In the Shadows of the Friends

     by Manfred Hulverscheidt
    edited by Damian Manire

In the morning of July, 18th 2003, the flash animated news-header on top of the webpage of Guardian Online drew my attention: Man named as BBC source missing. For days I had followed the discussion in England on this ominous "BBC source". Studies on sources--most of them historical, most of them dead--are part of my profession. But this source was alive, still walking the earth.

Q. Did he have any lunch? A. Yes, he did. I said to him -- he did not want any but he did have some lunch. I made some sandwiches and he had a glass of water. We sat together at the table opposite each other. I tried to make conversation. I was feeling pretty wretched, so was he. He looked distracted and dejected. Q. How would you describe him at this time? A. Oh, I just thought he had a broken heart. He really was very, very -- he had shrunk into himself. He looked as though he had shrunk, but I had no idea at that stage of what he might do later, absolutely no idea at all. Q. And that was how he was looking and seeming to you. Did you talk much at lunch? A. No, no. He could not put two sentences together. He could not talk at all. Q. You said, I think, you were feeling unwell that day? A. That is right. Q. What did you do? A. I went to go and have a lie down after lunch, which is something I quite often did just to cope with my arthritis. I said to him, "What are you going to do?" He said, "I will probably go for my walk".

The man left his Southmoor home in the afternoon, at about 3:45 p.m. He was dressed inappropriately for the wet weather, wearing only a shirt and not taking his coat with him. A local farmer saw him near his house. There was nothing to indicate that he was troubled. "He smiled and said hello." He knew the farmer well, whose fields lay around the wood. The man continued towards the small hill topped with a thick coppice of ash and oak, known as Harrington Hill. On the crown of the ridge, he took tablets of a prescription painkiller. As the drugs took their effect he drew a small sheath knife, his boy-scout knife, cut his left wrist, and waited on the crown of the ridge above the most magnificent of views.

Only one week before he had been quite a nobody. Of course, he was a reputated expert on biological warfare, advisor to the Ministry of Defense, and in the 90's was one of the most respected UN-inspectors in Iraq. But who cares? During the week before his death the media portrayed him as a "lowly official" with "doubtful qualifications" - based on information seemingly spread by his own colleagues. Having not returned home by 11.45pm, his family contacted the police.

He has been under enormous pressure! - sounded the choir of press and media. Nobody spoke it, but everyone knew: The man named, Dr. David Kelly, had revealed to a BBC reporter facts that could lead a trail of incrimination through the government, with the potential to ultimately engulf the Prime Minister Tony Blair. Treason! Betrayal! Treachery!

tradire (lat.) gives the etymological background of the English to betray, treason, treachery, of the French trahir and la trahison. The Germans use the Latin root merely to talk about tradieren and tradition, in the historical sense of to hand down. The Latin verb has some more or less harmless meanings such as to hand over, to give in, to confide, to expose, to abandon oneself, but also to hand down, to tell, to inform, to communicate. The German word for to betray = verraten is close to raten (to advise) or Rat (advise), words that have been used in connection with God and King from the early German age on through the medieval age. "Raten (to advise) implied everything the head of the clan owed to his dependents: protection, help, precaution, promotion, instruction, explanation. Ver-raten (to betray) is the breaking-out of this protective zone, in the sense of to lead astray, to misdirect, to give bad support, to expose, to hand over. In this original meaning you still find the ambiguity of the relationship: even the emperor can betray those who must obey him - an insight we Germans had lost until it was recognized and experienced anew with Adolf Hitler." (Margret Boveri, Verrat im XX. Jahrhundert, Bd. 1, S. 15. The author has, in five volumes, devoted her attention to the many cases of betrayal in the 20th century and the manyfold biographical, personal, professional, ideological and political bonds they implied. She talks of betrayal as a "mass phenomenon".) The notion of betrayal can only be defined by contemplating its connection with rule, protection, power - and, vice versa, to persecution and repression.

2. Betrayal and knowledge in solitude

To reveal secrets of a personal nature is to leave one's self open to manipulation and exploitation, and is often the beginning of a tragedy. Extreme case: a man is the only one who knows something about something. It could be knowledge of a crime, a plot, or a simple fact like the existence of a fortune, the hiding-place of the persecuted, or the hidden affliction of a mother and child's ongoing loss of sight like in Lars van Trier's film Dancer in the dark. The tragedy of betrayal starts either by intruding an island of knowledge, or by sending out boats and signals that break the isolation. Someone can't stand the secrecy anymore.

The consequences of betrayal can be very different. On one hand, the secret itself suffers a loss of significance. When revealed, the secret becomes a message, and by the spreading of that message the secret becomes gossip. Its force evaporates. On the other hand, the gossip (German vernacular: Tratsch also from Lat. tradire) will bring the original holder of the secret into great danger. His betrayal is regarded as a sign of unreliability and weakness of character; helplessness. Grade and intensity of the traitor's proscription depends very much on how clearly the existence of certain secret forces come into the light; powers, on which to knock was unwise. Traitors break the peace which envelopes the powerful. "Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses, resting silent you would have stayed a philosopher!" (from: Manfred Hulverscheidt: Verrat, Verrat! Concept for a TV-program on Traitors and Betrayals, Berlin 2002).

