WeaponsGate: The Coming Downfall of Lying Regimes?
by Wayne Madsen
You wouldn´t know if from listening to the leading
Democratic candidates for President, but "Weaponsgate"
may ultimately bring about the downfall of the Bush regime
and its allies in London, Canberra, and elsewhere. The
neo-conservatives may have also finally stirred something
in the Fourth Estate, which has suddenly begun
challenging the lying echo chambers in the White House
and Number 10 Downing Street.
The arrogance displayed by the Bush regime, somewhat
surprising since it gained power through a fraudulent
election process, is what may result in its eventual
undoing. Bush may or may not ever realize how he was ill
served by the neo-con blight that took root within his
administration, particularly within the Department of
Defense.
But the historians and scholars, who will look
back on what turned the tide for a supposedly "popular" war
president, will point to the self-described "cabal" whose
lies brought about a credibility gap unseen in the United
States since the days of Watergate.
In fact, Bush´s
"Weaponsgate" will be viewed as a more serious scandal
than Watergate because
1) U.S. and allied military
personnel were killed and injured as a result of the caper;
2) Innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children,
died in a needless military adventure; and
3) the political
effects of the scandal extended far beyond U.S. shores to
the United Kingdom, Australia, Spain, and other countries.
Other effects of Weaponsgate are already apparent.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the majordomo of
the neo-cons within the Pentagon, cannot find anyone to
take the place of outgoing Army Chief of Staff General Eric
Shinseki. Generals Tommy Franks and Shinseki´s vice
chief, General John "Jack" Keane, want no part of the job.
After winning a lightning war against Iraq, Franks suddenly
announced his retirement.
He and Keane witnessed how
Rumsfeld and his coterie of advisers and consultants, who
never once lifted a weapon in the defense of their country,
constantly ignored and publicly abused Shinseki. Army
Secretary and retired General Tom White resigned after a
number of clashes with Rumsfeld and his cabal.
The
Commander of the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq,
Lt. Gen. James Conway, said he was surprised that he
encountered no chemical weapons in Iraq.
Perhaps Conway was surprised because that is what the
neo-cons wanted him and his fellow Marines to believe.
Conway and his troops were merely additional victims of
"Weaponsgate." Paul Wolfowitz, a chief neo-con cabalist,
let the cat out of the bag in Singapore when he said that
everyone could agree on a cause of war being Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction.
That would be the common
denominator in justifying an attack, whether or not such
weapons could ever be found. Wolfowitz also stated that
Iraq´s swimming on a "sea of oil" was the reason it had to
be attacked and not, for example, North Korea. The fact that
weapons of mass destruction are actually possessed by
North Korea, a country lacking any significant natural
resources, is of no concern to the neo-cons. Oil was and is
the bottom line in Iraq.
Sometimes, even the liars trip up
and actually tell the truth. But only in a world where the
neo-cons have enjoyed a stranglehold on the corporate
media can Wolfowitz´s supporters claim he was
misquoted and the UK´s Guardian be forced to print a
clarification, one step short of a retraction. Congenital liars
like Wolfowitz should never be given the benefit of the doubt
on any issue..
Bush´s Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, who has had his
own problem with recognizing the truth, was obviously
concerned how the history books will treat him. He decided
to leave his post mid-term rather than face the music over
his repeated distortions about Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction as a casus belli.
Other Bush administration
officials, political and career, have also jumped off what
appears to be a rapidly sinking ship of state. They include
Richard Haass, who as the director for policy planning,
was number three at the State Department; Christine Todd
Whitman, Environmental Protection Agency administrator;
Rand Beers, the senior National Security Council director
for counter-terrorism; Charlotte Beers, the State
Department chief for International Public Diplomacy (who
was said to have resigned for -- get this bit of Soviet-style
spin -- "health reasons"), and State Department career
Foreign Service officers John H. Brown, John Brady
Kiesling, and Mary A. Wright.
Then there was the sudden firing of retired General Jay
Garner as U.S. viceroy of Iraq. He was "outed" as having
past associations with the neo-cons, especially the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). But when
Garner started to show some independence in Baghdad,
especially with regard to handing over some power to
Iraqis, he was quickly sacked and replaced by Paul
Bremer, a former Heritage Foundation flunky and Kissinger
Associates director who was obviously more in tune with
the ideological bent of the neo-cons.
In a Pentagon where
the civilian neo-cons don´t trust the uniformed flag rank
officers, Garner likely became a threat, a potential Trojan
horse who had to be replaced by someone whose loyalty
was beyond question.
The most dramatic revolt against George W. Bush and
Tony Blair can be seen from the high-level leaks of
classified information from the top levels of American and
British intelligence.
Just consider that the United States
has never experienced such repeated leaks of classified
information since the years of the spies in the 1980s, a
time when a number of intelligence employees were
caught selling U.S. secrets to the Russians and Israelis.
