| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 3:27 pm Post subject: Pat Buchanan: Who is Planning Our Next War? |
| January 9, 2007
Who Is Planning Our Next War?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
As George Bush reflects on his legacy, an urgent question must be pressing in upon him each day.
Will I leave here as the man who launched failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost thousands of U.S. dead, to no avail? Or can I yet enter history as the Churchillian statesman who used U.S. power to save America and Israel from the mortal threat of atomic weapons in the hands of the Iranian mullahs?
Which legacy would Bush prefer? Or Cheney?
As Americans await Bush's address announcing a "surge" of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq, we may be missing the larger picture. The War Party is turning its attention from Iraq – to Iran.
Nor is it simply an analysis of the character of George Bush that causes one to so conclude.
Tehran is now two weeks into a 60-day deadline to answer a Security Council resolution directing it to cease enriching uranium. While the sanctions are mild, the resolution passed unanimously and gives Bush the U.N. cover he used to wage war on Iraq. If Iran defies the United Nations, Bush will demand further sanctions. Up the escalator we go.
Moreover, a second U.S. carrier battle group is heading for the Gulf. More interesting, the new CentCom commander, replacing Gen. John Abizaid, is no soldier, but Adm. William J. Fallon, commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific. What Fallon does not know about securing streets, he does know about taking out targets from the air and keeping sea lanes open in a time of war.
Bush may be sending signals, but the Israelis are preparing for war. The London Sunday Times reports that Israeli pilots have been making the 2,000-mile run to Gibraltar to train for strikes with bunker-busting nuclear bombs on Iran's heavy water plant at Arak, the uranium hexaflouride facility at Isfahan and the centrifuge cascade at Natanz.
Israel angrily denies the report. But, on Dec. 30, retired Gen. Oded Tira, who headed up all Israeli artillery units, burst into print with this admonition:
"As an American air strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help (Bush) pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and U.S. newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure."
"Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran," writes Tira. Thus, Israel and its U.S. lobbying arm "must turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates in the Democratic Party so that they publicly support immediate action by Bush against Iran."
"The Americans must act," Tira concludes. "If they don't, we'll do it ourselves ... (and) we must immediately start preparing for an Iranian response to an attack."
According to UPI editor-at-large Arnaud De Borchgrave, Tira's line tracks the New Year's Day message of Likud superhawk "Bibi" Netanyahu, the former prime minister.
Said Netanyahu, Israel "must immediately launch an intense, international public relations front first and foremost on the U.S. The goal being to encourage President Bush to live up to specific pledges he would not allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons. We must make clear to the (U.S.) government, the Congress and the American public that a nuclear Iran is a threat to the U.S. and the entire world, not only Israel."
Israel's war, says Bibi, must be sold as America's war.
We are thus forewarned. A propaganda campaign, using Israeli agents and their neocon auxiliaries and sympathizers, who stampeded us into war in Iraq, is being prepared to stampede us into war on Iran.
We are to be convinced that Iran, with no air force or navy to speak of, an economy not 2 percent of ours, which has not started a single war since the revolution, 27 years ago, is about to give to terrorists, to use on us, a nuclear bomb it may be 10 years away from even being able to build.
Will Congress be duped again into giving Bush a blank check for war? Or will this new Congress summon the courage to take the war option out of Bush's hands, to decide itself, for the nation, when, where and whether America should ever go to war against Iran?
Every presidential candidate should be asked: Does President Bush have the authority to attack Iran without specific congressional authorization? And would you support giving him that authority?
Needed today are courageous men and women of both parties who will introduce and pass a congressional resolution stating, "In the absence of a direct Iranian attack on U.S. forces or personnel, or an imminent threat of such an attack, President Bush has no authority to launch a pre-emptive strike or a preventive war on Iran."
If we are going to war, let us do it constitutionally, for once, and not leave it up solely to George W. Bush and Brother Cheney.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=10290
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Bush's ace up his sleeve (Attack Iran!):
Posted: January 12, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Patrick J. Buchanan
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53736
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Pat Buchanan mentioned on MSNBC's 'Hardball' (on January 8th, 2007) that we are going after Iran:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16541961/
MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan and “The Washington Post‘s” Eugene Robinson are coming here to bat that one around and tomorrow on HARDBALL my guests will include himself, Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.
You are watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(NEWSBREAK)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. With the president just 48 hours away right now from announcing his new Iraq policy, an escalation, it is going to be Wednesday night at 9:00 Eastern. How will he sell his new push for this unpopular war?
Let‘s turn to our experts. MSNBC‘s political contributor Pat Buchanan and Eugene Robinson of the “Washington Post.”
Pat, I want to start with you. Are we headed towards more of a war in Iraq and a war in Iran? How big does this guy want the war to get?
PAT BUCHANAN, MSNBC POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: I don‘t think George Bush and Dick Cheney are going to go home with two lost wars upon their legacy. I think they are not going to let Iraq fall while they are in power and I think they have not ruled out the option of going home as the team that took down the Iranian nuclear option and preserved Israel and the United States from terror attacks for the seven years they were in office and go down that way as a success. I think that‘s what they have got in mind.
MATTHEWS: Somebody in the Israeli operation leaked this weekend to the “Times of London,” it was on the front page. I saw it out here in Chevy Chase. They were selling the “Times of London.”
And apparently Israel is talking about dropping some sort of a local small-yield nuclear weapon in Iran to blow up those nuclear facilities, but it looked to me like they were teasing us saying if you don‘t do it conventionally, we‘ll go in there with nuclear power. Is that what is going on here?
BUCHANAN: Right. The Sunday report said they were going to drop nuclear buster bunkers on Iraq and the hexafluoride facility, the Natanz facility .
MATTHEWS: In Iran.
BUCHANAN: Three facilities in Iran. Israel angrily denied it but you have got Netanyahu and you have got an Israeli general right at the new year saying, we have got to get the Americans to do this war for us. If they don‘t do it, we will have to do it ourselves. There is going to be a drive .
MATTHEWS: If they have that technology, Pat, why would we be better at it than they are? If they have the technology.
BUCHANAN: Well, the United States has - we have thousands of planes where they‘ve got a long distance to go. We‘ve got refueling capacity they don‘t have.
MATTHEWS: But we don‘t have the national interest in the region that they do, we don‘t have the reason to blow up facilities in another country like Israel does because Israel faces a regional threat not like we face.
BUCHANAN: Now look. Iran has no air force to threaten us, no navy to threaten us. It has no nuclear weapon right now. It hasn‘t launched a single war since the revolution started, it has got a loud mouth in the presidency, but he doesn‘t have control of nuclear weapons. They have not built a bomb and they may not be able to build one in 10 years.
MATTHEWS: What makes you think Bush will do this? That he will attack Iran.
BUCHANAN: Because I think that because we are started down the road, you have 60-day sanctions at the UN. They are weak but they come back in February for renewal.
I think Bush is starting down that road. Secondly, Chris, let me say this. The neocons will be for it. Many Christian conservatives will be for it. You‘ve got the majority leader Steny Hoyer saying military options on the table.
MATTHEWS: Will Hillary Clinton salute after this if it happens?
BUCHANAN: Well this is what the Israelis say, they have got to go work on Hillary Clinton to get her to back the president up. I think they have got enormous power to do this and nobody is up there saying no.
MATTHEWS: So the bottom line. Eugene, what do you think. You agree with this? The president will leave us after two years of his presidency will have elapsed and he will leave with us with his full complement of troops, 160 some thousand, in the field in Iraq and he will have begun war action against Iran before he leaves office. Do you buy this?
EUGENE ROBINSON, “WASHINGTON POST”: I certainly buy that we will have 160,000 troops in Iraq. I don‘t see how they go down. Iran, I don‘t know. I think there will be pushback not as much from the Hill as there will be actually from the public, I think.
