Pentagon Iran Office Mimics Former Iraq 'Office of Special Plans'

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Morning Edition, September 20, 2006 · The Pentagon has created a new desk to work on Iran policy. That worries some at the CIA, who point out that many of the new Iran-desk staffers are the same people who staffed the now-notorious Office of Special Plans in the run-up to the Iraq war.

from the report:

"It's Iraq Deja Vu all over again"

"Basically the same team, identical."

"Ongoing prominence of Abram N. Shulsky." -- He ran former Office of Special Plans for Iraq that was created by Douglas Feith to manufacture a relationship between al-Qaeda and Saddam espite the widespread understanding of the friction and animosity between the two.

Listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6108983


from Source watch:

Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, in their January 26, 2004, Mother Jones article "The Lie Factory" (http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/iraq/1448.html), write:

"As the momentum for war began to build in early 2002, Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith beefed up the intelligence unit and created an Iraq war-planning unit in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Affairs section, run by Deputy Undersecretary of Defense William Luti, under the rubric Office of Special Plans, or OSP; the new unit's director was Abram N. Shulsky. By then, David Wurmser had moved on to a post as senior adviser to Undersecretary of State John Bolton, yet another neocon, who was in charge of the State Department's disarmament, proliferation, and WMD office and was promoting the Iraq war strategy there. Shulsky's OSP, which incorporated the secret intelligence unit, took control, banishing veteran experts-including Joseph McMillan, James Russell, Larry Hanauer, and Marybeth McDevitt-who, despite years of service to NESA, either were shuffled off to other positions or retired. For the next year, Luti and Shulsky not only would oversee war plans but would act aggressively to shape the intelligence product received by the White House."

"According to Lt. Colonel Kwiatkowski, Luti and Shulsky ran NESA and the Office of Special Plans with brutal efficiency, purging people they disagreed with and enforcing the party line. 'It was organized like a machine,' she says. 'The people working on the neocon agenda had a narrow, well-defined political agenda. They had a sense of mission.' At NESA, Shulsky, she says, began 'hot-desking,' or taking an office wherever he could find one, working with Feith and Luti, before formally taking the reins of the newly created OSP. Together, she says, Luti and Shulsky turned cherry-picked pieces of uncorroborated, anti-Iraq intelligence into talking points, on issues like Iraq's WMD and its links to Al Qaeda. Shulsky constantly updated these papers, drawing on the intelligence unit, and circulated them to Pentagon officials, including Rumsfeld, and to Vice President Cheney. 'Of course, we never thought they'd go directly to the White House,' she adds."

"Kwiatkowski recalls one meeting in which Luti, pressed to finish a report, told the staff, "I've got to get this over to 'Scooter' right away." She later found out that "Scooter" was none other than I. Lewis Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. According to Kwiatkowski, Cheney had direct ties through Luti into NESA/OSP, a connection that was highly unorthodox.

"'Never, ever, ever would a deputy undersecretary of Defense work directly on a project for the vice president,' she says. 'It was a little clue that we had an informal network into Vice President Cheney's office.'

"Although Feith insists that the OSP did not seek to gather its own intelligence, Kwiatkowski and others sharply disagree. Staff working for Luti and Shulsky in NESA/OSP churned out propaganda-style intelligence, she says. As an example, she cited the work of a U.S. intelligence officer and Arabic specialist, Navy Lt. Commander Youssef Aboul-Enein, who was a special assistant to Luti. 'His job was to peruse the Arabic-language media to find articles that would incriminate Saddam Hussein about terrorism, and he translated these.' Such raw intelligence is usually subject to a thorough vetting process, tracked, verified, and checked by intelligence professionals. But not at OSP-the material that it produced found its way directly into speeches by Bush, Cheney, and other officials."

article:http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bush_administration

Shulsky profile: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Abram_N._Shulsky

[leveymg]

1. A little late in their coverage. LaLa at RaRa got there months ago.

The thing is, such news is subject to the strategic timing rule. Unless and until it helps to advance the Kremlin's agenda, it isn't covered on Pravda.

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2. It's a shame, but I'm encouraged by NPR covering it

That's how these issues gain momentum. Slowly, in fits and starts.

[peacetalksforall]

3. Doesn't this sentence say it all?

"Such raw intelligence is usually subject to a thorough vetting process, tracked, verified, and checked by intelligence professionals. But not at OSP-the material that it produced found its way directly into speeches by Bush, Cheney, and other officials"

How many families of the killed and maimed in the U.S., Iraq, and Coalition countries know this?

[Blackhatjack]

4. Congress is Asleep at the Wheel if They Do Not Challenge This...

...Congressmen are not ignorant about what is going on.

It takes courage to step out and object to the another Iraq redux. But that is their job, that is why they were elected, and if they remain silent -- they are ENABLERS, part of the problem.

Silence on this and failure to stand up and challenge this is turning their back on this country.

It is time for Bush and Co to pay a price for subverting the intelligence process to carry out their nefarious motives. And those unwilling to take them on, resign or be voted out, but in any event just get out of the way and let someone else do the job for the sake of Americans everywhere.

[atfqn]

5. I would like a Democrat in the house or senate.

To stand up, point this information out and let the american people know that if we go into Iran there will be a draft. Plain and simple. We do not have the military capacity to engage "insurgents" in a country we have occupied and controlled through embargoes for 10 years. How are we going to meet the needs a war with Iran will require? But I am sure this will go on. Hey, we could call it Operation Iraqi Liberation II or Operation Iranian Liberation or Operation Imperialistic Looting.

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6. kick

:kick: