die "neuen Pentagon Papiere "v.Kwiatkowski

von Karen Kwiatkowski ,die die Erfahrungen eines hochrangigen Offiziers während der Kriegsvorbereitungen kritisch schildern,scheinen einiges Aufsehen zu erregen
http://archive.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/
....To begin with, I was introduced to Bill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA. A tall, thin, nervously intelligent man, he welcomed me into the fold. I knew little about him. Because he was a recently retired naval captain and now high-level Bush appointee, the common assumption was that he had connections, if not capability. I would later find out that when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense over a decade earlier, Luti was his aide. He had also been a military aide to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich during the Clinton years and had completed his Ph.D. at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. While his Navy career had not granted him flag rank, he had it now and was not shy about comparing his place in the pecking order with various three- and four-star generals and admirals in and out of the Pentagon. Name dropping included references to getting this or that document over to Scooter, or responding to one of Scooter's requests right away. Scooter, I would find out later, was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff.

Co-workers who had watched the transition from Clintonista to Bushite shared conversations and stories indicating that something deliberate and manipulative was happening to NESA. Key professional personnel, longtime civilian professionals holding the important billets in NESA, were replaced early on during the transition. Longtime officer director Joe McMillan was reassigned to the National Defense University. The director's job in the time of transition was to help bring the newly appointed deputy assistant secretary up to speed, ensure office continuity, act as a resource relating to regional histories and policies, and help identify the best ways to maintain course or to implement change. Removing such a critical continuity factor was not only unusual but also seemed like willful handicapping. It was the first signal of radical change.

At the time, I didn't realize that the expertise on Middle East policy was not only being removed, but was also being exchanged for that from various agenda-bearing think tanks, including the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Interestingly, the office director billet stayed vacant the whole time I was there. That vacancy and the long-term absence of real regional understanding to inform defense policymakers in the Pentagon explains a great deal about the neoconservative approach on the Middle East and the disastrous mistakes made in Washington and in Iraq in the past two years.


The new Pentagon papers | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5




I soon saw the modus operandi of "instant policy" unhampered by debate or experience with the early Bush administration replacement of the civilian head of the Israel, Lebanon and Syria desk office with a young political appointee from the Washington Institute, David Schenker. Word was that the former experienced civilian desk officer tended to be evenhanded toward the policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, but there were complaints and he was gone. I met David and chatted with him frequently. He was a smart, serious, hardworking guy, and the proud author of a book on the chances for Palestinian democracy. Country desk officers were rarely political appointees. In my years at the Pentagon, this was the only "political" I knew doing that type of high-stress and low-recognition duty. So eager was the office to have Schenker at the Israel desk, he served for many months as a defense contractor of sorts and only received his "Schedule C" political appointee status months after I arrived.

I learned that there was indeed a preferred ideology for NESA. My first day in the office, a GS-15 career civil servant rather unhappily advised me that if I wanted to be successful here, I'd better remember not to say anything positive about the Palestinians. This belied official U.S. policy of serving as an honest broker for resolution of Israeli and Palestinian security concerns. At that time, there was a great deal of talk about Bush's possible support for a Palestinian state. That the Pentagon could have implemented and, worse, was implementing its own foreign policy had not yet occurred to me.
Throughout the summer, the NESA spaces in one long office on the fourth floor, between the 7th and 8th corridors of D Ring, became more and more crowded. With war talk and planning about Iraq, all kinds of new people were brought in. A politically savvy civilian-clothes-wearing lieutenant colonel named Bill Bruner served as the Iraq desk officer, and he had apparently joined NESA about the time Bill Luti did. I discovered that Bruner, like Luti, had served as a military aide to Speaker Gingrich. Gingrich himself was now conveniently an active member of Bush's Defense Policy Board, which had space immediately below ours on the third floor.

I asked why Bruner wore civilian attire, and was told by others, "He's Chalabi's handler." Chalabi, of course, was Ahmad Chalabi, the president of the Iraqi National Congress, who was the favored exile of the neoconservatives and the source of much of their "intelligence." Bruner himself said he had to attend a lot of meetings downtown in hotels and that explained his suits. Soon, in July, he was joined by another Air Force pilot, a colonel with no discernible political connections, Kevin Jones. I thought of it as a military-civilian partnership, although both were commissioned officers.

Among the other people arriving over the summer of 2002 was Michael Makovsky, a recent MIT graduate who had written his dissertation on Winston Churchill and was going to work on "Iraqi oil issues." He was David Makovsky's younger brother. David was at the time a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and had formerly been an editor of the Jerusalem Post, a pro-Likud newspaper. Mike was quiet and seemed a bit uncomfortable sharing space with us. He soon disappeared into some other part of the operation and I rarely saw him after that.

In late summer, new space was found upstairs on the fifth floor, and the "expanded Iraq desk," now dubbed the "Office of Special Plans," began moving there. And OSP kept expanding.

Another person I observed to appear suddenly was Michael Rubin, another Washington Institute fellow working on Iraq policy. He and Chris Straub, a retired Army officer who had been a Republican staffer for the Senate Intelligence Committee, were eventually assigned to OSP.

John Trigilio, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, was assigned to handle Iraq intelligence for Luti. Trigilio had been on a one-year career-enhancement tour with the office of the secretary of defense that was to end in August 2002. DIA had offered him routine intelligence positions upon his return from his OSD sabbatical, but none was as interesting as working in August 2002 for Luti. John asked Luti for help in gaining an extension for another year, effectively removing him from the DIA bureaucracy and its professional constraints.

Trigilio and I had hallway debates, as friends. The one I remember most clearly was shortly after President Bush gave his famous "mushroom cloud" speech in Cincinnati in October 2002, asserting that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction as well as ties to "international terrorists," and was working feverishly to develop nuclear weapons with "nuclear holy warriors." I asked John who was feeding the president all the bull about Saddam and the threat he posed us in terms of WMD delivery and his links to terrorists, as none of this was in secret intelligence I had seen in the past years. John insisted that it wasn't an exaggeration, but when pressed to say which actual intelligence reports made these claims, he would only say, "Karen, we have sources that you don't have access to." It was widely felt by those of us in the office not in the neoconservatives' inner circle that these "sources" related to the chummy relationship that Ahmad Chalabi had with both the Office of Special Plans and the office of the vice president.

The newly named director of the OSP, Abram Shulsky, was one of the most senior people sharing our space that summer. Abe, a kindly and gentle man, who would say hello to me in the hallways, seemed to be someone I, as a political science grad student, would have loved to sit with over coffee and discuss the world's problems. I had a clear sense that Abe ranked high in the organization, although ostensibly he was under Luti. Luti was known at times to treat his staff, even senior staff, with disrespect, contempt and derision. He also didn't take kindly to staff officers who had an opinion or viewpoint that was off the neoconservative reservation. But with Shulsky, who didn't speak much at the staff meetings, he was always respectful and deferential. It seemed like Shulsky's real boss was somebody like Douglas Feith or higher.

