THE REDIRECTION - Bush Funneling Money to al Qaeda-Related Groups

[papau]

Anyone else getting tired of waiting for the good guys at the CIA (and 99% of the CIA are "good guys" IMO) to remove from power the Neocon network (inside and outside the CIA) set up in the 70's when a few nuts aligned themselves with corporate sponsors like the Hunt brothers and the Coors brothers - and now the Halliburtons, Cheneys, Bechtels, GEs, Wolfowitzes, Bushes, Rumsfelds,and others that will save America by saving the corporations of the rich? When the word went through the community about the Federal Reserve plates these idiots had aquired to produce currency to fund whatever, under the pretense that they could set up situations that made it look like the bad guys were trying to destabilize the US (Like we just saw floated again this year), I thought the Congress would step in. Sorry to say I was naive about how naive our Congress folks could be. Owning the media via salary control, peer pressure, appeals to patriotism, career insecurity, and Board Room guidance has given the neo-cons control of the only back up we had for when the Congress became afraid of losing elections for lack of corporate monetary support. I doubt that there is a neocon overpopulation solution - a planned population correction via peak oil/global warming/domestic wars that began with 9/11 - because I don't think they are that smart or that organized - but I could be wrong.


http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022607A.shtml

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/25/hersh-qaeda/


Hersh: Bush Funneling Money to al Qaeda-Related Groups
ThinkProgress.com

Sunday 25 February 2007

New Yorker columnist Sy Hersh says the "single most explosive" element of his latest article involves an effort by the Bush administration to stem the growth of Shiite influence in the Middle East (specifically the Iranian government and Hezbollah in Lebanon) by funding violent Sunni groups.

Hersh says the U.S. has been "pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight" for covert operations in the Middle East where it wants to "stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence." Hersh says these funds have ended up in the hands of "three Sunni jihadist groups" who are "connected to al Qaeda" but "want to take on Hezbollah."

Hersh summed up his scoop in stark terms: "We are simply in a situation where this president is really taking his notion of executive privilege to the absolute limit here, running covert operations, using money that was not authorized by Congress, supporting groups indirectly that are involved with the same people that did 9/11." Watch it:

Hersh added, "All of this should be investigated by Congress, by the way, and I trust it will be. In my talking to membership - members there, they are very upset that they know nothing about this. And they have great many suspicions."

Transcript -and video: <snip>



http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070305fa_fact_hersh


"The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney."

THE REDIRECTION
Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of
Posted

A STRATEGIC SHIFT

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region.”

After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation became more complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

[Phredicles]

1. Don't know why this isn't bigger news,

apart from the establishment media being the Dear Leader's geisha boys, I mean.

[papau]

2. It certainly did not make evening news - or even Sunday talk. Seems GOP control of the media is

working very well.

[rodeodance]

3. my questions--Is anyone is Congress concerned about this?

[librechik]

4. time for an email campaign

everyone go ask your congressmen nicely to look into it. Then go to the media and give them the redass for not doing their jobs.

[Botany]

5. But A.N. Smith had her funeral yesterday

The media was working on real stories not something that has to
do with bush's buddies the Saudis funding 80% of the attacks on
Americans in Iraq.

This should be on the front page of every paper in the country but
just like when people were convicted of rigging the recount in the
2004 election in Ohio it will be quickly buried.

I was thinking the other day we have a President who did 1 year
of some sort of community service in the 1970s (Coke?) in Houston,
TX, had God knows how many DWIs, went AWOL, had filed businesses,
a criminal record, made money on insider deals, and ran w/ gutter trash
like Karl Rove yet in 2000 it was all about "Gore inventing the internet."

The level of control over the old media by the right wing is frightening.
That is why Progressive radio is being shut down and why "they" are looking
so hard to stop the internet traffic.

[sam sarrha]

6. i want to know when the ANS Casket Cams are going to start on YouTube

[patrice]

7. Which makes the blood of American soldiers the new bait in the new Bait & Switch

My letter to my Senators on this matter:

American troops in Iraq are in danger of being used as the new bait in a new “Bait and Switch” by Sunnis in the MidEast.

In last-week’s testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Joint Chief of Staff General Pace indicated that if he followed DoD readiness standards, one third of the forces headed to Iraq would not be deployed. Therefore, it is possible that, in addition to long established shortages, soon, one third of the total military force in Iraq will not be fully manned, fully trained or fully equipped. General Pace did not want Congress to do anything about this weakness in force readiness. Why?

The intent of redirected strategy in the Mideast, documented by Seymour Hersh March 5 in The New Yorker, is to weaken Shia in Iran by strengthening Sunnis in the region. Given that the Iraqi government is predominantly Shia and the Sunni militias are responsible for 80% of American fatalities, strengthening Sunnis further destabilizes a situation in which the blood of American soldiers is being sacrificed for stability.

As Iraqi Sunni militias get stronger with more regional support, they have to decide whether to kill more Americans or more Shia. Shortages in force readiness in this situation create the conditions favorable to a "Bait and Switch", in which American blood attracts Sunnis into what's going on, and then, as Hersh describes, through the use of special Sunni operatives, their efforts are turned on the Shia instead.