Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
America's leading retired military officials have been tearing the Bush administration's head off over its Iraq policy. Retired officers now say that not enough troops were deployed to prevent postwar chaos.
"I argued on the air during the war, that the coalition did not have enough troops to finish the conventional campaign against the Iraqi Army and simultaneously disperse to centers of regional and tribal power to establish the safe and secure environment needed to support reconstruction," says Gen. Meigs, a retired four star general, former commander U.S. forces in Europe who appeared on MSNBC during the war. "I think that position has been born out by events."Former drug czar (a losing general in the war on drugs :) Barry McCaffrey said"Dismissing the entire Iraqi Army en masse after the war ... was a major mistake. We should have done what the Germans did with the East German Army after reunification [in 1990]. Send away all over the rank of major and sift through the rest for the ones that could be used to form a new Army, then use them to help maintain a secure environment as part of our effort."
The more important and lasting errors made by the administration was the decision to disband the Iraqi Army and send its entire strength, including Republican Guard, fedayeen militia units and senior officers, back to their home villages without vetting them or creating POW camps.Also retired Marine General and former mideast envoy Anthony Zinni said that"This is a 400,000 man army that disappeared into thin air, was never engaged or defeated on the battlefield," says McCaffrey. "That was a stupid thing to do. We should have kept every officer we captured; we should have kept every member of Republican Guard and every fedayeen until we could finger print and get a digital photo of them, releasing them knowing where they live. But we had no troops to guard and process them, just as we had insufficient troops to guard key buildings, to garrison key towns and to search for weapons of mass destruction."
"The war plan was pushed on Tommy Franks with insufficient forces for Rumsfeld?s own ideological reasons," says McCaffrey. "He personally sat on the army?s deployment schedule and made sure the four or five divisions that should have been deployed never got there. And he and his people denigrate the army and its top generals in a way that suggest they pay no attention at all to them."
"I'm suggesting," Zinni said, "that either the [prewar] intelligence was so bad and flawed--and if that's the case, then somebody's head ought to roll for that--or the intelligence was exaggerated or twisted in a way to make a more convenient case to the American people."Zinni raised the issue that Bush might have purposefully misled the public and not shared with it the true reason for the war: "If there's a strategic decision for taking down Iraq, if it's the so-called neoconservative idea that taking apart Iraq and creating a model democracy, or whatever it is, will change the equation in the Middle East, then make the [public] case based on that strategic decision....I think it's a flawed--like the domino theory--it's a flawed strategic thought or concept....But if that's the reason for going in, that's the case the American people ought to hear. They ought to make their judgment and determine their support based on what the motivation is for the attack."
Earlier in the month, he addressed a forum sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association. There he let loose. Reflecting the views of high-ranking U.S. military officials who were dubious about launching a war against Iraq and skeptical about the occupation that would follow, Zinni accused the Bush crowd of having not been ready for the challenges to come after defeating the Iraqi army. "We're in danger of failing," he noted, because the Bush administration had not readied itself for what would follow the initial military engagement. "We fought one idiot here [in Iraq], just now," he said. "Ohio State beat Slippery Rock 62 to 0. No shit! You know! But we weren't ready for that team that came onto the field at the end of that three-week victory." He went on:
"Right now, in a place like Iraq, you're dealing with Jihadists that are coming in to raise hell, crime on the streets that's rampant, ex-Ba'athists that still running around, and the potential now for this country to fragment: Shi'ia on Shi'ia, Shi'ia on Sunni, Kurd on Turkomen. It's a powder keg. I just got back from Jordan. I talked to a number of Iraqis there. And what I hear scares me even more that what I read in the newspaper. Resources are needed, a strategy is needed, a plan. This is a different kind of conflict. War fighting is one element of it."
Zinni displayed little confidence in Bush and his aides. He said that their Iraq endeavor has landed the United States into the middle of assorted "culture wars" in the Middle East. "We don't understand that culture," he remarked. "I've spent the last 15 years of my life in this part of the world. And I'll tell you, every time I hear...one of the dilettantes back here speak about this region of the world, they don't have a clue. They don't understand what makes them tick. They don't understand where they are in their own history. They don't understand what our role is....We are great at dealing with the tactical problems--the killing and the breaking. We are lousy at solving the strategic problems; having a strategic plan, understanding about regional and global security and what it takes to weld that and to shape it and to move forward."
"When we put [our enlisted men and women] in harm's way, it had better count for something, It can't be because some policy wonk back here has a brain fart of an idea of a strategy that isn't thought out."
...Zinni practically counseled his audience to rebel against the Bush administration. U.S. troops, he said, "should never be put on a battlefield without a strategic plan, not only for the fighting--our generals will take care of that--but for the aftermath and winning that war. Where are we, the American people, if we accept this, if we accept this level of sacrifice without that level of planning? Almost everyone in this room, of my contemporaries--our feelings and our sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and lies, and we saw the sacrifice. We swore never again would we do that. We swore never again would we allow it to happen. And I ask you, is it happening again? And you're going to have to answer that question, just like the American people are."
The cookie is crumbling rapidly these days. The Friday Times editorial addressed those missing weapons that passed for a just cause.
If Iraq can be turned into a freer and happier country in coming years, it could become a focal point for the evolution of a more peaceful and democratic Middle East. But it was the fear of weapons of mass destruction placed in the hands of enemy terrorists that made doing something about Iraq seem urgent. If it had seemed unlikely that Mr. Hussein had them, we doubt that Congress or the American people would have endorsed the war.Then there is the unfolding bombshell between the CIA and the White House. As some recall, after Ambassador Joseph Wilson exposed the lies of the Nigerian Yellowcake hoax, a 'senior administration official' told columnist Robert Novak that Wilson's wife was (truely) an undercover CIA agent. Novak published this, and whoever told him broke the law.This is clearly an uncomfortable question for the Bush administration. Yesterday, Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Times editors. Asked whether Americans would have supported this war if weapons of mass destruction had not been at issue, Mr. Powell said the question was too hypothetical to answer. Asked if he, personally, would have supported it, he smiled, thrust his hand out and said, "It was good to meet you."
Now the CIA has determined that someone broke the law, and they want the Dept. of Justice to investigate, and catch them.
Joe Wilson laid it down at a public forum hosted by Rep. Jay Inslee, addressing the WMD issues and such. Wilson didn't mince words:
Audience Question: : Assuming that what Novak said was true, can we expect a full FBI investigation?Yeeeee haw!AJW: First, the CIA would perform an internal investigation. The results of that would be passed on to the Justice Department for professional investigation. I don't think this will be dropped. "At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words."
For the Jewish new year, the Israeli paper Haaretz is publishing a lengthy and complex feature on the phenomenon of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza: funding, the outpost arrangements, the many activities of Ariel Sharon, international law, Palestinian reaction, the settlers' internet activites, taxes, settlement tourism, the Russian settler population, and so forth.
For the first time, an Israeli media outlet has tried to compile and expose the amount Israel has spent maintaining and constructing the settlements. How much has the boondoggle cost since 1967? What has been the result of this thirty year misadventure? The lead article:
The extra civilian price tag: at least NIS 2.5 billion a yearOne of the most closely guarded secrets in Israel is the amount of funding that is channeled to the settlements. Budget items were built to conceal this information and no government report has ever been published on the subject. Now, for the first time, Haaretz is presenting a nearly complete picture of the additional cost of the settlements, which totals more than NIS 45 billion since 1967
The investments include: NIS 400 million for those willing to live in settlements in the Jordan Valley; the prime minister's approval for paving three roads in the West Bank at a cost of over NIS 150 million (the Keidar-Ma'aleh Adumim road, the Nili-Ofarim road, and the Yabed bypass road); a Housing Ministry decision to provide generous benefits (totaling some NIS 200 million) to those (mostly settlers) purchasing homes in areas designated as National Priority Areas A and B; and income tax breaks of 13 percent for 60 settlements (to be selected by the Defense Ministry).
