In this issue:

General Sanchez' Statements Show Revolt vs. Rumsfeld's Chickenhawk Command

University of Chicago Is 'A Moral Cesspool' Says Constitutional Law Expert

'Office of Special Plans' Operatives Plotting Regime Change in Iran

Rumsfeld Admits/Denies All About Gangster Ghorbanifar

Office of Special Plans Shutting Down?

Ashcroft Denounced for Creating 'Enemies List' of Judges

From Volume 2, Issue Number 32 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Aug. 12, 2003

United States News Digest

General Sanchez' Statements Show Revolt vs. Rumsfeld's Chickenhawk Command

That American troops in Iraq use Israeli Defense Forces-style tactics of humiliation and brutality, was admitted by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. ground force commander, in an interview published Aug. 8 by the New York Times. Sanchez said that the large sweeps that U.S. troops have been conducting have just about exhausted their usefulness. "It was a fact," he said, "that I started to get multiple indicators that maybe our iron-fisted approach to the conduct of ops was beginning to alienate Iraqis." He said he was getting this "from the Governing Council down to average people."

"When you take a father in front of his family and put a bag over his head and put him on the ground, you have had a significant adverse effect on his dignity and respect in the eyes of his family," is the message that Sanchez says he has been getting from Iraqi citizens who are friendly to the United States. When you do this, you create more enemies than you capture.

Under the new tactics that Sanchez is directing, the American forces are to depend more on Iraqis, meaning that American troops may withdraw from towns that have been quiet, leaving them to Iraqi police to patrol, and otherwise depend more on more dialogue with tribal leaders and clerics, as opposed to the raids and large-scale roundups they have been employing up to now.

This is part of a revolt by the U.S. military against the political command. Compare the response of General Keane, Acting Chief of Staff of the Army, when the Washington Post asked him about the U.S. troops in Iraq who have gone on television saying Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should be fired. Keane confirmed that it was a breach of regulations, but went on to say that, "I haven't even asked" whether any action had been taken against these soldiers.

Sanchez is saying that he can redefine the rules of engagement: "Here they are." Will Rumsfeld fire him? Sanchez believes he has clout, people behind him who agree with him about Rumsfeld.

University of Chicago Is 'A Moral Cesspool' Says Constitutional Law Expert

Professor Francis A. Boyle, the University of Illinois constitutional law expert, is well known as a human rights and U.S. Constitutional law expert, who has intervened in cases ranging from Iraq to Palestine to Bosnia, defending the civilian populations, and principles of national sovereignty. His latest defense of national sovereignty — this time dealing with the United States — occurs in the form of a devastating look into the "secret world" of the late university of Chicago professor Leo Strauss, and his followers who have invaded the Bush Administration. The network is the shadow government run by Dick Cheney, which was exposed by Lyndon LaRouche in the April 2003 dossier called "Children of Satan: The Ignoble Liars Behind Bush's No-Exit War."

On Aug. 2, Professor Boyle's article, "Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies, and the University of Chicago" was published by Counterpunch, an online publication, under the headline "My Alma Mater Is A Moral Cesspool."

The article begins:

"It is now a matter of public record that immediately after the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001, U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld and his pro-Israeli 'Neoconservative' Deputy Paul Wolfowitz began to plot, plan, scheme and conspire to wage a war of aggression against Iraq by manipulating the tragic events of September 11th in order to provide a pretext for doing so. Of course Iraq had nothing at all to do with September 11th or supporting Al-Qaeda. But that made no difference to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the numerous other pro-Israeli Neo-cons in the Bush Jr. administration.

"These pro-Israeli Neo-cons had been schooled in the Machiavellian/Nietzschean theories of Professor Leo Strauss, who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago in their Department of Political Science. The best expose of Strauss's pernicious theories on law, politics, government, for elitism, and against democracy can be found in two scholarly books by the Canadian Professor Shadia B. Drury: The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988); Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999). I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968 shortly after Strauss had retired. But I was trained in Chicago's Political Science Department by Strauss's foremost protege, co-author, and literary executor Joseph Cropsey. Based upon my personal experience as an alumnus of Chicago's Political Science Department (A.B., 1971, in Political Science), I concur completely with Professor Drury's devastating critique of Strauss. I also agree with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American political process by Chicago's Straussian cabal."

