----
yes they should
lets hold those who forged the intel they reported responsible
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense
for Policy Douglas Feith set up a secret intelligence unit, named the
Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group (CTEG—sometimes called the Policy
Counterterrorism Evaluation Group), to sift through raw intelligence
reports and look for evidence of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
[Risen, 2006, pp. 183-184; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 pdf
file]
Modeled after "Team B" - The four to five -person unit, a "B Team"
commissioned by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and modeled after
the "Team B" analysis exercise of 1976 (see November 1976), is
designed to study the policy implications of connections between
terrorist organizations. CTEG uses powerful computers and software to
scan and sort already-analyzed documents and reports from the CIA, the
Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and other
agencies in an effort to consider possible interpretations and angles
of analysis that these agencies may have missed due to deeply
ingrained biases. Middle East specialist Harold Rhode recruits David
Wurmser to head the project. Wurmser, the director of Middle East
studies for the American Enterprise Institute, is a known advocate of
regime change in Iraq, having expressed his views in a 1997 op-ed
piece published in the Wall Street Journal (see November 12, 1997) and
having participated in the drafting of the 1996 policy paper for
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, A Clean Break: A New
Strategy for Securing the Realm (see July 8, 1996). F. Michael Maloof,
a former aide to Richard Perle, is also invited to take part in the
effort, which becomes known internally as the "Wurmser-Maloof"
project. Neither Wurmser nor Maloof are intelligence professionals
[Washington Times, 1/14/2002; New York Times, 10/24/2002; Mother
Jones, 1/2004; Los Angeles Times, 2/8/2004; Reuters, 2/19/2004;
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 pdf file] , but both are close
friends of Feith's.
Countering the CIA - Since the days of Team B, neoconservatives have
insisted the CIA has done nothing but underestimate and downplay the
threats facing the US. "They have a record over 30 years of being
wrong," says Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, who adds that
the CIA refuses to even allow for the possibility of a connection
between Iraq and al-Qaeda—one of the topics that most interests
Wurmser and Maloof. [Unger, 2007, pp. 226-227]
Finding Facts to Fit Premises - Maloof and Wurmser set up shop in a
small room on the third floor of the Pentagon, where they set about
developing a "matrix" that charts connections between terrorist
organizations and their support infrastructures, including support
systems within nations themselves. Both men have security clearances,
so they are able to draw data from both raw and finished intelligence
products available through the Pentagon's classified computer system.
More highly classified intelligence is secured by Maloof from his
previous office. He will later recall, "We scoured what we could get
up to the secret level, but we kept getting blocked when we tried to
get more sensitive materials. I would go back to my office, do a pull
and bring it in.… We discovered tons of raw intelligence. We were
stunned that we couldn't find any mention of it in the CIA's finished
reports." Each week, Wurmser and Maloof report their findings to
Stephen Cambone, a fellow member of the Project for the New American
Century (PNAC—see January 26, 1998) neoconservative and Feith's chief
aide. George Packer will later describe their process, writing,
"Wurmser and Maloof were working deductively, not inductively: The
premise was true; facts would be found to confirm it." CTEG's
activities cause tension within the intelligence community. Critics
claim that its members manipulate and distort intelligence, "cherry-
picking" bits of information that support their preconceived
conclusions. Although the State Department's own intelligence outfit,
the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), is supposed to have
access to all intelligence materials circulating through the
government, INR chief Greg Thielmann later says, "I didn't know about
its [CTEG's] existence. They were cherry-picking intelligence and
packaging it for [Vice President] Cheney and [Defense Secretary]
Donald Rumsfeld to take to the president. That's the kind of rogue
operation that peer review is intended to prevent." A defense official
later adds, "There is a complete breakdown in the relationship between
the Defense Department and the intelligence community, to include its
own Defense Intelligence Agency. Wolfowitz and company disbelieve any
analysis that doesn't support their own preconceived conclusions. The
CIA is enemy territory, as far are they're concerned." Wurmser and
Maloof's "matrix" leads them to conclude that Hamas, Hezbollah,
Islamic Jihad, and other groups with conflicting ideologies and
objectives are allowing these differences to fall to the wayside as
they discover their shared hatred of the US. The group's research also
leads them to believe that al-Qaeda has a presence in such places as
Latin American. For weeks, the unit will attempt to uncover evidence
tying Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, a theory advocated by both
Feith and Wolfowitz. [Washington Times, 1/14/2002; New York Times,
10/24/2002; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Los Angeles Times, 2/8/2004;
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 pdf file; Unger, 2007, pp.