...There is still no clear answer to the question of how many extra billions the State of Israel spends in the territories each year. Is it NIS 1 billion? NIS 2 billion? NIS 5 billion? More? In other words, the question is how much less the state would spend if the 231,000 settlers resided within the Green Line. And how much money has Israel allocated for Jewish settlement in the territories since they were conquered over 36 years ago: NIS 20 billion? NIS 30 billion? NIS 50 billion - or more? The Haaretz investigation, conducted during the past three months, attempts to answer these questions for the first time.
...No prime minister or finance minister, from either the Likud or Labor parties, has ever answered these questions. Most, or all, of them do not know the answers. There is a story at the treasury about a new finance minister, a friend of the settlements, who received the portfolio not that many years ago and invited the head of the Budgets Division for a confidential talk. When the door was closed, the minister implored, "Now tell me, finally, how many billions is the government spending in the territories each year?" The head of the division responded by giving the minister a two-hour lecture on government spending in the territories. During the entire lecture, he did not mention even a single number.
Damn it all to hell. Someone stole my old bike from in front of the house. What's too bad is that I just got the tires fixed on Sunday. I had that one for a very long time. Fortunately tonight I went around along the river. A good last time. It's a surprise it made it this far, all in all...
IN more entertainging news, we are in what could be called a feedback loop of foreign policy. Bush has been paralyzed and his polls are corkscrewing straight to the floor (at a rate of 9 points in 3 weeks). He's polling poorly against any Dem, even that newbie Clark!
Has anyone on this planet noticed that there is no public report about Iraqi WMD from the investigators?? That, in fact, the administration has suppressed the information to avoid political damage??
Here's something else: Bush is actually intimidated by bias in newspapers. That is, he cannot identify and understand their bias. Hence he must depend on his advisors for a portrait of the world. This is pretty amazing, actually. I think we should all wonder how nice it is to have a president who believes that reading through the Post in the morning, say, would endanger the integrity (perceived as accuracy) of his worldview. Erk.
This comes from the happy interview in the White House with FOX News' Brit Hume:
HUME: How do you get your news?
BUSH: I get briefed by Andy Card and Condi in the morning. They come in and tell me. In all due respect, you've got a beautiful face and everything. (????)
I glance at the headlines just to kind of a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves. But like Condoleezza, in her case, the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the participants on the world stage.
HUME: Has that been your practice since day one, or is that a practice that you've...
BUSH: Practice since day one.
HUME: Really?
BUSH: Yes. You know, look, I have great respect for the media. I mean, our society is a good, solid democracy because of a good, solid media. But I also understand that a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with news. And I...
HUME: I won't disagree with that, sir.
BUSH: I appreciate people's opinions, but I'm more interested in news. And the best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world.
How can we view this disaster? How about the Foreign Policy Moebius Strip, via the political cartoon This Modern World.
The cartoon goes well with the latest from Washington writer Josh Marshall who tells us of an administration like a robot that's caught in a loop.
People disagree over how much we should involve our allies or the United Nations in our various military and diplomatic forays abroad. But we?re beyond that now. It?s no longer a matter of which approach is better. The problem is that the White House seems incapable of choosing one over the other and now oscillates back and forth between the two on an almost weekly basis.For the past six weeks we?ve watched the same sobering pattern recur again and again.
First, some major setback occurs in Baghdad. Next, the White House reacts with a newfound desire to broaden its coalition by bringing in the United Nations and our allies.
When the crunch comes, however, the White House can?t bring itself to make the hard decisions necessary to change the dynamic in Iraq or the United Nations. So everything falls back to the status quo ante until the next bomb blows up in Baghdad.
Last year, many in the administration genuinely did not care what the United Nations or the rest of the world thought about our venture into Iraq. But today, the White House pretty clearly wants some outside infusion of support. And yet the president cannot seem to muster more than insults and threats about U.N. irrelevancy when he speaks to the General Assembly.
Before the speech, when Fox News Channel?s Brit Hume asked the president whether he was willing to cede some political control to the United Nations in exchange for foreign assistance, Bush replied, "I'm not so sure we have to, for starters."
Many of us are familiar with the five stages of grieving identified three decades ago by the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler Ross. As individuals face death or any great loss they go through five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Those stages apply to the demise of major policy initiatives as well and we?re watching that happen now as the White House comes to grips with the collapse of its policy on Iraq. The administration keeps seeing what the problem is but cannot bring itself to take the cure.
Today Atmosphere released what will be one of the biggest albums of the fall, sounds like. I went down to Fifth Element, where they started selling the record at midnight. However there was only one cashier so the big line was really damn slow. Fortunately our friend Holly was already inside so she got her CD (and also they were selling copies of Sad Clown Bad Dub II). Holly's CD was signed by Slug and Ant. Very nice. We went back this afternoon to get my copy.
I will have more on this whole album in a bit. I think I might write a review for the Mac Weekly.
am putting this up on my site because it is fun to have information that is about to disappear down the memory hole. What am I talking about? An article which now only exists via the Google cache, reporting that a bunch of Israelis were arrested posing as art students in Ottowa, and are suspected of spying. The article has been deleted from the newspaper's site. i just found this in today's report from Justin Raimondo, which details further the Israeli-art student-spy ring possibilities. Please look at this copy on Google before it disappears.
Nine Israelis face deportation
Spy agency suspects they may be foreign agentsBy JOHN STEINBACHS and ANDREW SEYMOUR, Ottawa Sun
NINE ISRAELI NATIONALS --- who CSIS suspects are possible foreign agents -- were arrested by Immigration and Ottawa police tactical officers last Friday, blocks from Parliament Hill.
The nine have all been charged by Immigration for working in Canada illegally. All are in their 20s and were apparently selling art in Ottawa. The arrests follow similar takedowns of Israelis in Toronto and Calgary over the past few weeks.
An Ottawa police source said police were told members of the group were possible agents from Mossad, Israel's spy agency, but given no further information by CSIS.CSIS declined to comment yesterday.
All nine have since been released and are staying in several rooms at a Lisgar St. apartment-hotel.
Citizenship and Immigration spokesman Rejean Cantlon confirmed that nine Israelis were arrested last Friday for working in Canada without a permit. Immigration hearings were held Wednesday and nine exclusion orders were issued.
NO WEAPONS
Ienav Sofer, Amit Yedudai, Rani Rahuhim Katsov, Roy Laniado, Shulamit Gorelik and Anatoly Belnik received exclusion orders for two years for working without authorization and misrepresentation. Koby Cole, Sharon Moskovitz and Yafit Avram were issued exclusion orders for one year.
All will be deported as soon as paperwork is ready, likely within the next few weeks, Cantlon said.
They were arrested with the help of tactical and patrol officers Friday between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.
No weapons were found in their rooms.
Yesterday, eight were found walking down Lisgar St., but offered no comment when asked if they were Israeli art students.
This is not the first time students selling art in Ottawa have caused concern with law enforcement. In 2001, Centrepointe residents complained of foreign students selling paintings in their neighourhood that turned out to be fakes.
'WE'RE OUTRAGED'
The story of Israeli art students peddling paintings in foreign countries has been reported in the media and on the Internet in the past.
U.S. reports have alleged that groups of students had been trying to sell art in federal government buildings, prompting concerns about intelligence gathering, but no proof has ever been found linking the art peddlers with espionage.
"I keep seeing these things and looking into them, I really don't know how credible they are," said former CSIS chief of strategic planning David Harris. "Certainly it would be extremely surprising if such an outfit would repeat a (technique) in that sort of way."
