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

To: JohnM who wrote (122887)	1/7/2004 1:57:47 PM
From: Alastair McIntosh	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

With regard to John le Carré's new book, here is an editorial in today's Globe and Mail: globeandmail.com John le Carré's gospel UPDATED AT 1:55 PM EST Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2004 Whatever happened to John le Carré? Renowned as the author of spy novels with a literary sensibility, he has become a fire-and-brimstone preacher of that poisonous creed: anti-Americanism. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he has bitterly criticized the United States for what he sees as its belligerent response. In a blistering opinion piece that made waves around the world, he accused the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush of using Sept. 11 to launch an unnecessary war against Iraq's Saddam Hussein. There is nothing wrong with that. Many people opposed the war. Mr. le Carré, an intelligent man with a broad knowledge of world politics, has every right to question Washington's conduct. "The war on Iraq was illegitimate," says a character in his recent novel, Absolute Friends. "It was a criminal and moral conspiracy. . . . It was an old colonial war dressed up as a crusade for Western life and liberty, and it was launched by a clique of war-hungry Judeo-Christian geopolitical fantasists who hijacked the media and exploited America's post-9/11 psychopathy." That clique of American Christian evangelists and Zionist zealots is every bit as dangerous as the Islamic extremists grouped around Osama bin Laden, le Carré told The Globe's Alan Freeman in London recently. "So please don't fall into the trap of believing this is a battle between the civilized and uncivilized world." But he falls into another kind of trap. Throughout the Cold War, the era that inspired his most successful novels, many Western intellectuals insisted there was little or no difference between the Communist Soviet Union and the democratic United States. Moscow may have had Joseph Stalin, but Washington had Joseph McCarthy. The Soviet Union may have prevented Jews from emigrating, but the United States hindered blacks from voting. And so on. The same thing is going on today. Mr. le Carré is only one of a host of writers who claim that the oil-hungry, God-crazy, power-mad United States is the most dangerous force in the world today. That is the kind of nonsense that only an intellectual could believe. U.S. conduct since Sept. 11 has been far from perfect, but its response is motivated by a genuine fear of the very real danger posed by international terrorism, not by oil or power lust or religious zealotry. To suggest that George W. Bush, with all his faults, is in the same moral league as Osama bin Laden is to enter a Looking Glass world. If there was ever a "fantasist" in this world, it is John le Carré. © 2003 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

To: JohnM who wrote (122887)	1/8/2004 1:37:24 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Almost ignored by the American media... guardian.co.uk Carnegie group says Bush made wrong claims on WMD The Bush administration will today be accused of "systematically misrepresenting" the threat posed by "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction" in a comprehensive report on post-war findings. The report, by four experts on weapons proliferation at the respected Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is likely to reignite calls for acommission to look into the government's pre-war intelligence claims. According to the report, the absence of any imminent threat from Saddam Hussein's chemical or nuclear programmes was "knowable" before the war. There was greater uncertainty over biological weapons but no evidence strong enough to justify war. The authors say the intelligence reports of Iraq's capabilities grew more shrill in October 2002 with the publication of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which included an unusual number of dissenting views by intelligence officials. The intelligence community, the report says, began to be unduly influenced by policymakers' views "sometime in 2002". Repeated visits to the CIA by the US vice president, Dick Cheney, and demands by top officials to see unsubstantiated reports, created an atmosphere in which intelligence analysts were pressed to come to "more threatening" judgments of Iraq. The report concludes that "administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missile programmes". Last night aWhite House official responded by pointing to Mr Bush's comment on December 15 when he was pressed on the absence of Iraqi WMD. He claimed evidence had been found that contravened UN resolution 1441 calling for Saddam to disarm, a possible reference to signs that Iraq had been trying to extend the range of its missiles beyond UN limits. Stuart Cohen, the vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which oversees intelligence assessments, also defended the 2002 NIE. "We did not, in any area, hype our judgments. We made our calls based on the evidence we had. We never used the word 'imminent' in the ... estimate." But Joseph Cirincione, lead author of the Carnegie report, said: "This is the first thorough review of the intelligence threat assessments, administration statements, findings of UN inspectors and nine months of US searches in Iraq. It shows the threat assessment process is broken. The NIE was wildly off the mark."

