- Wikipedia on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_McGovern
-
- "Raymond McGovern (born 1939) is a retired CIA officer
turned political activist. McGovern was a Federal employee under seven
U.S. presidents over 27 years, presenting the morning intelligence briefings
at the White House for many of them. [. . .] "O.I.L."
-
- In a television interview with Tucker Carlson on MSNBC,
McGovern said: "I've been using the acronym O.I.L. for many - for
two years now: O for oil; I for Israel; and L for logistics, logistics
being the permanent - now we say "enduring" - military bases
that the U.S. wants to keep in Iraq."[12] McGovern testified at a
Democratic National Headquarters forum in 2005 that had been convened
by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) of the House Judiciary Committee on the Downing
Street Memo. The Washington Post reported that, in his testimony, McGovern
"declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel
and military bases craved by administration 'neocons' so 'the United States
and Israel could dominate that part of the world.' He said that Israel
should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
-
- 'Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation,'
McGovern said. Genuine criticism of official Israeli policy is often portrayed
as if it were anti-Semite bigotry: 'The last time I did this, the previous
director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic.'"[13] McGovern
described the incident with former Director of Central Intelligence James
Woolsey in an article in Counterpunch: "I thought of the debate I
had on Iraq with arch- neoconservative and former CIA Director James Woolsey
on PBS' Charlie Rose Show on August 20, when I broke the taboo on mentioning
Israel and was immediately branded "anti-Semitic" by Woolsey.
Reflecting later on his accusation, it seemed almost OK since it was so
blatantly ad hominem. And his attack was all the more transparent, coming
from the self-described "anchor of the Presbyterian wing of JINSA"
- the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a strong advocate
of war to eliminate all perceived enemies of Israel - like Iraq.[14] "]
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-
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- An American who speaks truth to power: Ray McGovern
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- consortiumnews.com
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- * * *
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- Dear Admiral Fallon,
-
- I have not been able to find out how to reach you directly,
so I drafted this letter in the hope it will be brought to your attention.
-
- First, thank you for honoring the oath we commissioned
officers take to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States
from all enemies, foreign and domestic. At the same time, you have let
it be known that you do not intend to speak, on or off the record, about
Iran.
-
- But our oath has no expiration date. While you are acutely
aware of the dangers of attacking Iran, you seem to be allowing an inbred
reluctance to challenge the commander in chief to trump that oath, and
to prevent you from letting the American people know of the catastrophe
about to befall us if, as seems likely, our country attacks Iran.
-
-
-
-
- William J. Fallon swore to defend the Constitution,
not his pension
or his reputation in the Jewish media.
-
-
- Two years ago I lectured at the Naval Academy in Annapolis.
I
- found it highly disturbing that, when asked about the
oath they took upon entering the academy, several of the "Mids"
thought it was to the commander in chief.
-
- This brought to my mind the photos of German generals
and admirals (as well as top church leaders and jurists) swearing personal
oaths to Hitler. Not our tradition, and yet
- I was aghast that only the third Mid I called on got
it right that the oath is to protect and defend the Constitution,
not the president.
-
- Attack Iran and Trash the Constitution
-
- No doubt you are very clear that an attack on Iran would
be a flagrant violation of our Constitution, which stipulates that treaties
ratified by the Senate become the supreme law of the land; that the United
Nations Charter which the Senate ratified on July 28, 1945, by a
vote of 89 to 2 expressly forbids attacks on other countries unless
they pose an imminent danger; that there is no provision allowing some
other kind of "pre-emptive" or "preventive" attack
against a nation that poses no imminent danger; and that Iran poses no
such danger to the United States or its allies.
-
- You may be forgiven for thinking: Isn't 41 years of service
enough; isn't resigning in order to remove myself from a chain of command
that threatened to make me a war criminal for attacking Iran; isn't making
my active opposition known by talking to journalists isn't all that
enough?
-
- With respect, sir, no, that's not enough.
-
- The stakes here are extremely high and with the integrity
you have shown goes still further responsibility. Sadly, the vast majority
of your general officer colleagues have, for whatever reason, ducked
that responsibility. You are pretty much it.
