“And then we sat down with [Barack Obama] to talk about what has become an open disagreement between military commanders here and Obama, over his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq on a 16-month timetable.” — Terry Moran

Transcript . Barack Obama ABC Interview . July 21, 2008

ABC’s Terry Moran: “And then we sat down with [Barack Obama] to talk about what has become an open disagreement between military commanders here and Obama, over his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq on a 16-month timetable. Did General Petraeus talk about military concerns about your timetable?”

Barack Obama: “You know, I would characterize the concerns differently. I don’t think that they’re deep concerns about the notion of a pullout per se. There are deep concerns about, from their perspective, a timetable that doesn’t take into account what they anticipate might be some sort of changing conditions. And this is what I mean when I say we play different roles. My job is to think about the national security interests as a whole, and to have to weigh and balance risks, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. Their job is just to get the job done here. And I completely understand that.”

Moran: “But the difference is real. Commanders here want withdrawals to be based on conditions on the ground. Obama emphasizes his timetable, but he insists he would remain flexible. I’m going to try to pin you down on this.” (continued below)

Obama: “Here let me say this, though, Terry, because, you know, what I will refuse to do, and I think that, you know ”

Moran: “How do you know what I’m going to ask?”

Obama: “Well, then if I don’t get it right, then you can ask it again.”

Moran: “All right.”

Obama: “Is to get boxed in into what I consider two false choices, which is either I have a rigid timeline of such and such a date, come hell or high water, we’ve gotten our combat troops out, and I am blind to anything that happens in the intervening six months or 16 months. Or, alternatively, I am completely deferring to whatever the commanders on the ground says, which is what George Bush says he’s doing, in which case I’m not doing my job as commander-in-chief.”

May 19, 2008

Dear Admiral Fallon:

I have not been able to find out how to reach you directly, so I have drafted this letter in the hope it will come to your attention.

First, thank you for honoring the oath we commissioned officers take to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic.  As you are doubtless aware, that oath has no expiration date; it remains on active duty, so to speak.

You have let it be known that, even though you are now retired, you do not intend to speak, on or off the record, about the looming war with Iran.

You are acutely aware of the dangers of attacking Iran, but seem to be allowing an inbred reluctance to challenge your erstwhile commander in chief to trump that oath, and to prevent you from letting the American people know of the catastrophe about to befall us if, as seems likely, our country attacks Iran.

Two years ago I lectured at the Naval Academy in Annapolis.  I found it highly disturbing that, when asked about the oath they took upon entering the academy, several of the “Mids” thought it was to the commander in chief.  This brought to my mind the photos of German generals and admirals (as well as top church leaders and jurists) swearing personal oaths to Hitler.  Not our tradition, and yet…..

I was aghast that only the third Mid I called on got it right—that the oath is to protect and defend the Constitution, not the president.

Attack Iran: Trash the Constitution

No doubt you are very clear that an attack on Iran would be a flagrant violation of the Constitution of the United States, which stipulates that treaties ratified by the Senate become the supreme law of the land; that the United Nations Charter treaty—which the Senate ratified by a vote of 89 to 2 on July 28, 1945—expressly forbids attacks on other countries, unless they pose an imminent danger; that there is no provision allowing some other kind of “pre-emptive” or “preventive” attack against a nation that poses no imminent danger; and that Iran poses no imminent danger to the United States or its allies.

You may be forgiven for thinking: Isn’t 41 years of service enough; isn’t it enough that I resigned in order to remove myself from a chain of command with no conscience or respect for national or international law—that I shuddered at the thought of being charged in some earthly or heavenly court as a war criminal, if I “just followed orders” and helped start an unprovoked war on Iran?  Isn’t making my misgivings known to journalists last year, realizing fully that this could be a career-ender—isn’t all that enough?

With respect, sir, no, that’s not enough.  The stakes here are extremely high, and together with the integrity you have already shown goes still further responsibility.  Sadly, the vast majority of your general officer colleagues have, for whatever reason, ducked that responsibility.  You are pretty much it.

In their lust for attacking Iran, administration officials will do their best to marginalize you, but you do not strike me as one likely to be deterred by that.  And, prominent a person that you are, the corporate media surely will try to do the same, if you exposed the lies given as justification for attacking Iran.

Indeed, there are clear signs the media have been given their marching orders to support an attack on Iran—to include pre-censorship of factual stories exposing administration hyperbole and fecklessness, as the White House and the Pentagon paint a dubious portrait of the dangers posed by Iran.

Preparing a Captive Audience for War…

At the CIA I used to analyze the Soviet press, so you will understand when I refer to the Washington Post and the New York Times as the White House’s Pravda and Izvestiya.  Sadly, these days it is as easy as during the days of the controlled Soviet press to follow our own government’s evolving line with a daily reading of our own controlled press.

In a word, our newspapers are dutifully revving up for war on Iran, and are even trotting out some of the most widely discredited cheerleaders for war on Iraq—the New York Times’ Michael Gordon of aluminum tubes fame, for example, who is again parroting what he gets from administration officials and casting it as news.

In some respects the manipulation and suppression of information in the present lead-up to an attack on Iran is even more flagrant and all encompassing than in early 2003 before the invasion of Iraq.

