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Washington for Impeachment .Org/ a one-stop shop (at least for WA state, but useful in anycase) for basic to specific info, Neighborhood Starter Kits, Resource Links, etc.

         "Why Impeach Bush and Cheney?" Editorials and Information on How to Impeach Bush & Cheney. Includes a Summary of Impeachable Offenses commited by Bush and Cheney, and tells why Congress should impeach them. Has a "How to Impeach" section among many others.

          Much of US favors Bush impeachment: poll WASHINGTON (AFP): Nearly half of the US public wants President George W. Bush to face impeachment, and even more favor that fate for Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a poll out Friday. The survey by the American Research Group found that 45 percent support the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against Bush, with 46 percent opposed, and a 54-40 split in favor when it comes to Cheney. 07/06/07

         
Please sign this petition (of July '07) urging Congress to force Vice President Cheney to respond to its subpoenas. If he doesn't, Congress has to begin impeachment proceedings against him.

         ANGLER: THE CHENEY VICE PRESIDENCY, PART I: 'A DIFFERENT UNDERSTANDING WITH THE PRESIDENT' By Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, Washington Post June 24, 2007 Page A01

         Impeachment Related Issues, Supporting Documents for H Res 333 (Articles illuminating reasons for impeachment, incl. more Sy Hersh articles):

http://kucinich.house.gov/SpotlightIssues/documents.htm

         

The "Bleep Tool Kit" ...because habits are difficult to break Intro for application of principles from 'What The Bleep Do We Know - Down the Rabbit Hole' from WhatTheBleep.Com. Remember *TM* (Transcendental Meditation)? Once the media made it all about the person (the guru), and not about the function and capability - for anyone who wanted to invest the time and energy ...well, at that point the potential was neutralized - until 'Bleep' resurrected the offer (with a much more grounded yet far-reaching platform). And I don't mean to imply that 'Bleep' is all about such serious things. It's as fun as it is intellectually stimulating, even as "wondrous," as it pulls together and makes understandable so many realms of knowledge in a practical way, including the quantum physics that backs it all up! And the DVD set is available at most video outlets.   The "De-Stress Kit" from HeartMath.Org provides much for initiating healing on the personal level, with great potential for assisting development of inner stillness and clarity. Such benefits can certainly, even naturally, expand to most every communal context. The HeartMath.Org web site is rich with fun tools for self-assessment and quickly introducing body, mind, and emotional health. It also provides FAQ's and voluminous research reports and related links & references. [Please note: as far as I know, there is no formal relationship between HeartMath.Org and WhatTheBleep.Com; I am associating them by common function - tools for conscious personal & world change. I consider their kit a valuable, perhaps essential, part of the "Bleep Tool Kit" - as I would any system(s) that does the same for an individual, actually. In you want to get really serious about such a tool kit, I would suggest integrating Chi-Gung, yoga, and a well-formed 'power-of-spoken-word' system with all the above. -cp]

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[Like a challenge? Here's an invitation to know more than you want to know, to do some effective prayer. Read the below and Put this together with the "National Continuity Policy" Presidential Directive NSPD 51 of 5/9/07]

============================
Executive Order: Changes to Order of Succession for Department of Defense WH-12-23-05

Posts 1 thru 7 of 55. Cannon, BarryRagin, OleHippieChick   Posted: 2005-12-23 20:14
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051222-7.html

Why would the monkey do this?
Could it be he can no longer trust the brass?

Quote: By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, 5 U.S.C. 3345 et. seq., it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Subject to the provisions of section 3 of this order, the officers named in section 2, in the order listed, shall act as and perform the functions and duties of the office of the Secretary of Defense (Secretary) during any period when the Secretary has died, resigned, or is otherwise unable to perform the functions and duties of the office of Secretary.

Sec. 2. Order of Succession.

(a) Deputy Secretary of Defense;
(b) Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence;
(c) Under Secretary of Defense for Policy;
(d) Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics;
(e) Secretary of the Army;
(f) Secretary of the Air Force;
(g) Secretary of the Navy;
(h) Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness and the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller);
(i) Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness;
(j) General Counsel of the Department of Defense, the Assistant Secretaries of Defense, and the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation;
(k) Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Material Readiness and the Director of Defense Research and Engineering;
(l) Under Secretaries of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force; and
(m) Assistant Secretaries of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, and General Counsels of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force.

Sec. 3. Exceptions. (a) No individual who is serving in an office listed in section 2(a)-(m) in an acting capacity shall act as Secretary pursuant to this order.

this is what it used to be...

1) Deputy Secretary of Defense.
(2) Secretary of the Army.
(3) Secretary of the Navy.
(4) Secretary of the Air Force.
(5) Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology.
(6) Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.
(7) Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller).
(8-) Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.
(9) Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology.
(10) Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.
(11) Director of Defense Research and Engineering.

here's a little more background on the new line-up...

The lineup's stacked with Rummy-Cheney cabal members.

a) Deputy Secretary of Defense;
The Department of Defense announced May 13, 2005, that the President has designated Secretary of the Navy Gordon England to be Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense, replacing Paul Wolfowitz whose resignation was effective May 13.

Like other armed service secretaries originally appointed by George W. Bush - including James Roche and Thomas White - Gordon England arrived at the Pentagon fresh from duties as an executive of a major corporation, in this case the Pentagon contractor General Dynamics. Gordon, along with his boss Donald Rumsfeld, is a champion of military transformation. According to a Washington Times article about his appointment, one of Gordon's chief aims as navy secretary is to develop “futuristic weapons to counter new types of threats emerging in the post-Soviet world." General Dynamics specializes in the design of attack and ballistic missile submarines as well as tanks. (3) (5)

(b) Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence;
Stephen A. Cambone was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence on March 7th, 2003. Prior to March 7th, he was the Director, Program Analysis and Evaluation, Office of the Secretary of Defense. Dr. Cambone held that position since July 1st, 2002.

Stephen Cambone, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's right-hand man, was for the first time caught in the glare of media attention as part of the congressional inquiry into Iraq prison abuses. (1) Under sharp questioning from senators on May 11, 2004, Cambone vigorously defended both Rumsfeld and Douglas Feith, the then-undersecretary of defense for policy. Cambone's attempt to split hairs on whether the Geneva Conventions were applicable to intelligence gathering in Iraq and his awkward defense of the role of military intelligence in interrogations put him at odds with the U.S. Army general who first investigated abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

As the first-ever undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Cambone will likely come under increased fire as the prison scandal unfolds. Some of the most intense questioning of Cambone centered on whether the Geneva Conventions were “precisely" respected. What “precisely" Cambone knew and when he knew it, and what precisely was the role of military intelligence will be questions that Cambone will be required to answer.

Cambone was director of strategic defense policy during the Bush I administration, working under then-Defense Secretary Cheney. A long-time a promoter of missile defense systems, Cambone went on to serve as the staff director of the two congressional commissions - one on missile defense and another on space weapons - chaired by Donald Rumsfeld in the late 1990s.

(c) Under Secretary of Defense for Policy;
Eric S. Edelman's duties include formulating defense planning guidance and forces policy, DoD relations with foreign countries and our role in interagency policy making.

During his government career, Edelman has shuttled back and forth between the State Department and DOD. His latest assignment was as ambassador to Turkey, where he gained a reputation as a meddlesome critic of the Turkish government at a time when anti-Americanism began flaring up throughout the country.

Replaced Douglas Feith.
Edelman served under Cheney during the administration of Bush pere. At that time he worked as part of a team headed by Paul Wolfowitz that was charged with formulating a Defense Policy Guidance that would serve as the post-Cold War framework for U.S. military strategy. Others working on the draft grand strategy were Zalmay Khalilzad and I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. According to Nicholas Lehman, writing in the New Yorker, this team picked by Cheney was "generally speaking, a cohesive group of conservatives who regard themselves as bigger-thinking, tougher-minded, and intellectually bolder than most other people in Washington." (9) In the draft Defense Policy Guidance, Wolfowitz and team laid out a policy agenda for U.S. military power that stipulated that the U.S. should wage preventive war to maintain unchallenged U.S. military supremacy.

During the Clinton administration, Edelman moved back to the State Department. As ambassador-at-large and special adviser to the secretary of state on the Newly Independent States, Edelman oversaw defense, security, and space issues.
Vice President Cheney brought Edelman back under his wing as principal deputy assistant for national security affairs. As an assistant to Cheney, he was part of the foreign policy network that hurriedly established the "intelligence" rationales for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Edelman, who is close to such leading neocons as Michael Ledeen and Richard Perle, worked closely in the vice president's office with Scooter Libby in establishing a policy network of hawks and neocons that was based at the Pentagon and Cheney's office but extended through key figures into State, the various intelligence agencies, and the National Security Council. (6)

(d) Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics;

As the Under Secretary, Kenneth J. Krieg ("war" in German) serves as the principal advisor for all matters relating to the DoD acquisition system; research and development; advanced technology; developmental test and evaluation; production; logistics; installation management; military construction; procurement; environment security; and nuclear, chemical, and biological matters.

(e) Secretary of the Army;
Dr. Francis J. Harvey became the 19th Secretary of the Army on November 19, 2004.
EDUCATION:
University of Notre Dame, Undergraduate
University of Pennsylvania, Doctorate in Metallurgy and Material Sciences
MOST RECENT ASSIGNMENT:
Director and Vice Chairman of Duratek, Inc., (the leader in safe, secure management of radioactive materials and radwaste)

(f) Secretary of the Air Force;
Michael W. Wynne is the Secretary of the Air Force, Washington, D.C.
Mr. Wynne held a variety of senior positions at General Dynamics, retiring in 1999 as Senior Vice President where his role was in International Development and Strategy.

(g) Secretary of the Navy;
Was Gordon England, just promoted to Deputy SecDef.

the Order of Succession WAS:

DepSecDef
SecArmy
SecNav
SecAF
UnderSecDef for Acquisitions and Technology
UnderSecDef for Policy
UnderSecDef (Comptroller)
UnderSecDef for Personnel and Readiness
DepUnderSecDef for Acquisition and Technology
DepUnderSecDef for Policy
Director of Defense Research and Engineering

SO, the former SecNav was elevated to next in line. (ED: SecArmy was booted.) Cambone's spot came outta nowhere.
And the press release link in original post is strangely dead.

----------------
6 of 55. Cleaner       Oregon | Member 3903, Joined Dec 10, 2001 | 1779 posts Posted: 2005-12-23 22:08

>Sec. 2. Order of Succession. (a) Deputy Secretary of Defense; (b) Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence;

    There is no current Deputy Secretary of Defense; the current Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense is Gordon England. http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/depsecdef_bio.html So can we assume that Rummy's about to resign, and Dumbass has just ensured that Cambone, the current Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, will replace him?
 
RightWeb and defense links: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051222-7.html

===================
15 of 55. YelloDawg       Red State Hell ...

>On 2005-12-23 22:37, LiberalinIdaho wrote: Like all dictators, Bush fears a Military Coup.

Exactly. They're doing what they've been doing since the first day; increasing, consolidating, and protecting their power. Maybe Bush saw "Seven Days in May" on movie night. Whatever the reason, Nixonian paranoia seems to be setting in. That doesn't bode well for Americans. Expect more spying, secrecy, and general facsism.

16 of 55. superyumancrew ...

Cambone's spot came outta nowhere.   That seems like the biggest change. Cambone is a very scary Neocon type, BTW, as most of us know. I guess Cambone was named by Seymour Hersh as running the Pentagon "Special Area of Protection" (SAP) black budget area through which the Iraqi counterinsurgency efforts (aka death squads) are being managed. Looks like Cambone will be the power in the Pentagon, if Rummy goes bye-bye. Perhaps this is a payoff of some sort to secure his future silence about all the illegal, even genocidal Pentagon activities that have occurred in the last few years.

21 of 55. superyumancrew   ... 2005-12-24 18:13

                Here's what Seymour Hersh said on Democracy Now! about Cambone's role in bringing torture to the Iraqi prisons- where maybe 90% of the people in the prison were swept up almost at random, and are innocent:

Quote:   So he simply set up a back channel operation. It was what they call a SAF, Special Access Program, a very classified program, inside the pentagon. And he recruited a bunch of Delta Force, and SEALS, and some CIA people, and other services, I'm sure. Everybody was handpicked. Everybody in it was under an alias, under a cover. I can't imagine, maybe foreign. I just don't know. And they didn't need visas. The SAP, the Special Access Program, had a budget. They were buying covert planes, planes that were not described, marked as American, necessarily. Certainly not as a military plane. And all the apparatus you need to run a secret little war. And they would pick up people, and they had their own detention centers, and apparently, they would get the first cut of Al Qaeda or suspected terrorists. And really the ones that weren't so useful went to Guantanamo. Pretty interesting. And then this group that's been operating, it's been going on for a year and a half or two years now, I guess. Close to it. And without any trouble. And last fall, because things were falling apart in Baghdad, and Iraq pretty badly, much more than the public knew. We had the U.N. bombing, the Jordanian bombing, and internally, there was also a lot of anxiety about what was going on with the insurgency. Nobody knew anything. We had no sources. It was decided in August-September that it was time to really get inside the Iraqi prison population. Although we all understand that the prison population in Iraq is a lot different than, let's say, in Guantanamo because take your pick. As General Antonio Taguba reports, the one that made so much noise a few weeks ago, Taguba said 60% of the people in prison were basically innocent. The national Red Cross says 90%. You had a situation where you had a different pool. Nonetheless, this special team was brought in at Rumsfeld's and his deputy foreign intelligence's request. The guy named Stephen Cambone brought it into Baghdad over the objections of everybody in the community. I shouldn't say "everybody," but many people obviously, because you don't take a very quiet, clandestine program and move it into a military situation, into a war, because it doesn't -- it doesn't function that way. You dilute its value. In any case, they went into the prison. Very tough orders were given. We're going to use coercion, if we have to; and we're also going to use sexual blackmail. We're going to get these Baathist Sunnis. Rusted was calling them, by that time last fall, "The Dead-enders. " These are the Baathist Sunnis, supporters of Saddam, that we thought were the core of the insurgency that we could not find. But the goal is to go into the prison population, get these guys if we have to blackmail them by putting in compromising, sexual positions, do it. We all have gone through the ritual, Amy, of how terrifyingly taboo it is in Islamic society for men to appear naked before other men, really. And we were going to do that: threaten to take the photographs of them and distribute it in their neighborhood to their families, to their mothers and fathers and wives or whatever, totally embarrassing them. And I think the goal is to: a) try and get some people to tell us what they knew, and, b) try and convince some people to go and leave the prison and go back into the Sunni community and spy. But whatever it was, it quickly got out of control. By late October, I've been told, the CIA had some people involved in this program. They pulled out. They pulled out all of their people involved in the interrogation process at Abu Ghraib. Their general counsel said, "this is nuts." They pulled out, and the program went along, out of control, basically, until it started getting in trouble earlier this year."

25 of 55. upu8 ... 2005-12-25 12:33
 
                Here's what Sy Hersh said about the arch-neocon Cambone two years ago:
 
                Quote:   The rising star in Rumsfeld's Pentagon is Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, who has been deeply involved in developing the new Special Forces approach. Cambone, who earned a doctorate in political science from Claremont Graduate University in 1982, served as staff director for a 1998 committee, headed by Rumsfeld, that warned in its report of an emerging ballistic-missile threat to the United States and argued that intelligence agencies should be willing to go beyond the data at hand in their analyses. Cambone, in his confirmation hearings, in February, told the Senate that consumers of intelligence assessments must ask questions of the analysts-"how they arrived at those conclusions and what the sources of the information were." This approach was championed by Rumsfeld. It came under attack, however, when the Administration's predictions about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the potential for insurgency failed to be realized, and the Pentagon civilians were widely accused of politicizing intelligence. (A month after the fall of Baghdad, Cambone was the first senior Pentagon official to publicly claim, wrongly, as it turned out, that a captured Iraqi military truck might be a mobile biological-weapons laboratory.) Cambone also shares Rumsfeld's views on how to fight terrorism. They both believe that the United States needs to become far more proactive in combatting terrorism, searching for terrorist leaders around the world and eliminating them. And Cambone, like Rumsfeld, has been frustrated by the reluctance of the military leadership to embrace the manhunting mission. Since his confirmation, he has been seeking operational authority over Special Forces. "Rumsfeld's been looking for somebody to have all the answers, and Steve is the guy," a former high-level Pentagon official told me. "He has more direct access to Rummy than anyone else." As Cambone's influence has increased, that of Douglas Feith, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, has diminished. In September, 2001, Feith set up a special unit known as the Office of Special Plans. The office, directed by civilians who, like Feith, had neoconservative views, played a major role in the intelligence and planning leading up to the March invasion of Iraq. "There is finger-pointing going on," a prominent Republican lobbyist explained. "And the neocons are in retreat." One of the key planners of the Special Forces offensive is Lieutenant General William (Jerry) Boykin, Cambone's military assistant. After a meeting with Rumsfeld early last summer-they got along "like two old warriors," the Pentagon consultant said-Boykin postponed his retirement, which had been planned for June, and took the Pentagon job, which brought him a third star. In that post, the Pentagon adviser told me, Boykin has been "an important piece" of the planned escalation. In October, the Los Angeles Times reported that Boykin, while giving Sunday-morning talks in uniform to church groups, had repeatedly equated the Muslim world with Satan. Last June, according to the paper, he told a congregation in Oregon that "Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army." Boykin praised President Bush as a "man who prays in the Oval Office," and declared that Bush was "not elected" President but "appointed by God." The Muslim world hates America, he said, "because we are a nation of believers."

Link to Entire article: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031215fa_fact

  Remember the four star general who was fired just before his retirement. He had a divorce pending and was fired for "adultery" for a relationship with a woman not under his command even though the divorce was final by the time he was fired. This was not just unusual, it was unprecedented and probably a "payback" for this:

  Quote:   Mr. Rumsfeld was upset at Gen. Byrnes for fighting proposed troop cuts being outlined by the defense secretary's aide, Stephen Cambone.     If Cambone ever gets complete control of DoD, everyone, imho, should be afraid and those who have considered leaving the US might want to take that as a final warning.
entire Moonie Times article: http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050809-110419-1753r.htm

=== 50 of 55. dontcaremuch   ...Posted: 2005-12-30 10:40

  I'm sorry, I must be dense or something. If there is no reason to be concerned about this, why did he do it and why after congress had left session and people were preoccupied with Xmas. This seems like those in charge of Bush are setting up an after government. My question I guess is what are they preparing for?

=== 51 of 55. sofazappa ...Posted: 2005-12-30 11:55

  Quote:   On 2005-12-30 10:40, dontcaremuch wrote:
>My question I guess is what are they preparing for?
 
Known unknowns.

=== 52 of 55. dontcaremuch ...Posted: 2005-12-30 22:21

                Finally! on a Friday night after everyone has left the office for the holiday weekend, the story makes it to the mudstream media (with it's right slant)

  Pentagon Shakes Up Emergency Hierarchy By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Heading a military service isn't quite the position of power it used to be.

  In a Bush administration revision of plans for Pentagon succession in a doomsday scenario, three of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's most loyal advisers moved ahead of the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force. A little-noticed holiday week executive order from President Bush moved the Pentagon's intelligence chief to the No. 3 spot in the succession hierarchy behind Rumsfeld. The second spot would be the deputy secretary of defense, but that position currently is vacant. The Army secretary, which long held the No. 3 spot, was dropped to sixth. The changes, announced last week, are the second in six months and reflect the administration's new emphasis on intelligence gathering versus combat in 21st century war fighting. Technically, the line of succession is assigned to specific positions, rather than the current individuals holding those jobs. But in its current incarnation, the doomsday plan moves to near the top three undersecretaries who are Rumsfeld loyalists and who previously worked for Vice President Dick Cheney when he was defense secretary. The changes were recommended, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, because the three undersecretaries have "a broad knowledge and perspective of overall Defense Department operations." The service leaders are more focused on training, equipping and leading a particular military service, said Whitman. Thomas Donnelly, a defense expert with the American Enterprise Institute, said the changes make it easier for the administration to assert political control and could lead to more narrow-minded decisions. "It continues to devalue the services as institutions," said Donnelly, saying it will centralize power and shift it away from the services, where there is generally more military expertise. Under the new plan, Rumsfeld ally Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary for intelligence, moved up to the third spot. Former Ambassador Eric Edelman, the policy undersecretary, and Kenneth Krieg, the undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, hold the fourth and fifth positions. The first to succeed Rumsfeld remains the deputy secretary, a position currently vacant because the Senate has not confirmed Bush's nominee - current Navy Secretary Gordon England. Senators have already approved Donald Winter to be England's replacement as Navy chief, and it is expected that Bush will eventually move England into the No. 2 Pentagon job without congressional approval through a recess appointment. The new succession order bumps the Navy secretary to near the bottom of the line of succession - eighth behind the deputy, the three Pentagon undersecretaries and the Army and Air Force secretaries. The Army secretary historically has been third in line, right behind the deputy secretary. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, intelligence gathering has taken center stage. Earlier this year, Bush named former ambassador John Negroponte as the country's first director of national intelligence, charged with overseeing the government's 15 highly competitive spy agencies. In spring 2003, Rumsfeld installed Cambone - one of his closest aides - in the new job of intelligence undersecretary.

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http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=569&Ite
 
Fear Up Harsh: The Iraqi Civil War in Context
 
Written by Chris Floyd    
Tuesday, 28 March 2006

The causes underlying any civil war are always complex, confused, even contradictory -- as one would expect in an outbreak of madness. But those seeking to discover some of the key precipitating factors behind Iraq's furious plunge into chaos and disintegration might find one of them in the records of an obscure Congressional committee meeting on August 10, 2004.

At that meeting, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, General Peter Pace (now head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and General Bryan Brown, head of Special Operations Command, appeared before the House Armed Services Committee. In a long session larded with the usual rhetorical posturing, mutual backscratching with the committee's rubberstamp Republican majority - and a couple of polite queries from the timid Democratic minority - Wolfowitz announced the Pentagon's plan to give money, arms and training to a network of local militias in trouble spots around the world. These irregular forces - "not just armies," Wolfowitz emphasized - would be used to "counter terrorism and insurgencies," provide greater internal security" in regions of American interest and "deny sanctuary" to America's designated enemies, according to Pentagon transcripts of the testimony.

General Brown said the use of militias was part of the "unconventional warfare" being waged by the Bush Administration across the globe, "whereby special forces accomplishes our national objectives through, by and with surrogate forces." General Pace gave the legislators a view of the scope of such operations, mentioning "Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Georgia, Paraguay, Colombia, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, North Korea, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Iran" and of course Iraq, which he mentioned twice. Wolfowitz told the Congressman that Bush wanted $500 million to set up this network - his own personal Janjaweed.

Writing in September 2004, I described the session this way:

Making copious citations from Bush's 2002 "National Security Strategy" of unprovoked aggressive war against "potential" enemies, [Wolfowitz] proposed expanding the definition of "terrorist sanctuary" to any nation that allows clerics and other rabble-rousers to offer even verbal encouragement to America's designated enemies du jour.

Any rogue state that countenances such freedom of speech within its borders will become a prime target for "the path of action," said Wolf, quoting Bush's most ringing Hitlerian phrase from the 2002 manifesto. To relieve the overstretched U.S. military, the "action" will be carried out largely by Bush's new hired guns: religious and ethnic militias, tribal forces, mercenaries, cultists, insurrectionists, druglords, pirates - basically anyone willing to slit throats and terrorize populations at the order of the Oval One.

Two months after this Congressional meeting, Bush duly signed a measure giving Special Operations Command the authority to provide "support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals," the Los Angeles Times reports. This was for the Pentagon side of the scheme; any money for militias funneled through the CIA would of course be cloaked in the "black budget." The Special Ops deal marked the first time that the Pentagon had been given such powers, which previously had been reserved for the CIA. The significance of this "liberation"of Special Forces became clear in the following months, when, after securing another four years in power, Bush signed a series of executive orders "authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations" in "as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia," as Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker last year. The orders turned the world into "a global free-fire zone," a top Pentagon advisor told Hersh.

In January 2005, I tied the revelations in Hersh's article to those unearthed back in October 2002 by William Arkin, then writing for the Los Angeles Times, which I had featured in a subsequent column. From the January 2005 piece:

More than two years ago, we wrote here of a secret Pentagon plan to foment terrorism: sending covert agents to infiltrate terrorist groups and goad them into action - i.e., committing acts of murder and destruction. The purpose was two-fold: first, to bring the terrorist groups into the open, where they could be counterattacked; and second, to justify U.S. military attacks on the countries where the terrorists were operating - attacks which, in the Pentagon's words, would put those nations' "sovereignty at risk." It was a plan that countenanced - indeed, encouraged - the deliberate murder of innocent people and the imposition of U.S. military rule anywhere in the world that American leaders desired.

This plan is now being activated.

In fact, it's being expanded, as the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh revealed last week. Not only will U.S.-directed agents infiltrate existing terrorist groups and provoke them into action; the Pentagon itself will create its own terrorist groups and "death squads." After establishing their terrorist "credentials" through various atrocities and crimes, these American-run groups will then be able to ally with - and ultimately undermine - existing terrorist groups.

Top-level officials in the Pentagon, the U.S. intelligence services and the Bush administration confirmed to Hersh that the plan is going forward, under the direction of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - just as we noted here in November 2002. Through a series of secret executive orders, George W. Bush has given Rumsfeld the authority to turn the entire world into "a global free-fire zone," a top Pentagon adviser says. These secret operations will be carried out with virtually no oversight; in many cases, even the top military commanders in the affected regions will not be told about them. The American people, of course, will never know what's being done in their name.

The covert units - including the Pentagon-funded terrorist groups and hit squads - will be operating outside all constraints of law and morality. "We're going to be riding with the bad boys," one insider told Hersh. Another likened it to the palmy days of the Reagan-Bush years: "Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador? We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren't going to tell Congress about it." Indeed, we reported here last summer that Bush has already budgeted $500 million to fund local paramilitaries and guerrilla groups in the most volatile areas of the world, a measure guaranteed to produce needless bloodshed, destruction and suffering for innocent people already ravaged by conflict.

Bush's executive orders also enabled the Pentagon "to run the operations off the books, free from legal restrictions imposed on the CIA," Hersh noted. The orders signed by Bush after the election in 2004 seem to bring the 2002 plan to fruition.

In January 2005, Pentagon plans to implement such operations in Iraq were leaked to Newsweek. The talk, again, was of the "Salvador Option" and also references to Britain's brutal and bloody repression of anti-colonial insurgencies in the years after World War II. The Iraq plans called for using Shiite and Kurdish militias to target Sunni insurgents - and civilians. "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," a top Pentagon official told Newsweek. "We have to change that equation."

All observers agree that the "equation" has now definitely changed in recent months. The howling chaos of civil war has taken a quantum leap in Iraq since the bombing of the Shiite's venerated al-Askari shrine in Samarra - an operation of unusual planning and dexterity. As Mike Whitney noted in Information Clearing-House, drawing on AFP reports:

AFP is reporting that the bombing of the Golden Domed Mosque "was the work of specialists" and that the "placing of explosives must have taken at least 12 hours."

Construction Minister Jassem Mohammed Jaafar said, "Holes were dug into the mausoleum's four main pillars and packed with explosives. Then charges were connected together and linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to a detonator which was triggered at a distance."

Clearly, the bombing was not carried out by rogue elements in the disparate Iraqi resistance. This is the work of highly-trained saboteurs and bomb-experts who were executing a precision-demolition to incite sectarian violence.

Now Iraq is being devoured in a maelstrom of carnage and fear. Reports of the horror are pouring in from all sides: mass beheadings, unspeakable tortures, the abandonment of vast swathes of Baghdad and other cities to warring militias, the evident complicity of the Iraqi government in many of the atrocities coupled with its obvious inability to stop any of them - and, apparently, a beserker rage infecting American forces, as attested in story after story of civilian massacres.

Yet none of this actually does any real harm to the true war aims behind Bush's illegal war. I will be taking up this theme in a Moscow Times column that will be posted here in a couple of days, but here is an excerpt from that piece, describing the Bush Faction's genuine war goals:

The reality clearly shows that Bush had three primary objectives in launching the invasion. First and foremost was the transfer of large portions of the national wealth of Iraq - and the United States - into the coffers of his political cronies, corporate backers and family members. Second was the frantic acceleration of the long-running, bipartisan militarization of America, which is now almost wholly dependent on war and rumors of war to keep its heavily-mortgaged economy afloat. Third was planting a permanent military presence in Iraq to "project dominance" over the strategic oil lands and serve as staging areas for further operations in regime change and political extortion as needed. ("Nice little country you got there, Abdul; too bad if something, like, happened to it - you savvy? Now howzabout signing that free trade agreement already?")

Yes, the myriad causes underlying the madness of civil war are always complex and confused. Once loosed, it is a whirlwind that rages in all directions; no one can control it. But it is obvious that certain groups would benefit the most from civil war, and thus would have the most to gain from trying to channel its fury to their own advantage. Ironically, these primary feasters on chaos are the same two gangs that have prospered the most from the global "War on Terror": the Bush Faction and al Qaeda. .