MATTHEWS: You know what this administration realizes the ramifications of an active war against Iran, what they are capable of doing to our oil supplies, what they are capable of doing to Israel and whoever else in that region they want to go after?
ROBINSON: I don‘t know. I don‘t know if they do.
MATTHEWS: Do you know, Pat? I sense they seem to know the price.
BUCHANAN: I think they know it could be a real disaster but I tell you this, Gene. I think the American public is probably more in favor of air strikes on Iran than it is of continuing the war in Iraq?
MATTHEWS: Has the American public been educated to what Iran can do to us?
BUCHANAN: No. It has not. I think—you say nuclear to the American people. That‘s when they tipped over both in Gulf War and in the Iraq War.
MATTHEWS: That‘s why it was used that way.
BUCHANAN: Sure. That‘s why they always go to the nuclear card, because it works.
ROBINSON: I‘m just not sure.
MATTHEWS: Just remember, last time around, they put out the word that Iraq, Saddam Hussein, not only was approaching getting a nuclear weapon but he had a delivery vehicle, some sort of balsa wood plane, that was going to come over the Continental United States and blow us up. As ludicrous as that sounds .
BUCHANAN: That was it for the chemical and biological weapons. The balsa wood plane.
MATTHEWS: Let me tell you. They did everything they could to get us in that war. Go ahead.
ROBINSON: I just wonder if he gets another blank check on the war.
MATTHEWS: From the Dems?
ROBINSON: From the people. From the public. From the Dems, the Dems are going .
MATTHEWS: They are going to position themselves as a person who can be seen as a hawk?
ROBINSON: Yeah. They are going to feel like they are in a tricky position and they can‘t say go ahead and blow up Israel .
MATTHEWS: Bill Clinton in ‘92, he was able to be elected president as a hawk.
ROBINSON: I think that‘s her story, she‘s going to stick to it.
BUCHANAN: The question is, does the president of the United States right now have the authority to launch air strikes an Iran? That is an open question.
MATTHEWS: Why doesn‘t the Democratic Party since it now controls Congress thanks to an election, issue a resolution saying the president cannot commit an active war against any country without coming to us first.
BUCHANAN: Or without an act of war against us. That‘s exactly what they ought to do with regard to Iran then you will see who has got real courage in the Congress. They didn‘t stop this war but they can stop the next one, Chris.
MATTHEWS: And you know they won‘t. They won‘t.
BUCHANAN: If some courageous guy puts in there, let‘s let him be counted.
MATTHEWS: Eugene, you know they‘ll want that option, won‘t they.
ROBINSON: Yeah. Who is the courageous one?
BUCHANAN: Jim Webb might do it. Jim Webb might do it.
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Pat Buchanan & Tucker on Coming War with Iran :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSnWwDb3_AU
Transcript of such:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16596310/
AIPAC and NeoCon Policy
on bombing Iran for Israel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rf16XjbOUs
AIPAC Trying to Get US to Attack Iran for Israel :
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/03/17/u-s-middle-east-policy-motivated-by-pro-israel-lobby.php
Bush's Rush to Armageddon:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2007/01/09/bush-s-rush-to-armageddon.php
http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com
Additional at following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2007/01/10/pat-buchanan-who-is-planning-our-next-war-page-4.php
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Just heard Bush's 'surge' speech on January 10th, 2007, and it looks like he is warhawking after Iran and Syria right in accordance with the 'A Clean Break'/war for Israel agenda of the Jewish JINSA/PNAC Neocons up at AEI (read pages 261-269/321 of James Bamford's 'A Pretext for War' book via the following URL for more on the 'A Clean Break'):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/11/a-clean-break-from-james-bamford-s-a-pretext-for-war.php
Last edited by Alpha on Sat Jan 13, 2007 2:48 pm; edited 8 times in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 10:42 am Post subject: Is Bush's War Winding Down or Heating Up? |
| January 8, 2007
Is Bush's War Winding Down or Heating Up?
The Coming Attack on Iran
by Paul Craig Roberts
Most Americans believe that Bush’s Iraqi misadventure is over. The occupation has lost the support of the electorate, the Congress, the generals and the troops. The Democrats are sitting back waiting for Bush to come to terms with reality. They don’t want to be accused of losing the war by forcing Bush out of Iraq. There are no more troops to commit, and when the "surge" fails, Bush will have no recourse but to withdraw. A little longer, everyone figures, and the senseless killing will be over.
Recent news reports indicate that this conclusion could be an even bigger miscalculation than the original invasion.
On January 7 the London Timesreported that it has learned from "several Israeli military sources" that "Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons."
The Israeli Foreign Ministry denied the report.
The Times reports that "Israeli and American officials have met several times to consider military action. Military analysts said the disclosure of the plans could be intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt enrichment, cajole America into action or soften up world opinion in advance of an Israeli attack."
In other news reports Israeli General Oded Tira is quoted as follows: "President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran. As an American strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and US newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure."
General Tira gives the Israel Lobby the following tasks: (1) "turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates in the Democratic Party so that they support immediate action by Bush against Iran," (2) exert influence on European countries so that "Bush will not be isolated in the international arena again," and (3) "clandestinely cooperate with Saudi Arabia so that it also persuades the US to strike Iran."
Israel’s part, General Tira says, is to "prepare an independent military strike by coordinating flights in Iraqi airspace with the US. We should also coordinate with Azerbaijan the use of air bases in its territory and also enlist the support of the Azeri minority in Iran."
British commentators report that "the British media appears to be softening us up for an attack on Iran." Robert Fox writing in The First Post says, "Suddenly the smell of Britons being prepared for an attack on Iran is all pervasive."
On January 7 the Jerusalem Postreported that Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told the Israeli newspaper that "Iran with nuclear weapons is unacceptable" and that "the use of force against Teheran remained an option." The Post notes that "Hoyer is considered close to the Jewish community and many Israeli supporters have hailed his elevation in the House." Hoyer was the Israel Lobby’s first victory over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who preferred Rep. John Murtha for the post. Murtha was the first important Democrat to call for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
On November 20 the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, reported that President Bush said he would understand if Israel chose to attack Iran.
Bush showed that he was in Israel’s pocket when he blocked the world’s attempt to stop Israel’s bombing of Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Many commentators believe that the failure of the neoconservatives’ "cakewalk war" has destroyed their influence. This is a mistaken conclusion. The neoconservatives are long time allies of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party and are part of the Israel Lobby in the US. The Israel Lobby represents the views of only a minority of American Jews but nevertheless essentially owns both political parties and most of the US media. As the neoconservatives are an important part of this powerful lobby, they remain extremely influential.
The Lobby works to increase the neoconservatives’ influence. To appreciate the Lobby’s influence, try to find columnists in the major print media and TV commentators who are not apologists for Israel, who do not favor attacking Iran, and who support withdrawing from Iraq. Recently, Bill "One-Note" Kristol, a rabid propagandist for war against Muslims, was given a column in Time magazine. Why would Time think its readers want to read a war propagandist? Could the reason be that the Israel Lobby arranged for Time to receive lucrative advertising contracts in exchange for a column for Kristol?
Neoconservatives have called for World War IV against Islam. In Commentary magazine Norman Podhoretz called for the cultural genocide of Islamic peoples. The war is already opened on four fronts: Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iran.
The Bush administration has used its Ethiopian proxies to overthrow the Somali Muslims who overthrew the warlords who drove the US from Somalia. The US Navy and US intelligence are actively engaged with the Ethiopian troops in efforts to hunt down and capture or kill the Somali Muslims. US Embassy spokesman Robert Kerr in Nairobi said that the US has the right to pursue Somalia’s Islamists as part of the war on terror.
For at least a year the Bush administration has been fomenting and financing terrorist groups within Iran. Seymour Hersh and former CIA officials have exposed the Bush administration’s support of ethnic minority groups within Iran that are on the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. Last April US Representative Dennis Kucinich wrote a detailed letter to President Bush about US interference in Iran’s internal affairs. He received no reply.