Israeli Embassy spokesman Ben Forer said the matter is being treated very seriously.
"These are illegal workers ... we're outraged by this," he said. "We expect Israeli citizens that would like to work in Canada to equip themselves with the appropriate work permits before they come to Canada."
Forer laughed when asked if the arrests had anything to do with terrorism or if the nine are agents of Mossad -- whose operatives have been known in the past to favour using bogus Canadian passports.
"We don't know full details about what the paintings were but it was a completely commercial matter," Forer said.
Soldier in Mosul: "We are facing death in Iraq for no reason." Lawrence of Arabia said the same First the word from a soldier serving in Mosul with the 101 Airborne: "We are facing death in Iraq for no reason:"
For the past six months, I have been participating in what I believe to be the great modern lie: Operation Iraqi Freedom.For Monday Robert Fisk reports from Iraq that every day is a death trap.As soldiers serving in Iraq, we have been told that our purpose is to help the people of Iraq by providing them with the necessary assistance militarily, as well as in humanitarian efforts. Then tell me where the humanity is in the recent account in Stars and Stripes (the newspaper of the US military) of two young children brought to a US military camp by their mother in search of medical care.
The two children had, unknowingly, been playing with explosive ordnance they had found, and as a result they were severely burned. The account tells how, after an hour-long wait, they - two children - were denied care by two US military doctors. A soldier described the incident as one of many "atrocities" on the part of the US military he had witnessed...
So what is our purpose here? Was this invasion because of weapons of mass destruction, as we have so often heard? If so, where are they? Did we invade to dispose of a leader and his regime because they were closely associated with Osama bin Laden? If so, where is the proof?
Or is it that our incursion is about our own economic advantage? Iraq's oil can be refined at the lowest cost of any in the world. This looks like a modern-day crusade not to free an oppressed people or to rid the world of a demonic dictator relentless in his pursuit of conquest and domination, but a crusade to control another nation's natural resource. Oil - at least to me - seems to be the reason for our presence.
There is only one truth, and it is that Americans are dying. There are an estimated 10 to 14 attacks every day on our servicemen and women in Iraq. As the body count continues to grow, it would appear that there is no immediate end in sight.
I once believed that I was serving for a cause - "to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States". Now I no longer believe that; I have lost my conviction, as well as my determination. I can no longer justify my service on the basis of what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies.
The American Humvee had burnt out, the US troop transporter had been smashed by rockets and an Iraqi lorry - riddled by American bullets in the aftermath of the attack - still lay smoldering on the central reservation.So now let's step back to August 22, 1920. The great British adventurer and author T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) wrote the Sunday Times of a burgeoning crisis in Mesopotamia. Its kind of staggering:"I saw the Americans flying through the air, blasted upwards," an Iraqi mechanic with an oil lamp in his garage said - not, I thought, without some satisfaction. "The wounded Americans were on the road, shouting and screaming."
The US authorities in Iraq - who only report their own deaths, never those of Iraqis - acknowledged three US soldiers dead. There may be up to eight dead, not counting the wounded. Several Iraqis described seeing arms and legs and pieces of uniform scattered across the highway.
There were three separate ambushes in Khaldiya and the guerrillas showed a new sophistication. Even as I left the scene of the killings after dark, US army flares were dripping over the semi-desert plain 100 miles west of Baghdad while red tracer fire raced along the horizon behind the palm trees. It might have been a scene from a Vietnam movie, even an archive newsreel clip; for this is now tough, lethal guerrilla country for the Americans, a death-trap for them almost every day.
As usual, the American military spokesmen had "no information" on this extraordinary ambush. But Iraqis at the scene gave a chilling account of the attack. A bomb - apparently buried beneath the central reservation of the four-lane highway - exploded beside an American truck carrying at least 10 US soldiers and, almost immediately, a rocket-propelled grenade hit a Humvee carrying three soldiers behind the lorry.
"The Americans opened fire at all the Iraqis they could see - at all of us," Yahyia, an Iraqi truck driver, said. "They don't care about the Iraqis." The bullet holes show that the US troops fired at least 22 rounds into the Iraqi lorry that was following their vehicles when their world exploded around them.
The mud hut homes of the dirt-poor Iraqi families who live on the 30-foot embankment of earth and sand above the road were laced with American rifle fire. The guerrillas - interestingly, the locals called them mujahedin, "holy warriors" - then fired rocket-propelled grenades at the undamaged vehicles of the American convoy as they tried to escape. A quarter of a mile down the road - again from a ridge of sand and earth - more grenades were launched at the Americans.
Again, according to the Sunni Muslim Iraqis of this traditionally Saddamite town, the Americans fired back, this time shooting into a crowd of bystanders who had left their homes at the sound of the shooting. Several, including the driver of the truck that was hit by the Americans after the initial bombing, were wounded and taken to hospital for treatment in the nearest city to the west, Ramadi. "They opened fire randomly at us, very heavy fire," Adel, the mechanic with the oil lamp, said. "They don't care about us. They don't care about the Iraqi people, and we will have to suffer this again. But I tell you that they will suffer for what they did to us today. They will pay the price in blood."
The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.The sins of commission are those of the British civil authorities in Mesopotamia (especially of three 'colonels') who were given a free hand by London. They are controlled from no Department of State, but from the empty space which divides the Foreign Office from the India Office. They availed themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time to carry over their dangerous independence into times of peace. They contest every suggestion of real self- government sent them from home. A recent proclamation about autonomy circulated with unction from Baghdad was drafted and published out there in a hurry, to forestall a more liberal statement in preparation in London, 'Self-determination papers' favourable to England were extorted in Mesopotamia in 1919 by official pressure, by aeroplane demonstrations, by deportations to India.
Yet our published policy has not changed, and does not need changing. It is that there has been a deplorable contrast between our profession and our practice. We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly a thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are spending ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of money on the same objects.
Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and killed a yearly average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining peace. We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes, armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured trains. We have killed about ten thousand Arabs in this rising this summer. We cannot hope to maintain such an average: it is a poor country, sparsely peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud his masters, if he saw us working. We are told the object of the rising was political, we are not told what the local people want. It may be what the Cabinet has promised them. A Minister in the House of Lords said that we must have so many troops because the local people will not enlist. On Friday the Government announce the death of some local levies defending their British officers, and say that the services of these men have not yet been sufficiently recognized because they are too few (adding the characteristic Baghdad touch that they are men of bad character). There are seven thousand of them, just half the old Turkish force of occupation. Properly officered and distributed, they would relieve half our army there. Cromer controlled Egypt's six million people with five thousand British troops; Colonel Wilson fails to control Mesopotamia's three million people with ninety thousand troops.
We have not reached the limit of our military commitments. Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it was forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three brigades from India. If the North-West Frontier [Taliban country!!!! Dan] cannot be further denuded, where is the balance to come from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the wilfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad. The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that town for political offences, which they call rebellion. The Arabs are not at war with us. Are these illegal executions to provoke the Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred British prisoners they hold? And, if so, is it that their punishment may be more severe, or is it to persuade our other troops to fight to the last? We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world. How far will the killing of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer hinder the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?
Some nice speculations about secret proxy army activities. There is a bizarre group in Iraq today called the Mujahideen e-Khalq, who hate the Iranian government. But they are basically a matriarchal cult with a couple dozen tanks. And they have been ranging around from US-controlled territory, Iraq, into Iran to cause... terrorism? After all, they're officially a 'terrorist organization,' and hence one of those 'enemies of civilization' and all that.
