The Bomb Iran Faction in the U.S.

[American Dream]

Well, just noting that the substantive comments are hard to come by here in this thread.

slim, if you want a critique of David Icke's thesis, then go ahead and post what you think is one of his better works. I honestly find him to be both ridiculous and destructive, so my review will not likely be positive even if I agree that perhaps 75% of the facts he cites are "true".

Notice here though the low quality of the comments on Bill Weinberg's piece and theongoing pattern in which people avoid engaging with what the main points of his thesis actually are.

[Ben D]

These weekend reports perhaps indicate that the bomb Iran clique are making progress?


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 638568.ece

The Sunday Times

July 5, 2009

Saudis give nod to Israeli raid on Iran

Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Sarah Baxter

The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.

Earlier this year Meir Dagan, Mossad’s director since 2002, held secret talks with Saudi officials to discuss the possibility.

The Israeli press has already carried unconfirmed reports that high-ranking officials, including Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, held meetings with Saudi colleagues. The reports were denied by Saudi officials.

“The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia,” a diplomatic source said last week.

Although the countries have no formal diplomatic relations, an Israeli defence source confirmed that Mossad maintained “working relations” with the Saudis.

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations who recently visited the Gulf, said it was “entirely logical” for the Israelis to use Saudi airspace.

Bolton, who has talked to several Arab leaders, added: “None of them would say anything about it publicly but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn’t trumpet it as a big success.”

and...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/us/po ... ss&emc=rss

NYT

Biden Suggests U.S. Not Standing in Israel’s Way on Iran

By BRIAN KNOWLTON

Published: July 5, 2009

WASHINGTON — Plunging squarely into one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. suggested on Sunday that the United States would not stand in the way of Israeli military action aimed at the Iranian nuclear program.

The latest on President Obama, the new administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion.

The United States, Mr. Biden said in an interview broadcast on ABC’s “This Week,” “cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do.” "Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said, in an interview taped in Baghdad at the end of a visit there.

The remarks went beyond at least the spirit of any public utterances by President Barack Obama, who has said that diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program should be given to the end of the year. But the president has also said that he is “not reconciled” to the possibility of Iran possessing a nuclear weapon — a goal Tehran denies.

Mr. Biden’s comments came at a particularly sensitive time, amid the continuing tumult over the disputed Iranian elections, and seemed to risk handing a besieged President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a new tool with which to fan nationalist sentiments in Iran.

What was not immediately clear was whether Mr. Biden, who has a long-standing reputation for speaking volubly — and sometimes going too far in the heat of the moment — was sending an officially sanctioned message.

The Obama administration has said, and Mr. Biden reaffirmed this, that it remains open to negotiations with Tehran, even after the bitterly contested election that returned Mr. Ahmadinejad to the presidency.

“If the Iranians respond to the offer of engagement, we will engage,” Mr. Biden said. “The offer’s on the table.”

[StarmanSkye]

"The United States, Mr. Biden said in an interview broadcast on ABC’s “This Week,” “cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do.” "Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said, in an interview taped in Baghdad at the end of a visit there."

****
Gawd, what an absolutely loathsome abdication of responsibility and authority here, as Biden has the nerve to excuse himself from stating a clear, unambigious moral position against the threat of yet another crime against peace, essentially signalling a hands-off attitude of non-involvement if not accomodation should Israel overfly Saudi Arabia and bomb Iran -- implying the US's willingness to excuse and justify such a belligerant and clearly illegal, unprovoked attack. What an utterly contemptable, shameful, loathesome posture. Even if Biden was carefully tiptoeing around not offending the AIPAC and Israel-First! lobbies, he had a half-dozen arguments, warnings and cautions he could counseled about, and one could make a case he had an ethical and legal duty to be outspoken against Israel's possible or desired plan to use force on Iran, citing the incalculable social suffering and environmental destruction it would cause, as well as severely complicating and aggravating the political crisis in the Middle East -- which seems to have become a standby tactic in Israel's playbook, when at an impasse in which Israel won't compromise it lashes out somewhere in a paroxism of violent military rage, creating more misery and destruction which it then claims is the victim's own fault, and which it subsequently exploits as if it were a valuable bargaining chip -- contributing to its reputation as reckless, unpredictable, ruthless and even crazed.

Of course, Biden could hardly point out that the use of armed aggression by ANY belligerant seldom if ever by itself results in peaceful resolution, since the US is the world's pre-eminent purveyor of terror and destruction. And of course, armed conflict --or the threat of same-- seems to be the US's preferred means of imposing geopolitical policy on nations it disagrees with. But considering Biden was speaking in Baghdad, he sure COULD have been more responsibly diplomatic. As it was, his weasily cop-out is a bad omen.

[JackRiddler]

.

Leupp actually seems to accept the premise that the US invasion of Iraq was in response to an Iraqi threat, whether with or without WMDs. He modifies the official US rationale of 2003 as follows: Since Iraq's neighbors declared they didn't feel a threat, but Israel kept quiet, then it must be that the real "threat" was to Israel and therefore the reason for the US invasion of Iraq was to "protect" Israel. But there never was a threat from Iraq to anyone! The stories of WMD and other threats were made up, something the engineers of the war in US and UK knew as they spun a succession of variable lies to justify the invasion and subsequent offensives. Even Wolfowitz admitted years ago that WMD was a bureaucratic convenience, a way of getting consensus on the cover story among the different agencies and interests involved. That means they didn't tell the real reasons for the invasion, which was on its way from the moment Bush took power. And since the WMD and threat story was never anything but a cover and a conscious lie at all times, Leupp's attempt to derive a hidden meaning from that fiction is bound to mislead.

