Blumenthal: The neocons' next war

[kskiska]

By secretly providing NSA intelligence to Israel and undermining the hapless Condi Rice, hardliners in the Bush administration are trying to widen the Middle East conflict to Iran and Syria, not stop it.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Aug. 03, 2006 | The National Security Agency is providing signal intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah as it fires hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, according to a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation. President Bush has approved the secret program.

Inside the administration, neoconservatives on Vice President Dick Cheney's national security staff and Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative senior director for the Near East on the National Security Council, are prime movers behind sharing NSA intelligence with Israel, and they have discussed Syrian and Iranian supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both countries, the source privy to conversations about the program says. (Intelligence, including that gathered by the NSA, has been provided to Israel in the past for various purposes.) The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is said to have been "briefed" and to be "on board," but she is not a central actor in pushing the covert neoconservative scenario. Her "briefing" appears to be an aspect of an internal struggle to intimidate and marginalize her. Recently she has come under fire from prominent neoconservatives who oppose her support for diplomatic negotiations with Iran to prevent its development of nuclear weaponry.

(snip)

Confused, ineffectual and incapable of filling her office with power, Rice has become the voodoo doll that Powell was in the first term. Even her feeble and counterproductive gestures toward diplomacy leave her open to the harshest attacks from neoconservatives. Scowcroft and the Bush I team are simply ignored. The sustained assault on Rice is a means to an end -- restoring the ascendancy of neoconservatism.

more…
http://salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/08/03/mideast/

[shain from kane]

1. Chicken fried Rice. Go public. Resign. Do something. You go, girl. n/t

[yurbud]

4. she doesn't disagree with goals, just doesn't do a good job of going thru

the diplomatic motions.

[napi21]

2. Hmmm, do you believe that? n/t

[burf]

3. Condi is going to suffer the

same fate as Katherine Harris. Used, abused and left hangin' out to dry.

[DemoTex]

5. Blumenthal goes on to say ..

Rice, agent of the nefarious State Department, is supposedly the enemy within. "We are in the early stages of World War III," Gingrich told Insight. "Our bureaucracies are not responding fast enough. We don't have the right attitude." Salon (My emphasis)

Lots of things have gone south for the NeoCon-men since 2001, so they are not unlike cornered feral dogs. They are lashing out unchecked. They are dangerous men, in a most dangerous time, and they are desperate. VERB SAP!


Blood is cheap to the NeoCon-men