Wolfowitz Cabal in August 2001 -Why Sep11th was important for Iraq War

posted by ewing2001 on Saturday June 14, @06:24PM

In the latest Vanity Fair article on the NeoCons (not available online) you will see a photo, which shows Paul Wolfowitz, who visited President Bush on his vacation in August 2001 at the Farm in Crawford.

What was the reason for this visit?
And did it take place before or after the CIA's memo on a pending attack on August 6th?

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It was neither explained or mentioned in this article by Sam Tanenhaus.

Probably because it seemed not to be important for the author.

In the archives of the DoD you find a note on August, 23, 2001:

"Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is on leave.
There are no public or media events on his schedule."

Was that the day?

Or was it just one day after the CIA memo?

As CNN reported on August 7th, Bush had "contacts with four unknown staff members, George Tenet (CIA), Condo Rice and Andrew H. Card Jr."

What are the identities of these "four unknown staff members"?

Can we speculate about some members of the National Defense Panel?

Maybe Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff and founding member of PNAC) and Douglas Feith (PNAC, JINSA, Northrop Grumman, INC-ties) ? Who was the 4th visitor? If Bush didn't get a visit by the National Defense Panel, then which four "staff members" CNN were talking about?

Interestingly, on August 6th -the same day of the CIA memo, Wolfowitz gave an interview at the DoD, in which he urged a new $3 billion -"missile program"

In the same interview with Charles Jaco, KMOX News Radio, St. Louis, MO, he furthermore said:

"...Hopefully we have Saddam Hussein lower down now, but it's a threat we could face in the future in the Gulf either from Iraq or Iran..."

Already in late April 2001, UPI obtained quotes from a secret report, which was described in Newsmax:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/4/27/211326.shtml
Saturday, April 28, 2001

"...The Bush administration is seriously considering supporting an Iraqi insurgency group and fomenting a military coup to topple Saddam Hussein, United Press International learned exclusively Friday.

These options are set out in a report written earlier this month by Richard Haass, the head of the Bush administration's interagency working group on Iraq policy. Haass recommended backing an uprising by a popular rebel group, while simultaneously recruiting and supporting high-ranking Iraqi military officers willing to oust Saddam's regime, according to administration officials who have seen Haass' memo and described its contents to UPI...

...On April 25, in a "deputies' meeting," which included high-ranking CIA officials, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney's national security adviser, I. Lewis Libby, the draft was sent down for further revisions...

...Haass' report revealed a new fault line in the young Bush administration's foreign policy team on Iraq. High-ranking Defense Department officials such as Wolfowitz and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - not to mention Cheney's national security team - are strong supporters of the Iraqi National Congress and particularly one of its leaders, Ahmad Chalabi...

...One problem for Chalabi, however, is the early resistance from Iraq's neighbors to an insurgency plan. The Jordanians, Syrians and Turks are wary of the INC...

But the Bush administration's supporters of Chalabi are undeterred. This month, the Pentagon appointed as its Iraq transition coordinator Randy Scheunemann, former national security adviser to Sens. Trent Lott, R-Miss. and Bob Dole, R-Kan., and the author of the 1998 legislation authorizing $98 million in Pentagon aid for the Iraqi National Congress...

...Haass would not agree to an interview due to his pending confirmation hearing..."

In the same month, the Pravda noticed, that "there are also elements in Washington that look at real or imagined threats abroad with great favor...", mentioning the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" some lines earlier:

"...Its core thesis, described by Ben Wattenberg in the April 12, Washington Times, is "to guard against the emergence of hostile regional superpowers, for example, Iraq or China. America is No. 1. We stand for something decent and important. That's good for us and good for the world. That's the way we want to keep it."

On August 8th, 2001, 2 days after the release of the CIA memo, Wolfowitz (together with General Myers and Admiral Quigley at a DoD-briefing), answeredm to the surprise of one journalist, who argued, that the US Government promised to cut the military budget,that "there certainly was no predetermined idea that we would cut the military".
Source: Defenselink.Mil

One week later, on August 16th, once again with Gen. Richard Myer (who wasn't yet Chief of Staff -it was still Henry Shelton until October 2001!), Wolfowitz said:

"...Instead of saying we're going to have these two more or less abstractly sized major war capabilities, we said we start with there are critical areas of the world where we need to have significant forces forward for deterrence; that in each of those areas we want to be able to swiftly defeat an aggression, if it takes place; and finally, we want to have a major war capability to impose whatever terms -- "win decisively," I guess is the terminology. (Chuckling)..."

