[Mb-civic] (no subject)

Thu Mar 3 16:58:00 PST 2005

Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years and served Bush the elder. Sad, 
sobering words about US foreign policy and the push for Iran to be next .....
LA TIMES
Mar 3, 2005 

It sounds crazy, but ... 
By Ray McGovern
"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply 
ridiculous." 
(Short pause) 
"And having said that, all options are on the table." 
Even the White House stenographers felt obliged to note the result: laughter. 

- The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin on President George W Bush's February 22 
press conference
For a host of good reasons - the huge and draining commitment of US forces to 
Iraq and Iran's ability to stir the Iraqi pot to boiling, for starters - the 
notion that the Bush administration would mount a "preemptive" air attack on 
Iran seems insane. And still more insane if the objective includes overthrowing 
Iran's government again, as in 1953 - this time under the rubric of "regime 
change". 

But Bush administration policy toward the Middle East is being run by men - 
yes, only men - who were routinely referred to in high circles in Washington 
during the 1980s as the "crazies". I can attest to that personally, but one need 
not take my word for it. 

According to James Naughtie, author of The Accidental American: Tony Blair 
and the Presidency , former secretary of state Colin Powell added an old 
soldier's adjective to the "crazies" sobriquet in referring to the same officials. 
Powell, who was military aide to defense secretary Casper Weinberger in the 
early 1980s, was overheard calling them "the f---ing crazies" during a phone call 
with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw before the war in Iraq. 

At the time, Powell was reportedly deeply concerned over their determination 
to attack - with or without United Nations approval. Small wonder that they 
got rid of Powell after the election, as soon as they had no more use for him. 

If further proof of insanity were needed, one could simply look at the 
unnecessary carnage in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003. That unprovoked attack 
was, in my view, the most fateful foreign policy blunder in our nation's 
history ... so far. 

It can get worse 
"The crazies" are not finished. And we do well not to let their ultimate 
folly obscure their current ambition, and the further trouble that ambition is 
bound to bring in the four years ahead. In an immediate sense, with US military 
power unrivaled, they can be seen as "crazy like a fox", with a value system in 
which "might makes right". Operating out of that value system, and now 
sporting the more respectable misnomer/moniker neo-conservative, they are convinced 
that they know exactly what they are doing. They have a clear ideology and a 
geopolitical strategy, which leap from papers they have put out at the Project 
for the New American Century in recent years. 

The very same men who, acting out of that paradigm, brought us the war in 
Iraq, are now focusing on Iran, which they view as the only remaining obstacle to 
American domination of the entire oil-rich Middle East. They calculate that, 
with a docile, corporate-owned press, a co-opted mainstream church, and a 
still-trusting populace, the US and/or the Israelis can launch a successful air 
offensive to disrupt any Iranian nuclear weapons programs - with the added bonus 
of possibly causing the regime in power in Iran to crumble. 

But why now? After all, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency has 
just told Congress that Iran is not likely to have a nuclear weapon until 
"early in the next decade?" The answer, according to some defense experts, is that 
several of the Iranian facilities are still under construction and there is 
only a narrow "window of opportunity" to destroy them without causing huge 
environmental problems. That window, they say, will begin to close this year. 

Other analysts attribute the sense of urgency to worry in Washington that the 
Iranians may have secretly gained access to technology that would facilitate 
a leap forward into the nuclear club much sooner than now anticipated. And it 
is, of course, neo-conservative doctrine that it is best to nip - the word in 
current fashion is "preempt" - any conceivable threats in the bud. 

One reason the Israelis are pressing hard for early action may simply be out 
of a desire to ensure that Bush will have a few more years as president after 
an attack on Iran, so that they will have him to stand with Israel when bedlam 
breaks out in the Middle East. 

What about post-attack "day two?" Not to worry. Well-briefed pundits are 
telling us about a wellspring of Western-oriented moderates in Iran who, with a 
little help from the US, could seize power in Tehran. I find myself thinking: 
Right; just like all those Iraqis who welcomed invading American and British 
troops with open arms and cut flowers. 

