[CTRL] WAR PARTY DUMPS BUSH?
-Caveat Lector- November 27, 2002 WAR PARTY DUMPS BUSH? http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j112702.html Newsweek's anti-Saudi conspiracy theory is a shot across the bow It had to happen sooner or later, and I don't want to sound too full of myself, but I did predict it: I mean the attempt to tie the Saudis, Al Qaeda, and the Bush administration into one gigantic conspiracy and cover-up. Headlines are being made by Newsweek, which ran a story by Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas about how some Saudi princess sent money to someone who knew somebody who knew somebody else who funneled the funds to the 9/11 hijackers: if you go here you can see, in the form of a graph, how far removed the alleged connection really is. But the tenuous nature of the alleged Saudi government link to 9/11 doesn't matter to Joe Lieberman and John McCain, who are both on this non-story like dogs on a bone. Newsweek hypes this tale as getting inside the probe the Bush administration doesn't want you to know about! Thanksgiving hasn't even gotten here and already we're in presidential campaign mode. Willya give me a friggin' break?! There is absolutely nothing, zero, zilch, nada to this phony story; it's politics, pure and simple. In August I wrote about the infamous briefing given in the Pentagon by one Laurent Murawiec, the ex-LaRouchie who railed that we ought to threaten to bomb Riyadh and take over the Kingdom. This column included a prediction that the Democrats (led by Lieberman) would try to make the alleged Saudi government connection to 9/11 a political issue: The not-so-hidden subtext of all this is that the Democrats can always bring up the Bush family's links to Saudi oil interests. The killer is that the Democrats don't have to say a word.. Why bother, when the tag-team of Isikoff and Thomas, not to mention platoons of neoconservatives, will do the job for you? Okay, so it's a little off-putting to quote yourself - and so often! - but bear with me for a moment: What we're seeing, here, is a left-right squeeze play, with the Bushies in the middle. It is, in reality, a form of political blackmail, a warning shot fired over the bow - by the ostensibly Republican neocons, and not the Democrats. Okay, so I was wrong about the details: it's the neocons and the Democrats who are taking out after the Newsweek story. Check out the huzzahs over at Neocon Central for Isikoff's latest scoop: the Amen Corner is fairly quivering with gloating and exultant I-told-you-so's. As the administration once again declared that the Saudis are good partners in the war of terrorism, Lieberman and McCain didn't wait for any investigation to make their opinions known, as Associated Press reports: Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), who together set up an independent commission that will investigate the terror attacks, offered piercing criticism. Saudi leaders 'have to decide which side they're on,' Lieberman said on CBS' 'Face the Nation.' 'For too many generations, they have pacified and accommodated themselves to the most extreme, fanatical, violent elements of Islam, and those elements have now turned on us and the rest of the world.' Added McCain: 'The Saudi royal family has been engaged in a Faustian bargain for years to keep themselves in power.' Lieberman and McCain, both with unabashedly presidential ambitions, are positioning themselves to attack the Bushies as soft on terrorism, i.e. soft on the Saudis and all those other Ay-rabs, who, we all know, are all alike. So why are the President's most fervent supporters over at National Review also piling on? The view that the President has put off the invasion of Iraq, perhaps indefinitely, now seems uncontroversial, even among the most stubbornly apocalyptic. By going the UN route, Bush has committed the United States to wait until the process is clearly finished. Hans Blix, and not the President of the United States, will effectively decide Iraq's fate. This not only postpones the hawks' war plans, it also opens up the possibility that the war may not come off at all. Although we are told, on a daily basis, that Saddam the Monstrous will never comply voluntarily with the disarmament process, he may be more pragmatic than mad. And then what? The War Party is turning on the President with a vengeance: they want to make the price of peace so high that war will be the only politically viable alternative. The neocons thought they had a bargain with the White House: unconditional support for Dubya in return for a conflagration in the Middle East. The alliance worked, for a time: until the neocons upped the ante. For they are not just after Iraq, they want the whole region - Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and beyond. As Monsieur Murawiec put it in his infamous rant in front of the Pentagon Advisory Board: Iraq is the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot, Egypt the prize. The White House wasn't going along with it, however. With the triumph of the Powell
[CTRL] WAR PARTY DUMPS BUSH?
