Cheney's Conspiracy Theory II: Iran

Did Cheney really believe that Saddam and al Qaeda conspired to attack the U.S. on 9/11 or was it just a conspiracy theory he came up to convince the majority of the U.S. on the necessity of the Iraq War?

As recently as April 5, 2007, "Cheney contended that al-Qaeda was operating in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion led by U.S. forces and that terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda." But that "[o]thers in al-Qaeda planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." Though, he has apparently backed off from previous assertions that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks, he is still clinging to the notion that has now been disproved by every agency and group that has investigated the connection(except the one run by ardent neocon Feith) that al Qaeda was nonetheless active in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion.

In my post of May 19, 2007, "Cheney's Conspiracy Theory", I wrote that perhaps Cheney really fell for the possibility that there was collusion between Saddam and al Qaeda prior to 9/11. It's possible his belief that Iraq was part of terrorist conspiracy plus his paranoia/fear that our democracy was seriously in danger might have led him to push for the invasion of Iraq. And I think there really is a possibility that Cheney and other neocons feel they are on a mission to protect the U.S. way of life as well as "our interests" in the Middle East, meaning Israel and Iraqi oil. And if their friends, Big Oil, get rich in the process, so be it -- then there will be more money for donations to get Republican candidates elected and to further the neocon agenda of expanding U.S. business interests and "morality" around the world.

There has also been some talk about a neocon Middle East domino theory , sort of a reverse of the Vietnam Era domino theory, which contends that if the U.S. manages to create a democracy in Iraq then democracy will spread to the surrounding countries. Well, communism didn't spread throughout Southeast Asia when we lost the Vietnam War and right now anyway, western-style democracy doesn't appear to be on the verge of spreading anywhere in the Middle East.

Actually, I'm not convinced that creating an Iraqi democracy was really part of the neocon plan or maybe it was just a best case scenario that didn't pan out. The real priority was to retain, apparently at any cost, a strong and preferably controlling presence in Iraq. The level of U.S. incompetence in "post-war" Iraq was too great to not have been, if not part of the plan, at least an acceptable outcome. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but I think it's possible that one reason why so many key civilian positions in Iraq have been filled by loyal Bush supporters is because it is more important that whatever happens there follows their long-range agenda than it is to create a stable and peaceful Iraq.

This scenario fits in with the theory that neocons are seeking "maximum chaos and instability in the Middle East in order to justify long-term US occupation of the region." And this theory, at least in terms of how long we plan to be in Iraq, gained more believability when on June 17, 2007, General Petraeus told Fox News in regards to Iraq that "typically, I think historically, counterinsurgency operations have gone at least nine or 10 years."

In addition the U.S. is building a large, well actually huge, U.S. Embassy complex in Baghdad that will encompass 104 acres on the bank of the Tigris River inside the Green Zone. "Original cost estimates," for the project, "ranged over $1 billion." State Department officials have openly admitted that the size of the embassy is due to the expectation of continued U.S. military presence in Iraq for many years to come.

So is the Bush Administration trying to destabilize the Middle East?

Recently there have been new accusations that Iran may be funding all of the conflicts in the region. According to the NY Times on June 15, 2007, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts are currently the official policy of the President and Vice President despite the fact that the "few remaining hawks" in the administration are "pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities". And as Patrick Buchanan pointed out on June 18, 2007, in an article titled "War With Iran? On The Escalator To A Third Middle East Confrontation", various recent accusations made by Senator Joe Lieberman, Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, and General Petraeus taken together assert that Iran is providing arms, training, and funds to opposition forces in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Afghanistan.

Are these guys part of the plan to convince us that we need to lay waste to Iran as we have to Iraq and Afghanistan?

Seymour Hersh in his March 05, 2007 New Yorker article "The Redirection" quotes the Vice President:

On Fox News on January 14th, Cheney warned of the possibility, in a few years, “of a nuclear-armed Iran, astride the world’s supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations and/or their nuclear weapons to threaten their neighbors and others around the world.” He also said, “If you go and talk with the Gulf states or if you talk with the Saudis or if you talk with the Israelis or the Jordanians, the entire region is worried… . The threat Iran represents is growing.”

