War Without End

Alpha

http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=4816

Could Bush Possibly Make the Same Mistake Twice? Yeah.

by Charley Reese
The Bush administration is making the same mistakes with Iran that it made with Iraq. It makes allegations unsupported by facts, refuses to negotiate and threatens sanctions or military action, neither of which is feasible.

In short, it has no rational Iran policy.

The Bush administration seems to be under the impression that the Iranians are pursuing the development of a nuclear weapon. Sound familiar? The Iranians deny it. The administration says, in effect, that they are lying. If the administration has any proof, let's see it. It was so all-fired certain that Iraq was not only pursuing nuclear weapons but had stockpiles of other weapons, all of which has been proven untrue. That was a mistake that has cost us 1,400 lives and 10,000 wounded. Make that mistake with Iran, and you'll see a heck of a lot more body bags coming back to the United States.

Our silly secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, says that the Iranians must live up to their international obligations. Again, a familiar propaganda note. The Bush people claimed Iraq was not complying with U.N. resolutions, but in fact it had. The trouble is that, so far as we can tell, the Iranians are also complying. They signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the Bush administration's pet country, Israel, has refused to sign. The Iranians are cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency and are allowing inspections, which Israel does not. They have a right under the treaty to enrich uranium, but are negotiating with the European Union to forgo that right.

The United States refuses to participate in those negotiations and several times has tried to get the IAEA to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, where it hopes sanctions will be applied. The IAEA has rightfully refused to do so. Even if it did so, China or Russia would certainly veto any resolution mandating sanctions.

Ms. Rice coyly said recently that a military attack against Iran is not on the Bush agenda "at this point." That's a nothing statement, because it does not rule out a military attack.

Are the Iranians pursuing a nuclear weapon? I don't know. They say they are not. But they are more or less surrounded by nuclear powers – the United States, Israel, India and Pakistan. Their reasoning for pursuing nuclear plants is feasible. They know their main export, oil, will run out one day, so by using nuclear fuel to produce internal power, they can extend the life of their most profitable export. They are certainly wise to disperse their facilities, given the fact that the Israelis bombed Iraq's only nuclear reactor in the 1980s.

But let's assume Iran does develop a nuclear weapon. I don't care. I've lived most of my life 30 minutes from total destruction by tens of thousands of the Soviet Union's nuclear warheads. The Bush administration's claim that nuclear deterrence, which worked against a superpower, will not work against a smaller and poorer country is bunk. Israel alone has enough nuclear warheads to pulverize Iran.

Oh, the administration says the Iranians will hand over a nuclear weapon to a terrorist organization. Well, where is any evidence of that? The evidence does show that once countries develop nuclear weapons, they keep pretty tight control over them.

But more to the point, if we don't want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, why not negotiate? Why keep threatening the Iranians? It doesn't make any sense. If I were an Iranian, I would assume that President Bush intends eventually to attack the country. That would be stupid, but if you look at the stupidity of the Iraqi mess, you can't rule it out. Never believe that Bush won't do something just because it's dumb.

Iraq, with just over 20 million people, a flat terrain and a dilapidated military, has given us quite a bit of trouble. Try Iran, which has nearly 70 million people, a mountainous terrain and a much more effective military. You Bush lovers should write your man and advise him to let that sleeping dog lie.

Alpha

Blast cited by U.S. in anti-Syria move
By Steven R. Weisman The New York Times
Wednesday, February 16, 2005

WASHINGTON The Bush administration, condemning the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, is suggesting that Syria is to blame and moving to get a new condemnation of Syria's domination of Lebanon at the UN Security Council.

U.S. and European officials also said the administration was studying the possibility of tougher sanctions on Syria, effectively tightening penalties imposed in May, when Washington said the Syrian government had failed to act against militant groups in Israel and against a supply line from Syria to the insurgents in Iraq.

Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, and other Bush administration officials said they had no concrete evidence of Syria's involvement in the killing of Hariri, a prominent opposition leader and critic of Syria's role in Lebanon, who died along with at least 11 others Monday when a car bomb blew up next to his motorcade in Beirut.

In fact, the Syrian foreign minister, Farouk al-Sharaa, speaking at a news conference in Damascus, also condemned the attack.

At the United Nations, the Security Council scheduled a meeting to discuss the bombing. In a resolution passed last year to condemn Syria's role in Lebanon, Syria's name was not mentioned; there was only a reference to foreign forces in Lebanon.

"We condemn this brutal attack in the strongest possible terms," McClellan said of the Hariri killing, adding that it was "a terrible reminder that the Lebanese people must be able to pursue their aspirations and determine their own political future free from violence and intimidation and free from Syrian occupation."

U.S. officials said the killing raised concern that Lebanon could plunge back into the civil war that it suffered throughout the 1980s. They also said it underscored growing U.S. impatience with the role played by Syria in the Middle East. Several officials condemned Syria's role in Lebanon as part of their comments on the attack.

"We're going to turn up the heat on Syria, that's for sure," a senior State Department official said. "It's been a pretty steady progression of pressure up to now, but I think it's going to spike in the wake of this event. Even though there's no evidence to link it to Syria, Syria has, by negligence or design, allowed Lebanon to become destabilized."

Syria has effectively controlled Lebanon since it moved troops into the country in 1976, at the outset of the civil war. In 1981 Syria forced the Beirut government to sign a treaty declaring that Syria would play the dominant role in its foreign policy.

In the view of U.S. analysts, Syria has in turn done the bidding of Iran, using Syrian territory to support Hezbollah, a major presence in Lebanon, and other Islamic groups that have attacked Israel.

The United States has focused mounting attention on Iran in recent weeks.

