[Mb-civic] Ray McGovern - Men Intoxicated with Power and Courtiers Who Serve Them

[Mike Blaxill]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011406Y.shtml

Men Intoxicated with Power and Courtiers Who
Serve Them 
    By Ray McGovern 
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Saturday 14 January 2006

    Individually, the new "dots" supplied by
revelations about the Iraq war in James Risen's
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and
the Bush Administration are not very surprising.
Collectively, though, they provide valuable
insight into the peculiar way in which President
George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony
Blair prepared to launch an unprovoked war -
shades of Germany and Quisling Austria two
generations ago. Needed: power-intoxicated
leaders, court functionaries to serve them, and
obedient military leaders able to subordinate
conscience to career requirements.

    Risen's book throws new light on just how
Bush and Blair led their countries into war. It
is a case study of the pitfalls in marginalizing
foreign policy bureaucracies in favor of
sycophants one level down. That part of his book
is as revealing as Risen's now-famous disclosures
of illegal eavesdropping on Americans by the
National Security Agency (NSA). Cumulatively, the
"dots" furnished by Risen illuminate US-UK
plotting and planning in 2002 - a year that will
live in infamy.

    Tête-à-Tête with Tenet

    Risen fills in gaps regarding the urgent
visit to Washington by the British intelligence
chief, Richard Dearlove, and the meeting he had
with Tenet on July 20, 2002. We already knew from
the famous "Downing Street Minutes" published by
London's Sunday Times on May 1, 2005 - official
minutes taken at a July 23, 2002, meeting of
Blair's top advisers - that Dearlove brought back
word from Washington that Bush had decided to
remove Saddam Hussein by force, and that the war
would be "justified" by cooking up intelligence
regarding weapons of mass destruction and warning
that Iraq might give them to terrorists like the
ones responsible for 9/11. While Tenet's name sat
atop the list of usual suspects, we did not know
for sure that it was he who provided this
reassurance to the British, until one of Risen's
CIA sources, who took part in the discussions
with Dearlove, filled in that particular gap.

    Risen's revelations add weight to the
"Downing Street Minutes." These remain a pearl of
great price, since they provide the smoking gun -
documentary evidence that President George W.
Bush, with Blair's acquiescence, had decided by
mid-2002 to effect "regime change" by force on
false pretenses. The minutes of the July 23
meeting leave no doubt that the president had
decided to attack Iraq, even while saying in
public that war would come only as a "last
resort."

    Dearlove is quoted as saying that Bush wanted
to remove Saddam through military action
"justified by the conjunction of terrorism and
WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being
fixed around the policy [emphasis added]." But I
have often wondered, why did Dearlove begin that
sentence with the conjunction "But?"

    Pregnant Conjunctions

    Reference to the "conjunction" of terrorism
and WMD is transparent. By the time the Downing
Street minutes hit the front page of the Sunday
Times, it had long since been clear that, for
whatever reason, Blair had bought into Bush's
plan to invade Iraq; that the plan included
conjuring up the specter of a "mushroom cloud" to
deceive Congress and Parliament into approving
war; and that this would be achieved by
pretending that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction and might give them to terrorists.
That "conjunction" is clear.

    But what about the "But?" The answer to that
becomes clearer elsewhere in the minutes, which
quote Foreign Secretary Jack Straw daring to warn
that the case was "thin." According to the
minutes, Straw said that:

It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to
take military action, even if the timing was not
yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was
not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD
capability was less than that of Libya, North
Korea or Iran.
    It was presumably at this point that Dearlove
countered, "But the intelligence and facts were
being fixed around the policy." Sadly, as is now
well known, in the summer and fall of 2002 that
is precisely what was done, with the full
cooperation of American and British intelligence
and invaluable help from the likes of the
archdeacon of con-men, Ahmed Chalabi, and his
stenographer, Judith Miller of the New York
Times.

    Marginalization of the Bureaucracy

    Risen's revelations in State of War throw
further light on the marginalization of Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw and his US colleague,
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell - and the
institutions they headed - in the months leading
up to the attack on Iraq. That they both had
serious doubts about the justification for -
indeed, the sanity of - launching war was clear
even then to close observers.

