Draft dodger during the Viet Nam War, Libby is a member of enormously powerful US political organisation, the Council on Foreign Relations. Libby, along with Paul Wolfowitz, wrote the 1992 document for Dick Cheney during Bush major’s administration, which laid out the plans for the "New American Century."
These plans bore fruit eleven years later in the administration of Bush major’s son. Libby has been the lawyer since 1985 of the infamous white-collar fraudster Mark Rich, who stole billions from the US government and sold arms to Iran when US hostages were being held in that country. When Rich’s crimes were discovered and he was indicted and bailed to stand trial 19 years ago on racketeering, wire fraud, income tax evasion and illegal oil trading charges, he fled to Switzerland.
After much lobbying by the Jewish lobby in general and the ADL and Libby in particular, Bill Clinton used his Presidential powers to have Rich pardoned. His was one of 140 pardons that Clinton granted in his last hours in office on January 20th 2000. Most of the other criminals pardoned at this time were also white collar fraudsters. Almost all of these were Jewish.
Denise Rich, Marc’s wife, has been a major contributor to Democratic campaigns and the Clinton presidential library foundation. It is known that Hilary Clinton was extravagantly supported by the Jewish lobby in her successful attempt to win the New York Senatorial seat. Bill Clinton was urged by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to support the Rich pardon.Rich has extensive and provable links with the Russian Mafia. He has bankrolled Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon extensively, before his election and since. Libby phoned Rich on January 22nd 2001, to congratulate him on the pardon. Libby’s law firm was paid more than $2 million to represent Rich between 1987 and 2000.
PAUL KANJORSKI. Congressman for Pennsylvania:
"Did you represent a crook who stole money from the United States government, was a fugitive and should never have been given or granted a pardon?"LIBBY:
"There are no facts that I know of that support the criminality of the client based on the tax returns… Mr. Rich did not violate the tax laws… I did not condone it, I didn't advise it, I don't admire it." ("CNN." "Inside Politics." March 2nd 2001)
"Look at what the President has done in Afghanistan and look at his speech to the joint session of Congress… He made it clear that we believe in expanding the zone of democracy even in this difficult part of the world… he had the courage to identify those states which present a problem, and to begin to build consensus for action that would need to be taken if there is not a change of behavior on their part. Take the Afghan case, for example…
He could have waited for juridical proof before we responded. He could have engaged in long negotiations with the Taliban… we don't know yet how it will end… The issue is not inspections. The issue is the Iraqis' promise not to have weapons of mass destruction, their promise to recognize the boundaries of Kuwait, their promise not to threaten other countries, and other promises that they made in '91, and a number of U.N. resolutions…
There is no basis in Iraq's past behavior to have confidence in good faith efforts on their part to change their behavior." ("New Yorker Magazine." April 1st 2002)EXECUTIVE INTELLIGENCE REVIEW.
"At Libby's behest, Rich and fellow gangster Michael Steinhardt went to Israel to run the operation against Labor Party chairman Mitzna which undermined Labor's election campaign and helped cover up, for a while, corruption scandals that were damaging Sharon's re-election bid. Steinhardt confessed to a Washington journalist that he met Sharon secretly, and then joined Marc Rich to orchestrate a Labor revolt against Mitzna, for his refusal to enter a national unity government with Sharon." (February 7th 2003. http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3005target_libby.html)
"Libby, a protégé of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for the past 30 years, has assembled a ‘shadow national security council’ in the Vice President's Office, which has protected the Israeli agents nest inside the Pentagon and State Department, and blocked an urgently needed purge of these Likudniks. Libby has his own longstanding deep ties to the Sharon circles, including to the Pollard spy ring.
While out of government, Libby served between 1985-2000 as the personal attorney for fugitive swindler Marc Rich. Rich was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department in 1983 for tax evasion and for trading with the enemy, and he fled the United States, establishing a luxurious hide-away in Zug, Switzerland. Today, according to Israeli sources, Rich is under investigation, for illegal contributions to Ariel Sharon's last political campaign. He has been involved in Russian Mafia operations in Africa, and, through his Marc Rich Foundation in Israel, has openly financed international operations of the Israeli Mossad.
Libby's law partner and mentor, Leonard Garment, was a pivotal player in the Israeli government's damage control effort, following the Pollard arrest in November 1985, and he served as the attorney for Israeli Air Force Col. Aviem Sella, the man who recruited and deployed (the Israeli spy) Jonathan Pollard. Now, Ariel Sharon's regime is hell-bent on provoking a regional war in the Middle East, a war pivoted on an Israeli pre-emptive attack on Iraq.
The threat is that, if President Bush does not virtually exterminate Iraq, and neighboring countries, too, Israel will. This means the likely use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. All the while, Sharon's Washington moles are operating under the shadows of the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense of the United States.
If Sharon is to be stopped from launching World War III in the Middle East, this entire Pollard stay-behind apparatus must be thoroughly investigated, exposed, and removed from government. It is time for these Israeli agents and spies to be kicked out of government, and the Israeli government to desist from its nuclear blackmail." (September 27th 2002. http://www.larouchepub.com/lar/2002/2937_israel_blackmail.html)HENRY KISSINGER. (Avraham ben Eliezer) 1923- Secretary of State during Richard Nixon’s Presidency. Defence Policy Board member. Bilderberger supremo. Council on Foreign Relations member.
"The imminence of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the huge dangers it involves, the rejection of a viable inspection system, and the demonstrated hostility of Saddam Hussein combine to produce an imperative for preemptive action." (As quoted in Vice President Cheney's Speech to the Veterans of Foreign wars. August 26th 2002)Prior quotations by Kissinger.
"With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears." (1957)
"De-population should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the Third World… Reduction of the rate of population in these States is a matter of vital US national security…
The US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries." (National Security Memorandum 200. Top secret document de-classified in 1990. US National Archives)
"There are only 90,000 people out there, who gives a damn?'' (Describing his feelings towards the Marshall Islands, which include Bikini and Enewetak Atolls, sites of at least 66 full scale US nuclear bomb tests)
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people."
"Chile should not be allowed to go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible." (Lord Parekh quoting Kissinger. House of Lords, 14th November, 2002)
"The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." (Before Congress, explaining what the CIA had done in 1973 to overthrow the democratic government in Chile, in which the President, Salvador Allende had been killed)
"Why should we flagellate ourselves for what the Cambodians did to each other?" (Kissinger and Nixon were responsible for the massive bombing of Cambodia in 1973, which killed three-quarters of a million peasants and disrupted Cambodian society, setting the stage for Pol Pot to come to power and ultimately kill another one-and-a-half million more)
Q. "The secret bombings in Cambodia, do you regret this today?''
A. "No… On the main lines of our policy, I wouldn't change anything.'' (An interview with Leslie Stahl on the CBS news program "60 Minutes." March 7th 1999)
"World Order: Modest Methods and Drastic Visions." (A chapter in Kissinger’s book, "On the Creation of a Just World Order." (1975)
"The US must carry out some act somewhere in the world which shows its’ determination to continue to be a world power." (After America’s hurried exit from Vietnam. "Washington Post," April, 1975)
"We say to all peoples and governments: let us fashion together a New World Order." (Address before the General Assembly of the United Nations. October 1975)
"Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy." ("Kiss the Boys Goodbye," p. 97, by Monika Jensen-Stevenson. 1990. Also, "The Final Days," by Woodward and Bernstein. 1976)
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer." ("Law and Politics")
"Today Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence.
It is then that all peoples of the world will pledge with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government.'' (Address to the Bilderberg meeting. Evian-les-Bains, France, May 21st, 1992. Transcribed from a tape recording made by one of the Swiss delegates)
"What Congress will have before it is not a conventional trade agreement but the architecture of a new international system... a first step toward a New World Order." (Describing NAFTA, 1993)
"How to Achieve The New World Order." (Title of book excerpt by Henry Kissinger, in "Time" magazine. March. 1994)Kissinger recommended that Israel put down the Palestinian uprising 'as quickly as possible, overwhelmingly, brutally and rapidly.' He added:
"The insurrection must be quelled immediately, and the first step should be to throw out television, a la South Africa. To be sure, there will be international criticism of the step, but it will dissipate in short order. There are no awards for losing with moderation." ("The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs." Article by Donald Neff. December, 1997)
"I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target overseas. And I believe George W. Bush will quickly unite the American people through his foreign policy.'' (CNBC TV. December 13th 2000)Kissinger is closely connected to the Rockefeller family. In 1971, he was appointed National Security Adviser in the Nixon administration. According to a "US News & World Report," this 'was on the advice of Governor Rockefeller, (crypto-Jewish?) who described Mr. Kissinger as ‘the smartest guy available.’
Kissinger has never seen combat in War.
IVAN FRASER. Historian, healer, ex-registered nurse. "The Brotherhood And The Manipulation Of Society," part 8. http://educate-yourself.org/nwo/brotherhoodindex.shtml
"In 1972, a Republican surveillance team working for Nixon's re-election committee, subsequently named the 'Plumbers,' broke into the Democrat headquarters at the Watergate Buildings in Washington. This was engineered by Kissinger and his protégé George Bush to remove the final pretence of 'democracy' and hand complete control of the US administration to the Elite. As Head of the State Department and the National Security Council, Kissinger effectively ran the Nixon presidency.
The 'Plumbers' were agents working for the White House Special Investigations Unit, created by Nixon (Kissinger) with money from the president of Bush-owned Pennzoil and other business associates of George Bush. At the time the Watergate story broke, Bush had been made chairman of the Republican National Committee yet claimed to have no knowledge of the situation.
After the break-in became public knowledge, Nixon was eventually forced to resign on the release of recordings in which he discussed ways to frustrate the Watergate investigations. The recordings were done by David Young, who worked for the Rockefellers and was appointed by Kissinger, and they were revealed by Butterworth, the White House liaison with the Kissinger-led secret service.
In the same recordings, Nixon implicated certain 'Texans' which referred to Bush and his associates, but Nixon was forced out of office before the trial at which this would have been revealed. Gerald Ford, a 33rd degree freemason and Rockefeller puppet, became president and pardoned Nixon so that the case never came to court. He appointed Nelson Rockefeller to be his vice-president and put him in charge of the Watergate investigations, which, unsurprisingly, discovered nothing of consequence."MOTHER JONES. March/April, 2003. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/10/ma_273_01.html
"Ever since the oil shocks of the 1970s, the United States has steadily been accumulating military muscle in the Gulf by building bases, selling weaponry, and forging military partnerships. Now, it is poised to consolidate its might in a place that will be a fulcrum of the world's balance of power for decades to come. At a stroke, by taking control of Iraq, the Bush administration can solidify a long-running strategic design.
