- With the 2004 U.S. Presidential campaign now in motion,
there are more than a few reasons to doubt that any of my visible rivals
for that office have the combined intellectual and moral qualifications
needed to deal with the combined onrush of a general economic collapse
and a desperate push toward a spreading dark age of world wars from which
no actual exit is foreseen.
-
- A suddenly unleashing, already raging international scandal
over certain dubious elements included in U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell's UNO Security Council address, tends to discredit my Democratic
Party rivals even more more than a Powell who was plainly carrying out
a mission crafted by others.
-
- For example, U.S. credibility is under assault as today's
Reuters' "World News" dispatches featured breaking news which
strongly suggests that Colin Powell's UNO Security Council address was,
in significant part, a hoax based on cooked-up documents of Britain's Blair
government.
-
- According to Reuters, "Glen Rangwala, an Iraq specialist
at Cambridge University, who analyzed the Downing Street dossier"
praised by Powell, "told Reuters that 11 of its 19 pages were `taken
wholesale from academic papers'.... Sections in the dossier on Saddam's
security apparatus drew heavily on an article written last year by Ibrahim
al-Marashi, an American postgraduate student of Iraqi descent who works
at the Monterrey Institute of International Studies in California."
-
- Reuters described the British dossier referenced by Powell:
"It claimed to draw upon `a number of sources, including intelligence
material.' But Friday, officials admitted whole swathes were lifted word
for word--grammatical slips and all--from a student thesis."
-
- - Today, as in 1928-33 - The challenge posed to U.S.
citizens by the alleged Blair dossier, is that no one is competent for
nomination as a 2004 Democratic Presidential candidate who does not meet
a standard of international leadership posed by comparing today's crisis-situation
with the situation in Germany and the U.S.A. over the period from 1928,
when the German Mueller government collapsed, through the appointment of
Adolf Hitler as Germany's Nazi Chancellor, on Jan. 30, 1933. We must not
only recognize the similarities of today's world's economic and military
crisis to those of the 1928-29 interval; today's threat is far worse than
that of 1928-33.
-
- How must we assess a Democratic candidate who, today,
would be panicked by a tainted report, such as that Powell was assigned
to carry into the UNO, into pushing the U.S.A. into a war from which the
U.S.A. itself might ultimately not return, a war such as the "Clash
of Civilizations" war against the Arab world, and who knows besides,
which the Chickenhawk consortium of Vice President Cheney and stained Senators
John McCain and Joe Lieberman continue to push, so feverishly, today?
-
- Compare the challenge to the U.S. Presidency today by
the standards of the contrast between the roles of Presidents Franklin
Roosevelt and Paul von Hindenburg in a time so much like today's, 1931-33.
-
- Once again, as during 1928-33, the world is gripped by
an accelerating economic collapse of the world's failed, 1971-2003 international
monetary-financial system. In such periods of economic history, a monetary-financial
collapse which has already entered its terminal phase, as during 1928-33
or today, is a period in which dictatorships and world wars erupt as a
result of the failures of leading governments and political parties. Such
is the situation today. In such a period, the failure to find, and select
an exceptional leader, such as Franklin Roosevelt, means that some foolish
nation, such as Hindenburg's Germany, will probably hand its fate over
to something like a new Adolf Hitler, or, perhaps, a Senator John "Bull
Moose" McCain.
-
- None of my supposed rivals among the currently visible
candidates for the 2004 Presidential nomination measure up to the standard
required for a period of crisis such as that ongoing now.
-
- - Appendix: - - What They Are Saying -
-
- The following are excerpts from news slugs which appeared
in the ICLC AM Daily Briefing of Saturday morning, Feb. 8, 2003. The following
are only a sample of the updates and discussions in which I dealt yesterday.
They are a sample of what a President should have reviewed, as I did yesterday.
They are, therefore, also a sample of what any serious candidate for a
Presidential nomination should have been reviewing yesterday. Should any
among these be seriously considered for a Presidential nomination under
the conditions of economic collapse and threat of more or less world-wide
war, in the world today?
