| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 7:35 pm Post subject: The lies that led to war |
| The lies that led to war
A leaked British memo, and other documents, make it clear that Bush
intended all along to invade Iraq -- and lied about it to the American
people. The full gravity of his offense has not yet sunk in.
By Juan Cole
May 19, 2005 | When Newsweek's source admitted that he had
misidentified the government document in which he had seen an account
of Quran desecration at Guantánamo prison, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence
Di Rita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch
said. How could he be credible now?"
Di Rita could have said the same things about his bosses in the Bush
administration.
Tens of thousands of people are dead in Iraq, including more than 1,600
U.S. soldiers and Marines, because of false allegations made by
President George W. Bush and Di Rita's more immediate boss, Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, about Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons
of mass destruction and equally imaginary active nuclear weapons
program. Bush, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice repeatedly made unfounded allegations that led
to the continuing disaster in Iraq, much of which is now an economic
and military no man's land beset by bombings, assassinations,
kidnappings and political gridlock.
And we now know, thanks to a leaked British memo concerning the head of
British intelligence, that the Bush administration -- contrary to its
explicit denials -- had already made up its mind to attack Iraq and
"fixed" those bogus allegations to support its decision. In short, Bush
and his top officials lied about Iraq.
Going to war is the most serious decision a president can make. It
should never be approached in a cavalier fashion. American lives, the
prestige and influence of the country, international relations, the
health of its defenses, and the future of the next generation are at
stake. Yet every single piece of evidence we now have confirms that
George W. Bush, who was obsessed with unseating Saddam Hussein even
before 9/11, recklessly used the opportunity presented by the terror
attacks to march the country to war, fixing the intelligence to justify
his decision, and lying to the American people about the reasons for
the war. In other times, this might have been an impeachable offense.
The media circus around the Newsweek story arrived in time to further
divert attention from the explosive British memorandum. Although the
leaked Downing Street memo, published by the London Times on May 1,
revealed the deeply dishonest and manipulative way that the Bush
administration took the United States (and the United Kingdom) to war
against Iraq, the American press corps studiously ignored it for two
weeks.
The memo reported a July 2002 meeting of key British Cabinet and other
officials, held when Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the British
intelligence service, MI6, returned from a trip to Washington. It
revealed that the decision to go to war had already been made by that
point: "Military action was now seen as inevitable," the notes by
British national security aide Matthew Rycroft revealed. Dearlove
reported, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action,
justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence
and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Members of the British Cabinet were worried by the news, the memo
shows, since they knew that the case against Iraq was tissue-thin in
international law and that there were several more egregious sinners in
the weapons area than Iraq. Because the United Kingdom, unlike the
United States, is a member of the International Criminal Court, its
officials had to worry about being tried for war crimes if they became
involved in an illegal war of aggression launched by Bush and lacking
U.N. Security Council sanction. Prime Minister Tony Blair put his hopes
in a ploy. He thought that Bush should arrange for the United Nations
to demand a return to Iraq of weapons inspectors, with the hope that
Saddam Hussein would refuse, thus creating a legal justification for
war acceptable to the international community.
On May 6, Knight Ridder reporters Warren Strobel and John Walcott said
that a former high official in the U.S. government told them that
Dearlove's remarks were "an absolutely accurate description of what
transpired" during his visit. This past Monday, White House spokesman
Scott McClellan finally responded to the leaked document but denied
that he had read it. Regarding the allegation that Bush fixed the
intelligence around the Iraq war policy he said, "The suggestion is
just flat-out wrong. Anyone who wants to know how the intelligence was
used only has to go back and read everything that was said in public
about the lead-up to the war."
It is hard to see how this absurdly vague methodology could actually
refute the memo's charges or, indeed, to know what exactly McClellan
was driving at. He added, "The president of the United States, in a
very public way, reached out to people across the world, went to the
United Nations, and tried to resolve this in a diplomatic manner." But
as the memo makes clear, that "reaching out" was fraudulent, a smoke
screen to cover a decision that had already been made. Bush went to the
United Nations reluctantly and against the advice of the Cheney and
Rumsfeld faction, mainly as a way of giving Saddam an ultimatum that
would form the basis for a war.