It has been doing so because of suspicions that Iran might have a nuclear arms program and because of its support of groups trying to disrupt a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A Western diplomat said the United States, in condemning Syria's possible role in the Beirut attack, may also be trying to rebuke Iran, signaling that U.S. tolerance of such behavior was diminishing. On the other hand, there are few sanctions available that the United States has not already imposed on Syria.

Western diplomats have sometimes suggested that Syria is "low-hanging fruit" in the campaign against terrorists: a nation that could be punished by further isolation and sanctions because its economy is in poor shape. Iran, by contrast, is awash in oil revenues, and the difficulties of mounting an international campaign against it are becoming increasingly obvious as Europeans call for engagement with Iran rather than confrontation.

Some in the Bush administration have argued for the last two years that Syria's role has not always been destructive. In particular, some at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have credited Syria with cracking down on some anti-Western militant groups and with trying at least partly to stop the flow of arms and financing to insurgents in Iraq.

That more benign view of Syria has lost favor, however, administration officials say. Earlier this year, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage traveled to Syria and gave what a senior official said Monday was a very stern warning to do more to stop the Iraq insurgency and aid to militant anti-Israel groups.

"He went with a pretty tough message, because pressure is building in the administration to do something," the official said. "We've seen some cooperation on the border with the Iraqis and some repatriation of some of the Iraqi money. But there's not been nearly enough action to make us satisfied."

Last May, President George W. Bush banned virtually all U.S. exports to Syria, except for food and medicine, and barred flights between Syria and the United States, except for emergencies. The Treasury Department also moved to freeze assets of Syrians with ties to terrorists, lethal weapons or the Lebanon occupation.

But these actions were described even in the administration as symbolic. Critics of Syria in Congress want a ban on exports or U.S. investments in Syria.

U.S. officials have raised the pressure on Syria since Bush's inaugural address and the congressional testimony of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her confirmation hearings, when she called Syria one of several "outposts of tyranny" in the world.

Warren Hoge contributed reporting from the United Nations and Richard W. Stevenson from Washington.

Alpha

Douglas Feith: Portrait of
a Neoconservative
By Tom Barry | September 3, 2004

Feith served as the number three civilian in the George W. Bush administration's Defense Department, under Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Undersecretary for Policy Feith had previously served in the Reagan administration, starting off as Middle East specialist at the National Security Council (1981-82) and then transferring to the Defense Department where he spent two years as staff lawyer for Assistant Defense Secretary Richard Perle. In 1984 Feith advanced to become Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy. Feith and Perle were among the leading advocates of a policy to build closer U.S. military and diplomatic ties with Turkey and to increase the military ties between Turkey and Israel. (21)

Feith left DOD in mid-1986 to found the Feith & Zell law firm, based initially in Israel, whose clients included major military contractor Northrup Grumman. In 1989 Feith established another company, International Advisors, Inc., which provided lobbying services to foreign clients including Turkey.

Feith's private business dealings raised eyebrows in Washington. In 1999, his firm Feith & Zell formed an alliance with the Israel-based Zell, Goldberg & Co., which resulted in the creation of the Fandz International Law Group. According to Fandz's web site, the law group "has recently established a task force dealing with issues and opportunities relating to the recently ended war with Iraq.and is assisting regional construction and logistics firms to collaborate with contractors from the United States and other coalition countries in implementing infrastructure and other reconstruction projects in Iraq." Remarked Washington Post columnist Al Kamen, "Interested parties can reach [Fandz] through its Web site, at www.fandz.com. Fandz.com? Hmmm. Rings a bell. Oh, yes, that was the Web site of the Washington law firm of Feith & Zell, P.C., as in Douglas Feith [the] undersecretary of defense for policy and head of—what else?—reconstruction matters in Iraq. It would be impossible indeed to overestimate how perfect ZGC would be in 'assisting American companies in their relations with the United States government in connection with Iraqi reconstruction projects'." (9) (15)

A vocal advocate of U.S. intervention in the Middle East and for the hard-line policies of the Likud party in Israel, Feith has been involved in or overseen the activities of two controversial Pentagon operations—the Defense Policy Board, whose former head Richard Perle resigned after concerns arose about conflicts of interest between his board duties and business dealings, and the Office of Special Plans (OSP), which allegedly misrepresented intelligence on Iraq to support administration policies. Feith's office not only housed the Office of Special Plans and other special intelligence operations associated with the Near East and South Asia (NESA) office and the Office of Northern Gulf Affairs but also the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, who directed military policy on interrogations of the Guantanamo Bay detainees and then arranged for the transfer of the base's commanding officer, Maj. General Geoffrey Miller to the Abu Ghraib prison in an effort to extract more information from Iraqi prisoners.

Feith & Israel

Feith cannot be described by just one label. He is a longtime militarist, a neoconservative, and a right-wing Zionist. According to Bob Woodward's book, Plan of Attack, Feith was described by the military commander who led the Iraq invasion, Gen. Tommy Franks, as "the f---ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth," referring to the bad intelligence fed to the military about Iraq and the extent of possible resistance to a U.S. invasion.

Feith also has a reputation as a prolific writer, having published articles on international law and on foreign and defense policy in The New York Times, Washington Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and New Republic.

His militarism—and close ties with the military-industrial complex—were evident in his policy work in the Pentagon working with Richard Perle in the 1980s and then part of the Vulcans along with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Cheney in the Bush II administration; his work as a corporate lobbyist in the 1990s for Northrup Grumman along other military contractors; and his prominent role in the Center for Security Policy and in the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). His political orientation is distinctly neoconservative, as evident in his affiliations with such groups as the Middle East Forum, Center for Security Policy, and Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS). Feith has also been associated with the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP), a policy institute that promotes missile defense, space weapons, and nuclear weapons development. Feith, along with Max Kampelman, were team leaders for NIPP initiatives, funded by the right-wing Smith Richardson Foundation, for studies advocating the implementation of ambitious missile defense systems.

