The French Minister (Quai d’Orsay)

The University of Louisville is currently in the midst of its annual French Film Festival. Unfortunately, two screenings of the film I've been most wanting to see, The French Minister (Quai d’Orsay), were canceled last night because of bad weather. The entire University was closed for extreme cold. Yesterday's 5 pm screening was supposed to be followed by a discussion with French professor Matthieu Dalle, and I'm hoping that will occur today at the 2 pm screening.

Here's the film's synopsis from IMDB:

Alexandre Taillard de Vorms is tall and impressive, a man with style, attractive to women. He also happens to be the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the land of enlightenment: France. With his silver mane and tanned, athletic body, he stalks the world stage, from the floor of the United Nations in New York to the powder keg of Oubanga. There, he calls on the powerful and invokes the mighty to bring peace, to calm the trigger-happy, and to cement his aura of Nobel Peace Prize winner-in-waiting. Alexandre Taillard de Vorms is a force to be reckoned with, waging his own war backed up by the holy trinity of diplomatic concepts: legitimacy, lucidity and efficacy. He takes on American neo-cons, corrupt Russians and money-grabbing Chinese. Perhaps the world doesn't deserve France's magnanimousness, but his art would be wasted if just restricted to home turf. Enter the young Arthur Vlaminck, graduate of the elite National School of Administration, who is hired as head of "language" at the foreign ministry. In other words, he is to write the minister's speeches. But he also has to learn to deal with the sensibilities of the boss and his entourage, and find his way between the private secretary and the special advisers who stalk the corridors of the Quai d'Orsay - the ministry's home - where stress, ambition and dirty dealing are the daily currency. But just as he thinks he can influence the fate of the world, everything seems threatened by the inertia of the technocrats.

Update February 22: The film reminded me in structure of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Basically, the film devoted about half of the narrative to the farcical politics of the French Foreign Ministry and half to the speechwriter’s domestic situation (where important political issues were also revealed in a personal manner). Both films generally ended happily for the ordinary people featured in the stories. No actor in the film played two roles, but the speechwriter literally provided the words for the Foreign Minister's closing address (and in previous speeches).

The parallel to Chaplin's classic film are not perfect. The Foreign Minister character was played for laughs throughout the film, but he was not a power-mad dictator. He was imagined as a slightly foolish political bureaucrat with intellectual interests. Indeed, the Minister's basic three talking points from the first meeting with the speechwriter were reflected in the final speech. I think the filmmaker could be suggesting that these key principles were so obvious and basic that even a fool could identify them right away -- the need for responsibility, unity, and efficacy. Somehow, the neocons and Bush managed to miss these elemental truths as they planned the Iraq war.

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Mearsheimer Profile

Back in 1990, in the Atlantic Monthly, prominent neorealist IR theorist John Mearsheimer published a popular version of one of his best-known academic arguments: "Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War."

The next forty-five years in Europe are not likely to be so violent as the forty-five years before the Cold War, but they are likely to be substantially more violent than the past forty-five years, the era that we may someday look back upon not as the Cold War but as the Long Peace, in John Lewis Gaddis's phrase.

This pessimistic conclusion rests on the general argument that the distribution and character of military power among states are the root causes of war and peace.

His argument was based on the difficulty of assuring stability among a larger number of great powers -- and the higher chance that states would have different amounts of military power. Of course, Mearsheimer was also quite skeptical about the role democracy and economic interdependence might play in assuring peace, though he was also pessimistic that realist prescriptions could avoid war.

In short, the essay reflected most of the important ideas associated with Mearsheimer -- a pessimistic (if not tragic) realist emphasis on great power competition and the enduring prospects for war.

In the January/February 2012 issue of The Atlantic, Mearsheimer is profiled by the magazine's frequent contributor Robert Kaplan: "Why John J. Mearsheimer Is Right (About Some Things)." Kaplan highlights the University of Chicago scholar's ongoing interest in the threat of major power war. The essay gives a great deal of attention to the potential rising threat from China, a point Mearsheimer has been emphasizing for over a decade.

If you follow IR theory, none of the political science discussed by Kaplan is new. The piece does include several photos.

Because of my interests in political communication and deliberation, I'm including this quote from one of Mearsheimer's ex- students:

As Ashley J. Tellis, Mearsheimer’s former student and now, after a stint in the Bush administration, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, later tells me: “Realism is alien to the American tradition. It is consciously amoral, focused as it is on interests rather than on values in a debased world. But realism never dies, because it accurately reflects how states actually behave, behind the façade of their values-based rhetoric.”

Here, Tellis is echoing a point Mearsheimer has frequently made.

Again, for scholars, the article is filled with redundancies like that. If you've read several pieces by Mearsheimer, chances are you did not learn anything from this article.

Yet, it is kind of interesting that a national magazine profiled Mearsheimer at this time. If the U.S. soon enters into a long cold war with China, he'll be credited (or blamed) with framing the logic behind the competition. Alternatively, if the U.S. or Israel launches war against Iran out of concerns about nuclear proliferation, then Mearsheimer will likely emerge as a vocal critic (as he was in the Iraq war case) and so this article helps to establish his credentials to a wider audience outside the academy.

In short, the article is (mostly) an effort to rehabilitate Mearsheimer after he and Steve Walt published their article and book about the role of the Israeli lobby in American foreign policy. Kaplan says that work is polemical and not objective, so the piece does not serve as a complete rehabilitation. Indeed, within the media Kaplan says that The Israeli Lobby has "delegitimized" Mearsheimer.

Kaplan is occasionally described as a neocon and apparently served in the Israeli armed forces, so he may not be the most objective observer of Mearsheimer. Notably, neocons have long shared Mearsheimer's worries about China.

In short, the subtext makes for an interesting read.


Note: I updated the post March 1 to provide a real conclusion.

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Not all deficit hawks are defense hawks

Many partisan deficit hawks are simply using the current political context to pursue policies that they have long supported for other reasons. Where were their deficit concerns when voting to renew the "Bush tax cuts" -- particularly since they insisted that tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans were included in any final deal?

And many are happy to see Pentagon spending increase when other spending is facing significant reductions. As one Washington insider recently told The Nation, “When the Soviet Union disappeared...a lot of people on the right failed to notice.”

It may be that the circumstances are changing in Washington. The unnamed Washington insider I just quoted is Grover Norquist, a long-time conservative activist.

On November 30, a coalition of conservative groups signed a joint letter calling for defense cuts as part of any reductions in government spending (pdf here).

The Pentagon is slated to spend $6.5 trillion over the next ten years – equal to the current projected deficit spending in the same time period....True fiscal stewards cannot eschew real spending reform by protecting pet projects in the federal budget. Any such Department of Defense favoritism would signal that the new Congress is not serious about fiscal responsibility and not ready to lead.

The coalition includes a number of libertarians, including Christopher Preble and Ben Friedman of the Cato Institute.

