by Patrick Lang
#1 (paraphrasing) – “It was the policy of the Clinton Administration as sanctioned by by the ‘Iraq Liberation Act of 1998’ that Saddam’s government should be overthrown.”
In 1998 I had conversations with the Senate staffers who had drafted the “Iraq Liberation Act.” These men were determined to see the overthrow of the Iraqi government and were quite proud of the fact that they had brought briefers from the Iraqi National Congress (INC-Chalabi) to the Senate to make the case to members who were then motivated to push for the act. (See my article “Drinking the Koolaid” for details.)
These same Senate staffers told me with glee, “Now we have Clinton where we want him. He will be forced to take a firm stand against Iraq.” They were correct. The process worked just that way. The same people told me that a major goal of the act was to force Clinton to provide money for the Iraqi resistance to Saddam Hussein.
# 2 (paraphrasing) – “All the major intelligence agencies in the world believed that Saddam’s government had WMDs or active programs for WMDs.”
This is deceptively true. In fact the major intelligence agencies (with few exceptions) have “liaison” relationships to American agencies, and lack the capability to collect the information on which to base independent judgments. All these agencies have an ingrained “inferiority complex” with regard to the capabilities of American intelligence and their leaders generally fear to take positions at variance with American intelligence conclusions because the political leaders of their countries tend to judge their performance by the criterion of their agreement with American Intelligence.
The British are no exception to this rule. “The Secret Intelligence Service” (SIS/MI-6) has largely been a “liaison” service ever since the disaster of the “Cambridge Spies” long ago. SIS is particularly dependent on American liaison. Therefore, it can be said that the fact that the foreign services also “believed” that Saddam had WMDs has no meaning. At the same, critical time, the “International Atomic Energy Agency” (IAEI) was saying that Saddam’s government did not seem to have an atomic program anymore and that the UN inspections were proceeding satisfactorily.
For the record I was head for five or six years of the US end of the military intelligence liaison relationship with one of America’s closest allies.
Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann (interview), CNN and Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room (interview), PBS’s Newshour, NPR’s “All Things Considered,” (interview), and more .
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“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2
…..so what is your message here? I am failing to see it. BTW what is your honest opinion of Peter Goss now in the CIA?
His first point seems to be that Clinton got himself cornered into a tough stance on Iraq.
(We’ve known plenty of Democrats who’ve allowed themselves to get cornered into tough stances, mostly because they’re afraid of appearing “weak” on national defense.)
His second point is that saying that other agencies around the world agreed that Saddam had WMD isn’t very meaningful since they feel “inferior” to U.S. intel agencies and so probably have a tendency to ‘go along in order to get along.”
Btw, CNN just had the head intel soldier on WMD — pre- and post-war Iraq. He discussed the list that DIA gave him of (I think the number was) 967 possible WMD sites in Iraq. His immediate concern was that a lot of the sources for the sites were very dated. After the war, he went to those sites. He found some mechanisms for WMDs still in place, but no WMDs.
I got a phone call so missed about half of the interview, and i failed to catch his name. I’ll look for the transcript and post it.
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I ALSO LIKED Larry Johnson’s point yesterday about the GOP talking points:
The risk of a preemptive war must be constantly hammered home.
I think that, in 2001-2002, most Americans — and especially those who like to parade their patriotism with magnetic flags and “support the troops” stickers — had the ego to think that we could just to in and wallop any country we felt like taking on.
Most Americans thought our Army invincible, and our American “values” so enticing that people would run to our offering of a democracy.
Now most Americans know better.
A little too late for tens of thousands of dead Iraqis and American soldiers.
Our ego got us in big trouble. Thank god that a bit more realism has sunk in.
Susan, I do not mean to play coy here, but I thought all that Lang presented was a known.
Since he was DIA and know somethings in the lead up to the war, I want his opinion on the current Director of the CIA. I think if Lang involved himself in the deepest of Goss’s career he woudl certainly know what he is very much up to, besides covering bush/cheneys ass to boot.
Goss and the bush boys have friends in many places that they both know…covert to boot.
as for it being known … yes, someone like you would know those arguments, but we need to get the talk show people and general public educated on those points.
no clue what Pat thinks about Goss. Maybe he’ll see this and tell us.