It seems entirely possible that you are unaware of a recent misadventure that speaks volumes about this—unaware precisely because the media have put the wraps on it.  So let me adduce one striking example of what is afoot here.  The example has to do with the studied, if disingenuous, effort over recent months to blame all the troubles in southern Iraq on the “malignant” influence of Iran.

Sadly, some of your erstwhile colleagues are among the dramatis personae.

…But Covering Up Fiasco

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen told reporters on April 25 that Gen. David Petraeus would be giving a briefing “in the next couple of weeks” that would provide detailed evidence of “just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability.”  Petraeus’ staff alerted U.S. media to a major news event in which captured Iranian arms in Karbala would be displayed and then destroyed.

Small problem.  When American munitions experts went to Karbala to inspect the alleged cache of Iranian weapons they found nothing that could be linked credibly to Iran.

News to you?  That’s because this potentially embarrassing episode went virtually unreported in the media—like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no corporate media to hear it crash.  So Mullen and Petraeus live, uninhibited and unembarrassed, to keep searching for Iranian weapons so the media can then tell a story more supportive of the orders they have been given to find ways to blame Iran for the troubles in Iraq.  Luckily for them, a fiasco is only a fiasco if folks know about it.

Media suppression of this misadventure is the most significant aspect of this story, in my view, and a telling indicator of how difficult it is to find honest reporting on these key issues.

Meanwhile, the Iraqis announced that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had formed his own Cabinet committee to investigate U.S. claims about Iranian weapons, and to attempt to “find tangible information and not information based on speculation.”

Dissing the Intelligence Estimate

Top officials from the president on down have been dismissing the key judgment of the National Intelligence Estimate released on December 3, 2007, a judgment concurred in by the 16 intelligence units of our government, that Iran had stopped the weapons-related part of its nuclear program in mid-2003.

Always willing to do his part, the malleable CIA chief, Michael Hayden, on April 30 publicly offered his “personal opinion” that Iran is building a nuclear weapon—the National Intelligence Estimate notwithstanding.  For good measure, Hayden added:

“It is my opinion, it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to the highest level of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq….Just make sure there’s clarity on that.”

Voicing his various “opinions,” Hayden is beginning to sound like the overly clever lawyers who advised him, orally, that it would be just fine to order NSA to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and like the other attorneys who approved water boarding.

And, please; tell me why we should care about Hayden’s “personal opinion?”  My neighbor Suzie, who gets her news from FOX, keeps voicing her “personal opinion” that all Muslims want to kill Americans, that generals with blue uniforms are the most trustworthy, and that weapons of mass destruction will still be found in Iraq.

But, seriously, I don’t need to tell you about the Haydens and the other smartly saluting, desk-riding headquarters generals here in Washington.

The Price of Silence

What I would suggest is that you have a serious conversation with a real general, Gen. Anthony Zinni, one of your predecessor CENTOM commanders (1997 to 2000).  As you know probably better than I, this Marine general is an officer of unusual integrity.  Nevertheless, when placed into circumstances very similar to those you now face, he could not find his voice.  And so he missed his chance to interrupt—or at least slow down—the juggernaut to war in Iraq.  You might ask him how he feels about that now, and what he would advise in current circumstances.

Zinni happened to be one of the honorees at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention on August 26,2002, at which Vice President Dick Cheney delivered the exceedingly alarmist speech, unsupported by our best intelligence, about the nuclear threat and other perils awaiting us at the hands of Saddam Hussein.  That speech not only launched the seven-month public campaign against Iraq leading up to the war, but set the terms of reference for the Oct. 1, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate fabricated—yes, fabricated—to convince Congress to approve war on Iraq, which it did ten days later.

Gen. Zinni later shared publicly that, as he listened to Cheney, he was shocked to hear a depiction of intelligence that did not square with what he knew.  Although Zinni had retired two years earlier, his role as consultant had required him to stay up to date on intelligence relating to the Middle East.  One Sunday morning three and a half years after Cheney’s speech, Zinni told Meet the Press. “There was no solid proof that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction…I heard a case being made to go to war.”

Zinni had as good a chance as anyone to stop an unnecessary war—not a “pre-emptive war,” since there was nothing to pre-empt—and Zinni knew it.  What he and other knowledgeable officials could—and should—have tried to block was a war of aggression, defined at the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal as the “supreme international crime.”

Sure, Zinni would have had to stick his neck out.  He may have had to speak out alone, since most senior officials, like then-CIA Director George Tenet, lacked courage and integrity.  In his memoir published a year ago, Tenet writes that Cheney did not follow the usual practice of clearing his August 26, 2002 speech with the CIA; that much of what Cheney said took him completely by surprise; and that Tenet “had the impression that the president wasn’t any more aware of what his number-two was going to say to the VFW until he said it.”

It is difficult to believe that Cheney’s shameless speech took “slam-dunk” Tenet completely by surprise.  We know from the Downing Street Minutes, vouched for by the UK as authentic, that Tenet told his British counterpart on July 20, 2002 that the president had decided to make war on Iraq for regime change and that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”

Encore: Iran

Admiral Fallon, you know this to be the case also now with respect to the “intelligence” being fixed to “justify” war with Iran.  And no one knows better than you that your departure from the chain of command has turned it over completely to smartly saluting martinets.  No doubt you have long since taken the measure, for example, of Defense Secretary Robert Gates.  So have I.