226-227]
Denial - Defending the project, Paul Wolfowitz will tell the New York
Times that the team's purpose is to circumvent the problem "in
intelligence work, that people who are pursuing a certain hypothesis
will see certain facts that others won't, and not see other facts that
others will." He insists that the special Pentagon unit is "not making
independent intelligence assessments." [New York Times, 10/24/2002]
The rest of the US intelligence community is not impressed with CTEG's
work. "I don't have any problem with [the Pentagon] bringing in a
couple of people to take another look at the intelligence and
challenge the assessment," former DIA analyst Patrick Lang will later
say. "But the problem is that they brought in people who were not
intelligence professionals, people were brought in because they
thought like them. They knew what answers they were going to
get." [Unger, 2007, pp. 226-227]
Dismissing CIA's Findings that Iraq, al-Qaeda are Not Linked - One
example is an early CTEG critique of a CIA report, Iraq and al-Qaeda:
Interpreting a Murky Relationship. CTEG notes that the CIA included
data indicating links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and then blast the
agency for "attempt[ing] to discredit, dismiss, or downgrade much of
this reporting, resulting in inconsistent conclusions in many
instances." In CTEG's view, policy makers should overlook any
equivocations and discrepancies and dismiss the CIA's guarded
conclusions: "[T]he CIA report ought to be read for content only—and
CIA's interpretation ought to be ignored." Their decision is powered
by Wolfowitz, who has instructed them to ignore the intelligence
community's view that al-Qaeda and Iraq were doubtful allies. They
also embrace the theory that 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta met with an
Iraqi official in Prague, a theory discredited by intelligence
professionals (see December 2001 and Late July 2002). Author Gordon R.
Mitchell refers to the original Team B in calling the critique "1976
redux, with the same players deploying competitive intelligence
analysis to sweep away policy obstacles presented by inconvenient CIA
threat assessments." In 1976, the Team B members were outsiders; now
they are, Mitchell will write, "firmly entrenched in the corridors of
power. Control over the levers of White House bureaucracy enabled
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to embed a Team B entity within the
administration itself. The stage was set for a new kind of Team B
intelligence exercise—a stealth coup staged by one arm of the
government against the other." [Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006
pdf file; Agence France-Presse, 2/9/2007]
Stovepiping Information Directly to White House - The group is later
accused of stovepiping intelligence directly to the White House. Lang
later tells the Washington Times: "That unit had meetings with senior
White House officials without the CIA or the Senate being aware of
them. That is not legal. There has to be oversight." According to Lang
and another US intelligence official, the two men go to the White
House several times to brief officials, bypassing CIA analysts whose
analyses they disagreed with. They allegedly brief White House
staffers Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, and
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Richard
Cheney, according to congressional staffers. [Washington Times,
7/29/2004] In October 2004, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) will conclude,
"[T]he differences between the judgments of the IC [intelligence
community] and the DOD [Department of Defense] policy office [CTEG]
might have been addressed by a discussion between the IC and DOD of
underlying assumptions and the credibility and reliability of sources
of raw intelligence reports. However, the IC never had the opportunity
to defend its analysis, nor point out problems with DOD's
'alternative' view of the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship when it was
presented to the policymakers at the White House." Levin will add,
"Unbeknownst to the IC, policymakers were getting information that was
inconsistent with, and thus undermined, the professional judgments of
the IC experts. The changes included information that was dubious,
misrepresented, or of unknown import." [Quarterly Journal of Speech,
5/2006 pdf file]
Passing Intelligence to INC - According to unnamed Pentagon and US
intelligence officials, the group is also accused of providing
sensitive CIA and Pentagon intercepts to the US-funded Iraqi National
Congress, which then pass them on to the government of Iran.
[Washington Times, 7/29/2004] "I knew Chalabi from years earlier,"
Maloof later recalls, "so I basically asked for help in giving us
direction as to where to look for information in our own system in
order to be able to get a clear picture of what we were doing.
[Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress] were quite helpful." [Unger,
2007, pp. 226-227]
CTEG Evolves into OSP - By August 2002, CTEG will be absorbed into a
much more expansive "alternative intelligence" group, the Office of
Special Plans (OSP—see September 2002). Wurmser will later be
relocated to the State Department where he will be the senior adviser
to Undersecretary Of State for Arms Control John Bolton.(see September
2002). [American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004;
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 pdf file]
Public Finally Learns of CTEG's Existence - Over a year after its
formation, Rumsfeld will announce its existence, but only after the
media reveals the existence of the OSP (see October 24, 2002).
Entity Tags: Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, David Wurmser, Donald
Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, F. Michael Maloof, Harold Rhode, Lewis
("Scooter") Libby, Gordon R. Mitchell, 'Team B', Stephen J. Hadley,
Paul Wolfowitz, Greg Thielmann, Richard Perle
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
Category Tags: David Wurmser, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard
Perle, Iraq, Terrorism and Al-Qaeda, US Intelligence
Bookmark and Share
August 2002: Neocons Give Unconvincing Presentation on Iraq Ties to Al-
Qaeda; Information Used by Bush, Tenet, Right-Wing Supporters
Edit event
Two influential neoconservatives, Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA]
reservist and Penn State political science professor Chris Carney and
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, give two
presentations on Iraq's alleged ties to al-Qaeda to the CIA at the
agency's Langley headquarters. CIA analysts are not impressed, having
seen much of the information before and having already determined that
it was not credible. Some of the information will nevertheless be
included in speeches by Bush and in testimony by Tenet to Congress.
The information is also put into a classified memo to the Senate
Intelligence Committee by Feith, which is later leaked to the Weekly
Standard, a neoconservative magazine (see November 14, 2003). [Vanity
Fair, 5/2004, pp. 238]
Entity Tags: Senate Intelligence Committee, Chris Carney, Weekly
Standard, Central Intelligence Agency, Douglas Feith, US Congress, Al-
Qaeda
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
Category Tags: Iraq, Terrorism and Al-Qaeda, US Intelligence, Douglas
Feith
Bookmark and Share
After October 7, 2002: Administration Neoconservatives Purge
Intelligence Community of Undesirables
Edit event
Senior Bush neoconservatives, angry at the US intelligence community's
refusal to allow the Iraq-Niger uranium deal allegations into
President Bush's Cincinnati speech (see October 5, 2002 and October 6,
2002), begin purging "troublesome" intelligence analysts. One such
victim is Bruce Hardcastle (see Early 2002), the DIA's intelligence
officer for the Middle East, South Asia, and Counterterrorism.
Hardcastle has challenged Bush officials, telling them "that the way
they were handling evidence was wrong." In retaliation, not only does
Hardcastle lose his job, but his position is eliminated entirely. DIA
analyst Patrick Lang will later recall: "They wanted just liaison
officers who were junior. They didn't want a senior intelligence
officer who argued with them." Lang will recall Hardcastle saying, "I
couldn't deal with these people." Lang continues: "They are such
ideologues that they know what the outcome should be.… They start with
an almost psuedo-religious faith. They wanted the intelligence
agencies to produce material to show a threat, particularly an
imminent threat. Then they worked back to prove their case. It was the
opposite of what the process should have been like, that the evidence
should prove the case." [Unger, 2007, pp. 262-263]
Entity Tags: Bush administration, Bruce Hardcastle, Patrick Lang,
Defense Intelligence Agency, George W. Bush
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and
Plame Outing
Category Tags: US Intelligence
Bookmark and Share
Late 2002-2003: Pentagon Neoconservatives Receptive to Israeli
Intelligence Dismissed by CIA
Edit event
After several CIA reports downplay intelligence provided to Washington
by Israeli intelligence officials, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives working in the Pentagon begin
meeting personally with Israeli officials to hear their intelligence.
The CIA's reports had found that conclusions made by Israeli
intelligence were often skewed by its biases against the Arab world.
On Aug 7, 9:04 pm, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> The Carnage ContinuesPosted byLaurence Vanceon August 7, 2011 10:15 AM
> InAfghanistan. Thirty U.S. military personnel were recently killed when their helicopter was shot down. This was the deadliest day ever for U.S. forces in Afghanistan since the war began.
> "Their death is a reminder of the extraordinary sacrifice made by the men and women of our military and their families," said the president. Sorry Obama, they diedin vainandfor a lie.
> xxxDying for a Lieby Laurence M. Vance"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it." -- Oscar WildeAll Americans know that Memorial Day is a federal holiday. Most Americans know that it commemorates U. S. soldiers who died in military service for their country. Many Americans believe that U. S. soldiers died defending our freedoms. Few Americans believe that they died for a lie.
