- "The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative
intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change
the course of history."
-
- --Israeli Journalist Ari Shavit www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=280279
-
- These are difficult days for the neo-conservative hawks
in the Bush administration. Their plans for global domination are unravelling
as quickly as Bush's poll ratings are slipping, more and more pressure
is building from the press and public to expose the lies that took America
and the UK to war with Iraq; and now a company that owns three of the neo-cons
major mouthpieces is in deep trouble and Richard Perle and friends are
desperately trying to keep control of the company.
-
- Hollinger International, which owns the Jerusalem Post,
Chicago Sun Times and the UK's Daily and Sunday Telegraph, stepped up its
battle with former Chief Executive Lord Conrad Black on January 26th, filing
a lawsuit aimed at thwarting Black's bid to sell a controlling stake in
the newspaper publisher to Britain's billionaire Barclay brothers. (Excuse
the aliteration). The Chicago-based owner of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph
said a committee of its independent directors, together with interim CEO
Gordon Paris, also adopted a shareholder-rights plan, or "poison pill",
that would be triggered if control changes hands without board approval.
Sources close to Hollinger have intimated that the lawsuit was filed at
the insistence of four other board members of Hollinger apart from CEO
Paris. Those four others are believed to be Hollinger co-CEO and board
member Peter White; Executive Vice President Jack Boultbee; board member
Henry Kissinger and George W Bush's chief foreign policy advisor and Hollinger
International director Richard Perle.
-
- It is believed the committee would prefer to see ownership
of Hollinger in American hands, and has mounted a campaign to persuade
the likes of William Kristol, editor of the right wing Weekly Standard,
a Murdoch published paper, and other wealthy businessmen friendly to the
Bush administration to form a consortium to bid against the Barclay brothers
for control of the Hollinger empire. Since last year there have been serious
investigations into alleged mis- deeds at Black's Hollinger International,
and these have thrown up some interesting connections between Lord Black,
Hollinger and Richard Perle. Perle, whom some refer to as "The Prince
of Darkness", is considered to be the "intellectual guru"
of the hardline right wing neo-conservative hawks in the Bush administration.
He has the "ear" of the President and is an advocate of America
using its military superiority to "democratise" those countries
around the world who don't hold to American interests and principles. However,
examining just what Perle's interests and principles are and what he has
done and said over the years is extremely revealing, as it appears there
are a great many conflicts of interest and even possible treachery in Mr.
Perle's past.
-
- Let's start with Perle's work with the Project for a
New American Century (PNAC). Here is an organisation that, as far back
as 1997, was advocating the ousting of Saddam Hussein, the take over of
Iraqi oil, and the eventual American take-over of oil in Iran and Saudi
Arabia. They called for the defeat of Syria and North Korea and eventual
American world domination by military power.
-
- In other words, Perle, along with the likes of Paul Wolfowitz,
Dov Zakheim, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney and
other founding members of the PNAC now ensconced in the White House, was
calling on America to start a "total, continual war" on those
it considered were acting against America's interests. As George W Bush
said: "You're either with us or against us".
-
- John Pilger, the emininent British journalist, wrote
the following about Richard Perle: "I interviewed Perle when he was
advising Reagan; and when he spoke about "total war", I mistakenly
dismissed him as mad. He recently used the term again in describing America's
"war on terror" saying: "This is total war. We are fighting
a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about
first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq... this is entirely
the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go
forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece together clever
diplomacy, but just wage a total war... our children will sing great songs
about us years from now."
-
- Decide for yourself; completely, barking mad; frighteningly
dangerous; or both.
-
- During his career Perle has, somewhat disengenuously,
laid claim to the moral high ground, telling anyone who would listen that
he was speaking and acting on behalf of America's best interests. Yet a
quick investigation of Perle's past shows that he has other interests at
heart, some of which appear to be more important than those close to home.
