Yoram Ettinger
CHENEY SHINES IN ISRAEL
Fri Feb 6 14:54:36 2004
64.140.158.184

CHENEY SHINES IN ISRAEL
by Yoram Ettinger
http://www.acpr.org.il/cloakrm/opeds/020320.html

Ynet (Internet edition of Yediot Aharonot, )
March 20, 2002

A month prior to the 2001 election in Israel, Vice President Cheney shared with some friends his concern about Shimon Peres joining the race, “lest he defeats General Sharon.” Shortly after Sharon’s victory, Cheney asked: “Why would the General, who just won a landslide victory, revive the Oslo Process, by inviting Labor to join his government?!”

High regard for history, values and national security have shaped the world view of Cheney, the most influential Vice President ever in the history of the US. Unlike his predecessors, he is also the Tsar of national security policy, as well as overseeing senior appointments by the Administration. The “Cowboy from Wyoming”, who has become one of the most effective operators in Washington, DC, has often expressed his opposition to the simplistic concepts of The New World Order and The New Middle East.

The identity of Cheney’s top advisors sheds light on the direction of his policy. For instance, his Chief-of-Staff is Scooter Libby, a national security hawk, and his top advisor on the Middle East is John Hannah, who has been a consistent critic of the Oslo Process. Moreover, it was Cheney who prevailed over Secretary Powell in the appointment of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and his deputy, Wolfowitz, the two leading hawks in the Administration.

The Vice President has professed that military might and determination, rather than negotiation and concessions, will deny radical and terrorist regimes and organizations chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities, which threaten the very existence of Western Democracies.

He is a graduate of the Gulf War, and aspires to avoid, rather than repeat, the critical errors of that 1991 war. Therefore, Cheney does not negotiate a cease-fire with Saddam, but rather attempts to obliterate Saddam’s regime and annihilate the infrastructure which nurtures Saddam’s fire, in accordance with the Afghanistan precedent. Therefore, Cheney has not inflated the value of The Coalition. He supports a unilateral action whenever required, in defiance of Europe, Russia, China, the UN and the Arabs. Therefore, he was the first top US official (at the 1991 Annual JINSA Dinner) to thank Israel for the 1981 bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, “which provided the US with a conventional option against Iraq in 1991!” Therefore, he does not trust Arafat, who participated in Saddam’s plunder of Kuwait, stabbing the back of Kuwait, which opened its arms and treasures to Arafat since 1959. Therefore, Vice President Cheney has refrained – so far – from meeting Arafat (notwithstanding “pressure” by the Department of State, Foreign Minister Peres and Defense Minister Ben-Eliezer), and therefore he turned-down a request, by Peres, for a private meeting.

Cheney’s visit to Israel – as the special emissary of President Bush – has focused on the furthering of the special relations and the bilateral strategic cooperation in face of mutual Islamic threats (terrorism, Iraq, Iran, non-conventional warfare and ballistic missiles). On the other hand, the visit by General (ret.) Zini – a special emissary of Secretary Powell – has aimed at furthering US involvement in the Israel-PLO war, which advances US neutrality, thus promoting frictions with Israel, while eroding the element of special relations.

Prior to his arrival to the Middle East, Cheney justified Israel’s employment of F-16s against Palestinian terrorists. Israeli steadfastness against Hizbullah, Syria, the PLO, Egypt and US pressure would be consistent with Cheney’s world view. On a rainy day, the V.P. would prefer a 1981-style resolute and daring Israel, over the indecisive and vacillating Oslo-driven Israel.
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The identity of Cheney’s top advisors sheds light on the direction of his policy. For instance, his Chief-of-Staff is Scooter Libby, a national security hawk, and his top advisor on the Middle East is John Hannah, who has been a consistent critic of the Oslo Process. Moreover, it was Cheney who prevailed over Secretary Powell in the appointment of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and his deputy, Wolfowitz, the two leading hawks in the Administration.

