THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

Nor did I Sumac. I was somewhat mistaken too. I believe that the oil contracts between the likes of France-Russia and Saddam; provided their leaders incentive to believe Saddam was less guilty. Leftwing thinkers are predisposed to distrust everything the hated Bush says, so they instinctually assumed he was wrong. As coincidence would have it, their doubts proved somewhat accurate, though I doubt there was anything concrete in which their beliefs were based. To some extent "intelligence" is a guessing game and I don't believe any of us are clairvoyant. A decade ago; we learned our intelligence was just as far off the mark, when we mistakenly didn't think Saddam was as close to WMDs as he indeed was. This time; I believe we erred on the side of caution and that is precisely the side I hope we make our errors in the future.

Bill said



I like that bit Bill. So much so, that I feel obliged to comment on it.

Bill, When ya mov'n to Costa Rica?

I don't know yet C.I. Rapping up my loose ends here is proving more time consuming than I anticipated. My next visit has been postponed for at least another week or two.

Boy Steve... We're practically on the same page now!

The new Pentagon papers
A high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Karen Kwiatkowski



March 10, 2004 | In July of last year, after just over 20 years of service, I retired as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. I had served as a communications officer in the field and in acquisition programs, as a speechwriter for the National Security Agency director, and on the Headquarters Air Force and the office of the secretary of defense staffs covering African affairs. I had completed Air Command and Staff College and Navy War College seminar programs, two master's degrees, and everything but my Ph.D. dissertation in world politics at Catholic University. I regarded my military vocation as interesting, rewarding and apolitical. My career started in 1978 with the smooth seduction of a full four-year ROTC scholarship. It ended with 10 months of duty in a strange new country, observing up close and personal a process of decision making for war not sanctioned by the Constitution we had all sworn to uphold. Ben Franklin's comment that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia had delivered "a republic, madam, if you can keep it" would come to have special meaning.

In the spring of 2002, I was a cynical but willing staff officer, almost two years into my three-year tour at the office of the secretary of defense, undersecretary for policy, sub-Saharan Africa. In April, a call for volunteers went out for the Near East South Asia directorate (NESA). None materialized. By May, the call transmogrified into a posthaste demand for any staff officer, and I was "volunteered" to enter what would be a well-appointed den of iniquity.


The education I would receive there was like an M. Night Shyamalan movie -- intense, fascinating and frightening. While the people were very much alive, I saw a dead philosophy -- Cold War anti-communism and neo-imperialism -- walking the corridors of the Pentagon. It wore the clothing of counterterrorism and spoke the language of a holy war between good and evil. The evil was recognized by the leadership to be resident mainly in the Middle East and articulated by Islamic clerics and radicals. But there were other enemies within, anyone who dared voice any skepticism about their grand plans, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Gen. Anthony Zinni.

From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it.

I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.

I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.

While this commandeering of a narrow segment of both intelligence production and American foreign policy matched closely with the well-published desires of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, many of us in the Pentagon, conservatives and liberals alike, felt that this agenda, whatever its flaws or merits, had never been openly presented to the American people. Instead, the public story line was a fear-peddling and confusing set of messages, designed to take Congress and the country into a war of executive choice, a war based on false pretenses, and a war one year later Americans do not really understand. That is why I have gone public with my account.

To begin with, I was introduced to Bill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA. A tall, thin, nervously intelligent man, he welcomed me into the fold. I knew little about him. Because he was a recently retired naval captain and now high-level Bush appointee, the common assumption was that he had connections, if not capability. I would later find out that when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense over a decade earlier, Luti was his aide. He had also been a military aide to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich during the Clinton years and had completed his Ph.D. at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. While his Navy career had not granted him flag rank, he had it now and was not shy about comparing his place in the pecking order with various three- and four-star generals and admirals in and out of the Pentagon. Name dropping included references to getting this or that document over to Scooter, or responding to one of Scooter's requests right away. Scooter, I would find out later, was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff.

Co-workers who had watched the transition from Clintonista to Bushite shared conversations and stories indicating that something deliberate and manipulative was happening to NESA. Key professional personnel, longtime civilian professionals holding the important billets in NESA, were replaced early on during the transition. Longtime officer director Joe McMillan was reassigned to the National Defense University. The director's job in the time of transition was to help bring the newly appointed deputy assistant secretary up to speed, ensure office continuity, act as a resource relating to regional histories and policies, and help identify the best ways to maintain course or to implement change. Removing such a critical continuity factor was not only unusual but also seemed like willful handicapping. It was the first signal of radical change.

At the time, I didn't realize that the expertise on Middle East policy was not only being removed, but was also being exchanged for that from various agenda-bearing think tanks, including the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Interestingly, the office director billet stayed vacant the whole time I was there. That vacancy and the long-term absence of real regional understanding to inform defense policymakers in the Pentagon explains a great deal about the neoconservative approach on the Middle East and the disastrous mistakes made in Washington and in Iraq in the past two years.