Cheney made the following remarks to troops on May 11, 2007, aboard the U.S.S. Stennis in the Persian Gulf:

We'll stand with our friends in opposing extremism and strategic threats. We'll disrupt attacks on our own forces. We'll continue bringing relief to those who suffer, and delivering justice to the enemies of freedom. And we'll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region. These are important duties, and they must all be done at the same time.

And he had this exchange on Fox News on May 14, 2007, with Bret Baier:

THE VICE PRESIDENT: We are confident that there are a number of senior al Qaeda officials in Iran and they've been there since the spring of '03. About the time that we launched operations into Iraq, the Iranians rounded up a number of al Qaeda individuals and placed them under house arrest and they're still there.

We think obviously there are other elements that are responsible for overall leadership of al Qaeda, specifically Osama bin Laden, Zawahiri. They are not in Iran, but there are some senior officials in Iran. They've been held there for some time. But activities they've been engaged in, I'm really not at liberty to discuss.

QUESTION: But clearly they're there and operating?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: We know they're there, and I don't want to go beyond that.

Will the next threat be that Iran is funding al Qaeda? Or are Cheney and friends just trying to get us to swallow a new conspiracy theory? This one replacing the nuclear WMD of Iraq with those of Iran.


Links

Vice President's Remarks at the United States Military Academy Commencement
West Point, New York, May 26, 2007

The Colossus of Baghdad
Commentary: Wonders of the imperial world.
By Tom Engelhardt, May 29, 2007

Iran: The Next Neocon Target
by Ron Paul, April 5, 2006

New U.S. Embassy in Baghdad Evokes Suburbia
By Christopher Hawthorne, June 18, 2007

Irrational Luxury in Baghdad
By Hanady Kader, June 18, 2007

The Long War: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Protracted Conflict—and Defeat
By Michael Vlahos, September o5, 2006

Republican Candidates abandon Bush

When I was watching the latest Republican debate on CNN last night I thought it was pathetic that these candidates fell over one another to distance themselves from the President. All of these candidates have more or less loyally stood by the president, despite his questionable competency, up until very recently. And now, rather suddenly they are more than willing to throw him under the bus to make themselves look more competent than he. Personally, it makes me very wary when people can change their loyalties so easily.

Following the lead of Peggy Noonan, conservatives and the Republican candidates are voicing stronger public opposition to Bush's policies, particularly on Iraq and immigration, than ever before. The candidates are obviously attempting to appeal to the 65% percent of Americans who no longer have faith in the President's ability to run the country.

Now that the they, in the long lead up to the 2008 Presidential election, are almost unanimously turning against Bush and his handling of the war, I think we are also seeing the beginnings of attempts to foist the blame or at least part of it onto the Democrats.

During the June 3, Democratic debate Hillary said: "This is George Bush's war. He is responsible for this war. He started the war. He mismanaged the war. He escalated the war. And he refuses to end the war."

McCain replied to this remark during last night's debate: "'When Senator Clinton says this is Mr. Bush's war, President Bush's war,' she is wrong, he said. 'When President Clinton was in power, I didn't say Bosnia was President Clinton's war,' the Arizona senator said. 'Presidents don't lose wars. Political parties don't lose wars. Nations lose wars,' he added." Earlier in the debate, he also harshly criticized the handling of the war saying: "I'm going to give you a little straight talk. This war was very badly mismanaged for a long time. And Americans have made great sacrifices, some of which were unnecessary because of this management of the war -- mismanagement of this conflict".

Seems like he's trying to spread the blame around. McCain said that nations lose wars not presidents or political parties and also that war was badly mismanaged without saying who exactly was responsible. Sounds like the groundwork is being laid to begin shifting some of the blame for the Iraq war onto the Democrats. The Republicans have trouble taking responsibility for their actions.

While I'm reluctant to say that the Democrats are more honest than the Republicans, I think that that the Democrats, at least those of the last 30 years or so, are less likely to lie about things like military intelligence, aid to hurricane victims, voting irregularities, etc. than the Republicans. The Republicans, since Bush No. 1 anyway, in general have no shame when it comes to spinning reality, no matter how badly they have behaved or lied, so that they will seem blameless or close to blameless whenever anything goes wrong.

