8.14.2005
Necessary Context: Iraq
With no chemical biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq, the goal of building a Democracy in Iraq was grabbed onto by our Miserable Failure of a President, Mr Bush and his supporters as a face saving excuse for the attack and occupation of a non threatening country far from our shores that, coincidently, has both a strategic geopolitical location and vast oil reserves.
If one gets past the partisan ya-ya the Fibber-in- Chief and his minions repeat robotically (always on message, the whole crew of them) with no regard for the situations realities one can see that Democracy in a NeoConservative vein, "the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein" as Thomas Friedman put it , aint gonna happen.. The Bushies act surprised.
My guess is that the NeoCons are pleased. A federalized Iraq, broken up into Sunni Shiite and Kurdish areas will prove to be pliable, if not pliable then at least it will be a weaker entity than Iraq was. I have linked to a paper titled "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties"" by Oded Yinon dated 1982 which states:
Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precendent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unqiue areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target as well as a paper presented to Benjamin Netanyahu by The Study Group "A New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000:" entitled A Clean Break:A New Strategy for Securing the Realm that was penned by, among others Bush NeoConservatives Richard Pearl, Douglas Feith David Wurmser and Meyrav Wurmser, in 1996. Here is a timeline of NeoConservative efforts to get the United States involved in a war with Iraq. It offers supporting links from NeoCon websites and articles; judge for yourself the reasons our young people are dying in Iraq. Take the time to read and reason.
This article from the Washington Post shows that the attack of Iraq was ill-conceived and badly managed :
U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq
Administration Is Shedding 'Unreality' That Dominated Invasion, Official Says
The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.
"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."
"...{S}hedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning"
The NeoConservative claims of flowers strewn at our soldiers feet. .. Look at this letter from a writer associated with The Project for A New American Century from May 2001, yup, pre 9/11 folks, urging Mr Bush to attack Iraq:
One of those costs would be the deployment of U.S. soldiers. To refuse to send large numbers of them would clearly signal that the United States still wasn't serious. For the opposition to have legitimacy and hayba in Iraqi eyes, U.S. ground forces would have to be deployed in the south to seize and protect zones under U.S.-opposition control. That alone would quickly transform Iraq's political landscape. We must shatter the bonds of fear that are the primary glue holding Saddam's totalitarian society together. U.S. ground troops are the key to instigating insurrection against the Ba'ath party.
And ground troops would also be a military necessity. Combined U.S.-opposition military operations would be inevitable. American helicopter gunships -- essential for neutralizing Baghdad's armor -- don't go anywhere without mechanized foot soldiers to back them up. American foot-soldiers don't go anywhere in significant numbers without tanks in front of them. At minimum, two divisions -- roughly 50,000 troops -- would probably be needed in the beginning. Given the U.S. military's doctrine of overwhelming force -- more Field Marshal Montgomery than General Patton -- the Army would likely press for far more...,
How about this snippet of a letter, composed at a 19 hour Rumsfeld meeting of Defense Advisory Board and PNAC associates, that Mr Powell was not invited to, published September 20th, 2001:
It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States. But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq
Retired General Anthony Zinni weighs in ( He was once US Envoy to Israel).
Well, it starts with at the top. If you're the secretary of defense and you're responsible for that. If you're responsible for that planning and that execution on the ground. If you've assumed responsibility for the other elements, non-military, non-security, political, economic, social and everything else, then you bear responsibility,” says Zinni. “Certainly those in your ranks that foisted this strategy on us that is flawed. Certainly they ought to be gone and replaced.”
Zinni is talking about a group of policymakers within the administration known as "the neo-conservatives" who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel. They include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle; National Security Council member Eliot Abrams; and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Zinni believes they are political ideologues who have hijacked American policy in Iraq.
“I think it's the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody - everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do,” says Zinni.
“And one article, because I mentioned the neo-conservatives who describe themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it. I certainly didn't criticize who they were. I certainly don't know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I'm not interested.”
Adds Zinni: “I know what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years. And what they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I don't believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in Washington that doesn't know where it came from.”
Read about The Office of Special Plans, the NeoCon stovepipe that promoted false intelligence to get this war accomplished.
Look at the key players, their connections, their long term strategy. Read deeply and reason.
The truth is not pretty. Don't be afraid to talk about it.
Unless the American people wake up, shake off this media fostered trance so many are in, more of the same is going to come straight from the Land of the Free. Death, the GOP/NeoConservative export:
In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran. The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a
contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United
States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.
8/14/2005
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