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Arash

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Aug 21, 2005, 9:29:55 PM8/21/05

Executive Intelligence Review (EIR)
August 12, 2005

Backlash Builds Against Cheney's 'Guns of August'

By Jeffrey Steinberg

As millions of copies of Lyndon LaRouche's July 27 "Cheney's Guns of August"
statement circulate worldwide (http://www.larouchepac.com), a Washington policy brawl
has erupted into public view, over the Bush Administration's now-confirmed
contingency plans to stage a pre-emptive military strike against Iran—possibly using
nuclear weapons. The report that Vice President Dick Cheney had tasked the Strategic
Command (STRATCOM) to develop military contingencies for a massive aerial bombardment
campaign against Iran, in the event of a new 9/11 attack, was first revealed in The
American Conservative magazine's Aug. 1 edition. The story highlighted the likely use
of nuclear weapons, and the widespread military opposition to the pre-emptive nuclear
war scheme.

Since that initial story by former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, this news service has
confirmed the accuracy of the report from a significant number of horrified U.S.
government officials—from Senators on both sides of the aisle, to military officers,
diplomats, and spies. One former U.S. ambassador in the Persian Gulf reported that he
had received angry reports from officials of the Central Command (CENTCOM), who have
been tasked as part of the contingency planning.

Another military source suggested that there are probably pre-positioned tactical
nuclear weapons at the U.S. military base at Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, under
the new military reorganization, which created a "Global Strike" plan for rapid,
massive assaults anywhere on the planet.

The bottom line: Vice President Cheney, the architect of the pre-emptive nuclear
attack plan, has gone stark raving mad, and is prepared to bring the world to the
brink of chaos, before he is driven from power. Democratic Party figure Lyndon
LaRouche describes Cheney's state of mind as "like Hitler in the bunker."

White House De Facto Confirms

In response to a question from EIR's White House correspondent Bill Jones,
Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan let the cat out of the bag on July 28. Asked
by Jones about the American Conservative report on the bombing contingencies,
McClellan pointedly chose not to deny the charges, and instead, after telling Jones
he "appreciated the question," went into a discussion of Iran's alleged secret
nuclear program, threatening United Nations sanctions and other actions, should Iran
fail to shut down its nuclear reprocessing efforts.

In response to a follow-up question by CBS reporter John Roberts about whether an
attack on Iran might fall under the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive action against
"terror states", given the new Iranian President's former position in the
Revolutionary Guard, McClellan again refused to reject the possibility, reminding the
press that the Administration still considered Iran a "state sponsor of terrorism".

It should be recalled that on January 20, 2005, the day of the Bush-Cheney second
inauguration, the Vice President appeared on the Don Imus show on MSNBC cable TV, to
target Iran (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6847999). Using language identical to his
earlier lies about Iraq, Cheney accused Iran of pursuing "a fairly robust nuclear
program" and of sponsoring terrorism. "That combination is of great concern", he
declared, warning that Israel could be expected to launch preventive bombing attacks
on Iran's alleged nuclear weapons sites, if the Iranians don't abandon those supposed
nuclear efforts.

NIE Leaked

One of the most dramatic signs of the ferocious behind-the-scenes fight was the
August 2 lead story of the Washington Post, which leaked a recent National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluding that, far from being on the verge of achieving
a nuclear bomb, Iran was at least 10 years away from such a capability. The story, by
staff writer Dafna Linzer, noted that "the carefully hedged assessments, which
represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public
statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not
offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal".
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/f3876e7c0b3ca92b?hl=en

The last time an NIE was prepared on Iran, it was estimated that Iran was 5 years
away from obtaining a nuclear bomb, and that was in 2002.

When Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited President Bush at his Crawford,
Texas ranch this past April, his top military aide, General Yoav Galant, presented an
Israeli assessment that Iran had a "very advanced" nuclear weapons program, could
have a bomb within 12-18 months, and was near to reaching a "point of no return",
when "it could not be any longer stopped".

The leak of the NIE, which was carefully prepared over a six-month period, beginning
in January of this year, was widely hailed as a direct factional move, from
high-level intelligence community circles, against the Cheney madness.

One former Cabinet official noted that the mass circulation of LaRouche's "Guns of
August" statement had created the necessary political conditions for the leak to
occur, seriously undermining Cheney and the neo-conservatives' race to a new
confrontation with Tehran.

The National Intelligence Council, the coordinating body of the 15 agencies that
comprise the U.S. intelligence community as a whole, is now housed in the office of
Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. Just days before the leak to the
Washington Post, Negroponte's deputy, General Michael V. Hayden, had testified before
the House Intelligence Committee about the overhaul of the NIE process, to assure
that there would be no repetition of the horrid mistakes made in the October 2002
Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. That rushed October 2002 NIE vastly
overstated and misrepresented Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program,
particularly its purported nuclear weapons program, and was a large contributing
factor to the U.S. Congress's capitulation to Bush and Cheney, in sanctioning the
Iraq pre-emptive invasion—even as United Nations weapons inspectors were continuing
their inspections with minimal interference from the Saddam Hussein regime, and were
stating that no nuclear weapons production was to be found.

General Hayden emphasized that the Estimates would now reflect the views of all the
relevant intelligence agencies, would be much more "nuanced", and would not be
released without a thorough review process, including an assessment of the quality of
the sources of key intelligence findings. According to the New York Times's Douglas
Jehl, "Other government officials said the standard had already been applied, to a
recent highly classified intelligence report on Iran".