‘It's the Kissinger plan,’ says James Akins, a former US diplomat. ‘I thought it had been killed, but it's back.’ Akins learned a hard lesson about the politics of oil when he served as a US envoy in Kuwait and Iraq, and ultimately as ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the oil crisis of 1973 and '74. At his home in Washington, D.C., shelves filled with Middle Eastern pottery and other memorabilia cover the walls, souvenirs of his years in the Foreign Service.
Nearly three decades later, he still gets worked up while recalling his first encounter with the idea that the United States should be prepared to occupy Arab oil-producing countries. In 1975, while Akins was ambassador in Saudi Arabia, an article headlined "Seizing Arab Oil" appeared in ‘Harper's.’
The author, who used the pseudonym Miles Ignotus, was identified as: ‘… a Washington-based professor and defense consultant with intimate links to high-level US policymakers.’ The article outlined, as Akins puts it ‘how we could solve all our economic and political problems by taking over the Arab oil fields [and] bringing in Texans and Oklahomans to operate them.’
Simultaneously, a rash of similar stories appeared in other magazines and newspapers. ‘I knew that it had to have been the result of a deep background briefing," Akins says. ‘You don't have eight people coming up with the same screwy idea at the same time, independently.
Then I made a fatal mistake,’ Akins continues. ‘I said on television that anyone who would propose that is either a madman, a criminal, or an agent of the Soviet Union.’ Soon afterward, he says, he learned that the background briefing had been conducted by his boss, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Akins was fired later that year. Kissinger has never acknowledged having planted the seeds for the article. But in an interview with ‘Business Week’ that same year, he delivered a thinly veiled threat to the Saudis, musing about bringing oil prices down through "massive political warfare against countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran to make them risk their political stability and maybe their security if they did not cooperate.’
In the 1970s, America's military presence in the Gulf was virtually nil, so the idea of seizing control of its oil was a pipe dream. Still, starting with the Miles Ignotus-article, and a parallel one by conservative strategist and Johns Hopkins University professor Robert W. Tucker in ‘Commentary,’ the idea began to gain favor among a feisty group of hardline, pro-Israeli thinkers...
Eventually, this amalgam of strategists came to be known as ‘neoconservatives,’ and they played important roles in President Reagan's Defense Department and at think tanks and academic policy centers in the 1980s. Led by Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, they now occupy several dozen key posts in the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department.
At the top, they are closest to Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who have been closely aligned since both men served in the White House under President Ford in the mid-1970s. They also clustered around Cheney when he served as secretary of defense during the Gulf War in 1991.
Throughout those years, and especially after the Gulf War, US forces have steadily encroached on the Gulf and the surrounding region, from the Horn of Africa to Central Asia. In preparing for an invasion and occupation of Iraq, the administration has been building on the steps taken by military and policy planners over the past quarter century."RICHARD PERLE. The leading Foreign Policy Advisor in Bush minor’s administration. Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Member of JINSA. Assistant Defence Secretary during Ronald Reagan’s Presidency. Personal friend of Ariel Sharon. Board member of the "Jerusalem Post." Although technically not a member of the Bush minor administration, Perle holds the unpaid chairmanship of the Defence Policy Board. In this position, he has access to classified documents and close contacts with the administration leadership. Draft dodger during the Vietnam War.
"We believed very strongly that Israel was the only country in the Middle East with whom we could identify philosophically and in terms of values, that the Israelis were willing and basically able to defend themselves if they got diplomatic and political and eventually some financial support from the United States…
There was no other ally that we could turn to who was as consistent and reliable as Israel, and in any event, we thought that we could not conceive of standing by if Israel was extinguished by totalitarian forces around them." (An interview with Henry Kissinger. March 30th 1997)
"I very much favor going after Saddam Hussein's regime and Saddam Hussein.... It has nothing to do with whether he's involved with September 11 or with al Qaeda. What's relevant here is that he hates the United States. He has weapons of mass destruction. He has used them against his own people and he will use them against us." ("The American Spectator," p. 40. November/December. 2001)
"The failure to take on Saddam after what the President said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the President that it would set back the War on Terrorism." ("New York Times," p. A 21. September 4th 2002)
"If it were up to me, on the strength of his previous record, I wouldn't have chosen Hans Blix… I am deeply sceptical that inspections by themselves can produce a result. They are a system for cooperating regimes to show their compliance, not for ferreting out arms in a regime determined to hide them… I absolutely believe in assassinations. I have always thought an absolute prohibition was unnecessarily inflexible." ("Guardian." November 13th 2002)
"I'm not going to try to make the argument for military action to enforce UN resolutions; let me just state that if we fail to do so, if we go from a 17th to an 18th resolution and then a 19th resolution, the UN will continue to dismantle itself, not brick-by-brick, but resolution-by-resolution. At some point, if resolutions are not enforced, they become meaningless, and I'm tempted to suggest that we're already past that point and what's needed now is an urgent rescue of the honor and integrity of the United Nations itself….
At the end of the day, the United Nations, in Article 51, recognizes the inherent right of self-defence. It doesn't confer that right. That's not the UN's to confer. It recognizes that we all have the right of self-defence and we may from time to time have to act without the approbation of the UN. I think the French went into the Ivory Coast without the United Nations. We and some our allies went into Kosovo without the United Nations. It's not without precedent to act without the United Nations…
We want support in the UN, we want the approbation of the UN, but no American government can allow the defence of this country to depend on a show of hands at the United Nations or anywhere else. If that sounds unilateralist, so be it…
The fabric of the UN, of the international community, is just not strong enough now that we would be ready to abandon our sovereign right of self-defence in the hope that some other structure is going to protect us. In my view, the right thing for Hans Blix to have said and done when, on December 7th, Saddam's regime handed over a false declaration about Iraqi holdings of weapons of mass destruction, was to proclaim that there was no appropriate mission for the inspectors and, therefore, the inspections would not begin until Saddam had done what he is obliged to do under UN resolution 1441, which is account for the differences between an inventory of weapons of mass destruction that had been compiled by the previous UN inspectors and what Saddam claimed to have on hand on December 7th.
Unfortunately, Hans Blix chose, rather than clarify this point at the outset, to send inspection teams on a fruitless goose chase, returning to sites that had been inspected previously before the expulsion of the inspectors and because they, understandably, returned without having found anything, this created the impression that perhaps there was nothing to be found.
Let me suggest to you that the inspectors will find nothing of consequence, nothing that Saddam doesn't wish them to find because he controls the territory absolutely, because everything of interest has been hidden and some things of particular interest have even been made mobile so that even if we knew the location, that information would be valid only at the instant at which it was achieved and, therefore, inspections will not produce results…
The suggestion that the United Nations can acquit itself and act on its repeated resolutions by granting more time or increasing the number of inspectors, it is simply a dilatory tactic. It is a tactic for delay, it is a tactic for shirking the responsibilities that the United Nations itself previously accepted. I think it's important to distinguish between German policy and French policy….
In the German case, there is strong evidence that the Chancellor, in his bid for re-election, tried hard to improve his standing in a group within the German electorate where he was falling below the anticipated numbers. The group, as I understand it, was women in the 25 to 40 age category. The Germans, like us, now conduct their elections with extensive polling. That's the antithesis of leadership and I'm sorry to say we all do it…
So they hit on appealing to the antiwar sentiment, the pacifist sentiment if you will… It became the chancellor's policy to elicit the strongest possible constituency among people who were alarmed at the prospect of war, frightened at the prospect of war, opposed to military action to deal with Saddam Hussein, and he painted himself into a corner, a corner so extreme that it became the chancellor's policy that Germany would not participate in a military action against Saddam Hussein…
France has found a way of dealing with Saddam Hussein that simply wouldn't work for the United States because it entails a degree of co-operation that is not acceptable for us. The commercial relationship between France and Saddam's regime is on hold owing to the sanctions but I think it's clear that the moment the sanctions are removed there is a pipeline of contracts that would be promulgated and they're important for France.
We shouldn't kid ourselves, they're important for France. It's my understanding that the Total contract with Saddam is worth $40 billion to $60 billion… So there are commercial interests and for those people who accuse the United States in being interested in oil in this matter, I submit to you that our interest in oil is in purchasing it on the world market. That could best be accomplished by lifting the sanctions, hardly by going to war against Saddam Hussein.
The French interest in the promulgation of contracts that will only go forward with this regime is perfectly obvious. But there's a second French attitude that I think we have to come to grips with and understand and that is the desire on the part of France to build the European Union as a counterweight to the United States…
For a long time the United States and France have been allies… Vital to each other's security at many times in our history and never in the period in which we were allies who supported one another did either of us think of describing the other as a counterweight. A relationship that can be described by the term counterweight is not a relationship of alliance… If the German government does not explain to the German people what is at issue, it's not unreasonable to assume that antiwar sentiment will prevail.
In the absence of a serious debate, the default position is opposition to war, of course. But I don't believe that there has been a serious, balanced discussion in Germany about the risks posed by Saddam Hussein…. It is to the credit of Prime Minister Blair that despite that antiwar sentiment, he is leading in the direction that he believes is right for his country, and this president is leading the United States in the direction that he believes is right for this country. The lesson of history is if leaders don't lead and if they simply follow sentiment, terrible mistakes can be made.
The sentiment in the United Kingdom before the last war was so hostile to military action that it even became hostile to military preparations and we saw the result of that. So I make no apology for the fact that public opinion is not solidly behind the thinking of the American president or the British Prime Minister, or Berlusconi or Aznar and others. There is leadership in Europe and there is a failure of leadership in Europe, if I could put it that way…
September 11th did something of enormous importance for the sensibility of American policymakers and this President in particular… On September 10th we knew what was going on in Afghanistan. We may not have known that Mohammed Atta had already bought a ticket and arrived in this country for the purpose of flying an airplane into the World Trade Center, but we knew that there were thousands of people in camps in Afghanistan being trained for terrorist action against us…
We knew there was a threat and we didn't act… There was a review of Iraq policy underway on September 11th and the administration hadn't decided at that point what to do, but one thing was very clear: the consensus behind the sanctions which had become the central element of western United Nations strategy for dealing with Saddam Hussein was crumbling. France and Russia had already indicated they were opposed to continuing the sanctions.
The French wanted to weaken the sanctions regime. The so-called smart sanctions policy of the United States was really a response to the eroding support for those sanctions and it was very clear that if something wasn't done that Saddam was going to emerge the survivor who had outlasted the United Nations… So it was urgent to deal with Iraq, and we set on a course of dealing with Iraq… Why now with Iraq?… The Clinton administration chose not to respond or not to respond in a substantial way. That was a terrible mistake…
Let me say a word about what you call the new strategy of pre-emption... If you know that you are about to be attacked, it is certainly sensible if you can act first and avoid that attack to do so... In 1981, the Israelis, after a long and, I gather, a heated cabinet debate, decided to destroy the reactor that Chirac had sent to Osirak, not because it was about to produce nuclear weapons. It wasn't. It was about to produce plutonium and it was under IAEA safeguards so the Iraqis would have had to siphon off small, undetectable quantities of plutonium and it would have taken them time to build a nuclear weapon based on what they would get from the Osirak reactor. But, nevertheless, the Israelis decided to strike some years in advance of the production of the nuclear weapon that they were concerned about…
From an Israeli point of view, what was imminent and what had to be acted against in a preemptive manner was not the ultimate emergence of the threat but an event that would lead inexorably to the ultimate emergence of the threat. They had to deal with a threshold that once crossed, they would no longer have the military option that could be effective at that moment.
