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2004-07-20 - 11:09 a.m.

Paul Krugman: 'The Arabian Candidate'

In this brilliant column from the New York Times, Paul Krugman uses the Manchurian Candidate theme to illustrate how our president has played right into the hands of al Qaeda:

In the original version of "The Manchurian Candidate," Senator John Iselin, whom Chinese agents are plotting to put in the White House, is a right-wing demagogue modeled on Senator Joseph McCarthy. As Roger Ebert wrote, the plan is to "use anticommunist hysteria as a cover for a communist takeover."

The movie doesn't say what Iselin would have done if the plot had succeeded. Presumably, however, he wouldn't have openly turned traitor. Instead, he would have used his position to undermine national security, while posing as America's staunchest defender against communist evil.

So let's imagine an update - not the remake with Denzel Washington, which I haven't seen, but my own version. This time the enemies would be Islamic fanatics, who install as their puppet president a demagogue who poses as the nation's defender against terrorist evildoers.

The Arabian candidate wouldn't openly help terrorists. Instead, he would serve their cause while pretending to be their enemy.

After an attack, he would strike back at the terrorist base, a necessary action to preserve his image of toughness, but botch the follow-up, allowing the terrorist leaders to escape. Once the public's attention shifted, he would systematically squander the military victory: committing too few soldiers, reneging on promises of economic aid. Soon, warlords would once again rule most of the country, the heroin trade would be booming, and terrorist allies would make a comeback.

Meanwhile, he would lead America into a war against a country that posed no imminent threat. He would insinuate, without saying anything literally false, that it was somehow responsible for the terrorist attack. This unnecessary war would alienate our allies and tie down a large part of our military. At the same time, the Arabian candidate would neglect the pursuit of those who attacked us, and do nothing about regimes that really shelter anti-American terrorists and really are building nuclear weapons.

Again, he would take care to squander a military victory. The Arabian candidate and his co-conspirators would block all planning for the war's aftermath; they would arrange for our army to allow looters to destroy much of the country's infrastructure. Then they would disband the defeated regime's army, turning hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers into disgruntled potential insurgents.

After this it would be easy to sabotage the occupied country's reconstruction, simply by failing to spend aid funds or rein in cronyism and corruption. Power outages, overflowing sewage and unemployment would swell the ranks of our enemies.

Who knows? The Arabian candidate might even be able to deprive America of the moral high ground, no mean trick when our enemies are mass murderers, by creating a climate in which U.S. guards torture, humiliate and starve prisoners, most of them innocent or guilty of only petty crimes.

At home, the Arabian candidate would leave the nation vulnerable, doing almost nothing to secure ports, chemical plants and other potential targets. He would stonewall investigations into why the initial terrorist attack succeeded. And by repeatedly issuing vague terror warnings obviously timed to drown out unfavorable political news, his officials would ensure public indifference if and when a real threat is announced.

Last but not least, by blatantly exploiting the terrorist threat for personal political gain, he would undermine the nation's unity in the face of its enemies, sowing suspicion about the government's motives.

O.K., end of conceit. President Bush isn't actually an Al Qaeda mole, with Dick Cheney his controller. Mr. Bush's "war on terror" has, however, played with eerie perfection into Osama bin Laden's hands - while Mr. Bush's supporters, impressed by his tough talk, see him as America's champion against the evildoers.

Last week, Republican officials in Kentucky applauded bumper stickers distributed at G.O.P. offices that read, "Kerry is bin Laden's man/Bush is mine." Administration officials haven't gone that far, but when Tom Ridge offered a specifics-free warning about a terrorist attack timed to "disrupt our democratic process," many people thought he was implying that Al Qaeda wants George Bush to lose. In reality, all infidels probably look alike to the terrorists, but if they do have a preference, nothing in Mr. Bush's record would make them unhappy at the prospect of four more years.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

2004-07-13 - 4:42 p.m.

Ray McGovern : 'Corrupted Intelligence'

Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

He is distressed to see how the difficult analytical work of finding the truth has been corrupted by those in charge of policy in the Bush Administration.

He writes his view of the corrupted view of intelligence that sent our nation to the misguided war in Iraq in this article in Common Sense.

Some excerpts follow:

Several of us have just spent a painful weekend digesting the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee on prewar intelligence assessments on Iraq. The corruption is far deeper than we suspected. The only silver lining is that corrupter-in-chief George Tenet is now gone.

When the former CIA director departed, he left behind an agency on life support—an institution staffed by sycophant managers and thoroughly demoralized analysts, who are embarrassed at their own naiveté in believing that the passage carved into the marble at the entrance to CIA Headquarters—“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”—held real meaning for their work.