=======================

Legal Advisor to the House of Representatives' Scooter Libby -- White House ...
www.apfn.net/messageboard/10-05-03/discussion.cgi.41.html

Scooter Libby -- White House
Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the Vice President

Most recently, Scooter Libby was Managing Partner of the Washington office of the
international law firm of Dechert, Price & Rhoads. He also served as the Legal
Advisor to the House of Representatives' Select Committee on U.S. National
Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China,
commonly known as the "Cox Committee." Scooter has held a variety of positions
at the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Defense. His previous
government position was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Scooter
is a graduate of Yale University and received his J.D. from Columbia.
Contact: 202-456-9000
http://www.results.gov/leadership/bios/libbys.html

Attorney General Is Closely Linked to Inquiry Figures — NY Times, Fri Oct 3

Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure >From Cheney Visits

(snip)
Former and current intelligence officials said they felt a continual drumbeat, not only from Cheney and Libby, but also from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Feith, and less so from CIA Director George J. Tenet, to find information or write reports in a way that would help the administration make the case that going into Iraq was urgent. http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/7-26-03/discussion.cgi.64.html

Securing Iraqi oil for Israel: The plot thickens
(snip)

The INC’s relationship with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) is of particular significance. It has been developing for a decade. JINSA has close ties with the Pentagon and US defense companies and counts among its board such prominent figures as Vice-President Dick Cheney, his chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and the eminence grise of the pro-Israel neoconservatives, Richard Perle, recently forced to step down as chairman of the Pentagon’s influential Defense Policy Board because of his business interests. Retired US General Jay Garner, who has been tasked with overseeing the reconstruction of Iraq, has traveled with JINSA groups to Israel and supported the organization’s agenda.
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/4-27-03/discussion.cgi.17.html

THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/5-09-03/discussion.cgi.9.html

Special investigation: The spies who pushed for war
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/7-17-03/discussion.cgi.6.html

Secret report undercuts Iraq connection to WTC
(snip)
"Democrats refused to address the threat. Now they're trying to undermine the rationale for it," she said. "They don't want the Iraqi angle coming out, because they failed to address it – and 3,000 Americans died."

Hard time getting published

Mylroie lists Clare Wolfowitz, wife of the No. 2 Pentagon official, among her friends in her book's Acknowledgments. She also gives a nod to John Bolton, one of the State Department's biggest Iraq hawks, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, whose wife also is an AEI scholar.

The conservative think tank is a hotbed of Iraq hawks known as "neocons." They include Irving Kristol, father of Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen.

Mylroie's book was first published in 2000 by AEI Press.
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/8-03-03/discussion.cgi.31.html

How neo-cons influence the Pentagon
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/8-10-03/discussion.cgi.68.html
=====================

LOTS MORE AT: http://slate.msn.com/id/2085803/

The first draft of Powell's speech was written by Cheney's staff and the National Security Council. Days before the team first gathered at the CIA, a group of officials assembled in the White House Situation Room to hear Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, lay out an indictment of the Iraqi regime—"a Chinese menu" of charges, one participant recalls, that Powell might use in his U.N. speech. Not everyone in the administration was impressed, however. "It was over the top and ran the gamut from al Qaeda to human rights to weapons of mass destruction," says a senior official. "They were unsubstantiated assertions, in my view."

Powell, apparently, agreed. So one week before he was to address the U.N. Security Council, he created a team, which set up shop at the CIA, and directed it to provide him with an intelligence report based on more solid information. ... The team, at first, tried to follow a 45-page White House script, taken from Libby's earlier presentation. But there were too many problems—some assertions, for instance, were not supported by solid or adequate sourcing, several officials say. Indeed, some of the damning information simply could not be proved.

Sound familiar?

If Libby is PB, it's unlikely he acted without strong encouragement from Cheney. In addition, Chatterbox's friend Jason Vest, who writes about national security for The Nation and the Village Voice, urges Chatterbox not to forget that National Security Council staff aide Robert Joseph would be a logical person to have worked closely with Libby on this. Judging from the questions at today's White House press briefing, Joseph is the White House press corps' No. 1 suspect. (Weirdly, Libby's name never came up.) It's previously been reported that Joseph had a role in the negotiations between the White House and the CIA over putting yellowcake into the speech. Note this snippet by David Sanger and James Risen, from the July 12 New York Times:

Before the speech, the crucial conversations between the C.I.A. and White House over whether to include the African reference in the State of the Union address were held between Robert G. Joseph, a nuclear proliferation expert at the National Security Council, and Alan Foley, a proliferation expert at the C.I.A., according to government officials.

