What was the source of Cheney's Iraq obsessions?

[leveymg]

So, who do you think was feeding Cheney and Rumsfeld bad intelligence that Iraq was behind 9/11, and that Saddam had WMDs? Like the Nile, everything has its source. Let's press back up river and see where it leads.

The issue of Iraq and 9/11 has been resurrected in the most recent issue of Newsweek. Not really news, but timely, and worth looking at again in light of what we've learned in the last year about the cabal around the Vice President's office and its outing of Valerie Plame, who we now know was focused at CIA on analyzing Iraq WMD issues.

Mark Hosenball at Newsweek writes about the struggle between the CIA and the Bush Administration in the weeks before the March 30, 2003 invasion of Iraq. He reports that the White House was planning to publicize a rumor that Mohamed Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence officers in Prague before 9/11, an account that was vigorously disputed by the CIA. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14824384/site/newsweek/print/1/displaymode/1098/ This is a side-bar story to the more widely publicized scandal surrounding the Niger yellowcake forgeries, another White House-CIA struggle over Iraq intelligence that led to the outing of Valerie Plame.

So, now we ask, who was the source of that contested intelligence report?

Along the way to the source, one can map four major tributaries carrying the rumour: the easiest to find is Laurie Mylroie (a single-issue anti-Hussein zealot who is something of a scapegoat now for this emerging scandal) along with Edward Jay Epstein (a New York journalist, previously, a self-styled debunker of JFK assassination theories), and former CIA Director James Woolsey, but go further upstream and we come all the way to the heart of darkness -- in the months just before 9/11, we find Paul Wolfowitz.

Let's first revisit a March 29, 2004 report by Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas. They wrote that U.S. counterterrorism efforts against bin Laden were pushed aside to make way for planning for a war against Iraq that from the early months of the Bush Administration became an obsession at the White House and the Pentagon: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4571338/

Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief of the national-security staff, tells Newsweek that at an April 2001 top-level meeting to discuss terrorism, his effort to focus on Al Qaeda was rebuffed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. According to Clarke, Wolfowitz said, "Who cares about a little terrorist in Afghanistan?" The real threat, Wolfowitz insisted, was state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam Hussein.

In the meeting, says Clarke, Wolfowitz cited the writings of Laurie Mylroie, a controversial academic who had written a book advancing an elaborate conspiracy theory that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Clarke says he tried to refute Wolfowitz. "We've investigated that five ways to Friday, and nobody believes that," Clarke recalls saying. "It was Al Qaeda. It wasn't Saddam." A spokesman for Wolfowitz describes Clarke's account as a "fabrication." Wolfowitz always regarded Al Qaeda as "a major threat," says this official.

Clarke tells Newsweek that the day after 9/11, President Bush wanted the FBI and CIA to hunt for any evidence that pointed to Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. Clarke recalls that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was also looking for a justification to bomb Iraq. Soon after the 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld was arguing at a cabinet meeting that Afghanistan, home of Osama bin Laden's terrorist camps, did not offer "enough good targets." "We should do Iraq," Rumsfeld urged.


That brings us to the source of allegations that emerged almost immediately after four airliners were hijacked, killing 3000 Americans, that Saddam Hussein was somehow responsible.

Here's a very intreresting listserve (remember those?) directed at conservatives with an interest in intelligence that dates from Sept. 24, 2001. It discusses the "discovery" of the Saddam-Osama connection a week earlier. Featured there is the same roster of sources on alleged Iraqi links to al-Qaeda: Mylroie, Woolsey, and prominently cited as supporting that theory:

http://lists101.his.com/pipermail/intelforum/2001-September/005542.html

Ex-Mossad Chief, Iraq was Behind the Attacks

Herald Sun Sunday
(Melbourne)
Saddam link to attacks
By DENNIS EISENBERG in Jerusalem
23sep01

INTELLIGENCE experts have suggested the prime mover behind the attacks
was Saddam Hussein.

The former head of Israel's Mossad secret service, Rafi Eitan, and a
former CIA director, R. James Woolsey, said there are clear indications
that the Iraqi president played a leading role in the attacks on the
World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. "I have no doubt whatsoever that
the mastermind of this atrocity is none other than the Iraqi dictator,"
said Mr Eitan, a security adviser to three Israeli governments and
mastermind of the capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in May
1960.

