LIES TO START A WAR ( the Nation)

[Zlatko Waterman]

Published on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 by The Nation
Feith-Libby Lies Exposed
by Robert Dreyfuss

If fool-me-once was the Bush Administration's reams of faked intelligence about Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and nonexistent ties to Al Qaeda, then fool-me-twice is the Administration's shameless effort to shift the blame for American casualties in Iraq from the Sunni-led resistance, where it belongs, to a make-believe threat from Iran and allied Shiite militias.

It's Iran in the headlines today, but happily on February 9 we got a timely reminder of how brazenly the Bush Administration--along with its neoconservative allies at The Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute--trumped up the case for war against Iraq five years ago.

In a stunning indictment of the Administration's chicanery, Pentagon Inspector General Thomas Gimble slammed the super-secret predecessor organizations to the Office of Special Plans for "disseminating alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and Al Qaeda relationship." Its actions, Gimble concluded, were "inappropriate," and its conclusions "were not supported by the available intelligence." Among the absurdly wrong conclusions reached by the OSP and its earlier incarnations--the equally Orwellian-sounding Policy Support Office and the Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group--were that a "mature symbiotic relationship" existed between Iraq and Al Qaeda and that Baghdad and Osama bin Laden's terrorists displayed "cooperation in all categories." Vice President Cheney used this nonsense to bolster his dark muttering about "possible Iraq coordination" with Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks.

Make no mistake: The phrase "not supported by the available intelligence" is merely bureaucratese for a "lie-filled pile of crap," and that's the most straightforward way to describe the intelligence product produced by the OSP, which was run directly out of the office of then-Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. Feith, who was called "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth" by Gen. Tommy Franks, is a hard-core neoconservative with intimate ties to the Israeli far right. The Inspector General's report chips away at merely the tip of a gigantic iceberg, a virtual empire of lies that was owned and operated by the Defense Department from 9/11 though the start of the Iraq War in March 2003. (For a complete account of the inner workings of the OSP, see "The Lie Factory," by me and Jason Vest, in the January 2004 edition of Mother Jones.)

At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin invited Gimble in to air Feith's dirty laundry. "The Inspector General's report is a devastating condemnation," said Levin. "These issues are as critical as any I have ever seen." After drawing out Gimble on his careful inquiry into Feith's mischief, Levin noted that despite having interviewed some seventy-five people for the report, there were still many--including at the White House, the National Security Council and the Vice President's office--who had somehow avoided talking to Gimble. "We're gonna be interviewing a lot of folks, including people who have refused to talk to you...including the Chief of Staff of the Vice President."

That "Chief of Staff" would be none other than Feith comrade-in-arms I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the now-disgraced neocon who is standing trial for perjury for trying to cover up information about the Administration's lies and deception over Iraqi WMD four years ago. Thus, very neatly, the Inspector General's inquiry dovetails with US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's long-running effort to pull on yet another thread in the Feith-Libby spider web.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Feith was shockingly unrepentant, denying any and all evidence that he stacked the deck for war. It was too much even for Chris Wallace, the show's host, who seemed incredulous that Feith would deny the obvious. (You can read the whole transcript here.) An excerpt:

WALLACE: Okay. Let's talk about it, because the briefing was titled "Iraq and Al Qaeda Making the Case," and here are some of the highlights from your PowerPoint presentation. "Intelligence indicates cooperation in all categories, mature symbiotic relationship." "Some indications of possible Iraq coordination with Al Qaeda specifically related to 9/11." And you said an alleged meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague in April 2001 was a known contact. Mr. Feith, all of that--all of that was wrong, wasn't it?

FEITH: No, not at all. There was substantial intelligence. I mean, evidence is a legal term not really appropriate here. There was a lot of information out there. Intelligence is very sketchy, and it's always open to interpretation. On this issue, there were people who disagreed about the intelligence and the people in the Pentagon were giving a critical review. They were not presenting alternative conclusions. They were presenting a challenge to the way the CIA was looking at things and filtering its own information.

WALLACE: I have to tell you, I mean, when I--I mean, I read these as "mature symbiotic relationship," "known contact"--that sure sounds like conclusions.

FEITH: You're plucking language out of a briefing, the thrust of which was why is the CIA accounting for information that it had that suggested an Iraq-Al Qaeda relationship when the CIA was excluding that information from its own finished intelligence at the time. It was a criticism. It's healthy to criticize the CIA's intelligence. What the people in the Pentagon were doing was right. It was good government.

The New York Times, in a scathing editorial ridiculing Feith, also pointed the finger at Feith's boss, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: "Wolfowitz would feverishly sketch out charts showing how this Iraqi knew that Iraqi, who was connected through six more degrees of separation to terrorist attacks, all the way back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing."