So this is what's interesting. The neoconservative planners tend to favor horrible little proxy armies to do their bidding. This was our opium-oriented "Northern Alliance," who stabilized the Afghan province so well. (Heh) It was also the strategy Ariel Sharon used with the Phalangist militia in Lebanon (of Sabra and Shatila massacre fame). And we know that a few of the neocons, namely Michael Ledeen and Eliot Abrams, were perjurous architects of the Iran-Contra scheme. Ledeen hates Iran passionately, and Abrams lied to Congress about it. There's been word that Ledeen has re-opened contact with an Iranian arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, the very same arms dealer who brought those missiles into the Islamic republic.
Could schemers be shifting weapons around, to use against Iran? More specifically, could the neo-cons be encouraging the MEK and giving them harbor? (Bush doctrine ultra-sin!) The Jewish newsletter Forward wrote back in June that
A small Pentagon planning office under fire for its alleged manipulation of intelligence on Iraq is also dealing with other countries in the Persian Gulf, including Iran, raising concerns among critics about the shaping of Bush administration policy in this sensitive region. Defense Department spokesmen acknowledge that a small, four-member team is working on Iran policy within the Pentagon's so-called Office of Special Plans. Critics contend that the office has been distorting intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda in order to strengthen the case for war. Even now, however, some hawks are pressing the administration to engage the group and possibly use it as a proxy against the Tehran regime.And so, these months later, the neocons have biffed the job. It seems that they didn't get to planning the post-Baathist fourth phase of the war! As leftie Alex Cockburn says on Counterpunch, "Matchlessly Wrong About Everything: Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con!":"The Office of Special Plans has been willing to reach out to the MEK and use them as a surrogate to pressure Iran," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA and State Department official who has been among those alleging pressure on analysts by Pentagon hawks to skew intelligence on Iraq. The senior Defense Department official strongly denied the allegations, contending that the Office of Special Plans had in fact advocated cracking down on the MEK. He said the ensuing policy confusion was due to other government agencies.
Now here we are on the downslope of 2003 and George Bush is learning, way too late for his own good, that the neo-cons have been matchlessly wrong about everything. One can burrow through the archives of historical folly in search of comparisons and still come up empty-handed. The neo-cons told Bush that eviction of Saddam would rearrange the chairs in the Middle East, to America's advantage. Wrong. They told him it would unlock the door to a peaceful settlement in Israel. Wrong. They told him (I'm talking about Wolfowitz's team of mad Straussians at DoD) that there was irrefutable proof of the existence of weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq. Wrong. They told him the prime Iraqi exile group, headed by Ahmad Chalabi, had street cred in Iraq. Wrong. They told him it would be easy to install a US regime in Baghdad and make the place hum quietly along, like Lebanon in the 1950s. Wrong...Oh no, even the militant Washington Times is givin some to the Pentagon's policy bombs. Of course, we don't necessarily have to reach for conspiracies to determine that their policy planning has simply been incompetent:Now many are gloating at the neo-cons' discomfiture and waiting for their downfall. Click go Madam Defarge's knitting needles as she waits beside the guillotine. Here come the tumbrils, inching their way slowly through the rotting cabbages and vulgar ribaldry of Republican isolationists. Here's a pale-faced Douglas Feith. Up goes the fatal blade, and down it flashes. Behold, the head of a neo-con! The next tumbril carries a weightier cargo: Richard Perle and Elliott Abrams. Still not enough. Madam Defarge knits on and her patience is soon rewarded. Here come Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, the latter defiantly jotting a coda to Rumsfeld's Rules. They are cleanly dispatched and the crowd moves off to torch the Weekly Standard and string up its editor, Bill Kristol.
The Pentagon's policy-making shop is getting internal criticism for failing to predict the ongoing guerrilla war in its planning for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, military officials say.So then, what will it be? A conspiracy to attack Iran (or at least move around arms), or else the continued implementation of really poor defense policies?The officials, who requested anonymity, also said the intelligence community failed to paint a full picture before the war of the sorry state of Iraq's infrastructure and basic services such as drinking water and sewage treatment.
Much of the inside-the-Pentagon criticism is directed at Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, who has coordinated postwar planning. "Feith's star is falling," one Pentagon insider said of the Georgetown University-educated lawyer who worked in the Reagan administration. This official said Mr. Feith pushed to make Saddam's suspected weapons of mass destruction the No. 1 rationale for going to war on March 19. That argument has suffered as search teams have failed to find any such weapons.
...Pentagon officials told of rushed prewar planning last winter, as one arm of the policy shop made post-Saddam blueprints of which others had no knowledge. Some nondefense agencies simply skipped planning meetings. While the war plan went off with few snags and produced a quick victory, the "Phase IV" plan was not solidly in place when Baghdad fell April 9.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, told Mr. Wolfowitz at a hearing last week: "It's clear that the Bush administration was not ready for what took place after the Iraqi regime collapsed. ... We were unprepared, totally unprepared, for what's happened out there in Iraq in terms of giving adequate protection for American troops."
...A secret report for the Joint Chiefs of Staff last month gave a low grade to planning for Phase IV. "Late formation of DoD [Phase IV] organizations limited time available for the development of detailed plans and pre-deployment coordination," said the report, prepared by the chiefs' planning arm, the Joint Staff. "Command relationships (and communication requirements) and responsibilities were not clearly defined for DoD organizations until shortly before [the war] commenced."
So what is this neoconservatism anyway? Is it militancy, an 'inverted Trotsyism,' 'creative destruction,' or just following through on 'Moral Clarity'? While the neocons were in the background during the Reagan years, they pretty much ran the Iraq show, and people are gradually sifting through this puzzle to shake out how it's a movement distinct from the usual in American politics.
To begin with look at an article by neocon 'Godfather' William Kristol, "The Neoconservative Persuasion," a rather subtle and crafty piece of writing.
This story is a collection of lengthy ideological screeds which aren't mine, so I put it off the front page. Hit "read more" to follow along. Or don't, if you think it doesn't matter.
One can say that the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy. That this new conservative politics is distinctly American is beyond doubt. There is nothing like neoconservatism in Europe, and most European conservatives are highly skeptical of its legitimacy. The fact that conservatism in the United States is so much healthier than in Europe, so much more politically effective, surely has something to do with the existence of neoconservatism....
Neocons do not like the concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study alternative ways of delivering these services. But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on "the road to serfdom." Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable. Because they tend to be more interested in history than economics or sociology, they know that the 19th-century idea, so neatly propounded by Herbert Spencer in his "The Man Versus the State," was a historical eccentricity. People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home in today's America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not.In a direct response to this piece, the old-school American conservative and adamant pacifist Justin Raimondo points out a variety of the neocon's dangerous, hidden views.But it is only to a degree that neocons are comfortable in modern America. The steady decline in our democratic culture, sinking to new levels of vulgarity, does unite neocons with traditional conservatives--though not with those libertarian conservatives who are conservative in economics but unmindful of the culture. The upshot is a quite unexpected alliance between neocons, who include a fair proportion of secular intellectuals, and religious traditionalists. They are united on issues concerning the quality of education, the relations of church and state, the regulation of pornography, and the like, all of which they regard as proper candidates for the government's attention. And since the Republican party now has a substantial base among the religious, this gives neocons a certain influence and even power. Because religious conservatism is so feeble in Europe, the neoconservative potential there is correspondingly weak.
AND THEN, of course, there is foreign policy, the area of American politics where neoconservatism has recently been the focus of media attention. This is surprising since there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience. (The favorite neoconservative text on foreign affairs, thanks to professors Leo Strauss of Chicago and Donald Kagan of Yale, is Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War.) These attitudes can be summarized in the following "theses" (as a Marxist would say): First, patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment and should be encouraged by both private and public institutions. Precisely because we are a nation of immigrants, this is a powerful American sentiment. Second, world government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion. Third, statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies.