To: JohnM who wrote (122887)	1/17/2004 11:48:56 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Dishonest War ____________________ Editorial The Washington Post By Edward M. Kennedy Sunday, January 18, 2004 washingtonpost.com Of the many issues competing for attention in this new and defining year, one is of a unique order of magnitude: President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. The facts demonstrate how dishonest that decision was. As former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill recently confirmed, the debate over military action began as soon as President Bush took office. Some felt Saddam Hussein could be contained without war. A month after the inauguration, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said: "We have kept him contained, kept him in his box." The next day, he said tellingly that Hussein "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction." The events of Sept. 11, 2001, gave advocates of war the opening they needed. They tried immediately to tie Hussein to al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld created an Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon to analyze the intelligence for war and bypass the traditional screening process. Vice President Cheney relied on intelligence from Iraqi exiles and put pressure on intelligence agencies to produce the desired result. The war in Afghanistan began in October with overwhelming support in Congress and the country. But the focus on Iraq continued behind the scenes, and President Bush went along. In the Rose Garden on Nov. 26, he said: "Afghanistan is still just the beginning." Three days later, Cheney publicly began to send signals about attacking Iraq. On Nov. 29 he said: "I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that this guy [Hussein] is clearly . . . a significant potential problem for the region, for the United States, for everybody with interests in the area." On Dec. 12 he raised the temperature: "If I were Saddam Hussein, I'd be thinking very carefully about the future, and I'd be looking very closely to see what happened to the Taliban in Afghanistan." Next, Karl Rove, in a rare public stumble, made his own role clear, telling the Republican National Committee on Jan. 19, 2002, that the war on terrorism could be used politically. Republicans could "go to the country on this issue," he said. Ten days later, in his State of the Union address, President Bush invoked the "axis of evil" -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- and we lost our clear focus on al Qaeda. The address contained 12 paragraphs on Afghanistan and 29 on the war on terrorism, but only one fleeting mention of al Qaeda. It said nothing about the Taliban or Osama bin Laden. In the following months, although bin Laden was still at large, the drumbeat on Iraq gradually drowned out those who felt Hussein was no imminent threat. On Sept. 12 the president told the United Nations: "Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents and has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon." He said Iraq could build a nuclear weapon "within a year" if Hussein obtained such material. War on Iraq was clearly coming, but why make this statement in September? As White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." The 2002 election campaigns were then entering the home stretch. Election politics prevailed over foreign policy and national security. The administration insisted on a vote in Congress to authorize the war before Congress adjourned for the elections. Why? Because the debate would distract attention from the troubled economy and the failed effort to capture bin Laden. The shift in focus to Iraq could help Republicans and divide Democrats. The tactic worked. Republicans voted almost unanimously for war and kept control of the House in the elections. Democrats were deeply divided and lost their majority in the Senate. The White House could use its control of Congress to get its way on key domestic priorities. The final step in the march to war was a feint to the United Nations. But Cheney, Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz had convinced the president that war would be a cakewalk, with or without the United Nations, and that our forces would be welcomed as liberators. In March the war began. Hussein's brutal regime was not an adequate justification for war, and the administration did not seriously try to make it one until long after the war began and all the false justifications began to fall apart. There was no imminent threat. Hussein had no nuclear weapons, no arsenals of chemical or biological weapons, no connection to Sept. 11 and no plausible link to al Qaeda. We never should have gone to war for ideological reasons driven by politics and based on manipulated intelligence. Vast resources have been spent on the war that should have been spent on priorities at home. Our forces are stretched thin. Precious lives have been lost. The war has made America more hated in the world and made the war on terrorism harder to win. As Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in announcing the latest higher alert: "Al Qaeda's continued desire to carry out attacks against our homeland is perhaps greater now than at any point since September 11th." The most fundamental decision a president ever makes is the decision to go to war. President Bush violated the trust that must exist between government and the people. If Congress and the American people had known the truth, America would never have gone to war in Iraq. No president who does that to our country deserves to be reelected. ______________________ The writer is a Democratic senator from Massachusetts.