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News * Analysis * Research * Action
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- AFIB No. 713, April 16, 2006 -
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
END THE OCCUPATIONS!
ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!
The excitement with which many American conservatives and neoconservatives greeted the prerogatives and accouterments of empire in the turn-of-the-century United States seemed to grow out of similar inclinations. However, despite a resurrected Anglophone lexicon of Eurasian pivotalism and advanced Great Game theory, the dross reality of Texas-style chicken-fried empire--George W. Bush imperator, sprawling Sun Belt megachurches instead of Gothic Westminster, Bible-thumping Virginia ayatollahs, Pentagon intellectuals-in-residence, doctrines of preemptive war, and Texas Ranger unilateralism--quickly sent serious historians reaching for less flattering analogies. ... One view offered by Pulitzer Prize-winning Japan specialist John W. Dower compared Bush-era America with the right-wing Japanese regime symbolized by Emperor Hirohito and World War II prime minister Hiked Tojo--a regime of triumphant nationalism that first took Manchuria and part of China, then seized Southeast Asia and attacked Pearl Harbor. It too, was terrorist suppressing, military in orientation, given to patriotic cultism, and caught up in the East Asian equivalent of Manifest Destiny. -- Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush [New York: Viking, 2004] pp. 325-326.
Contents: Number 713
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WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: editor@wsws.org
- Thursday, 13 April 2006 -
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1. U.S. Threats Against Iran -- The Specter of Nuclear Barbarism.
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News & Analysis: Middle East: Iran
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/iran-a13.shtml
Statement of the WSWS Editorial Board
The revelation that the United States government has conducted advanced planning and preparation for a bombing campaign against Iran that includes the possible use of nuclear weapons represents the most serious threat posed in an increasingly unstable international situation.
US imperialism has embarked upon a trajectory that will, if not stopped, lead to a world historic catastrophe that will make World War II pale by comparison.
That such an act could even be contemplated by the Bush White House should stun and horrify all those who are concerned with the fate of the world and the future of humanity. Little more than six decades after US imperialism carried out the first atomic bombings against Hiroshima and Nagasaki--inflicting horrors that generations since have vowed must never be repeated--Washington is actively considering the use of such terrible weapons once again, this time without provocation or even credible proof of a future threat. Such an act would have the effect of criminalizing America as a country and a society.
These plans are not only real, but are already being acted upon, as was confirmed by Seymour Hersh in an article published in this week's New Yorker magazine as well as by the Washington Post. The preparations include the deployment of special operations troops inside Iran to spot targets and the staging of air exercises in the skies over the Arabian Sea, simulating strikes with nuclear tipped missiles against Iranian nuclear facilities.
The threat of war has only intensified since the publication of these articles, with the Iranian government's announcement Tuesday that it has succeeded in enriching uranium for its nuclear power program. Teheran once again insisted that this program is meant solely for peaceful uses, and experts confirmed that the development still left Iran far from being able to produce the weapons-grade enriched uranium needed for a nuclear weapon.
There is undoubtedly a strong element of recklessness in the actions taken by the government in Teheran, which is pursuing shortsighted political aims of its own in the nuclear confrontation, utilizing the nationalist resentment of a large section of the Iranian people towards US bullying as a means of diverting social and political tensions within Iran. The actions of the bourgeois factions that control the Iranian government have done nothing to defend the Iranian people from the threat of war. Indeed, they have played into the hands of the right-wing militaristic clique that controls the White House.
Domestic political calculations play a prominent role in the new US buildup to war. The collapse of popular support for Bush's policies--itself a manifestation of a deep-rooted social crisis in the US--has encouraged the administration to embark on another campaign of military aggression as a means of stampeding public opinion and suppressing opposition.
Predictably, the Bush administration responded to the latest announcement from Teheran by ratcheting up its bellicose threats. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that the United Nations Security Council must take "strong steps" against Iran to "maintain the credibility of the international community." She added, "We can't let this continue."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described Iran as "a country... that supports terrorists." He continued: "It's a country that has indicated an interest in having weapons of mass destruction."
The administration is following a virtually identical script as that used in the run-up to the war on Iraq, with dark and unsubstantiated warnings of a supposedly imminent threat from "weapons of mass destruction" that can be stopped only through US-initiated "regime change." Once again, Washington is dismissing United Nations monitoring of the Iranian nuclear program as useless, and there can be little doubt that, given the almost certain refusal of Russia, China and perhaps other members of the Security Council to back military action, the Bush White House will again declare the UN irrelevant and embark on its own unilateral action.
Speaking before an audience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Bush repeated his bellicose 2002 denunciation of Iran as constituting--along with North Korea and the now US-occupied Iraq-part of an "axis of evil."
Bush declared that his strategy in relation to Iran was based upon a "doctrine of prevention." In the language of international statecraft, a preventive war is a war of aggression launched with the aim of preventing a perceived rival from gaining power or achieving a strategic advantage in the future. Under the precedent established by the Nuremberg trials of the German Nazi leadership, it constitutes a war crime.
The World Socialist Web Site has drawn attention to the stark parallels that exist between the policies pursued by the US administration and the methods employed by the leaders of Germany's Third Reich in the 1930s and 1940s. The utter contempt for international law, the launching of military aggression on the basis of bogus pretexts, the use of overwhelming force against relatively powerless victims are common to both regimes. Some of our readers may have dismissed such comparisons as exaggerated. With the latest revelations concerning US war plans against Iran, such complacency is no longer tenable.
There is a powerful element of recklessness and even insanity in the US threat to use nuclear weapons--for the first time anywhere on the planet since the end of the Second World War--for the supposed purpose of preventing Iran from gaining the technology that could be used to produce nuclear weapons.
Drive for oil and strategic advantage
Underlying this apparent madness, however, is a definite policy being pursued by US imperialism. As in Iraq, the primary motive behind the war threats against Iran is not weapons of mass destruction, but oil. The Iranian nuclear program is not, in reality, seen by Washington as a huge threat. As in Iraq, WMD serves as a casus belli for military action in pursuit of other objectives.
We do not support the Iranian government's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, on the principled grounds that they in no way advance the struggle of workers in Iran or elsewhere in the region. However, even if Iran were to acquire a nuclear weapon, it would have no major military significance, given the overwhelming force in the hands of the US.
Iran is, after all, surrounded by countries with such weapons--Russia, Israel, Pakistan, India--some of them having obtained these weapons with the open support of Washington. Had the US-backed dictatorship of the Shah not been overthrown, the nuclear program that it began, with the direct support of people like Cheney and Rumsfeld, would have undoubtedly long since produced bombs.
The American administration is merely exploiting popular ignorance of the situation and a compliant media to create a smokescreen behind which it is pursuing definite interests. Iran possesses the world's second-largest natural gas reserves and the fourth largest oil reserves, which are expected to produce for some decades after Saudi Arabia's oil runs dry. Moreover, Washington is confronted with the political fact that Iran stands to emerge as the principal beneficiary of the US intervention in Iraq, threatening to thwart the US attempt to establish unchallenged hegemony over the Persian Gulf and the region's strategic energy resources.
An even greater threat to US interests is seen in Iran's growing ties with Russia, China and Europe. Washington has no intention of allowing its major economic rivals to reap a strategic advantage from its decades-long policy of economic sanctions against Iran. In particular, the ties between Iran and Russia are seen as an impediment to the US drive to control the enormous untapped oil and gas reserves in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
In the final analysis, the threat of a war of aggression against Iran and the use of nuclear weapons express the historic crisis of American and world capitalism, and the accelerating disequilibrium within the entire capitalist nation-state system. This disequilibrium--and its malevolent product, the danger of a new world war--has been exacerbated both by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the relative decline of US capitalism's position within the world economy.
Within America's ruling oligarchy, these parallel developments have fostered a consensus strategy of exploiting US imperialism's military superiority for the purpose of reorganizing the world economy in the interests of US-based banks and transnational corporations. This means the seizure of strategic positions and resources--as in the Persian Gulf--and the use of militarism and war to preclude the emergence of any rival, even of a regional character, that would challenge America's bid for global hegemony.
Bush's dismissal of reported plans for the use of nuclear weapons notwithstanding, there is ample evidence that within the US political establishment what was once unthinkable is now seen as a viable option. Published in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, which reflects the views of the US foreign policy establishment, is an article entitled "The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy." This article makes the case for a winnable nuclear war based on technological advances in US weapons systems and the deterioration of the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal.
"Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy," the article states. "It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike."
A nuclear strike against Iran, which borders Russia, would represent a first step in testing out this strategy. It would serve not merely to devastate Iran and inflict massive civilian casualties on that country, but to threaten Russia, China and any other power that might stand in the way of American imperialist aims.
The US is moving in a direction that leads inexorably toward a wider and catastrophic war that would claim the lives of hundreds of millions. As for the next act of US military aggression, the question is not if, but only when.
Iraq has already shown that within the existing US political structure there is no means to stop this threat. On the threat of a war against Iran, the Democratic Party has remained virtually silent.
In his New Yorker article, Hersh quoted one member of the House of Representatives as saying, "There's no pressure from Congress" against launching a new war.