The details reported by the Guardian on the day before the BBC-source went missing were memorable: "Once they even switched off the air vents in a desperate attempt to make out what he was saying." -- and -- "The two burly Ministry of Defence minders sitting behind him were impassive. One had a broken nose, possibly from beating himself up."

The Independent wrote a summary of the hearing: "Dr Kelly said he had written to his manager in the MoD on 30 June to admit that he had met Mr Gilligan after he read the transcript of the reporter's evidence. I do realise that in the conversation I had there was reinforcement of some of the ideas that he has put forward, he said. Sir John Stanley, a Conservative member of the committee, asked why the MoD waited several days before issuing a press release. He praised Dr Kelly for coming forward, but said he had been thrown to the wolves by the MoD. Sir John said: "You were being exploited to rubbish Mr Gilligan and his source." Andrew Mackinlay, Labour MP for Thurrock, told Dr Kelly: "I reckon you are chaff that has been thrown up to divert our probing. Have you ever felt like the fall guy? You have been set up haven't you?" Dr. Kelly replied: "I accept the process." (The Independent, 16.7.2003)"

Excursus: Only a few people have noticed that reports based on secret service knowledge, formerly regarded as highly doubtful, have become top sources of international journalism after September 11th. In news and articles like the following by DER SPIEGEL you can see how the public is led astray by persistently pointing out seemingly reliable but truthfully nebulous sources, or by permanent use of the passive verb form:

Whatever he might have said in detail, Mr. David Kelly must have complained in his conversation with the BBC-reporter Mr. Gilligan how careless the government was dealing with the work of inspectors, scientists, and experts like him. So far removed were the spin doctors of Tony Blair from the real facts and human beings, that press officer Tom Kelly even slandered the well-reputated scientist as Walter Mitty, Thurber's famous quixotic dreamer. The derogatory spin was aimed at discounting Dr. Kelly's seriousness.

We don't learn much about the motives of the biologist, but learn much about his sensitivity in being personally exposed to the public. He was described by everyone as a man of integrity. So maybe it was an old-fashioned love of the truth that had driven him to talk and hand over internal knowledge. Friends of the Prime Minister did not appreciate such honesty. And so Kelly became a traitor, at least in the eyes of those who needed a watertight justification for their despicable plans to destroy a rich Middle Eastern country.

Dr. David Kelly surely knew more about insidious weapons stored behind locked doors than anyone else. He could speak coolly about things we normal people would find very emotional if not disgusting: "How can I protect myself against anthrax viruses that somebody has put into my mail?" Experts like him can trace cloned viruses to their original laboratory. If the FBI would have made real efforts to investigate the source of the poisoned letters sent to American journalists, congressmen, and others in autumn 2001, Dr. David Kelly should have been consulted.

Global Free Press, 18th of July 2003: "From 1984-1992 he was Head of Microbiology at the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment, Porton Down. Kelly was also among the hard-liners who claimed that Iraq had WMD. In October 2001, Kelly claimed, that in 1985, Iraq obtained Anthrax through a mail order of Virginia-based American Type Culture Collection."

http://news.globalfreepress.com/article.pl?sid=03/07/18/1440234&mode=thread http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/478386.stm

A heavy pressure weighs upon a man who commits suicide. Everything goes black. David Kelly thinks, they will slander me as an idiot, a chatterbox, so that I'll never be taken serious again. I have confined myself to the press, and now they will crucify me. I must not talk to the press, I must not talk to the press, I must not ... There appears a ghost: "Of course you are allowed to speak to the press, but you will be accountable to the PM, the MoD, and to the Carlyle Group.

Kelly's timid performance before the public made clear the man did not want to be exposed on a public stage. The testimony by his wife now widow confirmed this. But for him was it reason enough to commit suicide?

David Stuart Broucher, member of the Diplomatic Service and currently a Permanent Representative to the Conference of disarmament in Geneva, former British ambassador in Prague, stated on August, 21st 2003: "A. As Dr Kelly was leaving I said to him: what will happen if Iraq is invaded? And his reply was, which I took at the time to be a throw away remark -- he said: I will probably be found dead in the woods. Q. You understood it to be a throw away remark. Did you report that remark at the time to anyone? A. I did not report it at the time to anyone because I did not attribute any particular significance to it. I thought he might have meant that he was at risk of being attacked by the Iraqis in some way. Q. And you, at the time, considered it to be a sort of general comment one might make at the end of a conversation? A. Indeed."

