The Spies Who Pushed for War

[quiet.american]

In light of Cheney emerging from his hidey-hole yesterday to
literally spew more of the same ol', same ol', I think this is worth
calling attention to again today (I'd posted about it yesterday) --
it's an article about the Office of Special Plans that was published
in 2003 by the Guardian newspaper; and it:

1) slays the lie that "everyone had access to the exact same
information we did"

' "They surveyed data and picked out what they liked," said
Gregory Thielmann, a senior official in the state department's
intelligence bureau until his retirement in September. "The whole
thing was bizarre. The secretary of defence had this huge defence
intelligence agency, and he went around it." '

2) slays the lie that "no evidence has been found that anyone at the
CIA was pressured."

'Mr Tenet has officially taken responsibility for the president's
unsubstantiated claim in January that Saddam Hussein's regime had
been trying to buy uranium in Africa, but he also said his agency was
under pressure to justify a war that the administration had already
decided on.'

3) Puts in print that it operated under the radar and out of the
sight of Congress with the blessing of Dick Cheney:

The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was
set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA
information and operated under the patronage of hardline
conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon
and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.
The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government,
much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional
oversight.

The Guardian - Full Article

[havocmom]

1. Recommended and bookmarked

Handy dandy concise reference for making neocon enablers to STFU

Thanks :thumbsup:

[quiet.american]

2. Anytime. :) n/t

:hi:

[kentuck]

3. Yes. Ask them to explain the OSP...

Watch them squirm.

[DUBYASCREWEDUS]

4. Sounds like

W's Dick is out of control - - again!

[prescole]

5. Sicker and sicker it gets. Worst. Debacle. Ever. nt

[PurpleChez]

8. Excellent synopsis. This has gone beyond Worst President Ever.

It is now truely a debacle. A crime of the highest magnitude. Dare I say, a crap-fest. A sin that our society must atone for for a very, very long time.

[occuserpens]

6. GU simulates activity

GU discusses OSP, "clean break", etc, as if that's breaking news. The problem is, all this is known quite for some time. Why simulate activity?

1. Julian Borger. The spies who pushed for war: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,999737,00.html
2. Wiki on OSP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans
3. Wiki on Feith: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Feith

[Teena]

7. How do we spread this to those who still convincing?

http://www.prisonplanet.com/hilton_03_11_03.mp3

Listen to this, make copies of it, and send to everyone you can think of. Stan Hilton, former Chief of Staff to Bob Dole, is a lawyer who is representing over 400 families of 9/11 victims. He has reams of evidence that the Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz/Rice/Rumsfeld cabal planned and executed the 9/11 attacks.
Once this information inundates every news service there is, we won't have to be whining about the Bush administration again. Let's get this done!

[havocmom]

9. and keep this thread kicked

:kick:

[ewagner]

10. Thanks for posting that again

I lost if from my bookmarks through some clumsy house-cleaning earlier this year.

We need this infor out in the public domain.

[quiet.american]

23. Agree - the lies should not be allowed to drown out the truth. n/t

[savemefromdumbya]

11. Goebbels' Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda

As Minister of Enlightenment, Goebbels had two main tasks:
to ensure nobody in Germany could read or see anything that was hostile or damaging to the Nazi Party.
to ensure that the views of the Nazis were put across in the most persuasive manner possible.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/propaganda_in_nazi_germany.htm

[Minnesota_Lib]

12. More on the OSP from Mother Jones (Jan/Feb 2004)

I as well as others have posted this excellent and detailed article before, but for those that missed it...The Lie Factory.

Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon's Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists. "It wasn't intelligence‚ -- it was propaganda," she says. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials‚ -- including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February‚ -- that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war.

<snip>

Though Feith, in that briefing, described Wurmser's unit as an innocent project, "a global exercise" that was not meant to put pressure on other intelligence agencies or create skewed intelligence to fit preconceived policy notions, many other sources assert that it did exactly that. That the White House and the Pentagon put enormous pressure on the CIA to go along with its version of events has been widely reported, highlighted by visits to CIA headquarters by Vice President Cheney and Lewis Libby, his chief of staff. Led by Perle, the neocons seethed with contempt for the CIA. The CIA's analysis, said Perle, "isn't worth the paper it's printed on." Standing in a crowded hallway during an AEI event, Perle added, "The CIA is status quo oriented. They don't want to take risks."

That became the mantra of the shadow agency within an agency.

Full article:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html

The intelligence chain:

[quiet.american]

22. Fastastic chart and info -- thanks. n/t

[Wordie]

13. ...and a lot of the info may have been "cooked" with * admin involvement

(Edited to add: K&R, and thanks for posting this thread)

...so the claim is misleading. It looks like the Repubs "cooked" the info, so to then claim that the Dems "had the same information" is ridiculous, and just another part of the lie machine at work.

Here is another thread that shows that the Niger uranium claims were deliberately false, not just a case of an individual in it for "economic gain," as we've heard lately (as a result of the FBI's investigation, which was concluded way too soon, imho).

