How a Cabal Manipulates America’s Post-Sept. 11 Psyche
Mohammed Al-Khereiji, Arab News Staff 3/18/03
The war against Iraq may be just around the corner, worldwide protests notwithstanding. US public protests against such a war have only lately gathered steam — not in defense of Saddam Hussein, whom most detest, but directed at a war to be waged against another nation based on dubious, if not outright fabricated information, and cooked up not by the president of the US, but by a cabal controlling the American administration who were pushing for an Iraqi invasion policy well before George W. Bush’s assumption of the US presidency.
In a cynical and well-orchestrated campaign, they manipulated Americas post-Sept.11 psyche to push for their anti-Arab, anti-Islamic policies beginning with an invasion of Iraq to cement US hegemony as the world’s only superpower.
One of the godfathers of this cabal is a brilliant and articulate strategist named Richard Perle. But for his chairmanship of the Pentagon’s Defense Advisory Board, Perle would have been just another rabid anti-Arab and anti-Islamic Jewish demagogue espousing Israeli interests within any number of American administrations.
But an examination of how Perle, Wolfowitz, and their cohorts in the administration misled the president and the American public is already beginning. Part of this examination is being legally handled by the FBI, as Dana Priest and Susan Schmidt report in the Washington Post on March 13. Many believe this probe to be only the tip of the iceberg. The American and world press have been buzzing with reports of the poor quality of the information provided by Collin Powell to the world and later proven to be inaccurate by Blix and El-Baradei, who are being demonized by the right- wing media in the US for the crime of telling the truth.
Incredulity at the scope of this campaign to mislead the American public and indeed the whole world was recently voiced by Seymour Hersh, who stands out alongside Bob Woodward as America’s greatest investigative reporter. He did so in two news programs in which he detailed what he referred to as the US administration’s lies and falsehoods in support of its war against Iraq.
More importantly, the Hersh interviews were related to an article of his in the New Yorker magazine of March 17, which goes to the very heart of influence-peddling and the ethics of a leading pro-war activist like Richard Perle.
The facts in the article are pretty straightforward. Perle, among other things, is both the chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Advisory Board and a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., registered in Delaware in November 2001, two months after Sept. 11, 2001, to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods and services related to homeland security and defense.
In its fund gathering campaign, the company contacted the very Arabs and Muslims that Perle is so ready to castigate at the drop of a hat. To attract Arab funding, a direct meeting between the Arabs and Perle was promised, in which the Arabs would explore the possibility of a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi question. The meeting took place in January 2003 over lunch in Marseilles, France, and the meeting reeked of extortion and influence peddling. The article further details Perle’s past dubious business activities while in government service, which did not stand in the way of his rise to power, probably because of his links to the clique that controls the present American administration.
It is an unfortunate fact that the first victim in times of war is the truth, and America is waking up to the need for the truth and their wish not to be involved in a war that may have no logical end, and based mainly on an agenda advanced by a group committing the very deceptions and lies that they accuse Saddam of.
History has shown that Seymour Hersh and the American public have ample reason to distrust groups who claim that they, and only they, know what’s good for America and are leading Americans down a path of perpetual war in pursuit of an illusory grail of peace on their own terms.>>>> |