The term THE FRIENDS - a.k.a. "Old Boys Club" means a bit more than a group of regulars in a pub. The network of friendship officially consists of communities, sponsors, institutes, nowadays often called projects. THE FRIENDS, while not necessarily clandestine, do not advertise their meetings, plans, and agreements. Or, as chancellor Helmut Kohl once explained in the 80's to a TV-journalist: "The public will understand that talks between friends are not for the public." Even during the Parteispendenskandal (Party Spending Scandal) Kohl did not break the omertà, vowing to take to his grave the names of his and his party's sponsors. That honors the private gentleman but not the statesman.

Sometimes, maybe from the late 70's on, the term THE FRIENDS slowly became a central term of political science replacing rather stony terms like "ruling class," or even "bourgeoisie". Many see but a correction in language of THE FRIENDS, a kind of adaptation of the events of actual history, which is in great parts dominated by activities of mafia like groups. (Some say "as ever before in history".) So THE FRIENDS are finally not much more than the English translation of the word AMIGOS.

Ein Freund, ein guter Freund, das ist das Beste, was es gibt auf der Welt Ein Freund, ein guter Freund, und wenn die ganze Welt zusammenfällt D'rum sei auch nicht betrübt, wenn Dein Schatz Dich nicht mehr liebt, Ein Freund, ein guter Freund, das ist das Beste, was es gibt.