Taking that faulty line as premise - that the Iraq invasion was mainly for Israel's benefit, as orchestrated primarily by the "neocons" - Leupp says that now, these same forces are no longer "mincing words," but declaring openly that their proposed attack on Iran is intended for Israel's benefit. The latter is true; they have no other reason they can present. And that is because a bombing of Iran has been rejected as a terrible idea by overwhelming consensus of the American empire's handlers. It will not happen, and that is why the partisans of such an attack have become more shrill.

In December 2007, sources at the Pentagon or CIA leaked the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, establishing for the public that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program. The leak of an NIE was without precedent in the history of the US national security state. In the aftermath, the likes of John Bolton went ballistic on the rhetoric; he even said there had been a palace revolt. But no one was punished and the new line indicated by the NIE leak was adopted. This episode made plain that those who oppose bombing Iran have the upper hand at the Pentagon. That also appears to be the consensus at the CFR. With the rationale for an American attack knocked out, Israel last year demanded a US green light to bomb Iran itself, something that would require US support in flying over Iraq. This was rejected - by Bush.

We can discuss the reasons why neither the US nor Israel is going to bomb Iran. For the US, I expect the Pentagon handlers can no longer deny imperial overextension and loss of legitimacy and, increasingly, loss of hegemony in both the region and the world. It's been understood that the inevitable upshot of a bombing would be to cement a united, anti-American axis of Iran and Iraq (which is already on the way) and cause an open confrontation with the SCO countries and potentially even a break with Europe. Unlike in 2001, the Pentagon knows they have their hands full enough and anyway, they have no lack of real deployments, threat scenarios and fictional enemies to justify their budget, which remains at the highest levels ever and is still growing. As for Israel doing it alone, the bottom line is, they can't get permission to fly over Turkey or Iraq, so they're not going to risk their air force on a strike at that distance, or risk the certainty of international isolation and a possible break with the US.

Thus the louder rhetoric on Iran from the "neocon" side is actually evidence of the Israeli state's limits and the decline in power of the US "neocons," which Leupp misinterprets in opposite fashion as a further stage of "Israelification" of US policy.

As for Biden's statement, unappetizing and odious as always, it also reads to me like the opposite of your interpretation, StarmanSkye (also of Brian Knowlton's reading in the WaPo). Biden will give lip service to every myth the neocons want to promote about the evil Iran. But if he's calling Israel a "sovereign nation" to which "we" will not "dictate," and accepting that it might decide to bomb Iran on its own in pursuing its "interest," then even AIPAC's favorite senator and now vice-president is distancing himself from a potential Israeli strike as an Israeli and not an American decision. If the Israelis want to bomb Iran, they're on their own.

On the world stage, the recent Iranian upheaval is going to be a short break on the way to a de facto US detente with Iran. The hardliners will still screech, just like they often do with China (one of US imperialism's most important de facto and largely unwilling allies), but the national security elite will continue to search for an arrangement with the realities of a changed regional and world balance of power, which can no longer be altered by bombs on Iran.

Meanwhile, they'll keep bombing Afghanistan and Pakistan; that was the hidden question of the 2008 election, wasn't it? "Do you prefer an insane criminal attack on Iran that causes US interests to self-immolate instantly, or an escalation of the crimes against humanity in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in a way that is merely irrational and more gradually self-destructive?"

PS, Ben D: That Times article is a single-source Mossad press release. Plus a quote from Bolton. It illustrates nothing other than the mounting solipsism of the "neocon" faction.

Let's see, in between delivering his super-secret reports to Netanyahu, the Mossad guy takes a break to give the Times a review of what he's telling his boss, with his own name on the record. And his super-secret Saudi interlocutors, who super-secretly want him to bomb Iran NOW, apparently don't mind his betrayal of their trust, since no one reads that rag. Which is why it's publishing Mossad Fan Fiction, which is cheaper than running installments of a Tom Clancy novel.

.

[JackRiddler]

.

Did I win? ("Last one to post in this thread wins." It's a joke.)

The above being said, I don't and can't rule out mad-dog scenarios, or mad tails wagging dogs, if you will. Israeli society and the mental state of Israel's hardline partisans have reached a deeply unstable, dangerous condition; the traditional standards of "rational" or "realistic" political considerations (themselves hardly either, though there is a rough consensus on what the terms are supposed to mean) may not prevail. How far would the US follow on a Israeli "all in" move of launching a go-it-alone strike on Iran, if this involved the likely loss of Iraq, a military confrontation with the emergent SCO alliance and a break with Europe? What if such an action actually led to a situation where Israel was genuinely endangered, how would the US react then? My view is, however, that a US veto of an Israeli strike will be obeyed, and the US will continue to veto regardless of how the "neocons" bray. There's the simple matter that bombing Iran is still a wish, no matter how often they call it a need. Potential Iranian nuclear weapons do not and will not pose a mortal threat to Israel.

.

[Searcher08]

M&W: "The US national interest should be the primary object of American foreign policy. For the past several decades, however, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, a recurring feature—and arguably the central focus—of US Middle East policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering US support for Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout the region has enflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized US security... Why has the United States adopted policies that jeopardized its own security in order to advance the interests of another state?"

