Really Bad Information: the Neocon's 25-year war on Objective Intelligence

[JHB]

Another must-read-and-absorb article by Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews.com. Bookmark it, and add it to your list of things for people to read to convince them that "yes, they REALLY are THAT BAD". The VRWC is no joke, and its elements have been warping national policy for a long time. PNAC has deeper roots than many even well-informed people realize.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/102203.html

Why U.S. Intelligence Failed
By Robert Parry
October 22, 2003
...
Though a bit corny, Ryan’s dialogue captures the credo of professional intelligence analysts. Solid information, they believe, must be the foundation for sound decisions, especially when lives and the national security are at stake. The battle over that principle is the real back story to the recent dispute over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. It is a story of how the CIA’s vaunted analytical division has been corrupted – or “politicized” – by conservative ideologues over the past quarter century.
...
The concept of a conservative counter-analysis, which became known as “Team B,” had been opposed by the previous CIA director, William Colby, as in inappropriate intrusion into the integrity of the CIA’s analytical product. But the new CIA director, a politically ambitious George H.W. Bush, was ready to acquiesce to the right-wing pressure.
...
Not surprisingly, Team B did produce a worst-case scenario of Soviet power and intentions. Gaining credibility from its access to secret CIA data, Team B challenged the assessment of the CIA’s professional analysts who held a less alarmist view of Moscow’s capabilities and intentions. “The principal threat to our nation, to world peace and to the cause of human freedom is the Soviet drive for dominance based upon an unparalleled military buildup,” wrote three Team B members Pipes, Nitze and Van Cleave.

Team B also brought to prominence another young neo-conservative, Paul Wolfowitz. A quarter century later, Wolfowitz would pioneer the post-Cold War strategy of U.S. preemptive wars against countries deemed potential threats by using the same technique of filtering the available intelligence to build a worst-case scenario. In 2001, George W. Bush made Wolfowitz deputy secretary of defense under Rumsfeld.
----much more---
http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/102203.html

[catzies]

1. Adding to my list, thanks!

And a :kick:

[teryang]

2. "The Fog Machine"

Great article. Really worth the read.

<The CIA’s internal complaint that it was just the victim of administration ideologues is undercut by its own analytical products, including a post-invasion report claiming that two captured Iraqi trailers were labs to produce chemical or biological weapons. That claim has since collapsed as evidence has emerged to show that the labs were for making hydrogen for artillery weather balloons.

[JHB]

3. afternoon kick

:kick:

[Octafish]

4. REAL journalism kicks!

Thanks, Mr. Parry! So many, many visions of orange jail jumpsuits! A tying together of the BFEE past and present through Messrs. Gates and Tenet. From his excellent article:

EXCERPT...

Boren’s key staff aide who limited the investigation of Gates was George Tenet, whose behind-the-scenes maneuvering on Gates’s behalf won the personal appreciation of the senior George Bush. Those political chits would serve Tenet well a decade later when the younger George Bush protected Tenet as his own CIA director, even after the intelligence failure of Sept. 11, 2001, and later embarrassing revelations about faulty intelligence on Iraq’s WMD.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/102203.html

[Octafish]

5. Know Your BFEE!

Evening Kick Plus.

Robert Parry is THE guy who popped open Iran-Contra. His website ConsortiumNews.com has the goods on the BFEE. This is the latest article and it ties the past turds to the present. Those who want a different future than the one we're heading toward will want to review.

BTW: Where are the comments? The lack of response is ironic, considering so many DUers make fun of the "sheeple" for not being aware of what's going on.

[JHB]

6. ***cree cree cree***

Damn crickets chirping

Morning kick

[Octafish]

7. You can lead a DemoDonky to water, but you can't make it THINK!

...to borrow from Dorothy Parker. This article helps people understand HOW, WHY and HOW the BFEE use the Intel Services to corrupt government, manipulate the population and maintain power. It also show WHAT people like Robert Gates have DONE to our country. Anyone remember the October Surprise? Gates is one of the enablers for the deal with the Iranian TERRORISTS holding the US hostages that helped "elect" Pruneface Reagan and Poppy Bushler. Gates also helped squash investigations into Ollie North's drug-running and was IN IT UP TO HIS ARYAN ARMPITS IN IRAQ-GATE.

If you don't want to comment, fine. But, please give this important article a kick. (BTW: I am not the author, nor do I know the author).

More Parry on Gates:

* Lost History (Part 2): The Devil & Bob Gates

By Robert Parry

At CIA's campus-like headquarters amid the leafy woods ofLangley, Va., a Biblical quote stands out as an ironic motto. Itreads, "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make youfree." Near the door that William Casey shuffled past for sixyears in the 1980s, the Lord's advice could be read as awarning, too, a kind of marker for a descent into a netherworldthat crosses Dante with Orwell.

One of the paradoxical figures from that realm was Robert M.Gates, a compact man with the looks of a choirboy and ahigh-pitched Midwest twang that enhanced his image of innocence.Gates was technically an intelligence analyst dedicated to anobjective rendering of fact so top U.S. government officialswould have sound information upon which to base decisions.

But Gates was also a savvy political player, who moved throughkey intelligence jobs at a young age. He was tapped by powerfulmentors, especially by CIA directors Bush and Casey who saw inGates a malleable protege and a reliable subordinate. At anumber of crucial turns from 1970s to the early 1990s, Gates wasthere along the historical path, blending in with his easy smileand soft voice, unthreatening, disarming, but somehow sinister.

SNIP...

Troubling Witnesses

Much as the Congress had rejected witnesses and failed to followobvious leads in the mid-1980s as the Iran-contra scandal wasbuilding, Boren's Intelligence Committee brushed aside twowitnesses connecting Gates to the alleged GOP actions in 1980and the purported CIA arms deals with Iraq a few years later.The witnesses, former Israeli intelligence official AriBen-Menashe and Iranian businessman Richard Babayan, bothoffered details about Gates's alleged connections to thoseschemes.

Ben-Menashe, who worked for Israeli military intelligence from1977-87, first fingered Gates as an operative in the secret Iraqarms pipeline in August 1990 during an interview I conducted forPublic Broadcasting System's FRONTLINE program. Ben-Menashe wasin jail in New York on charges of trying to sell cargo planes toIran (charges which were later dismissed). When I interviewedBen-Menashe in 1990, Gates was in an obscure position, as deputynational security adviser to President Bush and not yet acandidate for the top CIA job.

In that interview and later under oath, Ben-Menashe put Gates ina 1986 meeting with a Chilean arms manufacturer Carlos Cardoen who allegedly was supplying cluster bombs and chemical weaponsto Saddam Hussein's army. At the time, Iraq was at war withIran. Babayan, an Iranian exile working with Iraq, alsoconnected Gates to the Iraqi supply lines and to Cardoen.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/lost2.html

KNOW YOUR BFEE!

[htuttle]

8. I'm glad he brought up Team B

I noticed the parallels between Team B and the OSP awhile back. Same people, same 'methodology'.

[ewagner]

9. Just a good morning kick

:kick: