Scold Warrior to head US State Department

[Moses]

Times: www.nytimes.com/2004/11/16/politics/16assess.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=

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16 May 2002 Condoleezza Rice declares: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon -- that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile."

13 Nov 2002 National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice declares: "He already has other weapons of mass destruction. But a nuclear weapon, two or three our four years from now -- I don't care where it is, when it is -- to have that happen in a volatile region like the Middle East is most certainly a future that we cannot tolerate."

12 May 2003 National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice declares: "U.S. officials never expected that we were going to open garages and find weapons of mass destruction."

13 Jul 2003 National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tells Fox News Sunday: "I believe that we will find the truth, and I believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."


10 Nov 2003 During a five-minute interview via satellite with Fox affiliate WTVT-TV, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice declares: "I think that the administration has made it clear that we have no evidence and have never claimed a direct link of Saddam Hussein and his regime to the events of September 11th, saying that he planned them or controlled them or something. It is very clear that he had links to terrorism that were broad and deep, including numerous contacts with al Qaeda, including an al Qaeda associate, a man named al Zarqawi, who was operating his network out of Baghdad. The network that ended up ordering the killing of an American citizen, an American diplomat in Jordan, Mr. Foley. So, yes, Saddam Hussein had links to al Qaeda, links to terrorism. But we have never claimed that he had a direct link to the September 11th events."

26 Mar 2004 Former FBI translator Sibel D. Edmonds tells Salon: "After reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, where she said 'we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes.' That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie."

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PRESIDENTIAL DAILY BRIEFING, 8/6/01:

(pgh 7) Al Qaeda members—including some who are U.S. citizens—have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks….

(8) A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

(9) We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [REDACTED] service in 1998 saying that bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

(10) Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

[Moses]

Biography:

National Security Advisor used to be a pretty important job, often filled by a towering amoral intellect like Henry Kissinger. However, the only time you're likely to see "towering intellect" and "Condoleeza Rice" in the same sentence is... well, you just read it.

It's not that she doesn't look good on paper. She spent 20 years working at Stanford in various positions, eventually rising to provost, and she worked as an advisor in various capacities to the first Bush administration.

But when you listen to her talk, it's impossible to avoid the flashbacks to sixth grade social studies, and the well-meaning but stultifying teacher who tried to explain world politics to you but f**ked it up so badly that you're still not sure what an electoral college is or why there was ever a wall in Berlin in the first place. (I think it had something to do with blocks?)

In 1998, George Bush Sr. called Rice and asked her to teach his idiot spawn everything he needed to know about the world.

Undaunted by this Herculean task, Rice agreed to the request, and the clueless Bush Jr. quickly became dependent on her smartitude. Her excellent tutoring paid tremendous dividends in shining moments like Bush's 1999 interview with a Boston TV reporter, in which he was unable to name the president of Pakistan while praising the military coup which created the anonymous fellow's dictatorship.

When Bush walked into the White House with a solid majority of Broward County, Fla., voters, Condoleezza Rice was right by his side, whispering in his ear when he forgot important civics facts, like the name of the Queen of Bavaria or the number of states in the union.

Rice had all the qualifications for membership in the new Bush administration — a close personal bond with the president, the ability to make him look good (well, less bad) and (needless to say) deep ties to the oil industry. Chevron even named a tanker after her. Rice was a former member of the board of directors of Chevron, as well as Charles Schwab, Transamerica, Hewlett Packard and The Rand Corporation.

Bush referred to Rice, his vice president Dick Cheney and Defense deputy Paul Wolfowitz as "the Vulcans," presumably because they used big words that he couldn't understand. With the election securely litigated, Bush named Rice his National Security Advisor and everyone proceeded to stick their collective thumb up their collective ass until September 11, 2001.

In the aftermath of al Qaeda's attack on the United States, Rice worked to become a voice of intellectual reassurance to offset Bush's swaggering bravado. In front of the cameras, she somehow managed to be completely unconvincing in the defense of the administration's actually quite justifiable invasion of Afghanistan.

Behind the scenes, Rice had her hands full trying to run a Cabinet full of maniacs, including Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell, all of whom were constantly at each others' throats over possible strategies, and the question of just how fast the hostilities in Afghanistan could be expanded to Iraq.

When U.S. military action to topple Saddam Hussein became an inevitability (historians have identified the date as September 12, 2001), Rice also became one of the leading salespeople in charge of jamming the inexplicable war down the throats of reluctant Americans and the reluctant rest of the world too.