To begin with, M&W accept the notion that there is a US "national interest" or even that the US is a traditional nation-state.

They said "should"


They avoid dealing with the fact that the US is first and foremost a global empire—the first truly global empire in world history.

Assertion / Metaphor

Foreign policy debate—especially in the executive branch, but to a lesser degree in Congress as well—is concerned with the maintenance of a global empire.

Re-asserted

The situation is, mutatis mutandi, akin to that of ancient Rome, in which the citizens of one city had the right to vote for the leaders of an empire that stretched from Palestine to Iberia.

Re-asserted

Only today, it is the citizens of one-third of a continent (North America between the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel) who vote for the leaders of an empire that essentially covers the planet, with the exception of a handful of "rogue states."

Re-asserted

The "Latin right" and "Italian right" that defined the relatively privileged roles of subject peoples close to the Roman imperial center but still denied actual Roman citizenship are analogous to the rights of NATO and G-8 members, afforded important managerial roles in the global empire, but always under clear US leadership.


Re-asserted. Arguing from analogy, which falls down, especially given the number of Israeli dual-nationals in the US.


The aim (largely achieved since the end of the Cold War) is a single, integrated planetary capitalist system, in which the US ruling class is assured the pre-eminent place.

Aim of who? UNSPECIFIED
Integrated, how? UNSPECIFIED
Planetary, how? UNSPECIFIED
ruling class WEASEL WORDS


The rhetoric in Washington's corridors of power has reflected this reality rather openly at least since the formative years of the Second World War. The minutes of a series of closed meetings between the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations beginning in 1939 explicitly charted the post-war rise of the US to the status of global empire: "...the British Empire as it existed in the past will never reappear and...the United States may have to take its place."

SO this is based on a 70year old meeting's notes??

I ASSERT - The CFR is extremely powerful, East Coast WASP centric and deeply influenced by Skull and Bones, based on Anony Suttons work.

What is this author's relationship with the CFR?



US leaders therefore "must cultivate a mental view toward world settlement after this war which will enable us to impose our own terms, amounting perhaps to a Pax Americana."

Even the author sounds unsure of what he is describing!

As significant a turning point has been reached in the post-Cold War and especially post-9-11 era, reflected even more clearly in official rhetoric. The Cold War nomenclature of "national security" is being abandoned in favor of "global (read: imperial) security" and, most tellingly, "homeland security."

This is just as easily deconstructed as Nazi language with a pedigree going back to Operation Paperclip

This latter formulation especially makes clear that the US continental "homeland" is perceived less as a nation-state than the seat of global governance.

I disagree - no chain of logic shown.

As the most critical resource on the planet—that which drives the whole global leviathan in both figurative and literal terms—oil is the most imperative strategic concern of the empire.

ASSERTED.

Who says? Conflates the global economy with a 'global empire'. Provides no evidence of a link with an empire and oil. Asserts that empires are purely resource driven, which is bollox - counter-example Mongol Empire.


The notion of a "war for oil" has much currency in anti-war circles, but it is generally understood in imprecise and oversimplified terms. The most deluded misreading assumes that military adventures such as that in Iraq are aimed at securing cheap oil for US consumers—again, taking notions of "national security" at face value. Closer to the mark but still oversimplified is the assumption that the aim is corporate profits for the big oil companies. The Middle East military crusades are to be correctly understood—and again, as we shall see, this is stated explicitly in official parlance, albeit not that intended for public consumption—as a strategic gambit for control of oil, as the critical means of assuring continued US global pre-eminence.

No evidence so far, just asserting.




Israel plays a unique role in the US-dominated global order. As the leading recipient of US aid it is by definition a client state.

What definition is that? This equates Isareli aid with other countries aid -- I respectfully disagree!

Although its military and economic might are disproportionate to its size and clearly decisive in a regional context, neither are sufficient to merit NATO or G-8 membership, even if these were seen as politically desirable.

Red Herring
Israel is not seeking membership to these organisations AFAIK and anyway, how can you lump NATO and G-8?? Apples and Oranges.





Yet, alone among US client states, it is afforded the relatively privileged position of our metaphorical "Latin right."

Again I disagree with the 'client state' assertion. No convincing logic was used, only argument from analogy; it also really lets Israel off the hook - "We are just a client state, You are the Master, America; Look at all the aid we need from you!!"




In the current US administration, it (Israael) has obviously secured an especially privileged voice among imperial policy-makers.

(Israel) has obviously secured an especially privileged voice among (imperial) policy-makers
First thing I agree with.
.



The question of how this state of affairs has come about is a vital one, but M&W formulate it problematically from the start. Insisting on posing the query in terms of US national sovereignty, they dispense with what they call "moral" and "strategic" explanations.

M&W: "Instead, the overall thrust of US policy in the region is due primarily to US domestic politics and especially to the activities of the 'Israel lobby.' Other special-interest groups have managed to skew US foreign policy in directions they favored, but no lobby has managed to divert US foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US and Israeli interests are essentially identical."

This makes perfect sense to me. It compares foriegn policy objects and special interest groups to see if any are disproportionate - yes, Israel is


The unlikely proposition of a client state seizing control of imperial policy is taken as a fait accompli. The possibility does not even seem to have occurred to them that US elites—even if in a counter-productive strategic blunder—have perceived a convergence of US imperial and Israeli national interests at this juncture, or perceived a unique usefulness of Israel as a regional proxy. Maintaining a regional proxy (which implies a more nuanced relationship than that between the imperial center and outright puppets, such as the Cold War military dictatorships of Central America) means granting a certain degree of access to imperial power and decision-making. It does not mean a surrender of power and decision-making.