For me, this evokes a painful flashback to the early 1980s when 
"intelligence", pointing to "moderates" within the Iranian leadership, was conjured up to 
help justify the imaginative but illegal 
arms-for-hostages-and-proceeds-to-Nicaraguan-Contras caper. The fact that the conjurer-in-chief of that spurious 
"evidence" on Iranian "moderates", former chief Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 
analyst, later director, Robert Gates, was recently offered the newly created 
position of director of national intelligence, makes the flashback more eerie 
- and alarming. 

George H W Bush saw through the 'crazies'
During his term in office, George H W Bush, with the practical advice of his 
national security adviser General Brent Scowcroft and secretary of state James 
Baker, was able to keep the "crazies" at arms length, preventing them from 
getting the country into serious trouble. They were kept well below the level of 
"principal" - that is, below the level of secretary of state or defense. 

Even so, heady in the afterglow of victory in the Gulf War of 1991, the 
"crazies" stirred up considerable controversy when they articulated their radical 
views. Their vision, for instance, became the centerpiece of the draft "Defense 
Planning Guidance" that Paul Wolfowitz, de facto dean of the 
neo-conservatives, prepared in 1992 for then-defense secretary Dick Cheney. It dismissed 
deterrence as an outdated relic of the Cold War and argued that the US must 
maintain military strength beyond conceivable challenge - and use it in preemptive 
ways in dealing with those who might acquire "weapons of mass destruction". 
Sound familiar? 

Aghast at this radical imperial strategy for the post-Cold War world, someone 
with access to the draft leaked it to the New York Times, forcing Bush Snr 
either to endorse or disavow it. Disavow it he did - and quickly, on the 
cooler-head recommendations of Scowcroft and Baker, who proved themselves a bulwark 
against the hubris and megalomania of the "crazies". Unfortunately, their 
vision did not die. No less unfortunately, there is method to their madness - even 
if it threatens to spell eventual disaster for our country. Empires always 
overreach and fall. 

The return of the neo-cons 
In 2001, the new Bush brought the neo-cons back and put them in top 
policymaking positions. Even former assistant secretary of state Elliot Abrams, 
convicted in October 1991 of lying to Congress and then pardoned by George H W Bush, 
was called back and put in charge of Middle East policy in the White House. In 
January, he was promoted to the influential post (once occupied by Robert 
Gates) of deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs. From 
that senior position Abrams will once again be dealing closely with John 
Negroponte, an old colleague from rogue-elephant Contra War days, who has now been 
picked to be the first director of national intelligence. 

Those of us who - like Powell - had front-row seats during the 1980s are far 
too concerned to dismiss the re-emergence of the neo-cons as a simple case of 
deja vu. They are much more dangerous now. Unlike in the 1980s, they are the 
ones crafting the adventurous policies our sons and daughters are being called 
on to implement. 

Why dwell on this? Because it is second in importance only to the portentous 
reality that the earth is running out of readily accessible oil - something of 
which they are all too aware. Not surprisingly then, disguised beneath the 
weapons of mass destruction smokescreen they laid down as they prepared to 
invade Iraq lay an unspoken but bedrock reason for the war - oil. In any case, the 
neo-cons seem to believe that, in the wake of the November election, they now 
have a carte-blanche "mandate". And with the president's new "capital to 
spend" they appear determined to spend it, sooner rather than later. 

Next stop, Iran 
When a Special Forces platoon leader just back from Iraq matter-of-factly 
tells a close friend of mine, as happened last week, that he and his unit are now 
training their sights (literally) on Iran, we need to take that seriously. It 
provides us with a glimpse of reality as seen at ground level. For me, it 
brought to mind an unsolicited email I received from the father of a young 
soldier training at Fort Benning in the spring of 2002, soon after I wrote an op-ed 
discussing the timing of Bush's decision to make war on Iraq. The father 
informed me that, during the spring of 2002, his son kept writing home saying his 
unit was training to go into Iraq. No, said the father; you mean Afghanistan 
... that's where the war is, not Iraq. In his next email, the son said, "No, 
Dad, they keep saying Iraq. I asked them and that's what they mean." 

Now, apparently, they keep saying Iran; and that appears to be what they 
mean. 

Anecdotal evidence like this is hardly conclusive. Put it together with 
administration rhetoric and a preponderance of other "dots", though, and everything 
points in the direction of an air attack on Iran, possibly also involving 
some ground forces. 

