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Politics : World Affairs Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Thomas M. who wrote (1339)8/13/2002 3:29:40 AM
From: craig crawford  Respond to of 3959
 
"Guys like Perle and [deputy defense secretary Paul] Wolfowitz are so blinded by their loyalty to Israel that they seldom look at the long-term consequences."

thanks for the article, which confirms what i said about influential jews in the media and the administration beating the drumbeat of war. it is not coincidental that jews are the loudest proponents for a U.S. war with iraq.
Message 17816432

they've been sounding off about iraq for several months. 9/11 makes excellent cover to further their imperialist agenda which is to use the united states to eliminate the enemies of israel one by one.

Saddam will be the next US target, one way or another
guardian.co.uk

Martin Woollacott in America
Friday November 16, 2001

Richard Perle, the most visible and forceful advocate of action against Iraq outside of government...

The group represented by Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary who is the most prominent hawk within the administration...



To: Thomas M. who wrote (1339)8/13/2002 3:41:46 AM
From: craig crawford  Respond to of 3959
 
Opposing Advice to Bush: Take out Iraq vs. Take on Israeli-Palestinian Peace
toledomuslims.com

Almost desperately, the Israel lobby has begun to forestall a peace agreement with the Palestinians, as it lays the groundwork for a new diversion.

The Israel lobby has begun to forestall a peace agreement as it lays the groundwork for a new diversion.

Israel-firsters quickly launched their offensive in two arenas. Firing the first shots was Richard Perle, a long-time lobbyist for Israel. He had hoped to get a more substantive position in George W. Bush's administration. That was not to be, but Perle took what he could get, chairmanship of the Defense Policy Board (DPB), a bipartisan board of national security experts that advises the Pentagon and is charged with overseeing military preparedness and engaging in defense policy.

The 18-member board includes Harold Brown, President Jimmy Carter's defense secretary; former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; R. James Woolsey, director of the CIA in the Carter administration; Adm. David E. Jeremiah, a former deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; former Vice President Dan Quayle; and James R. Schlesinger, a former defense and energy secretary.

Perhaps under Perle's auspices, a tight-knit group of Pentagon officials and defense experts outside the government is working to mobilize for a military operation to oust President Saddam Hussain as the next phase of the war against terrorism.

This group, derisively known as the "Wolfowitz cabal," after Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, is laying the groundwork for a strategy based on the use of air support, the occupation of southern Iraq and deployment of ground troops to install the London-based Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress.
..................................................................................................................................
Meanwhile, it was taking a bit longer for the usual Israel lobby cheerleaders to get going. But fairly soon they, too, got into the act. William Kristol, now editor of the Weekly Standard, which covers many topics objectively but has the obvious agenda of broadcasting the Israel line, began pushing the Iraq war. In the absence of any clear restraint by the Bush administration, it almost looked as if the Israel lobby was going to take over American foreign policy.
.............................................................................................................................
Fortunately, despite the clamoring of Israel firsters at all levels, Secretary of State Powell has remained unperturbable. He is adamant that the administration should take one problem at a time. If wiser heads continue to prevail, the Israel lobby will be reduced to trying to dream up a war in Somalia, a failed state; or Sudan, which probably would be just as eager as the United States to clean out any residual terrorists it could find; or Yemen, which certainly can be called upon to cooperate in pacifying some of its unruly elements in order to continue an orderly national development program.



To: Thomas M. who wrote (1339)8/13/2002 3:48:17 AM
From: craig crawford  Respond to of 3959
 
Pro-Israeli lobby pushing for attack on Iraq
dawn.com

By Jim Lobe

Within the administration, the most visible advocate of attacking Iraq is Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Ten years ago, as defence undersecretary, he clashed with Powell over whether to send US forces all the way to Baghdad after evicting Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

Behind Wolfowitz lies a network of veteran Washington hands whose political savvy, talent for polemics and bureaucratic intrigue, media and intelligence contacts, and lust for ideological combat have made them a formidable influence on foreign policy for almost 30 years.

Their core is made up of "" - former Democrats, often passionately committed to Israel, who broke with the party over the Vietnam War and moved steadily to the right. They recruited prominent New Republicans, like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as fellow travellers.

The best-known members of the network include former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, "End of History" guru Francis Fukuyama, former CIA chief James Woolsey, and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer. The more influential in the policy realm include administration insiders like Wolfowitz; Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby; Iran-Contra veteran Elliott Abrams, now Bush's top aide for global issues, democracy, and human rights; Douglas Feith, the defence undersecretary for policy; and Richard Perle, who currently heads the Defence Policy Board.