The Israeli/neoconservative plan, of which Bush may be a part or simply be a manipulated element, is to provoke a crisis with Iran in which the US Congress will have to support Israel. Both the Israeli government and the American neoconservatives are fanatical. It is a mistake to believe that either will be guided by reason or any appreciation of the potentially catastrophic consequences of an attack on Iran.
US aircraft carriers sitting off Iran’s coast are sitting ducks for Iran’s Russian missiles. The neoconservatives would welcome another "new Pearl Harbor."
The US media is totally unreliable. It cannot go against Israel, and it will wrap itself in the flag just as it did for the invasion of Iraq. The American public has been deceived (again) and believes that Iran is on the verge of possessing nuclear armaments to be used to wipe Israel off the map. The fact that Americans are such saps for propaganda makes effective opposition to the neoconservatives’ plan for WWIV practically impossible.
Large percentages of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attack. Recent polls show that 32% still believe that Iraq gave substantial support to al-Qaeda, and 18% believe that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the 9/11 attack. WXIA-TV in Atlanta posted viewers comments about Hussein’s execution on its web site. Atlantan Janet Wesselhoft was confident that Saddam Hussein is "the one who started terrorism in this country, he needs to be put to rest."
Even the London Times is in the grip of Israeli propaganda. In its report of Israel’s plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons, the Times says that Iranian president "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared that ‘Israel must be wiped off the map.’" It has been shown by a number of credible experts that this quote is a made-up concoction taken completely out of context. Ahmadinejad said no such thing.
In a world ruled by propaganda, lies become truths. The power of the Israel Lobby is so great that it has turned former President Jimmy Carter, probably the most decent man ever to occupy the Oval Office and certainly the president who did the most in behalf of peace in the Middle East, into an anti-semite, an enemy of Israel. The American media, from its "conservative" end to its "liberal" end did its best to turn Carter into a pariah for telling a few truths about Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians in his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
If truth be known, there is nothing to stop the Israeli/neoconservative cabal from widening the war in the Middle East.
As I previously reported, the neoconservatives believe that the use of nuclear weapons against Iran would force Muslims to realize that they have no recourse but to submit to the Israeli/US will. The use of nuclear weapons is being rationalized as necessary to destroy Iran’s underground facilities, but the real purpose is to terrorize Islam and to bring it to heel.
Until the US finds the courage to acquire a Middle East policy of its own, Americans will continue to reap the evil sowed by the Israel Lobby.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10286
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January 3, 2007
Keane/Kagan Plan Means More Bloodshed
by Paul Craig Roberts
On Jan. 2, the BBC reported a leak from a "senior administration source" that President George W. Bush is going to give a speech, whose "central theme will be sacrifice," announcing an increase in U.S. troops in Iraq for security purposes. Speculation abounds whether the leak is designed to block Bush's insane policy with protests or to soften its controversial edge when announced. The BBC reports that "already one senior Republican senator has called it Alice in Wonderland."
Bush's proposal, if he makes it, is the work of retired army general Jack Keane and Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute. AEI is the second most important Israeli lobby in Washington after AIPAC.
Keane and Kagan profess to believe that 30,000 more U.S. troops can bring security to Iraq. Keane and Kagan argue that more U.S. troops would permit the U.S. military to retain control of an area after they had cleared it of insurgents. They ignore that Iraq has progressed from insurgency into civil war. There can be no Iraqi army independent of the sectarian conflict. The military problem for the Americans is no longer a small insurgency drawn from a minority of the population, but sectarian strife involving all of Iraq. Today the only choice for U.S. forces is to ally with one side or the other in the civil war or to depart Iraq.
Knowledgeable people regard the Keane/Kagan plan as a proposal designed to continue for a while longer the blood profits of the U.S. military-industrial complex and to advance Israel's interests by spreading Sunni-Shi'ite conflict throughout the Middle East.
The neoconservatives' original plan was to give Israel hegemony in the Middle East by using the U.S. military to overthrow Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The failure of U.S. forces to subdue Iraq has led to a new neoconservative plan to give Israel supremacy by spreading sectarian conflict among Muslims throughout the region. No Arab state would be stable, and Israel could proceed with its seizure of Palestine.
If Bush adopts the Keane/Kagan "plan," he should be impeached for putting two special interests – the military-industrial complex and Israeli Zionist settlers – ahead of America's interests and the interests of peace in the Middle East. The crimes of the Bush regime already stand at a horrendous level. There is no support for the Keane/Kagan "plan" in the American political establishment, among Middle East experts and the American public, or within the Bush administration itself.
The American electorate, or stolen elections, have put in the presidency an ignorant and moronic person who is guided not by sense and reason but by an enormous ego that can admit no mistake. In the name of a concocted "war on terror," the American public has permitted Bush an endless stream of mistakes. These mistakes are destroying any prospect for peace in the Middle East, committing America to endless and pointless conflict, destroying America's soft power while demonstrating the limits of its military power, creating a domestic police state, and endangering the U.S. dollar. There is no imaginable gain from the Middle Eastern conflict that Bush has initiated that could possibly offset these costs to Americans.
The U.S. electorate attempted to rein in Bush in the November election by giving Democrats control of Congress. But Bush refuses to listen to the electorate as he prepares, instead, to mire America deeper in an illegitimate conflict that does not serve America's interests.
President George W. Bush is destroying America. Will Congress stop him?
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10256
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January 9, 2007
The Surge: Political Cover or Escalation?
by Paul Craig Roberts
The new year began on the hopeful note that Bush’s illegal war in Iraq would soon be ended. The repudiation of Bush and the Republicans in the November congressional election, the Iraq Study Group’s unanimous conclusion that the US needs to remove its troops from the sectarian strife Bush set in motion by invading Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld’s removal as defense secretary and his replacement by Iraqi Study Group member Robert Gates, the thumbs down given by America’s top military commanders to the neoconservatives’ plan to send more US troops to Iraq, and new polls of the US military that reveal that only a minority supports Bush’s Iraq policy, thus giving new meaning to "support the troops," are all indications that Americans have shed the stupor that has given carte blanche to George W. Bush.
When word leaked that Bush was inclined toward the "surge option" of committing more troops by keeping existing troops deployed in Iraq after their replacements had arrived, NBC News reported that an administration official "admitted to us today that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one." It is a clear sign of exasperation with Bush when an administration official admits that Bush is willing to sacrifice American troops and Iraqi civilians in order to protect his own delusions.
The American establishment, concerned by Bush’s egregious mismanagement, moved to take control of Iraq policy away from him. However, recent news reports and analysis suggest that Bush has turned his back to the American establishment and his military advisers and is throwing in his lot with the neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby. This will further isolate Bush and make him more vulnerable to impeachment.
In the January 5 issue of CounterPunch John Walsh gives a good description of the struggle between the American establishment and the neocons.
Peter Spiegel, the Pentagon correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, reported on January 4 that the neocons have used the failure of the administration’s policy in Iraq to convince Bush to launch an aggressive counterinsurgency requiring the buildup of troop levels by extending deployments beyond the agreed terms.
Raed Jarrar suggests that the Shi’ite militias, such as the one led by Sadr, are the intended targets of the "surge option." There seems no surer way to escalate the conflict in Iraq than to attack the Shi’ite militias. For longer than the US fought Germany in WWII, 150,000 US troops in Iraq have been thwarted by a small insurgency drawn from Iraq’s minority population of Sunnis. It hardly seems feasible that 30,000 additional US troops, demoralized by extended deployment, can succeed in a surge against the Shi’ite militias when 150,000 US troops cannot succeed against the minority Sunnis.
The reason the US has not been driven out of Iraq is that the majority Shi’ites have not been part of the insurgency. The Shi’ites are attacking the Sunnis, who are forced to fight a two-front war against US troops and Shi’ite militias and death squads.The US owes its presence in Iraq, just as the colonial powers always owed their presence in the Middle East, to the disunity of Arabs. Western domination of the Muslim world succeeded by not picking a fight with all of the disunited Arabs at the same time.