This is all Arguing from a Roman History example that he has not even presented aany argument for, just a metaphor.
At this point, I gave up as I did not want to spend anymore of my time on it.




I did this out of respect for you A_D - several other invitations you gave recently have suffered from 'board velocity', where I write something, you reply but a response is delayed for several days and is down to about Page 10 in the RI "Where are they now file" when I get back - I felt conscious of resurrecting old threads.

Regarding Icke, his 10 min video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHvTy_fVdJ8

and the bye-election video of last year
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 2wLd6JGoAQ

[American Dream]

Thank you for posting your critique of Bill Weinberg's piece, Searcher.

I fear that this is becoming so convoluted and fragmented as to be practically unreadable to others, especially if I now follow on the dissection of isolated passages.

Would you be willing to make a summary in a few sentences about how you see: U.S. as global hegemon (or not), Israel's role in deciding regional and global policy, the role of economics in sustaining the global power structure and oils importance (or not) within that, as well as: how David Icke's model of the world is useful and accurate (or not) in explaining these kinds of things.

I don't want to put words in your mouth- just a few sentences would be great.

Muchisimas Gracias,

A.D.

[Searcher08]

Thank you for posting your critique of Bill Weinberg's piece, Searcher.

I fear that this is becoming so convoluted and fragmented as to be practically unreadable to others, especially if I now follow on the dissection of isolated passages.

Would you be willing to make a summary in a few sentences about how you see: U.S. as global hegemon (or not), Israel's role in deciding regional and global policy, the role of economics in sustaining the global power structure and oils importance (or not) within that, as well as: how David Icke's model of the world is useful and accurate (or not) in explaining these kinds of things.

I don't want to put words in your mouth- just a few sentences would be great.

Muchisimas Gracias,

A.D.

A_D Thanks for your reply. I fear it will take more than a few sentences.

U.S. as global hegemon (or not)
I see US foriegn policy as flowing from domestic policy a la M+W. I see no case for America as the new Rome, as I have said above.

Israel's role in deciding regional and global policy,
Israel has aspirations of regional hegemony - Eretz Israel etc. and that whatever Israel wants from the US, it gets.

The role of economics in sustaining the global power structure

I do not see a global power structure, I see global power structures. Meta organisations / confederations above the interplay of transnational corporations - this is covered by Peter Dale Scott. There are probably at least three - one discovered by Danny Casolaro; one linked to Russian/Israeli interests and a Euro-centric one centred on the Bank of International Settlements as stated by Indira Singh

Oils importance (or not) within that

Apparent importance or actual importance. I believe that Tesla discovered a method to make almost limitless energy and this discovery (alongside those of Rife) have been kept secret.

I can imagine elite interests keeping these discoveries suppressed even if the cost to humanity (Peak Oil) was enormous.


as well as: how David Icke's model of the world is useful and accurate (or not) in explaining these kinds of things.

The USA and Western Europe are being driven towards a globalist fascist police state. Wars are being fought purely for corporate profit and to safeguard profits and drug flow.The media is feeding them lies, distortions and half truths.
Many of the people running Wall Street are driving this agenda.
If we dont wake up, we could end up one day in *extremely* dire circumstances and be unable to do anything about it.

[American Dream]

Thank you, Searcher.

Could you say a little more about how you see The United States and Israel's relative strength in the planetary power structure and also what important points david Icke makes that others might neglect and also where (if anywhere) he misses the boat?

[JackRiddler]

They avoid dealing with the fact that the US is first and foremost a global empire—the first truly global empire in world history.

Assertion / Metaphor

You lose me here. To ignore all other forms of economic and financial and "soft" power, and to take only the Pentagon and the alphabet agencies -- the part financed by federal taxes and debt and employed or hired directly by the US government -- they directly run: 800 foreign bases, located in most countries of the world (everyone else: perhaps a few dozen, mostly in combination with the US), a dozen carrier groups with the firepower of small nations (everyone else: zero), thousands of nuclear weapons on submarines and ICBMs (everyone else: about even), and a military budget as large as all of the other countries' combined. They have conducted a long series of direct foreign wars, bombings, strikes, occupations and interventions on every continent, including two big ones at the moment, plus hundreds of now-acknowledged covert ops, coups, psyops, assassinations, etc. Policy pronouncements from the US must be contended with in every country of the world, no exceptions. Who compares? The very-distant second place in these categories belongs to a power that dissolved 20 years ago. How is this not global, or an empire? What part of that phrase is a metaphor? (Are you going post-structural on me, and pointing out that all words are metaphors and contested, and communication is probably impossible?)

---

U.S. as global hegemon (or not)
I see US foriegn policy as flowing from domestic policy a la M+W.

