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Today's
Stories
February
9, 2004
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with Jewish
Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine in
Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide from
Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure: Our
Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Jordan
Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New
Mexico
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan
Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10, Morris
0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's Revelations
and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the Mafia
|
February
9, 2004
Smells Like Team Spirit
Bush's
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
By CHRIS FLOYD
The
confession by the Bush Administration's chief arms investigator that
Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction before the war has sent a thunderbolt
of puzzlement through the pundits and politicians of the Anglo-American
elite. "How could the intelligence reports have been so wrong?"
they cry, wringing their hands in consternation. "Independent"
commissions filled with Establishment worthies are now in the offing,
as the architects of the war -- and their media sycophants --
pledge to resolve this disturbing mystery.
But
of course there is no "mystery." Anyone with a passing acquaintance
of recent history knows exactly how, and why, the intelligence data
concerning Iraq's non-existent WMD came to be used as a justification
for military aggression. Indeed, this history is so open, so transparent
and so widely available -- in news reports, unclassified government
documents, think-tank publications, etc. -- that a cynic might suspect
that these government-appointed "investigations" are actually
designed to obscure the already evident truth.
It
began in 1976, when CIA Director George Bush established a new intelligence
analysis unit called "Team B." Championed by top White House
officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the Bush unit was packed
with hardcore ideologues -- including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle
-- bent on "proving" a predetermined conclusion: that regular
CIA assessments of the Soviet Union were "too soft," ignoring
the "imminent threat" of Soviet aggression and the Kremlin's
ever-increasing political and economic might. At every turn, the B-teamers
cooked and distorted intelligence data to fit their agenda. Scare stories
were regularly leaked to credulous journalists to whip up public fear;
legislators were plied with "top-secret" briefings to win
Congressional support for massive increases in military spending. During
the Reagan-Bush years, the B-Teamers and their acolytes spread throughout
the corridors of power, where they launched covert operations and proxy
wars around the world, always citing "credible evidence" of
"imminent threats" -- such as Ronald Reagan's famous warning
that tiny Nicaragua, then besieged by a U.S.-backed terrorist army,
could invade the sacred American heartland of Texas "in a matter
of hours."
As
it turned out, even the "softest" CIA assessments vastly underestimated
the weakness and instability of the Soviet regime. Team B's wildly inflated
perversions of reality were exposed as perhaps the most incompetent,
ignorant -- and costly -- intelligence failures in American history.
For in addition to the lives and money wasted fighting phantom threats
"to America's very survival," the now thoroughly B-Teamed
CIA armed and funded a horde of Islamic extremists in Afghanistan, schooling
them in "asymmetric warfare" and terrorist operations. No
doubt the B-Teamer's ideologically blinded "intelligence"
told them that the Western-hating jihadists would never turn this training
against their American paymasters.
The
end of the Soviet Union found Team B still entrenched in the White House.
In 1992, Bush, now president, directed Cheney, now Pentagon chief, and
his deputy, Wolfowitz, to draw up a plan for America's strategic future.
Despite the collapse of the Communist enemy, the plan called for --
what else? -- massive increases in military spending and a more aggressive,
unilateral "pre-emptive" posture against perceived threats
to American interests, with "vital raw materials, primarily Persian
Gulf Oil" listed as the first priority, as the NY Times reports.
The objective, openly stated, was American dominance over global economic
and political development in all spheres.
The
Cheney-Wolfowitz plan was then refined by the B-Teamers during the Clinton
interregnum. One of their groups, Project for the New American Century,
whose members included Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, published a manifesto
in September 2000 that incorporated the 1992 plan and openly called
for the expansion of American military presence all over the planet,
and into outer space as well -- "full spectrum dominance"
for "U.S. warfighters" and "economic interests."
It specifically insisted on the establishment of U.S military power
in Iraq, a strategic need that "transcends the issue of the regime
of Saddam Hussein." But PNAC warned, openly, plainly, that this
"revolutionary transformation" of American society would probably
not take place -- unless the American people were "catalyzed"
by a "new Pearl Harbor."
When
George W. Bush took office, he restored Team B to glory and enshrined
PNAC's plan as the official national security strategy of the United
States, adding a new imperative to establish "the single sustainable
model of national success" -- Bush-Enron crony capitalism -- in
every land. After the "new Pearl Harbor" of September 11,
Rumsfeld created a new "Team B" at the Pentagon: the Office
of Special Plans, packed with hardline ideologues bent on "proving"
a predetermined conclusion: that regular CIA assessments of Iraq were
"too soft," ignoring the "imminent threat" of Saddam's
aggression and his vast arsenal of WMD.
At
every turn, the OSP cooked and distorted intelligence data to fit their
agenda. Scare stories were regularly leaked to credulous journalists
to whip up public fear; legislators were plied with "top-secret"
briefings to win Congressional support for the invasion. Rumor, hearsay,
and forgeries were "stovepiped" directly to the White House,
bypassing professional analysts. Anything that contradicted the Bush
Regime's ideological delusions was ruthlessly pruned away. Anything
that flattered their desire for war -- no matter how specious, how false
-- was eagerly embraced.
So
there's no mystery in the current situation. It's how "Team Bush"
has always operated. They pervert intelligence to suit their needs --
and their greeds. When they're proved wrong -- at a horrendous cost
in blood and money -- they never admit it, never apologize. They simply
break out the whitewash, blame someone else -- usually the very intelligence
services they've suborned -- and lumber on in their brutal quest for
dominance: ignorant, incompetent and untouchable to the end.
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