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INTERVIEW: Seymour Hersh discusses his article on US planning for war on Iran
(Apr. 12, 2006)

Intro by Mark Jensen:
On Wednesday, Amy Goodman interviewed Seymour Hersh about his article in the Apr. 17 *New Yorker* (http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4333/) reporting that the Bush administration is accelerating plans to attack Iran that include the possibility of using nuclear weapons.   --   In addition to reiterating the article's claims in the aftermath of official denials, the interview offers some interesting insights into his modus operandi.   --   For example, he says: "[W]hen I write about troops, I'm vague about what I know and what I'm writing, because nobody wants to put anybody in the position of jeopardizing any of our forces on the ground, and you should know that I go to great lengths before I publish a story.   I have people that I can -- I can drop a draft of an article in a mailbox in, you know, rural Washington, somewhere in the suburbs, where people, serious people, live, and they'll review it for me to make sure.   I don't do it with this government, but I do do it with serious people on the inside and take their advice on what to publish or not publish." --   Thanks to Robert James Parsons for sending this transcript.   --Mark]

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4367/

SEYMOUR HERSH: BUSH ADMINISTRATION PLANNING POSSIBLE MAJOR AIR ATTACK ON IRAN
With Amy Goodman

** We speak with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh about his latest article in the *new Yorker* that the Bush administration has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. **

Democracy Now!
April 12, 2006

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/12/1359254 or http://www.alternet.org/story/34874/ (with reader comments)

We are joined today by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh.   In the latest issue of the *New Yorker*, Hersh reports (http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4333/) that the Bush administration has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack.   Sources told Hersh that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups.

One of the military's initial option plans calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon against suspected underground nuclear sites.

On Monday, President Bush dismissed Hersh's article saying, "What you're reading is wild speculation."   Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to comment on possible plans for military action against Iran at a press conference on Tuesday.   Rumsfeld told reporters, "We have, I don't know how many, various contingency plans in this department and the last thing I am going to start telling you, or anyone else in the press or the world, at what point we refresh a plan or don't refresh a plan, and why. It just isn't useful,"

Meanwhile Iran is moving forward on its nuclear program.   On Tuesday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that the country had succeeded for the first time in enriching uranium on a small scale.   The Iranian president insisted that the country's nuclear program is for peaceful means and not to build nuclear weapons.

--Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for the *New Yorker*.   His latest article is titled "The Iran Plans: How Far Will the White House Go?"

AMY GOODMAN:   On Monday, President Bush dismissed Hersh's article.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:   What you're reading is wild speculation, which is -- it's kind of a, you know, happens quite frequently here in the nation's capital.

AMY GOODMAN:   Meanwhile, reporters questioned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Tuesday about Hersh's report.

REPORTER:   In recent weeks or months, have you asked joint staff at Central Command, possibly through General Pace, to update, refine, modify the contingencies for possible military options against Iran?

DONALD RUMSFELD:   We have, I don't know how many, various contingency plans in this department, and the last thing I'm going to do is to start telling you or anyone else in the press or the world at what point we refresh a plan or don't refresh a plan and why. It just isn't useful.

REPORTER:   Are you satisfied with the state of planning for Iran options right now?

DONALD RUMSFELD:   I am never satisfied.

AMY GOODMAN:   That was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Tuesday.   Meanwhile, Iran's moving forward on its nuclear program.   On Tuesday, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the country had succeeded for the first time in enriching uranium on a small scale.   The Iranian president insists the country's nuclear program is for peaceful means and not to build nuclear weapons.   We're joined right now in Washington by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.   Welcome to Democracy Now!

SEYMOUR HERSH:   Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN:   It's good to have you with us.   Well, talk about what you have found and written about in your piece, "The Iran Plans."

SEYMOUR HERSH:   Well, very simply, as you said in the introduction.   This is not wild speculation.   It's simply a fact that the planning has gone beyond the contingency stage, and it's gone into what they call the operational stage, sort of an increment higher.   And it's very serious planning, of course.   And it's all being directed at the wish of the President of the United States.   And I can understand why they don't want to talk about it, but that's just the reality.

AMY GOODMAN:   You say that it's a pretty widespread -- or that there's a growing conviction among members of the U.S. military and the international community that President Bush's ultimate goal is regime change in Iran.

SEYMOUR HERSH:   There's no question that there's a lot of skepticism, particularly among our former allies -- the allies we now have, the European allies who have been with us.   The United States joined late after the negotiations began, but England, France, and Germany have been talking to the Iranians for years, three years now, about doing something about -- to keep them away from the nuclear edge.   Our allies there are frankly skeptical about what this president really wants to do.   They don't think necessarily, although there's -- it's not that the President isn't concerned about any enrichment.   He's set that as a red line.   He's publicly said many times that when Iran begins to enrich, that's a line we won't let them do.   It's that they really think that beyond -- the whole issue is really predicated on a belief that we've got to get rid of these ruling clerics and replace it with Bush's idea, that he thinks he's still pushing very hard, which is of a democratic Middle East.

AMY GOODMAN:   Sy Hersh, you write in your piece about a military official who says that the military planning is premised on the belief that a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership.   Can you talk more about what this defense official said?

SEYMOUR HERSH:   It's a former defense official who still does a lot of highly classified stuff, so he has access and he was given a briefing or a look at what they're planning.   And, you know, it's hard to know.   This is a White House that's very dominated -- this kind of planning is very dominated by the Vice President's office.   In that office, you have a number of people who have been long associated with what we call the neoconservative point of view, the American Enterprise Institute point of view, which is a very hard line towards the Middle East.   They've been the great pushers on this idea of democracy in that area, and it's those people who I think are pushing most effectively the President and the Vice President to believe that you can -- if you bomb and if you sustain the bombing, you will humiliate the clerics, the mullahs, who run the country.

After all, as we know, the Middle East basically, oversimplifying it, but it's this culture dominated by shame.   We operate out of guilt here in the West. And shaming them will make them vulnerable to the masses.   And there's no question, by the way, the masses in Iran, most of them, it's fair to say that a great large percent of them are very secular.   They're all good Muslims, but they're secular.   They're not interested in religious leadership.   So there is a tension.   And that was the thought:   Bomb them, and there will be an overthrow, and you'll have a democratic regime that, you know, can dance happily with the democratic regime the President thinks is going to emerge out of Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN:   And you quote further this defense official, who talked about the belief that the Bush administration has of humiliating the religious leadership, as saying, “I was shocked when I heard it and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?

SEYMOUR HERSH:   That's what he said.

AMY GOODMAN:   Can you explain what the Science Defense Board is, the Defense Science Board, and what it has to do with this?

SEYMOUR HERSH:   Actually, a lot.   And it's interesting, because this hasn't been picked up, and it's just hanging there sort of like ripe fruit for the press, if they wanted to.   It's an advisory board that's traditionally a defense science board, obviously.   It's just an advisory board of scientists who advise the Secretary of Defense on issues, and they do some very serious work.   They just did a paper recently on the declining rate of high-tech scientists inside that are capable of doing the kind of work we need to continue our leadership in outer space stuff, etc., etc., with a military point of view.   And their whole purpose, of course, is a military point of view.

Many of them also work for large defense contractors.   There's a lot of inherent problems in that, too, but nonetheless, in this case the board is headed by a guy named Dr. Bill Schneider, William Schneider, a former -- very conservative guy, very outspoken.   Schneider is among a small group of very influential members of the Bush government, who in 2001 produced a paper, just as Bush was coming into office for the first term, they produced a paper advocating or saying, ‘Let's not rule out the use of nuclear weapons.   There is a need for tactical nuclear weapons, and they should be in the arsenal and accepted as a rational part of the arsenal, particularly when you're going after hard targets like the underground nuclear facilities in North Korea and Iran, if you were to target them.

And the people that signed that report include Schneider, as I say, but also Stephen Hadley, who is now the National Security Adviser, Stephen Cambone, who 's the head of the intelligence for the Pentagon and one of Rumsfeld's closest advisers, and also Robert Joseph, who's the Under Secretary of State for Nonproliferation Affairs, the man who replaced John Bolton in that job and who's been very much a hawk and very tough on Iran in public and even tougher in private.   And so, you have these very influential people advocating that tact nukes have some sense and some bearing in the policy.

And I've been told that in the last few months a debate has been sort of ongoing inside the highest levels of the military, and the debate is simply between those senior generals and admirals -- who think using and even planning or talking about using a nuclear weapon in Iran is wacko -- and the White House, because the White House wants it kept in the plan.   There's a lot of tension there.   But in any case, the science board has been sending papers in saying, ‘Hey, you know, we can tool this weapon up and down.'   The B61, apparently, the yield can be adjusted.   You can get more bang for the buck, a larger yield with less radioactive fallout.   And so, these kind of papers go on.

What's interesting, Amy, is in all of the conversations we've had about bombing and not bombing and whether to use weapons, what weapon or how much bombing, as, not surprisingly, I don't think there's been any serious discussion of possible civilian casualties.   That never seems to be discussed in any of these papers, but that's the way it is.

AMY GOODMAN:   And your response to the Iranian president saying Iran has joined the nuclear countries of the world?

SEYMOUR HERSH:   Well, he's another sort of wacko, too.   The Iranian president, he's very mouthy, and he says a lot of things.   I think the consensus among our allies who have embassies in Tehran and have had much more contact and know much more about that society than we do -- America is very, we're pretty much opaque on Iran.   We haven't been there diplomatically in, you know, 25, 26 years, since the Shah's days.   Most people think the Ayatollah Khamenei [NOTE: The "rush transcript" give, absurdly, "Khomeini"], who's the supreme leader, probably controls the nuclear option, although certainly the Revolutionary Guards, in which the Iranian president is a major player, have something to say.

Look, they didn't join the nuclear club yesterday.   They've enriched --they've done a partial enrichment of some uranium to a low level, a level that could possibly be used to run a peaceful reactor.   They've done this before in a pilot program.   Certainly, it's a feat that's technically capable.   Many governments have done it, not just the eight nuclear powers.

And so, what he's doing by embellishing -- and this is my guess, my sort of heuristic guess, because I don't know, but what I think he's doing, he's basically playing chicken, like in the old James Dean movie, the two cars going at each other at high speed.   He's playing chicken with the President of the United States.   So that's what we're into.   We've got the President of the United States, who's been making -- Bush, as you know, and Cheney have been making an awful lot of bellicose statements in the last couple months, saying that they'll rule out no option, which obviously is a nuclear suggestion, also making declarations about red lines and where Iran can or cannot go.   So the bellicosity of the United States is now being matched by the bellicosity of the Iranian president.   I mean, great way to run a world.

AMY GOODMAN:   We're talking to investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh.   His piece in the *New Yorker* magazine is called "The Iran Plans: Would President Bush Go to War to Stop Tehran from Getting the Bomb?"   Can you talk about the list of targets?

SEYMOUR HERSH:   Well, you know, I don't really know the list, and I don't want to know the list.   It's not my -- when I write about troops, I'm vague about what I know and what I'm writing, because nobody wants to put anybody in the position of jeopardizing any of our forces on the ground, and you should know that I go to great lengths before I publish a story.   I have people that I can -- I can drop a draft of an article in a mailbox in, you know, rural Washington, somewhere in the suburbs, where people, serious people, live, and they'll review it for me to make sure.   I don't do it with this government, but I do do it with serious people on the inside and take their advice on what to publish or not publish.

But the targeting -- look, first of all, we don't know much about Iran.   The intelligence is skimpy.   We really don't know what they're doing.   We know that one major facility is an underground, called Natanz.   It's an underground -- I don't know what you call it -- research plant, 75 feet below the ground in very heavy rock.   This is why there's some talk of using a nuclear weapon. The only way of guaranteeing its destruction is with a tact nuke.   It's so deep underground.

There's also about 16 to 20 sites that have been declared.   All of this is not being done in a vacuum.   The International Atomic Energy Agency, the I.A.E.A., has been monitoring Iran's declared sites.   For example, when Iran enriched uranium, as it was announced yesterday, that was done under I.A.E.A. supervision.   And so, Iran has been a member of the -- I should add it's not illegal, because under the N.P.T. they're entitled to do enrichments, as long as it's for peaceful purposes, and that's the claim the Iranians make.

Nobody has any illusions.   Iran undoubtedly would like to get in the position where they could have the capability and the know-how and the materials, the enriched materials, to make or fabricate a nuclear weapon, sort of an on-off switch.   They'd like to be able to toggle it.   But the best guess, even the Israelis, who are, of course -- they view Iran as an existential threat, Israel does.   The Israelis, they can tell you that Iran is anywhere from two to three years at the best, by their estimate, from actually being in a position to do it.   But the American intelligence estimate, which was published last summer by the *Washington Post*, what they call the N.I.E., the National Intelligence Estimate, an official document, said something like eight to ten years away.

‘So, what's the rush?' is what I'm hearing from the military people and the diplomats involved.   What are we setting red lines for about small pilot production?   And so, there is time, but if you're going to do it, if you're going to hit Iran and you're going to bomb and you give it to the planners, you're going to get this.   You're going to get targeting for the known facilities, targeting facilities we suspect, and then you're going to get countermeasures.   You're going to get the Air Force -- nobody in the American government wants to see American boys, pilots, shot down and paraded through the streets of Tehran, as we did in Vietnam, if you remember that happened in Hanoi.

So if you're going to do systematic bombing or sustained bombing, you're going to take out the air fields.   Iran has an old integrated air force, based --many of the planes were given to the Shah by us back in the 1970s.   But they still fly, and they're still armed with missiles.   Iran, as many in your audience know, kicks out about four million barrels of oil a day and has --the prices are very high, going higher -- huge financial reserves -- has been buying a lot of sophisticated radar, anti-missile radars and other sort of anti-aircraft radars from the Chinese and, I think, even from Russia.

We have to take that out.   We don't want radars targeting our planes.   We have to take out all of their defense measures, so we can bomb with impunity.   So, how many targets are you looking for?   I quoted one paper done by a retired Air Force colonel, a planner named Sam Gardener, who has been doing a lot of war games, who's a very prudent -- by everybody's account, a prudent, careful man.   And Colonel Gardener, in a paper he delivered in Europe the other week, said 400 aim points.   And some of the aim points may have more than one or two bombs dropped on them, so it's a huge enterprise.

AMY GOODMAN:   We're talking to investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, and we're going to come back to him in a minute to talk more about his piece, "The Iran Plans," what the President of the United States plans are for Iran.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN:   Our guest in Washington D.C. is Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter with the *New Yorker* magazine.   His latest article is called "The Iran Plans: How Far Will the White House Go?"   In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Sy, Tony Blair, the British prime minister, and President Bush were at Camp David.   They held a news conference, and they said that the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency had a report that said that Iraq was six months away from building nuclear weapons.   And President Bush said I don't know how much more evidence we need.   Well, it turned out any evidence would have helped, that the I.A.E.A. did not have such a report.   Do you see parallels here with Iran?

SEYMOUR HERSH:   How can you not?   You know, what's interesting about that I.A.E.A. issue is that they were -- as you know, they had inspectors there until 1968, late ‘68.   And in late '67, the I.A.E.A. published an extensive analysis of the Iranian nuclear complex and basically said nothing -- nada --there, I mean, categorical.   That's why I was very -- because it's a long -- I happen to be working, doing a lot of reporting on what was going on in the U.N. then with the UNSCOM, it was called, the U.N. inspection process.   So I had read that report.   So, anybody reading that report would have known there was nothing there.

You do have a lot of parallels, because right now it's been taken away from the I.A.E.A., I must say to the disappointment and probably anger, definitely anger, of the leadership there, because at least the I.A.E.A. has inspectors in some legal right to be inside Iran right now.   And they've taken it to the U.N., where there's, you know -- are there going to be sanctions or not?   I mean, I don't know what kind of economic sanctions you can put on a country that puts out four million barrels of oil a day, and they're swimming in U.S. dollars.   And, of course, everybody knows inside, all of the people involved know, that Russia and China will never go along.   It's almost inconceivable they will go along with sanctions.   China is one of the recipients of oil. Russia does a lot of business there.   So, basically you've put yourself in a situation where you've got a dead end.   And you know it's going to be a dead end, at least you can anticipate.   It could change.   Something could happen, but at this point, it's a dead end.   And so, the parallel is obvious.

Everybody I talk to, the hawks I talk to, the neoconservatives, the people who are very tough absolutely say there's no way the U.N. is going to work, and we're just going to have to assume it doesn't in any way.   Iran, by going along with the U.N., what they're really doing is rushing their nuclear program.   And so, the skepticism -- there's no belief, faith here, ultimately, in this White House, in the extent of the talk, so you've got a parallel situation.   The President could then say, ‘We've explored all options.   We've done it.'   I could add, if you want to get even more scared, some of our closest allies in this process -- we deal with the Germans, the French, and the Brits -- they're secretly very worried, not only what Bush wants to do, but they're also worried that -- for example, the British Foreign Officer, Jack Straw, is vehemently against any military action, of course also nuclear action, and so is the Foreign Office, as I said, but nobody knows what will happen if Bush calls Blair.   Blair's the wild card in this.   He and Bush both have this sense, this messianic sense, I believe, about what they've done and what's needed to be done in the Middle East.   I think Bush is every bit as committed into this world of rapture, as is the president.

AMY GOODMAN:   Sy Hersh, you write about a meeting in Vienna between Mohamed El Baradei, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and head of the I.A.E.A., and Robert Joseph, the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control, and the relationship between El Baradei and the United States.

SEYMOUR HERSH:   Well, Joseph basically was, you know, essentially just -- I heard a lot about it, because it was pretty blustery.   And he just went in and basically told off the head of the -- the Nobel Prize winner and said, you know, ‘You will stop--'   The European and American complaint against El Baradei is this:   they say, ‘My God, he's treating this issue as if both sides have some justification, that Iran's aspirations equal the American and European's desire not for them to go nuclear.   He's treating them both as parities [NOTE: The "rush transcript" gives "parodies."].   And they're not. We're right, and they're wrong, and he doesn't reflect that.'   So they think he's unfair.   They think he's being too balanced, too nuanced, and that was the message that Joseph gave, basically, with a significant loss of temper, or let's put it, “intemperate" behavior, basically saying, ‘You will desist from saying anything that interferes with us.   We view this as our gravest national security threat.

I can also tell you Joseph has said the same thing in Turkey to the Turkish officials.   He went there, and they also reported a very boisterous meeting. And the American ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency is a guy named Greg Schulte, who was until last summer, August of 2005, was in charge of the Situation Room in the White House, and who from 1988 to 1992 worked for -- he's a career diplomat, but worked -- a career bureaucrat.   He's not in the diplomatic service.   He worked for Dick Cheney, when he was Secretary of Defense, now the Vice President, and did nuclear stuff for him.   So he's very connected to the vice President.   He's also quite direct and not very diplomatic in what he believes, and it's, you know, it's ‘They're bad guys, we're good guys,' that sort of approach.   There's no instinct.

What's amazing, Amy, about this is this, and what always surprises me about my country is, here we have a president that doesn't talk to people he disagrees with.   And anybody who's been around little boys, big boys, knows that when they get out of control, you grab them.   If you're a nursery school teacher, you grab the little four-year-olds by the scruff of the neck, and you pull them together, and you say, ‘You two guys, shake hands and make up, and go play in the sandbox.

Bush doesn't talk to people he's mad at.   He doesn't talk to the North Koreans.   He didn't talk to the insurgency.   When the history is done, there were incredible efforts by the insurgency leaders in the summer of 2003.   I'm talking about the Iraqi insurgency, the former Sunni generals and Sunni and Baathist leaders who were happy to see Saddam go, but did not want America there.   They wanted to talk to us.   Bush wouldn't.   Whether it got to Bush, I don't know, it got in to four stars.   Nobody wanted to talk to them.   He doesn't talk to the president of Syria; in fact, specifically rejects overtures from al-Asad to us.   And he doesn't talk to the Iranians.   There's been no bilateral communication at all.

Iran has come hat-in-hand to us.   A former National Security Council adviser who worked in the White House, Flynt Leverett, an ex-C.I.A. analyst who's now working at Brookings, wrote a piece a month or so ago, maybe six weeks ago, in the *New York Times*, describing specific offers by the Iranians to come and ‘let's deal.'   Let's deal on all issues.   I'm even told they were willing to talk about recognizing Israel.   And the White House doesn't talk.   And it's not that he doesn't talk, it's that nobody pressures him to talk.   There's no pressure from the media, no pressure from Congress.   Here's a president who won't talk to people he's walking us into a confrontation with.

AMY GOODMAN:   Seymour Hersh, we will leave it there.   I want to thank you very much for being with us.   But let me ask you one last thing, and that is where we started, with President Bush's comments about your report, saying, ‘What you're reading is wild speculation, which is kind of, you know -- happens quite frequently in the nation's capital.'   Your response?

SEYMOUR HERSH:   Well, he gave a speech at Johns Hopkins on Monday, that's one of his more remarkable speeches, not only because of his manner, which was a funny affectation -- he was hopping around, almost jocular.   Forget what he said about me.   It's what he said about Iraq that was very troubling to me. He once again said there's great progress, this is a wonderful thing we're doing, I'm proud that we're doing it, we're bringing democracy.   I have it in front of me, because I always carry it around.   He said -- he compared this --‘This is an ideological struggle we're having with Iran that equates the best part of the Cold War, when we defeated the Russians.'   He's once again comparing this to the Cold War.   He's once again saying that things are wonderful, that it's a noble enterprise.   ‘Does anybody there read the newspapers?' is what I wonder.

AMY GOODMAN:   Seymour Hersh, thanks very much for being with us.

SEYMOUR HERSH:   Glad to be here

AMY GOODMAN:   Investigative reporter for the *New Yorker* magazine.   The piece in the latest edition is called “The Iran Plans: How Far Will the White House Go?"

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NEWS: Bush shows strain at Pentagon press conference

Intro by Mark Jensen (re: NYT, WH):
President George W. Bush, resisting pressure to adapt to the fact that the U.S. cannot win in Iraq, showed the strain Wednesday after meeting with Department of Defense officials at the Pentagon on U.S. strategy in Iraq.   --   "We're not going to give up," he said."   --   "The stakes are too high, and the consequences are too great."   --   But the *New York Times* noted that the president avoided using the word "victory."[1]   --Bush's remarks, as posted on the White House web site, follow the *Times* article.[2]   --   The president referred to the Iraq war as "a war that we now find ourselves in," an odd turn of phrase for the man who initiated the war.   --   The press conference contained some typical Bushisms: "[O]ne of the interesting things about this experience is that there's a lot of ideas and a lot of opinions."   --   "These generals have spent a lot of time thinking about this issue."   --   "These are smart people and capable people, and people whose judgment I listen to.   And at the appropriate time, I will stand up in front of the nation and say here's where we're headed."   --   "[W]e spend a lot of time in our government talking to people like Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or Jordan, or Turkey, and sending messages, clear messages, to countries like Syria and Iran."   --At one moment, the president referred to "a stable Iran, an Iran that is capable of rejecting Iranian influence."   --   The president struggled at the end of his remarks to strike the right tone:   " I'm proud to be working with them, as they help lead the greatest military ever assembled -- a military, by the way, in which we've got brave volunteers, people who understand the stakes of this fight, saying, I want to be in, I want to serve my country.   It's a remarkable period in American history right now. And as I deliberate the way forward, I keep in mind that we've got brave souls that need -- to need to know that we're in this fight with a strategy to help them achieve the objectives that we've got."   --Finally, he gave up:   "Listen, thank you all very much."   --   The brief press conference at the Pentagon also included two rare presidential allusions to Iraqi oil:   "It would be a disaster for governments that have got energy resources to be in the hands of these extremists.   They would use energy to extract blackmail from the United States.   And when you couple all that with a regime that is -- doesn't like the United States having a nuclear weapon, you can imagine a world of turmoil.   And we're not going to let it happen."   --   He also mentioned the importance of "an oil law passed by the Iraqis that basically says to the people, all of you, regardless of where you live or your religion, get to share in the bounty of our nation."   --   But he made no mention of the production-sharing agreements (http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5387/) designed to share hundreds of billions dollars of that bounty with the oil companies and their shareholders.   --Mark]

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5408/

1.

World

BUSH CONSULTS WITH PENTAGON ON IRAQ
By David Stout

New York Times
December 13, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/world/13cnd-prexy.html

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said today that he would not be “rushed" into deciding on a new course of action in Iraq, and that United States troops would not leave the country “before the job is done" and Iraq is free and stable.

“We're not going to give up," Mr. Bush said at the Pentagon, after discussing the Iraq situation with senior Defense Department officials and military leaders. “The stakes are too high, and the consequences too great."

While Mr. Bush said he and the Pentagon leaders had discussed “how to win a war that we now find ourselves in," he avoided using the term “victory" and referred instead to devising “a strategy to succeed" and an approach to help American troops in Iraq “achieve their mission."

In vowing that he would not be hurried, the president said he will announce his plans after “a long deliberation."   He also sounded themes he has articulated for many months.   Mr. Bush asserted, for example, that a free and stable Iraq will be an example to other countries and peoples in the Middle East and an ally of the United States in the campaign against extremists.   And he said he envisioned an Iraq that is self-sustaining, self-governing, and able to defend itself.

With members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff behind him, Mr. Bush said he had a message for the men and women of the United States who are in Iraq. “I'm listening to a lot of advice to develop a strategy to help you succeed," Mr. Bush said.   “You have my unshakeable commitment."

He also said he was open to new ideas, including some outlined by the Iraq Study Group, which urged a change of course in Iraq.

Mr. Bush said he was confident that Iraq's Prime Minister, Kamal al-Maliki, wants his country to be politically unified, and that the great task facing his government and Washington involves a diplomatic campaign as well as a military one.

The president is to spell out a new strategy for Iraq in early January. For today, he was deliberately vague -- the better, he said, to keep getting valuable, interesting advice.

And while Mr. Bush pledged to work with the new, Democratic-controlled Congress on Iraq, he warned that to leave Iraq precipitously would be to hand that country over to “an enemy that would do us harm," an enemy whose deadliness was demonstrated on Sept. 11, 2001.

But that will only happen, he said, “if we lose our nerve, if we're not steadfast in our determination."

2.

PRESIDENT BUSH MEETS WITH SENIOR U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE OFFICIALS ON IRAQ

The Pentagon
December 13, 2006

2:45 p.m. EST

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061213-5.html

THE PRESIDENT:   I've just concluded a very productive meeting with the Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Pete Pace, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vice President.   I thank these men who wear our uniform for a very candid and fruitful discussion about the -- about how to secure this country, and how to win a war that we now find ourselves in.

We spent a lot of time talking about a new way forward in Iraq, to help the Iraqi government confront and defeat the enemies of a free Iraq.   We all agree it's in our nation's interest that we help this government succeed.   We recognize there are enemies that would like to topple this young democracy so they could have safe haven from which to plot and plan attacks against moderate nations in the Middle East, as well as attacks against the United States.   It's in our interest that we help this government succeed.

There has been a lot of violence in Iraq.   And the violence has been horrific.   Scores of innocent men, women, and children are being brutally killed by ruthless murderers.   Our troops are engaged in offensive operations, and we mourn the loss of life.   We are saddened by the loss of every single life amongst our servicemen and women.   Our folks are very active in al Anbar and in Baghdad, which is where the enemy is concentrated.

Our commanders report that the enemy has also suffered.   Offensive operations by Iraqi and coalition forces against terrorists and insurgents and death squad leaders have yielded positive results.   In the months of October, November, and the first week of December, we have killed or captured nearly 5,900 of the enemy.

While the enemy is far from being defeated, there should be no doubt in anybody's mind that every day and night, the Iraqi government and our brave men and women of the Armed Forces are taking the fight to the enemy; that in spite of the fact that I am conducting a strategic review of the best way forward in Iraq, there are a lot of operations taking place, day and night.

Yesterday, the Secretary and the Vice President and General Pace and I were on the SVTS with General Casey, and he's talking about the hard work our troops and Iraqi troops are doing to defeat these enemies.

I do want to say something to those who wear our uniform.   The men and women in uniform are always on my mind.   I am proud of them.   I appreciate their sacrifices.   And I want them to know that I am focused on developing a strategy that will help them achieve their mission.   Oh, I know there's a lot of debate here at home, and our troops pay attention to that debate. They hear that I am meeting with the Pentagon or the State Department or outside officials, that my National Security team and I are working closely with Iraqi leaders, and they wonder what that means.   Well, I'll tell you what it means.   It means I am listening to a lot of advice to develop a strategy to help you succeed.

There's a lot of consultations taking place, and as I announced yesterday, I will be delivering my -- my plans, after a long deliberation, after steady deliberation.   I'm not going to be rushed into making a difficult decision, a necessary decision, to say to our troops, we're going to give you the tools necessary to succeed and a strategy to help you succeed.   I also want the new Secretary of Defense to have time to evaluate the situation, so he can provide serious and deliberate advice to me.

I do want our troops to understand this, though:   that this government and this group of military leaders are committed to a strategic goal of a free Iraq that is democratic, that can govern itself, defend itself and sustain itself, and be a strong ally in this war against radicals and extremists who would do us harm; secondly, that our troops deserve the solid commitment of the Commander-in-Chief and our political leaders and the American people.