Doug Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, was a case study in how not to run a large organization. In late 2001, he held the first all-hands policy meeting at which he discussed for over 15 minutes how many bullets and sub-bullets should be in papers for Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. A year later, in August of 2002, he held another all-hands meeting in the auditorium where he embarrassed everyone with an emotional performance about what it was like to serve Rumsfeld. He blithely informed us that for months he didn't realize Rumsfeld had a daily stand-up meeting with his four undersecretaries. He shared with us the fact that, after he started to attend these meetings, he knew better what Rumsfeld wanted of him. Most military staffers and professional civilians hearing this were incredulous, as was I, to hear of such organizational ignorance lasting so long and shared so openly. Feith's inattention to most policy detail, except that relating to Israel and Iraq, earned him a reputation most foul throughout Policy, with rampant stories of routine signatures that took months to achieve and lost documents. His poor reputation as a manager was not helped by his arrogance. One thing I kept hearing from those defending Feith was that he was "just brilliant." It was curiously like the brainwashed refrain in "The Manchurian Candidate" about the programmed sleeper agent Raymond Shaw, as the "kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I've ever known."

I spent time that summer exploring the neoconservative worldview and trying to grasp what was happening inside the Pentagon. I wondered what could explain this rush to war and disregard for real intelligence. Neoconservatives are fairly easy to study, mainly because they are few in number, and they show up at all the same parties. Examining them as individuals, it became clear that almost all have worked together, in and out of government, on national security issues for several decades. The Project for the New American Century and its now famous 1998 manifesto to President Clinton on Iraq is a recent example. But this statement was preceded by one written for Benyamin Netanyahu's Likud Party campaign in Israel in 1996 by neoconservatives Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Douglas Feith titled "A Clean Break: Strategy for Securing the Realm."

David Wurmser is the least known of that trio and an interesting example of the tangled neoconservative web. In 2001, the research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute was assigned to the Pentagon, then moved to the Department of State to work as deputy for the hard-line conservative undersecretary John Bolton, then to the National Security Council, and now is lodged in the office of the vice president. His wife, the prolific Meyrav Wurmser, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, is also a neoconservative team player.
Before the Iraq invasion, many of these same players labored together for literally decades to push a defense strategy that favored military intervention and confrontation with enemies, secret and unconstitutional if need be. Some former officials, such as Richard Perle (an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan) and James Woolsey (CIA director under Clinton), were granted a new lease on life, a renewed gravitas, with positions on President Bush's Defense Policy Board. Others, like Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz, had apparently overcome previous negative associations from an Iran-Contra conviction for lying to the Congress and for utterly miscalculating the strength of the Soviet Union in a politically driven report to the CIA.

Neoconservatives march as one phalanx in parallel opposition to those they hate. In the early winter of 2002, a co-worker U.S. Navy captain and I were discussing the service being rendered by Colin Powell at the time, and we were told by the neoconservative political appointee David Schenker that "the best service Powell could offer would be to quit right now." I was present at a staff meeting when Bill Luti called Marine Gen. and former Chief of Central Command Anthony Zinni a "traitor," because Zinni had publicly expressed reservations about the rush to war.

After August 2002, the Office of Special Plans established its own rhythm and cadence separate from the non-politically minded professionals covering the rest of the region. While often accused of creating intelligence, I saw only two apparent products of this office: war planning guidance for Rumsfeld, presumably impacting Central Command, and talking points on Iraq, WMD and terrorism. These internal talking points seemed to be a mélange crafted from obvious past observation and intelligence bits and pieces of dubious origin. They were propagandistic in style, and all desk officers were ordered to use them verbatim in the preparation of any material prepared for higher-ups and people outside the Pentagon. The talking points included statements about Saddam Hussein's proclivity for using chemical weapons against his own citizens and neighbors, his existing relations with terrorists based on a member of al-Qaida reportedly receiving medical care in Baghdad, his widely publicized aid to the Palestinians, and general indications of an aggressive viability in Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program and his ongoing efforts to use them against his neighbors or give them to al-Qaida style groups. The talking points said he was threatening his neighbors and was a serious threat to the U.S., too.

I suspected, from reading Charles Krauthammer, a neoconservative columnist for the Washington Post, and the Weekly Standard, and hearing a Cheney speech or two, that these talking points left the building on occasion. Both OSP functions duplicated other parts of the Pentagon. The facts we should have used to base our papers on were already being produced by the intelligence agencies, and the war planning was already done by the combatant command staff with some help from the Joint Staff. Instead of developing defense policy alternatives and advice, OSP was used to manufacture propaganda for internal and external use, and pseudo war planning.

As a result of my duties as the North Africa desk officer, I became acquainted
with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) support staff for NESA. Every policy regional director was served by a senior executive intelligence professional from DIA, along with a professional intelligence staff. This staff channeled DIA products, accepted tasks for DIA, and in the past had been seen as a valued member of the regional teams. However, as the war approached, this type of relationship with the Defense Intelligence Agency crumbled.

Even the most casual observer could note the tension and even animosity between "Wild Bill" Luti (as we came to refer to our boss) and Bruce Hardcastle, our defense intelligence officer (DIO). Certainly, there were stylistic and personality differences. Hardcastle, like most senior intelligence officers I knew, was serious, reserved, deliberate, and went to great lengths to achieve precision and accuracy in his speech and writing. Luti was the kind of guy who, in staff meetings and in conversations, would jump from grand theory to administrative minutiae with nary a blink or a fleeting shadow of self-awareness.

I discovered that Luti and possibly others within OSP were dissatisfied with Hardcastle's briefings, in particular with the aspects relating to WMD and terrorism. I was not clear exactly what those concerns were, but I came to understand that the DIA briefing did not match what OSP was claiming about Iraq's WMD capabilities and terrorist activities. I learned that shortly before I arrived there had been an incident in NESA where Hardcastle's presence and briefing at a bilateral meeting had been nixed abruptly by Luti. The story circulating among the desk officers was "a last-minute cancellation" of the DIO presentation. Hardcastle's intelligence briefing was replaced with one prepared by another Policy office that worked nonproliferation issues. While this alternative briefing relied on intelligence produced by DIO and elsewhere, it was not a product of the DIA or CIA community, but instead was an OSD Policy "branded" product -- and so were its conclusions. The message sent by Policy appointees and well understood by staff officers and the defense intelligence community was that senior appointed civilians were willing to exclude or marginalize intelligence products that did not fit the agenda.