> Memorial Day was first observed in honor of Union soldiers who died during the War to Prevent Southern Independence. It was initially called Decoration Day because the tombs of the dead soldiers were decorated. Originally celebrated in select localities (to this day several cities claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day, although the federal government recognizes Waterloo, NY, as the official birthplace), the holiday was first widely observed on May 30, 1868, because of an earlier proclamation by General John Logan of theGrand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans:The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.New York, in 1873, was the first state to officially recognize the holiday. After World War I, the holiday was expanded to include U. S. soldiers who died in any war. Until this time, Southern states did not observe the holiday: they preferred to honor their Confederate dead on separate days. Although Congress in 1971 declared Memorial Day to be a national holiday celebrated on the last Monday in May, to this day some Southern states still maintain a day to honor their Confederate dead.
> The focus this Memorial Day will be on those men and women who have died in the current Iraq war, although it is likely that only a small minority of Americans realize that2,464U.S. soldiers have died thus far. The 117,000 U.S. soldiers who died in that war to end all wars, World War I, are ancient history. Few can name even one of the 405,000 U.S. soldiers who died in that "good war," World War II, so that Eastern Europe could be turned over to the mass murderer Stalin. The 54,000 U.S. soldiers who died in what is called America's forgotten war, the Korean War, are certainly long forgotten. The 58,000 U.S. soldiers who died in Vietnam so their names could be inscribed on awallare remembered by very few.
> They died in vain; they died for a lie.
> This does not mean that they were not brave, heroic, well-meaning, or patriotic. They may have fought with the best of intentions; they may have sacrificed themselves for others; they may have been sincere in their belief that they were fighting for a good cause; but they died for a lie.
> The first lie is that war is necessary. After commanding forces that firebombed Tokyo, which killed as many civilians as the atomic bomb dropped a few months later, General Curtis LeMay remarked: "We knew we were going to kill a lot of women and kids when we burned that town. Had to be done." But regardless of what happened beforehand, or what might have happened in the future, since when does slaughtering 100,000 people at one time ever have to be done? War should not be considered as an alternative; it is always the worst possible solution. As psychologist Alfred Adler has said: "War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man." War is not inevitable; it is never an absolute necessity. As Adler's successor Lydia Sicher once said: "Wars are inevitable... as long as we believe that wars are inevitable. The moment we don't believe it anymore it is not inevitable."
> The second lie is that it is the people in a country that want war. Surprisingly, it was Ronald Reagan who recognized that "governments make wars, not people." It is up to the government to convince its citizens that the citizens of another country are "the enemy." After all, as one columnist remarked: "When people have friends and customers in other lands, they tend to take a dim view of their government dropping bombs on them." Governments abuse the concept of patriotism to convince the populace that "the enemy" should be bombed, maimed, and killed. Hermann Goering recognized that all a government has to do to get the people to support a war is to "denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." Real patriotism is not wanting to see the blood of your country's soldiers shed in some desert or jungle halfway around the world fighting the enemy of the week, month, or year. Patriotism, as Charles de Gaulle explained, "is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first." It is the old men who make wars, and then send the young men to fight them; it is the members of Congress with no children in the military who agitate for war.
> The third lie is that there are winners and losers in a war. No side ever really wins a war. As Jeannette Rankin, the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry into both World Wars, said: "You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." Every side loses something in a war. English mystery writer, Agatha Christie, certainly showed more wisdom than most members of Congress when she said: "One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one." The consequences of a war are never as expected. One reason, as recognized by Thomas Jefferson, is that "war is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses."
> The fourth lie is that war can be good for a nation's economy. This myth of war prosperity was exploded by Ludwig von Mises: "War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings. The earthquake means good business for construction workers, and cholera improves the business of physicians, pharmacists, and undertakers; but no one has for that reason yet sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive forces in the general interest." More recently, Robert Higgs has called this "The Fallacy that Won't Die." But didn't unemployment fall during World War II? Of course it did. How could it not fall when the government conscripted 16 million men into the armed forces? But what about GDP during World War II? Naturally, it increased, but only because of the increased output of military goods and services. Tell the grieving parents of their only son, who never gave them any grandchildren, about how much greater their standard of living will now be because of the war that took their son.