-
- They are referenced here for the purpose of affording
the readers a sense of the avalanche of reports on the mass of disinformation
which the office of Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair contrived to jam
into Secretary Powell's presentation to the UNO Security Council.
-
- ITEM #1: First, on the report presented as the British
Prime Minister's dossier:
-
- [Source: Feb. 7 BBC] Feb. 7--BRITISH SOURCES YET AGAIN
UNDERCUT THE ANGLO-AMERICAN ANTI-IRAQ HYSTERIA, by revealing that a British
dossier on Iraq, released on Feb. 4, and lavishly praised in the UN speech
by Colin Powell the next day, is significantly based on material produced
by a graduate student. This is causing quite a stir in Britain itself,
and is being used against the Tony Blair government.
-
- In his speech, while rambling on against Iraq, Powell
declared, "I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper
that the United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes, in exquisite
detail, Iraqi deception activities."
-
- The problem is, as Britain's Channel 4 reported after
Powell spoke, that the dossier includes plagiarized material, and information
that is 12 years out of date. Channel 4 charged that most of the data came
from two academics and a graduate student, and that certain wording was
changed by the British government, to make a stronger case against Iraq.
BBC writes today: "The Channel 4 report said that even typographical
and grammatical errors from the student's work were included in the U.K.
Morning government dossier. It also noted that the student acknowledged
that the information was 12 years old in his report, but the government
doesn't make the same acknowledgment."
-
- The British Conservative Party's Shadow Defence Secretary
Bernard Jenkin said that the Tories are deeply concerned by all this: "The
government's reaction to the Channel 4 News report utterly fails to explain,
deny, or excuse the allegations made in it. This document has been cited
by the Prime Minister and Colin Powell, as the basis for possible war.
Who is responsible for such an incredible failure of judgment?" Liberal
Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell added: "This is
the intelligence equivalent of being caught stealing the spoons. The dossier
may not amount to much, but this is a considerable embarrassment for a
government trying still to make a case for war." (mjb)
-
-
- ITEM #2: What about Powell's report of links between
Iraq and al-Qaeda?
-
- [source: Wall Street Journal A6, Feb. 7, 2003] GERMAN
INTERIOR MINISTER, INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTER-TERRORISM OFFICERS, QUESTION
COLIN POWELL'S EVIDENCE OF IRAQ-AL-QAEDA LINKS. German officials, including
Minister of Interior Otto Schily, questioned the assertion of U.S. Secretary
of State Colin Powell on Feb. 5 to the UNSC, that a terrorist named Abu
Mussah al-Zarqawi provided a firm link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. German
counter-terrorism experts, after an 18-month investigation, have compiled
their own dossier of "hundreds of pages" on Zarqawi and his organization
Al Tawhid--and they say none of it supports the Powell argument that Zarqawi
worked cooperatively with Baghdad. "It's possible the U.S. has sources
unavailable to German intelligence, but we don't see any links between
Zarqawi and Iraq," one German intelligence official said. "We
assume that the secular ideology of Iraq is too distant from the religion
of al-Qaeda for them to cooperate." German Minister of Interior Otto
Schily said German intelligence didn't show Zarqawi operated in areas of
Iraq controlled by Baghdad, nor that terrorists such as al-Qaeda had linked
up with a state like Iraq.
-
- German officials scored a break a year ago, by rounding
up a dozen members of Al Tawhid. Its members said that while Zarqawi was
their leader, they had planned attacks on Israel and Jewish sites in Germany.
Members of the cell say {Iraq never figured in the picture}; they say Al
Tawhid focussed on the Palestinian cause and establishing a theocracy in
Jordan. They say Zarqawi was not himself a core operative of al-Qaeda.
Counter-terrorism experts in Germany say that at best an indirect link
exists between al-Qaeda and Iraq.
-
- Meanwhile, in a commentary in today's {New York Post},
aptly titled "Godfather of Terror," universal fascist Michael
Ledeen went into "spin" overdrive, claiming that Germany {endorses}
Powell's position. Ledeen crows: "We're certainly making progress
when [Germany] one of our most reluctant allies is the source of such devastating
intelligence."
