War Without End

Alpha

Forwarded:

The fourth paragraph illustrates why Kerry is more deadly than the
moron Israel firster (Bush). Same ideas but Kerry will get allies to push forth his
policies.
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http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?
pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer&cid=1092626412132&p=1078113566627

Kerry appoints Mel Levine top Mideast adviser

---------------------------------
Tom Tugend, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 16, 2004
---------------------------------

When Washington goes its own way and disrespects its allies, it
hurts not only the United States, but Israel as well, insists Mel
Levine.
"Whenever America is diminished in the eyes of the world, it does
Israel no favor," said Levine, who as John Kerry's newly appointed
top adviser on the Middle East is expected to play a major role in
shaping the Democrat's policy on region.
During an interview in his law office, the former congressman from
West Los Angeles was addressing himself to concerns that Kerry's
advocacy of a multilateral US foreign policy might mean greater
pressure on Israel for concessions to the Palestinians and
surrounding Arab states.
Not so, said Levine, "but if we cannot convince Europe, Russia and
other countries to keep nuclear weapons away from Iran, to fight
terrorism, and to exert greater leverage on Arab countries, we will
fail," and thereby weaken Israel.
To gauge Kerry's attitude toward Israel, one need only look at his
votes during 20 years in the US Senate, according to Levine.
"By every rating and criterion, Kerry's votes have shown 100 percent
solid support for Israel," he said. "That's well understood in his
home state of Massachusetts, but not yet throughout the rest of the
country."
Levine's appointment as chair of the Kerry campaign's Middle East
Policy Working Group has been hailed by Jewish spokesmen and
organizations as a reassurance that Israel's interests will have an
eloquent voice in Kerry's inner circle.
As congressman and member of the House foreign affairs committee
from 1983 to 1993, Levine was among Israel's strongest supporters.
His clashes with former Secretary of State James Baker on the Middle
East policies of the first President Bush have become part of
Washington folklore.
Representing the US, Levine has also had considerable experience in
dealing with the Arab side.
At Vice President Al Gore's request, he served as co-president, with
Arab-American James Zogby, of Builders for Peace, a private sector
initiative to make the West Bank economy more competitive that,
despite its good intentions, largely failed.
Following the 1998 Wye Plantation accords, Levine chaired the US-
Israel-Palestinian "anti-incitement" task force. He learned from
this experience that incitement has to be confronted directly and
aggressively, a lesson he is passing on to Kerry.
Until recently, he served on the board of the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), but has cut his activities in advocacy
groups since becoming chairman of the non-political Community
Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.
The Middle East Policy Working Group, said Levine, is not a formal
committee with regular meetings and joint policy formulations. "I
will be seeking informal and informed input from other members, and
then render my advice," Levine said.
He also believes that with Kerry's long service on the Senate
foreign relations committee and his global outlook, "he won't need
much policy guidance. Unlike other presidents, whose previous
experiences were as state governors, Kerry will hit the ground
running."
When Jewish Republicans and Democrats argue the merits of their
presidential candidates, and whether sizeable chunks of the
overwhelmingly Democratic Jewish community will defect this time to
President Bush, Republicans stress the incumbent's pro-Israel
record. Democrats – while not conceding that their man is any less
pro-Israel – emphasize the Bush administration's perceived domestic
policy failures.
Edward Sanders, an elder statesman of the Los Angeles and national
Jewish communities, and who served as President Jimmy Carter's
Middle East and Jewish relations adviser, has no doubt about his
priorities. "I couldn't vote for a candidate who is good for Israel
and bad on everything else," said the veteran Democrat and Kerry
supporter. "What's good for a strong and respected United States is
good for Israel."
Levine acknowledges that the Democrats may not quite retain the 80
percent of the Jewish vote they got in the last presidential
election, when they fielded Al Gore, a longtime friend of the Jewish
community, and Jewish vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman.
But with Bush and Kerry equally pro-Israel, in Levine's view, Jewish
voters will come down overwhelmingly on Kerry's side on a wide range
of domestic issues.
"On the top of the list is church-state separation, and to say that
the present administration has blurred the line is a significant
understatement," said Levine.
Other issues where Levine perceives serious Bush weaknesses include
privacy rights, energy independence, woman's right to choose, health
care, the environment, and preserving social services.
Veteran Democratic Rep. Howard Berman of California has known Levine
for some 27 years and sees the latter's appointment as "an obvious
statement by Kerry that he will be a strong supporter of Israel and
its security interests.
Another longtime colleague, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles)
praised Kerry's ability to "translate his views into public policy."
In a survey by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, leaders of major
Jewish organizations such as AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, and
the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
overwhelmingly endorsed the choice of Levine, though some noted that
in the end it would be up to Kerry to act on Levine's
recommendations.

Levine said he would be an "active advocate" in the Kerry campaign,
but declined to speculate on a future role in a Kerry administration.

Alpha

http://www.drudgereport.com/flashpb.htm

Alpha

August 23, 2004

Buchanan Against the Empire
Pat Buchanan's new book is out – and it's going to rock the neocons' world!

by Justin Raimondo

If you take only one book to the beach this summer, let it be Patrick J. Buchanan's Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency. Marshalling his considerable ability as a polemicist, his wide reading – and his remarkable insight into the ways of men and nations, gained over decades of service to two presidents and a place at the center of American public life – Buchanan draws up an indictment of the rising American Imperium written in the blunt and colorful prose for which he is famous.

Buchanan emerged as a central figure in the burgeoning opposition to our neoconservative foreign policy, starting in the early 1990s with his dissent against the first Gulf war. Why should American soldiers die for the Emir of Kuwait, he demanded to know, while trenchantly pointing out that it was Israel's amen corner that was beating the drums loudest for war. A decade later the same drum-beaters, energized by 9/11, again beat their tom-toms furiously, this time urging us to "finish the job" – and again it was Buchanan who dared point out just who and what was behind the drive to war – only this time he had plenty of company in his assessment of the nature and motivations of the War Party.

Buchanan cites his 1999 book, A Republic, Not an Empire, in which he predicted "if we continue on this course of reflexive interventions, enemies will one day answer our power with the weapon of the weak – terror, and eventually cataclysmic terrorism on U.S. soil." His 2000 presidential campaign was the occasion for an eerie premonition of our present predicament:

"Will it take some cataclysmic atrocity on U.S. soil to awaken our global gamesmen to the going price of empire?"

It is with what sounds like an audible sigh of weariness, and not any sense of vindication, that Buchanan opens his discussion of how we got here, and who brought us to this point in our history.

Buchanan believes that Bush was basically an empty vessel waiting to be filled, and I concur. He describes the neocon takeover of the Bush presidency as essentially an act of subversion: In election year 2000, the Republicans went after Madeleine Albright's puffed-up conception of America as "the indispensable nation," and Americans were offered by candidate Bush a "more humble" foreign policy. Contrasting this with Bush's post-9/11 mindset, Buchanan is astonished – and, one can see, genuinely shocked – at a president whose public utterances reek so strongly of blasphemy:

"Using rhetoric that hearkened back to Christ Himself in the New Testament – 'he who is not with me is against me' – Bush divided the world: 'Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.'"