Indeed, from the New Yorker reports of Seymour Hersh to Washington Post 
articles, accounts of small-scale American intrusions on the ground as well as into 
Iranian airspace are appearing with increasing frequency. 

In a speech given on February 18, former UN arms inspector and Marine officer 
Scott Ritter (who was totally on target before the Iraq war on that country's 
lack of weapons of mass destruction) claimed that the president has already 
"signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June in order to destroy its alleged 
nuclear weapons program and eventually bring about "regime change". This does not 
necessarily mean an automatic green light for a large attack in June, but it 
may signal the president's seriousness about this option. 

So, again, against the background of what we have witnessed over the past 
four years, and the troubling fact that the circle of second-term presidential 
advisers has become even tighter, we do well to inject a strong note of urgency 
into any discussion of the "Iranian option". 

Why would Iran want nukes? 
So, why would Iran think it has to acquire nuclear weapons? Senator Richard 
Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked this on a 
Sunday talk show a few months ago. Apparently having a senior moment, he failed 
to give the normal answer. Instead, he replied, "Well, you know, Israel has 
..." At that point, he caught himself and abruptly stopped. 

Recovering quickly and realizing that he could not just leave the word 
"Israel" hanging there, Lugar began again: "Well, Israel is alleged to have a 
nuclear capability." 

Is alleged to have? Lugar is chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 
and yet he doesn't know that Israel has, by most estimates, a major nuclear 
arsenal, consisting of several hundred nuclear weapons. (Mainstream newspapers 
are allergic to dwelling on this topic, but it is mentioned every now and then, 
usually buried in obscurity on an inside page.) 

Just imagine how the Iranians and Syrians would react to Lugar's 
disingenuousness. Small wonder our highest officials and lawmakers - and Lugar, remember, 
is one of the most decent among them - are widely seen abroad as hypocritical. 
Our media, of course, ignore the hypocrisy. This is standard operating 
procedure when the word "Israel" is spoken in this or other unflattering contexts. 
And the objections of those appealing for a more balanced approach are quashed. 

If the truth be told, Iran fears Israel at least as much as Israel fears the 
internal security threat posed by the thugs supported by Tehran. Iran's 
apprehension is partly fear that Israel (with at least tacit support from the Bush 
administration) will send its aircraft to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, just 
as American-built Israeli bombers destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at 
Osirak in 1981. 

As part of the current war of nerves, recent statements by the president and 
vice president can be read as giving a green light to Israel to do just that; 
while Israeli air force commander Major General Eliezer Shakedi told reporters 
on February 21 that Israel must be prepared for an air strike on Iran "in 
light of its nuclear activity". 

US-Israel nexus 
The Iranians also remember how Israel was able to acquire and keep its 
nuclear technology. Much of it was stolen from the US by spies for Israel. As early 
as the late-1950s, Washington knew Israel was building the bomb and could have 
aborted the project. Instead, American officials decided to turn a blind eye 
and let the Israelis go ahead. Now Israel's nuclear capability is truly 
formidable. Still, it is a fact of strategic life that a formidable nuclear arsenal 
can be deterred by a far more modest one, if an adversary has the means to 
deliver it. (Look at North Korea's success with, at best, a few nuclear weapons 
and questionable means of delivery in deterring the "sole remaining superpower 
in the world".) And Iran already has missiles with the range to hit Israel. 

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has for some time appeared eager to 
enlist Washington's support for an early "pre-emptive" strike on Iran. Indeed, 
American defense officials have told reporters that visiting Israeli officials 
have been pressing the issue for the past year and a half. And the Israelis are 
now claiming publicly that Iran could have a nuclear weapon within six months - 
years earlier than the Defense Intelligence Agency estimate mentioned above. 

In the past, Bush has chosen to dismiss unwelcome intelligence estimates as 
"guesses" - especially when they threatened to complicate decisions to 
implement the neo-conservative agenda. It is worth noting that several of the leading 
neo-cons - Richard Perle, chair of the Defense Policy Board (2001-03); Douglas 
Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and David Wurmser, Middle East 
adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney - actually wrote policy papers for the 
Israeli government during the 1990s. They have consistently had great 
difficulty distinguishing between the strategic interests of Israel and those of the US 
- at least as they imagine them. 

As for Bush, over the past four years he has amply demonstrated his 
preference for the counsel of Sharon who, as Scowcroft said publicly, has the president 
"wrapped around his little finger". (As chairman of the president's Foreign 
Intelligence Advisory Board until he was unceremoniously removed at the turn of 
the year, Scowcroft was in a position to know.) If Scowcroft is correct in 
also saying that the president has been "mesmerized" by Sharon, it seems 
possible that the Israelis already have successfully argued for an attack on Iran. 

When regime change meant overthrow for oil 
To remember why the US is no favorite in Tehran, one needs to go back at 
least to 1953 when the US and Great Britain overthrew Iran's democratically 
elected premier Mohammad Mossadeq as part of a plan to ensure access to Iranian oil. 
They then emplaced the young Shah in power who, with his notorious secret 
police, proved second to none in cruelty. The Shah ruled from 1953 to 1979. Much 
resentment can build up over a whole generation. His regime fell like a house 
of cards when supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rose up to do some 
regime change of their own. 

Iranians also remember Washington's strong support for Saddam Hussein's Iraq 
after it decided to make war on Iran in 1980. US support for Iraq (which 
included crucial intelligence support for the war and an implicit condoning of 
Saddam's use of chemical weapons) was perhaps the crucial factor in staving off an 
Iranian victory. Imagine then, the threat Iranians see, should the Bush 
administration succeed in establishing up to 14 permanent military bases in 
neighboring Iraq. 

Any Iranian can look at a map of the Middle East (including occupied Iraq) 
and conclude that this administration might indeed be willing to pay the 
necessary price in blood and treasure to influence what happens to the black gold 
under Iranian as well as Iraqi sands. And with four more years to play with, a 
lot can be done along those lines. The obvious question is: how to deter it? 
Well, once again, Iran can hardly be blind to the fact that a small nation like 
North Korea has so far deterred US action by producing, or at least claiming to 
have produced, nuclear weapons. 

Nuclear is the nub 
The nuclear issue is indeed paramount, and we would do well to imagine and 
craft fresh approaches to the nub of the problem. As a start, I'll bet if you 
made a survey, only 20% of Americans would answer "yes" to the question "Does 
Israel have nuclear weapons?" That is key, it seems to me, because at their core 
Americans are still fair-minded people. 

On the other hand, I'll bet that 95% of the Iranian population would answer, 
"Of course Israel has nuclear weapons; that's why we Iranians need them" - 
which was, of course, the unmentionable calculation that Lugar almost conceded. 
"And we also need them," many Iranians would probably say, "in order to deter 
the 'crazies' in Washington. It seems to be working for the North Koreans, who, 
after all, are the other remaining point on President Bush's 'axis of evil'." 

The ideal approach would, of course, be to destroy all nuclear weapons in the 
world and ban them for the future, with a very intrusive global inspection 
regime to verify compliance. A total ban is worth holding up as an ideal, and I 
think we must. But this approach seems unlikely to bear fruit over the next 
four years. So what then? 

A nuclear-free Middle East 
How about a nuclear-free Middle East? Could the US make that happen? We could 
if we had moral clarity - the underpinning necessary to bring it about. Each 
time this proposal is raised, the Syrians, for example, clap their hands in 
feigned joyful anticipation, saying, "Of course such a pact would include 
Israel, right?" The issue is then dropped from all discussion by US policymakers. 
Required: not only moral clarity but also what Thomas Aquinas labeled the 
precondition for all virtue, courage. In this context, courage would include a 
refusal to be intimidated by inevitable charges of anti-Semitism. 

The reality is that, except for Israel, the Middle East is nuclear free. But 
the discussion cannot stop there. It is not difficult to understand why the 
first leaders of Israel, with the Holocaust experience written indelibly on 
their hearts and minds, and feeling surrounded by perceived threats to the 
fledgling state's existence, wanted the bomb. And so, before the Syrians or Iranians, 
for example, get carried away with self-serving applause for the nuclear-free 
Middle East proposal, they will have to understand that for any such 
negotiation to succeed it must have as a concomitant aim the guarantee of an Israel 
able to live in peace and protect itself behind secure borders. That guarantee 
has got to be part of the deal. 

That the obstacles to any such agreement are formidable is no excuse not 
trying. But the approach would have to be new and everything would have to be on 
the table. Persisting in a state of denial about Israel's nuclear weapons is 
dangerously shortsighted; it does nothing but aggravate fears among the Arabs 
and create further incentive for them to acquire nuclear weapons of their own. 

A sensible approach would also have to include a willingness to engage the 
Iranians directly, attempt to understand their perspective, and discern what the 
US and Israel could do to alleviate their concerns. 

Preaching to Iran and others about not acquiring nuclear weapons is, indeed, 
like the village drunk preaching sobriety - the more so as our government 
keeps developing new genres of nuclear weapons and keeps looking the other way as 
Israel enhances its own nuclear arsenal. Not a pretty moral picture, that. 
Indeed, it reminds me of the scripture passage about taking the plank out of your 
own eye before insisting that the speck be removed from another's. 

Lessons from the past ... like mutual deterrence 
Has everyone forgotten that deterrence worked for some 40 years, while for 
most of those years the US and the USSR had not by any means lost their lust for 
ever-enhanced nuclear weapons? The point is simply that, while engaging the 
Iranians bilaterally and searching for more imaginative nuclear-free proposals, 
the US might adopt a more patient interim attitude regarding the striving of 
other nation states to acquire nuclear weapons - bearing in mind that the Bush 
administration's policies of "preemption" and "regime change" themselves 
create powerful incentives for exactly such striving. 

As was the case with Iraq two years ago, there is no imminent Iranian 
strategic threat to Americans - or, in reality, to anyone. Even if Iran acquired a 
nuclear capability, there is no reason to believe that it would risk a suicidal 
first strike on Israel. That, after all, is what mutual deterrence is all 
about; it works both ways. 

It is nonetheless clear that the Israelis' sense of insecurity - however 
exaggerated it may seem to those of us thousands of miles away - is not synthetic 
but real. The Sharon government appears to regard its nuclear monopoly in the 
region as the only effective "deterrence insurance" it can buy. It is 
determined to prevent its neighbors from acquiring the kind of capability that could 
infringe on the freedom it now enjoys to carry out military and other actions 
in the area. Government officials have said that Israel will not let Iran 
acquire a nuclear weapon; it would be folly to dismiss this as bravado. The 
Israelis have laid down a marker and mean to follow through - unless the Bush 
administration assumes the attitude that "preemption" is an acceptable course for the 
US but not for Israel. It seems unlikely that the neo-conservatives would 
take that line. Rather ... "Israel is our ally." 

Or so said our president before the cameras on February 17. But I didn't 
think we had a treaty of alliance with Israel; I don't remember the Senate 
approving one. Did I miss something? 

Clearly, the longstanding US-Israeli friendship and the ideals we share 
dictate continuing support for Israel's defense and security. It is quite another 
thing, though, to suggest the existence of formal treaty obligations that our 
country does not have. To all intents and purposes, our policymakers - from the 
president on down - seem to speak and behave on the assumption that we do 
have such obligations toward Israel. A former colleague CIA analyst, Michael 
Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris , has put it this way: "The Israelis have 
succeeded in lacing tight the ropes binding the American Gulliver to Israel and its 
policies." 

An earlier American warned:
A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of 
evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation facilitates the illusion of an imaginary 
common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, infuses into one 
the enmities of the other, and betrays the former into participation in the 
quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification ... 
It also gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, who devote 
themselves to the favorite nation, facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of 
their own country.
- George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
In my view, our first president's words apply only too aptly to this 
administration's lash-up with the Sharon government. As responsible citizens we need 
to overcome our timidity about addressing this issue, lest our fellow Americans 
continue to be denied important information neglected or distorted in our 
domesticated media. 

Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years - from the administration 
of John F Kennedy to that of George H W Bush. During the early 1980s, he was 
one of the writers/editors of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it 
one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers. He also chaired National 
Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran 
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. 

This article is reposted here by permission of Tomdispatch.com. 

(Copyright 2005 Ray McGovern)

Black holes and rogue states 
(Mar 2, '05)

EU unfazed by Iranian-Russian deal
(Mar 2, '05) 

The peace pipe's on the table 
(Feb 23, '05)

Psywar keeps Tehran on tenterhooks 
(Feb 16, '05)

How Iran will fight back
(Dec 16, '04)

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