Elizabeth Drew on certain FRIENDS

In her essay The Neocons in Power (Vol. 50, No. 10 - June 12, 2003 of the New York Review of Books) the American author Elizabeth Drew delivers a precise description of certain American friends keeping us in suspense with their adventurous remote-controlled-crusades in the Middle East. It is a remarkable inside report on the current American government. You can either go to http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16378 or - if you're a native german speaker - read the german translation on this site by switching to http://www.hdtvideo.de/Texte1.html   "1. The conflict within the Bush administration in recent months over policy for postwar Iraq has caused much confusion and has already damaged the reconstruction effort. The stakes are enormous not just for the US and for the people of Iraq, but for the entire Middle East, and the rest of the world. Almost from the outset of the Bush administration there have been battles between the State Department and the Defense Department, but the controversy over postwar Iraq has brought out bitterness and knife-wielding of a sort that Washington has seldom seen. To some extent, the tension between the two departments is inherent because of their different missions. This conflict spills over into the White House and the think tanks and the offices of various consultants around town. It is really a conflict between the neoconservatives, who are largely responsible for getting us into the war against Iraq, and those they disparagingly call the "realists," who tend to be more cautious about the United States' efforts to remake the Middle East into a democratic region. The word "neoconservative" originally referred to former liberals and leftists who were dismayed by the countercultural movements of the 1960s and the Great Society, and adopted conservative views, for example, against government welfare programs, and in favor of interventionist foreign policies. A group of today's "neocons" now hold key positions in the Pentagon and in the White House and they even have a mole in the State Department. The most important activists are Richard Perle, who until recently headed the Defense Policy Board (he's still a member), a once-obscure committee, ostensibly just an advisory group but now in fact a powerful instrument for pushing neocon policies; James Woolsey, who has served two Democratic and two Republican administrations, was CIA director during the Clinton administration, and now works for the management consult-ing firm Booz Allen Hamilton; Kenneth Adelman, a former official in the Ford and Reagan administrations who trains executives by using Shakespeare's plays as a guide to the use of power (www.moversandshakespeares .com); Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense and the principal advocate of the Iraq policy followed by the administration; Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, the Pentagon official in charge of the reconstruction of Iraq; and I. Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. Two principal allies of this core group are John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control (though he opposes arms control) and international security affairs, and Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser. Cheney himself and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld can be counted as subscribing to the neocons' views about Iraq.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A web of connections binds these people in a formidable alliance. Perle, Wolfowitz, and Woolsey have long been close friends and neighbors in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The three have worked with one another in the Pentagon, served on the same committees and commissions, and participated in the same conferences. Feith is a protégé of Perle, and worked under him during the Reagan administration. Adelman, a friend of Perle, Wolfowitz, and Woolsey, is very close to Cheney and Rumsfeld. The Cheneys and the Adelmans share a wedding anniversary and celebrate it together each year; Adelman worked for Rumsfeld in three government positions, and the Adelmans have visited the Rumsfelds at their various homes around the country. Woolsey and Adelman are members of Perle's Pentagon advisory group. At the outset of this administration Perle made sure that it was composed of people who share his hawkish views. (Perle recently resigned the chairmanship over allegations of conflicts of interest with his private consulting business, but he remains a member of the advisory board, and his power isn't diminished.) Bolton, over the objections of Colin Powell, was appointed to the State Department at the urging of his neocon allies. (A State Department official said to me recently, referring to the Pentagon, "Why don't we have a mole over there?") Perle, Woolsey, and Wolfowitz are all disciples of the late Albert Wohlstetter, a University of Chicago professor who had worked for the RAND corporation and later taught at the University of California. Throughout the cold war he argued that nuclear deterrence wasn't sufficient—that the US had to actually plan to fight a nuclear war in order to deter it. He strongly advocated the view that the military power of the USSR was underrated. Wolfowitz earned his Ph.D. under Wohlstetter; Perle met Wohlstetter when he was a high school student in Los Angeles and was invited by Wohlstetter's daughter to swim in their pool. Later, Wohlstetter invited Perle, then a graduate student at Princeton, to Washington to work with Wolfowitz on a paper about the proposed Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Wohlstetter opposed and which has been abandoned by the Bush administration. Wohlstetter introduced Perle to Democratic Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson of Washington, an aggressive cold warrior and champion of Israel's interests. Woolsey (who calls himself "a Scoop Jackson Democrat") came to know Wohlstetter in 1980, when they both served on a Pentagon panel. Of Wohlstetter Woolsey said in a conversation we had in mid-April, "A key to understanding how Richard and Paul and I think is Albert. He's had a major impact on us." And through Wohlstetter, Perle met Ahmed Chalabi, then an Iraqi exile who had founded the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization of Iraqi groups, many of its members in exile.      ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Perle's career has been an astonishing one. Though he has held only one government position—that of an assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration—he has had tremendous influence over the administration's Iraq policy. He openly advocated the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime shortly after he left the Pentagon in 1987. In the 1970s, while working on Jackson's Senate staff, he opposed détente, helped to stop ratification of the SALT II arms control agreement, and aided Jackson in getting through Congress the Jackson-Vanik law, which cut off trade with the Soviet Union if it continued to bar the emigration of Jews. During the Reagan administration, when he was assistant secretary of defense for policy, Perle became famous for opposing arms control agreements and acquired the nickname "The Prince of Darkness." Working with a small group of journalists who circulate his views, he's been known to savage someone he opposes on a big issue. He makes his influence felt through frequent television appearances, through his network of allies in the bureaucracy, and through his strategy of staking out an extreme posi-tion and trying to make the ground shift in his direction—which it often has. He is a strong advocate of the views of right-wing Israeli leaders, and serves on the board of the company that owns the pro-Likud Jerusalem Post. When he's not working with his clients, who include defense contractors, he is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. From this position Perle invites people to an annual conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado, cosponsored by AEI and former president Gerald Ford, and he has several times invited Ahmed Chalabi as his guest there. At the conferences, Chalabi was able to meet Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chalabi fled Iraq when he was thirteen, along with other members of his wealthy and prominent Shiite family, after the military coup in 1958 that overthrew the British-installed monarchy. He studied in America—earning an undergraduate degree in mathematics at MIT, and then a doctorate, also in mathematics, at the University of Chicago (where he met Wohlstetter) —and then went into banking. He has been tried and convicted, in absentia, in Jordan on charges of fraud and embezzlement over the collapse of the Petra Bank, which he founded and ran. (Chalabi has said that the bank's collapse was the result of a plot by Saddam Hussein's government.