Replies to post #76335 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[goodluck]

How to Skew Intelligence
NYT Editorial
Published: October 23, 2004

It's long been obvious that the allegations about Saddam Hussein's dangerous weapons and alliance with Osama bin Laden were false. But as the election draws closer, the remaining question is to what extent President Bush's team knew the allegations were wrong and used them anyway to persuade Americans to back the invasion of Iraq.

A report issued Thursday by the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin of Michigan, shows that on the question of an Iraqi-Qaeda axis, Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and others offered an indictment that was essentially fabricated in the office of Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy.

Mr. Levin's report does not prove that President Bush knew that the Hussein-bin Laden alliance was fiction. But officials like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz - as well as Mr. Cheney's chief of staff and the deputy national security adviser - knew that Mr. Feith's tailored conclusions were contrary to the views of the entire intelligence community. Mr. Cheney presented them to the public as confirmed truth about Iraq and Al Qaeda.

The Levin report is a primer on how intelligence can be cooked to fit a political agenda. It is another sad reminder of this administration's refusal to hold anyone accountable for the way the public was led into the war with Iraq.

It focuses on the intelligence operation set up by Mr. Rumsfeld, who had been advocating an invasion of Iraq long before Mr. Bush took office and wanted more damning evidence against Baghdad after 9/11 than the Central Intelligence Agency had.

This operation, run by Mr. Feith, tried to persuade the Pentagon's own espionage unit, the Defense Intelligence Agency, to change its conclusion that there was no alliance between Iraq and Al Qaeda. When the Defense Intelligence Agency rebuffed this blatant interference, Mr. Feith's team wrote its own report.

It took long-discredited raw intelligence and resurrected it to create the impression that there was new information supporting Mr. Feith's preordained conclusions. It misrepresented the C.I.A.'s reports and presented fifth-hand reports as authoritative, all to depict Iraq as an ally of Al Qaeda.

Bipartisan reports from the 9/11 commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the intelligence community had been right and Mr. Feith wrong: there was no operational relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and no link at all between Mr. Hussein and the 9/11 attacks.

For those who were confused before the war, and still are, by all the Bush administration's claims - that the hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi official shortly before 9/11, that a member of Al Qaeda set up a base in Iraq with the help of Mr. Hussein, that Iraq helped Al Qaeda learn to make bombs and provided it with explosives - the evidence is now clear. The Levin report, together with the 9/11 panel's findings and the Senate intelligence report, show that those claims were all cooked up by Mr. Feith's shop, which knew that the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency had already shown them to be false.

We don't know exactly how much of that the White House knew because Mr. Feith tried to confuse things. He eliminated points that the C.I.A. disputed when he showed the intelligence agency his report, and he put them back in when he sent it to the White House.

The Bush administration called Mr. Levin's report pre-election partisan sniping. It is far more than that, but voters, unfortunately, won't get final answers.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, which has reported on the C.I.A.'s actions before the war, has delayed a review of the administration's behavior until after the election. We also will not see the C.I.A.'s own report because Mr. Bush's new intelligence chief, Porter Goss, has rebuffed a bipartisan request from Congress to release it.

Voters have to decide whether to hold Mr. Bush accountable for the skewed intelligence cooked up by his administration to justify the war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/23/opinion/23sat1.html

[Zeev Hed]

I am copying below the post in question:


The assumption that Republican Presidents are somehow "better" or Worse" of Israel is Bovine Excrements. The policy of the United States in the middle east has very little to do with the intrinsic interest of Israel, it has, and should have, to do only with the intrinsic interests of the US.

Truman, a Democratic President, was probably a minor exception, he recognized Israel "de facto" despite strong objections of the state department. He justified to his state department the action with the quip, "they will not survive a year" (and enforced an arm embargo on Israel, while Britain was not only supplying Jordan's King Abdullah, but even providing military leadership to the Jordanian Legion). No Great succor for Israel from that democrat, even after the armistice, the US under that democrat refused to sell defensive arms to Israel.