Indeed, Perle seems to be somewhat ambiguous with regards to just exactly
"where" he considers home to be.
-
- Perle has an M.A. in political science from Princeton
University and a B.A. in international relations from the University of
Southern California. During the Carter administration Perle was part of
the "Committee on the Present Danger", which believed that the
US was about to be overrun by the Soviet Union. The committee advocated
huge military budgets and was totally opposed to any and all arms treaties
with the Soviets.
-
- He was a member of the U.S. Senate staff between 1969
and 1980 and during this time Perle was expelled from Senator Henry (Soop)
Jackson's office after the National Security Agency caught him passing
highly- classified National Security information to the Israeli Embassy.
He was granted a pardon for these un-American (treasonous?) activities
by George H W Bush. He later worked for the Israeli weapons firm, Soltam.
From 1981 until 1987 he was assistant secretary of defence for international
security policy in the Reagan administration, where he once again opposed
arms-control agreements with the Soviet Union.
-
- He has been one of US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz's
best friends since 1969, as well as the mentor of Douglas Feith, the under
secretary of defence whose Office of Special Plans oversaw preparations
for the Iraq invasion and the postwar occupation. A longtime ally of both
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, Perle
was described by the Washington Post last year as enjoying "profound
influence over Bush policies".
-
- Since 1987 Perle has served as Resident Fellow of the
pro Israeli American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He
returned to the US administration under Bush Jr. in 2001 as chairman of
the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, a post he was forced to resign over
his links to the bankrupt telecoms company Global Crossing. Though he resigned
as chairman of the Defence Policy Board, he still attends their meetings.
-
- Now comes an interesting connection between Canadian
born British peer Lord Conrad Black, Hollinger International and this so
called "Prince of Darkness". Perle is co-chairman of the investment
bank Morgan Crucible. He is also chairman and chief executive officer of
Hollinger Digital Inc. and a director of the Jerusalem Post. Both these
companies are currently owned by the embattled Lord Black, whose Hollinger
Corporation, which owns the Jerusalem Post, Chicago Sun Times and the UK's
Daily and Sunday Telegraph is currently under investigation regarding alleged
bribery, money-laundering, misuse of corporate assets and unauthorised
payments to Lord Black and former directors of Hollinger International.
The companies regulatory filing to the Security Exchange Commission also
disclosed that Hollinger made a $2.5m investment in Trireme Associates
LLC, a venture-capital firm founded by Richard Perle which had Perle's
good friend Henry Kissinger as a director. The company is the general partner
of Trireme Partners LP, a venture-capital fund co-managed by Mr. Perle
and Gerald P. Hillman, who also served on the Pentagon's Defence Policy
Board.
-
- In December of last year, it was revealed that Perle
lobbied on behalf of Boeing for an $18 billion government contract to provide
air tankers to the Pentagon. In exchange, Boeing made a $20 million "investment"
in Trireme Partners. Mr. Perle holds a 5% stake in Trireme and Lord Black
is a member of Trireme's strategic advisory board. Mr. Kissinger served
on the advisory board until this year, when he resigned because he had
reached the firm's mandatory retirement age, according to Mr. Hillman.
Hollinger's internal investigators are also looking at an investment by
Hollinger's digital unit in a company that includes Mr. Perle as a shareholder.
According to people familiar with the matter, Hollinger Digital invested
$14 million in a U.K. based technology firm called Cambridge Display Technology
(C.D.T.). Mr. Perle was a co-chairman of Hollinger Digital and was paid
a salary by the company to help find investments. The investment, confirmed
by C.D.T. Press Officer Terry Nicklan, was part of a syndicate led by Kelso
Co. and Gerald P Hillman's company Hillman Capital that acquired control
of C.D.T. for about $130 million. Mr. Hillman confirmed that Mr. Perle
also bought a stake in Cambridge Display Technology.