There has been no call by any section of the Democratic Party leadership for public hearings to consider the political, military, legal and moral implications of reported plans for a war that could involve the use of nuclear weapons. There is no reason to believe that Congress and the Democrats will not be just as complicit in this new criminal act as they were in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Symptomatic of the reaction of the erstwhile liberals was the editorial appearing in Tuesday's edition of the New York Times under the complacent headline, "Military fantasies on Iran."
"Congress and the public need to force the kind of serious national debate that never really took place before the American invasion of Iraq," the Times declares, noting that the administration is making threats of "future American military action in language that sometimes recalls statements made before the invasion of Iraq."
The editorial's call for a "serious national debate" on a new war of aggression echoes precisely the language used by the Times in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. At that time it urged the administration to continue pursuing a pseudo-legal justification for the war, and advocated a "debate" to prepare the public for it. When, however, the White House ordered an invasion without UN sanction, the newspaper supported it anyway.
This latest editorial warns about the possible adverse implications of air strikes against Iran for US troops in Iraq, questions whether such strikes could really "destroy all of Iran's nuclear facilities," and describes a war with Iran as "reckless folly." But the newspaper does not denounce the prospect of unprovoked air attacks and the possible use of nuclear weapons for what they are--war crimes. Clearly, the editors see such things as real possibilities.
Police state measures at home
The implications for American society itself of such an act of war are staggering. Such attacks would undoubtedly provoke retaliation, which would be seized upon by the administration in Washington to mount a dramatic intensification of the "war on terror," in the form of further military escalation abroad and the elimination of basic democratic rights at home.
The use of nuclear weapons by the US would provoke outrage and horror within the American population, sparking mass opposition. The government would respond with out-and-out repression. The prospect of the American people facing a fascist-military dictatorship as the byproduct of such a military attack is very real.
Posed in the new war threats against Iran is the basic alternative of the present historic epoch: socialism or barbarism. A fight against both this new threat and the ongoing war in Iraq can be waged only through the independent mobilization of American working people, together with workers and oppressed people all over the world. This must assume the form of a political struggle against the American financial oligarchy and both of its political parties.
The danger is that the capitalist crisis and the resulting recourse to militarism and war are developing very rapidly, but the political means to oppose them lag far behind. This danger has to be overcome through a conscious recognition of the contradiction between the enormity of the issues posed and the lack of any political alternative within the capitalist two-party system.
A new mass revolutionary movement must come forward which bases itself on the international unity of the working class in the struggle for socialism against the outmoded nation state system upon which imperialism rests. The Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site are fighting to lay the political foundations for the emergence of such a movement.
Copyright 1998-2006 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.
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2. Retired Colonel Claims U.S. Military Operations Are Already Underway in Iran.
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THE RAW STORY
Top Story
Saturday April 15, 2006
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Retired_colonel_claims_U.S._Military_operations_0415.html
Ron Brynaert
During an interview on CNN Friday night, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner claimed that U.S. military operations are already 'underway' inside Iran, RAW STORY has found.
"I would say -- and this may shock some -- I think the decision has been made and military operations are under way," Col. Gardiner told CNN International anchor Jim Clancy (as noted by Digby at the blog Hullabaloo).
(Crooks and Liars has a video clip of the interview)
Gardiner, who designed a war game in November of 2004 for Atlantic Magazine ("Will Iran be next?") which simulated "preparations for a U.S. assault on Iran," also claimed that Aliasghar Soltaniyeh, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told him a few weeks ago that units who had attacked the Revolutionary Guard had been captured and confessed to working with Americans.
"The secretary point is, the Iranians have been saying American military troops are in there, have been saying it for almost a year," Gardiner said. "I was in Berlin two weeks ago, sat next to the ambassador, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA. And I said, 'Hey, I hear you're accusing Americans of being in there operating with some of the units that have shot up revolution guard units.'"
"He said, quite frankly, 'Yes, we know they are. We've captured some of the units, and they've confessed to working with the Americans,'" said the retired Air Force colonel.
Last Thursday, Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna reported (On Cheney, Rumsfeld order, US outsourcing special ops, intelligence to Iraq terror group, intelligence officials say) that, according to former and current intelligence officials, the Pentagon has been using a right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) as an operational asset "to create strife in Iran in preparation for any possible attack."
"[I]nstead of securing a known terrorist organization, which has been responsible for acts of terror against Iranian targets and individuals all over the world -- including US civilian and military casualties -- Rumsfeld under instructions from Cheney, began using the group on special ops missions into Iran to pave the way for a potential Iran strike," Larisa reported.
"They are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all," an intelligence source told Larisa.
Larisa reported that the MEK soldiers were told to "quit" their organization and were "renamed" in accordance with a plan conceived by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld so that they could be "converted" into a military special ops team.
According to a UN official close to the Security Council whom Larisa interviewed, the "newly renamed MEK soldiers" were being employed in the place of U.S. military advance teams to commit "acts of violence in hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni population."
"We are already at war," the UN official told RAW STORY.
Copyright 2006 Raw Story Media Inc. All rights reserved.
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Intelligence experts warn that a proposal to merge
two Pentagon intelligence units could create an ominous new agency.
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NEWSWEEK
Web Exclusive
April 13, 2006
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12290187/site/newsweek/
By Mark Hosenball
A threatened turf grab by a controversial Pentagon intelligence unit is causing concern among both privacy experts and some of the Defense Department's own personnel.
An informal panel of senior Pentagon officials has been holding a series of unannounced private meetings during the past several weeks about how to proceed with a possible merger between the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), a post-9/11 Pentagon creation that has been accused of domestic spying, and the Defense Security Service (DSS), a well-established older agency responsible for inspecting the security arrangements of defense contractors. DSS also maintains millions of confidential files containing the results of background investigations on defense contractors' employees.
The merger was initially suggested by a government commission set up to recommend military base closures last year. The commission said that the Pentagon could achieve some savings by relocating both CIFA, now housed in a building near Washington's Reagan National Airport and DSS, headquartered in nearby Alexandria, Va. The panel suggested moving the two agencies to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., where FBI training and laboratory facilities are also based.
The Base Realignment and Closure Commission also suggested that the Pentagon could "disestablish" CIFA and DSS and "consolidate their components into the Department of Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency."
Pentagon officials began discussions about merging the two after the commission issued its recommendations. An initial round of meetings about the merger, however, failed to come up with a plan. In the meantime, CIFA, a mysterious and secretive unit created in 2002 and charged with making Defense counterintelligence efforts more effective, became the subject of two public controversies.
The first erupted late in 2005 when documents surfaced indicating that CIFA (whose mission, according to its own officials, is supposed to be limited to analysis of counterintelligence data produced by other agencies) was discovered to have put together a database that included reports on anti-administration demonstrators, including peace activists protesting alleged "war profiteering." (NEWSWEEK's Michael Isikoff reported on this in depth earlier this year in this story.) CIFA and Pentagon officials subsequently assured Congress in writing that CIFA's activities would be more carefully focused in the future on genuine potential terror threats to defense facilities and personnel and that data collected on legitimate peaceful protestors would be destroyed.
Another controversy over CIFA took hold during the corruption scandal surrounding former San Diego congressman Randall (Duke) Cunningham, who before he resigned in disgrace earlier this year, had been a member of both the House Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee. Federal prosecutors alleged Cunningham used his congressional influence to direct CIFA to grant defense contracts to a company called MZM. Earlier this year, Cunningham and MZM's former president, Mitchell Wade, both pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges. (The CIFA contracting probe has been covered in depth by investigative blogs Warandpiece.com and TPMMuckraker.com, as well as The Washington Post.) Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Gregory Hicks said the CIFA contracting issue was the focus of a continuing "review by appropriate organizations within the Department [of Defense] and it would be premature to discuss any possible outcomes of that review."
As stories about the CIFA scandals circulated earlier this year, talk about merging the controversial unit with the less controversial DSS appeared to stall. But in the past few weeks, Pentagon officials said, such discussions have regained momentum, with an informal committee led by Robert Rogalski, a deputy to Stephen Cambone, the under secretary of Defense for intelligence, meeting regularly to discuss the agencies' consolidation.
But both Pentagon insiders and administration critics remain queasy about the merger idea. Some veteran officials recall that DSS itself became the subject of unwelcome public attention during the Clinton administration when political appointees in the Pentagon press office got hold of the DSS security file on Linda Tripp, the disgruntled bureaucrat who blew the whistle on President Clinton's relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The file contained reports about an embarrassing incident from Tripp's past that were leaked to the media. The Pentagon Inspector General investigated, and security procedures surrounding the security files supposedly were improved.
Both Pentagon insiders and privacy experts fear that if CIFA merges with, or, in effect, takes over DSS, there would be a weakening of the safeguards that are supposed to regulate the release of the estimated 4.5 million security files on defense-contractor employees currently controlled by DSS. Those files are stored in a disused mine in western Pennsylvania.
According to one knowledgeable official, who asked for anonymity because of the extreme sensitivity of the subject, since its creation CIFA has on at least a handful of occasions requested access to the secret files stored in the mine without adequate explanation. As a result, the source said, DSS rejected the requests. A merger between CIFA and DSS would weaken those internal controls, the source said.