Finally, for a great power, the "national interest" is not a geographical term, except for fairly prosaic matters like trade and environmental regulation. A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode. A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns. Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.... This [American military] superiority was planned by no one, and even today there are many Americans who are in denial. To a large extent, it all happened as a result of our bad luck. During the 50 years after World War II, while Europe was at peace and the Soviet Union largely relied on surrogates to do its fighting, the United States was involved in a whole series of wars: the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo conflict, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War. The result was that our military spending expanded more or less in line with our economic growth, while Europe's democracies cut back their military spending in favor of social welfare programs. The Soviet Union spent profusely but wastefully, so that its military collapsed along with its economy.
The idea that America has "ideological interests" that are in any way "like the Soviet Union of yesteryear" is certainly repulsive to most conservatives, and to most Americans: which is why all the sound and fury about how neoconservatism is from the native soil sprung comes across as completely phony. Beyond the Beltway, the number of Americans who believe that we are destined to spread our system by force of arms around the world is minuscule, because nothing could be more un-American...The more anonymous Michael Tennan adds that the neocons are cramming an unconstitutional attitude down the nation's throat.How the man glories in war: that is the leitmotif of the neocons. Lovingly he ticks off what he regards as the high points of human history in the modern era: World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Gulf War II. There is something distinctly weird, and unhealthy, in this litany of mass slaughter. Aside from that, however, there are a few problems with the Kristolian analysis: The Soviet Union was too wasteful, he avers, but how wasteful is the American occupation of Iraq? No one should be surprised that Kristol considers the U.S. to be an "ideological" superpower in the old Soviet sense: that is precisely the essence of the neoconservative vision. The neocon project of forcibly "transforming" and "democratizing" the Middle East is a perfect replica of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. Soviet satellites were so many millstones around the Kremlin's neck: eventually, the burden dragged them down into a terminal decline. The same fate awaits us if we are so unwise as to ignore the bones of our predecessors lining the side of the road to empire.
Krstol's essay is suffused with a sense of power, and an implicit threat to "the older, traditional elements in the Republican party" who "have difficulty coming to terms with this new reality in foreign affairs, just as they cannot reconcile economic conservatism with social and cultural conservatism." These reactionaries, we are assured, will be swept aside by the new order ushered in by the President, whose top officials "turn out to be quite at home in this new political environment, although it is clear they did not anticipate this role any more than their party as a whole did."
The gloating is unmistakable, as if to say: 9/11 caught you unawares, but now you're cooperating, as you should have been all along. "As a result," avers Kristol triumphantly, "neoconservatism began enjoying a second life, at a time when its obituaries were still being published."
Yes, the neocons certainly have thrived since 9/11, unlike the rest of us, but surely this is nothing to advertise. To do so seems unnecessarily provocative, and in poor taste, to say the least. But conceit is pointless if it can't be openly displayed. Wrapping himself in the mantle of presidential power and favor, invoking the full might and majesty of the rising American Empire, Kristol is telling conservatives to ditch their entire program of rolling back an overgrown and often tyrannical federal government, in favor of perpetual war ?"the new reality in foreign affairs."
Yes, says Kristol, we neocons exist. Not only that, but we have the power ? and won't shrink from using it. So get with the program, buster, or get out. That is the chief theme and the whole point of Kristol's essay.
Says Kristol, "one can say that the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy.? It?s easy to see the liberal?and, indeed, Straussian, as Kristol claims Leo Strauss as one of the forerunners of neoconservatism?mind at work here. We, the enlightened ones, will "convert" you, the unenlightened, from your backward, parochial ways to our progressive, global ways; and we will do so against your will, by deception if possible, by force if necessary.What's interesting about these attacks on the neocons is that to a great extent they stem from the right, not the left. I think this is because all the 'lefties,' those who opposed the war because they were liberals, have yelled themselves hoarse. Meanwhile the many and varied strands of conservatives out there are getting anxious about a collection of clever, ex-Marxist Straussians who actually want to obliterate traditional conservatism against their wills. Along these lines is another right criticism from the interesting site LEWRockwell.com. DiLorenzo describes "'Godfather' Kristol?s Statist/Imperialist Manifesto" as follows:...Now for the big subject of the day: "foreign policy, the area of American politics where neoconservatism has recently been the focus of media attention," as Kristol puts it. That, of course, is because neocon foreign policy is exemplified by precisely the foreign policy that the Bush administration has implemented, contrary to Bush?s paean to a "humbler" foreign policy while campaigning. It seeks to dominate the world at any cost, sending troops to far-flung countries ( Afghanistan , Iraq , Liberia ) in pursuit of, well, hegemony, in the guise of bringing liberation and democracy to the oppressed of the world. It is completely contrary to the vision of the Founding Fathers and to the American tradition, which is why it had to be imposed on us against our will as well.
Essentially, neocon foreign policy is that might makes right. Oh, Kristol doesn?t come right out and say this, but his words add up to the same thing. For "a great power," he writes, "the ?national interest? is not a geographical term." That is, U.S. foreign policy should not be confined to safeguarding the territorial United States . Oh, no. We must be concerned with the entire world. "A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns." Yes, according to Irving Kristol, neocon foreign policy applies equally to the Soviet Union and the United States, both of whom have (or had, in the case of the Soviets) "ideological interests" which trump mere territorial concerns. Kristol further notes that since the U.S. "will always feel obliged to defend...a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces," the neocons thus "feel it necessary to defend Israel today." Apparently only the holding of elections, not what those elected governments? policies are, matters to neocons, and even then they?re more than willing to give some leeway to cooperative dictators. Once again, I must give Kristol credit for being accurate in his assessment that no central principles (other than the one left unmentioned, spelled p-o-w-e-r) guide the neocons in their quest for "national greatness" (as Kristol?s equally arrogant son, William, put it). It?s clear, though, that this power-grubbing, world-dominating foreign policy is certainly not in the interest of the average American, which is why he has to be converted against his will by the neocons.
Kristol continues to celebrate the power of the U. S. , and he notes that "[w]ith power come responsibilities, whether sought or not, whether welcome or not. And it is a fact that if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will discover them for you." The neocons, of course, are not content to let the world find uses for the power they?ve worked so hard to achieve. As a matter of fact, they?re more than happy to "find opportunities to use it." Whether those "opportunities" are in the best interest of the country or the world is irrelevant; all that matters is that the neocons are the ones finding the opportunities and wielding the power.
[T]he historical task and political purpose of neoconservativism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican Party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy (emphasis added).Heh, as long as we're on the topic of getting told to march off to the quicksand for other people's interests, lets look at what Irv Kristol's son William (the editor of key neo-con instrument Weekly Standard) said about the brilliant idea of War with Iran in mid-May, in a tasty piece "The End of the Beginning" (of the war on All Who Annoy):Like all neocons, Kristol claims to be a champion of democracy, but his words and actions often contradict this claim. Consider the language in the above quotation, "against their respective wills." According to the traditional theory of democracy, the role of competing ideas in politics is supposedly a matter of persuasion. Political debates are supposedly aimed at persuading voters that you are right and your rival is wrong. But Kristol will have none of this. He is the "Godfather," after all. What he apparently means by transforming traditional conservatives against their will is not to attempt to persuade them to become statists and imperialists like himself, but to intimidate and censor them by conducting campaigns of character assassination against anyone who disagrees with the neocon agenda. He means to purge all dissenters, Stalin style.
Kristol claims that the three biggest neocon idols are Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Ronald Reagan; all other Republican party worthies are "politely ignored." Teddy Roosevelt, whom the neocons affectionately call "TR," was simply nuts. Mark Twain, who met him twice, called him "clearly insane." In any number of "TR" biographies we learn that after an argument with his girlfriend as a young man he went home and shot his neighbor?s dog. When he killed his first buffalo ? and his first Spaniard ? he "abandoned himself to complete hysteria," as biographer Edmund Morris recounts.