> The fifth lie is that the U.S. military defends our freedoms. The military is too busy policing the world to defend our freedoms. We have U.S. troops in 155 countries or territories of the world. How are the 69,395 U.S. troops in Germany defending our freedoms? How are the 35,307 U.S. troops in Japan defending our freedoms? How are the 32,744 U.S. troops in Korea defending our freedoms? How are the 12,258 U.S. troops in Italy defending our freedoms? How are the 11,093 U.S. troops in the United Kingdom defending our freedoms? How are the ______ U.S. troops in _______________ defending our freedoms? To appease his conservative base on the illegal immigration issue, President Bush recently called for the stationing of some National Guard troops along the border with Mexico. The National Guard units that have been deployed to Iraq should not be assigned to guard the Mexican border. They should be sent home to their jobs and their families, and only used for genuine emergencies on U.S. soil. Stationing U.S. soldiers along the Mexican border would be defending our freedoms a thousand times more than putting them along any German or Italian border.
> Contrary to these lies, the truth about war, in the words of Major General Smedley Butler, is that "war is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious." Ambrose Bierce once made a callous statement about war that nevertheless comes to pass whenever the United States intervenes in another country: "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."
> The aphorism that truth is the first casualty of war has often been spoken but rarely learned from. This is because, as Charles Lindbergh said: "In a time of war, truth is always replaced by propaganda." This war in particular was started and maintained by more government lies than perhaps any other war in our history.
> What were our objectives in this war? Finding weapons of mass destruction? Finding chemical and biological weapons? Removing Saddam Hussein? Imposing democracy to Iraq? Bringing stability to the Middle East? Forcing Iraq to comply with UN resolutions? Protecting the nation of Israel? Dismantling Al Qaeda? Freeing Muslim women from oppression? Enforcing the no-fly zone imposed on Iraq after the first Persian Gulf War?
> If one stated objective was found to be a lie another could quickly be offered in its place. The number and scope of these objectives shows that there were no legitimate obtainable objectives. So why did we invade and occupy Iraq? I call your attention to two documents. Just two. Both of these documents are readily available online.
> The first document is calledUncovering the Rationales for the War on Iraq: The Words of the Bush Administration, Congress, and the Media from September 12, 2001 to October 11, 2002. It was written by Devon M. Largio in 2004 as a thesis for a bachelor's degree in political science at the University of Illinois. It is a total of 212 pages. Print it out and read it in its entirety. If you don't have time to read it right now then at least read herexecutive summary. Largio documents twenty-seven rationales given for the war by the Bush administration, war hawks in Congress, and the media between the September 11th attacks and the October 2002 congressional resolution to use force in Iraq. It was "the Bush administration, and the President himself" that "established the majority of the rationales for the war and all of those rationales that make up the most prominent reasons for war." The result of this investigation shows that Bush is a bigger liar than Clinton ever was, and, even worse, his lies are more deadly.
> The second document is calledIraq on the Record: The Bush Administration's Public Statements on Iraq. It was prepared for Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform Minority Staff, Special Investigations Division. It is dated March 16, 2004. It is a total of 36 pages. Print it out and read it in its entirety. An executive summary appears on pages iiv. The report is "a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President George Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice." Here is the report's conclusion:Because of the gravity of the subject and the President's unique access to classified information, members of Congress and the public expect the President and his senior officials to take special care to be balanced and accurate in describing national security threats. It does not appear, however, that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice met this standard in the case of Iraq. To the contrary, these five officials repeatedly made misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq. In 125 separate appearances, they made 11 misleading statements about the urgency of Iraq's threat, 81 misleading statements about Iraq's nuclear activities, 84 misleading statements about Iraq's chemical and biological capabilities, and 61 misleading statements about Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda.Every U.S. soldier who died in Iraq died for a lie. They may have died for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, the U.S. global empire, the U.S. government, the military-industrial complex, or Halliburton, but none of them died for the American people or our freedoms.
> If they died for a lie, then the liars should be held accountable. But don't look for Congress to do anything. How can we expect a Congress that continues to fund this war to hold the Bush administration accountable for its lies? Every member of Congress that continues to vote to fund this war is complicit in these lies. How many more dead American soldiers and billions of dollars will it take before Congress finally says enough is enough? How many American soldiers not currently in Iraq who are enjoying this Memorial Day holiday will be sent to Iraq to die for a lie before the next observance of Memorial Day?
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