[Mb-civic] Modest but important critiques of 9-11 report and conventional Iraq wisdom

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Sometimes I get really tired of rarely hearing ANY substantial critique of the latest 
mainstream ideas (in this case the 9-11 report and the Iraq "handover of power") on 
the corporate media or even NPR.  The following 2 articles are not exactly from 
radical sources....Robert Reich is a relatively mainstream liberal (Clinton's labor 
Secretary) and Scott Ritter is a republican ex-marine.  So at least the LA Times 
published Reich's op-ed and the Tribune published Ritter's piece.  Here they are in 
case you missed them....

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0722-04.htm
 
Published on Thursday, July 22, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times  
Better Spies Won't Add Up to Better Foreign Policy  
by Robert B. Reich 
  
America's intelligence system failed to see terrorist threats coming from Al 
Qaeda that should have been evident before 9/11, and then, after 9/11, saw 
terrorist threats coming from Iraq that didn't exist. A system that doesn't warn 
of real threats and does warn of unreal ones is a broken system. 

A unanimous and bipartisan report of the commission established by 
Congress to investigate intelligence mistakes leading up to 9/11 is expected 
to conclude that when its report is released today. Meanwhile, a unanimous 
and bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee has discredited the CIA's 
prewar assessments that Iraq possessed banned chemical and biological 
weapons and was seeking nuclear arms. Those assessments "either 
overstated or were not supported by the underlying intelligence," according to 
the committee. The senators blamed "a series of failures" of intelligence, 
such as taking circumstantial evidence as definitive proof, ignoring contrary 
information and relying on discredited or dubious sources. The failures 
occurred because of "shoddy work," faulty management, outmoded 
procedures, "groupthink" and a "flawed culture." 

What to do? The White House, Congress and the Kerry campaign are all 
sorting through several proposals. One would create a Cabinet-level 
intelligence "czar" with more control over the nation's sprawling $40-billion 
system for collecting and analyzing information about security threats. A 
second would do just the opposite — remove the CIA director from any 
control over other intelligence agencies and hence install a better system of 
checks and balances. A third proposal would fix the length of the director's 
term at five to seven years, removing that position from the whim of politics. 
A fourth, and contrary, proposal would make the director more politically 
accountable to the president and Congress. Almost all the proposals would 
beef up American intelligence with more resources. 

Some of these ideas have merit, but they don't respond to the core lesson we 
should have learned: When American foreign policy is based primarily on 
what our spy agencies say, we run huge risks of getting it disastrously wrong. 

The lesson isn't new. American intelligence failed to foresee the split between 
China and the Soviet Union in 1960 and 1961 and thereafter never fully 
comprehended it — right up through Vietnam. Had U.S. policy been based 
on more direct diplomacy and less on covert operations we might have 
avoided that shameful and costly war. 

The CIA was also notoriously wrong when it told John F. Kennedy that its 
plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs "could not fail," and it misread Soviet 
intentions before the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy managed to avoid 
a nuclear war only by instigating direct communication with Nikita 
Khrushchev. 

American intelligence wildly exaggerated Soviet defense capabilities in the 
1980s, leading the U.S. to spend billions of dollars for no reason. President 
Reagan's military buildup didn't bring the Soviets to their knees; the Soviet 
Union collapsed of its own weight. 

By all means, let's have better intelligence. But let's not fool ourselves into 
thinking that better intelligence is a substitute for better policy. This is 
especially true when the threat comes in the form of terrorism. 

Terrorism is a tactic. It is not itself our enemy. There is no finite number of 
terrorists in the world. At any given time, their number depends on how many 
people are driven by anger and hate to join their ranks. Hence, "smoking 
out," imprisoning or killing terrorists, based on information supplied by our 
intelligence agencies, cannot be the prime means of preventing future 
terrorist attacks against us. It is more important to deal with the anger and 
hate. This means, among other things, restarting the Middle East peace 
process rather than, as President Bush has done, run away from it. It 
requires shoring up the economies of the Middle East, now suffering from 
dwindling direct investment from abroad because of the violence and 
uncertainty in the region. And it means strengthening the legitimacy of 
moderate Muslim leaders, instead of encouraging extremism — as the 
current administration's policies have undoubtedly done. 