Like Kristol, Max Boot, Charles Krauthammer, and many other neocons, Teddy Roosevelt was infatuated with war and killing. A college friend of his wrote in 1885 that "he would like above all things to go to war with some one. He wants to be killing something all the time." As president, he constantly announced that America "needed a war," which is exactly what the neocons of today believe. War - any war - the neocons tell us, gives us "national unity."
TR was a statist in domestic policy, a foreign policy imperialist, and an inveterate warmonger. He was, in other words, the real "Godfather" of neoconservatism.
As for FDR, the neocons idolize him as well because the older ones like Kristol are all former leftists - like FDR - and they have never abandoned their statist beliefs. Further evidence of this lies in the one reason Kristol gives for why neocons idolize Ronald Reagan: Although they had nothing to do with initiating the "Reagan tax cuts," neocons supported them because they believed they would spur economic growth, which in turn would enable them to fully fund the welfare state. (In this regard California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger is a neocon: In his initial press conference announcing his candidacy he said he wanted to "bring business back to California" so that the Golden state?s massive welfare entitlement bureaucracy could be fully funded).
In foreign policy Kristol says neocons are, well, imperialists. For a "great power" there are no boundaries to its pursuit of "national interest." He says we have an "ideological interest" to defend, and that means endless warfare all around the globe to ostensibly "defend" that ideology. (And Mark Twain thought TR was insane.) Of course, someone has to decide for us what that "ideological interest" is, and then force the population, with the threat of imprisonment or worse (for nonpayment of taxes, for instance) to support it.
In Kristol?s case, his primary ideological rationale for military intervention is: "We feel it necessary to defend Israel today" in the name of democracy. Well, no we don?t. If Irving Kristol wants to grab a shotgun and take the next flight to Tel Aviv "to defend Israel" then Godspeed, and I will offer to buy him a first-class plane ticket. But leave me and my family out of it.
Translating "we feel it necessary to defend Israel" from neoconese, we get this: "Young American soldiers must die in defense of Israel." Like hell they must. Young Americans who join the military for patriotic reasons do so because they believe they are defending their country. It is a fraud and an abomination to compel them to risk their lives for any other country, whether it is Israel, Canada, Somalia, or wherever.
the war in which we are presently engaged is a fundamental challenge for the United States and the civilized world. It is a defining moment for America and American foreign policy. The victory in what the president called Thursday night "the battle of Iraq" is, perhaps, the end of the beginning of this larger war. President Bush understands that we are engaged in a larger war. His opponents, on the whole, do not, and this accounts in large measure for the yawning gulf between the supporters and critics of the Bush Doctrine. It is unclear, to say the least, what actual policies most of Bush's critics would follow. Different opponents would presumably embrace differing combinations of the sporadic use of American force, wishful exercises in appeasement, and endless negotiations at the United Nations and elsewhere.But what Bush's opponents have in common is a refusal to come to grips with the fundamental character of the war on terror: the fact that it is a war, of which Afghanistan and Iraq, as the president said, are merely battles. Thus they refuse to embrace the president's ambitious agenda, eloquently reiterated aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, of targeting all terrorist groups and the states that support them, of confronting outlaw regimes that seek weapons of mass destruction, and of standing with the friends of freedom around the world....
The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the Middle East. The creation of a free Iraq is now of fundamental importance, and we must do what it takes to make a decent, democratic Iraq a reality. But the next great battle--not, we hope, a military battle--will be for Iran. We are already in a death struggle with Iran over the future of Iraq. The theocrats ruling Iran understand that the stakes are now double or nothing. They can stay in power by disrupting efforts to create a pluralist, non-theocratic, Shia-majority state next door--or they can fall, as success in Iraq sounds the death knell for the Iranian revolution.
So we must help our friends and allies in Iraq block Iranian-backed subversion. And we must also take the fight to Iran, with measures ranging from public diplomacy to covert operations. Iran is the tipping point in the war on proliferation, the war on terror, and the effort to reshape the Middle East. If Iran goes pro-Western and anti-terror, positive changes in Syria and Saudi Arabia will follow much more easily. And the chances for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement will greatly improve.
The big news today is that the developing world finally scored a point in the World Trade Organizaion talks in Cancun, as they formed a 22-nation bloc (including Brazil, China and India) which demanded the wealthier nations address the imbalances in agricultural subsidies. When the us and EU wouldn't give any ground the talks imploded, to the cheers of the many and varied protesters outside. Farmers all around the world, but particularly in the developing world, have been hit hard with plunging, unpredictable food prices and escalating debt. A South Korean farmer stabbed himself at the front lines of the protest and later died in surgery. This is what the farmer said earlier:
Soon after the Uruguay Round (UR) Agreement was settled, we, Korean fellow farmers, and myself realized that our destinies are out of our hands already. Further, so powerlessly of ourselves, we could not do anything but just looking the waves destroy our lovely rural communities that had settle-downed over the hundred years. To make myself brave, I have tried to search the real reasons for and major forces of those waves. Reaching to my conclusion now here in Geneva, at the front gate of the WTO, I am crying out my words to you that have been boiled so long time in my body.Here is a totally unrelated site about Sept. 11 conspiracies, from a generally anti-conspiratorial point of view.It is true that Korean agricultural reform programs increased the productivity of individual farms. However it is also fact that increased productivity simply added another volume to over-supplied market in which imported goods occupied the lowest price portion. Since then, we never be paid over our production costs. Sometime, price drop recorded four-timers of normal trend in a sudden. How would it be your emotional reaction if your salary drops suddenly to a half without knowing clearly the reason.
One part, those farmers who gave up earlier his farming went to urban slum. The others who had tried to escape from the vicious cycle had to meet bankruptcy with accumulated debts mostly. Of course, some fortunate peoples could come further but not all of them may go longer, I suspect. For me I couldn?t do anything but just looking around this vacant house of old and eroded.
What I could do was to check sometimes his house with hoping him back. Once I run to a house where a farmer abandoned his life by drinking a toxic chemical because of his uncontrollable debts. I also could do nothing but hearing the howling of his wife. If you were me, how would you feel?
If you walk into Korean rural villages, we may firstly see many ruined structures ? mostly livestock shelters and green (mostly glass) houses, which swallowed such big amounts of money. If you get into some houses, you can easily meet old-aged-peoples who suffer from illness in most cases. Rural amenities can be felt, at a glance, only in riding on your car in the road. In fact, good road systems of being paved widely pulls large apartments (a thousand people live in it, usually), buildings and factories in Korea. Those lands paved now mostly were the paddies that constructed for the generations of thousand years and provided the daily lives foods and materials in the past. Now in the contemporary society, the environmental functions of paddies, ecologically and hydrologically are even more crucial. Who shall keep our rural vitality, community traditions, amenities and environment?
