-Caveat Lector- http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/03/04/01.html The Neocon Con: Deception and the Drive to WWIII
by Maureen Farrell "Nothing Saddam does can save him, says Powell" "Even if Baghdad readmits United Nations arms inspectors, the United States will still pursue a 'regime change' policy, with or without the support of its allies." - The Sydney Morning Herald, February 8, 2002 (nine months before U.N. inspectors returned to Iraq) http://old.smh.com.au/news/0202/08/world/world9.html Anyone who's been paying attention recognizes the prescient futility expressed in the article above. Serving as a marker of sorts, it's but a sliver in a body of evidence regarding the duplicitous nature of Bush's United Nations "diplomacy." Yet many Americans, equating blindness with patriotism, are convinced the president acted in good faith and went the "extra mile" to reach a diplomatic solution. And sadly, in confusing our allies' disarmament intentions with Bush's regime change imperative, they've funneled angst and anger towards the French, while missing vital subplots to this saga. In short, "patriotic Americans" have failed to notice that: 1) The Bush administration relied on a series of fabrications and forgeries to make its case 2) This war was planned before Sept. 11 and 3) The neocons are deliberating driving us towards World War III. A Madman's Guide to Chaos The Project for a New American Century has been on the radar for some time. Largely described as a group of neoconservative interventionists dreaming of empire, their impact was succinctly explained by University of Pennsylvania political science professor Ian Lustick. "After 9/11, (PNAC) was able to benefit from the gigantic eruption of political capital, combined with the supply of military preponderance in the hands of the president," Lustick said during a recent Nightline appearance. "And this small group, therefore, was able to gain direct contact and even control, now, of the White House." Connected to the president through Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Jeb Bush, PNAC foretold America's future foreign policy in its 2000 report, Rebuilding America's Defenses. "America's 'core mission,'" they announced, would be to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars." And so, the con was on. Article Link As moderate Arabs become radicalized by the war in Iraq, an even more disturbing picture unfolds. While spouting platitudes about peace, this administration, as columnist Joshua Micah Marshall asserts, is gunning for "a full-scale confrontation between the United States and political Islam." Even more to the point is Marshall's claim that, "Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare -- it's their plan." Exposing these neoconservatives' "willingness to deceive," Marshall writes: "In the [Bush Administration's] view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction. . . . Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism. . ." In other words, The Weekly Standard, edited by PNAC co-founder William Kristol, is admitting that the neocons are actually hoping to spark a world war - and even worse, they're willing to sacrifice U.S. citizens to do so. Marshall explains: "So events that may seem negative -- Hezbollah for the first time targeting American civilians; U.S. soldiers preparing for war with Syria -- while unfortunate in themselves, are actually part of the hawks' broader agenda. Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments -- or, failing that, U.S. troops -- rule the entire Middle East." There is a startling amount of deception in all this -- of hawks deceiving the American people, and perhaps in some cases even themselves." http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/ 2003/0304.marshall.html Military Matters A more troubling deception lies in the ways neocons have misled American troops. Though the CIA warned the Bush administration about possible Iraqi tactics, Ken Adelman, Dick Cheney and Richard Perle brayed about quick and certain success. "I believe demolishing (Iraqi President Saddam) Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk," Adelman wrote in the Washington Post last year, making Sgt. Mark N. Redford's comments all the more poignant. Serving with the Third Infantry Division in central Iraq, Redford said, "I expected a lot more people to surrender. >From all the reports we got, I thought they would all capitulate." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/29/international/worldspecial/29INFA.ht ml Though some stories, like those about Marines living on one daily meal ration or soldiers "war- gaming" against the wrong enemy sound more like byproducts of incompetence and hubris than deception, one overriding question arises: How do the neocons propose to wage "multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars"? With half of the U.S. armed forces deployed in Iraq and others stationed in various global hot spots, PNAC's "cavalry on the new American frontier" will need to be replenished. And as one reporter recently observed, "If the presence of 10,000 American soldiers is generating a resistance movement in Afghanistan, one can conjecture what the presence of more than 250,000 soldiers will do in Iraq?" Article Link In 2000, (when PNAC's plan was published), Delaware became the first state to link drivers' license applications to Selective Service registration. Since then, 28 states, 2 territories, and the District of Columbia have enacted similar legislation. http://www.sss.gov/FSdrivers.htm. In January, the Universal Service Act 2003 (H.R. 163) was introduced, and if passed, the bill would reinstate the draft, while insuring, according to Rep. Pete Stark, that "the well-off or the well- connected" won't be able to "dodge military service for their country, as did our President." http://www.house.gov/stark/documents/108th/univdraftstate.html 'Dixie-Chicked' and Bamboozled The military/media meld notwithstanding, ("Can we please demand that the U.S. military remove its troops from ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/MSNBC/Fox?," Michael Moore recently asked), the fact that America's "free press" is being used to