-
-
- ITEM #3: Expert opinion by a leading retired CIA officer,
Dr. Stephen Pelletiere, a professional with leading experience in the Middle
East: Feb. 7 (EIRNS)--"IT'S ALL JUST SHOW BUSINESS," SAYS FORMER
CIA ANALYST, OF POWELL'S SPEECH. Dr. Stephen C. Pelletiere, the CIA's senior
political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and a professor at
the U.S. Army War College from 1988 to 2000, told {EIR} today that he did
not find Secretary of State Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council
to be persuasive.
-
- "The al-Qaeda connection is the one that's falling
apart most spectacularly," Pelletiere said. He pointed to two articles
in yesterday's {New York Times}, one an interview with the head of the
al-Ansar group, who's living in exile in Norway, who said he had no awareness
of any connection to al-Qaeda, and who said that he had no knowledge of
Zarqawi, the so-called high-ranking al-Qaeda operative whom he's supposed
to be sheltering.
-
- "All of that raises a question," Pelletiere
said, adding that "the Kurds, who are ringing the al-Ansar enclave,
and who are assumed to be fairly knowledgeable about what goes on in that
part of the world, claim that the town that Powell singled out as an Aswar
enclave, actually is in the possession of a rival group, the Komola."
-
- "I know the Komola, because I worked on them when
I was at the Agency in the 1980s, so that's a bona fide group," Pelletiere
said.
-
- "The Ansar is a new group, but it may be an old
group with a new name. because there has always been a small group of Kurds
in the north who oppose the secularist Kurds of the two warlords--Talebani
and Barzani. This little group was Islamist," Pelletiere stated. "So
it would appear Powell's just got his information wrong."
-
- When he was told about the statements by German officials--that
they have conducted an extensive investigation of Zarqawi, and that they
have no information supporting Powell's that he works closely with Saddam
Hussein, Pelletiere called that "disturbing," saying that "it
makes you wonder if the Administration is just going through the motions."
-
- "They've determined that they're going to invade
Iraq, and they're aware that they need a cover from the UN," Pelletiere
said, "but they're really not going out of their way, to make a very
good case, if it can be shot down that easily."
-
- "When you take that, on top of the Blair dossier,
you get the impression that this is all just show business. There isn't
any real intelligence investigation going on here."
-
-
- Feb. 7 (EIRNS)--WHAT DO THE "NERVE GAS" INTERCEPTS
SIGNIFY? When asked about the intercepts of alleged conversations cited
by Secretary of State Powell, former CIA analyst Stephen Pelletiere said
in an interview with {EIR}, that the statement cited by Powell--"Don't
mention `nerve gas'" in any of your dispatches"--could have just
been a routine dissemination of advice from the Iraqi government, based
on knowledge of how the U.S. gathers "sigint" (signals intelligence).
"We routinely take thousands of hours and hours of conversations,
and then the computer trolls through and picks out certain phrases,"
Pelletiere explained. "So if they don't want their conversations taped,
they would make sense to advise their subordinates to stop using certain
key words, because that's going to trigger the sigint."
-
- "The guy isn't actually saying that `We've got this
stuff.' He's just saying: `Don't use that phrase.'"
-
-
- Feb. 7 (EIRNS)--INTELLIGENCE ANALYSTS UPSET OVER "POLITICIZATION"
OF INTELLIGENCE. Citing his experience in the CIA in the 1980s under then-director
William Casey, former CIA analyst Stephen Pelletiere told {EIR} that he
is afraid that this kind of "politicization" is resurfacing.
"And of course the Agency was badly shaken by that, back in the '80s,
and there was a reaction away from it, and I understand that there are
a number of Agency analysts who are speaking out, and are very unhappy
with what they see."
-
- "I've seen a lot of this at Langley, and I've seen
a lot of this in Britain," Pelletiere noted. "British Intelligence
leaked the material on Blair, in which they showed that they didn't have
any proof of links with al-Qaeda, and then Jack Straw came out and said,
`Blair doesn't give a damn.'"
-
- "Obviously, there's a lot of dissent in the intelligence
community."
