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Condoleezza Rice should go because of lying
and incompetence
Liz Lopez
Al-Jazeerah, 9/29/03
On "Meet the Press" (Sunday, 28 September 2003),
Condoleezza Rice again regurgitated the same old lie that Saddam Hussein
had "connections" with Al Qaida, cynically used by the corrupt Bush Regime
to frighten American people into mis-thinking that Iraq was somehow
connected to 9/11: IT WASN'T! Condi Rice should go ... she is a liar.
Condi Rice described in July 2001, a weak, divided and
militarily defenceless Iraq. "Saddam does not control the northern part of
the country," she said. "We are able to keep his arms from him. His
military forces have not been rebuilt." Shortly after the horrific attack
on America on 9/11, Condi said that it was a "enormous opportunity" to
invade Iraq and grab their oil. This insane, immoral and illegal
adventure into Iraq was waged to enrich the Bushies' corporate cronies,
that is resulting in the rape of the American taxpayer and Iraqi resources
(oil). Refer to "Condoleezza Rice and the Case of the Big Swindle" on
http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=SamAdams&static=13951 and
"Dig Deep Into Your Pockets To Pay-off Bush's Massive Boondoggles For His
Corporate Cronies!" on
http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=WinstonSmith&static=14437
.
"We the People" should demand that the incompetent and
corrupt Condi Rice step down, as she is a danger to our national
security. Please contract Congress on
http://www.congress.org .
Read "Post-War Iraq Planning Was 'Perfect Storm' of
Mistakes and Bad Luck: Weak Intelligence, Wrong Assumptions, Blinders,
Poor Coordination" - "Infighting at State Dept. and Pentagon Prevented
U.S. From Taking Control Of A Bad Situation at the Outset" on
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030928/nysu006a_1.html :
"NEW YORK, Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Newsweek interviews
with top government officials involved in the planning and execution of
the reconstruction of Iraq point to a "perfect storm" of mistakes and bad
luck: wrongheaded assumptions, ideological blinders, weak intelligence and
poor coordination by White House national security adviser Condoleezza
Rice. Much of the damage was done at the outset-in the first days after
the war, when political infighting and wishful thinking prevented the
United States from taking control of a bad situation that was turning
worse, report Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas and National Security
Correspondent John Barry in the October 6 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands
Monday, September 29).
Last February, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
ordered retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner to cut 16 of the 20 State Department
officials from his roster of experts to rebuild Iraq after the war was
over. It seems that the State Department people were deemed to be Arabist
apologists, or squishy about the United Nations, or in some way
politically incorrect to the right-wing ideologues at the White House or
the neocons in the office of the Secretary of Defense, Newsweek reports.
The vetting process "got so bad that even doctors sent to restore medical
services had to be anti-abortion," recalls one of Garner's team to
Newsweek. Finally, Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to stand up for
his troops and stop Rumsfeld's meddling. "I can take hostages, too,"
Powell warned the secretary of Defense. "How hard do you want to play this
thing?"
There was considerable confusion over who was supposed
to be in charge of post-Saddam Iraq. "What do we mean by 'regime change'
anyway?" CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks queried Secretary Rumsfeld in
the middle of the war. Many CIA and State Department officials were
skeptical about Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi and other exiles, insisting
(correctly) that they had no popular base of support. At the State
Department, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, Powell's number two, fought
bitterly with the Defense Department neocons, Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's third-ranking civilian.
Armitage was convinced that the Defense neocons had spies at the State
Department. "Bats, we call them. Bats," said Armitage, in a colorful
private harangue reported to Newsweek. "Because they hang upside down all
day, with their wings over their eyes, pretending they don't see anything.
But at night they spread their wings and fly off to whisper, whisper,
whisper."
The ideological intrigue reached into the upper levels
of the Bush administration. Rumsfeld ordered General Garner to drop a
State Department official named Thomas Warrick from his reconstruction
team. Garner protested, his aides recall; he needed Warrick, who had been
the author of a $5 million, yearlong study called "The Future of Iraq."
Rumsfeld's reply, as relayed by Garner to his aides, was: "I'm sorry, but
I just got off a phone call from a level that is sufficiently high that I
can't argue with him." Sources tell Newsweek that Rumsfeld was taking his
orders from Vice President Cheney. Administration officials say that
Warrick was vetoed because he did not get on with Iraqi exile leaders.
On May 16, five days after he arrived in Baghdad, Paul
Bremer, who replaced Garner in Iraq, assembled the top American officials
in Baghdad and announced that all ministries would be "de-Baath-ized" by
removing roughly the top six layers of bureaucracy. The CIA's Baghdad
station chief demurred. "We'll, that's 30,000 to 50,000 pissed-off
Baathists you're driving underground," said the senior spook. Bremer went
on: the army would be disbanded and not paid. "That's another 350,000
Iraqis you're pissing off, and they've got guns," said the CIA man. Said
Bremer: "Those are my instructions."
Who is to blame for the missed signals and too-rosy
scenarios? The person charged with coordinating U.S. foreign policy is the
president's national- security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. She likes to say
that her national security staff is not "operational," meaning that it
advises on policy and leaves the implementation to government agencies,
Newsweek reports. White House staffers are now surprisingly willing to
dump on the Defense Department for bungling postwar security in Iraq. But
for too long, White House staffers kept any qualms private. It is also
true that the White House, including the president, signed off on the
basic war plan and reconstruction effort.
On the ground, the Coalition Provisional Authority,
charged with actually running Iraq until the Iraqis can take over, is the
source of increasing ridicule. "CPA stands for the Condescending and
Patronizing Americans," a Baghdad diplomat told a Newsweek reporter. "So
there they are, sitting in their palace: 800 people, 17 of whom speak
Arabic, one is an expert on Iraq. Living in this cocoon. Writing papers.
It's absurd," says one dissident Pentagon official. He exaggerates, but
not by much. Most of the senior civilian staff are not technical experts
but diplomats, Republican appointees, White House staffers and the like. "
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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