Eisenhower, a Republican, when informed of the Bulganin nuclear ultimatum against Britain, France and Israel, if they do not withdraw from the Suez in 1956 (post the nationalization of the canal by Nasser and thus confiscation of assets), told the trio, "you cooked the soup, you eat it", and refused to abide by the Nato treaty extending the US nuclear umbrella over its allies. That led to France (and Israel) to develop their own nuclear capabilities. Furthermore, Eisenhower continued Truman policy to not sell Israel defensive arms. Surely, not a great succor to Israel from a Republican administration.

JFK, when Nasser annulled the 1956 armistice in 1963 and removed the UN forces from the Sinai, and the cacophony of "throw the Jews into the seas" from all Arab capitals, and faced with acts of war by Egypt, including the closing of international water ways to Israeli navigation, and the position of naval guns at Sharam al sheich, did "absolutely nothing", allowing the tension to evolve into an actual major fire fight. That democrat was no great succor to Israel either.

Johnson, was the first Democrat that started to understand the counter balance to Soviet influence (a major US interest) in the mid east that Israel provided, and started to tilt toward support of Israel with sales of arms, and economic support. Not because he might or might not have had a soft spot in his heart for Israel, but because the stunning 1967 victory against all Arab armies, fully equipped with modern soviet arms, proved to him, that indeed, Israel can be relied on as a counter balance (at one point he stated, if memory serves, Israel is our Cuba in the mid east, namely, as the Soviet had a close ally near us, we now have an ally in the middle of the Mid East the soviets were coveting), and only because that policy served the US national interest, was it pursued, as it should have been.

Nixon was a little handicapped in doing anything meaningful because of the Vietnam tragedy (except inviting Moshe Dayan to advise on the matter only to hear, if you do not plan to use the nuclear option, get out of there), but followed the Johnson Doctrine of mild support (which became great support in the 1973 conflict with massive shipments of arms to resupply dwindling Israeli reserves). Both Johnson and Nixon could be signaling the first shift in US policy to a more friendly attitude to the new state. Some cynics say, only because that state proved its survivability in three conflicts with the arabs without the US help.

Carter, a democrat, with all his fumbling and sining only in his heart, was really the first US president that dare put his credibility on the line, and lo and behold, he brings two arch enemies, Sadat and Begin to sign a peace treaty, a great succor to the state of Israel.

Reagan, a Republican, on the other hand, did absolutely nothing and changed nothing in Carter's policy toward Israel. Bush 1 continued with Reagan policies, both of them were supportive to Israel, but did nothing to resolve the underlying Palestinian issue. Minor succor to Israel

Clinton, a democrat, first (IMHO), fumbled in a big way, in lieu of getting the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel (October 1994) to include a single Palestinian state, allowed Hussein to get away from the necessity of dealing with the PLO in his own country. Clinton should have insisted on final borders between Israel and Jordan/Palestine (remember, Abdallah already annexed the west bank to Jordan in 1950...), but instead left the refugee and "Palestinians" questions unresolved. Yet, he followed Carter in enhancing the security of Israel by having a second Arab state sign a peace treaty with Israel. The poor guy tried very hard to resolve the problems just before leaving office, and got Barak to agree to an unprecedented agreement, which unfortunately failed, since Arafat, just cannot bring himself to resolve the problem. I would rate Clinton as the greatest "succor" to the state of Israel (he also increased aid, military cooperation, joined weapons development programs etc). This democratic President surely did whatever was humanly possible to resolve the problem and support Israel.

Bush II, absolutely dropped the ball, he got so involved with the "American Century" ideology, that he has drastically increased the dangers to Israel in the mid east. Sometimes, I think that his faith in the second coming is so great that he is working to get this in "our times". Jews should not cherish that second coming at all, it involves the destruction, first, of the state of Israel (only 144,000 Jews that have accepted Jesus as the savior are left, all others perish), before "his kingdom" is established. Frankly, Bush is a "Clear and Present danger" to the state of Israel.

Now, as to Kerry, I have no reason to believe that he will not strive to complete Clinton's effort to bring to a fair settlement, he has already stated that Arafat is not a partner in negotiations, and if he succeeds where Clinton "almost" did, guess what, we see no second coming "here and now", the state of Israel survives the maelstrom Bush has thrown us in, and that is great succor to anyone that truly supports the right of Israel to its own secure state in the Mid East.

