Now we all now that Secretary of State Colin Powell and his Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage either is (or is not) going to stay for a Bush second term (should there be one, of course), depending on which set of rumors and denials you care to believe. And the United States either is or is not going to dun Israel’s loan guarantees because of “the Fence.” According to Nathan Guttman and Aluf Benn in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz (Rice: Security fence will not affect loan guarantees), Colin Powell yesterday commented “in a broadcast to the Arab world,”
“‘A nation is within its rights to put up a fence if it sees the need for one.’ However, he said, ‘in the case of the Israeli fence we are concerned when the fence crosses over on to the land of others.'”
But the same piece reported that “U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice yesterday told Dov Weisglass, the prime minister’s bureau chief, that deducting the cost of the separation fence from U.S. loan guarantees is not on the agenda.” And in Crawford, to clarify matters, the president’s spokesman said “that ‘at this stage’ no decision had been made about the loan guarantees.”
So Colin Powell is definitively staying and the neocons are making a mad rush for the position of Secretary of State. (Can you really imagine Wolfowitz of Arabia in that position? Or Newt Gingrich?) Below, in a piece in the Asia Times, Jim Lobe of Interpress News Service suggests some of the chaos and in-fighting that threatens constantly to burst out of the confines of what previously may have been the most secretive and secrecy-mad administration in our history. And Maureen Dowd in a spirited column in today’s New York Times describes the neocon campaign to capture State.
In the confusion of competing semi-public claims, it’s also possible to feel how the occupation of Iraq has managed to throw this administration into a deep and angry disarray. Who can remember a time any more when the Bush men were so disciplined and “on message” that there was nothing but the “message” to report? Now, just remind me, what was yesterday’s message? Who’s on first? Or was that What on second?
At the moment it’s almost as if this administration is flushing its secret idiocies out into the open like so many quail. Just in the last few days, for instance, Joseph Wilson, the ex-ambassador who carried out a visit to Niger to check the uranium sale story for the CIA (under the prodding of the Vice President), again had a thing or two to say. In what evidently was a response to his embarrassing public statements on who should have known what about the forgeries, his wife Valerie Plame seems to have been outed as a CIA agent by people within the administration itself. Yesterday, Wilson responded, reports Ken Sengupta of the British Independent (Whistleblower on Niger uranium claim accuses White House of launching ‘dirty-tricks campaign’).
“[He said] the naming of his wife had parallels with the disclosure of the identity of the British scientist David Kelly, the source of BBC allegations that the British government ‘sexed up’ a dossier on Iraqi weapons.
But the same piece reported that “U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice yesterday told Dov Weisglass, the prime minister’s bureau chief, that deducting the cost of the separation fence from U.S. loan guarantees is not on the agenda.” And in Crawford, to clarify matters, the president’s spokesman said “that ‘at this stage’ no decision had been made about the loan guarantees.”
So Colin Powell is definitively staying and the neocons are making a mad rush for the position of Secretary of State. (Can you really imagine Wolfowitz of Arabia in that position? Or Newt Gingrich?) Below, in a piece in the Asia Times, Jim Lobe of Interpress News Service suggests some of the chaos and in-fighting that threatens constantly to burst out of the confines of what previously may have been the most secretive and secrecy-mad administration in our history. And Maureen Dowd in a spirited column in today’s New York Times describes the neocon campaign to capture State.
In the confusion of competing semi-public claims, it’s also possible to feel how the occupation of Iraq has managed to throw this administration into a deep and angry disarray. Who can remember a time any more when the Bush men were so disciplined and “on message” that there was nothing but the “message” to report? Now, just remind me, what was yesterday’s message? Who’s on first? Or was that What on second?
At the moment it’s almost as if this administration is flushing its secret idiocies out into the open like so many quail. Just in the last few days, for instance, Joseph Wilson, the ex-ambassador who carried out a visit to Niger to check the uranium sale story for the CIA (under the prodding of the Vice President), again had a thing or two to say. In what evidently was a response to his embarrassing public statements on who should have known what about the forgeries, his wife Valerie Plame seems to have been outed as a CIA agent by people within the administration itself. Yesterday, Wilson responded, reports Ken Sengupta of the British Independent (Whistleblower on Niger uranium claim accuses White House of launching ‘dirty-tricks campaign’).