[*]) After founding the Iraqi National Congress in 1992, he received CIA funds. In 1995, working from Kurdish territory in northern Iraq, he promoted a coup against Saddam Hussein, but his plan fizzled. Even one of his current allies says he "may have overstated" the degree of support his attempted coup would receive from disaffected members of the Iraqi military. Chalabi claimed at the time that the CIA supported him, but Anthony Lake, then Clinton's national security adviser, denies this. "Fearing another Bay of Pigs," he told me, "everyone agreed that we needed to be crystal clear with Chalabi. The United States had already betrayed the Kurds twice, and we didn't want to see it happen again by our encouraging such a dubious operation. So I personally sent him a message that we didn't support him." A current senior administration official says that Saddam's government knew in advance about Chalabi's plan, and had penetrated it. Back in Washington, where he spent a great deal of time, Chalabi impressed various members of Congress, among them John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, and was the moving force behind the passage in 1998 of the Iraq Liberation Act, which called for the overthrow of the Saddam regime and directed that the State Department grant $97 million to the INC. But before long the department, suspicious that the organization had misallocated funds, ordered an audit, announced "accounting irregularities," and held up further contributions—to the everlasting fury of Perle and other neocons. When the Bush administration came in, the Pentagon began funding the INC.     ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chalabi's role in postwar Iraq has become one of the most contentious issues within the Bush administration. The State Department considers him "damaged goods," and someone who has been out of touch with Iraq for too long. The neocons admire him as a man of strong intelligence and a courageous fighter for the overthrow of Saddam and for democracy in Iraq; they see him as the perfect person to lead postwar Iraq. After the start of the war, without informing the State Department, the Pentagon flew Chalabi and his paramilitary forces, which the American military had trained in Hungary, back into Iraq. Their intention was to give him a strong head start toward becoming the leader of the new Iraqi government. But the State Department objected to the US installing Iraq's new leader, and Colin Powell argued strenuously in National Security Council meetings that the United States should not impose a new ruler on Iraq, a position that the President adopted during discussions in February with his national security advisers: Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, and George Tenet of the CIA. The official position of the US government became that the Iraqi people should decide the future of Iraq and that the future leaders should be drawn from Iraqis who had been both inside and outside the country during the Saddam regime. But there's a question of how many anti-Baathist leaders could survive in Iraq during Saddam's reign. The neocons argue that no one comparable to Konrad Adenauer or Václav Havel is likely to be found inside Iraq. Despite the President's position, Chalabi's friends in Washington continue to back him strongly. A senior member of the administration says, "Their whole approach to life seems to be to get Mr. Chalabi in a position of authority." A well-informed official told me recently that in National Security Council meetings, "Nobody would argue against the point that there had to be insiders and outsiders. Some people in the administration wouldn't argue against that point but wouldn't accept it." This person said that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, along with their like-minded outsiders, took the position that "we're going to fight this war and we're going to install Chalabi." The British government takes a skeptical view of Chalabi—who spent several of his exile years in London— and has so informed the Bush administration. Even those outside the neocons' circle who think well of Chalabi agree that it's been a major mistake for Chalabi's US supporters to make it so apparent that he's their man in Iraq. US forces are now providing protection for Chalabi in Baghdad.      ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Perle says of Chalabi, "He's an exceptional person, brilliant, with the disciplined mind of a mathematician. He's someone you want to talk to— deeply knowledgeable of the region, its history and culture." He adds, "One of the sources of opposition to Chalabi is the dictators of the countries around Iraq and the reason is obvious: he's going to fight for democracy and other peoples will want it." Woolsey said, "The State Department bureaucracy tilts pro-Saudi and anti-Chalabi. The key thing about Ahmed is not that he's a banker, not that he wears $2,000 suits, not that he's been in and out of Iraq since he was a teenager. I think that the key problem is that he's Shiite: the State bureaucracy has been used to Sunni powers in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq—pretty much everywhere in the Middle East." (Sixty percent of the Iraqi people are Shiite but there are as yet no signs that the secular Chalabi has the support of Shiite religious leaders in Iraq.) Woolsey added, "The State Department bureaucracy likes to get along with clients and the CIA likes to control things and Chalabi isn't controllable, he has his own views." When we talked in April Kenneth Adelman told me, "The starting point is that conservatives now are for radical change and the progressives—the establishment foreign policy makers— are for the status quo." He added, "Conservatives believe that the status quo in the Middle East is pretty bad, and the old conservative belief that stability is good doesn't apply to the Middle East. The status quo in the Middle East has been breeding terrorists."   2. In January, the President signed a secret National Security Policy Directive, giving the Defense Department the authority to manage postwar policy in Iraq, and directing other agencies to coordinate with Defense. But this didn't settle things: conflict between the Defense Department and the State Department continued. The State Department submitted a list of people to serve in the reconstruction and the Defense Department rejected some of them without informing State. The appointment of retired general James Garner to run the reconstruction effort in Iraq was controversial from the outset. Garner was a friend of Rumsfeld from the days when they served together in 1998 on a commission that strongly advocated missile defense. After the first Gulf War Garner was much praised in northern Iraq for his management of Operation Provide Comfort, a program of aid for Kurdish refugees. The Bush I administration had urged the Kurds in northern Iraq, as well as the Shiites in southern Iraq, to rise against the Saddam regime, but then abandoned them. Garner, the president of a company that supplies missile parts, had advised Israel on the use of the Patriot missile during the Gulf War. More recently he was one of forty-four retired military officers who signed a document praising the "remarkable restraint" of Israel's defense forces "in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by" the