Another journalist insisted on the pending "cut" -situation:

"...I think, that in the long run, as you go through this process, a reduction in the overall size of the force is possible..."

But Wolfowitz repeated his thoughts about a "paradigm shift":

"...Definitely -- it's definitely possible, and it -- (chuckling) -- again, I need to stress it's possible that it will stay roughly the same. I mean, I think it's fair to say no one is looking at major increases at this point. But -- (laughs) --

(Laughter.) Well, you know, if we went to war tomorrow, that would probably change...

...we can identify Iraq as a threat today and we can identify North Korea as a threat today..." Asked about the possibility of sending troops to the Middle East, the DoD-Transcript says:

"...No one has asked me about it, so I haven't even thought about it, okay? (Chuckles.)

Yes, sir?

Q: Mr. Secretary, everybody talks about transformation, but nobody seems to put a time frame on it. You know, if give the services enough time --

Wolfowitz: Excuse me. I am definitely not ruling it in, okay? Please don't -- (chuckles). No one has asked me. (Laughter.) ..."
Source:

http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/010816Wolfowitz.html

Wolfowitz' wish to go to Iraq was imminent in July/August 2001.

In yet another DC-Interview on July 30th, 2001, (released on the "US Mission to NATO"-website) he was asked about the possibility of "going after the Iraqi leader".

Wolfowitz answered:
"When we find the right way to do it, I believe we should."

In the Vanity Fair article, Wolfowitz' "doctrine" to go after Saddam, is described at one February 2003 meeting at the Metropolitan Club.

At this event, the PNAC leaders celebrated the publication of "The War over Iraq" by Lawrence F. Kaplan, an editor at "The New republic":

"...Wolfowitz..was well known as the principal author of the most neoconservative text of the day:
The Bush doctrine of pre-emptive, or "preventive", military action...
At the time.., the official White House line was that the war could be still averted. But Wolfowitz spoke of it as an impending event."There was no if,"...his talk was clearly framed as when.."

Already in September 2001, it became clear, that Wolfowitz plotted against Henry Shelton, who opposed to go to Iraq.

The Vanity Fair article cited Wolfowitz due to "an informed source":

"...We have very good options for dealing with Iraq".

And Wolfowitz mentioned also Oil as a reason to go to Iraq.
Due to this source, he told President Bush:

"...'Think about the fact that the second largest city in Iraq'- Basra- is full of Shia who hates Saddam...Consider, too, that Basra lies 'within 60 kilometers of the Kuwaiti border and within 60 percent of Iraq's total oil production."

The article stated, that "Bush was impressed".
Due to Vanity's source, it was "clear that (Wolfowitz) stuck with him"

It should become more and more important to archive all quotes of Paul Wolfowitz during Summer 2002.

But he wasn't alone with his thoughts on a "paradigm change".

At least 40 other PNAC-members supported a new role of the United States since their founding in 1997.

The "Wolfowitz-Cabal" is only part of the whole cabal inside the US Government.

The Perle Factor

Still interesting is also Richard Perle, another Wohlstetter and Strauss-protege and friend of Wolfowitz since the Reagan-Bush years.

On September 11th, as Vanity Fair writes, "fellows at the American Enterprise Insitute, soon to emerge as the Bush administration's favourite think tank, were receiving... agressivel counsel from... Richard Perle, who was on the phone from France...

One who consulted him that day was presidental speechwriter David Frum...

Frum spent an hour on the phone with Perle.
'I remember very clearly what he said', Frum recalls.
'Whatever the president says, he must make clear that he's holding responsible not just terrorists but whoever harbors those terrorists.'

That night Bush would go on television and say precisely this".

How could Perle already know on the day of Sep11th,
that one particular country would harbor the terrorists from Sep11th?

Did he really spoke about the hijackers from this day or a general threat?

It becomes now very clear, that it was never about finding the real masterminds of Sep11th.

