MarcGopin.com

This is an important unnoticed piece that helps piece together the corruption of power during the Bush years that led to the Iraq debacle. It deserves study to help solidify democratic checks and balances to avert this in the future. Democratic systems require constant vigilance in order to checks and balances to work in ever changing circumstances.

Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
By Jim Lobe

An excerpt from the article:

The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which worked alongside the Near East and South Asia (NESA) bureau in Feith’s domain, was originally created by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to review raw information collected by the official U.S. intelligence agencies for connections between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

Retired intelligence officials from the State Department, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have long charged that the two offices exaggerated and manipulated intelligence about Iraq before passing it along to the White House.

But key personnel who worked in both NESA and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003.

Read the rest of the article from the Inter Press Service News Agency here.

I spent almost an hour on the phone with this excellent reporter, Manya A. Brachear, who wrote the Los Angeles Times story. The more I studied the pictures the more horrified I became that this man was running the United States military, and that our country was actually engaged in a Christian crusade in the eyes of so many of its soldiers. I am so glad the reporter gathered the responses of the Christian community and I do hope that, as I said in the article, there is a bipartisan Christian effort to put this dark period behind us in the United States.

Here is an excerpt:

One passage plucked from the New Testament’s Epistle to the Ephesians instructs believers to “put on the full armor of God.”

An excerpt from the Old Testament’s Isaiah directs them to “open the gates that the righteous nation may enter.”

As American troops fought in Iraq in 2003, these biblical verses and others reportedly prefaced intelligence reports approved by then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Disclosed last week on the website of GQ magazine, the hawkish use of scripture has prompted many faithful to ask whether Americans lost their lives in Iraq defending democracy or fighting a religious crusade.

Read more here.

One picture has the gate of swords below from Iraq with American soldiers marching triumphantly through, accompanied by a quote from Isaiah 26: Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith.

One final note. It amazes me, in light of this evidence,  that there is a single Jew, Muslim, or non-fundamentalist Christian left in this country that feels safe voting Republican ever again. The Republican Party needs a major overhaul, and it needs to put the Bill of Rights and Constitution back at the front and center of its political ethos, and then we should be happy to argue about abortions, and guns, foreign policy, and taxes. Until the Bill of Rights is back at the center nothing is safe.

Soldiers kneeling in prayer accompanied by triumphant Biblical quotes also appeared in the top secret document

It is not easy to be a nation that advocates and indeed missionizes on democracy and the rule of law. It is the missionizing that causes the conflict with those who may want democracy and the rule of law in their own country but are blind-sided by the glaring American hypocrisies of recent years. Plans are already underway by President elect Obama’s team as to how to end the illegal imprisonment of combatants at Guantanomo, and to return the United States to a nation of laws. Why was this so hard? Was revenge that important? This remains a mystery to me.

An abomination that must end

The timing is amazing from a neoconservative point of view, a few days before the American elections. Right now, after years of scrupulously avoiding crossing into Syrian territory, the American military receives instructions to invade a town in Syria and kill 8 people.

A U.S. military official confirmed late Sunday an American helicopter attack in an area along Syria’s border with Iraq, which left 8 people dead and three people wounded.

Syria condemned the attack, which it called “serious aggression.”

We are closer than ever before to serious conversations between Israel and Syria, Syria has recognized an international border with Lebanon for the first time in modern history, and this is horrifying to neoconservatives who ran Washington for the last decade. They need to use force and force only to conquer Iraq, Iran and Syria. And they need to promote a conception of the American presidency that is focused on the use of military force. It is vital to their conception of American hegemony. It is as opposite from a realist’s interests in exploring common interests internationally, with both allies and adversaries, as one could imagine.

What better way to move the American people back to a neoconservative view than by provoking a Syrian/American conflict days before one of the most fateful elections in American history. Most Americans are fed up with foreign wars, unbelievable debt from those wars, and economic failure. Yet if we can provoke Syria into retaliating against the United States somehow, then we can terrify the American people enough right now before the elections. Then they will vote from fear, not from the perspective of pragmatism and realism, and certainly not from a position of vision and hope. It has happened before in history.

I hope the Syrian regime sees this as bait, that they do not take the bait, that they do not become pawns in an internal American struggle that will only hurt them in the long run. And I hope the American people catch on to those who are attempting to manipulate them with tactics of fear.

The Iraqi/Syrian border: an appropriate place to decide an American election?

The world of disaster relief, overseas aid, and development has always had a difficult time with mixed motives. Why does anyone give large sums to poor nations in desperate need of help? Millions of people donate money to thousands of non-governmental organizations precisely in order to help people who are sick, poor, and in disastrous circumstances, especially when natural calamities occur. The motivation is mostly altruistic. But governments are massive donors as well. The problem is that once government gets involved there is always the question of mixed motives, national interests and economic interests mixed with public expressions of altruism. The problem is even more acute when it is not just the government but the military. That is why there are strong objections to the U.S. military getting into the business of aid and disaster relief:

“Our [foreign] policy is out of whack,” said Kenneth Bacon, a former assistant secretary of defense who now runs Refugees International, a nonprofit organization. “It is too dominated by the military and we have too little civilian capacity.”

Bacon is particularly concerned about Pentagon plans for a new US Africa Command. In a report published this month, Refugees International called on the next administration to limit the military’s role in Africa to conducting security-related tasks, such as training foreign militaries and providing critical humanitarian assistance – and to leave the rest to civilian specialists.

“The military should not take on what [the US Agency for International Development] does or the State Department,” Bacon said. Still, US military strategists believe they have an expanding role to play in exerting America’s soft power.

The problem with the objections is that, when it comes to mixed motives the State Department will be no different than the military. Both will operate in places of the world in which they have determined some national interest for the United States. Furthermore, getting some part of the Pentagon to become deeply involved in humanitarian aid will set up a healthy tension between that aspect of the Defense Department engaged in “smashing things”, to cite the great humanitarian Donald Rumsfeld, versus those engaged in preventing things—and people—from being smashed. This will be good for the overall objectives of humanizing American foreign intervention. Of course, if I were a congressman I would give the most to funds for NGO’s, secondly to AID and State, and only thirdly to the Pentagon. But given the reality of the massive and excessive funds given now to the Pentagon which funds military bases in 160 countries, it is better that some in that building start seeing the advantages of “soft power” over “smashing things”. That is why these scenarios are welcome, in my opinion:

When a US military team arrived by helicopter in Cambodia’s rural Kampong Chhnang Province in late May, the imam from the local mosque spread the word and hundreds of locals descended on the Americans.

But it was not confrontation they sought. It was free healthcare. The Friendship Clinic, offering primary and vision care, dentistry, a women’s health center, and medical training, was part of a first-of-its kind humanitarian mission called Pacific Angel by the Honolulu-based 13th Air Force.

In recent months, Navy war ships have been dispatched to some of the poorest nations to administer medical aid, the Air Force is flying regular humanitarian flights, and teams of US military personnel are helping rebuild schools in Latin America.