Robert Dreyfuss in that February 14, 2011, issue of The Nation reported that a counter-coalition of conservatives who are hawkish on defense are leading the fight to preserve defense spending. The names are familiar from the Bush years: William Kristol, Thomas Donnelly, and Danielle Pletka.

Dreyfuss says that Kristol's Foreign Policy Initiative is an updated version of the Project for a New American Century. Indeed, FPI has been scolding the Obama administration for planned future defense cuts.

If the question was of less importance, I would suggest making some popcorn and watching the conservatives commit fratricide. Instead, it looks like the libertarians might need some help.

Good progressives may need to help Tom Coburn cut defense. What would such a Faustian bargain entail?

Corrections: Ben Friedman wrote to point out that he is not a libertarian even though he works at Cato. Also, I didn't mean to imply he's a signatory to the letter (he's not). Rather, Dreyfuss reported that Friedman and Preble gave a Capitol Hill forum calling for substantial defense cuts.


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Ducks in a row

This has been a quiet week here, but I've posted several pieces at Duck of Minerva recently.

Today, I posted "Wilson's legacy," which compares the neoconservative argument about "democratic realism" to the pragmatic and limited version of liberalism Wilson advocated.

Wednesday, February 24, I posted "More ISA highlights," which constituted my second contribution to the post-conference reminiscing by the Duck bloggers.

Last Saturday, February 20, the first of those posts appeared: "ISA: Renewing my call for comedy." Yes, I presented another paper (or two?) for "the comedy project."

January 24, I posted "Hamiltonian Failure?" The posting explored whether the American state has perhaps gone too far in removing itself from global capitalism.

January 14, I blogged about the aftermath of the earthquake that hit Haiti. The post focuses on Pat Robertson's idiocy.


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Service notes

Rob Farley and Robert D. Kaplan would not appear to be allies. Farley is a progressive who teaches at the University of Kentucky's Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce and blogs at Lawyers, Gun$ and Money and TAPPED.

Kaplan is a neocon journalist who writes influential pieces on military strategy and theory for the Atlantic Monthly and is currently Class of 1960 Distinguished Visiting Professor in National Security at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Yet, despite their different perspectives, both Farley and Kaplan recently published pieces in popular magazines calling explicitly or implicitly for a larger navy.

Farley's pro-navy pieces comes in the form of a provocative call to abolish the air force. Farley wants to give important functions of the Air Force to the Navy:

To the extent that the United States requires a capability to punish other states militarily for political purposes, the Navy can handle the job. The aircraft carriers of the Navy already represent the most powerful concentration of mobile military power in the world. Navy cruise missiles, launched from submarines and surface vessels, can strike most of the surface of the Earth within a couple of hours. Adding certain elements of the Air Force portfolio to the Navy would neither transform nor hinder the Navy's power projection mission.

The strategic nuclear capability of the Air Force should also go to the Navy. The USN already operates its own strategic deterrent in the form of the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, armed with the Trident missile. The Navy could also operate the other two legs of the nuclear triangle (ICBMs and strategic bombers) without difficulty, especially since the latter would support the Navy's strategic mission.

In dismantling the Air Force, Farley would give tactical air support missions to the Army.

Kaplan (in a subscriber-only piece) adopts realist thinking about world politics and implicitly urges expansion of the navy for the simple reason that other states -- China, especially -- are likely to pose future threats to U.S. security interests. Kaplan even uses a narrative structure common to academic realists -- "the tragedy of great power politics."

Democracy and supremacy undermine the tragic sense required for long-range planning.

Democracy is dangerous because it can be difficult to sell weapons systems to the American public. Supremacy is foolhardy because it breeds satisfaction and makes it difficult to see the burgeoning new threats in a dangerous world. If this sounds convincing, keep in mind that Kaplan adopts a very long-term perspective:

All of this puts us in a precarious position. History shows that powerful competitor navies can easily emerge out of nowhere in just a few decades.

Act now! Threats are merely decades away!

Of course, Kaplan refutes his thesis in a succinct sentence:

The vast majority of American ships that saw combat in World War II had not even been planned before the spring of 1941.

Some emergency, eh?

Elsewhere, I am developing my own critique of the tragedy narrative employed by realists. I'm working on a book-length argument about the comedy of global politics. Here is a link to a conference paper that is likely to become a chapter.


Note also: Farley criticizes Kaplan's facts and argument here. Yet, it seems obvious that both would increase the size and capability of the navy if they had authoritative power in the Pentagon.



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At the Duck

Lately, at the Duck of Minerva, I have blogged the following:

November 20, "The decline in Iraqi violence" which explains why "the surge" may not explain the recent decline in violence in Iraq.

Tuesday, November 13: I blogged "Breathe easier, DC and NYC," which is about the (un)reality of so-called "suitcase nukes."

Saturday, November 10: "Is neoconservatism still vibrant?" The title speaks for itself.

Thanks for reading.


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RIP Jeane Kirkpatrick

Former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick died on December 7. I've linked to The Washington Post obituary, but you won't have to google very long to find others.

At first glance, Kirkpatrick was a political schizophrenic. As a youth, she was a Columbia-educated Marxist who became a fervent anti-communist in Washington. Though it is not a transformation of that magnitude, she also worked for Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and Ronald Reagan in 1981.

By the 1970s, Kirkpatrick was an ardent cold warrior. In 1979, she published her best-known work, a very famous piece about democratization and human rights for Commentary magazine, "Dictatorships & Double Standards." The piece offered a blistering critique of Jimmy Carter's foreign policy -- and an ideological defense of America's cold war alliances with various right-wing autocrats throughout what was then commonly called the "third world."

Though today's neocons supposedly owe Kirkpatrick a huge intellectual debt, and the administration of George W. Bush is often-said to be heavily influenced by her thinking, it seems obvious to me that the neocons and Bush people should go back and read her 1979 article:

Although most governments in the world are, as they always have been, autocracies of one kind or another, no idea holds greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances. This notion is belied by an enormous body of evidence based on the experience of dozens of countries which have attempted with more or less (usually less) success to move from autocratic to democratic government. Many of the wisest political scientists of this and previous centuries agree that democratic institutions are especially difficult to establish and maintain-because they make heavy demands on all portions of a population and because they depend on complex social, cultural, and economic conditions.

...Decades, if not centuries, are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits.

Here's another zinger from that article:

Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.

Despite these warnings that resonate in contemporary politics, Kirkpatrick was primarily arguing that some right-wing autocracies had eventually evolved into democracies while there were no examples at that time of a "revolutionary 'socialist' or Communist society being democratized."

This implied (a) that the U.S. could justify its alliances with right-wing autocrats because they were not necessarily permament; and (b) that the U.S. should overtly support these right-wing autocrats because they were vulnerable to pressures applied by Marxist revolutionaries. If the latter came to power, she argued, the new government would be worse than the autocracy it replaced.