The Senate Committee report is meticulous. Its findings are a sharp blow to those of us who took pride in working in an agency where we could speak truth to power—with career protection from retribution from the powerful, and with leaders who would face down those policymakers who tried to exert undue influence over our analysis.

...

Catering To The Powers That Be

It turns out that only one U.S. analyst had met with the Iraqi defector appropriately codenamed “Curveball”—the source of the scary tale about mobile biological weapons factories—and that this analyst, in an e-mail to the deputy director of CIA’s task force on weapons of mass destruction, raised strong doubt regarding Curveball’s reliability before Colin Powell highlighted his claims at the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003. I almost became physically ill reading the cynical response from the deputy director of the task force:

"As I said last night, let’s keep in mind the fact that this war’s going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn’t say, and the powers that be probably aren’t terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he’s talking about.”

...

Tell It To The Families

I would like to hear Roberts and McLaughlin explain all this to the families of the almost 900 U.S. servicemen and women already killed and the many thousand seriously wounded in Iraq.

Roberts seemed at pains to lay the blame on a “flawed system,” but a close reading of the committee report yields the unavoidable conclusion that CIA analysis can no longer be assumed to be honest—to be aimed at getting as close to the truth as one can humanly get. For those of you cynics about to smirk, I can only tell you—believe it or not—that truth was in fact the currency of analysis in the CIA in which I was proud to serve.

Aberrations like the Tonkin Gulf cave-in notwithstanding, the analysis directorate was widely known as the unique place in Washington where one could normally go and expect a straight answer unencumbered by any political agenda. And we were hard into some very controversial—often critical—national security issues. It boggles my mind how any president, and particularly one whose father headed the CIA, could expect to be able, without that capability, to make intelligent judgments based on unbiased fact.

It is said that truth is the first casualty of war. Sadly, in the case of Iraq, even before the war, truth took a back seat to a felt need to snuggle up to power—to stay in good standing with a president and his advisers, all well known to be hell-bent on war on Iraq.

Caution: Don’t Be Fooled

The Washington Times lead story on July 10 began: “Flawed intelligence led the United States to invade Iraq was the fault of the US intelligence community…a report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded yesterday.” From the other end of the political spectrum, David Corn of The Nation led his own report with, “The United States went to war on the basis of false claims.”

Not so. This is precisely the spin that the Bush administration wants to give to the Senate report; i. e., that the president was misled; that his decision for war was based on spurious intelligence about non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

But the president’s decision for war had little to do with intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. It had everything to do with the administration’s determination to gain control of strategic, oil-rich Iraq, implant an enduring military presence there, and—not incidentally—eliminate any possible threat from Iraq to Israel’s security.

These, of course, are not the reasons given to justify placing U.S. troops in harm's way, but even the most circumspect senior officials have had unguarded moments of candor. For example, when asked in May 2003 why North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz responded, “Let’s look at it simply…The country (Iraq) swims on a sea of oil.”

And basking in the glory of “Mission Accomplished” shortly after Baghdad had been taken, Wolfowitz admitted that the focus on weapons of mass destruction to justify the attack on Iraq was “for bureaucratic reasons.” It was, he added, “the one reason everyone could agree on”—meaning, of course, the one that could successfully sell the war to Congress and the American people.

The Israel factor? In another moment of unusual candor—this one before the war—Philip Zelikow, a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2001 to 2003 (and now executive director of the 9/11 commission), pointed to the danger that Iraq posed to Israel as “the unstated threat—a threat that dare not speak its name…because it is not a popular sell.

Last, but hardly least, it was not until several months after the Bush White House decided to make war on Iraq that the weapons-of-mass-destruction-laden National Intelligence Estimate was commissioned, and then only because Congress needed to be persuaded that the threat was so immediate that war was necessary. Vice President Dick Cheney set the main parameters in a major speech on Aug. 26, 2002, in which he declared, "We know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." The estimate Tenet signed dutifully endorsed that spurious judgment—with "high confidence," no less.

Is There Hope?

If hope is what was found at the bottom of Pandora’s box, it can be found here too. That there are still honest, perceptive analysts at CIA is clear from the analysis that Anonymous sets forth in his excellent book, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror . (Note to Condoleezza Rice: Anonymous’ name is Michael Scheuer; he is an overt employee; you can get his extension from the CIA operator.)

As long as analysts of that caliber hang in there, there can be hope that, once the CIA is given the adult supervision it has lacked for the last 25 years, it can fulfill its critical mission for our country.

Go here to read the rest of this important article.

2004-07-11 - 2:14 p.m.

Scott Ritter: 'Facing the Enemy on the Ground'

By Scott Ritter, AlterNet. Posted July 9, 2004.

Scott Ritter was the one outspoken UN Weapons Inspector who advised against invading Iraq, attempting to point out the dangerous consequences for doing so. But no one listened then, and he was vilified as unpatriotic.

