the destabilization and fragmentation of Israel’s Middle East enemies. [http://www.theunjustmedia.com/the%20zionist_plan_for_the_middle_east.htm].

And, as I pointed out in an earlier message [Iraq in Israel’s Grand Strategy], the idea of breaking up Israel’s Arab neighbors actually was Zionist policy prior to the independence of Israel in 1948, and was promoted by David Ben-Gurion himself. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/print/2003/634/op2.htm

What Woodward describes as the "separate government" (run by neocons) actually became THE US GOVERNMENT.

Raimondo writes: "In effect, the neocons pulled off a coup d'etat, a palace revolution in which veteran government officials like Richard Clarke, and the CIA and Pentagon ‘old guard,’ were pushed aside. . . . If the purpose of the U.S. government is to protect American security and interests, then why did there need to be a "separate" and competing government – unless that government was pursuing other, non-American interests?"

Raimondo goes on to describe the war on Iraq as a successful "covert operation."

"There is, however, no way to understand where we are, and how we got here, unless we see the push to get us into Iraq as a successful covert operation. A success, that is, not in terms of American interests, but in the terms of those who carried it out."

"On the other hand, the concept of the Iraq war as a successful Israeli covert operation is altogether plausible. It would hardly be the first time a foreign government made a concerted effort to drag us into war on their side. And just look at the pattern of recent events: Israel gains, America pays: Israel assassinates, Americans die: Israel conquers, and the American government concurs wholeheartedly: Israel says ‘Jump!’ and the government of the United States only wants to know how high. Israel's partisans inside the U.S. government – who, according to top officials and other ‘defectors,’ set up their own ‘separate government’ – seized the helm and steered the American ship of state into turbulent waters."

Raimondo has done an excellent job in pointing out how the neocons were the fundamental driving force for this was and actually drove the build-up for the war. He has been on this issue from the very beginning, and must be commended for having the courage to do so. However, I disagree with his description of the neocon operation as a "covert operation." There was nothing very covert about Israel or the neocons, and their very open support of Israel. They have made it quite public. And many openly hold important positions of power regarding national security in the Bush administration. Obviously, some of their operations have been secretive, and they didn’t just come out and say that they were leading the US into war to advance the interests of Israel. However, the link between the neocons and Israel and Israel and the war on Iraq was quite obvious. It has even seeped out in the mainstream media. But most mainstream folk have not have the courage to pursue the issue very far and give it the publicity that it needs. Hence, average Americans are generally unaware of the neocons’ role. Of course, this failure and fear is due the taboo on saying anything that displeases powerful Jewish organizations, which can bring about the lethal charge of "anti-Semitism."

I discussed all this in my "The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel." http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/conc_toc.htm

The only activity that was definitely "covert" (if it did exist) was the possible links between Administration officials and Israel to the September 11 terrorism. Did leading members of the Bush Administration intentionally avoid authorizing actions that might have stopped the terrorists? What was the connection to 911 of the Mossad agents in the US, some of whom lived near chief terrorist Mohammed Atta in Hollywood, Florida, while others took pictures of the burning World Trade Towers and celebrated? In short, the neocon push for war was pretty open, although more can still be learned, but the September 11 terrorism still has its significant mysteries, which may never be uncovered (and, of course, will definitely never be uncovered if no one dares to make an extensive investigation).

_________________________________________________

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=2340

April 19, 2004

Plan of Attack

Bob Woodward says the neocons set up a 'separate government' – but to what purpose?

by Justin Raimondo

It was a twofer for the serial killers at the helm in Tel Aviv. Israeli helicopter gunships had just taken out a blind paraplegic, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, when his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, also went up in a puff of smoke. The United States, as usual, exculpated Israel, while the Arab world blamed Uncle Sam. What made it all so typical of Israeli behavior was the timing.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had barely stepped off the plane, back from his triumphant visit to Washington – where the President of the United States had capitulated to his every whim, agreeing to the annexation of key portions of the West Bank. While the Arabs writhed in helpless fury, and the fighting in Iraq rose to new heights of blood-drenched fury, Rantisi was struck down along with several bystanders, and the Arab are blaming us for that, too.

Israeli policies are undeniably fueling the Iraqi insurgency, and swelling radical Islamist ranks. In a statement issued by a previously-unknown group claiming responsibility for the horrific death-by-mutilation of four American quasi-military contractors in Fallujah, the link was made explicitly:

"'This is a gift from the people of Fallujah to the people of Palestine and the family of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin who was assassinated by the criminal Zionists,' said in the statement from the 'Brigades of Martyr Ahmed Yassin.' 'We advise the US forces to withdraw from Iraq and we advise the families of the American soldiers and the contractors not to come to Iraq.'"

How many more Americans soldiers will die in Iraq as a result of Sharon's calculated murders is a grim statistic to contemplate. As an emboldened Israel continues its rampage through Palestine, that number will surely grow.

Far from trying to mitigate these fatal consequences, the Israelis revel in their leverage with the Imperial hegemon. As one member of the Israeli delegation put it:

"I think this will probably be remembered as one of the most important successful political initiatives that Israel has ever undertaken vis-a-vis the United States. It takes into consideration all the important elements: that the (Palestinian refugees') claim of return is not to Israel but to a Palestinian state, the need for defensible borders and the recognition that Israel cannot return to the 1949 lines and a recognition of the demographic realities. As far as the statement is concerned, the outline of any future permanent agreement with the Palestinians has been documented and signed by the president of the United States."

Recent events have greatly clarified the exact meaning and motives of the War Party in recklessly invading Iraq without a plan, without enough troops to police the place, and without a clue as to the consequences. As the body-bags come home and the bills come in, a growing number of conservative Republicans are beginning to ask: whatever possessed him to do it? Why did he go against the advice and example of his own father, and listen to the false counsel of the neocons – and what was their motive, anyway?

While mind-reading George W. Bush is like trying to discern the hidden meaning of a blank page, the neoconservative mindset is hardly a state secret. In understanding what motivates them in their relentless pursuit of "regime change," not only in Iraq but throughout the Middle East, one only has to ask: Who benefits, and who pays?

Israel's West Bank annexation – piously described as a "unilateral withdrawal" by Sharon and his amen corner in the West – is the first big payoff. That it comes just as the American casualty rate is beginning to soar underscores the essence of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. While America's fight against Al Qaeda and defending the homeland against terrorism is made more difficult by the occupation of Iraq, the Israeli goal of leveling any and all threats to its national security has been advanced – and the chaos, too, is a benefit.