There is still a dispute over what exactly was said in their conversations. Mr. Foley was said to recall that before the speech, Mr. Joseph called him to ask about putting into the speech a reference to reports that Iraq was trying to buy hundreds of tons of yellowcake from Niger. Mr. Foley replied that the C.I.A. was not sure that the information was right.

Mr. Joseph then came back to Mr. Foley and pointed out that the British had already included the information in a report. Mr. Foley said yes, but noted that the C.I.A. had told the British that they were not sure that the information was correct. Mr. Joseph then asked whether it was accurate that the British reported the information. Mr. Foley said yes.

Other government officials said, however, that Mr. Joseph did not recall Mr. Foley's raising any concerns about the reliability of the information. If he had, they said, Mr. Joseph would have made sure that the reference was not included in the speech.

Conceivably, Joseph would have been acting on his own (assuming Foley's version is the correct one). But knowing how fully engaged Libby was in collecting and assessing Iraq intelligence, Chatterbox has a hard time imagining Libby would have stayed away. Remember: Nobody had an inkling at the time that this would cause any controversy. So Chatterbox is going to guess that Scooter is PB.

LOTS MORE: http://slate.msn.com/id/2085803/
=====================

Scooter Libby -- White House
Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the Vice President

Most recently, Scooter Libby was Managing Partner of the Washington office of the international law firm of Dechert, Price & Rhoads. He also served as the Legal Advisor to the House of Representatives' Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, commonly known as the "Cox Committee." Scooter has held a variety of positions at the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Defense. His previous government position was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Scooter is a graduate of Yale University and received his J.D. from Columbia.

Contact: 202-456-9000
http://www.results.gov/leadership/bios/libbys.html 

Fineman: A CIA-White House War
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/10-05-03/discussion.cgi.47.html

Howard Fineman has a piece posted at MSNBC offering his take on what is really at the root of the Valerie Plame scandal, and why the issues involved are more than just whether or not a law was broken. He offers a good history of both Wilson's involvement in the first Iraq war, explaining why some in the White House probably weren't happy with the CIA choosing to sent him to Niger in the first place, as well as a history of the relationship between the Bushes and George Tenet. He also provides this bit of insight into the scandal:
Bush presumably trusted Tenet and the CIA to get the goods on Saddam and his WMD. Cheney's staff evidently did too. But why did Tenet send Wilson to Africa? Maybe he just thought he was sending the most qualified guy. But the neo-cons and their allies came to see it as a conspiracy to ignore the truth - especially after Wilson, last July, went public with the essence of his findings, which was that the yellowcake rumors were false.

The moment that piece hit the op-ed page of the New York Times, it was all-out war between the pro- and anti-war factions, and between the CIA and its critics. I am told by what I regard as a very reliable source inside the White House that aides there did, in fact, try to peddle the identity of Joe Wilson's wife to several reporters. But the motive wasn't revenge or intimidation so much as a desire to explain why, in their view, Wilson wasn't a neutral investigator, but, a member of the CIA's leave-Saddam-in-place team. [Emphasis mine, except for the underscore on "did", which Fineman emphasised in his piece]It's a bit of an interesting theory as to why the Plame leak was engineered - I'm not sure what I think of it, but I can certainly see it as plausible. I'm still more of the mind that it was done as a means of intimidating anyone in the CIA who might think of leaking information that might be embarrassing to the President - a kind of "we burned her and we'll burn you too", but I can see that pointing out that Wilson has a reason to side with the CIA could also be a factor.

Of course, the most interesting aspect of the article is Fineman's assertion that he, too, has been told that the White House did want to burn Plame. It'll certainly be interesting when some of the names of who did the leaking - and maybe also who's giving information to the press confirming parts of the story - come out.
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