60 Minutes: Insider: Iraq Attack Was Preemptive

[L. Coyote]

60 Minutes: Insider: Iraq Attack Was Preemptive
Pentagon Insider Tells 60 Minutes U.S. Attack On Iraq Was Anticipatory Self-Defense; Not 9/11 Retaliation
April 6, 2008 - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/03/60minutes/main3992653.shtml

PlayVideo
Preview: Iraq Was 'Preemptive'

Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy, tells Steve Kroft the U.S. attack on Iraq was anticipatory self-defense; not 9/11 retaliation. Sunday, April 6, 7 p.m. ET/PT.
(CBS) The first Pentagon insider to give his account of the run-up to war says the attack on Iraq was more a defensive move against possible future threats from Saddam Hussein than a retaliation for the 9/11 attacks. Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy, also tells Steve Kroft that the Pentagon failed to foresee the insurgency or the need for more troops to prevent the post-war chaos that included looting. Feith’s interview will be broadcast on 60 Minutes Sunday, April 6 (7-8 p.m., ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

"What we did after 9/11 was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States would come," says Feith, the number-three person in the Pentagon’s hierarchy from 2001 to 2005. "Our main goal was not merely retaliation for the 9/11 attack, it was preventing the next attack," he says. Pressed by Kroft on the importance of punishing the 9/11 plotters, Feith responds that retribution was important, but ..........

[EVDebs]

1. Tommy Franks' opinion of Feith says it all...

Douglas FeithWhat has the Pentagon's third man done wrong? Everything.
http://www.slate.com/id/2100899/

consider the source, and what Gen Tommy Franks has to say about him:

"Some of the vitriol directed at Feith by anonymous sources may be due to personal animus. A 2002 Washington Post profile of Feith noted that he is "disliked by many people who work with him on a daily basis," and in March 2003 the National Journal noted that "it is hard to overstate how utterly Feith is reviled in certain circles." The latest manifestation of this is the juicy quote by Gen. Tommy Franks in Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, in which Franks calls Feith "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth."

[C_U_L8R]

24. We all agree but what does that make Tommy Franks

for going along with such stupidity?

[aquart]

2. That's called a war of AGGRESSION.

[DemoTex]

14. War of Aggression: see Counts 1 and 2 of the Nuremberg Indictments

Nuremberg Indictments

Count One: Conspiracy to Wage Aggressive War

Count Two: Waging Aggressive War, or "Crimes Against Peace"

Count Three: War Crimes

Count Four: Crimes Against Humanity

The Nuremberg Indictments are so simple, that even Bu$h and Cheney should be able to understand them.

[orleans]

38. can we impeach the lot of them? can we hang them now? can we? can we? please... n/t

[aquart]

39. Maybe after dinner, after your homework, if you're good....

Doesn't it feel like that? I keep asking and the "responses" feel so old and irritatingly familiar.

[orleans]

42. yes they do.

but i want an oompa-loompa NOW!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9obgyYB1IU&feature=related

[PSPS]

3. "not merely retaliation for the 9/11 attack"

"What we did after 9/11 was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States would come," says Feith, the number-three person in the Pentagon’s hierarchy from 2001 to 2005. "Our main goal was not merely retaliation for the 9/11 attack, it was preventing the next attack," he says.

Here we are catapulting the propaganda that Saddam was behind 9/11 again, just like Cheney. And good old CBS and 60 minutes gives these cretins their air time to continue lying.

[SusanaMontana41]

17. Haven't seen the show, but

I see it more as shining a light on cockroaches. Nobody except the hard-cord deluded believes these lying liars. Let's get 'em on the record in any way we can; no statute of limitations on war crimes.

Your point is well taken, though. I'd like to see Anthony Zinni and Thomas Ricks blast the rhetoric, point by point, during the same broadcast. How about it, CBS?

[xchrom]

4. we like to -- pin it all -- on bush -- but the number of people

in this administration who got iraq so monstrously wrong is truly breath taking.

[Lil Missy]

6. They didn't get it wrong. They KNEW what they were doing.

[calimary]

40. Oh it was all the Pentagon's fault! It was their fault. It was your fault. It was somebody

else's fault standing way over there somewhere.

Um - seems to me that it was the civilian "management" of our military that forced this issue. The saber rattling came from the White House and the Old Executive Office Building, and only as far into the Pentagon building as rummy's office. The fault, dougie, lies quite a bit with you yourself.

[Lil Missy]

5. Duh!

[grassfed]

7. attacks against what country?

[Boz]

9. China

Every move in the last two decades including Iraq point to a land war in china.

Geographically Iraq is the perfect fortress to launch from, and oh by the way we just built just such a fortress two-thirds the acreage of Washington’s National Mall right smack in jumping distance.