TIME FOR WEST WING!
No West Wing 🙁
Thanks Susan, and I so enjoy seeing Mr Lang on the talking head shows rebutting these things. I was just saying he seems to be singing to the choir here. Nothing bad meant by it. I just was thinking we all know this already and wished he had a lot more new stuff to give to us. Anyhow, Thanks Mr. Lang.
Sorry bout west wing. Maybe the current real west wing will not show up soon, too…:o) as far as I am concerned, they never show up for anything good….hugs..
Great perspectives you bring to this Susan. And of course I really appreciate Pat Lang’s point about how so many other nations’ intel services are “liason-only” with us, pretty much negating the idea that they’d reached accord with our intel findings independently.
One other thing I want to say, partially because it’s Veterans day time now and we have so many dead and newly suffering Veterans.
I think our military is “virtually invincible” in pretty much all instances where it might be deployed on an honest mission to either protect our own nation or that of our friends, or, at the bequest of victims, to help prevent atrocity and aggression from continuing. But I think the biggest problems our miltary have is that the ideologues in civilian suits in government prevent the commanders in the field from pursuing what they believe is the best tactical course of action for any given situation, and, equally important, that these ideologues lie with impunity about the real mission, about the real reason they’re being sent to fight and die, to the very soldiers whom they purport to respect.
I think it’s a crime that Cheney performs any ritual at all at Arlington or anywhere else connected with those whose lives have been taken by war. For this scumbag Cheney to show up at the graves of the war dead is an nsult and a disgrace to every single soldier whose ever died while serving his country.
I fully believe, even with all the ugliness that inevitably accompanies war, that 99.99999% of our soldiers are honorable persons. In Iraq I believe they’ve become victims of the dishonesty rampant in the Bush regime, and it is this dishonesty from the suits in office that have created a climate that has led to a corrupting influence which has, in turn, created a serious quandary for many of our soldiers.
It’s never right to instill cognitive dissonance in people in order to get them to do what you want. there are always unpleasant repercussions from such manipulation. Cheney and his loathsome gang have created a situation where our serving soldiers frequently have to choose between upholding both their personal and national honorability or following orders that lead them to debase and needlessly kill people who are really innocent of any wrongdoing. This ugly choice should never be an institutionalized part of how we comport ourselves. Duty and Honor should never be deployed against each other
If you remember way back when this administration took over, the first thing they did was to give a party for the veterans…the military…what was it they were telling us way back then??? I suppose we all can look back and consider the writings on the wall, but it is so very real today. I will never remember how upset I was when they did this. I know they were chicken hawks and that just didnt sit well with me, anyhow.
Juan Peron in Argentina won his first election in large part because he had his wife Eva throw chickens from the train to all the poorthat lined the route as they campaigned across the country in 1946.
Peron threw chickens at the poor; Bush threw parties for the military. Same difference. Peron destroyed Argentina’s economy and severely undermined it’s future by looting the economy and allowing his supporters to exploit every opportunity to enrich themselves.
Bush is pursuing the same course, adding in a needless war that is killing and maiming the very people he pretends to respect.
I think our military is “virtually invincible” in pretty much all instances where it might be deployed on an honest mission to either protect our own nation or that of our friends, or, at the bequest of victims, to help prevent atrocity and aggression from continuing. But I think the biggest problems our miltary have is that the ideologues in civilian suits in government prevent the commanders in the field from pursuing what they believe is the best tactical course of action for any given situation, and, equally important, that these ideologues lie with impunity about the real mission, …
Let me ask you this, because Brent Scowcroft raised it in the New Yorker interview (it’s the New Yorker with the scary Halloween cover)…. He’s a realist, unlike the Neocons, and he doesn’t believe in military interventions, although he was very much in favor of going after Saddam for invading Kuwait because he thought that if we didn’t, it’d set a bad precedent around the world.
He mentioned the failure at Somalia where we’d sent troops to get food to starting Somalians. Then he speculated about Rwanda.
Clinton has said many times now that his biggest regret is that he didn’t go into Rwanda and help stop the bloodshed.