The de facto disintegration and break-up of Iraq as a unitary nation, an increasingly likely consequence of the U.S. invasion, is an outcome that, again, benefits Israel, to the detriment of American interests. A campaign to similarly atomize Syria is next, with economic sanctions already in place, and a border incident waiting to happen. But the War Party's agenda doesn't end in Damascus: it's on to Tehran, Riyadh, and, eventually, Cairo. As Laurent Murawiec, the ex-LaRouche cultist who famously briefed the Pentagon Policy Board at Richard Perle's invitation, put it:

"Iraq is the tactical pivot,

Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot,

Egypt the prize."

While Murawiec may not have fully recovered from his decade-plus immersion in a nut-cult, one has to wonder if the leaders of our own government are any less nutty. Which raises the question, just who is running things, anyway? The answer, according to Colin Powell, reports Bob Woodward in his new book, Plan of Attack, is not at all clear:

"Powell felt Cheney and his allies – his chief aide, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's 'Gestapo' office – had established what amounted to a separate government."

In effect, the neocons pulled off a coup d'etat, a palace revolution in which veteran government officials like Richard Clarke, and the CIA and Pentagon "old guard," were pushed aside. (Go here for an up close and detailed description of the purge by former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski.) If the purpose of the US government is to protect American security and interests, then why did there need to be a "separate" and competing government – unless that government was pursuing other, non-American interests?

Not only the Woodward book, but the series of whistleblowers who have come out of the closet and revealed the inner workings of the Bush administration, lead us into territory that, for want of a better word, can only be called a "conspiracy theory." Which, one supposes, is one way of saying that everything is not an accident. There is, however, no way to understand where we are, and how we got here, unless we see the push to get us into Iraq as a successful covert operation. A success, that is, not in terms of American interests, but in the terms of those who carried it out.

The Iraq war, the diversion away from the real authors of 9/11, the costly obsession with Saddam Hussein, the professed intention of "staying the course" of an unsustainable policy – none of it makes any sense when viewed through the prism of American national interests. The entire thrust of our Middle East policy is counter-intuitive and counterproductive. Only two parties benefited from the invasion of Iraq: the Likudniks (and their American branch office) loyal to Sharon and the jihadists associated with Osama Bin Laden.

Sharon now has a weapon to wield against the radicals in his own party, who want all the settlements to stay in the West Bank, and the Labor Party, which accuses him of being too intransigent. Also, perhaps, his triumph has provided him with a shield to ward off the growing stench of personal scandal. Bin Laden, on the other hand, is winning a worldwide following and recruiting hand over fist, forging the next generation of suicide-bombing fanatics, who dream of two, three, many more 9/11s.

No, I'm not saying that agents of Osama bin Laden have taken over the US government. Although Coleen Rowley and her co-workers at the FBI used to joke that headquarters acted at times as if it had been infiltrated by Al Qaeda, and Clarke quips in his book that Bush must have been "channeling Osama bin Laden" in coming up with the scheme to invade Iraq, this kind of rhetorical flourish is not meant to be taken literally.

On the other hand, the concept of the Iraq war as a successful Israeli covert operation is altogether plausible. It would hardly be the first time a foreign government made a concerted effort to drag us into war on their side. And just look at the pattern of recent events: Israel gains, America pays: Israel assassinates, Americans die: Israel conquers, and the American government concurs wholeheartedly: Israel says "Jump!" and the government of the United States only wants to know how high. Israel's partisans inside the US government – who, according to top officials and other "defectors," set up their own "separate government" – seized the helm and steered the American ship of state into turbulent waters.

The storm, I fear, is only just beginning. What began as a police action, a "mopping up" of Ba'athist "remnants," is now taking on the scope of a nationwide anti-American insurgency. Americans want to know how and why we were rushed into war – and by whom.

This war, and the policy that gave birth to it, is criminal in so many different ways, but surely treason is not the least of the crimes that can be ascribed to the leaders of the War Party. The investigation into the machinations of this group – who acted, in effect if not consciously, as agents of a foreign power – is a ticking time-bomb for this administration – or, at least, for the "separate government" set up by the Cheney-Wolfowitz-Feith junta.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

I hate to say "I told you so," but, hey, didn't I predict that military operations in Iraq would soon come to resemble the siege at Waco? The news that our "psyops" brigade is playing heavy metal rock really really loud in hopes of flushing out Fallujah's defenders confirms it. Okay, so I was writing about the siege of Najaf, not Fallujah, where the heavy metal weapon is being deployed, but, hey, it's all the same, isn't it – at least according to professional ignoramus Andrew Sullivan, who writes:

"SADR CAPITULATES: I'm unnerved by the presence of Iranians helping to broker some kind of deal with al Sadr, but heartened by the fact that the extremist revolt in Fallujah seems to have been quelled – largely by Marine force and by moderate Shiite realism."

But of course Sadr is in Najaf, not Fallujah, which is Sunni, not Shi'ite. And somebody ought to tell those rebellious Fallujans they've been "quelled," because they don't seem to have realized it as yet. Why anyone takes Sullivan seriously – gay affirmative action? – is waaaaay beyond me.

–Justin Raimondo

Find this article at:

http://www.antiwar.com/justin

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foppe37 · Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2004 6:05 am Post subject: quagmire

The USA public hardly gets any information.
I've begun to watch French/Belgian TV5 a lot, and my French thus improves.
Unfortunately I'm unable to understand all of it.

Few people know about French relations in the ME.
I ran into this when in 1987 in Damascus we strayed into what looked like a railway station, and saw French descriptions above the ancient ticket booths.
The Berlin-Damascus railway came into operation before WW I, and may have been the main cause of that war.
After it began to operate German exports to the ME rose with 1200 % in a few years; Britain's wealth came from India.
The railway was to be extended to Baghdad and Basra, but WW I prevented this.

France from before WW I had commercial relations in Beirut.
So Sicott and Pykes, a French and a British diplomat, when it began to look probable that the Ottomans would lose the war, carved up the ME.

Britain got Iraq and Palestine, France present Lebanon and Syria.
Rich people from Beirut shop in Paris.

So the French are well acquinted with the ME, and know the local factions.

Not just Iraq is a mess, Saudi Arabia can become a mess any moment.
The USA keeps the present ruling clan in Saudi Arabia upright in return for their promise to keep the oil price under thirty dollars a barrel.

So when Saudi Arabia is taken over by an anti USA clan, and present difficulties show that this may happen any moment, car gas prices in the USA may rise to unpopular heights.

What the USA/Israel right now tries to do it protect their perceived 'interests' by brute force.

So if the idiots in Washington and Tel Aviv stay on their present course the whole ME may become one big Lebanon.
See http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/tuccille5.html for a prediction on USA conscription.
This is expensive, both in blood and in money.