The growing disconnection from 9/11, the great diversion to Iraq – and threats directed at virtually every region in the Middle East – culminated in the rise of the Bush Doctrine, enshrining preemption as the central organizing principle of American policy. No nation must be allowed to threaten America's global dominance on every continent, and the U.S. must be prepared to use military force if anyone so much as looks as though they might be contemplating a military challenge to our universal supremacy. This gives new meaning to the old Greek word, hubris, meaning an overweening pride. Not even Rome, or the British empire at its height, ever dared enunciate such a grandiose vision, and his commentary on this illustrates one delightful aspect of Buchanan as a writer, his playful sense of history:

"Had Britain adopted such a policy in the nineteenth century, Parliament would have asserted a right to go to war to prevent the United States from ever increasing its sea power to rival that of the Royal Navy."

No doubt that would suit the extreme Anglophile wing of the War Party just fine, but for the rest of us Buchanan makes a trenchant and quite unanswerable point.

Pat the icon-smasher, who pulverizes the pious platitudes of the neocons and their liberal imperialist camp followers with a few well-placed sucker punches, is a delight to read: I could go on quoting for the rest of this column. Suffice to say that his is a searing indictment of the hypocrisy that abhors the terrorism of Osama bin Laden, but ignores the much more efficient and deadly state terrorism routinely meted out to conquered peoples. The victors, who write the history books, define who is a terrorist and who is a national hero. The founders of the Irish republic and the state of Israel, who rose to power using terrorist tactics – what are they?

Against the idea that we must "drain the swamp" of the Middle East and eradicate terrorism by implanting our conception of "democracy," Buchanan replies:

"How can President Bush say we are not secure if the Islamic world is not democratic? The Islamic world has never been democratic. Yet, before we intervened there, our last threat came from Barbary pirates."

Again, Pat's mischievous sense of historical irony is wickedly employed:

"How would we have responded in the nineteenth century if Britain had invaded and occupied Washington until President Andrew Jackson abolished slavery and stopped his mistreatment of the Indians?"

Buchanan lays out the case against Bushian imperialism in terms that are sure to enrage the neocons, who rail that any attempt to explain what motivated the 9/11 terrorists is necessarily an apologia for Osama bin Laden. But that is nonsense, says Pat: one must know one's enemies, or else be defeated by them, and Buchanan the patriot is determined that a huge foreign policy miscalculation – the invasion and occupation of Iraq – will not bring down the country he loves. "Interventionism is the problem," he writes,

"America's huge footprint in the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia led straight to 9/11. The terrorists were over here because we were over there. Terrorism is the price of empire. If you do not wish to pay the price, you must give up the empire."

Instead of giving up what dragged down Rome, Byzantium, and Britain, too, the President of the United States concocted

"An American version of the Brezhnev Doctrine, wherein Moscow asserted a right to intervene to save Communism in any nation where it had once been imposed. Only we Americans now assert a right to intervene anywhere to impose democracy."

Describing the neocons as "the boat people of the McGovern revolution" in the Democratic party, Buchanan chronicles their journey from left to "right," and their hijacking of the conservative movement. He details the rise of the "Vulcans" in the Bush administration's foreign policy councils, underscoring the key role played by Paul Wolfowitz, who started out as an aide to Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-Boeing), in the 1960s, and wound up the main theoretician of the neoconservative faction within the Reagan administration. Wolfowitz's views became controversial after the Washington Post cited a 1992 memo in which Wolfowitz proposed going to war with the Soviet Union … over Lithuania.

The rationale for this batty battlefield plan – that no one must be allowed to assert their hegemony in a regional theater – became the operative principle of U.S. foreign policy in September, 2002, when Wolfowitz and the neocons were once again installed in the Pentagon, and the U.S. government issued a document entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States."

The honeycombing of the U.S. national security bureaucracy with neoconservatives who put Israel, and their war agenda, first, and American interests last, is amply documented. Buchanan not only cites the frequently cited "A Clean Break" document as evidence that the conflation of American and Israeli interests lies at the heart of the neoconservative agenda, he also ploughs new ground with separate screeds authored by Deputy Defense Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, Middle East policy chief for the Office of the Vice President. The former is a radical supporter of Israel's ultra-nationalist Likud party, who urged then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to re-invade Palestinian land even though "the price in blood would be high." The latter called on the U.S. to:

"Broaden the conflict to strike fatally, not merely disarm, the centers of radicalism in the region – the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Teheran, and Gaza. That would establish the recognition that fighting either the United States or Israel is suicidal."

To the neocons, the interests of America and Israel cannot – must not – ever diverge, and with Feith and Wurmser ensconced in the highest echelons of the U.S. government, they are now in a position to implement their views, and they have been doing so – with horrific results. Buchanan, for his part, asks if we really want to make war on a billion-plus Muslims worldwide. Are Arabs to be our bitter enemies in a "civilizational" war to the death?

Buchanan shows how the small clique of neocons in this administration moved within hours of the 9/11 terrorist strike to divert the president's anger, and the nation's, toward Iraq, rather than Osama bin Laden. He strongly implies that the neocons exercised a thinly-veiled threat to abandon the president if he didn't take immediate action against Saddam Hussein:

"Nine days after an attack on the United States, this tiny clique of intellectuals was telling the President of the United States and commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces that if he did not follow their war plans, he would be publicly charged with a 'decisive surrender' to terrorism."

Buchanan tells the story of a president who was deceived into war, lied to by his own top advisors, and then led down the garden path by a bunch of war-maddened ideologues. I would tend to agree, but would add that this view would be strengthened by an analysis of why this course has been politically advantageous to the president and his party, particularly as it relates to the role of the Christian fundamentalist foot-soldiers who play such a vital role in the GOP electoral machine.

He also gets in several digs at the neocons, his bitter enemies, citing Russell Kirk's opinion of them as "often clever, never wise" – ouch! – and bringing up Francis Fukuyama's vigorous dissent from his former allies' support for the Iraq war. In replying to the neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, who declared that "Even Rome is no match for what America is today," Fukuyama suggested that the former psychiatrist-turned-laptop bombardier has become "strangely disconnected from reality." How that must rankle the neocons, such as Norman Podhoretz, who has recently taken out after Fukuyama, formerly one of his favorites, in a gargantuan essay of such oppressive length and subject matter – the inevitability and bright promise of launching "World War IV" against the Muslim world – that it seems intended to bury him in an avalanche of vituperation. If the neocons hate Buchanan, they surely hate their own apostates more.

Buchanan's survey of the Islamic world and the history of the Arab peoples is a panoramic albeit tightly condensed summary of a worldview that seems all the more alien precisely because of its parallels and antecedents in our own traditions. I found myself mesmerized by his spirited defense of the Crusades, and his citations of pro-Crusader Catholic historians, and also frankly shocked by it – until I got to the punch-line:

"If Mecca were overrun today by infidel armies, would not Muslims be justified in conducting a jihad to liberate their holy city? Would devout Muslims be ashamed of such a war, or apologize for having waged it?"