Thus my short comment, Krauthammer's comments are simplistic and purely bovine excrements. If your voting decision is based on what is best for the US, and also best for Israel, Bush is not your guy. With Bush we will have permanent bases in Iraq (already under construction), and permanent US bases in Iraq have only one purpose, getting ready for the day we take on Iran. Iran is not going to be a cakewalk like Iraq was, you are talking about 20,000 to 50,000 US casualties, our best young men, for a pyrrhic victory which will lead to generations of muslim animosity against the US and Israel in particular, and the west and Christianity in general, and maybe, finally bring to such a huge catastrophe of desperation from the muslim world, which will bring the "second coming" and with it the destruction of Israel, refractionation of the world and a century of misery all over the world. Bush II, worse than Bush I and no succor to Israel.





Sacrificing Israel

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 22, 2004; Page A25

The centerpiece of John Kerry's foreign policy is to rebuild our alliances so the world will come to our aid, especially in Iraq. He repeats this endlessly because it is the only foreign policy idea he has to offer. The problem for Kerry is that he cannot explain just how he proposes to do this.

The mere appearance of a Europhilic fresh face is unlikely to so thrill the allies that French troops will start marching down the streets of Baghdad. Therefore, you can believe that Kerry is just being cynical in pledging to bring in the allies, knowing that he has no way of doing it. Or you can believe, as I do, that he means it.

He really does want to end America's isolation. And he has an idea how to do it. For understandable reasons, however, he will not explain how on the eve of an election.

Think about it: What do the Europeans and the Arab states endlessly rail about in the Middle East? What (outside of Iraq) is the area of most friction with U.S. policy? What single issue most isolates America from the overwhelming majority of countries at the United Nations?

The answer is obvious: Israel.

In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support in places such as Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in to them on Israel.

No Democrat will say that openly. But anyone familiar with the code words of Middle East diplomacy can read between the lines. Read what former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger said in "Foreign Policy for a Democratic President," a manifesto written while he was a senior foreign policy adviser to Kerry.

"As part of a new bargain with our allies, the United States must re-engage in . . . ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. . . . As we re-engage in the peace process and rebuild frayed ties with our allies, what should a Democratic president ask of our allies in return? First and foremost, we should ask for a real commitment of troops and money to Afghanistan and Iraq."

So in a "new bargain with our allies" America "re-engages" in the "peace process" in return for troops and money in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Do not be fooled by the euphemism "peace process." We know what "peace process" meant during the eight years Berger served in the Clinton White House -- a White House to which Yasser Arafat was invited more often than any other leader on the planet. It meant believing Arafat's deceptions about peace while letting him get away with the most virulent incitement to and unrelenting support of terrorism. It meant constant pressure on Israel to make one territorial concession after another -- in return for nothing. Worse than nothing: Arafat ultimately launched a vicious terror war that killed a thousand Israeli innocents.

"Re-engage in the peace process" is precisely what the Europeans, the Russians and the United Nations have been pressuring the United States to do for years. Do you believe any of them have Israel's safety at heart? They would sell out Israel in an instant, and they are pressuring America to do precisely that.

Why are they so upset with President Bush's Israeli policy? After all, isn't Bush the first president ever to commit the United States to an independent Palestinian state? Bush's sin is that he also insists the Palestinians genuinely accept Israel and replace the corrupt, dictatorial terrorist leadership of Yasser Arafat.

To reengage in a "peace process" while the violence continues and while Arafat is in charge is to undo the Bush Middle East policy. That policy -- isolating Arafat, supporting Israel's right to defend itself both by attacking the terrorist infrastructure and by building a defensive fence -- has succeeded in defeating the intifada and producing an astonishing 84 percent reduction in innocent Israeli casualties.

John Kerry says he wants to "rejoin the community of nations." There is no issue on which the United States more consistently fails the global test of international consensus than Israel. In July, the U.N. General Assembly declared Israel's defensive fence illegal by a vote of 150 to 6. In defending Israel, America stood almost alone.

You want to appease the "international community"? Sacrifice Israel. Gradually, of course, and always under the guise of "peace." Apply relentless pressure on Israel to make concessions to a Palestinian leadership that has proved (at Camp David in 2000) it will never make peace.

The allies will appreciate that. Then turn around and say to them: We're doing our part (against Israel), now you do yours (in Iraq). If Kerry is elected, the pressure on Israel will begin on day one.