Indisputably, it does. But it has also always been formulated as a grand global policy by a class of think-tank priests who serve the interests of the MIC, Wall Street, and the oil sector, among others, and who themselves come from or belong to the larger ruling class. The latter can be distinguished as a unit, it's not a "weasel word": a power elite of about 10,000 individuals who largely grow up together, go to school together, and network as adults control the majority of the productive and disposable wealth and majority interest in the banks and corporations, from which power stems. (I think you should put C.Wright Mills's The Power Elite on your reading list alongside Icke.) The proposals of the grand foreign-policy generators have often been adopted contrary to domestic considerations. And it hardly ended (or started) with a CFR memo 70 years ago, as you at one point suggest. There's been a memo every minute, in the same spirit. (Examples of the "priests": CFR, Kennan, Dulles, McCloy, Huntington, RAND, Kissinger, Brzezinski, AEI/Heritage/PNAC.)

.

[JackRiddler]

crosspost

http://www.truthout.org/070309J

Eager to Tap Iraq's Vast Oil Reserves, Industry Execs Suggested Invasion
Friday 03 July 2009

by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report


Two years before the invasion of Iraq, reports suggested invading to end Saddam Hussein's control of the oil. (Photo: Getty Images)
Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain "a prisoner of its energy dilemma" as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

That April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the US Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world's second largest oil reserves.

"Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East," the report said.

"Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments."

The advisory committee that helped prepare the report included Luis Giusti, a Shell Corp. non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of British Petroleum; and David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco.

James Baker, the namesake for the public policy institute, was a prominent oil industry lawyer who also served as secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush, and was counsel to the Bush/Cheney campaign during the Florida recount in 2000.

Ken Lay, then-chairman of the energy trading Enron Corp., also made recommendations that were included in the Baker report.

At the time of the report, Cheney was leading an energy task force made up of powerful industry executives who assisted him in drafting a comprehensive "National Energy Policy" for President George W. Bush.

A Focus on Oil

It was believed then that Cheney's secretive task force was focusing on ways to reduce environmental regulations and fend off the Kyoto protocol on global warming.

But Bush's first treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, later described a White House interest in invading Iraq and controlling its vast oil reserves, dating back to the first days of the Bush presidency.

In Ron Suskind's 2004 book, "The Price of Loyalty," O'Neill said an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda at the first National Security Council. There was even a map for a post-war occupation, marking out how Iraq's oil fields would be carved up.

Even at that early date, the message from Bush was "find a way to do this," according to O'Neill, a critic of the Iraq invasion who was forced out of his job in December 2002.

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer later made another discovery: a secret NSC document dated February 3, 2001 - only two weeks after Bush took office - instructing NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney's task force, which was "melding" two previously unrelated areas of policy: "the review of operational policies towards rogue states" and "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields." [The New Yorker, February 16, 2004]

By March 2001, Cheney's task force had prepared a set of documents with a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a list titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," according to information released in July 2003 under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.

A Commerce Department spokesman issued a brief statement when those documents were released stating that Cheney's energy task force "evaluated regions of the world that are vital to global energy supply."

There has long been speculation that a key reason why Cheney fought so hard to keep his task force documents secret was that they may have included information about the administration's plans toward Iraq.

"Conspiracy Theory"

However, both before and after the invasion, much of the US political press treated the notion that oil was a motive for invading Iraq in March 2003 as a laughable conspiracy theory.

Generally, business news outlets were much more frank about the real-politick importance of Iraq's oil fields.

For instance, Ray Rodon, a former executive at Halliburton, the oil-service giant that Cheney once headed, said he was dispatched to Iraq in October 2002 to assess the country's oil infrastructure and map out plans for operating Iraq's oil industry, according to an April 14, 2003 story in Fortune magazine.

"From behind the obsidian mirrors of his wraparound sunglasses, Ray Rodon surveys the vast desert landscape of southern Iraq's Rumailah oilfield," Fortune's story said. "A project manager with Halliburton's engineering and construction division, Kellogg Brown & Root, Rodon has spent months preparing for the daunting task of repairing Iraq's oil industry."




"Working first at headquarters in Houston and then out of a hotel room in Kuwait City, he has studied the intricacies of the Iraqi national oil company, even reviewing the firm's organizational charts so that Halliburton and the Army can ascertain which Iraqis are reliable technocrats and which are Saddam loyalists."


At about the same time as Rodon's trip to Iraq - October 2002 - Oil and Gas International, an industry publication, reported that the State Department and the Pentagon had put together pre-war planning groups that focused heavily on protecting Iraq's oil infrastructure.

The next month, November 2002, the Department of Defense recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers award a contract to Kellogg, Brown & Root to extinguish Iraqi oil well fires.

The contract also called for "assessing the condition of oil-related infrastructure; cleaning up oil spills or other environmental damage at oil facilities; engineering design and repair or reconstruction of damaged infrastructure; assisting in making facilities operational; distribution of petroleum products; and assisting the Iraqis in resuming Iraqi oil company operations."

In January 2003, as President Bush was presenting the looming war with Iraq as necessary to protect Americans, the Wall Street Journal reported that oil industry executives met with Cheney's staff to plan the post-war revival of Iraq's oil industry.

"Facing a possible war with Iraq, US oil companies are starting to prepare for the day when they may get a chance to work in one of the world's most oil-rich countries," the Journal reported on January 16, 2003.




"Executives of US oil companies are conferring with officials from the White House, the Department of Defense and the State Department to figure out how best to jump-start Iraq's oil industry following a war, industry officials say.

"The Bush administration is eager to secure Iraq's oil fields and rehabilitate them, industry officials say. They say Mr. Cheney's staff hosted an informational meeting with industry executives in October [2002], with ExxonMobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp., ConocoPhillips and Halliburton among the companies represented.