Staff officers would always request OSP's most current Iraq, WMD and terrorism talking points. On occasion, these weren't available in an approved form and awaited Shulsky's approval. The talking points were a series of bulleted statements, written persuasively and in a convincing way, and superficially they seemed reasonable and rational. Saddam Hussein had gassed his neighbors, abused his people, and was continuing in that mode, becoming an imminently dangerous threat to his neighbors and to us -- except that none of his neighbors or Israel felt this was the case. Saddam Hussein had harbored al-Qaida operatives and offered and probably provided them with training facilities -- without mentioning that the suspected facilities were in the U.S./Kurdish-controlled part of Iraq. Saddam Hussein was pursuing and had WMD of the type that could be used by him, in conjunction with al-Qaida and other terrorists, to attack and damage American interests, Americans and America -- except the intelligence didn't really say that. Saddam Hussein had not been seriously weakened by war and sanctions and weekly bombings over the past 12 years, and in fact was plotting to hurt America and support anti-American activities, in part through his carrying on with terrorists -- although here the intelligence said the opposite. His support for the Palestinians and Arafat proved his terrorist connections, and basically, the time to act was now. This was the gist of the talking points, and it remained on message throughout the time I watched the points evolve.

But evolve they did, and the subtle changes I saw from September to late January revealed what the Office of Special Plans was contributing to national security. Two key types of modifications were directed or approved by Shulsky and his team of politicos. First was the deletion of entire references or bullets. The one I remember most specifically is when they dropped the bullet that said one of Saddam's intelligence operatives had met with Mohammad Atta in Prague, supposedly salient proof that Saddam was in part responsible for the 9/11 attack. That claim had lasted through a number of revisions, but after the media reported the claim as unsubstantiated by U.S. intelligence, denied by the Czech government, and that Atta's location had been confirmed by the FBI to be elsewhere, that particular bullet was dropped entirely from our "advice on things to say" to senior Pentagon officials when they met with guests or outsiders.

The other change made to the talking points was along the line of fine-tuning and generalizing. Much of what was there was already so general as to be less than accurate.

Some bullets were softened, particularly statements of Saddam's readiness and capability in the chemical, biological or nuclear arena. Others were altered over time to match more exactly something Bush and Cheney said in recent speeches. One item I never saw in our talking points was a reference to Saddam's purported attempt to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger. The OSP list of crime and evil had included Saddam's attempts to seek fissionable materials or uranium in Africa. This point was written mostly in the present tense and conveniently left off the dates of the last known attempt, sometime in the late 1980s. I was surprised to hear the president's mention of the yellowcake in Niger in his 2003 State of the Union address because that indeed was new and in theory might have represented new intelligence, something that seemed remarkably absent in any of the products provided us by the OSP (although not for lack of trying). After hearing of it, I checked with my old office of Sub-Saharan African Affairs -- and it was news to them, too. It also turned out to be false.

It is interesting today that the "defense" for those who lied or prevaricated about Iraq is to point the finger at the intelligence. But the National Intelligence Estimate, published in September 2002, as remarked upon recently by former CIA Middle East chief Ray McGovern, was an afterthought. It was provoked only after Sens. Bob Graham and Dick Durban noted in August 2002, as Congress was being asked to support a resolution for preemptive war, that no NIE elaborating real threats to the United States had been provided. In fact, it had not been written, but a suitable NIE was dutifully prepared and submitted the very next month. Naturally, this document largely supported most of the outrageous statements already made publicly by Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld about the threat Iraq posed to the United States. All the caveats, reservations and dissents made by intelligence were relegated to footnotes and kept from the public. Funny how that worked.

Starting in the fall of 2002 I found a way to vent my frustrations with the neoconservative hijacking of our defense policy. The safe outlet was provided by retired Col. David Hackworth, who agreed to publish my short stories anonymously on his Web site Soldiers for the Truth, under the moniker of "Deep Throat: Insider Notes From the Pentagon." The "deep throat" part was his idea, but I was happy to have a sense that there were folks out there, mostly military, who would be interested in the secretary of defense-sponsored insanity I was witnessing on almost a daily basis. When I was particularly upset, like when I heard Zinni called a "traitor," I wrote about it in articles like this one.

In November, my Insider articles discussed the artificial worlds created by the Pentagon and the stupid naiveté of neocon assumptions about what would happen when we invaded Iraq. I discussed the price of public service, distinguishing between public servants who told the truth and then saw their careers flame out and those "public servants" who did not tell the truth and saw their careers ignite. My December articles became more depressing, discussing the history of the 100 Years' War and "combat lobotomies." There was a painful one titled "Minority Reports" about the necessity but unlikelihood of a Philip Dick sci-fi style "minority report" on Feith-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Cheney's insanely grandiose vision of some future Middle East, with peace, love and democracy brought on through preemptive war and military occupation.
I shared some of my concerns with a civilian who had been remotely acquainted with the Luti-Feith-Perle political clan in his previous work for one of the senior Pentagon witnesses during the Iran-Contra hearings. He told me these guys were engaged in something worse than Iran-Contra. I was curious but he wouldn't tell me anything more. I figured he knew what he was talking about. I thought of him when I read much later about the 2002 and 2003 meetings between Michael Ledeen, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar -- all Iran-Contra figures.

In December 2002, I requested an acceleration of my retirement to the following July. By now, the military was anxiously waiting under the bed for the other shoe to drop amid concerns over troop availability, readiness for an ill-defined mission, and lack of day-after clarity. The neocons were anxiously struggling to get that damn shoe off. That other shoe fell with a thump, as did the regard many of us had held for Colin Powell, on Feb. 5 as the secretary of state capitulated to the neoconservative line in his speech at the United Nations -- a speech not only filled with falsehoods pushed by the neoconservatives but also containing many statements already debunked by intelligence
War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to the Congress and to the American people for this one were inaccurate and so misleading as to be false. Moreover, they were false by design. Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq -- more bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional ruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision also played a role. These more accurate reasons for invading and occupying could have been argued on their merits -- an angry and aggressive U.S. population might indeed have supported the war and occupation for those reasons. But Americans didn't get the chance for an honest debate.
...

ich habe es reinkopiert,weil oftmals solche Seiten wieder verschwinden




 

 

spuck wegen mir noch auf ein Schröderbild oder nenn mich einen Rotfrontkämfer,
aber für heute hast du genug Unsinn verzapft.
Morgen kannst du ja wieder zuschlagen.  

aber karikiere dich und deine gesinnungsgenossen selbst. nur zu.


WER IST SCHRÖDER???