I was his branch chief when he was a young, disruptively ambitious, CIA analyst.  When Ronald Reagan’s CIA Director William Casey sought someone to shape CIA analysis to accord with his own conviction that the Soviet Union would never change, Gates leaped at the chance, proved his mettle, and bubbled right up to be chief of analysis.  After Casey died, Gates admitted to the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus that he (Gates) watched Casey on “issue after issue sit in meetings and present intelligence framed in terms of the policy he wanted pursued.”  Gates’ entire career showed that he learned well at Casey’s knee.

So it should come as no surprise that, despite the unanimous judgment of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran stopped the weapons-related aspects of its nuclear program in mid-2003, Gates is now repeating the party line that Iran is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.  Some of his earlier statements were more ambiguous, but Gates recently took advantage of the opportunity to bend with the prevailing winds and freshen his own loyalty oath—to the president.

In an interview on events in the Middle East with a New York Times reporter on April 11, Gates was asked whether he was on the same page as the president, Gates replied, “Same line, same word.”  I imagine you are no more surprised at that than I.  Bottom line:  Gates will salute smartly and transmit the order, legal or illegal, if Cheney persuades the president to let the Air Force and Navy loose on Iran.

You know the probable consequences; you need to let the rest of the American people know.

A Gutsy Precedent

Can you, Admiral Fallon, be completely alone; can it be that you are the only general officer to resign on principle?  And, of equal importance, is there no other general officer, active or retired, who has taken the risk of speaking out in an attempt to inform Americans about President George W. Bush’s bellicose fixation with Iran.  Thankfully, there is.

Gen. Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, took the prestigious job of Chairman, President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board when asked by the younger Bush.  From that catbird seat, Scowcroft could watch the unfolding of U.S. policy in the Middle East.  Over decades dealing with the press, Scowcroft had honed a reputation of quintessential discretion.  Thus, it was all the more striking when he did what he decided he had to do to warn Americans about what may be the president’s most dangerous fixation.

In an interview with London’s Financial Times in mid-October 2004 Scowcroft was harshly critical of the president, charging that Bush had been “mesmerized” by then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.  “Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger,” Scowcroft said.  “He has been nothing but trouble.”

Needless to say, Scowcroft was given his walking papers and told never to darken the White House doorstep again.  His very troubling observations have been largely shunned in the media, and banned from polite conversation here in Washington, although the insight they provide is worth a thousand erudite op-eds.  Testifying before Congress on June 16, 2005, I alluded to Scowcroft’s comments, and was widely pilloried in the media the next day for being, you guessed it, “anti-Semitic.”

A Bush Commitment?

There is ample evidence that Sharon’s successors believe they have extracted a commitment from President Bush to “take care of Iran” before he leaves office, and that the president has done nothing to disabuse them of that notion—no matter the consequences.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum at Sharm el Sheikh on Sunday, Bush threw in a gratuitous reference to “Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.”

“To allow the world’s leading sponsor of terror to gain the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations.  For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

Pre-briefing the press, Bush’s national security adviser Stephen Hadley identified Iran as one of the dominant themes of the trip, adding repeatedly what seemed to be the PR formula of the day; namely, that Iran “is very much behind” all the woes afflicting the Middle East, from Lebanon to Gaza to Iraq, even to Afghanistan.

The Rhetoric is Ripening

In the coming weeks, at least until U.S. forces can find some real Iranian weapons in Iraq, the rhetoric is likely to focus on what I call the Big Lie—the claim that Iran’s president has threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.”  In his controversial speech in 2005, Ahmadinejad was actually quoting from something Ayatollah Khomeini had said in the early eighties.  Khomeini was expressing a hope that a regime that was treating the Palestinians so unjustly would be replaced by a more equitable one.

A distinction without a difference?  I think not.  Words matter.  As you may already know (but most Americans don’t), the literal translation from Farsi of what Ahmadinejad said is “The regime occupying Jerusalem much vanish from the pages of time.”  Contrary to what the administration and corporate media would have us all believe, the Iranian president was not threatening to nuke Israel, push it into the sea, or wipe it off the map—or, as is so often heard, “destroy” it.

President Bush is way out in front on this issue, and this comes through with particular clarity when he ad-libs answers to questions.  On October 17, 2007, long after he had been briefed on the key intelligence finding that Iran had stopped the nuclear weapons-related part of its nuclear development program, the president spoke as though, well,  “mesmerized.”  He said:

“But this—we got a leader in Iran who has announced he wants to destroy Israel.  So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems you ought to be interested in preventing them from have (sic) the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.  I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.”

Some contend that Bush does not really believe his rhetoric.  I rather think he does, for the Israelis seem to have his good ear, with the tin one aimed at the U.S. intelligence he has repeatedly disparaged.  But, frankly, which would be worse: that Bush believes Iran to be an existential threat to Israel and thus requires U.S. military action?—or that he knows it’s just rhetoric to “justify” U.S. action to “take care of” Iran for Israel?