"Both the Bush administration and the companies say such a meeting never took place. Since then, industry officials say, the Bush administration has sought input, formally and informally, from executives and industry experts on how best to overhaul Iraq's oil sector."


Guarding the Oil Ministry

Despite the Bush administration's denials about oil as a motivation for war, the Bush administration's focus on Iraqi oil was firmly set.

On April 5, 2003, Reuters reported that the State Department's "Future of Iraq" project headed by Thomas Warrick, special adviser to the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, held its fourth meeting of the oil and energy-working group.

Documents obtained by Reuters showed that "a clear consensus among expert opinion favoring production-sharing agreements to attract the major oil companies."


"That is likely to thrill oil companies harboring hopes of lucrative contracts to develop Iraqi oil reserves," the news agency reported. "Short-term rehabilitation of southern Iraqi oil fields already is under way, with oil well fires being extinguished by US contractor Kellogg Brown and Root ...




"Long-term contracts are expected to see US companies ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips compete with Anglo-Dutch Shell, Britain's BP, TotalFinaElf of France, Russia's LUKOIL and Chinese state companies."


After US troops captured Baghdad in April 2003, they were ordered to protect the Oil Ministry even as looters ransacked priceless antiquities from Iraq's national museums and stole explosives from unguarded military arsenals.

Unacceptable Options

In April 2001, the report laid out a series of unacceptable options, including helping Iraq under Saddam Hussein extract more oil by easing embargoes that were meant to hem Hussein in.

"The US could consider reducing restrictions on oil investment inside Iraq," the report said. But if Hussein's "access to oil revenues was to be increased by adjustments in oil sanctions, Saddam Hussein could be a greater security threat to U.S. allies in the region if weapons of mass destruction, sanctions, weapons regimes and the coalition against him are not strengthened."

Iraq is a "key swing producer turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest," the report said, adding that there was even a "possibility that Saddam Hussein may remove Iraqi oil from the market for an extended period of time" in order to drive up prices.

"Under this scenario, the United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma, suffering on a recurring basis from the negative consequences of sporadic energy shortages," the report said. "These consequences can include recession, social dislocation of the poorest Americans, and at the extremes, a need for military intervention."

The report recommended Cheney move swiftly to integrate energy and national security policy as a means to stop "manipulations of markets by any state" and suggested that his task force include "representation from the Department of Defense."

"Unless the United States assumes a leadership role in the formation of new rules of the game," the report said, "US firms, US consumers and the US government [will be left] in a weaker position."

Two years after the Baker report, the United States - along with Great Britain and other allies - invaded Iraq. Now, more than six years later, the US oil industry finally appears to be in a strong position relative to Iraq's oil riches.

However, the price that has been paid by American troops, Iraqi civilians and the US taxpayers has been enormous.

[Ben D]

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PS, Ben D: That Times article is a single-source Mossad press release. Plus a quote from Bolton. It illustrates nothing other than the mounting solipsism of the "neocon" faction.

Let's see, in between delivering his super-secret reports to Netanyahu, the Mossad guy takes a break to give the Times a review of what he's telling his boss, with his own name on the record. And his super-secret Saudi interlocutors, who super-secretly want him to bomb Iran NOW, apparently don't mind his betrayal of their trust, since no one reads that rag. Which is why it's publishing Mossad Fan Fiction, which is cheaper than running installments of a Tom Clancy novel.

Somewhat late but yes Jack, I agree with you that this article standing alone raises more questions then it explains. However due to the coincidence of timing with the NYT article "Biden Suggests U.S. Not Standing in Israel’s Way on Iran", I was suggesting that both articles coming out together and being rather complementary to the larger subject of bombing Iran, raises the possibility of contrivance on the part of those "mad tails" whose scheme it is to wag dogs.

[JackRiddler]

Somewhat late but yes Jack, I agree with you that this article standing alone raises more questions then it explains. However due to the coincidence of timing with the NYT article "Biden Suggests U.S. Not Standing in Israel’s Way on Iran", I was suggesting that both articles coming out together and being rather complementary to the larger subject of bombing Iran, raises the possibility of contrivance on the part of those "mad tails" whose scheme it is to wag dogs.

The article discredits itself. If there were Saudi elements who agreed with the Mossad's plan for a flyover, they would have stopped doing so after the Mossad betrayed them by feeding this "secret" to a newspaper. Laughably saying they'd like to keep it low-key! So, 99.99% chance, it's fiction front and back, presumably meant to cause paranoia and witch-hunts among the Saudis and their neighbors. As for Biden, I think that's a misreading. His comments could have also been headlined: "Biden: If Israelis want to bomb Iran, that's their thing. (God forbid I should appear to be telling them what to do. Thanks for the checks, AIPAC!)"

As a US operation, bombing Iran has been visibly off the table since at least 2007, and likely to remain so. As for the Israelis, they know as well as everyone else that Iran poses no military threat to them, that they are themselves making up the propaganda claiming it does, and that a go-it-alone bombing strike would have a high risk of military disaster for their air force. So barring insanity on their part, the words of panic about hitting Iran will get louder, with the intent of preventing detente, even as the chances of a military action further recede.

This thread should have been titled, the "Don't Bomb Iran (But Don't Say You Won't) Faction in the US." Since that's the actual policy.