-
- Mr. Perle also served as a director of GeoBiotics, Inc.
from 1996 to 2000 and currently serves as a director of E.Certify and NAPRO
Biotherapeutics, Inc. He is also a director of the British software company
Autonomy, Inc. Autonomy supplies the US Department of Defence, the Department
of Homeland Security, and Britain's GCHQ and MI6 with tools that enable
the "bugging" of computer communications. When the New Yorker's
Seymour Hersh documented Perle's business dealings in the Middle East on
behalf of the venture capital firm Trireme, Perle threatened to sue the
journalist, saying that he was the "the closest thing American journalism
has to a terrorist."
-
- Hersh's article, "Lunch with the Chairman,"
discussed possible conflicts of interest resulting from Perle's dual role
as chairman of the Defence Policy Board and as a partner for Trireme, a
company that invests in defence-related industries. Hersh recounts how
Perle met with Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi billionaire arms dealer, and
Harb Zuhair, an Iraqi born Saudi businessman, in early 2003. Various people
interviewed by Hersh, including Khashoggi and Zuhair, indicated that Perle
and Trireme seemed to be sending the message that in return for Saudi investment
backing, the "Chairman" would use his Pentagon connections to
influence US policy.
-
- This is perhaps not the first time Perle has crossed
paths with Kashoggi. During the Reagan Administration, when Perle was assistant
secretary of defence for international security policy, Khashoggi was one
of the middlemen between Oliver North, the White House, and the mullahs
in Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Kashoggi was,
with US government approval, supplying Iran with weapons in return for
American hostages, whilst at the same time arming the Contra guerillas
in Nicaragua in their fight against the democratically elected Sandanista
government. A congressional investigation revealed that Khashoggi had borrowed
much of the money for the weapons from the disgraced Bank of Credit and
Commerce International (B.C.C.I.), whose collapse, in 1991, defrauded thousands
of depositors and led to years of inquiry and litigation. Investigations
revealed that B.C.C.I. was involved in a massive money laundering operation
and as a conduit for illegal financial transfers, many involving terrorist
organisations such as al-Qa'eda.
-
- Soon after the Hersh piece was published, columnist Maureen
Dowd and other journalists documented Perle's relationship to Global Crossing,
a bankrupt communications giant and defence contractor that was seeking
Pentagon permission to be sold to the Asian company Hutchinson Wampoa.
This is the same Hutchinson Wampoa whose interests in Panama sparked a
loud and nasty round of conservative hand-wringing in the US about a Chinese
attempt to take control of the Panama Canal. Although Perle denied any
wrongdoing, he admitted through his attorney that he was hired by Global
Crossing to consult with a reluctant Defence Department about the deal.
-
- Perle originally came to government from the the American
Enterprise Institute (AEI) the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
(JINSA). There are those who claim he has Israeli citizenship and is an
agent of Mossad, the feared Israeli secret service, whose motto is "By
way of deception, thou shalt do war".
-
- Now, Perle has published a new book, along with fellow
AEI and JINSA member David Frum, the Bush speech writer who coined the
phrase "Axis of Evil". In the book, entitled "An End to
Evil: How to Win the War on Terror" Perle and Frum demand that any
talks with North Korea require the "complete and immediate abandonment
of its nuclear programme". The book urges that America "Prepare
to launch pre-emptive strikes against North Korea's nuclear facilities
unless Pyongyang "immediately surrenders all of its nuclear material,
closes its missile bases and agrees to the permanent presence of international
inspectors". It goes on to call for a "Cuba-style military blockade
and overt preparations for war, including the rapid pullback of US forces
from the inter-Korean border so that they move out of range of North Korean
artillery".
-
- Such action will "prompt China to oust its ally,
Kim Jong-il, and install a saner regime in North Korea".