Unlike some "libertarian" deep thinkers who immediately reacted to the 9/11 attacks without reference to the history of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, Buchanan answers the question "why do they hate us" with refreshing honesty, bluntness, and daring. The 9/11 hijackers "did not fly into the World Trade Center to protest the Bill of Rights. They want us off sacred Saudi soil and out of the Middle East."

Like the author of Imperial Hubris, Michael Scheuer, Buchanan concludes that the policies we are pursuing are helping al-Qaeda and the more extreme fundamentalists, and winning a generation of hearts and minds to militant Islamism. He is also convinced that their long-term strategy has a good chance of success, given the advantage we have handed them by invading Iraq and multiplying their mass base a thousand-fold:

"Terrorists are picadores and matadores. They prick the bull until it bleeds and is blinded by rage, then they snap the red cape of bloody terror in its face. The bull charges again and again until, exhausted, it can charge no more. Then the matador, though smaller and weaker, drives the sword into the soft spot between the shoulder blades of the bull. For the bull has failed to understand that the snapping cape was but a provocation to goad it into attacking and exhausting itself for the kill."

Will America exhaust itself in a series of futile lunges in the Middle East, rampaging through Iraq, Syria, Iran, and god-knows-where-else, until, bankrupted and bleeding, the imperial hegemon stumbles – and fails to get up? Or will the impulse represented by Buchanan's book – the tendency of Americans to distrust and rebel against ideologues and liars, especially when they come to inhabit the highest seats of government – triumph in the end?

We'll see, won't we? Buchanan, for all his dark predictions and parables of imperial decline, is full of hope. I am not so optimistic, but am willing – nay, eager! – to be proved wrong. So let's get this book to the top of the bestseller list at Amazon, the New York Times, and every other measure of success that matters.

One caveat: I cannot vouch for all of the views expressed in this book, especially the chapter entitled "Economic Treason," with which I have profound differences. But in the Old Right that is newly revived due in large part to Buchanan's efforts – most notably, The American Conservative, which he co-edits, and for which I am a contributing editor – we are allowed to disagree. Unlike in the neocon-dominated "official" conservative Establishment, where war-worship, leader-worship, and lock-step ideological conformity on even the smallest issues has imparted to the movement a certain Stalinesque quality.

I don't agree with Buchanan on trade policy, nor do I endorse his views on homosexuality or transubstantiation, but I can tell you this: no one writing today is more effective than Pat in demolishing the arguments and characterizing the true motives of the War Party.

Strike a blow against the Empire – and for the restoration of our old Republic. Buy this book – and give it to your friends.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

One more caveat on the Buchanan book: Pat avers that the Bush administration has had its fill of Iraq, and that we are on the way out, with Fallujah marking the "high tide of the American empire," and no more wars on the Republican agenda. He makes a good case, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it. After 250 pages of countless examples where Bush has sold out the principles of conservatism, the views of the Founders of this country, and the requirements of common sense, Pat's half-hearted appeal to conservatives that they ought to stick with the president and the GOP are not particularly convincing. But, then again, maybe it wasn't meant to be.

–Justin Raimondo

Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin

Alpha · Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 1:52 pm Post subject: Neocon Treason

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=3436

Neocon Treason

"The neoconservatives," writes Buchanan, "are marinated in conceit, and their hubris may yet prove their undoing. And ours as well."

Alpha · Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 10:08 pm Post subject: Re: Neocon Treason

Alpha

Note how many Zionist extremist (racist) Jews are mentioned below (some of whom are shown at www.nowarforisrael.com ):

Letter From Washington:
THE HAWKS ON IRAQ TURN ON EACH OTHER
By David D. Kirkpatrick
The International Herald Tribune - August 24, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/535483.htm

In the 18 months since President George W. Bush went to war against
Iraq, the hawkish intellectuals who built the case for the invasion
have
largely stood their ground.

This close-knit community, often called neoconservative - which
includes
Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary; Richard Perle, former
chairman of the Defense Policy Board; and William Kristol of the
magazine The Weekly Standard - has often emphasized what it said were
the invasion's underappreciated successes. Occasionally, some have
faulted the U.S. military for mistakes in execution, like using too
little force.

Lately, however, there has been emerging discord within their ranks
over
the lessons from the war. Earlier this month, Francis Fukuyama, author
of "The End of History" and one of the most influential thinkers
associated with the movement, surprised many by delivering a lengthy
attack on the neoconservatives' longstanding arguments in support of
the
war in Iraq, including their confidence in building a democracy there
and their assessment of the threat from Islamic radicalism.

In the clubby world of neoconservative intellectuals, many of whom are
longtime friends and allies, Fukuyama's repudiation of the case for
war,
which appeared in The National Interest, was all the more startling
because he presented it as an attack on a recent
speech by his friend, the columnist Charles Krauthammer of The
Washington Post.

Fukuyama faces stiff resistance. In an interview on Friday, Krauthammer
says he is publishing a rebuttal in the next issue of The National
Interest portraying Fukuyama's critique as "breathtakingly incoherent."

Others are redoubling their arguments for the invasion of Iraq,
contending that it should be the first step in a campaign to transform
the region. In the next issue of Commentary magazine, Norman Podhoretz,
who helped found the neoconservative movement in the 1970s, has written
a 37-page defense of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

In "World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to
Win," he argues that the United States should now help seek the
liberation of other Middle Eastern countries to help drain the swamp
where Islamic radicalism breeds, just as the cold war helped liberate
the Soviet Union.

"Like anybody else in the world who is sane, I am very much worried
about Iran gaining nuclear capacity," Podhoretz said in an interview
Friday. "I am not advocating the invasion of Iran at this moment,
although I wouldn't be heartbroken if it happened."

Certainly, many plain old conservatives - or paleoconservatives -
opposed the war from the beginning or changed their minds as the war
progressed. But neoconservatives laid the intellectual foundation for
the war, and they attained influence within the Bush administration.

Many are also bound together by friendships with influential members of
the administration's foreign policy team, including Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the undersecretary of defense, Douglas
Feith. Fukuyama, for example, said he was a student at Cornell decades
ago when he first became friends with Wolfowitz.

Although few in the movement have criticized the neoconservative
argument for the war as comprehensively as Fukuyama did, several others
said his argument with Krauthammer had captured widespread attention as
a new stage in the debate over the lessons of Iraq.

"These are two of the intellectual heavyweights among neoconservatives,
and their dispute is real," said Gary Rosen, managing editor of
Commentary. "People are looking for guidance on this, and these are two
strong proponents of opposing views within the movement."

In an interview last week, Fukuyama said that he had harbored private
doubts about the war at the time, although he kept quiet about them
then. "I figured it was going to happen anyway, and there wasn't
anything I could do about it," he said. "I believed it was a big roll
of
the dice, and I didn't believe it was a wise bet. But on the other
hand,
it was a roll of the dice, and for all I knew, it might have worked."

He added, "It turned out to be even worse than I anticipated."

But as he was listening to his friend Krauthammer deliver a recent
speech on the theme of the United States as a unipolar power, Fukuyama
said, he grew increasingly agitated.

Krauthammer's speech "is strangely disconnected from reality," Fukuyama
said in his article.

"One gets the impression that the Iraq war," Fukuyama continued, "has
been an unqualified success, with all of the assumptions and
expectations on which the war had been based vindicated."

Like many other critics of the war, he argued that Krauthammer and
other
neoconservatives were overconfident about turning Iraq into a
democracy,
too quick to dismiss arguments of longtime allies, and too willing to
give up the practical advantages of partnership with other nations.

Most of all, though, he argued that Krauthammer and other
supporters of the war mischaracterized Iraq and Islamic radicals as an
immediate threat to the existence of the United States, a claim that
justified immediate intervention. The Soviet Union arguably threatened
the existence of the United States, Fukuyama argues, but Iraq never
did.

But, Fukuyama said, he retained his neoconservative principles - a
belief in the universal aspiration for democracy and the use of
American
power to spread democracy in the world. He said he was acknowledging
the
mistakes to preserve the credibility of the neoconservative movement.

Krauthammer, for his part, argued that Fukuyama's essay did not amount
to much of a critique at all. "His recalibrations are astonishingly
empty," he said, arguing that Fukuyama's criticisms were undercut by
his
ultimate endorsement of the same neoconservative views.

"I have never read a piece which is ostensibly meant to attack a
person's position and then ends up explicitly endorsing it," he said.

But he said that there was one substantive disagreement. "To think
that the threat to the United States from Islamic radicalism is not
existential is absurd," he said, comparing Al Qaeda today to
Hitler in 1936, when he occupied the Rhineland. Hitler did not have the
means then to overrun Europe, but, Krauthammer said, "he soon acquired
the means."

Podhoretz, another old friend of Fukuyama's, said, he, too,
disagreed. "Some things went wrong, but things always go wrong in every
war," he said. "It is always a question of compared to what?"

Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, and another founder of the neoconservative movement, said she,
too, had doubts about the invasion. But she didn't think the debate
over
the Iraq war was about neoconservatism.

"I think there's almost an epidemic of the use of the term," she said.

For now, Fukuyama said, he was awaiting the full response from
Krauthammer and his other neoconservative friends.

"I have gotten a lot of e-mails from non-neoconservatives who liked
it,"
he said. "I have yet to hear from almost any of my friends about it."

Alpha

http://www.antiwar.com/av/?articleid=3440

Alpha · Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 10:22 am Post subject: ZIONIST NEOCON TIMELINE FOR WAR

http://www.ameu.org/summary.asp

Current Issue
Title: Timeline for War
Author: John F. Mahoney
September - October 2004
Volume 37 , Issue 4
Download PDF

Unless otherwise noted, the sources for this timeline come from the following: “A Pretext for War,” (Doubleday) by James Bamford; “Plan of Attack,” (Simon & Schuster) by Bob Woodward; “Rise of the Vulcans,” (Viking) by James Mann; “Against All Enemies,” (Free Press, Simon & Schuster) by Richard Clarke; “The 9/11 Commission Report,” by The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks against the United States; and “The Path to War,” an article that appeared in the May 2004 issue of Vanity Fair.

A Reader’s Guide on pages 8 & 9 offers background information on persons who enter prominently in the timeline; it is based on two articles: “The Men From JINSA and CSP” by Jason Vest in the Sept. 2, 2002 issue of The Nation, and “Serving Two Flags: Neocons, Israel and the Bush Administration” by Stephen Green in the May 2004 issue of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

While the timeline was being constructed, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee released its 511-page report on why we went to war against Iraq. The report concludes that the major reasons the Bush administration gave to justify the war were baseless. Most of the blame is placed on the CIA, but, as Senator Jay Rockefeller noted, the report does not explain the environment of intense pressure in which intelligence officials were asked to render judgments on Iraq, when policy officials had already forcefully stated their own conclusions in public. This part of the committee’s investigation is expected later this year, most likely after the November presidential elections.

Our timeline aims to fill the gap left in the Senate Committee’s report. Recognizing that the information was wrong is one thing; acknowledging how and why it was wrong is quite another—and too important to leave for post-November 2 reading.

A.M.E.U.’s list of books and videos is on pages 14-16. Of particular relevance to this timeline issue are James Bamford’s book, “A Pretext for War,” and the video “Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land,” produced by the Media Education Foundation. Bamford is the former Washington investigative producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. His book reads like a detective mystery. And, like all good detectives, Bamford follows the facts. He concludes that the Bush administration has co-opted the intelligence community for its own political ends, and that its Middle East policy, from overthrowing Saddam Hussein to unconditionally supporting Israel, is driven by long-held beliefs and goals of an elite group of conservatives inside and outside government.

As for how this can happen and why we Americans fail to see the centrality of the Palestinian cause, “Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land” answers those questions better than any documentary I’ve seen.—John F. Mahoney, Executive Director, September 2004.

Articles

http://www.ameu.org/page.asp?iid=258&aid=434&pg=1

Timeline for War, by John F. Mahoney

Timeline for War
by: John F. Mahoney
September - October 2004
The Link - Volume 37, Issue 4
Page 1

Timeline for War
by: John F. Mahoney
September - October 2004
The Link - Volume 37, Issue 4

Timeline for War

The Timeline was written by AMEU executive director John Mahoney, with considerable input and editing from AMEU board members and staff.

March, 1992: The Pentagon. Paul Wolfowitz, undersecretary of defense for policy for President Bush, drafts an update of America’s overall military strategy called the “Defense Planning Guidance.” In it he argues that the U.S. might be faced with taking preemptive military action to prevent the use or development of WMD. The official ultimately responsible for the document is Bush’s defense secretary Dick Cheney. The draft is actually written by Wolfowitz’s protégé and top assistant Lewis Libby.

Sept. 1, 1992: New York. Ramzi Yousef, the nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, arrives at JFK Airport. Born of a Palestinian mother, his goal is to punish the United States for its support of Israel, knowing that the U.S. government every year sends military and financial aid worth billions of dollars to Israel. Ramzi says that he and his uncle, an engineer who had studied higher mathematics and jet propulsion in the U.S., have been planning to bring down the towers of the World Trade Center, the ultimate symbol of America’s worldwide financial muscle.

Feb. 26, 1993: New York. Ramzi Yousef, with others, sets off explosives at the World Trade Center. Later in the day he flies out of JFK for Karachi, disappointed that both towers were still standing and determined to bring them down at another time.

Feb. 27, 1993: New York. A group calling itself the “Liberation Army” sends a letter to The New York Times saying the World Trade Center bombing was in retaliation for American support for Israel, and warning that if America did not change its Middle East policy, more terrorist missions would be carried out, some by suicide bombers.

April 15, 1993: Kuwait. Kuwaiti police say they have prevented an assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush, his wife, two sons, and daughter-in-law Laura. Most in the CIA promptly point the finger at Saddam Hussein; others, including investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, doubt the Iraqi president had any involvement in the plot.

Jan. 7, 1995: Manila. Ramzi Yousef and a colleague, Abdul Hakim Murad, accidentally set off an explosion in their apartment. Murad is captured and, under torture, tells the Philippine police of a plan to board an American commercial aircraft, hijack it, control the cockpit, and dive the plane into the CIA headquarters. The Chief of Intelligence Command for the Philippine National Police tells the Associated Press that its office shared the information immediately with FBI agents in Manila, along with the message they found on Yousef’s laptop explaining why they were doing it: “If the U.S. government keeps supporting Israel … then we will continue to carry out operations inside and outside the United States.”

April 18, 1996: Lebanon. Israel attacks a U.N. refugee camp at Qana, killing women and children. Israel says it was a mistake. The U.N. and Amnesty International say it was intentional. Shortly afterwards, Osama bin Laden moves to the mountains of Afghanistan, where he uses the Qana massacre to recruit fighters in a war against the U.S. and Israel.

July 9, 1996: Washington, DC. Douglas Feith, the Washington, DC partner of an Israeli firm soliciting American business for Israel’s right-wing settler movement, joins with other pro-settlement supporters Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Wurmser’s wife, Meryav, to develop a foreign-policy position paper for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” it calls for Israel to overthrow Saddam Hussein and put a pro-Israel regime in his place. Netanyahu rejects it.

July 25, 1996: Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. A truck bomb rams a high-rise complex housing U.S. airmen. Nineteen are killed. The bombing is blamed on Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors, although the U.S. commission investigating the 9/11 attacks will later conclude that Osama bin Laden may have had an involvement—but not Saddam Hussein.

Aug. 23, 1996: Afghanistan. Bin Laden, with his new mastermind for worldwide operations, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, issues a call to action: “My Muslim Brothers of the world…Your brothers in Palestine and in the land of the two Holy Places [Saudi Arabia] are calling upon your help and asking you to take part in fighting against the enemy — your enemy and their enemy — the Americans and the Israelis…The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory...They [Americans] are not exonerated from responsibility, because they chose this [their] government and voted for it despite their knowledge of its crimes in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and in other places.”

Jan. 26, 1998: Washington, DC. Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Armitage, and 14 others send letter to President Clinton urging regime change in Iraq and a more aggressive Middle East policy. The letter is sponsored by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), founded by William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard.

July 31, 1998: New York. David Wurmser meets with Israel’s permanent representative to the U.N., Dore Gold, in an effort to get Israel to put pressure on the American Congress to approve a $10 million grant to Ahmed Chalabi ‘s Iraqi National Congress, an exile group based in London with a guerilla army based in northern Iraq, whose purpose is the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Aug. 7, 1998: Tanzania and Kenya. Suspected Al Qaeda cells bomb U.S. embassies in both countries, killing 258, including 12 Americans.

Aug. 20, 1998: Afghanistan and Sudan. President Clinton orders missile attack against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan said to produce nerve gas and to be linked to bin Laden. Bin Laden survives and doubts are raised about the pharmaceutical plant, which Sudanese say produced infant formula. Shortly after, bin Laden tells ABC News that, if the liberation of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and the Ka’aba in Saudi Arabia is a crime, he indeed is a criminal.

Feb.-March, 1999: Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden summons Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to tell him that his proposal to use aircraft as terror weapons against the U.S. has the full support of Al Qaeda.

Sept. 28, 2000: Jerusalem. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, flanked by 1,000 armed police, visits site of the Al Aqsa Mosque. Bin Laden reacts by asking that the planned attacks against the U.S. be moved up.

Oct. 12, 2000: Yemen. The USS Cole is attacked; 17 sailors are killed and 39 wounded. Bin Laden, the suspected mastermind, praises the suicide attackers, then reads a poem he wrote in honor of Palestinian children killed in their struggle against Israel’s occupation of their land.

Jan. 1, 2001: Washington, DC. David Wurmser recommends to President-elect Bush that America and Israel join forces to “strike fatally, not merely disarm, the centers of radicalism in the region—the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Tehran, and Gaza,” and he suggests that “crises can be opportunities” to implement this plan.

Jan. 30, 2001: The White House. President Bush holds his first high-level National Security Council meeting. Two topics are on the agenda: Israel and Iraq. He says he plans to “tilt it [U.S. policy] back toward Israel” and—in what turns out to be the prime focus of the meeting—he says he wants to remove Saddam Hussein. Condoleezza Rice explains: “Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region.”

Feb. 5, 2001: The White House. Rice chairs a principals’ committee meeting to review Iraq policy. All agree that the sanctions were only hurting the Iraqi people, not Saddam. Powell proposes stricter U.N. sanctions on Saddam’s military programs.

April, 2001: The White House. Cabinet deputies meet to review terrorism policy. Richard Clarke warns that the network of terrorist organizations called Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, presents an immediate and serious threat to the U.S., and that the U.S. had to target bin Laden and his leadership by reinitiating flights of the Predator drone. Wolfowitz replies that Iraq is just as much a terrorist threat. Clarke says he is unaware of any Iraqi-sponsored terrorism directed at the U.S. Deputy CIA director John McLaughlin backs up Clarke. Wolfowitz tells Clarke he gives bin Laden too much credit and that he had to have a state sponsor. Clarke replies that bin Laden has made plain his terrorist aims and, as with Hitler in Mein Kampf, you have to believe these people will actually do what they say. Wolfowitz responds that he resents comparing the Holocaust to “this little terrorist in Afghanistan.” Clarke replies: “I wasn’t comparing the Holocaust to anything. I was saying that like Hitler, bin Laden has told us in advance what he plans to do and we would make a big mistake to ignore it.”

June 21, 2001: Afghanistan. Bin Laden aide Ayman al-Zawahiri announces over the Middle East Broadcasting Company that, “The coming weeks will hold important surprises that will target American and Israeli interests in the world.”

Aug. 6, 2001: Crawford, Texas. President Bush receives a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” It warns that the FBI has intelligence indicating that terrorists might be preparing for an airline hijacking in the U.S. and might be targeting a building in lower Manhattan. No action is taken.

Sept. 4, 2001: The White House. Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke meets with the President to walk him through a proposed National Security Presidential Directive, whose goal is to eliminate bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders. Clarke had asked for the meeting, calling it “urgent,” back in January, but only now is allowed to see him. He tells Bush that the use of minimum-wage rent-a-cops to screen passengers and carry-on at airports has got to stop. The President agrees.

Sept. 11, 2001: New York, Washington, DC, Pennsylvania. Nineteen Middle Eastern hijackers, 15 from Saudi Arabia, commandeer four commercial airplanes, crashing two into the World Trade Towers in Manhattan, one into the Pentagon in Washington, and one in a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 are killed. Rumsfeld directs Pentagon lawyer to talk to Wolfowitz about Iraq’s connection to the attacks.

Sept. 12, 2001: Germany. Seven members of Rumsfeld’s brain trust meet at an airport in Frankfurt and board an Air Force refueling plane sent to ferry them back to Washington. Group includes Douglas Feith, now undersecretary of defense for policy. On the flight back they sketch out a plan for the defense secretary according to which the U.S. would first topple the Taliban government of Afghanistan, then go after other terror states, including Iraq. Feith appoints David Wurmser to put together a secret intelligence unit in his Pentagon office that will bypass the normal channels and report directly to him; called the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, its purpose is to find loose ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in order to counter the CIA, whose analysts had found no credible links between the two. Later in the day, counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke attends White House meetings of the inner circle of Bush’s war cabinet and is stunned to learn that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to take advantage of the national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq. Rumsfeld specifically asks if the attacks did not present an “opportunity” to launch war against Iraq.