A CIFA merger with DSS could also alter the job responsibilities of the 280 inspectors employed by DSS to inspect security arrangements and procedures at defense contractorsâ· offices. According to the official source, these inspectors are responsible for making sure that contractors have taken proper measures to protect classified information. But if DSS merges with CIFA, there are fears that CIFA will pressure the DSS inspectors to expand their mandate to include inspecting contractors to see if they are protecting information that could be considered "sensitive but unclassified"--a term the Bush administration has tried to use to expand restrictions on access to government records. Security professionals regard that expansion as too elastic and open to misinterpretation. By acquiring control of the DSS inspector force, a merged CIFA-DSS would also have something that CIFA at the moment claims not to have, which is a force of field investigators. Today CIFA has to rely for raw field reports on other defense and military intelligence agencies, such as branches of Army, Navy and Air Force intelligence.
Defense analyst and washingtonpost.com blogger Bill Arkin, who first brought allegations about CIFA's domestic spying to light, says that in its efforts to trying eliminate waste and better coordinate intelligence activities, "we are creating an American military secret police that is clearly acquiring way too much information and way too much power."
But Cindy McGovern, a spokeswoman for DSS, maintains that even if CIFA does merge with DSS, officials will not be able to get access to secret security files unless they have a "legitimate need and we verify that ... People who have access to these records need to have a verified need, a legitimate bona fide need." Asked how many times CIFA requests for access to DSS files were turned down because of lack of adequate justification, McGovern said she did not have that information at hand. Hicks, the Pentagon spokesman, said there was "no clear answer" to this question, adding: "There are protocols in place to request information that CIFA follows, but there is no quick grasp as to how many times or instances that has been sought."
In an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, Hicks added: "The Defense Security Service takes the release of personnel files and the information contained therein very seriously ... For the purposes of disclosure and disclosure accounting, the Department of Defense is considered a single agency. Notwithstanding, disclosures of DSS records within DOD are only authorized when a justifiable official need for the information exists. These same safeguards would apply in the event of a merger with CIFA."
Copyright 2006 Newsweek, Inc.
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4. Cheney Authorized Leak of CIA Report, Libby Says.
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NATIONAL JOURNAL
Online Exclusive
Friday, April 14, 2006
http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0414nj3.htm
By Murray Waas, National Journal
Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to Libby's grand jury testimony in the CIA leak case and sources who have read the classified report.
There is a growing body of information showing that at the time Plame was outed the vice president was deeply involved in the effort to undermine her husband.
The March 2002 intelligence report was a debriefing of Wilson by the CIA's Directorate of Operations after Wilson returned from a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger to investigate claims, later proved to be unfounded, that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation, according to government records.
The debriefing report made no mention of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, then a covert CIA officer, or any role she may have played in her husband's selection by the CIA to go to Niger, according to two people who have read the report.
The previously unreported grand jury testimony is significant because only hours after Cheney reportedly instructed Libby to disclose information from the CIA report, Libby divulged to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper that Plame was a CIA officer, and that she been involved in selecting her husband for the Niger mission.
Both Libby and Cheney have repeatedly insisted that the vice president never encouraged, directed, or authorized Libby to disclose Plame's identity. In a court filing on April 12, Libby's attorneys reiterated: "Consistent with his grand jury testimony, Mr. Libby does not contend that he was instructed to make any disclosures concerning Ms. Wilson [Plame] by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, or anyone else."
But the disclosure that Cheney instructed Libby to leak portions of a classified CIA report on Joseph Wilson adds to a growing body of information showing that at the time Plame was outed as a covert CIA officer the vice president was deeply involved in the White House effort to undermine her husband.
A spokesman for the vice president declined to comment.
On April 5, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, asserted in a court filing that Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003 op-ed piece in The New York Times criticizing the Bush administration's Iraq policies "was viewed in the office of Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq."
Moreover, on July 12, 2003, the same day that Libby spoke to both Cooper and Miller, Libby and Cheney traveled aboard Air Force Two for the dedication of a new aircraft carrier in Norfolk, Va. During the flight either to or from Norfolk, Cheney, Libby, and Cathie Martin, then-assistant to the vice president for public affairs, discussed how they might rebut Wilson's charges and discredit him, according to federal court records, and interviews with people with first-hand knowledge of accounts that all three provided to federal investigators.
It has long been known that Cheney was among the first people in the government to tell Libby that Plame worked for the CIA. The federal indictment of Libby -- who has been charged with five counts of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements to federal investigators in the CIA leak case -- states: "On or about June 12, 2003, Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division. Libby understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA."
Fitzgerald asserted that just days before Libby divulged Plame's identity to Miller and Cooper on July 12, "Vice President Cheney, [Libby's] immediate superior, expressed concerns to [Libby] regarding whether Mr. Wilson's trip was legitimate or whether it was a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife." Although contained in a public court filing, this second conversation between Cheney and Libby had gone unreported.
The new disclosure about the CIA report further raises questions about the vice president's role in directly authorizing the leak of classified information outside the formal declassification process. Last week it was reported that Libby also testified to the grand jury that Cheney told him that as part of the effort to rebut Wilson's criticism, President Bush had authorized the leaking of portions of a then-classified National Intelligence Estimate concerning purported attempts by Iraq to develop nuclear weapons.
The Bush administration has asserted that presidents have the constitutional right to declassify information. Although vice presidents haven't shared such authority, President Bush issued an executive order in March 2003 allowing Cheney to share such authority with him. According to Fitzgerald's April 5 filing, Libby has also testified that in July 2003, then-Counsel to the Vice President David Addington "opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amount to a declassification of the document."
Jeffrey Smith, a former general counsel for the CIA, said in an interview, however, that while there are executive orders that apparently allow the vice president "on his own to determine what to declassify and to whom," that authority should "not exempt him or anyone from exercising prudence or good judgment" in doing so. "You would want the president or the vice president to seek the views of the CIA or any other intelligence agencies... to make sure that there is no potential disclosing an intelligence source" or some other sensitive information.
Criticizing the decision to leak portions of the NIE, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said last week: "Leaking classified information to the press when you want to get your side out or silence your critics is not appropriate. If I had leaked the information, I'd be in jail. Why should the president be above the law? I am stunned."
In his grand jury testimony, according to Fitzgerald's filing, Libby portrayed himself as a reluctant subordinate in July 2003 who took orders from higher ups. Libby "testified that he at first advised the Vice President that he could not have this conversation with [Judith] Miller because of the classified nature of the NIE," said the special counsel's filing. "[Libby] testified that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized [Libby] to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE." It was during this time that Libby says he spoke to Addington on the matter.
Steve Aftergood, a senior research analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, who tracks government secrecy and classification issues, said that Libby "presents himself in this instance and others as being very scrupulous in adhering to the rules. He is not someone carried on by the rush of events. If you take his account before the grand jury on face value, he is cautious and deliberative in his behavior.
"That is almost the exact opposite as to how he behaves when it comes to disclosing Plame's identity," Aftergood said. "All of a sudden he doesn't play within the rules. He doesn't seek authorization. If you believe his account, he almost acts capriciously. You have to ask yourself why his behavior changes so dramatically, if he is telling the truth that this was not authorized and that he did not talk to higher-ups."
Libby has insisted that the vice president never authorized or told him to discuss Plame's identity. Although Libby discussed Plame with Miller and Cooper on July 12, 2003 -- the same day he says he was authorized by Cheney to leak portions of the NIE and the CIA report -- Libby insists the two actions are unrelated.
The new disclosure also raises the question whether President Bush or his aides knew that Cheney may have been deciding on his own to authorize the leaking of classified information. Senior government officials said that top Bush aides -- including then-deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley and White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett -- were not aware that Cheney had authorized the disclosure of the CIA report on Wilson's Niger mission. These officials raised the possibility that Bush himself was unaware at the time of Cheney's action.
Regarding the release of Plame's name and CIA employment, a senior administration official said that even if Cheney did not directly authorize Libby to leak the information to the press, the vice president might have set a climate in which his aides viewed it as routine to release classified information whenever it served their purposes.
The administration was interested in discrediting Wilson because the former ambassador asserted in his op-ed piece that he found no evidence in Niger to substantiate Bush administration claims that Saddam had attempted to purchase uranium from that country. Wilson alleged that the administration had misrepresented intelligence by making that claim in its case to go to war with Iraq. Six days after the Times published Wilson's piece, Libby leaked Plame's identity to Miller and Cooper.
Cheney and other Bush administration officials also believed that the CIA debriefing report might undermine Wilson's claims because it showed that Wilson's Niger probe was inconclusive on the uranium questions. Wilson was restricted on the persons he was able to interview in Niger, and he was denied some intelligence information before undertaking the trip.
In reportedly directing Libby to disclose portions of the March 2002 CIA report on Wilson's mission, Cheney apparently kept in the dark a number of administration officials who were working to declassify that very same document.