Yesterday evening on Belgian tv an Afghan cleric was interviewed, he spoke perfect english.
He stated that there was no proof whatsoever that Bin Laden had caused the sept 11 attacks, but nevertheless the USA had attacked Afghanistan and caused thousands of deaths.

He stated that the USA and those who support it, Europe, must reap what is has sown, and pay the price.
He also stated that for Muslims dying doing the good thing was the best assurance for a happy eternal life.

When asked if attacks in Belgium also were possible the answer was 'yes'.

Alpha

http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=2371

April 23, 2004
Going Back Where They Came From

by Patrick J. Buchanan
"If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me," William Kristol has told the New York Times.

The Weekly Standard editor added that the neoconservatives may just abandon the Right altogether and convert to neo-liberalism.

Alluding to his father Irving's definition of a neoconservative as a liberal who has been mugged by reality, Kristol describes a neoliberal as a "neoconservative who has been mugged by reality in Iraq."

Ranking his political preferences, Kristol added, "I will take Bush over Kerry, but Kerry over Buchanan....If you read the last few issues of The Weekly Standard, it has as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives."

Yes, it does. But as John Kerry backs partial birth abortion, quotas, raising taxes, homosexual unions, liberals on the Supreme Court and has a voting record to the left of Teddy Kennedy, how can Kristol prefer him to other conservatives? Answer: War and Israel.

Like Kristol, Kerry wants more U.S. troops sent to Iraq where they can advance the neocons' project for empire. And at a fund-raiser in Juno Beach, Fla., Kerry declared eternal fealty to Israel: "I have a 100 percent record – not a 99, a 100 percent record – of sustaining the special relationship and friendship that we have with Israel."

Kristol's warning that the neocons could break with the Right and go to Kerry is an admission of what many conservatives have long argued. To neocons, Israel comes first, second, and third, conservative principles be damned.

The day after Kristol said he preferred Kerry to conservatives skeptical of committing more troops to Iraq, this item appeared in The Wall Street Journal:

"Mr. Kristol thinks Mr. Bush should use the revelations [from the Woodward book] to shake up his war cabinet by firing Mr. Powell...along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has pushed for smaller deployments of U.S. forces than some critics, including Mr. Kristol, think wise."

Set aside the suicidal folly of Bush dynamiting his war cabinet in an election year by firing its most famous members, and consider the ingratitude, the ruthlessness, and the cynicism on display here.

When it was launched in 1995, The Weekly Standard called on Colin Powell to run for president and offered its endorsement. Purpose: Hook up with the most popular man in the GOP who could restore the neocons and Kristols to preeminence and power. Powell rebuffed the offer. Ever since, he has been a target of abuse for having repelled the boarding party.

As for Rumsfeld, he has been a hero of neoconservatives for two decades. He co-signed the neocons' 1998 open letter to Clinton urging war on Iraq. He brought Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith into his Pentagon in the No. 2 and 3 slots. He put Perle in charge of the Defense Review Board. After 9/11, according to Richard Clarke, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were making the case for attacking Iraq immediately, even before Bush had ousted the Taliban enablers of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.

Agree or disagree with the defense secretary, Rumsfeld has been a lion in the neocon cause. To see the Weekly Standard snake on him like this brings to mind that wretched crowd in Yankee Stadium that took to booing Joe Dimaggio at the end of his career.

With Iraq turning into the Mesopotamian morass some of us warned it would become, the neo-Jacobins have decided they are not going to be the ones to ride the tumbrels.

In times like this character comes through. By turning on the men they persuaded to go to war, by fabricating alibis and inventing excuses to absolve themselves of culpability for what they labored to create, they have revealed themselves for what they are: hustlers and opportunists devoid of principle, driven by an ideology of power and a passionate attachment to a nation not their own.

The Old Right curmudgeons who warned us against giving these vagabonds food, shelter and a warm place by the fire were right. We should have put them back out on the street.

President Bush should have listened to his father who kept the neocons at some remove, and he had best beware, because they have a major card yet to play. That card is escalation.

With the situation in Iraq deteriorating, the neocon agenda is to widen the war into Syria, Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia, and convert it into "World War IV," the war of their dreams, a war of civilizations, an Armageddon, with America and Israel on one side and Islam on the other.

Exiting Iraq with honor and avoiding the wider war for which the neocons are even now scheming is the first duty of patriots.

A WAR FOR ISRAEL?:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/22/a-war-for-israel.php

Bush threatens to attack Iran to protect Israel:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/21/bush-threatens-to-attack-iran-to-protect-israel.php

JINSA/PNAC Neocons Ready to Expand Iraq War to Syria/Iran:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/20/jinsa-pnac-neocons-ready-to-expand-iraq-war-to-syria-iran.php

foppe37 · Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2004 2:42 pm Post subject: 1955

Among other things I'm reading on with Eban's memoirs.
I just learned that Israel instructed Eban to try to make the USA withdraw its support for the Assuan Dam loan.
Eban left Dulles office, he writes, at the same time the Egyptian ambassador went in to hear about the USA withdrawing its support.
Nasser then nationalised the Suez Canal.
This in turn led to the Israeli, British and French attack on Egypt.
If this was was Ben Gurion's intention when he instructed Eban to try to make the USA withdraw its support for the loan, I of course cannot know.
What is clear is that Israel regarded Nasser as it's most important opponent, thus had every incentive to undermine him.
I also think I maybe found the reasons for the 1967 Egypt blockade of the Straits near Eilath, the USSR had forbidden Nasser to use the weapons supplied by the USSR for attacking Egypt.
So maybe Nasser wanted Isarel to attack.

But what is most clear from the memoirs how Eban used Jews in and ouside the USA to further Israel's interests.
Two Jewish French prime ministers both visited him in Washington.
And christian ideas were fully exploited, in Congress, House, with the American public.

You know about Marilyn Monroe's 'suicide', Eban, Kennedy and Marilyn drove around in a soccer stadium for the celebration of Israel's eight anniversary.

So I now wonder if the Israeli's not jus killed Kennedy, but also Monroe.
There seems to be a lot of pillow talk.

Alpha

Subj: Woodward: Cheney's Unwavering Desire for War
Date: 4/24/04 7:32:12 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
To: hectorpv@comcast.net

Friends,

Woodward: Cheney’s Unwavering Desire for War

Woodward in _Plan of Attack_ points out it was Cheney who was the central Bush administration figure pushing for war on Iraq. Of course, Cheney did not come up with the war on Iraq idea by himself. Cheney has been intimately tied to the neoconservative elite. Prior to becoming VP, Cheney was a member of the board of advisors of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and was a founding member of the neocon Project for a New American Century (PNAC), whose chairman is arch-neocon Bill Kristol, editor of _The Weekly Standard_ . PNAC gave birth to "The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq," headed by Ahmed Chalabi. Th at committee was first staffed entirely by PNAC members. [http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Project_for_the_New_American_Century] [http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm]

PNAC is based in the same building as the neocon American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC. Cheney’s wife Lynne is a prestigious member of the American Enterprise Institute.

Cheney would play a major role in staffing the Bush administration. And as James Mann points out in his _The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet_: "The selection of Cheney was of surpassing importance for the future direction of foreign policy. It went further than any other single decision Bush made toward determining the nature and the policies of the administration he would head.""(pp. 252-53) Of course, when Bush picked Cheney there was no evidence that Bush wanted someone who could lead the US into war on Iraq. Cheney set this agenda, relying on his neocon coterie to bring it off.

The following excerpt from Woodward’s book begins with Cheney praising one of neocon Ken Adelman’s pro-war propaganda pieces and inviting him to dinner with neocons Scooter Libby (Libby is currently Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the Vice President) and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. (Adelman was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during the Ronald Reagan administration as well as serving as Reagan's director of arms control.) Both Libby and Wolfowitz have played major roles in pushing for war on Iraq.

And Cheney’s neocon-supported wife Lynn is an active participant in the conversation. Hey, it’s part of the cabal. Cheney and the neocons.

And what are they talking about. They are in ecstasy about the start of the war on Iraq. "Let's talk about this Gulf war. It's so wonderful to celebrate," as Adelman puts it.

Now it is crucial to see who Cheney is in cahoots with here and throughout Wooward’s book.. It is always the neocons. Some people, fearful of the obvious Jewish connection, want to believe that Cheney reflects the thinking of other groups--oilmen, war profiteers, elder Bush cronies--whom one is allowed to detest. But there is no evidence that Cheney ever consorts with these people. In fact Cheney sees the opposition to the war coming from the oilmen/elder Bush contingent. They were the enemy. Woodward writes: "Here was Scowcroft, the pillar of establishment foreign policy, vocally on the other side, widely seen as a surrogate for the president's father. There had been James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, insisting on a larger coalition of nations. And Lawrence Eagleburger, Baker's successor in the last half year of the first Bush administration, on television all the time saying war was justified only if there was evidence that Hussein was about to attack us." As much as the war critics want to imagine that the war was provoked by oil and the hateful Bushites—the obviously preferred enemies--the fact of the matter is that this is totally untrue.

Cheney wanted the Bush administration to focus on attacking Iraq from its very beginning. And Woodward illustrates how Cheney especially made rescue efforts when a peace scare emerged. There appeared to be a danger in August 2002, when Powell persuaded Bush to go the UN route to bring back the weapons inspectors, which Cheney feared would be a diversion from war. Moreover, at the same time Scowcroft, Baker, and Eableburger, the pillars of the Republican foreign policy establishment, were expressing their opposition to the move to war.

Cheney gave a super hard-line address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville, which became a media splash. Woodward observes: "’Cheney Says Peril of a Nuclear Iraq Justifies Attack,’ read the headline in the New York Times on Aug. 27. Powell was dumbfounded. The vice president had delivered a hard-line address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville and basically called weapons inspections futile."

.Woodward adds that "These remarks, just short of a declaration of war, were widely interpreted as administration policy. Powell was astonished. It was a preemptive attack on what the president had agreed to 10 days earlier. Cheney's speech blew it all up."

Still, Woodward emphasizes that Cheney was not able to alter Bush’s acceptance of the UN approach. In short, Bush does not automatically accept the neocon agenda, the neocons have to use their influence in key positions to move Bush toward their agenda.. Powell was able to put up limited opposition.

Powell and Cheney were always at loggerheads. Woodward writes: "Powell detected a kind of fever in Cheney. He was not the steady, unemotional rock that he had witnessed a dozen years earlier during the run-up to the Gulf War. The vice president was beyond hell-bent for action against Hussein. It was as if nothing else existed."

"Powell thought that Cheney had the fever. The vice president and Wolfowitz kept looking for the connection between Hussein and Sept. 11. It was a separate little government that was out there -- Wolfowitz, Libby, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith and Feith's ‘Gestapo office,’ as Powell privately called it."

What Powell called "Feith’s ‘Gestapo office’" was the Office of Special Plans under neocon Abram Shulsky which provided the phony WMD propaganda that came from Chalabi and Israeli intelligence, which influenced Bush, the American people, and even, to some extent, the CIA. [http://www.twf.org/News/Y2003/0722-Spies.html]

Woodward continues: "He saw in Cheney a sad transformation. The cool operator from the first Gulf War just would not let go. Cheney now had an unhealthy fixation. Nearly every conversation or reference came back to al Qaeda and trying to nail the connection with Iraq. He would often have an obscure piece of intelligence. Powell thought that Cheney took intelligence and converted uncertainty and ambiguity into fact."

But, of course, Cheney’s emphasis on making war on Iraq was not some peculiar obsession of his, but rather reflected the agenda of the neocons, with whom he had long been closely associated. In short, Cheney took the lead in pushing the neocon agenda, but he was hardly a lone figure. He had helped to fill the Bush administration with numerous neocons who were essential to the success of this venture.

I heard Chris Matthews on TV claim that Woodward shows that Bush ultimately made the decision for war. And I think it is true that Bush is not coerced by Cheney to do anything against his will and that he really believes in what he does. But what does this mean? Where does Bush get his information? He admittedly doesn’t read or even follow the news on TV. He seems like a complete simpleton in his views of the Middle East. In fact, during the 2000 campaign he admitted that he knew little about foreign policy. The neocons were his most numerous advisors—controlling the Defense Department, the VP office, and looming large in the National Security Council staff. The only real resistance came from the State Department. Moreover, the neocons were feeding Bush with the bogus intelligence. Furthermore, neocons Richard Perle and Wolfowitz had been Bush’s advisors during the 2000 campaign. In short, the weight of information provided to Bush naturally moved him in the pro-war direction—it was understandable that a man who knew nothing else would adopt the neocon line. (Although a curious individual might grasp the neocons’ biases.) Added to this was the fact that the pro-war policy seemed to have political support and Bush could bask in the praise of his supporters for his firm "leadership." As I wrote in an earlier message, I think that even if Bush loses the upcoming election, he can be made to feel good as a martyr for the cause of righteousness by his war party supporters.

__________________________________________

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25550-2004Apr19.html

washingtonpost.com

Cheney Was Unwavering in Desire to Go to War

Tension Between Vice President and Powell Grew Deeper as Both Tried to Guide Bush's Decision

By Bob Woodward

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, April 20, 2004; Page A01

This is the third 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. Simon & Schuster. © 2004.

