Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.

Dismiss

@@ Israel and the neocons: The Lewis Libby affair @@

0 views

Skip to first unread message

Arash

unread,

Dec 28, 2005, 2:04:14 AM12/28/05

Counter Punch
November 3, 2005

Israel and the Neocons
The Libby Affair and the Internal War

Professor James Petras
jpetras[AT]binghamton.edu

The national debate, which the indictment of Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby
(http://www.nndb.com/people/416/000045281) for perjury and obstruction of justice has
aroused in the mass media, has failed to address the most basic questions concerning
the deep structural context, which influenced his felonious behavior.

The most superficial explanation was that Lewis Libby, by exposing CIA agent "Valerie
Plame Wilson" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Plame), acted out of revenge to
punish her husband, U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Wilson) for exposing the lies put forth by
Bush about Iraq's "importation" of uranium from Niger
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcake_forgery).

Other journalists claim that Lewis Libby acted to cover up the fabrications to go to
war. The assertion however raises a deeper question -- who were the fabricators of
war propaganda, who was Lewis Libby protecting? And not only the "fabricators of
war", but the strategic planners, speech-makers and architects of war who acted hand
in hand with the propagandists and the journalists who disseminated the propaganda?
What is the link between all these high-level functionaries, propagandists and
journalists?

Equally important given the positions of power which this "cabal" occupied, and the
influence they exercised in the mass media as well as in designing strategic policy,
what forces were engaged in bringing criminal charges against a key operative of the
cabal?

Lewis Libby's rise to power was part and parcel of the ascendancy of the
neo-conservatives to the summits of U.S. policymaking. Libby was a student, protégé,
and collaborator with Paul Wolfowitz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz)
for over 25 years.

Lewis Libby (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_Libby) along with Paul Wolfowitz,
Elliott Abrams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Abrams), Douglas Feith
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Feith), Robert Kagan
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1241), Eliot Cohen
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_A._Cohen), Michael Rubin
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1345), Kenneth Pollack
(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Kenneth_M._Pollack), Michael Chertoff
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Chertoff), Ari Fleischer
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ari_Fleischer), William Kristol
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1254), Marc Grossman
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Grossman), Abram Shulsky
(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Abram_N._Shulsky) and a host of other
political operators
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_described_as_neoconservatives) were long
term believers and aggressive proponents of a virulently militaristic tendency of
Zionism linked with the rightwing Likud Party of Israel.

Early in the 1980's, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith were charged with passing
confidential documents to Israel, the latter temporarily losing his security
clearance.

The ideologues begin their "Long March" through the institutions of the state. In
some cases, advisers to rightwing pro-Israel congressmen, others in the lower levels
of the Pentagon and State Department, in other cases as academics or leaders of
conservative think tanks in Washington during the Reagan and Bush senior regimes.
With the election of Bush in 2001, they moved into major strategic positions in the
government, and as the principal ideologues and propagandists for a sequence of wars
against "Muslim" adversaries of the "Israeli" State.

Leading neocons, like Lewis Libby, drew up a war strategy for the Likud government in
1996, and then recycled the document for the U.S. war against Iraq before and
immediately after September 11, 2001
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1438.htm). Along with their rise to
the most influential positions of power in the Bush administration, the neocons
attracted new recruits, like New York Times reporter Judith Miller
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller_%28journalist%29).

What is striking about the operations of the "cabal" is the very open and direct way
in which they operated: former Director of the National Security Agency (under
Reagan) Lieutenant General William Odom
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Eldridge_Odom), retired Marine General Anthony
Zinni (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Zinni), former chief of staff of Powell,
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Wilkerson), retired
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Kwiatkowski), National Security Adviser to
President George Bush (the First) Brent Scowcroft
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Scowcroft), and numerous disenchanted officials,
including veterans of the intelligence agencies, high level observers, and former
diplomats openly criticized the neocon takeover of U.S. policy and the close
relationship between them and Israeli officials.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby were the
architects of the military strategy for Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, their bosses.
Douglas Feith established the "Office of Special Plans" to fabricate the lies to
justify the war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans).

Judith Miller, David Frum (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1155) and Ari
Fleisher served to disseminate the lies and war propaganda through articles,
interviews, press conferences, and speechwriting for President Bush.

The neocons pushed to manipulate and marginalize many of the key institutions in the
U.S. imperial state. To circumvent intelligence from the CIA that didn't promote the
Israeli agenda of war with Iraq, neocon Douglas Feith (number 3 in the Pentagon)
established the Office of Special Plans (OSP), which fabricated propaganda and
channeled it directly to the President's Office bypassing and marginalizing any
critical review from the CIA.

Paul Wolfowitz and Don Rumsfeld (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld)
marginalized the leading generals, promoting nondescript "loyalists" and outsiders to
the top positions, and discarding any advice which opposed or conflicted with their
plans for war with Iraq. The Secretary of State referred to a speech prepared for him
by Lewis Libby as "bullshit" because of its falsehoods. His chief aide, Colonel
Wilkerson has written disparagingly of the "cabal", which marginalized the State
Department including his boss Colin Powell.

The prosecution of Lewis Libby however reveals the intense internal struggle over the
control of the U.S. imperial state between the neocons and the traditional leaders of
its major institutions. Along with the indictment of Libby by a grand jury at the
request of the special prosecutor, the FBI has arrested the two leading policy makers
of the most influential Israeli lobby (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIPAC) for spying
for the State of Israel. These are not simply isolated actions by individual
officials or investigators. To have proceeded against Libby and AIPAC leaders, they
had to have powerful institutional backing; otherwise the investigations would have
been terminated even before they began
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIPAC_espionage_scandal).

The CIA is deeply offended by the neocon usurpation of their intelligence role, their
direct channels to the President, their loyalty to Israel.

The military is extremely angry at their exclusion from the councils of government
over questions of war, the disastrous war policy which have depleted the armed forces
of recruits, devastated troop morale, and the neocons' grotesque ignorance of the
costs of a colonial occupation.

It is no wonder that General Tommy Frank referred to Douglas Feith as "the stupidest
bastard I have ever met" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Franks).

The current institutional war recalls an earlier conflict between the rightwing
Senator Joseph McCarthy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy) and the
Defense Department. At the time during the mid 1950's, Senator McCarty was
accumulating power first by purging trade unions, Hollywood, the universities, and
promoting likeminded conservative officials. He successfully extended his
investigations and purges to the State Department and finally tried to do the same to
the military. It was here that Senator McCarthy met his Waterloo, his attack
backfired, the Army stood its ground, refuted his accusations and discredited his
fabrications and grab for power.

In the meantime, the neocons are not at all daunted by the trials of their colleagues
in AIPAC and the Vice President's office: they are pressing straight ahead for the
U.S. to attack Syria and Iran, via economic sanctions and military bombing.

On October 30, 2005 the former head of the Israel Secret Police (Shin Bet) told AIPAC
to escalate their campaign to pressure in the U.S. to attack Iran (Israel National
News.com).

There was a near unanimous vote in the U.S. Congress in favor of economic sanctions
against Syria. Despite mass demonstrations, and because of a 'captured' congress, it
appears paradoxically that the only force capable of defeating the neocon juggernaut,
like the earlier Joe McCarthy, are powerful voices in the state threatened by new
disastrous wars not of their making.

* James Petras, a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University,
New York, owns a 50 year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the
landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina and is co-author of "Globalization
Unmasked" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1856499383). His new book with
Henry Veltmeyer, Social Movements and the State: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745324231), was published in 2005.

http://www.counterpunch.org/petras11032005.html