The Usual Suspects

In further probing of the Cheney-led drive for a pretext to bomb Iran, EIR has
confirmed that the same cast of neo-con characters who led the disinformation
campaign against Iraq, in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion, have been tasked to
carry out the same effort, this time targetting the regime in Tehran.

Furthermore, while some media have portrayed the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last
month as President of Iran as the trigger for the new war push, the truth is that the
campaign was launched, in earnest, within days of the November 2004 dubious
re-election of Bush and Cheney.

In November 2004, Jerome Corsi, a leading player in the Karl Rove-inspired
dirty-tricks apparatus known as Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, suddenly emerged
as the new head of the Iran Freedom Foundation
(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Iran_Freedom_Foundation), promoting
regime change in Tehran.
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/491f0b1c7c7d07ee?hl=en

Jerome Corsi was touted by Senator Rick Santorum
(http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/3ee9e2b1585e2282?hl=en) as
being the driving force behind the Iran Freedom and Support Act of 2005, which calls
for $10 million in funds to be handed out to Iranian dissident groups.

Jerome Corsi (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jerome_Corsi) had
co-authored the Rove-inspired propaganda book "Unfit To Serve", smearing Bush's
Democratic Presidential rival John Kerry over his military service in Vietnam.

In March 2005, Jerome Corsi published another propaganda book, "Atomic Iran",
peddling scare stories about Iran's imminent possession of nuclear bombs.
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/bca3be22c36000b2?hl=en

From May 15 to May 18, Jerome Corsi (http://hail.he.net/~danger/corsi.jpg) led an
"Iran Freedom Walk" (http://www.iranfreedomfoundation.org/default.php?page_id=269)
from Philadelphia to Washington, where a rally was addressed by neo-con Richard Perle
(http://ancapistan.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/princeofdarkness.jpg), and where
Jerome Corsi was congratulated, in a written statement, by Dick Cheney.

In April 2005, Regnery Publishing, Inc. released another fractured-fairy-tale
propaganda piece, promoting pre-emptive war on Iran, this one by Representative Curt
Weldon
(http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/d9bd00a0920b05bf?hl=en).

Sources familiar with the book report that Congressman Curt Weldon was snookered by
ex-CIA Director and leading neo-con war party operative James Woolsey, and
self-proclaimed "universal fascist" Michael Ledeen, into buying fake intelligence,
pushed through a former Iranian minister under the Shah, who has more recently been a
business partner of discredited Iran-Contra gun dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar.

Congressman Curt Weldon
(http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/7f20be521b5c33dd?hl=en)
concealed the identity of his high-level "source," referring to him only as "Ali".
But "Ali" was soon identified as Fereidoun Mahdavi, a former commerce minister, who
fled Iran shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and never looked back.

In an interview with The American Prospect's Laura Rozen (Curt Weldon's Deep Throat:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9836 /
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002147.html), Fereidoun Mahdavi professed shock
and outrage that his "information" had formed the basis for Weldon's shrill book. He
confirmed that all of the information he passed on to the Congressman Weldon had, in
fact, originated with Israeli agent Manucher Ghorbanifar
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghorbanifar), a notorious disinformationist, and
Iran-Contra ally of the Washington neo-cons.
http://www.umsl.edu/~skthoma/khashoggi.htm /
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0808-12.htm /
http://www.iranvajahan.net/english/pictures/en.20031019..1.jpg

Congressman Weldon's saga with "Ali", as recounted in his book, "Countdown to
Terror—The Top-Secret Information That Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on
America ... And How the CIA Has Ignored It", began in March 2003, at the very moment
that the Bush-Cheney regime was about to launch its Iraq invasion.

In late June of this year, Kenneth Timmerman
(http://www.mdtaxes.org/archives/board_bios/timmerman-bio.html), a propagandist for
the neo-cons and for right-wing Israeli circles around former Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, published another book, "Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown
With Iran", which makes a string of preposterous claims, all based on information
provided by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK/MKO/NCR), a cultist anti-Iran terrorist group
(http://www.iran-interlink.org) on the U.S. State Department's list of Foreign
Terrorist Organizations.

Kenneth Timmerman (http://www.sw-asia.com/People/Bio897.htm) asserted that: Iran was
behind the 9/11 attacks; Iran is safehousing Osama bin Laden inside the country; and
Iran has all of the elements to produce nuclear weapons, and possibly provide them to
terrorist cells already infiltrated into American cities.

When the Kenneth Timmerman (http://www.fightingterror.org/members/index.cfm) book was
published, the Moonie's mouthpiece "Washington Times"
(http://www.perkel.com/politics/moonies) ran three days of excerpts, along with an
editorial touting the book and calling for action against Iran.

If all of this sounds remarkably similar to the propaganda run-up to the Iraq
invasion of March 2003, that's because it is.

The same Michael Ledeen/Richard Perle/Dick Cheney circles that brought you Operation
Iraqi Freedom, are aggressively pushing war against Iran.
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/658f0dc1ee0e6ca6?hl=en

But this time, with 170,000 American troops bogged down in Iraq, Cheney, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, et al. are now pushing their decade-old plan to conduct
pre-emptive nuclear strikes.

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3232vs_cheney_war.html