A good book on neo-con origins, connections and rise to power is "America
Alone" by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, Cambridge, 2004.
Ed
Just so others can understand where James Petras is "coming from", I invite
them to visit his web site
http://www.rebelion.org/petrasenglish.htm
Clearly a person with a point of view.
arthur
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Christoph Reuss
Sent: Friday, December 30, 2005 7:52 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Futurework] Hardcore Zionists behind the War
Israel and the Neocons, The Libby Affair and the Internal War
By James Petras
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11385.htm
12/27/05 "ICH" -- -- The national debate, which
the indictment of Irving Lewis Libby for perjury
and obstruction of justice has aroused in the
mass media, has failed to address the most basic
questions concerning the deep structural context,
which influenced his felonious behavior. The most
superficial explanation was that Libby, by
exposing Valerie Plame (a CIA employee), acted
out of revenge to punish her husband Wilson for
exposing the lies put forth by Bush about Iraq's
"importation" of uranium from Niger. Other
journalists claim that Libby acted to cover up
the fabrications to go to war. The assertion
however raises a deeper question -- who were the
fabricators of war propaganda, who was Libby
protecting? And not only the "fabricators of
war", but the strategic planners, speech-makers
and architects of war who acted hand in hand with
the propagandists and the journalists who
disseminated the propaganda? What is the link
between all these high- level functionaries,
propagandists and journalists?
Equally important given the positions of power
which this cabal occupied, and the influence they
exercised in the mass media as well as in
designing strategic policy, what forces were
engaged in bringing criminal charges against a
key operative of the cabal?
Libby's rise to power was part and parcel of the
ascendancy of the neo-conservatives to the
summits of US policymaking. Libby was a student,
protégé, and collaborator with Paul Wolfowitz for
over 25 years. Libby along with Wolfowitz, Elliot
Abrams, Douglas Feith, Kagan, Cohen, Rubin,
Pollack, Chertoff, Fleisher, Kristol, Marc
Grossman, Shumsky and a host of other political
operators were long term believers and aggressive
proponents of a virulently militaristic tendency
of Zionism linked with the rightwing Likud Party
of Israel. Early in the 1980's, Wolfowitz and
Feith were charged with passing confidential
documents to Israel, the latter temporarily
losing his security clearance.
The ideologues begin their "Long March" through
the institutions of the state. In some cases,
advisers to rightwing pro-Israel congressmen,
others in the lower levels of the Pentagon and
State Department, in other cases as academics or
leaders of conservative think tanks in Washington
during the Reagan and Bush senior regimes. With
the election of Bush in 2001, they moved into
major strategic positions in the government, and
as the principal ideologues and propagandists for
a sequence of wars against Arab adversaries of
the Israeli State. Leading neocons, like Libby,
drew up a war strategy for the Likud government
in 1996, and then recycled the document for the
US war against Iraq before and immediately after
9/11/01. Along with their rise to the most
influential positions of power in the Bush
administration, the neocons attracted new
recruits, like New York Times reporter Judith
Miller.
What is striking about the operations of the
'cabal' is the very open and direct way in which
they operated: former Director of the National
Security Agency (under Reagan) Lt. General
William Odom, retired Marine General Anthony
Zinni, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (former chief
of staff of Powell), retired Air Force Lt.
Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, National Security
Adviser to President George Bush (the First)
Brent Scowcroft, and numerous disenchanted
officials, including veterans of the intelligence
agencies, high level observers, and former
diplomats openly criticized the neocon takeover
of US policy and the close relationship between
them and Israeli officials.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Wolfowitz
and Libby were the architects of the military
strategy for Rumsfeld and Cheney, their bosses.
Douglas Feith established the "Office of Special
Planning" to fabricate the lies to justify the
war. Judith Miller, David Frum and Ari Fleisher
served to disseminate the lies and war propaganda
through articles, interviews, press conferences,
and speechwriting for President Bush.
The neocons pushed to manipulate and marginalize
many of the key institutions in the US imperial
state. To circumvent intelligence from the CIA
that didn't promote the Israeli agenda of war
with Iraq, neocon Douglas Feith (number 3 in the
Pentagon) established the Office of Special
Planning, which fabricated propaganda and
channeled it directly to the President's Office
bypassing and marginalizing any critical review
from the CIA. Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld marginalized
the leading generals, promoting nondescript
"loyalists" and outsiders to the top positions,
and discarding any advice which opposed or
conflicted with their plans for war with Iraq.
The Secretary of State referred to a speech
prepared for him by Libby as "bullshit" because
of its falsehoods. His chief aide, Colonel
Wilkerson has written disparagingly of the cabal,
which marginalized the State Department including
his boss Powell.
The prosecution of Libby however reveals the
intense internal struggle over the control of the
US imperial state between the neocons and the
traditional leaders of its major institutions.
Along with the indictment of Libby by a grand
jury at the request of the special prosecutor,
the FBI has arrested the two leading policy
makers of the most influential pro-Israeli lobby
(AIPAC) for spying for the State of Israel. These
are not simply isolated actions by individual
officials or investigators. To have proceeded
against Libby and AIPAC leaders , they had to
have powerful institutional backing; otherwise
the investigations would have been terminated
even before they began.
The CIA is deeply offended by the neocon
usurpation of their intelligence role, their
direct channels to the President, their loyalty
to Israel. The military is extremely angry at
their exclusion from the councils of government
over questions of war, the disastrous war policy
which have depleted the armed forces of recruits,
devastated troop morale, and the neocons'
grotesque ignorance of the costs of a colonial
occupation. It is no wonder that General Tommy
Frank referred to Douglas Feith as "the stupidest
bastard I have ever met."
The current institutional war recalls an earlier
conflict between the rightwing Senator Joseph
McCarthy and the Defense Department. At the time
during the mid 1950's, Senator McCarty was
accumulating power first by purging trade unions,
Hollywood, the universities, and promoting
likeminded conservative officials. He
successfully extended his investigations and
purges to the State Department and finally tried
to do the same to the military. It was here that
Senator McCarthy met his Waterloo, his attack
backfired, the Army stood its ground, refuted his
accusations and discredited his fabrications and
grab for power.
In the meantime, the neocons are not at all
daunted by the trials of their colleagues in
AIPAC and the Vice President's office: they are
pressing straight ahead for the US to attack
Syria and Iran, via economic sanctions and
military bombing. On October 30, 2005 the former
head of the Israel Secret Police (Shin Bet) told
AIPAC to escalate their campaign to pressure in
the US to attack Iran (Israel National News.com).
There was a near unanimous vote in the US
Congress in favor of economic sanctions against
Syria. Despite mass demonstrations, and because
of a 'captured' congress, it appears
paradoxically that the only force capable of
defeating the neocon juggernaut, like the earlier
Joe McCarthy, are powerful voices in the state
threatened by new disastrous wars not of their
making.
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