Creating a Cauldron in the Middle East - Michael Ledeen - Fascism [View All]

[eleny]

I was researching "yellowcake" trying to learn what it is and what countries have it. By Googling, I learned that Gabon, Namibia, South Africa and Niger are sources in Africa.

I also looked up a definition of yellowcake and arrived at this Encyclopedia web site that linked to its definition of "yellowcake forgery". It talks all about how we went to war in Iraq using the forged documents.
www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Yellowcake-forgery

And that's where Michael Ledeen is mentioned. "In an interview published April 7, 2005, Cannistaro (the former head of counterterrorism operations at the CIA and the intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan) was asked by Ian Masters what he would say if it was asserted that the source of the forgery was former National Security Council and State Department consultant Michael Ledeen. (Ledeen had also allegedly been a liaison between the American Intelligence Community and SISMI (Italian military intelligence agency) two decades earlier.) Cannistraro answered by saying: "you'd be very close."
www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Yellowcake-forgery

So I followed the Encyclopedia External link for Ledeen and found this:
"Regarding regime change in the Middle East, in 2002 Ledeen criticized the views of former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, writing: Regime change is the overthrow of a government (or regime) considered illegitimate by an external force (usually military), and its replacement with a new government according to the ideas and/or interests promoted by that force.
He (Scowcroft) fears that if we attack Iraq "I think we could have an explosion in the Middle East. It could turn the whole region into a caldron and destroy the War on Terror." One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today. If we wage the war effectively, we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and either bring down the Saudi monarchy or force it to abandon its global assembly line to indoctrinate young terrorists. That's our mission in the war against terror."
www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Michael-Ledeen

An article on Ledeen in The American Conservative shows them to be very wary of him: "Flirting with Fascism/Neocon theorist Michael Ledeen draws more from Italian fascism than from the American Right" http://www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/feature.html
"...But there is at least one neoconservative commentator whose personal political odyssey began with a fascination not with Trotskyism, but instead with another famous political movement that grew up in the early decades of the 20th century: fascism. I refer to Michael Ledeen, leading neocon theoretician, expert on Machiavelli, holder of the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, regular columnist for National Review—and the principal cheerleader today for an extension of the war on terror to include regime change in Iran....
As Ledeen shows, the Italian fascists expressed their desire “to tear down the old order” (his words from 2002) in terms that are curiously anticipatory of a famous statement in 2003 by the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. In 1932, Asvero Gravelli also divided Europe into “old” and “new” when he wrote, in Towards the Fascist International, “Either old Europe or young Europe. Fascism is the gravedigger of old Europe. Now the forces of the Fascist International are rising.” It all sounds rather prophetic."