In this issue:

Arkin Warns: Stratcom Turning into Global Strike Command

Soros Wants 'To Stick it Out' in Iraq

Robert McNamara: Iraq War Is 'Just Wrong'

Corrupt Ashcroft Rails Against Corruption

'Rodent-Like Wolfowitz' Violates Corrupt Practices Law

Moonie Times Attacks Democrat Simmons for Recall

GOP Aide Sidelined in Probe of Watergate-Style Theft

Davis Pledges GOP Will Investigate White House Leak

Perle Speaks at Terrorist Fundraiser

House Maneuvers To Force Senate Hand on Bankruptcy Reform

From Volume 3, Issue Number 5 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Feb. 3, 2004

United States News Digest

Arkin Warns: Stratcom Turning into Global Strike Command

The U.S. Strategic Command (Stratcom) is turning into a global strike command, according to nuclear expert William Arkin, who spoke Jan. 25, during a three-day conference in Washington of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute. Arkin noted that when Stratcom was first created in the early 1990s, in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, it was the custodian of nuclear forces that would be segregated from conventional military forces.

However, since 2001, with the merging of Stratcom and U.S. Space Command, the codification of the January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, and last year's National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, Stratcom has been transformed into what Arkin described as a "super global strike command."

The new responsibilities include space operations; missile defense; nodal analysis on a global scale including effects-based operations; cyber warfare and strategic deception; directed-energy weapons used on a strategic level; global conventional precision and earth-penetrating capabilities; and even special operations. In other words, Stratcom has been transformed from a custodian and advocate for strategic nuclear forces into a global warfighting organization that includes nuclear weapons as a component of its capabilities.

Arkin warned that, even with the smaller number of nuclear warheads contemplated by the Nuclear Posture Review, this leads to "a greater level of confidence that the U.S. could disable Russian or Chinese forces and absorb any retaliation with missile defenses."

Speaking on the following panel, retired Gen. Charles Horner declared that, from a military standpoint, nuclear weapons have no military utility, plus "the horrible political cost for the decision to use them." He reported that during the 1991 Gulf War, for which he was the air commander, the U.S. official policy towards Iraqi use of chemical or biological weapons was one of "ambiguity," but that, in reality, "I knew we had no such plans" to use nuclear weapons against Iraq.

Horner warned that because of the reorganization of Stratcom, and the re-engineering of existing nuclear weapons to deal with hardened and deeply buried targets, "We may develop young people in the military who'll believe that nuclear weapons are acceptable," and not see that the costs associated with using such weapons is far greater than any victory we might achieve.

Soros Wants 'To Stick it Out' in Iraq

The London Guardian published an excerpt from George Soros's new book, entitled The Bubble of American Supremacy, as an op-ed on Jan. 26. In it, Soros hits the Cheney doctrine of preemption (called by Soros the "Bush doctrine of preemption"). Being stronger than others, we assume we know best, says Soros: "That is where religious fundamentalism comes together with market fundamentalism to form the ideology of American supremacy."

Fine—but then Soros shows his imperial hand. We messed up in Iraq, he says—"Yet there are more places where we need to project our power than ever," naming North Korea, Iran, and Afghanistan, as better locations for U.S. military force. And, as far as Iraq is concerned, having carefully left out the name of Dick Cheney, he concludes: "We have no alternative to sticking it out and paying the price for our mistake."

Robert McNamara: Iraq War Is 'Just Wrong'

Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, known as "Body-Count Bob" for his conduct of the Vietnam War, called the current Iraq war "just wrong, morally wrong, politically wrong, economically wrong." McNamara's 1995 mea culpa on the Vietnam War (he wrote, after 20 years, "we were wrong, terribly wrong" about that war) listed "11 lessons" which he hoped America had learned from Vietnam, and would never repeat.

But, he tells Canada's Globe and Mail Jan. 26, we've done it again in Iraq. "The new circumstances and new technology didn't help us in Iraq." As in Vietnam, we have gone in against the will of our major allies, he says, and trying to "democratize" the Middle East is the same blunder as thinking we could roll back communism in Indo-China.

Corrupt Ashcroft Rails Against Corruption

It must have been quite a sight. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft took his righteousness on the road to Davos, Switzerland, to evangelize the world's elite on the need to smite corruption. Speaking on Jan. 22, Ashcroft said corruption is "one of the most pressing threats to opportunity and human achievement today," jeopardizing basic ideals and the rule of law.

"Free markets are the greatest force man has ever known for overcoming the scourge of poverty," but when "the invisible hand that guides the market is replaced by a greased palm" and "violate[s] the integrity of the marketplace," the rights of the people are denied. "The goal of law enforcement, then, is clear: Equal opportunity in the marketplace must be defended. Trust must not be abused." To bolster his sermon, Rev. Ashcroft explicitly invoked Freidrich von Hayek and his Road to Serfdom, and painted corruption as a form of terrorism.

In a delicious bit of irony that only the chosen few could fail to see, Ashcroft also praised the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law he is conspicuously failing to enforce against his good friends at Halliburton.