Attacking the Shi’ite militias while fighting a Sunni insurgency would violate this rule. If Bush ignores US military commanders and expert opinion and accepts the surge option advanced by the delusional neocon allies of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party, US troops will be engulfed in general insurgency. This is why General John Abizaid resigned on January 5. He wants no part of the Republican Party’s sacrifice of US soldiers to sectarian conflict.
In recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearings, Republican Senator John McCain, who believes in the efficacy of violence and not in diplomacy, pressed General Abizaid to request more US troops to be sent to Iraq. General Abizaid replied as follows:
"Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the core commander, General Dempsey, we all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no."
Bush is like Hitler. He blames defeats on his military commanders, not on his own insane policy. Like Hitler, he protects himself from reality with delusion. In his last hours, Hitler was ordering non-existent German armies to drive the Russians from Berlin.
By manipulating Bush and provoking a military crisis in which the US stands to lose its army in Iraq, the neoconservatives hope to revive the implementation of their plan for US conquest of the Middle East. They believe they can use fear, "honor," and the aversion of macho Americans to ignoble defeat to expand the conflict in response to military disaster. The neocons believe that the loss of an American army would be met with the electorate’s demand for revenge. The barriers to the draft would fall, as would the barriers to the use of nuclear weapons.
Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz set out the plan for Middle East conquest several years ago in Commentary magazine. It is a plan for Muslim genocide. In place of physical extermination of Muslims, Podhoretz advocates their cultural destruction by deracination. Islam is to be torn out by the roots and reduced to a purely formal shell devoid of any real beliefs.
Podhoretz disguises the neoconservative attack against diversity with contrived arguments, but its real purpose is to use the US military to subdue Arabs and to create space for Israel to expand.
Not enough Americans are aware that this is what the "war on terror" is all about.
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Why is Iraq in Chaos?
Ask the Zionist Occupiers.
TO SURGE OR NOT TO SURGE
As Congress and the president debate whether to surge or not in the quagmire of Iraq, the fundamental fact avoided by the Zionist-controlled press and government spokesmen is that the occupation of Iraq is the war in Iraq, and vice versa.
That is to say that the so-called war in Iraq is nothing more than the violence associated with the U.S.-led military occupation. When the foreign armies and their quislings leave Iraq, the war will end. It's that simple.
http://www.iamthewitness.com/Bollyn-Zionist-Occupation-of-Iraq.html
ZIONIST OCCUPATION
Stage-managing the calamitous occupation of Iraq are high-level Zionist agents with close ties to Israel. These senior agents, with clear ties to the state of Israel, have played key roles in guiding (or misguiding) the U.S.-led war and occupation in Iraq from the beginning.
Israel, it should be noted, has been in a state of war with Iraq since the Zionist state was established in 1948. For the United States to knowingly employ hostile and enemy Israeli agents in the planning and setting up the military occupation in Iraq indicates that the occupation is, in fact, Zionist-designed.
To read complete article, go to:
http://www.iamthewitness.com/Bollyn-Zionist-Occupation-of-Iraq.html
Photo: General Mark Kimmitt in Iraq with his Zionist handler, Daniel Samuel Senor. Senor's father worked at the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem and he grew up with his mother who was the executive secretary at the Israeli consulate in Toronto for 26 years. For the United States to have placed high-level Israeli agents in the occupation authority reveals the Zionist conspiracy behind the war and occupation of Iraq.
Last edited by Alpha on Thu Jan 11, 2007 1:43 am; edited 1 time in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 12:19 pm Post subject: |
| Here is the AEI Jewish Neocon who wrote the 'surge' proposal that Bush will be presenting tonight - so the Jewish (JINSA/PNAC) Neocons via the pro-Israel lobby won out over Baker-Hamilton:
http://www.c-span.org/pdf/20061219_ChoosingVictory.pdf
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December 14, 2006
Is James Baker a Match
for AIPAC?
by Paul Craig Roberts
The report by the Iraq Study Group is an attempt by elder statesmen of the American political establishment to take U.S. foreign policy out of the incompetent hands of President Bush and the self-serving hands of the Israeli Lobby. The Iraq Study Group's effort may or may not succeed.
Others have expressed disappointment that the ISG elder statesmen did not call for Bush's impeachment and immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq. Such wishful thinking caused writers to pour cold water over the establishment's attempt to save Bush and the U.S. from a "grave and deteriorating" situation.
Even war critic Pat Buchanan is dismissive of the ISG report. Buchanan, however, comes closer to the truth than the report's other critics when he writes that the purpose of the report is to save the establishment from any responsibility for the debacle that Bush and his neoconservative government have produced.
The Iraq Study Group, which includes Bush's new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, realizes that far from being the macho superpower that controls the world's destiny, the U.S. does not even control its own destiny. The U.S. is in a "grave and deteriorating" situation that can easily result in a far greater calamity than merely a bruised ego from a lost war. The entire Middle East can come undone.
The real problem is the Israeli Lobby's powerful influence – about which the Lobby brags – over U.S. policy in the Middle East and Israel's inflexibility toward the Palestinians, whose land Israel has stolen. As long as Israel exercises a veto over U.S. policy in the Middle East, the powder keg will remain alight.
The members of the ISG are elder statesmen. They have held high positions and accumulated the honors. Their careers are behind them. They have nothing to lose. They can afford to tell the truth and to address the real problem.
If news reports are correct (see, for example, this), former Secretary of State James Baker has proposed a Middle East peace conference without Israeli participation. According to an official quoted by Insight magazine, "As Baker sees this, the conference would provide a unique opportunity for the United States to strike a deal without Jewish pressure. This has become the hottest proposal examined by the foreign policy people over the last month."
According to Insight, "officials said the Baker proposal to exclude Israel garnered support in the wake of Vice President Dick Cheney's visit to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 25. They said Mr. Cheney spent most of his meetings listening to Saudi warnings that Israel, rather than Iran, is the leading cause of instability in the Middle East." The official told Insight that the administration "has fallen in line," but that "Bush is not in the daily loop. He is shocked by the elections and he's hoping for a miracle on Iraq."
President Bush lacks the knowledge, judgment, and experience to be in the Oval Office. He has been deceived and manipulated by neoconservatives who live in the fantasy world of their own ideology and who have been aligned with Israel's right-wing Likud Party for most of their careers.
The neoconservatives put Bush and the U.S., along with Iraqis, Afghans, and Lebanese, in harm's way. Their fantasy enterprise failed, and now they damn Bush for a lost war that they said would be a cakewalk. Neoconservatives told Bush that U.S. troops would have flowers thrown at them, not bombs.
Many neoconservatives have been cleared out of the Bush administration. But other neoconservatives still occupy media positions, which they will continue to use to lie to the American public. As long as the neoconservatives' protector, Vice President Cheney, continues to have influence, the Israeli Lobby might again succeed in overthrowing American public opinion and win its war against the Iraq Study Group.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10160
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January 10, 2007
Distracting Congress from the Real War Plan: Iran
by Paul Craig Roberts
Is the surge an orchestrated distraction from the real war plan?
A good case can be made that it is. The US Congress and media are focused on President Bush’s proposal for an increase of 20,000 US troops in Iraq, while Israel and its American neoconservative allies prepare an assault on Iran.
Commentators have expressed puzzlement over President Bush’s appointment of a US Navy admiral as commander in charge of the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The appointment makes sense only if the administration’s attention has shifted from the insurgencies to an attack on Iran.
The Bush administration has recently doubled its aircraft carrier forces and air power in the Persian Gulf. According to credible news reports, the Israeli air force has been making practice runs in preparation for an attack on Iran.
Recently, Israeli military and political leaders have described Israeli machinations to manipulate the American public and their representatives into supporting or joining an Israeli assault on Iran.
