Heads Must Roll, As Counter-coup Against Straussians Accelerates
by Edward Spannaus, New Federalist
The "countercoup" against the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Straussian cabal which seized the levers of power in Washington after Sept. 11, 2001, is now moving rapidly forward, to the point where insiders are forecasting that soon, "heads will roll." The immediate issue is the scandalous intelligence fakery which was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. A torrent of leaks from within both U.S. and British intelligence circles have triggered a series of investigations in the U.S., and moves in the British Parliament which could bring down Prime Minister Tony Blair.
As Lyndon LaRouche stressed, in remarks in last week. the target is not President Bush. The targets are those in the neo-conservative cabal, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who have captured the Presidency and attempted to impose fascist, "empire" policies on the U.S. government. The point is to free Bush from this gang, so he can act as a real President, with the help of competent advisers.
And, as LaRouche has also emphasized, this shift in the U.S. political scene is also reflected in the fact that the Senate is beginning to re-assert its role with respect to the checks and balances built into the U.S. Constitutional system. - 'Cooking the Books' -
The focus of the latest round of disclosures and calls for investigations, is the manner in which intelligence concerning Iraq was distorted for political purposes, in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq. The primary focus is the special Pentagon intelligence unit in the Defense Department's policy shopwhich EIRNS has described as the "Chickenhawk Intelligence Agency"and a secondary focus is the Central Intelligence Agency itself, which came under tremendous political pressure to shape its finding to support the push for war from the Cheney-Rumsfeld crowd. Many of the disclosures now being leaked out, are coming from professional intelligence officers in the U.S. and Britain who are angry and disgusted at the "cooking" of the intelligence to justify the Iraq war policy.
Over the past weekend, the three major U.S. news magazines all came out with major exposés of the Iraq intelligence frauds.
* U.S. News & World Report described how Secretary of State Colin Powell had rejected the initial draft of the presentation he was to give at the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 4, at one point tossing several pages in the air and exclaiming: "I'm not reading this. This is bullsh." The draft had been written by Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff (who has been identified by EIRNS as one of the hard-core Straussians in the Adminstration, and an advocate of preemptive war as of at least 1991).
The presentation was worked over for six days, and at the end of the process, an exasperated Powell wanted no doubts that the CIA stood behind the presentation; he told Tenet, "George, you're coming with me," and thus the world saw Tenet sitting right behind Powell when the Secretary of State gave his presentation to the Security Councilsomething which enraged many current and retired CIA officers.
* Newsweek wrote of the "civil war" inside the Administration over intelligence assessments, and it reported a number of military and State Department analysis describing the material cited by Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld as "garbage" and "crap." As an example of the civil war, Newsweek said one of the "founders" of the "cabal" in the Administration had just his security clearance removed, by enemies in the intelligence community.
* Time magazine reported that current and former U.S. officials are asking "whether the U.S. gamed the intelligence to justify the invasion," and quipped that WMD stands for "weapons of mass disappearance." It quoted an Army intelligence officer as saying "Rumsfeld was deeply, almost pathologically distorting the intelligence." - Investigations Underway -
At least three investigations are known to be either underway, or in the planning stages. Any one of these could lead to the firing or resignations of top Adminstration officials, and some observers even believe that these could ultimately result in prosecutions on criminal charges.
(1) The CIA itself has launched an internal review. CIA Director Tenet has reportedly appointed a team of retired CIA analysts to compare reports prepared before the Iraq war, with what was actually found or not found after the war. The CIA review is expected by many to lead to an examination of the Pentagon unit formally identified as the "Office of Special Plans," within the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, which is run by another avowed Straussian, Abram Shulsky.
(2) The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, chaired by former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, is also reviewing the overall intelligence on Iraq. This probe was first called for by a group of retired CIA analysts known as Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), in a May 1 open letter to President Bush. The VIPS call was echoed in the lead editorial of the New York Times on May 26.
(3) The Congressional oversight committees are also planning investigations. In the Senate, Sen. John Warner (R-Va), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kans) who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, are considering holding joint hearings. The leaders of the House Intelligence Committee are planning their own investigation, and have asked Tenet a series of questions on the CIA's WMD intelligence sources and methods. - Army vs. Rumsfeld -
Meanwhile, the controversy over Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz's botched planning for the Iraq war and post-war continues. The Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which had been scheduled to be redeployed back to their home base at Fort Stewart, Ga., is now being told they will be staying for awhile, and they are in fact being redeployed to "trouble spots" outside of Baghdad. Morale is reported to be plunging, but the effect is not merely psychological. Senior officers and logisticians say that the division has received almost no spare parts to repair damaged tanks and armored personnel carriers, since they left Kuwait on March 22. Army ground commander Lt. Gen. David McKiernan said that, because of recent attacks on U.S. troops, he would not hesitate to send the Third into combat, if needed. "He is going to get U.S. soldiers needlessly killed if he expects us to go into battle," said one senior non-commissioned officer. and the Division is also short on spare parts to repair damaged equipment.
Rumsfeld is also under fire from the Senate over his failure to nominate a new Army Chief of Staff to replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, whose term expires on June 11, and also to replace the Army's Vice Chief of Staff. It is an open secret that Rumsfeld has been at war with the Army for the past two years, and his animosity to Shinseki, a decorated Vietnam veteran, is well known. A number of officers have turned the two positions down, since anyone who takes either of those positions will be caught in the cross-fire between Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz on the one side, and the senior uniformed Army leadership on the other.
Former Army Secretary Thomas White, recently fired by Rumsfeld, jumped back into the fray in a interview with USA Today published June 3, in which he accused the Pentagon's senior civilian officials of refusing to face reality, charging that they "are unwilling to come to grips" with the scale of U.S. postwar obligation in Iraq. "It's almost a question of people not wanting to 'fess up to the notion that we will be there a long time and they might have to set up a rotation and sustain it for the long term." Rumsfeld had been furious when White agreed with Shinseki's estimate that several hundred thousand troops would be needed for the postwar occupationan estimate ridiculed by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
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