In this article, the "Kirkpatrick doctrine" justifying support for right-wing autocrats did not directly begat the "Reagan doctrine," which justified American support for anti-communist insurgencies in places like Nicaragua and Afghanistan. But as the US Permament Representative to the UN for four years, Kirkpatrick certainly supported that policy. And the Commentary piece does criticize the Carter administration for its failure to attempt to undermine any communist states.

Let me note one other prominent Kirkpatrick statement. At the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas that re-nominated Ronald Reagan for president, she delivered the famous address that criticized the "San Francisco Democrats" (the party had just had its national convention in that city) that would "Blame America First" for various ills in world affairs.

In her public life, Jeane Kirkpatrick was both a skilled politico and a scholar. Not many have bridged those two worlds.

My personal experience confirms both her political skills and intellectual prowess. Ten years ago, I spent significant parts of two working days and a long evening with Kirkpatrick and a few other colleagues. Given the stark differences between her politics and mine, I was not really expecting to like her very much. However, I found her to be a very skilled advocate for her positions. She was also quite charming. And entertaining.

And maybe just a little bit flirty.

One final note: As my Duck of Minerva colleague Bill Petti has pointed out, the latest move by the neoconservative crowd is to "Blame America Last." It is clear from Kirkpatrick's 1979 critique of Carter's foreign policy that she was quite willing to place blame on America when she thought its leaders were doing a poor job and creating instability and new threats.

Thus, I'd like to think she would reject this latest twist.


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Filed as: Jeane Kirkpatrick

"Prepare to Bomb Iran"

Ignore the distractions in the news, my title phrase is a direct quote from neoconservative Joshua Muravchik's latest article in Foreign Policy. Here's what immediately follows:

Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office. It is all but inconceivable that Iran will accept any peaceful inducements to abandon its drive for the bomb. Its rulers are religio-ideological fanatics who will not trade what they believe is their birthright to great power status for a mess of pottage. Even if things in Iraq get better, a nuclear-armed Iran will negate any progress there. Nothing will embolden terrorists and jihadists more than a nuclear-armed Iran.

The global thunder against Bush when he pulls the trigger will be deafening, and it will have many echoes at home. It will be an injection of steroids for organizations such as MoveOn.org.

Muravchik, a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is helping to launch neoconservative's "Operation Comeback."

Indeed, do not be fooled by the apparent silence of the neocons for the past couple of years. They are mounting a full-on effort to duck responsibility for the Iraq war fiasco -- and they apparently plan to get things right in Iran.

This is why Pete Dombrowski and I want to invigorate the public debate about the prospects for such a war. Muravchik focuses on the negative implications of an Iranian bomb, but completely ignores the disastrous potential consequences of even a "limited" war against Tehran.

Coming attraction in this space: Explicit discussion of the downside of war with Iran.

Hat tip on Muravchik's article to Steve Clemons.


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Filed as: Iran

Scowcroft and his best friend's son

I finally got around to reading the October 2005 piece on Brent Scowcroft in The New Yorker. Writer Jeffrey Goldberg clearly got former GHW Bush National Security Advisor Scowcroft to talk fairly openly about his very strong disagreements with the current Bush administration.

Scowcroft is a realist and thus makes arguments about Iraq that are like those made by academics Stephen Walt and John Mearshimer. Mearsheimer's last book was about the tragedy of international politics, and Scowcroft shares the same basic pessimism:

“I believe in the fallibility of human nature,” Scowcroft told me. “We continually step on our best aspirations. We’re humans. Given a chance to screw up, we will.”

Like academic realists, Scowcroft doesn't think much of Wilsonianism:

Scowcroft does not believe that the promotion of American-style democracy abroad is a sufficiently good reason to use force. “I thought we ought to make it our duty to help make the world friendlier for the growth of liberal regimes,” he said. “You encourage democracy over time, with assistance, and aid, the traditional way. Not how the neocons do it.”

Scowcroft says simply, "Iraq feeds terrorism."

People in the White House, like former protégé Condi Rice, feel betrayed by Scowcroft. It works both ways:

"She says we’re going to democratize Iraq, and I said, ‘Condi, you’re not going to democratize Iraq.’"

...

“What the realist fears is the consequences of idealism,” he said. “The reason I part with the neocons is that I don’t think in any reasonable time frame the objective of democratizing the Middle East can be successful. If you can do it, fine, but I don’t you think you can, and in the process of trying to do it you can make the Middle East a lot worse.” He added, “I’m a realist in the sense that I’m a cynic about human nature.”

Some insiders think the former General speaks for the elder Bush.

Indeed, other Bush I officials, like James Baker, are also prominent outsiders now. I guess that frees them to criticize:

“We always made sure the President was hearing all the possibilities,” John Sununu, who served as chief of staff to George H. W. Bush, said. “That’s one of the differences between the first Bush Administration and this Bush Administration.”

The article is filled with criticism of various players in the current administration.

...that time in September...

The Italian papers and American blogosphere have been buzzing today about a number of prominent Italians who may have been involved in forging the Niger uranium documents. This includes the SISMI Chief Nicolo Pollari...and apparently the current Italian Ambassador to the US, Giovanni Castellaneta!

Josh Marshall:

Remember, too, that Pollari attended the secret Rome meetings in late 2001 arranged by Michael Ledeen and attended by Manucher Ghorbanifar, Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode.

Pollari's efforts were apparently in concert with the man who is now the Italian ambassador to the United States. And, perhaps most explosively, Pollari apparently arranged a secret meeting with Stephen Hadley -- then deputy National Security Advisor, and now National Security Advisor -- to discuss the documents.

The alleged date was September 9th, 2002.

Remember that date, which has been confirmed by Laura Rozen:

Today's exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

September 9.

If UPI reporter Richard Sale is right, you may soon start hearing a lot of American names associated with the Niger forgeries:Via Pat Lang's blog:

Thanks to a letter of February, 2004 which Fitzgerald asked for and obtained expaneed authority, the Special Prosecutor is now in possession of an Italian parliament nvestigationi into the forged Niger documents alleging Iraq's interest in purchasing Niger uranium, sources said.

They said that Fitzgerald is looking into such individuals as former CIA agent, Duane Claridge (sic), military consultant to the Iraqi National Congress, Gen. Wayne Downing, another military consultant for INC, and Francis Brooke, head of INC's Washingfton office in an effort to determine if they played any role in the forgeriese or their dissiemination. Also iIncluded in this group is long-time neoconservative Michael Ledeen, these federal sources said.

You've seen Ledeen's name associated with the Niger forgeries before.

But note the names Duane Clarridge (more on him later) and Wayne Downing.

Check this out from the AEI webpage:

The War against the Terror Masters
How We Got There. Where We Are Now. How We'll Win.