######################
gruß
proxi  

werden P 1 nur sehr wenige, da zu lang,
verstehen noch weniger, da zu wenige so gut Englisch können.
Also, vergebliche Liebesmühe,
trotzdem vielen Dank.  

es geht hier darum ,dass der Autor als hochrangiger Offizier miterlebte wie die Leute von Clinton durch neokonservative Leute Bushs in dem Department NESA abgelöst wurden.Der langjährige Direktor des Büros Joe McMillan wurde an die Militärakademie versetzt,die Kontinuität damit unterbrochen,die Erfahrung im Mittleren Osten ersetzt durch Institute wie  Middle East Media Research Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs,die massgeblich für das spätere Fiasko verantwortlich zeichnen.
Am ersten Tag bereits teilte mir ein GS-15 career -Beamter unfroh mit,dass ich hier besser keine positiven Ansichten über Palästinenser äussern sollte.Bill Bruner ,der dem Irak-Büro vorstand,war Unterstützer von Ahmed Chalabi,der der favorisierte Exilpolitiker der Neokonservativen war.Er und ein Bill Luti,mit dem die Autorin zusammen arbeitete ,waren beide Miltärattaches des Sprechers  Gingrich gewesen,eines aktiven Mitglieds des Bush's Defense Policy Board.
Dann kam Michael Makovsky,um über Öl in Irak zu arbeiten.Er ist der jüngere Bruder von David Makovsky, dem früheren Herausgeber der Likudnahen Jerusalem Post......
Ältere Offiziere liessen abweichende Meinungen jüngerer Offiziere nicht gelten....
Das dürfte der Grund auch für die Falschaussagen von Bush und Powell gewesen sein

Karen Kwiatkowski schildert hier ihre eigenen Erfahrungen,sie ist mittlerweile im Ruhestand und schreibt regelmässig für die Military Week,sie lebt mit ihrer Familie auf einer kleinen Farm in Virginia und unterrichtet an der James Madison University
http://www.militaryweek.com/  

Richtig überrascht oder gar schockiert ist gegenwärtig wohl kaum mehr jemand über diese Enthüllungen von Frau Kwiatkowski, die als ehemalige Pentagon-Mitarbeiterin über Jahre hinweg genauestens beobachten konnte, wie in der ministerialen Abteilung für den Nahen Osten und Südasien (NESA) opportunes Geheimdienstmaterial fabriziert wurde, das die Gründe für einen militärischen Angriff auf den Irak liefern sollte.


Dass der Kriegszug gegen den Irak von neokonservativen Strategen schon weit vor dem 11.September projektiert war: nichts Neues (vgl.  Bush plante Invasion in den Irak schon zu Beginn seiner Amtszeit und  Irak-Krieg von langer Hand vorbereitet). Dass die Beweise dafür "gezimmert" wurden (vgl.  Das Theater mit den Geheimdienstinformationen über irakische Massenvernichtungswaffen): nichts Neues. Aber, so das regierungskritische US-Magazin Mother Jones, bislang wurde die Geschichte, wie die Bush-Administration die irakische Bedrohung mit manipulierten Dokumenten und fragwürdigen Quellen hochstilisierte, noch nicht in vollem Umfang erzählt. Der kürzlich veröffentlichte  Bericht, der dies jetzt nachholt, offenbart eine Politik im Zentrum des Pentagon, die gnadenlos auf ein großes Ziel ausgerichtet ist.

Was sich da auf fünfzehn mit Insider-Informationen gespickten Seiten aufblättert, ist das Skript eines lang durchdachten, stur und rücksichtslos durchgeführten Manövers, das dem amerikanischen Epos über die besessene Jagd auf einen weißen Wal in einigen Punkten sehr nahe kommt. Wie Kapitän Ahab holte sich Deputy Wolfowitz eine geheime Crew an Bord, auf die er sich mehr verließ als auf die übrige Mannschaft: eine geheime Zelle, die im Herzen des Pentagon operierte mit dem Auftrag, abseits der offiziellen Geheimdienstarbeit das nötige Material zu beschaffen, um einen Angriff auf den Irak zu rechtfertigen.


Mission "Factoids"


Schon einen Tag nach dem Amtseid von Bush 43, sollen sich Wolfowitz und Douglas C.Feith (vgl.  Die Prätorianer-Garde des Imperiums) daran gemacht haben, personelle, ideologische und strategische Vorbereitungen für den Schlag gegen den Leviathan in Bagdad zu treffen. Das politische Programm lautete, dass die Nichteinnahme Bagdads 1991 ein großer Fehler war, den es zu korrigieren galt. Die Hauptrollen wurden innerhalb des neokonservativen Ensembles verteilt. Man kannte sich bestens, seit Jahren, vom Studium, von vielen Treffen in der Hochburg der neocon-Elite, dem American Enterprise Institute (AEI - vgl.  Die Fürsten des IV.Weltkriegs).


So wurde David Wurmser, schon lange ein ausgewiesener Verfechter eines Militärschlages gegen Bagdad und ideologisch ein Mann der rechten Gesinnung (vgl.  Der Club der rechten Schlaumeier), Chef der AEI-Abteilung für Middle East Studies, neben Wolfowitz und Feith zum Mitbegründer der geheimen namenlosen Geheimdienstzelle im Pentagon, die beweisen sollte, was gar nicht existierte: die Verbindungen Saddam Husseins zu den Schurken von Al-Qaida, ein theoretisches Konstrukt, das von den professionellen Geheimdienstlern als "lächerlich" abgetan wurde.

Der wichtigste Zweck dieser Zelle im Pentagon sei es, so Wolfowitz bei einer Pressekonferenz zu diesem Thema im Oktober 2002, "Factoids" zusammenzustellen. Die Wortneuschöpfung gibt auch schon das Erkenntnisziel der geheimdienstlichen "Enterprise"-Zelle vor: bislang unentdeckte Welten zwischen Fakten und Lügen. Die Kreativpapiere wurden dann später dazu genutzt, unerwünschte Ermittlungsergebnisse der Geheimdienste mit haarsträubenden Geschichten zu konterkarieren. Cheney und sein Stabschef Libby übten starken Druck auf die CIA aus und der Fürst der Finsternis unter den Neokonservativen, Richard Perle, machte auf den Fluren des American Enterprise Institutes keinen Hehl aus seiner Verachtung der CIA:



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

Ihre Analysen sind das Papier nicht wert, auf dem sie gedruckt sind. Die CIA ist am Status quo orientiert. Die wollen keine Risiken eingehen.






Das "Office of Special Plans"


Als sich das politische Klima 2002 mehr und mehr zugunsten einer militärischen Aktion im Irak neigte, schufen Wolfowitz und Feith eine neue geheime Zelle, welche bei den Vorbereitungen zum Militärschlag entscheidend mithelfen sollte. Der Name, den man der Zelle im Pentagon, die der Abteilung für den Nahen Osten und Südasien (NESA) eingegliedert wurde, gab, verrät ein gewisses literarisches Geschick für atmosphärisch Finsteres: "Büro für besondere Pläne" (Office of Special Plans).

William Luti, Ressortchef der NESA, Lametta schwerer Ex-Navy-Käptn mit besten Verbindungen zum Vizepräsidenten Cheney, politisch sehr mit Wolfowitz und Feith befreundet, ein Neokonservativer aus dem Bilderbuch, demgegenüber sogar Oliver North als moderat gilt, bestellte Abram N.Shulsky, politischer Wegbegleiter von Perle, als Chef des "Büros", der dann gleich mal die NESA von übrig gebliebenen alten "Moderaten" säuberte.