According to Fitzgerald's recent filing, Libby "testified that on July 12, 2003, he was specifically directed by the Vice President to speak to the press in the place of Cathie Martin (then the communications person for the Vice President) regarding the NIE and Wilson. [Libby] was instructed... to [also] provide information contained in a document [he] understood to be the cable authored by Mr. Wilson. During the conversations that followed on July 12 [Libby] discussed Ms. Wilson's [CIA] employment with both Matthew Cooper (for the first time) and Judith Miller (for the third time)."
The purported Wilson cable refers to the classified CIA debriefing of Wilson, according to sources who have read the document. Wilson never himself authored a cable on his Niger mission. Rather, the CIA Directorate of Operations, which sent Wilson to Niger in February 2002, produced a March 8, 2002 report based on Wilson's debriefing by intelligence officers. The report did not name Wilson, or even describe him as a former ambassador, but rather as a "contact with excellent access who does not have an established reporting record" to protect the-then covert nature of the trip.
The report was then "widely distributed in routine channels," according to a 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq. It is unclear whether Cheney or his office received the report at the time it was distributed, or sometime later.
But two government officials with first-hand knowledge of events said during the summer of 2003, Libby and other White House officials sought any reports and other classified information regarding Wilson's Niger trip, and it was provided at that time.
A relatively small amount of information derived from the March 2002 report was revealed on July 11, 2003, when then-CIA Director George Tenet released a statement regarding Wilson's trip to Niger in which he disclosed some aspects of the debriefing described in the document. But other portions remained highly classified at the time that Cheney directed Libby to leak portions of the report, two senior government officials said in interviews. These officials say the White House abandoned its attempt to declassify all or part of the March 2002 report when Tenet released his statement.
The federal indictment of Libby states: "On or about June 9, 2003, a number of classified documents were faxed to the Office of the Vice President to the personal attention of Libby and another person in the Office of the Vice President. The faxed documents, which were marked as classified, discussed, among other things, Wilson and his trip to Niger, but did not mention Wilson by name. After receiving these documents, Libby and one or more persons in the Office of the Vice President handwrote the names 'Wilson' and 'Joe Wilson' on the documents."
It is unclear if one of the documents in question, or the one with Wilson's name handwritten on it by someone in the Vice President's office, was the March 2002 CIA report, but the fact that it did not mention Wilson by name suggests that it possibly was indeed the one with the handwriting.
Cheney, Libby, and others wanted to leak and declassify portions of the report because they believed that it would undercut the perception that Wilson's mission had disproved the allegations definitively that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from Niger, two senior government officials said in interviews.
Among other things, Wilson had agreed only to interview former Nigerien officials, instead of current ones, so as not to step on the toes of the State Department or its then-ambassador to Niger, and he was disadvantaged in his inquiries, the two senior government officials said.
In an interview, Wilson said it was unnecessary to interview current Nigerien officials because the then-U.S. ambassador was conducting her own inquiry, and a decision was made for him to speak to former Nigerien officials while the ambassador made her inquiries of the current government.
"When I arrived in Niger, I spoke to the ambassador who thought that she had already debunked the allegations with current Niger officials," Wilson said. "We agreed then that I would speak to former government officials, who I knew better than she did because I worked with them while I was on the NSC staff at the White House, and thereafter. So that was the division of labor."
Wilson also said that the ambassador told her that a "four-star Marine general had also already talked to current officials, and that he too had concluded and reported that he believed there was nothing to the allegations."
National Journal correspondent Shane Harris also contributed to this report.
Copyright 2006 by National Journal Group Inc.
*****
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_________________________________________________________________________
THE NATION
Feature Story
May 1, 2006 issue
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060501/phillips
by KEVIN PHILLIPS
Is theocracy in the United States (1) a legitimate fear, as some liberals argue; (2) a joke, given the nation's rising secular population and moral laxity; (3) a worrisome bias of major GOP constituencies and pressure groups; or (4) all of the above? The last, I would argue.
The characteristics are not inconsistent. No large nation--no leading world power--could ever resemble theocracies like John Calvin's Geneva, Puritan Massachusetts or early Mormon Utah. These were all small polities produced by unusual migrations of true believers.
As a great power, a large heterogeneous nation like the United States goes about as far in a theocratic direction as it can when it meets the unfortunate criteria on display in George W. Bush's Washington: an elected leader who believes himself in some way to be speaking for God; a ruling party that represents religious true believers and seeks to mobilize the nation's churches; the conviction of many rank-and-file Republicans that government should be guided by religion and religious leaders; and White House implementation of domestic and international political agendas that seem to be driven by religious motivations and biblical worldviews.
As several chapters in American Theocracy make clear, this kind of religious excess has been a problem--indeed, a repeating Achilles' heel--of leading powers from late-stage Rome (historian Gibbon thus explained Roman decline and fall) to the militant Catholicism of Habsburg Spain and most recently the evangelical and moral imperialist Britain that saw 1914 as something of an Armageddon against the German Kaiser's Antichrist and wound up in 1917-18 crusading in the Middle East to liberate Jerusalem. But although this facet of historical decline constitutes a major caution regarding the future of the United States, this essay will concentrate on the domestic political aspects--the theocratic tendencies in the GOP and the notable "religification" of American politics across a spectrum from life and death to science and medicine to climate change and biblical creationism.
The Growth of Theocratic Sentiment
The essential US conditions for a theocratic trend fell into place in the late 1980s and '90s with the growing mass of evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christianity, expressed politically by the religious right; and the rise of the Republican Party as a powerful vehicle for religious policy-making and eventual erosion of the accepted degree of separation between church and state. This transformation was most vivid at the state level, where fifteen to twenty state Republican parties came under the control of the religious right, and party conventions in the South and West endorsed so-called "Christian nation" platforms. As yet nationally uncatalogued--a shortfall that cries out for a serious research project--these platforms set out in varying degrees the radical political theology of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, ranging from the Bible as the basis for domestic law to an emphasis on religious schools and women's subordination to men. The 2004 platform of the Texas Republican Party is a case in point.
So are the political careers of Pat Robertson and John Ashcroft, two presidential aspirants whose careers were milestones in the theocratization of the Republican Party. Robertson's 1988 presidential bid brought huge numbers of Pentecostals into the Republican Party. Missouri Senator Ashcroft, who explored a presidential race in 1997-98, got much of his funding from Robertson and other evangelicals. Picked as Attorney General by Bush after the 2000 election, Ashcroft was the choice of the religious right. Earlier in his career Ashcroft had decried the wall between church and state as "a wall of religious oppression," and his memoir describes each of his many electoral defeats as a crucifixion and every important political victory as a resurrection, and recounts scenes in which he had friends and family anoint him with oil in the manner "of the ancient kings of Israel."
But the national political emergence of Bush was equally relevant. "Born again" during the mid-1980s, he came up during the same period and in the same intense mode. As Newsweek noted in 2003, "As a subaltern in his father's 1988 campaign, George Bush the Younger assembled his career through contacts with ministers of the then emerging evangelical movement in political life. Now they form the core of the Republican Party, which controls all of the capital for the first time in a half century. Bible-believing Christians are Bush's strongest backers."
More telling still, in the years since 1988 dozens of reports have quoted Bush the Younger telling ministers, supporters and foreign officials that God wanted him to run for President and that God speaks through him. In mid-2004 one Pennsylvania newspaper reported his telling a local Amish audience, "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job." Reports that he told Middle Eastern leaders that God told him to invade Iraq have been denied by the White House, but this is clearly the sort of language he uses from time to time.
Since Robertson's run for the White House in 1988 and the victory that same year by Bush the Elder, the Republican Party has clearly moved closer to this constituency--and the process was speeded by Bill Clinton, whose politics and personal conduct offended the churchgoing South, in particular, enabling George W. Bush to pose as the standard-bearer of moral restoration in 2000. This metamorphosis gained further momentum after September 11, 2001, when the younger Bush responded to the terrorist attacks by declaring the start of a war between good and evil, speaking in a relentlessly religious idiom that several biblical scholars have described as double-coding--only mildly religious on the surface, but beneath that full of allusions to biblical passages and Christian hymns. They, too, suggested that Bush cast himself as a prophet of sorts--one who spoke for God.
The upshot of this escalating religiosity on the part of the Republican national leadership has been an escalating and parallel religiosity on the part of the Republican rank and file. Those voting Republican for President since 1988 have become increasingly religious in motivation. After 9/11 pro-Bush preachers described Bush as God's chosen man while hinting that Saddam Hussein, whose Iraq was the biblical "New Babylon" of fundamentalist preacher Tim LaHaye's eerie Left Behind series, was the Antichrist or at least the forerunner of the Evil One. In 2004 a further wave of evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal turnout helped to cement the Republican transformation, even as moderate mainline Protestants shuddered and turned in a small Democratic trend between 2000 and 2004.
As early as 1988, Ohio academician John Green, a specialist in religious political behavior, had commented on how the growing correlation between frequent church attendance and Republican presidential voting was starting to raise a US parallel to the religious parties of Europe, most notably the Christian Democrats in Germany and Italy. By 2000-04, this correlation was much stronger, and political journalists began to speak of the "religious gap" that was replacing the "gender gap." The less discussed but even more significant aspect of this upheaval lay in a second set of polls that showed the increasingly theocratic inclinations of the Republican electorate (see chart).