This week's revelation that Mohamed Atta, 33, an Egyptian suspected of
hijacking the first plane to strike the World Trade Centre, met an Iraqi
intelligence official in Europe earlier this year, adds weight to the
theory. Officials have also suggested bin Laden was in contact with
Iraqi agents from his base in Afghanistan in the days before the
attacks.

Mr. Eitan said bin Laden may have been a partner, or merely a pawn, in a
plot by Baghdad to strike back following its Gulf War defeat and to show
the world it is still capable of action despite 10 years' of crippling
UN sanctions. "It is no secret that Saddam Hussein has been using the
vast resources of his own intelligence forces to avenge his defeat," Mr.
Eitan said.

His view is shared by American academic and Iraqi affairs expert Laurie
Mylroie. "Bin Laden is said to be the man behind the attack, but even if
he did have a hand in it, his role was clearly a very minor one," Ms.
Mylroie said.

Uri Dan, an adviser to Israeli premier Ariel Sharon, said: "Saddam
Hussein, with great cunning, feels that nobody has any proof that he was
directly involved in the New York bombing attack. "He has been careful
to make sure that no finger can be pointed directly at him. "He is quite
happy to see somebody else being held responsible."

Though Mr. Woolsey, CIA director from 1993 to '95, believes bin Laden
played a role in the atrocities, he told The New Republic magazine:
"Intelligence and law enforcement officials would do well to at least
consider another possibility: that the attacks -- whether perpetrated by
bin Laden and his associates or by others -- were sponsored, supported
and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein."

And he cited an investigation by Ms. Mylroie into the 1993 bombing of
the World Trade Centre to support his claim.Ý Writing in her book, "A
Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America," Ms.
Mylroie suggests that the attack was carried out by an Iraqi agent. The
FBI had blamed Pakistani Abdul Basit, 27, who had used the alias Ramzi
Yousef, but Ms. Mylroie has challenged this theory. She insists the man
hiding behind the alias Yousef did plan the attack, but that man was not
Basit. The Pakistani had been living in Kuwait in 1990 and, it is
claimed, was killed, along with his family, when Iraq invaded. An Iraqi
agent then assumed Basit's identity, and files relating to him in Kuwait
were doctored.

Ms. Mylroie's theory has been supported by James Fox, the man who led
the FBI's investigation into the 1993 bombing until he was taken off the
case a year later. "If Mylroie and Fox (who died in 1997) are right,
then it was Iraq that went after the World Trade Centre last time, which
makes it much more plausible that Iraq has done so again," Mr. Woolsey
told The New Republic. "As yet, there is no evidence of explicit state
sponsorship of the September 11 attacks, but absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence." Mr. Woolsey said material handled by Basit while
in England in 1988 and seized by British security services, would have
been examined for fingerprints. If the prints matched those of Yousef,
the Iraqi connection would be disproved and the accepted theory, that a
lone Pakistani planned the operation, would stand. But if they did not
match, it would support the argument that the forces of Saddam Hussein
killed Basit, stole his identity and an agent of Baghdad hid behind the
ghost of a dead man while bringing terror to New York. The results of
the fingerprint tests have never been revealed and the CIA has refused
to comment on Mr. Woolsey's claims. If the claims can be proved there
are plenty of people in Washington who would support a Baghdad blitz. A
White House insider this week said: "The focus ought to be on bin Laden
and the Afghan network first." But he stressed: "Iraq's day will come."

I hope this helps , if l dont know something or l am unsure l will say so

Jeremy Compton
jeremycompton@h...

Intelligence Forum (http://www.intelforum.org ) is sponsored by Intelligence
and National Security, a Frank Cass journal (http://www.frankcass.com/jnls/ins.htm )

****

Iraq's day, indeed, came, and contrary to forgeries and bad intelligence tips fed through OSP to OVP, there were no WMDs found, and no ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda established. Now there is the accounting.

One must ask a simple question. Were elements within Israeli intelligence aligned with Likud simply feeding back what they knew Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz wanted to hear -- that Saddam was the heart of darkness -- or, were these indeed the very source of the lies that drove America into Iraq?

[havocmom]

1. Geography/pipelines (n/t)

[leveymg]

5. This is about the source of bad 9/11 Iraq intelligence.

Not a complete explanation for why we invaded Iraq. I agree, Halliburton, Enron and Exxon-Mobil was at the heart of that deeper darkness.