Rice also brought her silver-tongued diplomacy to the Arab world, reassuring panicky Arab leaders that the U.S. only wanted to bring "diplomacy and freedom" to all the nations of the Middle East, which is just what the monarchists, theocrats and dictators wanted to hear. The response in a Jordanian newspaper was pretty typical:

"As for you, black Condoleezza Rice, swallow your tongue, remember your origins and stop talking about liberation and freedom. Have you not been taught by your cowboy masters that 'slaves' cannot liberate themselves, that they are not capable to capture the large Islamic world whose cultural roots are planted in the depths of history. The slaves who are happy with their enslavement, O Condoleezza, will continue to be enslaved. They will never be free and will never free others."

Ignoring this good advice, Rice went right back to her cowboy masters and toed the line on Iraq (after all, she had the value of her Chevron shares to think about). In fact, she and the also-black Colin Powell made the bulk of the administration's case for the invasion, mostly because the old white guys Cheney and Rumsfeld couldn't get through the interviews without salivating. Rice and Powell gave repeated speeches in which they warned of the dangers of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction.

At the time, everyone was convinced that Iraq probably had some sort of weapons of mass destruction, based in part on the fact that Rumsfeld gave a bunch of them to Saddam Hussein during the 1980s.

But having successfully goaded Americans into sitting on their hands and letting the "boys have their fun" in Iraq, Rice was suddenly embroiled in explaining why no weapons were actually used against or found by by invading U.S. troops. Rice also became the administration's lead spokesperson in trying to explain the president's decision to use outright lies to justify the attack during his State of the Union address in January 2003.

She brought her usual fortitude to the task of explaining the president's reference to forged and discredited documents which alleged that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Niger. Rice explained this by making profound intellectual points like "It was the CIA's fault," and "I didn't know nothin' and you can't prove it," and "it's the Brits' fault" and "whoever's fault it is, it is certainly not mine, unless you think it's the president's, in which case it's mine."

[Moses]

November 17, 2004
Editor Matthew Rothschild comments on the news of the day.
www.progressive.org/webex04/wx111704.html

Not Rice's but Cheney's Triumph

Bush's nomination of Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State is a triumph not for Rice but for Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and thingy Cheney.

Rice had made no secret of her desire to take Rumsfeld's job over at the Pentagon.

But Rumsfeld remains at the Pentagon, as does Wolfowitz. The neocon hawks are still on their perch, even after all their droppings have made such a mess.

Wolfowitz, one of the biggest proponents of the Iraq War, assured everyone that we'd be greeted as liberators over there.

Rumsfeld lowballed the number of troops every step of the way and was responsible, largely, for Abu Ghraib.

It's amazing that Bush would keep him on. This is a reward for arrogance and lawlessness.

But behind Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz lurks the dominant figure of thingy Cheney, who handpicked those two guys at the start and stood by them from one scandal to the next.

Seymour Hersh writes that after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Cheney phoned Rumsfeld "with a simple message: No resignations."

Cheney was four-square behind the approach of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz; in fact, it was his approach all along.

In the epilogue of Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack," he describes a scene at Cheney's home. It was just four days after the fall of Baghdad, and the Vice President and his wife, Lynne, were in a mood to celebrate. Cheney invited his deputy Scooter Libby over for dinner, as well as Wolfowitz and Kenneth Adelman, another leading neocon.

The group bantered and boasted.

Then, writes Woodward, "someone mentioned Powell, and there were chuckles all around." Cheney got out the knife. "He sure likes to be popular, Cheney said," according to Woodward, and the Vice President added that Powell was always a problem when it came to supporting Bush's war plans.

"They turned to Rumsfeld, the missing brother," Woodward continues. "Both Cheneys told some affectionate stories going back to the late 1960s when they had hooked up with Rumsfeld."

In this supper of swagger, it's clear that Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld are Cheney's boys, and Powell his adversary.

Seen in such a light, the changes Bush has announced in his cabinet take on an unmistakable meaning: This is Cheney's government.

Powell would have stayed on as Secretary of State for a while, but Cheney wouldn't have it.

Rice would have been Secretary of Defense, but Cheney wouldn't have it.

George Bush's second term is looking more and more like D*ck Cheney's second term.

And that is a profoundly scary development.