Feith served as chairman of the board of directors of the Center for Security Policy, a policy institute that promotes higher military budgets, missile defense systems, space weapons programs, and hard-line policies in the Middle East and East Asia. CSP was founded in 1988 by Frank Gaffney, a fellow neocon and, like Feith, a former DOD official in the Reagan administration. Feith helped Gaffney organize CSP's large advisory board, which includes leading neocons, arms lobbyists, and the leading congressional members linked to the military-industrial complex. Feith has also served as an adviser to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which aims to foster closer working relationships between the Israeli military, the U.S. military, the Pentagon, and military contractors in both countries.

Feith has supported lobbying efforts aimed at persuading the United States to drop out of treaties and arms control agreements. Wrote one journalist in The Nation, "Largely ignored or derided at the time, a 1995 [Center for Security Policy (CSP)] memo co-written by Douglas Feith holding that the United States should withdraw from the ABM [antiballistic missile] treaty has essentially become policy, as have other CSP reports opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the International Criminal Court." (8) (14)

Feith is a self-proclaimed Zionist—not a Labor Zionist but a right-wing Zionist close to the Likud party and the Zionist Organization of America.

In the 1990s, Feith was an outspoken critic of the Middle East policies of both the Bush and Clinton administrations which he said were based on the faulty "peace now" and "land for peace" policy frameworks. Instead, he called for a "peace through strength" agenda for Israel and the United States—invoking a phrase promoted by the neoconservatives since the mid-1970s, which became the slogan of the Center for Security Policy.

The Middle East Information Center described Feith as an "ideologue with an extreme anti-Arab bias," remarking that "during the Clinton years, Feith continued to oppose any agreement negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinians: Oslo, Hebron and Wye." Feith "defined Oslo as, "one-sided Israeli concessions, inflated Palestinian expectations, broken Palestinian solemn understandings, Palestinian violence.and American rewards for Palestinian recalcitrance."(5)

In 1991, Feith, together with Frank Gaffney (founder of the Center for Security Policy), addressed the National Leadership Conference of the State of Israel Bonds Organization. In Feith's view, it was foolish for the U.S. government and Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians over issues of land given that contrasting principles—not differences over occupied lands—fueled the Israeli-Arab conflict. He notes that, even before Israel was established, Western political leaders mistakenly thought that "the vast territories newly made available for the fulfillment of Arab ambitions for independence would make it easier to win acceptance within the region of a Jewish state in Palestine." According to Feith, no matter what they say publicly or at the negotiating table, the Palestinians have always rejected the principle of legitimacy, namely "the legitimacy of Zionist claims to a Jewish National Homeland in the Land of Israel." Criticizing the George H. W. Bush administration's attempt to broker a land for peace deal, Feith warned, "If Western statesmen openly recognized the problem as a clash of principles, they would not be able to market hope through the launching of peace initiatives." (16)

In 1997 the Zionist Organization of America honored Dalck Feith and Douglas Feith at its annual dinner. It described the Feiths as "noted Jewish philanthropists and pro-Israel activists." The father was awarded the group's special Centennial Award "for his lifetime of service to Israel and the Jewish people," while Douglas received the "prestigious Louis D. Brandeis Award." (17)

Dalck Feith was a militant in Betar, a Zionist youth movement founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, an admirer of Mussolini. Betar, whose members wore dark brown uniforms and spouted militaristic slogans modeled after other fascistic movements, was associated with the Revisionist Movement, which evolved in Poland to become the Herut Party, which later became the Likud Party. (18)

In 1999 Douglas Feith wrote an essay for a book entitled The Dangers of a Palestinian State, which was published by ZOA. Also in 1999 Feith spoke to a 150-member ZOA lobbying mission to Congress that called, among other things, for "U.S. action against Palestinian Arab killers of Americans" and for moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The ZOA lobbying group also criticized the Clinton administration for its "refusal to criticize illegal Palestinian Arab construction in Jerusalem and the territories, which is far more extensive than Israeli construction there." (19)

Initially, Feith strongly supported the Netanyahu government controlled by the Likud party. Immediately before Netanyahu took office, Feith in a Washington Times op-ed wrote: "His Likud party is in general about as radical as our Republican Party. Mr. Netanyahu favors diplomatic, defense, and economic policies for Israel similar in principal to the kind of policies that Reaganites favored (and favor) for the United States." In the opinion piece, Feith echoed the Likud position on peace negotiations and occupied territories. According to Feith, "Israel is unlikely over time to retain control over pieces of territory unless its people actually live there. Supporters of settlements reason: If Israelis do not settle an area in the territories, Israel will eventually be forced to relinquish it. If it relinquishes the territories generally, its security will be undermined and peace therefore will not be possible."

Feith wrote that the Likud party's policies were guided by the "peace-through-strength principle." Feith took the opportunity of the op-ed to explain that both Israel and the United States would benefit from a strong commitment to missile defense. According to Feith, Israel would directly benefit from the installation of a sea-based, wide-area missile defense system, which would supplement Israel's own national missile defense system that the U.S. helped develop. Noting the symbiosis of U.S. and Israeli interests, Feith wrote that Netanyahu knew that "if he encourages Israel's friends in Congress to support such programs, he will create much good will with the broad-based forces in the United States, led by the top Republicans in Congress, that deem missile defense the gravest U.S. military deficiency." Feith didn't see fit to mention that, along with Israel, the main beneficiary of such a global missile defense system would be military contractors such as the ones he represented in his law firm, including Northrup Grumman. (20)

Feith is also well known for his participation—along with neoconservative big wigs Richard Perle and David Wurmser—in a 1996 study organized by the Israel-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, which urged scrapping the then-ongoing peace process. The study, titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," advised Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu "to work closely with Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize, and roll back" regional threats, help overthrow Hussein, and strike "Syrian military targets in Lebanon" and possibly in Syria proper.