On April 10, 2003, Ken Adelman, a Reagan administration official and supporter of the Iraq war, published an op-ed article in The Washington Post headlined, " 'Cakewalk' Revisited," more or less gloating over what appeared to be the quick victory there, and reminding readers that 14 months earlier he had written that war would be a "cakewalk." He chastised those who had predicted disaster. "Taking first prize among the many frightful forecasters" was Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser in the first Bush administration. Adelman wrote that his own confidence came from having worked for Donald H. Rumsfeld three times and "from knowing Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz for so many years."

Vice President Cheney phoned Adelman, who was in Paris with his wife, Carol. What a clever column, the vice president said. You really demolished them. He said he and his wife, Lynne, were having a small private dinner Sunday night, April 13, to talk and celebrate. The only other guests would be his chief adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Wolfowitz, now deputy secretary of defense. Adelman realized it was Cheney's way of saying thank you, and he and his wife came back from Paris a day early to attend the dinner.

When Adelman walked into the vice president's residence that Sunday night, he was so happy he broke into tears. He hugged Cheney for the first time in the 30 years he had known him. There had been reports in recent days of mass graves and abundant, graphic evidence of torture by Saddam Hussein's government, so there was a feeling that they had been part of a greater good, liberating 25 million people.

"We're all together. There should be no protocol; let's just talk," Cheney said when they sat down to dinner.

Wolfowitz embarked on a long review of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and what a mistake it had been to allow the Iraqis to fly helicopters after the armistice. Hussein had used them to put down uprisings.

Cheney said he had not realized then what a trauma that time had been for the Iraqis, particularly the Shiites, who felt the United States had abandoned them. He said that experience had made the Iraqis worry that war this time would not end Hussein's rule.

"Hold it! Hold it!" Adelman interjected. "Let's talk about this Gulf war. It's so wonderful to celebrate." He said he was just an outside adviser, someone who turned up the pressure in the public forum. "It's so easy for me to write an article saying, 'Do this.' It's much tougher for Paul to advocate it. Paul and Scooter, you give advice inside and the president listens. Dick, your advice is the most important, the Cadillac. It's much more serious for you to advocate it. But in the end, all of what we said was still only advice. The president is the one who had to decide. I have been blown away by how determined he is." The war has been awesome, Adelman said. "So I just want to make a toast, without getting too cheesy. To the president of the United States."

They all raised their glasses. Hear! Hear!

Adelman said he had worried to death that there would be no war as time went on and support seemed to wane.

After Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney said, the president understood what had to be done. He had to do Afghanistan first, sequence the attacks, but after Afghanistan -- "soon thereafter" -- the president knew he had to do Iraq. Cheney said he was confident after Sept. 11 that it would come out okay.

Adelman said it was still a gutsy move. When John F. Kennedy was elected by the narrowest of margins, Adelman said, he told everyone in his administration that the big agenda items such as civil rights would have to wait for a second term. Certainly it was the opposite for Bush.

Yes, Cheney said. And it began the first minutes of the presidency, when Bush said they were going to go full steam ahead. There is such a tendency, Cheney said, to hold back when there is a close election, to do what the New York Times and other pundits suggest and predict. "This guy was just totally different," Cheney said. "He just decided here's what I want to do, and I'm going to do it. He's very directed. He's very focused."

"I want you three guys to shut up," Lynne Cheney said, pointing at Cheney, Wolfowitz and Adelman. "Let's hear what Scooter thinks."

Libby, smiling, just said he thought what had happened was "wonderful."

It was a pretty amazing accomplishment, they all agreed, particularly given the opposition to war. Here was Scowcroft, the pillar of establishment foreign policy, vocally on the other side, widely seen as a surrogate for the president's father. There had been James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, insisting on a larger coalition of nations. And Lawrence Eagleburger, Baker's successor in the last half year of the first Bush administration, on television all the time saying war was justified only if there was evidence that Hussein was about to attack us. Eagleburger had accused Cheney of "chest thumping."

They turned to the current secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, and there were chuckles around the table.

Cheney and Wolfowitz remarked that Powell was someone who followed his poll ratings and bragged about his popularity. Several weeks earlier in a National Public Radio interview, Powell had said, "If you would consult any recent Gallup poll, the American people seem to be quite satisfied with the job I'm doing as secretary of state."

He sure likes to be popular, Cheney said.

Wolfowitz said that Powell did bring credibility and that his presentation to the United Nations on weapons of mass destruction intelligence had been important. As soon as Powell had understood what the president wanted, Wolfowitz said, he became a good, loyal member of the team.

Cheney shook his head, no. Powell was a problem. "Colin always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."

Cheney said he had just had lunch with the president. "Democracy in the Middle East is just a big deal for him. It's what's driving him."

"Let me ask," Adelman inquired, "before this turns into a love fest. I was just stunned that we have not found weapons of mass destruction." There were several hundred thousand troops and others combing the country.

"We'll find them," Wolfowitz said.

"It's only been four days, really," Cheney said. "We'll find them."

Immediate Focus on Iraq

In early January 2001, before Bush was inaugurated, Cheney passed a message to the outgoing secretary of defense, William S. Cohen, a moderate Republican who served in the Democratic Clinton administration.

"We really need to get the president-elect briefed up on some things," Cheney said, adding that he wanted a serious "discussion about Iraq and different options." The president-elect should not be given the routine, canned, round-the-world tour normally given incoming presidents. Topic A should be Iraq.

Cheney had been secretary of defense during George H.W. Bush's presidency, which included the Gulf War, and he harbored a deep sense of unfinished business about Iraq. In addition, Iraq was the only country the United States regularly, if intermittently, bombed these days.

The U.S. military had been engaged in a frustrating low-grade, undeclared war with Iraq since the Gulf War when Bush's father and a United Nations-backed coalition had ousted Hussein and his army from Kuwait after they had invaded that country. The United States enforced two designated no-fly zones, which meant the Iraqis could fly neither planes nor helicopters in these areas, which made up about 60 percent of the country. Cheney wanted to make sure Bush understood the military and other issues in this potential tinderbox.

On Jan. 10, a Wednesday morning 10 days before the inauguration, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Powell went to the Pentagon to meet with Cohen. Afterward, Bush and his team went downstairs to the Tank, the secure domain and meeting room for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Two generals briefed them on the state of the no-fly zone enforcement. No-fly zone enforcement was dangerous and expensive. Multimillion-dollar jets were put at risk bombing 57mm antiaircraft guns. Hussein had warehouses of them. As a matter of policy, was the Bush administration going to keep poking Hussein in the chest? Was there a national strategy behind this, or was it just a static tit for tat?