Two US carrier task forces or strike groups will certainly congest the Persian Gulf. On January 9, a US nuclear sub collided with a Japanese tanker in the Persian Gulf. Two carrier groups will have scant room for maneuver. Their purpose is either to provide the means for a hard hit on Iran or to serve as sitting ducks for a new Pearl Harbor that would rally Americans behind the new war.
Whether our ships are hit by Iran in retaliation to an attack from Israel or suffer an orchestrated attack by Israel that is blamed on the Iranians, there are certainly far more US naval forces in the Persian Gulf than prudence demands.
Bush’s proposed surge appears to have no real military purpose. The US military opposes it as militarily pointless and as damaging to the US Army and Marine Corps. The surge can only be accomplished by keeping troops deployed after the arrival of their replacements. Moreover, the increase in numbers that can be achieved in this way are far short of the numbers required to put down the insurgency and civil war.
The only purpose of the surge is to distract Congress while plans are implemented to widen the war.
Weapons inspectors have failed to find a nuclear weapons program in Iran. Most experts say it would be years before Iran could make a weapon even if the Iranian government is actively working on a weapons program. Since the danger, if any, is years away, why is Israel so determined to attack Iran now?
The answer might be that Israel has the chance now. The Bush administration is in its pocket. The White House is working with neoconservatives, not with the American foreign policy community represented by the Iraq Study Group. Neoconservative propagandists are in influential positions in the media. The US Congress is intimidated by AIPAC. The correlation of forces are heavily in Israel’s favor.
Part of the Israeli/neoconservative plan has already been achieved with the destruction of civilian infrastructure and spread of sectarian strife in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. If Iran can be taken out with a powerful air attack that might involve nuclear weapons, Syria would be isolated and Hezbollah would be cut off from Iranian supplies.
Israel has two years remaining to use its American resources to achieve its aims in the Middle East. How influential will Israel and the neoconservatives be with the next president in the wake of a US defeat in Iraq and Israeli defeat in Lebanon? If the US withdraws its troops from Iraq, as the US military and foreign policy community recommend and as polls show the American public wants, the only effect of Bush’s Iraq invasion will have been to radicalize Muslims against Israel, the US, and US puppet governments in the Middle East. Extremist elements will tout their victory over the US, and the pressures on Israel to accept a realistic accommodation with Palestinians will be overpowering.
Now is the chance – the only chance – for Israel and the neoconservatives to achieve their goal of bringing Muslims to heel, a goal that they have been writing about and working to achieve for a decade.
This goal requires the war to be widened by whatever deceit and treachery necessary to bring the American public along.
The US Congress must immediately refocus its attention from the surge to Iran, the real target of Bush administration aggression.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10298 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 1:50 pm Post subject: |
| Notice how the 'The Man Who'll Lead the Surge' article below by Sally Donnelly and Douglas Waller for Time magazine doesn't mention that Fallon was honored by JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) as the following 'Bush's Rush to Armageddon' article by Robert Parry conveys:
Bush's Rush to Armageddon
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2007/01/09/bush-s-rush-to-armageddon.php
Colin Powell believes that the 'JINSA crowd' is in control of the Pentagon as the appointment of Fallon confirms it yet again:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/10/08/a-war-for-israel-colin-powell-seems-to-think-so.php
Tuesday, Jan. 09, 2007
The Man Who'll Lead the Surge
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1575736,00.html
By SALLY B. DONNELLY AND DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON
It was early May 2005, and alarm bells in Washington's media echo chamber were ringing. A leaked Pentagon report had warned that the strain of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars could crimp the Defense Department's ability to respond quickly to other conflicts, and pundits were fretting that China and North Korea could exploit the vulnerability. But flying through Asia in his Air Force Boeing 737, Admiral William Fallon, the man who had taken over the U.S. Pacific Command just two months earlier, wasn't ruffled. His command — with 300,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines — still outclassed the force Beijing was building up, he insisted. And together with a growing South Korean army, it could quickly overpower any kind of attack by Pyongyang's army. "I'm not losing too much sleep right now," the admiral told TIME, which accompanied him on the trip.
That kind of calm confidence, seasoned by nearly 40 years in the Navy, has made quite an impression on Fallon's bosses — particularly President George W. Bush, who's looking for a steady military hand to help him turn around the mess in Iraq. This week Bush will announce he wants "Fox" Fallon ("Fox" comes from his call sign as a Naval aviator) to replace Gen. John Abizaid as head of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Iraq war and the entire volatile Middle East.
Fallon may be widely respected, but within military circles, his selection is controversial. The top Central Command job has always gone to an Army or Marine general for the simple reason that their ground forces would typically bear the brunt of any war in the theater. A bombadier-navigator in Vietnam, Fallon, 62, has no operational experience commanding ground troops or battling the kind of insurgency that grips Iraq or is growing in Afghanistan. "To put in a naval aviator without any command combat experience is like putting a baseball coach in to run the offense in the Super Bowl," grumbles a retired Marine general.
Why did Bush reach over several layers of experienced veterans to pick Fallon? Some critics think he was looking for a senior statesman in uniform, and Fallon certainly fits the bill, both abroad and at home. In Washington, he has developed good contacts with lawmakers from both parties, which may prove critical, as congressional Democrats are now vowing to fight any Administration plan to send more U.S. forces into Iraq as part of a so-called surge. He's "one of America's best strategists," enthuses Ike Skelton, the new Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. But one Marine general who knows the region says it actually makes some sense to put a naval officer in charge. If the U.S. begins redeploying forces outside of Iraq as a part of a drawdown it will increasingly have to use naval vessels, not large land bases, for stationing them.
More importantly, Fallon has gained the President's trust. Fallon hosted a small dinner at his Hawaii headquarters for Bush, who was on his way back from Vietnam last month, and the two men spoke about a range of issues in the Pacific theater. In particular, Pentagon sources say, they agreed that engaging with China was crucial to U.S. interests —a view that Fallon often found being challenged by his former boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
If Fallon was a surprise, few were taken aback by the news that Army Lieut. General David Petraeus will take over Gen. George Casey's job as the on-scene commander in Iraq. Petraeus served in Iraq twice, has a Ph.D in international relations, and comes loaded with the optimism the job requires, not to mention support for the surge option Bush favors. Some Marine officers were pulling for one of their own: Lt. Gen. James Mattis, one of the military's most seasoned combat veterans (he led the complex but successful invasion into Afghanistan and then took the 1st Marine Division on the march to Baghdad). The Marines have not held a senior position in CENTCOM or Iraq since before the start of the war and many of them privately blame poor Army leadership for the war's failures.
Petraeus — whom critics call "King David" for his often sophisticated self-promotion skills — will be in charge of day-to-day fighting in Iraq, while Fallon will oversee the entire Middle East and Southwest Asia, which are under CENTCOM's purview. The admiral will also be tasked with trying to convince Middle Eastern countries to lend the U.S. a hand in redeveloping Iraq's flagging economy.
The Pentagon's four-stars who serve as overseas combatant commanders are as much diplomats as warriors, and Fallon has proven to be a particularly deft one. After a Navy submarine struck the Japanese fishing boat Ehime Maru in 2001, killing nine aboard the vessel, Bush dispatched the admiral to Tokyo to deliver the U.S. apology to the government and an angry Japanese public. As Vice Chief of Naval Operations in 2002-2003 he impressed Rumsfeld, who was notorious for bullying his flag officers. When Fallon had to fill in for his boss at service chiefs meetings with Rumsfeld, he took advantage of the fact that he was the junior officer in the group and thus the last called on to speak. It gave him the chance to see how Rummy grilled the other chiefs so he could quickly rearrange his presentation to please the defense secretary. "What Fallon really brings that matters is the proven capability to operate at the regional strategic level and to work and foster relationships," says retired Adm. Stephen Pietropaoili, who's now executive director of the Navy League, an advocacy group for the sea service.
