Observer: Mental flowers as Feith exits (Tommy Franks was right!!!!!!!!!!)

[hadrons]

There were no flowers being thrown at Douglas Feith yesterday as the outgoing undersecretary of defence for policy wound down his Pentagon tour. During his four years in the five-sided building, Feith was no stranger to controversy.

Democrats accused him of skewing intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. State department and NSC officials found him impossible to work with; towards the end of last year some state department officials refused to sit in the same room as him.

Spurned by the more liberal elements of Washington, he also found little favour with the military rank and file. Even General Tommy Franks, who commanded the US invasion of Iraq, was quoted as calling Feith "the (expletive) stupidest guy on the face of the earth".

Feith came under much criticism for the poor postwar planning in Iraq, and for adhering to the Dick Cheney view that the Iraqis would welcome the US with flowers, not roadside bombs.

In an interview with the New Yorker, Feith said the Iraqis welcomed the US with flowers in their minds.

Yesterday, the staff at the Pentagon were doing the same.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/2a086e86-0872-11da-97a6-00000e2511c8,ft_acl=,s01=2.html

[Kerrytravelers]

1. I guess all the freepers are seeing these same "mind flowers"

[ironman202]

2. they're all turd blossoms to me

[Cassandra]

3. " refused to sit in the same room as him"

BO that bad?

[Burried News]

4. Feith is in the news at TomPaine too.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050809/bigger_than_aipac.php
Excerpt:
First, the indictment says that from "about April 1999 and continuing until on or about August 27, 2004" Franklin, Rosen and Weissman "did unlawfully, knowingly and willfully conspire" in criminal activity against the United States. So far, no one has explained what triggered an investigation that began more than six years ago. But it reveals how long the three indicted conspirators and "others, known and unknown to the Grand Jury," engaged in such criminal activity. In any case, what appeared at first to be a brief dalliance between Franklin and the two AIPAC officials now—according to the latest indictment, at least—spans more than five years and involves at least several other individuals, at least some of whom are known to the investigation. What triggered the investigation in 1999, and how much information has FBI surveillance, wiretaps and other investigative efforts collected?

Second, the indictment makes it absolutely clear that the investigation was aimed at AIPAC, not at Franklin. The document charges that Rosen and Weissman met repeatedly with officials from a foreign government (Israel, though not named in the indictment) beginning in 1999, to provide them with classified information. In other words, the FBI was looking into the Israel lobby, not Franklin and the Defense Department, at the start, and Franklin was simply caught up in the net when he made contact with the AIPACers. Rosen and Weissman were observed making illicit contact with several other U.S. officials between 1999 and 2004, although those officials are left unnamed (and unindicted). Might there be more to come? Who are these officials, cited merely as United States Government Official 1, USGO 2, etc.?

Third, Franklin was introduced to Rosen-Weissman when the two AIPACers "called a Department of Defense employee (DOD employee A) at the Pentagon and asked for the name of someone in OSD ISA with an expertise on Iran" and got Franklin's name. Who was "DOD employee A"? Was it Douglas Feith, the undersecretary for policy? Harold Rhode, the ghost-like neocon official who helped Feith assemble the secretive Office of Special Plans, where Franklin worked? The indictment doesn't say. But this reporter observed Franklin, Rhode and Michael Rubin, a former AEI official who served in the Pentagon during this period and then returned to AEI, sitting together side by side, often in the front row, at American Enterprise Institute meetings during 2002-2003. Later in the indictment, we learn that Franklin, Rosen and Weissman hobnobbed with "DOD employee B," too.

Fourth, Rosen and Weissman told Franklin that they would try to get him a job at the White House, on the National Security Council staff. Who did they talk to at the White House, if they followed through? What happened? END

[Burried News]

5. So many questions - so few answers.

Last lines of article linked:
"So far, at least, the media frenzy attending to the Plame affair is matched by nearly total silence about the Franklin-AIPAC affair? Can it be true that reporters are more courageous about pursuing a story that involves the White House than they are about plunging into a scandal that involves Israel, our No. 1 Middle East ally?"

[tanyev]

6. "flowers in their minds"

What are they smoking?