-- Matthew Rothschild

[Moses]

Rice will head a State Dept purged by Cheney, esp. intelligence units.

www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1353796,00.html

Colin and the crazies

The culling of the US secretary of state is symptomatic of a swing even further to the right

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday November 18, 2004
The Guardian

Colin Powell's final scene was a poignant but harsh exposure of his self-delusion and humiliation. The former general held in his head an idea of himself as sacrificing and disciplined. But the good soldier was dismissed at last by his commander-in-chief as a bad egg. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld regarded him either as a useful tool or a vain obstructionist. They deployed his reputation as the most popular man and the most credible face in the US for their own ends, and when he contributed an independent view he was isolated and undermined.

As secretary of state has been a peripheral figure, even a fig leaf, ever since his climactic moment before the UN security council on which he staked his credibility. There he presented the case that WMD in Iraq required war, a case consisting of 26 falsehoods, and about which he later claimed to have been "deceived". When the statue of Saddam was toppled, he offered President Bush 17 volumes of his Future of Iraq project, but it was rejected. Predicting everything from the looting to the insurgency, and suggesting how it might be avoided, the project was politically incorrect.

Powell had wanted to stay on for the first six months of Bush's second term to help shepherd a new Middle East peace process, but the president insisted on his resignation. Condoleezza Rice was named in his place. She had failed at every important task as national security adviser, pointedly neglecting terrorism before September 11, enthusiastically parroting the false claim that Saddam had a nuclear weapons programme, while suppressing contrary intelligence, mismanaging her part of postwar policy so completely that she had to cede it to a deputy, and eviscerating the Middle East road map.


As incompetent as she was at her actual job, she was agile at bureaucratic positioning. Early on, she figured out how to align with the neo-conservatives and to damage Powell. Her usurpation is a lesson to him in blind ambition and loyalty.

Powell's sacking and Rice's promotion are more than examples of behaviour punished and rewarded. His fall and her rise signal the purge of the CIA and the state department, a neocon night of the long knives. Bush's attitude is that of the intimidating loyalty enforcer that he was in his father's political campaigns.

The CIA has not been forgiven for failing to support Cheney's phantasmagorical case linking Saddam to al-Qaida. And the release in September of the outline of the most recent National Intelligence Estimate, laying out dark scenarios for Iraq, was considered an act of insubordination intended to help oust Bush in the election. The new CIA director, Porter Goss, has installed partisan aides at the top, and senior officials have been fired. He has issued a party line diktat that the CIA's mission is to "support the administration and its policies".

At the state department, senior career officers, especially those who were close to Powell, believe they are next on the chopping block. Indeed, Bush has charged Rice with bringing the department under control. Its bureau of intelligence and research, which has provided the most accurate analysis of Iraq, is a special target for purging. Cheney is heavily involved in the planning, and he intends to fill key slots with neocons and fellow-travellers. "By the time she takes over, Rice will have been manoeuvred into a prestructured department staff," one state department source, who has been close to Powell, told me.

The dictation of a political line has conquered policy-making. Since the US emerged as a world power, the executive, because of immense responsibilities and powers, has relied upon impartial information and analysis from its departments and agencies. But vindictiveness against the institutions of government based on expertise, evidence and experience is clearing the way for the intellectual standards and cooked conclusions of rightwing think-tanks and those appointees who emerge from them.

A system of bureaucratic fear and one-party allegiance is being created in this strange soviet Washington. Only loyalists are rewarded. Rice stands as the model. One can never be too loyal. And the loyalists compete to outdo each other. Dissonant information is seen as motivated to injure the president, disloyalty bordering on treason. Success is defined as support for the political line; failure perceived as departure from the line. An atmosphere of personal vendetta and an incentive system for suppressing realities prevails. This is not an administration; it does not administer - it is a regime.

On one of Powell's futile diplomatic trips, his informal conversation with reporters turned to a new book, The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency, by James Naughtie. In it, Powell is quoted as describing the neocons to British foreign minister, Jack Straw, as "f**king crazies". That, the reporters suggested, might be an apt title for his next volume of memoirs. Powell laughed uncontrollably.

· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is Washington bureau chief of salon.com

sidney_blumenthal@ yahoo.com

[Moses]

www.atimes.com   
 <br>Front Page

Hawks flying high with Rice posting

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush's nomination of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to replace Secretary of State Colin Powell consolidates the control over US foreign policy of the coalition of hawks that promoted the war in Iraq, led by Vice President Dick Cheney.

The promotion of Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley, to take her place in the White House also confirms Cheney's pre-eminence in Bush's second term.

A major booster of national missile defense and the development of "usable" mini-nuclear weapons, Hadley held a key policy position under the vice president when Cheney served as Pentagon chief under Bush's father, president George H W Bush, from 1989-93.