Start: Tuesday, September 10, 2002 5:00 PM
End: Tuesday, September 10, 2002 7:00 PM
Location: Colonial Room, Mayflower Hotel
1127 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

5:00 Presentation: Michael A. Ledeen, AEI
Panelists: Duane Clarridge, Central Intelligence Agency (retired)
Wayne Downing, U.S. Special Forces (retired)

The event was so popular that even the UPI noted it.

So all the alleged forgers were in Washington just days before the President spoke to the UN about Iraq.

Oh, and Downing and Clarridge used to go around saying that the US could win a war in Iraq with 5000 troops. Pat Lang wasn't happy about that in Summer 2004.

The paleocons (guys like Lang and Sale) and the neocons are at war.

Turn Turn Turn

Have you read Scooter Libby's September 15, 2005, letter to Judith Miller, who was at that point still incarcerated? It closes with this:

"You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover—Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work—-and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers."

A lot of bloggers have tried to make heads or tails of the passage.

Is this just more of Libby's notorious purple prose?

It is based on fact.

Or, is it a code, perhaps written to look like purple prose?

As Robert Novak, of all people, reported on September 22, a bunch of rich conservatives recently gathered in Aspen, Colorado, to talk policy...and bash President Bush!

For two full days, George W. Bush was bashed. He was taken to task on his handling of stem cell research, population control, the Iraq war and, especially, Hurricane Katrina. The critics were no left-wing bloggers. They were rich, mainly Republican and presumably Bush voters in the last two presidential elections.

The Bush-bashing occurred last weekend at the annual Aspen conference sponsored by the New York investment firm Forstmann Little & Co. Over 200 invited guests, mostly prestigious, arrived Thursday night (many by private aircraft) and stayed until Sunday...They faithfully attended the discussions presided over by PBS's Charlie Rose on such serious subjects as "global poverty and human rights" and "the 'new' world economy." The connecting link was hostility to President Bush.

Hmmm.

The Aspens have turned in a cluster, have they?

And maybe it is their neocon roots that connect them?

Interesting.

Miller, by the way, authored a book on biological weapons and received one of the (hoax) anthrax letters in fall 2002.

Put that with her false reporting about WMD in Iraq and she's had a busy decade already.

I'm not 100% sure why Libby thinks there will be biological threats to report this fall, though I guess he could just be thinking of the bird flu.

In any case, I think one of the most interesting theories is that Libby was telling Miller it was OK to turn on someone (Bush? Rove? Bolton?) because everyone was turning already. People connected at the roots, like she and he, would live long and prosper.


Notes: big money conservatives have long had a thing for Aspen.

Some people argue that Bolton is not a neocon, and others report that he is actually "a libertarian who despises the neocons."

Iran's Judith Miller -- or Laurie Mylroie?

Usually, when "The Daily Show" has a right-wing guest, Jon Stewart tips off his audience and tries to have some fun with the fact that the guest's views diverge from his. Last night, Stewart seemed to think that his show's visitor, Kenneth R. Timmerman, was a like-minded critic of the Bush administration -- annoyed that US foreign policymakers had attacked the wrong Middle Eastern country in 2003. Stewart, earlier this year said something that he nearly repeated last night:

"George W. Bush is not stupid. He invaded Iraq. They didn't have weapons of mass destruction or ties to Al Quaeda ... but Iran does. So he was only one letter off and that should be credited,"

Timmerman has just authored a new book Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran, which was based on his access to "Iranian defectors and officials, and high-level sources in the U.S. government."

By the end of Timmerman's appearance on "The Daily Show," he was informing host Stewart of the evidence he had gathered from Iranian dissidents about the clear threat from Iran -- primarily nuclear proliferation and terror sponsorship. OK.

But Stewart became really polite and said "Goodnight" to his audience just after Timmerman revealed that Osama bin Laden had secretly plotted to take down the Twin Towers on 9/11 with the Iranian government. Timmerman claimed this was largely what the 9/11 Commission had found.

What? Why didn't Stewart call him on that? While the Commission found that some of the so-called Saudi "muscle" hijackers may have gone through Iran, this was because Iran didn't as a rule stamp passports of Saudi nationals traveling through to or from Afghanistan (p. 241):

"We have found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 terror attack. At the time of their travel through Iran, the al Qaeda operatives themselves were probably not aware of the specific details of their future operation."

Did Stewart's staff drop the ball?

I've spent the past half day trying to figure out if Timmerman is the Judith Miller or Laurie Mylroie of Iran. Is he a journalist duped by defectors, or a wacko pushing his unsupported conspiracy theories on major media?

Timmerman's right-wing credentials are clear and I'm leaning to the parallel to Mylroie.

He writes frequently for The American Spectator, The National Review Online, the Washington Times, the New York Post, Human Events, Insight, etc.

Timmerman appears regularly on Fox News and MSNBC's Scarborough show.

His past writings have attacked the French betrayal of the US, John Kerry's plans to abandon the war on terror, Jesse Jackson, the media's biased coverage of the post-war search for WMD in Iraq, etc. He defends Ahmed Chalabi.

The book's publisher, Crown Forum, also puts out work by Ann Coulter and "the writers at NewsMax.com" (which is Fox News).

With neoconservatives Peter Rodman and Joshua Muravchik, Timmerman founded the Foundation for Democracy in Iran. Since its founding in 1995, the author has served as FDI's Executive Director.

Hmmmm. Maybe Timmerman is trying to be more like Michael Ledeen?

Neo-Conquests?

This was today's headline on Doyle McManus's LA Times story: "Bush Pulls 'Neocons' Out of the Shadows." Oh boy, despite John Bolton's resignation and Paul Wolfowitz's near-withdrawal from public life, they're baaaaack:

Bush proclaimed in his inaugural address that the central purpose of his second term would be the promotion of democracy "in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" — a key neoconservative goal. Suddenly, the neocons were ascendant again.

"This is real neoconservatism," said Robert Kagan, a foreign policy scholar who has been a leading exponent of neocon thinking — and who sometimes has criticized the administration for not being neocon enough. "It would be hard to express it more clearly. If people were expecting Bush to rein in his ambitions and enthusiasms after the first term, they are discovering that they were wrong."

Traditional conservatives are not happy:

"If Bush means it literally, then it means we have an extremist in the White House," said Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center, a conservative think tank that reveres the less idealistic policies of Richard Nixon. "I hope and pray that he didn't mean it … [and] that it was merely an inspirational speech, not practical guidance for the conduct of foreign policy."

Like me, some of you are probably wondering what happens to the US relationship with despots we like:

On Friday, the senior official who briefed reporters said the administration also would be pressing friendly regimes to institute democratic reforms; he mentioned Russia, China, Pakistan and Egypt "as illustrations." Much of the pressure, he said, would be private rather than public, and the administration would be careful to avoid undermining a leader like Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whom it counts as a democratic reformer.

