U.S. Will Raise Defense With Israel

U.S. Will Raise Defense With Israel

The United States has agreed to raise the level of defense relations with Israel.

In that context, the Bush administration has dispatched Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Israel, who will arrive tonight for meetings on strategic issues with his counter part, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The Gates visit was said to have signaled the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Israel in wake of an unmanned aerial vehicle upgrade project for China in 2004.

The Pentagon, angered that Israel tried to conceal the project, severed high-level ties, blocked sensitive exports and denied Israel access to the Joint Strike Fighter program. Israel was not believed to have completed the Harpy UAV upgrade for Beijing.

In September 2005, Israel and the United States agreed to consult on proposed arms exports by the Jewish state. Israel also pledged to make its export approval process transparent, legislation that has not yet been approved by the Knesset.

Posted Apr 17, 2007 06:15 PM PST
Category: ISRAEL

Note that Israel appears to have received precisely what it wanted, but the legislation to make its export approval transparent has not yet been passed by the Knesset.

The alleged "concern" about the US selling advanced F-15 and F-16 fighters to Saudi Arabia is simply a bargaining chip with which Israel hopes to gain more advantage in the deal.

US Defense Secretary to Visit Israel to Sell Weapons

_{Last update - 02:04 12/04/2007}

U.S. defense secretary to visit Israel

_{By Shmuel Rosner}

WASHINGTON - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will visit Israel next week for a series of meetings with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz on the strategic situation in the Middle East.

The visit, scheduled for April 17, is the first time a U.S. Defense Secretary will be visiting Israel in eight years.

American sources told Haaretz on Tuesday that the visit was decided and a date finalized, though an official announcement on the matter has not been made public.

The visit, which comes about a month after Peretz visited Washington, will also deal with bilateral defense ties between the U.S. and Israel.

Gates was appointed Defense Secretary less than six months ago, replacing Donald Rumsfeld. A planned visit of Rumsfeld to Israel in June 2006 was canceled last minute.

The last U.S. Defense Secretary to have visited Israel was William Cohen, who came in 1999, during the second Clinton administration.

The Gates visit is critical to helping heal the rift in the relations between the U.S. and Israel defense establishments, following the crisis that occured over Israeli's sale of defense equipment to China. In 2005, the U.S. defense establishment placed severe sanctions on Israel, which included restrictions on defense-related sales, joint projects and exchanges of information on advanced weapons systems.

Gates' main mission at this point is to oversea the renewed effort to stabilize Iraq, in light of President George Bush's decision to increase the number of U.S. troops in that country.

American sources told Haaretz yesterday that Gates is interested in hearing what the Israeli leadership thinks about the situation in Iraq. He is also planning to discuss tactics for dealing with the IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) employed by terrorists in Iraq, which have taken a toll on U.S. forces.

Among the bilateral issues to be discussed is Israel's wish to be included once more in the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) project for the new American strike fighter - from which it was excluded following the China crisis. Senior Israeli officials argued in their recent meetings with American counterparts that it is advisable to include some Israeli sub-systems in the new aircraft. However, the Americans were adamant that they do not intend to make further changes in the design and development of the aircraft.

The Israelis said they raised some of the lessons of the Lebanon war in conversations with their American colleagues and recommended that these should be studied before the JSF development program is finalized.

Another issue of interest to Gates and Israel, and a subject covered extensively last week by the New York Times, is Israel's opposition to the sale of advanced weapons systems to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States.

The American defense establishment is determined to sell these systems to Arab states and will seek a compromise formula in order to prevent supporters of Israel in Congress from foiling the deal. Israel has also expressed interest in procuring a number of advanced systems from the U.S. and it is possible that Washington will agree to reconsider the sale of these to Israel in exchange for an easing of Israeli objections to the Saudi deal.

From Doug Feith's lips to your ears

April 05, 2007

From Doug Feith's lips to your ears.

Finally, a declassified version of the briefing slides (pdf) used by Feith's shop to illustrate the "mature, symbiotic relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda has been made publicly available, courtesy of Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI). The briefing was given to senior White House officials in the prelude to the Iraq War.