Now he has an intelligent article that speaks to the continued problems we will face in our occupation of Iraq. Will anybody listen this time?

Here are some excerpts:

The Iraqi resistance has been years in the making. And with the help of American involvement, the insurgency will continue to flourish and grow until no force can defeat it.

...

Not only has the United States failed to put into place a viable government to replace the CPA in the aftermath of the so-called "transfer of sovereignty," but more importantly, it continues to misidentify the true nature of the Iraqi insurgency. As a consequence, the resistance will inevitably continue to flourish and grow until no force can defeat it, Iraqi or American.

...

Confronted with the postwar turmoil created by military defeat and economic devastation (prolonged by UN-imposed sanctions), Saddam had to re-engineer his domestic constituency to maintain his power. The traditional Ba'athist ideology, based on Iraq-centric Arab nationalism, was no longer the driving force it had been a decade prior. Creating a new power base required bringing into the fold not only the Shi'ite majority – which had revolted against him in the spring of 1991 – but also accommodating the growing religious fundamentalism of traditional allies such as key Sunni tribes in western Iraq.

The most visible symbol of Saddam's decision to embrace Islam was his order to add the words "God is Great" to the Iraqi flag. He also simultaneously embraced traditional Iraqi tribal culture, de-emphasizing the importance of the Ba'ath Party in 1996 by noting that it was but "one of the tribes of Iraq" – a move that erased decades of Ba'athist anti-tribal policies.

Getting It Wrong, Again

The transformation of the political dynamics inside Iraq, however, has gone largely unnoticed in the West. It certainly seems to have escaped the attention of the Bush Administration. And the recent "transfer of sovereignty" from the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to the new Iraqi government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi reflects this lack of understanding.

...

Once again, the Pentagon has it wrong. U.S. policy in Iraq is still unable or unwilling to face the reality of the enemy on the ground.

The Iraqi resistance is no emerging "marriage of convenience," but rather a product of planning years in the making. Rather than being absorbed by a larger Islamist movement, Saddam's former lieutenants are calling the shots in Iraq, having co-opted the Islamic fundamentalists years ago, with or without their knowledge.

...

No More Lebanons

The transfer of sovereignty to the new Iraqi government of Iyad Allawi is a charade that will play itself out over the next weeks and months, with tragic consequences. Allawi's government, hand-picked by the United States from the ranks of anti-Saddam expatriates, lacks not only a constituency inside Iraq, but also legitimacy in the eyes of many ordinary Iraqi citizens.

The truth is that there never was a significant people-based opposition movement inside Iraq for the Bush Administration to call on to form a government to replace Saddam. It is why the United States has instead been forced to rely on the services of individuals tainted by their association with foreign intelligence services, or drawn from opposition parties heavily infiltrated by agents of Saddam's former security services.

Regardless of the number of troops the United States puts on the ground or how long they stay there, Allawi's government is doomed to fail. The more it fails, the more it will have to rely on the United States to prop it up. The more the U.S. props up Allawi, the more discredited he becomes in the eyes of the Iraqi people – all of which creates yet more opportunities for the Iraqi resistance to exploit to their advantage.

The historical parallel that best underscores the current disaster-in-the-making is not the Vietnam War but rather Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Originally intended to rid Lebanon of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israel's subsequent occupation led to the creation of Hizbollah as a viable force of political and military resistance. The Hizbollah was so effective that Israel was forced to unilaterally withdraw its forces from Lebanon in May, 2000. The 18-year occupation not only failed to defeat the PLO, but it also created an Islamic fundamentalist movement that today poses a serious threat to the security of Israel and the Middle East region.

In Iraq, history may very well produce the same result since neither the Bush Administration nor a possible Kerry Administration shows any inclination to withdraw from Iraq in the foreseeable future. And so the course of American involvement in Iraq and its inevitable consequences are clear. We will suffer a decade-long nightmare that will lead to the deaths of thousands more Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. We will witness the creation of a viable and dangerous anti-American movement in Iraq which will one day watch as American troops unilaterally withdraw from Iraq every bit as ignominiously as Israel did from Lebanon.

The strength of this anti-American resistance depends on how long the United States chooses to "stay the course" in Iraq. The calculus is quite simple: The sooner we bring our forces home, the weaker this movement will be. And, of course, the obverse is true: The longer we stay, the stronger and more enduring this by-product of Bush's elective war on Iraq will be.

There is no elegant solution to our Iraqi debacle. It is no longer a question of winning, but rather mitigating defeat.

Scott Ritter was a UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq from 1991-1998. He is also the author of "Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America" (Context Books, 2003).

I have left out much of the meat of this article, but to read the whole informative article, go here.

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