Equally fatuous is the notion that "preemptive war," based on what our 
intelligence agencies say a potential foreign adversary is likely to do to us, 
will offer us protection. Terrorists aren't dependent on a few rogue nations. 
They recruit and train in unstable parts of the world and can move their bases 
and camps easily, wherever governments are weak. 

The United States cannot control or police the world. Instead, we will have to 
depend on strong treaties and determined alliances to prevent illegal 
distribution of thousands of nuclear weapons already in existence in Russia, 
Pakistan, India and other nuclear powers, and of biological or chemical 
weapons capable of mass destruction. The administration's "go-it-alone" 
diplomacy takes us in precisely the wrong direction. That the United States 
suffers from a failure of intelligence is indisputable. The calamitous state of 
our spy agencies is only one part of that failure. 

Robert B. Reich, a professor at Brandeis University, is the author most 
recently of "Reason" (2004, Alfred A. Knopf). He was secretary of Labor in 
the Clinton administration. 

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times 

###
 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0722-01.htm
 
Published on Friday, July 23, 2004 by Tribune Media Services  
Saddam's People are Winning the War  
by Scott Ritter 
  
The battle for Iraq's sovereign future is a battle for the hearts and minds of 
the Iraqi people. As things stand, it appears that victory will go to the side 
most in tune with the reality of the Iraqi society of today: the leaders of the 
anti-U.S. resistance. 

Iyad Allawi's government was recently installed by the U.S.-led Coalition 
Provisional Authority (CPA) to counter a Baathist nationalism that ceased to 
exist nearly a decade ago. 

In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's regime shifted 
toward an amalgam of Islamic fundamentalism, tribalism and nationalism that 
more accurately reflected the political reality of Iraq. 

Thanks to his meticulous planning and foresight, Saddam's lieutenants are 
now running the Iraqi resistance, including the Islamist groups. 

In August 1995, Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, defected to Jordan. 
Fourteen months into the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Kamal's testimony that 
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed in the summer of 
1991 has taken on new relevance, given the fact that to date no WMD have 
been found. 

More important is Kamal's self-described reason for defecting: Saddam's 
order that all senior Baath Party officials undergo mandatory Koranic studies. 
For Saddam, this radical shift in strategy was necessary to his survival, given 
the new realities of post-Gulf War Iraq. 

The traditional Baathist ideology, based on Iraq-centric Arab nationalism, was 
no longer the driving force it had been a decade prior. Creating a new power 
base required bringing into the fold not only the Shiite majority - which had 
revolted against him in the spring of 1991 - but also accommodating the 
growing religious fundamentalism of traditional allies such as key Sunni tribes 
in western Iraq. 

The most visible symbol of Saddam's decision to embrace Islam was his 
order to add the words "God Is Great" to the Iraqi flag. 

The transformation of the political dynamics inside Iraq, however, went 
largely unnoticed in the West. It certainly seems to have escaped the 
attention of the Bush administration. And the recent "transfer of sovereignty" 
to Allawi's government reflects this lack of understanding. 

One of the first directives issued by Paul Bremer, the former head of the 
CPA, was to pass a "de-Baathification" law, effectively blacklisting all former 
members of that party from meaningful involvement in the day-to-day affairs 
of post-Saddam Iraq. The law underscored the mindset of those in charge of 
Iraq: Baathist holdouts loyal to Saddam were the primary threat to the U.S.-
led occupation. 

Senior Bush administration officials recognized their mistake - though a little 
too late. In April, 2004, Bremer rescinded his "de-Baathification" order. The 
Pentagon today speaks of a "marriage of convenience" between Islamic 
fundamentalists and former members of Saddam's Baathist regime, even 
speculating that the Islamists are taking over Baathist cells weakened by 
American anti-insurgency efforts. 

Once again, the Pentagon has it wrong. U.S. policy in Iraq is still unable or 
unwilling to face the reality of the enemy on the ground. 

The Iraqi resistance is no emerging "marriage of convenience," but rather a 
product of years of planning. Rather than being absorbed by a larger Islamist 
movement, Saddam's former lieutenants are calling the shots in Iraq, having 
co-opted the Islamic fundamentalists years ago, with or without their 
knowledge. 