“[He said] the naming of his wife had parallels with the disclosure of the identity of the British scientist David Kelly, the source of BBC allegations that the British government ‘sexed up’ a dossier on Iraqi weapons.
“‘The Administration in Washington came in saying they were going to restore honour and dignity to the presidency They have shown no sign of it so far. This is highly damaging to my wife’s career, and could be seen as a smear against me.’
“But it was also about discouraging ‘others who may have information embarrassing to the administration from coming forward.”
“Frank Anderson, the former CIA station chief for the Near East Division, said: ‘When it gets to the point of an administration official acting to do career damage, and possibly endanger someone’s life, that’s mean, that’s petty, it’s irresponsible, and it ought not to be sanctioned.'”
Believe me when men like this, ultimate insiders, secret agents, quiet diplomats are all yakking away to any reporter in sight — even if as yet they are better covered in the British press than here — it’s a signal that something’s happening. And, oh yes, the Democrats are threatening hearings on the Valerie Plame matter in the fall. Men like Joseph, once they emerge, provide perfect cover for a previously weak and meek opposition party as they do for a previously weak and meek press. Expect investigation and hearings gridlock starting in the fall — just another problem for an administration that no longer has its act together.
Perhaps there’s been no more staggering story in recent weeks than an op-ed by Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel assigned for her last three years of service to the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Under Secretariat for Policy in the Pentagon. It appeared to next to no notice in the Houston Chronicle. She got transferred out of that job, she tells us, after reading a document that responded to queries by an unnamed Middle Eastern country on U.S. postwar occupation policies in Iraq. “The answers,” she writes, “had been heavily crafted by the Pentagon, and to me, they were remarkably inadequate, given the late stage of the game. I suggested to my boss that if this was as good as it got, some folks on the Pentagon’s E-ring may be sitting beside Saddam Hussein in the war crimes tribunals.”
Her full piece, which I strongly urge you to read below, gives the single best sense of the neocon takeover of this government via the Pentagon, of the resulting “groupthink,” of the cabal-like quality of policy-making in this administration, and of the degree to which these figures are insulated — have quite consciously insulated themselves — not just from intelligence that might differ from their expectations, but from anything that might do so.
Dirty tricks, war crimes these are not charges of critics way out on the fringes. They’re coming from “retired” insiders — and “retired” officialdom, when it speaks in a critical public voice, usually represents as well the opinions of angry insiders who don’t dare to speak up for fear of being retired. If things continue on this path, expect a busy fall in Congress and in the media. Angry insiders will continue to appear, dirty tricks will multiply, policy in Iraq (and possibly the Middle East) will only get messier, and inside the administration hands will be reaching for throats.
And while I’m talking about insiders who speak up through those who have already stepped into the cold, it’s always important to hail those who take those steps for themselves. One such figure has just done so — and in Iraq. He is fitting proof of the consequences of occupying and reconstructing Iraq on the cheap; in fact, on next to nothing at all. Brian Whitaker of the Guardian reports (Voice of free Iraq walks out on US):
“A broadcaster who became known as ‘the voice of free Iraq’ after the fall of Saddam Hussein has walked out of his job, saying the United States is losing the propaganda war. Failure to invest in the new Iraqi broadcasting service means foreign channels are gaining popularity at the expense of the US, Ahmed al-Rikabi, the American-appointed director of TV and radio said yesterday.
“The station was provided with only three studio cameras and five portable cameras, Mr Rikabi said. For the five portable cameras, they were allowed only 10 rechargeable batteries lasting 15 minutes eachThere was also a clothing allowance for newsreaders, but only to clothe the visible top half of their bodies.
“Stephen Claypole, who was a public affairs adviser to Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, said: ‘It’s very typical of everything the Americans get involved in. They announce large budgets and the money is never released.'”
(And there’s that telltale tell-all comment again from another former U.S. official who no longer cares to keep his mouth shut when a reporter calls.)