The Bush administration, and some credulous or loyal members of the
press, have long tried to blame U.S. intelligence services for
exaggerating the Iraq threat and thus misleading the president into
going to war. That position was always weak, and it is now revealed as
laughable. President Bush was not misled by shoddy intelligence.
Rather, he insisted on getting the intelligence that would support the
war on which he had already decided. A good half of Americans, opinion
polls show, now believe that the president actively lied to them about
Iraq. In another, less cynical, flag-waving and intimidated age, this
conclusion would provoke a scandal. The question would be, What did
George W. Bush decide about Iraq, and when did he decide it?
The leaked British document demonstrates that the moment of decision
was far earlier than the Bush administration publicly admitted. On Aug.
7, just weeks after the Dearlove visit to Washington, Cheney said in
California that no decision had been made on Iraq. When Bush met with
Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan on Aug. 26, 2002, CNN reported that
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press, "The president
stressed that he has made no decisions, that he will continue to engage
in consultations with Saudi Arabia and other nations about steps in the
Middle East, steps in Iraq." On Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney was interviewed
by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press." Russert asked, "Will militarily
this be a cakewalk? Two, how long would we be there and how much would
it cost?" Cheney replied, "First of all, no decision's been made yet to
launch a military operation."
The administration continued the charade that no decision had been
taken through the end of 2002 and into 2003. In a White House press
conference on Dec. 17, 2002, a questioner asked Fleischer, "The L.A.
Times today published a poll that found that 72 percent of Americans,
including 60 percent of Republicans, said the president has not
provided enough evidence to justify starting a war with Iraq. Is the
president losing the public relations battle here in the United
States?"
"Well, one, I think that I'll just state what is well known," Fleischer
replied. "The president will not make any decision about war and peace
and the possibility of putting some of our nation's best men and women
in harm's way on the basis of a poll. He will do it on the basis of his
judgment as commander in chief and what it will take to save and
protect American lives in the event that he reaches the conclusion
Saddam Hussein will indeed engage in war against the United States or
provide terrorists with weapons to engage in war against the United
States, just like on September 11th with the attack. And if he reaches
that judgment, he will do so because the information he has and the
judgment he makes suggest that, not because of a poll."
The British memo is only the most decisive in a long list of documents
that make it inescapably clear that Bush had decided to go to war long
before. Indeed, Bush had decided as early as his presidential campaign
in the year 2000 that he would find a way to fight an Iraq war to
unseat Saddam. I was in the studio with Arab-American journalist Osama
Siblani on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" program on March 11, 2005,
when Siblani reported a May 2000 encounter he had with then-candidate
Bush in a hotel in Troy, Mich. "He told me just straight to my face,
among 12 or maybe 13 Republicans at that time here in Michigan at the
hotel. I think it was on May 17, 2000, even before he became the
nominee for the Republicans. He told me that he was going to take him
out, when we talked about Saddam Hussein in Iraq." According to
Siblani, Bush added that "he wanted to go to Iraq to search for weapons
of mass destruction, and he considered the regime an imminent and
gathering threat against the United States." Siblani points out that
Bush at that point was privy to no classified intelligence on Iraqi
weapons programs and had already made up his mind on the issue.
Siblani's account of Bush's stance is virtually identical to the
impressions Dearlove brought back from Washington a little over two
years later: "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action,
justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD." Iraq had long
played the great white whale to W.'s Ahab, and the chance to move
decisively against Saddam was intrinsic to his presidential ambitions.