These sentiments did not spring from nowhere. A majority of Americans take the Bible literally in many dimensions, including subjects ranging from the creation and Noah's Ark to the Book of Revelation. Within the ranks of Republican voters, the ratios are lopsided. For example, in 1999 a national poll by Newsweek revealed that 40 percent of American Christians believed in Armageddon and virtually as many thought the Antichrist was already alive. Because such believers were most numerous in the Republican electorate, I would calculate that roughly 55 percent of Bush 2004 voters believed in Armageddon--and it could be higher.
Such voters are especially prone to theocratic views, and foreign policy is by no means immune. In 2004 a survey by the Pew Center found that 55 percent of white evangelical Protestants consider "following religious principles" to be a top priority for foreign policy. Only a quarter of Catholics and mainline Protestants agreed, but given the makeup of the Bush coalition, I would guess that about half its voters would favor that position. This explains both why so many of Bush's core supporters cheered the first-stage US involvement in Iraq--and why Bush bungled things in the Holy Land so badly.
The Bible, Theology and American Politics
This is a bit of a chicken-versus-egg situation. Have the issues that matter most to Americans become more theological because religion has become more of a political force--or has the growth of issues with a religious dimension spurred the increasing religious divisions? Probably some of each, but the list is frighteningly long.
First and foremost are the issues involving birth, life, death, sex, health, medicine, marriage and the role of the family--high-octane subject matter since the 1970s. These are areas where perceived immorality most excites stick-to-Scripture advocates and the religious right. Closely related is the commitment by the Bush White House and the religious right to reduce the current separation between church and state.
Topics such as natural resources, climate, global warming, resource depletion, environmental regulation and petroleum geology mark out a third important arena. Organizations such as the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty have enlisted a fair amount of conservative religious and corporate support for preparing what amounts to a pro-business, pro-development explanation of Christian stewardship. The institute's director, Roman Catholic Father Robert Sirico, contends that left-tilting environmentalism is idolatrous in its substitution of nature for God, giving the Christian environmental movement a "perhaps-unconscious pagan nature."
Then there is the subject matter of business, economics and wealth, in which the tendency of the Christian right is to oppose regulation and justify wealth and relative laissez-faire, tipping its hat to the upper-income and corporate portions of the Republican coalition. Christian Reconstructionists go even further, abandoning most economic regulation in order to prepare the moral framework for God's return.
The last arena of theological influence, almost as important as sex, birth and mortality, involves American foreign policy, bringing us to the connections among the "war on terror," the rapture, the end times, Armageddon and the thinly disguised US crusade against radical Islam. Since Islam and Christianity began fighting in the seventh century, the Holy Land has often brought disillusionment: after the Crusades (all nine of them); after the fall of Constantinople in 1453; and five centuries later for the British, in particular, after World War I. Unmindful Western nations may still be playing out the Crusader hand. In the months before George W. Bush sent US troops into Iraq, his inspirational reading each morning was a book of sermons by a Scottish preacher accompanying troops about to march on Jerusalem in 1917.
Controversies over life and death--often pivoting on precise definitions of each--can only continue to burgeon. The arguable rights of women (or parents) are being displaced by the rights of embryos or by the prerogative of sperm and egg to join, decisions rooted largely in theology, not science. Perhaps the preoccupation involves maximizing the potential soul count for the hereafter, in the manner of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inquisitors who ordered that heretics must die even if they repented, yet pursued repentance to save their souls first.
The theology of death is cloudier and also riskier politically. Although Bush took a bold and ultimately unpopular stand in the Terri Schiavo case, bending over backward to insist on continuing her life support, blocking death is not the theological equivalent of enabling birth. The Bible abounds with the killing of those already born, both by God and by lawful authorities. Bush himself, as governor of Texas, sent hundreds of prisoners to the electric chair.
The next throbbing cluster of issues involves church-state relations. The nonradical theocon wing of the GOP demands a more conservative judiciary and an expanded role for religion in education, social services and the constraining of what they consider to be immoral behavior--abortion, homosexuality, pornography and contraception--but avoids spelling out any grand revolutionary mandate. The Christian Reconstructionist movement, by contrast, proclaims ambitions that range from replacing public schools with religious education to imposing biblical law and limiting the franchise to male Christians.
The federal judiciary is the arena in which the battles most critical to incipient theocrats will be fought out judge by judge, court by court. Signs of their anxiety to control the federal judiciary burst into view in an early 2005 meeting at which conservative evangelical leaders were addressed by Tom DeLay and Senate majority leader Bill Frist. The focus of the strategy session was how to strip funding or jurisdiction from federal courts, or even eliminate them. James Dobson of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family named one target: the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. "Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court," Dobson commented. "All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn't exist anymore, and it's gone." A spokesman for Frist said he did not agree with the idea of defunding courts or shutting them down, but DeLay, who had once said, "We set up the courts. We can unset the courts," declined to comment.
Beyond the judiciary, pressure for theological correctness became overt in federal government relationships with the varieties of science--from climatology to geology, and even entomology--that can conflict with the Book of Genesis. For the growing number of elected officials who uphold Genesis, the Almighty, not carbon dioxide, brings about climate change. The consequences here go far beyond the evolution-doubting books being sold by the National Park Service or inconvenient information about climate change or caribou habitats in oil lands being deleted from government websites. In Texas, where the cotton industry is plagued by a moth in which an immunity to pesticides has evolved, a frustrated entomologist commented, "It's amazing that cotton growers are having to deal with these pests in the very states whose legislatures are so hostile to the theory of evolution. Because it is evolution they are struggling against in their fields every season." Meanwhile, the bigger message--depressingly reminiscent of our imperial predecessors--is that science in the United States is already in trouble. Irving Weissman, a stem-cell researcher, told the Boston Globe, "You are going to start picking up Nature and Science and all the great [research] journals, and you are going to read about how South Koreans and Chinese and Singaporeans are making advances that the rest of us can't even study."
Part of the explanation involves the religious right's larger view of economic matters and dismantling of government. In the radical Texas Republican platform adopted in 2004, the Lone Star GOP was not content to call for abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department; it also demanded abolition of the Internal Revenue Service and elimination of the income tax, the inheritance tax, the gift tax, the capital-gains levy, the corporate income tax, the payroll tax and state and local property taxes.
Evangelicals, Southern Baptist Convention adherents and others oppose government social and economic programs because they interfere with a person's individual responsibility for his or her salvation. Others were diverted by rapture and end-times possibilities. "Overall, this kind of teaching has certainly stifled social consciousness among evangelicals," said Tim Weber, professor of church history at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. "If Jesus may come at any minute, then long-term social reform or renewal are beside the point. It has a bad effect there."
These are divisive issues, and they divide both parties, but survey data suggest that they divide the Republicans somewhat more than the Democrats. True, liberals were front and center in trying to shrink the role of religion in the public square, and they have paid the price. However, the more important confrontation is now within the GOP, as the essential tensions shift from the unpopular derogation of religion so prevalent decades ago to the theologization and theocratic excesses of the conservative countertide.
Three prominent Republicans have staked out the boundaries. Former Republican Senator John Danforth of Missouri complained in 2005 that "the only explanation for legislators comparing cells in a petri dish to babies in a womb is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law." Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee suggested that George W. Bush's "I carry the word of God" posture ought to be a 2004 election issue. And Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut regretted that "the Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy."
Unhappily, that's the direction in which it's been trending.
Kevin Phillips has been an author and commentator for four decades.
Copyright 2006 The Nation
*****
THE MOSCOW TIMES
Global Eye
April 14, 2006
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/167359/
By Chris Floyd
Of all the war crimes that have flowed from the originating crime of President George W. Bush's unprovoked invasion of Iraq, perhaps the most flagrant was the destruction of Fallujah in November 2004. Now, as ignominious defeat looms for Bush's Babylonian folly, some of the key players in fomenting the war are urging that the "Fallujah Option" be applied to an even bigger target: Baghdad.
What these influential warmongers openly call for is the "pacification" of Baghdad: a brutal firestorm by U.S. forces, ravaging both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in a "horrific" operation that will inevitably lead to "skyrocketing body counts," as warhawk Reuel Marc Gerecht cheerfully wrote last week in the ever-bloodthirsty editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal. Gerecht's war whoop quickly ricocheted around the right-wing media echo chamber and gave public voice to the private counsels emanating from a group whose members now comprise the leadership of the U.S. government: The Project for the New American Century.
As oft noted here, PNAC was founded by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Zalmay Khalilzad and the now-indicted Lewis Libby, among others. In September 2000, they publicly called for sending U.S. forces into Iraq -- even if Saddam Hussein was already gone -- as well as planting new bases in Central Asia, putting weapons in space, building new nukes and funding a vast militarization of American society. Being such savvy inside players and all, they recognized that this lunatic program would not be accepted by the American people -- unless, of course, the nation was struck by a "catalyzing event" like "a new Pearl Harbor." Who says dreams don't come true?