In her column, Dowd suggests that the final step in neocon planning of the moment is: “Change the subject. Next stop, North Korea.” So I include as my final entry of the day, an op-ed from the Wall Street Journal written by ex-CIA director R. James Woolsey in conjunction with a former lieutenant-general and present-day Fox military analyst Thomas G. McInerney. (Generals are now like those football coaches who go from the field directly into the press box to provide play-by-play on their former teams and their opponents). The piece is entitled, coincidentally (and charmingly) enough, “The Next Korean War,” and, coming from the man who announced in the prewar months that we were already in “World War IV,” it should set your heart racing and make your blood run cold.
Woolsey and company suggest first pressuring China into forcing “regime change” in North Korea and then, if that isn’t quickly successful, launching not just a strike at North Korean nuclear facilities, but a full-scale “regime change” war in the north. (“In short, we must be prepared to win a war, not execute a strike.”) And honestly, they assure, us it will be as easy and safe as eating cherry pie — and when we do strike those nuclear facilities, our precision weapons will surely “minimize radiation leakage.” (I’m ready to send Woolsey and his companion in for a few post-strike weeks to find out for themselves.) Like the full-scale verbal assault on Kim Jong Il last week by John Bolton, the Pentagon’s man in the State Department, while on a visit to South Korea, this op-ed is clearly meant to be a negotiation-sinking provocation. Both are as much intended as first-strike attacks on the State Department as they are on North Korea. It’s a piece worth reading. “Know your enemy” is a useful phrase. Tom
The many voices of US foreign policy
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times
August 4, 2003If foreign leaders and diplomats appear increasingly confused about where United States foreign policy is being made, they are not alone.
From Qalqiya on the West Bank to Karbala in Iraq to North Korea, contending forces within both the administration of President George W Bush and his Republican Party are duking it out for control, and the White House seems more and more unable to impose discipline.
While the neo-conservatives and right-wing hawks in the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, who led the drive to war in Iraq, have been put on the defensive as the costs in blood and treasure of the post-war occupation mount, they have by no means retreated from the battle.
The Pentagon has some explaining to do
By Karen Kwiatkowski
Houston Chronicle
August 3, 2003After eight years of Bill Clinton, many military officers breathed a sigh of relief when George W. Bush was named president. I was in that plurality. At one time, I would have believed the administration’s accusations of anti-Americanism against anyone who questioned the integrity and good faith of President Bush, Vice President Cheney or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
However, while working from May 2002 through February 2003 in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Near East South Asia and Special Plans (USDP/NESA and SP) in the Pentagon, I observed the environment in which decisions about post-war Iraq were made.
Those observations changed everything.
What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline.
Kwiatkowski is a recently retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who spent most of her final three years of military service in the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Under Secretariat for Policy.
To read more Kwiatkowski click here
Neocon Coup at the Department d’État
By Maureen Dowd
The New York Times
August 6, 2003Let others fight over whether the war in Iraq was a neocon vigilante action disrupting diplomacy. The neocons have moved on to a vigilante action to occupy diplomacy.
The audacious ones have saddled up their pre-emptive steeds and headed off to force a regime change at Foggy Bottom.
President Bush staged a Texan tableau vivant last night, playing host at his ranch to the secretary of state, his wife, Alma, and his deputy, Richard Armitage. Mr. Bush wanted to show solidarity after a Washington Post story on Monday that said that Colin Powell, under pressure from his wife, said he would not be part of a second Bush term, nor would Mr. Armitage.
Mr. Bush might be trying to signal his respect for Mr. Powell, but the president is not always privy to the start of a grandiose neocon scheme.
The Next Korean War
By R. James Woolsey and Thomas G. McInerney
The Wall Street Journal
August 5, 2003The White House had a shape-of-the-table announcement last week: North Korea would participate in six-sided talks with the U.S., China, Russia, South Korea and Japan. This was welcome but it changes nothing fundamental. Kim Jong Il has clearly demonstrated his capacity for falsehood in multilateral as well as bilateral forums. The bigger, and much worse, news is the overall course of events this summer.
In early July, krypton 85 was detected in locations that suggested that this gas, produced when spent nuclear fuel is reprocessed into plutonium for nuclear weapons, may have emanated from a site other than North Korea’s known reprocessing facility at Yongbyon.
Mr. Woolsey was CIA director from 1993-95. Gen. McInerney, a retired three-star Air Force lieutenant general and former assistant vice chief of staff, is a Fox News military analyst.