Levin also released a declassified version (pdf) of the Defense Department's Inspector General's report on Feith, which found that Feith's doings "inappropriate but legal."

Highlights soon.

Update: Highlights here.

-- Paul Kiel

White House Document Dump: An Iraq War shell-game

Sunday, March 11, 2007

George Bush pulled another fast one on Friday, though so far the whole thing has gone unnoticed. It's a classic Bush & Co. document dump, with a twist.

Bush is traveling abroad, while his administration is rocked by one major scandal after another, and the escalation in Iraq just rescalated. What better time then to get some Awkward News out? This Awkward News happens to concern the military budget.

The twist here is that in the letter Bush sent to Nancy Pelosi asking Congress to give the DOD more money, he gave a seriously misleading account of what he planned to do with it all. In the letter, Bush claims that the money is needed for base closures. The truth of the matter emerges only once you examine a document sent along with that letter.

And the truth is that Bush wants to cut billions of dollars from domestic programs partly in order to pay for troop deployments in Iraq.

Here is the first letter from Bush to Pelosi, regarding proposed cuts to domestic programs, from 3/9/07 (emphasis mine):

I ask the Congress to consider the enclosed FY 2007 request to cancel $3.1 billion of funding from lower-priority Federal programs and excess funds. This request would offset fully the funds needed to address the $3.1 billion FY 2007 funding shortfall for the Department of Defense to implement the recommendations of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission. The proposed cancellations would affect the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, the Interior, and Transportation, as well as the Corps of Engineers.

The details of this request are set forth in the enclosed letter from the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

I'll return to the grisly details of what Bush proposes to cut from domestic programs in order (as he claims here) to fully fund the base closures that were rammed through in 2005. You'll recall that this was another of Rumsfeld's hare-brained schemes. Rumsfeld claimed improbably that the military could save nearly $50 billion by closing military bases en masse. Instead, these closures are turning out to be of dubious value, as more credible people had predicted.

In questioning the Pentagon's estimate on savings, the commission has pointed to its own analysis as well as a report by the Government Accountability Office that found upfront costs will total $24 billion.

That report said eliminating jobs held by military personnel would make up about half of the Pentagon's projected annual recurring savings. It also said much of that money would not be available for other uses because the jobs — and salaries — simply would be relocated.

"It doesn't appear to us the savings are real," Phillip Coyle, a commissioner and former assistant secretary of defense, told officials.

The DOD has in fact been budgeting billions every year to pay for the initial base closings:

The Defense Department's proposed $379.9 billion fiscal 2004 budget suggests the Pentagon will close or realign as many as 25 percent of all bases during the next round of base closures in 2005.

The proposed budget lays out a six-year spending plan that calls for spending $2.97 billion on base closures in fiscal 2006, $5.26 billion in fiscal 2007, and $2.25 billion in fiscal 2008.

But now, Bush tells Pelosi, DOD needs another $3.1 billion dollars alone for 2007...just to supplement the base-closure budget.

~~~

As it turns out, though, that's not quite the whole truth. Wander on over to the Office of Management and Budget, and you'll find a copy of the enclosure that Bush directed OMB to send along with the letter to Pelosi (PDF).

Submitted for your consideration is an FY 2007 request to cancel $3.1 billion of funding from lower-priority Federal programs and excess funds. These proposals would offset fully funds needed to address the $3.1 billion FY 2007 funding shortfall for the Department of Defense (DOD) to implement the recommendations of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission. These funds are necessary for DOD to continue scheduled redeployments of military personnel and their families from overseas stations to the United States and support the training, mobilization and deployment of military forces in support of the Global War on Terror. In addition, these funds are required to maintain the legislated schedule for BRAC realignments and closures, which is important to communities that have already made specific plans and commitments.

The statement is clear as mud, don't you know, but my understanding of the phrase I've emphasized is that the administration is slipping an additional purpose into the package. Some of this will be used for BRAC (presumably), but the big pot of $3.1 billion is also going to be siphoned off to pay for the wars in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Funny that the President didn't mention that in his letter to Pelosi.