-Caveat Lector- http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html November 27, 2002 WAR PARTY DUMPS BUSH? Newsweek's anti-Saudi conspiracy theory is a shot across the bow It had to happen sooner or later, and I don't want to sound too full of myself, but I did predict it: I mean the attempt to tie the Saudis, Al Qaeda, and the Bush administration into one gigantic conspiracy and cover-up. Headlines are being made by Newsweek, which ran a story by Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas about how some Saudi princess sent money to someone who knew somebody who knew somebody else who funneled the funds to the 9/11 hijackers: if you go here you can see, in the form of a graph, how far removed the alleged connection really is. But the tenuous nature of the alleged Saudi government link to 9/11 doesn't matter to Joe Lieberman and John McCain, who are both on this non-story like dogs on a bone. Newsweek hypes this tale as getting "inside the probe the Bush administration doesn't want you to know about"! Thanksgiving hasn't even gotten here and already we're in presidential campaign mode. Willya give me a friggin' break?! There is absolutely nothing, zero, zilch, nada to this phony story; it's politics, pure and simple. In August I wrote about the infamous briefing given in the Pentagon by one Laurent Murawiec, the ex-LaRouchie who railed that we ought to threaten to bomb Riyadh and take over the Kingdom. This column included a prediction that the Democrats (led by Lieberman) would try to make the alleged Saudi government connection to 9/11 a political issue: "The not-so-hidden subtext of all this is that the Democrats can always bring up the Bush family's links to Saudi oil interests. The killer is that the Democrats don't have to say a wordâ¦." Why bother, when the tag-team of Isikoff and Thomas, not to mention platoons of neoconservatives, will do the job for you? Okay, so it's a little off-putting to quote yourself â and so often! â but bear with me for a moment: "What we're seeing, here, is a left-right squeeze play, with the Bushies in the middle. It is, in reality, a form of political blackmail, a warning shot fired over the bow â by the ostensibly Republican neocons, and not the Democrats." Okay, so I was wrong about the details: it's the neocons and the Democrats who are taking out after the Newsweek story. Check out the huzzahs over at Neocon Central for Isikoff's latest "scoop": the Amen Corner is fairly quivering with gloating and exultant I-told-you-so's. As the administration once again declared that the Saudis are "good partners" in the war of terrorism, Lieberman and McCain didn't wait for any investigation to make their opinions known, as Associated Press reports: "Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), who together set up an independent commission that will investigate the terror attacks, offered piercing criticism. Saudi leaders 'have to decide which side they're on,' Lieberman said on CBS' 'Face the Nation.' 'For too many generations, they have pacified and accommodated themselves to the most extreme, fanatical, violent elements of Islam, and those elements have now turned on us and the rest of the world.' Added McCain: 'The Saudi royal family has been engaged in a Faustian bargain for years to keep themselves in power.'" Lieberman and McCain, both with unabashedly presidential ambitions, are positioning themselves to attack the Bushies as "soft on terrorism", i.e. soft on the Saudis and all those other Ay-rabs, who, we all know, are all alike. So why are the President's most fervent supporters over at National Review also piling on? The view that the President has put off the invasion of Iraq, perhaps indefinitely, now seems uncontroversial, even among the most stubbornly apocalyptic. By going the UN route, Bush has committed the United States to wait until the process is clearly finished. Hans Blix, and not the President of the United States, will effectively decide Iraq's fate. This not only postpones the hawks' war plans, it also opens up the possibility that the war may not come off at all. Although we are told, on a daily basis, that Saddam the Monstrous will never comply voluntarily with the disarmament process, he may be more pragmatic than mad. And then what? The War Party is turning on the President with a vengeance: they want to make the price of peace so high that war will be the only politically viable alternative. The neocons thought they had a bargain with the White House: unconditional support for Dubya in return for a conflagration in the Middle East. The alliance worked, for a time: until the neocons upped the ante. For they are not just after Iraq, they want the whole region â Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and beyond. As Monsieur Murawiec put it in his infamous rant in front of the Pentagon Advisory Board: "Iraq is the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot, Egypt the prize." The White House wasn't going along with it, however.