Boyle describes the operations of the Straussians in the Bush Administration, their manipulation of "intelligence" to effect the Iraq war and their "Orwellian gall" in presenting themselves as the defenders of the principles of democracy.

"Just recently the University of Chicago officially celebrated its Bush Jr. Straussian cabal, highlighting Wolfowitz, Ph.D. '72, Ahmad Chalabi, Ph.D. '69, Abram Shulsky, A.M. '68, Ph.D. '72, Zalmay Khalilzad, Ph.D. '79, together with faculty members Bellow, X '39 and Bloom, A.B. '49, A.M. '53, Ph.D. '55. According to the June 2003 University of Chicago Magazine, Bloom's book 'helped popularize Straussian ideals of democracy.' It is correct to assert that Bloom's rant helped to popularize Straussian 'ideas,' but they were blatantly anti-democratic, Machiavellian, Nietzschean, and elitist to begin with. Only the University of Chicago would have the unmitigated Orwellian gall to publicly claim that Strauss and Bloom cared one whit about democracy, let alone comprehended the 'ideals of democracy.'

"Does anyone seriously believe that the Chicago/Strauss/Bloom product Wolfowitz cares one whit about democracy in Iraq? Or the Bush Jr. administration itself, after having stolen the 2000 presidential election from the American People in Florida and before the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court, some of whom were Feddies? Do not send your children to the University of Chicago where they will grow up to become warmongers like Wolfowitz or totalitarians like Ashcroft! Chicago is an intellectual and moral cesspool."

Boyle's article about the Straussians, one of dozens to surface after the publication of LaRouche's "Children of Satan," is an insider's view that flies in the face of the many media defenses of Strauss (for examples, see this week's EIW Europe Digest). Boyle's article is found on www.counterpunch.com.

'Office of Special Plans' Operatives Plotting Regime Change in Iran

Operatives of Vice President Dick Cheney's neo-conservative cabal have been exposed in a covert plan to change the regime in Iran. As described in this week's EIW InDepth, targetting Iran for U.S. military action was high on the agenda set by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon when he came to Washington on July 29-30 for meetings with the Bush Administration. EIW has previously put a spotlight on universal fascist ideologue Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), as playing a key role in this operation. A leading Middle East analyst in Washington has also indicated that "talk around Washington" was for the U.S. to hit Iran with a preemptive military strike against nuclear reactors being built there. EIW can now add that Ledeen has been identified to this publication as a contract employee for the DoD's Office of Special Plans, the neo-cons' intelligence agency in the Pentagon which is the subject of investigations for its role in "cooking" intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.

Now, an Aug. 9 story, in the New York newspaper Newsday, by reporters Knut Royce and Timothy Phelps, has taken the lid off renewed "Iran-Contra" secret government-type operations for "regime change" in Iran, involving Ledeen, and the notorious Iran-Contra gun-runner Manucher Ghorbanifar, who worked for Oliver North's and Richard Secord's "Project Democracy," the group that secretly armed Iran's Khomeini government, behind the back of President Ronald Reagan. North and Secord were both prosecuted and convicted for their illegal operations in the Iran-Contra scandal.

The Newsday authors report that meetings with Ghorbanifar took place in Paris, with two top emissaries of Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith—Harold Rhode (Feith's liaison to Iraqi wannabe president Ahmed Chalabi) and Larry Franklin, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst "on loan" to the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (OSP). Feith, a partisan of Israel's Likud party, is already under investigation for disinformation about Iraq coming out of the OSP. Newsday says that Administration officials suggest the meetings were set up by Ledeen—who is running a campaign to overthrow the regime in Iran out of a recently created Iran "democracy" front group spun out of AEI. Ledeen is also reported to be a "contract employee" of the OSP.