Lots of acronyms and program names were thrown around -- most of them familiar to Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell, who had spent 35 years in the Army and been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993. President-elect Bush asked some practical questions about how things worked, but he did not offer or hint at his desires.

The Joint Chiefs' staff had placed a peppermint at each place. Bush unwrapped his and popped it into his mouth. Later he eyed Cohen's mint and flashed a pantomime query, Do you want that? Cohen signaled no, so Bush reached over and took it. Near the end of the hour-and-a-quarter briefing, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, noticed Bush eyeing his mint, so he passed it over.

Cheney listened, but he was tired and closed his eyes, conspicuously nodding off several times. Rumsfeld, who was sitting at a far end of the table, paid close attention, though he kept asking the briefers to please speak up or please speak louder. "We're off to a great start," one of the chiefs commented privately to a colleague after the session. "The vice president fell asleep, and the secretary of defense can't hear."

Given Cheney's background in national security going back to the Ford administration, his time on the House intelligence committee and as secretary of defense, the new president said that at the top of his list of things he wanted Cheney to do was intelligence.

In the first months of the new administration, Cheney made the rounds of the intelligence agencies -- the CIA; the National Security Agency, which intercepts communications; and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. He was determined to get up to speed on what had transpired in the eight years since he had left government. Bush also asked Cheney to study the nation's vulnerability to terrorism, primarily from biological and chemical threats. By the summer of 2001, Cheney had hired a retired admiral, Steve Abbott, to oversee a program for taking homeland defense more seriously.

With the president's full knowledge and encouragement, Cheney became the self-appointed examiner of worst-case scenarios. He would look at the darker side, the truly bad and terrifying scenarios. Because of his experience and temperament, it was the ideal assignment for Cheney. He felt the administration had to be prepared to think about the unthinkable. It was one way to be an effective second-in-command -- carve out a few matters, become the expert in them and then press the first-in-command to adopt your solutions.

Cheney thought that the Clinton administration had failed in its response to terrorist acts, going back to the World Trade Center bombing, in 1993, and that there had been a pattern of weak responses: no effective response to the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers, the U.S. military installation in Saudi Arabia; not enough to the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa; none to the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.

After Sept. 11, it was clear to Cheney that the threat from terrorism had changed and grown enormously. So two matters would have to change. First, the standard of proof would have to be lowered -- irrefutable smoking-gun evidence would not have to be required for the United States to defend itself. Second, defense alone wasn't enough. They needed an offense.

The most serious threat now facing the United States was a nuclear weapon or a biological or chemical agent in the hands of a terrorist inside the country's borders. And everything, in his view, had to be done to stop it.

"The vice president, after 9/11, clearly saw Saddam Hussein as a threat to peace," Bush said in an interview last December. "And was unwavering in his view that Saddam was a real danger."

Powell Gets Bush's Ear

Colin Powell had always been just one level beneath Cheney in the pecking order. Over three decades he had worked his way up to become the top uniformed military man, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and had wound up reporting to Cheney, who had been an improbable pick as defense secretary for Bush's father when the nomination of Sen. John Tower (R-Tex.) was rejected by his Senate colleagues. Then as secretary of state, the senior Cabinet post, Powell was again outranked by Cheney, this time the unexpected pick as vice president. At National Security Council meetings, Cheney sat at Bush's right hand, Powell at his left.

Powell was often confounded by Cheney. Years earlier, writing his best-selling memoir, Powell kept trying to pin down the remoteness of the man and had drafted and redrafted the sections on Cheney, sending them off to his best friend, Richard L. Armitage, now deputy secretary of state. Not quite right, Armitage kept replying. Powell finally told Armitage he had found a way to be "relatively truthful but not harmful."

In the final version of "My American Journey," published in 1995, Powell wrote of Cheney, "He and I had never, in nearly four years, spent a single purely social hour together." He told of Cheney's last day as defense secretary, when he had gone to Cheney's suite of offices at the Pentagon and asked, "Where's the secretary?" Informed that Cheney had left hours ago, Powell wrote, "I was disappointed, even hurt, but not surprised. The lone cowboy had gone off into the sunset without even a last, 'So long.' "

Powell had different issues with Bush. They were uncomfortable with each other. A sense of competition hovered in the background of their relationship, a low-voltage pulse nearly always present. Powell had considered running for president in 1996. He had had stratospheric poll ratings as the country's most admired man. For personal reasons and after making a calculation that there were no guarantees in American politics, he had decided not to run. But he had been the man in the wings, the former general and war hero, a moderate voice who would not run in 2000 when George W. Bush did.

For the first 16 months of the administration, Powell had been "in the refrigerator," or worse, as he and Armitage called his frequent isolation. It gnawed at him when stories appeared in the media suggesting that he was going to resign, what he privately called the "Powell's-on-his-way-out-again mode." As planning for a war with Iraq became the focus of the war cabinet, Powell became more and more frustrated. Armitage had been pushing hard for Powell to request private time with the president to build a personal relationship -- and present his case.

He achieved a breakthrough of sorts on Aug. 5, 2002, when Bush invited Powell and Condoleezza Rice to the residence. The meeting expanded to include dinner in the family dining room and then continued in the president's office.

Powell's notes filled three or four pages. War could destabilize friendly governments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, he said. It could divert energy from almost everything else, not just the war on terrorism, and dramatically affect the supply and price of oil. What of the image of an American general running an Arab country, a Gen. MacArthur in Baghdad? Powell asked. How long would it be? No one could know. How would success be defined? War would take down Hussein, and "you will become the government until you get a new government."

By the time they were in Bush's office, Powell was on a roll.

"You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," he told the president. "You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems. You'll own it all." Privately, Powell and Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.

"It's going to suck the oxygen out of everything," the secretary continued. So as not to sidestep the politics of it, he added, "This will become the first term." The clear implication was: Did the president want to be defined this way? Did he want to run for reelection on an Iraq war?

Powell thought he was scoring. Iraq has a history that is quite complex, he said. The Iraqis have never had a democracy. "So you need to understand that this is not going to be a walk in the woods."

The president listened and asked some questions but did not push back that much. Finally he looked at Powell. "What should I do? What else can I do?"

Powell realized he needed to offer a solution. "You can still make a pitch for a coalition or U.N. action to do what needs to be done," he said. The United Nations was only one way, but some way had to be found to recruit allies, to internationalize the problem.

Though the conversation was tense several times, Powell felt that he had left nothing unsaid. There were no histrionics. The president thanked him after two hours, an extraordinary amount of time for Powell without static from Cheney and Rumsfeld.