William Kristol, former Vice President Dan Quayle's chief of staff and currently editor of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, is perhaps the group's most public agitator.

In the neo-conservatives' view, the United States is a force for good in the world; it has a moral responsibility to exert that force; its military power should be dominant; it should be engaged globally but never be constrained by multilateral commitments from taking unilateral action in pursuit of its interests and values; and it should have a strategic alliance with Israel. Saddam must go, they argue, because he is a threat to Israel, and also Saudi Arabia, and because he has hoarded - and used - weapons of mass destruction.

Ardent supporters of US military intervention, few neo-cons have served in the armed forces; fewer still have ever been elected to public office. Numerous polls show that large majorities of the public repudiate their main principles - especially their ceaseless quest for global military dominance and contempt for the United Nations and multilateralism more generally.



To: Thomas M. who wrote (1339)8/13/2002 3:56:08 AM
From: craig crawford  Respond to of 3959
 
Zionist lobby: declare war on Muslim world
milligazette.com

President Bush and Secretary Powell are under zionist lobbyists pressure to declare a global war against the Muslim world.

By Michael Collins Piper

A recent story in The New York Times confirms that a tight-knit group of Pentagon officials and defense experts outside government is working to mobilize support for a military operation to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as the next phase of the war against terrorism. Times writers Sciolino and Tyler said the group, "which some in the State Department and on Capitol Hill refer to as the 'Wolfowitz cabal,'" (after its leader, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz) has "largely excluded the State Department.. President Bush and Powell are facing an uprising among supporters of Israel in Congress who support the "Wolfowitz cabal."

The Oct. 19 issue of Forward, an influential Jewish weekly, reported that Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) defiantly declared that "Israel is not going to be sacrificed for the war on terrorism" and that Brett Heimov, an aide to Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) had charged that while "there hasn't been a real selling out of Israel", "they [Bush and Powell] are waiting for that excuse and it hasn't quite come yet."
Forward also reported that an unnamed House staff member alleged that the Bush administration is giving Israel "the cold shoulder" by supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state and by attempting to build bridges to the Arab and Muslim worlds.

The refusal by Bush and Powell to blame Iraq for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has left Israel's supporters in Congress and in the "Wolfowitz cabal" scrambling to generate support by both the public and in government policy-making circles for an all-out attack on Iraq-and then the remaining Muslim states that Israel perceives to be enemies to its survival. While the Times report admitted that "Both Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney have said there is no evidence linking Iraq to the attacks" of Sept. 11, Wolfowitz and his allies, such as Richard Perle, a member of the Defense Policy Board, are promoting "the need to turn to Iraq as soon as the initial phase of the war against Afghanistan and bin Laden and his organization is over." Amazingly, a two-day series of meetings of the Defense Policy Board, which included Wolfowitz and Perle, did not even brief Powell despite the saber-rattling tone underlying the board's efforts. The Times reported that Powell was "surprised" and "quite distressed" to learn that the president's deputy national security advisor, Stephen Hadley, inserted what was described as "a far-reaching sentence" into a letter sent to the United Nations Security Council threatening possible action against Iraq and other nations that Wolfowitz, Perle and their allies are alleging to be sponsors of terrorism.

What the Times writers did not mention are the following facts about Wolfowitz and Perle reported by AFP based on the pioneering investigative work of the late Spotlight correspondent Andrew St. George: Perle is perhaps the singular driving force behind a closely-knit group (including Wolfowitz) whose origins in the modern-day national security establishment go back to the 1970s when Perle was a top aide to the late Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.). Not only was Perle a key "inside" player on behalf of the Israeli lobby on Capitol Hill, but he also played a critical part in the selection of a formal body - officially known as "Team B" - that functioned as a purportedly "independent" advisory council on intelligence estimates relating to Soviet aims and capabilities. In fact, the members of Team B were bound by their determination to make literally every aspect of U.S. foreign policy geared toward policies that would prove beneficial to Israel. Solid evidence compiled over the years by a variety of independent researchers in and out of government indicates that Team B exaggerated Soviet influence. Team B's purpose in so doing was to advance the theory that Israel was vital to U.S. defense against the Soviets and that Israel therefore needed vast infusions of U.S. tax dollars.

Today Wolfowitz and Perle, working with a "war party" connected to the circles spawned by "Team B," are using the new war on terrorism to force the military to carry out a geopolitical agenda that not only represents the interests of a foreign nation - Israel - but which could also be dangerous to America's interests abroad.