In a different era, leaders of these countries were considered "our" bastards. When I visited the JFK Museum and Library earlier this week, many cold war-era bastards were featured prominently in various photos and exhibits, including the Shah of Iran.

The greatest US attention is going to be directed at the so-called "outposts of tyranny" identified earlier this week by Condi Rice in her opening statement:

To be sure, in our world there remain outposts of tyranny -- and America stands with oppressed people on every continent -- in Cuba, and Burma, and North Korea, and Iran, and Belarus, and Zimbabwe. The world should apply what Natan Sharansky calls the "town square test": if a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a "fear society" has finally won their freedom.

Do you suppose CNN and Fox are wondering when the fireworks begin? After all, someone may have to prepare new "march to war" graphics.

You Go Girl -- and take Bush and the Neocons with You

NewsMax.com: (Fox News) reported the other day that Dr. Condoleezza Rice, former Stanford Provost and current National Security Advisor has been named "the most powerful woman in the world" by Forbes magazine.



The article didn't say, but maybe the honorary degree she got from University of Louisville put her over the top?

Actually, as I noted in February, it's hard for me to forgive Rice for not reading what she called a "footnote" to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. As it happens, because of a book chapter I'm writing, I read most of that document today.

Let me remind readers of one of the report's central conclusions (this is a part she claimed to have read): "Iraq does not yet have a nuclear weapon or sufficient material to make one." The CIA thought such a weapon would be in Iraq's arsenal by 2007 to 2009...so you can see why it was so urgent to attack in March 2003.

Then again, according to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll conducted just days after the 2002 State of the Union address (that's the Niger uranium one), 28% of the respondents said they were "certain [it] is true" that "Iraq has nuclear weapons." Another 49% said it was "likely but not certain."

Do you suppose Rice's statement about not wanting to wait for a mushroom cloud had anything to do with that?

I guess the fact that Rice recommended war in the face of the skeptical intelligence data, helped convince people that it was true, and then made sure the President agreed...means she is powerful! Really powerful.

You also know someone is powerful when she becomes a cultural icon. For instance, supremely talented Texas singer-songwriter Steve Earle has a tune about Dr. Rice on his latest CD. I don't own it (yet), but the San Jose Mercury News had this Saturday:

Over a calypso beat, he [Earle] sings the praises of the former Stanford professor in ``Condi Condi.''

"Sweet and dandy, pretty as can be

"You be the flower and I'll be the bumble bee

"Oh she loves me, oops she loves me not"

"People say you're cold but I think you're hot."

Nobody ever called Earle a shrinking violet. But his new album, "The Revolution Starts . . . Now," which came out Tuesday, is political even by his outspoken standards.

Apparently, the song also includes this line, "Pretty little Condi, precious as can be, Bet you never had another love like me."


Note: The Washington Post says the Earle record is good, though flawed.

It is a "frisky combination of early-'90s-reminiscent alternative country and shuffly, Keith Richards-style rock. While it isn't the record it might have been, much of it is literate and sympathetic in the way the best Earle efforts can be.

Oh, those Straussians

Journalist Robert Dreyfuss wrote yesterday that the apparent recent divide between the United States and Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress is a ruse. Let's use this post as a chance to celebrate the con in neocon, eh?

To review, the US started the week by cutting off funding to Chalabi's group (to the tune of $340,000 per month). That's some stipend, eh?

Today, US forces have raided Chalabi's house in Baghdad (though one report said it was his office) and carted off boxes full of files. Here's what he said in response:

Hours after the raid, Chalabi repudiated the American occupation authority and declared himself a leader of the new Iraq.

"My relationship with the Coalition Provisional Authority doesn't exist."

That sounds like a complete fissure in the relationship.

That would be huge, because just three months ago Chalabi was so connected to the Pentagon that he was willing for the INC to take the fall for the faked intelligence. Then again, strong evidence suggests that the INC was responsible for much of the bad WMD intelligence.

But, Dreyfuss says it is a trick -- and quotes a neocon, Michael Rubin, formerly in the Pentagon, now at AEI, who says so:

"By telegraphing that he is not the favorite son of America, the administration will bolster him, showing he is his own man."

Here's Dreyfuss's final paragraph:

In other words, it’s all a big con game. The still-neocon-dominated Pentagon—which this week stopped funding Chalabi’s INC —is playing its last card, hoping that it can boost Chalabi’s sagging fortunes by pretending to sever ties with him. That, the neocons hope, will allow Chalabi to strengthen his ties to Sistani, the king-making mullah who, they hope, holds Iraq’s fate in his wrinkled hands.

My guess is that some politicos at the Pentagon spent some recent time watching "House of Games," "The Sting," "Matchstick Men" and other flicks about confidence games and, as I said, decided to emphasize the con in neocon.

How can you blame them? I love this genre, and would probably toss in "A Big Hand for the Little Lady."

Moreover, the time may be right. As one of my old debate coaches used to say, "When it's fourth-and-long, and you're behind late in the game...throw deep."

For more info about the neocons and the INC, check out Laura Rozen's new piece in the American Prospect. I know people are interested in this stuff since I get several hits every week for my early February blog entry highlighting the known links among neocon Michael Ledeen, Iran-contra figure (and con man) Manucher Ghorbanifar, and the Niger-uranium story. Rozen mentions these figures in passing, along with the DoD's Doug Feith (who may yet be punished for leaking a widely repudiated memo about alleged Iraq-al Qaeda links).

Empire

I've got to go to Lexington this afternoon to give a talk on American primacy and empire. It's for a "Worldview" conference, co-sponsored by the Rotary and University of Kentucky Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce.

President Bush says the US is not pursuing empire:

We have no territorial ambitions, we don't seek an empire. Our nation is committed to freedom for ourselves and for others. We and our allies have fought evil regimes and left in their place self-governing and prosperous nations.

And in every conflict, the character of our nation has been demonstrated in the conduct of the United States military. Where they have served, America's veterans are remembered by civilians with affection, not fear.

One veteran recalls the closing days of the second world war. In the spring of 1945, he said, "around the world, the sight of a 12-man squad of teenage boys armed in uniform brought terror to people's hearts. But there was an exception: a squad of GIs, a sight that brought the biggest smiles you ever saw to people's lips, and joy to their hearts. GIs meant candy and cigarettes, C-rations and freedom." "America," he said, "has sent the best of her young men around the world, not to conquer, but to liberate; not to terrorize, but to help."

I plan to take the President seriously and argue against the idea even of American primacy. The US should work with its allies to resolve common problems, whether they are nuclear proliferation, global terror or global warming.

Apparently, I speak right after Tom Donnelly, a neo-conservative from the American Enterprise Institute. He recently wrote an op-ed piece on American primacy, but part of it is heavily dependent upon a piece written by someone I've known since we both spent a year at Stanford back in 1987-88, Bill Wohlforth.