You have my unshakable commitment in this important fight to help secure the peace for the long-term.   I pledge to work with the new Congress to forge greater bipartisan consensus to help you achieve your mission.   I will continue to speak about your bravery and your commitment and the sacrifices of your families to the American people.   We're not going to give up.   The stakes are too high and the consequences too grave to turn Iraq over to extremists who want to do the American people and the Iraqi people harm.

I thank you for your service.   I'm proud to be your Commander-in-Chief. We'll honor the sacrifices you are making by making sure your children and grandchildren can grow up in a more peaceful world.

God bless.

I'll take a couple of questions.   AP man.

Q   Mr. President, thank you.   You've been gathering advice, as you said, from leaders here and from leaders in Iraq.   As you've gone through that extensive process, have you heard any new ideas at all, anything that would change your thinking?

THE PRESIDENT:   I've heard some ideas that would lead to defeat, and I reject those ideas -- ideas such as leaving before the job is done; ideas such as not helping this government take the necessary and hard steps to be able to do its job.

I've heard interesting ideas.   I won't share them with you because I want to make sure I continue to collect those ideas and put them together in a strategy that our military and the commanders and our national security team understands will lead to an Iraq that can govern and sustain and defend itself.

I put off my speech -- actually, I was quite flexible about when I was going to give my speech, to begin with -- and one of the main reasons why is I really do want the new Secretary of Defense to have time to get to know people and hear people and be a part of this deliberation.   And he will not be sworn in until next Monday.   I also -- one of the interesting things about this experience is that there's a lot of ideas and a lot of opinions.   And I want to make sure I hear from as many of those ideas and opinions as possible.

Today I heard from some opinions that matter a lot to me, and these are the opinions of those who wear the uniform.   These generals have spent a lot of time thinking about this issue.   There's nobody who cares more about our troops than they do, and nobody who wants us to achieve more --than to achieve our objectives than they do.   And it was a fascinating discussion we had.   These are smart people and capable people, and people whose judgment I listen to.   And at the appropriate time, I will stand up in front of the nation and say here's where we're headed.

But one thing people got to understand is we'll be headed toward achieving our objectives.   And I repeat, if we lose our nerve, if we're not steadfast in our determination to help the Iraqi government succeed, we will be handing Iraq over to an enemy that would do us harm, the consequences of which -- of leaving Iraq before the job is done, for example, would be grave for the American citizens.

As we learned on September the 11th, the enemy has got the capacity to strike us.   And there's no doubt in my mind a failure in Iraq would make it more likely the enemy would strike us.   It would certainly make it more likely that moderate people around the Middle East would wonder about the United States' will.   Moderate people -- moderate governments in the Middle East would be making irrational decisions about their future.   It would be a disaster for governments that have got energy resources to be in the hands of these extremists.   They would use energy to extract blackmail from the United States.   And when you couple all that with a regime that is -- doesn't like the United States having a nuclear weapon, you can imagine a world of turmoil.   And we're not going to let it happen.

Caren.

Q   Thank you, sir.   You said you would reject plans that would lead to defeat.   Would you put the Baker-Hamilton report in that category?

THE PRESIDENT:   No, my opinion of Baker-Hamilton hasn't changed.   One, I appreciated their look.   Secondly, I thought it was interesting that both Democrats and Republicans could actually work in concert to help achieve an objective.   And the objective they stated that was necessary in their report was a government that could defend itself, govern itself, sustain itself, and serve as an ally in the war on terror.   I thought there were some good ideas in there.   And I -- as I told both Baker and Hamilton and the American people after I received the report, I take every one of their considerations seriously.

Q   As you give the new Defense Secretary time to get more in the mix, what is the strategy that you're looking to build?   Is it a military strategy for success in Iraq, or a political one?

THE PRESIDENT:   I think that our military cannot do this job alone.   Our military needs a political strategy that is effective.   And that includes things such an oil law passed by the Iraqis that basically says to the people, all of you, regardless of where you live or your religion, get to share in the bounty of our nation.   It requires a reconciliation effort, including a rational de-Baathification law.

Q   That's not something you can do with your new strategy, is it?

THE PRESIDENT:   Oh, absolutely.   Absolutely, I can do that with my strategy.   I mean, it is -- I can hold people to account.   It's something the military recognizes that they're not -- that's not their job, it's my job to convince the Maliki government to make the hard decisions necessary to move his country forward.

But the good news is, he agrees.   In my conversations with him, I have said, are you going to promote a unity government, or will you be so divisive in your approach that you can't achieve the objectives that the Iraqi people expect you to achieve?   How do I know they expect to achieve? They voted; 12 million of them actually went to the polls and expressed their opinions.

And so there needs to be a political track.   And we're working very hard with the Maliki government to achieve that political track.   That's what I've been doing the last couple of days.   As a matter of fact, today on the telephone I spoke to the two Kurdish leaders.   These men have been outspoken about the desire to have a moderate governing coalition, which we support.   I met with the major Sunni leader yesterday, all talking about how we hope that there is political reconciliation and a commitment to a political process that says to the Iraqi people, you count; you matter for the future of our country.

There needs to be an economic component.   As you know, part of our successful strategies in parts of Iraq have been based upon "clear, hold and build."   Well, "build" means getting projects up and running in key parts of the country, so that people see the benefits of either working with coalition forces, and/or the benefits of supporting a government. And so this is much more than a military operation.

And finally, there's the foreign policy piece that's necessary.   And we spend a lot of time in our government talking to people like Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or Jordan, or Turkey, and sending messages, clear messages, to countries like Syria and Iran.   And I believe, for example, the Saudis are committed to a government that will bring peace and stability, and that's a unity government. It's in their interest they do so. And we're working hard with them to figure out a strategy to help the Maliki government succeed.

I'm pleased when Iraqi leaders go to Saudi Arabia and talk to my friend, the King of Saudi Arabia, and talk about how they can work together to achieve stability.   It's in Saudi's interest, it's in Jordan's interest, it's in the Gulf Coast countries' interest that there be a stable Iran [sic], an Iran [sic] that is capable of rejecting Iranian influence -- I mean, Iraq that is capable of rejecting Iranian influence.   It's in our interests that we succeed in Iraq so that we can continue to send a clear message to those in Iran that are desirous of a free society that freedom is possible in your neighborhood.

And so the stakes are high in this fight.   Nobody knows that better than the gentlemen standing behind me.   They clearly understand the stakes that are confronted -- that confront this nation.   And I am proud to have listened to their points of view.   And I'm proud to be working with them, as they help lead the greatest military ever assembled -- a military, by the way, in which we've got brave volunteers, people who understand the stakes of this fight, saying, I want to be in, I want to serve my country.

It's a remarkable period in American history right now.   And as I deliberate the way forward, I keep in mind that we've got brave souls that need -- to need to know that we're in this fight with a strategy to help them achieve the objectives that we've got.

Listen, thank you all very much.

END 3:02 P.M. EST

To TOP    of PAGE

[see '07// Feb18: General Pace Nay say...]

NEWS & BACKGROUND: Iran's 'Quds force' blamed by Bush for bombs & US deaths in Iraq

Intro by Mark Jensen:
                In a White House press conference Wednesday, President George W. Bush said he could "say with certainty that the Quds Force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated I.E.D.'s that have harmed our troops" in Iraq.[1]   --   The press conference, called at short notice, appeared to be an attempt to "tamp down reports of divisions within the American government about who in Iran should be held responsible for the weapons shipments," following skeptical remarks (http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5752/) from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday.   --   Officials had earlier been unwilling to give, even off the record, the source of the information, but on Wednesday Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV in Baghdad said that the assertion was based on information from Iranians detained in Iraq over the past two months.   --   In a separate article, the *New York Times* quoted attempts by administration spokespersons to rebut charges that the information was being used to generate support for military action against Iran by saying that the decision to publish the information was based on the fact that there was "a new high reached in December" for "attacks with the device."[2]   --   But no hard figures were given, and the timing matter remains highly suspicious, even if that is true.   --   ABC posted a brief background piece on the Al Quds force (and did not capitalize the word "force," as the *New York Times* did).[3]   --   Neither the size nor much about the activities of the secretive "operation" is clearly known, but "CIA Case Officer Robert Baer says that Ahmadinejad is very close to the al-Quds force." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qods_Force)   --   The *Los Angeles Times* reported that a director of research at a London think tank that studies terrorism said the force had at most 2,000 members, and is "quite possibly one of the best Special Forces units in the world."[4]   --As to who controls the operation, "'This has been a topic of debate among Iran experts inside and outside the government for 25 years,' said Kenneth M. Pollack, an Iran expert . . . 'There are people who believe the Quds Force does not move a muscle without getting explicit orders from (Supreme Leader Ali) Khamenei; there are other people who believe they are rogues. The weight of evidence is somewhere in the middle.' . . . Revolutionary Guards have acted on their own, occasionally trying to pull the central government with them into more extremist positions," Borzou Daragahi and Peter Spiegel reported, and Pollack said that Quds may be freelancing in Iraq.   --   ABC's Brian Ross called the Quds force "a group of secret agents and hit men" ("special forces" in Richard Clarke's words) and implied that President Bush was either mistaken or deliberately misleading when he implied that it took orders from Iranian President Ahmadinejad: "the Quds force is under the control of the country's Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not Iran's president."[5]   --   ABC fed the anti-Iran propaganda campaign by asserting that "But U.S. officials say there's no doubt that the Quds force has long had American blood on its hands, linking them to the 1983 attacks in Beirut on the U.S. embassy and marine barracks," (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing) but in fact responsibility for that attack remains unknown.   --   *Editor & Publisher* emphasized that the president was contradicting his own government's briefing given three days earlier.[6]   --Mark]

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5761/

1.

World

Middle East

BUSH DECLARES IRAN'S ARMS ROLE IN IRAQ IS CERTAIN
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Marc Santora

New York Times
February 14, 2007

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/14/us/14bush600.jpg

PHOTO (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/14/us/14bush600.jpg) CAPTION:   President Bush leaving the news conference today in the East Room of the White House.

MULTIMEDIA (http://nytimes.feedroom.com/?fr_story=221055de3be8ec7e64aa3a77c280c7270eead6cc) CAPTION:   Video:   Bush:   Iran Supplying Weapons in Iraq.

[MULTIMEDIA (http://podcasts.nytimes.com/podcasts/2007/02/14/14backstory.mp3) CAPTION: [Audio:]   Back Stor with the *Times*'s Sheryl Gay Stolberg.]

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Wednesday that he was certain that factions within the Iranian government had supplied Shiite militants in Iraq with deadly roadside bombs that had killed American troops.   But he said he did not know whether Iran's highest officials had directed the attacks.

Mr. Bush's remarks amounted to his most specific accusation to date that Iran was undermining security in Iraq.   They appeared to be part of a concerted effort by the White House to present a clearer, more direct case that Iran was supplying the potent weapons -- and to push back against criticism that the intelligence used in reaching the conclusions was not credible.

Speaking at a news conference in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Bush dismissed as “preposterous" the contention by some skeptics that the United States was drawing unwarranted conclusions about Iran's role.   He publicly endorsed assertions that had until now been presented only by anonymous military and intelligence officials, who have said that an élite branch of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps known as the Quds Force has provided Shiite militias in Iraq with the sophisticated weapons that have been responsible for killing at least 170 American soldiers and wounding more than 600.

“I can say with certainty that the Quds Force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated I.E.D.'s that have harmed our troops," Mr. Bush said, using the abbreviation for improvised explosive device.   “And I'd like to repeat, I do not know whether or not the Quds Force was ordered from the top echelons of the government. But my point is, what's worse, them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and its happening?"

The House of Representatives is debating a resolution disapproving of Mr. Bush's plan to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq.   And so Mr. Bush used his appearance to defend that decision as necessary in the face of deteriorating security in Baghdad.   Asked about a possible American response to Iranian interference, he said, “We will continue to protect our troops."   With skeptics asking why the intelligence about Iran's meddling is coming to light now, a number of possibilities have been raised, including the increase in attacks and American casualties in recent months.

American intelligence officials have said they think that top leaders in Iran must have approved of the attacks on the American forces, in part because the Quds Force has historically reported to the country's top religious leaders.   But aides to Mr. Bush, mindful of the criticism about its use of intelligence before the Iraq war, said the White House wanted to be careful not to make that kind of accusation without hard proof.

As Mr. Bush discussed Iran in Washington, the chief American military spokesman in Baghdad provided a more detailed, on-the-record account of how the administration believed the weapons, particularly lethal explosive devices known as explosively formed penetrators, or E.F.P.'s, got to Iraq. The spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, was also careful not to link the actions of the Quds Force directly to Iran's top leaders.   He said American assertions about a link between the weapons and the force were based on information obtained from people, including Iranians, detained in Iraq in the past 60 days.

“They in fact have told us that the Quds Force provides support to extremist groups here in Iraq in the forms of both money and weaponry," General Caldwell said.   He added:   “They have talked about how there are extremist elements that are given this material in Iran and then it is smuggled into Iraq.   We have in fact stopped some at the border and discovered it there, coming from Iran into Iraq."

The coordinated messages out of Baghdad and Washington were an effort by the White House to tamp down reports of divisions within the American government about who in Iran should be held responsible for the weapons shipments.   A senior Defense analyst said at a briefing in Baghdad over the weekend that the effort was being directed “from the highest levels of the Iranian government."   But Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered a contradictory account this week, telling the Associated Press that while some bomb materials were made in Iran, “that does not translate that the Iranian government, per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this."

At Wednesday's news conference, Mr. Bush suggested that it did not matter whether senior leaders were involved.   “What matters is, is that we're responding," Mr. Bush said.   He said that if the United States found either networks or individuals “who are moving these devices into Iraq, we will deal with them."

Some experts said the question of Iran's responsibility remained important.   “There's a big difference between saying that there is a rogue element doing things and then asking the Iranian government to rein it in, as opposed to saying this is a calculated deliberate strategy of the Iranian government," said Vali Nasr, a Middle East scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations.   “That has very different implications in terms of how do you hold Iran culpable."

The administration's claims about Iran have been met with intense skepticism, from Democrats in Congress and from experts like David Kay, who led the search for illicit weapons in Iraq.   Some critics have said the White House is using Iran as a scapegoat for its problems in Iraq, and some have suggested that the administration, which has been trying to pressure Iran into abandoning its nuclear program, is laying the foundation for another war.

On Wednesday, a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for president, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, took to the Senate floor to call on Mr. Bush to seek authorization for any military action against Iran.   “We cannot and we must not allow recent history to repeat itself," she said.

Mr. Bush has said that he has no intention of invading Iran and that any suggestion that he was trying to provoke Iran “is just a wrong way to characterize the commander in chief's decision to do what is necessary to protect our soldiers in harm's way."   But experts say that the ratcheting up of accusations could provoke a confrontation.   Gary Sick, an expert on Iran at Columbia University, said there was a “danger of accidental war." He said, “If anything goes wrong, if something happens, there's an unexplained explosion and we kidnap an Iranian, and the Iranians respond to that somehow, this could get out of control."

Mr. Bush has also refused to meet with Iran's leaders, and he said Wednesday that he did not believe that it would be an effective way of persuading the Iranians to give up their nuclear goals.   “This is a world in which people say, ‘Meet!   Sit down and meet!'" he said.   “And my answer is, if it yields results, that's what I'm interested in."

--Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Washington, and Marc Santora from Baghdad.

2.

World

Middle East

WHY ACCUSE IRAN OF MEDDLING NOW?   U.S. OFFICIALS EXPLAIN
By Michael R. Gordon

New York Times
February 15, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/world/middleeast/15timing.html

WASHINGTON -- One of the questions posed by skeptics about the Bush administration assertions about Iran's meddling in Iraq is why the charges are coming to light only now, when American officials say the shipment of lethal weapons from Iran to Shiite militias was first detected several years ago.

Among possible explanations for the timetable, some critics have suggested, is that the White House is making its assertions now in an effort to blame Iran for the deteriorating situation in Iraq, or that President Bush is trying to lay a legal and political groundwork for a military strike against the government in Tehran, which he singled out in 2002 as a member of the “axis of evil."

In recent interviews and in a military briefing on Wednesday in Baghdad, American officials have offered a more direct explanation for the timetable:   attacks with the device have increased sharply in recent months, prompting the United States to react, and then to justify its actions.

According to one military official, reports of the “explosively formed penetrator," as the weapon is known, first surfaced in late 2003.   But attacks with the device have steadily increased since then.   The last quarter of 2006 was a particularly dangerous period in terms of attacks with the device, with a new high reached in December.

As the attacks have gone up, so have the American casualties.   Since 2004, at least 170 Americans have been killed and 620 wounded in attacks with the device.   But a significant number of those casualties occurred in the last part of 2006.

Faced with stepped-up attacks, military officials said they began to carry out raids to try to disrupt efforts to train and equip Shiite militants with the weapon.   That led to the detention of Iranian officials -- and questions from the Iraqi government, the public, and the press about why the American military was capturing and detaining Iranians, including some officials who said they were diplomats.

American officials assert that the raids produced additional evidence implicating a branch of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as the Quds Force, in supplying the devices, a charge Iran has denied.

Even so, the decision by American military officials to put forward the evidence in a full-scale briefing was not an easy call, according to Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the American military spokesman in Iraq.   One concern was that discussing the weapon would let adversaries know how effective it is.

After concluding that efforts to warn the Iranians through diplomatic channels not to send the weapons components were not producing results, Bush administration officials and military commanders in Baghdad decided to organize a briefing and present some of the evidence in a session last Sunday.

“The intent of the press conference was to talk about a force protection issue, not politics," General Caldwell said on Wednesday.

3.

International

THE AL QUDS: IRAN'S ÉLITE SECRETIVE GUARD
By Zunaira Zaki

** Former CIA Officer Says Secretive Unit Has American Blood on Its Hands **

ABC News
February 14, 2007

By ZUNAIRA ZAKI

http://www.abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=2875127

The United States has proof that the al Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is involved in arming Shiite militias in Iraq, President Bush told reporters today.   The president added, however, that he did not know whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was giving direct orders to the al Quds unit.

WHAT IS AL QUDS?

The name Quds is a direct reference to the city of Jerusalem, which is one of the holiest sites in Islam and is often referenced by Muslim militant groups now that the city is under Israeli control.

The al Quds force is a secretive, highly effective core Iranian military operation entrusted with only the most high level and sensitive of operations.   Qassim Suleimani is thought to be their current leader.   The force is believed to have come into existence soon after Islamic Revolutionary forces took control of Iran on Jan. 16, 1979.   The unit was the intelligence arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and is now thought to be very much a part of the Iranian government and very close to the conservative mullahs that make up Iran's governing council.

There is no definite sense of how large this force is.   ABC News consultant Fawaz Gerges points out that the effectiveness "of an underground operation cannot be judged by its size.   This is exactly the mistake the United States made with al Qaeda."   Former CIA Case Officer Robert Baer says that Ahmadinejad is very close to the al Quds force.

Baer, who has followed the movements of the al Quds as part of his work for the CIA, says it is very difficult to track the forces' movements and gather any information on them.   This unit avoids traditional means of communication, shunning the use of telephones, and instead relies only on couriers to carry out orders.

The al Quds force is also known to have been closely aligned with Hezbollah in Lebanon until the 1980s and is believed to have assisted or commissioned many terrorist operations there.

Baer describes the al Quds forces as the "bad guys . . . who 100 percent have American blood on their hands." Baer points out that al Quds were involved in numerous terrorist actions until the 1990s. He believes that they scaled back their terrorist activities under the somewhat moderate Iranian leader Mohammad Khatami.

AL QUDS AND IRAN

The al Quds force is thought to have gained its notoriety and great influence during the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988.   It was during this war that al Quds operatives are believed to have infiltrated Iraq.

Baer says he met with al Quds operatives in Iraq during the 1990s when they were involved in commissioning assassinations of Iranian dissidents, who Saddam Hussein supported at the time.   Baer adds that al Quds forces have been involved in a string of terrorist attacks through the years.   If they are operating in Iraq, he adds, this is very bad news for the Americans.

As for the al Quds arming Shiite militias in Iraq, Gerges says, "It is possible and probable that the Quds is training and helping some of the Shiite militias."   However, he adds, the U.S. administration still needs to prove that Shiite militias and not the Sunni insurgency are responsible for the attacks against coalition forces.

4.

World news

IRAN'S ELITE QUDS FORCE REMAINS AN ENIGMA
By Borzou Daragahi and Peter Spiegel

Los Angeles Times
February 14, 2007

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-quds15feb15,1,7977308.story?coll=la-headlines-world

BAGHDAD -- Among the myriad military and intelligence agencies that make up Iran's security forces, none has the skill and reach of the Quds Force, an élite unit nominally within the command structure of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Like the Revolutionary Guards, the Quds Force and its antecedents were among the semi-official militias, charities, and centers of clerical power born of the paranoia and zeal of the tumultuous years following Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution which brought Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power.

The Revolutionary Guards played a defensive role through the 1980s, protecting Iran's Shiite revolutionaries in a war against Iraq as well as against Iranian secular nationalists, the West, and Sunni-dominated regimes of the Middle East.

The Revolutionary Guards were entrusted to protect Khomeini's theocracy. But the Iranian revolutionaries were also inspired to spread their vision abroad.

The Quds Force and its predecessors consisted of the most skilled warriors in the Revolutionary Guards.   According to experts, they were specialized and highly secretive commando units sent abroad to assist fellow Shiites to usurp monarchies in the Persian Gulf, gun down enemies abroad, and Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.   They've also allegedly run operations in the Sudan, South Asia, and Western Europe.

On occassion their plans have coincided with U.S. interests, as when they supported Afghan warriors fighting the Soviet Union during the 1980s or armed Bosnian Muslims fighting Serbians in the 1990s.

The Quds Force has also had a hand in dealings with Iraq.   It assisted Kurdish rebels fighting Saddam Hussein during the 1980s and Shiites fighting him in the 1990s.   Even Ahmad Chalabi's expatriate Iraqi National Congress received assistance from the Quds Force, experts say.

At most, the force numbers 2,000 members, including support staff, says Mahan Abedin, director of research at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism, a London think tank.

"It's a remarkably efficient organization, quite possibly one of the best Special Forces units in the world," he said.

The extent to which the Quds Force is directly controlled by the government in Tehran has been a hotly debated issue within Washington's foreign policy circles.

"This has been a topic of debate among Iran experts inside and outside the government for 25 years," said Kenneth M. Pollack, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy.   "There are people who believe the Quds Force does not move a muscle without getting explicit orders from (Supreme Leader Ali) Khamenei; there are other people who believe they are rogues.   The weight of evidence is somewhere in the middle."

There is evidence that, in the past, Quds-linked Iranian operatives have taken direct orders from Tehran for overseas plots.   Most notable, Pollack said, was the 1992 killing of an Iranian Kurdish separatist leader and three associates, gunned down in a Berlin restaurant by four assailants led by an Iranian agent.   In 1997, a German court found the hit was ordered by a special government committee in Tehran which included Khamenei and then-President Hashemi Rafsanjani.

But there have also been signs of rifts between Iran's government and forces such as the Revolutionary Guards or the Quds Force.   Revolutionary Guards have acted on their own, occasionally trying to pull the central government with them into more extremist positions.   In 1998, for example, thousands of Revolutionary Guard troops amassed on the border with Afghanistan in what appeared to be a move to attack the Taliban regime.

There was widespread suspicion at the time that the Revolutionary Guard was working independently, and the central government later sent conventional forces to the border to "keep a watch" on the Guard troops, Pollack said.

"We do have evidence here and there, circumstantial in many ways, that the Quds Force guys and other people in the Revolutionary Guard like to push the edge of the envelope," Pollack said, speculating that Quds may be doing similar freelancing in Iraq.

"Tehran almost certainly told the Quds Force to go into Iraq," he said.

--Daragahi reported from Baghdad and Spiegel from Washington.

A LOOK AT THE IRANIAN MILITARY

Iran has two distinct, parallel military commands, the regular armed forces and the specialized Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.   Each has a navy and air force.   In addition, the Revolutionary Guards has a special forces unit called the Quds Force, which U.S. officials charge is involved in aiding Iraqi militants.   Al Quds is Arabic for Jerusalem, a city considered one of the most holy to Islam.   Some U.S. analysts say the two Iranian military branches are in frequent competition, both for resources and for influence within the government.

Islamic Republic of Iran Regular Forces:

Ground Forces -- 350,000
Navy -- 18,000
Air Force (includes air defense) -- 30,000

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps:

Ground Forces -- 100,000
Navy -- 20,000
Air Force -- Unspecified

Quds Force (special operations) -- 2,000 (est.)

Basij Force (Popular Mobilization Army) -- 2 million

--Source[s]: CIA, *Los Angeles Times* reporting

5.

WHO'S BEHIND IRAN'S DEATH SQUAD?
By Brian Ross, ABC News chief investigative correspondent

** Iran's Secret Agents Answer to a Higher Power **

ABC News
February 14, 2007

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/BrianRoss/story?id=2876019

The Quds force, meaning Jerusalem force, is, in effect, a group of secret agents and hit men who answer only to the religious authority of the Iranian government.

"The Quds force is a part of the Iranian government.   Whether Ahmadinejad ordered the Quds force to do this, I don't think we know," President Bush said today in his live press conference.

What U.S. officials do know, and have known for years, is that the Quds force is under the control of the country's Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not Iran's president.

"Quds force reports directly to the Supreme Ayatollah, through the commander-in-chief of the revolutionary guards," Richard Clarke, a former U.S. counterterrorism official and now ABC News consultant, explained. "So it is possible that the ministers in the Iranian government don't know what the Quds force is doing."

The U.S. says it has conclusive evidence that the Quds force is moving lethal roadside bombs into Iraq that killed at least 170 U.S. troops.

And U.S. officials say Quds force members have been taken into custody in Iraq, suspected of funding and training Shiite militias.

"They are the trained killers; they are the special forces," Clarke told ABC News.

But less clear, as President Bush conceded today, is who in the Iranian government may have sent them.

"I don't think we know who picked up the phone and said to the Quds force, 'Go do this,'" Bush said.

But U.S. officials say there's no doubt that the Quds force has long had American blood on its hands, linking them to the 1983 attacks in Beirut on the U.S. embassy and marine barracks, as well as the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, and a series of assassinations of Iranian dissidents in Europe.

"The cream of the fundamentalist crop are the people who really get recruited into the Quds Force," Roya Hakakian of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University explained.

In a series of recent speeches, the commander overseeing the Quds force spoke of American forces in Iraq sunk in a quagmire and highly vulnerable, with Iranian strategy on U.S. weaknesses.

6.

News

BUSH AT PRESS CONFERENCE TODAY CONTRADICTS SUNDAY'S BRIEFING ON IRANIAN
WEAPONS
By E&P Staff

Editor & Publisher
February 14, 2007

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003545598

NEW YORK -- At his press conference this morning in ice-covered Washington, D.C., President Bush was pressed by reporters on U.S. officials' claims at a Baghdad briefing on Sunday.   These unnamed officials charged that not only were weapons from Iran killing American soldiers in Iraq, they were being used on orders from top Iranian leaders.

The *New York Times* and *Washington Post*, among other papers, featured these charges on the top of their Web sites and front page on Sunday and Monday.   Since then, skepticism has grown, with even Gen. Peter Pace saying that he knew of no evidence linking Iranian leaders to any use of such weapons.

So the question came up at today's press conference. Here is an excerpt.

*

QUESTION: Critics say that you are using the same quality of intelligence about Iran that you used to make the case for war in Iraq -- specifically about WMD -- that turned out to be wrong, and that you are doing that to make a case for war against Iran.   Is that the case?

BUSH: I can say with certainty that the Quds Force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated IEDs that have harmed our troops.   And I'd like to repeat:   I do not know whether or not the Quds Force was ordered from the top echelons of government.   But my point is: What's worse -- them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it's happening?   And so we will continue to protect our troops.   We --our strategy is comprehensive in order to resolve problems that will affect our own peace and the peace in the world.   And the biggest problem I see is the Iranians' desire to have a nuclear weapon.   And, as you know, we've been dealing with this issue ever since you've been covering me, and pretty much ever since I've been the president.   And we've made it very clear to the Iranians that, if they would like to have a dialogue with the United States, there needs to be a verifiable suspension of their program. I would hope that they would do that.   I would like to be -- have been --given a chance for us to explain that we have no desire to harm the Iranian people.   But my focus is on making sure that this weapon is dealt with, the program is dealt with in a constructive, peaceful way.   And we'll continue to work toward achieving our common objectives, with other nations in the world, in a peaceful way. . . .

Q   I want to follow up on Iran one more time.   Are you saying, today, that you do not know if senior members of the Iranian government are, in fact, behind these explosives?   That contradicts what U.S. officials said in Baghdad on Sunday.   They said the highest levels of the Iranian government were behind this.   It also -- it seems to square with what General Pace has been saying, but contradicts with what your own press secretary said yesterday.   What . . .

BUSH:   Can I -- let me -- I can't say it more plainly:   There are weapons in Iraq that are harming U.S. troops because of the Quds Force.   As you know, I hope, the Quds Force is a part of the Iranian government.   Whether Ahmadinejad ordered the Quds Force to do this, I don't think we know.   But we do know that they're there.   And I intend to do something about it. And I've asked our commanders to do something about it. And we're going to protect our troops.

Q   But given some of those contradictions, Mr. President...