If we think of imminence in that sense, if we think of it as the thresholds that once crossed will so worsen our situation that we can't allow those thresholds to be crossed, then you start looking at how far are they from achieving the means to do the thing that everyone would recognize we were justified in stopping at the moment that action was taken.
In the case of Iraq, we're talking about stopping the further development of nuclear weapons, we're talking about new systems of delivery for the chemical and biological weapons Saddam already has, including systems with much longer range…
I think the one thing that would encourage further acts of terror against the United States would be a withdrawal by the United States at this point. If we were to fail to carry forward on the things we've said, we would appear to be what Osama bin Laden says we are and what Saddam Hussein has said we are, which is weak and blustery, a bully. So we have to carry this forward…
If we're unpopular because we're powerful, I don't know how to avoid that except by becoming less powerful and I can't believe that that's going to help us in the long run… We're bound, I think, to be unpopular simply by virtue of the strength of our position." (New York. February 13th 2003)In July, 2002, Perle described the misgivings of the military, regarding War with Iraq as 'a political judgment that these guys aren't competent to make.' ("The Age." July 31st 2002)
ERIC BOEHLERT. "The Armchair General," "Salon." 5th September 2002. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/09/05/Perle/)
"Whilst Perle was a congressional aide for "Scoop" Jackson, FBI wiretaps picked up Perle providing classified information from the National Security Council to the Israeli embassy. In the 1980s, Perle was convicted on a misdemeanor charge of lying to Congress. In 1983, he received substantial payments to represent the interests of the Israeli weapons conglomerate, Soltam services after he had assumed his position in the Defence Department.
Perle denied conflict of interest, insisting that, although he received payment for these, he was between government jobs when he worked for the Israeli firm. Soltam was founded by Shlomo Zabludowcz, one of the many survivors of Aushwitz...
Formerly an obscure civilian board designed to provide the Secretary of Defence with non-binding advice on a whole range of military issues, the Defence Policy Board, now stacked with unabashed Iraq hawks, has become a quasi-lobbying organization whose primary objective appears to be waging war with Iraq."THE FORWARD. US Zionist Weekly. December 28th 2001.
"Sterner named Richard Perle, a former Reagan administration official and current chairman of the Defence Policy Board, as the most powerful advocate of this anti-Arab stance outside of government. Mr. Sterner pointed to Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz as the main proponent of this anti-Arab stance within the Bush administration. Both Mr. Perle and Mr. Wolfowitz are Jewish."STEPHEN J. SNIEGOSKI. "War on Iraq - Conceived In Israel." 19th February, 2003. http://www.rense.com/general34/liar.htm Commenting on Perle’s above comment, Sniegoski writes:
"Cheney and Rumsfeld went even farther referring to the generals as 'cowards' for being insufficiently gung-ho regarding an Iraq invasion. Now one might be tempted to attribute the rejection of the military's caution to insane hubris on the part of Perle and the neoconservative crowd, how could those amateurs deign to know more about military strategy than professional military men?
But Richard Perle may be many things but stupid is not one of these. Perle undoubtedly has thought through the implications of his plan. And it is apparent that the 'inside-out' option would be a win-win proposition from Perle's perspective. Let's assume that it works, that a few American troops can capture some strategic areas and the Iraqi army quickly folds. Then Perle and the neoconservatives appear as military geniuses who would have free reign to prepare a series of additional low-cost wars in the Middle East.
But, on the other hand, let's assume that the invasion is a complete fiasco. The American troops are defeated in the cities. Many are captured and paraded around for all the world to see via television. Saddam makes bombastic speeches about defeating the American aggressor. All the Arab and Islamic world celebrates the American defeat. American flags are burned in massive anti-American celebrations throughout the Middle East. And all of this is viewed by Americans on their television screens. America is totally humiliated. It looks like a paper tiger.
What would be the American reaction? It would be like Pearl Harbor in engendering hatred of the enemy in the hearts of average Americans. The public would demand that American honor and prestige be avenged. They would accept the idea fed to them by the neoconservative propagandists that the war was one between America and Islam. Total war would be unleashed, which would involve heavy bombing of cities. And the air attacks could easily move from Iraq to the other neighboring Islamic states. A war of conquest and extermination would be the neoconservatives fondest dream since it would serve to destroy all of Israel's enemies in the Middle East."CHRIS PATTON. Former Chairman of the Conservative Party. Minister in both the Thatcher and Major governments. "The Frost Programme." 2nd March, 2003.
"You can hardly switch on a radio or television these day without hearing form the ubiquitous Mr. Perle."
Perle has become the most visible manifestation in the United Kingdom of the American government’s call for war. And yet Richard Perle is NOT a member of the American government.
No matter, he does speak for Bush. As do so many of the rabid commentators who are, also, not an official part of the administration. I would be surprised if the younger Bush, and perhaps even the elder, do not call Mr. Perle "Sir."
Those who have ruled our lives, since before most of us were born, have usually been shadowy unknowable presences behind the scenes, pulling the strings and paying the real wages of the politicians and talking heads of the media, who owed their elevation to celebrity status to them in the first place.
Not any more, the Richard Perle’s of the world are now so confident of their power, invulnerability and ability to influence events and outcomes, no matter what the people want or say, that they are happy to lead from the front these days, indulging their massive egos right out front where the masses can see for themselves who it is that really decides their future. And who it was that decided their past and handed them their strictly edited version of history.
JOSEPH LIEBERMANN. Democratic Senator for Connecticut. Vice Presidential candidate, 2000. Probable Presidential candidate in 2004. Much was made during the 2000 Presidential campaign of the fact Liebermann is a practising Orthodox Jew.
"Remember the President's edict here and it was the correct one, right after September 11th last year, said to the nations of the world: ‘… you are either with us or with the terrorists, and if you're with the terrorists, you're going to feel our wrath.’ I think we have to apply those standards not just to enemies like Iraq and Afghanistan or Iran, we have to apply it to our friends like Saudi Arabia. And either they have to change or the relationship that we have with Saudi Arabia is going to change dramatically." ("AM." "Australian Broadcasting Cooporation." November 25th 2002)
"I am… extremely disappointed to hear rumors that allies have been developing clandestine proposals to put peacekeepers in Iraq. There may be a time for peacekeepers, but this is not it" (February 10th 2003)http://lieberman.senate.gov/~lieberman/press/03/02/2003210A57.html
"It is the President's right and responsibility, informed by all the latest intelligence, to decide when the diplomatic route is no longer advancing our goal of disarmament, and I will support his determination. But we cannot wait months to deal with a dangerous regime… I have always said and continue to believe that America must be prepared to act alone." (January 27th 2003. http://lieberman.senate.gov/~lieberman/press/03/01/2003127843.h)
"We all look forward to seeing Iraq's oil wealth at long last turned from the construction of palaces and weapons of mass to destruction, to the needs and future of the people of Iraq… We all hope quickly to see the day when the democratically-elected Iraqi Parliament and a legitimate Iraqi government wisely administer those funds on behalf of the people and in accordance with their wishes; that will, however take time…
Immediately following a conflict in Iraq, we will have a rare opportunity to influence political debate and development in the Middle East… It has been my position for over a decade that the policy of the United States should be to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq." (A letter to George W. Bush. February 13th 2003. http://lieberman.senate.gov/~lieberman/press/03/02/2003213646.h)
"To me, post-Saddam Iraq is not a burden to be shunned but an opportunity to be relished. It can become a signal to the world, particularly the Islamic world, of our nation's best intentions… In other words, we must not only 'drain the swamp' of terrorists, as Secretary Rumsfeld has put it. We also must seed the garden with our best values, and our best political and economic ideas… we can again make the world a safer and better place." (Speech to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. October 7th 2002. http://lieberman.senate.gov/~lieberman/press/02/10/2002A08452.html)Liebermann proposed the following resolution to the US Senate on behalf of himself, Senator Smith of Oregon, and Senator Daschle of South Dakota, which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22nd 2002.
"Expressing solidarity with Israel in its fight against terrorism. Whereas the United States and Israel are now engaged in a common struggle against terrorism and are on the frontlines of a conflict thrust upon them against their will…
Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Senate- (1) stands in solidarity with Israel, a frontline state in the war against terrorism, as it takes necessary steps to provide security to its people by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas; (2) remains committed to Israel's right to self-defence; (3) will continue to assist Israel in strengthening its homeland defences; (4) condemns Palestinian suicide bombings; (5) demands that the Palestinian Authority fulfill its commitment to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas." (http://lieberman.senate.gov/~lieberman/press/02/04/2002422A49)
"Ultimately, in supporting Israel's right to protect itself, to defend itself, we are supporting our own war against terrorism… we must stand with our ally Israel, sharing hopes and values as we do." (April 22nd 2002. http://lieberman.senate.gov/~lieberman/press/02/04/2002422A56.html "… the war against terrorism has just begun." (September 13th 2001. http://lieberman.senate.gov/~lieberman/press/01/09/2001914457.html)
"We want retaliation, and we will have it… Retaliation for yesterday's atrocities is only the end of the beginning of what should be our response… This is a war against democracy itself. In defending against those attacks, the world's other democratic nations must join together with us… If we are truly involved in a war against terrorism, then our allies in Europe and elsewhere must come to our side as we came to theirs in World War II…
We must convince them that they will either be allies of allies or allies of our enemies." (September 12th 2001. http://lieberman.senate.gov/~lieberman/press/01/09/2001913307.html)WILLIAM KRISTOL. Bush administration advisor. Chairman: Project for the New American Century, probably the most influential civilian "think tank" vis-à-vis Gulf War II. Chief of Staff to Secretary of Education William Bennett under Reagan and to Vice President Dan Quayle during the Bush administration. Founder and editor, with John Podhoretz, of the Rupert Murdoch owned "Weekly Standard," the most hawkish and pro-Israeli Washington newspaper, in 1995.
He taught at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government before setting up "The Weekly Standard," in Washington, in 1995. Bilderberger. Former Enron consultant. Draft dodger during the Vietnam War. Kristol has been described as Richard Perle’s mouthpiece in Washington.
