THE BOYS FROM OSP
Steve,
Re: Sharon himself said before the war that Israel considered Syria and Iran more dangerous to Israel than Iraq.
Don Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz set up their own spook shop before the war, and they created their own reality with the Office of Special Plans (OSP). I first read about these creeps in Seymour Hersh's expose in May, but here's more detail from the Guardian. Of particular note is that Sharon provided a more ideological staff, bypassing Mossad, just as Wolfowitz felt a need to bypass the CIA here in the States. This is a damn ominous thing. As the wits say, Wolfowitz ought to be afforded his own opinion, but not his own facts. In the case of justifying the Iraq war crime, it sure looks like Wolfowitz created his own reality, then sold it upstream to the rest of the ideologues.
guardian.co.uk
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The spies who pushed for war
Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force
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Compare: newyorker.com
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SELECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Donald Rumsfeld has his own special sources. Are they reliable?
Issue of 2003-05-12
Posted 2003-05-05
They call themselves, self-mockingly, the Cabal—a small cluster of policy advisers and analysts now based in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. In the past year, according to former and present Bush Administration officials, their operation, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has brought about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community. These advisers and analysts, who began their work in the days after September 11, 2001, have produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq. They relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi. By last fall, the operation rivalled both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., as President Bush’s main source of intelligence regarding Iraq’s possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaeda. As of last week, no such weapons had been found. And although many people, within the Administration and outside it, profess confidence that something will turn up, the integrity of much of that intelligence is now in question.
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