Fareed Zakaria, Bletchley II, Delta of Terrorism, Iraq War plans

[LSK]

I am in the process of reading Bob Woodwards book "State of Denial". At the end of Chapter 9 (pages 83-85) we come up to the time just after 9/11 happened. Paul Wolfowitz called Christopher DeMuth of the conservative thinktank the American Enterprise Institute. The Pentagon was incapable of coming up with ideas and strategy regarding the middle east and how to deal with the crisis of 9/11. Wolfowitz asked AEI for some help on this. He was looking for answers to questions such as "who are these terrorists? what is this the history of the Middle East? etc etc."

Demuth gathered a dozen people for a weekend brainstorming session starting on November 29, 2001 at a secure Virginia conference center. Members agreed to go only if Demuth would keep it secret. Included in this brainstorming session was none other than Fareed Zakaria who is a regular on ABC's This Week Sunday morning talk show. Demuth was "surprised at the consensus among his group. He stayed up late Sunday night distilling their thoughts into a seven-page, single spaced document called "Delta of Terrorism"".

What they concluded was that Islam was undergoing a war within itself and it was deep problem and that 9/11 was not an isolated incident. "Overall the report concluded, that the United States was likely in for a two generational battle with radical Islam." Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran were seen as key to the problems, but difficult to deal with. Iraq was seen as weaker. "We concluded that a confrontation with Saddam was inevitable. He was a gathering threat - the most menacing, active and unavoidable threat. We agreed that Saddam would have to leave the scene before the problem would be addressed."

Copies of the classified memo were handed out to the Bush administration. They were pleased with the memo and found it very persuasive.

The brainstorming session was called Bletchley II after the world war II brainstorming session that defeated the Nazi communications code.

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I have not found much mention on the web of this topic. Here are a few links I have found about it:

http://www.stickwithanose.com/category/media/

http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2006/10/10/5530

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001687.php

[LSK]

1. kick

[Gabi Hayes]

2. ''(Saddam) He was a gathering threat - the most menacing...

.....active and unavoidable threat.''

how pathetic. how imcompetent. how PNACish. just shows what a total disaster these idiots have been.

and to show what ignoramuses these guys are, how ignorant of the basic tenets of history they are, Bletchley Park was not a brainstorming session, it was the complex (a large country estate) at which the best minds of England were gathered, and worked for YEARS to break the German codes. To call it a brainstorming sesson shows how little they knew about the most basic historical facts. No wonder they didn't have a clue about Saddam's real threat, or lack thereof.

If you read State of War, by James Risen, you'll see that this attitude carried on throughout the intel community. One example was when they sent former Iraqi citizens back to Iraq to talk to friends, family, etc., to gauge the strength of Saddams' nuke/chem/bio programs. NOT ONE report supported what they wanted to hear: that they were working on them. EVERYBODY came back and said that the programs had been DISCONTINUED. But all these reports were quashed.