Growing speculation that another Cheney ally, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, will be nominated to serve as deputy secretary of state under Rice is adding to the impression that the hawks are on the verge of a clean sweep.

As expected, the State Department's current No 2, Richard Armitage, announced his resignation on Tuesday, thus opening another key slot in the foreign-policy bureaucracy and one on which Bolton and his neo-conservative and ultra-unilateralist backers have had their eyes for months.

"This is a statement that Bush sees that what he's done in his first term is the way he wants to go into the second term, if not a bit more so," said Jonathan Clarke, a former British analyst based at the libertarian Cato Institute and co-author of America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order.

"It's a way of saying, 'If you liked what you saw in the first administration, you're going to love the second one,'" he said in an interview.

Although Rice began her tenure as Bush's national security adviser a traditional "realist", stressing the importance of bolstering US alliances and of committing US troops overseas only in cases where vital national interests were threatened, she was careful from the outset to avoid alienating right-wing forces, particularly Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

On key issues, particularly surrounding the lead-up to the Iraq war, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the US posture toward Iran and North Korea, she more often either aligned herself with or deferred to the hawks, especially Cheney, than she sided with Powell.

That was an immense frustration to the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had assumed at the beginning that, like himself, she was committed to the pragmatic multilateralism of George H W Bush and their mutual mentor, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft.

Thus Rice ordered an early draft of the administration's December 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS) that was written by Powell protege and current president of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass to be completely rewritten, according to James Mann, author of a highly regarded study of the Bush war cabinet, Rise of the Vulcans.

"She thought the Bush administration needed something bolder, something that would represent a more dramatic break with the ideas of the past," noted Mann.

As rewritten, the NSS marked a comprehensive endorsement of most of the controversial ideas put forward under Bush, including global US military dominance, preemption against possible enemies, the aggressive promotion of democracy overseas and the rejection of multilateral mechanisms or treaties that might constrain the exercise of US power.

But Rice appears to have been picked to run the State Department as much for her fierce personal loyalty to Bush as for her own foreign-policy views.

Recommended originally by Scowcroft and former secretary of state George Shultz to serve as Bush's principal foreign-policy adviser during his 2000 campaign, Rice, who shares a love of American football and physical fitness with the president, hit it off immediately with the future leader.

During the past five years, she has frequently spent weekends at the presidential retreat at Camp David or at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, with the Bush family.

The closeness of her relationship with Bush - something that entirely eluded Powell, whose unequaled international and popular standing appeared to evoke some resentment in both the president and vice president - would normally be seen as a plus by the foreign-service officers who toil at the State Department, because it ensures that their views will heard in the White House.
According to Mann, that may yet turn out to be the case. "The White House saw Powell as an independent force and an independent operator," he said, adding that such independence limited his influence.

"Rice, who will be more hawkish, will also now be the spokesman for the State Department and for diplomacy within the administration, and I can imagine situations where, once in a while, the same policies that would have been rejected if they came from Powell might get a better reception at the White House because they came from Rice."

At the same time, Mann described the posting as "Bush's way of establishing his political control over the State Department", which has been seen by many of the hawks and their backers in the media as resisting the president's more aggressive policies. In this view, Rice, like newly assigned Porter Goss at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), will act as an enforcer of Bush's policy "vision" in the department and as a reliable communicator of the president's line to foreign governments.

"She will be a much more forceful advocate [of Bush's policy] to American allies and partners and less inclined to be a sponge for their frustrations," said Clarke. "She'll be more inclined to take the fight to them and not allow the outside world to think that she is somehow a channel into the foreign-policy-making process to deflect or undermine the president's policies."

Many State Department officials expressed serious concerns about Rice's appointment on Tuesday, even as they were recovering from Monday's announcement by Powell that he was indeed leaving.

Powell, who devoted considerable time and effort to managing the department, had raised morale significantly from its nadir under his predecessor, Madeleine Albright, who tended to ignore the career officers in favor of a small group of political appointees. "We're so sad to see him go," said one veteran, who noted that Rice's managerial experience has been far more limited.

Indeed, most analysts assess her experience overseeing the National Security Council (NSC) staff quite negatively because of her reluctance to take a position when policies were deadlocked, to ensure that all sides were heard, and to enforce discipline on the various agencies once a policy was decided. As a result, policy reviews in key areas, such as Iran and North Korea, to cite two of the most prominent examples, dragged on for months and in some cases were never completed.