~~~

So what domestic programs does the OMB suggest taking an ax to? The document goes on to list them. I'll highlight a few of the suggested cuts, to give you an idea of what this endless war in the Middle East is doing for America. Remember that the administration considers these things to be 'excess'.

Proposed cuts (in millions of dollars)

• Dept. of Agriculture, $245.3, including cuts from the Rural Business Enterprise Grants and Hatch Act Formula Funds (given to State Agricultural Experiment Stations)
• Dept. of Commerce, $79.1, from the Advanced Technology Program
• Dept. of Education, $891.7, including cuts from Career and Technical Education State Grants, from Tech-Prep State Grants, and from the family literacy program Even Start
• Dept. of Energy, $200 from the Environmental Management program
• HHS, $118 from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention
• HUD, $740 from Community Development Block Grants
• Dept. of Interior, $77.3, including cuts from the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Education Construction program and from the Land and Water Conservation Fund State Grants program
• Dept. of Transportation, $670, mostly in cuts from grants for passenger rail service

These cuts show you clearly where this administration's priorities are, and they are not where people live, and work, and strive to make better lives for themselves. With bird flu a looming threat, it's time to cut funds from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. With states' budgets sinking under the weight of unfunded educational mandates imposed by the 'education President', the way to pay for deployments to Iraq is to cut close to a billion dollars from educational grant programs. With oil and gasoline prices soaring, the rational way to plan for the nation's energy and transportation needs is to cut back on passenger rail service.

How does the Bush administration justify these cuts? Not very persuasively, I suppose I'd say. Here for example is its reasoning for cutting Hatch Act funds:

The proposal would cancel $130.0 million from the Hatch Act formula grant program, which provides funding to land grant universities...The Administration has consistently emphasized that funding through peer-reviewed competitive research programs generates the highest quality research, and therefore believes that providing significant amounts of additional funding to statutorily-derived formula programs is not the most effective use of taxpayer dollars.

You get the impression that nobody at the upper reaches of this administration attended a land-grant university. There's an awful lot of 'because-we-say-so' in these justifications.

The proposal would cancel $740.0 million from the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. This program was proposed to be reduced in the President's FY 2007 and FY 2008 Budgets, and P.L. 110-5 provides funding significantly above these requests. The current CDBG program is not well-targeted and program results have not been adequately demonstrated or reported. The Administration continues to support CDBG legislative reforms, similar to the CDBG Reform Act, which was transmitted to the Congress in May 2006.

And get a load of what people who own rambling estates think of publicly-owned parks:

The proposal would cancel $28.0 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund State grants program in the National Park Service. The program provides grants to States for land acquisition and improvements to State and local parks. No funds for this program were requested in the FYs 2006, 2007, or 2008 President's Budgets on the grounds that paying to improve State and local parks are decisions better left to State and local taxpayers.