A Strong Assertion From Cheney

Cheney saw he was rapidly losing ground. Talk of the United Nations, diplomacy and now patience was wrong in his view. Nothing could more effectively slow down the march to war -- a war he deemed necessary. It was the only way. His former colleagues from the Ford and the first Bush administrations were weighing in with a blizzard of commentary -- Scowcroft with his cautionary antiwar message, former secretary of state Baker, who urged that unilateral action be avoided. Former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, dean of realpolitik foreign policy, had on Aug. 12, 2002, published a long, somewhat convoluted piece in The Washington Post supporting Bush for forcing the issue of Hussein to a head, but warning about the importance of building support from the public and the world.

The New York Times had made the Scowcroft and Kissinger positions the lead article on its front page on Aug. 16: "Top Republicans Break with Bush on Iraq Strategy." It was a misinterpretation of Kissinger's remarks, which more or less backed Bush. The Times eventually ran a correction, but Cheney and his deputy, Scooter Libby, found the article extremely aggravating. The correction would never catch up with the front-page headline, and Scowcroft's dissent was indisputable and more potent. It looked as if the march to war was put off.

Cheney decided that everyone was offering an opinion except the administration. There was no stated administration position and he wanted to put one out, make a big speech if necessary. It was highly unusual for the vice president to speak on such a major issue before the president, who was going to address the United Nations on Iraq on Sept. 12. But Cheney couldn't wait. Nature and Washington policy debates abhor a vacuum. He was not going to cede the field to Scowcroft, Baker, a misinterpreted Kissinger -- or Powell. He spoke privately with the president, who gave his approval without reviewing the details of what Cheney might say.

At an NSC meeting, Cheney said to the president, "Well, I'm going to give that speech."

"Don't get me in trouble," Bush half joked.

Trouble is what Cheney had in mind.

"Cheney Says Peril of a Nuclear Iraq Justifies Attack," read the headline in the New York Times on Aug. 27. Powell was dumbfounded. The vice president had delivered a hard-line address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville and basically called weapons inspections futile. "A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his compliance with U.N. resolutions," Cheney had said of Hussein. "On the contrary, there is a great danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow 'back in the box.' "

The vice president also issued his own personal National Intelligence Estimate of Hussein: "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction [and] there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us." Ten days earlier, the president himself had said only that Hussein "desires" these weapons. Neither Bush nor the CIA had made any assertion comparable to Cheney's.

Cheney also said that these weapons in the hands of a "murderous dictator" are "as great a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risk of action."

These remarks, just short of a declaration of war, were widely interpreted as administration policy. Powell was astonished. It was a preemptive attack on what the president had agreed to 10 days earlier. Cheney's speech blew it all up. Now Powell felt boxed in. To add to his problem, the BBC started releasing excerpts of an interview Powell had given before Cheney's speech, asserting, "The president has been clear that he believes weapons inspectors should return."

Stories began appearing saying that Powell was contradicting Cheney. He was accused of disloyalty, and he counted seven editorials calling for his resignation or implying he should quit. How can I be disloyal, he wondered, when I'm giving the president's stated position?

Adelman thought Bush was really delaying too long in deposing Hussein. Two days after Cheney's speech, he weighed in with a blistering op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. Hussein was a bigger threat than al Qaeda, he wrote, because he had a country, billions in oil revenue, an army and "scores of scientific laboratories and myriad manufacturing plants cranking out weapons of mass destruction."

The problem could not be solved with new U.N. inspections, Adelman wrote. "Every day Mr. Bush holds off liberating Iraq is another day endangering America. Posing as a 'patient man,' he risks a catastrophic attack. Should that attack occur and be traced back to an Iraqi WMD facility, this president would be relegated to the ash heap of history."

It was strong stuff. Cheney did not communicate directly with Adelman on such matters, but he passed word to a mutual friend, who called Adelman right after his article appeared to report the vice president's reaction. "Ken has been extremely helpful in all this," the friend quoted Cheney as saying, "and I really appreciate what he has done and it's been great."

A day later, Aug. 29, Cheney spoke to the Veterans of the Korean War in San Antonio. It was the same speech with significant differences. He dropped his assertion that weapons inspections might provide "false comfort" and watered down his criticism, saying that "inspections are not an end in themselves."

Instead of asserting as he had in the first version of the speech that, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," he said simply that Hussein was pursuing "an aggressive nuclear weapons program." Some other language was moderated, by eliminating a "very," for example, and about eight paragraphs were removed from the speech.

Cheney and Powell at Odds

On the evening of Sept. 6, the national security principals met at Camp David without Bush to go over the U.N. issues before Saturday morning's scheduled NSC meeting with the president and afternoon summit with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Cheney continued to argue that to ask for a new resolution would put them back in the hopeless soup of U.N. process. All Bush needed to say in his speech was that Hussein was bad -- a willful, serial violator of U.N. resolutions -- and that the president reserved the right to act unilaterally.

But that would not be asking for U.N. support, Powell replied. The United Nations would not just roll over, declare Hussein evil and authorize war. That approach was not salable. The president had decided to give the United Nations a chance, and the only practical way to do that was to seek a new resolution.

Powell detected a kind of fever in Cheney. He was not the steady, unemotional rock that he had witnessed a dozen years earlier during the run-up to the Gulf War. The vice president was beyond hell-bent for action against Hussein. It was as if nothing else existed. Powell attempted to summarize the consequences of unilateral action, an argument he felt he had down pretty well. He added a new dimension, saying that the international reaction would be so negative that he would have to close U.S. embassies around the world if we went to war alone.

That is not the issue, Cheney said. Hussein and the clear threat are the issue.

Maybe it would not turn out as the vice president thinks, Powell said. War could trigger all kinds of unanticipated and unintended consequences -- some that none of them, he included, had imagined.

Not the issue, Cheney said.

The conversation exploded into a tough debate between the two men, who danced on the edge of civility but did not depart from the formal deference they generally showed each other. It was sharp and biting, however, and they both knew how to score debating points as they pulled apart the last fraying threads of what had connected them for so many years. Powell appeared to harbor a deep-seated anger even though he was getting his way this time.

On Saturday morning, Sept. 7, Bush met with the NSC and the argument was joined again. Powell said that if for no other reason than U.S. credibility, they needed to offer a plan to begin inspections again as part of any reengagement with the United Nations on Iraq. Procedurally, the only way to do this was to seek new resolutions.