After Feith's OSP concocted its cock-and-bull story about Iraq, they had the temerity to take it over to the CIA and present it to a team of professional analysts there. George Tenet, after listening politely to Feith's team on August 15, 2002, quietly asked his staff to stick around after the OSP briefers departed. The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency reviewed Feith's conclusions (apparently there were some two dozen or more pieces of "evidence") and promptly disagreed with more than 50 percent of it, Gimble said. Five days later, they all met once again, and the CIA pointedly offered to footnote Feith's report with strident objections of its own. Feith's team said thanks--and then promptly set up an appointment to brief the White House, without so much as adding a single CIA footnote. Needless to say, that briefing was widely cited by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others--and it was helpfully leaked to The Weekly Standard, which printed it nearly verbatim. Later, when asked why he kept insisting that Iraq and Al Qaeda were allies, Cheney pointed to the Weekly Standard article to support his charges!

Bizarre as all this is, it is important to remember that because of these lies, America went to war against a country that had never attacked the United States, that had no weapons of mass destruction and that had no ties to Al Qaeda or 9/11. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead, along with 3,109 Americans. Not only that, but there is every reason to believe that the Administration is once again involved in fabricating intelligence to justify its increasingly belligerent stance toward Iran. While Senator Levin keeps one eye on the Feith-Libby lies of 2003, let's hope he and the rest of Congress keep the other on what looks like additional baloney about Iran. As President Bush himself so eloquently put it: "Fool me once, shame on--shame on you. Fool me--you can't get fooled again."

Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Metropolitan

[mnaz]

This is why we must hold our government's feet to the fire at the time they are beating the drums for war, and not years later. Americans had a chance to register their own "non-binding resolution" (in the opinion polls of '02-'03) rejecting the war or at least demanding sufficient justification for it, but failed to do so when it counted.

As to this particular article, I've been trying since the end of 2003 to tell people about Cheney and Feith's O.S.P. cell, but most simply wouldn't hear of it, or worse, simply didn't care. After all, it's just "left-wing propaganda" now, isn't it?...

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear mnaz:

Though I couldn't agree more about your "feet to the fire" comment, we, the citizens, DID take to the streets and register our complaints against a lying, murdering, greedy administration.

Worldwide, nearly a hundred million people took to the streets to protest between January and March, 2003. Mary and I went to our local demonstration and marched down Main Street in our town with about a hundred others, waving home-made signs, shouting, chanting, singing and swinging on guitars, banjos and tambourines. We did this every Saturday from January ( late) to the invasion of Iraq by the U.S. in March.

As in the Vietnam period, nothing happened. It took years to get up enough momentum to influence Nixon and Johnson during the Vietnam War. Bush, even more enamelled and dumb than they were, can't learn anything, and is closely managed by vicious bureaucrats like Karl Rove.

I just heard Decider I on the radio yesterday.

The man sounds like a mad dog when he answers questions.

His , "It's my job to protect the 'Mur-can peeple!" which begins every statement is an embarrassment coming from an illiterate, know-nothing ventriloquist's dummy on which someone else is pulling the strings. At least with Nixon we knew the loathsome lies were coming from a smart lawyer who was dumb enough to shit in his own nest and bug himself in his own office.

There is, and has been, no connection between Washington and Iraq that takes any realities into account.

I'm reading Stanley Karnow's excellent VIETNAM: A HISTORY and seeing parallels with our present fiasco on every page.

I strongly recommend SK's book as a way to understand the overgrowth of lies, deception and Republican "self-responsibility" and "moral uprightness" ( hear that, Mark Foley?) that thickens over every fact, every death, every billion on no-bid contracts.


Nice comment, yours. And great desert writing, too.

Desert of the society, fecund and alive with the little pink and yellow flowers of the self.

If you decide to come down this way, just let us know.


--Z

[mnaz]

Still, it bothers me that polls in the U.S. were running in favor of the Iraq invasion (over 55% I think), just like that, despite the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 or the al Qaeda threat. And the smug, shit-stirring arrogance of so many war supporters was incredible.

I think one major reason those bastards in DC got away with it is the US-led coalition's short and powerful victory in Iraq in 1991; Americans were lulled into a sense that advanced U.S. military might could solve international conflicts quicky, efficiently, and painlessly (for us); in this context, motivation to ask tough questions of the Liar-in-chief obviously suffered.

Z, I've had a tough couple of months. I'll try to rally and get all my chores done by late Feb./early Mar., and grab a vacation week or two. I'll try to let you know my sched. is in the next 2-3 weeks or so.

[e_dog]

Boo Hoo Hoo.

We don't want a war 'cause we're a bunch of sissies.

Please mr. Bush, don't attack iran! We don't want our precious ittle troopsie woopsies to get in harms way.

Send them home.

Who cares if Iran gets weapons of mass destruction. Who cares if they attack the World Trade Center, again!