-
- In their lust for attacking Iran, administration officials
will do their best to marginalize you. And, as prominent a person as you
are, the corporate media will do the same.
-
- Indeed, there are clear signs the media have been given
their marching orders to support attacking Iran.
-
- At CIA I used to analyze the Soviet press, so you will
understand when I refer to the Washington Post and the New York Times
as the White House's Pravda and Izvestiya.
-
- Sadly, it is as easy as during the days of the controlled
Soviet press to follow the U.S. government's evolving line with a daily
reading. In a word, our newspapers are revving up for war on Iran, and
have been for some time.
-
-
- In some respects the manipulation and suppression of
information in the present lead-up to an attack on Iran is even more flagrant
and all encompassing than in early 2003 before the invasion of Iraq.
-
- It seems entirely possible that you are unaware of this,
precisely because the media have put the wraps on it, so let me adduce
a striking example of what is afoot here.
-
- The example has to do with the studied, if disingenuous,
effort over recent months to blame all the troubles in southern Iraq on
the "malignant" influence of Iran.
-
- But Not for Fiasco
-
- Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, told
reporters on April 25 that Gen. David Petraeus would be giving a briefing
"in the next couple of weeks" that would provide detailed evidence
of "just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability."
-
- Petraeus's staff alerted U.S. media to a major news event
in which captured Iranian arms in Karbala would be displayed and then
destroyed.
-
-
-
- Let's just call this lying psychopath what he
is: General Betray-us.
-
-
- Small problem. When American munitions experts went to
Karbala to inspect the alleged cache of Iranian weapons they found nothing
that could be credibly linked to Iran.
-
- News to you? That's because this highly embarrassing
episode went virtually unreported in the media like the proverbial
tree falling in the forest with no corporate media to hear it crash.
-
- So Mullen and Petraeus live, uninhibited and unembarrassed,
to keep searching for Iranian weapons so the media can then tell a story
more supportive to efforts to blacken Iran. A fiasco is only a fiasco
if folks know about it.
-
- The suppression of this episode is the most significant
aspect, in my view, and a telling indicator of how difficult it is to
get honest reporting on these subjects.
-
- Meanwhile, it was announced that Iraqi Prime Minister
Nouri al- Maliki had formed his own Cabinet committee to investigate U.S.
claims and attempt to "find tangible information and not information
based on speculation."
-
- Dissing the Intelligence Estimate
-
- Top officials from the president on down have been dismissing
the dramatically new conclusion of the National Intelligence Estimate
released on Dec. 3, 2007, a judgment concurred in by the 16 intelligence
units of our government, that Iran had stopped the weapons-related part
of its nuclear program in mid-2003.
-
- Always willing to do his part, the malleable CIA chief,
Michael Hayden, on April 30 publicly offered his "personal opinion"
that Iran is building a nuclear weapon the National Intelligence
Estimate notwithstanding.
-
- For good measure, Hayden added: "It is my opinion,
it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to the highest level
of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq. Just
make sure there's clarity on that."
-
- I don't need to tell you about the Haydens and other
smartly saluting generals in Washington.
-
- Let me suggest that you have a serious conversation with
Gen. Anthony Zinni, one of your predecessor CENTOM commanders (1997 to
2000).
-
- As you know better than I, this Marine general is also
an officer with unusual integrity. But placed into circumstances virtually
identical to those you now face, he could not find his voice.
-
- He missed his chance to interrupt the juggernaut to war
in Iraq; you might ask him how he feels about that now, and what he would
advise in current circumstances.
-
- Zinni happened to be one of the honorees at the Veterans
of Foreign Wars convention on Aug. 26, 2002, at which Vice President Dick
Cheney delivered the exceedingly alarmist speech, unsupported by our
best intelligence, about the nuclear threat and other perils awaiting
us at the hands of Saddam Hussein.
-
-
-
-
- That speech not only launched the seven-month public
campaign against Iraq leading up to the war, but set the terms of reference
for the Oct. 1, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate fabricated
yes, fabricated to convince Congress to approve war on Iraq.
-
- Gen. Zinni later shared publicly that, as he listened
to Cheney, he was shocked to hear a depiction of intelligence that did
not square with what he knew. Although Zinni had retired two years earlier,
his role as consultant had required him to stay up to date on intelligence
relating to the Middle East.