Joining Wolfowitz and Perle as the self-appointed publicist for the "war party" is Perle's fellow Bilderberg member, William Kristol, publisher of The Weekly Standard, a "conservative" journal owned by Rupert Murdoch, a longtime media front man for the allied financial interests of the powerful Rothschild and Bronfman families and other patrons of Israel. Wolfowitz, Perle and Kristol propose broadening the targets of the war on terrorism to include not only Iraq, but also Syria and Iran - a formula for a global conflagration that would unite over a billion followers of the Islamic faith against the United States.

According to the BBC (8 Nov.) Secretary Powell has warned of military action against Iraq after the current campaign in Afghanistan



To: Thomas M. who wrote (1339)8/13/2002 4:07:53 AM
From: craig crawford  Respond to of 3959
 
`Wolfowitz Cabal' Is an Enemy Within U.S.
larouchepub.com

by Michele Steinberg

On Oct. 14, the London Observer published one of the now familiar—and totally false—propaganda scare stories, entitled "Iraq 'Behind U.S. Anthrax Outbreaks.' " The story gave credence to the ravings of "American hawks" who say there is "a growing mass of evidence that [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein was involved, possibly indirectly, with the Sept. 11 suicide hijacks." If confirmed, said the Observer, "the pressure now building ... for an attack [on Iraq] may be irresistible." One of these "hawks," an unnamed U.S. "administration official," told the Observer that British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a "faithful ally" in the war against terrorism and that "if it means we are embarking on the next Hundred Years' War, then that's what we are doing" (emphasis added).

The "next Hundred Year's War"? Who are the U.S. maniacs who use such language, and are they not as dangerous as Osama bin Laden's jihad?

Here we will name the names of the fanatics in this anti-Iraq grouping who have become known as the "Wolfowitz cabal," named after Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. According to the New York Times, which published a leak about their activities on Oct. 12, this grouping wants an immediate war with Iraq, believing that the targetting of Afghanistan, already an impoverished wasteland, falls far short of the global war that they are hoping for. But Iraq is just another stepping stone to turning the anti-terrorist "war" into a full-blown "Clash of Civilizations," where the Islamic religion would become the "enemy image" in a "new Cold War."

The "Clash of Civilizations" theory, developed by Harvard professor-turned President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and his protégés, including Harvard Prof. Samuel Huntington, defined the Arab and Islamic world as an "arc of crisis" from the Middle East to the Islamic countries of Central Asia in the then-Soviet Union. Brzezinski wanted to use the "Islamic card" against the Soviet Union, and in so doing, began the policy of promoting Islamic fundamentalists against moderate and pro-Western Arab and Islamic governments. After the end of the Cold War, the Brzezinski/Huntington crowd updated their "arc of crisis," declaring that the Islamic religion is the enemy, in a new war in which religions, rather than political systems, inevitably battle each other. However, trained by British and U.S. special intelligence services and the CIA, and armed by Israeli military networks, the very terrorist drug-runners in the Islamic world who were launched by Brzezinski and "adopted" by the Iran-Contra networks run by Lt. Col. Oliver North, under the elder George Bush's Executive Order 12333, have become the main suspects in terrorist attacks against the United States.

A Network Throughout the Government
The adherents of the so-called "Wolfowitz cabal," pushing the "Clash of Civilizations" theory, are nothing less than "an enemy within" the United States, a network that cuts across the Defense Department, the State Department, the White House, and the National Security Council. This report is not a "good guys" versus "bad guys" description of the Bush Administration; rather it is a warning that this cabal is a close-knit rogue network that is trying to hijack U.S. policy, and turn the current Afghanistan mess into a global war. The cabal bears a dangerous resemblance to the "secret parallel government" of North and Gen. Richard Secord's "Project Democracy" operation that ran Iran-Contra. In fact, some of the cabal members now in the Bush Administration are convicted criminals as a result of their activity in North's "Enterprise"!

On Oct. 12, the New York Times revealed deep divisions in the Bush Administration, describing how the cabal plots policy behind the back of Cabinet officials, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell, in the name of the U.S. government. The group wants to obliterate Iraq, put Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority on the terrorism list (if not the obituary list), and declare war on nation-states.

The Times revealed that a key section of the "Wolfowitz cabal," is the 18-member Defense Policy Board, which met for more than 19 hours on Sept. 19-20 to "make the case" against Saddam Hussein. The meeting pushed for a renewed war against Iraq as soon as the war against Afghanistan had concluded its initial phase. It discussed overthrowing Saddam Hussein, partitioning Iraq into mini-states led by U.S.-funded dissidents who would steal the proceeds from the Basra oil revenues for their quisling government. The meeting discussed how to manipulate information so as to pin the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States on Saddam Hussein.

According to the Times, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld attended the meetings for only "part" of both days, and on Sept. 22, President George Bush rejected the Policy Board's recommendation to declare war against Iraq. But to the "Wolfowitz cabal," Bush's decision didn't really matter—senior members of the Policy Board had been selected for their broad international connections, especially to the United Kingdom and Israel, allowing them to force changes in U.S. policy through an "outside-inside" operation. If unable to change policy through advising, the network could also run covert operations as a "government within a government," as they had maneuvered during Iran-Contra.

The chairman of the Defense Policy Board is Richard Perle, the former Reagan Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, now based at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Perle, nicknamed "The Prince of Darkness" because of his nuclear Armageddon views during the Cold War, is, more importantly, an asset of Conrad Black's Hollinger International, Inc., which grew out of British Empire Security Coordinator William Stephenson's efforts to secure arms for Britain during World War II. At present, Hollinger owns the British Tory Party-linked Telegraph PLC, whose International Advisory Board is headed by former British Prime Minister, now Lady Margaret Thatcher. Hollinger also owns the Jerusalem Post, another war-mongering press outlet.

The "heavy hitters" on the Defense Policy Board are the worst of the Anglo-American-Israeli geopolitical fanatics from the last several decades, including: former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who is also a member of Hollinger's International Advisory Board; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; former Clinton Administration Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey; former Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. David E. Jeremiah; former Vice President Dan Quayle; former Defense and Energy Secretary James R. Schlesinger; and former President Carter's Defense Secretary Harold Brown.

Though Perle was only recently appointed to head the Defense Policy Board, he and Wolfowitz have been collaborators for more than two decades, as agents-of-influence of the right-wing Israeli war faction. In 1985, when it was clear that Jonathan Jay Pollard, an American convicted that year of spying for Israel, could not have been working alone in stealing such high-level U.S. secrets for Israel to sell to the Soviet Union, top-level intelligence officials told EIR that an entire "X Committee" of high-level U.S. officials, was being investigated. Wolfowitz and Perle were on the list of "X Committee" suspects, and Israeli spying against the United States was so thick that investigators told EIR they had found "not moles, but entire molehills." Pollard and his Israeli defenders later claimed that Pollard "had to" spy against the United States because the Americans were soft on Iraq and other Arab countries.

The "Wolfowitz cabal" is deterimined to push the United States in the direction of the most dangerous Israeli right-wing policy, including a possible Israeli nuclear attack on an Arab state.
They are implementers of the very "breakaway ally" scenario about which 2004 Democratic Party Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche warned in his statement of Oct. 12 (see International).

Plan B: Wagging the Dog
The "Wolfowitz cabal" is out to destroy any potential for a Middle East peace, and simultaneously is determined to crush Eurasian economic development centered around cooperation among Europe, Russia, and China. After being rebuffed after the marathon Defense Policy Board meetings, the Wolfowitz cabal set various operations in motion to plant propaganda stories, falsify reports of U.S. policy, and carry out other maneuvers, whereby the tail would "wag the dog." Unapproved statements are made by cabal members, interviews misrepresenting U.S. policy are planted around the globe, and intelligence reports are altered or manufactured to further the policy goals.

The pattern is becoming crystal clear.

In the first such instance, shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, Wolfowitz declared that the United States will "end states harboring terrorism," and insisted that under the principle of self-defense, the United States could act alone, without the United Nations, or cooperation from any other country. He wanted to establish the "doctrine" that the United States would hit a country "anywhere, anytime" based on secret evidence. But, Wolfowitz was forced to retract his statements, in a visible rift with the White House. Some days later, NATO allies at its Brussels headquarters snubbed Wolfowitz, and refused to formalize cooperation with the United States under NATO agreements at a meeting where Wolfowitz represented the Bush Administration.

In the same vein, on Oct. 7, the day the Afghanistan bombings began, the cabal again attempted to provoke a rift between the United States and members of the UN Security Council, especially Russia and China, by altering the text of a letter from U.S. Ambassador to the UN John D. Negroponte. (Not coincidentally, Negroponte was a notorious insider in the Iran-Contra operation, who was accused of collaborating with narcotics-linked military death squads in Honduras in the 1980s.) The changes in the letter were made without notifying Negroponte's boss, Secretary of State Powell.