It wasn't for sure Afghanistan and definetely not Iraq.

But if Perle was so sure to go already to Iraq, can we still speak of a patriotic reaction but less an investigative reaction?

It could have been Lybia, North Korea or maybe even a Palestine attack. Nothing was 100% clear on that day.

And if Perle was thinking about Bin Laden, why did he want to go to Iraq, where Bin Laden definetely wasn't?

What was the real reason for Perle's September 2001 visit in France?

Was it because of the warning by the French Intelligence on Zacarias Moussaoui from August 2001?

Who did Perle visit in September 2001 in France?
(He owns a chateau in the south of France). With all his connections, Perle must have had prior knowledge of both pending attacks and the planned war against the Taliban.

Still he ignored the Sep11th attack and concentrated on Iraq only.

Why?

But, more odd, why did Perle synchronise with Wolfowitz a similar demand on "missile defence" on August 6th?

Both spoke about this demand on the same day, when Bush received a warning by the CIA on a pending attack on America:

"Because we are totally vulnerable today to anyone who acquires a ballistic missile capable of reaching American territory and such a missile could have a nuclear or a chemical or a biological warhead...

...people like Saddam Hussein have a powerful incentive to acquire a single missile..."

Source:

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/roguestate/interviews/perle.htm

The "Freedom"-(Fries) Terrorist

Isn't it odd, that the official 20th hijacker, "Zacarias Moussaoui" was of french origin?

Who had a reason to script a french terrorist into the hijacker plot?

Was it to embarass France and gag them into an ally for a "war against terrorism", or better Iraq?

And who would have been the mastermind behind this kind of script?

Bin Laden would have make no sense at all, Saddam Hussein even less .

Who contacted Moussaoui?

If George Bush knew about Moussaoui since August 2001, why didn't he insist of more background information about him?

More eerie, if Tenet knew about every detail of Moussaoui's arrest, shouldn't it make him wonder, why this guy lived only 2 minutes away from the University of his former "mentor", David Boren (ex-CIA), in Noman, Oklahoma?

And more interesting, what has Boren to say on this strange "coincidence"?

Noone ever asked Boren, Bush and Tenet on that.

Maybe this month could bring another chance, when Tenet will be grilled at the Investigation on the Iraq intelligence files.

France was against the War.

However, it wasn't just about peace, it was for sure about oil.

France had contracts with Iraq through TotalFina (as many european countries had: Russia/Lukoil, Tatneft, Spain/Repsol YPF or Italy/Eni)

Perle must have known about the strong opposition from France against the Iraq war- a long time before Sep11th.

Perle mentioned in this August 2001 interview, that "we're certainly not going to subject the sensitive issue of our own defence to some kind of majority vote among other people who are not directly effected — any more than the French would let us vote on whether they should have their deterrent."

Perle profitted from the War against Terrorism -and one can find the evidence, for another weird reason, in France, too: In January 2003 (as Seymour Hersh from the New Yorker found out), "Perle met at a private lunch, in France, Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East" -and Adnan Kashoggi, a famous weapon dealer.

Perle's strongest military ties are currently with Trireme Partners (where he invested in defense and homeland-security companies, probably together with with fellow Defense Advisory Board memners Henry Kissinger and Gerald P. Hillman, who are on the advisory board of Trireme). In April 2003, Kissinger denied however any financial interest in Trireme.

Among Trireme's clients are Barclays Bank, BP Oil, Chase Manhattan, UBS Warburg and Standard Chartered Bank.

Here we find a familiar pattern of partner structures, which many independent investigators found at other angles of the Sep11th-story as well, while still trying to connect the dots, without knowing every kind of details.

Still almost unknown, even among 911-specialists is, that one of the hijacker's money transfers had been arranged at Standard Chartered Bank, who had an office in WTC Building 7, one floor above the CIA, DoD and INS, which later collapsed on Sep11th, it was never really explained, why.

While Con Edison filed a lawsuit against the former Owner, Blackstone/TRW, who obtained a mortgage in October 2000, resisted to explain, why B7 collapsed.

Could the collapse have been in reality a cover-up to destroy some papertrails of these money transfers -by some insiders, connected with the Sep11th attack?