Three of the six authors of the report—Perle (who was IASPS team leader), Wurmser, and Feith—helped set the Middle East strategy, including strong support for Sharon's hard-line policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the Bush II administration. Perle chaired the DOD's Defense Policy Board, Feith became undersecretary of defense for policy, and Wurmser became Vice President Cheney's top Middle East adviser after leaving the State Department where he worked under Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton.

Other members of the IASPS study group on "A New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000" included James Colbert of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Meyrav Wurmser of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), and Jonathan Torop of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a neoconservative think tank founded by a director of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). At the time the report was published, David Wurmser was an associate of IASPS.

As guiding principles for a new framework of Israeli-U.S. policy in the Middle East, the report advocated that the new Likud government do the following:

Change the nature of its relations with the Palestinians, including upholding the right of hot pursuit for self defense into all Palestinian areas and nurturing alternatives to Arafat's exclusive grip on Palestinian society.
Forge a new basis for relations with the United States—stressing self-reliance, maturity, strategic cooperation on areas of mutual concern, and furthering values inherent to the West.
Israel has the opportunity to make a clean break; it can forge a peace process and strategy based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism, the starting point of which must be economic reform. (13)
By 1997 Feith and other right-wing Zionists in the United States were expressing their disappointment that the Netanyahu government had not "dismantled the Oslo process," as Feith wrote in Commentary, the neoconservative magazine of the American Jewish Committee. Feith then proceeded to outline a radical break with what he characterized as the "peace now" framework of negotiations. Instead, Feith recommended that Netanyahu fulfill his "peace through strength" campaign promise. "Repudiating Oslo would compel Israel, first and foremost, to undo the grossest of the errors inherent in the accords: the arming of scores of thousands of PA 'policemen'." Feith asserted that the "PA's security force has succeeded primarily in aggravating Israel's terrorism problem." What is more, Feith argued for Israel "to deflate expectations of imminent peace" and to "preach sobriety and defense." (21) It was not until a new Likud government was formed under Ariel Sharon and when Feith and other Zionists such as Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, and Michael Rubin, together with militarists such as Rumsfeld and Cheney, took over control of Middle East policy during the Bush II administration that Israel, supported by the United States, made a "clean break" from the Oslo framework.

Typical of other neoconservatives, Feith in public statements has not made reference to his own Zionist convictions. Rather in congressional testimony and in op-eds in major media, Feith has instead argued that U.S. policy in the Middle East should be guided by concerns about human rights and democracy. Israel, according to Feith, should never enter into good-faith negotiations with Arab countries or the PA because they are not democratic. Moreover, human rights violations in Syria, Iran, and Iraq justify aggressive U.S. and Israeli policies aimed at ousting undemocratic and repressive regimes. Israeli occupations are justified in the name of ensuring the national security of democratic Israel. (22)

In addition to his close ties with the right-wing ZOA, Douglas Feith before assuming his current position as the third ranked civilian in the Pentagon cofounded One Jerusalem. Alarmed at the conciliatory direction of the Camp David peace talks, prominent Israelis and Jewish Americans founded One Jerusalem with the objective of “saving a united Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel.” Other cofounders of this Jerusalem-based organization are David Steinmann, chairman of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, board member of the Center for Security Policy, and chairman of the executive committee of the Middle East Forum; Dore Gold, a top adviser to Prime Minister Sharon; and Natan Sharansky; Israel's Minister of Diaspora Affairs and current chairman of One Jerusalem.

Although an organization of American Jewish and Israeli right-wing Zionists, One Jerusalem actively courts the involvement of Christian Zionists. In May 2003, One Jerusalem hosted the Interfaith Zionist Summit in Washington, DC, bringing together such Christian Zionists as Gary Bauer of American Values and Roberta Combs of the Christian Coalition with Daniel Pipes of Middle East Forum and Mort Klein of the Zionist Organization of America. (27)

Intelligence Operations and Scandals

Feith is no stranger to intelligence scandals. In 1982 he left the National Security Council under the shadow of an FBI investigation of administration officials suspected of passing intelligence information to Israel. (30) During the Bush II administration, investigative reports by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker focused public attention on the Office of Special Plans that came under Feith's supervision. (23)

In the days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Feith and Wolfowitz started cooking intelligence to meet the needs of the radically new foreign and military policy that included regime change in Iraq as its top priority.

One might have thought that the priority for a special intelligence would have been to determine the whereabouts of the terrorist network that had just attacked the homeland. But Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Feith, working closely with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Richard Cheney, had other intelligence priorities. This loosely organized team soon became the Office of Special Plans directed by Abram Shulksy, formerly of RAND and the National Strategy Information Center (NSIC). The objective of this closet intelligence team, according to Rumsfeld, was to "search for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists." OSP's mission was to create intelligence that the Pentagon and vice president could use to press their case for an Iraq invasion with the president and Congress.

About the same time the Pentagon took the first steps toward launching a counterintelligence operation called the Office of Strategic Intelligence to support the emerging security doctrine of preventive war. But this shadowy office, whose very purpose was to create propaganda and to counter information coming out of Iraq, was quickly disbanded. Congressional members expressed their concern that a counterintelligence office would not limit itself to discrediting the intelligence of U.S. adversaries. Such a secret counterintelligence office, critics warned, either intentionally or inadvertently might spread disinformation to the U.S. public and policy community as part of the build-up to the planned invasion.