"We're now at war. We're at war with terrorism, with the terrorist group that launched this incredibly bloody and destructive attack on Americans, with the states that harbor that terrorist group. We need to find out who did it, track them down, kill them and remove the government of those states…
If it does turn out that Saddam Hussein, as seems increasingly the case, has links to Osama bin Laden… we're not just dealing with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan, but we're basically looking at finishing the job we began in 1990 with Saddam Hussein." ("Lehrer Newshour." September 11th 2001.
http://warincontext.org/editorials/cakewalk.htm)
"What's next in the war on terrorism?’ The short answer is that Iraq is next… The president sees this war differently from our European allies and differently, I think, from the way his predecessor or even his father might have seen it. The president has chosen to build a new world, not to rebuild the old one that existed before September 11, 2001. And after uprooting al Qaeda from Afghanistan, removing Saddam Hussein from power is the key step to building a freer, safer, more peaceful future…
Reviving the status quo would mean that we would be satisfied at having deposed the Taliban, and at having dealt with Osama bin Laden… and having crippled his al Qaeda network.
We would not overly concern ourselves with who's in power in Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or in Central and South Asia. We would continue to try to keep Saddam Hussein ‘in his box’ and similarly to contain Iran. We would return to the old Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace process.’ We would regard North Korea not as a Stalinist state organized for war but as an arms control problem amenable to an ‘agreed framework’…
The only real unresolved great-power issue is that of China… Even before the final collapse of the Soviet Union, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Though his army was defeated and driven back to Baghdad, the failure to remove the Iraqi tyrant left a problematic legacy. Since then, the pace of major terrorist attacks, now directly aimed at America, has increased, as Norman Podhoretz has chronicled in the most recent issue of ‘Commentary’ magazine…
Since September 11, President Bush has been clear… that there has been a fundamental shift in US policy and strategy. On the evening of the attacks, he vowed to bring to justice ‘those who are behind these evil acts.’ Yet by September 20, when he addressed a joint session of Congress, he had determined that we were at war not only with a group of terrorists directly responsible for the attacks but with ‘every terrorist group of global reach’ and with the ‘nations that provide safe haven to terrorism,’ as well.
On November 6, he assured the Warsaw Conference on Combating Terrorism that the United States would wage war on terror ‘until we're rid of it.’ He also saw the potential threat of terrorists armed with chemical, biological, radiological or even nuclear weapons… And shortly afterward, the president shifted his emphasis from terrorist groups to terror-loving states… And President Bush singled out three regimes, North Korea, Iran and Iraq, as enemies; they constitute an ‘axis of evil’ that poses ‘a grave and growing danger.’… Time, he said, ‘is not on our side.’
The president is thus willing to act pre-emptively and, if need be, unilaterally… The Bush Doctrine seeks to eliminate these weapons and the dictatorial regimes that would use them. The president also seeks to challenge tyranny in general… Moreover, our role with respect to those principles will not be passive…
The Bush Doctrine rests on a revived commitment to the principles of liberal democracy and the restoration of American military power. If the president has defined a new goal, or reminded us of what Americans have always regarded as our true purpose in the world, how do we get there?
The president and his lieutenants have suggested answers to what the next steps should be. Since September 11, we have all understood that this will be a large and long war… The campaign in Afghanistan is far from complete. The Taliban has been routed, al Qaeda's safe haven destroyed… Nor can victory in Afghanistan be ensured without securing Pakistan.
The campaign against al Qaeda now is taking American soldiers into Southeast Asia. More than 600 troops have been deployed to the Philippines to help the government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in its war against the Abu Sayyaf group of Muslim extremists.
Singapore and Malaysia both have arrested terrorists with al Qaeda connections and the Bush Administration is stepping up pressure on the Indonesian government to do the same. The trail is also likely to lead into Somalia and elsewhere in Africa. The presence of North Korea in President Bush's ‘axis of evil’ underscores his larger view of this war.
The administration previously has taken somewhat contradictory stands on North Korea, first suggesting it would overturn the Clinton Administration's policy and then to maintain it. North Korea may be impoverished and isolated, but it is extremely dangerous.
American policy must be to change the North Korean regime, not simply to contain it and coexist with it. The president also makes it clear that he regards the Middle East as occupying the central front in this war, and that the problem is political, not religious. What links Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and the mullahs in Tehran is a common hatred of America and a desire to drive America out of the region…
The principal obstacles to that goal are the regimes in Iran and Iraq… We may never definitely know, for example, whether Saddam had a hand in the events of September 11… But Iraqi involvement would come as no surprise. After all, Saddam Hussein has remained at war with the United States since 1991. Every day, his air Defences target US and British aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq…
And we know that Iraqi-sponsored terrorists have tried to kill an American president and Saddam's agents were likely involved in the effort to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993... The larger question with respect to Iraq, as with Afghanistan, is what happens after the combat is concluded… reconstructing Iraq may prove to be a less difficult task than the challenge of building a viable state in Afghanistan.
The political, strategic and moral rewards would also be even greater. A friendly, free, and oil-producing Iraq would leave Iran isolated and Syria cowed; the Palestinians more willing to negotiate seriously with Israel; and Saudi Arabia with less leverage over policymakers here and in Europe. Removing Saddam Hussein and his henchmen from power presents a genuine opportunity, one President Bush sees clearly, to transform the political landscape of the Middle East. Conversely, the failure to seize this opportunity, to rise to the larger mission in this war, would constitute a major defeat…
Our allies in the region who have truly stood with us, like Israel, Turkey and now Pakistan and Hamid Karzai's nascent government in Afghanistan,- would feel a lonely chill. And our allies in Europe… would soon begin to worry about their own prospects in a world in which terrorists and terrorist states have acquired weapons of mass destruction. Very shortly, for lack of confidence in America's willingness to preserve and shape a global order, our friends would start appeasing our adversaries, and our adversaries' ambitions would grow even greater…
It is now impossible to recover the world of September 10, or to find a stable balance of power with the likes of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Nor can we afford, as the president said, to ‘wait on events, while dangers gather.’" (Testimony To the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. February 7th 2002. http://www.newamericancentury.org/foreignrelations-020702.htm)
"The Bush Doctrine involves a thorough-going war on terror… Previously, the Middle East has been regarded as exempt from the requirements of liberal democracy…
President Bush has delivered perhaps the most profound statement by any American president about the Middle East since Truman. At the same time, as with Truman, he has now committed himself to an active and bold role in this part of the world that will require all parts of his administration acting in concert to implement his vision. This vision of a democratic and peaceful swath of the Middle East, from Israel through Palestine, Jordan and Iraq, has now become the governing objective of the Bush Administration." (June 25th 2002. http://www.newamericancentury.org/bushspeech-062502.htm) "The time for action grows near. Congressional leaders should seriously consider a resolution authorizing use of force when they return next week. Passing such a resolution as soon as possible would provide the president with maximum flexibility and an opportunity for tactical surprise, would strengthen his hand vis-a-vis our allies, and might embolden internal opposition in Iraq." ("Memorandum To: Opinion Leaders." Subject: Today’s Speech by Vice President Cheney. August 26th 2002)
"Let's be clear. President Bush's policy is regime change in Iraq. President Bush believes that regime change is most unlikely without military action… No doubt he and his administration could have been doing a better job of making that case in a sustained and detailed way. But that is not why an axis of appeasement, stretching from Riyadh to Brussels to Foggy Bottom, from Howell Raines to Chuck Hagel to Brent Scowcroft, has now mobilized in a desperate effort to deflect the president from implementing his policy.
The appeasers don't want the president to do a better job of explaining his policy. They don't agree with his policy. They hate the idea of a morally grounded foreign policy that seeks aggressively and unapologetically to advance American principles around the world. Some, mostly abroad and on the domestic left, hate it because they're queasy about American principles.
Some, mostly foreign policy ‘realists,’ hate it because they're appalled by the thought that the character of regimes is key to foreign policy. Some, cosmopolitan sophisticates of all stripes, hate talk of good and evil. Now they've come together in a last-gasp attempt to stop President Bush from setting American foreign policy on a course of moral clarity and global leadership…
Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska wanders into Pat Buchanan-land with his comment that: ‘… maybe Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad.’… as Henry Kissinger said in a television interview last week: … If there is no action now, that means that we are saying, we will wait until these weapons are used and react to an actual provocation. That is going to produce, if it comes, horrendous casualties.’ This secretary of state… could be particularly helpful if he were to join the president, the vice president, the national security adviser, and the defence secretary in making the case for the Bush Doctrine with respect to Iraq…
When told that previous secretaries of state had an hour alone every week to talk foreign policy with the president, Powell is reported to have asked: ‘But what would I do with the other 55 minutes?’ Well, what he could do is spend those minutes figuring out how best to execute the president's policy, or he could step aside and let someone else do the job.
Colin Powell is an impressive man. He is loyally assisted by the able Richard Armitage. They are entitled to their foreign policy views. But they will soon have to decide whom they wish to serve, the president, or his opponents." ("Weekly Standard." 26th August, 2002. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/550afrhr.asp.)
"Just before Labor Day, the American people were uncertain about the need to act soon to remove Saddam Hussein... Senators and House members were objecting to a broad grant of authority to the president to use force. And our allies were even more unhappy than usual. Then the president called in the congressional leadership, went to the United Nations and made his case. The country now supports him. His administration is at least publicly united behind him. He has won large bipartisan majorities in Congress. And he is likely to prevail in the UN Security Council. What accounts for the president's success?
Primarily it's the clarity, toughness and straightforwardness with which he has marshalled his arguments. There have been impressively serious and high-minded speeches, for example to the United Nations on Sept. 12 and in Cincinnati on Monday. There has been the release of information and the presentation of arguments... And there have been the informal comments that have had real political punch, especially the not-so-veiled threat on September 13 to Democrats standing for re-election that they could be accused of subordinating American security to the United Nations.
So the president has succeeded in explaining why Hussein must go, why time is not on our side, why deterrence can't be counted on, and why war is necessary. But now the president has to move from building support for a war to fighting a war. The president now becomes a war leader, not merely… a war mobilizer… now his task is not to educate or persuade us. It is to defeat Saddam Hussein. And that will require the president, at times, to mislead rather than to clarify, to deceive rather than to explain…
The president's duty is no longer to make the case for war or to prepare the nation for a necessary war. It is to win it as quickly, as decisively and with as few casualties as possible. The case for war, over the past few weeks, required clarity and truth. Victory in war, over the next few weeks or months, will require using the fog of war." ("Washington Post." October 12th 2002. http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-101202.htm)
"It thereby helps Saddam Hussein. If the Chancellor even refuses to support a UN-mandated operation, one can only read that as a de-facto support for Saddam Hussein… We, however, never asked Gerhard Schroeder for his support. He said he is not going to that party? He has not even an invitation. The situation would be different if German support were crucial. It isn't. It is not of great importance for us."
