Subject:
1. ... and now finally a short review on Iraq (with
James Risen, Ray McGovern, and my own personal records);
2. comment and reply Re: From "8 Essential Lessons We Learned
From the Vietnam Antiwar Movement" to Sy Hersh on Saudi Arabia
1. The old guard at the CIA may never recover from what CIA
Director George Tenet did to them before Congress went along with
the decision to attack Iraq.
"The intelligence was wrong; but
it was not mistaken; it was out-and-out fraud." The
"intelligence" was made-up fraud on the part of George Tenet as part
of a little team with those who gave him the idea to do it,
Richard Cheney,
Donald
Rumsfeld, and some of their associates. You may recall that
both Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were part of the infamous
Project for a New American Century, the 25 totally shameless and
greedy* highly influential guys who got together to plan the
reshaping of U.S. foreign policy starting in 1997.
(Wikipedia link) I am quite sure
that you will recall having heard of at least some of the others as
well.
Part of the result of that effort, those little closed planning
sessions, can be read
here
(link) or downloaded directly as a pdf file from
here
(link) (77 pages) to use your familiar pdf reader. I put that
out there for you for in case it should somehow disappear from the
web otherwise.
Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld of the PNAC seem still to be proud of
themselves though, despite not quite yet having gotten control of
oil production for American companies in the area known as Iraq as
they planned on at least as a secondary goal to building an American
Empire to cover the planet. They haven't quite got that one yet
either, but they
are making huge bucks from us in those
efforts besides adding a bit to American employment numbers.**
While you're at it you might want to note at the upper left of the
page numbered 51 in
the pdf, the suggestion that what was needed to
get Americans on board with the program was something like another
Pearl Harbor. That report of theirs was finalized a year before
9/11. They managed to use 9/11 to get Americans on board with
them. Their fraud after 9/11 certainly helped with that.
See also
Project
for a New American Century - Startpage Web Search
The book by 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner James Risen,
State of
War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush
Administration (2006), sets forth in its first third
much about George Tenet, how he went about developing his personal
relationships with those guys*** in the years prior to his betrayal
of his clear duty as recently appointed CIA Director, and about the
internal effects of his fraud on those who had been with the CIA for
a long time. To make it short, the dedicated employees and associates of the former CIA could no longer keep their
heads up as high as they had previously. They had always thought
that the CIA was really special, that their jobs were supposed be to
report information with the utmost accuracy, to be above politics
and political influence. George Tenet's action lost the CIA its
reputation among those who knew and/or learned later of the complete
fraud that he helped those guys from the 1997 PNAC to
perpetrate on America and upon everyone else who might have believed
anything they said about al-Qaeda being involved in Iraq or about
any existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Again, those
were not mistakes, those were outright made-up frauds that were
personally created and led by George Tenet and the other few guys I
have mentioned here.
You can easily find
on
that PNAC Wikipedia page the names of others of the 25 members
of the original PNAC who came in as big government officials in the
2000 election.
I mention that in passing just because I feel it reasonable to
assume that they were all of them in on everything, in on all of the
now-known-and-proven big picture re-creations, in on all the frauds
that were committed by any of them against law, duty, and us. We do
not have to imagine anything. Information just keeps on coming out.
Just to note for those who might care about someone who was
not
part of the plot, Colin Powell, who was highly respected for truth-telling, was their innocent dupe when he
famously spoke at the UN, misleading his listeners unbeknownst to
him. He said later that he had been careless in believing what those guys
had fed him.
I included a bit about James Risen's book when I wrote you the more
major piece a couple of days ago that started with Vietnam and then
went on to the essences of our wars in Afghanistan and Yemen and of
the killing (murder, really, it now appears) of Saddam Hussein
(link).
Now please let 27-year CIA veteran Ray McGovern fill in what I have
been telling. He is utterly clear and concise, I think. He speaks
with authority.
"The
Phony ‘Bad Intel’ Defense on Iraq: Jeb Bush’s stumbling start to
his presidential bid has refocused attention on Official
Washington’s favorite excuse for the illegal, aggressive and
disastrous war in Iraq" (link) (or
printfriendly
link), May 16, 2015. Note that the original publication is
said to have been at
Consortium
News.
2. I received a comment to my message of three days ago,
"From '8 Essential Lessons We Learned From the Vietnam Antiwar Movement' to Sy Hersh on Saudi Arabia," from one of my few old and wise
friends--referring to those few wise people I am privileged to call
friend who are in their 80's and have learned a lot. It was much
longer than I'm showing you here. I am sharing this part of it
as an introduction to the response of mine that follows. There is
some repetition. I think repetition is a bit unusual for me.
Please forgive me for it just this once.
Anon497: ...... WHY did we abandon Afghanistan
and start a SECOND war [in Iraq]? Saddam Hussein was doing nothing
to initiate this urgency of a second war, and there was a lot to
lose in Afghanistan by deserting them - pulling out all we could
and leaving a few people in Afghanistan....
LS: Having read carefully what you wrote (about some of the
effects of U.S. activities in the Middle East], I think you have
things pretty straight based on what I know. The one big thing I
would add is that the major U.S. foreign policy leaders had their
sights on finding some excuse to attack Iraq specifically even
before 9/11. Remember the 25 totally shameless and greedy* highly
influential guys who worked on the Project for a New American
Century starting in 1997.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
Project
for a New American Century - Startpage Web Search
You might recall that The Weekly Standard (Wikipedia
link) was the main mouthpiece or one of the main
mouthpieces for the Project for a New American Century, with
William Kristol (Wikipedia link) a big servant to the PNAC guys
from 1997 in addition to his role as major author for articles
in his paper, with much republication in other outlets that are
read mostly by propagandized Republicans, more in some parts of of
the U.S. than in others. Please excuse the R-word. The point is
not party politics here, really. There are propagandized people
in various groupings.
Anyway, that's where attacking Iraq came from. As far as I know
that particular choice was mostly about the oil, though American
oil companies taking control of the oil did not end up working out
as planned.
I guess the fact that the concept of Americans getting control of
the oil production in Iraq did not work out as planned is what in
retrospect ended up making the whole thing a "big mistake" in the
eyes of many.
Larry
* "totally shameless and greedy"--I am not sure that those 25
individuals who comprise or comprised the PNAC have described
themselves that way, but that is certainly a not unreasonable short
version of how they come across.
**
Please
review here about the benefits to the U.S. economy,
just to help keep your head together perhaps.
*** James Risen describes George Tenet as having been pretty much a
public and private back-slapping sycophant of Mr. Cheney, Mr.
Rumsfeld, and especially Mr. G.W. Bush, totally obedient to their
influences.
--
Brother Larry/Attorney Scott
archives (Larry at Blogspot) "undisclosed
recipients" email message archive, no logging in, no
public comments
One way or another, raise
yourself up I
say; do not be afraid. If you are not doing it you can
do it. Other people are doing it. We can learn from them, I
find.