To the great frustration of Powell and former CIA director George Tenet, Rice tolerated informal channels of communication between the mainly neo-conservative appointees around Rumsfeld and Cheney's office, which is headed by his neo-con chief of staff and national security adviser, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Libby, whose own national-security staff has been exceptionally large and aggressive, "is able to run circles around Condi", one former NSC staffer told Inter Press Service last year (see Cheney's grip tight on foreign policy reins, Oct 23, 2003).

Hadley, a lawyer by profession, is seen as a hardline technocrat who has specialized in nuclear weapons and national missile defense. He has been a major advocate of preemption and the development of "mini-nukes" and other new nuclear weapons that could be used for conventional purposes.

Considered particularly discreet - even self-effacing - Hadley came under strong criticism in various reports in the run-up to the war in Iraq, primarily because of his close working relationship with Libby on promoting a number of now-discredited efforts to tie ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and to assert that Saddam was reconstituting a nuclear-weapons program.
(Inter Press Service)
www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FK18Aa01.html

[POA]

I don't know if if this could possibly be considered a 'bright' side, but they seem to have managed to promote all of the totally incompetent people completely disconnected from reality.

[Moses]

Not a bright side because they are in the process of demolishing the United States government, and bringing it under the control of a small cabal, and a foreign power.

The Government of the United States is being consolidated and put under the personal control of a small cabal loyal to a foreign power:

After day of cabinet resignations, many fear a shift to the right
By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell's resignation and a flood of high-level departures at the State Department and CIA remove the cautionary voices that had often acted as a brake on President Bush's aggressive foreign policy.


U.S. officials and foreign policy analysts said Monday that by agreeing to Powell's departure and approving a purge by new CIA chief Porter Goss, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney appear to be eliminating the few independent centers of power in the U.S. national security apparatus and cementing the system under their personal control.


Powell and his State Department team - quietly backed by the intelligence community - argued often for a foreign policy that was more inclusive of allies and that relied on diplomacy and coercion rather than on force to deal with adversaries.


They lost more battles than they won.


Powell, who friends said had hoped to stay on a little longer, will be replaced at the State Department by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, said a senior administration official. Rice is far closer personally to Bush.


Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a major architect of the Iraq war along with Bush and Cheney, appears to be staying for now, signaling that the White House believes its much-criticized Iraq policies are on the right track.


"Letting him go would be an admission of failure," said one senior administration official who, like others, requested anonymity because of the White House's distaste for dissent.


"Now," the official said, "they've got no one left to blame but themselves if things don't go right."


"We are seeing the consummation of the revolution," said Ivo Daalder, a scholar at the Washington-based Brookings Institution and author of a book on Bush's foreign policy.


"Anybody who thought that a `Bush 2' foreign policy would be a more moderate, multilateral, (John) Kerry-like foreign policy just doesn't understand this president, or this election," Daalder said.


Powell's resignation was the most prominent of a string of resignations that were announced or are in the works.


At the CIA Monday morning, Goss announced the resignations of Deputy Director for Operations Stephen Kappes, who heads the clandestine service, and his deputy Michael Sulick. Both had clashed with Goss over suggestions that CIA counterintelligence officers should investigate leaks to the media, intelligence officials said.


Goss, a former Republican congressman from Florida, and a team of four aides he brought from the House Intelligence Committee, have begun a post-election purge of the Operations Directorate that's infuriated and alarmed current and former U.S. intelligence officials.


Many officials believe that the CIA, particularly the DO, as the Operations Directorate is known, is in dire need of reform. The agency was largely unable to penetrate either al-Qaida or Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime and critics charge that it's become too risk-averse and bureaucratic.


But, they said, the way Goss and his aides have proceeded has caused turmoil during heightened intelligence-gathering challenges. It smacks of partisanship and retaliation for the agency's production of analysis that doesn't support White House policy, they said.


"There is no doubt that changes needed to take place at the CIA, and people should be held accountable for past failures," Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. "However, the departure of highly respected and competent individuals at such a crucial time is a grave concern."


"Goss must take immediate steps to stabilize the situation at the CIA," he said.


"What Goss has done with his four minions is just appalling because it strikes at the heart of morale, which was not good to begin with," said Stanley Bedlington, a counterterrorism expert who spent 17 years at the CIA. "To upset the intelligence machine to the extent that it has been upset is the height of foolishness."


Others said that the CIA is in need of shock therapy.


"The more turmoil, the better. The place is dysfunctional," said one former CIA officer, who requested anonymity. "I'm not too sure there is a right way (to institute change). You are going into a hornets' nest."