Gerecht, an ex-CIA man, is a senior fellow at PNAC. He was one of the many munchkins who laid the groundwork for the mass deception that led to the war by constantly undermining any CIA report that failed to conform to the warmongers' highly profitable fantasies of America's imminent destruction by the broken, toothless regime of Saddam Hussein. The intelligence services' many caveats about this bogus threat were placed directly on Bush's desk, as the National Journal reports, but the P-Nackers in the White House tossed them aside. They dreamed of war, and they got it.
But the natives failed to play their part in the imperial masque macabre. As noted here last week, they have churlishly failed to show proper appreciation for being slaughtered, looted, tortured and controlled. Even the Shiites, hailed by the Bushists just a few weeks ago as salt-of-the-earth lovers of moderate democracy, are now denounced as hate-filled sectarians, even worse than the Sunni insurgents -- who are suddenly being courted by Bush's man in Baghdad, the P-Nacker Khalilzad, the BBC reports.
Not that the Shiite death squads -- backed by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government -- have been all bad, mind you. Sure, they've been kidnapping Sunni civilians, drilling holes in their skulls, beheading them and then dumping the corpses on city streets or burying them in schoolyards. But all of this been "healthy," says Gerecht, because it has made the Sunnis and Kurds fear "Shiite power." Or something. To be honest, Gerecht's column is filled with so many canards, delusions and logical inconsistencies that it often leaves the plane of rational discourse altogether. But its import is clear: By daring to defy Washington's edicts, the Shiites have gotten too big for their britches and must be brought to heel, along with the rest of the scum who are making the Dear Leader look bad back home.
You think that's a joke, but it's not. One of Gerecht's main reasons for "pacifying" Baghdad in a hydra-headed war on every ethnic faction is because "the U.S. media will never write many optimistic stories about Iraq if journalists fear going outside" the city's fortified Green Zone. There you have the Bushist vision in a nutshell. The war is not actually happening in the real world, where real people are dying by the tens of thousands; no, it's really being fought on the monitors of Fox News, CNN and NBC, in the flimsy pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, and on the overheated airwaves of talk radio. Baghdad must be pacified -- like Grozny, like Guernica -- so that Americans can see a few more peppy stories on the tube on their way to the ballgame or the mall.
The fate of Fallujah provides a template of the grim fate awaiting Baghdad if Gerecht and the government P-Nackers have their way. Fallujah was encircled in a ring of iron; water, electricity and food supplies were cut off, a flagrant war crime. The city was bombed for eight weeks, then hit by an all-out ground attack with both conventional and chemical weapons -- white phosphorous and napalm -- that killed thousands of civilians and left more than 200,000 homeless. Among the first targets were Fallujah's hospitals and clinics, another flagrant war crime. Some were destroyed, killing doctors and patients alike, others seized and closed, all in order to prevent any stories about civilian casualties from reaching the Western media, the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told The New York Times. Once again, manufactured image trumped bloodstained reality.
Perhaps this cup will pass from Baghdad. Perhaps Bush and his P-Nackers will instead move forward with their frenzied plans for a nuclear strike on Iran, as The New Yorker reported last week. But Gerecht's article is a perfect snapshot of the depraved minds that now rule America. Somewhere, somehow -- and soon -- another city is going to die.
Copyright 2006 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
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The preemptive "defensive war" doctrine and the "war on terrorism" against Al Qaeda constitute essential building blocks of the Pentagon's propaganda campaign. ... To justify military actions, the National Security Strategy (NSS) requires the fabrication of a terrorist threat,--i.e., "an Outside Enemy." It also needs to link these terrorist threats to "State sponsorship" by so-called "rogue states." ... The objective is to present "preemptive military action"--meaning war as an act of "self-defense" against two categories of enemies, "rogue States" and "Islamic terrorists," both of which are said to possess weapons of mass destruction. ... This "anticipatory action" under the NSS includes the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which are now classified as "in theater weapons" to be used in conventional war theaters alongside conventional weapons. ... In the wake of September 11, 2001, the nuclear option, namely the preemptive use of nuclear weapons is intimately related to the "war on terrorism." -- Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War On Terrorism" [Pincourt, QC: Global Research, 2005] pp. 267-268.
Contents: Number 712
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The War On Iran.
_________________________________________________________________________
ASIA TIMES ONLINE
Middle East
April 13, 2006
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD13Ak01.html
By Pepe Escobar
"All options, including the military one, are on the table." - US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
"I announce, officially, that dear Iran has joined the nuclear countries of the world." - President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, saying on Tuesday that Iran had successfully enriched uranium for the first time, a landmark step toward its quest to develop nuclear fuel.
The ominous signs are "on the table" for all to see. The Pentagon has its Long War, the rebranded "war on terror" that Vice President Dick Cheney swears will last for decades, a replay of the war between Eastasia and Oceania in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
President George W Bush issued a "wild speculation" non-denial denial that the US was planning strategic nuclear strikes against Iran, but Iran considerably upped the ante on Tuesday with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's announcement that Iran had enriched uranium for the first time. In a nationally televised speech, Ahmadinejad urged the West to stop pressuring Tehran, saying that Iran was seeking to develop nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes.
Iranian nuclear officials say the country has produced 100 tonnes of uranium gas, an essential ingredient for enrichment. The United Nations Security Council has demanded that Iran stop all uranium-enrichment activity by April 28. Iran has rejected the demand.
From the point of view of the Pentagon's Long War, a strategic nuclear attack on Iran can be spun to oblivion as the crucial next stage of the war on "radical Islam". From the view of a factionalized European Union, this is (very) bad business; the Europeans prefer to concentrate on the factionalized nature of the Iranian government itself and push for a nuclear deal.
Iranian government officials claim that the Germans and the Italians - big trade partners with extensive economic interests in the country - are pushing for a deal more than the French and much more than the British. As much as the EU cannot possibly agree on a unified foreign policy, Europeans in fact reject both sanctions and/or a possible US military strike.
Hitler meets Iraqification
The demonization of Ahmadinejad in some quarters in the US as the "new Adolf Hitler" is beside the point. As Asia Times Online has shown (The ultimate martyr, April 12), all crucial decisions in Iran remain with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ahmadinejad has been downgraded by the leader to play a "domestic" president's role.
His vocal, nationalist defense of Iran's civilian nuclear program follows the leader's script, and is met with approval because virtually all Iranians regard the issue as a matter of national right and pride.
According to a late-January poll by the Iranian Students Polling Agency, 85.4% of Iranians are in favor of continuing with the nuclear program. More than 80% feel the country needs nuclear energy. And about 70% regard the European negotiation side as "illogical".
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, issued a fatwa in the 1980s declaring that production, possession and use of nuclear weapons was against Islam. Russia, China and India still take him at his word.
For the Iranian government, the nuclear program is a powerful symbol of independence with regard to what is perceived as Anglo-Saxon colonialism. The view is shared by Iranians of all social classes and education backgrounds. Moreover, Iran is pushing for a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement, stating that every country has the right to a peaceful nuclear program. What Iran officially wants is a nuclear-free zone in West Asia, and that includes Israel, the sixth nuclear power in the world with more than 200 nuclear warheads.
But the issue itself may be beside the point. What's really at stake is that while the occupation of Iraq might be downgraded, the "invisible" US military bases will consolidate the US presence in Iraq and the Persian Gulf region. Ahmadinejad in this scenario is the perfect Hitler; US troops - and bases - must remain on the ground to prevent Iran from going nuclear and to prevent Iran's influence in Iraq's "Shi'iteistan".
Meanwhile, Washington's avowed initiative of financing groups to provoke "regime change" from within is widely viewed in Tehran as a joke. What Iranians - both in government and in the bazaars and tea shops - take very seriously is the US lending a hand to Israel squeezing Palestine even more - a development also spun in Washington as part of the war on "radical Islam". The Quadrennial Defense Review - the Pentagon's strategic document calling for the Long War against terror - can be easily interpreted as a call for a war on Islam.
The first steps towards war
A war on Iran could involve many military scenarios. Iranian officials are aware that the US may go for an initial "shock and awe". But they play down the possibility of a street revolution toppling the nationalist theocracy, as Washington hopes; the regime controls everything, and in the event of a foreign attack, virtually the whole population would rally behind the government. They also exclude attacking Israel, because they know Israel may respond with a nuclear strike. But they do not rule out the possibility of the US dropping nuclear bombs on Iran.
Iran's current demonology instrumentalizes the UN Security Council, in the name of "peace" and nuclear non-proliferation. But Iranian officials keep complaining that the country's official nuclear proposal was never examined in full by the EU. It included a provision that Iran would continue to negotiate with the EU-3 (Germany, France and Britain) on uranium enrichment for two more years, and would resume enrichment only if negotiations failed. The next step in the Security Council may be the imposition of "intelligent sanctions" - an oxymoron. In practice, that would mean a partial trade embargo on Iran, excluding food and of course oil and gas. Oil and gas are once again the heart of the matter. A recent energy conference in Tehran (In the heart of Pipelineistan, March 17) made it clear that Iran is a crucial node of a proposed Asian energy-security grid, which includes China, Russia and India. This grid would bypass Western - especially US - control of energy supplies and fuel in a real 21st-century industrial revolution all across Asia. It's no wonder that many analysts view the war on Iran in essence as a war of the United States against Asia.