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill described to Ron Susskind in
"The Price of Loyalty" the first Bush national security meeting of
principals on Jan. 30, 2001. He writes that after Bush announced he
would simply disengage from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and
"unleash Sharon," he made it clear that Iraq would be a priority. "The
hour almost up, Bush had assignments for everyone ... Rumsfeld and
[Joint Chiefs chair Gen. H. Hugh] Shelton, he said, 'should examine our
military options.' That included rebuilding the military coalition from
the 1991 Gulf War, examining 'how it might look' to use U.S. ground
forces in the north and the south of Iraq ... Ten days in, and it was
about Iraq." Bush hit the ground running with regard to Iraq, shunting
aside key U.S. foreign-policy goals -- such as a resolution of the
Arab-Israeli conflict -- in favor of exploring military options against
Saddam Hussein. O'Neill reports a sense at the meeting that the
reluctance to commit ground forces to an Asian war, a legacy of the
Vietnam War, had ended with the advent of the Bush presidency.
An Iraq war might have been a hard sell, even for the skilled and
highly manipulative Bush team. But Sept. 11 ensured that they could get
congressional approval and public support for a war. Americans were
angry and willing to lash out in any direction specified by the
president. Former terrorism czar Richard Clarke related that on the
evening of Sept. 12, 2001, Bush "grabbed a few of us and closed the
door to the conference room. 'Look,' he told us, 'I know you have a lot
to do and all ... but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over
everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in
any way...'" When Clarke protested that it was clearly an al-Qaida
operation, Bush insisted, "Just look. I want to know any shred ... Look
into Iraq, Saddam." According to Clarke, Bush said it "testily."
Clarke reveals that Rumsfeld was already, on the afternoon of Sept. 12,
"talking about broadening the objectives of our response and 'getting
Iraq.'" Although early accounts of National Security Council meetings
after the attacks highlighted the role of Deputy Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz in pressing for an immediate war on Iraq, it has become
increasingly clear that he was only one such voice, and hardly the most
senior.
Astonishingly, the Bush administration almost took the United States to
war against Iraq in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. We know about
this episode from the public account of Sir Christopher Meyer, then the
U.K. ambassador in Washington. Meyer reported that in the two weeks
after Sept. 11, the Bush national security team argued back and forth
over whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan. It appears from his account
that Bush was leaning toward the Iraq option.
Meyer spoke again about the matter to Vanity Fair for its May 2004
report, "The Path to War." Soon after Sept. 11, Meyer went to a dinner
at the White House, "attended also by Colin Powell, [and] Condi Rice,"
where "Bush made clear that he was determined to topple Saddam. 'Rumors
were already flying that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack
Iraq,' Meyer remembers." When British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived
in Washington on Sept. 20, 2001, he was alarmed. If Blair had consulted
MI6 about the relative merits of the Afghanistan and Iraq options, we
can only imagine what well-informed British intelligence officers in
Pakistan were cabling London about the dangers of leaving bin Laden and
al-Qaida in place while plunging into a potential quagmire in Iraq.
Fears that London was a major al-Qaida target would have underlined the
risks to the United Kingdom of an "Iraq first" policy in Washington.
Meyer told Vanity Fair, "Blair came with a very strong message -- don't
get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaida, Afghanistan, the
Taliban." He must have been terrified that the Bush administration
would abandon London to al-Qaida while pursuing the great white whale
of Iraq. But he managed to help persuade Bush. Meyer reports, "Bush
said, 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when
we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.'" Meyer also
said, in spring 2004, that it was clear "that when we did come back to
Iraq it wouldn't be to discuss smarter sanctions." In short, Meyer
strongly implies that Blair persuaded Bush to make war on al-Qaida in
Afghanistan first by promising him British support for a later Iraq
campaign.
That the Afghanistan war went so well quickly enabled Bush to begin
planning for an attack on Iraq. Bob Woodward reports in "Plan of
Attack" that Bush asked Cheney for an Iraq war plan on Nov. 21. On Nov.
26 the Independent reported that Bush had called Saddam Hussein "evil"
and demanded that he accept U.N. weapons inspectors. On Nov. 27 Howard
Fineman of Newsweek reported a conversation with Bush aboard Air Force
One in the wake of the successful Afghanistan campaign. "He wants to
avoid the more profound mistakes his dad made...: his failure, at the
end of the Gulf War, to stop -- once and for all -- Saddam Hussein in
Iraq from threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction."