What You Can Do

Admiral Fallon, you can surely speak authoritatively about what is likely to happen—to U.S. forces in Iraq, for example—if Bush orders your successors to begin bombing and missile attacks on Iran.  I imagine you have spent more than one sleepless night sorting through the full array of Iranian options for serious retaliation.

And you could readily update Scowcroft’s remarks, by drawing on what you observed of the Keystone Cops efforts of White House ideologues like Iran-Contra convict Elliot Abrams, supported by amateurish covert action operatives and Israeli intelligence, to overturn by force the ascendancy of Hamas in 2006-07 and Hezbollah.  (Abrams pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of misleading Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, but was pardoned by the first President Bush on Dec. 24, 1992.)

Clearly, it is the arch-neoconservative Abrams, aided, instructed, and abetted by the vice president, who is running U.S. policy toward the Middle East.  And it is just as clear that the status of the secretary state has been reduced simply to “frequent flyer.”

It is easy to understand why no professional military officer would wish to be in the position of taking orders originating from the likes of Abrams—not to mention the vice president.

If you weigh in, as I believe your (non-expiring) oath to protect and defend the Constitution dictates, you might conceivably prompt other sober heads and courageous hearts to speak out.  I hope you will agree that an attack on Iran can still be prevented, but it seems that this will take more outspokenness and energy than those of us who see what is coming have been able to muster so far.  And the controlled press is a huge problem.

Were you to speak out strongly at this stage, the media could not ignore you.  I cannot bring myself to believe that you, like so many on the Hill, would be cowed at the prospect of being pilloried by FOX and branded anti-Semitic.  And, who knows; perhaps some of those former subordinate officers who admire you for what you have done, will be encouraged to go and do likewise.

And, in the end, if profound ignorance and ideology—supported by a captive corporate press and abetted by political parties supine before the Israel lobby—enable an attack on Iran, and the Iranians, for example, take thousands of our troops hostage in southern Iraq, you will be able to look in the mirror, and at the rest of us, and say at least you tried.

You will not have to live with the remorse of not knowing what you might have made possible, had you been able to shake your reluctance to speak out.

Leadership does not end with retirement; neither do oaths.

Respectfully,

/s/

Ray McGovern
Steering Group
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

Ray McGovern, a veteran Army intelligence officer and then CIA analyst for 27 years, now works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.

The original version of this article appeared on Consortiumnews.com.

Hillary Clinton takes time out from the campaign trail to question the country’s top general in Iraq, at a scheduled hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee today. A senior aide tells CBS News that Clinton will “really press” Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker who are “both good men in tough jobs, defending bad policy.”

Before joining her colleagues at the committee hearing today, Sen. Hillary Clinton appeared on several morning TV programs and was asked a wide range of questions about her campaign as well as today’s hearing:

Morning Joe:

BELOW, the CNN and Fox News interviews (during which they ask her about Mark Penn, and numerous other issues unrelated to the hearing today):

CNN, with John Roberts:

Hillary on Fox News this morning:

Hope you all caught Hillary’s questioning of Ambassador Crocker and General Petreaus in the Senate hearing this morning. We plan to have video for you as soon as possible.

Events of last week offer a metaphorical glimpse at the delusion pervading President George W. Bush’s White House and other enclaves of Iraq supporters in Washington. Bush and the First Lady spent last Monday clowning with the Easter Bunny (White House counsel Fred Fielding having donned the costume).

At the American Enterprise Institute war-cheerleaders, dressed as academicians, were delivering a panegyric on how peaceful and stable the situation in Iraq had become. The “surge,” they announced had nipped a civil war in the bud.

“The civil war is over,” AEI’s Fred Kagan, co-author of the surge, declared proudly. Brookings twins Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack led the cheering section.

Meanwhile, back in the southern Iraq city of Basra and elsewhere, full-blown civil war seemed about to explode. And in Baghdad, formerly protected folks were getting killed by mortar and rocket fire in what is customarily referred to as “the highly fortified Green Zone,” which has sequestered U.S. embassy and military officials as well as those of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government.

Two American officials and two Iraqi guards of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi died in the Green Zone attacks, which are continuing.

At ABC in New York, Good Morning America’s Diane Sawyer was trying hard Thursday to understand it all. Shaking her head in disbelief after four straight days of attacks on the Green Zone, she asked how a round “can actually get inside the embassy; how fortified is that?” ABC national security correspondent Jonathan Karl let her down easy, explaining that artillery fire can actually get “over the walls…so it does happen: they do get inside the embassy compound.”

A teaching moment. Mortar and artillery fire can actually get “over the walls.” Quick. Someone tell Gen. David Petraeus.

But Don’t Bother Bush

No need to drag the president away from the Easter Bunny with such nettlesome detail. Interestingly, it was Sawyer herself who asked Bush, during an interview on Dec. 16, 2003, where he gets his news and how he reacts to criticism. The president’s answer was revealing:

“Why even put up with it when you can get the facts elsewhere? I’m a lucky man. I’ve got…it’s not just Condi and Andy [Andy Card, former chief of staff], it’s all kinds of people in my administration who are charged with different responsibilities, and they come in and say this is what’s happening, this isn’t what’s happening.”