BUSH:   There's no contradiction that the weapons are there and they were provided by the Quds Force . . .

Q   What assurances can you give the American people that the intelligence this time will be accurate?

BUSH:   We know they're there.   We know they're provided by the Quds Force. We know the Quds Force is a part of the Iranian government.   I don't think we need who picked up the phone and said to the Quds Force, "Go do this," but we know it's a vital part of the Iranian government.   What matters is, is that we're responding.   The idea that somehow we're manufacturing the idea that the Iranians are providing IEDs is preposterous.   My job is to protect our troops.   And when we find devices that are in that country that are hurting our troops, we're going to do something about it, pure and simple.   Now, David says:   Does this mean you're trying to have a pretext for war?   No.   It means I'm trying to protect our troops.   That's what that's means.   And that's what the family members of our soldiers expect the commander in chief and those responsible for -- responsible for our troops on the ground.   And we'll continue to do so.

To TOP    of PAGE

BACKGROUND: Congress kept in dark as Cheney embraces Saudis, targets Iran
(S. Hersh)

Intro by Mark Jensen
[In "The Redirection," an article posted Sunday on the web site of the *New Yorker*, Seymour Hersh tells how the Bush administration's Mideast policy has undergone a "strategic shift . . . as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated."[1]   --   Hersh also describes an interview with Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the reclusive Lebanese Hezbollah leader.   --   The so-called "redirection" of Mideast policy involves clandestine operations against Hezbollah, against Iran, and against Syria.   --     It has sometimes strengthened groups sympathetic to al-Qaeda, and Hersh devotes almost a quarter of his 8,200-word article to describing how this is affecting the intricacies of Lebanese politics.   --   Once again, Congress is being kept in the dark.   --   The "key players behind the redirection," Hersh writes, are Vice President Dick Cheney, deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador) Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national security adviser.   --   "The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat":   the "redirection" is "a victory for the Saudi line."   --   The target in this strategic shift is Iran.   --   Since last August, hundreds of Iranians have been arrested and interrogated in Iraq, Hersh reports.   --   In recent months, "a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours."   --   Hersh says the U.S. is prepared for conflict with Iran this spring.   --   The freshest aspect of Hersh's article is its account of an interview in December 2006 with Hassan Nasrallah.   --   Nasrallah told Hersh he believes the U.S. wants to redraw the map of the Middle East, and is not only working toward the partition of Iraq, but also the partition of Syria, Lebanon, and ultimately Saudi Arabia and even the North African states.   --   Hersh does not endorse this view, but he adds:   "Nasrallah's vision of a larger sectarian conflict in which the United States is implicated suggests a possible consequence of the White House's new strategy."   --   Toward the end of his article, Hersh discusses parallels between the present situation and the clandestine maneuvering that occurred during the Iran-Contra scandal.   --   Some of the same individuals are involved, and tactics have been adjusted as the result of "lessons learned" during that fiasco.   --   Nevertheless, Hersh was told by a "former senior intelligence official" that the resignation of John Negroponte from the position of director of national intelligence came because "Negroponte did not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when he served as Ambassador to Honduras" and was implicated in Iran-Contra shenanigans designed to fund an unauthorized and illegal war in Central America. --Mark]

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5834/

1.

Fact

Annals of National Security

THE REDIRECTION
By Seymour M. Hersh

** Is the Administration's new policy benefitting our enemies in the war
on terrorism? **

New Yorker
March 5, 2007 (posted Feb. 25)

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070305fa_fact_hersh

A STRATEGIC SHIFT

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy.   The “redirection," as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran.   The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria.   A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to al-Qaeda.

One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites.   But, from the Administration's perspective, the most profound -- and unintended -- strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran.   Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country's right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region."

After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation became more complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard to the Saudis.   Al-Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq's Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein.   They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years.   Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly.   In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East," separating “reformers" and “extremists"; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that divide."   (Syria's Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.)   Iran and Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize."

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however.   The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not been adequately briefed.   “We haven't got any of this," he said.   “We ask for anything going on, and they say there's nothing.   And when we ask specific questions they say, ‘We're going to get back to you.'   It's so frustrating."

The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national security adviser.   While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney's office and the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, “The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.")

The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.

The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy -- it's a sea change," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said.   The Sunni states “were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq," he said. “We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it."

“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what's the biggest danger -- Iran or Sunni radicals," Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me.   “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies.   This is a victory for the Saudi line."

Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War."   Indyk, who is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of its new policy.   “The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq," he said.   “It's doubling the bet across the region. This could get very complicated.   Everything is upside down."

The Administration's new policy for containing Iran seems to complicate its strategy for winning the war in Iraq.   Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran and the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued, however, that closer ties between the United States and moderate or even radical Sunnis could put “fear" into the government of Prime Minister Maliki and “make him worry that the Sunnis could actually win" the civil war there.   Clawson said that this might give Maliki an incentive to coöperate with the United States in suppressing radical Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

Even so, for the moment, the U.S. remains dependent on the coöperation of Iraqi Shiite leaders.   The Mahdi Army may be openly hostile to American interests, but other Shiite militias are counted as U.S. allies.   Both Moqtada al-Sadr and the White House back Maliki.   A memorandum written late last year by Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser, suggested that the Administration try to separate Maliki from his more radical Shiite allies by building his base among moderate Sunnis and Kurds, but so far the trends have been in the opposite direction.   As the Iraqi Army continues to founder in its confrontations with insurgents, the power of the Shiite militias has steadily increased.

Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic" about the new strategy with regard to Iraq.   “The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when -- if you look at the actual casualty numbers -- the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude," Leverett said.   “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran.   The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them."

President George W. Bush, in a speech on January 10th, partially spelled out this approach.   “These two regimes" -- Iran and Syria -- “are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq," Bush said.   “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops.   We will disrupt the attacks on our forces.   We'll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria.   And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

In the following weeks, there was a wave of allegations from the Administration about Iranian involvement in the Iraq war.   On February 11th, reporters were shown sophisticated explosive devices, captured in Iraq, that the Administration claimed had come from Iran. The Administration's message was, in essence, that the bleak situation in Iraq was the result not of its own failures of planning and execution but of Iran's interference.

The U.S. military also has arrested and interrogated hundreds of Iranians in Iraq.   “The word went out last August for the military to snatch as many Iranians in Iraq as they can," a former senior intelligence official said.   “They had five hundred locked up at one time.   We're working these guys and getting information from them.   The White House goal is to build a case that the Iranians have been fomenting the insurgency and they've been doing it all along -- that Iran is, in fact, supporting the killing of Americans."   The Pentagon consultant confirmed that hundreds of Iranians have been captured by American forces in recent months.   But he told me that that total includes many Iranian humanitarian and aid workers who “get scooped up and released in a short time," after they have been interrogated.

“We are not planning for a war with Iran," Robert Gates, the new Defense Secretary, announced on February 2nd, and yet the atmosphere of confrontation has deepened.   According to current and former American intelligence and military officials, secret operations in Lebanon have been accompanied by clandestine operations targeting Iran.   American military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed the border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq.

At Rice's Senate appearance in January, Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, of Delaware, pointedly asked her whether the U.S. planned to cross the Iranian or the Syrian border in the course of a pursuit.   “Obviously, the President isn't going to rule anything out to protect our troops, but the plan is to take down these networks in Iraq," Rice said, adding, “I do think that everyone will understand that -- the American people and I assume the Congress expect the President to do what is necessary to protect our forces."

The ambiguity of Rice's reply prompted a response from Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican, who has been critical of the Administration: "Some of us remember 1970, Madam Secretary. And that was Cambodia. And when our government lied to the American people and said, 'We didn't cross the border going into Cambodia,' in fact we did.     I happen to know something about that, as do some on this committee.   So, Madam Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy that the President is talking about here, it's very, very dangerous."

The Administration's concern about Iran's role in Iraq is coupled with its long-standing alarm over Iran's nuclear program.   On Fox News on January 14th, Cheney warned of the possibility, in a few years, “of a nuclear-armed Iran, astride the world's supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations and/or their nuclear weapons to threaten their neighbors and others around the world."   He also said, “If you go and talk with the Gulf states or if you talk with the Saudis or if you talk with the Israelis or the Jordanians, the entire region is worried. . . . The threat Iran represents is growing."

The Administration is now examining a wave of new intelligence on Iran's weapons programs.   Current and former American officials told me that the intelligence, which came from Israeli agents operating in Iran, includes a claim that Iran has developed a three-stage solid-fuelled intercontinental missile capable of delivering several small warheads -- each with limited accuracy -- inside Europe.   The validity of this human intelligence is still being debated.

A similar argument about an imminent threat posed by weapons of mass destruction -- and questions about the intelligence used to make that case -- formed the prelude to the invasion of Iraq.   Many in Congress have greeted the claims about Iran with wariness; in the Senate on February 14th, Hillary Clinton said, “We have all learned lessons from the conflict in Iraq, and we have to apply those lessons to any allegations that are being raised about Iran.   Because, Mr. President, what we are hearing has too familiar a ring and we must be on guard that we never again make decisions on the basis of intelligence that turns out to be faulty."

Still, the Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction of the President.   In recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours.

In the past month, I was told by an Air Force adviser on targeting and the Pentagon consultant on terrorism, the Iran planning group has been handed a new assignment:   to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq.   Previously, the focus had been on the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities and possible regime change.

Two carrier strike groups -- the Eisenhower and the Stennis -- are now in the Arabian Sea.   One plan is for them to be relieved early in the spring, but there is worry within the military that they may be ordered to stay in the area after the new carriers arrive, according to several sources. (Among other concerns, war games have shown that the carriers could be vulnerable to swarming tactics involving large numbers of small boats, a technique that the Iranians have practiced in the past; carriers have limited maneuverability in the narrow Strait of Hormuz, off Iran's southern coast.)   The former senior intelligence official said that the current contingency plans allow for an attack order this spring.   He added, however, that senior officers on the Joint Chiefs were counting on the White House's not being “foolish enough to do this in the face of Iraq, and the problems it would give the Republicans in 2008."

PRINCE BANDAR'S GAME

The Administration's effort to diminish Iranian authority in the Middle East has relied heavily on Saudi Arabia and on Prince Bandar, the Saudi national security adviser.   Bandar served as the Ambassador to the United States for twenty-two years, until 2005, and has maintained a friendship with President Bush and Vice President Cheney.   In his new post, he continues to meet privately with them.   Senior White House officials have made several visits to Saudi Arabia recently, some of them not disclosed.

Last November, Cheney flew to Saudi Arabia for a surprise meeting with King Abdullah and Bandar.   The *Times* reported that the King warned Cheney that Saudi Arabia would back its fellow-Sunnis in Iraq if the United States were to withdraw.   A European intelligence official told me that the meeting also focussed on more general Saudi fears about “the rise of the Shiites."   In response, “The Saudis are starting to use their leverage -- money."

In a royal family rife with competition, Bandar has, over the years, built a power base that relies largely on his close relationship with the U.S., which is crucial to the Saudis.   Bandar was succeeded as Ambassador by Prince Turki al-Faisal; Turki resigned after eighteen months and was replaced by Adel A. al-Jubeir, a bureaucrat who has worked with Bandar.   A former Saudi diplomat told me that during Turki's tenure he became aware of private meetings involving Bandar and senior White House officials, including Cheney and Abrams.   “I assume Turki was not happy with that," the Saudi said.   But, he added, “I don't think that Bandar is going off on his own."   Although Turki dislikes Bandar, the Saudi said, he shared his goal of challenging the spread of Shiite power in the Middle East.

The split between Shiites and Sunnis goes back to a bitter divide, in the seventh century, over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad.   Sunnis dominated the medieval caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, and Shiites, traditionally, have been regarded more as outsiders.   Worldwide, ninety per cent of Muslims are Sunni, but Shiites are a majority in Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain, and are the largest Muslim group in Lebanon.   Their concentration in a volatile, oil-rich region has led to concern in the West and among Sunnis about the emergence of a “Shiite crescent" --especially given Iran's increased geopolitical weight.

“The Saudis still see the world through the days of the Ottoman Empire, when Sunni Muslims ruled the roost and the Shiites were the lowest class," Frederic Hof, a retired military officer who is an expert on the Middle East, told me.   If Bandar was seen as bringing about a shift in U.S. policy in favor of the Sunnis, he added, it would greatly enhance his standing within the royal family.

The Saudis are driven by their fear that Iran could tilt the balance of power not only in the region but within their own country.   Saudi Arabia has a significant Shiite minority in its Eastern Province, a region of major oil fields; sectarian tensions are high in the province.   The royal family believes that Iranian operatives, working with local Shiites, have been behind many terrorist attacks inside the kingdom, according to Vali Nasr.   “Today, the only army capable of containing Iran" -- the Iraqi Army -- “has been destroyed by the United States.   You're now dealing with an Iran that could be nuclear-capable and has a standing army of four hundred and fifty thousand soldiers."   (Saudi Arabia has seventy-five thousand troops in its standing army.)

Nasr went on, “The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis" -- Sunni extremists who view Shiites as apostates.   “The last time Iran was a threat, the Saudis were able to mobilize the worst kinds of Islamic radicals.   Once you get them out of the box, you can't put them back."

The Saudi royal family has been, by turns, both a sponsor and a target of Sunni extremists, who object to the corruption and decadence among the family's myriad princes.   The princes are gambling that they will not be overthrown as long as they continue to support religious schools and charities linked to the extremists.   The Administration's new strategy is heavily dependent on this bargain.

Nasr compared the current situation to the period in which al-Qaeda first emerged.   In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.   Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities.   Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis.   Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded al-Qaeda, in 1988.

This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists.   Their message to us was ‘We've created this movement, and we can control it.'   It's not that we don't want the Salafis to throw bombs; it's who they throw them at -- Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran."

The Saudi said that, in his country's view, it was taking a political risk by joining the U.S. in challenging Iran:   Bandar is already seen in the Arab world as being too close to the Bush Administration.   “We have two nightmares," the former diplomat told me.   “For Iran to acquire the bomb and for the United States to attack Iran.   I'd rather the Israelis bomb the Iranians, so we can blame them.   If America does it, we will be blamed."

In the past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Bush Administration have developed a series of informal understandings about their new strategic direction.   At least four main elements were involved, the U.S. government consultant told me.   First, Israel would be assured that its security was paramount and that Washington and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states shared its concern about Iran.

Second, the Saudis would urge Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian party that has received support from Iran, to curtail its anti-Israeli aggression and to begin serious talks about sharing leadership with Fatah, the more secular Palestinian group.   (In February, the Saudis brokered a deal at Mecca between the two factions.   However, Israel and the U.S. have expressed dissatisfaction with the terms.)

The third component was that the Bush Administration would work directly with Sunni nations to counteract Shiite ascendance in the region.

Fourth, the Saudi government, with Washington's approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria.   The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations. Syria is a major conduit of arms to Hezbollah.   The Saudi government is also at odds with the Syrians over the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, in Beirut in 2005, for which it believes the Assad government was responsible.   Hariri, a billionaire Sunni, was closely associated with the Saudi regime and with Prince Bandar.   (A U.N. inquiry strongly suggested that the Syrians were involved, but offered no direct evidence; there are plans for another investigation, by an international tribunal.)

Patrick Clawson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, depicted the Saudis' coöperation with the White House as a significant breakthrough.   “The Saudis understand that if they want the Administration to make a more generous political offer to the Palestinians they have to persuade the Arab states to make a more generous offer to the Israelis," Clawson told me.   The new diplomatic approach, he added, “shows a real degree of effort and sophistication as well as a deftness of touch not always associated with this Administration.   Who's running the greater risk -- we or the Saudis?   At a time when America's standing in the Middle East is extremely low, the Saudis are actually embracing us.   We should count our blessings."

The Pentagon consultant had a different view.   He said that the Administration had turned to Bandar as a “fallback," because it had realized that the failing war in Iraq could leave the Middle East “up for grabs."

JIHADIS IN LEBANON

The focus of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, after Iran, is Lebanon, where the Saudis have been deeply involved in efforts by the Administration to support the Lebanese government.   Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is struggling to stay in power against a persistent opposition led by Hezbollah, the Shiite organization, and its leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.   Hezbollah has an extensive infrastructure, an estimated two to three thousand active fighters, and thousands of additional members.

Hezbollah has been on the State Department's terrorist list since 1997. The organization has been implicated in the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed two hundred and forty-one military men.   It has also been accused of complicity in the kidnapping of Americans, including the C.I.A. station chief in Lebanon, who died in captivity, and a Marine colonel serving on a U.N. peacekeeping mission, who was killed. (Nasrallah has denied that the group was involved in these incidents.) Nasrallah is seen by many as a staunch terrorist, who has said that he regards Israel as a state that has no right to exist.   Many in the Arab world, however, especially Shiites, view him as a resistance leader who withstood Israel in last summer's thirty-three-day war, and Siniora as a weak politician who relies on America's support but was unable to persuade President Bush to call for an end to the Israeli bombing of Lebanon. (Photographs of Siniora kissing Condoleezza Rice on the cheek when she visited during the war were prominently displayed during street protests in Beirut.)

The Bush Administration has publicly pledged the Siniora government a billion dollars in aid since last summer.   A donors' conference in Paris, in January, which the U.S. helped organize, yielded pledges of almost eight billion more, including a promise of more than a billion from the Saudis.   The American pledge includes more than two hundred million dollars in military aid, and forty million dollars for internal security.

The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant.   “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we're spreading the money around as much as we can," the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will," he said.   “In this process, we're financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences.   We don't have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don't like.   It's a very high-risk venture."

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south.   These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with al-Qaeda.

During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of attempting “to hijack the state," but he also objected to the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon.   “Salafis are sick and hateful, and I'm very much against the idea of flirting with them," he said.   “They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more.   If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us.   It will be ugly."

Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut, told me, “The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in.   It could be very dangerous."   Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon.   Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government's interests -- presumably to take on Hezbollah," Crooke said.

The largest of the groups, Asbat al-Ansar, is situated in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp.   Asbat al-Ansar has received arms and supplies from Lebanese internal security forces and militias associated with the Siniora government.

In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis Group, Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and the son of the slain former Prime Minister -- Saad inherited more than four billion dollars after his father's assassination -- paid forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh.   The men had been arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon.   The Crisis Group noted that many of the militants “had trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan."

According to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his parliamentary majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the Dinniyeh Islamists, as well as for seven militants suspected of plotting to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut, the previous year.   (He also arranged a pardon for Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian militia leader, who had been convicted of four political murders, including the assassination, in 1987, of Prime Minister Rashid Karami.)   Hariri described his actions to reporters as humanitarian.

In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows al-Qaeda types to have a presence here," he said.   He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict."

The official said that his government was in a no-win situation.   Without a political settlement with Hezbollah, he said, Lebanon could “slide into a conflict," in which Hezbollah fought openly with Sunni forces, with potentially horrific consequences.   But if Hezbollah agreed to a settlement yet still maintained a separate army, allied with Iran and Syria, “Lebanon could become a target.   In both cases, we become a target."

The Bush Administration has portrayed its support of the Siniora government as an example of the President's belief in democracy, and his desire to prevent other powers from interfering in Lebanon.   When Hezbollah led street demonstrations in Beirut in December, John Bolton, who was then the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., called them “part of the Iran-Syria-inspired coup."

Leslie H. Gelb, a past president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the Administration's policy was less pro-democracy than “pro-American national security.   The fact is that it would be terribly dangerous if Hezbollah ran Lebanon."   The fall of the Siniora government would be seen, Gelb said, “as a signal in the Middle East of the decline of the United States and the ascendancy of the terrorism threat.   And so any change in the distribution of political power in Lebanon has to be opposed by the United States -- and we're justified in helping any non-Shiite parties resist that change.   We should say this publicly, instead of talking about democracy."

Martin Indyk, of the Saban Center, said, however, that the United States “does not have enough pull to stop the moderates in Lebanon from dealing with the extremists."   He added, “The President sees the region as divided between moderates and extremists, but our regional friends see it as divided between Sunnis and Shia.   The Sunnis that we view as extremists are regarded by our Sunni allies simply as Sunnis."

In January, after an outburst of street violence in Beirut involving supporters of both the Siniora government and Hezbollah, Prince Bandar flew to Tehran to discuss the political impasse in Lebanon and to meet with Ali Larijani, the Iranians' negotiator on nuclear issues.   According to a Middle Eastern ambassador, Bandar's mission -- which the ambassador said was endorsed by the White House -- also aimed “to create problems between the Iranians and Syria."   There had been tensions between the two countries about Syrian talks with Israel, and the Saudis' goal was to encourage a breach.   However, the ambassador said, “It did not work. Syria and Iran are not going to betray each other.   Bandar's approach is very unlikely to succeed."

Walid Jumblatt, who is the leader of the Druze minority in Lebanon and a strong Siniora supporter, has attacked Nasrallah as an agent of Syria, and has repeatedly told foreign journalists that Hezbollah is under the direct control of the religious leadership in Iran.   In a conversation with me last December, he depicted Bashir Assad, the Syrian President, as a “serial killer."   Nasrallah, he said, was “morally guilty" of the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the murder, last November, of Pierre Gemayel, a member of the Siniora Cabinet, because of his support for the Syrians.

Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad.   He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be “the ones to talk to," Jumblatt said.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement founded in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent opposition to the regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir's father.   In 1982, the Brotherhood took control of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city for a week, killing between six thousand and twenty thousand people. Membership in the Brotherhood is punishable by death in Syria.   The Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of Israel. Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, “We told Cheney that the basic link between Iran and Lebanon is Syria -- and to weaken Iran you need to open the door to effective Syrian opposition."

There is evidence that the Administration's redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood.   The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood.   A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support.   The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement."   He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House.   (In 2005, a delegation of the Front's members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.)   A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.

Jumblatt said he understood that the issue was a sensitive one for the White House.   “I told Cheney that some people in the Arab world, mainly the Egyptians" -- whose moderate Sunni leadership has been fighting the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for decades -- “won't like it if the United States helps the Brotherhood.   But if you don't take on Syria we will be face-to-face in Lebanon with Hezbollah in a long fight, and one we might not win."

THE SHEIKH

On a warm, clear night early last December, in a bombed-out suburb a few miles south of downtown Beirut, I got a preview of how the Administration's new strategy might play out in Lebanon.   Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, who has been in hiding, had agreed to an interview.   Security arrangements for the meeting were secretive and elaborate.   I was driven, in the back seat of a darkened car, to a damaged underground garage somewhere in Beirut, searched with a handheld scanner, placed in a second car to be driven to yet another bomb-scarred underground garage, and transferred again.   Last summer, it was reported that Israel was trying to kill Nasrallah, but the extraordinary precautions were not due only to that threat.   Nasrallah's aides told me that they believe he is a prime target of fellow Arabs, primarily Jordanian intelligence operatives, as well as Sunni jihadists who they believe are affiliated with al-Qaeda.   (The government consultant and a retired four-star general said that Jordanian intelligence, with support from the U.S. and Israel, had been trying to infiltrate Shiite groups, to work against Hezbollah.   Jordan's King Abdullah II has warned that a Shiite government in Iraq that was close to Iran would lead to the emergence of a Shiite crescent.)   This is something of an ironic turn: Nasrallah's battle with Israel last summer turned him -- a Shiite -- into the most popular and influential figure among Sunnis and Shiites throughout the region.   In recent months, however, he has increasingly been seen by many Sunnis not as a symbol of Arab unity but as a participant in a sectarian war.

Nasrallah, dressed, as usual, in religious garb, was waiting for me in an unremarkable apartment.   One of his advisers said that he was not likely to remain there overnight; he has been on the move since his decision, last July, to order the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid set off the thirty-three-day war.   Nasrallah has since said publicly -- and repeated to me -- that he misjudged the Israeli response.   “We just wanted to capture prisoners for exchange purposes," he told me.   “We never wanted to drag the region into war."

Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to deliberately instigate *fitna*, an Arabic word that is used to mean “insurrection and fragmentation within Islam."   “In my opinion, there is a huge campaign through the media throughout the world to put each side up against the other," he said.   “I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli intelligence."   (He did not provide any specific evidence for this.)   He said that the U.S. war in Iraq had increased sectarian tensions, but argued that Hezbollah had tried to prevent them from spreading into Lebanon.   (Sunni-Shiite confrontations increased, along with violence, in the weeks after we talked.)

Nasrallah said he believed that President Bush's goal was “the drawing of a new map for the region.   They want the partition of Iraq.   Iraq is not on the edge of a civil war -- there is a civil war.   There is ethnic and sectarian cleansing.   The daily killing and displacement which is taking place in Iraq aims at achieving three Iraqi parts, which will be sectarian and ethnically pure as a prelude to the partition of Iraq.   Within one or two years at the most, there will be total Sunni areas, total Shiite areas, and total Kurdish areas.   Even in Baghdad, there is a fear that it might be divided into two areas, one Sunni and one Shiite."

He went on, “I can say that President Bush is lying when he says he does not want Iraq to be partitioned.   All the facts occurring now on the ground make you swear he is dragging Iraq to partition.   And a day will come when he will say, ‘I cannot do anything, since the Iraqis want the partition of their country and I honor the wishes of the people of Iraq.' "

Nasrallah said he believed that America also wanted to bring about the partition of Lebanon and of Syria.   In Syria, he said, the result would be to push the country “into chaos and internal battles like in Iraq."   In Lebanon, “There will be a Sunni state, an Alawi state, a Christian state, and a Druze state."   But, he said, “I do not know if there will be a Shiite state."   Nasrallah told me that he suspected that one aim of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon last summer was “the destruction of Shiite areas and the displacement of Shiites from Lebanon.   The idea was to have the Shiites of Lebanon and Syria flee to southern Iraq," which is dominated by Shiites.   “I am not sure, but I smell this," he told me.

Partition would leave Israel surrounded by “small tranquil states," he said.   “I can assure you that the Saudi kingdom will also be divided, and the issue will reach to North African states.   There will be small ethnic and confessional states," he said.   “In other words, Israel will be the most important and the strongest state in a region that has been partitioned into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement with each other.   This is the new Middle East."

In fact, the Bush Administration has adamantly resisted talk of partitioning Iraq, and its public stances suggest that the White House sees a future Lebanon that is intact, with a weak, disarmed Hezbollah playing, at most, a minor political role.   There is also no evidence to support Nasrallah's belief that the Israelis were seeking to drive the Shiites into southern Iraq.   Nevertheless, Nasrallah's vision of a larger sectarian conflict in which the United States is implicated suggests a possible consequence of the White House's new strategy.

In the interview, Nasrallah made mollifying gestures and promises that would likely be met with skepticism by his opponents.   “If the United States says that discussions with the likes of us can be useful and influential in determining American policy in the region, we have no objection to talks or meetings," he said.   “But, if their aim through this meeting is to impose their policy on us, it will be a waste of time."   He said that the Hezbollah militia, unless attacked, would operate only within the borders of Lebanon, and pledged to disarm it when the Lebanese Army was able to stand up.   Nasrallah said that he had no interest in initiating another war with Israel.   However, he added that he was anticipating, and preparing for, another Israeli attack, later this year.

Nasrallah further insisted that the street demonstrations in Beirut would continue until the Siniora government fell or met his coalition's political demands.   “Practically speaking, this government cannot rule," he told me.   “It might issue orders, but the majority of the Lebanese people will not abide and will not recognize the legitimacy of this government.   Siniora remains in office because of international support, but this does not mean that Siniora can rule Lebanon."

President Bush's repeated praise of the Siniora government, Nasrallah said, “is the best service to the Lebanese opposition he can give, because it weakens their position vis-à-vis the Lebanese people and the Arab and Islamic populations.   They are betting on us getting tired.   We did not get tired during the war, so how could we get tired in a demonstration?"

There is sharp division inside and outside the Bush Administration about how best to deal with Nasrallah, and whether he could, in fact, be a partner in a political settlement.   The outgoing director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, in a farewell briefing to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in January, said that Hezbollah “lies at the center of Iran's terrorist strategy. . . . It could decide to conduct attacks against U.S. interests in the event it feels its survival or that of Iran is threatened. . . . Lebanese Hezbollah sees itself as Tehran's partner."

In 2002, Richard Armitage, then the Deputy Secretary of State, called Hezbollah “the A-team" of terrorists.   In a recent interview, however, Armitage acknowledged that the issue has become somewhat more complicated. Nasrallah, Armitage told me, has emerged as “a political force of some note, with a political role to play inside Lebanon if he chooses to do so."   In terms of public relations and political gamesmanship, Armitage said, Nasrallah “is the smartest man in the Middle East."   But, he added, Nasrallah “has got to make it clear that he wants to play an appropriate role as the loyal opposition.   For me, there's still a blood debt to pay" -- a reference to the murdered colonel and the Marine barracks bombing.

Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism.   But now, he told me, “we've got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon.   It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it's going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites.

“The most important story in the Middle East is the growth of Nasrallah from a street guy to a leader -- from a terrorist to a statesman," Baer added.   “The dog that didn't bark this summer" -- during the war with Israel -- “is Shiite terrorism."   Baer was referring to fears that Nasrallah, in addition to firing rockets into Israel and kidnapping its soldiers, might set in motion a wave of terror attacks on Israeli and American targets around the world.   “He could have pulled the trigger, but he did not," Baer said.

