Today, Tuesday 3 February 2004, I
received the following from the Institute for Public Accuracy:
McGovern doesn't bother to ask the
key question: WHY?
WHY, as Ray McGovern suggests, has
the administration been "Cooking Intelligence for War"? In
the latest case, there was no war ("war" needs two or more
combatants) but an invasion of Iraq. Is the time that it takes to
investigate the cooked intelligence the major concern? In his article,
McGovern only seems uneasy about the fact that the CIA did not provide
the intelligence sought by the administration. He never asks why the
administration wanted cooked intelligence.
The Institute for Public Accuracy
(IPA) announcement included the following:
JOHN QUIGLEY, (614) 292-1764,
(614) 326-3674
quigley.2@osu.edu
http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR021003.htm
Quigley is author of "The Ruses for War: American
Intervention Since World War II" and a professor of
international law at Ohio State University. On 10 February
2003 (shortly after Colin Powell's presentation to the UN
Security Council), Quigley was on an IPA news release titled
"US Credibility Problems", noting a history of
false US claims to justify attacking other countries. Today
he noted that in 2002 the CIA was actually warning the
administration of a lack of evidence of a threat from Iraq.
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WHY, as Professor Quigley asserts,
has the US made false "claims to justify attacking other
countries" (most recently Iraq)? He doesn't ask. The IPA quotes
Quigley as giving three instances where the US gave "information
to the Security Council on war and peace issues that later turned out
to be false". Nowhere in his quoted remarks does Professor
Quigley ask why?
This duo from the University of Texas
added:
Rahul Mahajan is publisher of Empire
Notes and author of the book "Full Spectrum Dominance: US
Power in Iraq and Beyond". They said today:
The Iraq war wasn't the result
of an "intelligence failure". It was the result of
a spectacular political success - the manoeuvring of a
nation to war when no threat existed, over the objections of
the world community... On 5 February 2003, Secretary [of
State] Powell claimed that "most US experts"
believed that Iraqi purchases of aluminium tubes were for
centrifuges that would do uranium isotope separation - not
for artillery, as Iraq had claimed. Actually, most experts
said the opposite. George W. Bush said that Iraq had
purchased uranium from "Africa", a claim based on
forgeries so crude that IAEA analysts said a couple of hours
on Google would suffice to expose them. On 7 October 2002,
Bush said Iraq was planning to use its unmanned aerial
vehicles to target the US, although their top range was
about 400 miles. On 16 March 2003, [Defence Secretary] Dick
Cheney said, "We believe he [Saddam] has, in fact,
reconstituted nuclear weapons." Neither the
International Atomic Energy Agency nor anyone else had ever
said anything of the kind; since nuclear weapons activities
give off radiation, they are very easily detected, and
inspectors had been doing on-site visits for four months at
the time....
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Professor Jensen and Rahul Mahajan
have been good enough to point out that "The Iraq War wasn't the
result of an 'intelligence failure'. It was the result of a
spectacular political success - the manoeuvring of a nation to war
when no threat existed, over the objections of the world
community."
WHY? Why haven't these scholars even
bothered to ask the question? It's understandable that they might not
want to speculate. What's not readily comprehensible, or forgivable,
is that they're not insisting on answers from those whose
"reasons" determined their warmongering actions.
If scholars and journalists can't, or
won't, deduce the reasons for the US invasion of Iraq from the
existing information available to anyone, they hardly deserve to be
referred to as reliable sources of information.
If the extent of their investigative
reporting allows only for finger-pointing at false claims used to
justify American warmongering (an unprovoked invasion, not war), their
claims serve little or no practical purpose beyond personal
horn-blowing.
Three scholars - all alluding to
false justification for military action can't even be bothered to ask,
much less attempt to answer, WHY? Why have more than 20,000 lives been
sacrificed along with more than 166 billion dollars for a pre-emptive
strike to satisfy Donald Rumsfeld and the dual loyalists Paul
Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and Elliott
Abrams?
Surely the scholars paraded and
lauded by the Institute for Public Accuracy are familiar with this
important bit of recent history:
In 1996, according to an article in
the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Perle, Feith and David Wurmser
wrote a policy proposal for Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel's prime
minister. Included in their proposal were tips on how to manipulate
the American government and advice to drop the peace plan, drop
the idea of land for peace and concentrate on toppling Saddam
Hussein and eventually replacing other Middle Eastern governments
in order to create a safe environment for Israel. (emphasis
mine)
Are these Americans or Israelis? Do
American members of the US Defence Department justify invading a
country at the cost of 20,000 lives and over 166 billion dollars in
order to create a safe environment for Israel? Is that the answer to
the question "why"? According to Haaretz and these
dual loyalists, it is.
Why do three scholars and journalists
ignore the facts? Ignoring the facts because the question (WHY?) may
produce some uncomfortable answers is no excuse for pretending to
represent "public accuracy".
It's no damn wonder that a falsifying
government can get away with murder (literally!). The political brains
relied upon by the Institute for Public Accuracy lead nowhere except
to a conclusion about how severely they are malfunctioning. WHY?
Intelligence failure!