(La Repubblica: Italian Niger investigation (and FBI) a whitewash (Hadley?))
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2255157

[IkeWarnedUs]

14. some things never change

This is from the 2003 Guardian article, but it could fit into almost any news story today (except for the word "new"):

---------------------
The White House counter-attacked yesterday when new chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, accused critics of "politicising the war" and trying to "rewrite history". But the Democratic leadership kept up its questions over the White House role.

---------------------

[PATRICK]

15. Cheney has been consistent

he has set up shadow government everywhere to make complete end runs around all institutions that even if sympathetic cannot possibly move totally and fast enough(or do do crimes) as he thinks fit. Energy Commission, the oddly forgotten Security end run before 911, the Shadow Government itself, and on and on. Quite of fan of the agency within an agency so long as it is above, his own, and loyally tailored.

He's an outright traitor.

[havocmom]

16. Kick again

Good stuff. Don't want the evening shift to miss it!
:kick:

[RedEarth]

17. great article....

[Uncle Joe]

18. Looks like, they brownieised intelligence.

Heckuva job O.S.P.

Kicked and nominated

:kick:

[Roland99]

19. More on the OSP from someone who WORKED in it - Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski

The New Pentagon Papers
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/

Full article available for free.



Or,

Hijacking Catastrophe
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6895.htm

Hijacking Catastrophe is powerful, understated, straightforward and educational. In a single meticulously organized hour of evidence and analysis, viewers are treated to a thoughtful explanation of modern American empire, neo-conservatism as a driving force for the current Bush administration.


(Video) - Right-click and Save As...
http://videos.informationclearinghouse.info/hijacking_catastrophe.rm

[ClintonTyree]

20. Common sense and DU rules...........

prohibit me from saying what I'd like to. That the rationale for this entire war of choice was constructed by a few men from the United States and Israel sickens me. Someday, somehow, I hope justice is served to all who contributed to this clusterfuck. I know I'm wishing for the impossible. A few underlings may pay for the sins of their masters but the people actually responsible will escape all punishment, as always.
Like I said, I cannot say what I really want to. Most here can use their imaginations and venture a good guess as to my feelings.

[cal04]

21. here's another one with some interesting information

Iraq, the secret US visit, and an angry military chief

In an exclusive interview with The Observer, Taft has for the first time disclosed details of Goldsmith's mysterious visit to the US capital. Up until now, the British government has been reluctant to give any details of his meeting with the powerful network of lawyers in Bush's inner sanctum who helped persuade him that a second UN resolution was not necessary.
Goldsmith, who had been expressing doubts about the legality of any proposed war, was sent to Washington by the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to 'put some steel in his spine', as one official has said.
On 11 February, Goldsmith met Taft, a former US ambassador to Nato who was then chief legal adviser to the Secretary of State, Colin Powell. After a gruelling 90-minute meeting in Taft's conference room 6419, Goldsmith then met the US Attorney General, John Ashcroft, followed by a formidable triumvirate including Judge Al Gonzales, Bush's chief lawyer at the White House.

Philippe Sands QC, an international lawyer whose book Lawless World re-ignited the row over the Attorney General's legal advice said: 'How delightful that a Labour government should seek assistance from US lawyers so closely associated with neo-con efforts to destroy the international legal order.'


In his 7 March legal advice, Lord Goldsmith makes it clear that some British law officers believed that it was up to the Security Council, not individual states, to decide if Iraq was in breach of its obligations. But Goldsmith discloses that he had fully taken on board the arguments made to him during his visit to Washington: 'The US have a rather different view: they maintain that the fact of whether Iraq is in breach is a matter of objective fact, which may therefore be assessed by individual member states. I am not aware of any other state which supports this view.'
The advice clarifies a second vital point: that the American legal advisers who drew up 1441 were convinced that it contained, in itself, the authorisation to use force against Saddam if he could be shown to have failed to disarm. Goldsmith refers specifically to his meetings with the neo-cons and the effect the arguments that Taft and others had on him: 'I was impressed by the strength and sincerity of the views of the US administration which I heard in Washington on this point.'

Taft remains adamant that 1441 gave the US and Britain a legitimate trigger for the use of force. 'We were drafting the resolution having in mind that we might not get another one and we wanted, in the event of non-compliance , to allow our policy-makers to be in a position to do what they needed to do,' he said. 'There was an enormous fight. A draft resolution was tabled stating that the Security Council would have to take further action and this was not accepted.'
Taft is convinced that Goldsmith's final advice to Blair was correct under international law. 'I am still right there. The use of force was entirely lawful and authorised by the Security Council.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1474190,00.html

[HDPaulG]

24. Unfortunately....The lies will continue. The desperate Bush-Davidians...

will make the lies greater...However, according to polls...American people are waking up.

[texpatriot2004]

25. Thank goodness for the Guardian newspaper, wish America

had journalism like that...especially in 2003. OSP circumvented the CIA and it definitely had Cheney's approval...Chumpy too (all of WHIG loved the OSP).