Historically there is little doubt that Hillary's statement about Iraq war was true. It has been well documented that several Bush insiders including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Perle, etc. had been urging for a return to Iraq for many years. It has also been well-documented in several books (Fiasco, Hubris, Cobra II, etc.) that Bush knowingly provided false and misleading evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

And while to an extent McCain does have a point in that Hillary was rather gung-ho in the lead up to war (outlined well by conservative columnist Kathleen Parker) it's hard to get around the now documented fact that Bush, Cheney, Tenet, etc. made every effort possible, including providing false evidence, to convince the public and Congress that Saddam Hussein had to be taken out no matter the cost. They used the fear and terror that resulted from 9/11 and a campaign of misinformation to convince the majority of the public that Saddam was responsible for 9/11.

It's probably true that Hillary's early position about the war had more to do with appealing to her constituents and the majority of the the public than it did with any deep conviction on her part one way or the other. But isn't that what the Republican Candidates are doing now? Only she never threw the leader of her party under a bus or supported his war even after it became obvious it was going horribly wrong. McCain last night spoke in favor of the current surge in Iraq: "I believe we have a strategy which can succeed ...."

Noonan Abandoning Bush for Romney?

In my last post I wrote about how Bush, Rove, Cheney, etc., were doing their best to divide the Democratic Party, it was just speculation -- who knows whether it's true or not. However, what seems to be very true is Bush's unintentional alienation of his own party. In fact, he has managed to alienate his own party at least as successfully as the Democratic leadership did theirs last week with their weak stance on the Iraq troop spending bill. Seems like he forgot who he was talking too last Tuesday when many of the party faithful took exception to these remarks regarding his immigration bill:

"This reform is complex. There's a lot of emotions around this issue. Convictions run deep. Those determined to find fault with this bill will always be able to look at a narrow slice of it and find something they don't like. If you want to kill the bill, if you don't want to do what's right for America, you can pick one little aspect out of it, you can use it to frighten people. Or you can show leadership and solve this problem once and for all, so the people who wear the uniform in this crowd can do the job we expect them to do. Now is the time for comprehensive immigration reform. Now is the time for members of both political parties to stand up and show courage, and take a leadership role and do what's right for America."

Not only did he infer that opponents to the bill were unpatriotic but cowards as well. The NY Times reported that "Mr. Bush did not mean to impugn anyone’s patriotism, and that he had ad-libbed the line during a passionate address on an issue he holds dear." It was too late and many Republicans who are strongly opposed to his legislation were incensed that he would use the same rhetoric to question their patriotism that he has so often used on the Democrats.

Peggy Noonan spoke for many disillusioned Republicans in her 07/01/07 Wall Street Journal Op-Ed:

"The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic.... What I came in time to believe is that the great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom--a sense that they did not invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him, that maturity is not the same thing as cowardice, that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything, that the way it works in politics is a friend becomes a loyalist becomes a hack, and actually at this point in history we don't need hacks. "

She has finally seen the light or at least a glimmer of it.

I first heard about her opinion piece when I was listening to a "progressive" talk radio show where her reaction was discussed but not what exactly had set her off. I assumed it was Iraq, because I guess I naively don't quite understand why the immigration issue is such a big deal (didn't most of us have relatives and/or ancestors who came here from another country?)

Noonan surprisingly admits:

".... that the beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when the president declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation. This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me. For others the beginning of distance might have been Katrina and the incompetence it revealed, or the depth of the mishandling and misjudgments of Iraq."

So for over two years and through one election she kept her doubts to herself and now because of the immigration issue she decides it's time to go public. Thousands of coalition troops, mercenaries, and contract workers have been killed and 100s of thousands of Iraqis; billions of dollars spent and she decides it's immigration that is so horrible that she can no longer give her support to Bush.

Rumor has it that Noonan is planning to go to work for Mitt Romney. Is this the reason she trying to publicly separate herself from the president? She concludes her op-ed with: "Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time."

Sounds a little like what Romney is trying to do with his ads like "He cares and he is fearless...", "Tested, Proven...", "Now is the time...", etc. in which he is critical of Bush's over-spending, squandering of military strength, education policy and other shortcomings.