-
- One Sunday morning three and a half years after Cheney's
speech, Zinni told "Meet the Press": "There was no solid
proof that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I heard a case being
made to go to war."
-
- Gen. Zinni had as good a chance as anyone to stop an
unnecessary war not a "pre-emptive war," since there was
nothing to pre- empt and Zinni knew it. No, what he and any likeminded
officials could have stopped was a war of aggression, defined at the post-
WWII Nuremberg Tribunal as the "supreme international crime."
-
- Sure, Zinni would have had to stick his neck out. He
may have had to speak out alone, since most senior officials, like then-CIA
Director George Tenet, lacked courage and integrity.
-
- In his memoir published a year ago, Tenet says Cheney
did not follow the usual practice of clearing his Aug. 26, 2002 speech
with the CIA; that much of what Cheney said took him completely by surprise;
and that Tenet "had the impression that the president wasn't any
more aware of what his number-two was going to say to the VFW until he
said it."
-
- It is a bit difficult to believe that Cheney's shameless
speech took Tenet completely by surprise.
-
- We know from the Downing Street Minutes, vouched for
by the UK as authentic, that Tenet told his British counterpart on July
20, 2002, that the president had decided to make war on Iraq for regime
change and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around
the policy"
-
- Encore: Iran
-
- Admiral Fallon, you know that to be the case also with
respect to the "intelligence" being conjured up to "justify"
war with Iran. And no one knows better than you that your departure from
the chain of command has turned it over completely to the smartly saluting
sycophants.
-
- No doubt you have long since taken the measure, for example,
of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. So have I.
-
- I was one of his first branch chiefs when he was a young,
disruptively ambitious CIA analyst. When Ronald Reagan's CIA Director
William Casey sought someone to shape CIA analysis to accord with his
own conviction that the Soviet Union would never change, Gates leaped
at the chance.
-
- After Casey died, Gates admitted to the Washington Post's
Walter Pincus that he (Gates) watched Casey on "issue after issue
sit in meetings and present intelligence framed in terms of the policy
he wanted pursued." Gates' entire subsequent career showed that he
learned well at Casey's knee.
-
- So it should come as no surprise that, despite the unanimous
judgment of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran stopped the weapons
related aspects of its nuclear program, Gates is now saying that Iran
is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.
-
- Some of his earlier statements were more ambiguous, but
Gates recently took advantage of the opportunity to bend with the prevailing
winds and leave no doubt as to his loyalty.
-
-
- Quote:
- In an interview on events in the Middle East with a New
York Times reporter on April 11, Gates was asked whether he was on the
same page as the president. Gates replied, "Same line, same word."
-
-
- I imagine you are no more surprised than I. Bottom line:
Gates will salute smartly if Cheney persuades the president to let the
Air Force and Navy loose on Iran.
-
- You know the probable consequences; you need to let the
rest of the American people know.
-
- A Gutsy Precedent
-
- Can you, Admiral Fallon, be completely alone? Can it
be that you are the only general officer to resign on principle?
-
- And, of equal importance, is there no other general officer,
active or retired, who has taken the risk of speaking out in an attempt
to inform Americans about President George W. Bush's bellicose fixation
with Iran. Thankfully, there is.
-
- Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser
to President George H.W. Bush, took the prestigious job of Chairman,
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board when asked to by the younger
Bush.
-
- From that catbird seat, Scowcroft could watch the unfolding
of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Over decades dealing with the press,
Scowcroft had honed a reputation of quintessential discretion. All the
more striking what he decided he had to do.
-
- In an interview with London's Financial Times in mid-October
2004 Scowcroft was harshly critical of the president, charging that Bush
had been "mesmerized" by then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
-
- "Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger,"
Scowcroft said. "He has been nothing but trouble."
-
- Needless to say, Scowcroft was given his walking papers
and told never to darken the White House doorstep again.
-
- There is ample evidence that Sharon's successors believe
they have a commitment from President Bush to "take care of Iran"
before he leaves office, and that the president has done nothing to disabuse
them of that notion no matter the consequences.
