PNAC alive and well at the AEI

[formercia]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/10/wleb10.xml

CIA gets the go-ahead to take on Hizbollah

By Toby Harnden, US Editor
Last Updated: 1:47am GMT 10/01/2007

# Con Coughlin: Siniora government's battle for survival

The Central Intelligence Agency has been authorised to take covert action against Hizbollah as part of a secret plan by President George W. Bush to help the Lebanese government prevent the spread of Iranian influence. Senators and congressmen have been briefed on the classified "non-lethal presidential finding" that allows the CIA to provide financial and logistical support to the prime minister, Fouad Siniora.

The finding was signed by Mr Bush before Christmas after discussions between his aides and Saudi Arabian officials. Details of its existence, known only to a small circle of White House officials, intelligence officials and members of Congress, have been passed to The Daily Telegraph.


It authorises the CIA and other US intelligence agencies to fund anti-Hizbollah groups in Lebanon and pay for activists who support the Siniora government. The secrecy of the finding means that US involvement in the activities is officially deniable.

--snip--

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former clandestine CIA officer, said that such a finding would involve "various steps and types of non-military activity" agreed to by the Lebanese. "It takes two to tango. You're only those things that the Lebanese themselves would want you to do," he said.

--snip--


http://www.newamericancentury.org/aboutpnac.htm

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former clandestine CIA officer and Director of the Middle East Initiative for PNAC.

http://www.aei.org/scholars/scholarID.19,filter.all/scholar.asp

Reuel Marc Gerecht
Resident Fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at AEI. An expert in Middle East affairs, he has focused since 9/11 on Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as on terrorism and intelligence. He is the author of Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997) and The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy (AEI Press, 2004). He is a contributing editor for The Weekly Standard and a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, as well as a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other publications. Mr. Gerecht formerly held positions as the director of the Middle East Initiative for the Project for the New American Century and as a Middle Eastern specialist in the Central Intelligence Agency.

[Avalux]

1. I want every last one of these assholes tried for treason.

A pox on our country!!!!! x(

[izzie]

2. I would say we have 2 years of real madness with Bush.

He will do anything and I do not think a little thing like the Constitution plays a part. We now have the inmates running the whole thing and it is near for the police to move in so they are going to act even more nuts until that day.(740 days) Our real nightmare is just starting. New wars, new laws, WH has new lawyers,and I think I will just say keep your head down so it will not get a hole in it.

[izzie]

4. Has Bush ever left anything better than he found it?

Just an added thing to make one feel good.

[formercia]

6. He's just trying to prove

he can screw the pooch better than his Old Man.

[Purveyor]

3. The "CIA"? I'm sure Hizbollah is shaking in their boots... n/t

[formercia]

5. anyone who takes that money

will be looking over their shoulder for a long time to come.

What do the Lebanese think of this idea?