We are sad that the Ayatollah is frightened. We don't want to pay for war. We want to fund gay marriage and play the internet. We want to save the whales. Global warming is more important than the holy land! As if!

[mnaz]

yeah, it was kind of like that.

[stilltrucking]

I can't stand anymore truth. I been reading Fiasco, THe American Military Adventure in Iraq. I read three or four pagges at a time and get so depressed I have to put it down.

I am not sure I buy the lead up to the Vietnam war comparision to Iraq. I have not read the the book you speak of Norman but I have read plenty others about the Vietnam war. The war did not start with LBJ or Nixon, not even Kennedy. It goes back to Truman.
Americas Longest War

All I can say about the article is what Vonnegut said to that University of Chicago Professor when he told him that he was going to write a novel about the fire bombing of Dressden. The UC professor was very tough minded he had no compassion for Germans. He harrangued vonnegut with all the Nazi atrocities. And all vonnegut could say was "I know, I Know, I KNOW!"

Check out Fiasco by Thomas E. RIcks, if you have the stomach for it. I don't think I can stand to read much more.


mnaz
I want to hold Hillary's feet to the fire, but I would vote for her just to get Bill back in the white house again in some compacity, if only as First Gentleman.

e-dog
I can see why Bush needs a wider war, to protect his legacy. As Nixon would say to protect the office of the ex presidencey

This same shit been happening for two hundred years, or at least as far back as the war against Mexico. So what else is new?



"The organizing principle of any society is for war. The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers." The Report From Iron Mountain. Even if it was a hoax there is much in it that speaks to our current situation.

[stilltrucking]

It is pretty stupid of me to say I don’t agree with a book I have never read. Sorry about that.

From a book review of Karnow’s History Of Vietnam.

As Ho Chi Minh stood on a crude wooden platform on 2 September 1946 to pronounce the free and autonomous Vietnam, the reader is left to wonder why--why did the United States not support him and his nation's fight for freedom? Karnow proposes an answer, but what we will see is that it merely leads to many more complicated questions.


http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/students/te ... /book.html

What did Karnow propose as an answer to that?

From the way I remember it in America’s Longest War is was because of the French, FDR had promised to support the Vietnamese bid for independence but France was not ready to give up its colony. They pressured Truman with threats that they would drop out of NATO if we did not help them keep Indo China. Naturally we sold them out. Even helped arm the Japenese POW’s to fight on the side of France.

Strange sceene in Hanoi that September day in 1946, American and Viet Minh Flags flying side by side. Our generals and theirs standing side by side, american fighter planes flying over head in salute. Ho gave a speech praising Thomas Jefferson. We thanking him for his support during the war for rescuing our downed pilots. And then France put the kibosh on it.

I suppose starting with the Tonkin Gulf there are parallels to Iraq.

Not to get off subject but one difference for me between LBJ and GWB is the pictures of LBJ collapsed on his desk holding his head in despair not like our jolly fearless leader with his snarky snorty little giggles.

[e_dog]

Bush has militsary experience fought in a jet. mission accomplish'd. an all that jass.

Ho Chi Minh was a rockstar. we shoulda been on 'is side but them damn french with their freedom fries cowed us. Never again can we let that happen! Not with this global warming garbage environment ministry shit, No UN.

[Zlatko Waterman]

ST:

One of the most wonderful things about SK's book is not only its brilliant analysis and detailed thoroughness, but its reticence to "give an answer."

Nearly all good books, except DUB the DECIDER's playbook ( immune to his Daddy's friend's suggestions) are reticent about "giving answers" . . .eh?


--Z

[stilltrucking]

reticent about "giving answers"

10-4

That review of Karnow's book was very critical of him for exactly that reason.
But it just so happens I know the answer to life, the universe and everything. The answer is....42. That won't mean much unless you have read Douglas Adams.

Everybody these days is so full of uniformed opinions, me especially. I have so many opinions I don't have enough bodily orifices to express them. For example I got lots of opinions about Hillary Clinton based on sound bytes.

I been thinking about making a public apology to Hillary Clinton. David Brooks and I hardly agree on anything but I think he got this right.
I been judging Clinton on what I hear other people say, not on what she said.

No Apology Needed

[stilltrucking]

I still got my doubts about Hillary, she says if she knew then what she knows now she would have voted against it. But I still wonder what did Boxer know that she did not. What did that racist Byrd of WVA know, what did Sarbanes know, what did Mikulski know what did 21 democratic senators know, what did Lincoln Chaffee know (the only republican who seemed to know, and he was defeated by a democrat in the last election.) As His Holiness George as reminded us the democrats were in control of the senate when that resolution was passed. I got to check my facts but I am pretty sure that is true about the democratic majority in the senate.

ramble ramble
sorry