-
- On May 18, speaking at the World Economic Forum at Sharm
el Sheikh, Bush threw in a gratuitous reference to "Iran's nuclear
weapons ambitions." He said:
-
- "To allow the world's leading sponsor of terror
to gain the world's deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal
of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow
Iran to have a nuclear weapon."
-
- Pre-briefing the press, Bush's national security adviser
Stephen Hadley identified Iran as one of the dominant themes of the trip,
adding repeatedly that Iran "is very much behind" all the woes
afflicting the Middle East, from Lebanon to Gaza to Iraq to Afghanistan.
-
- The Rhetoric is Ripening
-
- In the coming weeks, at least until U.S. forces can find
some real Iranian weapons in Iraq, the rhetoric is likely to focus on
what I call the Big Lie the claim that Iran's president has threatened
to "wipe Israel off the map."
-
- In that controversial speech in 2005, Ahmadinejad was
actually quoting from something the Ayatollah Khomeini had said in the
early 1980s. Khomeini was expressing a hope that a regime treating the
Palestinians so unjustly would be replaced by another more equitable
one.
-
- A distinction without a difference? I think not. Words
matter.
-
- As you may already know (but the American people don't),
the literal translation from Farsi of what Ahmadinejad said is,
-
- Quote:
- "The regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from
the pages of time."
-
-
- Contrary to what the administration would have us all
believe, the Iranian president was not threatening to nuke Israel, push
it into the sea, or wipe it off the map.
-
- President Bush is way out in front on this issue, and
this comes through with particular clarity when he ad-libs answers to
questions.
-
- On Oct. 17, 2007, long after he had been briefed on the
key intelligence finding that Iran had stopped the nuclear weapons- related
part of its nuclear development program, the president spoke as though,
well, "mesmerized." He said:
-
- "But this we got a leader in Iran who has
announced he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're
interested in avoiding World War III, it seems you ought to be interested
in preventing them from have (sic) the knowledge necessary to make a
nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously."
-
- Some contend that Bush does not really believe his rhetoric.
I rather think he does, for the Israelis seem to have his good ear, with
the tin one aimed at U.S. intelligence he has repeatedly disparaged.
-
- But, frankly, which would be worse: that Bush believes
Iran to be an existential threat to Israel and thus requires U.S. military
action? Or that it's just rhetoric to "justify" U.S. action
to "take care of" Iran for Israel?
-
- What you can do, Admiral Fallon, is speak authoritatively
about what is likely to happen to U.S. forces in Iraq, for example
if Bush orders your successors to begin bombing and missile attacks
on Iran.
-
- And you could readily update Scowcroft's remarks, by
drawing on what you observed of the Keystone Cops efforts of White House
ideologues, like Iran-Contra convict Elliot Abrams, to overturn by force
the ascendancy of Hamas in 2006-07 and Hezbollah more recently. (Abrams
pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of misleading Congress, but was
pardoned by President George H.W. Bush on Dec. 24, 1992.)
-
- It is easy to understand why no professional military
officer would wish to be in the position of taking orders originating
from the likes of Abrams.
-
- If you weigh in as your (non-expiring) oath to protect
and defend the Constitution dictates, you might conceivably prompt other
sober heads to speak out.
-
- And, in the end, if profound ignorance and ideology
supported by the corporate press and by both political parties intimidated
by the Israel lobby lead to an attack on Iran, and the Iranians
enter southern Iraq and take thousands of our troops hostage, you will
be able to look in the mirror and say at least you tried.
-
- You will not have to live with the remorse of not knowing
what might have been, had you been able to shake your reluctance to speak
out.
-
- There is a large Tar Baby out there Iran. You may
remember that as Brer Rabbit got more and more stuck, Brer Fox, he lay
low.
-
- A "Fox" Fallon, still pledged to defend the
Constitution of the United States, cannot lie low-not now.
-
- Lead.
-
-
- Respectfully,
-
- Ray McGovern;
- Steering Group; Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity (VIPS)
-
- * * *
- Ray McGovern, a veteran Army intelligence officer and
then CIA analyst for 27 years, now works with "Tell the Word,"
the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner- city
Washington.
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