Perle said that, if Germany, after entering the UN Security Council next February, voted against an Iraq intervention 'it would be a catastrophe for the German-American relations... it would be very serious. It would be such a severe disappointment, that I would be surprised if that would pass without a controversy.' (December, 2002. http://www.fredparhad.com/fong/messages/10212.html)
"There's been too much pseudo-populism, almost too much concern and attention for, quote: 'the people'... After all, we conservatives are on the side of the lords and barons... We... are pulling up the drawbridge against the peasants." (http://members.tripod.com/aldems/page13.html)
"The aim of Kristol's argument is to silence doubters by branding them as disloyal, not just to this president but to American interests and ideals. It is demagogy and it is merely offensive, not effective."ROBERT KAGAN & WILLIAM KRISTOL. Co-founders of the Project for a New American Century.
"When all is said and done, the conflict in Afghanistan will be to the war on terrorism what the North Africa campaign was to World War II: an essential beginning on the path to victory. But compared with what looms over the horizon, a wide-ranging war in locales from Central Asia to the Middle East and, unfortunately, back again to the United States, Afghanistan will prove but an opening battle...
But this war will not end in Afghanistan. It is going to spread and engulf a number of countries in conflicts of varying intensity. It could well require the use of American military power in multiple places simultaneously. It is going to resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone has hoped to avoid." ("Weekly Standard." October 29th 2001. http://theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/384thhhq.asp)
"Is the president preparing to back off the bold pledges he made to the American people four months ago in his State of the Union address? The president warned us then that the clock was ticking in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was working hard to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Bin Laden, al Qaeda, and other terrorists were eager to get their hands on such weapons.
And it was only a matter of time before the ultimate horror of terrorists armed with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons confronted us all. Bush proclaimed that he was determined to confront and eliminate this threat, and he called on Americans to gird themselves for the difficult struggle that lay ahead. And he told us time was not on our side.
In the weeks and months that followed, Bush repeatedly let it be known, publicly and privately, that he was committed to removing Saddam Hussein from power, and by military force if necessary, which he presumed it would be. Was it all hot air? On Friday, the Washington Post published a credible report by the respected journalist Tom Ricks that the administration has put off the idea of an invasion of Iraq. Indeed, a military attack on Saddam may never happen at all. It seems that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have recommended against a military operation to remove Saddam, on the grounds that it would be difficult and would require some 200,000 troops.
They have also recommended against an operation that combined airstrikes with special operations forces on the ground. In fact, they apparently have argued that the continued "containment" of Saddam--the continuation of the Clinton policy, that is, is sufficient. There are signs that President Bush and his team may be inclined to accept this recommendation. On Thursday, in Berlin, the president said: ‘I have no war plans on my desk… we've got to use all means at our disposal to deal with Saddam Hussein’…
In other words, the administration may be returning to the idea of containment plus covert operations against Saddam, attempted coups, hoped-for assassination by people close to Saddam, hoped-for spontaneous combustion of his dictatorship, hoped-for serious U.N. inspections. In short, dreamland.
This is the policy of the Clinton administration, the one Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and a host of Republicans criticized so vociferously during the 2000 campaign: Keep Saddam ‘in his box’ and pray for a miracle. That is what Clinton did for eight years. The CIA tried to foment coups, to support plots against Saddam, and they all failed. Plotters were caught and executed. American agents were rounded up and executed. And at the end of Clinton's term, Saddam was alive and kicking. And posing the grave peril that Bush so astutely identified in his State of the Union address.
But now, apparently, the Bush administration may be seeing wisdom in Clinton's approach. In fact, the administration recently made life even easier for Saddam, winning U.N. approval for a significant easing of the sanctions against Iraq. Saddam will now grow richer, and he will have new cash to spend on his weapons programs. Did President Bush really not understand what he was saying when he pronounced the Bush Doctrine?
Did he think an invasion of Iraq would be easy? Was it really a surprise to Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld when the Joint Chiefs told them 200,000 troops would be needed to take out Saddam? Perhaps it was. And there are other, worrying signs of non-seriousness about war in the highest reaches of the Bush administration: An unwillingness to substantially increase the defense budget. A lack of preparation of the American public for the fact that the war on terror is going to get bigger, not smaller…
Surely the president will step in and save the day. His presidency is on the line. As is the credibility of the United States and the whole security structure--or lack thereof--of the post-9/11 world. But time is not on the president's side. He has lost considerable momentum in the war against terror and weapons of mass destruction. More drift and indecision would be disastrous.
The president returns from Europe this week. He needs to take control of his administration, and remind them, as he said in Berlin on Thursday, that ‘we're still at war.’ If we're really at war, let's be serious about doing what we have to do to win it." (June 3rd 2002)
"President Bush's resounding victory in last week's midterm elections was, among other things, a remarkable expression of national support for the course the president has steered in the war on terrorism. And, of course, that includes the president's Iraq policy…
The most significant legislative action during this election campaign came when Congress gave the president authorization to use force to remove Saddam… All that remains is to go through the motions of U.N. inspections before the president orders military action to remove the world's most dangerous dictator. Right?…
Of the president's intentions we have every confidence. For months he has consistently declared that Saddam Hussein is a dangerous menace who must be removed… Unfortunately, the battle over the president's policy is still not over, and the attempt to derail the president's policy toward Iraq has not completely failed, at least not yet.
We can see the effects of the late-summer onslaught against removing Saddam unfolding before us right now, in the form of the U.N. Security Council resolution passed Friday and the attempt to get U.N. inspectors back into Iraq… The French government of Jacques Chirac is reported to be ‘delighted’ that over the past seven weeks it has been able to force ‘a substantial change in the initial U.S. position.’ As the ‘Financial Times’ reported from Paris on Friday, the French are congratulating themselves for directing the new Security Council resolution toward disarmament rather than ‘regime change’ in Iraq…
Today the president himself talks chiefly of disarmament and, at least theoretically, leaves open the possibility that a disarmed and fully inspected Saddam Hussein-led regime will be an acceptable outcome for the United States. There is no point in kidding ourselves:
The inspections process on which we are to embark is a trap… It was designed to satisfy those in Europe who oppose U.S. military action against Iraq; and it was negotiated by those within the Bush administration who have never made any secret of their opposition to military action in Iraq. We shouldhardly be surprised, then, that the process established by the U.N. Security Council makes it harder, not easier, for the president to accomplish what he has long stated as his objective in Iraq…
As the plan is currently devised, the people who will have considerable influence in deciding whether the United States has legitimate grounds for taking action against Saddam Hussein are (1) the U.N.'s chief arms inspector, Hans Blix, (2) the members of the U.N. Security Council, i.e., France and Russia, and (3) Saddam Hussein himself…
Now President Bush's policy rests heavily on Blix's actions and decisions. According to the resolution passed on Friday, Blix will have 45 days to begin inspections in Iraq. Then he will have another 60 days to submit a report on his findings to the U.N. Security Council. During these 105 days he may also report on any efforts by Iraq to obstruct inspections. Now, of course, it is possible that Blix will report every breach or obstruction committed by Iraq, that he will file a complaint every time his access to some building is delayed by 24 hours, or every time one of his vehicles gets a flat tire, or every time one of the people he wants to interview mysteriously fails to show up.
But, really, what are the chances that Mr. Blix will want to blow the whistle on Saddam, knowing that he may thereby signal the start of a war that he and his backers at the Security Council want to avoid?… Earlier American drafts had stated simply that if Iraq obstructed inspections or made false declarations, it would be in ‘material breach’ of the U.N. resolution, thus implicitly leaving the United States free to take action.
But in recent weeks France and Russia fought hard against this ‘hidden trigger,’ precisely because, as the ‘Associated Press’ reports: ‘… the original wording would have let the United States determine on its own whether Iraq had committed an infraction.’… At France's insistence, the resolution now states that any new breach ‘will be reported to the Council for assessment.’… The French believe, and more important the British believe, that this means President Bush has promised he will not order an invasion just because it is clear to him that Saddam is obstructing inspections or lying and cheating.
Their interpretation of the resolution is that the President can act only when Blix declares to the Security Council that there is a problem. As one British diplomat at the U.N. told the ‘New York Times,’ ‘There is now no route through this resolution that circumvents’ the weapons inspectors. Which means there is no way for the United States to make an independent judgement without being accused of subverting a process the United States appears to have authorized.
So the best that can be hoped for now is a return to the Security Council sometime within or shortly after the next 105 days. At which point, we will be back where we began eight weeks ago. The Bush administration will claim the time has come for military action, and the French and Russians will argue that the time has not come, that the reports are ambiguous, that inspections need more time, etc. Then, it is true, President Bush will be free to flout the will of Security Council members and invade if he chooses…
So the question is… will he feel freer to act without U.N. approval 15 weeks from now?… We understand the operating assumption behind Bush's whole approach to the U.N. inspections plan: Saddam will blow it, somehow… Somewhere, sometime, somehow, Saddam will trip up and give the United States the pretext to do what Bush wants to do, take him out militarily…
On what grounds will President Bush declare that the inspections effort has failed and the only remaining option is an invasion? The legal and scientific case may be no stronger then than it is now. One answer administration officials give is that they intend to have "zero tolerance" for Iraqi misbehavior or dissimulation during the next 105 days.
The minute Bush sees something he doesn't like, he will take action. We trust this will indeed be the administration's approach… The tragic irony, of course, is that the inspections regime cannot possibly ‘work,’ no matter how compliant Saddam chooses to be. It simply cannot eliminate the danger Saddam poses to the United States and to the world… President Bush has been right all along to insist on a change of regime in Iraq. The problem is not just Saddam's weapons. The problem is Saddam. The president knows this. But right now his administration is conducting a policy that deliberately denies and obscures this fundamental truth…
We find it inconceivable that the president intends to end his first term with Saddam Hussein still in power. He knows what a disaster that would be, for the security of his nation, for the world, and for him personally… Perhaps what the president really believes is that, at the end of the day, he will act when he deems it necessary to act, no matter what Blix and the Security Council say. That is our hope.
We trust the president will ensure that his administration's vision remains unclouded by the smoke emanating from the U.N., and that, at the right moment, and at a moment not dangerously far off and not indefinitely to be postponed, he will thank the U.N. and our ‘allies’ for their efforts, and order his military to get about the urgent business of removing Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq." ("Weekly Standard." November 18th 2002)ROBERT KAGAN. Leading neoconservative strategist. Co-founder of PNAC. Associate Editor of the Rupert Murdoch owned "Weekly Standard." Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"We will probably need a major concentration of forces in the Middle East over a long period of time. When we have economic problems, it's been caused by disruptions in our oil supply. If we have a force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies." ("Mother Jones." March/April, 2003. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/10/ma_273_01.html)
"To appreciate fully the unparalleled political and moral courage of Tony Blair, Jose Maria Aznar and the other six European leaders who called for solidarity with the United States in a statement published in yesterday's ‘Wall Street Journal,’ you really have to live in Europe and feel the mood out here.
