Late last night I wrote about Jim Lobe's exchange with Richard Perle over Perle's evasion of neoconservative responsibility for the Iraq war. Well, here is Lobe's excellent blogpost on Perle's snakiness, from a month back. It includes citations of two letters that Bill Kristol apparently drafted, and that Perle signed:
The
first letter
was published on September 20, 2001, and lays out the step-by-step
blueprint for how the war on terror should be fought, including, of
course, the necessity of ousting Saddam Hussein whether or not he was
involved in the 9/11 attacks (although Perle, in his interactions with
the media, never missed an opportunity to suggest that Saddam was
indeed involved) followed by “appropriate measures of retaliation”
against Iran and Syria if they did not end their support for Hezbollah.
The second
letter,
published April 3, 2002, calls for breaking all ties with Yasser Arafat
and for accelerating plans to remove Saddam as the first step toward
realizing “a renewed commitment on our part, as you suggested in your
State of the Union address, to the birth of freedom and democratic
government in the Islamic world.” If those two letters (which, of
course, echoed the arguments made by the hawks within the
administration) didn’t constitute statements advocating the invasion of
Iraq primarily for the purpose of of promoting democracy or advancing
some grand neoconservative vision,” it’s hard to know what would.
In my post of last night, I defended the idea that the neocons represented a conspiracy, inasmuch as they have never been straightforward about their aims. A friend points me to an important piece on the Iraq war by Princeton professor George Kateb. Called "A Life of Fear" (available at findarticles.com), it was the first essay to diagnose the Iraq war as driven by (a) an interest in the oil of the region, (b) Israel and its American supporters and (c) Republican quest for party political advantage. And here is Kateb on conspiracy:
Now, it may be thought that in what I have just said (and in what I am going to say) I am embarked on an attempt to produce a conspiracy theory of past and present American conduct in the world. I would never rule out a priori the existence of conspiracy in political life. What is conspiracy? It is concerted action for a publicly unavowed purpose (or briefly or barely or misleadingly avowed). The purpose is concealed, though imperfectly and not always successfully, by invoking standard values that everyone accepts. The unavowed motives must remain unavowed, but the stated motives must be stated, and accepted by the people, as the real motives. Conspiracy is luridly called "plotting"; but plotting is only planning by another name. There need be no illegality in a political conspiracy, yet there will surely be criminality of some sort... In any case, politics is often legal criminality. To call an analysis "conspiratorial" may simply mask impatience with those who reject prevailing interpretations, or unhappiness with their ideas.
About Philip Weiss
Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
CONSPIRACY – 18 U.S.C. 371 makes it a separate Federal crime or offense for anyone to conspire or agree with someone else to do something which, if actually carried out, would amount to another Federal crime or offense. So, under this law, a 'conspiracy' is an agreement or a kind of 'partnership' in criminal purposes in which each member becomes the agent or partner of every other member.
In order to establish a conspiracy offense it is not necessary for the Government to prove that all of the people named in the indictment were members of the scheme; or that those who were members had entered into any formal type of agreement; or that the members had planned together all of the details of the scheme or the 'overt acts' that the indictment charges would be carried out in an effort to commit the intended crime.
Also, because the essence of a conspiracy offense is the making of the agreement itself (followed by the commission of any overt act), it is not necessary for the Government to prove that the conspirators actually succeeded in accomplishing their unlawful plan.
What the evidence in the case must show beyond a reasonable doubt is:
First: That two or more persons, in some way or manner, came to a mutual understanding to try to accomplish a common and unlawful plan, as charged in the indictment;
Second: That the person willfully became a member of such conspiracy;
Third: That one of the conspirators during the existence of the conspiracy knowingly committed at least one of the methods (or 'overt acts') described in the indictment; and
Fourth: That such 'overt act' was knowingly committed at or about the time alleged in an effort to carry out or accomplish some object of the conspiracy.
An 'overt act' is any transaction or event, even one which may be entirely innocent when considered alone, but which is knowingly committed by a conspirator in an effort to accomplish some object of the conspiracy.
A person may become a member of a conspiracy without knowing all of the details of the unlawful scheme, and without knowing who all of the other members are. So, if a person has an understanding of the unlawful nature of a plan and knowingly and willfully joins in that plan on one occasion, that is sufficient to convict him for conspiracy even though he did not participate before, and even though he played only a minor part.
Ah, the Jewish conspiracy again. Or should I say the criminal jewish conspiracy. Actually the idea of brining democracy and western rule of law to a bunch of Arabs is like teaching apes to use toilet paper. Can't happen.
One of the points in Kateb's 2004 article is how the 9-11 Report seemed content to ignore the whole question of motivation. We now know that the Commission originally did intend to discuss how large the Palestinian issue loomed in the minds of the bombers. In fact, a preliminary version of the report was reported like this in the Forward–
BIN LADEN AIMED TO LINK PLOT TO ISRAEL
Marc Perelman, Forward, Jun 25, 2004
But this explosive version of the report never got issued. When the final report came out in July, the Commissioners rejected mentioning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at all in the report. Why? Because, "This was sensitive ground," and some commissioners worried "listing U.S. support for Israel as a root cause of al Qeada's opposition to the United States indicated that the United States should reassess that policy." This is explained in Keane/Hamilton's book "Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission."
Very true, D
The original draft was amended on this point. The final made a generic allusion to this motive. It was a clear case of putting Israel first over the USA's best interests–at that level!
Sword, you remind me of the Mafia dons who always stated under oath, "Mafia? What Mafia? There is no Mafia."