Cheney then listed all the reasons inspections could mire them in a tar pit. First, the inspectors would not be Americans, but lawyers and experts from around the world who were less concerned about, and less skeptical of, Hussein. Second, these inspectors, like those in the past, would be more inclined to accept what they were told by Iraqi authorities, less likely to challenge, more likely to be fooled. The end result, Cheney said, would be deliberations or reports that would be inconclusive. So inspections would make getting to a decision to actually take out Hussein much more difficult.

Swayed by Blair's plea later that day that for his political viability he had to be able to show he had tried the United Nations, Bush decided this time in Powell's favor.

Cheney Stands His Ground

On Jan. 31, 2003, Blair again prevailed on Bush to go to the United Nations, again over Cheney's objections. This time the president asked Powell to make the case against Hussein. As Powell was preparing his speech, he received a call from Cheney.

Colin, the vice president said, look carefully at the terrorism case that Scooter prepared. Give it a good look.

Sure, Dick, Powell said. He generally used the vice president's first name when they were alone. Cheney was not ordering him or trying to direct him. It was just a request to take a serious look.

Powell looked at it. Four meetings between Sept. 11 pilot Mohamed Atta with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague -- meetings that had been alleged but never proved to have taken place. That was worse than ridiculous. Powell pitched it.

Powell thought that Cheney had the fever. The vice president and Wolfowitz kept looking for the connection between Hussein and Sept. 11. It was a separate little government that was out there -- Wolfowitz, Libby, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith and Feith's "Gestapo office," as Powell privately called it. He saw in Cheney a sad transformation. The cool operator from the first Gulf War just would not let go. Cheney now had an unhealthy fixation. Nearly every conversation or reference came back to al Qaeda and trying to nail the connection with Iraq. He would often have an obscure piece of intelligence. Powell thought that Cheney took intelligence and converted uncertainty and ambiguity into fact.

It was about the worst charge that Powell could make about the vice president. But there it was. Cheney would take an intercept and say it shows something was happening. No, no, no, Powell or another would say, it shows that somebody talked to somebody else who said something might be happening. A conversation would suggest something might be happening, and Cheney would convert that into a "We know." Well, Powell concluded, we didn't know. No one knew.

Strained Relations

After major combat operations ended in Iraq in May 2003, Powell spent the next months more often than not on the defensive. To those who thought he should have been a more forceful advocate against war, he replied that he had taken his best shot. He had not misled anyone, he told associates. He had argued successfully in August and September 2002 that the president should adopt two tracks -- plan for war and conduct diplomacy through the United Nations. The president could travel those two tracks only so long before he would reach a fork in the road, and one fork was war.

"He's the president," Powell told associates, "and he decided and, therefore, it was my obligation to go down the other fork with him."

As the war planning had progressed over the nearly 16 months, Powell had felt that the easier the war looked, the less Rumsfeld, the Pentagon and Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks had worried about the aftermath. They seemed to think that Iraq was a crystal goblet and that all they had to do was tap it and it would crack. It had turned out to be a beer mug instead. Now they owned the beer mug.

Visiting Iraq in the fall of 2003, Powell saw the mass graves and heard the testimony of witnesses to the torture and oppression. He was delighted that Hussein and his whole rotten government were gone. It was the saving grace. Certainly the decision to go to war was not 100 percent wrong. History, after all, had not yet determined whether it was right or wrong.

Cheney continued to be Powell's bête noire. At meetings of the principals, in Powell's view, Cheney improved on his technique of not betraying his position by insisting he either didn't have one, or could change his mind in 30 minutes. Powell finally decoded the technique. He concluded that he had to listen carefully because Cheney's disavowals generally turned out to be positions about which Cheney was not going to change his mind.

Relations became so strained that Powell and Cheney could not, and did not, have a sit-down lunch or any discussion about their differences. Never.

Powell thought that now that Bush and the administration had to live with the consequences of their Iraq decisions, they were becoming dangerously protective of those decisions. There was no one in the White House who could break through to insist on a realistic reassessment. There was no Karen Hughes who could go to Bush and say, "Pay attention, you're in trouble." Powell believed it was the hardest of all tasks to go back to fundamentals and question one's own judgment, and there was no sign it was going to happen. So he soldiered on once again against the current.

Cheney in Charge?

At the beginning of 2004, Cheney was confident that the Iraq war would be seen as a history-shaping event. He was unrepentant about his analysis of terrorism and his assertions about Hussein. The great threat to the nation was al Qaeda armed -- not just with box cutters and airline tickets, but with a nuke in the middle of an American city. The administration had been accused of not having connected the dots before Sept. 11. How could it afford to ignore the dots after Sept. 11? It was just that simple.

Cheney believed that given the intelligence reporting about Iraq-al Qaeda links over so many years and the intelligence evidence on weapons of mass destruction, no one in his right mind sitting in Bush's position as president could have ignored it.

There was so much focus on the aftermath and criticism of the postwar planning. Cheney thought it wouldn't matter in the end. It would be noise to history as long as they were successful in what they were trying to do. Outcomes mattered. He thought history would treat Bush very well, though he acknowledged that the jury was still out.

Nearly all presidents have had to deal with vice presidents with real or imagined political futures. Even Bush senior, the super-loyal vice president, broke publicly with President Ronald Reagan several times when he deemed it politically necessary, such as when the Reagan administration was negotiating with Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega and Bush had distanced himself from dealings with the unsavory strongman. But Cheney had made it clear he did not aspire to the presidency.

On a few occasions, political adviser Karl Rove and the president had discussed the news stories that Cheney was the one pulling the strings and running things behind the scenes. Some of the White House communications people worried about this. Bush laughed. Both of them had seen how deferential Cheney was. "Yes, Mr. President," or "No, Mr. President." It was no different when the president and Cheney were alone.

When the president wasn't around, Cheney often referred to him as "The Man," saying, "The Man wants this." Or, "The Man thinks this." Cheney was a forceful, persistent advocate, but the president decided. The clearest evidence of that was Cheney's strenuous objection to going to the United Nations to seek new weapons inspection resolutions. The president had gone against his advice. Cheney had saluted.

Rove argued that the politics of the Cheney-is-in-charge thesis worked in their favor. First, anyone who believed that was long lost to them anyway. Second, Rove wanted them to keep talking about it, throw the campaign into that briar patch. He believed the ordinary person wouldn't buy it. Here 67 percent were saying Bush was a strong leader and that included a third of the people who disapproved of his performance in office. A strong leader would not kowtow to his vice president, and Bush did not look meek in public.

Mark Malseed contributed to this report.

War Without End

The global war against terror, news about the illegal invasion of Iraq, the corporate puppet presidents, the war criminal Tony Blair, September 11th 2001, the USS Liberty and New World Order crimes against humanity.

JINSA/PNAC Neocons Ready to Expand Iraq War to Syria/Iran