Never mind that Blair, Aznar, Silvio Berlusconi, et al. planted themselves at the side of President Bush in the coming confrontation with Iraq, at a time when polls in Britain, Spain, Italy and elsewhere around Europe show opposition to American policy running at 70 percent or higher. And never mind that they insisted America's war on terrorism must be Europe's war, too, at a time when, as EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana recently conceded, most Europeans do not feel the slightest bit threatened by international terrorism and, indeed, fear Bush more than they fear Osama bin Laden. This was nothing compared with the unabashed pro-Americanism of their declaration. The eight European leaders actually wrote of "American bravery, generosity and farsightedness" in setting Europe free from Nazism and communism in the last century and in keeping the peace in Europe for the past six decades.
By using the word "generosity," they even implied that Europeans might now owe the United States a little generosity in return. Such sentiments are pure heresy these days in Europe, where anti-Americanism has reached a fevered intensity.
I live in Brussels, famed "capital of Europe," and have travelled across the continent over the past year, speaking with intellectuals, journalists, foreign policy analysts and government officials at the endless merry-go-round of highbrow European conferences. The settings couldn't be nicer; the food and wine couldn't be better; the conversations couldn't be more polite. And the suspicion, fear and loathing of the United States couldn't be thicker.
In London, where Tony Blair has to go to work every day, one finds Britain's finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the ‘neoconservative’ (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy…
In Paris, all the talk is of oil and ‘imperialism’ (and Jews). In Madrid, it's oil, imperialism, past American support for Franco (and Jews). At a conference I recently attended in Barcelona, an esteemed Spanish intellectual earnestly asked why, if the United States wants to topple vicious dictatorships that manufacture weapons of mass destruction, it is not also invading Israel.
Yes, I know, there are Americans who ask such questions, too. We have our Buchanans and our Gore Vidals. But here's what Americans need to understand: In Europe, this paranoid, conspiratorial anti-Americanism is not a far-left or far-right phenomenon. It's the mainstream view. When Gerhard Schroeder campaigns on an anti-American platform in Germany, he's not just ‘mobilizing his base’ or reaching out to fringe Greens and Socialists. He's talking to the man and woman on the street, left, right and center. When Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin publicly humiliate Colin Powell, they're playing to the gallery.
The ‘European street’ is more anti-American than ever before. Even in the 1960s at the height of the anti-Vietnam War protests or in the early 1980s at the height of the ‘nuclear freeze’ movement, European anti-Americanism was always more than counterbalanced by European anti-communism…
When Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher and even Francois Mitterrand stood with Reagan in the waning years of the Cold War, theirs was a courageous and vitally important but not a politically risky stand. Not so today for Messrs. Blair, Aznar and Berlusconi or for Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister.
For leaders in Western Europe, more so than for their Central and Eastern European colleagues, standing with Bush in the present Iraq crisis is political poison, at least in the short run… Certainly they do not feel a scintilla of generosity toward the United States. Instead… anti-Americanism has become the organizing theme for all European grievances about their world...
Schroeder surely hopes his impoverished constituents in the former East Germany can be encouraged to vent their anger at Bush and not at their own chancellor. French anxieties about France's growing Muslim population are channeled into hostility toward Israel and the Bush administration's Middle East policies. History offers few examples of democratic political leaders willing to sail head-on into such gale-force winds.
That is why Blair and his colleagues deserve so much admiration, even more than Thatcher and hers. While Chirac and Schroeder simultaneously feed and feed on anti-Americanism, Blair, Aznar and their colleagues have taken the much harder and much lonelier road. Appealing to what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature, they ask Europeans to rise above pettiness and insecurity.
In the long run, political courage may have a political payoff. In a few months, Blair and his colleagues may come out of this stronger for having the guts to take an unpopular stand now. Let's just pray they survive the effort." ("Washington Post." January 31st 2003. http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-013103.htm)ROBERT E. EBEL. Director of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Former CIA operative. "Mother Jones." March/April, 2003. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/10/ma_273_01.html
"If something happens in Saudi Arabia, if the ruling family is ousted, if they decide to shut off the oil supply, we have to go in… Oil is high-profile stuff. Oil fuels military power, national treasuries, and international politics. It is no longer a commodity to be bought and sold within the confines of traditional energy supply and demand balances. Rather, it has been transformed into a determinant of well-being, of national security, and of international power…
They (China) have different political interests in the Gulf than we do. Is it to our advantage to have another competitor for oil in the Persian Gulf?"THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW. 16th March 2002. http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/qfiraq3.html
"The house is on fire in the Middle East, but the Bush Administration is preoccupied not with dousing it but with lighting another fire. All this has gone far beyond a response to terrorism... The blueprint for Bush was written six years ago by a pair of influential US neo-conservatives. William Kristol and Robert Kagan posed the question of what the US role in the world should be, then answered their own question: ‘Benevolent global hegemony. Having defeated the 'evil empire,' the US enjoys strategic and ideological predominance. The first objective of US foreign policy should be to preserve and enhance that predominance.’
A 1996 Kristol and Kagan article in the journal ‘Foreign Affairs,’ noted that China's Jiang Zemin and Russia's Boris Yeltsin had issued a joint condemnation of US ‘hegemonism’ in the post-Cold War world.
The two Americans rejoiced in this reprimand: ‘They meant this as a complaint about the US. It should be taken as a compliment and a guide to action.' The Bush Administration is taking precisely this course. Neo-conservatives not only help guide the Bush policy, many of them staff the Administration, led by the super-hawkish Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defence...
It does not occur to a neo-conservative that another country might have a legitimate basis for challenging US hegemony."DOUGLAS FEITH. US Undersecretary of Defence. Third-highest-ranking executive in the Pentagon. Managing Attorney, Feith & Zell P.C.; Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Negotiations Policy.
Close associate of Richard Perle, has served as his Special Counsel. Member of JINSA. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Frequently speaks at "Zionist Organization of America" conferences. Draft dodger during the Vietnam War.Feith and Zell’s only International office is in Israel. His firm's own website stated that Feith ' represents Israeli Armaments Manufacturers.'
"I've just completed participation in the conference of the Southeast European Defence Ministers… we were given the opportunity to provide a briefing on the war on terrorism… We discussed the danger in particular of the overlap of the countries that are supporting terrorism, and those countries that have dangerous and irresponsible regimes that are pursuing weapons of mass destruction and the overlap of those two lists represents a significant strategic danger. The danger comes together in an especially acute form in the regime in Iraq…
We intend to… develop as broad a base as possible, and as solid a base as possible, for whatever conclusions we are going to come to about the truthfulness of that Iraqi declaration… We talked about the building of a coalition for possible military action in Iraq…
If military action is required, the stronger the coalition that can be put together, the faster any military action could be done, and one would expect the lower the cost for everybody involved, and so it is highly desirable to have a broad base of support for our diplomacy and for military action, if it's required…
Our closest allies and friends around the world are democracies and democratic governments are… difficult to deal with because they're democratic and they have to answer to their people. And it complicates life in all kinds of ways when you have to deal with the public… We think is helpful when we're working with our democratic friends to present the kind of explanations and evidence that allow them to persuade their publics that if they're co-operating with us, it is in the common interests of the two countries…
I think there is a common understanding of the very serious danger represented by the Iraqi regime, given its history of using weapons of mass destruction against its neighbors, against the Iranians, against its own Kurdish citizens, its history of aggression not only against Iran, but against Kuwait and against Saudi Arabia and against Israel. I think that there is an understanding that the time has come for the Iraqi regime to co-operatively comply with its international obligations, or to be compelled to do so." (News briefing following a conference of Southeast European Defence Ministers in Rome. December 11th 2002. http://www.uspolicy.be/Issues/Iraq/Feith.121102.htm)
"President Bush has said that Iraq must disarm itself of its weapons of mass destruction, the chemical weapons that it has, the biological weapons that it has, and the nuclear weapons program that it has along with its long-range missiles. It must do that either through Cupertino with the UN or the United States will lead a coalition of willing countries to bring about the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The world community knows that Iraq has chemical weapons and biological weapons. It also knows that Iraq has been pursuing for decades nuclear weapons… The United States has some people in Europe with whom we disagree on this matter and a large number of people in Europe, including governments in Europe, with whom we agree… If war were to become necessary, we are confident that we would have a substantial amount of international support and Cupertino and countries working with us in the coalition, including substantial participation from European countries…
Iraq is a country that has used nerve gas in its wars with Iran and against its own people, the Kurds in the Hilacha area, and the international community is focused on the danger that Iraqi chemical and biological weapons pose and the danger that the Iraqis might soon, if left alone, acquire nuclear weapons." (Interview with "Al Jazeera." January 24th 2003)
"We have reason to believe that Saddam's regime is planning to sabotage Iraq's oil fields… That makes for a horrific problem in reconstruction."Citing estimates that 500,000 Iraqis could perish if a prolonged war had to be fought house-to-house in Baghdad, Barbara Boxer said: ‘If it goes wrong, and we do kill so many people as we try to run this country, will we really be regarded as liberators?’Feith assured the senators that the Pentagon was planning for ‘worst-case’ scenarios. (Questioned by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Chicago Tribune."
February 12th 2003. (http://www.Defencelink.mil/news/Jan2003/t01242003_t0124djf.html)
MARC GROSSMAN. US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs. One time Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources at the Department of State.
"How this transition will take place (after a war in Iraq) is perhaps opaque at the moment… Hopefully, there will be people who come up and want to be part of the government… Should military action be required in Iraq, the US will take steps to protect and preserve Iraq's oil sector… I can't answer the question yet whether I want to have UN until I know what the position of the UN will be."Asked how quickly the administration expected US forces to be able to hand administration of the country back to Iraqi civilians, Grossman said 'two years.' But under further questioning, he backed away from that estimate.
"It would be a big mistake for us to set some sort of date… is going to be hard, and it's going to take long."
DAVID WURMSER. Director, Middle East Program, AEI; Research Fellow, American Enterprise Institute. Special assistant to State Department chief arms control negotiator, John Bolton, in the Bush minor administration. "Washington Times." November 1st 2000.
"Middle East War: How Did It Come to This?"
"America’s and Israel’s mistakes in dealing with tyrannical societies in the Middle East have led the entire region to the brink of disaster. To reverse that, the two countries should adopt a co-ordinated strategy to fatally strike the centres of radicalism in the region. The unthinkable has happened: a ‘war’ in the Middle East.
While it is still a war of attrition along the seam lines dividing Israeli and Palestinian areas of control, it is the first sign of a broad strategic collapse of the United States’ regional position. Both the United States and Israel have mis-stepped on key policy issues over the past decade. America’s failures on Iraq and Iran have combined with the ill-conceived Arab-Israeli ‘peace’ process to trigger a torrent of anti-American and anti-Israeli rage unprecedented in its breadth and danger in over forty years. The eruption of violence in autumn 2000 on the Palestinian issue is only the local expression of a regional threat caused ultimately by the combined collapse of America’s regional and Israel’s local standing.
