This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
If the world is lucky, Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham will soon have another chance to heap abuse on Gen. Dempsey for blocking direct U.S. military involvement in one or another of their favorite wars. It is a safe bet Dempsey is again warning the President that there are risks that the Russian bear will do more than just snarl if it continues to be poked by the U.S.-installed coup government in Kiev. Hopefully, at the September 4-5 NATO summit in Wales, Dempsey and other cool heads, who have had some experience in war, will again be able to head off the hotheads advocating gratuitous threatening gestures toward Russia.
This will take courage and stamina, since ill-informed Groupthink, aided and abetted by the "mainstream" media, has taken hold in Washington, in a way reminiscent of this same time 12 years ago. Sadly, there was no Martin Dempsey at hand then. The malleable careerist generals that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld picked to serve him -- like JCS Chairman Richard Myers -- could be counted on to salute smartly to all of the boss's decisions -- even on torture. Ex-general Colin Powell -- who was Peter-Principled up to be Secretary of State because he was safe -- was cut of the same cloth. So Rumsfeld together with his partner-in-crime Vice President Dick Cheney had a free hand.
By all appearances, except for Dempsey and his immediate staff, Groupthink continues to reign supreme in the foreign policy and defense councils of Establishment Washington. It is as though nothing has been learned from the destruction and chaos left behind after the U.S./UK invasion and the occupation of Iraq beginning in March 2003.
Anatomy of a Consequential Lie
With Rumsfeld covering for him at the Pentagon, Vice President Dick Cheney led the charge exactly 12 years ago. Addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars on August 26, 2002, Cheney launched the propaganda campaign for war on Iraq, falsely claiming, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. ... Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon." Cheney went on to warn that UN inspectors were worse than useless, since they fostered a false sense of security.
Cheney's speech provided the recipe for how the intelligence was to be cooked in September 2002. In effect, it provided the meretricious terms of reference and conclusions for a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) requested by Congress a few weeks later and completed on October 1. We now know that Robert Walpole, the intelligence official selected to chair the Estimate was receiving guidance from Cheney during the record-short drafting period. We also know that the NIE was wrong on every major judgment. Its purpose, though, was to deceive Congress out of exercising its Constitutional prerogative to declare or otherwise authorize war. And that worked like a charm.
To their discredit, many in the intelligence community knew of Cheney's and Walpole's playing fast and loose with the evidence and the White House's determination to pave the way to war. Those intelligence officials, however, simply held their noses. No one spoke out.
The whole orchestration was a fairy tale, and Cheney and his co-conspirators knew it full well. The most successful midwife of such tales, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, later bragged about his role in facilitating the spurious claims of WMD in Iraq. He said, "Saddam is gone. ... What was said before is not important. ... We are heroes in error."
Old Soldiers Never Lie; They Just Keep Their Mouths Shut
Back to the VFW convention on August 26, 2002: sitting on the stage that evening was former CENTCOM commander Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who was being honored by the VFW. Zinni later said he was shocked to hear a depiction of intelligence (Iraq has WMD and is amassing them to use against us) that did not square with what he knew. Although Zinni had retired two years before, his role as consultant had enabled him to keep his clearances and stay up to date on key intelligence findings.
Zinni is among a handful of senior officials, active duty and retired, who could have prevented the war, had they spoken out at the time.
Three and a half years later, Zinni told Meet the Press, "There was no solid proof that Saddam had WMD...I heard a case being made to go to war." Zinni had earlier enjoyed a reputation as a straight shooter, with occasional displays of actual courage. And so the question lingers: why did he not make inquiries and -- if necessary -- go public?
It is an all too familiar conundrum. Senior military leaders, like Bre'r Fox, don't say nuthin'. And, almost always, it comes out badly for everyone else, but they still get to sit on corporate boards and make a ton of money. It is a safe bet Zinni now regrets letting himself be guided -- or misguided -- by what passes for professional courtesy and/or slavish adherence to classification restrictions, when he might have prevented the U.S. from starting the kind of war of aggression branded at Nuremberg as the "supreme international crime."
Tenet: Gosh! But Completely Complicit
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
4
2
