The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney...William Luti, an ex-aide to Mr Cheney, ran the day-to-day operations, answering to Douglas Feith, a defense undersecretary and a former Reagan official. The primary customers for this disinformation were Mr Cheney, Mr Libby and their closest idoelogical ally on the national security council ~ Stephen Hadley, Condoleeza Rice's deputy.
I wrote this post on February 6th 2004 and called it the smoking gun for our illegal attack and subsequent occupation of Iraq.
However, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing Friday at which the Inspector General of the Pentagon, Thomas Gimble, testified that the Iraq War was essentially launched on a pack of lies ~ and only a few democrats attended.
Gimble produced a report[http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/18368] documenting the actions of the Office of Special Plans, which included the gathering of "intelligence" and the presenting of that "intelligence" to top administration officials. The Pentagon is not an agency authorized to gather intelligence, and no agency is authorized to do that sort of work without informing the Congress.
Here's my original 2/02/04 post which features an indepth article from the Guardian UK entitled THE SPIES WHO PUSHED FOR WAR which also mentions an important Israeli connection.
Last year Julian Borger ( The Guardian ) reported on the shadow rightwing intelligence Agency set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force. Although published on July 17, 2003 ~ it is , indeed , now more than ever , the smoking Gun and devastating for a White house which stands accused of politicising and contaminating its own source of intelligence. This is a must read now and pass on article !
Thursday July 17, 2003: (The Guardian) As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war.
It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses.
This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House which stands accused of politicising and contaminating its own source of intelligence
According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency.
Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on Conscious talk radio www.conscioustalk.net