    Powell's misgivings became still more obvious
in a book by BBC broadcaster James Naughtie
published a year and a half ago. Naughtie quoted
Powell describing the neo-conservatives in
control of policy toward Iraq as "f___ing
crazies." (At a reporter's suggestion that Powell
use this sobriquet as a title for his memoirs,
the then-secretary of state laughed
uncontrollably.)

    "Crazies" (with or without the preceding
adjective) is an epithet in use for over 20 years
to refer to Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and
other ideologues of the extreme right, at a time
when they were deliberately restricted to
mid-level positions in the Reagan and Bush
administrations so they could not cause major
trouble. The words escaped Powell's mouth during
a telephone conversation with his counterpart
Jack Straw during the run-up to the war,
according to Naughtie.

    Who Else Heard Powell's Colorful Language?

    Powell's ideologue colleagues, of course,
were only too well aware that the disdain was
mutual - and they could not have been unaware of
the moniker "crazies." Now that we know the
extent of NSA's warrantless monitoring of US
citizens, however, it seems altogether likely
that conversations between Powell and Straw were
among those intercepted - apparently unbeknownst
to Powell, who insists he was told nothing of the
widened tasks assigned to NSA by the president.

    Although arch-ideologue and now US Ambassador
to the UN John Bolton was then nominally
subordinate to Powell while working at State, he
was clearly Powell's ideological "minder."
Bolton's requests (revealed at his confirmation
hearings) for certain transcripts of NSA
intercepts suggest he wanted to be able to bring
hard copy to his neo-conservative colleagues in
the White House to provide documentary proof of
Powell's treachery. Small wonder that the
administration refused to provide copies of the
NSA documents Bolton requested to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, even though that
eventually meant the Senate would not confirm
Bolton as Ambassador to the UN and that he would
have to be given an interim appointment.

    And small wonder that Powell's contract was
not renewed.

    Risen to the Occasion

    Risen's book throws intriguing light on the
intrigue. We know from other leaked British
official documents that Jack Straw was something
of a thorn in the side of Blair's more war-prone
advisers, and was regarded as a general nuisance
for raising picayune matters like whether the war
might violate international law. Here is an
excerpt from a memo he wrote to Blair on March
25, 2002, before Blair visited Bush at Crawford
and came home committed to support war:

There has been no credible evidence to link Iraq
with UBL [Usama Bin Laden] and Al Qaida.
Objectively, the threat from Iraq has not
worsened as a result of 11 September.... regime
change per se is no justification for military
action ... A legal justification is a necessary
but far from sufficient precondition for military
action. We have also to answer the big question -
what will this action achieve? There seems to be
a larger hole in this than in anything.... Iraq
has had NO [emphasis in original] history of
democracy so no one has this habit or experience.
    Straw and Powell just would not "get with the
program." Small wonder that Blair and Bush
decided to circumvent their chief foreign policy
advisers and resort to more unquestioning
loyalists like their intelligence chiefs.

    Risen makes very clear is that Blair felt an
urgent need for some kind of high-level,
independent confirmation of what he was hearing
on the telephone directly from Bush, and that
both Straw and Powell were seen as flies in the
ointment. CIA director Tenet, on the other hand,
was very close to and loyal to the president.
Better still, he enjoyed daily access to the
president, had a perfect record for telling him
what he wanted to hear, and knew the president's
mind on Iraq. And the latter is what Blair wanted
to know.

    That explains Blair's urgent insistence that
Dearlove sound out Tenet, in order to increase
Blair's comfort level before he let himself get
even more deeply involved in the Iraq adventure.
And the garrulous Greek from Queens did not
disappoint.

    From the minutes recording Dearlove's July
23, 2002, report to Blair and his top twelve
advisers, as well as from Risen's additional
revelations, it is clear that "slam-dunk" Tenet
gave the needed reassurances to Dearlove, with
whom he spoke one-on-one for an hour and a half
on July 20, 2002. The message was this: Blair
need not worry. Nor need he pay any heed to
naysayers or foot draggers like Straw and Powell.
President Bush had decided for war, and the
intelligence would be "fixed" to support that
policy.

    Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the
publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in Washington, DC. He is on the Steering
Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity, and has a chapter "Sham Dunk: Cooking
Intelligence for the President" in Neo-CONNED Again!