-
-
- ITEM #4: From another relevant U.S. intelligence specialist:
-
- [Source: cfr.org, Feb. 5] SENIOR CFR OFFICIAL SAYS VOICE
INTERCEPTS CAN BE FAKED. Michael Peters, a career military officer, who
is now the Executive Vice President of the New York Council on Foreign
Relations, was interviewed about Secretary of State Powell's UN Security
Council presentation, by cfr.org editor Bernard Gwertzman.
-
- One of the questions asked to Peters, was: "You
can always fake voice intercepts?" Peters answered: "Right. Any
kind of intelligence, but especially signals intelligence. Messages are
so truncated and cryptic that there are a lot of blanks to fill in."
-
- Peters also said that the Administration used Powell,
because he is a much more effective messenger than Bush. He added that
he does not think that a war can start before March, or even April, because
of the time needed to get equipment to Turkey.
-
-
- ITEM #5: Now look at what some would-be Presidential
nominees have been saying on the issue of launching a war against the Arab
world. Do those would-be Democratic Presidential candidates meet the standard
of persons we should trust with the fateful decision of war or peace?:
-
- [source: various wire and newspaper accounts, and individuals'
web sites, Feb. 5-7, 2003]
-
- DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES AND LEADERS QUOTED ON IRAQ, AND
REACTING TO POWELL'S UN SPEECH:
-
- * Sen. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (Conn.), in a statement released
after Powell's speech: "Patience is a virtue, but too much patience
with dangerous lawlessness is a vice. In my view, the case against Saddam
is clear, and it is compelling. The time for containment has passed. The
time for patience with Saddam's deceit in the face of Saddam's danger is
over."
-
- * Sen. JOHN EDWARDS (N.C.) said on Wednesday, that Secretary
of State Colin L. Powell made a powerful case before the United Nations
that Saddam Hussein violated a Security Council resolution on Iraq's possession
of weapons of mass destruction. "I have long argued that Saddam Hussein
is a grave threat and that he must be disarmed. Iraq's behavior during
the past few months has done nothing to change my mind," Sen. Edwards
said. "Secretary of State Powell made a powerful case. This is a real
challenge for the Security Council to act. Saddam Hussein is on notice,"
he added.
-
- * Rep. RICHARD GEPHARDT (Mo.) said, "I believe Secretary
Powell made a compelling case that Iraq is concealing its weapons of mass
destruction and is in material breach of UN Security Council Resolution
1441." Gephardt said that he hoped the presentation "will strengthen
our alliance with other nations about the course of action ahead. I encourage
the Administration to work with our allies during the upcoming weeks on
how best to resolve this matter in the interest of our mutual security."
-
- * Sen. BOB GRAHAM (Fla.), who may campaign for President
once he recovers from recent heart bypass surgery, said, "In my opinion,
this linkage of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and groups
like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, with a substantial number of trained terrorist
operatives placed inside the United States, represents the greatest danger
to our people. I continue to urge the President, in the relatively few
days left before the start of war with Iraq, to use every measure to protect
Americans by dismantling these international terrorist organizations here
and abroad."
-
- * Sen. JOHN F. KERRY (Mass.) said Powell had laid out
a "compelling case." Kerry said he would back using military
force to disarm Iraq, but urged the Administration to continue seeking
support from the world community.
-
- * Former Gov. HOWARD DEAN (Vt.) said in an interview,
"While it is clear that Saddam Hussein is a dreadful person, that
is not reason to disarm him unilaterally. I don't think the evidence rises
to the level of an imminent threat to the United States and therefore that
military action is justified." Dean said he had not been moved by
Powell's arguments--although he made clear that he was not opposed to action
to remove Saddam Hussein if Iraq was not in compliance with the United
Nations, as opposed to action by the United States alone. He said, "I'm
not convinced: I don't think the case has been made for unilateral action."
-
- * The REV. AL SHARPTON of New York did not return reporters'
calls seeking comment. He has been consistently opposed to a military strike
on Iraq.
-
- [For a personal update, call Executive Intelligence Review
(EIRNS), toll-free, at 1-888-347-3258.]
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