A senior official and a second Administration source told Newsday that "the ultimate objective of Feith and a group of neo-conservative civilians inside the Pentagon is change of government in Iran." The immediate objective of this gang, they said, is to "antagonize Iran" to provoke the government there into "reactions" that could be used to justify a U.S. hard line against Iran, instead of efforts to improve relations.

One Administration official was awed by the involvement of Ledeen and Ghorbanifar, saying "it would be amazing" if people in government "hadn't learned the lessons of last time around."

These meetings were "not authorized by the White House and appeared to be aimed at undercutting sensitive negotiations with Iran's government," reports Newsday.

EIW has independently documented that Feith is deeply involved in sabotaging the Road Map for Middle East peace, and in pushing disinformation about Syria and Iran, in order to get the wars against these two nations. Feith was one of the co-authors with Richard Perle, of the notorious "Clean Break" document that advocates war against Iraq, Iran and Syria, as well as scuttling the Oslo Accords, and Israeli expulsion of the Palestinian leadership from the occupied territories.

Rumsfeld Admits/Denies All About Gangster Ghorbanifar

Speaking to reporters in Crawford, Texas on Aug. 8 with President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld responded to a question about the above-cited meetings with gun-runner Manucher Ghorbanifar, with lies tripping over each other: "One or two officials ... were approached by some people who had information about Iranians that wanted to provide information to the U.S. government," Rumsfeld said. The subsequent meetings were "more than a year ago," and "there wasn't anything there that was of substance or of any value that needed to be pursued further.... Everyone in the interagency process, I'm told, was apprised of it and it went nowhere." He said this was just a case of "people come in, offering suggestions or information or possible contacts...."

Just last week, another Iran-Contra convicted criminal, former National Security Adviser John Poindexter, was dumped from Rumsfeld's Pentagon, after having been caught setting up a "derivatives market" in political assassinations.

Office of Special Plans Shutting Down?

A well-placed Washington journalist told EIW on Aug. 6 that Pentagon sources report on a private meeting early in the week between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Assistant Secretary Doug Feith, in which Feith was ordered to roll up the Office of Special Plans, the information warfare unit behind much of the disinformation used to convince the President to go to war against Iraq.

There are scores of journalists and Congressional investigators zeroing in on the OSP, which is far more than the four-man analysis shop claimed by Feith and by William Luti at their June 4 press conference.

According to several sources, OSP had more than 100 "private" consultants on payroll, including such neo-con notables as James Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Roy Godson, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Laurie Milroie, Michael Pillsbury, and John Carbaugh. One OSP staffer, Michael Maloof, was identified in media reports as having lost his security clearance, due to associations with a Lebanese businessman/arms dealer named Imad El Hage, who was implicated in arms trafficking in Liberia and Sierra Leone. El Hage was arrested at Dulles International Airport on Jan. 28, 2003, carrying a .45 caliber gun, which, Pentagon sources say, was Maloof's government-issue weapon.

Ashcroft Denounced for Creating 'Enemies List' of Judges

The Wall Street Journal of Aug. 6 reports that Attorney General John Ashcroft has launched a major attack on Federal judges whom Ashcroft considers to be too "soft" in sentencing. Expanding on the "Feeney Amendment" written largely by the Department of Justice and passed by Congress in April 2003, Ashcroft has ordered U.S. Attorneys and Federal prosecutors to report on judges who give more lenient sentences than provided in Federal sentencing guidelines, and to appeal almost all "downward departures" from the guidelines.

The Feeney Amendment, and Ashcroft's new order, have infuriated Federal judges, including Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who regards the moves as an attack on the independence of the judiciary. The Feeney Amendment will "seriously impair the ability of courts to impose just and responsible sentences," says Rehnquist.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner of Massachusetts calls the changes "very sad," because of the amendment's "eliminating a judge's role in checks and balances."

Rep. John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said through a spokesman: "John Ashcroft seems to think Washington, D.C. can better determine a fair sentence than a judge who heard the case or the prosecutor who tried it. The effort by DOJ to compile an 'enemies list' of judges it feels are too lenient, is scary, to say the least."

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