From his headquarters on Oahu, Fallon hasn't been shy about flexing U.S. diplomacy the past two years. Despite wariness of Pentagon hawks, he has pressed to improve relations with Beijing, for example, organizing a joint naval exercise last fall with the Chinese navy. Fallon believes diplomacy is as important a weapon as all the ships, planes and soldiers he commands. Some of that broader view "comes with old age," Fallon told TIME in 2005. Bush now hopes that kind of thinking from the admiral in Asia can help rescue a troubled war in a very different part of the world. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 2:09 pm Post subject: |
| This Michael Duffy of Time Magazine also wrote an excellent review of Bamford's 'A Pretext for War' which is included after the following article of his:
Thursday, Jan. 04, 2007
What a Surge Really Means
By MICHAEL DUFFY
Find this article at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1574148,00.html
For years now, George W. Bush has told Americans that he would increase the number of troops in Iraq only if the commanders on the ground asked him to do so. It was not a throwaway line: Bush said it from the very first days of the war, when he and Pentagon boss Donald Rumsfeld were criticized for going to war with too few troops. He said it right up until last summer, stressing at a news conference in Chicago that Iraq commander General George Casey "will make the decisions as to how many troops we have there." Seasoned military people suspected that the line was a dodge--that the civilians who ran the Pentagon were testing their personal theory that war can be fought on the cheap and the brass simply knew better than to ask for more. In any case, the President repeated the mantra to dismiss any suggestion that the war was going badly. Who, after all, knew better than the generals on the ground?
Now, as the war nears the end of its fourth year and the number of Americans killed has surpassed 3,000, Bush has dropped the generals-know-best line. Sometime next week the President is expected to propose a surge in the number of U.S. forces in Iraq for a period of up to two years. A senior official said reinforcements numbering "about 20,000 troops," and maybe more, could be in place within months. The surge would be achieved by extending the stay of some forces already in Iraq and accelerating the deployment of others.
The irony is that while the generals would have liked more troops in the past, they are cool to the idea of sending more now. That's in part because the politicians and commanders have had trouble agreeing on what the goal of a surge would be. But it is also because they are worried that a surge would further erode the readiness of the U.S.'s already stressed ground forces. And even those who back a surge are under no illusions about what it would mean to the casualty rate. "If you put more American troops on the front line," said a White House official, "you're going to have more casualties."
Coming from Bush, a man known for bold strokes, the surge is a strange half-measure--too large for the political climate at home, too small to crush the insurgency in Iraq and surely three years too late. Bush has waved off a bipartisan rescue mission out of pride, stubbornness or ideology, or some combination of the three. Rather than reversing course, as all the wise elders of the Iraq Study Group advised, the Commander in Chief is betting that more troops will lead the way to what one White House official calls "victory."
WHOSE IDEA IS THIS?
ALL KINDS OF MILITARY EXPERTS, BOTH active duty and retired, have been calling for more troops since before the war began--former Army chief Eric Shinseki, former Centcom boss Anthony Zinni and, perhaps loudest of all, Senator John McCain. But seen in another light, the surge is the latest salvo in the 30-year tong war between the two big foreign policy factions in the Republican Party: the internationalists and the neoconservatives. The surge belongs to the neocons and in particular to Frederick Kagan, who taught military history at West Point for a decade and today works out of the American Enterprise Institute as a military analyst. Kagan argued for a surge last fall in the pages of the Weekly Standard, the neocons' house organ, after the military's previous surge, Operation Forward Together, failed in late October. Kagan turned to former Army Vice Chief of Staff Jack Keane, a retired four-star general who still has street cred at the Pentagon, to help flesh out the plan and then sell it to the White House. The neocons don't have the same juice they had at the start of the war, in part because so many of them have fled the government in shame. But they are a long way from dead.
It was no accident that the surge idea began gathering steam among the war's most ardent supporters at exactly the same moment the Baker-Hamilton group proposed, in early December, that the White House start executing a slow but steady withdrawal from Iraq. To the neocons, former Secretary of State James Baker is the archenemy, the epitome of those internationalists who have always been too willing to cut deals with shady players overseas. His commission's 79 recommendations struck the neocons as defeatist--and a condemnation of a war they had thought up in the first place. And so, re-energized by the return of Baker to prominence, they went on the offensive. "We were hearing all this talk of pulling back and pulling out and how not to lose," said a retired senior officer. "But we're looking for a way to win."
Although the Baker group allowed for a surge to stabilize Baghdad or speed up training of Iraqis, it conditioned that O.K. with the phrase "if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective." When it became clear to the internationalists that the Kagan-Keane surge was winning White House attention without any calls for more troops from generals on the ground, they counter-counterattacked. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former four-star, said a surge had been tried in Baghdad--and had failed last fall--and would only further delay Iraqis in taking control of their own security. Powell added, a little pointedly, that he had not heard any generals ask for more troops--an oblique way of hinting that the President was saying one thing about who was deciding troop levels but doing another.
Bush greeted the Baker-Hamilton proposals with the gratitude of someone who had just received a box of rotting cod. He never much liked the internationalists (although--or perhaps because--his father is a charter member). By Christmas, it was clear that he had not only rejected a staged withdrawal in the mold of Baker-Hamilton but was ready to up his bet and throw even more troops at the problem. He began executing his pivot quietly. First, after reassuring Americans that he would ask for more troops only when the generals requested them, Bush amended that promise and hinted that he would merely listen to what the generals were saying. Bush next sent his new Pentagon boss, Robert Gates, to Baghdad to see whether the Iraqi commanders needed more troops. Bush then turned to his National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, to hack this new way out of the Iraqi jungle.
So far, the Hadley-run hunt for a new military and diplomatic approach has earned mediocre marks from inside and outside the White House. Wider-ranging alternatives were not explored in any depth, said several foreign policy experts who met with Hadley in December, and talks with Iran and Syria were ruled out of the question. A dismayed Administration official who has generally been an optimist about Iraq described the process as chaotic. "None of this," he predicted of the surge and its coming rollout, "is going to work."
WHAT IS THE MISSION?
NOT LONG AGO, THE GOAL OF U.S. FORCES IN Iraq sounded straightforward: liberate the country and turn it over to the Iraqi people. Now U.S. strategy is a vast, many-headed monster: disarm or kill the insurgents, hunt down al-Qaeda, rebuild the electrical and energy grids, establish civilian order, work with political parties to speed a stand-alone government, keep an eye out for Iranian influence--and try not to get killed in the process. According to Kagan, the newly enlarged forces would reorder those priorities and make protecting the Iraqi people Job One. How? With what retired Lieut. General David Barno, who helped Kagan and Keane write the plan, calls "classic counterinsurgency tactics: soldiers going house to house in every block, finding out who lives there, what they do, how many weapons they have, whom they are connected to and how they can help or hurt." Only by winning the trust of the people, the thinking goes, can the U.S. overcome the insurgents. There is a big debate about how many troops would be needed to execute that mission successfully. Some experts think 100,000 might be the right number; Keane and Kagan say it can be done with 35,000, which is about the limit that would be available. It does not appear that the White House will be sending that many.
HOW DO THE GENERALS VIEW THE IDEA OF A SURGE?
FOR MONTHS THE GENERALS OPPOSED increasing troop strength, chiefly because they calculated that as long as the American footprint was growing, Iraqis would never take responsibility for their own security. This continues to concern them: a former military official told TIME that Defense Secretary Gates has spent a lot of time in his first three weeks on the job trying to wrest from his military planners clear benchmarks for putting the Iraqis in charge. The chiefs hinted they would back a surge only if the goals--and the goalposts--are explicit. "We would not surge without a purpose," said Army chief Peter Schoomaker. "And that purpose should be measurable."