[havocmom]

9. Yes, bad intel. And why bad intell? Geography/pipelines

Had to get their war on so they could have the real estate. Only that isn't going so well.

[leveymg]

16. It boils down to a three letter word:

O-I-L

[savemefromdumbya]

17. and dollars not Euros

[Warpy]

2. It's been pointed out before that this idiocy of a war

against Iraq was launched on pure fabrications posing as legitimate intelligence and pushed along with lies the administration knew they were telling at the time they told them and that the war has benefited no one save Israel.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to find out they'd been poisoning the intelligence offices in the Pentagon for years. It would explain a lot.

It looks like the spy in Feith's office, Franklin, may weasel out of the charges thanks to the efforts of the administration, men who want the embarrassment of getting caught to go away.

[leveymg]

4. Franklin already pled guilty. No weaseling for him.

Before he was arrested, though. he did wear a wire for the FBI. Among those caught on tape was the Naor Gilon, the Mossad Chief of Station in Washington, along with two AIPAC employees. That's in the Indictment.

[Warpy]

12. I knew Franklin weaseled a plea bargain

in exchange for the names of his AIPAC contacts and to avoid the trial which would have been so embarrassing to the administration as more and more dirt involving the Pentagon intelligence offices was dug up and exposed.

I doubt he'll do much time before he decamps for Israel.

[leveymg]

15. He already had a trial, which the major US media didn't cover.

He was sentenced to seven years, in exchange for his cooperation. He could have gotten life.

The follow-on trial of his two confederates at AIPAC may be deep-sixed because they were charged under the 1917 Espionage Act. It's unusual that a non-official who just receives and passes on classified documents is prosecuted under that statute, and may not be a good precedent, as it could also be used in the same way as a de facto Official Secrets Act to go after journalists who publish classified docs.

[populistdriven]

3. This Haaretz article names more

If only our MSM was as free as Israel's...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=280279&contrassID=2&subContrassID=14&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible. But another journalist, Thomas Friedman (not part of the group), is skeptical

1. The doctrine

WASHINGTON - At the conclusion of its second week, the war to liberate Iraq wasn't looking good. Not even in Washington. The assumption of a swift collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime had itself collapsed. The presupposition that the Iraqi dictatorship would crumble as soon as mighty America entered the country proved unfounded. The Shi'ites didn't rise up, the Sunnis fought fiercely. Iraqi guerrilla warfare found the American generals unprepared and endangered their overextended supply lines. Nevertheless, 70 percent of the American people continued to support the war; 60 percent thought victory was certain; 74 percent expressed confidence in President George W. Bush.

Washington is a small city. It's a place of human dimensions. A kind of small town that happens to run an empire. A small town of government officials and members of Congress and personnel of research institutes and journalists who pretty well all know one another. Everyone is busy intriguing against everyone else; and everyone gossips about everyone else.

In the course of the past year, a new belief has emerged in the town: the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another and are convinced that political ideas are a major driving force of history. They believe that the right political idea entails a fusion of morality and force, human rights and grit. The philosophical underpinnings of the Washington neoconservatives are the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Edmund Burke. They also admire Winston Churchill and the policy pursued by Ronald Reagan. They tend to read reality in terms of the failure of the 1930s (Munich) versus the success of the 1980s (the fall of the Berlin Wall).

(more)

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=280279&contrassID=2&subContrassID=14&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

[leveymg]

7. I didn't cite it, but you should also read

http://www.counterpunch.org/green02282004.html

February 28 / 29, 2004

A CounterPunch Special Report
Serving Two Flags
Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration
By STEPHEN GREEN

Since 9-11, a small group of "neo-conservatives" in the Administration have effectively gutted--they would say reformed--traditional American foreign and security policy. Notable features of the new Bush doctrine include the pre-emptive use of unilateral force, and the undermining of the United Nations and the principle instruments and institutions of international law....all in the cause of fighting terrorism and promoting homeland security.

Some skeptics, noting the neo-cons' past academic and professional associations, writings and public utterances, have suggested that their underlying agenda is the alignment of U.S. foreign and security policies with those of Ariel Sharon and the Israeli right wing. The administration's new hard line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict certainly suggests that, as perhaps does the destruction, with U.S. soldiers and funds, of the military capacity of Iraq, and the current belligerent neo-con campaign against the other two countries which constitute a remaining counterforce to Israeli military hegemony in the region--Iran and Syria.