In any case, Donnelly argues that September 11 awakened a sleeping giant, American primacy contributes to the creation of a durable peace, and coalitions among states are of limited utility. Since the Bush adminstration apparently recognizes these facts, Donnelly reckons this is all good news for democracy (in places like the Middle East) and bad news for China, which has long been a neo-con concern:

Still, the decision to remove Saddam Hussein and to build something more decent and democratic in the regime's place does mark a new, third epoch in the "unipolar era." Moreover, this break has been reinforced by President Bush's recent speeches vowing to "transform" the politics of the greater Middle East and questioning the United States' previous willingness to tolerate a variety of autocratic local allies in the name of narrow "stability" or Cold War, balance-of-power habit. What has begun is the real test of the Pax Americana-the active employment of American power to promulgate liberal political principles and thereby fashion an enduring peace...

This final point seems as obvious today as in 1999; yes, Chinese economic and military strength has continued to grow. And, especially in the particular case of a decapitating strike on Taiwan, the People's Liberation Army can make a U.S. response very challenging. But the overall strategic balance between the United States and China is probably shifting away from Beijing. In a "globalized" world, the distinction between regional and global power is increasingly illusory, making it difficult for Beijing to maintain its own private sphere of influence independent from the overarching Pax Americana.

More on my response when I get back.

A Conversation with Robert Kagan

Yesterday, I moderated a Kentucky Author Forum event with Robert Kagan, whose Of Paradise and Power just came out in paperback last month.

I've previously blogged about his argument, so I won't repeat that now. Rather, I'm just going to summarize a few of the things he said in response to my questions. Audience members also asked questions, but I was targeting mine at areas of interest to me.

I started by asking Kagan to define a "neoconservative" and then I asked him to outline his "US is from Mars, Europe is from Venus" position. The answers were pretty much what I expected.

Kagan's new "Afterward" argues that the US needs the Europeans to provide legitimacy and the Europeans would like to cooperate with the US so as to have some say in how US power will be used. Eventually, he got around to making this point in the session Thursday.

Kagan said in reply to someone's questions that the Europeans just don't appreciate the WMD/terror threat the same way the US does since 9/11. He admitted, however, that Europeans have long faced terror, but declared that 9/11 was quite unique to the US because of the scale (and because the US had previously been relatively untouched by this problem).

I asked Kagan whether he thought the US and Europe could come to a "common assessment of the threat" (he uses virtually the same phrase as the September 2002 National Security Strategy document)? Specifically, I asked if the US could sustain a "high threat" context given the new revelations by David Kay about Iraqi WMD. Do Americans really believe they are imperiled all the time? Could the US eventually move toward the European view?

Kagan replied that people in Washington and NY certainly continue to feel threatened, as do those who fly planes. He also made a side comment that Kay really hadn't dismissed the threat, which is perhaps literally true, but is certainly not how it is being played out in the public sphere.

Then I asked Kagan to consider a counterfactual. What if the WTC buildings had been badly damaged, but had not collapsed? Would Americans still think the threat was so great if they did not have the visual image of the huge buildings collapsing. He acknowledged that the images were important, but insisted that the US would still rate these threats as high.

Later, I picked up something Bill Hartung of the World Policy Institute said last weekend in DC. When President Bush landed on that aircraft carrier last May, the US ship cost more than the entire North Korean military budget. Yet, the US is now approaching a half trillion dollar defense budget. Given that conservatives typically distrust government spending ("throwing money down a rathole"), did Kagan think the US is spending too much?

Kagan said no, and regretted that the US had reduced its military spending after the cold war ended. At one point, he noted that China was increasing its spending and he wished that the Europeans would spend more -- but doubted that would happen. Since the US is spending only about 4.5% of its GNP on defense, it could afford a lot more. It was common to spend 7% in the cold war, and the US sometimes spent as much as 15%.

Bottom line: even though Robert Kagan appreciates the importance of legitimacy, he still thinks the Europeans are wrong about the threats, wants to see a high level of US defense spending, and worries about the rise of China.

At one point, Kagan noted his support for American military intervention in the 1990s (places like Haiti and Kosovo) and declared that he was an IR liberal. Shortly after that, he said that he accepted realist arguments about the importance of power -- so he was basically trying to marry America's power to its ideals and change the world.

In short, he's still saying what the Project for A New American Century said before Bush was elected President. PNAC (Kagan was a director) called for many of the hawkish policies (warning, pdf file) the US is now pursuing . And the justification then wasn't terror or WMD. The neocons who wrote their playbook wanted to take advantage of the "unprecedented opportunity" presented by a world of great American power facing minimal great power opposition.

Let's hope the Europeans continue to deny legitimacy to the Pax Americana project.

Political Weapons

Yesterday, I mentioned that Michael Ledeen has been a conduit linking US officials like Oliver North and Harold Rhode to Iran-contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar.

So I thought I'd take a quick look at Ledeen's politics today. He is a well-known neoconservative, based at the American Enterprise Institute who writes regularly for The National Review Online.

Moreover, Ledeen is quite hawkish on Iran and Syria, arguing that the US will never be successful in Iraq until it takes a "regional" perspective. That means "regime change" in the neighboring states.

However, Ledeen does not advocate using military force to topple these states. Ledeen instead advocates using "political weapons" rather than arms. A lot of doves potentially embrace this position, so I thought it might be worthwhile to see what Ledeen has in mind for Syria and Iran:

But unlike Iraq, there is no need for a military campaign. Our most potent weapons are the peoples of Syria and Iran, and they are primed, loaded, and ready to fire. We should now pull the political lanyards and unleash democratic revolution on the terror masters in Damascus and Tehran.

What does Ledeen mean by using political weapons?

I'm not 100% certain. This is what he wrote in The Australian, about Lebanon:

We should unleash the full panoply of political weapons on behalf of Lebanese freedom: a vigorous human rights campaign, attention to the many stories of brutality and abuse coming from the lively Lebanese diaspora, political observers at every Lebanese election, demands for shutting down the infamous terrorist training camps in the Bekaa Valley, and investigations into the state of religious freedom.

And this is what he said about the "battle for the minds" of Iranians:

In Iran, we have a seemingly irresistible political card to play: give the people the same sort of political support we gave the Yugoslavs under Milosevic, the Poles, Hungarians and Czechs under the Soviet empire, and the Filipinos under Marcos.

More specifically, in Iran, Ledeen would support "student and teacher organizations, trade unions" and other worker groups "especially in the oil and textile sectors" that could "organize an insurrection in Tehran and other major cities. They need money (a fraction of what was squandered in the CIA’s failed program to induce an insurrection in Basra), satellite phones, laptop computers..." Ledeen has made perfectly clear his disdain for traditional diplomatic dialogue with the state. But he's confident his measures will work:

"if the United States chooses to give real support to the regime's opponents, there could well be a replay of the mass demonstrations that led to the fall of Milosevic in Yugoslavia and the Marcoses in the Philippines."