By Thursday, someone did tell the president about Maliki’s big gamble in taking on militias loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr in the Basra area, the stiff resistance Iraqi government forces encountered, and the application of U.S. ground and air support.

And someone told the president to take the line that the outbreak of major violence was “a positive moment,” and so that’s what he said. No matter that the upsurge in hostilities threatened to demolish the myth of a “successful surge.” The White House spin machine could be counted on to take care of that. And, for good measure, the shelling of the Green Zone could be blamed on Iran. Indeed, Petraeus was quick to label the projectiles “Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets.”

Reality? We Make Our Own

It is comfortable to stay in denial, and President George W. Bush basks in it. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska saw that early on. In June 2005 he told U.S. News & World Report:

“The White House is completely disconnected from reality…it’s like they’re just making it up as they go along.”

Would that someone had summoned the courage to tell Bush of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s observations about Iraq in the National Review on Feb. 24, 2006:

“Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans…Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality…different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.”

A few months later, on June 13, 2006, Bush flew to Baghdad to size up Prime Minister Maliki. The president told American troops gathered in the “heavily fortified Green Zone” that he had come “to look Prime Minister Maliki in the eyes—to determine whether or not he is as dedicated to a free Iraq as you are. I believe he is.”

This, of course, was not the first display of the president’s propensity to draw significant impressions from eyeballing foreign leaders. Five years before, Bush had quickly taken the measure of Russia’s Vladimir Putin: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy…I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

Souls can change, I suppose. But apparently not eyeballs. Maliki’s retinal scan apparently remains valid for at least two years, judging from the president’s automatic endorsement of Maliki’s major gamble last week in the Basra area. Bush has now ordered U.S. ground and air units to support Maliki’s effort. The general objective is to root out Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army units in the area, but the campaign faces formidable obstacles and does not appear to be going well.

Doesn’t Make a Lot of Sense? So?…

In the past, Bush has let himself be convinced by Vice President Dick Cheney’s “analysis” that increased enemy attacks were signs of desperation—an indication that the enemy is in its “last throes,” if you will. And it seems clear that Cheney is still, as Col. Larry Wilkerson has put it, “whispering in Bush’s ear.”

That is scary. There were abundant signs during Cheney’s recent visit to the Middle East that, among other things, he continues to be receptive to Israeli importuning, as Israeli president Shimon Perez put it on March 23, to deal with what both referred to as “the Iranian threat” before Bush leaves office. Bush and Cheney seem to have given Israeli leaders the impression that the Bush administration has made a commitment to do precisely that.

Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser to the president’s father and who was appointed Chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board by the son, took the unusual step of going public with a startling remark in Oct. 2004 that should give us all great concern. Just before he was sacked, the usually discreet Scowcroft told the Financial Times that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had George W. Bush “mesmerized.” Eyeballing again—this time in Bush’s direction, it appears.

And Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with masterful tutoring from the psychologists in the Israeli Mossad, has shown he can duplicate the spell. Who can forget watching Olmert’s fulsome praise of George W. Bush during his recent visit to Israel and how Bush seemed to turn to putty. Aw shucks, he seemed to be saying. At least the Israelis respect me. And they are “mighty tough fellas.”

Attacking Iran

The point is that if Cheney and Olmert both whisper “attack Iran,” the president may give the order with the full expectation that—with Admiral William Fallon out of the way—a malleable secretary of defense and martinet generals and admirals left over from former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s reign will salute smartly and launch a much wider and more dangerous war in the Persian Gulf area. (After all, those rockets hitting the Green Zone are, according to Gen. Petraeus, “Iranian-provided, Iranian-made.”)

Why attack Iran? Israeli officials have not been reluctant to insist publicly that they want our impressionable president to take care of their Iran problem before he leaves office.

Last October, for example, Israeli ambassador to the US, Sallai Meridor, rang several changes on the theme of Iran’s “threat” to Israel. In warning dripping with chutzpah and unintended candor, the Israeli ambassador served notice that countering Iran’s nuclear ambitions will take a “united United States in this matter,” lest the Iranians conclude that, “come January ‘09, they have it their own way.” Meridor stressed that “very little time” remained to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, and the time frame he has in mind is clear.

Why attack Iran? Well, also, just because! Because, as Bush is fond of saying, he is commander in chief. And he considers the U.S. armed forces his plaything. And because he can. Never mind the consequences. When has anyone held George W. Bush accountable for consequences?

Worse still, Bush’s open-ended rhetorical commitment to defend Israel if attacked could spell big trouble. If Iran were to strike Israel, Bush has said, “We will defend our ally (sic), no ifs, ands, or buts.” That is great rhetoric; trouble is that it surrenders the initiative to the Israelis, who have it within their power to provoke the Iranians.

And, Please, No Jimmy Baker

Bush chafes at any thought that those he considers his father’s cronies could rein him in. Bete noire number one is the fella the president calls “Jimmy Baker.” Negotiate with Iran? Draw down troops? George W. Bush will instinctively do the opposite. If Baker says Guantanamo should be shut down (as he did, joining five other former secretaries of state last week), then keep it open.