Goss said Kappes and Sulick "honorably served their nation and this agency with distinction for many years."


"There will be no gap in our operations fighting the global war on terror, nor in any of our other vital activities," Goss added. He said he asked the current head of the Counterterrorist Center to take Kappes' place. Knight Ridder is withholding his name because he was a covert operative. [Said to be former Station Chief, Latin America, who was reprimanded in '97 for using his office to protect a friend involved in drug trafficking]


Three senior administration officials charged that Goss and his aides are carrying out a "White House-directed purge." One said it appears to be directed at "everybody who said there was no connection between Iraq and al-Qaida and everybody who they think leaked information that undercut what the administration was claiming."


Many intelligence and other officials questioned the administration's claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaida, claims that subsequent investigations have found to be erroneous. They also challenged White House assessments about political and economic progress in Iraq.


Cheney, they said, was particularly angered by reports, first carried by Knight Ridder, that the CIA had been unable to find any conclusive evidence tying Saddam's regime to Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Cheney had ordered the CIA to take another look at possible links among Saddam, Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden, the official said, and was angered when a CIA briefer told him the results of the inquiry.


"This is a classic case of shooting the messenger," said one senior official. "Unfortunately, they're the same messengers we're counting on to warn us of the next al-Qaida attack."


At the State Department, officials said, Powell is expected to be accompanied out the door by virtually his entire management team: Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage; Undersecretary for Political Affairs Marc Grossman, the department's No. 3 official; Undersecretary for Management Grant Green; and several others.


"They're going to purge the State Department," said one of the senior officials, adding that he'd heard White House officials say: "The State Department doesn't get it. They're not on the president's message."

Powell will be sorely missed among career employees, not so much for his policy successes, but because he made personnel a priority and used his political clout to wrest much-needed funds and hiring authority from Congress.


Powell imbued "a sense of self-worth that's a rare commodity for the civil service and the foreign service that works here," a mid-level official said. "It hasn't sunk into folks around here that we're about to lose our lord and protector."

www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/10190336.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

[Moses]

The cons and the neocons also went on a massive campaign to assist the leader of "the only democracy" in the Middle East, or as some know him, the "butcher of Sabra and Shatila." On August 2, 2004, in reference to the EU's attempt to engage Iran in a dialogue concerning processing uranium and to prevent another US-Israeli (USraeli) war in the Middle East, the national security adviser Condoleezza Rice warned: "The Iranians have been trouble for a very long time. And it's one reason that this regime has to be isolated in its bad behavior, not quote-unquote, 'engaged'" (Reuters, Aug 2, 2004). This was, of course, the same Condoleezza Rice who on September 8, 2002, warned the world about Iraq's non-existing nuclear weapons by saying "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

www.counterpunch.org/sasan12032004.html

the representatives of both Presidential candidates, namely, Condoleezza Rice and Richard Holbrooke, appeared at AIPAC's "Largest-Ever National Summit" on October 24-25 in Hollywood, Florida, to pay homage to an agency that was accused of involvement in spying. Soon after, AIPAC's usual website, which was temporarily halted by the cries of we are "loyal U.S. citizens," went back to what it does best, i.e., trying to lead the US to wage another war in the Middle East, this time against Iran:

Today, AIPAC has 65,000 members across all 50 states who are at the forefront of the most vexing issues facing Israel today: stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, fighting terrorism and achieving peace. And above all, ensuring that Israel is strong enough to meet these challenges. (AIPAC website)

[Moses]

Neocons take complete control
George W. Bush continues to purge his administration of those who advised caution in Iraq, while Dick Cheney wrests power from a wobbly Condoleezza Rice.

---

By Sidney Blumenthal



Dec. 30, 2004  |  The transition to President Bush's second term, filled with backstage betrayals, plots and pathologies, would make for an excellent chapter of "I, Claudius." To begin with, I have learned from numerous sources, including several people close to Brent Scowcroft, that Bush has unceremoniously and without public acknowledgment dumped Scowcroft, his father's closest associate and friend, as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. The elder Bush's national security advisor was the last remnant of traditional Republican realism permitted to exist within the administration. But no longer. At the same time, Vice President Dick Cheney has imposed his authority over Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice, in order to blackball Arnold Kanter, former undersecretary of state to James Baker, and partner in the Scowcroft Group, as a candidate for deputy secretary of state.

"Words like 'incoherent' come to mind," one top State Department official told me about Rice's effort to organize her office. She is unable to assert herself against Cheney, her wobbliness a sign that the State Department will mostly be sidelined as a power center for the next four years. The neoconservatives' attempt to force their favorites on Rice and her failure to accede to their every demand is one motive ascribed to Cheney's veto of Kanter.