The chiefs also complain that the surge seems to involve only guys with guns. There is a widespread feeling that the Pentagon has shouldered the entire load in Iraq while U.S. government agencies better suited for reorganizing political and economic systems have dropped the ball. Other agencies, most notably the State, Justice and Energy departments, lag in sending experts and advisers to help the Iraqis pull themselves together. Uniformed officers say they can pull off a surge, but it won't make any difference if there isn't a larger, government-wide strategy to mend the broken country.
But if the brass isn't keen on a surge, they also know a bargaining chip when they see one. While Rumsfeld was in charge, the Joint Chiefs were muffled, too scared to say boo in public if it meant crossing the civilian boss. But in early December, once Rumsfeld had resigned, the Army and Marine Corps chiefs increasingly went public with their long-standing gripes that Iraq has stretched their forces to the breaking point, damaging recruiting and diminishing readiness. Bush moved quickly to quell this startling revolt: within days he hinted that he might ask Congress to enlarge the overall size of the armed forces in the future. It will be years before the expanded forces are recruited, trained, equipped and in the field, so that change won't solve the problems a surge creates. But the generals seem to have prevailed on a demand that went nowhere while Rumsfeld was in charge.
HOW LONG COULD A SURGE BE SUSTAINED?
TO CREATE "THE SURGE," KAGAN AND KEANE proposed extending combat tours in Iraq to produce an additional 30,000 troops in Iraq over the next 18 months. Army tours would be lengthened from 12 to 15 months, and Marine deployments would stretch from seven to 12 months. A few additional combat brigades would be shipped over early to round out the reinforcements. There is no question that some units could pick up the pace. The Marines, after all, still station almost 20,000 troops in Okinawa.
Outgoing Centcom boss John Abizaid told a Senate panel in November that the U.S. "can put in 20,000 more Americans tomorrow and achieve a temporary effect." But he added that "the ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something we have right now with the size of the Army and the Marine Corps." Surge proponents quietly cheered the recent announcement that Abizaid is retiring. They believe that Abizaid and many of the Army's other top generals are locked in a post-Vietnam mentality that has them worrying more about the recruitment and retention required for an all-volunteer force than about fighting and winning wars.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SURGE ENDS?
THAT DEPENDS ON WHETHER YOU ARE AN optimist or a pessimist on the subject of Iraq. Kagan told TIME that U.S. troop force "should be down significantly" from what it is now--"enough to permit economic development, the recruiting and training of the Iraqi army, political development and reconciliation." Under this scenario, U.S. forces can turn to eradicating the insurgents full time once Baghdad is "stabilized." Not everyone buys this happy talk. "Are we assuming the insurgents don't get to vote on this?" asks a veteran of both the Iraqi and Vietnam wars. "I see more arrogance than ever, assuming once again that Western genius counts for more than Eastern resolve." Already the sectarian militias so eager to kill civilians across Baghdad have been careful not to confront U.S. forces. When U.S. troops appear, the Mahdi Army simply melts away and waits for another moment. Unless they are killed off, jailed or somehow turned into allies--unlikely outcomes all--Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militia fighters will still be around because they have more patience than the U.S. has staying power.
SO, IS THE SURGE BUSH'S LAST STAND?
PROBABLY YES, WHETHER BUSH INTENDS IT that way or not. There is always a chance that a surge might reduce the violence, if only for a while. But given that nothing in Iraq has gone according to plan, it seems more likely that it won't. That's why many in the military assume privately that a muscular-sounding surge now is chiefly designed to give Bush the political cover to execute a partial withdrawal on his terms later. "We think that by bringing the level of violence down and bringing the level of Iraqi support up, we will be able to begin to hand over the country," Kagan told TIME.
Asked what happens if the surge fails, he added, "If the situation collapses for some other reason--loss of will in the U.S., say, or an unexpected Iraqi political meltdown, then the reduced violence will permit a more orderly withdrawal, if that becomes necessary, mitigating the effect of defeat on the U.S. military and potentially on the region." A retired colonel who served in Baghdad put it more bluntly: "We don't know whether this is a plan for victory or just to signal to Americans that we did our damnedest before pulling out."
There is one other scenario to consider: it may be that Bush won't pull out of Iraq as long as he is President. Whether it works or not, a surge of 18 to 24 months would carry Bush to the virtual end of his term. After that, Iraq becomes someone else's problem. Bush's real exit strategy in Iraq may just be to exit the presidency first.
WHEN HE UNVEILS HIS PLAN, BUSH IS likely to wrap the surge inside a handful of other proposals. There is a new Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative in the works for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's team and the outlines of an upgraded Iraqi jobs and infrastructure proposal on the table. Plus, Bush has indicated that he favors the expansion in the armed forces that both the Army and Marine Corps chiefs want. Most of those ideas will meet with broad support in Congress and at the Pentagon, and that's part of the design here: it will be harder to pick the surge apart, the thinking goes, if it's paired with other projects. Besides, Bush and lawmakers know there isn't much Congress can do to stop a surge, short of cutting off funds for military operations. And neither party has any appetite for that.
But that fact hides one other big political change since the November elections. Skepticism among Republicans about the President's thinking on Iraq has become reflexive. Over the past week, two Republican Senators, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, indicated they were far from sold on the surge, and Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam veteran from Nebraska, called a surge "folly." A senior aide to a G.O.P. Senator told TIME that "requiring more troops without providing the goals or the message is a killer. It's a political killer."
And this is where the problem of the President's direction on Iraq only damages his cause in the long run. The White House imagines it is girding for battle against the Democrats and the naysayers who opposed the war in the first place. In fact, its fastest-growing problem is with Republicans who carried Bush's water on "stay the course" last fall. That gambit cost the party 36 seats in the House and Senate in November. One can only imagine what that number would have been--45? 55?--had Bush campaigned last fall for sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq instead.
With reporting by Mike Allen, SALLY B. DONNELLY, Massimo Calabresi/ Washington, Mark Kukis/Baghdad
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Sunday, Jun. 06, 2004
One Expert's Verdict: The CIA Caved Under Pressure
By Michael Duffy/Washington
The CIA that George Tenet leaves behind next month is a shadow of its imaginary self, a butt of jokes rather than the envy of the world. It is an agency that has become self-protective and bureaucratic; it is too reliant on gadgets rather than spies to steal secrets. Sometimes the CIA has simply been too blind to see what is hiding in plain sight. Tenet restored the agency's morale, but he leaves behind a string of spectacular intelligence failures.
And that may not be the worst of it. In his new book A Pretext for War, intelligence expert James Bamford alleges that the CIA not only failed to detect and deter the secret army of Muslim extremists gathering over the horizon in the late 1990s but also failed to take action when a group of Administration hard-liners, backed by the Pentagon chief and Vice President Dick Cheney, began to advance the case for war with Iraq in secret using data the CIA widely believed weren't supportable or were just plain false. Instead of fighting back, Bamford argues, the CIA for the most part rolled over and went along. The result was a war sold largely on a fiction, confected from unchecked rumor and biased informants.
A Pretext for War is probably the best one-volume companion to the harrowing events in the war on terrorism since 1996, chiefly because it focuses on the most difficult to pierce subject: the hidden machinery of U.S. intelligence. Bamford is a veteran chronicler of the spy world whose The Puzzle Palace, published in 1982, is still considered the classic account of the mysterious National Security Agency (NSA), which electronically snoops on friends and enemies overseas. His account of 9/11 and its aftermath is studded with new details, including some about the undisclosed location known as Site R, an underground bunker on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border where the Vice President spent much of his time in 2001. Deep under Raven Rock Mountain, Site R "is a secret world of five buildings, each three stories tall, computer filled caverns and a subterranean water reservoir." It is just 7 miles from Camp David.