In the letter, Negroponte echoed Wolfowitz's so-called gaffe, writing, "We may find that our self-defense requires further action with respect to other organizations and states" (emphasis added). The statement implicitly targetted Iraq, Syria, and Sudan, all countries which are on the State Department's list of countries that support terrorism. The statement violated promises the United States had made, that it would limit "coalition" action to redressing the attack of Sept. 11. Upon learning of the statement, from the press, Powell reportedly "hit the roof." The insertion was drafted by Stephen J. Hadley, who is the Deputy Adviser to the National Security Council. The stunt may have been planned at the Defense Policy Board meetings.

Then there's the case of former CIA director R. James Woolsey, whose defined role is as the Policy Board member who is most public in demanding the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The Knight-Ridder newspaper chain reported on Oct. 11, that Woolsey had been authorized the prior month to fly to London on a U.S. government plane, accompanied by Justice and Defense Department officials, on a secret mission to gather evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attack. In a Sept. 18 press conference by Defense Week, Woolsey called for creating a "no-fly and no-drive zone" in the north and south of Iraq, so that the Kurds and the Shi'ites, respectively, could better fight Saddam. "The watchword of the day," Woolsey said, is, "It's the Regimes, Stupid!"

Since the Oct. 5 death from anthrax of Bob Stevens, the Sun tabloid photo editor, from anthrax, Woolsey has been the world's leading finger-pointer at Saddam as being behind the anthrax attack. His so-called evidence is dated, prejudiced, and completely unreliable.

It was no accident that Woolsey role-played a prominent character—CIA Director—in the New York Council on Foreign Relations 1999-2000 scenario the previous year, "The Next Financial Crisis: Warning Signs, Damage Control, and Impact," that acted out a virtual coup d'état coming on the heels of a combined financial crisis and terrorist attack. In the CFR war-game, the U.S. President would be taken out of the picture, leaving the country under the control of a crisis management dictatorship.

Also dispatched to London to propagandize for a "rolling war" that would attack Afghanistan, then Iraq, then country after country until revenge is exacted, was fellow Policy Board member Newt Gingrich. Talking to the London Times, owned by top British-Israeli propagandist Rupert Murdoch, Gingrich said that the United States is "at war" with "organized, systematic extensions of terror, supported by nation-states." He said that targetting the Afghan Taliban without defeating Iraq would be "like defeating Imperial Japan and leaving the Nazis alone." Gingrich threatened that countries judged not cooperative against terrorism would face the consequences: "The U.S. and the coalition forces will assist your own people in removing you."

Setting the pace for his team, Perle was the joint initiator with neo-con William Kristol of the Rupert Murdoch-funded Weekly Standard, of an open letter to President Bush, that, while ostensibly supporting the President in the war against terrorism, was, in fact, an ultimatum to support a "Clash of Civilizations" Thirty Years' War in the Middle East. Among the non-negotiable demands set forth in that letter was the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [Sept. 11] attack."

There is no doubt that the Wolfowitz/Perle duo is at the heart of the network that can use Israel in the "breakaway ally scenario." Indeed, Wolfowitz is one of great hopes of right-wing extremists in Israel, including among the radical settlers movement, who are demanding the assassination of Arafat and the expulsion of all Palestinians from the Occupied Territories (see coverage in International). But, Wolfowitz and Perle are not "Israeli agents." Rather, they are second-generation operatives both mentored by the RAND Corp.'s Albert Wohlstetter, a former Trotskyite communist turned nuclear strategist. Nor are the cabal war-mongers Seven Days in May militarists.

A key member of the cabal is Richard Armitage, the number-two man in the U.S. State Department, who was investigated in the Iran-Contra scandal, and who is a longtime collaborator of Wolfowitz in the targetting of Iraq. The cabal also has high-level operatives at the National Security Council (NSC):

Gen. Wayne Downing, former Commander in Chief of the Special Operations Command, was just appointed as Director of Combatting Terrorism for the Homeland Defense Board, headed by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. In 1997-98, Downing drew up a military plan to overthrow Saddam, by assassination, if necessary. The plan hinged on heavily arming dissident gangs of Iraqi Shi'ites in the south of Iraq, and Kurdish fighters in the north. Invasion by U.S. Special Forces ground troops was not ruled out. The promoter of the neo-Conservative yahoos in Congress and the think-tanks was Wolfowitz, then head of the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Unable to ram this plan through the Clinton Administration, Wolfowitz shopped the plan to Perle, an expert in "chain-letter" pressure politics, who garnered signatures. Now at the NSC, Downing has the ready-made plan to hit Iraq.