'Rodent-Like Wolfowitz' Violates Corrupt Practices Law

By promising prime contracts for countries that send troops to Iraq, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is in violation of the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which expressly prohibits Americans from attempting to bribe or otherwise illegally influence foreign officials in order to seek favorable treatment on the awarding of contracts, wrote investigative journalist Wayne Madsen on Jan. 26 in the UN Observer. The "rodent-like" Wolfowitz is using "blatant extortion," and the Justice Department of the "ethically tainted" John Ashcroft should open up a criminal investigation, he added.

Moonie Times Attacks Democrat Simmons for Recall

In a bizarre lead editorial, even for the Republican Party-linked, Moonie-owned Washington Times, the Jan. 27 issue attacked the recall drive against Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, and particularly targetted Democratic National Committee member Barbara Lett Simmons for "refusing to vote for the Gore-Lieberman ticket" at the 2000 Democratic convention. (This is something that Simmons had proudly announced at a Lyndon LaRouche webcast in Washington after the 2000 elections.)

"D.C. Democrats need to nip this latest disruptive effort in the bud," the right-wing Times railed, complaining that "national committeewoman" Simmons, who is African American, is launching a recall against the titular head of the D.C. Democratic Party.

GOP Aide Sidelined in Probe of Watergate-Style Theft

Manuel Miranda, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn), has been put on leave while the Senate Judiciary Committee investigates the theft of a confidential Democratic Senate memo, reported Associated Press Jan. 28.

The Democrats' internal memo concerning the Bush Administration's judicial nominations was made "available" to the Republicans, and then showed up in the pages of publications like the Wall Street Journal. Miranda, who worked for Judiciary Committee chairman Orin Hatch (R-Utah) before joining Frist's staff, had been named as a suspect. A complaint to the Congressional Sergeant-at-Arms in November 2003, by Judiciary Committee member Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill), forced Hatch to open an investigation into actual theft.

Davis Pledges GOP Will Investigate White House Leak

Don't hold your breath, but Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va), the head of the House Government Reform Committee, says he'll investigate who disclosed the identity of Valerie Plame only if the Justice Department fails in its investigation. Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was outed as a CIA undercover operative last summer by columnist Robert Novak.

"If they don't find it, we will," Davis said. "It will be looked at and second-guessed. It's a troubling and serious violation." Davis was quoted in The Hill newspaper, Jan. 28, after the ranking Democrat on the committee, Henry Waxman (D-Calif), charged that the Republican-led Congress has failed in its responsibility to carry out oversight of the Bush Administration, explaining that "there is not a scandal too big to ignore."

Perle Speaks at Terrorist Fundraiser

Straussian neo-con Richard Perle addressed a fundraiser run by the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) at the Washington Convention Center on Jan. 27. The MEK, a group of exiled Iranians based in northern Iraq, has been on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations since 1997, but Perle's crowd has been wooing them as an asset in their hoped-for invasion of Iran. The event was billed on its website as a charity fundraiser for Iranian earthquake victims, and "a referendum for regime change in Iran."

"All of the proceeds will go to the Red Cross," Perle claimed. But the Red Cross, which had been informed earlier of the possible terrorist connections, announced before the event that it would refuse any monies.

Perle was paid an undisclosed amount for the speech, and, of course, has known of the connections since the MEK controversy was at the center of a State Department/Pentagon fight following the invasion of Iraq. In recent weeks, both Time magazine and The Hill newspaper reported on the fundraiser's terrorist connections. On Jan. 26, the Treasury Department froze the assets of the event's prime organizer, the Iranian-American Community of Northern Virginia.

House Maneuvers To Force Senate Hand on Bankruptcy Reform

House GOP leaders, to jolt the Senate, took action Jan. 28 to attach stalled bankruptcy-reform legislation to a non-controversial bill extending the Chapter 12 provision of the bankruptcy law to family farms. The Chapter 12 provision expired Dec. 31, 2003.

Democrats blasted the attachment as nothing more than an attempt to placate credit-card companies on the backs of family farmers. Representative Mel Watt (D-NC) told the House that "the primary reason we are having an increase in the number of bankruptcies in this country is job loss and economics which is being driven by this Administration." He added that "this is an effort to find someone to blame for the failure to pass the bankruptcy reform legislation."

The original "reform"—making it more difficult to declare personal bankruptcy—passed the House on March 19, 2003, by an overwhelming 315 to 113, but stalled in the Senate over a provision to prohibit abortion protestors from discharging judgments against them in bankruptcy court. Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc) complained that while the Senate "is often described as the saucer in which the coffee cools," the bankruptcy bill "has become nearly frozen in that proverbial saucer."

Proponents of bankruptcy reform continued to place the blame for skyrocketing bankruptcy fillings, reaching a record 1.7 million in 2003, on abuse of the system, rather than on economic realities. Sensenbrenner stated that the present system "allows, if not encourages, dishonest debtors to file abusive bankruptcies that overburden the system."

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