NYT, p1:How Terror Finding Led to Intel Clash(Feith/Iraq/Qaeda)

[DeepModem Mom]

How Pair's Finding on Terror Led to Clash on Shaping Intelligence
By JAMES RISEN

Published: April 28, 2004


WASHINGTON, April 27 — Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, a two-man intelligence team set up shop in a windowless, cipher-locked room at the Pentagon, searching for evidence of links between terrorist groups and host countries....

***

Old ethnic, religious and political divides between terrorist groups were breaking down, the two men warned, posing an ominous new threat. They saw alliances among a wide range of Islamic terrorists, and theorized about a convergence of Sunni and Shiite extremist groups and secular Arab governments. Their conclusions, delivered to senior Bush administration officials, connected Iraq and Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

In doing so, the team also helped set off a controversy over the shaping of intelligence that continues today.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is investigating whether the unit — named the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group by its creator, Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy — exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq to justify the war.

The C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies found little evidence to support the Pentagon's view of an increasingly unified terrorist threat or links between Mr. Hussein and Mr. bin Laden, and still largely dismiss those ideas. Foreign Islamic fighters have sought haven in Iraq since the American-led invasion and some Sunnis and Shiites have banded together against the occupiers, but the agencies say that is the result of anger and chaotic conditions, not proof of prewar alliances.

And with criticism mounting in recent weeks as the conflict has become more bloody, President Bush has found himself forced to defend once more how the war on terror led to Baghdad....

(ON EDIT: Click on "Multimedia" box to right of article for an interesting graphic: "A Small Intelligence Cell's Connections," which include Perle and Chalabi.)


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/28/politics/28INTE.html

[Old and In the Way]

1. It started with a simple directive from the top.

->Find the evidence that links Hussein to Al Qaeda.<- Once the desired outcome is understood, the evidence to fit the directive is easy.

[leftchick]

2. I certainly hope the SSC asks Karen Kwiatkowski ,Soldier for truth....

to testify....

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/022304B.shtml

Kwiatkowski got there just as war fever was spreading, or being spread as she would later argue, through the halls of Washington. Indeed, shortly after her arrival, a piece of NESA was broken off, expanded and re-dubbed with the Orwellian name of the Office of Special Plans. The OSP s task was, ostensibly, to help the Pentagon develop policy around the Iraq crisis.

She would soon conclude that the OSP a pet project of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld was more akin to a nerve center for what she now calls a neoconservative coup, a hijacking of the Pentagon.

Though a lifelong conservative, Kwiatkowski found herself appalled as the radical wing of the Bush administration, including her superiors in the Pentagon planning department, bulldozed internal dissent, overlooked its own intelligence and relentlessly pushed for confrontation with Iraq.

Deeply frustrated and alarmed, Kwiatkowski, still on active duty, took the unusual step of penning an anonymous column of internal Pentagon dissent that was posted on the Internet by former Colonel David Hackworth, America s most decorated veteran.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Yep -- Feith was a busy guy pre-Iraq-War, with 2 ops going...

From the article:

"The failure to find (WMDs) in Iraq has prompted a series of investigations into prewar intelligence. The Senate committee plans to complete its review, including its examination of the Feith group, in the next few months. The unit has often been confused with another Feith operation, called the Office of Special Plans, which Pentagon officials say was involved in prewar planning but not intelligence analysis."

[Leilani]

4. And of course, the NY Times does not

mention the fact that this cabal of PNAC members wanted to remake the Middle East to be safe for Israel.

We are fighting a war for Israel.Our troops are dying for Israel. We, as taxpayers are spending billions for Israel.

And the media will not touch this with a 10 foot pole.

And the few who speak out are called anti-Semetic.