Feith oversaw these efforts to provide the type of "strategic intelligence" needed to drive this policy agenda. As the Pentagon's top policy official in Middle East affairs, Feith had oversight authority of the DOD's Near East and South Asia bureau (NESA). That office came under the direct supervision of William Luti, a retired Navy officer who is a Newt Gingrich protégé and who has long advocated a U.S. military invasion of Iraq.

The OSP worked closely with Ahmed Chalabi and others from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an expatriate group promoted by the neoconservatives to replace the Hussein regime once U.S. troops were in Baghdad. Chalabi assured the Pentagon that a U.S. invasion would be supported by widespread Iraqi resistance, leading to claims by top administration officials and neocon pundits that the invasion would be a "cakewalk." The OSP also relied on intelligence flows about Iraq from a rump unit established in the offices of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon—who like Chalabi was a proponent of a U.S. military invasion and had close relations with neocons like Wolfowitz and Feith. (24)

Feith became embroiled in a new intelligence scandal in late August 2004 when it was reported that the FBI had for the past two years been investigating intelligence leaks to Israel from the Pentagon. The Pentagon official named in the media reports is Lawrence Franklin, who was brought into the Office of Special Plans from the Defense Intelligence Agency. Franklin, who had served in the military attache's office in the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv in the late 1990s as a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, is suspected of passing classified information about Iran to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee and Israel.

The Israeli government and the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee have denied that they engaged in any criminal operations involving classified Pentagon documents about Iran. Israeli cabinet minister Natan Sharansky, a cofounder with Feith of the right-wing Zionist organization One Jerusalem, said, “There are absolutely no attempts to involve any member of the Jewish community and any general American citizens to spy for Israel against the United States.” He observed that the investigation of DOD Office of Planning staff most likely stemmed from an interagency rivalry within the U.S. government. (29)

And Michael Ledeen told Newsweek that the espionage allegations against his close friend Franklin were “nonsensical.” (25) The FBI is also investigating whether Franklin and other DOD officials passed classified information to Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. Ledeen and other neocons, like Sharansky, see the investigations as instigated by the State Department and the CIA to undermine the credibility of the neoconservatives and to obstruct their Middle East restructuring agenda, including regime change in Iran. According to one neocon interviewed by the Washington Post, "This is part of a civil war with the administration, a basic dislike between the old CIA and the neoconservatives." (26)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sources
(1) U.S. Department of Defense: Undersecretary of Defense for Policy
http://www.defense.gov/policy/bio/feith.html

(2) PRWatch.org
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Douglas_Feith

(3) Center for Security Policy
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?section=static&page=events

(4) People for the American Way
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=6181

(5) Middle East Information Center
http://middleeastinfo.org/article701.html

(6) Zionist Organization of America
http://www.zoa.org/pressrel/19971013a.htm

(7) United States Institute for Peace
http://www.usip.org/aboutus/board.html

(8) Center for Security Policy 98-D139
http://www.security-policy.org/papers/1998/98-D139.html

(9) FANDZ International Law Group
http://www.fandz.com/html/fandz.html

(10) Statement of the Honorable Douglas J. Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Senate Armed Services Hearing on the Nuclear Posture Review
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/021402feith.pdf

(11) The Middle East Forum
http://www.meforum.org/research/lsg.php

(12) Jim Lobe, “Pentagon Office Home to Neocon Network,” IPS, August 7, 2003
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=19565

(13) "A Clean Break: a New Strategy for Securing the Realm," IASPS
http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm

(14) Jason Vest, “The Men from JINSA and CSP,” The Nation, August 15, 2002
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20020902&s=vest

(15) Al Kamen, “Feith-Based Initiative,” Washington Post, September 10, 2003

(16) Douglas Feith, ""The Historical Perspective on 'Land for Peace," National Leadership Conference on the State of Israel, October 14, 1991

(17) "News Release," Zionist Organization of America, October 13, 1997
www.zoa.org/pressrel/19971013a.htm

(18) "Jabotinsky—A Brief Biography & Quotes"
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Famous-Zionist-Quotes/Story640.html

(19) "News Release," Zionist Organization of America, August 31, 2004
www.zoa.org/pressrel/1999/19990629a.htm

(20) Douglas J. Feith, "About as radical as the Reaganites," Washington Times, June 18, 1996

(21) Douglas J. Feith, "A Strategy for Israel," Commentary, September 1997

(22) See, for example, Testimony by Douglas Feith before the House Human Rights Caucus," April 24, 1991

(23) Seymour M. Hersh, "Selective Intelligence," New Yorker, May 12, 2003; Seymour M. Hersh, "The Stovepipe," New Yorker, October 27, 2003

(24) Robert Dreyfus, "More Missing Intelligence," The Nation, July 7, 2003

(25) Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, "And now a mole," Newsweek, September 6, 2004

(26) Susan Schmidt and Robin Wright, "Leak Probe More Than Two Years Old," Washington Post, September 2, 2004

(27) OneJerusalem.org
www.oneJerusalem.org

(28) James J. Zogby, “A Dangerous Appointment,” April 26, 2002
http://middleastinfo.org/article701.html

(29) “Israeli Held Meetings with U.S. Analyst,” New York Times, August 30, 2004

(30) Stephen Green, “Serving Two Flags: Neo-cons, Israel, and the Bush Administration,” CounterPunch Special Report, February 28/29, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Published by the Right Web Program at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC). ©2004. All rights reserved.