The crisis will prove to be a decisive moment in Middle East history. The local upheaval threatens to engulf the entire area in a larger conflagration. To correct this problem, America’s and Israel’s responses must be regional, not local. Few anti-American outbursts or Arab-Israeli confrontations initially have much to do with Israel’s or America’s behavior; they have more to do with what these two countries are: free societies.
These upheavals originate in the conditions of Arab politics, specifically in the requirements of tyrannies to seek external conflict to sustain internal repression… A regime built on opposition to freedom will view free nations, such as the United States and Israel, as mortal threats… For the worst regional despots, survival demands hostility toward Israel…
Heightened conflict with Israel can destabilize and shove a moderate, ill-prepared Arab nation, such as Jordan, into a vise… War is a political act; it serves political aims. By the early 1990s, America’s and Israel’s victories in war began to change the tide and alter the tone of Arab politics…
Privately, Arabs whispered that Israel’s free society, like America’s, was its source of strength. Gingerly, less revolutionary Arab regimes, such as Morocco, Jordan, and Qatar, abandoned the safe shelter of anti-Zionism and dealt with the forbidden foe. Israel and the United States were seen as the forces of the future.
Nations queued up to align with the United States and make peace with Israel. Some nations, such as Turkey, sought a strategic alliance with Israel… The region was defined by this joint American-Israeli victory… Neither Israel nor the United States understood their victory, leading them to surrender it. Instead, both in effect accepted the assertion of the most radical Arab despots that the Palestinian conflict is the root cause of the region’s endemic violence, poverty, instability, corruption… These issues, they argued, could not be dealt with until after the Palestinian conflict was genuinely solved.
That would happen only when Palestinians felt tangible benefits from peace, specifically enhanced sovereignty and economic development… But the United States also accepted the idea that a failure to solve the Palestinian conflict contributed directly to a regionwide climate of violence and anti-Americanism…
Madeline Albright openly blamed Israel in 1998 for America’s failure to keep the anti-Iraq coalition together, asserting that Israel’s intransigence fostered anti-Americanism… … officials in Washington and Jerusalem identified their own behavior as the source of anti-Israeli and anti-American violence rather than recognizing that violence as a manifestation of the despotic nature of their attackers. This led both governments to ignore the positive influence of their power… America’s and Israel’s mistakes have led the region to the brink of disaster.
The United States has failed in its efforts to contain Saddam Hussein. America stumbled in 1995 by abandoning a viable insurgency led by the Iraqi National Congress just as it was scoring significant victories against Saddam, achievements that went unrecognized in Washington… When the United States bombed Iraq in December 1998, it appeared that it served more to divert attention from its failure than to advance a coherent strategy to topple Saddam… The Oslo ‘peace’ process, for which both Israel and America share blame, revived and encouraged actors who had been orphaned by the Soviet Union’s collapse and weakened by decades of humiliating defeats at Israel’s hands to again threaten war against Israel… There are times when an opponent… demands the surrender of things so dear that if surrendered, they pave the way to national collapse and destruction.
At those moments, compromise is inappropriate, and intransigence, even if it means war, is justified… War and diplomacy are means to achieve a political victory; the PLO had used both to force Israel by autumn 2000 into a choice: fight or die. Israel chose to fight, and survive.
The more the United States clings to the fantasy of conflict resolution, the more it endangers the very existence of its key regional ally by undercutting its ability to fight. The Clinton… administration’s ‘even-handedness’ has devastated US credibility…
Crises can be opportunities. Israel must avoid letting Arafat prolong the intermittent war of attrition in West Bank towns. Arafat wants that war; Israel cannot win it. Instead, Israel and the United States should adopt a co-ordinated strategy to regain the initiative and reverse their regionwide strategic retreat.
They should broaden the conflict to strike fatally, not merely disarm, the centers of radicalism in the region, the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Tehran, and Gaza. That would reestablish the recognition that fighting with either the United States or Israel is suicidal. Many in the Middle East will then understand the merits of being an American ally and of making peace with Israel."JAMES WOOLSEY. Former Director of the CIA. Defense Policy Board member. Member of JINSA. CFR member.
"If evidence continues to develop pointing to Iraqi involvement in the terrorist incidents against the United States in the 1990's, September 11 and afterwards, the American people will not only tolerate, but will demand victory over Iraq. We must wage this war quickly, powerfully and ruthlessly… This time, no more Mr. Nice Guy… Our focus is to help the President make decisions determining if we are also at war with the state…
I don't know why the involvement of Al Qaeda doesn't mean a state isn't also involved… Saddam has been drawing closer to Islamic terrorists, making common cause for some years with Islamist extremists…
There are so many elements involved in the September 11 attacks, it indicates that a state is involved… If the enemy has a face and a name, Americans will react as it has in the past; and this will be something extraordinary." Woolsey said that America is held in contempt in the Middle East because it let Saddam survive in the Gulf War. Attacking Saddam would restore respect for America he said. He said the US should finish with Afghanistan: "… as quickly as possible and then turn to Iraq." (The National Convention of the American Jewish Congress. October 23rd 2001.
http://www.ajcongress.org/pages/RELS2001/OCT_2001/oct01_07.htm) "The silence of the Arab public, in the wake of America's victories in Afghanistan, proves that only fear will re-establish respect for the US" (Washington. December, 2001)
"It's pretty straightforward, France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them. If they throw in their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult to the point of impossible to persuade the new Iraqi government to work with them." ("New York Times." "Counter Punch." October 10th 2002)
"What is different after September 11th is not that these three groups came to be at war with us. They've been at war with us for some time. It's that we finally, finally may have noticed and have decided at least, in part, that we are at war with them.
If these are the three groupings, and by the way, I think of these more or less as analogous to three mafia families. They do hate each other and they do kill each other from time to time. But they hate us a great deal more and they're perfectly willing and perfectly capable to assist one another in one way or another, including Iraq and al-Qaeda… We're hated because of freedom of speech, because of freedom of religion, because of our economic freedom, because of our equal, or at least almost equal, treatment of women, because of all the good things that we do. This is like the war against Nazism…
In 1991, President Bush organized a magnificent coalition against the seizure of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. We fought the war superbly, and then stopped it while the Republican guard was intact. And after having encouraged the Kurds and the Shiia to rebel against Saddam, we stood back, left the bridges intact, left their units intact, let them fly helicopters around carrying troops and missiles, and we watched the Kurds and Shiia who were winning in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces, to be massacred.
And the world looked at us and said, well, we know what the Americans value. They save their oil in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and after that, they didn't care… And throughout the rest of the '90s, we continued our practice of the '80s. Instead of sending military force, we usually sent prosecutors and litigators…
I would suggest that our response after September 11th in Afghanistan, like our response against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, was something that was quite surprising to our enemies in the Middle East who attacked us. I think they were quite surprised at what we did in Afghanistan. But, you have to admit, like the Japanese at the beginning of the '40s, the Islamists, both Shia and Sunni and the fascist Baathists in the Middle East at the beginning of the 21st Century, had some rationale and some evidence for believing this rich, spoiled, feckless country would not fight…
We do not want in the mid-21st century people looking back on us having made some of the kinds of decisions that, for example, were made to incarcerate the Nisei, the Japanese-Americans in World War II and saying, how in the world could those people have done that? But this country can do some ugly things when it gets scared.
And one thing to remember about the incarceration of the Japanese-Americans in World War II is that the three individuals most responsible were Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the then Attorney General running for governor of the State of California, Earl Warren, and the man who wrote the Korematsu decision which upheld the constitutionality of the acts, Hugo Black. Roosevelt, Warren, and Black, of course, were not famous for setting up concentration camps.
They were names from the liberal side of the American political spectrum… What we have to do is manage this domestic war in such a way… that we don't slip into extraordinarily ugly, anti-constitutional steps. This is not easy. But nobody promised us a rose garden. And it will in some ways, I think, be one of the hardest aspects of the war… Hans Blix, to put it as gently as I can, does not have a stellar background of inquisitiveness or decisiveness…
People can change. We can hope that Hans Blix does not continue as the Inspector Clouseau of international investigations… if he does, the President under this resolution will have some tough choices to make and perhaps, as soon as December 8, as to whether the United States will on its own, declare what will certainly be a lie: Saddam's declaration that he has no weapons of mass destruction programs.
Whether the United States will decide that that is a violation of the UN resolution and we will then take action. I must admit, I hope that happens because I don't believe there is any way to solve this problem of Iraq without removing Saddam forcefully…
This is going to be a long war, very long indeed. I hope not as long as the Cold War, 40 plus years, but certainly longer than either World War I or World War II.
I rather imagine it's going to be measured, I'm afraid, in decades… Outside of Israel and Turkey, the Middle East essentially consists of no democracies. It has, rather, two types of governments, pathological predators and vulnerable autocrats… Five of those states: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Libya sponsor and assist terrorism in one way or another; all five of those are working on weapons of mass destruction of one type or another.
The Mideast presents a serious and massive problem of pathological predators next to vulnerable autocracies. I don't believe this terror war is ever really going to go away until we change the face of the Middle East… But I would say this, both to the terrorists and to the pathological predators such as Saddam Hussein and to the autocrats as well, the barbarics, the Saudi royal family.
They have to realize that now for the fourth time in 100 years, we've been awakened and this country is on the march. We didn't choose this fight, but we're in it. And being on the march, there's only one way we're going to be able to win it. It's the way we won World War I fighting for Wilson's 14 points.
The way we won World War II fighting for Churchill's and Roosevelt's Atlantic Charter and the way we won World War III fighting for the noble ideas I think best expressed by President Reagan, but also very importantly at the beginning by President Truman, that this was not a war of us against them. It was not a war of countries. It was a war of freedom against tyranny…
I think we need to say to both the terrorists and the dictators and also to the autocrats who from time to time are friendly with us, that we know, we understand we are going to make you nervous. We want you to be nervous. We want you to realize now for the fourth time in 100 years, this country is on the march." ("World war IV." National War College. 16th November, 2002)MICHAEL LEDEEN. Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. P2 member. Former Special Advisor to the Secretary of State. Founder of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. (JINSA) Ledeen was deeply involved in the Iran/Contra scandal. Draft dodger during the Vietnam War. "National Review." Online. January 9th 2003.