The ultimate prize
As was the case with Iraq, Iran is being sold as a threat to world peace (it may be pursuing nuclear weapons). Bush - at least vocally - hopes diplomacy will prevail. But the decision to attack may have been made already, just as it was taken regarding Iraq way before March 2003.
Iraq had signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but was accused of possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). UN weapons inspectors were expelled on the eve of the 2003 war. Iran has also signed the NPT, but is being accused of pursuing a nuclear-weapons program. UN weapons inspectors still work in the country on and off - but for how long?
In 1995, Iraq told UN inspectors, via Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law Hussein Kamel, about a secret nuclear-weapons program, which had just been scrapped. This did not prevent the regime from being accused of concealing WMD just before the March 2003 invasion. In 2002, Iran told the UN that it had a secret nuclear program - not a weapons program. This did not prevent Iran from being accused four years later by the EU-3 of "concealment and deception".
In November 2002, the US threatened to strike Iraq unless it cooperated with UN inspectors. The US invaded Iraq anyway, without Security Council backing. In January, the EU-3 called for Iran to be referred to the Security Council. Sanctions may be applied. If no diplomatic solution is found, the Pentagon may find the opening it seeks for the next stage of its Long War.
Iran is not to be easily intimidated. Few in Tehran take the threat of oil sanctions seriously. Iranians know that even if the US decided to bomb the country's nuclear sites, they are maintained by Russian advisers and technicians; that would mean in effect a declaration of war against Russia. Russia recently closed a US$700 million deal selling 30 Tor M-1 surface-to-air missiles to Iran - very effective against aircraft, cruise missiles and guided bombs. The missiles will be deployed at the nuclear-research center at Isfahan and the Bushehr reactor, which is being built by Russia.
Iranians know Shi'ites in the south and in Baghdad would turn extreme heat on the occupation forces in Iraq. Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, on an official visit to Iran, according to his spokesman, said that "if any Islamic state, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is attacked, the Mehdi Army would fight inside and outside Iraq".
Iranians also know they can bypass any trade sanctions by trading even more with China. Anyway, Mohammed-Nabi Rudaki, deputy chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, which sits at the majlis (parliament), has already threatened that "if Europe does not act wisely with the Iranian nuclear portfolio and it is referred to the UN Security Council and economic or air travel restrictions are imposed unjustly, we have the power to halt oil supply to the last drop from the shores of the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz".
Up to 30% of the world's oil production passes through the strait. Were Iran to block it, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait would not be able to export their oil. The Pentagon may eventually get its Long War - but not exactly on its terms.
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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- Monday, 10 April 2006 -
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News & Analysis: Middle East: Iran
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/iran-a10.shtml
By Bill Van Auken
The Bush administration is in the advanced stages of the planning and preparation for a full-scale air war against Iran, including the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons against selected targets, according to reports published this week.
"Current and former American military and intelligence officials said 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," investigative reporter Seymour Hersh writes in the new edition of the New Yorker magazine, dated April 17.
The New Yorker report was largely corroborated by an article in Sunday's Washington Post, which reported, "Although a land invasion is not contemplated, military officers are weighing alternatives ranging from a limited air strike aimed at key nuclear sites, to a more extensive bombing campaign designed to destroy an array of military and political targets."
The Post added that the administration is considering an "ambitious campaign of bombing and cruise missiles leveling targets well beyond nuclear facilities, such as Iranian intelligence headquarters, the Revolutionary Guard and some in the government." It also said that war planners are "contemplating tactical nuclear devices."
According to Hersh's account, while the ostensible purpose of this military planning is the destruction of Iran's capacity to produce nuclear weapons, "President Bush's ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change."
Officials told Hersh that the Pentagon's plans call for bombing "many hundreds" of targets inside Iran, the majority of them having no connection with the country's nuclear program.
According to an unnamed former Pentagon official quoted in Hersh's report, the Bush administration's strategy is based on the premise that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." The former official told Hersh, "I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, 'What are they smoking?'"
That top US officials may have convinced themselves that a US bombing campaign, which would undoubtedly cost thousands of lives and leave a substantial section of Iran's infrastructure in ruins, would trigger a pro-American uprising is indeed mind-boggling.
Even more ominous, however, is the fact that they are drawing up plans for the first use of nuclear weapons in war--this time wholly unprovoked--since the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The Pentagon, Hersh reports, presented the White House this winter with contingency plans calling "for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One target is Iran's main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran."
The article further quotes a former defense official as revealing that US warplanes operating off of aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea have been "flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions--rapid ascending maneuvers known as 'over the shoulder' bombing--since last summer... within range of Iranian coastal radars."
A former senior intelligence official told Hersh that if the US wants to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, which are widely dispersed and, in some cases, housed in fortified underground bunkers, it would almost have to use nuclear weapons. "Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap," the official said. "'Decisive' is the key word of the Air Force's planning. It's a tough decision. But we made it in Japan."
"We're talking about mushroom clouds"
Spelling out the implications of nuclear strikes, the official added, according to Hersh: "'...we're talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don't have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out'--remove the nuclear option--'they're shouted down.'"
Hersh reports that the threatened use of nuclear weapons against Iran is strongly opposed by senior officers in the military's uniformed command, some of whom have threatened to resign over the issue. This was echoed by the Washington Post, which wrote: "Many military officers and specialists, however, view the saber rattling with alarm. A strike at Iran, they warn, would at best just delay its nuclear program by a few years but could inflame international opinion against the United States, particularly in the Muslim world and especially within Iran, while making US troops in Iraq targets for retaliation."
There has been speculation that the appearance of reports such as these is part of the Bush administration's strategy for intimidating the Iranian regime into giving up its nuclear program without a fight. On the other hand, there is reason to believe that senior officers in the US military command may want the discussion of nuclear strikes against Iran made public as a means of heading off such a move before the Bush administration can carry it out.
The Iranian government dismissed the war threats as an intimidation tactic. "We regard that (planning for air strikes) as psychological warfare stemming from America's anger and helplessness," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told the media. At the same time, he charged Washington with seeking to provoke a crisis. "They do not want us to reach an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Europeans," he said.
Washington's principal ally in the war against Iraq, Britain, likewise rejected the idea that there was any real threat of a US war against Iran. "...there is no smoking gun, there is no 'casus belli,'" said British Foreign Minister Jack Straw. "We can't be certain about Iran's intentions and that is therefore not a basis for which anybody would gain authority to go to military action."
However, according to the Washington Post, the Blair government "has launched its own planning for a potential US strike, studying security arrangements for its embassy and consular offices, for British citizens and corporate interests in Iran and for ships in the region and British troops in Iraq."
Many observers point to the irrationality of launching a war against Iran under conditions where the US military is already stretched to the breaking point in neighboring Iraq, and where air strikes across the border would undoubtedly trigger upheavals within the Iraqi Shiite population, the majority of the country, making the US occupation even more untenable.
Such reassurances, however, rely on the unwarranted assumption that rational considerations play the preponderant role in the formulation of the Bush administration's policies. A criminal and reckless military adventure is a very real possibility, arising to no small degree from the growing domestic political crisis of the Bush administration. The Bush White House has seen its popular support slump to historic lows, and it is threatened by a series of ticking political time bombs: the unraveling situation in Iraq, economic instability, criminal investigations into corruption and abuse of power.
A decision to embark on another war as a means of diverting and intimidating public opinion is a very real possibility. An attack on Iran would also likely give the Bush White House a real "war on terror" to facilitate its assault on democratic rights at home and justify even greater US military adventures in the future against such potential targets as China and Russia. Most people familiar with political relations in the region predict that a US strike on Iran would provoke a very real campaign of retaliation by well-organized and well-equipped forces against US targets both outside and within the United States.
There has been virtually no protest from the Democratic Party leadership against the threat of nuclear attacks on Iran. Many party leaders, including Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, have made repeated attacks on Bush from the right on the Iranian question, accusing the administration of failing to prosecute a sufficiently hard-line policy against Teheran.
According to Hersh's account, at least one leading congressional Democrat has been included in the administration's discussions with members of Congress on war plans for Iran. Quoting an unnamed member of the House of Representatives, Hersh reported that questions from those briefed in Congress were limited to the military's technical capacity for carrying out an effective strike. "There's no pressure from Congress" against launching a military attack on Iran, the House member said.
The general consensus for military aggression against Iran within the American ruling establishment is driven by the same interests that provided bipartisan support for the war on Iraq. As a "high ranking diplomat" told Hersh, "The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years."
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INTER PRESS SERVICE
Politics: U.S.
April 11, 2006
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32862
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 11 (IPS) -- One month after the publication by two of the most influential international relations scholars in the United States of a highly controversial essay on the so-called "Israel Lobby", their thesis that the lobby exercises "unmatched power" in Washington is being tested by rapidly rising tensions with Iran.
Far more visibly than any other domestic constituency, the Israel Lobby, defined by Profs. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt, academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, as "the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction", has pushed the government -- both Congress and the George W. Bush administration -- toward confrontation with Tehran.