Hear, hear. Thanks, c.i.

Well that's extremely interesting, c.i. And from an insider, too.

I wish some of this good information could sometimes get out into the mainstream. But folk get fed Fox News.

you can read more by Karan Kwiatowski at

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski-arch.html

Well Steve, I'm glad you had to spell Kwiat... whatever. And not me. (Me is easier to spell)

AND. The third most often quoted reason for attacking Iraq is because they "disregarded UN ultimatums to comply with inspections"

And thats wrong too, because Iraq is not the only country which flouts UN decrees. Israel does that, and we haven't attacked them.

McTag, And by now, we all understand why Iraq WAS attacked, and Israel continues to defy UN Resolutions. ;(

McTag, yes quite proud about spelling Ms K's name right. Surname that is. Was concentrating hence the mistake with her first name.

No, if true, and no weapons of mass murder (i.e., huge quantities of toxic chemical agents and/or toxic bacterial agents) are hidden in some holes somewhere, it is an error; it is a grevous error; it is certainly not a "technicality". In my opinion, the justification for Iraqi regime change was at least as great as for Serbian regime change. Furthermore, we know for certain that Saddam was aiding and abetting Palestinian terrorists and was vigorously praising the terrorist murder of almost 3,000 residence of the USA, many of whom were not American citizens (but just as murdered as were the Americans). I believe that praise was born of his assistance to some of those terrorists and/or terrorist leaders.



When and if Pakistan reveals a definite intent to again attack its neighbors like Sadam did twice, a pre-emptive strike by its neighbors could be the wisest course. Certainly, Pakistan realizing that its neighbors might be wise enough to strike first if Pakistan threatens them like Sadam threatened and attacked his neighbors (not to mention certain large groups within Iraq), Pakistan would be wise to not make any such threats.



Demagoguery is a poor substitute for reasoning. I neither thought, think, said, or implied any such thing. As for my looking stupid ... to whom? If it's a demagog I would merely giggle and perceive that as in fact a compliment. Shall I regard your comment as an equivalent compliment :wink:

Interesting opinion. I wonder to what extent the terrorist murder of almost 3,000 US residents influenced or biased the thinking of those Karen disagrees with. Perhaps Karen told it like it was, or perhaps Karen was biased by something herself. How can we determine whether Karen saw and described things as they were, or like Kerry back from Vietnam, made up stuff to achieve some objective she thinks noble enough to justify falsities.

Your sentence in truth ought to have been:

And by now, we all understand why Iraq defied and Israel continues to defy UN Resolutions.

Iraq did it to serve its objectives. Israel did it to serve its objectives.

Iraq's objectives were expansion of its power. Israel's objective are self-defense, post and pre-emptive.

Bush Campaign Shows First Attack Ad Against Kerry
50 minutes ago Add Politics to My Yahoo!


By Adam Entous

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites)'s re-election team rolled out its first attack ads on Thursday claiming that Democratic challenger John Kerry (news - web sites) would raise taxes by at least $900 billion and would have sought U.N. approval before "defending America."
*************
Sounds like a darn good idea to me! c.i.

The problem with that statement is that we weren't "defending America" or Americans. As a matter of fact, Bush put Americans in harms way.

Ican, I've noticed before that Americans seem to be singularly defective in detecting irony.

The point I was making was that if you are going to adopt a policy of pre emptive strike, then it puts even more emphasis on getting the intelligence, on which that decision is made, RIGHT.

And as Senator Carl Levin has so amply demonstrated, the attack on Iraq was based on wmd intelligence which wasnt just faulty, it was 100% and spectacularly WRONG.

Which leads me to suspect, cynical though I may be about the intellectual abilities of some within the Bush administration, that not even they could be that stupid; and that the invasion of Iraq was actually for reasons the American administration would rather not discuss, but which we can all work out.

Unfortunately, this administration refuses to discuss anything concerning the truth about their preemptive strike on Iraq. This simple truth seems to be lost on most republicans. Why do they keep missing this? "And as Senator Carl Levin has so amply demonstrated, the attack on Iraq was based on wmd intelligence which wasnt just faulty, it was 100% and spectacularly WRONG."

The problem is this statement is a falsity.

I remember and have reviewed video tapes of several reasons being given by this administration for regime change in Iraq. The future possibility apparently falsely perceived that nuclear bomb development was well underway in Iraq, was for me the least of the several reasons Bush et al gave us. Too many otherwise intelligent folks are mesmerized by the media's often repeated one reason: nuke development = WMD.

I write again: all the reasons that justified our intervention in Serbia and its regime change are the same for Iraq. Why can't Democrats get that now when they were able to get that for Serbia. Mass murder of residents and making war or threatening to make war on neighbors is a good enough reason to seek regime change by force.