Nov. 27, 2001, was a significant date. Gen. Tommy Franks in his memoirs
reveals that he received an unexpected call from Rumsfeld. "General
Franks, the president wants us to look at options for Iraq." Franks
knew exactly what the call portended. "Son of a bitch, I thought. No
rest for the weary." There would be another war. The die had already
been cast.
On Dec. 31 Newsweek reported, "In principle, Bush and his
national-security team have decided that Saddam has to go, U.S.
officials say. 'The question is not if the United States is going to
hit Iraq; the question is when,' says a senior American envoy in the
Middle East." The article notes Bush's oft-stated caution that no final
decision had been made, but dismisses it on the basis of insider
information. The main credit for this article was given to Christopher
Dickey and John Barry, but Sami Kohen is listed as reporting from
Turkey. Since a U.S. ambassador is quoted, and Kohen was the only one
of the coauthors in the Middle East, he is likely the one who got the
quote. Was his source Ambassador W. Robert Pearson?
Former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida says in his memoirs, "Intelligence
Matters," that on Feb. 19, 2002, he visited the U.S. Central Command.
Franks revealed to him that the command was no longer engaged in a war
in Afghanistan. Graham was taken aback. Franks told the stunned
senator, "Military and intelligence personnel are being re-deployed to
prepare for an action in Iraq." The implementation phase had already
begun.
In April 2002, Tony Blair went to see Bush at his Crawford, Texas,
ranch. Vanity Fair reports that Blair stressed the need to get the
backing of the United Nations for an Iraq war if he was going to swing
Parliament behind it.
This long-term obsession of George W. Bush, then, was the background of
the meeting in Washington with Dearlove in July 2002. Although Dearlove
reported on a change of mood, such that the Iraq war was now a sure
thing, he was probably actually observing that Bush had moved it to the
front burner. By late July or very early August 2002, according to
Vanity Fair, Blair had called Bush. A senior White House official who
saw the transcript remarked, "The way it read was that, come what may,
Saddam was going to go; they said they were going forward, they were
going to take out the regime, and they were doing the right thing."
Blair, he said, did not need any convincing. Both Blair and Bush would
go on telling the public for months afterward that no final decision
had been made about going to war.
It was also in midsummer 2002 that Franks asked Rumsfeld for $750
million to begin making preparations in Kuwait toward an Iraq war. The
request, reported in Woodward's "Plan of Attack," provoked a good deal
of controversy. Many in Congress felt that no specific appropriation
had been made for such preparations, and the money was essentially
taken from Afghanistan appropriations without congressional approval.
>From Bush's meeting in May 2000 with Osama Siblani and 12 Republicans
in a hotel room in Troy, Mich., until July 2002, his obsession with
attacking Iraq never wavered. His first national security meeting was
all about Iraq. He seriously considered attacking Iraq before
Afghanistan after Sept. 11, and Blair had to argue him into the
Afghanistan war. He had Rumsfeld ask Gen. Franks for an Iraq war plan
on Nov. 27, 2001. The sense that Dearlove had, that the die had been
inexorably cast by July 2002, was entirely correct.
But it is no positive reflection on the head of MI6 that he had not
been able to discern that the die had been cast long before. The
Downing Street memo is remarkable only for the frankness with which it
acknowledges the illegality of the planned war and Bush's policy of
"fixing" the intelligence around the policy. That the decision was made
first, and various pretexts advanced for it in the aftermath, is now
clear to the public.
Why has there not been more outrage in the United States at these
revelations? Many Americans may have chosen to overlook the lies and
deceptions the Bush administration used to justify the war because they
still believe the Iraq war might have made them at least somewhat
safer. When they realize that this hope, too, is unfounded, and that in
fact the war has greatly increased the threat of another terrorist
attack on U.S. soil, their wrath may be visited on the president and
the political party that has brought America the biggest foreign-policy
disaster since Vietnam.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian
history at the University of Michigan and the author of "Sacred Space
and Holy War" (IB Tauris, 2002). | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 6:39 am Post subject: A Lie of Historic Proportions |
| A Lie of Historic Proportions
Iraq has been the tragic Lie of Historic Proportions of Washington, DC since before the first Gulf war. For years, Saddam was one of our government's propped up and militarily supported puppets. Many people have seen the famous footage of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam. I suppose the two are smiling so big for the cameras because they are kindred spirits. After all of the hand-shaking and weapon brokering, when did Saddam become such a bad guy to Bush, Cheney, Halliburton and Co.? (Insert your favorite reason here).
