UNITED STATES NEWS DIGEST
LaRouche's Campaign Makes 'Chickenhawks' the Achilles Heel of War Party
Reflecting the geometry created throughout the United States by the Lyndon LaRouche's 2004 Democratic Presidential campaign on the "Chickenhawks," the Nov. 4 cover of The Nation magazine is a drawing, portraying seven gawking, dumb birds roosting at the top of a tree, each of whose faces bears a likeness to a well-known political figure who is pushing war against Iraq. The title simply proclaims: Chickenhawks. The seven birds are: Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott; President George W. Bush; Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Senator Joe Lieberman; House Majority Whip Tom DeLay; Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh; and Weekly Standard editor William Kristol.
The Nation's story is only one of several major pieces in the Establishment U.S. media, going after the war party which is writing the "preemptive war" script for Bush, and is sweeping him into that. USA Today of Oct. 24 ran an op-ed by James Bamford, author of several books on U.S. intelligence, who exposed that the Bush Administration is pressuring the CIA to "cook" its intelligence and "find a casus belli ... whether one exists or not." Even the war-mongering Wall Street Journal on Oct. 23 reported that while George W. "repeats it regularly," there is "no hard evidence" connecting Iraq to al-Qaeda or other terrorism against the United States.
In October 2001, EIR's groundbreaking article, "The Wolfowitz Cabal Is an 'Enemy Within,' " exposed the operatives in the Bush Administration, who had been linked in 1985 to the investigation of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, as being behind the lying campaign to blame the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as the anthrax attacks, on Saddam Hussein. Since then, dozens of exposés have appeared identifying the smallbut powerfulcircle of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith as a Likud nest in the Pentagon. Since then, hundreds of articles in major journals in the United Kingdom, Russia, Israel, and the Arab world, have followed up on EIR's dossier, exposing the Chickenhawks as an international danger.
Copies of Lyndon LaRouche's strategic campaign leaflets can be found on http://www.larouchein2004.com.
'Chickenhawk Intelligence Agency' Exposed
On Oct. 24, the New York Times revealed that the "Wolfowitz cabal" has been running its own intelligence agency in the bowels of the Pentagon. The exposé prompted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to issue his usual angry denial about splits in the Bush Administration.
Several major exposés appeared this week:
*New York Times Oct. 24: The Times quotes unnamed officials of the Bush Administration to the effect that, in fact, the Wolfowitz cabal is trying to invent intelligence it does not have about Iraqi links to al-Qaeda. Says the Times, "Top civilian policy makers are intent on politicizing intelligence to fit their hawkish views on Iraq." Quoting a Defense Department official, the Times adds: "Wolfowitz and Company disbelieve any analysis that doesn't support their own preconceived conclusions. The CIA is enemy territory as far as they are concerned."
*Columnist Georgie Anne Geyer: Her syndicated column in the Washington Times Oct. 26 asks, "Might the U.S. Military Revolt?" She comments that there are voices in London and Washington filled with the "thrill" of war, but they want to send other 20-year-olds to do the fighting. As to the Chickenhawks of the "war party" around Rumsfeld and Cheney, she describes them as "former Cold Warriors, avid supporters of Likud, and ... abysmally uninformed on the Middle East." Likewise, in Congress, not one of the 435 members of the House has a son or daughter in the enlisted ranks.
*Washington Post Oct. 22/24: Post opinion writer Richard Cohen assailed Bush and his team for making up information to get a war on Iraq. They "have exaggerated the Iraqi threat, creating links and evidence where they do not exist." Bush is not "punctilious about the truth," when he says that Iraq could use unmanned aircraft to attack the U.S., or that Iraq could develop nuclear weapons within six months, Cohen asserts. A front-page Washington Post article by Dana Millbank Oct. 22, called "President Enhances His Facts," noted that many of Bush's recent statements on Iraq have been "dubious, if not wrong," and noted that "a President who won election underscoring Al Gore's knack for distortions and exaggerations has been guilty ... himself."
U.S. Formally Introduces Iraq Resolution, To Block France and Russia
On Oct. 25, in a move designed to preempt, or at least delay, any debate on the proposed French and Russian language on a new resolution concerning Iraq, the U.S. formally introduced its own Iraq resolution in the Security Council. Under the parliamentary rules of the Council, the U.S. resolution has to be debated first, even though the French and Russian resolutions were subsequently introduced, putting three texts into the hands of the UNSC member-nations. Diplomats expect that a vote will take place by Nov. 1.
After his meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin, President Bush said, "Let me put it bluntly; there must be consequences" for Iraq. In a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan circulated on Oct. 25, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri accused the U.S. of delaying the arrival of the weapons inspectors and fomenting war.