Mit "brutaler Effizienz" soll das Team Luti und Shulski die NESA und das "Büro" in der folgenden Zeit Mitarbeiter und Material auf Linie gebracht haben. Man hatte direkten Kontakt ins Weiße Haus, zum Vizepräsidenten Cheney, und dubiose Quellen, die gute Geschichten für "Factoids" lieferten. Rekrutiert wurden diese Quellen u.a. von Achmed Dschalabi, dem Chef der irakischen Partei (INC), gegenwärtig Mitglied des irakischen Regierungsrates, langjähriger politischer Freund von Perle et al..

Dschalabis Informanten,  finanziert mit amerikanischen Steuergeldern, lieferten die passenden Geschichten (vgl.  Schlauer als die CIA), haarsträubende Geschichten, die als Beweise für die irakische Bedrohung herhalten mussten, und über das "Büro" und die NESA direkt den Weg in öffentliche Reden von Bush, Cheney und anderen fanden - und sich allesamt als heiße Luft herausstellten.

Die CIA wusste, was von diesen Informanten, die sich als Abtrünnige des Hussein-Regimes verkauften, zu halten war: "völlig unverlässlich" (Vincent Cannistraro, früherer Anti-Terrorchef der CIA). Wie sich später  herausstellte lagen die Skeptiker der CIA völlig richtig. Nichts, absolut nichts an diesen Informationen war richtig. Alles Fake, auch die Großmutter aller Lügen: die Versuche des Irak im afrikanischen Niger Uran zu ergattern, was immerhin Eingang in die Rede zur Lage der Nation von Bush im Januar 2003 fand.




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

Entweder brach das System zusammen oder es gab einen selektiven Gebrauch von Teilen der Information, um die Entscheidung für den Krieg, die bereits getroffen war, zu rechtfertigen
So das Fazit von Joseph Wilson, der von der CIA nach Niger geschickt wurde und dessen Ermittlungen die Fälschung der Dokumente an den Tag brachte. Im amerikanischen Senat macht sich derzeit der Abgeordnete Jay Rockefeller dafür stark, dass die Rolle des "Büros für besondere Pläne" unter die Lupe genommen wird; aber, wie es heißt, gibt es eine starke Fraktion, die dagegen ist: die Mehrheit der Republikaner.

http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/special/irak/16746/1.html



und ein interessantes Interview mit Kwiatkowski:
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/13/news-cooper.php

 

Euer Bedauern über den Sturz Eures Freundes
Saddam.  

The neoconservatives pride themselves on having a global vision, a long-term strategic perspective. And there were three reasons why they felt the U.S. needed to topple Saddam, put in a friendly government and occupy Iraq.

One of those reasons is that sanctions and containment were working and everybody pretty much knew it. Many companies around the world were preparing to do business with Iraq in anticipation of a lifting of sanctions. But the U.S. and the U.K. had been bombing northern and southern Iraq since 1991. So it was very unlikely that we would be in any kind of position to gain significant contracts in any post-sanctions Iraq. And those sanctions were going to be lifted soon, Saddam would still be in place, and we would get no financial benefit.

The second reason has to do with our military-basing posture in the region. We had been very dissatisfied with our relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly the restrictions on our basing. And also there was dissatisfaction from the people of Saudi Arabia. So we were looking for alternate strategic locations beyond Kuwait, beyond Qatar, to secure something we had been searching for since the days of Carter — to secure the energy lines of communication in the region. Bases in Iraq, then, were very important — that is, if you hold that is America’s role in the world. Saddam Hussein was not about to invite us in.

The last reason is the conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the Food for Oil program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this, by the way, long before 9/11, in November 2000 — selling his oil for euros. The oil sales permitted in that program aren’t very much. But when the sanctions would be lifted, the sales from the country with the second largest oil reserves on the planet would have been moving to the euro.

The U.S. dollar is in a sensitive period because we are a debtor nation now. Our currency is still popular, but it’s not backed up like it used to be. If oil, a very solid commodity, is traded on the euro, that could cause massive, almost glacial, shifts in confidence in trading on the dollar. So one of the first executive orders that Bush signed in May [2003] switched trading on Iraq’s oil back to the dollar.
(aus dem Interview der Los Angeles Times mit Kwiatkowski)

glaubst du allen Ernstes Doc Brömme ,die Absetzung Saddam Husseins rechtfertigt einen solchen Krieg??

 

endlich weißt, wer ich immerhin bin.

So urteilt die Presse über mich  

Dr. Udo Brömmel MdL

Dr. Udo Brömmel ist der neue Star der deutschen Politik. Wie kein anderer versteht es der 34-jährige CDU-Politiker, auf die Interessen der Bürger einzugehen. Sein bürgernaher Aktionismus sorgte in den vergangenen Wochen für Furore: Bei der Fußball-EM setzte Brömmel in Gesprächen mit englischen Fans Akzente in der Völkerverständigung, und vor zwei Wochen feierte er ausgelassen mit über einer Million Raver auf der Love Parade in Berlin. Seit 1991 ist Dr. Udo Brömmel Vorsitzender der Jungen Union Köln und seit 1992 Mitglied des Gemeinderats der Stadt Köln. Seit 1996 sitzt er als Abgeordneter im Landtag von Nordrhein-Westfalen. Brömmel ist verheiratet und hat keine Kinder. Warum? Dieses und anderes haben wir den Politiker in seinem ersten Exklusiv-Interview gefragt.

 

mit wem Ihr es zu tun habt:

MEIN LEBENSLAUF


Dr. Udo Brömmel MdL

34 Jahre voller Energie - sein spannender Weg zum Ziel:
Dr. Udo Brömmel wurde am 14. Juni 1966 in Bückel bei Pelzlau geboren. Von 1979 bis 1988 besuchte er das Ina-Seidel-Gymnasium in Prüm. Ab 1989 studierte er Betriebswirtschaftslehre und Rechtswissenschaft an der Universität Köln. Nach dem Abschluß des BWL-Diploms 1993 arbeitete er als wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Lehrstuhl für Arbeitsrecht der Universität Köln.
1994 promovierte er zum Dr. jur. 1995 bis 1996 folgte ein Forschungsauftrag an der University of California, Berkeley (USA). Dr. Brömmel spezialisierte sich auf die Fachbereiche Personalwesen und Arbeitswissenschaft, Arbeitsrecht und betriebswirtschaftliche Steuerlehre. Seit 1998 ist er Lehrbeauftragter an der Berufsakademie in Köln-Mülheim.

Auch sein politischer Werdegang kann sich sehen lassen: Seit 1991 ist Dr. Brömmel Vorsitzender der Jungen Union Köln; seit 1992 Mitglied des Gemeinderats der Stadt Köln. Seit 1996 sitzt er als Abgeordneter im Landtag von NRW. Seit 1997 ist Dr. Udo Brömmel verheiratet.


 

würde ich Dich nicht kennen,würde ich Dir das vielleicht sogar abnehmen,aber so ist mir klar,dass du uns auf den Arm nimmst
 

Leider sieht man es dem Fake sonst nicht an, das er nicht das unübertroffene Original ist.

Aber immerhin, er hats wiedermal geschafft etwas Verwirrung zu stiften. Herzlichen Glückwunsch!