Yet, the current leaks are not acts of treason, but acts of
unbridled patriotism.
The leaks from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), CIA,
State Department, and other agencies are testimony to the
deep divisions within the Bush administration over the
phony war on Iraq. Intelligence agencies that are often at
odds with one another over policy have united like never
before in blowing the whistle on the neo-con agenda.
The
Bush administration lied flat out over the Iraqi WMDs and
Iraq´s links to Al Qaeda. It´s just that simple. Career
intelligence officers, who know the penalties for the
unauthorized disclosure of classified information, are
showing more courage than most of the Democrats in
Congress who seem more fearful of the neo-cons and
their supporters than in exposing "Weaponsgate."
The most recent classified disclosure was a DIA report on
chemical weapons that concluded that there "was no
reliable information on whether Iraq is producing or
stockpiling chemical weapons or whether Iraq has or will
establish its chemical agent production facilities."
On June 8, the Bush administration paraded its usual
shills, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, before the
Sunday talking head shows. Rice and Powell said they
based their claims that Iraq had WMDs on an October 1,
2002 national intelligence "white paper."
But that paper
stated that Iraq had a capability to produce chemical
weapons within its chemical industry, not that it was
producing such weapons. Hans Blix recently said the
so-called intelligence passed to him by the Bush regime
was useless for his own UN weapons inspection team in
its search for WMDs in Iraq. It now appears that all the
so-called U.S. and British "intelligence" was nothing more
than a collection of neo-con propaganda and
disinformation.
In the face of incessantly probing questions
on CBS´s "Face the Nation," Rice, in her school marm-like
best, could only keep repeating that "there are still bad
people in Iraq." Bad people? Is this the best terminology
we can get from a PhD in International Studies? Or is that
the phraseology she uses in explaining foreign policy
matters to Bush? The latter explanation seems more likely.
Last March, a classified State Department report, prepared
by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and titled "Iraq,
the Middle East and Change: No Dominoes," countered
neo-con claims that a democracy in Iraq would foster
democracy throughout the Middle East.
The report, dated
February 26, 2003, concluded that democracy would be
difficult to achieve in Iraq, electoral democracy in Iraq would be exploited by anti-American elements, and that the idea that other Middle East nations would be transformed into democracies is not credible. So far, all those predictions have come true.
Iraq is currently an American protectorate lacking even fundamental human services, anti-American Shi´as in the south are increasingly venting their anger at U.S. occupiers, and far from extending democracy
throughout the Middle East, Mauritania´s Arab pro-American government barely survived a military coup attempt by Islamist and pro-Iraqi elements in the country´s
armed forces.
So much for the Middle East "domino theory"
concocted by Richard Perle and his American Enterprise
Institute clones and parroted by Bush in a speech before
the right-wing "think tank" the same day the State
Department prepared its opposite report.
In another slap at the neo-cons, who have supported the
Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi, the CIA leaked
a classified report about their favorite Iraqi. The report,
which surfaced in April 2003, concluded that Chalabi had
little popular support among the Iraqi people.
No wonder
then that it is Chalabi who appears to be the source for all
the bogus intelligence about Iraqi WMDs, Saddam
Hussein´s links to Al Qaeda, Iraqi purchases of uranium
from Niger, and other false flag intelligence. Chalabi, who
is as big a liar as his neo-con friends, hoped to lull
American intelligence into believing him over seasoned
Middle East intelligence hands.
No one but Rumsfeld;
former CIA Director James Woolsey (who has taken
hundreds of thousands of consulting dollars from Chalabi
over the years); Wolfowitz; Doug Feith; America´s new
monitor for the Middle East peace road map, John Wolf;
and their comrades were taken in by Chalabi, a wanted
scofflaw from justice in Jordan.
One day the names Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Woolsey,
and Chalabi will become as familiar to students of
"Weaponsgate" as the names Haldeman, Ehrlichman,
Liddy, Mitchell, and Stans are familiar to those who study
Watergate. And in a very interesting nexus between the two
scandals, Richard Nixon´s former counselor John W. Dean
has written that Bush´s lying about the reasons for the
United States to go to war is an impeachable offense.
For those who are looking for the straw that broke the
camel´s back in "Weaponsgate" they need not look any
farther than Number 10 Downing Street. The troubles that
Tony Blair are now experiencing may be a harbinger for
things to come in Washington. Blair is in deep trouble and
he knows it.
After returning from the G-8 summit in Evian,
France, Blair was reported by The Observer to be running
around Number 10 in a pathetic panic. In a moment of
temporary insanity, which must have been precious to
people who loathe Blair, the toothy Prime Minister was
pacing about his residence and yelling that people needed
to get a grip on what was happening.