-
- In what they call a "manual for victory", the
two authors describe an extremely dangerous world in which the greatest
current evil, "militant Islam", can be found everywhere. Militant
Islam "seeks to overthrow our civilization and remake the nations
of the West into Islamic societies imposing on the whole world its religion
and law", write the authors. The book advocates cutting off arms supplies
and the flow of oil from Iraq to Syria, and pursuing suspected "terrorists"
into Syrian territory, unless Damascus implements a thorough "Western
reorientation" of its policies, economy and political system.
-
- It also seeks to help "dissidents" overthrow
the government of Iran - "the regime must go" say Perle and Frum.
-
- It demands countries "Cease criticizing Israel for
taking actions against Hamas and Hezbollah. The distinction between Islamic
terrorism against Israel, on the one hand, and Islamic terrorism against
the United States and Europe, on the other, cannot be sustained."
-
- Perle and Frum also urge Mr Bush to "tell the truth
about Saudi Arabia". Wealthy Saudis, some of them royal princes, fund
al-Qa'eda, they write. They claim the Saudi government backs "terror-tainted
Islamic organisations spreading their extremist version of Islam throughout
the
-
- Muslim world and into Europe and North America".
However, no mention is made in the book of Bush's connections to the Saudi
princes and indeed the Bush family's very close ties to the bin Laden family
through George H W Bush's directorship of the secretive Carlyle Group,
an investment firm managing some $14 billion in assets, including stakes
in a number of defence-related companies. On September 27th. 2001, The
Wall Street Journal reported that:
-
- "George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush,
works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle
Group, an international investment consulting firm. The senior Bush has
met with the bin Laden family at least twice."
-
- It also seems that Perle has forgotten his connections
to Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi billionaire arms dealer and Iraqi born Saudi
Harb Zuhair with whom he has had dealings. The word duplicity comes to
mind.
-
- Finally, in a demand that rivals Bush's assertion that
the French have no word for "entrepreneur" the book calls for
tough action against France. "We should force European governments
to choose between Paris and Washington," it states.
-
- So, here we have a man who is advocating "total
and continual" war against anyone who dares to speak out against the
interests of the United States of America and its "friends".
They believe China will cave in to American threats against North Korea
and turn against their long term friend Kim Jong-il. Perle honestly believes
that America, already militarily lacking, can overthrow the regimes in
Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia and bring "American democracy" to
these countries by military force without so much as a whisper from other
Islamic countries. And in a final act of revenge and hubris, Perle threatens
France, and by extension all of Europe, with making a choice between Washington
or Paris. If Europe decides on Paris, what's Perle's advice? Nuke Marseilles?
-
- Given that Perle, who said Americans would be welcomed
as "liberators" in Iraq, has got things so badly wrong about
that country, does anyone believe that he's got it right about Iran, Korea,
Saudi Arabia and Syria? Perhaps people are now seeing that Perle is not
quite the "intellectual" some portray him to be, just another
mad warmonger who wants to "bring on" Armageddon. He argues for
America to sacrifice its young people on the altar of US imperialism for
the benefit of a small group of ruthless, greedy, megalomaniacs who have
continually lied to the American public and do not have the best interests
of the United States as their prime objective.
-
- Throughout the entire diatribe of "An End to Evil:
How to Win the War on Terror" there is no mention of perhaps the one
thing that could de- escalate this so-called "war on terror"
and perhaps begin to heal the wounds between Islam and the West. Surely
an "intellectual" would be able to understand the main source
of the problems between Islam and the West. But no. No mention of Israel's
continuing biligerence against Palestinians, no mention of Israel's huge
dividing wall, no mention of Israel's continued expansion of it's settlements
and no mention of the implementation of the road map for peace. Just total,
continual war.
-
- John Pilger said he "mistakenly" thought Richard
Perle was mad. I agree. What Richard Perle is transcends madness. This
man wishes to extinguish perhaps four billion people in a never ending
total war against those who disagree with American policies. The world
should beware Richard Perle and his friends. They are the devils in the
White House
-
- "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned
an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility
to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy
alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task
of the statesmanship of today." Theodore Roosevelt 1906.
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