Promoter of War Lies to be promoted : NSC Director

[Moses]

Stephen Hadley as National Security Advisor – Hadley is portrayed as the archetypal technocrat, whose personal loyalty to the president is the key factor in his promotion to head of the NSC. But his ideological inclinations are solidly neocon, and this was clear early on when he briefed a group of prominent Republicans, in the spring of 2000, on what the foreign policy priorities of a Bush administration would be, and, as former intelligence official Patrick Lang relates, the Bushies' Iraq fixation predated 9/11:

"Hadley's briefing shocked a number of the participants, according to Clifford Kiracofe, a professor at the Virginia Military Institute, who spoke to several of them shortly after the meeting. Hadley announced that the 'number-one foreign-policy agenda' of a Bush administration would be Iraq and the unfinished business of removing Saddam Hussein from power. Hadley also made it clear that the Israel-Palestine conflict, which had dominated the Middle East agenda of the Clinton administration, would be placed in the deep freeze."

Like Rice, Hadley is a facilitator, a conduit through which the neocons operate, allowing them to bypass all opposition – such as formerly existed in the CIA and the State Department – such as the time he "forgot" to pass on to the president the CIA's debunking of the claim that Saddam was seeking nuke-grade uranium in the African nation of Niger.

www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3993

[Moses]

Hadley has admirers among Democratic foreign policy experts. Nancy Soderberg, who was a deputy national security advisor under President Clinton, praised Hadley in a recent interview for his skills in working out consensus among officials from different government agencies.

    But Hadley's low-key manner does not mean he does not have strong conservative convictions, said James Mann, author of "Rise of the Vulcans," a book on Bush's foreign policy team.

    "He's a get-along guy and, like Cheney, he's very low-key," Mann said. "But on policy, he's very hawkish."

    Hadley, who worked for both Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz during President George H.W. Bush's administration, has argued for broadening the use of nuclear weapons to include deterrence against "weapons of mass destruction."

    In one paper, he wrote that it was often "an unstated premise" in nuclear arms debates that such weapons may only be used for deterrence. But he added: "I am not sure this unstated premise is true."

    Hadley for years has been a leading advocate for expansion of the U.S. missile defense program prized by Bush, and for abandonment of the keystone Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. When Bush came to office in 2001, his team expected missile defense to be the preeminent national security issue.

    "He has always favored missile defense, and has had a skeptical but not unreasonable view of arms control agreements," said David J. Smith, an arms control negotiator during the Reagan and first Bush administrations.

    During the 2000 presidential campaign, Hadley joined the group of Bush advisors known as the Vulcans that also included Rice and Wolfowitz.

    Before that, Hadley practiced international business and regulatory law at the firm of Shea & Gardner, which also included former CIA Director R. James Woolsey.

    Hadley was a principal in the consulting business of Brent Scowcroft, who was national security advisor under George H.W. Bush. In part because of this association, Hadley has sometimes been seen as a moderate Republican internationalist, like Scowcroft.

    But some foreign policy experts said that in recent years Hadley's views had shifted, like Bush's, toward a more assertive approach abroad.

    Hadley went to Yale Law School and worked in the Nixon and Ford administrations. As an assistant defense secretary in the administration of the elder Bush, he oversaw the issues of missile defense, nuclear weapons and arms control.

www.truthout.org/docs_04/111804E.shtml