One day earlier, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov warned that putting the U.S. resolution to a quick vote would be "counterproductive," saying that the latest draft contains provisions which are "impossible to implement" and which could thwart the work of UN weapons inspectors. "Russia is also concerned about some provisions in the revised draft which, albeit camouflaged, could be used to justify the use of force against Iraq," Fedotov said.
Coiner of 'Axis of Evil' Phrase: U.S. Is Launching 'Revolutionary' Process in Mideast
In an Oct. 25 Daily Telegraph article titled, "The Truth: America Is Indeed Subverting the Middle East," David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter who coined the "axis of evil" formulation in President Bush's 2002 State of the Union message, boasts that the U.S. is launching a "revolutionary" process in the Mideast, which will overthrow the Saudi ruling family and the "Mubarak clan" in Egypt.
Frum, who left the White House soon after the Bush State of the Union, is now at the American Enterprise Institute, and is currently in Britain.
He warns Britons who object to the current trends in U.S. foreign policy, that "since Sept. 11, America has ceased to be a 'status quo' power in the Middle East, and has become, or anyway is becoming, a revolutionary one.... The Middle East is now a region of overpopulation and underemployment, where tens of millions of young men waste their lives in economic and sexual frustration." They direct their rage at the West, at the U.S., at Israel. This "old order" has become "unsustainable."
Frum writes that "the Americans every day take ... actions that subvert and undermine the old order in the Middle East.... And most subversive of all is the looming war with Iraq.... Democratization and liberalization mean doom, not only for the rulers of the moderate statesthe Saudi royal family, the Mubarak clan, and so onbut also for a much broader swath of the elite...."
Zinni Calls for Permanent Quartet Intervention into Israel-Palestine Crisis
General Anthony Zinni, in a recent speech at Virginia Military Institute, called for permanent intervention by the Quartet (the U.S., the European Union, Russia, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan) into the Israel-Palestine crisis. Zinni (USMC-ret.), the former commander of the Central Command, not only denounced the idea of a war on Iraq, but said the Iraq situation was only the fourth or fifth priority for U.S. policymakers dealing with the volatile Middle East. The number one priority, he said, was the Israel-Palestine situation.
In regard to that, he offered a detailed proposal involving a permanent intervention on the ground in the region by the Quartet, saying a permanent team of diplomats should be stationed there, working fulltime on reviving the peace process. Zinni offered that it would take a full year of non-stop activity, with the full weight of the Quartet, to get the situation back to where it was at the time of the Taba talks, during the Clinton Presidency.
Zinni also said that he considered the Iran situation the second regional priority, one in which he saw bright prospects for real reform, if the West threw its backing behind Khatami and the reformers, and sought ways to normalize relations.
Perle on Warpath Against Saddam Hussein Since 1987
So says an Oct. 15 article in the Los Angeles Times, which goes on to explain that in 1987, Perle "criticized the U.S. government for tilting toward Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War, arguing that Hussein was more of a threat than the ayatollahs."
The LAT article notes that, while a student at Hollywood High School, young Perle became friends with Rand Corp. analyst Albert Wohlstetter's daughter, and that later, Wohlstetter brought Perle to Washington. In Washington, Perle became part of the brain trust of Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-Wash), along with Paul Wolfowitz, Frank Gaffney, and Charles Horner (now a retired general at the Hudson Institute, and a member of Perle's Defense Advisory Board).
According to the 1991 book The Death Lobby, by Kenneth Timmerman, Perle's obsession with Iraq goes back farther, at least to 1984, when he was furiously protesting West Germany's sales of high-technology civilian equipment to Iraq, and trying to block similar U.S. sales and Commerce Department export licenses. At that time, Perle was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, and working under him were Steven Bryen (who had been caught slipping classified documents to Israel in 1978), plus Frank Gaffney and Doug Feith.
In 1985-86, State Department officials responsible for the Middle East singled out Perle and Bryen for their obstructionist behavior in trying to block export licenses. Among purchases being blocked by Perle and Bryen were computers for Iraq's oil industry, and machine tools for its steel industry. "They are not interested in the Gulf, except when it comes to technology transfer," said one State Department official. "They are dead set against the sale of perfectly ordinary computers to Iraq."
CIA Expanding Its Domestic Operations
The Central Intelligence Agency will post officers in almost all of the FBI's 56 terrorism task forces around the country, according to a Washington Post article. CIA officers, however, are not supposed to take part in operations or make arrests. FBI Director Robert Mueller described the new arrangement as similar to MI-5 in Britain. "It goes some distance to accomplishing what the MI-5 does," Mueller said. The CIA is also increasing the number of case officers in its domestic National Resources Divisionrecruiting foreigners, debriefing U.S. citizens who have been abroad, and so on, which it has done for many years.