It's certainly not clear that the information revolution and Reagan's rhetoric about evil empires toppled Poland, Hungary and the Soviet empire. Decades of containment policy, combined with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev, had a lot to do with those cases. A lot. Yes, the regimes were illegitimate, but they were also horribly managed and poorer than most people knew. Glasnost revealed the Soviet state and economy for what it was.

In a different op-ed, Ledeen advocated that Israel use "political weapons" against the Palestinians. He advocated using broadcasts, but stated somewhat vaguely that "freedom is the most lethal weapon in the endless struggle against tyranny. An entire generation of Americans forgot it, and was shocked to see its awesome power when Ronald Reagan aimed it at Moscow. A generation of Israelis forgot it, and need to remind themselves of it as they grapple with their life-threatening crisis." Days after 9/11, Ledeen also referenced the Reagan era:

In other words, it is time once again to export the democratic revolution. To those who say it cannot be done, we need only point to the 1980s, when we led a global democratic revolution that toppled tyrants from Moscow to Johannesburg.

I wonder whether Ledeen supported sanctions or "constructive engagement" vis-a-vis South Africa in the 1980s?

Before readers start thinking, hey, this Ledeen guy sounds like a reasonable fellow, consider something more controversial that he's written, which attracted a lot of attention.

Last year during the debate with France and Germany over Iraq policy at the UN, Ledeen argued that the US might have to take the fight against terror to Europe:

Both countries have been totally deaf to suggestions that the West take stern measures against the tyrannical terrorist sponsors in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. Instead, they do everything in their power to undermine American-sponsored trade embargoes or more limited sanctions, and it is an open secret that they have been supplying Saddam with military technology through the corrupt ports of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid's little playground in Dubai, often through Iranian middlemen.

I think Chirac will oppose us before, during, and after the war, because he has cast his lot with radical Islam and with the Arab extremists. He isn't doing it just for the money — although I have no doubt that France is being richly rewarded for defending Saddam against the civilized countries of the world — but for higher stakes. He's fighting to end the feared American domination before it takes stable shape.

If this is correct, we will have to pursue the war against terror far beyond the boundaries of the Middle East, into the heart of Western Europe.

Of course, Ledeen concludes this piece by writing, "And there, as in the Middle East, our greatest weapons are political: the demonstrated desire for freedom of the peoples of the countries that oppose us."

What does that mean? Aren't Europeans already free?

What did it mean when millions of citizens took to the streets and protested the prospective war against Iraq? What did it mean when pollsters found overwhelming European opposition to war?

Is Ledeen as wrong about countries in the Middle East as he is about Europe?

The Forged Documents

Josh Marshall hints that he is on to something big. The journalist-blogger first quotes an intriguing tidbit from Monday's Washington Post story on the Valerie Plame investigation:

A parallel FBI investigation into the apparent forgery of documents suggesting that Iraq attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger is "at a critical stage," according to a senior law enforcement official who declined to elaborate. That probe, conducted by FBI counterintelligence agents, was launched last spring after U.N. officials pronounced the documents crude forgeries.

Sy Hersh's "stovepiping" story reported that the Niger story dates to just after 9/11:

In the fall of 2001, soon after the September 11th attacks, the C.I.A. received an intelligence report from Italy’s Military Intelligence and Security Service, or SISMI, about a public visit that Wissam al-Zahawie, then the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican, had made to Niger and three other African nations two and a half years earlier, in February, 1999. The visit had been covered at the time by the local press in Niger and by a French press agency. The American Ambassador, Charles O. Cecil, filed a routine report to Washington on the visit, as did British intelligence. There was nothing untoward about the Zahawie visit. “We reported it because his picture appeared in the paper with the President,” Cecil, who is now retired, told me. There was no article accompanying the photograph, only the caption, and nothing significant to report. At the time, Niger, which had sent hundreds of troops in support of the American-led Gulf War in 1991, was actively seeking economic assistance from the United States.

None of the contemporaneous reports, as far as is known, made any mention of uranium. But now, apparently as part of a larger search for any pertinent information about terrorism, sismi dug the Zahawie-trip report out of its files and passed it along, with a suggestion that Zahawie’s real mission was to arrange the purchase of a form of uranium ore known as “yellowcake.” (Yellowcake, which has been a major Niger export for decades, can be used to make fuel for nuclear reactors. It can also be converted, if processed differently, into weapons-grade uranium.)

I'm sorry for quoting so much of this, but Hersh draws a link from Italy to the US intelligence agency, to the Vice President's office.

The SISMI report, however, was unpersuasive. Inside the American intelligence community, it was dismissed as amateurish and unsubstantiated. One former senior C.I.A. official told me that the initial report from Italy contained no documents but only a written summary of allegations. “I can fully believe that sismi would put out a piece of intelligence like that,” a C.I.A. consultant told me, “but why anybody would put credibility in it is beyond me.” No credible documents have emerged since to corroborate it.

The intelligence report was quickly stovepiped to those officials who had an intense interest in building the case against Iraq, including Vice-President Dick Cheney. “The Vice-President saw a piece of intelligence reporting that Niger was attempting to buy uranium,” Cathie Martin, the spokeswoman for Cheney, told me. Sometime after he first saw it, Cheney brought it up at his regularly scheduled daily briefing from the C.I.A., Martin said.

Hersh points out that the administration started publicly claiming that Iraq was acquiring materials to restart its nuclear program in January 2002. In February, Ambassador Wilson was contracted to go to Niger. Later in the year, the British "dodgy dossier" apparently relied upon the SISMI report to assert that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger.

The forged documents themselves apparently emerged in October 2002, about the time the administration started talking about mushroom clouds and Iraq. This is from Hersh's story in the New Yorker:

At that moment, in early October, 2002, a set of documents suddenly appeared that promised to provide solid evidence that Iraq was attempting to reconstitute its nuclear program. The first notice of the documents’ existence came when Elisabetta Burba, a reporter for Panorama, a glossy Italian weekly owned by the publishing empire of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, received a telephone call from an Italian businessman and security consultant whom she believed to have once been connected to Italian intelligence. He told her that he had information connecting Saddam Hussein to the purchase of uranium in Africa. She considered the informant credible.

Berlusconi, remember, supported the war.

Hersh then describes the photocopied documents received by the reporter, complete with codebook so as to interpret them. Burba turned the documents over to the American embassy in Rome on October 9, 2002. Hersh advances several theories about the forgeries. One is that SISMI fabricated them, another is that former CIA agents produced them to prove how intelligence was being mishandled by the adminsitration. Burba, incidentially, like Wilson travelled to Niger and fairly easily established that they were false. Inside the US they were also apparently discredited -- until they got to the Pentagon and Office of Special Plans.

Let's now consider Marshall's suspicions, which he acknowledges are based on circumstantial evidence. First, the circumstances, which Marshall wrote about in late October 2003:

The US and UK start a major roll-out on the nuclear claims. But the response is generally disappointing. There’s major push-back from the IAEA and, secretly in the US, from the CIA.