PLO. Garner's support of Israel's government has been widely noted in the Arab press; the American conservative Jewish publication Forward in late March proudly published a piece headlined "Pro-Israel General Will Oversee Reconstruction of Postwar Iraq." Before the war ended, Garner and a staff of a few hundred people installed themselves in a row of beachfront villas in Kuwait, and, in the deepest secrecy, made plans for the postwar period. After they got to Baghdad, they remained largely inaccessible in a grand palace, trapped by the insecure surroundings which they hadn't adequately planned for. Then, in early May, came word that a civilian, Paul Bremer, a former State Department official in charge of counterterrorism and former manager of Henry Kissinger's consulting firm, would be installed as head of the reconstruction effort over Garner. The administration had become aware—belatedly—that it wasn't brilliant public relations to have a military man in charge of the reconstruction effort and that it was running into serious difficulties. US officials had failed to anticipate the degree of chaos that followed the war: they didn't have an adequate plan, didn't protect hospitals and other public buildings from looters, or citizens from violent crime, and by early May still hadn't restored many basic services. The leaders of long-repressed Shiite Muslims were taking charge of some neighborhoods and calling for a theocratic state. Iraqis were agitating for the US to leave. The State Department had argued from the outset that a civilian should run the reconstruction efforts, and the British government, among others, had complained to the Bush administration about the appointment of a military man. Rumsfeld, I was told, suggested the appointment of Bremer, who is close to the neocons, and State Department officials were pleased with the idea because they considered Bremer, a former foreign service officer, to be one of them. Thus, Bremer's appointment was a rarity: State and Defense were both enthusiastic—while Garner was highly displeased and is to leave Iraq soon, along with some of the officials who were found lacking in skills needed for the postwar administration. But Robert Oakley, a former ambassador to Pakistan and Zaire, a special envoy to Somalia for two presidents, a former head of the counterterrorism program (he was succeeded by Bremer), and now a visiting fellow at the National Defense University, said to me after the shake-up, "I don't think it matters who's leaving and who's taking their place. It's too late. In large part events are developing out there in ways that may now be beyond our control." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Perle confirmed to me what others had told me—that he has been the leader of the pro-Chalabi group. "It may have been because I knew him longer and introduced him to others," he said. He has known Chalabi for twelve years. It was Chalabi who encouraged the US planners of the war to believe that the Shiites in the south would welcome the US forces as liberators (despite the fact that the US had betrayed them in 1991), that the Iraqi army would lack the will to fight, and that there would be substantial defections by the Republican Guard. This advice led Cheney to say on Meet the Press, "I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.... I think the regular army will not [fight, and that] significant elements of the Republican Guard are likely as well to want to avoid conflict"; and it led Kenneth Adelman to predict that defeating Saddam Hussein's regime would be a "cakewalk." The overconfidence of US officials was the result not only of Chalabi's "information" but also of their and Chalabi's eagerness to sell the war. Perle concedes having underestimated the role of the Fedayeen Saddam, a paramilitary force set up by Saddam's son Uday after the Gulf War. "What we didn't expect," Perle said, "was that the Fedayeen Saddam got moved south, by the busload"—thus causing the taking of some southern towns to be more difficult than expected. Perle and Chalabi had argued that between 40,000 and 80,000 American soldiers would suffice, that if a small number of troops were sent in they could be augmented by forces recruited by the INC, and that large parts of the Iraqi military would quickly join them. As Rumsfeld began planning for an invasion, he ordered, as one option, a study for a war strategy using 80,000 troops. He was eager to prove his point that the military, in particular the Army, could be slimmed down, that many of its previous roles in combat could be performed by sophisticated new weapons and by Special Operations forces. In holding down the number of US forces to fight in Iraq to approximately 230,000 to 250,000—roughly half the number of troops that were sent to fight in the Gulf War—and belatedly redirecting the troops that had been supposed to be sent through Turkey (they didn't arrive until after the fighting had ceased), Rumsfeld took some big chances. Among other consequences, there weren't enough troops to deal with the chaos in Baghdad after it fell to the allies. Some military experts also argue that supply lines were unnecessarily endangered, and that lives were unnecessarily lost. Retired General Wesley Clark said on CNN, "We took the risk and it worked out.... But I'm still of the school that would say, don't take risks if you don't have to take the risk." Rumsfeld has tried to have it both ways. In a single press briefing, he insisted both that there were adequate troops and that the Baghdad Museum couldn't be protected (though the Oil Ministry was) because "when some of that looting was going on, people were being killed, people were being wounded." Rumsfeld's determination to hold down the number of troops in Iraq carried over from the war to the postwar period. Earlier this year, General Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, testified to Congress that at least 200,000 troops would be needed after the fighting ended. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, loath to have the public think that waging war in Iraq would impose a long-term burden on the US, were angered by Shinseki's testimony, which the next day Wolfowitz called "wildly off the mark." So then they were stuck with staying below 200,000 troops in Iraq. Rumsfeld rejected requests to have a sizable number of military police ready to impose order and protect facilities when the fighting ended. As of May 12, there were roughly 150,000 US troops inside Iraq, with many more in the region. Of late, officials have privately admitted that they underestimated the degree of lawlessness and looting that would follow the fighting —but this kind of activity has had many precedents in postwar situations. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Like Perle, Wolfowitz had favored bringing down the Saddam regime since before the Bush administration took office, and in meetings of the President's national security advisers just after September 11, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz put forward their view that Saddam's regime should be eliminated. Iraq was a terrorist state, they argued, and should be made a target of the "war on terrorism." Kenneth Adelman says, "At the beginning of the administration people were talking about Iraq but it wasn't doable. There was no heft. That changed with September 11 because then people were willing to confront the reality of an international terrorist network, and terrorist states such as Iraq. The terrorist states are even worse than terrorist networks because they have so many more resources at their disposal—they have money, they have weapons, and they can send contraband material in diplomatic pouches." Iraq's supposed ties to al-Qaeda have still not been proved; but Bush apparently became convinced that they existed. (Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, unhappy that the CIA and the Penta-gon's own Defense Intelligence Agency weren't confirming their charges about Iraq's ties to terrorist groups, set up their own intelligence group, one more likely to tell them what they wanted to hear.) By repeating the charge that Iraq was linked with international terrorism, the President and other officials succeeded in convincing nearly half the US public before the war that Iraq was involved in the attack on the World Trade Center. Several sources told me that if Cheney and his neocon allies had had their way, the war with Iraq would have begun in the fall of 2002; they attribute the delay to Powell's success in convincing Bush to take his case to the UN and send weapons inspectors to Iraq. Not long after September 11, high US military officials were told by members of the Bush administration that the regimes of six other countries besides Iraq would eventually have to be removed because they harbored terrorist groups: Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, and Libya. The administration had declared a "war on terrorism," but, unsure how to fight it, adopted the strategy of "draining the swamps" in which it was said to breed. In announcing on May 1 the end of "major combat" in Iraq, Bush called that war "one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11, 2001, and still goes on." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The neocons' assurance that the United States could not only remove Saddam Hussein but also convert Iraq and the rest of the Middle East into democratic nations relies on several false analogies. Wolfowitz, his neo-con allies, and the journalists who circulate their ideas often cite Germany and Japan after the Second World War as examples of countries that were transformed into democracies. But unlike Iraq, Japan had a largely homogeneous culture and a symbol of national unity, the Emperor, who kept his title if not his power. Japan, in any case, has had essentially one-party rule since the end of the war. And Germany, which also had a cohesive society, had a democratic constitution and parliamentary institutions until Hitler was barely elected chancellor in 1933. Moreover, the US occupied Japan for seven years and Germany for four. Rumsfeld has said that no time limit can be set on the US occupation of Iraq, but US officials are aware that the longer it goes on the greater will be the danger to US troops there—and perhaps domestic pressures to bring them home. (The neocons—as well as officials of previous administrations and some academics —also assert that democracies don't make war on each other, but this is a highly debated proposition.) Because some—but certainly not all —of the neoconservatives are Jewish and virtually all are strong supporters of the Likud Party's policies, the accusation has been made that their aim to "democratize" the region is driven by their desire to surround Israel with more sympathetic neighbors. Such a view would explain the otherwise puzzling statements by Wolfowitz and others before the war that "the road to peace in the Middle East goes through Baghdad." But it is also the case that Bush and his chief political adviser Karl Rove are eager both to win more of the Jewish vote in 2004 than Bush did in 2000 and to maintain the support of the Christian right, whose members are also strong supporters of Israel. The neoconservatives are powerful because they are cohesive, determined, ideologically driven, and clever (even if their judgment can be questionable), and some high administration officials, including the vice-president, are sympathetic to them. (Rove is known to have bought the road-through-Baghdad argument, which gave them a powerful boost.) But the neocons don't win all the time. In the argument over how involved the UN should be in postwar Iraq, the State Department and Tony Blair favored a fairly large role whereas the Defense Department preferred virtually none at all. The President came down somewhere near the middle, saying that the UN should have a "vital" role. On May 9, the US circulated a draft resolution providing for a United Nations "special coordinator" who would work with the US on humanitarian activities and help US administrators in setting up political and civic institutions. Colin Powell is skilled in bureaucratic infighting, yet when the White House makes a decision that favors Powell, the ideologues on the right don't take this as final: they keep pushing. Powell's general inclination, after he has fought for a position, is to support his commander in chief—as he did on going to war in Iraq. A diplomatic source has called Powell "The Unsackable," because of his national popularity rating (higher than Bush's) and his international standing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rumsfeld was reported to be in trouble before September 11 for having alienated almost everyone—Congress, the military, defense contractors (who are big campaign contributors to the Republicans)—and his ideas for restructuring the military were going nowhere. He has been riding high since the war. On the Sunday after Baghdad fell, The Washington Post and The New York Times ran front-page stories saying that Rumsfeld was now in a commanding position within the government. This was no accident. The stories were apparently encouraged by Rumsfeld's people. Rumsfeld and his associates saw the victory in Iraq as providing leverage for his struggles with other agencies and support for his program to change the military. So now Rumsfeld is "unsackable," too. As a result, as long as Powell and Rumsfeld choose to remain in place, the conflicts between the two departments—unprecedented in their intensity and openness—will go on. Bush, who can by several accounts be snappish and harsh with his staff, even his highest-placed advisers (and has a fearsome temper), hates leaks and tolerates no open disagreement among advisers in other matters. He has fired some members of his administration for raising questions about his policies, in particular his economic program; yet he tolerates open conflict among his national security team. Some people argue that Condoleezza Rice should foster greater cooperation, but a former high State Department official says, "You can't coordinate people who refuse to be coordi- nated." The President himself seems unable or unwilling to impose order. People familiar with how Rumsfeld operates say that he cows people, makes them ill at ease in his presence; a former Republican official calls him "unsettling." Powell, for his part, raised questions about the planning for the war in meetings of the national security advisers, but said nothing publicly about his doubts. He has told people, "I'm no longer a soldier. I'm not going to manage defense policy." Rumsfeld has no corresponding reluctance about foreign affairs. In his virtually daily televised briefings—unprecedented for a cabinet officer—on which he clearly thrives, he has unhesitatingly insulted other countries, France and Germany among them. The problems in a postwar Iraq were always going to be difficult, but they have been made worse as a result of several factors: the administration's zeal—particularly on the part of the neocons and their allies—to remove Saddam Hussein from power while failing to plan for the peace; Bush's pretense that he hadn't decided to go to war long after he apparently had in fact decided to; the administration's relative lack of interest in peacekeeping and belief that such efforts are politically unpopular (a carryover from the 2000 campaign that is also proving destructive in Afghanistan); and Rumsfeld's determination to hold down the number of troops in Iraq after the war—at whatever cost. Senator Richard Lugar, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has publicly complained that the planning for the aftermath of the war "started very late.... A gap has occurred, and that has brought some considerable suffering." Bush, whose presidency has been audacious and even radical, is now embarked on his riskiest gamble so far. —May 14, 2003 Update on October, 8th 2003: Pepe Escobar's thoughts on friends, in the Asia Times of yesterday, lead us deep into the present Iraq. In his worth reading article he describes, among other players, the role of Ahmad Chalabi, the stumbled banker, now on location in Baghdad. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EJ07Ak02.html