We've cleared supply lines for weapons, materials and troops from two ocean fronting ports to Iraq with the exception of the block of Iran and Syria. But it seems that will be taken care of.

We've built pipelines to move fuel to Iraq, yes I said to.

We are building and deploying missile shields to cover close by Europe the source of our future money reserves, we have devalued the dollar to destabilize the majority of monetary reserve China already has and the euro will be the Dollar replacement in international trade.

The target is China, McCain was right it is a 100 year war, most people just dont realize we have already been fighting that war for almost 60 years already since the placement of the Iran regime in the 50s.

Back then China was a stepping stone to Russia and just a target of convenience, but with the fall of the Soviet Union now China is no longer the gateway it IS the target.

Every move since then has been in support of that, including our ally (Great Britain) returning Hong Kong to China in 1998, they gave up Hong kong just 5 years before they got the deal on Iraq oil (BP)

Not some vast conspiracy theory, just a war playing out so slow that "regular" people don't see it, But governments have much longer memories. Thats why George Bush is convinced that people will think he was great guy in 20 or 30 years.

[InkAddict]

10. Ah so...Step One defense; poison pets and children

Will be too dead too lead poisoned when they grow up to ride into Beijing on big dogs of war.

You have made an excellent point; when populations and the free market of Friedman's wet dreams collide. Already, they do capitalistic credit cards with a twist; the CUP usurer IS the STATE, and their marketeers readily admit to raising the expectations and thereby desires of their cardmembers.

What's in your CUP?

[merh]

8. yeah and the DOD's inspector general's office investigated

this administrations tactics and found that Feith had distorted the intelligence and fed the congress folks misinformation and false intel.

in other words, they said he was a liar.

[Warren DeMontague]

11. See! We were attacked by Iraq! Just in the future.

So we invaded to, eh, stop it.

[hoosier_lefty]

12. WAIT! WAIT!

BLAH! AHHH! SEX SCANDAL !!

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain !


I would bet money this story will be eclipsed by a
much sexier story. It seems to me Americans have the attention
span of a kitten.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

13. Doug Feith wbo worked in the Office of Special Plans, who created false intelligence to make a case

for war? The same Doug Feith who said the WMD were buried in Syria? Doug Feith who helped write for PNAC Rebuilding America's Defenses, and for Israel, A Clean Break? The same Doug Feith who should be tried as a war criminal? That Doug Feith?????

[Echo In Light]

15. A former Pentagon employee gives her brief account of this in Why We fight

I don't remember her name. She's since quite and moved on ... but I recall her very explicitly outlining the pro-war mood in the Pentagon, that the "war" had already been set to go, and all that was required was getting the American populace on the same page. I know the film identifies a few PNAC members although it doesn't delve into that matter as extensively as it should have.

[leveymg]

18. Likely, that was Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski

She was a DOD South Asia analyst who blew the whistle at Feith's OSP.

[Echo In Light]

19. Here's the clip from the film

http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/main.html

[Dirty Hippie]

16. Damn... You mean I can beat the shit out of someone

in "anticipatory self-defense"?

I wonder how that would play with a Judge.

[Prophet 451]

23. Actually, you can

but only under very carefully defined circumstances. The rules governing war work the same way: It is possible to legally make a pre-emptive attack but only under very carefully defined circumstances. The attack on Iraq, obviously, doesn't qualify.

[spanone]

20. when the war tribunals crank up, i wanna see feith in front of the line

pre-emptive attack, maybe that's how osama sold 911

[izzybeans]

21. We were told that from the beginning. The 911 claptrap didn't happen until they

figured out they couldn't plant the ghost weapons that we were supposed to be afraid of. We knew it was illegal from the start.

[lonestarnot]

dupe

[lonestarnot]

22. A dickie and bushitler thinker, why shouldn't he use language as "cover." Cowards can't face truth

when it's slapping them down.

[nichomachus]

25. Feith is a traitor and a liar

The attack on Iraq was planned and outlined in detail in 1992 in the PNAC manifesto signed by Feith. It said that we would attack Iraq whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power.

If 60 minutes doesn't confront him with that -- it's on the freaking Internet, for crying out loud -- the program isn't worth watching.

[grassfed]

27. Feith rejected Arabic speaking Americans who could have saved American lives

To Feith the fact that someone studied or spoke Arabic was evidence of sympathy with the Arab world and therefore disqualified them.

[FVZA_Colonel]

41. I have no doubt that this is true, but do you have any links on this matter?

I'd really like to read up about this, as so far I'd only heard of Gay Arabic speaking Americans being kicked out.