Leading the charge has been a familiar group of neo-conservatives, such as former Defence Policy Board (DPB) chairman Richard Perle and former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey, who championed the war in Iraq but who have increasingly focused their energies over the past year on building support for "regime change" and, if necessary, military action against Iran if it does not abandon its nuclear programme.
(On Tuesday, Iran announced that it had successfully enriched uranium, which can be used for both nuclear weapons and nuclear power reactors, in defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution ordering an end to all enrichment activities by Apr. 28).
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the premier Israel lobby group whose annual convention last year featured a giant, multi-media exhibit on how Iran is "pursuing nuclear weapons and how it can be stopped", has also been pushing hard on Capitol Hill for legislation to promote regime change. Despite White House objections, the group has sought tough sanctions against foreign companies with investments in Iran.
"This bill has been pushed almost entirely by AIPAC," noted Trita Parsi, a Middle East expert at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) here. "I don't see any other major groups behind this legislation that have had any impact on it."
Similarly, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), whose leadership is considered slightly less hawkish than AIPAC, has taken out full-page ads in influential U.S. newspapers since last week entitled "A Nuclear Iran Threatens All" depicting radiating circles on an Iran-centred map to show where its missiles could strike.
"Suppose Iran one day gives nuclear devices to terrorists," the ad reads. "Could anyone anywhere feel safe?"
In their 81-page essay, entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" and condensed in a shorter essay published last month in the London Review of Books, Mearsheimer and Walt, pillars of the "realist" school of international relations, argue that Washington's Middle East policy is too closely tied to Israel to serve its own national interests in the region, particularly in the so-called "war on terror".
They believe that the power of the Israel Lobby -- derived, among other things, from its ability to marshal financial support for Democratic as well as Republican politicians, its grassroots organisational prowess, and its ability to stigmatise critics as "anti-Semitic" (a tactic already deployed against the authors) -- is largely responsible.
"No lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essentially the same," the authors argued, noting that the lobby, while predominantly Jewish, also includes prominent Christian evangelicals and non-Jewish neo-conservatives, such as Woolsey and former Education Secretary William Bennett.
In the administration's decision to invade Iraq, pressure from Israel and the lobby played a "critical" -- although not exclusive -- role, according to the paper, which cited pre-war public prodding by Israeli leaders and by leaders of many major Jewish organisations as evidence, although it notes that most U.S. Jews were sceptical and have since turned strongly against the war.
Neo-conservatives closely associated with the right-wing views of Israel's Likud party - both in and outside the administration -- played a particularly important role in gaining support for "regime change" in Iraq stretching back to the mid-1990s, according to the paper.
But even during the run-up to the Iraq war, Israeli leaders, notably then-Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, depicted Iran as the greater threat, a theme that was picked up by the Lobby, led by the neo-conservatives, immediately after Baghdad's fall.
"The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the Middle East... But the next great battle -- not, we hope a military one -- will be for Iran," wrote the Weekly Standard's neo-conservative editor, William Kristol, in early May 2003.
Shortly thereafter, neo-conservatives and other hawks led by Vice Pres. Dick Cheney succeeded in cutting off ongoing U.S.-Iranian talks on Afghanistan and Iran and killing an offer by Tehran to engage in a broader negotiation on all outstanding differences.
What makes the growing confrontation with Iran so remarkable is that the Israel Lobby appears to be the only major organised force here that is actively pushing it toward crisis.
Mainstream analysts, including arms control hawks who favour strong pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme, have spoken out against military action as far too risky and almost certainly counter-productive. Even analysts at the right-wing Heritage Foundation have voiced doubts. "It just doesn't make any sense from a geopolitical standpoint," said Heritage's James Carifano, noting Iran's capacity to retaliate against the U.S. in Iraq.
The Iranian exile community, which has generally favoured more pressure on Tehran, similarly appears divided about the consequences of a military attack, with some leaders fearing that it would strengthen the regime, Walt told IPS. He added that "it's hard for me to believe that (U.S.) oil companies would be in favour of a military option (because they) don't like violence or events that create political risk or uncertainty."
While insisting that military action against Iran's nuclear programme should only be a last resort, the Israel Lobby, on the other hand, appears united in the conviction that an attack will indeed be necessary if diplomatic efforts, economic pressure, and covert action fail.
"(Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) sees the West as wimps and thinks we will eventually cave in," Patrick Clawson, deputy director of research of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank established by AIPAC, told New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. "We have to be ready to deal with Iran if the crisis escalates."
Hersh summarised Clawson's bottom line as "Iran had no choice other than to accede to America's demands or face a military attack."
That was much the same message delivered by Perle himself and rapturously received by the attendees at AIPAC's 2006 convention here last month. The convention, at which the keynoter, none other than the administration's ultimate hawk, Vice Pres. Cheney, vowed "meaningful consequences" if Iran did not freeze its nuclear programme, drew several hundred Democratic and Republican lawmakers in what could only be described as a show of raw political power.
"I don't think there's another group in the country that has two successive conferences in which the centrepiece was beating the drums for war in Iran," noted one senior official with another major pro-Israel organisation, who asked not to be identified. "They are the main force behind this."
Copyright 2006 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.
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- Tuesday, April 11, 2006 -
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4. Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455:
A Glimpse into the Mind of a Terrorist.
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By JOSE PERTIERRA
http://www.counterpunch.org/pertierra04112006.html
Last week in Miami, Luis Posada Carriles's accomplice in the downing of the Cuban passenger plane that was blown out of the sky with 73 innocent people on board on October 6, 1976 was interviewed by Juan Manuel Cao of Channel 41 in Miami. His name is Orlando Bosch.
I quote verbatim excerpts from the television interview
Juan Manuel Cao: Did you down that plane in 1976?
Orlando Bosch: If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself . . . . and if I tell you that did not participate in that action, you would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or the other.
Juan Manuel Cao: In that action 76 persons were killed (the correct figure is 73, including a pregnant passenger)?
Orlando Bosch: No chico, in a war such as us cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant, you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach.
Juan Manuel Cao: But don't you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?
Orlando Bosch: . . . Who was on board that plane? Four members of the Communist Party, five north Koreans, five Guyanese, (JP: there were really 11 Guyanese passengers) . . . concho chico, four member of the Communist Party chico!!! Who was there? Our enemies . . .
Juan Manuel Cao: And the fencers? The young people on board?
Orlando Bosch: I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant etc etc. She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant. We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that every one who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny.
Juan Manuel Cao: If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn't you think it difficult . . . ?
Orlando Bosch: No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba.
Bosch's answers to those five questions give us a glimpse into the mind of the kind of terrorist that the United States government harbors and protects in Miami: terrorists that for the last forty-seven years have waged a bloody and ruthless war against the Cuban people.
What happened to Cubana de AviaciÃ"n 455 almost thirty years ago is no secret. We need simply examine the CIA's own declassified cables. At the time, this was the worst act of aviation terrorism in history, and the first time that a civilian airliner was blown up by terrorists.
More than three months before CU-455 was blown out of the sky over Barbados on that sunny Wednesday afternoon of October 6, 1976, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) informed Washington that a Cuban exile extremist group planned to place a bomb on a Cubana de Aviacion flight.
The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research reported to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that a CIA source had overheard Luis Posada Carriles say less than a month prior to the bombing that "we are going hit a Cuban airliner."
Neither Washington nor the CIA alerted Cuban authorities to the terrorist threat against their planes.
The bombing was carried out by Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo. Final preparations for the terrorist act began with the arrival of Orlando Bosch in Caracas on September 8, 1976. Bosch is a Cuban-born terrorist who was the acknowledged leader of an organization called Coordinacion de Organizaciones Revolucionarias Unidas (CORU).
According to the FBI, CORU was an umbrella group of Cuban exile organizations that was formed to "plan, finance and carry out terrorist operations and attacks against Cuba." (FBI cable dated June 29, 1976).
When Bosch arrived in Caracas on the 8th of September of that year, Posada Carriles was there to greet and make available to him his right hand man: trusted confidante Hernan Ricardo, who has admitted under oath to be a CIA operative. In 1976, Ricardo was also an employee of Luis Posada Carriles at a private intelligence firm that the latter founded and ran in Caracas: Investigaciones Comerciales e Industriales (ICI). Ricardo says that Posada Carriles introduced him to Orlando Bosch at the ICI offices in Caracas.
To help him with the special operation that Bosch and Posada planned for him, Ricardo in turn recruited Freddy Lugo. A Venezuelan citizen, Lugo has also admitted under oath to be a CIA operative.
We know that the foursome of Posada, Bosch, Ricardo and Lugo met together at least four times to plan the downing of the plan.
At the meetings, the terrorists agreed upon the coded words they would use to describe the success of the operation. The plane would be known as the "bus", and the passengers would be called the "dogs." "The rest is up to you," Posada told Lugo and Ricardo.
The C-4 explosives were carried on board the aircraft by Ricardo and Lugo in a tube of toothpaste and in a camera.
Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo boarded the CU-455 flight in Trinidad at 12:15 PM bound for Barbados. Ricardo traveled under a