Sept. 15, 2001: Camp David. Bush gathers closest advisers. Much discussion is on Afghanistan, but Wolfowitz advocates attacking Iraq, maybe even before Afghanistan. He says there’s a 10 to 50 percent chance Iraq was involved in 9/11. Bush sends note to Wolfowitz saying he doesn't want to hear more on Iraq that day. Cheney, Powell, Wolfowitz, and Rice vote against hitting Iraq first; Rumsfeld abstains. Powell, who is appalled at the idea of hitting Iraq, finds Rumsfeld abstention interesting. Richard Perle, who is also present, says Wolfowitz planted the seed.

Sept. 16, 2001: Washington, DC. Richard Perle and other neoconservatives send letter to Bush urging him to focus immediately on a war with Iraq, whether or not a connection with 9/11 can be shown.

Sept. 17, 2001: The White House. Bush signs a Top Secret order that lays out his plan for going to war in Afghanistan and directs the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.

Sept. 19, 2001: The Pentagon. Perle convenes a two-day meeting of the Defense Policy Board, a group that advises the Pentagon. He introduces two guest speakers: Prof. Bernard Lewis of Princeton, a longtime friend of Cheney and Wolfowitz, who says U.S. must respond to 9/11 with a show of strength, and must support such democratic reformers in the Middle East as Ahmad Chalabi. The second speaker, in fact, is Ahmad Chalabi, who tells the group that Iraq does possess WMD, although, as yet, there is no evidence linking Iraq to 9/11.

Oct. 7, 2001: Afghanistan. U.S. and U.K. planes bomb Taliban bases; the war against Al Qaeda begins.

Nov. 13, 2001: Afghanistan. The capital, Kabul, falls. Most of the Taliban leaders flee.

Nov. 21, 2001: The White House. At the end of a National Security Council meeting, President Bush secretly directs Rumsfeld to prepare for war on Iraq.

Nov. 27, 2001: Florida. Rumsfeld flies to see General Franks at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa and tells him to update the Top Secret Operation Plan on attacking and invading Iraq.

Dec. 4, 2001: The Pentagon. Franks presents a slightly revised plan on invading Iraq. Estimated force level is reduced from 500,000 to 400,000. Rumsfeld thinks fewer forces will be needed in light of the Afghanistan success. Franks agrees.

Dec. 12, 2002: The Pentagon. Franks returns with updated plan. Rumsfeld tells him he has to look at a plan that he could do “as early as April or May.”

Dec. 20, 2001: New York. The New York Times reporter Judith Miller has front-page interview with Iraqi defector Adnan Ishan Saeed al-Haidere, who says he has recently been working in Baghdad in secret facilities for biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. Miller secures the interview through Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, which has close contacts with Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith. Miller will later say that it is Chalabi who provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to The New York Times.

Dec. 28, 2002: The White House. Franks tells Bush that, with support from other Muslim countries, Iraq could be invaded with an initial 105,000 U.S. forces, but 230,000 eventually would be needed.

Jan. 2002: The White House. Bush’s top speechwriter, Michael Gerson, gives instructions to David Frum, a Canadian, to write a speech making the best case for war in Iraq.

Jan. 29, 2002: Washington, DC. Bush gives State of the Union address; he calls North Korea, Iran, and Iraq an axis of evil and pledges not to wait while dangers gather.

Feb. 1, 2002: The Pentagon. Franks tells Rumsfeld a unilateral U.S.-only invasion of Iraq could be readied in 45 days with an initial force of 105,000; ultimately, 300,000 would be needed to stabilize Iraq after it fell.

Feb. 7, 2002: White House Situation Room. Rumsfeld introduces notion of shock and awe, i.e., building up such a carrier force and bombing onslaught that it might, by itself, trigger regime change.

Feb. 12, 2002: Washington, DC. Powell tells the Senate Budget Committee there are no plans to go to war with Iran or North Korea, but U.S. is looking into ways of bringing about regime change in Iraq.

Feb. 16, 2002: White House. The National Security Council ratifies Policy Directive on Iraq, committing the U.S. to examining ways of bringing about a CIA-backed coup and providing military support for Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress.

Feb. 20, 2002: Iraq. CIA survey team secretly enters northern Iraq to prepare for deployment of CIA paramilitary teams.

Feb. 28, 2002: Pentagon. Franks brings Rumsfeld a list of nearly 4,000 possible bombing targets in Iraq. Rumsfeld tells him to prioritize the list.

March 6, 2002: The White House. In preparation of his upcoming visit to the Middle East, Cheney is briefed by Franks, who tells him what the U.S. will need in its invasion of Iraq from other Arab and Muslim countries. When he does go to the Middle East, the vice president is surprised to learn that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is seen by Arab leaders as a greater threat to the region than Saddam Hussein.

March 9, 2002: Washington, DC. CIA tells the White House reports that Niger was supplying Iraq with uranium were investigated by Ambassador Joseph Wilson and were found not to be credible.

March 14, 2002: The White House. The Joint Chiefs of Staff report that an invasion of Iraq “would place severe strains on personnel and cause deep shortages of certain critical weapons.”

April 20, 2002: Camp David. Bush tell Franks he wants the invasion of Iraq done “right and quickly.”

April 24, 2002: Doha, Qatar. Franks tells his major commanders to do whatever it takes to prepare for an invasion, no matter the costs.

May 11, 2002: Camp David. Franks presents a five-front war plan to Bush.

June 19, 2002: The White House. Franks tells Bush he could do the invasion within 30 days with a little over 100,000 ground assault troops.

Late Aug. 2002: The Pentagon. Office of Special Plans is set up at the Pentagon to plan for the war and its aftermath. Picked to head the OSP is longtime protégé of Richard Perle, Abram Shulsky. As part of its mission, the OSP forges close ties to a parallel intelligence unit within Ariel Sharon’s office in Israel, whose job is to provide key Bush administration people with cooked intelligence on Saddam’s Iraq. One Pentagon official, Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, later relates how she had escorted six or seven Israeli generals to Feith’s OSP office. The generals surged ahead of her, waved aside the required sign-in book, and entered the OSP office; seeing Feith’s office door closed, the generals demanded to know from his secretary who Feith was talking to.

Sept. 7, 2002: The White House. Bush tells reporters that an International Atomic Energy Agency report estimates that the Iraqis are six months away from developing a nuclear weapon. The new report, however, turns out to be an old IAEA document from 1996 that described a weapons program that the inspectors had long ago destroyed.

Sept. 12, 2002: New York. Bush addresses U.N. General Assembly, saying the U.S. will work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary resolutions to go to war with Iraq.

Sept. 16, 2002: New York. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan says he has received a letter from Iraqi authorities allowing inspectors access “without conditions.” Bush administration is livid because it did not say “unfettered access,” meaning “anytime, anyplace.”