But Scowcroft raises an intriguing point: Once in Rwanda, how would we have managed to bring about a truce or peace, and how could we have extricated ourselves?
Would we have been stuck in a no-win, bloody war in Rwanda?
Rwanda, Somalia, and numerous other places around the world where atrocities take place; all are difficult situations to describe appropriate action for. Each is different in several different ways, but even so, the question of when to act or otherwise intervene and when not too is often an extremely complicated choice.
I think in Rwanda the potential to be helpful through intervention would have been relatively simple. “Stop the Genocide” is a pretty clear goal, and considering that Rwanda had no ther special significance or value to either the US or any of the other major powers, if asked by Rwandans to help, putting together a sizable reaction force assembled from several different countries and deploying to stop the murdering would likely not have created much in the way of long-term repercussions.
Things in Somalia would have been, (were, actually), much different. There were quite a few different intel operations going on there with respect to bin Laden and/or various arms dealings, arms smuggling, and burgeoning terrorist-network related issues. Part of the reason the humanitarian effort there was so disastrous was that it was in itself compromised by the fact of our presence there being utilized in an intel capacity, the result being that we were seen by many not in a humanitarian light but more in a suspicious way, the concern being wariness about what we were really up to behind the facade of humanitarianism.
I don’t think it’s always appropriate for intervention in other nations affairs, even when atrocities are being committed. Just because we can do something doesn’t always mean we should do something. But I think there are times when nations can and should come together to stop aggression by one nation against another and by one group in a country seeking to rise to power through the mass murder of it’s citizenry.
I used to hope that the UN would somehow finally be recognized as the best venue through which to do these sorts of interventions when necessary. The idea of the
UN makes it perfect in principle for such tasks yet, sadly, it’s dominated by a few at the expense of the many.
All of this for me highlights the vital importance of well developed foreign policies designed to encourage cooperation to resolve problems rather than to set people against each other in order to pursue other less visible mercantile advantages.
Read this online only article from the New Yorker where Amy Davidson discusses with Jeffery Goldberg his impressions from his interview with Scowcroft. There’s apart quite a ways into it where they discuss what “realist” means as it applies to the Scowcroft perspective and the terrible disdain for human rights such “realists” have. Fascinating and thoughtful!
Link here.
99.99% are decent you say. Why? Why do you blame the suits? They gave them permission to destroy Fallujah, Napalm Fallujah, Melt Women Children, cats and dogs with Poison Phosophrous WMD, Toruture innocent prisoners, kill innocent prisoners, rape underage boy and girls.
So how are the suits preventing the military from doing anything. They are letting them do whatever they want and much more.
The average American is a moron and the soldiers are no different.
The CIA is a Gestapo. They dissapear people and take them to prisons and torture them. Then they throw them away.
It’s really a shame that you missed the essence of what I was saying completely, and that your what seems to be general sense of outrage may be preventing you from engaging in civil discourse.
I read and reread what you said about “our military” being virtually invincible when used with conscience. The US military has almost always been used to protect business interests first from communism and now whatever the daily fare is identified as being. They were defeated in Vietnam and they have been decisively defeated in Iraq. They are just pretending to fight now out of fear that they will be identified as “losers” and that’s what they are …losers. Anyone who fights a lost cause is a loser.
Soldieris are part of America, the people and the government and they bear some portion of the responsibility, –perhpas the least— in what America does. They do not get off scott free and neither do you or I. Everyone in America is reponsible and will pay for IRaq.
The glorification and narcissism of the military must stop. I feel much more sympathy to the Iraqi people than I do for the American Soldiers and I am more sympathetic to the insurgency in it’s efforts to get America out than I am to the American soldiers. The reason is the insurgents are in effect more likely to share our values or freedom and secularity than the fundamentalist government the US is supporting.
It is absolutely insane and backwards…this situation.
Just bring the children with their guns back home.
I’ve never engaged in the glorification of either the military or war. I was vigorously and actively opposed to the Vietnam invasion, the assault on Grenada, the assault on Panama, all the military materiel we provide to tyrants and psychopaths everywhere, and I was categorically against this invasion of Iraq.