repress dissent is disconcerting. Michael Savage uses MSNBC's airwaves to pine for a return to Sedition laws, pro-war and Nazi- like Dixie Chick CD demolition rallies are organized by Clear Channel and this summer, Ann Coulter will be invading TV Land to accuse liberals of treason. Ensuring that U.S. citizens receive their daily requirement of government- issued pabulum, the Pentagon is desperately trying to prevent independent journalists from reporting in Iraq, while bombarding others with Pentagon-approved spin. One BBC news source complained that, "The misinformation in this war is far and away worse than any conflict I've covered," adding, "We're getting more truth out of Baghdad than the Pentagon at the moment." http:// www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,924172,00.html Meanwhile, reporters based at Center Command in Qatar are complaining "about a credibility gap between what reporters see and hear on the battlefield and what the top brass at headquarters are saying, or not saying," and are defecting. ABC News, which had nearly 70 journalists stationed at Centcom is down to 12 and when Michael Wolff, the media critic at New York magazine, openly asked "why should we stay? What's the value to us for what we learn at this million-dollar press center?" the room applauded. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/29/international/worldspecial/29CENT.ht ml Unanswered Questions: Following Sept. 11, the media lobbed fluffballs at the Bush administration. When Donald Rumsfeld appeared on Larry King in Dec. 2001, for example, he admitted that at 8:00 a.m.on Sept. 11, he told a congressional delegation that "sometime in the next two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve months there would be an event that would occur in the world that would be sufficiently shocking that it would remind people again how important it is to have a strong healthy defense department." Did that raise an eyeball? Or inspire follow-up questions? No. King responded, "You were pretty prophetic that morning." http://www.defenselink.mil/news/ Dec2001/t12062001_t1205sd.html As the president's recent visit to Andrews Air Force base reminded, we're still paying for the media's ineptitude and complicity. Why, once again, weren't jets scrambled from Andrews to at least save people in the Pentagon? And why, 19 months later, do we still not know the answer to that and other disturbing questions? Though the PNAC neocons suspiciously admitted that it would take "some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor" to set their WWIII plans in motion, shouldn't the press and American citizens be demanding accountability? Although the alternative media and various organizations have researched 911 oddities, and Greg Palast http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid= 104&row=1 Gore Vidal http:// www.observer.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,819932,00.html and Michael Moore http:// www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,925548,00.html have expressed misgivings about the official story, mainstream sources are finally questioning the Bush administration's reluctance to investigate 911. In March, Newsweek reported on Florida Sen. Bob Graham's "911 outrage" over FBI and CIA failures, as well as "facilitation" of the hijackers by a "sovereign nation" (reportedly Saudi Arabia). He also accused the Bush administration of suppressing information. "There's been a cover-up of this," he said. Later, Time asked "Is the Bush White House trying to put the brakes on the congressional panel created last fall to investigate 9-11 attacks?" http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/ 0,8599,437267,00.html, while the New York Times reported that while an estimated $14 million is needed to fund the 9-11 independent commission, and find out how terrorists were able to conspire to kill 3000 Americans, only $3 million has been made available. "In comparison," the Times said, "the inquiry into the shuttle disaster's loss of seven lives may cost an estimated $40 million, and the inquiry into the Whitewater controversy ate up more than $30 million." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/opinion/31MON2.htm Nonetheless, with the first public hearings on 9/11 underway, hopefully some answers will be forthcoming. http://www.9- 11commission.gov/hearings/index.htm The Con Lives On Sadly, however, it's become impossible to trust this White House. And it doesn't help that Bush's messianic mission to "liberate" the Iraqi people reeks of conquest instead. U.S. forces have informally named a captured Iraqi airfield, "Bush International Airport," Halliburton leads the war- profiteering parade and Colin Powell says we won't be ceding control of Iraq to the U.N. "We didn't take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have a significant dominating control over how it unfolds in the future," he said. Article Link Nor does it help that, even as pundits bray about the Afghanistan successes, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are regrouping; women and children are brutalized; and the only sure sign of success is the highly-prized pipeline that's going to transport gas and oil through Afghanistan from the Caspian Sea basin. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2608713.stm Bombarded with orange alerts, duct tape and other fear-mongering tactics, many citizens believe Bush's serial wars will save America. But with secret detentions, secret bunker governments, oppressive stealth legislation and martial law/internment camp contingencies http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/27/1027497418339.html, we're already losing what we've vowed to protect. And face it. This county is only one terrorist attack from becoming the kind of country our parents and grandparents fought against. And sadly, it seems that many Americans have been conned into thinking that's exactly as it should be. BACK TO TOP Maureen Farrell is a writer and media consultant who specializes in helping other writers get television and radio exposure. © Copyright 2003, Maureen Farrell Forwarded for your information. 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