One of Blair´s aides
had to comfort Blair and convince him that his advisers
were on his side. Blair must have had thoughts of John
Major getting ready stick it to Margaret Thatcher or of Brutus
getting ready to plunge a knife into the back of Julius
Caesar. Blair´s political opponents within his own Labor
party had seized on his government´s use of a "dodgy
dossier" on Iraqi WMDs to support the attack on Iraq as an
example of Blair´s deceit. The dossier, titled "Iraq: Its
Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation,"
was based on a 12-year-old PhD thesis culled from the
Internet and the bogus Chalabi documents about Nigerien
uranium.
The revolt against Blair should serve as a warning for
Bush. Just consider what is happening in Britain. Blair has
been abandoned by some of his most senior government
officials, including former Leader of the House of
Commons Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and former
International Development Minister Clare Short, in addition
to a number of lesser Cabinet officials. Over 70 of Blair´s
Labor members of the House of Commons are in open
revolt against his duplicity. No wonder Godric Smith, Blair´s
official spokesman, announced his resignation the same
day that Ari Fleischer was announcing his departure in
Washington.
The wheels are coming off the transatlantic
neo-con wagon. New Labor and the "Compassionate
Conservative" Republican Party have been shown to be
total ruses. Their war policies and global domination goals
have been thoroughly exposed as neo-fascist
manifestations of the teachings of neo-con philosopher
Leo Strauss.
But Blair faces an even more serious revolt from his
intelligence officials. Blair´s use of bogus intelligence to
claim that Britain had only a 45-minute warning prior to an
Iraqi chem-bio attack reportedly resulted in the threatened
resignations of the heads of MI-6 and MI-5, Sir Richard
Dearlove and Eliza Manningham-Buller, respectively, And
there was the leak of a January 31, 2003 Top Secret memo
from the National Security Agency to its Government
Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) counterpart,
which asked for British help in electronically snooping on
members and non-members of the UN Security Council to
determine their stance on America´s anti-Iraq UN
resolution.
That memo was reportedly leaked with a wink
and an nod from the highest levels of British intelligence.
The public row in Britain has forced Alastair Campbell,
Blair´s own Karl Rove-like spinmeister, to apologize to the
British Security Services for combining their intelligence
material with the bogus material it used in developing the
Iraqi WMDs dossier.
However, some of Blair´s advisers
seem willing to go down with their Prime Minister faster
than the deck hands on the Titanic. Blair´s new House of
Commons leader John Reid, a former member of the
British Communist Party, ranted that "rogue elements"
within the intelligence services were leaking classified
information to bring down the government. Reid also stated
that for all anyone knew, the leaks were coming from some
"man in a pub." Such are the cynical words from a
government on the brink of collapse.
Blair is not the only "Coalition of the Willing" partner
beginning to get nervous. Australian Prime Minister John
Howard is distancing himself from the forged and phony
intelligence on Iraqi WMDs, claiming his intelligence
services took at face value what was presented by the
Americans and British. Denmark, which has very little
tolerance for lying Prime Ministers, is opening up an
parliamentary investigation of why Prime Minister Anders
Fogh Rasmussen lied about the Iraqi WMDs. Bush´s allies
in Spain and Italy face similar inquiries. Blair, who appears
to be heading for an ignoble British-style heave-ho, is
sticking to the lie but with an interesting caveat.
At a June
10 news conference, Blair restated the canard, "There is
not a shred of evidence that we have doctored or
manipulated intelligence." But then he added, "that would
be absolutely gross if we did so."
Blair may be entering the
typical "let´s look for a scapegoat" phase. He won´t be
successful. The intelligence services won´t let him get
away with it. He and his supporters will have to pay the
price for lying to the British people. Barring a miracle,
Blair´s days in office appear to be numbered.
And what of Bush saying the United States will help its
friends and punish its foes? Well, it seems that Mr. Bush
cannot be trusted to take care of his friends. Iceland was
one of the country´s that signed up to Bush´s so-called
"coalition."
How has Bush repaid the North Atlantic nation?
By writing a letter to Iceland´s Prime Minister stating that
the United States will, after 46 years of providing for the
NATO nation´s defense, pull its military forces from the
soon-to-be defenseless island state.
The Icelandic Prime Minister, like his colleagues in
Denmark, Australia, Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands,
and the United Kingdom, has found out the hard way of
what price is paid for aligning with a dishonest and illegal
regime. They will suffer the consequences.
However, the
leaders of France, Germany, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New
Zealand, Ireland, Belgium, South Africa, Luxembourg,
Norway, Sweden, and the other countries who withstood
constant berating from Washington and the American
ambassadors accredited to them, can take heart in the fact
that they were correct all along. They will reap the electoral
benefits of their stance while they see their pro-American
colleagues take the consequential and inevitable electoral
fall.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative
journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to
Forbidden Truth. He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of
"America´s Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II.
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@a...
Copyright W Madsen 2003. For fair use only/ pour usage
équitable seulement .
***
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