Have the neo-conservatives--many of whom are senior officials in the Defense Department, National Security Council and Office of the Vice President--had dual agendas, while professing to work for the internal security of the United States against its terrorist enemies?

SNIP

[Individualist]

6. Intelligence reports were irrelevant to the PNAC cabal

They were hell-bent on invading Iraq just as they're hell-bent on attacking Iran.

[leveymg]

8. True, but they needed to cite some intel to justify the invasion.

No matter how flimsy. Because they could didn't want to risk cooking it up themselves, someone outside the US intel community had to provide it.

[Parisle]

10. Go Back To Pre-1993

---- A lot of soon-to-be recognized neocons were not happy with the limited manner in which Bush 41's Desert Storm concluded,... When the USSR essentially imploded and fell apart in 1993-94, a few of them were already on the case. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle basically looked at each other and said, "We can take over the world, now." Iraq was seen as the first stepping stone for two reasons. We had just HAD a war there, and the war fervor and rationale could be somewhat revived, they felt. And their further military ambitions required that the US not undertake achieving those ambitions unless we knew for certain that we would not get caught in an oil pinch ,.. after all, fighter jets, tanks and most navy ships still run on oil. And so the plan began to take shape.....

---- Clinton, of course, was not supposed to win in '92,... but Perot was the unforseen fly in the neocon ointment that year. Enter Scaiffe-Mellon, Ken Starr, et al,.. and the vast right wing conspiracy to get Clinton. When he won again in '96, they threw it in overdrive,.... The PNAC was formally launched,... they even submitted their 1997 Manifesto to Clinton,.. The fantastic plans for pipelines in Afghanistan and gas plants in India were already being pitched by Enron,.. and the PNAC found a logical partner in the energy companies,... then patiently waited for 2000 and for Florida.

[leveymg]

19. Excellent summary!

:thumbsup: But, don't forget the motivations of the Clinton Administration: develop the Caspian Sea sources that had just been dislodged from the former Soviet Union. Don't get sidetracked into Middle East advertures. Keep energy prices low. Grow the U.S. economy, stupid.

Then the election of 2000. Then 9/11. Then the Iraq War. Then huge deficits and near-zero domestic growth. Then the rest of the mess we're in.

[paparush]

11. US takes down Iraq = oil and profits AND it clears a path for Iran

to rise to the fore in the region thus justifying the PNAC need to move against Iran.

[leveymg]

14. Iran was the ultimate goal, according to "A Clean Break"

The exact sequencing was to take down Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and finally Iran, as the prize. http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm Looks like they got bogged down at step one-and-a-half of that four-step agenda.

However, the plan was packaged for Netanyahu as a model for transforming Israel, itself, into a Right-wing regional empire.

[NoSheep]

13. I don't think they needed bad intel to know how much money

would be involved in defense contracts. But I do remember they trusted that guy Chalabi (sp?) until he got on their bad side. Also, weren't there stateside Iraqi's cluing them in on how "easy" it would be to overthrow Saddam?

I don't have any links...so this is just from memory. But I bet someone does!

[leveymg]

20. Chalabi and the INC is part of the mix, but they're working with others

Ahmed was actually arrested in 2004 by the CIA, but he got a nice Get Out of Jail free card from Rumsfeld and Cheney.

[Virginia Dare]

22. Chalabi was ultimately in cahoots with the Iranians....

as well. One has to wonder what sort of bargain was struck there.

Chalabi tried for years to lobby the Clinton Administration about Iraq, but they brushed him off as a kook.

Just shows you what a tragedy this whole mess has been. If only things could have been different in 2000.

[leveymg]

25. Perhaps.

He's also accused of taking part in the conspiracy to generate the false Niger Yellowcake documents. That appears to have been a different party. Of course, Chalabi is an opportunist who worked for a lot of people.

[shadowknows69]

18. Saddam jilted him for Satan?

the proof is in the South Park movie.

[leveymg]

21. Just out of curiosity, but why did this post get so few Recs today?

[Virginia Dare]

23. I just found it, I'll vote it up...

it's important!

[leveymg]

24. Thanks eom

[slipslidingaway]

26. K&R for now, thanks. n/t

[shanti]

27. PNAC

in a word....