Rice may have wanted to appoint as deputy her old friend Robert Blackwill, whom she had put in charge of Iraq at the NSC. But Blackwill, a mercurial personality with a volcanic temper, allegedly physically assaulted a female U.S. Foreign Service officer in Kuwait and was forced to resign in November. Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage assembled the evidence against Blackwill and presented it to Rice. "Condi only dismissed him after Powell and Armitage threatened to go public," a State Department source close to Powell told me.

Meanwhile, key senior State Department professionals, with long, promising careers presumably ahead of them, such as Marc Grossman, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, have abruptly resigned. According to their colleagues, who have chosen to remain (at least for now), they foresee the damage that will be done as Rice is charged with whipping the State Department into line with the White House and Pentagon neocons. Floundering, Rice has pleaded with Armitage to stay on for a while. But "he colorfully said he would not," a State Department official told me. Rice's radio silence when her former mentor, Scowcroft, was defenestrated, was taken by the State Department professionals as a sign of things to come.

Bush has borne resentment against his father's alter ego since before Scowcroft privately rebuked him for his Iraq follies more than a year ago -- an incident that has not previously been reported. Bush "did not receive it well," said a friend of Scowcroft's. In "A World Transformed," the elder Bush's 1998 memoir, coauthored with Scowcroft, they explained why the then-president decided not to seize Baghdad in the Gulf War: "Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." In the run-up to the Iraq War, Scowcroft wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal warning of the danger. Bush derided him, according to conservative biographers Peter and Rachel Schweizer in "The Bushes": "Scowcroft has become a pain in the ass in his old age," they quoted Bush. The Schweizers write, "Although he never went public with them, the president's own father shared many of Scowcroft's concerns." Despite his belief that the younger Bush's policies were disastrous, Scowcroft publicly supported him for reelection mainly out of loyalty to the father.

The rejection of Kanter is a compound rejection of Scowcroft and James Baker -- the tough, cunning, results-oriented operator who as White House chief of staff saved the Reagan presidency from its ideologues, managed the elder Bush's successful campaign in 1988, and was summoned by the family in 2000 to rescue George W. in Florida. When all else failed (the voters, for example), Baker arranged the outcome that put Bush in the Oval Office. In the 1995 memoir of his years as secretary of treasury and state, Baker observed that in the Gulf War the administration's "one overriding strategic concern was to avoid what we often referred to as the Lebanonization of Iraq, which we believed would create a geopolitical nightmare." In private, Baker is scathing about the current occupant of the White House, people who have spoken with him have recently related to me. Now the one indispensable creator of the Bush family political fortunes is repudiated.

Those Republican elders who warned of endless war are purged. And those who advised Bush that Saddam was building nuclear weapons, that with a light military force the operation would be a "cakewalk," that capturing Baghdad was a "mission accomplished," and that the Iraqi army should be disbanded, are rewarded.

Powell, the outgoing secretary of state fighting his last battle, a rearguard action against his own administration on behalf of his tattered reputation, is leaking stories to the Washington Post about how his advice went unheeded. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whose heart beats with the compassion of a crocodile, clings to his job by staging Florence Nightingale-like tableaux of hand-holding the wounded, while declaiming into the desert wind about "victory." Since the election, 203 U.S. soldiers have been killed and 1,674 wounded.

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About the writer
Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.

[Moses]

Bush chooses Zoellick as Deputy Secretary of State

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Janine Zacharia, THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 8, 2005

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US President George W. Bush on Friday chose Robert Zoellick, the US Trade Representative, to be Deputy Secretary of State. Zoellick, who will replace Richard Armitage as the second highest-ranking US diplomat, will face Senate confirmation.

Zoellick, a long-time diplomat, has been the chief US official negotiating free trade agreements around the world for the past four years, including with Middle Eastern countries like Morocco.

Zoellick's confirmation hearing should take place in the coming weeks. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who Bush has nominated to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State, will face Senate questioning on January 18.

Also on Friday, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, a leading architect of the Iraq war, said he had been asked to remain in the Bush administration. "I have been asked to stay and have accepted," Wolfowitz told Reuters through a spokesman.

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This article can also be read at www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1105154357467


Copyright 1995-2005 The Jerusalem Post - www.jpost.com/

[Moses]

Bolton not resigned


Washington, DC, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- The U.S. State Department Friday denied reports of the resignation of John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.