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[Ben D]

Your analysis seems quite sound Jack, but as insignificant a likelihood it may be, I personally still don't rule out the possibility of a lurking Dr. Strangelove character somewhere in the relevant 'corridors of power'. Procedures can be made foolproof easily enough, but never idiot-proof.

[JackRiddler]

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Something new and interesting on this subject. Bush wrote in his memoir about the Pentagon revolt that ended the original PNAC plan to attack Iran after Iraq.

Although this thread begins with Leupp's weak premises, I'm reviving it rather than starting a new one so that all this discussion doesn't go lost...

November 23, 2010
How US Intelligence Thwarted an Attack on Iran
Bush the Warmonger in His Own Words

By RAY McGOVERN

Why should George W. Bush have been “angry” to learn in late 2007 of the “high-confidence” unanimous judgment of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon four years earlier? Seems to me he might have said “Hot Dog!” rather than curse under his breath.

Nowhere in his memoir, Decision Points, is Bush’s bizarre relationship with truth so manifest as when he describes his dismay at learning that the intelligence community had redeemed itself for its lies about Iraq by preparing an honest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. As the Bush-book makes abundantly clear, that NIE rammed an iron rod through the wheels of the juggernaut rolling toward war.

Nowhere is Bush’s abiding conviction clearer, now as then, that his role as “decider” include the option to create his own reality.

The Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) has missed that part of the book. And hundreds of Dallas “sheriffs,” assembled to ensure decorum at the Bush library groundbreaking last week, kept us hoi polloi well out of presidential earshot.

But someone should ask Bush why he was not relieved, rather than angered, to learn from U.S. intelligence that Iran had had no active nuclear weapons program since 2003. And would someone dare ask why Bush thought Israel should have been “furious with the United States over the NIE?”

It seems likely that Bush actually dictated this part of the book himself. For, in setting down his reaction to the NIE on Iran, he unwittingly confirmed an insight that Dr. Justin Frank, M.D., who teaches psychiatry at George Washington University Hospital, gave us veteran intelligence officers into how Bush comes at reality — or doesn’t.

“His pathology is a patchwork of false beliefs and incomplete information woven into what he asserts is the whole truth... He lies — not just to us, but to himself as well... What makes lying so easy for Bush is his contempt — for language, for law, and for anybody who dares question him.... So his words mean nothing. That is very important for people to understand.”

Not Enough Sycophants

When the NIE on Iran came out in late 2007, Bush may have pined for his sycophant-in-chief, former CIA Director George Tenet and his co-conspirator deputy, John McLaughlin, who had shepherded the bogus Iraq-WMD analysis through the process in 2002 but had resigned in 2004 when their role in the deceptions became so obvious that it shamed even them.

Tenet and his CIA cronies had been expert at preparing estimates-to-go — to go to war, that is. They had proved themselves worthy rivals of the other CIA, the Culinary Institute of America, in cooking intelligence to the White House menu.

On Iraq, they had distinguished themselves by their willingness to conjure up “intelligence” that Senate Intelligence Committee chair Jay Rockefeller described as “uncorroborated, unconfirmed, and nonexistent,” after a five-year review by his panel. (That finding was no news to any attentive observer, despite Herculean — and largely successful — efforts by the FCM to promote drinking the White House Kool-Aid.)

What is surprising in the case of Iran is the candor with which George W. Bush explains his chagrin at learning of the unanimous judgment of the intelligence community that Iran had not been working on a nuclear weapon since late 2003. [There is even new doubt about reports that the Iranians were working on a nuclear warhead before 2003. See Consortiumnews.com’s “Iranian Nuke Documents May Be Fake.”]

The Estimate’s findings were certainly not what the Israelis and their neoconservative allies in Washington had been telling the White House — and not what President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were dutifully proclaiming to the rest of us.

Shocked at Honesty

Bush lets it all hang out in Decision Points. He complains bitterly that the NIE “tied my hands on the military side.” He notes that the Estimate opened with this “eye-popping” finding of the intelligence community:

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”

The former president adds, “The NIE’s conclusion was so stunning that I felt it would immediately leak to the press.” He writes that he authorized declassification of the key findings “so that we could shape the news stories with the facts.” Facts?

The mind boggles at the thought that Bush actually thought the White House, even with de rigueur help from an ever-obliging FCM, could put a positive spin on intelligence conclusions that let a meretricious cat out of the bag—that showed that the Bush administration’s case for war against Iran was as flimsy as its bogus case for invading Iraq.

How painful it was to watch the contortions the hapless Stephen Hadley, national security adviser at the time, went through in trying to square that circle. His task was the more difficult since, unlike the experience with the dishonestly edited/declassified version of what some refer to as the Whore of Babylon — the Oct. 1, 2002 NIE on WMD in Iraq, this time the managers of the Estimate made sure that the declassified version of the key judgments presented a faithful rendering of the main points in the classified Estimate.

A disappointed Bush writes, “The backlash was immediate. [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad hailed the NIE as a ‘great victory.’” Bush’s apparent “logic” here is to use the widespread disdain for Ahmadinejad to discredit the NIE through association, i.e. whatever Ahmadinejad praises must be false.

But can you blame Bush for his chagrin? Alas, the NIE had knocked out the props from under the anti-Iran propaganda machine, imported duty-free from Israel and tuned up by neoconservatives here at home.

How embarrassing. Here before the world were the key judgments of an NIE, the most authoritative genre of intelligence analysis, unanimously approved “with high confidence” by16 agencies and signed by the Director of National Intelligence, saying, in effect, that Bush and Cheney were lying about the “Iranian nuclear threat.”