Richard Clarke, Adviser to the President for Cyberspace Warfare. Clarke, who was originally with the State Department during the elder Bush's Administration, was demoted for covering up Israeli violations of the Arms Exporting laws. In August 1998, Clarke was one of the key figures who planted false information about Sudan's involvement in the East Africa U.S. Embassy bombings, which led to U.S. cruise missile attacks on a Sudanese pharmaceutical company in Khartoum. Clarke shopped in disinformation from British-Israeli covert operations stringer Yosef Bodansky that targetted Sudan.

Elliott Abrams, NSC staff. Abrams, who was convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, was quietly placed on the NSC as a specialist in "religion and human rights." He is a longtime member of the right-wing Zionist networks that infiltrated the U.S. security establishment. He worked closely with Secord and North in Central America, also providing a link to the Israeli gun-running networks that delivered arms to Khomeini's Iran.



To: Thomas M. who wrote (1339)8/13/2002 4:15:17 AM
From: craig crawford  Respond to of 3959
 
Saddam in the Crosshairs
villagevoice.com

by Jason Vest
November 21 - 27, 2001

At the other pole is Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, increasingly seen by some as an asylum where a coterie of vengeful Cold War unilateralist relics plot a return to a forceful, Reaganesque Pax Americana, broadening the war to encompass military action against Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon—essentially fusing Israel's national security agenda with that of the United States. No fans of multilateralism or diplomatic initiatives, this crew—despite its majority's lack of uniform service or time spent in combat zones—is particularly bellicose, and contemptuous of Powell and his belief in conflict limitation. "Powell's such a product of Vietnam—he tries to prevent conflict, rather than realizing it's inevitable," sneers a Pentagon official who, despite never having heard a shot fired in anger, is spoiling for a larger war. "When conflict is inevitable, we should be the ones who decide the outcome. It's not about schmoozing and sucking up."

Taking point for this policy option has been deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, backed by a so-called "cabal" that includes undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith, assistant secretaries Peter Rodman and J.D. Crouch, longtime Wolfowitz comrade-in-arms Richard Perle, members of the advisory Defense Policy Board Perle chairs and, less visibly, some hawkish brethren at the State Department who were forced on Powell early in the administration, including undersecretary of state John Bolton.

For this group, the events of the past two months present an almost rapturous opportunity to realize an item on the far right's national security agenda. In their view, September 11 is nothing short of a mandate to do what they feel the U.S. should have done over a decade ago—take the fight to Baghdad and destroy Saddam, coalition partners and world opinion be damned. And updating to the Wolfowitz Cabal the Reagan-era view of then CIA director William Casey that all terrorist groups were interconnected via the Soviet, the links between Saddam, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and just about every other Middle East Islamist group are clear—thus necessitating the speedy deployment of bombs, and possibly even troops, to Iraq as well as Syria and Lebanon
....................................................................................................................................
The Project for the New American Century conclave and subsequent memos were news to Powell, who reportedly considered the whole scheme a highly improper end run. At the Pentagon, some hold that Powell did the administration a disservice when, after Wolfowitz made a passing reference to "ending states" that sponsor terrorism, Powell—in response to a reporter's question on the remark—edgily shot back that Wolfowitz was not speaking for the administration. "Powell essentially took a polite, behind-the-scenes policy debate public," says a Pentagon staffer, adding that "privately, Paul has said he misspoke," and implying that Powell knew as much, thus making his public rebuke bad form.

But according to intelligence and diplomatic sources, Powell—as well as George Tenet—was infuriated by a private intelligence endeavor arranged by Wolfowitz in September. Apparently obsessed with proving a convoluted theory put forth by American Enterprise Institute adjunct fellow Laurie Mylroie that ties Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Wolfowitz, according to a veteran intelligence officer, dispatched former director of central intelligence and cabalist James Woolsey to the United Kingdom, tasking him with gathering additional "evidence" to make the case. Woolsey was also asked to make contact with Iraqi exiles and others who might be able to beef up the case that hijacker Mohammed Atta was working with Iraqi intelligence to plan the September 11 attacks, as well as the subsequent anthrax mailings.



To: Thomas M. who wrote (1339)8/13/2002 4:37:44 AM
From: craig crawford  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 3959
 
iraqwar.org

President Bush Does Not Tell Lies!!
supplysideinvestor.com

Memo To: Ari Fleisher, White House Press Secretary
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: He is sometimes misinformed.