But, most of all, enjoy the last ten months of “unitary executive” power.

That is perhaps most disturbing of all. George W. Bush is tap dancing through it all. And the worse things get, the more jocular he seems to become. Commenting on Bush’s recent manic behavior, Justin Frank, MD, author of Bush on the Couch, suggests that Bush is “acting like a kid planning to make a real mess as only he knows how—given his comfort with sadism, his lack of shame or conscience, and his propensity to take delight in breaking things.”

Trouble is that as he tap dances the next few months away, he is systematically destroying the armed forces of the United States, and there does not seem to be anyone with the courage to try to stop him.

Eight months ago, Dr. Frank and Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) collaborated on an article we called “Dangers of a Cornered Bush.” [http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/072707a.html ] The president and his imperial court now have ten more months to act out. The scenarios we explored in that memo are still worth pondering.

Let me close with a remark Seymour Hersh made last year, even though it may seem flippant and in no way conveys the enormity of the danger we face in the coming months:

“These guys are scary as hell…you can’t use the word ‘delusional,’ for it’s actually a medical term. Wacky. That’s a fair word.”

With so much destructive power at the disposal of George W. Bush, we need to be increasingly alert to signs that additional delusionary policies are about to be executed.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-year career as a CIA analyst, he worked closely with George H. W. Bush when he was C.I.A. Director and later at the White House. Ray is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

This article appeared first on Consortiumnews.com.

Except for an inside-the-beltway tidbit here and there—for example, about how the pitiable secretary of state Colin Powell had to suffer so many indignities at the hands of other type-A hard chargers, Frontline added little to the discussion. Notably missing was any allusion to the unconscionable role the Fourth Estate adopted as indiscriminate cheerleader for the home team; nor was there any mention that the invasion was a serious violation of international law. But those omissions, I suppose, should have come as no surprise.

Nor was it a surprise that any viewer hoping for insight into why Cheney and Bush were so eager to attack Iraq was left with very thin gruel. It was more infotainment, bereft of substantive discussion of the whys and wherefores of what in my view is the most disastrous foreign policy move in our nation’s history.

Despite recent acknowledgements from the likes of Alan Greenspan, Gen. John Abizaid, and others that oil and permanent (or, if you prefer, “enduring”) military bases were among the main objectives, Frontline avoided any real discussion of such delicate factors. Someone not already aware of how our media has become a tool of the Bush administration might have been shocked at how Frontline could have missed one of President George W. Bush’s most telling “signing statements.” Underneath the recent Defense Authorization Act, he wrote that he did not feel bound by the law’s explicit prohibition against using the funding:

“(1) To establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” or

“(2) To exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

So the Frontline show was largely pap.

At one point, however, the garrulous former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage did allude to one of the largest elephants in the living room—Israel’s far-right Likudniks—and their close alliance with the so-called neo-conservatives running our policy toward the Middle East. But Armitage did so only tangentially, referring to the welcome (if totally unrealistic) promise by Ahmed Chalabi that, upon being put in power in Baghdad, he would recognize Israel. Not surprisingly, the interviewer did not pick up on that comment; indeed, I’m surprised the remark avoided the cutting room floor.

Courage No Longer a Frontline Hallmark

Frontline has done no timely reportage that might be looked upon as disparaging the George W. Bush administration—I mean, for example, the real aims behind the war, not simply the gross incompetence characterizing its conduct. Like so many others, Frontline has been, let’s just say it, cowardly in real time—no doubt intimidated partly by attacks on its funding that were inspired by the White House.

And now? Well the retrospective criticism of incompetence comes as polling shows two-thirds of the country against the Iraq occupation (and the number is surely higher among PBS viewers). So, Frontline is repositioning itself as a mild ex-post-facto critic of the war, but still unwilling to go very far out on a limb. Explaining the aims behind war crimes can, of course, be risky. It is as though an invisible Joseph Goebbels holds sway.

Too Late

On Monday evening I found myself initially applauding Frontline’s matter- of-fact, who-shot-John chronology of how our country got lied into attacking and occupying Iraq. Then I got to thinking—have I not seen this picture before? Many times?

It took a Hollywood producer to recognize and act promptly on the con games that sober observers could not miss as the war progressed. Where were the celebrated “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD)? Robert Greenwald simply could not abide the president’s switch to “weapons of mass destruction programs,” which presumably might be easier to find than the much-ballyhooed WMD so heavily advertised before the attack on Iraq. You remember—those remarkable WMD about which UN chief inspector Hans Blix quipped that the U.S. had one hundred percent certainty of their existence in Iraq, but zero percent certainty as to where they were.

Robert Greenwald called me in May 2003. He had read a few of the memoranda published by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) exposing the various charades being acted out by the administration and wanted to know what we thought of the president’s new circumlocution on WMD.

I complimented him on smelling a rat and gave him names of my VIPS colleagues and other experienced folks who could fill him in on the details. Wasting no time, he arrived here in Washington in June, armed simply with copious notes and a cameraman. Greenwald conducted the interviews, flew back to his eager young crew in Hollywood and, poof, the DVD “Uncovered: The War on Iraq” was released at the beginning of November 2003.”