Recommended citation:
Tom Barry, "Douglas Feith: Portrait of a Neoconservative," IRC Right Web (Silver City, NM: Interhemispheric Resource Center, September 3, 2004).

Web location:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2004/0409feith.php

Production information:
Author: Tom Barry, IRC
Layout: Chellee Chase-Saiz, IRC

Alpha

This article appears in the October 17, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Cheney Behind New
Mideast War Drive:
Return of `Clean Break'

by Jeffrey Steinberg

With very little fanfare, in September David Wurmser moved over from the State Department office of arms control chief and leading war-party agitator John Bolton, to the Old Executive Office Building, working directly under Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Wurmser's move was highly significant, given that the former American Enterprise Institute and Washington Institute for Near East Policy neo-conservatives was one of the primary authors of the now-infamous 1996 "A Clean Break" document, which spelled out the current joint Mideast war strategy of the Ariel Sharon government in Israel and the Cheney cabal inside the Bush Administration in the United States.

Just days after Wurmser joined the Vice President's "shadow national security council," the Bush Administration—at Cheney's urging—made an abrupt shift in policy towards Syria, a shift that has now brought the entire Mideast region to the brink of war and chaos—worse, even, than the fiasco of the American occupation of Iraq, which military experts are increasingly describing as "our new Vietnam" (see page 60).

At an American Enterprise Institute event on Oct. 7, Leo Strauss acolyte William Kristol, the publisher and editor of the Weekly Standard, candidly admitted that he was miffed that the United States had not already moved beyond the Iraq war to the "next regime change" of "the next horrible" Middle East Arab "dictator"—Syrian President Bashar Assad.

`A Clean Break' Revisited
Turn the clock back seven years. On July 8, 1996, Richard Perle, currently a member, and formerly the head of the Defense Policy Board in the Don Rumsfeld Pentagon, delivered a document to the new Israeli Prime Minister, Jabotinskyite Benjamin Netanyahu. Perle, and a team of American neo-cons, had been tasked by Netanyahu—through the Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS)—to draft a strategy for abrogating the Oslo Accords and overturning the entire concept of "comprehensive land for peace," in favor of a jackboot policy of U.S.-Israeli-Turkish raw military conquest and occupation.

The short policy memo, which Netanyahu, and his successor-Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, totally adopted as the core strategy of their administrations, spelled out a four-pronged attack on the peace process and the entire Arab world. It has become a self-evident truth that, since the Bush "43" and Sharon governments came into power simultaneously in early 2001, "A Clean Break" has been the guiding strategic doctrine of both—particularly following the irregular warfare attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Perle-Wurmser policy document demanded: 1) Destroy Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, blaming them for every act of Palestinian terrorism, including the attacks from Hamas, an organization which Sharon had helped launch during his early 1980s tenure as Minister of Defense. 2) Induce the United States to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. 3) Launch war against Syria after Saddam's regime is disposed of, including striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and targets in Syria proper. 4) Parlay the overthrow of the Ba'athist regimes in Baghdad and Damascus into the "democratization" of the entire Arab world, including through further military actions against Iran, Saudi Arabia, and "the ultimate prize," Egypt (see Documentation following for the "Clean Break" report).

On Oct. 5, for the first time in 30 years, Israel launched bombing raids against Syria, targetting a purported "Palestinian terrorist camp" inside Syrian territory. The bombing immediately raised fears that Sharon is preparing a nuclear strike, most likely against Iran. A senior Israeli intelligence source told EIR that Sharon's action was clearly backed by the "pro-Sharon" crowd in Washington, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: "They continue to be committed to their basic plan: Destroy Iran and Syria, and make Israel the dominant power in the region, and drive the Palestinians across the Jordan River." The source added that there "is obviously an agreement in Washington to do nothing." In a press conference a day after the Israel attack on Syria, President George W. Bush said Sharon had the right to "defend his own people," and then added, "We would be doing the same thing."

'Clean Break' Who's Who
In addition to arch-chicken-hawk Richard Perle, the other participants in the "Clean Break" exercise now constitute the hard core of the neo-con apparatus poisoning the Bush Administration.

The principal author of "Clean Break" and a series of follow-on IASPS strategy papers elaborating the new balance of power schema for the Middle East, was David Wurmser, now in the Office of Vice President Cheney. Wurmser's wife, Meyrav Wurmser, another of the "Clean Break" authors, is the head of Middle East policy at the Hudson Institute, a neo-con hotbed, heavily financed by Lord Conrad Black, owner of the Hollinger Corporation and sugar-daddy to Richard Perle, who was installed by Black on the Hudson Institute board as soon as the London-based publisher poured a pile of cash into the think tank at the start of the Bush "43" Presidency. Meyrav Wurmser received her doctorate at George Washington University, by researching the life and works of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism and a self-professed fascist. Before coming to Hudson, she headed the Washington office of the Middle East Research and Investigation Project (MERIP), of Col. Yigal Carmon, a retired Israeli Army Intelligence careerist, who is hard-wired into the U.S.A. neo-con gang.

Meyrav Wurmser has taken the point in promoting the overthrow of the House of Saud and the American military occupation of the Saudi Arabian oil fields, through a string of Hudson Institute policy papers, commentaries, and seminars.

Hudson has also played a pivotal role in the drive for war against Syria and Lebanon, as spelled out in "Clean Break." On March 7, 2003, Hudson sponsored a forum addressed by Gen. Michel Aoun, who was Prime Minister of Lebanon from 1988-1990, and who is pushing a military action against Syria, right out of the pages of "Clean Break."