Ansonsten fasse ich es als Kompliment auf, wenn sich jemand die Mühe macht, meine ID zu faken :-)


Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense
 

Es gibt nur eiieiiiiiiiiiiin doooooooooc brrrrrrrrrrrrroemmmmmmmmeeeeeeee!  

CBS) In the aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush ordered his then top anti-terrorism adviser to look for a link between Iraq and the attacks, despite being told there didn't seem to be one.

The charge comes from the adviser, Richard Clarke, in an exclusive interview on 60 Minutes.
Clarke also tells CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl that White House officials were tepid in their response when he urged them months before Sept. 11 to meet to discuss what he saw as a severe threat from al Qaeda.Clarke went on to say, "I think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism."
Clarke says that as early as the day after the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for retaliatory strikes on Iraq, even though al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan.

Clarke suggests the idea took him so aback, he initally thought Rumsfeld was joking.
Clarke is due to testify this week before the special panel probing whether the attacks were preventable.
 

sagte Rumsfeld wir müssen den Irak bombardieren.Alle,der FBI ,der CIA sagten es gebe keine Verbindung.Tenet sagte es Rumsfeld,dann wurden sie von Bush unter Druck gesetzt,er sagte:"Irak,finden Sie heraus ,ob da eine Verbindung besteht,er sagte es in einer einschüchternden Art, und es war klar welches Ergebnis erwartet wurde.....

"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.

"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking.

"I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection."

Clarke says he and CIA Director George Tenet told that to Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Clarke then tells Stahl of being pressured by Mr. Bush.

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'

"I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don't think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer."  

March 22, 2004
White House Assails Ex-Official Critical of Antiterror Effort
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, March 22 — The White House mounted a fierce assault today on a former counterterrorism official who has criticized President Bush's performance in connection with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, labeling the ex-official's criticism ill-timed and irresponsible.

Any implication that the Bush administration could have prevented the attacks is "deeply irresponsible, offensive — it's flat-out wrong," the president's chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, said at a White House briefing.

Contrary to what the counterterrorism official, Richard A. Clarke, has asserted in a new book and in recent interviews with journalists, Mr. McClellan said, President Bush and his top advisers regarded Al Qaeda terrorists as a high priority "very early on" in the administration.

Mr. Clarke asserts in his book "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror" that the administration did not take Al Qaeda seriously enough before the 2001 attacks, and that after the attacks it wrongly focused on Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, even though there is no evidence that Iraq had a role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Instead of making the United States safer from terror attacks, Mr. Clarke writes, the Iraq war has actually made it more vulnerable by fomenting anti-American feelings and taking military resources away from the hunt for Al Qaeda.

Mr. Clarke further asserts that the administration did not go after the Taliban in Afghanistan quickly enough after Sept. 11, even though it suspected the Taliban of sheltering the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, widely considered a mastermind of the terror attacks.

Such accusations, unless successfully rebutted by the administration, could be politically troublesome for President Bush, who has based much of his re-election strategy on portraying himself as the steady commander in chief in the struggle against terrorism.

Underscoring White House concern, Vice President Dick Cheney was among the top-level officials enlisted today in the effort to discredit Mr. Clarke. Mr. Cheney appeared on the conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh's radio program and alternately dismissed Mr. Clarke's credentials and questioned his expertise.

"He wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff," the vice president said.

Seeking to turn Mr. Clarke's government experience against him, Mr. Cheney noted that Mr. Clarke was in the government at the time of the first attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993; when American embassies were attacked in Africa in 1998; and when the warship Cole was attacked in 2000.

"The question that ought to be asked is, what were they doing in those days when he was in charge of counterterrorism efforts?" Mr. Cheney said.

At the White House, Mr. McClellan was unusually harsh in rebutting Mr. Clarke to reporters. The spokesman's tone underlined the seriousness with which the White House viewed Mr. Clarke's assertions, as did the actions of Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

Ms. Rice delivered the administration's response in appearances on three major television networks this morning, and she was briefing Washington journalists this afternoon in a further effort to dismantle Mr. Clarke's case against the administration. She also defended the administration's performance in an Op-Ed article in The Washington Post today.

Mr. McClellan implied that Mr. Clarke might be motivated at least in part by annoyance at effectively being demoted early in the Bush administration, and that he was trying to promote his book, set to go on sale today.

"Well, I mean, why all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner?" Mr. McClellan said. "This is one and a half years after he left the administration. And now all of a sudden he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had.

"And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book, and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book."

"Let's look at the politics of it," Mr. McClellan added. "His best buddy is Rand Beers, who is the principal foreign policy adviser to Senator Kerry's campaign." Mr. Beers, a former State Department official, is a colleague of Mr. Clarke's at Harvard.

Mr. Clarke, who spent 30 years in government, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, found his counterterrorism position downgraded in status after President Bush took office. Mr. McClellan said he was also disappointed at not being named to a senior position he had coveted in the Department of Homeland Security. He resigned from the government in March 2003.

Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, who is Mr. Bush's all but certain opponent on the Democratic ticket, said over the weekend that he would not comment on the Clarke book until he had studied it. Mr. Kerry is vacationing in Idaho, but his campaign's Web site did take note of the Clarke book on Sunday evening as Mr. Clarke was interviewed on the CBS program "60 Minutes."

Earlier today, Ms. Rice, said in interviews on the ABC, NBC and CBS morning programs that Mr. Bush had not been obsessed with Iraq in 2001, as Mr. Clarke says, but rather was pressing to determine if there was indeed a connection between the Sept. 11 attacks and Iraq.

"Yes, he was concerned about who might have done this, and it was an only logical question to keep an open mind," Ms. Rice told Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today" show. "Was it just Al Qaeda, or was it possible that there was some link, for instance, to Iraq, with whom we had a history, including Iraq's attempt to assassinate former President Bush?"

But Mr. Clarke wrote, and has said in interviews, that President Bush wanted a case made against Iraq, as did Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz.

The controversy loosed by Mr. Clarke's book comes at an important time, on the eve of hearings before the commission investigating the administration's performance in connection with the attacks and in the midst of a heated presidential campaign. Mr. Clarke is to testify before the commission on Wednesday.

President Bush has repeatedly said that the war in Iraq is part of the campaign against worldwide terrorism that America was thrust into by the Sept. 11 attacks. His critics have said it is disingenuous and cynical to make that association.

Mr. Clarke, appearing before Ms. Rice this morning on ABC's "Good Morning America," was asked whether he thought the administration had lied to the American people about an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"I think the administration went right up to the line, and intentionally left the impression with the American people, including the soldiers who were going to fight," Mr. Clarke replied, adding that he believed that American soldiers "went to their deaths in Iraq thinking that they were avenging 9/11, when Iraq had nothing to do with it."