As I'm wont to do when there's nothing going on at work, I searched for our great deputy defense secretary Douglas Feith on Google News. Today, journalists around the world are picking up on the fact that US intelligence agencies (CIA, DIA, State-Intel) already knew that Saddam Hussein represented no real threat to American interests, so in order to have a war, those agencies would have to be caught in a 'web of lies' within the government, which would remove their ability to challenge the legitimacy of the war. (This was duplicated for the public via organs like the Murdoch-neocon Weekly Standard which forbid dissenting comment) The neocon Pentagon civilians under Wolfowitz, namely Douglas Feith in this case, had to create an ad-hoc executive apparatus to subvert the intelligence functions of the agencies and replace their intelligence with falsehoods drawn from neo-con ideology. The intelligence agencies of Europe are pretty aware of this now. So when you search for Mr Feith in the online news, you will run into a wealth of research into this. For example here is a report in the Asia Times, The Twin Towers and the Tower of Babel Part 2 : The roadmap of human folly. Also check out Part 1 of the report, which has more to do with the Bush administration abandoning its proclaimed rejection of the Baathist (Mukhabarat) security services. A little of the goods:
...Intelligence and scientific inspectors proved almost beyond reasonable doubt that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction. This raised the question of which of the Bush neo-conservatives came up with the false evidence to support the war, which Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon number 2, cynically claimed on the record was to "secure a consensus for the war policy". European intelligence confirms that a group of "unofficial" political advisers appointed and controlled by Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Donald Rumsfeld in the Office of Special Planning (OSP) were the source of the false claims.Here is a long-deleted Fox News story about an Israeli spy ring in the US, which might have had some foreknowledge of the 911 attacks. This is not closely related to the story but still entertaining. What is interesting is that 'Bush Knew' conspiracies still float around, but this crazy line of investigation has been totally squashed.Wolfowitz and Feith, the Pentagon number 3, were responsible for setting up the OSP. Its director was Abraham Shulsky. The OSP included other neo-cons with no professional qualification whatsoever in intelligence and military affairs. It came as no surprise that Shulsky is a protege of the "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle - who resigned as chairman of the Defense Policy Board before the war (a job he got via Wolfowitz). The OSP also included Elliot Abrams (who supported the Guatemalan genocide of the 1980s), a senior director for Middle East affairs for the National Security Council. These neo-cons intimately connected with the Zionist lobby, even issued reports on Iraq totally contradicting those from the Israeli Mossad, which did not believe that Iraq represented any threat, either to the US or to Israel.
The OSP is just one more arm of the neo-cons - especially Wolfowitz and Feith - in a central strategy of supporting Ariel Sharon's hardcore policy against the Palestinians. Sharon was never interested in the success of the Middle East roadmap to peace - which would imply painful concessions from Israel towards the Palestinians. It's no surprise that Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz are now targeting Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia with a vengeance - with the same barrage of fake "intelligence reports" accusing Arab countries of funding, protecting and promoting terrorism, and now sending terrorists to Iraq. All the fake intelligence is provided by OSP operatives and their elaborate networks....
Also here is a representation of the famous report made to the Defense Policy Board about the need to destroy the government of Saudi Arabia (or 'taking the Saudi out of Arabia').
Well those are just some of the random things I've looked at this afternoon. It's mostly all old news except the Asia Times story.
The first week at Macalester has been going off pretty well. I am in a couple very good politics classes, a computer hardware class and urban geography. It should be challenging this year but enlightening. One of my politics classes focuses on the field known as 'critical theory' as put forth by the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse, etc. Kind of psycho-social neo-Marxism, it could be described as. That's interesting... Besides that everything is excellent here at the house on Grand, despite the occasional weird incidents like the raving drunk who came up to us on the porch at 3 AM last night.
The word of the weekend I say goes to Maureen Dowd who sugggested that
Does Mr. Bush ever wonder if the neocons duped him and hijacked his foreign policy? Some Middle East experts think some of the neocons painted a rosy picture for the president of Arab states blossoming with democracy when they really knew this could not be accomplished so easily; they may have cynically suspected that it was far more likely that the Middle East would fall into chaos and end up back in its pre-Ottoman Empire state, Balkanized into a tapestry of rival fiefs -- based on tribal and ethnic identities, with no central government -- so busy fighting each other that they would be no threat to us, or Israel.Also check out a disturbing report in the Observer UK about how Iraqis randomly killed by the US are barely noted officially.The administration is worried now about Jordan and Saudi Arabia in the face of roiling radicalism.
Some veterans of Bush 41 think that the neocons packaged their "inverted Trotskyism," as the writer John Judis dubbed their rabid desire to export their "idealistic concept of internationalism," so that it appealed to Bush 43's born-again sense of divine mission and to the desire of Mr. Bush, Rummy and Mr. Cheney to achieve immortality by transforming the Middle East and the military.
What is perhaps most shocking about their deaths is that the coalition troops who killed them did not even bother to record details of the raid with the coalition military press office. The killings were that unremarkable. What happened in Mahmudiya last week should not be forgotten, for the story of this raid is also the story of the dark side of the US-led occupation of Iraq, of the violent and sometimes lethal raids carried out apparently beyond any accountability.Everyone should look at this really amazing interview with Jason Burke, someone who has examined Islamic militancy closely. (Link via Altercation) For those of you who believe that al-Qaeda is a self-contained, concrete organization rather than a loose network of militants, consider:
There?s an understanding among the Western public that Al-Qaeda is a coherent, organized terrorist network with a hierarchy, a command and control structure, a degree of commission and execution of terrorist acts by a few individuals.There was a pretty wild story in the Washington Post on Sunday about al-Qaeda setting up a front in Iraq (which of course it didn't have before) to cause havoc etc. The article also has a lot of speculations about Al-Qaeda leaders hiding in Iran after the Afghanistan war, and plotting the recent Riyadh bombings. This article in turn sparked a lot of disagreement in part because it was written by somewhat discredited WaPo reporter Sue Schmidt, who might be more ready to jump on Iran with unproven allegations drawn from the Iranian exiles who hate their government. That site, Talking Points Memo, points to a good blog kept by a middle east studies professor who also debunks aspects of the story.That simply isn?t the case. The biggest myth is that all the various incidents that we are seeing are linked to some kind of central organization. One of the reasons the myth is so prevalent is that it?s a very comforting one.
Because if you clearly get rid of that central organization, if you get rid off, particularly bin Laden?and a few score, a few hundred people around him?then the problem would apparently be solved. Unfortunately, that idea is indeed a myth and bears very little resemblance to what?s happening on the ground.
Talking Points Memo is written by Josh Micah Marshall, who writes on Salon, the Washington Monthly and a Washington newsletter The Hill. I really like his writings on various topics around Washington, such as this new piece detailing how the Bush administration hates experts who they see as controlled by a 'namby-pamby' liberal ideology, and hence disregards real facts:
By disregarding the advice of experts, by shunting aside the cadres of career professionals with on-the-ground experience in these various countries, the administration's hawks cut themselves off from the practical know-how which would have given them some chance of implementing their plans successfully. In a real sense, they cut themselves off from reality. When they went into Iraq they were essentially flying blind, having disengaged from almost everyone who had real-world experience in how effective occupation, reconstruction and nation-building was done. And much the same can be said of the administration's take on economic policy, environmental policy, and in almost every sort of policy question involving science. Muzzling the experts helped the White House muscle its revisionist plans through.In August 2002, Marshall wrote a fascinating piece in Salon about how a schism exists in the Rumsfeld Pentagon between the brass and the top civilians (i.e. the Neocons):
The Bush administration's most right-leaning political appointees are concentrated at the Pentagon. And nowhere is that tilt more evident than in its Middle East policies. The Bush appointees have not just ignored recommendations from military advisors and civil servants but have often ousted or sidelined those who have had the temerity to offer any policy advice. Over the last 18 months, there has been an exodus of career civil servants leaving the Pentagon policy shop for stints on Capitol Hill or with other Defense Department-affiliated institutions, according to a half-dozen such departees who spoke to Salon -- far more than is normally the case when administrations change from one party to the other. Many of those slots have been filled by ideologues and think-tank denizens who can be relied on to serve up the right kind of advice to their superiors.He also wrote a great article in the January Washington Monthly about how terrible Dick Cheney is at making decisions.When most people think of neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, they think of men like Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary, and Richard Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board. But the second tier of civilian appointees at the Pentagon is stacked with Wolfowitz and Perle proteges who are in many ways even more conservative in their views than their mentors and -- as the Rhode incident shows -- a good deal more hotheaded...