Most members of the intelligence and diplomatic communities acknowledge Hezbollah's ongoing ties to Iran.   But there is disagreement about the extent to which Nasrallah would put aside Hezbollah's interests in favor of Iran's.   A former C.I.A. officer who also served in Lebanon called Nasrallah “a Lebanese phenomenon," adding, “Yes, he's aided by Iran and Syria, but Hezbollah's gone beyond that."   He told me that there was a period in the late eighties and early nineties when the C.I.A. station in Beirut was able to clandestinely monitor Nasrallah's conversations.   He described Nasrallah as “a gang leader who was able to make deals with the other gangs.   He had contacts with everybody."

TELLING CONGRESS

The Bush Administration's reliance on clandestine operations that have not been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries with questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, an earlier chapter in history.   Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran.   Saudi money was involved in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then -- notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams -- are involved in today's dealings.

Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned" discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal.   Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress.   As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found:   “One, you can't trust our friends.   Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it.   Three, you can't trust the uniformed military, and four, it's got to be run out of the Vice President's office" -- a reference to Cheney's role, the former senior intelligence official said.

I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte's decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State.   (Negroponte declined to comment.)

The former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte did not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when he served as Ambassador to Honduras.   “Negroponte said, ‘No way.   I'm not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off the books, with no finding.'"   (In the case of covert C.I.A. operations, the President must issue a written finding and inform Congress.)   Negroponte stayed on as Deputy Secretary of State, he added, because “he believes he can influence the government in a positive way."

The government consultant said that Negroponte shared the White House's policy goals but “wanted to do it by the book."   The Pentagon consultant also told me that “there was a sense at the senior-ranks level that he wasn't fully on board with the more adventurous clandestine initiatives." It was also true, he said, that Negroponte “had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the Middle East."

The Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight, was accounting for covert funds.   “There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions," he said.   The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.

“This goes back to Iran-Contra," a former National Security Council aide told me.   “And much of what they're doing is to keep the agency out of it."   He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations.   And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What's going on?'   They're concerned, because they think it's amateur hour."

The issue of oversight is beginning to get more attention from Congress. Last November, the Congressional Research Service issued a report for Congress on what it depicted as the Administration's blurring of the line between C.I.A. activities and strictly military ones, which do not have the same reporting requirements.   And the Senate Intelligence Committee, headed by Senator Jay Rockefeller, has scheduled a hearing for March 8th on Defense Department intelligence activities.

Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, a Democrat who is a member of the Intelligence Committee, told me, “The Bush Administration has frequently failed to meet its legal obligation to keep the Intelligence Committee fully and currently informed.   Time and again, the answer has been ‘Trust us.'"   Wyden said, “It is hard for me to trust the Administration."

==================

VIDEO: Seymour Hersh on Negroponte's resignation & the anti-Iran 'strategic shift'

[As his new article, "The Redirection," (http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5834/) was posted on web site of the *New Yorker* on Sunday, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh was interviewed about it on CNN by Wolf Blitzer.   --   Blitzer focused on the reasons for John Negroponte's resignation on Jan. 5, 2007, from the position of director of national intelligence, but Hersh steered the conversation toward the larger matter of the evasion of congressional scrutiny and the fact that as part of the "strategic shift" Hersh's article describes the Bush administration now certainly approves probably actively enables support for extremist Sunni groups allied to al-Qaeda. --   Hersh says:   "I understand this is very serious stuff, and my magazine understands this is very serious stuff, and we have really taken a lot of time with this story, and couched it as carefully as we could, and with all the caveats.   This is serious businesss."   --   Hersh did not say so in his article, but told Blitzer that his article evolved from leads Hersh pursued after interviewing Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon (in early December 2006).   --   A number of viewers have posted the six-minute interview on YouTube.[1]   --Mark]

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5836/

1.

SEYMOUR HERSH ON PLANNED INVASION OF IRAN

CNN
February 25, 2007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywE7-AB4caM

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The Seymour Hersh Mystery
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A Journalist Writing Bloody Murder…
And No One Notices
By Tom Engelhardt

Let me see if I've got this straight. Perhaps two years ago, an "informal" meeting of "veterans" of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal --holding positions in the Bush administration -- was convened by Deputy National Security Advisor <http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/969>Elliott Abrams. Discussed were the "lessons learned" from that labyrinthine, secret, and illegal arms-for-money-for-arms deal involving the Israelis, the Iranians, the Saudis, and the Contras of Nicaragua, among others -- and meant to evade the Boland Amendment, a congressionally passed attempt to outlaw Reagan administration assistance to the anti-communist Contras. In terms of getting around Congress, the Iran-Contra vets concluded, the complex operation had been a success -- and would have worked far better if the CIA and the military had been kept out of the loop and the whole thing had been run out of the Vice President's office.

Subsequently, some of those conspirators, once again with the financial support and help of the Saudis (and probably the Israelis and the Brits), began running a similar operation, aimed at avoiding congressional scrutiny or public accountability of any sort, out of Vice President Cheney's office. They dipped into "black pools of money," possibly stolen from the billions of Iraqi oil dollars that have <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n21/harr04_.html>never been accounted for since the American occupation began. Some of these funds, as well as Saudi ones, were evidently funneled through the embattled, Sunni-dominated Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to the sort of Sunni jihadi groups ("some sympathetic to al-Qaeda") whose members might normally fear ending up in Guantanamo and to a group, or groups, associated with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.

All of this was being done as part of a "sea change" in the Bush administration's Middle Eastern policies aimed at rallying friendly Sunni regimes against Shiite Iran, as well as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Syrian government -- and launching secret operations to undermine, roll back, or destroy all of the above. Despite the fact that the Bush administration is officially at war with Sunni extremism in Iraq (and in the more general Global War on Terror), despite its support for the largely Shiite government, allied to Iran, that it has brought to power in Iraq, and despite its dislike for the Sunni-Shiite civil war in that country, some of its top officials may be covertly encouraging a far greater Sunni-Shiite rift in the region.

Imagine. All this and much more (including news of U.S. military border-crossings into Iran, new preparations that would allow George W. Bush to order a massive air attack on that land with only 24-hours notice, and a brief window this spring when the staggering power of four U.S. aircraft-carrier battle groups might be available to the President in the Persian Gulf) was revealed, often in remarkable detail, just over a week ago in <http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh?printable=true>"The Redirection," a Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker. Hersh, the man who first broke the My Lai story in the Vietnam era, has never been off his game since. In recent years, from the <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/10/040510fa_fact>Abu Ghraib scandal on, he has consistently released explosive news about the plans and acts of the Bush administration.

Imagine, in addition, that Hersh went on <http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/28/150251>Democracy Now!, Fresh Air, <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17384580/>Hardball with Chris Matthews, and <http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0702/25/le.01.html>CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer and actually elaborated on these claims and revelations, some of which, on the face of it, seem like potentially illegal and impeachable offenses, if they do indeed reach up to the Vice President or President.

Now imagine the response: Front-page headlines; editorials nationwide calling for answers, Congressional hearings, or even the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into some of the claims; a raft of op-ed page pieces by the nation's leading columnists asking questions, demanding answers, reminding us of the history of Iran-Contra; bold reporters from a recently freed media standing up in White House and Defense Department press briefings to demand more information on Hersh's various charges; calls in Congress for hearings and investigations into why the people's representatives were left so totally out of this loop.

Uh…

All I can say is: If any of this happened, I haven't been able to discover it. As far as I can tell, no one in the mainstream even blinked on the Iran-Contra angle or the possibility that a vast, secret Middle Eastern operation is being run, possibly illegally and based on stolen funds and Saudi money, out of the Vice President's office. You can certainly find a few <http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/26/iran.nuclear/index.html>pieces on, or reports about, "The Redirection" -- all focused only on the possible build-up to a war with Iran -- and the odd wire-service <http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=2904037>mention of it; but nothing major, nothing Earth-shaking or eye-popping; not, in fact, a single obvious editorial or op-ed piece in the mainstream; no journalistic questions publicly asked of the administration; no Congressional cries of horror; no calls anywhere for investigations or hearings on any of Hersh's revelations, not even an expression of fear somewhere that we might be seeing Iran-Contra, the sequel, in our own moment.

This, it seems to me, adds up to a remarkable non-response to claims that, if true, should gravely concern Congress, the media, and the nation. Let's grant that Hersh's New Yorker pieces generally arrive unsourced and filled with anonymous officials ("a former senior intelligence official," "a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel"). Nonetheless, Hersh has long mined his sources in the Intelligence Community and the military to striking effect. Undoubtedly, the lack of sourcing makes it harder for other reporters to follow-up, though when it comes to papers like the Washington Post and the New York Times, you would think that they might have Washington sources of their own to query on Hersh's claims. And, of course, editorial pages, columnists, op-ed editors, Congressional representatives, and reporters at administration news briefings don't need to do any footwork at all to raise these subjects. (Consider, for instance, the <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060410-2.html>White House press briefing on April 10, 2006, where a reporter did indeed ask a question based on an earlier Hersh New Yorker piece.) As far as I can tell, there haven't even been denunciations of Hersh's report or suggestions anywhere that it was inaccurate or off-base. Just the equivalent of a giant, collective shrug of the media's rather scrawny shoulders.

Since the response to Hersh's remarkable piece has been so tepid in places where it should count, let me take up just a few of the many issues his report raises.

"Meddling" in Iran

For at least a month now, our press and TV news have been full to the brim with mile-high headlines and top-of-the-news stories recounting (and, more rarely, disputing) Bush administration claims of Iranian "interference" or "meddling" in Iraq (where U.S. military spokesmen regularly refer to the Iraqi insurgents they are fighting as "anti-Iraq forces"). Since Hersh published <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/06/28/040628fa_fact?printable=true>"Plan B" in the New Yorker in June 2004 in which he claimed that the Israelis were "running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria," he has been on the other side of this story.

In <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/01/24/050124fa_fact>"The Coming Wars" in January of 2005, he first reported that the Bush administration, like the Israelis, had been "conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since" the summer of 2004. In April of 2006 in <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417fa_fact?printable=true>"The Iran Plans," he reported that the Bush administration was eager to put the "nuclear option" on the table in any future air assault on Iranian nuclear facilities (and that some in the Pentagon, fiercely opposed, had at least temporarily thwarted planning for the possible use of nuclear bunker-busters in Iran). He also reported that American combat units were "on the ground" in Iran, marking targets for any future air attack, and quoted an unnamed source as claiming that they were also "working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris, in the north, the Baluchis, in the southeast, and the Kurds, in the northeast. The troops ‘are studying the terrain, and giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds,' the consultant said. One goal is to get ‘eyes on the ground'… The broader aim, the consultant said, is to ‘encourage ethnic tensions' and undermine the regime."

In "The Redirection," he now claims that, in search of Iranian rollback and possible regime change, "American military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed the [Iranian] border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq." In his Democracy Now! radio interview, he added: "[W]e have been deeply involved with Azeris and Baluchis and Iranian Kurds in terror activities inside the country… and, of course, the Israelis have been involved in a lot of that through Kurdistan… Iran has been having sort of a series of backdoor fights, the Iranian government, because… they have a significant minority population. Not everybody there is a Persian. If you add up the Azeris and Baluchis and Kurds, you're really 30-some [%], maybe even 40% of the country."

In addition, he reported that "a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours," and that its "new assignment" was to identify not just nuclear facilities and possible regime-change targets, but "targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq."

Were there nothing else in Hersh's most recent piece, all of this would still have been significant news -- if we didn't happen to live on a one-way imperial planet in which Iranian "interference" in (American) Iraq is an outrage, but secret U.S. operations in, and military plans to devastate, Iran are your basic ho-hum issue. Our mainstream news purveyors don't generally consider the issue of our "interference" in Iran worthy of a great deal of reporting, nor do our pundits consider it a topic worthy of speculation or consideration; nor, in a Congress where leading Democrats have regularly outflanked the Bush administration in hawkish positions on Iran, is this likely to be much of an issue.

You can <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IC07Df03.html>read abroad about rumored American operations out of Pakistan and Afghanistan aimed at unsettling Iranian minorities like the Baluchis and about possible <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4642170.stm>operations to create strife among Arab minorities in southern Iran near the Iraqi border -- the Iranians seem to blame the British, whose troops are in southern Iraq, for some of this (a charge vociferously <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4347216.stm>denied by the British embassy in Tehran) -- but it's not a topic of great interest here.

In recent months, in fact, <http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/14/iran.bombing/index.html>several bombs have <http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/17/iran.bombing/index.html>gone off in minority regions of Iran. These explosions have been reported here, but you would be hard-pressed to find out what the Iranians had to say about them, and the possibility that any of these might prove part of a U.S. (or Anglo-American) covert campaign to destabilize the Iranian fundamentalist regime basically doesn't concern the news mind here, even though past history says it should. After all, many of our present Middle Eastern problems can be indirectly traced back to the Anglo-American ur-moment in the Middle East, the successful CIA-British-intelligence plot in 1953 to <http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB126/index.htm>oust Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (who had nationalized the Iranian oil industry) and install the young Shah in power.

After all, in the 1980s, in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, the CIA (with the eager connivance of the Pakistanis and the Saudis) helped organize, arm, and fund the Islamic extremists who would someday turn on us for terror campaigns on a major scale. As <http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=76824>Steve Coll reported in his superb book Ghost Wars, for instance, "Under ISI [Pakistani intelligence] direction, the mujahedin received training and malleable explosives to mount car-bomb and even camel-bomb attacks in Soviet-occupied cities, usually designed to kill Soviet soldiers and commanders. [CIA Director William] Casey endorsed these despite the qualms of some CIA career officers."

<http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2033>Similarly, in the early 1990s, the Iraq National Accord, an organization run by the CIA's Iraqi exile of choice, Iyad Allawi, evidently planted, under the Agency's direction, car bombs and explosive devices in Baghdad (including in a movie theater) in a fruitless attempt to destabilize Saddam Hussein's regime. <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0609-02.htm>The New York Times reported this on its front page in June 2004 (to no effect whatsoever), when Allawi was the Prime Minister of American-occupied Iraq.

Who knows where the funding, training, and equipment for the bombings in Iran are coming from -- but, at a moment when charges that the Iranians are sending into Iraq advanced IEDs, or the means to produce them, are the rage, it seems a germane subject.

In this country, it's a no-brainer that the Iranians have no right whatsoever to put their people, overtly or covertly, into neighboring Iraq, a country which, back in the 1980s, invaded Iran and fought a bitter eight-year war with it, resulting in perhaps a million casualties; but it's just normal behavior for the Pentagon to have traveled halfway across the planet to dominate the Iraqi military, garrison Iraq with a string of vast permanent bases, build the largest embassy on the planet in Baghdad's Green Zone, and send special-operations teams (and undoubtedly CIA teams as well) across the Iranian border, or to insert them in Iran to do "reconnaissance" or even to foment unrest among its minorities. This is the definition of an imperial worldview.

Sleepless Nights

Let's leave Iran now and briefly take up a couple of other matters highlighted in "The Redirection" that certainly should have raised the odd red flag and pushed the odd alarm button here at home far more than his Iranian news (which did at least get some attention):

1. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_contra>Iran-Contra Redux: Does it raise no eyebrows that, under the leadership of Elliot Abrams (who in the Iran-Contra period pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress and was later pardoned), such a meeting was held? Does no one want to confirm that this happened? Does no one want to know who attended? Iran-Contra alumni in the Bush administration at one time or another included former Reagan National Security Advisor <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Poindexter>John Poindexter, <http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1323>Otto Reich, <http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1306>John Negroponte (who, Hersh claims, recently left his post as Director of National Intelligence in order to avoid the twenty-first century version of Iran-Contra -- "No way. I'm not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. [National Security Council] running operations off the books, with no [presidential] finding."), <http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1308>Roger Noriega, and Robert Gates. Did the Vice President or President sit in? Was either of them informed about the "lessons drawn"? Were the Vice President's right-hand men, I. Lewis Libby and/or David Addington in any way involved? Who knows? In the Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan administration drew together the seediest collection of freelance arms dealers, intelligence agents, allies, and -- in the case of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iranian regime -- sworn enemies in what can only be called "amateur hour" at the White House. Now, it looks like the Bush administration is heading down a similar path and, given its previous "amateur hour" <http://conflictsforum.org/2007/elliot-abrams-uncivil-war/>reputation in foreign policy, imagine what this is likely to mean.

2. Jihadis as Proxies: Using jihadis as American <http://tonykaron.com/2007/03/09/war-with-iran-is-not-a-done-deal/>proxies in a struggle to rollback Iran -- with the help of the Saudis -- should have rung a few bells somewhere in American memory as another been-there, done-that moment. In the 1980s -- on the theory that my enemy's enemy is my friend -- the fundamentalist Catholic CIA Director William Casey came to believe that Islamic fundamentalists could prove tight and trustworthy allies in rolling back the Soviet Union. In Afghanistan, as a result, the CIA, backed by the Saudis royals, who themselves represented an extremist form of Sunni Islam, regularly favored and funded the most extreme of the mujahedeen ready to fight the Soviets. Who can forget the results? Today, according to Hersh, the Saudis are reassuring key figures in the administration that this time they have the jihadis to whom funds are flowing under control. No problem. If you believe that, you'll believe anything.

3. Congress in the Dark: Hersh claims that, with the help of Saudi National Security Adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan (buddy to the Bushes and Dick Cheney's close comrade-in-arms), the people running the black-ops programs out of Cheney's office have managed to run circles around any possibility of Congressional oversight, leaving the institution completely "in the dark," which is undoubtedly exactly where Congress wanted to be for the last six years. Is this still true? The non-reaction to the Hersh piece isn't exactly encouraging.

To summarize, if Hersh is to be believed -- and as a major journalistic figure for the last near-40 years he certainly deserves to be taken seriously -- the Bush administration seems to be repeating the worst mistakes of the Reagan administration and of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, which led inexorably to the greatest acts of blowback in our history. Given what we already know about the Bush administration, Americans should be up nights worrying about what all this means now as well as down the line. For Congress, the media, and Americans in general, this report should have been not just a wake-up call, but a shout for an all-nighter with NoDoz.

In my childhood, one of the Philadelphia papers regularly ran cartoon ads for itself in which some poor soul in a perilous situation -- say, clinging to the ledge of a tall building -- would be screaming for help, while passersby were so engrossed in the paper that they didn't even look up. Now, we have the opposite situation. A journalist essentially writing bloody murder in a giant media and governmental crowd. In this case, no one in the mainstream evidently cares -– not yet anyway -- to pay the slightest attention. It seems that there's a crime going on and no one gives a damn. Think <http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs818a,0,7944135.story>Kitty Genovese on a giant scale.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of <http://www.americanempireproject.com/>the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560259388/nationbooks08>Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.

Copyright 2007 Tom Engelhardt      

To TOP    of PAGE

[Read the below and Put this together with the "Changes to Order of Succession for Department of Defense WH-12-23-05" ("Dictatorial Powers Shrub Chain of Command '05 hijack") ]

=========== ARTICLES & REFS =============

Bush Anoints Himself Coordinator (dictator) after a catastrophic incident
 
  18 May 2007
 
        With scarcely a mention in the mainstream media, President Bush has ordered up a plan for responding to a catastrophic attack.
        Under that plan, he entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch. And he gives himself the responsibility "for ensuring constitutional government."
          He laid this all out in a document entitled "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html) and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20."
          The White House released it on May 9.
          Other than a discussion on Daily Kos (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/11/0401/26667) led off by a posting by Leo Fender, and a pro-forma notice in a couple of mainstream newspapers, this document has gone unremarked upon.
          The subject of the document is entitled "National Continuity Policy."
          It defines a "catastrophic emergency" as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function."
          This could mean another 9/11, or another Katrina, or a major earthquake in California, I imagine, since it says it would include "localized acts of nature, accidents, and technological or attack-related emergencies."
          The document emphasizes the need to ensure "the continued function of our form of government under the Constitution, including the functioning of the three separate branches of government," it states.
          But it says flat out: "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government."
          The document waves at the need to work closely with the other two branches, saying there will be "a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government." But this effort will be "coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers."
          Among the efforts coordinated by the President would ensuring the capability of the three branches of government to "provide for orderly succession" and "appropriate transition of leadership."
          The document designates a National Continuity Coordinator, who would be the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
          Currently holding that post is Frances Fragos Townsend. She is required to develop a National Continuity Implementation Plan and submit it within 90 days.
          As part of that plan, she is not only to devise procedures for the Executive Branch but also give guidance to "state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure."
          The secretary of Homeland Security is also directed to develop planning guidance for "private sector critical infrastructure owners and operators," as well as state, local, territorial, and tribal governments.
          The document gives the Vice President a role in implementing the provisions of the contingency plans.
          "This directive shall be implanted in a manner that is consistent with, and facilitates effective implementation of, provisions of the Constitution concerning succession to the Presidency or the exercise of its powers, and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (3 USC 19), with the consultation of the Vice President and, as appropriate, others involved."
        The document also contains "classified Continuity Annexes."

============================
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=2169
================================

Spencer S. Hsu | Washington Post
Bush Changes Continuity Plan Administration, Not DHS, Would Run Shadow Government
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050902719.html)
============================

Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government in Emergency
MAY 18, 2007 BY MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD,     The Progressive magazine

With scarcely a mention in the mainstream media, President Bush has ordered up a plan for responding to a catastrophic attack.
In a new National Security Presidential Directive, Bush lays out his plans for dealing with a “catastrophic emergency."

Under that plan, he entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch. And he gives himself the responsibility “for ensuring constitutional government."

He laid this all out in a document entitled "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20."

The White House released it on May 9.

Other than a discussion on Daily Kos led off by a posting by Leo Fender, and a pro-forma notice in a couple of mainstream newspapers, this document has gone unremarked upon.

The subject of the document is entitled “National Continuity Policy.".......
This story continues at         http://progressive.org/mag_wx051807

====== More Refs & Complete text =========

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHI20070521&articleId=5720

New presidential directive gives Bush dictatorial power
National Security & Homeland Security Presidential Directive establishes "National Continuity Policy"

by Larry Chin

Global Research, May 21, 2007

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007 declares that in the event of a “catastrophic event", George W. Bush can become what is best described as "a dictator":

"The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government."

This directive, completely unnoticed by the media, and given no scrutiny by Congress, literally gives the White House unprecedented dictatorial power over the government and the country, bypassing the US Congress and obliterating the separation of powers. The directive also placed the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic “security".

The full text is below. A critical analysis on the directive can be found here.

This is another step towards official martial law (see “US government fans homeland security fears"), which suggests that a new "catastrophic event" 9/11-type pretext could be in the pipeline.

National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive

NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51

HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-20

Subject: National Continuity Policy

Purpose

(1) This directive establishes a comprehensive national policy on the continuity of Federal Government structures and operations and a single National Continuity Coordinator responsible for coordinating the development and implementation of Federal continuity policies. This policy establishes "National Essential Functions," prescribes continuity requirements for all executive departments and agencies, and provides guidance for State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector organizations in order to ensure a comprehensive and integrated national continuity program that will enhance the credibility of our national security posture and enable a more rapid and effective response to and recovery from a national emergency.

Definitions

(2) In this directive:

(a) "Category" refers to the categories of executive departments and agencies listed in Annex A to this directive;

(b) "Catastrophic Emergency" means any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions;

(c) "Continuity of Government," or "COG," means a coordinated effort within the Federal Government's executive branch to ensure that National Essential Functions continue to be performed during a Catastrophic Emergency;

(d) "Continuity of Operations," or "COOP," means an effort within individual executive departments and agencies to ensure that Primary Mission-Essential Functions continue to be performed during a wide range of emergencies, including localized acts of nature, accidents, and technological or attack-related emergencies;

(e) "Enduring Constitutional Government," or "ECG," means a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government, coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers among the branches, to preserve the constitutional framework under which the Nation is governed and the capability of all three branches of government to execute constitutional responsibilities and provide for orderly succession, appropriate transition of leadership, and interoperability and support of the National Essential Functions during a catastrophic emergency;

(f) "Executive Departments and Agencies" means the executive departments enumerated in 5 U.S.C. 101, independent establishments as defined by 5 U.S.C. 104(1), Government corporations as defined by 5 U.S.C. 103(1), and the United States Postal Service;

(g) "Government Functions" means the collective functions of the heads of executive departments and agencies as defined by statute, regulation, presidential direction, or other legal authority, and the functions of the legislative and judicial branches;

(h) "National Essential Functions," or "NEFs," means that subset of Government Functions that are necessary to lead and sustain the Nation during a catastrophic emergency and that, therefore, must be supported through COOP and COG capabilities; and

(i) "Primary Mission Essential Functions," or "PMEFs," means those Government Functions that must be performed in order to support or implement the performance of NEFs before, during, and in the aftermath of an emergency.

Policy

(3) It is the policy of the United States to maintain a comprehensive and effective continuity capability composed of Continuity of Operations and Continuity of Government programs in order to ensure the preservation of our form of government under the Constitution and the continuing performance of National Essential Functions under all conditions.

Implementation Actions

(4) Continuity requirements shall be incorporated into daily operations of all executive departments and agencies. As a result of the asymmetric threat environment, adequate warning of potential emergencies that could pose a significant risk to the homeland might not be available, and therefore all continuity planning shall be based on the assumption that no such warning will be received. Emphasis will be placed upon geographic dispersion of leadership, staff, and infrastructure in order to increase survivability and maintain uninterrupted Government Functions. Risk management principles shall be applied to ensure that appropriate operational readiness decisions are based on the probability of an attack or other incident and its consequences.

(5) The following NEFs are the foundation for all continuity programs and capabilities and represent the overarching responsibilities of the Federal Government to lead and sustain the Nation during a crisis, and therefore sustaining the following NEFs shall be the primary focus of

the Federal Government leadership during and in the aftermath of an emergency that adversely affects the performance of Government Functions:

(a) Ensuring the continued functioning of our form of government under the Constitution, including the functioning of the three separate branches of government;

(b) Providing leadership visible to the Nation and the world and maintaining the trust and confidence of the American people;

(c) Defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and preventing or interdicting attacks against the United States or its people, property, or interests;

(d) Maintaining and fostering effective relationships with foreign nations;

(e) Protecting against threats to the homeland and bringing to justice perpetrators of crimes or attacks against the United States or its people, property, or interests;

(f) Providing rapid and effective response to and recovery from the domestic consequences of an attack or other incident;

(g) Protecting and stabilizing the Nation's economy and ensuring public confidence in its financial systems; and

(h) Providing for critical Federal Government services that address the national health, safety, and welfare needs of the United States.

(6) The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government. In order to advise and assist the President in that function, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (APHS/CT) is hereby designated as the National Continuity Coordinator. The National Continuity Coordinator, in coordination with the Assistant to the President for National

Security Affairs (APNSA), without exercising directive authority, shall coordinate the development and implementation of continuity policy for executive departments and agencies. The Continuity Policy Coordination Committee (CPCC), chaired by a Senior Director from the Homeland Security Council staff, designated by the National Continuity Coordinator, shall be the main day-to-day forum for such policy coordination.

(7) For continuity purposes, each executive department and agency is assigned to a category in accordance with the nature and characteristics of its national security roles and

responsibilities in support of the Federal Government's ability to sustain the NEFs. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall serve as the President's lead agent for coordinating overall

continuity operations and activities of executive departments and agencies, and in such role shall perform the responsibilities set forth for the Secretary in sections 10 and 16 of this directive.

(8) The National Continuity Coordinator, in consultation with the heads of appropriate executive departments and agencies, will lead the development of a National Continuity Implementation Plan (Plan), which shall include prioritized goals and objectives, a concept of operations, performance metrics by which to measure continuity readiness, procedures for continuity and incident management activities, and clear direction to executive department and agency continuity coordinators, as well as guidance to promote interoperability of Federal Government continuity programs and procedures with State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate. The Plan shall be submitted to the President for approval not later than 90 days after the date of this directive.

(9) Recognizing that each branch of the Federal Government is responsible for its own continuity programs, an official designated by the Chief of Staff to the President shall ensure that the executive branch's COOP and COG policies in support of ECG efforts are appropriately coordinated with those of

the legislative and judicial branches in order to ensure interoperability and allocate national assets efficiently to maintain a functioning Federal Government.

(10) Federal Government COOP, COG, and ECG plans and operations shall be appropriately integrated with the emergency plans and capabilities of State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to promote interoperability and to prevent redundancies and conflicting lines of authority. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall coordinate the integration of Federal continuity plans and operations with State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to provide for the delivery of essential services during an emergency.

(11) Continuity requirements for the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and executive departments and agencies shall include the following:

(a) The continuation of the performance of PMEFs during any emergency must be for a period up to 30 days or until normal operations can be resumed, and the capability to be fully operational at alternate sites as soon as possible after the occurrence of an emergency, but not later than 12 hours after COOP activation;

(b) Succession orders and pre-planned devolution of authorities that ensure the emergency delegation of authority must be planned and documented in advance in accordance with applicable law;

(c) Vital resources, facilities, and records must be safeguarded, and official access to them must be provided;

(d) Provision must be made for the acquisition of the resources necessary for continuity operations on an emergency basis;

(e) Provision must be made for the availability and redundancy of critical communications capabilities at alternate sites in order to support connectivity between

and among key government leadership, internal elements, other executive departments and agencies, critical partners, and the public;

(f) Provision must be made for reconstitution capabilities that allow for recovery from a catastrophic emergency and resumption of normal operations; and

(g) Provision must be made for the identification, training, and preparedness of personnel capable of relocating to alternate facilities to support the continuation of the performance of PMEFs.