Bamford maintains that before 9/11, the U.S.'s entire spook network was pretty much out to lunch. It was a community that had done its job well in the cold war and was looking for a reason to exist. By the late 1990s the NSA was becoming obsolete, unable to keep up with the pace of technological change. The NSA netted millions more conversations at its worldwide listening posts than it could translate or interpret. The agency spent billions to eavesdrop on chatter overseas that moved by satellite — only to see the world move to harder-to-steal digitized cellular, e-mail and instant-messaging communications. Meanwhile, at the NSA's sprawling Fort Meade, Md., campus, the agency's director could not send an email to all the NSA's 38,000 employees. Why? The NSA had 68 separate e-mail systems.
Things were not much better at the CIA. In a devastating chronology, Bamford reports that even as late as 2000, the agency was stuck in an old cold war way of doing things — training its agents, recruiting spies overseas and keeping headquarters happy. One agent explains that CIA recruiting overseas was about as rigorous as going to an opening-night mixer at a Las Vegas convention: American agents overseas sometimes competed with one another to see who could collect the most business cards at official receptions in foreign capitals. Then they would return to their embassy to determine the night's winner. Each card, the agents told themselves, represented a potential spy for the U.S. In fact, the agent said, "none of these people had anything useful ... It was just numbers. It's all quantity."
With tradecraft like that, it is little wonder the CIA "never once even tried to infiltrate" al-Qaeda, according to Bamford. He says agents working at the CIA's vaunted Alec station, the shop inside the agency responsible for tracking and killing Osama bin Laden, seemed more interested in flying to Afghanistan and Paris to meet with various Afghan warlords who promised to provide details of bin Laden's whereabouts in exchange for bags full of cash. Bamford asserts that the CIA's Afghan assets never came through with very much on the Saudi terrorist, but the CIA kept them on the dole anyway.
About the only thing going well was the 50-year war between the CIA and the FBI. Alec station's chiefs were so turf conscious about which agency had "the lead" in the hunt for bin Laden that they routinely left their FBI counterparts in the dark about what they were learning from overseas — a habit that turned out to be a fatal error. Sloppy surveillance permitted two of the hijackers to elude the CIA as early as January 2000, but then the agency repeatedly failed to inform the FBI or half a dozen other government officers who could have assisted in the hunt. Indeed, at the CIA, keister covering was in full swing long before the attacks of 9/11. In January 2000 the head of Alec station told his bosses he still had the two men under surveillance when in fact he had lost them in Bangkok. That bureaucratic chore completed, Alec station then dropped its chase altogether. It would be more than a year before a conscientious FBI agent assigned to the CIA re-examined the evidence and realized how badly the agency had blundered. The two names were finally given to the State Department on Aug. 23, 2001.
But the intelligence community's shaky performance also made the agency vulnerable to another kind of attack: the one mounted by a group of hard-line neoconservatives who took over at the Pentagon and in the Vice President's office when Bush became President. Long suspicious of the CIA if not openly hostile to it, the neocons came into power asserting internally that the agency couldn't shoot straight and therefore its judgments couldn't be trusted.
The Bush hard-liners had long believed that stability could come to the Middle Eastand Israel — only if Saddam Hussein was overthrown and Iraq converted into a stable democracy. Led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, they were installed at various national-security choke points in the government, and nothing moved without their O.K. Bamford comes very close to stating that the hard-liners were wittingly or unwittingly acting as agents of Israel's hard-line Likud Party, which believed Israel should operate with impunity in the region and dictate terms to its neighbors. Such a world view, Bamford argues, was simply repotted by the hard-liners into U.S. foreign policy in the early Bush years, with the war in Iraq as its ultimate goal. Bamford asserts that the backgrounds, political philosophies and experiences of many of the hard-liners helped to hardwire the pro-Israel mind-set in the Bush inner circle and suggests that Washington mistook Israel's interests for its own when it pre-emptively invaded Iraq last year.
The result was a war built on sand — and a CIA that lacked the will to take on its masters. Douglas Feith, a senior Pentagon official, set up several secret offices in the Pentagon that received data from Israel's own intelligence teams and coordinated its findings with them, partly as a way to get around CIA caution in the region. Bamford reveals that the original source of the spurious allegation that Saddam harbored "mobile biological-weapons labs" did not come from the brother of a top aide to Ahmad Chalabi whose code name was Curveball, but from an Israeli tip going back to 1994. Bamford quotes anonymous CIA agents who say that they suspected that much of the hard-liners' intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was bogus but there was pressure from within and without to shut up about it.
Bamford implies that Tenet, the ultimate staff guy, is partly to blame for this failure of nerve. When Secretary of State Colin Powell was putting together his now discredited speech to the U.N. last year about Saddam's WMD program, he stood virtually alone against the hard-liners, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley, all of whom seemed keen to pump up the Secretary's talking points. Cheney's staff handed Powell a 50-page draft of allegations; the Secretary rejected most of them as unsupportable, with the hard-liners, Rice and even Tenet fighting him every step of the way during run-through sessions at CIA headquarters. And as it turned out, Powell didn't fight hard enough.
Could Tenet have stopped the rush to war? Bamford suggests he could have. "Off on the sidelines, George Tenet was one of the few who knew the truth," he writes, adding that Tenet preferred to work behind the scenes on minor disagreements about the data "instead of speaking out" against the grand scheme. That's a harsh indictment of the man who kept America's secrets under two Presidents. But one of Tenet's colleagues was even less generous, saying simply, "We caved." | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 1:22 pm Post subject: |
| General Jim David (whose name appears on the cover of former Republican Congressman Paul Findley's 'They Dare to Speak Out' book about the power/influence of the pro-Israel lobby - AIPAC and similar - on the US political system and media) wrote the following:
BGJDAVID wrote:
Bush wants to send 21,000 more troops to Iraq
Not only does Bush want to send 21,000 more troops to Iraq, but maybe the most dangerous thing that he is doing is sending an armed U.S. carrier to the gulf. In his speech last night he tried to prepare the American people for the next attack on Iran and Syria by trying to blame the two countries for its role in arming the insurgents in Iraq, without any evidence of these accusations. It was obvious that Bush was preparing the American people for justification to attack Iran and Syria. The most logical and diplomatic course would be to sit down and talk with Iran and Syria before jumping to these conclusions that would only threaten America's security as was determined in the Baker study. This is not the choice that Bush seems to be taking as his Jewish advisors, the Jewish lobby, and Israel's demands are to use force not diplomacy. As was evident immediately after the Baker study was released to the public, suggesting the U.S. should talk with Iran and Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert immediatly protested any talks, and I'm sure this protest was sent immediately to the White House. After all, what better way is there to eliminate Iran's nuclear threat than for America to use its blood and money to fight Israel's war. The American people have been duped before and as long as we keep supporting Israel we will be duped again. Here we go with the tail wagging the dog. I have never seen a president who puts the security of Israel above the security of America as we see with President Bush and his Administration. And just like Ariel Sharon once said, "Don't worry about America--We, control America." As long as President Bush is in office, I'm afraid he's right.
BBC: US forces storm Iranian consulate
US forces have stormed an Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil and seized five members of staff.
The troops raided the building at about 0300, taking away computers and papers, according to Kurdish media and senior local officials.
The US military had no immediate comment on the raid, which comes amid high tension between Iran and the US.
The Bush administration accuses Iran of helping fuel violence in Iraq, as well as trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran strenuously denies both charges, countering that US military involvement in the Middle East endangers the whole region.
A local TV station said Kurdish security forces had taken over the building after the Americans had left.
Irbil lies in Iraq's Kurdish-controlled north, about 350 kilometres (220 miles) from the capital Baghdad.
Reports say the Iranian consulate there was set up last year under an agreement with the Kurdish regional government to facilitate cross-border visits.
Iranian media said the country's embassy in Baghdad had sent a letter of protest about the raid to the Iraqi foreign ministry.
In December, US troops detained a number of Iranians in Iraq, including two with diplomatic immunity who were later released.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6251167.stm
War with Iran is imminent (for Israel, of course!):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2007/01/11/war-with-iran-is-imminent-for-israel-of-course.php | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