"We are stepping into an area that is fraught with peril," said Fred Hitz, former CIA general counsel.
Former Times Editor Demands Preemption, Blasts France and Germany
Although the New York Times editorial policy at present opposes war on Iraq, former New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal, writing an op-ed column in the Oct. 21 Washington Times, invoked former Secretary of State George Shultz to urge preemption, and blasted Germany and France for opposing the U.S. over war on Iraq.
Rosenthal started his column: "Preemption," said George Shultz. "You can't negotiate with the terrorists. You've got to put them down. People are shocked by that word. Get used to it." Rosenthal reports that Shultz said this at a recent unnamed meeting in New York, and then defines the first task as being to "wipe out the greatest danger existingSaddam-directed world terrorism." Then, to give preemption some heft, Rosenthal takes on the European allies: "France and Germany insult and desert the U.S., but they are already in the garbage pail of international respect." For good measure, he throws in the UN, "mostly a collection of sycophants, liars, double-crossers."
Jeb Bush Could Lose Florida Gubernatorial Election
Running for reelection as Governor of Florida, Presidential brother Jeb Bush is in an extraordinarily tight race. In addition to his problems from a running scandal over mismanagement in the state's child welfare agency, Gov. Bush seems really to have put his foot in it by opposing the passage of Amendment 9, a ballot initiative that would create mandatory caps on class sizes in the state's public school system. Florida schools are notoriously overcrowded, and Bush is balking at spending more money on educationa very unpopular stance, and one opposite from that of his Democratic gubernatorial rival, Bill McBride. Democratic National Committee chairman and moneyman Terry McAuliffe recently identified the Jeb Bush Florida race as "the most important" election in America for the Democrats, operating from the presupposition that a defeat for Jeb in November, would be a major blow to George W's reelection hopes.
Washington Post Endorses All Republicans in Virginia Races
In its "For Congress in Virginia" editorial on Oct. 19, the Washington Post uncharacteristically endorsed all Republicans. Starting off with the Senate, the Post writes:
"Once again, Republican Sen. John W. Warner has a near-clear path to re-election; the Democrats' failure to field an official party choice leaves him with two opponents: Nancy Spannaus, whose allegiance to Lyndon LaRouche ought to be enough to ensure her defeat, and relatively unknown independent Jacob G. Hornberger. When it comes to representing Virginia's interests in Washington, especially the military and defense constituencies, Senator Warner's influence has been a great asset; so too his efforts for this region."
The editorial mainly attacks Northern Virginia Democratic Congressman James Moran, whose Republican opponent they endorse. They also endorse Frank Wolf against the Democrat John Stevens.
The fact that the Post does not expose Hornberger as the pro-drug Libertarian wacko he is, would indicate that the paper hopes he will get (by fair means or foul), the anti-Warner vote, pulling it away from Spannaus, who is far better-known in the state.
Supreme Court Refuses To Consider Whether It's Constitutional To Execute Minors
The U.S. Supreme Court, which recently abolished the death penalty for the mentally retarded, has voted 5-4 against taking up the question of whether executing killers under age 18or those whose crimes were committed when they were under 18violates Article VIII of the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting "cruel and unusual punishment."
In writing for the dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens, unfortunately, relied on the concept of "evolving standards of decency," rather than on natural law, which is the underpinning of the Constitution. "The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society," Stevens wrote, adding, "We should put an end to this shameful practice." Stevens was joined by Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginzburg, and Steven Bryer.
On the other side, were the familiar fascist faces: Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justices Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O'Connor, Arthur Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas.
Meanwhile, in Illinois, outgoing Gov. George Ryan (R), has convened nine days of hearings to review 139 cases of Death Row inmates. Ryan, who chaired President Bush's Illinois campaign in 2000, underwent a Damascus Road conversion on the issue of the death penalty, after DNA evidence exonerated 13 Death Row inmates in Illinois two years ago. "This is a major event," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center of Ryan's initiative. "If this results in most or all of the cases being overturned, it says there's a serious problem in a large Midwestern state, and other states may decide if they need to take a serious look at the 3,000 or so other people on death row."
At the same time, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Oct. 21 was to address the constitutionality of the death penalty. Arguments were to be heard in the case of United States v. Quinones, an appeal by the U.S. Attorney of a lower court ruling by Federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff, who declared the Federal death penalty unconstitutional on July 1 of this year. In his ruling, Judge Rakoff stated that it is "fully foreseeable that in enforcing the death penalty, a meaningful number of innocent people will be executed who otherwise would eventually be able to prove their innocence."
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