During the Clinton regime the US-UN led sanctions against Iraq and the weekly bombing raids killed tens of thousands of people in Iraq. Many of them were children, but since one of her children didn't have to be sacrificed to the homicidal war machine, Madeline Albright, thinks the slaughter during the “halcyon” Clinton years was “worth it.” More lies.
Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of current events understands that this invasion/occupation of Iraq was not about Saddam being a “bad guy.” If that logic is used, then how many innocent Iraqi people have to die before the citizens of America wake up and know that our government is a “bad guy?” We also know that Iraq was not about WMD's. They weren't there and they weren't going to be there for at least a decade, by all reports. Another reason, so wispy and more difficult to disprove, is that America invaded Iraq to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. When one tries to dispute this particular deception, one is accused of being unpatriotic or hating freedom. Even though correct, the statement “Freedom isn't Free” is very insulting to me. False freedom is very expensive. Fake freedom costs over one billion of our tax dollars a week; phony freedom has cost the Iraqi people tens of thousands of innocent lives; fanciful freedom has meant the destruction of a country and its infrastructure. Tragically, this fabricated notion of freedom and democracy cost me far more than I was willing to pay: the life of my son, Casey. The Lie of Historic Proportions also cost me my peace of mind, I do not feel free and I do not feel like I live in a democracy.
One of the other great deceits that is being perpetuated on the American public and the world is that this occupation is to fight terrorism: If we don't fight terrorism in Iraq then we will have to fight it “on our streets.” In fact, terrorist attacks have skyrocketed in Iraq and all over the world. So much so, that the State Department has stopped compiling the statistics and quit issuing the yearly terrorism report. I guess if one doesn't write a report, then terrorism doesn't exist. All of Casey's commendations say that he was killed in the “GWOT” the Global War on Terrorism. I agree with most of GWOT, except that Casey was killed in the Global War Of Terrorism waged on the world and its own citizens by the biggest terrorist outfit in the world: George and his destructive Neo-con cabal.
The evidence is overwhelming, compelling, and alarming that George and his indecent bandits traitorously had intelligence fabricated to fit their goal of invading Iraq. The criminals foisted a Lie of Historic Proportions on the world. It was clear to many of us more aware people that George, Condi, Rummy, the two Dicks: Cheney and Perle, Wolfie, and most effectively and treacherously, Colin Powell, lied their brains out before the invasion. The world was even shown where the WMD'S were on the map. We were told that the “smoking gun” could come at any time in the form of a “mushroom cloud” or a cloud of toxic biological or chemical weapons. Does anyone remember duct tape and plastic sheeting?
Finally, the side of peace, truth and justice has our own smoking gun and it is burning our hands. It is the so-called Downing Street Memo dated 23, July 2002, (almost 8 months before the invasion) that states that military action (against Iraq) is now seen as “inevitable.” The memo further states that: “Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action”, justified by the conjunction of “terrorism and WMD's.” The most damning thing to George in the memo is where the British intelligence officer who wrote the memo claims that the intelligence to base Great Britain and the US staging a devastating invasion on Iraq was being “fixed around the policy.” Now, after over three years of negligent propaganda, it is difficult to distinguish the proven lies from the new “truth:” that this occupation is bringing freedom and democracy to the people of Iraq.