There is so much to read these days that one never knows what is the truth and what is a "stretcher," Mr. Fleisher. For your own guidance, you should know that anything written about Iraq on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal or Washington Times is actually dictated by the second most powerful man in Washington, Richard Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board and a fellow I've known for over 30 years. Richard, known to his close friends as "The Prince of Darkness," is responsible for most the stretchers told about Saddam Hussein, as far as I can tell, although there are surely a lot of skeletons in Saddam's closet that have not been stretched. There has been a rumor that Paul Gigot is the editorial page editor of the WSJ, but I can tell you for certain that Perle is the de facto editor who runs that page. He ran it for years when Bob Bartley was editor, at least on national security matters. Perle has a vast network of warriors scattered all over Washington, which he has cultivated over the years with his sidekick, Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard is the primary house organ for Perle Propaganda in Washington. His buddy Bill Kristol is the editor. Perle also dictates William Safire's NTTimes columns on national security and the Middle East (yesterday's was a pip, about that Monster, Yasir Arafat), and ABC's George Will has been a Perle-handled pistol for more than 30 years. Just ask around and you will find well over half of all members of Congress have Perle acolytes on their staffs -- Senator Joe Lieberman, who was on the ticket with Al Gore, among them.

Perle’s themes and variations go into the columns of Richard Lowery, editor of the National Review, and the reportage of Bill Gertz of The Washington Times. Syndicated columnist Frank Gaffney, who appears regularly on the tv news shows, is Perle's deputy sheriff, with a license of kill by character assassination. Then there is Jim Woolsey, former director of Central Intelligence in the Clinton administration, who has been fetching Perle's coffee and donuts for the last 30 years, rewarded with the CIA job when Perle snuck him into the Clinton administration in 1993, as he had been a nominal Democrat from his days as a Senate staffer. Woolsey is the designated propagandist of the Defense Policy Board, which is why he gets so much air time. Over the weekend, he announced that we should not even bother with weapons inspectors in Iraq, that the only way to be sure Saddam is no longer a threat is to go in and kill him. It was Woolsey at the CIA in 1993 who urged the bombing of Iraq on the evidence Saddam had tried to kill your boss's Dad. Read Hersh's story and you should see Perle's coffee-and-donut man was "stretching." It is highly likely that Perle and Woolsey orchestrated the whole thing with their Kuwaiti contacts. The same PR outfit that was supposed to run the Office of Strategic Influence was behind the stories of atrocities by the Iraqi army in 1990, stories later found to be bogus. In its expose of the OSI last month, the NYT made that connection. The OSI was supposedly killed, but do not believe it, Mr. Fleisher. The PR firm is still working at the Pentagon, cooking up stories.

Perle, by the way, does not mind collateral damage, as witness the 1.5 million Iraqi civilians who have been sacrificed to Allah in accord with Perle's plan to bring down Saddam by starving Iraq until the people decided to overthrow the guy. If you go back further, Mr. Fleisher, you will find that a lot of this junk began piling up when Perle masterminded Israel's bombing of the Iraq nuclear power plant in the early days of the Reagan administration. Perle was then inside the Pentagon, in daily contact with the Israeli government. He seems to have concluded, with his mentor, the late Albert Wohlstetter, that if the new French-built power plant were permitted to open, just outside Baghdad, that it could not be bombed, as radioactivity would be released and Israel would be condemned for the massive loss of life. So the Israeli Air Force bombed it before the French delivered the fissile material. I was told Perle celebrated at the Pentagon with his staff. Of course, all of the above pressniks hailed the bombing at Osiraq. The excuse was that if Iraq were to open the plant, it would learn how to deal with nuclear stuff and might someday make a nuke, to match Israel's nuke. History reveals that Iraq at the time did not have a nuke weapons program and was (and is) a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, which is why the French were allowed to provide it with fissile material. But after the bombing, for which the Israelis offered "not a brass farthing" for compensation, Saddam embarked on his nuke program. By the way, the press corps keeps writing that Saddam is still trying to make a nuke. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which regularly inspects Iraq, says he ain't. Please advise the President of this information, Mr. Press Secretary.

And if you want more leads on strategic misinformation, you know how to get hold of me. Maybe my facts are not always right, but at least I try to get them, and I don't ever, ever do stretchers.



To: Thomas M. who wrote (1339)8/13/2002 4:47:53 AM
From: craig crawford  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 3959
 
Answering the 'Wolfowitz Doctrine' on American Empire
antiwar.com

by Jon Basil Utley
8/24/01

As Washington and China face military confrontation, an Australian has warned Americans about how the British Empire lasted so long.