It is inconceivable that as the drafting of the Estimate on Iran proceeded during 2007, the intelligence community would have kept the White House in the dark about the emerging tenor of its conclusions. And yet, just a month before the Estimate was issued, Bush was claiming that the threat from Iran could lead to “World War III.”

The Russians More Honest?

Ironically, Russian President Vladimir Putin, unencumbered by special pleading and faux intelligence, had come to the same conclusions as the NIE.

Putin told French President Nicolas Sarkozy in early October 2007:

“We don’t have information showing that Iran is striving to produce nuclear weapons. That’s why we’re proceeding on the basis that Iran does not have such plans.”

In a mocking tone, Putin asked what evidence the U.S. and France had for asserting that Iran intends to make nuclear weapons. And, adding insult to injury, during a visit to Tehran on Oct. 16, 2007, Putin warned: “Not only should we reject the use of force, but also the mention of force as a possibility."

This brought an interesting outburst by President Bush the next day at a press conference, a bizarre reaction complete with his famously tortured syntax:

Q. “Mr. President, I'd like to follow on Mr.--on President Putin's visit to Tehran … about the words that Vladimir Putin said there. He issued a stern warning against potential U.S. military action against Tehran. …Were you disappointed with [Putin’s] message?”

Bush: “I -- as I say, I look forward to -- if those are, in fact, his comments, I look forward to having him clarify those … And so I will visit with him about it.”

Q. “But you definitively believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon?”

Bush: “I think so long -- until they suspend and/or make it clear that they -- that their statements aren't real, yes, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. And I know it's in the world's interest to prevent them from doing so. I believe that the Iranian -- if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace.

“But this is -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding world war III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously, and we'll continue to work with all nations about the seriousness of this threat.”

Can’t Handle the Truth

In his memoir, Bush laments: “I don’t know why the NIE was written the way it was. … Whatever the explanation, the NIE had a big impact — and not a good one.” Spelling out how the Estimate had tied his hands “on the military side,” Bush included this (apparently unedited) kicker:

“But after the NIE, how could I possible explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?”

Thankfully, not even Dick Cheney could persuade Bush to repair the juggernaut and let it loose for war on Iran. The avuncular Vice President has made it clear that he was very disappointed in his protégé. On Aug. 30, 2009, he told “Fox News Sunday” that he was isolated among Bush advisers in his enthusiasm for war with Iran.

“I was probably a bigger advocate of military action than any of my colleagues,” Cheney said when asked whether the Bush administration should have launched a pre-emptive attack on Iran before leaving office.

Bush briefed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before the NIE was released. Bush later said publicly that he did not agree with his own intelligence agencies. [For more on the Bush memoir’s conflicts with the truth, see Consortiumnews.com’s “George W. Bush: Dupe or Deceiver?”]

And it is entirely possible that the Iran-war juggernaut would have been repaired and turned loose anyway, were it not for strong opposition by the top military brass who convinced Bush that Cheney, his neocon friends and Olmert had no idea of the chaos that war with Iran would unleash.

There’s lots of evidence that this is precisely what Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen and then-CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon told Bush, in no uncertain terms. And it is a safe bet that these two were among those hinting broadly to Bush that the NIE was likely to “leak,” if he did not himself make its key judgments public.

Whew!

What About Now

The good news is that Cheney is gone and that Adm. Mullen is still around.

The bad news is that Adm. Fallon was sacked for making it explicitly clear that, “We’re not going to do Iran on my watch,” and there are few flag officers with Fallon’s guts and honesty. Moreover, President Barack Obama continues to show himself to be an invertebrate vis-à-vis Israel and its neocon disciples.

Meanwhile, a draft NIE update on Iran’s nuclear program, completed earlier this year, is dead in its tracks, apparently because anti-Iran hawks inside the Obama administration are afraid it will leak. It is said to repeat pretty much the same conclusions as the NIE from 2007.

There are other ominous signs. The new Director of National Intelligence, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, is a subscriber to the Tenet school of malleability. It was Clapper whom former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put in charge of imagery analysis to ensure that no one would cast serious doubt on all those neocon and Iraqi “defector” reports of WMD in Iraq.

And, when no WMD caches were found, it was Clapper who blithely suggested, without a shred of good evidence, that Saddam Hussein had sent them to Syria. This was a theory also being pushed by neocons both to deflect criticism of their false assurances about WMD in Iraq and to open a new military front against another Israeli nemesis, Syria.

In these circumstances, there may be some value in keeping the NIE update bottled up. At least that way, Clapper and other malleable managers won’t have the chance to play chef to another “cooked-to-order” analysis.

On the other hand, the neocons and our invertebrate President may well decide to order Clapper to “fix” the updated Estimate to fit in better with a policy of confrontation toward Iran. In that case, the new Director of National Intelligence might want to think twice. For Clapper could come a cropper. How?

The experience of 2007 showed that there are still some honest intelligence analysts around with integrity and guts—and with a strong aversion to managers who prostitute their work. This time around, such truth-tellers could opt for speedy, anonymous ways of getting the truth out—like, say, WikiLeaks.

Ray McGovern was an Army officer and CIA analyst for almost 30 year. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair (Verso). He can be reached at: rrmcgovern@aol.com

A shorter version of this article appears at Consortiumnews.com.