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Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense
 

White House Tailspin

By David Sirota, Christy Harvey and Judd Legum, The Progress Report
March 23, 2004

One day after counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke's well-documented criticism of the Bush Administration's lackadaisical attitude towards terrorism, the White House is deploying top officials in a vicious barrage of personal attacks on a man with 30 years of public service under four presidents. The attacks reveal the vicious tactics this Administration uses to intimidate and threaten truth-tellers, but is so filled with inconsistencies, contradictions and lies that it actually bolsters Clarke's credibility. As Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) said, "This is a serious book written by a serious professional who's made serious charges, and the White House must respond to these charges" – something that, despite the personal attacks, the White House has not yet done. See American Progress's full rundown of the Administration's distortions yesterday, and internal Justice Department/FBI documents substantiating Clarke's claims.


National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed that Clarke "chose not to" voice his concerns about the Administration's counterterrorism policy, or lack thereof. But the White House itself acknowledges Clarke sent a memo to Rice on January 24, 2001 marked "urgent" asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with an impending al Qaeda attack, and that top officials rejected Clarke's request, saying they "did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat." Of course, Rice is the same person who denied ever being warned about putting the false uranium claim into the 2003 State of the Union Speech. When her dishonesty was exposed, she claimed, " I either didn't see the memo [or] I don't remember seeing the memo" from the CIA.


Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley – the same man who ignored CIA orders to remove false uranium claims from the President's pre-war State of the Union – defended the Administration by saying, "All the chatter [before 9/11] was of an attack, a potential Al Qaeda attack overseas." But according to page 204 of the bipartisan 9/11 congressional report, "In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained a report that Bin Laden supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States" to "carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives." The report "was included in an intelligence report for senior government officials in August [2001]." In the same month, the Pentagon found out that bin Laden associates "had departed various locations for Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States."


On Fox's Hannity and Colmes, Bush National Security spokesman Jim Wilkinson called Clarke's accusations a "work of fiction," and said the Bush Administration was focused on terror before 9/11. As proof, he claimed "it was this president who expedited the deployment of the armed Predator" (the unmanned plane). But according to Newsweek, it was the Bush Administration which "elected not to relaunch the Predator" and threatened to veto the defense bill if it "diverted $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism" programs like the Predator. As a result, AP reports, "though Predator drones spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times in late 2000, the Bush administration did not fly the unmanned planes over Afghanistan during its first eight months." While "the military successfully tested an armed Predator throughout the first half of 2001," the Bush Administration failed to resolve a bureaucratic "debate over whether the CIA or Pentagon should operate" the system, and it did not get off the ground before 9/11.


One of the most odious charges from the White House yesterday was that Clarke was personally responsible for all previous al Qaeda attacks against America. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice – who oversaw the worst national security failure in American history and yet refuses to testify publicly about it – said, "what's very interesting is that, of course, Dick Clarke was the counterterrorism czar in 1998 when the embassies were bombed. He was the counterterrorism czar in 2000 when the Cole was bombed. He was the counterterrorism czar for a period of the '90s when al Qaeda was strengthening and when the plots that ended up in September 11 were being hatched." Vice President Cheney echoed the very same criticism on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. Rice and Cheney conveniently ignored the President's own "buck stops here" declaration and desire for a " culture of personal responsibility": Both refused to mention that they were Clarke's bosses in the lead up to 9/11, and that they ignored Clarke's repeated efforts to get the Administration to take terrorism more seriously. They also failed to elucidate why, if Clarke's record was so terrible, they called him an " outstanding public servant" and decided to keep him on board at the White House.


Top Bush officials claimed Clarke's criticism was not credible because, as Vice President Cheney said, Clarke " was out of the loop" after the White House counterterrorism office was downgraded from the top position it occupied under previous administrations. But this attack implicitly acknowledges that counterterrorism was downgraded as a priority at the White House, and thus disproves the Administration's claims that it was taking terrorism seriously before 9/11. And such downgrading is consistent with other internal administration documents. As columnist Paul Krugman notes, before 9/11 not only did the Administration "completely drop terrorism as a priority – it wasn't even mentioned in his list of seven 'strategic goals' – just one day before 9/11 it proposed a reduction in counterterrorism funds."


Vice President Cheney claimed "a process was in motion throughout the spring" to develop a "more effective" terrorism policy – an allusion to the counterterrorism task force he was asked to head in May. But, while Cheney convened his energy task force at least 10 times (and had six other meetings with Enron executives), he never once convened the counterterrorism task force. Similarly, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett claimed, "President Bush understood the threat of terrorism when he took office." But when pressed to prove this claim in the face of Cheney's task force negligence and internal documents proving otherwise, Bartlett could only muster, "George Tenet personally briefed [the President about terrorism] every single morning."

 

Mit Spannung war der Auftritt des ehemaligen Beraters des US-Präsidenten, Richard Clarke, vor dem Untersuchungsausschuss zum 11. September erwartet worden. Seine Aussage kam einem Geständnis gleich: Die US-Regierung und er selbst trügen wegen Versäumnissen Mitschuld an den Anschlägen.
REUTERS
Clarke vor der Kommission: Aus Frust um Versetzung gebeten
Washington - Richard Clarke teilte aus, verschonte sich selbst aber nicht: "Die Regierung hat Sie im Stich gelassen, und ich habe es auch", sagte der ehemalige Berater des amerikanischen Präsidenten an die Adresse der Opfer gerichtet. In der mit Spannung erwarteten Aussage dem Untersuchungsausschuss zu den Anschlägen des 11. Septembers sagte Clarke, er habe so häufig und vergeblich versucht, mit seinen Warnungen bei den höchsten Stellen Gehör zu finden, dass er im Juni 2001 frustriert um eine Versetzung gebeten habe.

US-Präsident George W. Bush sah nach Angaben des hochrangigen ehemaligen Mitarbeiters in der Terrorbedrohung durch die al-Qaida vor dem 11. September 2001 "keine dringliche Angelegenheit". Bush habe der Terrorbekämpfung keine höchste Priorität eingeräumt, so der ehemalige Terrorabwehr-Berater weiter. Bereits im Januar 2001 sei er zum Beispiel auch bei der Nationalen Sicherheitsberaterin Condoleezza Rice mit einem Vorstoß für ein Dringlichkeitstreffen auf höchster Ebene gescheitert.

Clarkes Aussage vor dem Ausschuss erfolgte, nachdem er bereits am Wochenende mit seinen massiven Vorwürfen gegen die Regierung Bush an die Öffentlichkeit getreten war. So hatte er auch gesagt, dass sich Bush von Anfang an auf den Irak konzentriert und dadurch die Terrorbedrohung außer Acht gelassen habe. Vor der Kommission erklärte er heute: "Mit der Invasion im Irak hat der amerikanische Präsident den Anti-Terror-Krieg sehr geschwächt."
 