(12) In order to provide a coordinated response to escalating threat levels or actual emergencies, the Continuity of Government Readiness Conditions (COGCON) system establishes executive branch continuity program readiness levels, focusing

on possible threats to the National Capital Region. The President will determine and issue the COGCON Level. Executive departments and agencies shall comply with the requirements and

assigned responsibilities under the COGCON program. During COOP activation, executive departments and agencies shall report their readiness status to the Secretary of Homeland Security or the Secretary's designee.

(13) The Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall:

(a) Conduct an annual assessment of executive department and agency continuity funding requests and performance data that are submitted by executive departments and agencies as part of the annual budget request process, in order to monitor progress in the implementation of the Plan and the execution of continuity budgets;

(b) In coordination with the National Continuity Coordinator, issue annual continuity planning guidance for the development of continuity budget requests; and

(c) Ensure that heads of executive departments and agencies prioritize budget resources for continuity capabilities, consistent with this directive.

(14) The Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy shall:

(a) Define and issue minimum requirements for continuity communications for executive departments and agencies, in consultation with the APHS/CT, the APNSA, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the Chief of Staff to the President;

(b) Establish requirements for, and monitor the development, implementation, and maintenance of, a comprehensive communications architecture to integrate continuity components, in consultation with the APHS/CT, the APNSA, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the Chief of Staff to the President; and

(c) Review quarterly and annual assessments of continuity communications capabilities, as prepared pursuant to section 16(d) of this directive or otherwise, and report the results and recommended remedial actions to the National Continuity Coordinator.

(15) An official designated by the Chief of Staff to the President shall:

(a) Advise the President, the Chief of Staff to the President, the APHS/CT, and the APNSA on COGCON operational execution options; and

(b) Consult with the Secretary of Homeland Security in order to ensure synchronization and integration of continuity activities among the four categories of executive departments and agencies.

(16) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall:

(a) Coordinate the implementation, execution, and assessment of continuity operations and activities;

(b) Develop and promulgate Federal Continuity Directives in order to establish continuity planning requirements for executive departments and agencies;

(c) Conduct biennial assessments of individual department and agency continuity capabilities as prescribed by the Plan and report the results to the President through the APHS/CT;

(d) Conduct quarterly and annual assessments of continuity communications capabilities in consultation with an official designated by the Chief of Staff to the President;

(e) Develop, lead, and conduct a Federal continuity training and exercise program, which shall be incorporated into the National Exercise Program developed pursuant to Homeland Security Presidential Directive-8 of December 17, 2003 ("National Preparedness"), in consultation with an

official designated by the Chief of Staff to the President;

(f) Develop and promulgate continuity planning guidance to State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector critical infrastructure owners and operators;

(g) Make available continuity planning and exercise funding, in the form of grants as provided by law, to State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector critical infrastructure owners and operators; and

(h) As Executive Agent of the National Communications System, develop, implement, and maintain a comprehensive continuity communications architecture.

(17) The Director of National Intelligence, in coordination with the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, shall produce a biennial assessment of the foreign and domestic threats to the Nation's continuity of government.

(18) The Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Secretary of Homeland Security, shall provide secure, integrated, Continuity of Government communications to the President, the Vice President, and, at a minimum, Category I executive departments and agencies.

(19) Heads of executive departments and agencies shall execute their respective department or agency COOP plans in response to a localized emergency and shall:

(a) Appoint a senior accountable official, at the Assistant Secretary level, as the Continuity Coordinator for the department or agency;

(b) Identify and submit to the National Continuity Coordinator the list of PMEFs for the department or agency and develop continuity plans in support of the NEFs and the continuation of essential functions under all conditions;

(c) Plan, program, and budget for continuity capabilities consistent with this directive;

(d) Plan, conduct, and support annual tests and training, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, in order to evaluate program readiness and ensure adequacy and viability of continuity plans and communications systems; and

(e) Support other continuity requirements, as assigned by category, in accordance with the nature and characteristics of its national security roles and responsibilities

General Provisions

(20) This directive shall be implemented in a manner that is consistent with, and facilitates effective implementation of, provisions of the Constitution concerning succession to the Presidency or the exercise of its powers, and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (3 U.S.C. 19), with consultation of the Vice President and, as appropriate, others involved. Heads of executive departments and agencies shall ensure that appropriate

support is available to the Vice President and others involved as necessary to be prepared at all times to implement those provisions.

(21) This directive:

(a) Shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and the authorities of agencies, or heads of agencies, vested by law, and subject to the availability of appropriations;

(b) Shall not be construed to impair or otherwise affect (i) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budget, administrative, and legislative proposals, or (ii) the authority of the Secretary of Defense over the Department of Defense, including the chain of command for military forces from the President, to the Secretary of Defense, to the commander of military forces, or military command and control procedures; and

(c) Is not intended to, and does not, create any rights or benefits, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its

agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

(22) Revocation. Presidential Decision Directive 67 of October 21, 1998 ("Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations"), including all Annexes thereto, is hereby revoked.

(23) Annex A and the classified Continuity Annexes, attached hereto, are hereby incorporated into and made a part of this directive.

(24) Security. This directive and the information contained herein shall be protected from unauthorized disclosure, provided that, except for Annex A, the Annexes attached to this directive are classified and shall be accorded appropriate handling, consistent with applicable Executive Orders.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Larry Chin is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Larry Chin

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"Cheney The Dark Side CIA Tenet Powell Private Security Homeland Frontline"

On TV: 'Frontline' shines more light on Cheney's power trip

By MELANIE McFARLAND

P-I TELEVISION CRITIC

October 15, 2007 8:30 p.m. PT

LATE-NIGHT talk shows have spun endless material out of Dick Cheney's love of obfuscation and secrecy. "The Daily Show" has gone so far as to create a segment called "You Don't Know Dick," in which host Jon Stewart pokes fun at strange details such as Cheney's ownership of a man-size safe, or the fact that his home does not appear on Google Earth.

It's the lighter side of what many think of as a frightening situation -- one illuminated over multiple episodes by "Frontline" producer and director Michael Kirk. "Cheney's Law," the "Frontline" season opener airing tonight at 9 on KCTS/9, is Kirk's and reporter Jim Gilmore's latest examination of Cheney's push to consolidate power in the executive branch. It also is the producer's 10th film examining the Bush administration's post-9/11 policies. Past work includes "The Torture Question," "Rumsfeld's War" and last year's look at Cheney's efforts to effectively disempower the intelligence community, "The Dark Side."

"Cheney's Law" might be thought of as the delayed companion piece to that film. Where "The Dark Side" walked viewers through the well-planned political gelding of former CIA Director George Tenet and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, this one breaks down another prong in the vice president's strategy: an interpretation of constitutional law that gives the Oval Office the final word on all rulings, above those of Congress and the judicial branch.

There's little in "Cheney's Law" that those keeping track of current events don't already know. But Kirk's film grants a historic context daily reports rarely offer, taking viewers back to the Nixon administration, when Cheney's views on unfettered presidential power began to take form.

More than this, the Bush administration's interpretation of constitutional law lurks behind debates in the news over wiretapping, interrogation tactics and those congressional subpoenas of legal documents the administration has and will continue to ignore, citing executive privilege. Day-to-day coverage makes that point easy to forget.

This "Frontline" premiere is particularly timely, airing on the eve of congressional confirmation hearings on Michael B. Mukasey's nomination to be attorney general. Closer looks at Alberto Gonzales' successor are a given, but "Cheney's Law" draws attention to another lawyer standing in the shadows: the vice president's former counsel and current chief of staff, David Addington.

The hourlong film posits that the occupant of the attorney general's chair has far less power than the lawyer signing memoranda in the vice president's office. Numerous stories and editorials blamed Gonzales for politicizing the Justice Department, but only a very few went so far as to implicate Addington as the man pulling his strings -- aided by Steven Bradbury, the compliant head of the Office of Legal Counsel.

Since Sept. 11, Addington and the vice president were able to secretly override congressional votes and unfavorable Justice Department rulings, leaving the president to prosecute the war on terror in the ways he saw fit -- including torture tactics, warrantless wiretapping and rendition. At one point during this quiet establishment of this new order, 30 Justice Department officials threatened to resign.

The relationship between the vice president and his lawyer dates back to the Reagan administration, when Cheney was alone in voicing his opinion that the president didn't need congressional approval to fund the Contras in Nicaragua.

Cheney was only partway into formulating a plan to centralize power in the Oval Office, a three-decade effort that finally bore fruit in this administration. But he didn't have the ability to give his views a voice until he met Addington, a man who shared Cheney's vision and, better yet, could interpret it through a constitutional prism.

Neither could do anything until 9/11, an event journalist Ron Suskind succinctly called "a moment of preparation meeting opportunity."

Suskind is one of many journalists "Frontline" viewers have come to expect would lend their views to a piece like this. Truly hair-raising revelations, meanwhile, come from former administration officials who had front-row seats to the process. That includes John Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer who worked with Addington to redefine interrogation methods, and Jack Goldsmith, the former assistant attorney general who headed the Office of Legal Counsel for about nine months before resigning in disgust.

Goldsmith wrote a book, "The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration," on the administration's running roughshod over other branches to achieve its ends; the summary of his observations provides the backbone for the central thesis in "Cheney's Law."

One thing the series won't change is how the administration will continue molding the law to suit its ends, or how the American people feel about the most powerful vice president to occupy the White House -- who, along with his top allies, declined to be interviewed for "Cheney's Law."

The program grants people additional reasons, as if they need them, to be horrified by the man who has drawn comparisons to Darth Vader -- and those are the kindlier ones. People who see him as a righteous crusader might marvel at the way he has redirected power to facilitate Bush's prosecution of the war on terror.

In any estimation, "Frontline" once again shows us why it is premium news programming by shedding much-needed light into the darker corners of government.

WATCH IT

"Frontline," 9 p.m. Tuesday, KCTS/9

P-I TV critic Melanie McFarland can be reached at 206-448-8015 or tvgal@seattlepi.com. Follow her TV Gal blog at blog.seattlepi.com/tv.

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(PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY Michael Kirk PRODUCED AND REPORTED BY Jim Gilmore WRITTEN BY Michael Kirk)

Home Page with links to an incredible assortment of material including INTERVIEWS (CIA officials, analysts and operators ... State Department and DoD ... national security experts), OBSERVATIONS AND ANALYSIS (Richard Cheney and "the dark side" ... George Tenet and the CIA ... The flawed '02 National Intelligence Estimate ... Office politics ... the war in Afghanistan), CHARTS, TRANSCRIPTS & RELATED MEDIA:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/

INTRODUCTION
SITE MAP
analysis

The Chart 1 - CHENEY'S NETWORK: This chart highlights how Cheney aggregated power at key national security centers -- the Pentagon, State and White House -- and lists the positions his friends and allies have held during the time period leading up to the 2003 war in Iraq.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/etc/network.html

The Chart 2 - CIA'S REALIGNMENT: In 2004, Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act which created the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (DNI) to oversee and coordinate all intelligence collection in order to advise the Congress and the White House. As a result of this reorganization, the director of the CIA no longer reports directly to the president.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/etc/cia.html

The Chart 3 - PATHS TO POWER

THE 2002 NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE (NIE): It analyzed prewar intelligence on Iraq's WMD programs and its key findings were soon proven wrong. CIA and other intelligence experts talk about the decision-making and politics that surrounded this flawed document.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/themes/nie.html

Watch On-Line

Transcript
Educational videotapes of The Dark Side are available for purchase by schools, libraries, and other educational institutions through Shop PBS for Teachers in DVD and VHS format, or through PBS Video by calling 1-877-PBS-SHOP, by faxing your order to 866-274-9043 (include item title and number and credit card information), or by mailing your order to: PBS Video PO Box 609 Melbourne, FL 32902-0609 (include check, money order, or credit card information with your order)

MISC RELATED
* discussion http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/talk/
* readings & links http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/etc/links.html
* FRONTLINE series home http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/
* wgbh http://main.wgbh.org/
* pbs http://www.pbs.org/

      OBSERVATIONS & ANALYSIS      

Vice President Richard B. Cheney
Close observers of Cheney and those who have worked with him offer impressions of his personality, management style, exercise of power and interest in intelligence issues over the years.

George Tenet
Former CIA officials and others discuss the impact and legacy of one of the nation's longest-serving directors of central intelligence.

The 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)
It analyzed prewar intelligence on Iraq's WMD programs and its key findings were soon proven wrong. CIA and other intelligence experts talk about the decision-making and politics that surrounded this flawed document.

      Interviews      

FRONTLINE / PBS Interviews

Interviews with CIA Officials, CIA Operators, CIA Analysts, State Department, Department of Defense, National Security Advisers/Policy-Makers, and Journalists

      CIA Officials      

Richard Kerr
He served in the CIA from 1960 to 1992, including deputy director for intelligence (1986-1989), deputy director (1989-1992), and a few months as acting director in 1991.

John McLaughlin
From 2000 to 2004 he was deputy director of the CIA and became its acting director following George Tenet's resignation in July 2004

John Brennan
From 1999 to 2005 he worked closely with George Tenet, first as chief of staff, then as deputy executive director, and finally as director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

      CIA Operators      

Gary Berntsen
A 20-year veteran in the clandestine service, he commanded a team of CIA and special forces during the war in Afghanistan in 2001.

Tyler Drumheller
As division chief for the Directorate of Operations (DO) he was the CIA's top spy in Europe until retiring in 2005.

Gary Schroen
Soon after 9/11 he was selected to lead the first trip into northern Afghanistan to connect with leaders of the Northern Alliance, offer money, equipment and political support, and join forces with them to oust the Taliban in Kabul and other cities in northern Afghanistan.

      CIA Analysts      

Paul Pillar
A CIA analyst for 30 years, he finished his career as the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia and was involved in the intelligence assessments on the Iraq WMD threat.

Michael Scheuer
He was chief of the CIA's Bin Laden Desk from 1995 to 1999 and headed an internal CIA investigation into alleged intelligence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda - a connection his team found to be unproven.

      State Department      

Carl W. Ford, Jr.
During the first Gulf War he worked on intelligence in the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. From 2001 to 2003 he was in charge of the State Department's Intelligence and Research Bureau.

Lawrence Wilkerson
He was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Since retiring from the State Department, he has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration.

      Department of Defense      

Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong
From 2000 to 2003 he was deputy commander to Gen. Tommy Franks at Central Command (CENTCOM), where they oversaw U.S. operations in the war in Afghanistan and later the invasion of Iraq.

F. Michael Maloof
Not long after 9/11 he joined the Pentagon's Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group that was set up under Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith to examine raw intelligence on the terrorist threat and make recommendations.

      National Security Advisers/Policy-Makers      

Sen. Bob Graham
Senator Graham (D-Fla., 1987-2005) chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. His committee requested a National Intelligence Estimate be done on the threat of Iraq's WMD programs before the Congress voted on whether to go to war.

Richard Clarke
A counterterrorism expert, Richard Clarke was a member of the White House National Security Council in both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and is the author of Against all Enemies, an insider account of the Bush administration's policy-making in the war on terror.

      Journalist      

Steve Coll
A New Yorker writer, he is the author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.

posted june 20, 2006

The Dark Side [home]FRONTLINE series home
John Brennan

The Real thing and all the links to the rest:

From 1999 to 2004 Brennan worked closely with George Tenet, first as his chief of staff, then as deputy executive director of the CIA. He also directed the National Counterterrorism Center from 2004 to 2005. Brennan discusses here how it became obvious the Pentagon wanted to have more of a role in intelligence; the pressures the CIA felt in the run-up to the Iraq war; how Tenet reacted to the news that the intelligencee assessment on WMD programs was wrong, and his thoughts on the CIA's future. This is an edited transcript of an interview conducted on March 8, 2006.

* Some highlights from this interview
* Pressures to deliver evidence supporting the case for war
* The 2002 National Intelligence Estimate
* Tenet's "slam dunk" comment to President Bush

... Take me back to when Tenet gets the job, to the state of the agency then and what you think he did.

George came into the agency in 1994 as [Director of Central Intelligence] John Deutsch's deputy. He had long experience on intelligence issues, most recently at the National Security Council [NSC] as director of intelligence programs. Before that, on the Senate Select Committee of Intelligence [SSCI], he was the staff director.

He brought a lot of intelligence background and familiarity with the CIA, and he's somebody who always, I think, had a soft spot in his heart for the CIA, because -- you talked about what 9/11 allowed the agency to do, which was to demonstrate what it could do. It was a very high-profile event, and therefore CIA's role was going to be high-profile. There were a lot of things that the CIA had done over the years that were not high-profile by design, and a lot of successes that they achieved that they were not able to tout. ...

When John Deutsch left and George ramped up to be a director, I think he was already well positioned with the workforce, and with a lot of trust that the workforce had in him to take the agency to the next level. So George made it a point to try to ensure that the agency was able to fulfill its responsibilities in the operational front and the analytic front.

... [W]hen he became the director, he had the ability to turn the workforce the way he wanted to turn it. That's why, when 9/11 hit, George was able to bring to bear that type of trust from the workforce and to give it direction. The people in the agency were more than willing to salute and say, "We can meet this challenge." It was a very big challenge; it was an unprecedented challenge for the agency.

But George was somebody who was the enthusiastic leader and wanted to make sure that the troops were going to rally behind him.

What some people have told us was that he was drawn to the idea of the operatives. He was interested in connecting and being part of that group of people, that he understood it in some way or knew they needed him. Is that accurate?

I think there's a certain appeal about operational work, and the Directorate of Operations does a very good job at trying to ingratiate itself with the leadership of the agency or the places. George bonded very well with them. He took a very strong interest in operational activities and covert action and collection activities. He made a lot of trips overseas to make sure he understood the business at the working level.
[Tenet] had to rely on what the community provided him in that [NIE] ŠDid he know all the details under ... that whole report? Nobody did at that point, because it wasn't reinvestigated and revalidated.

So I think he was probably most predisposed within the agency to work with the operations directorate. He knew all the division chiefs; he knew a lot of the branch chiefs. He knew a lot of the people who were specialists there, because the agency's unique mission is collection and covert action, and he had that responsibility.

He hooks up with the Counterterrorist Center [CTC], which has had its ups and downs inside the agency. ... Of all the groups inside there, that seemed to be one that he was extremely interested in, ... because he knew that the agency was morphing anyway and needing to be something; that that something would have something to do with terrorist attacks. Am I right about that?

The Counterterrorist Center -- the title of it, it was the DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] Counterterrorist Center. He was the one who had authority and responsibility for the Counterterrorist Center. It was within the CIA, but it had a lot of the characteristics that I think that George really liked: It was a combination of operational officers as well as analysts from CIA; it had people from FBI and FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] and other places; it was a hub of that type of activity.

Also, I think over the years, a lot of us have been personally affected by terrorist attacks. We all with[in] the agency know people who had been killed, injured or maimed, and during George's tenure, there are a lot of very good agency officers who were killed as a result of terrorism. I think George and others recognized that CTC had the responsibility to save American lives and help protect not just agency officers overseas, but others overseas, as well as the homeland here, and there was something that had such tremendous consequences if it didn't go well.

So I think of all the elements within the agency, the CTC embodied, first of all, the integration of effort across the agency as well as the community, but also it was at the point [of the] spear in many respects. Terrorism is something that was a serious threat to the U.S. before 9/11, and George worked it hard, so he spent a lot of time with them, particularly given Al Qaeda's promises to carry [out] the attacks, as well as its pursuit of WMD material that could be used to devastating consequence in the United States and abroad. The stakes were quite high, and that's why CTC had a lot of George's attention.

How did he get and keep the job in the new Bush administration?

I was George's chief of staff during that transition period, and George was somebody who by that time had already served about six years between deputy and director of CIA. He was questioning himself whether or not he wanted to continue into the [Bush] administration, but there were a lot of things that were going on. The terrorist threat was important. George is somebody who will throw himself into the vacuum of responsibility, and he knew that he was going to transition, one way or another, for that intelligence portfolio from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration.

When we knew that President Bush was the one who was going to take office, George let the president know that he was at his disposal and he was ready to serve in any capacity for whatever length of time. I think at that point, President Bush 43 really didn't know about George other than what he had heard from others, and I think his father and other senior U.S. officials gave President Bush a rather positive view of George.

George -- first of all, he's an extremely likable person, but also he's very knowledgeable. He is somebody who has tremendous powers of recall and the ability to integrate information from an intelligence perspective.

The Bush administration, when they took office in 2001, were not planning to keep George Tenet, but then he was able to demonstrate his skill and his contribution. Therefore, I think it was the president's decision -- first of all, that he liked him personally, but also he respected him. George has the ability to demonstrate a nonpartisanship despite whatever types of political winds may be blowing in Washington.

There was a trust factor, I think, that developed early on. Once he came in and it was decided that he was going to stay for some period of time, by the time the summer came around and then September, with 9/11, it might have been that the plan was to replace George. But at that point, the importance of pursuing Al Qaeda made, I think, the decision very easy for the administration to make. They wanted someone like George Tenet to continue along. Then when it started to go after 9/11 and the run-up to the Iraq war, again, George's value was something that was, quite frankly, cherished by the president and others. ...

He was briefing [the president] almost every morning. What is it that he does, and is hard to do, when you're briefing a president?

George is the person who will speak very candidly, honestly. Sometimes he will deliver messages that are not welcome by some who have maybe political agendas or ideas. I think when George greets the president, the president will be surrounded by a coterie of individuals who are part of that administration and may have certain political views as well as policy agendas.

I think, quite frankly, President Bush appreciated his willingness to speak up and to allow the group to consider other sides of the story or implications. ...

I could imagine it being hard to speak truth to power in certain moments, especially given what was happening.

I've been in meetings with George where he spoke very bluntly to other Cabinet secretaries. He's an animated individual, and he doesn't shy away from raising the tone of his voice to make sure that the message is understood.

What is [Vice President Dick] Cheney['s relationship with Tenet] like?

The vice president is somebody who has a tremendous intellect, has tremendous commitment to the security of this nation. He has his own views and goals as far as how this nation is going to be protected and maintained. He is somebody who will be taking up all the information then, but I think, rightly, the vice president will reserve his counsel for the president in those private sessions with the president.

...He [was] always somebody who would be sort of calculating about how his intelligence would affect the course that he thought the U.S. government should proceed.

Do you feel like he had a negative view of the Central Intelligence Agency?

I didn't get that impression in any meetings I had with him. Intelligence is a very complex business. ... A lot of times, intelligence reports or analysis is generated as a result of the types of questions that are asked, and I think that Vice President Cheney and others frequently would ask certain questions in order to see what intelligence there might be -- in fact, to support certain types of policy objectives.

I don't believe that Vice President Cheney had negative views about CIA, but I think there was a feeling that sometimes the intelligence was not always going to be supportive of certain policy courses. ...

Just before 9/11, in that summer and the spring, how hard was Tenet pushing on the terrorism threat?

I think he was pushing at every opportunity he had. ... George and [former CTC Director] Cofer [Black] were very much of a mind-set that we can't sit back and wait; we need to do things. We need to do things in Afghanistan. We need to go after Al Qaeda. We need to ratchet up the pressure on the Taliban.

George took several trips out to Saudi Arabia and other places to try to gain support from the Arab states to try to put pressure on the Taliban to give up bin Laden and others. George would knock on any door. He would pursue any course. I think what he was trying to do, prior to 9/11, was to make sure the administration was focused on that.

And were they?

I think they were aware of the issue. I don't think they, in fact, appreciated the seriousness of it, because I think they were trying to get their ducks in a line on a number of fronts to include Iraq prior to 9/11. Therefore, I think they felt as though they had time, because we didn't have the tactical intelligence that told us an attack is going to take place in New York on 9/11.

That lack of specificity [about] the timing of an attack was something that I think allowed it to move on through the course of the summer and then into September. There were a number of proposals that were on the table and actions that were going to be taken, but we just never got there.

... Were you aware that from the first NSC [meeting] on, there was certainly an impetus, a lot of talk about doing something that either Bush 41 couldn't or wouldn't do, or maybe something that needed to be done [with Iraq]?

The so-called neocons, there was a fairly good track record there as far as the public statements they would make or the writings that they would do that talked about Iraq, and that focused on what they were going to have as a priority when they came in to power. So I think there were a lot of people who felt as though there was going to be an aggressive policy vis-à-vis Iraq, because that was something that, at least from the intelligence community's perspective, seemed to be at the top of the priority list for the new administration. I think they were setting their sights on that from the early days. ...

Did Tenet ever talk about it that you remember, worrying about it, worrying about those guys?

Yes, there were times when George would express concern about certain individuals within the administration [who] were going down a certain policy course, almost irrespective of the intelligence. George really felt as though it was his responsibility to ensure that the president had the intelligence base for whatever policy decision the president was going to make.

It wasn't a secret on the seventh floor of the CIA that there was this drumbeat in certain quarters of the government to move toward some type of confrontation with Iraq.

Was there any doubt that the vice president was leading that team?

I think the vice president was viewed as being somebody who was at the summit of that neoconservative group within the government and was supportive of that line. A lot of the questions that were posed to the intelligence community were related to those possible policy courses.

Now, the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, what Saddam Hussein had in his arsenal and other things, I think there was a feeling within the CIA prior to the war in Iraq that, was there a pressing need at that point to take action against Iraq? Well, the intelligence didn't indicate it. It was a long-festering problem. Saddam Hussein was a problem in the area and needed to be contained, but there were a lot of folks who felt as though he was being contained. Continuing to go down that confrontation course was something that was a policy decision clearly, obviously. It wasn't intelligence-generated.

Intelligence was used, I think, to support certain policy decisions. But it wasn't intelligence that was surfacing that said Saddam Hussein is going to do this, or he has the intention of doing that. You can look in the body of intelligence that is out there and always find some type of reporting that's going to support certain policy courses. The issue is to make sure that that intelligence is presented in a balanced way and in the context of all the intelligence.

As we find ourselves heading into Afghanistan, I had a couple of people who worked on the transition say there was no way Cheney wanted Tenet to continue. He wanted his own guys, but also wanted that agency, wanted certainly the dark side of that agency, the operative side of that agency, to do what they needed to do. They would even talk of [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld running the agency for a while.

Did you guys pick up on any of that? Or, what was the impact of that crossing over from Clinton to George W. Bush?

I think there was a concern within CIA, certainly, that in the early days of the administration that there was going to be somebody put in charge of CIA that was going to be more a part of the administration or more a part of the neocon community. I do believe it was the president's decision, and it probably wasn't one that was supported by everybody within that administration, that George would continue.

The CIA plan [for Afghanistan] comes forward. How unhappy do you think the secretary of defense was that the CIA had a plan like this and was ready to roll?

I think there were a lot of seniors in the Department of Defense that were dismayed that they weren't able to respond as quickly as CIA. It has been shown over the past couple of years that the Defense Department has tried to increase its role in the intelligence community and to chew away at CIA's traditional authorities and responsibilities. ...

Particularly because the counterterrorism effort is cast as a war on terrorism, the Department of Defense sees that they need to be that sort of intelligence vanguard in that war, and I think that's a mistake. The CIA needs to continue to play that very important role from an intelligence perspective.

One of the many things we're looking at as we step back with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, ... and we see that there's now a really separate effort from the Central Intelligence Agency that's been under way, created by the Defense Department, authorized to go forward and have special ops guys running around on their behalf. ... I suppose the genesis moment is when Director Tenet and [former CIA Deputy Director John] McLaughlin go out to Camp David on the 15th of September and present the plan. Meanwhile, Rumsfeld and [then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz are saying: "What about Iraq? Shouldn't we be going to Iraq?" Is that the way you remember the story?

Yes. I think Secretary Rumsfeld and others at Defense recognized that there needed to be something done immediately against Al Qaeda, because it did pose a threat. I think they were hoping that there was going to be a dual track, that Iraq would be able to continue at the same time of the move against Al Qaeda. There were efforts under way within the Defense Department to wrap the two together, so it could be this two-pronged offensive against Iraq and Afghanistan at one time, because a lot of people were trying to make the connection [that] 9/11 was connected to Iraq. In my mind, there was absolutely no connection whatsoever.

That's where the issue of maintaining an independent intelligence organization is so critically important, because departments have certain policy objectives and goals. If you have a department such as the Department of Defense that controls the intelligence function as well, there is a great potential for that intelligence to be skewed, either wittingly or unwittingly, in support of policy objectives.

Let's go for a moment to Tora Bora. [Former CIA operative Gary Schroen] says, "We had Osama bin Laden in our grasp, up in the mountains, and [head of U.S. Central Command Gen.] Tommy Franks and the Defense Department and others just wouldn't do it." Were you privy to Gary's wires and phone calls and entreaties to go get Osama bin Laden up in the mountains?

I wasn't privy to phone calls and a lot of the back-channel stuff. I was aware of the debate that was going on. Whether it was a CIA officer or whether it's a U.S. military officer, they will each come at the issue with their own perspective based on what knowledge they have. And frequently, that's incomplete knowledge on both sides.