Of course, you, Sword, wouldn't even make a decent bagman.
Being a neocon liar might have been good for the career but it's bad news for the skin–check out how much Ari Fleischer has aged. Maybe he's not sleeping well. He's still lying like the best of them, however. You just gotta admire the commitment to the cause. WMD's? "How could we be wrong? … We all thought it… Saddam was the big liar here" [!!!!!!!!!!11!!1one]
Note how he implies the French, Germans, Egyptians, United Nations, and Bill Clinton (!) were all party to the war-mongering over Iraq's non-existent weapons. If you ask Ari, pretty much everybody was itching for that war EXCEPT Dick Cheney, Lockheed Martin, and Israel. And he's also a Nigerian prince with millions of inheritance dollars in need of transfer to your bank account, and not only that, he has a bridge he wants to sell you!
Well concerning the Germans, they surely warned of curveball. And it seems the CIA didn't quite trust him either.
Then there is of course Hans Blix, who wasn't quite as pliable as the US government expected. A single article absolutely misrepresenting Blix' view in my weekly, after initial fair treatments of the topic, led me to cancel my subscription after 20 years. They don't give up to court me to renew it … A complete waste of money and energy.
not to mention the danger scenario based on a "student's paper", the yellowcake forgery, the Valerie Plame Affair … and especially the OSP
Citizen’s citation of federal law is interesting. If, as I do, one believes that there was a tacit conspiracy to lie America into the Iraq war carried our by the executive branch, members of Congress from both parties, factions of media and academia, and certain think tanks, theoretically thousands of Americans, including some of the most powerful people in the country, could be prosecuted for conspiracy under federal law.
So one can see why the current Congress doesn’t want to go after the Bush administration or even begin investigations on what it knew and when, because there are so many with blood on their hands in the entire sordid affair, there would be no end until the entire two-party regime had been brought to its knees.
Instead, the corrupt Establishment is going to circle the wagons and sweep it all under the rug.
What else is the corrupt Establishment sweeping under the rug? The federal engineered housing bubble? SEC and Wall Street bankster scamming of stock markets and stock holders? The $65 trillion in IOU’s on the federal government’s books that has been shoveled onto the backs of future generations of Americans?
It’s easy to see why nothing that the federal government does is turning the economy around, or going to. The People have lost all faith and trust in the current two-party regime, and their faith will simply never be restored while the two-party regime holds power. There is not an ioda of idealism left in Washington. All it has to offer is more fairy tales, plots, and chicanery — swindles and spin.
$65 trillion? Care to prove that, Ed?
Sure…and when I do, tell your Zionist cousins to go find another sugar daddy, because you've tapped us out…
—-
Federal obligations exceed world GDP
Does $65.5 trillion terrify anyone yet?
(By Jerome R. Corsi, WorldNetDaily) February 13, 2009 — As the Obama administration pushes through Congress its $800 billion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan, the American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government already is measured in trillions of dollars, and in fact its $65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world.
The total U.S. obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, effectively have placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy, even before new continuing social welfare obligation embedded in the massive spending plan are taken into account.
The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" as released by the U.S. Department of Treasury.
The difference between the $455 billion "official" budget deficit numbers and the $5.1 trillion budget deficit cited by "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" is that the official budget deficit is calculated on a cash basis, where all tax receipts, including Social Security tax receipts, are used to pay government liabilities as they occur. ..[contd]
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=88851
Neocons dissemble. Meanwhile, back at reality ranch, this appointment of Chas Freeman to NIC is some kinda antidote to the Neocon era: link to antiwar.com
What kinda? Some kinda. Phew. This guy sees with clear eyes, and pulls no punches. Click through to his speech at USIA! Wow.
Actually the idea of brining(sic) democracy and western rule of law to a bunch of Arabs is like teaching apes to use toilet paper.
—-
Wasn't that just a lie concocted in "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Islam"?
LanceThruster: "Wasn't that just a lie concocted in "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Islam"?"
I find there isn't much difference between the thinking of anti-semites, many hard-core Zionists, and even many liberals. The first dehumanize Jews, the second Arabs, and the third, white conservatives, southerners, or Christians. The phrases they use are often identical, the only difference being the object of contempt.
Don't forget that wingnuts dehumanize liberals.
"Don't forget that wingnuts dehumanize liberals."
Good point. Liberals get to be called "Arab-lovers who support terrorism" or "hate America." Those kind of wingnuts are so often Zionists that I didn't think of mentioning them separately.
wingnut = anyone with a political opinion that differs from that of the corrupt liberal establishment.
Left liberals are kind of like Zionists in that they want to demonize all opposition to their dysfunctional belief system as nutty or "insane."
I see Ed's roll of welfare facts shut chris berel up.
I see that Citizen has become blind. Ed's figures are just meaningless droning.
right, chris. Jerome R. Corsi figures and his welfare israel sources can be checked out by anyone passing by here on the net. Where do they go to check out chris berel's juvenile comments? No where. chris does not back up anything he says, like a baby wailing. Who can tell why the baby wails? chris berel has no
means of discourse. Should objective people wishing to discern truth google "blind"? Or "meaningless"?
But then they are adrift as chris berel gives no support source for what he says. Just a babe in the woods, crying out, nobody knows why. Best guess, too much shit encrusted on his tukas.
Seems like Citizen of shitland is throwing a hissy fit. Somebody please change his diaper.
Just observe and read Citizen's support references for what he say. Then compare chris berel's potty talk in response. Keep following the comments on this blog. We need your heart and brains.