Lier, lier, pans on fire
- From: "jamiil" <jalqadir@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 13 Apr 2007 09:44:38 -0700
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"United States has suffered a devastating blow to its political
influence and moral authority, as well as to its finances and to the
fighting ability of its armed services, while Israel, confronted by a
resurgent Iran, is itself less secure than before the war."
-------------
A shadowy Pentagon unit -- the Office of Special Plans, headed by
Douglas Feith, former U.S. Under Secretary of Defence for Policy --
deliberately fabricated intelligence linking Saddam Hussein's regime
to al-Qaida in order to incite the United States to make war on Iraq.
This conclusion, long suspected by most observers of the Middle East,
has now been confirmed by Thomas F. Gimble, Inspector General of the
U.S. Defence Department, in a declassified report, released on April 5
at the request of Carl M. Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee.
Together with his boss, Paul Wolfowitz, then Deputy Defence Secretary,
Douglas Feith was one of an influential group of pro-Israeli neo-
conservatives in the Bush administration who exploited the 11
September 2001 terrorist attack on the U.S. to campaign and intrigue
for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
According to the Inspector General's report, Feith produced
intelligence assessments which claimed that there was a 'mature,
symbiotic relationship [between Iraq and al-Qaida]' in no fewer than
ten specific areas, including training, financing and logistics. To
bolster his case, Feith made much of an alleged meeting in Prague in
April 2001 between Muhammad Atta, one of the Al-Qaida hijackers, and
an Iraqi intelligence officer, Ahmad al-Ani.
To mobilize the American public for an attack on Iraq, Feith leaked
his fraudulent conclusions to the Weekly Standard, the neo-con
magazine which, under its editor William Kristol, had been stridently
calling for 'regime change' in Iraq since the late 1990s - and which
has now turned its attention to calling for war against Iran.
After a thorough examination of the evidence, the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) and the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) both concluded
that Feith was wrong. They found 'no conclusive signs' of a
relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida and no evidence of 'direct
cooperation.'
But Feith was not deterred. Instead, he did his best to discredit the
CIA and DIA findings and, bypassing the intelligence community, he
presented his phoney evidence as fact to another prominent neo-con, I.
Lewis Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and to
Deputy National Security Director Steven Hadley. In due course, by
means of complicities in the Administration, Feith's dubious material
was passed up to President Bush and Vice-President Cheney who used it
in speeches preparing the public for war in March 2003. The intrigue
was successful.
Senator Carl Levin said in a written statement last week that the
Defence Department's report fully demonstrated why the Inspector
General had concluded that Douglas Feith had 'inappropriately' written
intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion alleging
connections between Iraq and al-Qaida. The word 'inappropriately' is
hardly a precise description of Feith's criminal behaviour.
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Lies prevail until the truth comes and behold... the truth comes!
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As is now plain for everyone to see, the war has been an unmitigated
disaster for the United States, for Iraq and for the whole Middle
East. But it is only now, four years after the American seizure of
Baghdad, that an official report has clearly pointed the finger at the
men largely responsible.
Why did Feith and his neo-con associates do it? And how did they
manage to get away with it?
Clearly, in pressing for war, they were primarily concerned to enhance
Israel's security by smashing a major Arab state, thereby removing any
potential threat to Israel from the east. As they schemed to transform
the region with America's military power, they dreamed of defeating
all of Israel's enemies -- Arab nationalists, Islamic radicals and
Palestinian militants -- at a single stroke. Overthrowing Saddam was
to be only the first step in a thorough transformation of the region
to the advantage of both Israel and the United States.
In the event, the United States has suffered a devastating blow to its
political influence and moral authority, as well as to its finances
and to the fighting ability of its armed services, while Israel,
confronted by a resurgent Iran, is itself less secure than before the
war.
The reckless enterprise of Feith and his fellow neo-cons would
probably have had little chance of success had they not managed to
team up with men like Dick Cheney and former Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, who were evidently seduced by the prospect of taking control
of Iraq's oil reserves, second-largest in the world after Saudi
Arabia's, and of turning a submissive Iraqi client state into a base
for the projection of American power throughout the Middle East and
Central Asia.
President George W Bush himself bought their agenda - a decision he
must now bitterly regret, as he and his advisers seek desperately to
find a way out of the Iraqi quagmire.
In retrospect, the campaign by Israel and its American friends to push
the United States into war with Iraq must be judged one of the most
audacious sabotage operations of the Arab world ever mounted.
Israel has a long history of seeking to destabilise its neighbours in
the belief that a weak and divided Arab world is to its advantage.
Over the years, it has sent funds, weapons and military instructors to
stiffen the southern Sudanese in their long war against Khartoum and
has provided even greater support to the Kurds against Baghdad.
Its repeated invasions of Lebanon - in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996 and 2006
-- have been designed to wrest that country out of Syria's sphere of
influence and bring to power in Beirut a government prepared to do
Israel's bidding. In the Occupied Territories it has sought to destroy
Palestinian resistance not only by boycotts, military strikes and a
systematic campaign of murder of Palestinian activists, but also by
setting one Palestinian faction against another, notably Islamists
against nationalists.
But for sheer daring, the intrigue which carried the U.S. into war
against Iraq can best be compared to the Iran-Contra Scandal of the
mid-1980s.
It will be recalled that Israel started sending American weapons
secretly to Iran from the start of the Iraq-Iran war in 1980, even
while American hostages were held captive in Tehran and in
infringement of the arms embargoes imposed by both the Carter and
Reagan Administrations.
Israel's interest was to fuel the war so as to rule out any
possibility that Iraq might turn westwards and combine its military
power with that of Syria. Selling arms to the Islamic Republic of
Iran, which was then fighting for its survival, was a way to weaken
two potential enemies - Iran and Iraq. It was also highly profitable
for Israel's arms dealers.
To persuade Washington to turn a blind eye to this arms trade, Israel
came up with an ingenious idea. It proposed overcharging Iran for the
American weapons it was secretly supplying and diverting the profits
to the Nicaraguan Contras. The Americans fell for it. They had been
looking for ways to support the Contras after Congress had cut off
funding.
On 17 January 1986, President Reagan signed a Finding which formally
re-launched the clandestine arms programme. Israel's arms sales to
Iran were freed from all constraint. But the exposure of what was to
become known as 'Irangate' crippled the last years of the Reagan
Administration, much as Bush's last years have now been crippled by
the Iraq war.
Can Israel now be persuaded to seek its long-term security by means of
good neighbourly relations with the Arabs rather than by spreading
mayhem among them?
The Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, re-launched at the recent Arab
Summit in Riyadh - which offers Israel peace and normal relations with
all 22 members of the Arab League if it withdraws to its 1967 borders
-- could perhaps be seen as an invitation to Israel to play a
constructive rather than a destructive role in the region.
The Arab message to Israel seems to be this: 'Stop being the bad boy
on the block. Let's put war behind us and cooperate for a better
future.' But Israel's interventionist instincts are so deeply
ingrained that it would take something of a revolution in its military
and security thinking for it to seize the opportunity now being
presented to it.
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"But the exposure of what was to become known as 'Irangate' crippled
the last years of the Reagan Administration, much as Bush's last years
have now been crippled by the Iraq war."
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http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/contributors/04-2007/Article-20070413-ea631747-c0a8-10ed-00a3-4c8cfaaa7ce2/story.html
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