Other authors of the 1996 war scheme were: Douglas Feith, now Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy, and the overseer of the Office of Special Plans "information warfare" unit, which was instrumental in the black propaganda campaign to sell President Bush and the U.S. Congress on the Iraq war; and Charles Fairbanks, Jr., a longtime friend and disciple of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, dating back to their graduate studies under Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago. Fairbanks is now at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

From Words to Warfare
On Sept. 16, just as David Wurmser was going to Cheney's office to replace Eric Edelman, a longtime Wolfowitz protégé now tapped to be the new U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, the Syria war drive was seriously launched. Chief arms control provocateur John Bolton was given the green light to testify before a House International Relations subcommittee hearing on Syria and Lebanon. That testimony had been held up for several months, as the result of a direct intervention by the Central Intelligence Agency, which issued a highly unusual white paper challenging many of Bolton's planned allegations of Syrian current involvement in terrorist operations and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

The fact that Bolton was given the go-ahead to Capitol Hill signalled that Cheney had scored a tactical victory over those in the Bush Administration who were promoting a dialogue with Damascus. In fact, Bolton's provocative testimony undercut quiet efforts, then under way, to establish fresh channels of cooperation between the United States and the Assad government.

The day after Bolton's appearance, the same House subcommittee continued the anti-Damascus rant, by hosting General Aoun and rabid chicken-hawk Daniel Pipes, who demanded an immediate confrontation with Syria.

This public display of venom in Washington was all the signal that Ariel Sharon needed. On Oct. 5, Israeli Air Force jets bombed a Palestinian camp deep inside Syrian territory, ostensibly in retaliation for an Islamic Jihad suicide bombing in Haifa the day before. However, the Sharon war cabinet had approved a Syrian bombing six weeks earlier. The Bolton appearance and the promotion of Wurmser into Cheney's inner sanctum just served as the green light.

To make the linkage between the Israeli actions and the Cheney-led Bush Administration tilt even even more transparent, on Oct. 8 the White House announced that it would no longer oppose Congressional passage of the Syrian Accountability and Restoration of Lebanese Sovereignty Act, the equivalent to the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act which set in motion the drive towards war against Saddam Hussein.

This time, Sharon and Cheney do not intend to wait five years to get their war. Unless they are stopped, their timetable is to have Israel launch war on Syria by November 2003. And heaven help the American GIs in Iraq if Sharon and Cheney get their way. As Lyndon LaRouche has demanded, "Beast-man" Cheney needs to be dumped from power within the next 30 days; and, along with him, the entire neo-con cabal. As Bush "41" and Karl Rove must understand by now, Cheney and his gang of "Clean Break" fanatics are the albatross around George W. Bush's neck, and time is running out.

Alpha

Alpha

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/19/cia-director-says-iraq-war-helps-recruit-terrorists.php

Alpha · Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2005 3:15 pm Post subject: The Anti-Conservatives

The Anti-Conservatives

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/19/the-anti-conservatives.php

Alpha · Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 3:17 am Post subject:

U. Avnery: Bush Targets Iran and Syria

Uri Avnery
19.2.05

Beware of the Dog!

It is not very flattering to be paraded like a Rottweiler on a leash, whose master threatens to let him loose on his enemies. But this is our situation now.

Vice President Dick Cheney threatened a few weeks ago that if Iran continues to develop its nuclear capabilities, Israel might attack her.

This week, President George Bush repeated this threat. If he were the leader of Israel, he declared, he would have been feeling threatened by Iran. He reminded those who are a little slow that the United States has undertaken to defend Israel if there is a threat to its security.

All this adds up to a clear warning: if Iran does not submit to the orders of the US (and, perhaps, even if it does) Israel will attack it with American help, much as it attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor some 24 years ago.

The same week, something quite unexpected happened: Ariel Sharon sent the Chief-of-Staff, Moshe Ya’alon, packing. His successor will most probably be General Dan Halutz.

Halutz is, of course, a pilot, and one who played his part in the 1981 attack on the Iraqi reactor. If he succeeds Ya’alon, it will be the first time in the annals of the Israel Defense Forces that an airman is appointed Chief-of-Staff. That is rather curious. In the coming year, the army will be called upon to carry out a very difficult operation on land: the evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements. The appointment of an Air Force general as Chief-of-Staff may hint that the IDF is planning something even more important in the air.

(Entr’act: Nobody will shed a tear at the removal of Ya’alon. As Chief-of-Staff, he bears responsibility for all the terrible things that happened in the army during the last three years, from the “killing verification” of a 13-year old girl to the “neighbor practice” – compelling a Palestinian civilian to walk in front of soldiers on their way to kill a militant. But if Ya’alon is succeeded by Halutz, it will confirm the pessimistic dictum that for every bad man removed there is an even worse one to succeed him.

For those who have forgotten: Halutz (“pioneer”, in Hebrew) aroused a public storm after the Air Force dropped a one-ton bomb on the house of a Hamas leader and killed him together with 15 civilians, including nine children. Asked what he feels when dropping such a bomb, he answered “a slight bump”, adding that he sleeps well afterwards. On the same opportunity he vilified Gush Shalom for its actions against war crimes and demanded that we be put on trial for treason.)

Back to Bush-Cheney and the Rottweiler.

When Bush came to power for the first time, the Neo-Cons laid before him a coherent plan for the extension of the American Empire in the Middle East. It contained three chapters:

One, to conquer Iraq in order to take control of its immense oil reserves and place an American garrison at the critical junction between the Caspian Sea oil and the Saudi resources.

Two, to break the Iranian regime and return Iran to the American bloc.

Three, to do the same to Syria and Lebanon. It was not yet decided whether Iran would come before Syria, or the other way round.

It might have been assumed that the experience of the American adventure in Iraq would cancel the next chapters. The Iraqi people did not receive the occupying army with flowers. The pretext for the invasion – Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction – was exposed as a blatant lie. The armed insurrection continues. The future of the Iraqi state hangs in the balance, even after the recent elections. The country may well break up into three parts, creating shock waves all around the Middle East.

Naive people believe that after all this, Bush would not risk more adventures of this kind. They are wrong.

First, because a primitive and vain person like him never admits to failure. When one of his adventures fails, this just drives him on to even more ambitious ones.

Second, the failure does indeed cost a lot of lives and destroys the infrastructure of life in Iraq, but that doesn’t matter for the planners of the operation. The main aim – establishing a permanent garrison in the country - has been achieved. Outside of Iraq, nobody is demanding that the American soldiers leave. And, whatever the acts of sabotage, the Iraqi oil is controlled by the US. The oil barons, who are the patrons of the Bush family, can be well satisfied.

The Europeans and Russian are trying to block Bush’s path. He is now going to pay a state visit to the EU and NATO, trying to convince them by sweet talk and threats to cooperate in his adventures.

Therefore, one must take seriously Bush’s and Cheney’s threats to unleash the Rottweiler. The moment they feel that the way is clear, they will give the sign to Sharon. Sharon will do his duty, in return for an American agreement to allow him to gobble up some more pieces of the Palestinian territories.

Will military action cause the regime of the Ayatollahs to collapse? I doubt it. It is, indeed, a detestable regime, but faced with an attack from the outside, especially from “Crusaders and Zionists”, the Iranian people will unite behind it. A proud people, with a glorious history like the Iranians, will not break easily.

Syria is a different target. Unlike Iraq and Iran, it has no oil resources. But without it the American Empire will not be contiguous and it is an obstacle to Israel.

In the 1967 war, Israel conquered the Golan heights, which until then were known in Israel as “the Syrian heights”. In place of many dozens of Syrian villages, which were wiped from the face of the earth, Israel settlements sprang up. The Syrians have never given up their resolve to recover their territory. In 1973, they tried to do this by war but were routed, in spite of a remarkable initial victory. Since then, the balance of military power has tilted even more in favor of Israel. Therefore, Syria is using another method: harassing Israel by proxy, by giving support to Hisbullah and radical Palestinan organizations, whose leaders reside in Damascus.

In order to make permanent its rule over the Golan heights, the Israeli government must break Syria. The neo-cons in Washington – surprise, surprise – have the same aim. The pretext: the fact that Syrian soldiers are stationed in Lebanon.

Historically, Lebanon is a part of Syria. Damascus has never resigned itself to the establishment of a separate Lebanese state by the French colonialists in the first half of the 20th century. At the most, it accepts Lebanon as a client state.

The Syrian army entered Lebanon in 1976, at the height of the terrible civil war there. The Muslims and Druze, with help of the PLO, were poised to conquer the Christian areas. It was the Christians (please remember!) who called upon the Syrians to come and save them. Since then, the Syrians have remained there. Many Lebanese believe that their departure would cause the civil war to break out again.

In 1982 Israel tried to dislodge them. That was the main objective of the army general staff (as distinct from then Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon, whose main objective was to drive the Palestinians out). But the invasion did not achieve its aim: in the end, the Israelis were driven out and the Syrians remained.

This week, the Muslim leader Fariq al-Hariri, who lately joined the opposition, was assassinated in Beirut. It is not yet known who did it. The huge American propaganda machine, which includes the Israeli media, has pointed at the Syrians. If they are indeed guilty, it was an act of supreme folly, since it was obvious that it would help the Americans build up the Lebanese opposition and arouse a storm of anti-Syrian sentiment. It happened at exactly the right moment for anyone interested in starting a campaign against Syria, under the slogan “End the Syrian Occupation!”

There is something laughable about this demand, coming as it does from two occupying powers: the Americans in Iraq and the Israelis in Palestine. But Rottweilers are not renowned for their sense of humor, any more than those who parade them around on a leash.

Alpha

Blindly Backing Israel against Iran

http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=4884

Zionist (Israel first) Neocons Promote U.S. - Iran War:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/13/neocons-concentrate-on-promoting-u-s-iran-war.php

The following is a reply to www.antiwar.com from a retired US intel contact:

----- Original Message -----

From: Don To: backtalk@antiwar.com
Sent: Saturday, February 19, 2005 11:37 AM
Subject: Blindly Backing Israel Against Iran-- Prather

None of this has anything to do with anything except surrounding Israel with compliant puppets who can be coerced and robbed at will. Israel defines greater Israel--as granted to them by their version of God--as all lands east of the Nile, west of Iran, south of Turkey and north of the Indian Ocean. Bush is supposed to get it for them. In doing so, Bush gets land, oil, control, and water. Water is at the heart of this, not oil. As Arafat said: "Israel wants it all." Can that be any plainer? This rapacious program started in 1986 with the Likudnik-Zionist-Neocon-PNAC movement under Perle, Woflowitz, Abrams, Adelman, and about a hundred others. Ledeen has laid it all out for all to see. China and Russia are to be the last victims of this. Putin knows it and has acted to stop it. Putin's self-defense actions have angered Bush. Clearly, Bush is more Israeli than American. He always puts Israel's interests before America's. Have you noticed that Bush and bin Laden use the same language as they claim to be God's men on Earth? It is perverse and evil. We are clearly stuck between Zionazis and Islamofascists. It will be interesting to see who wins.

Don

Alpha

Iranians Unite over Nuclear Row...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3758762.stm

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.

'A Clean Break' (from James Bamford's 'A Pretext for War') - page 2