Sept. 19, 2002: Washington, DC. Rumsfeld, speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, says current U.N. inspection team is weak. At the White House, Bush says if U.N. Security Council won’t deal with Iraq, “the U.S. and some of our friends will.” Bush also meets with 11 House members, telling them the biggest threat is that Saddam, with his WMD, “can blow up Israel and that would trigger an international incident.”

Oct. 1, 2002: Langley, Virginia. CIA prepares secret National Intelligence Estimate on the case for war with Iraq. NIE claims Saddam has chemical and biological weapons, including mobile labs, and that it is building nuclear weapons. Bush wants condensed version for the public in the form of a White Paper. The White Paper, however, distorts the facts to make the strongest possible case for war. (See the Vanity Fair article for specific examples of distortions.)

Nov. 8, 2002: New York. U.N. Security Council passes Resolution 1441, which gives Iraq a “final opportunity” to come clean on its WMD, adding that the council would meet again, following the inspectors’ report, to “consider the situation.” The French, who oppose war with Iraq, say off the record that they understand the resolution is enough to give America and Britain legal cover for going it alone, if they felt Iraq hadn’t complied to their satisfaction.

Dec. 7, 2002: Baghdad. Iraqi government delivers a 12,000-page document in Arabic to UNMOVIC. It is intended to account for the state of its weapons programs. The U.S. takes possession of it, has it translated, submits it to the Security Council with large portions deleted, then dismisses it as a “material breach” of Resolution 1441.

Jan. 13, 2003: The White House. The French call for a meeting that is held in Rice’s office. Attending are Chirac’s top adviser, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, and French Ambassador to the U.S., Jean-David Levitte. Both explain their country’s reasons for opposing the war, then Levitte says that if the U.S. was determined to go to war, it should not seek a second U.N. resolution, that 1441 arguably gave the White House enough cover, and that France would keep quiet if the U.S. went ahead. White House dismisses the offer because it has promised Tony Blair it would seek a second resolution. The French are angry. On the same day, Bush tells Powell in the Oval office, “I’m really going to do this.” Powell asks if he understands the Pottery Barn principle: if he breaks Iraq, he’ll own it. Bush says he understands.

Jan. 20, 2003: New York. French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin announces that France will not support military intervention in Iraq. The White House is irate.

Jan. 21, 2003: The White House. Franks delivers final war plan to Bush. He estimates fewer than 1,000 U.S. killed. No public pictures of returning coffins and no body count of Iraqis killed will be permitted, as both practices created bad PR during the Vietnam war.

Jan. 25, 2003: White House. Lewis Libby makes presentation on Saddam’s WMD and ties him to bin Laden. Much of the material comes from Feith’s Office of Special Plans. Richard Armitage, the second in authority at the State Department, sees it as drawing the worst conclusions from fragmentary threads; Wolfowitz finds it convincing. Bush aides Karen Hughes and Karl Rove think Powell should make the U.N. presentation. Powell agrees to do it.

Jan. 27, 2003: New York. Hans Blix delivers his first inspections report to U.N. He acknowledges that no WMD have been found but notes that Iraq has failed to account for undetermined quantities of the nerve agent VX and anthrax, and for 6,500 chemical bombs.

Jan. 28, 2003: Washington, DC. Bush gives State of the Union address in which he claims: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Jan. 29, 2003: The State Department. Powell gives his chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, a 48-page dossier that the White House wants Powell to use in his U.N. speech making the case for war with Iraq. The dossier is prepared in Cheney’s office by a team led by Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, and his deputy assistant for national security affairs, John Hannah.

Jan. 30, 2003: Langley, Virginia. Wilkerson, with several staff members and CIA analysts, sets up shop at CIA headquarters to prepare Powell’s speech. Meanwhile the White House supplies 45 more pages on Iraq’s links to terrorism and human rights violations.

Jan. 31, 2003: Langley, Virginia. Wilkerson throws out the White House dossier, suspecting much of it originated with the Iraqi National Congress and its chief, Ahmad Chalabi, whose information in the past often proved suspect or fabricated. Powell is convinced that much of the material had been funneled to Cheney by the separate OSP unit set up by Rumsfeld. “We were so appalled at what had arrived from the White house,” says one staff member.

Feb. 5, 2003: New York. At 2 a.m., on the day of his U.N. speech, Powell receives a call from the CIA’s George Tenet, who says he wants another look at the speech. Tenet is afraid Powell has cut too much about Saddam’s supposed links to terrorism, especially the 9/11 attack. For days the White House and Cheney have pressed Powell to include a widely discredited Czech intelligence report that Mohamed Atta, the 9/11 ringleader, had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer. Powell had thrown out the Prague material as suspect and unverified. But Powell does keep much of what the White House wants, including mobile biological weapons labs, ties to Al Qaeda, and anthrax stockpiles. One of the sources for the mobile labs is an Iraqi major known to the CIA to be a liar. That morning, at the U.N., Powell insists that Tenet sit behind him as a signal that he is relying on the CIA to make the case for war.

Feb. 8, 2003: The White House. President Bush, in his weekly radio address, says: “Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990’s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document-forgery experts to work with Al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. And an Al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990’s for help in acquiring poisons and gases. We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner. This network runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad.”

Feb. 14, 2003: New York. Hans Blix goes before the U.N. Security Council. He contradicts Powell, saying the trucks Powell had described as being used for chemical decontamination could just as easily have been used for routine activity, and he contradicts Powell’s statement that the Iraqis knew in advance when the inspectors would be arriving. And he adds that Iraq is finally taking steps toward real cooperation with the inspectors, allowing them to enter Iraqi presidential palaces, among other previously prohibited sites. Disarmament through inspections is still possible, he concludes.

Feb. 15, 2003: Worldwide. Tens of millions participate in an unprecedented, antiwar demonstration. The biggest crowds are in the countries that support the war: Britain, Italy, and Spain.

Feb. 24, 2003: New York. Claiming Iraq has failed to take the final opportunity afforded it in Resolution 1441, the U.S., Britain, and Spain propose the second resolution Tony Blair has been seeking.

Feb. 27, 2003: The White House. Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel visits Bush and tells him Iraq is a terrorist state that should be invaded as a matter of morality, otherwise Saddam will unleash a weapon of mass destruction on Israel. Bush later remarks, “If Elie Wiesel feels that way, I am not alone.”

March 1, 2003: Turkey. The Turkish government rejects U.S. request to move troops through its country.

March 3, 2003: The White House. Pope John Paul II’s envoy, Cardinal Pio Laghi, visits Bush and tells him war with Iraq would be unjust and illegal because it would cause so many civilian casualties, create a wider gap between the Christian and Muslim world, and overall would not make things better. Bush replies it would absolutely make things better.

March 7, 2003: France. The French announce they will veto a second resolution to authorize the automatic use of force. The U.S. begins lobbying the six undecided members of the Security Council: Pakistan, Chile, Mexico, Cameroon, Guinea, and Angola, having first wiretapped their offices. Chile and Mexico say they will not support a second resolution.

March 10, 2003: France. French President Chirac goes on TV and announces, “My position is that, regardless of the circumstances, France will vote ‘no’.” U.S. and Britain blame France for the diplomatic breakdown, and use it as the reason for not seeking the second resolution.