I would just caution that each side only had a certain amount of perspective. And CIA, God love it, is always saying: "We can take that hill. We can do it, we can do it, we can do it." Sometimes it's not as easy as some within CIA believe. At the same time, I think the military comes at some of these issues in saying: "We need more. We need to make sure that we have a program or a capability that will ensure success." There is sometimes a caution on the part of the military and a sense within the agency that we need to move faster and in a much more aggressive way.

My perspective is that the truth is somewhere in between, that we probably could have moved with greater alacrity and with greater force, and possibly intercepted and taken care of some problems, but there were so many unknowns at that time and so many dynamics under way that, again, the CIA perspective was one; military's was another. ...

You don't know how hard [Tenet] advocated on behalf of "Let's go get 'em" to the president or others?

George was usually supportive of any type of operational initiatives recommended by the field. There were some very well-known instances where George said, "This is not going to go because the chance of success is so low." But generally, he would rely heavily on the recommendations, advice from the people in the CIA and the field, and would make sure that at least that perspective was shared with his counterparts in Washington. ...

Was there a moment where it became obvious that Cheney, Rumsfeld, that whole chain really didn't want to go any further in the "war on terror," and really were interested in making sure that it went in the direction of their original goal, which was Iraq, and that maybe in the first glimmers of that happening that --

I never had the sense, from at least my perspective, that either the vice president or Department of Defense decided to ratchet back on the war on terrorism and the effort against Al Qaeda. They were wanting to make sure everything was done in order to continue that. They also, though, were anticipating that there needed to be this focus on Iraq, and to the extent that both of them could have been prosecuted equally well, I think they wanted to do that.

I don't think they understood how the war in Iraq and against Iraq would sap a lot of focus, energy and resources away from the war against terrorism. There were a lot of miscalculations on the part of the senior policy-makers about moving against Iraq in that manner. ...

When did you get the first hints ... that there was this movement in the direction of Iraq ...?

The train started to leave the station before the election of 2000, with the neocons putting things out. There was a real focus that we needed to do something about Iraq. It was gaining momentum and strength. And with [Iraqi National Congress founder Ahmad] Chalabi and [former Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard] Perle and others feeding those fires, I do think they just had a complete lack of understanding of the complexity of doing something like that.

They're very outspoken and vocal about the need to take action. It's easy to execute; if there is criticism that is being made of this administration, [it] is that the decision to take action is only part of the challenge. It's the follow-through; it's the strategic planning afterward. Those areas really need to be paid attention to, because the U.S. military [has] no problem as far as just decimating the Iraqi army, but the people like Chalabi and the other neocons, and people like [then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy] Doug Feith, who I think has a very superficial understanding of some of these issues -- I don't know how much time Doug Feith has spent in the Middle East or in Iraq, but it's a very, very complex society.

A lot of things look good on an academic's blackboard in terms of the actions that need to be taken. It's almost like a football coach, when you draw the X's and O's: Every play that is chalked on that board goes for a touchdown. Well, there are a lot of yards to be made between the line of scrimmage and the touchdown. A lot of people were focused on getting the ball past the line of scrimmage, and there was a real lack of appreciation about the difficulty of following through and then assuming responsibility for this war.

When we talked to [former deputy director of the CIA John]McLaughlin, he said: "We were incredibly busy in the winter and the spring of 2002 really thinking about the war on terror. We were worried about an attack on the United States." Meanwhile, the Office of Special Plans is being created at the Defense Department, this other alternative intelligence service, grabbing raw data, retyping it, "stovepiping" it up to the vice president. ... Were you guys aware that that was happening?

We knew that there were things that were going on that were continuing to focus on Iraq. Also, a lot of people look at presidential administrations, and historians say that there are certain things that need to be done at certain periods within a four-year administration. I think there were some folks with the administration that wanted to make sure that there was going to be action taken at a certain point within that first administration that would be tied up then, and a sufficient time afterward, that can go then to the next election.

There was a timeline there that they were sort of working on. And after 9/11, and after everybody came together to prosecute the war in Afghanistan and tried to move against Al Qaeda, I think in the early months of '02, those who were advocates of taking military action against Iraq wanted to continue on that timeline and were pulling together the intelligence. A lot of time it was done outside of CIA and the intelligence community.

You guys write, I think on the 21st of September, 2001, "There's no connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein." And yet they persist.

They persisted and persisted. I'd continue to ask the question; they would come up with intelligence. Again, it was trying to seek validation for preconceived either notions or policy courses that they wanted to pursue.

It's like a prosecuting attorney [who amasses] the evidence that supports a certain thesis. You can cherry-pick intelligence to support that policy course, and unfortunately, there were people within the administration who were determined to pursue that policy course because they thought that was in the best interest of the United States government. But they were going to be selective in their choice as far as what intelligence we brought to bear to justify that policy action.

By the middle of 2002, heading into the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] in the fall, it's been reported that Tenet is feeling pressure ... to do things about Iraq, pressure to write things about weapons of mass destruction. Did you ever have a conversation with him about it, or are you aware of that kind of pressure?

I think there was a feeling within the agency that intelligence was increasingly becoming the meat in the sandwich on this one; that we were being asked to do things and to make sure that that justification was out there. Responding to the requests from the Hill for that National Intelligence Estimate in a very short period of time and compressed schedule to do something as major and as significant as that, there was concern that intelligence was being pushed forward as the justification for war. ...

It was an intense period. We still were heavily engaged on trying to counter Al Qaeda, the war on terrorism. And so there were a lot of things on George's plate. And he was working, you know, from sun up to sun down and past that, seven days a week. ...

We talked to [former National Intelligence Officer] Paul Pillar last December, really trying to go through what he was feeling and observing from his vantage point as an intelligence analyst ... Did he ever talk about it?

Well, Paul had the responsibility of making sure that this [NIE] estimate was truly a community-coordinated estimate. It was not a CIA product; it was something that had the imprimatur of the intelligence community, of all the different elements. Paul had that responsibility, to orchestrate that effort.

What Paul wanted to do, my impression, is to ensure that the key questions were going to be addressed, but at the same time to ensure that the analytic augmentation and basis was solid and firm. The tight deadline that it was produced under, I think, was responsible for some of those mistakes and the due diligence that didn't take place.

But there was a lot of information in that estimate. You can only pull so many of those threads. And people tried to do the best job they could. Looking back on it, some of that intelligence was faulty, because that estimate was based on a wide body of intelligence that had built up over the years. A lot of the previous intelligence was included in it, but it was not revalidated, so some of that foundation was faulty, unknowingly at the time. Paul was trying to do his level best to make sure that the product that came out was a fair and balanced one.

He told us that ... even at the time, he wasn't aware about how politicized it was, but he was -- especially as he looks back on it, especially around the "white paper" -- really embarrassed, I think is the word he used at how faulty it was. Did it feel that way at the time, or does it just look that way in hindsight?

At the time there were a lot of concerns that it was being politicized by certain individuals within the administration that wanted to get that intelligence base that would justify going forward with the war.

Could I ask you who?

Some of the neocons that you refer to were determined to make sure that the intelligence was going to support the ultimate decision. Looking back on it now, as we put pieces together, it probably is apparent to some, including Paul, that it was much more politicized than in fact we realized. It wasn't a secret, though, at that time that there were certain people who were strong advocates of going to war, almost irrespective of what the intelligence was. ...

And Tenet, as that's all happening, what's it like for him? He's delivering the truth, and they're disregarding it apparently.

I think George had real concerns about where we were going with Iraq, and George was trying to figure out exactly what the appropriate role for him was in those policy discussions. He, I believe, went as far as he could as far as putting intelligence on the table. It's unfortunate the term "slam dunk" is one that has been now associated with George. The context of that discussion -- I leave it to people who were there.

But I think what George wanted to do was not to advocate war; it was to ensure that people understood the intelligence and that it was a difficult time. Should George have argued more strongly against some of those strong advocates? You'd have to ask George. ...

One of the things that [the administration does] right away is get lots of legal justifications lined up, from the Bybee memo [the so-called "torture memo"] to everything -- would there have been very much difference between what Tenet believed the CIA should do in terms of renditions and all of it? And what we can assume the vice president and the president and others would want the CIA to do? Was Tenet especially more careful, more cautious than they were sounding like they were?

I think George had two concerns. One is to make sure that there was that legal justification, as well as protection for CIA officers who are going to be engaged in some of these things, so that they would not be then prosecuted or held liable for actions that were being directed by the administration. So we want to make sure the findings and other things were done probably with the appropriate Department of Justice review.

But at the same time, there is a question about how aggressive you want to be against terrorism in terms of, what does it mean to take the gloves off? There was a real debate within the agency, including today, about what are the minimum standards that you want to stoop to and beyond where you're not going to go, because we don't want to stoop to using the same types of standards that terrorists use. We are in this business, whether it be intelligence or the government, to protect freedom, democracy and liberty, not to violate that.

When it comes to individuals who are determined to destroy our nation, though, we have to make sure that we take every possible measure. It's a tough ethical question, and it's a question that really needs to be aired more publicly. The issue of the reported domestic spying -- these are very healthy debates that need to take place. They can't be stifled, because I think that we as a country and a society have to determine what is it we want to do, whether it be eavesdropping, whether it be taking actions against individuals who are either known or suspected to be terrorists. What length do we want to go to? What measures do we want to use? What tactics do we want to use?

Hopefully, that "dark side" is not going to be something that's going to forever tarnish the image of the United States abroad and that we're going to look back on this time and regret some of the things that we did, because it is not in keeping with our values. ...

Sometimes there are actions that we are forced to take, but there need to be boundaries beyond which we are going to recognize that we're not going to go because we still are Americans, and we are supposed to be representing something to people in this country and overseas. So the dark side has its limits.

In the fall of 2002, there's the NIE. The president wants to give the speech ... in Cincinnati; it has the yellowcake stuff in it. [Tenet] fights and writes a couple of memos to get it taken out. We're on a kind of juggernaut to war here. The State of the Union coming up, and then there's going to be the U.N. speech by the secretary of state [Colin Powell]. How is Tenet through this period? Is he on a slippery slope? Does he know it? Is he waging a kind of back-channel war?

I think it was a very personal and pensive time for George, yeah. He, I think, asked himself whether or not he wanted to continue on that road and to be part of it. I think there was a lot of agonizing that George went through about what would be in the best interest of the country and national interest: Whether or not he would stay in that position and continue along a course that I think he had misgivings about, or whether or not his leadership of the agency at a very critical time -- still with the war on terrorism and knowing that we're going to be going into Iraq -- whether his greatest contribution to the country was to stay in position. I think he had some long nights that he thought over whether or not he was going to be perceived as part of this road going against Iraq.

[What about the use of the term] "slam dunk"?

Unfortunate use of term. I think what George was basically referring to was that John McLaughlin, who is an exceptional analyst and briefer, was presenting the case as best it could be. When there were challenges made to that case, in terms of "Is that all there is?," George had his natural tendency to sort of defend his deputy and say -- whether the term "slam dunk" was used or not, I don't know. But George wanted to make sure that John was the one to present it, because John was the consummate analyst; he could present it the way it needed to be presented, and whatever that discussion was that followed that briefing, that briefing still stood. ..

Did he believe the stuff that was in the NIE and the stuff that Powell ultimately said before the U.N.? ...

He had to rely on what the community provided to him in that estimate, the language that was in there, and so he wanted to make sure that that was going to be presented fairly. Did he know all the details under ... that whole report? Nobody did at that point, because it wasn't reinvestigated and revalidated. But he, I think, felt as though it was his appropriate place to stand behind or sit behind Secretary Powell at the U.N., because it was an intelligence case that was being made, and there were a lot of long, long nights that went over that material as best they could at the time, so that the legal brief or the intelligence brief could be presented to the world. ...

[Powell's Chief of Staff] Larry Wilkerson was telling us about what it was like when Tenet would call Powell after the hostilities and say: "We're not finding this. We don't have that. We don't know this." From Tenet's end of that conversation, how must that have been for him? Do you know?

It was difficult. I think everybody did assume that there was going to be things found in Iraq. When things were not found, for whatever reason, it was a surprise to a lot of people. I think George recognized that not only was he, George, out front on this issue as far as being the representative of the intelligence, but the CIA and the intelligence community was going to be called to task if it didn't pan out.

Clearly since the decision was made to go to war [and] it happened, it would have been good to find the stuff that was used as a justification for it. When things started to fall away, there was some real concern that, oh my goodness, the justification that was given to the world for going to war in Iraq, as weak as it might have been from a justification standpoint, pre-emptive war, the evidence that was used to support it was not accurate.

Were you ever with him when he got one of those calls from [then-head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) David] Kay or when he got the information that something wasn't working out? What did he say?

He would be a bit animated and talk about, "We're not finding the stuff that we thought we'd find," ... which really brought into question the strength of that intelligence. Any intelligence that's used to justify some type of policy course, after that course is taken, that intelligence is going to be scrutinized in terms of, how good was it? And something as major as this, everybody in the agency knew that if it didn't pan out that there was going to be hell to pay, and that the agency was going to be taken to task for it, and there were going to be implications for the agency. I think we've seen [that].

There are people, of course, in the Republican Party around the president who say, what you're witnessing here, especially now or starting in about 2004, is a war between the Central Intelligence Agency and certainly the office of the vice president. ... What do you say to that?

Different individuals from the CIA who are speaking out, they're doing it for a variety of reasons: Some very personal; some because they really believe that the institution of the CIA was greatly misused by some individuals within the administration. I think they feel that there has been almost a corruption of the intelligence process in many areas, and they're really concerned about it, not just because of what has happened in the past, but the future course.

There was a real lack of appreciation about the importance of maintaining that integrity and independence of the CIA, and they're coming to the defense of the CIA in terms of what it stands for and what it's supposed to stand for. A lot of people -- CIA veterans and others -- are concerned that we're going down a course that is not in the best interest of the country.

Intelligence transformation is very important. The CIA, in many respects, is responsible for not helping to shape its own future, and the CIA over the years has been quite isolated and insular, and they have ... a go-it-alone attitude, because they felt as though they could do it best. In many respects, they did.

But I don't think they read the writing on the wall after 9/11 in terms of trying to lead the community. I think they're resistant to a number of changes. A lot of the changes that have taken place have been done in a rather thoughtless manner and too fast, and so the intelligence function the CIA has played over the years is really now in question, and the future is quite uncertain as far as how this is going to play out in national security. ...

posted june 20, 2006

* Some highlights from this interview
* Pressures to deliver evidence supporting the case for war
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/interviews/brennan.html#1
* The 2002 National Intelligence Estimate
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/interviews/brennan.html#2
* Tenet's "slam dunk" comment to President Bush
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/interviews/brennan.html#3

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-------- Original Message --------

Subject: Resolution Opposing Bush Executive Orders
Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 22:39:36 -0700
From: Linda Boyd
To: Linda Boyd

FYI: Once again citizens beg congress to simply provide oversight. Is it too much to ask? -Linda

Humboldt County CA Dems Mull Resolution on Bush Assuming Dictatorial Powers in Emergency and Confiscating Americans' Assets

Submitted by Chip on Tue, 2007-08-07 01:37. Activism | Impeachment

HCDCC SCHEDULED TO CONSIDER RESOLUTION CALLING ON CONGRESS TO OVERTURN TWO EXECUTIVE ORDERS BY BUSH ALLOWING HIM TO ASSUME 'DICTATORIAL POWERS' AND VIOLATING CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF U.S CITIZENS

A resolution calling for Congress to overturn two recent Executive Orders issued by President George Bush that would allow him to assume "dictatorial powers" in time of a national emergency and confiscate the assets of anyone opposing the Iraq war--both in violation of the U.S. Constitution--has been drafted and added to the agenda of the Humboldt County Democratic Central Committee when it meets on Wednesday, Aug. 8, starting at 7 p.m. at its headquarters, 129 Fifth St., Eureka. The public is invited.

Although the news media--mainstream or alternative--have given little attention to the controversial Orders, the proposed HCDCC resolution asserts that they "could lead to an extraordinary, unprecedented and unconstitutional taking of legislative and judicial branch prerogatives at great costs to personal rights hard-won by generations of Americans."

Groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the conservative Cato Institute have expressed alarm over expansion of executive power through Executive Orders. The ACLU said in a statement that the July 17 Order "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq" contain "sweeping provisions (that) pose risks for residents of the United States and for humanitarian work in Iraq." A Policy Analysis written for the Cato Institute said in light of past Orders, “Congress needs to take more effective action to check presidential usurpations of legislative power and restore the constitutional structure of government...if we are to be saved from...autocracy."

One scholar argues that the Orders violate citizens' constitutional rights to freedom of speech, protection against unreasonable searches and seizure without probable cause and guarantees that no person shall be deprive of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

The resolution urges Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Mike Thompson and "all other publicly elected office holders, regardless of political affiliation, to commit the full strength of their resolve and influence to protecting the rights of all United States citizens by reversing these Executive Orders and constraining Presidential authority to within its constitutional limits by whatever legal means available."

The resolution:

RESOLUTION OPPOSING BUSH EXECUTIVE ORDERS THAT VIOLATE U.S. CONSTITUTION and CALLING FOR PUBLIC ACTION

Whereas President George W. Bush has issued two executive orders and the CIA has published a National Intelligence Estimate during the past three months that could lead to an extraordinary, unprecedented and unconstitutional taking of legislative and judicial branch prerogatives at great costs to personal rights hard-won by generations of Americans, and

WHEREAS, on May 9, 2007, Bush issued a major presidential National Security Directive (National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51/HSPD 20), which would allow him to "take over all government functions and direct all private sector activities" (1) and "suspend constitutional government and instate broad dictatorial powers under martial law in the case of a "Catastrophic Emergency" (2), defined in the Directive as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions," and

WHEREAS, National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601-1651) requires the President to declare formally the existence of a national emergency and to specify what statutory authority, activated by the declaration, would be used; and provides Congress with a means to countermand the President's declaration and the activated authority being sought, according to a Congressional report (3), and

WHEREAS, the May 9, 2007, Directive "appears to supersede the National Emergencies Act by creating the new position of National Continuity Coordinator without any specific act of Congress authorizing the position" and "makes no reference whatsoever to Congress" (4), and

WHEREAS, on July 11, 2007, the CIA published its "National Intelligence Estimate," which pointed to an imminent Al Qaeda attack on America, a second 9/11 which, according to the terms of NSPD 51, "would immediately be followed by the suspension of constitutional government and the instatement of martial law under the authority of the president and the vice-president" (5), and

WHEREAS, on July 17, 2007, Bush issued "Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq," which provides the President with "the authority to confiscate the assets of whoever opposes the US-led war," serving to criminalize the antiwar movement and making opposition to the war an illegal act, (6) by "authorizing the Treasury Department to freeze and confiscate the assets of anyone determined "'to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing' acts of violence with the 'purpose or effect' of hindering the Iraqi government or reconstruction efforts," authorizing "the freezing of assets of anyone who provides 'material support' to such a person or group, whether or not the person's support was knowing or intentional” and by “expressly prohibit(ing) even donations of 'food, clothing, and medicine intended to be used to relieve human suffering,'" (7) and

WHEREAS, the American Civil Liberties Union believes the Order's "sweeping provisions pose risks for residents of the United States and for humanitarian work in Iraq," "could have a serious chilling effect on charitable contributions intended to ease the suffering in Iraq," "reaches far beyond criminal activity to activity that may be entirely innocent," and that a "person may find herself inadvertently in violation of this order and there is no provision for judicial review," (8), and

WHEREAS, the conservative Cato Institute has issued a Policy Analysis on “Executive Orders and National Emergencies” that states “Congress needs to take more effective action to check presidential usurpations of legislative power and restore the constitutional structure of government,” “if we are to be saved from ...autocracy,” and “Congress has such power..to modify or revoke all presidential directives except those undertaken pursuant to constitutional powers, such as the power to pardon, that are vested in the president, (9)

WHEREAS, the July 17 Executive Order "violates the First (guaranteeing freedom of speech), Fourth (prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizure without warrants based on probable cause) and Fifth (ensuring no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law) Amendments of the US Constitution" and "repeals one of the fundamental tenets of US democracy, which is the right to free expression and dissent," (10) and violates the rule of law in America ensuring the innocence of the accused until proven guilty by empowering the Bush Administration to seize a person's property, if found to "pose a significant risk of committing an act of violence," even if no act whatsoever has been committed,

WHEREAS, together, these Orders and National Intelligence Estimate have been characterized by one expert as "ultimately geared towards repealing constitutional government and installing martial law in the event of a 'national emergency,'" (11),

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Humboldt County Democratic Central Committee condemns actions by George W. Bush to deprive the American people of their constitutional rights and bestow on himself the right to assume dictatorial powers,

AND FURTHER BE IT RESOLVED, that the Humboldt County Democratic Committee urgently requests United States Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, Representative Mike Thompson and all other publicly elected office holders, regardless of political affiliation, to commit the full strength of their resolve and influence to protecting the rights of all United States citizens by reversing these Executive Orders and constraining Presidential authority to within its constitutional limits by whatever legal means available.

(1) by Jerome R. Corsi, who received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science and has written many books and articles, including his latest best seller, "The Late Great USA."

(2) by Michel Chossudovsky, the author of the international best seller, America's "War on Terrorism" Second Edition, Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization.

(3) , "National
Emergency Powers Updated," Nov. 13, 2006.

(4) ibid, Corsi.

(5) ibid, Chossudovsky.

(6) ibid, Chossudovsky.

(7) "ACLU Says Executive Order 'Material
Support' Provision Sweeps Too Broadly and Will Restrict Humanitarian
Efforts in Iraq," July 27, 2007, .

(8) ibid, ACLU.

(9) Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 358, “Executive Orders and National Emergencies: How Presidents Have Come to ‘Run the Country’ by Usurping Legislative Power,” by William J. Olson and Alan Woll, .

(10) ibid, Chossudovsky.

(11) ibid, Chossudovsky.

VIDEO: Olbermann to Bush: "Your Hypocrisy Is So Vast"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092107A.shtml
Keith Olbermann says on "MSNBC Countdown": "In pimping General David Petraeus and in the violation of everything this country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have tried to blur the gleaming radioactive demarcation between the military and the political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military, and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it. You did it again today and you need to know how history will judge the line you just crossed. It is a line thankfully only the first of a series that makes the military political, and the political, military. It is a line which history shows is always the first one crossed when a democratic government in some other country has started down the long, slippery, suicidal slope towards a Military Junta."

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The message below is from VFP Member Bud Deraps, who lost his youngest grandson this past weekend in Fallujah. We are all keeping his family in our thoughts and prayers.

WHAT ARE WE DOING TO OUR OWN IN OUR WARS?   5-08-06

    Amid mounting casualty rates and suffering both here and abroad,the majority of Americans are beginning to voice their opposition to our disastrous invasions and senseless killings.

      A Mar. 10 report from the Congressional Research Service stated that the cost of our two wars will rise 44% this year to $9.8 billion dollars a month. (1) This is a massive $230,000 dollars every minute of every day. Over a decade ago, we bankrupted Russia with military spending and now,we have found a guaranteed way to bankrupt ourselves.

      Meanwhile, as General Pace assures the nation that things are going well, the military is frantically trying to meet recruitment needs using all means possible. The Pentagon has spent over $70 million dollars with private market research firms and has amassed information on over 30 million Americans between the ages of 16 to 23. (2) They have added 25% more recruiters in some areas and raised enlistment age to 39. In Sept. of 2005 ,there was a maximum joining bonus of $90,000 paid over 3 years with $20,000 in cash and $70,000 in benefits. It may be higher now.

  In addition, it costs about $14,000 to sign up each   recruit. A few years ago over 20% of   recruits were Black or Latino. Today, despite all those tempting incentives, it is now down to near 14%. (3) At the present time, about 30,000, or 7% of our troops are not citizens.

    We read that the government is now in the process of criminalizing the hiring of undocumented Latinos. This, while at the same time, our military recruiters are scouring Latin American countrysides to recruit young men to fight and die for Uncle Sam and apply for citizenship the day they enlist.

      I frequently leaflet at our city high schools, where nearly all the students are of the minority. These are some of the sharpest kids I have ever met and it is clear that they know very well that they are only being used as cannon fodder in a poverty draft. Over 20,000 highly paid mercenaries are now serving on our behalf.

      In 2005, 15% of recruits were on waivers, most for medical reasons, but some with misdemeanor convictions or more serious criminal misconduct such as aggravated assault, robbery and making terrorist threats according to data provided by the Army. If you or I make a terrorist threat, we'll to jail, not the Army. (4)

    The Military has spent over $45 million dollars producing and distributing violent video games including the popular "America's Army". Since July, 2002, it has 4.6 million registered players and adds 100,000 new ones every month. (5)

    Just how does the military take a young American who has grown up being told Thou Shall Not Kill and turn them into willing and obedient killers?

    First, they and their parents must be made to believe the war is justified and necessary. Fear must be instilled in their hearts and minds by fabricating reasons to achieve and maintain that fear. We hear our enemy is a threat to us and their neighbors. That they have weapons of mass destruction to use against us. That their leader is such a threat he must be removed.

    It is essential that some act of terror targets our nation so that we have someone to blame, even if it is necessary to provoke that action ourselves. Look back in history at our former wars and you will see that this is a centuries old practice.

    Our proposed enemy must be demonized.   Our troops and public must be desensitized to the point they will support and accept the carnage, killing, and suffering that will follow.

    Consider Marine Boot Camp. Retired Drill Sgt. Chris White revealed some of the march cadenses they used. "Blood Makes the Grass Grow, Kill, Kill, Kill," or "Throw Some Candy In The School Yard. Watch The Children Gather Round. Load A Belt In Your M60. Mow Them Little Bastards Down." or even "We're Gonna Rape, Kill, Pillage And Burn, Gonna Rape, Kill, Pillage And Burn." (6)

    Marine General Maltis said at a San Diego Forum- "It's fun to shoot some people." Fun for who, general?

    My youngest grandson, Leon, grew up in a tiny Mo. town playing violent killing video games including America's Army. At 17, he joined the marines and on graduation at 18, went off to boot-camp, proudly following in the foot steps of his dad, Dale, who was a marine during the Vietnam war, but served only in the states.

    Recruiting psychological operations are so refined today that despite what negative war news does appear in the media, instilled strong faith in God and country, often overshadows the   tragic reality and result of our wars.

    In the year before his leaving for boot camp, I began sending articles on what was really happening to our troops and their condition on returning home. Telling them Leon could legally back out of his enlistment until the first day of boot-camp and taking the oath to serve.   I was forbidden to send any more material.

    Their support endured until the middle of the night of May 6th, when two Marines knocked on Dales's door to sadly inform them that Leon had been killed in Fallujah by a roadside bomb.

    My greatest fear now, is that their extreme grief and suffering will be doubled, knowing that his serving could have been prevented.

    Let us examine why recruiting has become more difficult , as more of the following facts become known by the public. Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 states that of the 580,400 US troops that served in the 6 week 1991 Gulf war, 11,000 were dead by year 2000 and 325,000 were on permanent medical disability from either physical, or emotional injuries. This despite the fact that Official US records show that only 269 died in combat and only 457 were wounded in that war.

    A Veterans Administration official reported that by 2001, disabled veterans from all wars totaled 2.5 million. This is a greater number than even after WW2.

    I will give you just 2 examples of what countless thousands of veterans are coming home to. Reporter G. Hladky, New Haven Register, 02-11-05 interviewed Ms. M. Sterry, a Conn. National Guard Veteran. She had suffered 3 heart attacks, 2 heart surgeries, chronic fatigue, aches and rashes. She said "There were 8 of us that served together. Now 6 of my friends are dead." Their job in Iraq was to clean out tanks and equipment destroyed by our Depleted Uranium, (DU) weapons with no protective clothing. (7)

    Dr. Andras K-Both, a Gulf War Syndrome researcher has a son who had been a part of the 2003 assault from Kuwait to Baghdad. From his unit of 20 men, 8 now have "malignant cancer growths." (8) Nearly all experts, except the US Government say this is the result of their exposure to the remains of our Depleted Uranium weapons that have saturated that suffering country.

    The World Health Organization reported that over a 100,000 Iraqis, most of them children, have died from many different types of cancer. >From 1990 to 1999, the cancer rate for children rose 242% in S. Iraq alone. Birth defects increased 10 fold from 1989 to 2001. (9)

    I was in Iraq in 2001 with a Veterans for Peace team that was rebuilding sewer polluted water plants in the Basra area. We visited a number of hospitals, one in particular, a childrens hospital that also delivered babies. It was overflowing with dying children, each one accompanied by a relative.

    Due to the sanctions, lacking most of the medicines needed to treat them, the head doctor said they would all die there. He went on to show us dozens of pictures, some of the hundreds of babies being born there with extreme birth defects.

    Do you realize that our loved ones in Iraq, are exposed to the very same conditions that are killing and maiming countless thousands of innocent Iraqi people?

    Do you also know that prior to 1990, under Saddam, Iraq had one of the most advanced, educated, healthy, and socially equal nations in the entire Mid-East and the 3 ethnic regions enjoyed complete religious freedom?