"England," observes Editor Owen Harries in the Spring 2001 National Interest ("Anglosphere Illusion"), "was the only hegemon that did not attract a hostile coalition against itself. It avoided that fate by showing great restraint, prudence and discrimination in the use of its power in the main political arena by generally standing aloof and restricting itself to the role of balancer of last resort. In doing so it was heeding the warning given it by Edmund Burke, just as its era of supremacy was beginning: 'I dread our own power and our own ambition. I dread being too much dreaded.'"

Notes Harries, "I believe the United States is now in dire need of such a warning."

Instead of understanding the limits to its power, however, America is forging a world alliance against itself. Russia is now allying with China and India and Iran against American hegemony. Much, if not most, of the Muslim world fears and hates American policies, if not Americans. Europe is going neutral and America's Asian allies want no part in a conflict between China and America. New embassies are built like Star Wars' fortresses and the US Navy has fearfully cut back shore leave in much of the world. And now a multi-billion dollar missile shield is sought to protect America mainly from all the new enemies it is making for itself.

How did the "world's only super power" become so isolated and fearful?

The "Wolfowitz Doctrine" is named for the No. 2 man at the Defense Department and key Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld confidant, Paul Wolfowitz, former director of the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, known for his support of NATO expansion and the attack on Serbia.

As the New York Times explained it, the Wolfowitz Doctrine argues that America's political and military mission should be to "ensure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge. With its focus on this concept of benevolent domination by one power, the Pentagon document articulates the clearest rejection to date of collective internationalism." Its core thesis, described by Ben Wattenberg in the April 12, Washington Times, is "to guard against the emergence of hostile regional superpowers, for example, Iraq or China. America is No. 1. We stand for something decent and important. That's good for us and good for the world. That's the way we want to keep it."

Even though there is truth to the claim of Americans' fundamental decency, since Athenian times democracies have been woefully unable to run empires. American foreign policy is made by Congress in response to sensationalist TV news and domestic ethnic voting blocks, not with a view to national interests, but rather in response to the short term need for money and votes for the next election. That is the reason many foreigners see American military interventions as inconsistent and hypocritical. Most American don t care about foreign policy. Consequently it is controlled by the few who do care.

Imagine how long the Roman empire would have lasted if there had been a Visigoth or Egyptian lobby pushing its agenda on Roman foreign policy. The Roman Empire resulted in the end of the Roman republic and freedom. The English empire failed when the electoral franchise grew so much that new voters could thwart the elites' rule. Still, many American conservatives who argue that government can't even properly run a nursery have fallen for the concept that it can run the world.

Further confusing American interests, there are also elements in Washington that look at real or imagined threats abroad with great favor. The old military-industrial complex has grown to become the overwhelming military-industrial-congressional establishment. Its power is reflected by the difficulty of closing unnecessary bases and the wasteful weapons purchasing process, as evidenced by ordering weapons before they are fully tested, e.g. the ill-fated Osprey helicopter, manufactured in 42 states and congressional districts.

Yet we imagine wars without casualties, with exciting "bang-bang" for evening TV, and with no hurtful consequences for our interests. Foreigners are not going to oblige us, but more likely will wage wars of terrorism from unknown quarters, possibly even with horrendous biological weapons currently being developed.

Ruling the world is not even a "conservative" position. "It is a policy" writes William Ruger for Reason Magazine ("Foreign Policy Folly,"June 2001), "that will threaten rather than preserve many of America's traditional values, such as individual liberty, small government and anti-militarism. As has been pointed out by a number of historians, war and preparing for war are the soils that nurture the growth of state power, burdensome taxation, conscription, and militarism. If American conservatism should stand for anything, it should be the goal of limited government. Yet the primacist policies offered here guarantee the opposite: a leviathan." The first cost of empire will be the loss of many of our own freedoms. The second will be our prosperity. Empires are expensive.

Many conservatives are showing a passion for confrontation with China. Answering those "crying Wolfowitz," Craig Smith pointed out in the New York Times (May 15), that China and Taiwan are actually thriving together economically -- not the image one gets from those who want confrontation. This anti-China sentiment is comparable to anti-German belligerence in England before World War I, when street demonstrations demanded war. The desire of American hawks to "contain" China resembles England's efforts to prevent Germany from gaining its "place in the sun." England's "Wolfowitz Doctrine" led to the end of the British Empire, even though England "won" the war. Not coincidentally, during the half-century after 1914, most Englishmen lived in poverty.

To preserve our own freedoms and best serve the rest of the world, our foreign policy should be noninterventionist, non-threatening and non-militaristic. With economic strength and a politics of fairness and nonintervention, we can prosper and keep our own freedom. America is simply incapable of any other consistent foreign policy. America should be a beacon, because it can't be a competent policeman.