So Frontline is four and a half years behind a Hollywood producer with appropriate interest and skepticism. (Full disclosure: I appear in “Uncovered,” as do many of the interviewees appearing in Frontline’s “Bush’s War.”)

Actually, the interviewing by Frontline occurred just a few months later. I know because I was among those interviewed for that as well, as was my good friend and former colleague at the CIA, Mel Goodman. I was struck that Mel looked four years younger on this week’s Frontline. It only then dawned on me that he was four years younger when interviewed.

Have a look at “Uncovered,” [http://www.truthuncovered.com/index.php ] and see how you think it compares to Frontline’s “Bush’s War.”

Safety in Retrospectives

It also struck me that producing a Frontline-style retrospective going back several years is a much less risky genre to work with. Chalk it up to my perspective as an intelligence analyst, but ducking the incredibly important issues at stake over the next several months is, in my opinion, unconscionable. The troop “surge” in Iraq, for example.

Only toward the very end of the program does Frontline allow a bit of relevant candor on a point that has been self-evident since Cheney and Bush, against strong opposition from Generals Abizaid and Casey (and apparently even Rumsfeld), decided to double down by sending 30,000 more troops into Iraq. A malleable new secretary of defense would deal with the recalcitrant generals and pick a Petreaus ex Machina of equal malleability and political astuteness to implement this stop-gap plan.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist/author Steve Coll, with typical candor, put the “surge” into perspective:

“The decision at a minimum guaranteed that his [Bush’s] presidency would not end with a defeat in history’s eyes; that by committing to the surge, he was certain to at least achieve a stalemate.”

Given this week’s fresh surge of violence as the U.S. surge is scheduled to wind down, even a stalemate may be in some doubt. But, okay, small kudos to Frontline for including that bit of truth—however obvious—and for adding the grim background music to its final comment: “Soon Bush’s war will be handed to someone else.”

Rather Not, Thank You

Intimidation of the media is what has happened all around, including with Frontline, which not so many years ago was able to do some gutsy reporting. Let me give you another example about which few are aware.

Do you remember when Dan Rather made his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, admitting that the American media, including him, was failing to reveal the truth about things like Iraq? Speaking to the BBC on May 16, 2002, Rather compared the situation to the fear of “necklacing” in South Africa:

“It’s an obscene comparison,” Rather said, “but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around peoples’ necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be neck-laced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck.”

Talking to another reporter, Dan told it straight about the careerism that keeps US journalists in line. “It’s that fear that keeps [American] journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore-in on the tough questions so often.”

The comparison to “necklacing” may be “obscene” but, sadly, it is not far off the mark. So what happened to the newly outspoken Dan Rather with the newly found courage, when he ran afoul of Vice President Dick Cheney and the immense pressure he exerts on the corporate media?

We know about the lies and the cheerleading for attacking Iraq. But there is much more most of us do not know and remain unable to learn if Rather and other one-time journalists keep acting like Bert Lahr’s cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz before he gets “the nerve” and courage.

For Dan Rather, the fear would simply not go away…even after leaving CBS for HDNet and promising that, on his new “Dan Rather Reports” show, viewers would see hard-hitting and courageous reporting that he said he couldn’t do at CBS.

Will it surprise you that Dan Rather cannot shake the necklace? I refer specifically to a program for “Dan Rather Reports,” meticulously prepared by award-winning producer, Kristina Borjesson. The special included interviews with an impressive string of first-hand witnesses to neocon machinations prior to the US attack on Iraq, and provides real insights into motivations—the kind of insights Frontline did not even attempt.

Nipped in the Bud by the “Dark Side”

Last year Borjesson’s taping was finished and the editing had begun. Borjesson’s requests to interview people working for the vice president had been denied. But, following standard journalistic practice (not to mention common courtesy), she sent an email to John Hannah in Cheney’s office in order to give Hannah a chance to react to what others—including several of the same senior folks on Frontline last evening— had said about him for her forthcoming report.

At that point all hell broke loose. Borjesson was abruptly told by Rather’s executive producer that by sending the email, Borjesson could have “brought down the whole (‘Dan Rather Reports’) operation.”

The show was killed and Borjesson sacked. For good measure, she was also accused of “coaching” interview subjects and taking their words out of context. Since neither Rather nor his executive producer would provide proof to substantiate that allegation, Borjesson took the unprecedented step of sending her script and transcripts to all her interview subjects, asking them to confirm or deny that she had coached them or taken their words out of context. Not one of them found her script inaccurate or said they were coached. She has the emails to prove this.

This sorry episode and Frontline’s careful avoidance of basic issues like the strategic aims of the Bush administration in invading and occupying Iraq are proof, if further proof were needed, that the White House, and especially Cheney’s swollen office, exert enormous pressure over what we are allowed to see and hear. The fear they instill in the corporate press, and in what once was serious investigative reporting of programs like Frontline, translates into programs getting neutered or killed outright—and massive public ignorance.

Some consolation is to be found in the good news that, in this particular case, Kristina Borjesson is made of stronger stuff; she has not given up, and was greatly encouraged by how many of the very senior officials and former officials she had already interviewed consented to be re-interviewed (since the tapes belonged to the “Rather Not” folks).

Now who looks forward to being re-interviewed?

Borjesson’s original interviewees took into account her problems with the cowards and the censors—and her atypical, gutsy refusal to self-censor—and went the extra mile. A tribute to them as well, and their interest in getting the truth out.

Borjesson is now completing the program on her own. Look for an announcement in the coming months, if you’re interested in real sustenance rather than the pabulum served up, no doubt under duress, by Frontline.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington, DC. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer in the early sixties, then a CIA analyst for 27 years. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

This article originally appeared on Consortiumnews.com.

… Petraeus, perhaps the most scholarly American officer ever to wear four stars, has been preoccupied by a political imperative—justifying the “surge” of thirty thousand additional troops who accompanied him to Baghdad. The General, a fitness compulsive who excels at pushups, has given much time to hosting congressional delegations and providing journalists with interviews, which he often conducts amid the stirring atmospherics of his airborne command helicopter. This summer, Petraeus crafted a campaign to publicize signs of progress he claimed to see in Iraq, and it became clear that he regarded America’s restive democracy as a theatre in his counterinsurgency operations.

By the time he returned to Washington last week to deliver a flinty and unrevealing report on the war, the General’s achievements on the Iraqi front appeared, at best, to amount to a muddle, but his success at forestalling war skeptics in Congress looked more impressive. …

Further down in the piece, Coll dissects Petraeus’s dismissal of the Powell Doctrine (which recommends we “enter wars only with overwhelming force and with clear, achievable objectives that would enjoy public support”) and Petraeus’s “three-hundred-and-thirty-seven-page doctoral dissertation at Princeton entitled ‘The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam,’ a lucid and subtle review of civil-military relations in the United States from the Korean War until the mid-nineteen-eighties”:

Petraeus saw the [Powell] doctrine as potentially unrealistic because small, nasty wars—where there would be no “clear-cut distinction between peace and war”—seemed to him the coming trend. He quoted approvingly former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger’s belief that the United States should not limit itself to fighting only “popular, winnable wars.” To prepare for such a future, Petraeus argued for rebuilding America’s counterinsurgency capabilities.

He observed that American public opinion often wavers during a protracted conflict, and he quoted General George C. Marshall’s admonition that “a democracy cannot fight a Seven Years War”; his tone betrayed a hint of professional irritation at weak-kneed tendencies among the people [HMMMMMPH!]. Still, Petraeus could see that not all counterinsurgencies are easily won, no matter the public’s fortitude. He cited in particular the Soviet Union’s brutal struggles in Afghanistan:

After all, if a country with relatively few public opinion concerns or moral compunctions about its tactics cannot beat a bunch of ill-equipped Afghan tribesmen, what does that say about the ability of the United States —with its domestic constraints, statutory limitations, moral inhibitions, and zealous investigative reporters—to carry out a successful action against a guerrilla force?

Academic questions of that kind require field work to answer; two decades later, Petraeus has his controlled experiment, and his research is remarkably well funded. [SNORT!] It is far from clear, however, whether he is asking all the right questions.

If General Petraeus privately believes President Bush’s facile rhetoric about the pursuit of “victory” in Iraq, it would be a departure from the thinking evident in his dissertation and counterinsurgency field manual. More likely, the General sees himself as scrapping toward a moderately intolerable mess in Iraq, as an alternative to utter cataclysm. [OUCH.] He has compared his goals to the British campaign in Northern Ireland, which produced “a level of violence that actually the Northern Ireland citizens learned to live with.” Britain’s democracy, however, saw crucial interests in its historical ties to Northern Ireland. The American public has made plain that it sees no comparable interest in the interminable pursuit of a less bad Iraq.

Petraeus’s recent strategy of playing for time through the application of spin politics is straining the health and vitality of the Army to which he has devoted his life. [STRAIGHT THROUGH THE HEART!] It is also deepening mistrust between civilian politicians and the military. Surely, for example, the General is conscious of the partisan Republican campaign to promote him as “Bush’s Grant,” and is aware of the cause: the Party expects to lose the next Presidential election because of the war, but Petraeus offers hope, however faint, that a Republican nominee might find something in Iraq to embrace. Petraeus’s ambition is legendary; his pride and his professional devotion to counterinsurgency have now become entangled in an exploitive electoral machine.

Petraeus also apparently clings to the belief that Iraq’s sectarian leaders might reconcile if American forces stay the course. [GIGGLE.] This opinion, shared by many in the Bush Administration, has encouraged yet another generation of unconvincing strategic plans that assume that a unified Iraq governed from Baghdad is attainable and that thousands of American troops might help patrol the capital’s streets for years. A more plausible strategy, devoted to managing as successfully as possible the informal sectarian partition of Iraq which is already well under way, has again been postponed, along with substantial troop reductions.

American majorities repudiated the Vietnam War and have repudiated the invasion of Iraq. They did not lack guts then or now; they saw past the false promises and manipulations of their leaders, and called time. …

You tell ‘em, Steve.

Read all of “General Accounting.”

By the way, have you read Coll’s book, “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001“?