    I have been in contact with the Birth Defect Research Assn. in Florida where they did a study of over 30 specific defects and their occurrence among US Iraq veteran parents and the average American parent.

    They found that a veteran parented 2 to 3 times more defected children than the average in many cases. A Mississippi news reporter interviewed a 251 person unit that returned from the Gulf War. She found that over 60% of them had parented a child with some birth defect while all born prior to deployment were normal. (10)

    Would you believe that physical injuries are not the major problem facing Vets returning today? It is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder affecting more than   one out of three.

    PTSD can affect not only psychologically injured Vets, but also those with severe brain trauma and all major lifelong bodily injuries like loss of limbs.

    A recent 3 month study at Walter Reed Army Hospital reported that 67% of their patients were suffering brain injuries from bomb concussions, vehicle, or other accidents. (11)

    Veteran medical centers treated 317,000 veterans in 2005 for PTSD. This figure is easier to understand when re read a July 2004 study by the New England Journal of Medicine of 894 returned Army Troops from Iraq. They found that 93% had been shot at or received small arms fire. 48% had been responsible for the death of an enemy combatant. 14% had been responsible for the death of a noncombatant, 50% had handled, or uncovered dead bodies. 86% knew someone seriously injured, or killed and 14% had been wounded or injured themselves. (12)

    Before the 2003 war began, the Dept. of Defense budgeted for 23,500 that may need care. By the end of 2004, 103,000 had already applied for treatment. The centers are overwhelmed and this explains the long waits to get in and the extreme frustration shared by so many.

    Over 8000 have deserted since this war began and 72% of the troops want it ended within a year. The great majority   serving now believe all this carnage and killing is unjust and unnecessary.(13) 45% of our troops are on their second tour with 29% on the third. (14) Under the "stop-loss" provision, 50,000 troops have been forced into extended duty. (15)

    Rick Rogers, a San Diego newsman with the Union Tribune 3-19-06 reported that many mentally ill service members are being returned to combat. Besides bringing antibiotics and painkillers, many are leaving with antidepressant and anti-anxiety medicines. Rogers also said that Steve Robinson, director of the National Gulf War Resource Center told him that three Army doctors told him they were pressured by their commanders NOT to identify mental conditions that would prevent troops from being deployed. They were told to diagnose combat stress reaction instead of PTSD. That keeps the troops deployable and it makes it harder for them to collect disability claims once they get out of the military.

    More than 435,000 US troops have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but defense officials say they do not keep tract of those deployed while taking these medicines, or the number diagnosed with mental illness. However, they do admit that between 1999 and 2004, disabilities payments to veterans with PTSD rose to $4.3 billion dollars from $1.7 billion.

    Can you think of anything more criminal than sending these frightened, drugged souls back to the terror that destroyed their emotions in the first place?

    Far too many of our loved ones are returning home to a disabled life of alcohol, drugs, depression, rage, suicide, homicide,joblessness, homelessness, divorce and some to jail.

    Many have said they wish they had died over there.

    It is long past the time when ALL Americans must stand together and demand an end to this criminal inhumanity.

    "Heat not a furnace for your foe, so hot, that it do singe yourself" --Wm. Shakespeare.1600s.

"Beyond PTSD, The Moral Casualties of War" by Camillo "Mac" Bica, Part I, "Beyond PTSD, the Moral Casualties of War", Part II, ...Programming Our Children to Kill, Part Three, ...War Crazy: "In Part One and Part Two of this article, I asked the reader to utilize her ability to think and offered a theoretical analysis of what I termed “moral casualties.” I argued that as soldiers experience the horror and cruelty of war, especially guerrilla/counterinsurgency war such as was the case in Vietnam and now in Iraq, the moral gravity of their actions – displacing, torturing, injuring, and killing other human being – becomes apparent and problematic. As a consequence, soldiers suffer not only the effects of trauma, but from debilitating remorse, guilt, shame, disorientation, and alienation from the remainder of the moral community – moral injuries. In this installment, in the hope of providing a more complete picture of the psychological, emotional, and moral impact of war, I will offer, not theoretical analysis, but personal observations regarding the aftermath of war. In doing so, I will ask the reader not to think so much as to feel. ..."

More by Camillo "Mac" Bica http://www.bestcyrano.org/bicaCamillo.htm

Also see the set at the JGP Library of the Virtual us Peace Academy

                                                              ~~~    

For a comprehensive overview of the Iraq wars-

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MOR407A.html

http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml

(1) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=q000001&refer==topworldnews&sid==ak3gHkUGPtpY

(2) Vermont Guardian Jan. 17,2006 Mining for Kids

(3) http://www.zmag.org/content/printarticle.cfm?itemID=ƒ99&sectionD==1

(4) Baltimore Sun Mar.8 2006 Army Increases Recruiting etc.

(5) http:www.recruitmenteducation.org/readings/infocards0102.html

(6) CounterPunch Oct. 23,2002   Why I Oppose the US War etc.

(7) New Haven Register 2-11-05 Gulf War vet testifies on radiation.

(8) http://www.gulfwarvets.com/du cancerclusters.htm

(9) http://.who.int?features/2003/iraq briefing note/en/index1.html

(10) http:globalresearch.ca/articles/MOR407A.html

(11) Free New Mexican Nov. 27 2005 War in Iraq: Number of Brain Injuries etc.

(12) NEJM Hoge et al.351   (1): 13. Table 2   July 1 ,2004

(13) USA TODAY   Mar. 6, 2006   8000 Desert During Iraq War

(14) http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-1/579 02 WeWantOut.shtml

(15) http://www.mothersagainstthedraft.org/index.php?option==comcontent&task==view&id=p1&Itemid=.3

Bud Deraps.   WW2 Navy Veteran.   Member of Veterans for Peace
6605 Clayton Ave. #203
St. Louis, Mo. 63139
314 645 0883
peacebud@earthlink.net

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4/3/06, 4/12/06, 04/13/06, 04/17/06,
4/23/06, 8/24/06, 10/16/06, 11/5/06

      VIDEO's      

Sent: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 03:03:18 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [vfp-all] Generals Coming Out

Speaking Out Several former generals have criticized Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on his Iraq war strategy. Retired Major General John Batiste comments. realaudio
 
Read Transcript Here and also Listen: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june06/iraq_4-13.html

Listen Here: http://media.pbs.org/ramgen/newshour/expansion/2006/04/13/20060413_iraq28.rm?altplay=20060413_iraq28.rm

Hi Al and all,
        More re: "It is our responsibility to inform our soldiers - of their right and their responsibility - to bring this conflict to an end." :

    Below are a few samples of support references (annotated Ref/Links, I call them) for getting points across. Presented with strategic timing if/when/as appropriate, depending on who you're talking with. With some time, I'm sure many more could be found.
      -Chris Pringer

===== Military Resistance to War, Some Support References =====

Murtha Lays the Dead at Rumsfeld's Door
Jason Leopold Truthout .Org
Democratic congressman John Murtha has released a 12-page report outlining severe shortfalls plaguing the US Army as thousands of troops prepare to be deployed to Iraq. Murtha said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bears full responsibility for the military's consistent readiness failures and demanded that he resign.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091506J.shtml

===================

MURTHA PREDICTS U.S. PULLOUT FROM IRAQ [or Democratic control of House by 2007]
By Kimberly Hefling   Associated Press May 12, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/11/AR2006051101235.html
          "Rep. John Murtha, a Vietnam veteran first elected in the anti-war fever of 1974, says American troops will be brought home from Iraq by 2007..."
===================
VIDEO's:   Murtha and Generals Coming Out

Murtha on Patriotism and the Cost of the War An Interview by Geoffrey Millard and Scott Galindez In Part 2 of our interview with Congressman John Murtha, we ask him about the attacks on his patriotism, the cost of the war, and his opposition to permanent bases in Iraq.   http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm

Speaking Out Several former generals have criticized Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on his Iraq war strategy. Retired Major General John Batiste comments. realaudio
Read Transcript Here and also Listen: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june06/iraq_4-13.html

http://media.pbs.org/ramgen/newshour/expansion/2006/04/13/20060413_iraq28.rm?altplay=20060413_iraq28.rm

==================

Reports on intra-military debate on Rumsfeld-related issues
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4396/
    * YOUNG OFFICERS JOIN THE DEBATE OVER RUMSFELD By Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt
New York Times April 23, 2006 Section 1, Page 1
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/washington/23military.html

from Commentary by Mark Jensen:
... Historian Chalmers Johnson has written:   "The old and well-institutionalized American division of labor between elected officials and military professionals who advised elected officials and then executed their policies was dismantled [after Vietnam], never to be recreated.   During the Reagan administration, an ever-burgeoning array of amateur strategists and star-wars enthusiasts came to occupy the White House and sought to place their allies in positions of authority in the Pentagon.   The result was the development of a kind of military opportunism at the heart of government, with military men paying court to the pet schemes of inexperienced politicians and preparing for lucrative postretirement positions in the arms industry or military think tanks.   Top military leaders began to say what they thought their political superiors wanted to hear, while covertly protecting the interests of their individual services or of their minifiefdoms within those services.   The military establishment increasingly became a gigantic cartel, operated to benefit the four principal services -- the army, navy, Marine Corps, and air force -- much the way the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) functions to maintain the profits of each of its members. Shares of the defense budget for each service have not varied by more than 2 percent over the past twenty-five years, during which time the Soviet Union collapse and the United States fought quite varied wars in Panama, Kuwait, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.   Military needs did not dictate this stability" (*The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic* [Metropolitan Books, 2004], pp. 61-62).   --Mark[]
===================

REVOLT OF THE GENERALS   By Richard J. Whalen, Nation
October 16, 2006 (posted Sept. 28)
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061016/whalen

===================

statements by Rep. John Murtha, including:
      U.S. lawmaker John Murtha, who retired as a colonel after 37 years in the Marine Corps, said nothing indicates that the Iraqis killed in the incident were at fault. Murtha is a harsh critic of the war in Iraq and said that such incidents are the result of inadequate planning, training, and troop numbers in Iraq. "...they actually went into the houses and killed women and children. ...Our troops over-reacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood ...It shows the tremendous pressure these guys are under every day when they're out in combat and the stress and consequences."
      excerpted from:
    * MARINES KILLED IRAQI CIVILIANS 'IN COLD BLOOD': U.S. LAWMAKER
AFP May 17, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060518/wl_mideast_afp/usiraqrightsmarines

    * PENTAGON REPORT SAID TO FIND KILLING OF IRAQI CIVILIANS DELIBERATE
By Drew Brown, Knight Ridder May 17, 2006
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/14604341.htm

===================

From the West Point Graduates Against the War Statement of Purpose:
          "...When we West Point graduates took our commissioning oath of office one past June morning, we swore to protect our nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The deceitful connivances of the current administration have resulted in a war catastrophic to our nation's interests: politically, economically, militarily, and morally. We now stand to protect our nation from these deceivers. We will not serve their lies..."
        http://www.westpointgradsagainstthewar.org/ourpurpose_2.htm
===================

WATADA WATCH: Account of hearing & statement by Boyle published
[snow-news] 8/24/2006 1:13 AM jensenmk@plu.edu
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5012/
                includes:
        WAR CRIMES By Eli Sanders
** Last Week, in a Small Hearing Room at Fort Lewis, a Young Soldier Put the Iraq War on Trial **
Stranger (Seattle, WA) August 24-30, 2006
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=57019
              and
STATEMENT ON BEHALF OF LT. ERHEN WATADA By Francis A. Boyle
** An Archetypal American Hero **
CounterPunch August 23, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/boyle08232006.html

===================

How GI Resistance Altered The Course Of History:
“Sir, No Sir," A Timely Film, Premiers Week of 4/3/2006
by Paul Rockwell Oakland, California
        http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/opin/pr_sirnosir.html

==================

REVOLT OF THE GENERALS by Richard J. Whalen

from Commentary by Mark Jensen:
        Writing in the Oct. 16, 2006, number of the *Nation*, author Richard J. Whalen called attention to a "revolt . . . brewing among our retired Army and Marine generals."[1]   --   Among the leaders:   Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack Jr. and Maj. Gen. John Batiste, both of whom commanded forces in Iraq, and both of whom "recently sacrificed their careers by retiring and joining the public protest" against the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- a movement that is, according to Whalen, "unprecedented in American history."   --   Whalen has personal experience of what it is like to be on the inside in the midst of a strategic débâcle:   forty years ago, he was on the staff of President Richard Nixon and was involved in planning to end the Vietnam war.   --   Whalen favors Karen Kwiatkowski's view that "The retired generals' revolt may be inspired by their apprehension over a wider Mideast conflict spreading to potentially nuclear Iran," and goes on to endorse the increasingly heard view that the U.S. must engage in discussions with Iran with a view to reaching agreement on security in the Persian Gulf region.   --   As part of the aftermath of the Iraqi débâcle, Whalen foresees an "inevitable post-Iraq War tsunami of U.S. political recrimination."   --   Thanks to Todd Boyle for sending this piece.

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5214/

REVOLT OF THE GENERALS
By Richard J. Whalen
Nation, October 16, 2006 (posted Sept. 28)
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061016/whalen

==================

General Zinni's retirement related to what National Security Archive now revealed:   Pentagon knew from 1999 on that invasion and occupation of Iraq would entail disaster

"They knew Iraq was not a cakewalk knew we would not be liberators"
by Margie Burns | Nov 5 2006 - 8:05am
http://www.margieburns.com/
Margie Burns is a freelance journalist in the D.C. area with a blog at MargieBurns.com.

      ...The National Security Archive now reveals that the Pentagon knew from 1999 on that invasion and occupation of Iraq would entail disaster.   Through a FOIA request, the National Security Archive has obtained documents of "Desert Crossing" war games conducted by CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command) in April 1999 to assess outcomes of invading Iraq. Outcomes were not rosy.   As the NSArchive introduction observes, "Some of these conclusions are interestingly similar to the events which actually occurred after Saddam was overthrown.."   ...forewarned ... "rival forces bidding for power" ..."fragmentation along religious and/or ethnic lines" and antagonize "aggressive neighbors." ... An exit strategy, the report said, would also be complicated by differing visions for a post-Saddam Iraq among those involved in the conflict."
        ... General Zinni, who retired after the war games, tried unsuccessfully to remind the current administration about Desert Crossing. In an act of political heroism, he went public with some of his concerns. Aside from other problems, "the former CENTCOM commander noted that his plan had called for a force of 400,000 for the invasion -- 240,000 more than what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved. "We were concerned about the ability to get in there right away, to flood the towns and villages," USA Today quoted Zinni as saying in July 2003. "We knew the initial problem would be security."
        ...Even couched in the value-neutral language of bureaucracy, the conclusions of the report are horrifying: "The dimensions of preparing a post-Saddam policy for Iraq and the region are vast and complex. Early preparation of a political-military plan as called for in Presidential Decision Directive 56 should be a priority. The accompanying policy debate will expose a variety of contentious positions that must be reconciled and managed. Key discussion points include: benefits and risks associated with various strategic options; information requirements; and the likelihood that intervention will be costly in terms of casualties and resources."

===================

‘Army Times' calls for Rumsfeld's dismissal
November 5, 2006

from Commentary by Mark Jensen:
        An editorial to be published Monday by *Army Times* calls for the dismissal of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and denounces the American plan to create an Iraqi army capable of tending to the security of Iraqis as unrealizable:   “[T]he problem of molding a viciously sectarian population into anything resembling a force for national unity has become a losing proposition."[1]   --   *Army Times* portrays Rumsfeld as a leader who has lost the confidence of the men he is supposed to lead. --   The editorial also asserts that “many [of the nation's currently military leaders] privately feared [the Iraq war] would fail" but “have kept their counsel private, adhering to more than two centuries of American tradition of subordination of the military to civilian authority."   --   Now, *Army Times* asserts, “although that tradition, and the officers' deep sense of honor, prevent them from saying this publicly, more and more of them believe [that the war is a failure]."     --   The editorial places the blame for the failure squarely on the shoulders of Rumsfeld (whose incompetence, it will be recalled, is the controlling thesis of Bob Woodward's recent bestseller, *State of Denial*).   --“[T}he blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary," the editorial concludes.   --   “Donald Rumsfeld must go."   --   It's remarkable and welcome that *Army Times* questions “the war's planning, execution, and dimming prospects for success," but we wish it would dig a little deeper and acknowledge, as Lt. Ehren Watada has done, the war's illegal and immoral character...

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5255/

Editorial
TIME FOR RUMSFELD TO GO
Army Times
November 6, 2006 (posted Nov. 5)
http://armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2333360.php

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10/20/06, 10/22/06, 10/26/06, 10/31/06, 11/2/06, 11/4/06

[Most via The Guardian 11/5/06]

Field Officers Questioning Authority

Films
                * <http://film.guardian.co.uk/Film_Page/0,,-99441,00.html>Hearts, Minds And Body Parts: The Secret Cinema Of US Military Propaganda

From Blackhawk to ballot box - war veterans take fight to Republicans
                * Guardian, Saturday November 4 2006
                * Suzanne Goldenberg in Elk Grove, Illinois
Tammy Duckworth steers her wheelchair across the checkerboard floor of the diner, past the men hunched over their eggs at the counter, to a table where a woman in a lime green sweater is blinking nervously at the four television cameras heading her way. "It's a little crazy, isn't it," Ms Duckworth laughs, and toys with the bracelets on her wrist. Then, at machine-gun speed, (...)

==============

US general says Abu Ghraib forced him out
                * Guardian Unlimited, Thursday November 2 2006
                * Mark Tran
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1937962,00.html
The former top US commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, has blamed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal for his early retirement at the age of 55. "That's the key reason, the sole reason, that I was forced to retire," Gen Sanchez told the Monitor, a Texas newspaper. General Sanchez, the senior US military officer in Iraq in 2003-04, was effectively exonerated along (...) (...) Sanchez told the Monitor, a Texas newspaper. General Sanchez, the senior US military officer in Iraq in 2003-04, was effectively exonerated along with several (...)
=================

Los Angeles Times reports that growing numbers of US Military Officers have been questioning the White House...

Iraq insurgents trying to sway US voters, says Cheney
                * Guardian Unlimited, Tuesday October 31 2006
                * Mark Tran and agencies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1935868,00.html
The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, yesterday said insurgents in Iraq were stepping up attacks in an attempt to influence voters in next week's US midterm elections. Mr Cheney - one of the main architects of the war in Iraq - said fighters had increased the level of violence and were monitoring US public opinion on the internet. "It's my belief that they're very sensitive of (...) (...) Iraq." However, the Los Angeles Times today reported that growing numbers of US Military Officers have been questioning the White House...
=================

Soldiers sign online lobby for withdrawal
                * Guardian, Thursday October 26 2006
                * Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1931521,00.html
It is a common enough sentiment in a politically charged electoral season: bring the troops home. But this time the demand is coming not from politicians and activists safe at home, but from troops on active service. An online petition aims to collect the signatures of American troops in Iraq opposed to the war and pass their grievance to members of Congress in January. The (...) (...) their Congressional Representative and US Senators to urge an end to the US military occupation." While serving officers are barred from denouncing the president (...)

=================

We've lost battle for Baghdad, US admits
                * Guardian, Friday October 20 2006
                * Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1926963,00.html
A day after George Bush conceded for the first time that America may have reached the equivalent of a Tet offensive in Iraq, the Pentagon yesterday admitted defeat in its strategy of securing Baghdad. The admission from President Bush that the US may have arrived at a turning point in this war - the Tet offensive led to a massive loss of confidence in the American presence in (...) (...) its entire security plan for the capital, Major General William Caldwell, a US military spokesman, said yesterday. "The violence is, indeed, disheartening," he told (...)
=================October 22 2006October 31 2006

Fears over huge growth in Iraq's unregulated private armies
                * Guardian, Tuesday October 31 2006
                * Richard Norton-Taylor
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1935676,00.html
A huge increase in the number of unregulated private military and security companies operating in Iraq and Afghanistan is driving concern about the lack of regulation and constraints on their activities. There are three British private security guards to every British soldier in Iraq, the charity War on Want said yesterday. At least 181 private military and security companies (...) (...) on Want said yesterday that civilian contractors - including men named in US military reports as having carried out abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib (...)
=================

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1928670,00.html>How Iraq came home to haunt America
                * Observer, Sunday October 22 2006
                * Peter Beaumont, Edward Helmore and Gaby Hinsliff
Colonel Tom Vail is planning a road trip around the United States. It is his last, sad duty before returning to his family from eastern Baghdad. For when the commander of the 4th Brigade of the 101st Airborne arrives back in the States, it will be with videos of the memorial services held in Baghdad for each of his fallen soldiers to give to the families of the dead men. He (...) (...) of Vail's unit and others, backed by thousands of Iraqi troops, the US military leadership in Baghdad has been forced to admit that attacks (...)

To TOP    of PAGE Related Links & Political Reference Page Set           Support Winter Soldier II: Iraq & Afghanistan           On March 13-16, 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War members gathered near Washington DC to disclose the realities of U.S. war policy, to share eyewitness stories that have been censored from the American public about the true human cost of these occupations. They need your support! There are many ways to help. There will continue to be live audio/video feeds from the Washington DC hearings available to present at your local event. Listen to Audio Clips from Participating Veterans! Read and sign the Winter Soldier Statement of Support here, and encourage friends, family, coworkers and members of your group to sign it as well. "...We Support the Troops Who Oppose the War: Truth, honesty and integrity are essential components to a functioning democracy...".           Besides the IVAW: Iraq Veterans Against The War, more new groups we are so happy to see formed are Veterans Against The Iraq War, and West Point Grads Against The War .Org! Another new outfit is the World Veterans Federation. And lastly, but actually FIRST among the veterans of questioning authority, are the much appreciated VVAW- Vietnam Veterans Against The War!           *Iraq Veterans Against the War* Speak Out, VIDEOs (Google Src Results -LOTS)           Military/War/Anti-War/Sexual VIDEOs (Google Src Results): Probably one of the most powerful of these is of April Fitzimmons, Intelligence Analyst, USAF. A Comment at YouTube: "Thank you for posting this. It is truly amazing. She has real courage. 'My biggest enemy was my own company', just what Suzanne Swift said. This is something that anyone even considering joining the military needs to see, especially women. Winter Soldier II promotional postcards are now available without charge.           Lt. Ehren Watada Lt. Ehren Watada became the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse deployment to the unlawful war and occupation in Iraq (with the Fort Lewis-based 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division). While doing this on June 22, 2006, Watada said, "As the order to take part in an illegal act is ultimately unlawful as well, I must refuse that order." Watada’s commander added a seventh count to the six he already faced for remarks Watada made in a speech Aug. 12 at the Veterans for Peace national convention in Seattle. see Watada Speech at Veterans for Peace convention August 2006 and related articles ("Iraq combat vets explain support for Lt. Watada," "GI resistance is a growing trend," and "We were conditioned to hate them") at the 'Thank You Lt. Watada web site'             and                 PepperSpray Productions announces the release of "He Stood UP" a DVD about the mistrial of Lt. Ehren Watada. To get more info, or to order the DVD online, go to http://www.peppersprayproductions.org/videos.htm (is Also available at Alliance for Democracy video Lending Library- check out the library at http://www.sounddemocracy.org/ -- click on “lending library” in Left Column)           CITIZENS’ HEARING ON THE LEGALITY OF U.S. ACTIONS IN IRAQ: Hearing held over January 20-21, 2007, more than 600 citizens joined a distinguished tribunal panel in listening to testimony about the legality of the US invasion of Iraq. The Citizens' Hearing was convened to present evidence that Lt. Ehren Watada would have presented in his February 5 court martial on the question that the military ruled barred from entry on Jan. 16 - the question of the Iraq War's legality. Testifiers included experts in military policy, international law and war crimes: * Daniel Ellsberg Military analyst who released the Pentagon Papers in the Vietnam War; * Denis Halliday Former UN Assistant Secretary-General, coordinated Iraq humanitarian aid; * Richard Falk Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University; * Antonia Juhasz Policy-analyst and author on U.S. economic policies in Iraq; * John Burroughs Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy Executive Director; * Benjamin G. Davis Assoc. Prof. of Law, University of Toledo; expert on law of war; * Francis Boyle Professor of international law at Univ. of Illinois (video). * Marjorie Cohn National Lawyers' Guild President; Thomas Jefferson law school (video) If the slot below is blank, please see icasualties.org   "History Repeats Itself Clear and Present Danger, Analysis of CPD and PNAC" by Candi Crider (2/4/07) -- A comparative analysis between four different groups that arose within the US government and had the purpose of influencing foreign policy in this country, incl. Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) and Project for a New American Century (PNAC)      (at http://www.chalicebridge.com/PNACandPresentDanger.html) A T     T H E     A N N O T A T E DP O L I T I C A L       R E F E R E N C E       P A G E Elaborated Descriptions of Links whereby you can get "the jist of the story" right here! --- This page is here to say how the current situation came about and why each citizen needs to to give that 5 minutes a week. (See Christopher's Political Reference Page for specifics as needed) So far the Sections at the Reference Page include:     I.    A HISTORY of High Crime - The Bush Cabal's Agendas & Relationships    (The same folks into Drugs, Oil, Arms, Power, & Mercenaries ("contractors") - "the DOAPM Mafia" since the 60's)     II.    LIARS WARS (Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Caspian Basin ("Base"), Etc       The Case for Impeachment        IIa. DEPLETED URANIUM Weaponry ("DU")        III.    Civil Liberties Changes & Implications,    including "The Original Homeland Security" and     === Lots of Links on the CRITICAL VOTING situation, REFORM, etc ===        IV.    Media Issues        V.    Recovering Democracy, Peace Education, Related Attitudinal Change & Healing         VI.    Responsible Shopping & Investment, Corporate Reform, & Economic Fairness Issues    (Other ref/links on this page likely: Word search/Find using keywords "econ," "cost," "spending" via your browser's edit or file menu).     VII.     Veterans For Peace, More Alternatives to War, etc      Main Political Page Links (Essays, Etc) including "The Four Governments" regarding our beliefs about our government - myths, fantasies, & realities - working & not, "Getting Real About Conspiracies" & belief system of the power elite, and "Handling Conspiracy Theories" & Questionable News, Unfamiliar Internet Sources, etc L E T T E R S     &     P E T I T I O N S   Demand Accountability for Bush, Cheney, & Rove Act NOW (with H.Res. 1531) To Stop The Bush Pardons (Before Jan 19, 2009) We Can Have Them In Jail By End of 2010 Find Link-loaded Messages for quickly getting your sigs on petitions and sending letters to Elected Officials via PolyPsyList Archives: Use "Impeach" in its efficient Search Engine, sort by latest, etc. For Rove, include "Mike Connell" (yep, another plane crash) Related: Impeachment Resource Links;   For a quick read to dispel doubt of need, see Myths About Impeachment   PolyPsy List Archives Provides the most recent postings on what's going on (as regards peace & justice, & citizen effectiveness, including action resources) - Planetary in scope with more specifics for Seattle/NW): you can join the list or just peruse the Archives without joining. The list was created in the effort to help us better see and UTILIZE opportunities to jump in and make things better when we can - while maintaining our psychological and spiritual capacity to do so - and to help keep the PolyPsyArts web site current. This list is a "Newsletter" style list; NOT the kind that allows members to send email to other members. (It does NOT make member email addresses available to anyone, So members do NOT receive email from anyone but myself.) List Description is elaborated at http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/PolyPsySp. To subscribe, send email to: PolyPsySp-subscribe@lists.riseup.net. You can type the same in the subject and body areas of your message. Thank you, -Chris Pringer, ListOwner/Mgr Facebook Postings Below is a sample Facebook posting. The links WORK for the noted articles by Karen Vlahos, as well as for most of the fcbk tabs, the Share link, etc. (Usually these postings are not repeated via the Poly-Psy Mailing List.) At Right is a WORKING mock-up of my fcbk *NOTES* block [May'10]. My Comment on the above Facebook Posting     [At my fcbk page, 6-07-10]          [Quoting from the article:] "The number of Guard and reserves as a percentage of the total force in Iraq and Afghanistan has fluctuated over the years. Official estimates in 2005 were at 28 percent; it was about 7 percent in Iraq and 15 percent in Afghanistan at the end of 2008. Manski estimates it’s closer to one-third today. ..."           Remember the report on increased military sign-ups? And we were wondering where our priorities went (and other political psych-outs)... Well, check these stats (from Karen Vlahos's article): "So here is the situation. The secretary of defense ordered, and Congress authorized, an expansion in the size of the Army. But the Army reduced the recruitment goal – and reduced the retention goal. The size of the Army is in fact shrinking. It may look as if it’s growing – the Pentagon report gives the impression it’s growing – but it’s growing only in comparison with the officially set goals."           Ahhhhhhh! Karl Rove & students are still at work in the smoke & mirrors factory (just in case we forgot).      The virtual U.S. Peace Academy @Seattle Is here and now to inspire the creation of the *real* UNITED STATES PEACE ACADEMY. Courses are now being set up to be taught in the Seattle area [Spring '07]. In the interim the vUSPA is here for students choosing alternatives in peace, to facilitates resources and connections to institutions of higher learning for lasting global peace. In utilizing this site, young people can also create a vital and permanent record of their sincere desire and choice to learn and wage the arts of peace, rather than the art of war as taught at the military academies - as well as establish Conscientious Objector Status.

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