George Bush und Tony Blair sollen den Krieg gegen den Irak weit früher beschlossen haben als sie öffentlich zugeben. Bei einem Dinner neun Tage nach den Attacken des 11. September hätten beide einen "Geheimpakt" geschlossen, schreibt der britische "Observer".
London/Washington - Die Zeitung beruft sich in ihrem Bericht auf den ehemaligen britischen Botschafter in Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer. Er sagt, Bush und Blair bereits gut eine Woche nach den Terroranschlägen vom 11. September im Weißen Haus über einen möglichen Schlag gegen den irakischen Machthaber Saddam Hussein gesprochen.

"Wenn wir mit Afghanistan fertig sind, müssen wir auf den Irak zurückkommen", sagte Bush nach Angaben Meyers, der bei dem Dinner der beiden Staatsmänner dabei gewesen sei. Blair habe keine Einwände erhoben. Der ehemalige Botschafter habe außerdem gesagt, Blair habe nie daran geglaubt, dass Saddam ohne Krieg seine Macht und seine vermeintlichen Massenvernichtungswaffen aufgeben werde.

Die Konversation zeige, so der "Observer", dass der britische Premierminister entgegen eigenen Worten in der Öffentlichkeit bereits vor dem Militärschlag gegen Afghanistan gewusst habe, dass die USA beabsichtigten, auch den Irak anzugreifen.

Die britische Regierung wies diese Darstellung zurück. Der Irak sei seit langer Zeit ein vorrangiges Thema der Außenpolitik gewesen und von den beiden Politikern bei fast allen ihren Treffen besprochen worden. "Unsere Position war immer klar: dass wir versuchen, über die Vereinten Nationen zu handeln, und dass eine Entscheidung für einen Militärschlag nicht getroffen wurde, bis alle andere Möglichkeiten im März vergangenen Jahres ausgeschöpft waren", sagte ein Downing Street-Sprecher dem "Observer".
und hier das Original vom Observer:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1185407,00.html
Details of this extraordinary conversation will be published this week in a 25,000-word article on the path to war with Iraq in the May issue of the American magazine Vanity Fair. It provides new corroboration of the claims made last month in a book by Bush's former counter-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, that Bush was 'obsessed' with Iraq as his principal target after 9/11.

But the implications for Blair may be still more explosive. The discussion implies that, even before the bombing of Afghanistan, Blair already knew that the US intended to attack Saddam next, although he continued to insist in public that 'no decisions had been taken' until almost the moment that the invasion began in March 2003. His critics are likely to seize on the report of the two leaders' exchange and demand to know when Blair resolved to provide the backing that Bush sought.

The Vanity Fair article will provide further ammunition in the shape of extracts from the private, contemporaneous diary kept by the former International Development Secretary, Clare Short, throughout the months leading up to the war. This reveals how, during the summer of 2002, when Blair and his closest advisers were mounting an intense diplomatic campaign to persuade Bush to agree to seek United Nations support over Iraq, and promising British support for military action in return, Blair apparently concealed his actions from his Cabinet.
...Vanity Fair quotes a senior American official from Vice-President Dick Cheney's office who says he read the transcript of a telephone call between Blair and Bush a few days later.
As late as 9 September, Short's diary records, when Blair went to a summit with Bush and Cheney at Camp David in order to discuss final details, 'T[ony] B[lair] gave me assurances when I asked for Iraq to be discussed at Cabinet that no decision [had been] made and [was] not imminent.' Later that day she learnt from the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, that Blair had asked to make 20,000 British troops available in the Gulf......
 

wenn Vanity Fair Auszuge aus Clare Shorts Tagebuch bringt nächste Woche und auch andere Zeugen genannt werden,dafür dass Blair das Kabinett getäuscht hat  

Sonntag, 4. April 2004
"Die Schwerter sind vorbereitet"
"Zerstörung Roms" angekündigt  

Ein Vertrauter von Terrorchef Osama bin Laden hat auf einem Video mit der "Zerstörung Roms" gedroht. "Diejenigen, die Rom zerstören werden, bereiten schon die Schwerter vor", sagte nach Angaben der Zeitschrift "Panorama" der als "Botschafter Bin Ladens in Europa" bekannte und seit 2002 in Großbritannien inhaftierte Extremist, Scheich Abu Katada.

Wie "Panorama" (Mailand) weiter berichtet, entdeckten Fahnder das Video kürzlich in einem Versteck islamischer Extremisten in der norditalienischen Stadt Cremona. Unklar sei, wann das Video aufgenommen wurde.

Die italienischen Sicherheitsbehörden nahmen unterdessen 161 mutmaßliche islamische Extremisten ins Visier, die verdächtigt werden, Kontakte zu terroristischen Organisationen zu unterhalten. Innenminister Giuseppe Pisanu bezeichnete die am Freitag angeordneten Überprüfungen als präventive Maßnahme gegen den Terrorismus. Von den in fast allen Regionen des Landes kontrollierten Personen seien bis zum Samstag rund 90 vorübergehend festgenommen worden. 15 weitere Personen seien des Landes verwiesen worden, weil sie über keine gültigen Aufenthaltsgenehmigungen verfügten, hieß es. Bei dem Großteil der überprüften Personen handelte es sich um marokkanische, algerische und tunesische Staatsbürger.

Auf dem beschlagnahmten Video erklärt Katada dem Bericht zufolge: "Rom ist das Kreuz, und der Westen ist das Kreuz. Die Römer sind die Herren des Kreuzes und das Ziel der Muslime." Weiter heiße es: "Wer nicht Muslim ist, muss getötet werden. Der Koran verlangt den Kampf und die Zerstörung der Feinde des Islam." Italienische Anti-Terror-Spezialisten warnen seit Monaten vor Anschlägen islamischer Terroristen im Land. Immer wieder ist davon die Rede, auch der Vatikan sei im Visier der Terroristen.


kicky, wenn dies mal nicht die stühle in berlin sind, die da wackeln.
der terror kommt näher, auch du bist nur eine UNGLÄUBIGE!

was haben deine verhaßten amis, eigentlich damals in somalia gemacht(tutsi/hutu)......eure linke hetze gegen die usa ist nur zum kotzen.

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gruß
proxi

 

und das ist meine Meinung:

Die nächste Vernichtung aller Werte dieser Welt wird von den USA ausgehen.

Das war für die Jungs drüben zumindest immer das Erfolgsrezept für Wachstum und Wohlstand, und wie heißt es in US:
Never touch a running system.

Die sind einfach blöd und machen weiter wie bisher. Gottseidank hatten unsere Väter und Großväter schon die Bomben, wir werden nicht mehr betroffen sein, aber vielleicht Mal,lorca (um Gottes Willen, Hilfe ......)  

befreit.

immer diese kriegslüsternen amis. wenn diese blutrünstigen kriegstreiber, damals schön in amerika geblieben wären, könntet ihr linken heute nicht soviel krauses zeug schreiben......


auch unter dem sed-regime war ami-hetze obsolet, der böse kapitalismus mit seiner affinität zu kriegen. das waren noch zeiten, im fdj-hemd, was kicky?


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gruß
proxi  

http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/special/irak/17120/1.html