One look at the list of the 55 "most wanted" members of the Saddam regime 
who remain at large reveals the probable chain of command of the Iraqi 
resistance today. It also underscores the success of Saddam's strategic 
decision nearly a decade ago to disassociate himself from Baathist ideology. 

Keep in mind that there was never a formal surrender ceremony after the 
U.S. took control of Baghdad. The security services of Saddam's Iraq were 
never disbanded; they simply melted away into the population, to be called 
back into service when and where they were needed. 

The so-called Islamic resistance is led by none other than former Vice 
President Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, an ardent Iraqi nationalist, a Sunni Arab and 
a practicing member of the Sufi brotherhood, a society of Islamic mystics. His 
deputy is Rafi Tilfah, who headed the Directorate of General Security (DGS), 
an organization that had thoroughly penetrated Iraqi society with 
collaborators and informants during Saddam's regime. 

As a former UN weapons inspector, I have personally inspected the 
headquarters of the DGS in Baghdad, as well as the regional DGS 
headquarters in Tikrit. The rooms were full of files concerning those who 
were working with or on behalf of the DGS. There is not a person, family, 
tribe or Islamic movement in Iraq that the DGS does not know intimately - 
information that is an invaluable asset when coordinating and facilitating a 
popular-based resistance movement. 

I also interacted with the former director of the Special Security Organization, 
Hani al-Tilfah, on numerous occasions during 1997-98, when he was put in 
charge of riding roughshod over my inspections. Today he helps coordinate 
the operations of the Iraqi resistance using the very same officers. 

Tahir Habbush headed the Iraqi Intelligence Service that perfected the art of 
improvising explosive devices and using them to carry out assassinations. In 
the months prior to the U.S.-led invasion, he was ordered to blend his agents 
back into the Iraqi population so as to avoid detection by any occupying force. 

The recent anti-American attacks in Fallujah and Ramadi were carried out by 
well-disciplined men fighting in cohesive units, most likely drawn from the 
ranks of Saddam's Republican Guard. 

The level of sophistication should not have come as a surprise to anyone 
familiar with the role of the former chief of the Republican Guard, Sayf al-
Rawi, in secretly demobilizing select Guard units for this very purpose prior to 
the U.S. invasion. 

The transfer of sovereignty to the new Iraqi government of Iyad Allawi is a 
charade that will play itself out over the next weeks and months, and with 
tragic consequences. Allawi's government, hand-picked by the United States 
from the ranks of anti-Saddam expatriates, lacks not only a constituency 
inside Iraq but also legitimacy in the eyes of many ordinary Iraqi citizens. 

The truth is that there never was a significant people-based opposition 
movement inside Iraq for the Bush administration to call on to form a 
government to replace Saddam. It is why the United States has instead been 
forced to rely on the services of individuals tainted by their association with 
foreign intelligence services, or drawn from opposition parties heavily 
infiltrated by agents of Saddam's former security services. 

Regardless of the number of troops the United States puts on the ground or 
how long they stay there, Allawi's government is doomed to fail. The more it 
fails, the more it will have to rely on the United States to prop it up. The more 
the United States props up Allawi, the more discredited he will become in the 
eyes of the Iraqi people - all of which creates yet more opportunities for the 
Iraqi resistance to exploit. 

We will suffer a decade-long nightmare that will lead to the deaths of 
thousands more Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. We will witness 
the creation of a viable and dangerous anti-American movement in Iraq that 
will one day watch as American troops unilaterally withdraw from Iraq every 
bit as ignominiously as Israel did from Lebanon. 

The calculus is quite simple: the sooner we bring our forces home, the 
weaker this movement will be. And, of course, the obverse is true: the longer 
we stay, the stronger and more enduring this byproduct of Bush's elective 
war on Iraq will be. 

There is no elegant solution to our Iraqi debacle. It is no longer a question of 
winning but rather of mitigating defeat. 

Scott Ritter, a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, is the author 
of "Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of 
America." This article was distributed by Global Viewpoint for Tribune Media 
Services International. 

Copyright © 2004 Tribune Media Services 

###
 


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