Casey took an oath to protect the US from all enemies “foreign and domestic.” He was sent to occupy and die in a foreign country that was no threat to the USA. However, the biggest threat to our safety, humanity, and our way of life in America are George and his cronies. Congress made a Mistake of Historic Proportions and waived its Constitutional responsibility to declare war. It is time for the House to make up for that mistake and introduce Articles of Impeachment against the murderous thugs who have caused so much mindless mayhem. It is time for Congress to re-validate itself by holding a hearing about the Downing Street Memo. The reader can help by going onto www.AfterDowningStreet.org and signing a petition to Rep. John Conyers so he will know that the American people are behind him to convene an investigation in the House Judiciary Committee. You can also write your Congressional Representative to help push the inquiry.
It is time to put partisan politics behind us to do what is correct for once and reclaim America's humanity. It is time for Congress and the American people to work together in peace and justice to rid our country of the stench of greed, hypocrisy, and unnecessary suffering that permeates our White House and our halls of Congress. It is time to hold someone accountable for the carnage and devastation that has been caused. As a matter of fact, it is past time, but it is not too late.
Cindy Sheehan
Mother of needlessly slain soldier, Casey Sheehan.
Cofounder of Gold Star Families for Peace www.gsfp.org
(Organizational Supporters of www.AfterDowningStreet.org)
Scindy121@aol.com
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Bush Acted Illegally in Push for Iraq War
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/05/27/bush-acted-illegally-in-push-for-iraq-war.php | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:24 am Post subject: 'Pretext for War' |
| http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040801/news_lz1v1pretext.html
'Pretext for War'
... finds a slew of flaws and abuses
Reviewed by Michiko Kakutani
August 1, 2004
In the walk-up and wake of the Iraq war, it's no secret that one of the most bitter battles in Washington has been between the CIA and the State Department on one side, and neoconservative hawks in the Pentagon and White House on the other.
Intelligence and State Department officials have characterized the neocons as hawkish ideologues who entered office before 9/11 with an agenda to depose Saddam Hussein. They have accused the hard-liners of cherry-picking and hyping intelligence in order to sell the war against Iraq.
The hawks have characterized the CIA as a bunch of risk-averse, bean-counting bureaucrats, hobbled by what Richard Perle has called "ideologically liberal assumptions." They have accused the agency of continuing intelligence failures, from the overthrow of the shah's government in Iran in 1979 to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
As James Bamford, the author of two respected books on American intelligence, tells it, there is plenty of blame to go around. His new book, "A Pretext for War," draws a damning portrait of the country's intelligence agencies as woefully ill-equipped to deal with the threats of terrorism and a post-Cold War world. It also draws a scathing picture of ideologues in the Bush administration, manipulating dubious evidence about links between al-Qaeda and Saddam and flawed information about weapons of mass destruction in the push toward war.
In addition, Bamford suggests that the CIA caved to pressure from administration hard-liners. He quotes a CIA case officer who says that in January 2003, one of the agency's higher-ups called a meeting and said, "You know what – if Bush wants to go to war, it's your job to give him a reason to do so." And he writes that the CIA chief George Tenet said of the provocative intelligence about Iraq that Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the United Nations in February 2003: "I'm standing behind it 100 percent," even though much of that intelligence later turned out to be flawed, and Tenet stated this year that his agency "never said there was an 'imminent' threat" from Saddam.
Much of the information and many of the theories in Bamford's book will be familiar to readers from earlier magazine and newspaper articles, and other books: most notably, Bob Woodward's "Bush at War" and "Plan of Attack"; "Ghost Wars," Steve Coll's exhaustive history of the CIA, Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan; the former counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke's best-selling expose of the war on terror, "Against All Enemies"; and "Inside 9-11," a detailed chronicle of the terrorist attacks of 2001 by Der Spiegel journalists.
But Bamford unearths new details about everything from the identity of one of the undisclosed locations used by Vice President Dick Cheney after 9/11 (Site R, a secret military command post on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border) to the failures of a special CIA unit charged with tracking bin Laden, and he connects the many dots, both old and new, to create a vivid, unsettling narrative.