The denial followed media reports that Bolton had resigned over the selection of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick for the No. 2 job at the State Department.

Earlier Friday, Bush announced Zoellick would be the deputy to Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice.

Sources at the State Department, however, said Bolton would be replaced and named Robert G. Joseph, one of Condoleezza Rice's assistants at the National Security Council, as his likely successor.

The change is part of Rice's move to bring her own team to the State Department, the sources said. She is replacing Secretary of State Colin Powell in the second Bush administration.

[Moses]

....judging from his actions and writings before joining the current administration, Mr. Zoellick is a more clearheaded hawk than he is often given credit for. In 1998, for example, he joined Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Elliott Abrams, among others, in sending a letter to Bill Clinton warning that if Saddam Hussein were to "acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will be put at hazard." The signers urged Mr. Clinton to make it the aim of American foreign policy to "remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from power."

    And, writing in Foreign Policy, Mr. Zoellick said: "Finally, a modern Republican foreign policy recognizes that there is still evil in the world — people who hate America and the ideas for which it stands. Today, we face enemies who are hard at work to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, along with the missiles to deliver them. The United States must remain vigilant and have the strength to defeat its enemies."

    Mr. Zoellick is a superb choice for the post, and looks to be philosophically in sync with the president and incoming Miss Rice.

washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050106-082214-9316r.htm


Duck...........Duck..........Goose!
    <br>

[Moses]

February 4, 2005

Rice Says U.S. Won't Aid Europe on Iran Incentives
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN, ELAINE SCIOLINO and DAVID E. SANGER

LONDON, Feb. 3 - Less than a day after President Bush declared he was "working with European allies" to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States would continue to rebuff European requests to participate directly in offering incentives for Iran to drop what is suspected of being a nuclear arms program.

Opening her first overseas trip as secretary, Ms. Rice also declared that the Tehran government's record on human rights was "something to be loathed" - a harsh comment that comes at a time when many European leaders have asked the United States to help lower tensions with Iran.

"I don't think anybody thinks that the unelected mullahs who run that regime are a good thing for the Iranian people or for the region," Ms. Rice said to reporters on her plane to London. "I think our European allies agree that the Iranian regime's human rights behavior and its behavior toward its own population is something to be loathed."

Ms. Rice made her remarks as the Iranians, the Europeans and many in Washington were dissecting Mr. Bush's comments about Iran - and far gentler words about Saudi Arabia and Egypt - in his State of the Union address on Wednesday night. In the address, Mr. Bush seemed to invite the people of Iran to liberate themselves from their clerical rulers, for the first time matching a specific nation to his Inauguration Day call for an end to tyranny around the world.

But he also sounded willing to support the Europeans in their initiative to negotiate an end to a key part of Iran's nuclear program.

"Today, Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror, pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve," Mr. Bush said. "We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing, and end its support for terror. And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you."

But he made no effort to urge the people of Egypt or Saudi Arabia to challenge their governments, even though both countries have turned aside Mr. Bush's past calls that they allow democratic forces to determine who will rule their governments. "The government of Saudi Arabia can demonstrate its leadership in the region by expanding the role of its people in determining their future," he said in the speech, and Egypt "can now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East."....



But the administration has left its policy on regime change deliberately ambiguous. While a former deputy secretary of state, Richard L. Armitage, had once said the administration did not favor regime change in Iran, Ms. Rice said on Thursday that "what we support is that the Iranian people should have a chance to determine their own future." She said she hoped her trip would send "a very clear message" that Europe and the United States were united in their approach.

But in tone and substance, her comments suggested that a wide rift remained; Europeans continue to complain that the Bush administration was overly confrontational. Some Europeans fear that the American approach could lead to eventual attacks on areas suspected of being Iranian nuclear sites. The foreign ministers of several European nations have recently begun to warn that without American participation in an incentive package for Iran, their efforts could founder. [Which is part of the Bush plan-- they will then declare these efforts a "failure" and insist on sanctions and do the whole UN thing, etc.]

"There has to be a sense that there will be a U.S. buy-in to the solution," John Bruton, the European Union's representative to the United States, told reporters earlier this week, adding that the administration was "not engaged in the way we would like."

But Ms. Rice said Thursday: "It's not the absence of anybody's involvement that is keeping the Iranians from knowing what they need to do. They need to live up to their obligations."

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Steven R. Weisman reported from London for this article, Elaine Sciolino from Paris and David E. Sanger from Washington.

[Moses]

Rice Scolds Russia