[grassfed]

44. Doug Feith’s Arabic problem

A random sample:

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/26/doug-feiths-arabic-problem/

At a recent forum, career U.S. intelligence officer Patrick Lang recounted a job interview he had with neocon war architect Douglas Feith. Lang, who had previously run the Pentagon’s world-wide spying operations, “was put forward as somebody who would be good at running the Pentagon’s office of special operations and low-intensity warfare, i.e., counterinsurgency.” So he was interviewed by Feith:

“He was sitting there munching a sandwich while he was talking to me,” Lang recalled, “which I thought was remarkable in itself, but he also had these briefing papers — they always had briefing papers, you know — about me.

“He’s looking at this stuff, and he says, ‘I’ve heard of you. I heard of you.’

“He says, ‘Is it really true that you really know the Arabs this well, and that you speak Arabic this well? Is that really true? Is that really true?’

“And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s really true.’

“That’s too bad,” Feith said.

The audience howled.

“That was the end of the interview,” Lang said. “I’m not quite sure what he meant, but you can work it out.”

Feith, of course, like the administration’s other Israel-connected hawks, didn’t want “Arabists” like Lang muddying the road to Baghdad, from where — according to the Bush administration theory — overthrowing Saddam Hussein would ignite mass demands for Western-style, pro-U.S. democracies across the entire Middle East.

[L. Coyote]

26. This is generating real interest. LET'S LiveBlog the broadcast.

[L. Coyote]

32. Coming up on the West Coast in a few.

[Sparkly]

28. "possible future threats"

"a defensive move against possible future threats"

How many countries are "possible future threats?!?"

[Voice for Peace]

29. We need to attack the US next, before they attack us.

But then we would be so dead to us.

[L. Coyote]

33. How many people are, thanks to Bush's wars?? Way more than before!

[GeorgeGist]

30. Ah, another installment of Vanity Fair ...

very amusing.

http://www.anesi.com/vanity.bmp

[Kip Humphrey]

31. Even I could see at the time that Saddam's war plan was for the Republican Guard to

retreat into a guerrilla insurgency. And it was equally obvious from the beginning that the US plan was to generate on-the-ground, planned chaos in Iraq to ensure a long-term US presence in Iraq. Hence, we promptly disbanded the police and military; we ignored Iraq's open borders; and we immediate initiated construction of all of those permanent bases instead of concentrating on repairing Iraq's infrastructure, especially water and electricity. How else could we establish 2 fronts from which to bomb Iran? How else could we ensure being there for a long time? Intentional chaos was the game plan and still is now. Embroiling Iran was the plan then and it is still the plan now.

GIVE ME A BREAK!!! Anyone who believes a single word this lying son-of-a-bitch says is either collusive or brain-damaged (like McCain?). Doug Feith shouldn't even be on 60 Minutes. He should be locked up in prison for War Crimes Against Humanity... or in a traitor's grave.

[L. Coyote]

34. VIDEO: The Path To War

The Path To War
Play Video = 12:53 - - http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3994668n&channel=/sections/60minutes/videoplayer3415.shtml

The first Pentagon insider to give his account of the run-up to war says the attack on Iraq was more a defensive move against the threat of Saddam Hussein than a retaliation for the 9/11 attacks. Steve Kroft reports.

[samsingh]

35. another explanation and more lies

and admissions to war crimes

[wiggs]

36. Jailtime: Two conditions of the IWR: imminent threat and connection to 9/11!! nt

[sofa king]

37. Yeah, just file that horseshit with the other versions of the lie.

That story will keep changing to fit the circumstances. The real story is this: they planned it from the beginning, they dove out of the way of Osama to get their lead-in, and they did it to a) control the oil and drive the prices up; b) cover the theft of $2.3 trillion from the federal treasury; and c) give U.S. troops a place to stay since Osama chased them out of Saudi Arabia--they'll be needed to feed the war machine in the '10s and the '20s, by taking over the rest of the oil producing areas in the region. The truth will just keep dripping, like the gore from the back of a KBR refrigerated truck.

I also refuse to believe that these people are stupider than I am. In 2001, I spat it all over the Internet and to everyone I knew that this would create the perfect climate for guerrilla warfare, and that Americans would be dying until the last day they were there (and I guessed six to twelve years). They knew; they just didn't give a fuck.

[galledgoblin]

43. THERE WERE NO WMDS

"anticipatory self-defense"?! against WHAT? Saddam had neither the capability nor really the will to attack the US.

even if we were talking about a possible attack a decade or two from now, the top intelligence and defense people really thought (and still believe?!) that invasion and deposing the leader of a nation we had no reason to feel threatened by would instill good feelings and positive views of the US among both Iraqi citizens and the rest of the world, best ensuring that worst-case scenario would not come to pass, MORESO than easing Iraq into a democratic regime through gradual diplomacy would when Saddam naturally kicked the bucket?! (he was nearly 70, remember!)


ugh.