Six Degrees of MICHAEL LEDEEN ----------->

[Stephanie]

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http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21704


Who Forged the Niger Documents?
By Ian Masters, AlterNet. Posted April 7, 2005.

Editor’s Note: This is an edited transcript of an interview conducted by Ian Masters with Vincent Cannistaro, the former CIA head of counterterrorism operations and intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, which aired on the Los Angeles public radio KPFK on April 3, 2005.

<excerpt>

The documents were fabricated by supporters of the policy in the United States. The policy being that you had to invade Iraq in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and you had to do it soon to avoid the catastrophe that would be produced by Saddam Hussein’s use of alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Well, Ambassador Wilson publicly refuted the claims — particularly the 16 words in the President’s State of the Union address that the Iraqis were trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Niger. That document, I understand, was fabricated ... it originally came out of Italian intelligence, I think SISME, or SISDE—I’m not sure which one.

It was SISME, yeah. ...

During the two-thousands when we’re talking about acquiring information on Iraq. It isn’t that anyone had a good source on Iraq—there weren’t any good sources. The Italian intelligence service, the military intelligence service, was acquiring information that was really being hand-fed to them by very dubious sources. The Niger documents, for example, which apparently were produced in the United States, yet were funneled through the Italians.

Do we know who produced those documents? Because there’s some suspicion ...

I think I do, but I’d rather not speak about it right now, because I don’t think it’s a proven case ...

If I said “Michael Ledeen” ?

You’d be very close . . .

Well, again, Vincent Cannistraro, the feeling you get is that, from going back to, let’s agree that 9/11 is the greatest intelligence catastrophe since Pearl Harbor, and then the WMD catastrophe that followed it. These are two huge embarrassments and it seems to be that the way the White House has handled it’s as though you have a car accident. And instead of blaming the driver, you are blaming the car here. So, do you believe that, you know, that this process — whether it was the intention or not — it’s certainly worked out in such a way to exonerate the White House and to lay the blame with the wrong . . .

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http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/4/dreyfuss-r.html

The American Prospect
Just the Beginning
Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake the world?
By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 4.1.03

For months Americans have been told that the United States is going to war against Iraq in order to disarm Saddam Hussein, remove him from power, eliminate Iraq's alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and prevent Baghdad from blackmailing its neighbors or aiding terrorist groups. But the Bush administration's hawks, especially the neoconservatives who provide the driving force for war, see the conflict with Iraq as much more than that. It is a signal event, designed to create cataclysmic shock waves throughout the region and around the world, ushering in a new era of American imperial power. It is also likely to bring the United States into conflict with several states in the Middle East. Those who think that U.S. armed forces can complete a tidy war in Iraq, without the battle spreading beyond Iraq's borders, are likely to be mistaken.

"I think we're going to be obliged to fight a regional war, whether we want to or not," says Michael Ledeen, a former U.S. national-security official and a key strategist among the ascendant flock of neoconservative hawks, many of whom have taken up perches inside the U.S. government. Asserting that the war against Iraq can't be contained, Ledeen says that the very logic of the global war on terrorism will drive the United States to confront an expanding network of enemies in the region. "As soon as we land in Iraq, we're going to face the whole terrorist network," he says, including the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and a collection of militant splinter groups backed by nations -- Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia -- that he calls "the terror masters."

"It may turn out to be a war to remake the world," says Ledeen.

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http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest&c=1

article | Posted August 15, 2002
The Men From JINSA and CSP
by Jason Vest

<snip>On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war--not just with Iraq, but "total war," as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For this crew, "regime change" by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents--be it Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA or career military officers--is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East--a hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and covert action.

For example, the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board--chaired by JINSA/CSP adviser and former Reagan Administration Defense Department official Richard Perle, and stacked with advisers from both groups--recently made news by listening to a briefing that cast Saudi Arabia as an enemy to be brought to heel through a number of potential mechanisms, many of which mirror JINSA's recommendations, and which reflect the JINSA/CSP crowd's preoccupation with Egypt. (The final slide of the Defense Policy Board presentation proposed that "Grand Strategy for the Middle East" should concentrate on "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot (and) Egypt as the prize.") Ledeen has been leading the charge for regime change in Iran, while old comrades like Andrew Marshall and Harold Rhode in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment actively tinker with ways to re-engineer both the Iranian and Saudi governments. JINSA is also cheering the US military on as it tries to secure basing rights in the strategic Red Sea country of Eritrea, happily failing to mention that the once-promising secular regime of President Isaiais Afewerki continues to slide into the kind of repressive authoritarianism practiced by the "axis of evil" and its adjuncts. </more>

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2003/03/26/perle/index.html

Joe Conason's Journal
Will the Senate investigate top hawk Richard Perle's questionable conduct at the Defense Policy Board?

- - - - - - - - - - - -

March 26, 2003 | A Perle of great price

Two weeks ago I suggested that Richard Perle's commingling of public service and private profit deserves the scrutiny of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Evidence has been growing since then that Perle, the chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, is using his immense clout in the Bush administration as a business calling card. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that Rep. John Conyers has asked the Pentagon inspector general to investigate Perle, and that an unnamed "prominent Democratic member of the Senate" is "considering making a similar request." But rather than simply punting Perle over to the inspector general, the Senate itself ought to act in this case.

The first exposé of Perle's business affairs appeared in a New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh, who Perle then memorably smeared as a "terrorist" for having the temerity to report on his peculiar dealings with Adnan Khashoggi, the billionaire Saudi arms dealer, oilman and Iran-contra scandal figure. (Iran-contra scandal figures are a key talent pool for the Bush administration, the latest example being neocon publicist Michael Ledeen. Josh Marshall provides a photo of Ledeen and Perle at a Washington kaffeeklatsche, along with some of Ledeen's inane commentary, but omits his unsavory role in the arms-for-hostages fiasco.)

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,935812,00.html

Bush ready to fight war on two fronts
Ed Vulliamy in Washington
Sunday April 13, 2003
The Observer

The last shot of the war in Iraq will be the starting pistol for two further campaigns by the administration of President George W Bush. One will be fought in the region: no one really believes America's project is confined to Iraq. The toppling of Saddam is first base in what Michael Ledeen, leading thinker among the neo-conservatives driving foreign policy, calls 'a war to remake the world'.

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[bloom]

1. "It may turn out to be a war to remake the world," says Ledeen.

While many think that the war is not going to plan - it seems more and more likely that it is. Esp. when you read this stuff.

Bush has said similar things in speeches. (Inspired by Ledeen, apparently).

[Emit]

3. Another telling quote by Ledeen

"Machiavelli…has not lost his democratic faith. His call for a brief period of iron rule is a choice of the lesser of two evils: if the corruption continued, a real tyranny would be just a matter of time (making it even harder to restore free institutions); whereas freedom can be preserved if a good man can be found to put the state back in order. Just as it is sometimes necessary temporarily to resort to evil actions to achieve worthy objectives, so a period of dictatorship is sometimes the only hope for freedom.” (Michael Ledeen)

[Stephanie]

4. Chilling

And now we're back to Leo Strauss. It seems like we take this course every semester.

[Stephanie]

2. kick

for researchers on the other thread - good old articles on Ledeen