"September 11th wasn't terrible enough for most Western leaders to recognize the gravity of the threat and the urgency of victory. The two leaders who were catalyzed by the terror attack (President Bush and British Prime Minister Blair) have been boxed in by a combination of so-called friends and allies and by their own advisers who counsel excessive prudence. This antiwar coalition prevented the rapid and decisive action Mr. Bush seemed instinctively inclined to unleash…
All along, the really big prize, Iran, was there for the asking, and at a bargain price… Our attack on the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan raised hopes for a democratic transformation of the Middle East, but the long delay once again seemed to confirm the impression that the United States lacks the resolve to accomplish a real victory, and enabled our enemies to prepare for the next battle. The terror network that had been housed in Afghanistan was rebuilt in the valleys of Lebanon and the forests of Iran and Iraq, and new money poured in from Saudi Arabia…
All the while, North Korea provided nuclear and missile technology to Iran, Iraq, and Syria, who prepared for war while their diplomats maneuvered to buy time. The Axis of Evil turned out to be real, not just a deft turn of phrase in a presidential address. Unlike the West, the terror masters are thoroughly convinced of the rightness of their cause and have no desire to reach any accommodation with the infidels. Unlike the West, our enemies understand that one can win or lose this war, but cannot opt out of it. They are preparing to win, while we are still chasing the illusion of a negotiated settlement...
The terrorists all were, or were at least presumed to be, Muslim jihadists, and the targets were all infidels, a.k.a. the civilized world. And how did the civilized world respond? By squabbling with each other over the wording of a UN resolution that sent a team of hapless inspectors into Iraq, thereby further delaying the next battle in the war against terrorism…
The terror masters treat the West as a single target, but the West refuses to acknowledge the clear pattern… Western statesmen debate the fine points of crisis resolution while the enemies of the Western enterprise pour through the gates. This is the classic pattern of appeasement. The appeasers, from the European foreign ministries to some within our own diplomatic and intellectual establishments, condemn any effective American response as an outrageous provocation…
The appeasers demand that firm action be taken against the United States lest it strike against any of the terror masters. The appeasement campaign has taken its toll against President Bush, its prime target. A year ago he vowed to wage war against countries that support terror, or harbor terrorists, but that language has long since disappeared into the mush of a constantly redefined and ever vaguer ‘regime change,’ recently equated with the inspection tour of Hans Blix, and a vision of a subsequent ‘disarmament.’
If we were serious about waging this war, we would, at an absolute minimum, support the Iranian people's brave campaign against their tyrants, declare Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity and recognize an Iraqi government in exile in the "no fly" zones we control, shut down the network of fanatical schools and mosques run by the Saudis all over the world, and plan seriously for action against North Korea.
If we don't, we may well find ourselves facing a far bigger problem than Saddam alone. Iran, Iraq, and Syria are busy arming Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas for action against our troops, and the leaders of the Hermit Kingdom in North Korea may well try to divide our strength by attacking the South, or issuing a nuclear Ultimatum, as soon as we start our Iraqi campaign.
All this would likely be combined with further attacks on American soil. That's the sort of thing that happens to countries who don't take war with the seriousness it deserves, and give their enemies a second opportunity to strike us at their convenience."
"We should instead be talking about using all our political, moral, and military genius to support a vast democratic revolution to liberate all the peoples of the Middle East from tyranny… liberating all the peoples of the Middle East."
The war 'is not just a war against Iraq,' but rather 'against terrorist organizations and against the regimes that foster, support, arm, train, indoctrinate, and command the terrorist legions who are clamoring for our destruction. There are four such regimes: in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia." ("Wall Street Journal." September 4th 2002)PETER RODMAN. Assistant Secretary for Defence and International Security Affairs in the Bush minor administration. National Security Council official, Head of the policy planning staff in the State Department and Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs during Reagan’s adminstration. Former Director of National Security Programs, Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom; Draft dodger during the Vietnam War.
"In the military dimension, there are potential adversaries pursuing 'asymmetric strategies,' attempting to zero in on our weaknesses… Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea are seeking to acquire either advanced conventional weapons or weapons of mass destruction to raise the risk of American casualties and thereby to deter us from intervening against regional challenges… History has not been kind to dominant powers.
In the last 500 years, a number of powerful nations that enjoyed or aspired to imperium have exhausted themselves by overextension, or provoked a coalition of other powers against them, or otherwise lost their position of advantage. China and the 15-nation European Union are emerging as the United States' main potential peer competitors…
Chinese strategists, as it happens, have shown an eager, if not morbid, fascination with the subject of American decline. It has become a sub-genre of Chinese strategic analysis. The sheer size of China, harnessed to its economic dynamism and nationalistic energy, suggests this is not so fanciful. Not since early in the last century have we Americans even had to conceive of another country with an economy the same size as ours…
The European Union is already an $8 trillion economy, on a par with the United States with new aspiration to develop a common foreign and security policy and the institutions to go with it…
Europe should probably be viewed as the candidate with the greatest potential to be a global peer competitor.. In recent years, both Iraq and North Korea have outmaneuvered us, Iraq by shutting down the effective and vitally important UN inspection system and North Korea by blackmailing us into an agreement that gives us no direct restraint on its clandestine nuclear weapons program . These are bad omens…
In a multitude of areas, selling arms to China and Iran; cultivating former clients in Iraq; attempting to constrain US missile defences; objecting to NATO's enlargement and to NATO policies in the Balkans, Russia perceives its national interest in terms that conflict, often sharply, with US policies." ("UPI" July 4th 2000)
"Saddam Hussein's Iraq is one of the most brutal, fascistic regimes on the face of the Earth. The suffering that he, I repeat, he inflicts on his own people should not be falsely attributed to the world community's efforts to contain him. Extensive resources are available to Iraq, through oil sales and imports of food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods long permitted under sanctions.
The people's suffering is caused by Saddam Hussein's diversion of those resources to building new palaces for his henchmen, to rebuilding his military machine, and to clandestine programmes for acquiring weapons of mass destruction. An Iraqi Government for which the welfare of its people was a priority would allocate those resources to them, and indeed would relinquish the weapons programs that are the main reason for sanctions.
Should UN sanctions be dismantled, Saddam Hussein would trumpet his victory and tighten his repression. Contraband technology would be much harder to block. It would heighten the danger to Iraq's neighbors. The most humane course of all would be to hasten the regime's demise. Sanctions alone, to be sure, are not enough. A more vigorous policy of arming and supporting an internal opposition is really what is called for." ("BBC News." 22nd January, 2001)
"I don't want to talk about a Middle East war. It's something I think about, but I'd rather not… The Syrian-Iraqi relationship is intriguing. There's a rivalry that goes back many decades, yet in the present environment they seem to have common ground in trying to complicate life for the United States and for Israel...
We have not forgotten about Iraq, and some of the basic issues are being addressed… It's an important effort we are making to see if the sanctions policy can be improved, and we haven't abandoned that effort at all… there are other elements of the policy, like the no-fly zones. There is the Iraq Liberation Act on the books… Let me just say we have not forgotten about these issues at all…
This administration includes a number of people, including myself, that came in to office interested in a more vigorous policy…
The United States remains a global power. We have global interests." (US Department of Defence Briefing. August 21st 2001)ROBERT ZOELLICK. Bush major's deputy chief of staff and Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan and Bush administrations. He is Bush minor’s US Trade Representative. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
"The U.S. should demonstrate its ongoing commitment to an open trading system… In terms of growth, price stability, employment, innovation, and national wealth and power, the United States has benefited enormously from the liberalized global trading system. If the U.S. now hesitates, or worse, retreats, how can we expect others to stand up to those who oppose competition?" (Testifying before the House Banking Committee. January 30th 1998)
"At some point we know that Saddam will move first and at that point, as opposed to letting him get an additional step, I think for one step forward he has to get two steps back. That means that we essentially undermine his position within his own country, also with the Russians, the French and others, and that means slowly taking away pieces of his territory. We have started that in the north, I believe we could do that in the south. I believe that in part this involves air power, in part it involves more." (Seminar organised by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "Reuters." May 19th 2000)
"Five principles distinguish a modern Republican foreign policy. First, it is premised on a respect for power.. By matching America's power to its interests, such a policy can achieve its objectives and build credibility both at home and abroad. U.S. policy should respect the histories, perspectives, and concerns of other nations, but it should not be paralyzed by intellectual penchants for moral relativism.
All states do not play equally important roles. Given America's responsibilities in the world, it must retain its freedom to act against serious dangers. Second, a modern Republican foreign policy emphasizes building and sustaining coalitions and alliances…
Third, Republicans judge international agreements and institutions as means to achieve ends, not as forms of political therapy. Agreements and institutions can facilitate bargaining, recognize common interests, and resolve differences cooperatively. But international law, unlike domestic law, merely codifies an already agreed-upon cooperation.
Even among democracies, international law not backed by enforcement mechanisms will need negotiations in order to work, and international law not backed by power cannot cope with dangerous people and states. Every issue need not be dealt with multilaterally. Fourth, a modern Republican foreign policy must embrace the revolutionary changes in the information and communications, technology, commerce, and finance sectors that will shape the environment for global politics and security…
America's foreign policy must promote these global trends… It should link itself to the agents of change around the world through new networks of free trade, information, and investment. Finally, a modern Republican foreign policy recognizes that there is still evil in the world, people who hate America and the ideas for which it stands.
Today, we face enemies who are hard at work to develop nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, along with the missiles to deliver them. The United States must remain vigilant and have the strength to defeat its enemies. People driven by enmity or by a need to dominate will not respond to reason or goodwill. They will manipulate civilized rules for uncivilized ends… The United States and its partners need to link the world's continental regions within a global economic system that secures the benefits of integration while coping with the inevitable stresses of capitalism…
The United States must navigate changing great-power relations, strengthen its alliances, and maintain unquestioned military superiority over dangerous regimes... This modern Republican design recognizes the benefits of regional integration and seeks to harness it for global purposes… The practice of joint action within regions, especially by private-sector groups, can be expanded to deal with common political and even security issues… This plan offers a positive program around which internationalists of both parties can rally to counter protectionists and isolationists…
The United States must counter those dangerous states that threaten its closest friends, such as Israel, or its vital interests, such as maintaining access to oil in the Persian Gulf. In dealing with the likes of Iraq and North Korea, the United States needs to offer consistent long-term directions to guide coalitions that will deter and even replace their brutal regimes…
The United States must retain the initiative so that its opponents are so worried about what America is planning that they cannot plot attacks or new forms of blackmail. Theater and national missile defenses will let the United States counter missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction from those countries that might target U.S. conventional forces or paralyze the United States if it intervenes against their threats…
America's leadership in the next century requires a strong military, wisely used… … a new generation must chart a course for America amid revolutionary changes in technologies, economies, societies, and weaponry. It is a mistake for the United States simply to react to events. America needs a strategy that blends traditional truths with the opportunities of a networked marketplace and a modernized army. It must be realistic about human nature and conflicting interests… America must deploy its power wisely, selectively, and consistently to mold an international system that will enhance its influence in future events." ("Foreign Affairs." The magazine of the Council on Foreign Affairs. January/February, 2000)Next section...
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