Re: The Return of the Neocons

webrand — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:45:53 -0000

Mr. Feith's book is summarized by him in the Hugh Hewitt show, 60 Minutes, the Daily Show with John Stewart, NPR Morning Edition, PBS Tavis Smiley, This Week in Defense, CSIS Event, and in five videos presented by National Review Online. You can see these summaries and get the gist of his case at http://waranddecision.com He claims the reason the US went to war was this: "What the jihadist threat represents, and what 9/11 drove home, is that people who could just bypass our military can come in, in relatively small numbers, and do something as absolutely mind-boggling as destroy the World Trade Center towers, both of them, knock them down, destroy the west side of the Pentagon. And what we were concerned about in the days right after 9/11 is what are the other follow-on attacks that might occur? And what would be the effect on American society if there had been a series of them? It doesn

Re: The Return of the Neocons

webrand — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:39:49 -0000

Risen did a poor job of summarising Feith's narrative. According to Feith, his key goal, accepted by Rumsfeld and President Bush, was to have a very short occupation -- to turn over governance to the Iraqis in two or three weeks after the fall of Baghdad. The purpose was to avoid an insurgency or at least to weaken it. This policy had been a success in Afghanistan when there was quickly a plan to have a "loya jurga", a tribal gathering to decide on a new government. It wasn't long before Hamid Karzai, an "external", was installed by the Iraqi tribal governments.

Feith had designed an interim government arrangement in which some "externals" such as Chalabi and others Iraqis who had been outside Iraq, along with "internals", would take over governance just long enough to organize a vote for a government that would arrange for an election and the resulting government would write a constitution.

Armitage (State) and Tenet (CIA) did not like Chalabi nor did Bremer who replace Jay Garner. They claimed he would never be acceptable to the internal Iraqis. (At one time Chalabi had accused the CIA of incompetence). According to Feith, Armitage, Tenet and Bremer took actions so as to avoid the interim plan for some 14 months which exacerbated the insurgency. Finally Bush told Bremer he would have to leave and shortened the process, otherwise the Americans might still be sovereign today and the insurgency still flourishing.

It appears that Armitage, Tenet, and Bremer were wrong as the Iraqis have elected Chalabi and several other "externals" to full time positions in the Iraqi government. Feith strongly believes that the failure to adopt his interim Iraqi government plan was the cause of that insurgency or at least strengthened it appreciably.

This is what I got from Feith's book. He claims this history is derived from contemporaneous notes and memoranda. I have not, as yet, checked them.

Two other points Feith raised were quite interesting. He denied the purpose of the Iraq invasion was to introduce democracy into the Middle East although he thought that was an ancillary benefit but would not have, by itself, justified the invasion. Nor was the invasion for the purpose of revenge against al Qaeda. He claimed it was to avoid further attacks such as had occurred on 9/11. These were not necessarily attacks by al-Qaeda. There was and still is a global network of many terrorist organizations other than al Qaeda and he was concerned that a state terrorist such as Iran, North Korea or Iraq could provide WMD to one or more of these groups. Why Iraq? Feith explains that they had tried diplomacy on Iraq and it hadn't work. They had yet to fully explore diplomacy with Iran and North Korea. Although no stockpiles of WMD were found, the inspectors showed that Iraq still maintained resources from which WMD could be manufactured in a very short time frame.

Finally, one more interesting point was the discussion over the interaction between Defense and CIA on whether there were meaningful contacts between Iraq and terrorist groups. One of Feith's researchers found that CIA was systematically devaluating many contacts between Iraq and terrorist groups because of its analysts preconceptions that a secular government such as that of Saddam Hussein would never collaborate with a religious extremist group -- even against a common enemy. Defense's people thought that each contact should be evaluated on its own merits and not be watered down or filtered out because of the CIA's preconceptions. According to Feith, this was a matter of professionalism rather than a question of the administration trying to pressure the CIA to change its views as was leaked to the press by CIA. I have not yet checked the contemporaneous notes and memoranda on this point either.

Re: The Return of the Neocons

webrand — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:05:19 -0000

Risen was closer to Feith's Narrative in his story for the New York Times.

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