March 14, 2003: The White House. As a concession to Blair, Bush announces agreement on a road map for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

March 16, 2003: The Azores. Bush, Blair and Spanish prime minister Aznar meet. Bush says they need to start the war soon because antiwar sentiment will only get worse if they delay. He says he is going to give Saddam a 48-hour ultimatum to leave Iraq.

March 17, 2003: The White House. Bush reneges on his commitment to seek U.N. approval, claiming 1441 provides ample authorization. In a TV announcement he gives Saddam the 48-hour ultimatum. Prior to the announcement he calls Australian prime minister Howard and Israeli prime minister Sharon to tell them of his decision. Meanwhile, Cheney tells congressional leaders of the decision, noting that Israel will not be part of the coalition, “but we are working closely with them on their reaction.”

March 18: 2003: London. Blair wins a Commons vote for war, barely carrying his own party.

March 19, 2003: The White House. Bush gives Franks order to execute Operation Iraqi Freedom. Around 4 p.m., CIA information is received that Saddam and his two sons are or will be in a bunker in Baghdad. Cheney advises Bush to strike at the target, effectively beginning the war. Bush agrees. At 7:30 p.m., Rice phones Israeli finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling him the war had begun; he says he knows. Rice then summons Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar to come to the White House. Around 8:30 p.m. she tells him that, within a half-hour, all hell will break loose. At 10:10 p.m., Bush informs the nation the war has started.

April 7, 2003: Washington. Rumsfeld appoints Gen. Jay Garner to direct Pentagon’s new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq. Garner, a JINSA advisor, says the first person he will invite to work with him is former Israeli defense minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer.

May 2, 2003: The USS Lincoln. President Bush tells nation, “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

May 6, 2003: Washington. L. Paul Bremer III is appointed administrator of Iraq, replacing Jay Garner.

June 5, 2003: Washington, DC. The Washington Post reports that VP Cheney and his aide Lewis Libby paid multiple visits to the CIA in the months leading up to the Iraq war. Later, former CIA Counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro will tell a congressional hearing that prior to the war, the White House exerted unprecedented pressure on the CIA and other intelligence agencies to come up with evidence linking Iraq to bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

June 8, 2003: Washington, DC. David Kay, former chief weapons inspector for the U.N., is asked to take over the search for WMD in Iraq.

July 6, 2003: New York. Former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson IV writes column in The New York Times saying he was sent on a fact-finding mission to Niger by the CIA and that, well before the president’s State of the Union Address, he reported his finding that no uranium had been shipped to Iraq.

August 27, 2003: Washington. Newly available documents reveal that Halliburton, the company VP Cheney formerly headed, wins contracts for more than $1.7 billion out of Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to receive hundreds of millions more under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Bechtel Group, George Shultz’s company, wins contracts for one billion dollars.

Sept. 17, 2003: The White House. President Bush tells a reporter, “No, we’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September 11.”

Oct. 2, 2003: Washington, DC. Kay delivers interim report to Congress saying, “We have not yet found stocks of weapons.”

Dec. 13, 2003: Iraq. Saddam Hussein is captured.

Jan. 23, 2004: David Kay resigns.

Jan. 28, 2004: Washington. Regarding the existence of WMD in Iraq, Kay tells Senate Armed Services Committee, “We were almost all wrong.” His testimony forces White House to name a presidential commission to investigate the prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Feb. 5, 2004: Washington, DC. Tenet admits in a speech at Georgetown University that as far back as May 2002 the Defense Information Agency had issued a “fabrication notification” to steer clear of the Iraqi major who had attested to the mobile biological labs mentioned in Powell’s U.N. speech. Somehow the CIA never saw it.

Feb. 24, 2004: Washington, DC. CIA director Tenet tells the Senate Select Committee that, despite our invasion of Afghanistan and occupation of Iraq, the worldwide threat from bin Laden and Al Qaeda has grown, not diminished.

March 11, 2004: Madrid. Train bombs kill 200 people. Search leads to a widening web of organizations that may have few ties to Al Qaeda but share its goals.

March 14, 2004: Madrid. Conservative prime minister José Aznar is defeated by Socialist challenger José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, who ran on a pledge to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq unless they were placed under U.N. sanction. The new prime minister calls the Iraq war an error, saying: “It divided more than it united, there were no reasons for it, time has shown that the arguments for it lacked credibility, and the occupation has been poorly managed.”

April 18, 2004: Madrid. Spain withdraws all its troops from the Coalition of the Willing.

April 19, 2004: Nicaragua. President Maduro says Nicaragua will withdraw its forces from Iraq.

April 28, 2004: CBS’s Sixty Minutes II shows U.S. troops mistreating Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

April 29, 2004: Santo Domingo. The Dominican Republic withdraws its troops from Iraq, citing security concerns. Wolfowitz tells a congressional hearing that Iraq is still a combat zone, “and until it becomes peacekeeping, a lot of countries are probably going to stay on the sidelines.”

May 20, 2004: Baghdad. Iraqi police and U.S. military raid home of Iraqi National Council finance minister Ahmad Chalabi as part of an investigation into suspected fraud. CIA also charges him with informing Iran that the U.S. had cracked its secret codes and was eavesdropping on its intelligence messages. The Pentagon stops monthly payments of $340,000 to Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress.

May 26, 2004: New York. The New York Times acknowledges that its reporters, among them Judith Miller, used questionable sources in affirming the existence of WMD in Iraq, and that Ahmad Chalabi, the INC leader, was feeding bad information to journalists and the White House, information the White House eagerly received.

May 29, 2004: Baghdad. Iyad Alawi, a longtime CIA operative, is chosen interim prime minister of Iraq.

June 4, 2004: Langley, Va. CIA Director George Tenet resigns.

June 16, 2004: Washington, DC. The 9/11 Commission investigating the September 11 attacks reports that there did not appear to be a collaborative relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

June 22, 2004: Washington. Wolfowitz tells a House Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon had underestimated Iraq’s postwar insurgency and that the U.S. may have to keep a significant number of troops in Iraq for years to come.

July 5, 2004: Former U.S. Army General Janis Karpinski, who had been in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison when Iraqi detainees were abused and humiliated, tells BBC radio that she knew of at least one Israeli involved in the prisoner interrogation.

July 9, 2004: Washington. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concludes in its report that the most pivotal assessments used to justify the war against Iraq were unfounded and unreasonable. Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the committee, concludes: “We in Congress would not have authorized that war — we would NOT have authorized that war—with 75 votes if we knew what we know now.” The second part of the report on whether the White House and Pentagon tried to influence intelligence agencies is postponed until after the November election.

July 12, 2004: The Philippines. President Arroyo announces that her country will withdraw from the Coalition of the Willing in order to save the life of a Filipino hostage held by Iraqi insurgents.

Aug. 1, 2004: Number of U.S. killed in the Iraq war reaches 910. The media is barred from showing their returning coffins. Number of Iraqi civilians killed is not available from official U.S. sources; independent sources estimate the number to be between 11,305 and 13,315. (For updates on Iraqis killed and wounded, see: www.iraqbodycount.org.)

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War Without End

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Buchanan's New Book: How Neocons have Hijacked Bush Regime - page 4