It was precisely at this moment (in the last days of September and the first of October) that the advocates of the Niger story were most in need of some new evidence. And it was precisely at this moment when the new evidence --- at first seemingly incontrovertible --- popped up in Rome.

And the day after the reporter gets the docs the Editor-in-Chief of her magazine instructs her to take them to the American Embassy.

Marshall provides more precise dates for all this -- take it from me that all this activity was condensed into several weeks during late September and early October 2002.

Today, Marshall wrote this on his blog:

a close look at the timeline of events in October 2002 points to the conclusion that the person who got those documents into the hands of Italian journalist Elisabetta Burba had some knowledge -- either direct or indirect -- of highly secret debates then going in between the Bush White House, the CIA and members of the Blair government in the UK.

I've been doing some digging into the timeline and likely (neocon?) connections and have arrived at some names I think Marshall means.

One is Manucher Ghorbanifar, of Iran-contra fame. Or should I say infamy? Ghorbanifar was the go-between for the US and Iranians when US arms were illegally traded for hostages. The CIA doesn't like him much:

One result of the Iran-contra scandal was a decision by the C.I.A. that it could not trust Mr. Ghorbanifar. A 1987 Congressional report on Iran-contra said that after Mr. Ghorbanifar failed C.I.A.-administered polygraph examinations, the agency issued a rare "Fabricator Notice," warning that he "should be regarded as an intelligence fabricator and a nuisance." He has been considered a con artist by the C.I.A. ever since.

Back in early December, the New York Times ran a story about meetings between Ghorbanifar and two Pentagon officials. In August, Newsday had already identified them as, "Harold Rhode, [Doug] Feith's top Middle East specialist, and Larry Franklin, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst on loan to the undersecretary's office." Apparently, the first meetings were initiated by Ghorbanifar and occurred in Paris, December 2001. Other meetings occurred in June 2002 in Rome:

Rhode recently acted as a liaison between Feith's office, which drafted much of the administration's post-Iraq planning, and Ahmed Chalabi, a former Iraqi exile disdained by the CIA and State Department but groomed for leadership by the Pentagon.

Rhode is a protege of Michael Ledeen, a neo-conservative who was a National Security Council consultant in the mid-1980s when he introduced Ghorbanifar to Oliver North, a National Security Council aide, and others in the opening stages of the Iran-contra affair.

Who set up these meetings between Ghorbanifar and the US officials? Apparently neocon Michael Ledeen (the NYT names him as the broker as well), who is quoted directly in the more recent New York Times piece, after refusing to comment in August to Newsday.

In October 2003, Ledeen was the named source for a story in the conservative Washington Times claiming that Iraq provided Iran with uranium five years ago. He says the CIA refused to follow up the story because it was revealed in these meetings between the Pentagon officials and Ghorbanifar.

"We aggressively pursue all legitimate leads on weapons of mass destruction," chief CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said.

"It is true that we have no interest in meeting Mr. Ghorbanifar since he long ago was proven to be a fabricator and someone who sought to peddle false information for financial gain," Mr. Harlow said.

Fox News also had this story last October:

According to a leading Middle East expert, the CIA missed a golden opportunity to uncover a cache of Iraqi enriched uranium.

Michael Ledeen, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Manucher Ghorbanifar, a figure from the Contra-hostage arms deals from the Reagan years, contacted him.

According to Ghorbanifar, a Shiite Iraqi and a former Iraqi military officer in Iraq had access to enriched uranium. The uranium was reportedly part of a cache hidden by Saddam, some of which had been smuggled to Iran by the Shiite and the Iraqi officer.

Bottom line: Ghorbanifar met with Pentagon officials and discussed uranium smuggling in Rome in 2001-2002.

I don't know if this has anything to do with Marshall's theory, but Ledeen used to live in Rome and apparently consulted for SISMI. Journalist Jim Lobe says it was Ledeen that helped expose Billy Carter's relationship with Libya. And of course, Ledeen was pretty directly involved in Iran-contra.


6/3/04 Update: More people have viewed this post than any other on my blog. Atrios linked to it back in early February and he always directs lots of readers. Now, What Really Happened has linked to it again. Thanks.

As a followup, I took note of Ledeen's daughter Simone's connections to the new Iraq on June 1, 2004.

I think the next most popular posts here concern either Laurie Mylroie or the numerous WMD lies.


7/18/05 update whatREALLYhappened.com has linked here again. I've blogged recently about this latest wave of readers.

Next? Maybe Syria?

Some members of the Bush administration, especially neoconservatives like John Bolton (he's the one embedded in the State Department), dream of taking the war on terrorism to additional states, like Syria or Lebanon.

And by "war on terror," I mean war.

This past spring, in the immediate euphoria of military success in Iraq, a number of people in the administration speculated openly about who might be next.

What's more impressive is that guys like Bolton are still saying these things in the face of the "long, hard slog" in Iraq. Consider this excerpt from a recent Financial Times story, which is archived at Cuba-Solidarity. Originally, I found the reference to the story from Digby at Hullabaloo. However, FT stories require subscription.

The Bush administration on Tuesday defended its strategy of pre-emptive action against Iraq - even while admitting that US intelligence had been imperfect - and warned that the US was ready to use all options against five other "rogue states".

John Bolton, under-secretary of state for arms control and international security, singled out Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya and Cuba as being "hostile to US interests" during a speech in Washington. Mr Bolton, known as a hardliner, also cautioned negotiating partners in Asia and Europe that the US remained sceptical over efforts to induce North Korea and Iran to abide by nuclear safeguard commitments, amid reluctance to take firmer action.

Obviously, the US is bogged down in Iraq and I do not think the US is about to start any wars before the 2004 election. However, US foreign policy is still moving toward head on collision with Syria.

This week, Congress passed legislation authorizing new sanctions against Syria, though President Bush has the authority to waive them. Here are key paragraphs from the Reuters report:

The bill bars trade in items that could be used in weapons programs until the administration certifies that Syria is not supporting terrorist groups, has withdrawn personnel from Lebanon, is not developing unconventional weapons and has secured its border with Iraq.

It would also oblige Bush to impose at least two other sanctions from a menu that includes barring U.S. businesses from investing in Syria, restricting travel in the United States by Syrian diplomats, and banning exports of U.S. products other than food and medicine to Syria.

With trade between the two countries a modest $300 million or less annually, the sanctions would have more political than economic effects.

Bolton has accused Syria of pursuing WMD, though the CIA says his evidence is exaggerated. In fact, Bolton was slated to testify to Congress about this back in July, but it was delayed until September at least partly because the CIA wrote a 35+ page critique of his evidence.

At least it is good to know the intell people are going to have (and apply) more careful standards before another war is launched on shaky evidence.