In the minds of these second-tier appointees, taking out Saddam Hussein is only part of a larger puzzle. Their grand vision of the Middle East goes something like this: Stage 1: Iraq becomes democratic. Stage 2: Reformers take over in Iran. That would leave the three powerhouses of the Middle East -- Turkey, Iraq and Iran -- democratic and pro-Western. Suddenly the Saudis wouldn't be just one more corrupt, authoritarian Arab regime slouching toward bin Ladenism. They'd be surrounded by democratic states that would undermine Saudi rule both militarily and ideologically.
As a plan to pursue in the real world, most of the career military and the civilian employees at the Pentagon -- indeed most establishment foreign policy experts -- see this vision as little short of insane. But to Bush's hawkish Pentagon appointees the real prize isn't Baghdad, it's Riyadh. And the Saudis know it.
As far as the resignation of the Palestinian Prime Minister is concerned, that was unfortunate but really it was the poor man's only card to play. What, precisely, was he supposed to do? Buy off a few armed gangs and make them sit tight as Israel failed to relax the occupation (as well as cease constructing settlements as the Road Map demanded)? It should be remembered that he only could have moved against that 'terrorist infrastructure' in the cities where he controlled Palestinian security forces (he only controlled a few of these groups anyway). It was a pointless venture because Israel and the U.S. never gave him any slack. Israel didn't even stop trying to kill Hamas members. Well, that's one way to do a cease-fire. Finally, Ariel Sharon is safe from peace, as one Israeli put it. Israel, by the way, did bomb Lebanon a little bit this week, but that's how it goes these days. And a panel found that the Israeli police treated Israeli Arabs as 'the enemy' in a riot just after the beginning of this Intifada.
Naturally Bush didn't address the dramatic Palestinian peace plan failure, or the economy, in his barrage of platitudes this evening. His polls are falling and this whole conflagration is such a marvelous. $87 billion, money well spent. Mr Marshall says this evening:
We went into Iraq to eliminate Saddam's stock of weapons of mass destruction, to depose a reckless strongman at the heart of a vital region, and to overawe unfriendly regimes on the country's borders. Agree or not, those were the prime stated reasons. Now we've got a deteriorating security situation and a palpably botched plan for reconstruction. And our effort to recover from our ill-conceived and poorly-executed policy is now the 'central front' in the war on terror, which is among other things extremely convenient.The president has turned 9/11 into a sort of foreign policy perpetual motion machine in which the problems ginned up by policy failures become the rationale for intensifying those policies. The consequences of screw-ups become examples of the power of 'the terrorists'.
We're not on the offensive. We're on the defensive. A bunch of mumbo-jumbo and flim-flam doesn't change that.
The latest thing that Condi Rice and the gang have taken to is comparing the Iraqi occupation with post-WWII Germany, describing the 'werwolf' operations of the SS as on par with those persistent Iraqi 'Baath remnants' or 'dead-enders.' However as a report in Slate concludes, the administration is lying because in the post-war German occupation, there was virtually no violence against American forces, much like in peacekeeping operations in Haiti and the Balkans. Take a little revisionist history from Donald Rumsfeld:
This gibberish comes strictly in the context of the mounting toll of injuries and death against the US forces in Iraq. The WaPost warns that injuries are mounting very rapidly, as about 10 soldiers a day are injured and about 2 killed. Impressively, the army no longer reports violent injury incidents, as these happen too frequently for the American public to deal with.Rumsfeld: One group of those dead-enders was known as "werewolves." They and other Nazi regime remnants targeted Allied soldiers, and they targeted Germans who cooperated with the Allied forces. Mayors were assassinated including the American-appointed mayor of Aachen, the first major German city to be liberated. Children as young as 10 were used as snipers, radio broadcasts, and leaflets warned Germans not to collaborate with the Allies. They plotted sabotage of factories, power plants, rail lines. They blew up police stations and government buildings, and they destroyed stocks of art and antiques that were stored by the Berlin Museum. Does this sound familiar?Well, no, it doesn't. The Rice-Rumsfeld depiction of the Allied occupation of Germany is a farrago of fiction and a few meager facts.The Army history records that while there were the occasional anti-occupation leaflets and graffiti, the GIs had reason to feel safe. When an officer in Hesse was asked to investigate rumors that troops were being attacked and castrated, he reported back that there had not been a single attack against an American soldier in four months of occupation. As the distinguished German historian Golo Mann summed it up in The History of Germany Since 1789, "The [Germans'] readiness to work with the victors, to carry out their orders, to accept their advice and their help was genuine; of the resistance which the Allies had expected in the way of 'werewolf' units and nocturnal guerrilla activities, there was no sign.
U.S. battlefield casualties in Iraq are increasing dramatically in the face of continued attacks by remnants of Saddam Hussein's military and other forces, with almost 10 American troops a day now being officially declared "wounded in action."The bit about WWII Germany comes via Warblogging.com, which expands on the serious chasm between the peace in Germany and the chaos today:The number of those wounded in action, which totals 1,124 since the war began in March, has grown so large, and attacks have become so commonplace, that U.S. Central Command usually issues news releases listing injuries only when the attacks kill one or more troops. The result is that many injuries go unreported.
The rising number and quickening pace of soldiers being wounded on the battlefield have been overshadowed by the number of troops killed since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations May 1. But alongside those Americans killed in action, an even greater toll of battlefield wounded continues unabated, with an increasing number being injured through small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, remote-controlled mines and what the Pentagon refers to as "improvised explosive devices."
Indeed, the number of troops wounded in action in Iraq is now more than twice that of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The total increased more than 35 percent in August -- with an average of almost 10 troops a day injured last month.
With no fanfare and almost no public notice, giant C-17 transport jets arrive virtually every night at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, on medical evacuation missions. Since the war began, more than 6,000 service members have been flown back to the United States. The number includes the 1,124 wounded in action, 301 who received non-hostile injuries in vehicle accidents and other mishaps, and thousands who became physically or mentally ill. "Our nation doesn't know that," said Susan Brewer, president and founder of America's Heroes of Freedom, a nonprofit organization that collects clothing and other personal items for the returning troops. "Sort of out of sight and out of mind."
The fact is, of course, that the "post-war" conflict in Iraq has been terrible. So terrible, in fact, that despite the more than 140,000 troops currently in Iraq American cavalry officers are being forced to dismount and engage in urban warfare ? something they were never trained to do. Cavalry soldiers, in fact, are even carrying AK-47s because they aren't issued automatic weapons ? they're not expected to need them. This after neoconservatives in the Bush Administration said that the United States would need only 40,000 soldiers to occupy Iraq. We are now at the point where we must call Iraq what it is. It is a quagmire. The status quo of occupation of Iraq is something which the United States cannot tolerate for long ? two soldiers killed and ten wounded per day add up quickly.And then there's that other war on terror in the Afghan province. (link from The Agonist) The AP has all the bad news:
The Taliban are no longer on the run and have teamed up with al-Qaida once again, according to officials and former Taliban who say the religious militia has reorganized and strengthened since their defeat at the hands of the U.S.-led coalition nearly two years ago.Depressing yet entertaining nonetheless... Yet again the wily Afghans stick it out.The militia, which ruled Afghanistan espousing a strict brand of Islam, are now getting help from some Pakistani authorities as well as a disgruntled Afghan population fed up with lawlessness under the U.S.-backed interim administration, according to a former Taliban corps commander.
"Now the situation is very good for us. It is improving every day. We can move everywhere," said Gul Rahman Faruqi, a corps commander of the Gardez No. 3 garrison during the Taliban's rule.