1. FOX-NEWS: "Terrorists don't care what (sic !) you are - they just want you dead!"

2. THE AGE, Melbourne, 21. August 2003: "This deadly mix of local resistance and foreign jihadist fighters is transforming Iraq, as Deputy Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz told Congress just a few weeks ago, into the central battle in the war on terrorism. Mr Wolfowitz, like Mr Bush, is not intimidated by this battle. He quoted a top general as saying: 'It's much better to be killing those people in Iraq than to have them come here and kill Americans'."

Question: Why does this courageous man not pack his bags in Baghdad? The Bavarian politician Franz-Josef Strauss once said that the main goal of our campaigns is to gain air superiority on the pubs. Is Wolfowitz now waiting for air superiority on Arabic tea-rooms? It seems that only the necessary power supply is missing.

Well fed by Murdoch's and other mainstream media, 70% of all Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks of 9/11. Only a few know that the sons of Saddam have killed and tortured Iraqis, but have never harmed any American. Can we therefore suppose that George W.'s private satisfaction is at stake? In a famous September 2002 meeting of the Republican Party, he proclaimed: "After all, this is the guy that tried to kill my Dad at one time." Does anybody remember that the freshly elected President Bill Clinton -- because of this never fully investigated murder attempt in Kuwait -- fired 20 cruise missiles on Baghdad killing dozens of unknown civilians, and Mrs. Layla al-Altar, an artist and director of the National Art Forum? The vendetta demands its bloody victims!

3. Counterpuch.org, 25th of July 2003:

Kurt Nimmo: "As Tommy Franks admitted during Bush's invasion, the Pentagon is not in the business of counting dead people. But according to the Iraq Body Count project, between 6,000 and nearly 8,000 civilians have died so far, not counting the 1.6 million people who have died as a result of the sanctions put in place by Bush Senior and the United Nations and stringently -- and sadistically -- maintained by Clinton and Bush Junior. Prior to the depredations of these war criminals, Iraq was widely regarded as having the finest health care system in the Middle East. After Gulf Invasion I, however, between 4,500 to 6,000 children died from preventable disease and malnutrition every month. Some say the death rate is even worse now after Bush II's vendetta against Saddam Hussein."

Why does the Anglo-American mainstream propaganda not talk about these horrible facts? Simply because journalists, filmmakers, and moderators are massively intimidated. Again, Kurt Nimmo: "Fox News, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, the whole of the corporate media, mostly ignored the crimes perpetuated against innocent Iraqis, as they ignored those committed against the people of Afghanistan. 'It seems too perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan,' wrote CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson in a memo back in October, 2001. 'DO NOT USE photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties from the U.S. war on Afghanistan,' Ray Glenn, copy desk chief of the News Herald in Panama City, Florida, warned his employees on October 31, 2001. 'Our sister paper in Fort Walton Beach has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening emails and the like. Also: DO NOT USE wire stories that lead with civilian casualties from the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Failure to follow any of these or other standing rules could put your job in jeopardy.' In other words, in Bush's America telling the truth can cost you your job and put your family at risk. It can result in threatening emails sent by enraged flag-wavers and armchair sadists. (...)

'There is a distinct change in journalism since the September 11 terrorist attacks. The press has failed to perform its crucial role of government watchdog and instead become the American-flag waving, jingoistic press of the First World War', wrote Victoria E. Sama, former CNN International producer to Eason Jordan of CNN on March 24, 2003. 'Reporting the number of Iraqi civilian casualties may damage support for the president's war. Or maybe it won't. That's for American viewers to decide. It is not CNN's job to report only what is popular. It is not CNN's job to become a cog in the president's propaganda machine. It is CNN's job to report the truth, and to find facts that help citizens make an informed decision about the war in Iraq. Please don't fail the American public, and yourselves, again.'