If so, by whom? Once again, it must have been asked, if both Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein make sense to bomb Building 7?

Why did September 11th really happen?

Why was the Twin Towers and the Pentagon attacked?

Who benefits?

Who has the power to cover it up?

It's still more the "why" and not the "who", which points on the answers. Just follow the money or sniff at the oil peak.

The money in this case came officially from Sheik Mohammed aka Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, a Saudi who was the alleged paymaster to the Sept. 11 terrorists.

Hawsawi opened accounts at Standard Chartered Bank in Dubai in June 2001 and wired money through their bank accounts opened by some of the official "hijackers".

Hawsawi arranged also another account for Sheikh Saaed, a former close asset to the Pakistani Secret Service (ISI), who due to the Indictment of Moussaoui, transfered $100.000 to Mohammed Atta.

When, meanwhile a very popular "underground"-story, the first articles had been posted (India Times reported), the head of the ISI had to resign, but no further investigation of the FBI ever had started.

For sure, Pakistan as an ally, PNAC as an important think tank and American Credit Institutes are not on the schedule of the 911 Commission.

But maybe PNAC will play a role in the Iraq Inquiry.

It's also probably hard to understand for Joe Six Pack, why either the alleged financial mastermind, "KSM" or his "helping hand", Sheikh Saeed, haven't yet been interrogated in a public trial.

The CIA claims, they arrested KSM last year, but still deny to say, where they hide him.

Sheikh Saeed was arrested by Pakistan Intelligence, but for the killing of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journalist.

Once again, it's hard to understand, why Saeed is not here in the United States.

Is 'someone' just embarrassed, he could talk too much?

And if so, who will be embarrassed?

It's just a matter of time, until all these bizarre irregularities and "coincidences" will reach the mainstream editorials of Newsweek and Co.

With every day, new Kristoffs, Isikoffs or Leopolds are scratching the truth. The Guardian is not alone anymore. The US Media finally fell into a summer hole and found something, which is getting more harder to spin.

But probably, once again, they might fade out, when it's on connecting the correct dots. But maybe they will drop, well known "underground"-infos of unbiased independent news portals of the internet.

And we still have some unknown whistleblowers at the CIA, supported by ex-CIA associates like Ray Mc Govern, who are mad on Bush and talk and leak and talk and leak...

The Mideast: Neocons on the Line

A growing number of critics on Capitol Hill and around the world are questioning the Bush administration's credibility-and its assumptions-as never before.

By Michael Hirsh

NEWSWEEK

June 23 issue -

"...Paul Wolfowitz seems a bundle of contradictions, all of them roiling inside him. Calm yet driven, a champion of bold action who speaks in a soft, somewhat quavery voice, Wolfowitz today finds himself pacing the world stage like a nervous father. He is a father in a sense-to an idea, one that has taken on a life of its own and, somewhat in the manner of a wayward child, is causing its parent no end of grief.

IT WAS WOLFOWITZ, the gentlemanly superhawk, who within days of 9-11 prodded the Bush administration into a radical new strategy: forcefully confronting states that sponsor terrorism. It was Wolfowitz-the ex math whiz who fell in love with the idea of "national greatness" as a youth and is now seen as the Bush administration's chief intellectual-who pressed Bush hardest to transform the war on terror into a campaign for regime change and democracy in rogue nations, especially in Iraq and the Islamic world.

Now the deputy defense secretary and his fellow neoconservatives are on the defensive. They are battling a growing crowd of critics on Capitol Hill and around the world as the Bush administration's credibility-and its assumptions-are tested as never before. In Iraq, after another week in which U.S. troops died and got into fierce fire fights, elements of more than half of America's Army divisions are tied down. Some U.S. officials have begun muttering the dreaded Q word-quagmire, a term Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had mocked on a visit to Baghdad in the days just after the three-week war..."

Sam Tanenhaus, Vanity Fair, in an interview with FOX TV

Wolfowitz Interview Casts Shadow Over Pre-Iraq War WMD Evidence

Monday, June 02, 2003

DAVID ASMAN, GUEST HOST:  There is still no smoking gun in the hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (search).

Now an interview running in Vanity Fair magazine quotes Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (search), saying the weapons issue was merely a bureaucratic reason to justify the war.