Discursive in organization, "A Pretext for War" provides selective context for the failure to prevent the attacks of 9/11 and the Bush administration's path to war. Bamford is highly persuasive in recounting the many ways in which American intelligence agencies failed to adapt to the end of the Cold War: They lacked specialists in many key Middle Eastern languages and a sufficient number of analysts to grapple with an avalanche of cyber-age data, and even though Americans like John Walker Lindh had been secretly joining al-Qaeda, operatives appear to have made little effort to penetrate terrorist organizations, preferring the decorous, low-risk tack of trying to recruit foreign embassy officials at cocktail parties.
Bamford does not address the broader question of how Cold War paradigms shaped the thinking of key Bush administration members such as national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Cheney. And unlike James Mann in "Rise of the Vulcans," he does not delve into many of the larger factors shaping the hawks' thinking – from their experiences in dealing with the Soviet Union to their appropriation of the Wilsonian idea of exporting democracy.
What he does focus on is the role that Israel has played in shaping American policy. Bamford contends that "the blueprint for the new Bush policy" on the Middle East "had actually been drawn up five years earlier by three of his top national security advisers" (Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser) for the Israeli prime minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu (who rejected the plan), and that when they entered office in January 2001, all these hawks needed was "a pretext" for war against Iraq. Citing a report from the British newspaper The Guardian, Bamford adds that the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon unit set up by Feith, "forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence unit within Ariel Sharon's office in Israel," which "was designed to go around the country's own intelligence organization, Mossad."
In recounting the failures of intelligence before 9/11, Bamford points to missed clues about the hijackers and the poisonous rivalry (not to mention fatal lack of communication) between the CIA and FBI. He also writes that a special unit of the CIA named Alec Station, which was set up in 1996 "with the sole mission of collecting intelligence" on bin Laden and "disrupting his network," had an abysmal record. He notes that "after four years and hundreds of millions of dollars," it failed "to recruit a single source within bin Laden's growing Afghanistan operation." He adds: "It was George Tenet's biggest secret. Not only was al-Qaeda never penetrated, neither the Counterterrorism Center nor Alec Station ever picked up a single piece of usable intelligence on bin Laden or his organization, the country's greatest threat."
Bamford is equally scorching on the subject of an alternative intelligence gathering operation (called the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group) set up at the Pentagon by Feith and Wurmser, arguing that it "was little more than a pro-war propaganda cell" designed "to produce evidence to support the pretexts for attacking Iraq."
He also denounces the Pentagon's heavy reliance on intelligence acquired through Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress and a longtime friend of many prominent administration hawks. Though much of the information from Chalabi's sources about weapons of mass destruction later turned out to be incorrect or fabricated, Bamford writes, it was funneled to the White House and to the press – most notably, The New York Times – to help sell the "war to the American public."
Both President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush are taken to task in these pages as well. In describing the country's vulnerability in the face of terrorism, Bamford repeatedly notes that budget cutbacks during the Clinton administration weakened the country's intelligence agencies, and he writes that the now famous Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief – titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." – seemed "to have made little impression" on Bush.
He observes that when Tenet, the head of the CIA during both administrations, declared war on terrorism – in the wake of the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa – it was so low-key that senior officials at the Pentagon and the FBI had not heard of it. And he points out that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who actually controls a large portion of America's spy world, was "far more concerned with downsizing the Pentagon than reorganizing and reinvigorating the intelligence community" when he entered office.
In the end Bamford's conclusions are alarming, if not unfamiliar ones: that incompetence, timidity and a lack of readiness contributed to the failure to prevent the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and that misinformation, ideological agendas and poor intelligence led to the decision to go to war against Iraq.
©New York Times News Service
A Pretext for War
9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
James Bamford
Doubleday, 420 pages, $26.95 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:57 am Post subject: Turning Point On the War? |
| Turning Point On the War?
This past week, widely scattered newspaper editorialists roused themselves from seeming acceptance of the continuing slaughter in Iraq to voice, for the first time in many cases, outright condemnation of the war.
(June 06, 2005) -- Suddenly there seems to be something in the air -- the smell of death? Or something in the water -- blood? In any case, this past week, widely scattered newspaper editorialists roused themselves from seeming acceptance of the continuing slaughter in Iraq to voice, for the first time in many cases, outright condemnation of the war.
While still refusing to use the "W" word in offering advice to Dubya -- that is, "withdrawal" -- some at least are finally using the "L" word, for lies.
Memorial Day seemed to bring out the anger in some editorial writers, who at that time are normally afraid to say anything about a current conflict that might seem to slight the brave sacrifices of men and women, past and present. Maybe it was the steadily growing Iraqi and American death count, or the increasing examples of White House "disassembling" (to quote the president this week), or the horror stories emerging from Gitmo.
Or perhaps it's a hidden trend that might have even more impact than the rest: the writing on the wall spelled out by plunging military recruitment rates. That only adds to the sense that, overall, the Iraq adventure has made America far less safe in this world.
For whatever reason, it's possible that more than a few editorial pages may finally be on the verge of saying "enough is enough." Perhaps they might even catch up with their readers, as the latest Gallup polls find that 57% feel the war is "not worth it," and nearly as many want us to start pulling out troops, not sending more of them.
There were numerous signs of editorial unrest in the past week, too many to cite. The Sun of Baltimore, in its Memorial Day editorial, declared: "If the president truly wished to honor their memory, he would demonstrate to the nation that the government that has botched so much of the war at least has some inkling as to how to draw it to a successful conclusion -- so that the dead will not have died in vain." The Minneapolis Star-Tribune called Iraq "an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns. ... President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes."
Steve Chapman, syndicated columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune (and generally considered a conservative), on Thursday declared: "The dilemma the U.S. faces in fighting the insurgents is that military methods are not enough to solve the problem and may make it worse. If the movement is a reaction to the U.S. military presence, keeping American troops in Iraq amounts to fighting a fire with kerosene.
"That explains why the longer we stay, the more suicide attacks we face. And it suggests that the only feasible strategy is to withdraw from Iraq and turn the fight over to the Iraqi government. The alternative is to stay and keep doing what we've been doing for the last two years. But that approach has shown no signs of fostering success. It only promises to raise the cost of failure."
But perhaps the most powerful denunciation came from an unlikely source, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. An editorial in that Hearst paper this past Wednesday, just after Memorial Day, really thundered, and deserves reprinting here:
"President Bush was among the 260,000 graves at Arlington National Cemetery when he said it. But it was clear Monday that the president was referring to the more than 1,650 Americans killed to date in Iraq when he said, 'We must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives; by defeating the terrorists.'
"Bush insists on clinging to the thoroughly discredited notion that there was any connection between the old Iraqi regime -- no matter how lawless and brutal -- and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"U.S. military action against an Afghan regime that harbored al-Qaida was a legitimate response to the 9/11 attacks. The invasion of Iraq was not.
"As of Memorial Day 2003, Bush had declared major combat operations at an end, predicted that weapons of mass destruction would be found and that U.S. forces were in the process of stabilizing Iraq. One hundred sixty U.S. troops had died.
"The U.S. death toll has grown more than tenfold. No weapons of mass destruction were found. More than 700 Iraqis have been killed since Iraq's new government was formed April 28.
"Bush said of the insurgents at a news conference yesterday, 'I believe the Iraqi government is plenty capable of dealing with them.'
"Of course, this is the same president that assured the world that military intervention in Iraq was a last resort and that the United States would make every effort to avoid war through diplomacy. Giving lie to that as well is the so-called Downing Street War Memo, which shows that as early as July 2002, 'Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD ... the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'
"Perhaps all presidents' remarks in military graveyards are by nature self-serving. But few have been so callow as the president's using the deaths of U.S. troops in his unjustified war as justification for its continuance."
At the close of the editorial online, the paper polled readers, asking if they thought it was "time to begin the careful but quick withdrawal of American forces from Iraq?" These highly unscientific surveys usually should be ignored. But the result in this case, from over 2,600 votes, was so one-sided it deserves mention: Nearly 92% called for the beginning of a pullout.
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(gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is the editor of E&P.
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