The Feith channel: How Pentagon hijacked intelligence for war

[radfringe]

The Feith channel: How Pentagon hijacked intelligence for war
NEWS JOURNAL ON-LINE Editorial
February 17, 2007
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/opnOPN50021707.htm

At the time in 2002, the public face of the Bush administration was still talking as if it was doing everything possible to avoid a war with Iraq. ,b>In reality, plans for an invasion were so solid by August of that year -- seven months before the invasion and months before the administration went to the United Nations to make the case for war -- that Pentagon planners already had a slide show about what Iraq would look like post-invasion, in 2006: It would be democratic. It would be stable. It would be a staunch American ally. And no more than 5,000 American troops would be stationed there. ( You can see the slideshow at George Washington University's National Security Archive, nsarchive.org. <link/excerpts below> )

Armed with rosy myths like that, Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense at the time -- and a chief architect of the invasion -- could make the case to President Bush that attacking Saddam Hussein would be easy and rewarding. But there were still many in the intelligence community, and indeed dissenting generals within the Pentagon, who saw things differently. Analysts within the State Department and the CIA were skeptical about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Their views never made it to the president's ears, which Vice President Dick Cheney waxed with gate-keeping of his own. What views he did let through were those of Douglas Feith, an aide to Rumsfeld and the person chiefly responsible for coordinating policy between national security agencies.

--------

TOP SECRET POLO STEP - slide show (enlargement of slides are in PDF format)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/index.htm

Iraq War Plan Assumed Only 5,000 U.S. Troops Still There by December 2006

CentCom PowerPoint Slides Briefed to White House and Rumsfeld in 2002, Obtained by National Security Archive through Freedom of Information Act

PowerPoints Reflect Internal Debates Over Size and Timing of Invasion Force
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 214
Edited by Joyce Battle and Thomas Blanton

Washington D.C., February 14, 2007 - The U.S. Central Command's war plan for invading Iraq postulated in August 2002 that the U.S. would have only 5,000 troops left in Iraq as of December 2006, according to the Command's PowerPoint briefing slides, which were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and are posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org).

The PowerPoint slides, prepared by CentCom planners for Gen. Tommy Franks under code name POLO STEP, for briefings during 2002 for President Bush, the NSC, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, the JCS, and Franks' commanders, refer to the "Phase IV" post-hostilities period as "UNKNOWN" and "months" in duration, but assume that U.S. forces would be almost completely "re-deployed" out of Iraq within 45 months of the invasion (i.e. December 2006).

"Completely unrealistic assumptions about a post-Saddam Iraq permeate these war plans," said National Security Archive Executive Director Thomas Blanton. "First, they assumed that a provisional government would be in place by 'D-Day', then that the Iraqis would stay in their garrisons and be reliable partners, and finally that the post-hostilities phase would be a matter of mere 'months'. All of these were delusions."

The PowerPoint slides reflect the continuous debate over the size of the invasion force that took place within the Bush administration. In late November 2001, President Bush asked Rumsfeld about the status of plans for war with Iraq. He asked for an updated approach, but did not want to attract attention. Rumsfeld ordered Gen. Franks to prepare a commander's estimate of improvements needed, and Franks convened a planning group that adopted the codeword POLO STEP.

[radfringe]

1. kick

[malaise]

2. These men should be in a lock up

for treason -lies, murder, failure.

[unhappycamper]

3. What a miserable bunch of assholes.

Having served in my uncle's army for almost ten years, I have a goodly collection of bad words. If I said what I'm thinking, I would have to remove this reply for some severely bad words.

We can only hope that Patriots continue to step forward and reveal the truth.

The corporate controlled m$m has sat on stories like this for years; we can only hope they will be held accountable for their silence.

[Octafish]

4. Traitors and Sons of Traitors.

Thank you for the important articles, radfringe.

As an old codger, I remember how Poppy also had a need to lie America into Gulf War I, a war he profited from.

First there was the argument of "naked agression can not stand" in Kuwait; a PR company enlisted the aid of the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter to testify before Congress that she was a nurse who saw babies pulled from incubators; then came a threat to Saudi Arabian oil; then came the Saddam had nukes. That seemed to work public opinion to supporting the war. About 12 years later, it worked again.

No casus belli? Invent one!

As Colin Powell presents evidence to the UN to justify war, Maggie O'Kane argues that the US's justification for the first Gulf war does not bear scrutiny

Analysis
The Guardian
Wednesday February 5, 2003

In 1990 as the US prepared for its first war with Iraq there was heavy reliance on the use of "classified" satellite photographs purporting to show that in September 1990 - a month after the invasion of Kuwait - 265,000 Iraqi soldiers and 1,500 tanks were massing on the border to gear up to invade Saudi Arabia. The threat of Saddam aggressively expanding his empire to Saudi Arabia was crucial to the decision to go to war, but the satellite pictures were never made public.

Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2 1990. The US cabinet met the same day. At that point, war was no more than a possibility. Norman Schwarzkopf recalls the prevailing mood in his autobiography, It Doesn't Take a Hero. He quotes General Colin Powell's remark to him: "I think we could go to war if they invaded Saudi Arabia. I doubt if we would go to war over Kuwait."

Within days the mood at the top had hardened. When Schwarzkopf next met Powell, he was told to prepare to go to Saudi Arabia. "I was stunned," he says in his book. "A lot must have happened after I left Camp David that Powell wasn't talking about. President Bush had made up his mind to send troops."

A lot had changed. By the early weeks of September, America and Britain were leading the march towards war. Somehow, almost without anybody noticing, the agenda was changing. Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait alone was no longer acceptable. New resolutions had been adopted by the UN security council

The photographs, which are still classified in the US (for security reasons, according to Brent Scowcroft, President Bush senior's national security advisor), purportedly showed more than a quarter of a million Iraqi troops massed on the Saudi border poised to pounce. Except, when a resourceful Florida-based reporter at the St Petersburg Times persuaded her newspaper to buy the same independently commissioned satellite photos from a commercial satellite to verify the Pentagon's line, she saw no sign of a quarter of a million troops or their tanks.

CONTINUED...

http://foi.missouri.edu/polinfoprop/nocasusbelli.html

No wonder Poppy hates the Internet and journalists -- independent journalists.

[bonito]

5. K&R

[SalmonChantedEvening]

6. "Completely unrealistic assumptions"

The neocon philosophy summed up in 3 words.

[many a good man]

7. 7 words

"... and they don't care."