That article is making waves all over the globe, but has Wolfowitz been misquoted or taken out of context?

Sam Tanenhaus conducted the interview. He is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and he joins us live. Thanks for coming in.

SAM TANENHAUS, VANITY FAIR:  My pleasure.

ASMAN: Was there anything taken out of context here?

TANENHAUS: Oh, no. Absolutely not. I think you should understand, viewers should understand exactly how these remarks of the secretary's were made. He was describing to me some of the advantages of the Iraq war that were not receiving enough attention. One of them was our ability now to remove troops from Saudi Arabia (search). He went on to say that this had been a serious irritant for Usama bin Laden, one of the reasons Al Qaeda had been able to recruit so many people to its cause.

ASMAN: And the reason that we were in Saudi Arabia was because Saddam was in Iraq.

TANENHAUS: Precisely.

ASMAN: And once we got rid of Saddam, we could get rid of our troops in Saudi Arabia.

TANENHAUS: Exactly.

ASMAN: That was just one of the several of reasons.

TANENHAUS: And this was an idea that had been kicking around for a while. And defense policy people will talk about this, that the connection between Saddam and bin Laden was really a strategic one, not necessarily one having to do with terror.

ASMAN: Now, the reason why this has raised such a ruckus is a lot of Europeans who opposed getting into the war are using this and saying that Wolfowitz used this issue to justify the war, an issue that they really, the U.S. didn't really feel that comfortable supporting, but they decided for bureaucratic reasons to get the State Department (search) on board to use this weapons of mass destruction as the issue to get the world involved, to get rid of Saddam.

And Wolfowitz, here's one quote from your article. It says, "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."

Now Wolfowitz has since come out and said that's not the full context of his quote. And he spoke earlier. I think we have a tape of that. Let's take a listen to it if we can.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE:  We have, from the beginning, had three concerns. One was weapons of mass destruction, a second was terrorism, and the third — and all three of these, by the way, are in Secretary Powell's presentation at the U.N. — and the third was the abuse of the Iraqi people by its own government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ASMAN: So, he is saying there were three reasons, WMD was just one.

TANENHAUS: That's right. And this is what my article says. WMD was just one. The problem was that became the reason…

ASMAN: That became the reason we went out to get Saddam.

TANENHAUS: Precisely. And I applaud the secretary for the candor of his remarks to me. To return to the point I made earlier, after he began to talk about the significance of our removing troops from Saudi Arabia, I then asked him if this had been an issue of his very early on, because again — as I mentioned — this was something that had been kicking around in the diplomatic and foreign policy community. At that point, the secretary said, “Yes, the truth is that weapons of mass destruction were used for reasons that had...”

ASMAN: Bureaucratic reasons, essentially, Bringing the State Department on board. But why didn't you include that second part in what he said, that there have always been three fundamental concerns…

TANENHAUS: Well, the article makes clear there were a number of reasons.

ASMAN: But the quote was just that one and, of course, the Europeans have jumped upon that because they've had trouble finding WMD, saying the one reason we got involved with the war with Saddam was a false reason.

TANENHAUS: That is not exactly right.

ASMAN: It's not right, but that is what they're saying.

TANENHAUS: Right, but what the secretary did — and of course you're a journalist yourself — he made a very bold statement bringing in the question of bureaucracy, internal dissension or disagreement had to be settled.

ASMAN: Got to ask a final question. It's a huge article, by the way, about Bush's foreign policy team, a very good article. This is on the last page, almost the last paragraph. Why did you bury the lead?

TANENHAUS: Well, because this was not an article that was looking to create the kind of controversy it did. As you know, it is a very friendly piece toward the secretary, very admiring toward him. And of the neo-conservative ...

ASMAN: It is indeed. But I just wonder, why it is at the end of the article? You never bury a lead as a good journalist.

TANENHAUS: Well, it's a magazine article. Had it been a newspaper story ... At one point, we considered making it the lead. But for a magazine reader, he needs a kind of warm-up. He needs to be led into the article.

ASMAN: All right. It's a very interesting article. Vanity Fair, Sam Tanenhaus is the author. Thanks, Sam. Appreciate it.

TANENHAUS: My pleasure.

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