I’ve advocated from the very beginning of this current deacle that the best thing for everyone is to bring all our armed forces home immediately. I see that the longer the military presence is in Iraq the worse things will get.
My point in the original post was that if we had leaders that had respect for humanity and understood that war is a demonstration of weakness, not of strength, then the current murderous war wouldn’t even be happening. My further point tangent to this is that the soldiers serving in Iraq are also victims, victims of the deceit of those whose orders they’ve contracted to obey My point about honorability relates to this. People can be honorable even when thery’re wrong, even when they’ve been duped or otherwise tricked into believing things that aren’t true and acting on those erroneous beliefs in good faith. I’ve worked with cult related issues off and on for a long time and I can tell you that the military as it exists now is more and more of a cult environment than it ever was before.
Maybe it’s easy for you to assault those who don’t know better with your hate, but I have to say that your aggressive and careless judgmentalism and the all encompassing scope of your condemnations simply serve to undermine the chance for serious and insightful exploration and analysis of the problems that confront us. By defining those you attack in such broad terms, (Americans are morons and the soldiers are no different), you prevent your own argument, whatever it really is, from being seen as having a foundation in a functional and responsibly examined reality.
I have absolutely almost no influence on anything whatsoever so I am not undermining anything. That you might say so in words is a reflection of your imagined power, not mine.
I don’t like the “I” this and “I” that bullshit. Forget about me.
This HATE thing. Drop it. Putting people in categories is what Bush does.
Who bombed the Hotels in Jordan. Was it Iraqui terrorist or Israelis?.
Israel did it. Look who got killed. Palestinians working with Chinese.
Who was the Woman. Probably an innocent person forced to protect her family by admitting false guilt.
Categories are for people who need to be reassured.
The arrogance of your willful ignorance and the irresponsible nature of your accusations agaoinst “categories” of people is astonishing.
As requested I will forget about you. Your idiotic statement about my imagined power, combined with yourimplicit denial ofyour own hatred, signals to me that even if you had the capacity for reasoned discourse,you have no interest in it.
This is the end of my respones to you.
Clinton did it too talking point. Riiiiggghhhtt.
Always remember to point out that President Clinton used the most effective anti-terrorism weapons ever deployed – peace and prosperity. It’s much easier doing your job at the CIA when most of the world wants to be like you rather than blow you up.
But you do have to give W credit where credit is due – he’s a much bigger liar than Bill ever was as these talking points continue to demonstrate.
Police & intel.
We actually caught and convinced Trade Center bombers in his term.
Brenda
My point is that these are a couple of the standard arguments being used by the Bush people and they are bogus.
Goss? Out of his depth. pl
Sir, Goss is yet another appointment for convience and since he and bush and his family have been friends for a long time, this is my point. He really has not one thing to give to make the CIA better. As a matter of fact, he is tearing it apart. The damage is serious, IMHO.
Lang.
Name what do you think of a Porter for Bush heading the CIA?
Name one thing the CIA has ever done for any nation that was of benefit to anyone long term, apart from some inidividual businessman or business.
Almost everybody was for regime change in Iraq. Hell I was all for regime change in China and the Soviet Union back in 1964. But unlike Dr. Strangelove I wasn’t willing to see the earth turned into a radioactive cinder in the process.
The result was not worth the investment. And pointing to the fact that everyone agreed the result would be a good thing means nothing. Because some people were calling out about “boys and girls in boxes” coming home while others were telling me Saddam was a bad man. I know that, I knew that, I also knew the military dictators that run Myanmar were bad men. And I didn’t and don’t see some big push to intervene there. Iraq could be looking like Switzerland today and it would not have been worth the investment in lives and money. We could have done a lot of things with $300,000,000,000.
Second, it matters not a jot what Clinton believed in 1996. It doesn’t matter what Kerry believed in September 2002. What counts is what we knew in February 2003. There was exactly one man strutting around declaring “the decision has not been made” and “I get to decide”. Inconvenient facts are still facts. This is Bush’s war, he wanted the whole credit for it, well he got his wish.
Exactly, my point too….
I do not care for one minute what Clinton did back then..that was then and this is now. What bush did was much more.
Thanks…
I am very interested in this
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