In its details and overall, this is an obnoxious proposal from OMB, but it drives home exactly what this foolish invasion of Iraq has meant to our common wealth. No wonder this stinker from Bush came as a Friday document dump. It will be interesting to see whether Congressional Democrats even treat it as meriting serious discussion.

~~~

As I suggested above, there was a second letter from Bush to Pelosi on Friday, this one requesting that an unspecified amount of money be reallocated within the pending DOD budget. As the OMB enclosure (PDF) with that letter reveals, Bush is asking to shift $3.2 billion around, the great majority to fund operations in Iraq and to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. A relatively small amount, $50 million, will go toward improving the health care for veterans.

The $3.2 billion is to come from a variety of less important lines in the DOD budget—that is to say, things "not associated with Iraq and Afghanistan".

In addition, Bush asks for permission to raise the ceiling by $3.5 billion in what he is authorized to transfer within the DOD budget. The purpose, again, is to fund the Iraq war.

All of this goes to underline the point that emerges from the first letter to Pelosi: That the Iraq War is bankrupting the US and increasingly desperate budgetary measures have to be employed just to maintain the appearance that the Bush administration has things under control.

The long-term damage to our military's readiness, both in personnel and in materiel, will be profound. The drain upon our finances, regrettably, may be even more difficult to repair. And if this administration has any say in the matter, all of this will be cloaked from the public for as long as possible.

• OMB
• Bush
• Iraq

Posted by smintheus ,: smintheus at entermail dot net, at 23:05:06. Filed under: war

• Go ahead: say your piece

Larger CIA and DoD Privatization Scandal Emerging from Walter Reed Story, US Attorneys Firing

Mar 10, 2007
by leveymg

Rumsfeld and Top GOP Figures Profited from Privatization of VA Hospital, CIA Contractors

A large global hedge fund, Cerberus Capital Management (dba, Cerberus-Gabriel), is at the center of an emerging Pentagon and CIA contracting scandal that has the attention of three Congressional Committees.

In each case, the companies under investigation have links to prominent GOP figures, including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and several Republican Congressmen indicted for corruption involving kickbacks from defense contractors. The Republican Congressional Campaign Commitee (RCCC) has also received substantial contributions from conservative fund managers running Cerberus, a virually unregulated $30 billion hedge fund, which owns the second largest bank in Israel.

This scandal involves the mismanagement of VA hospital facilities privatized during the Bush-Cheney Administration, as well as intelligence abuses by private CIA contractors.

The lastest Cerberus scandal involving its holding, International American Products (IAP) Worldwide Services, awarded a $120 million contract to manage facilities at Walter Reed, is only the latest in a long line of serious problems involving the company and its officers. IAP’s President, Alfred V. Neffgen, was formerly Chief Operating Officer for KBR's government operations group, which was forced to repay tens of millions of dollars to the Defense Department for food and fuel overcharges in Iraq. IAP has other contracting connections with Dick Cheney’s Halliburton/KBR. Most recently, IAP bid on part of the Iraq oil reconstruction project as a partner with Halliburton KBR. The Army Times reports about the Halliburton tie-in:

http://www.armytimes.com/...

Walter Reed also awarded a five-year, $120-million contract to IAP Worldwide Services, which is run by Al Neffgen, a former senior Halliburton official.

They also found that more than 300 federal employees providing facilities management services at Walter Reed had drooped to fewer than 60 by Feb. 3, 2007, the day before IAP took over facilities management. IAP replaced the remaining 60 employees with only 50 private workers.

"The conditions that have been described at Walter Reed are disgraceful," the letter states. "Part of our mission on the Oversight Committee is to investigate what led to the breakdown in services. It would be reprehensible if the deplorable conditions were caused or aggravated by an ideological commitment to privatize government services regardless of the costs to taxpayers and the consequences for wounded soldiers."

The letter said the Defense Department "systemically" tried to replace federal workers at Walter Reed with private companies for facilities management, patient care and guard duty – a process that began in 2000.

Cerberus owns, or had a major interest in, a string of now-bankrupt companies that had contracts with U.S. defense and intelligence agencies that were found to have a common pattern of large-scale fraud, security problems, and financial scandals involving GOP lawmakers and lobbyists.

IAP is also tied-in with Halliburton/KBR on multi-billion dollar Iraq contracts. Halliburton is a major defense contractor once headed by Vice President Cheney, that has had its own history of problems with fraud and overcharges related to its management of sole-source projects in Iraq, particularly the multi-billion dollar LOGCAP contract to repair and maintain Iraq’s oil fields and pipelines.

Just months before the invasion, DoD designated Halliburton/KBR as the sole potential bidder for potential large-scale pipeline repair contracts. Four years after the initial invasion and occupation of those fields, Iraq is still not producing at its prewar levels, a threshold that would require termination of the LOGCAP contract.

On October 16, 2006, IAP Worldwide Services issued this press release: "IAP Worldwide Services, Inc. Team Submits Bid For LOGCAP IV Contract," which included this quote from former Halliburton/KBR executive Dave Swindle:

"The LOGCAP IV contract is a major challenge," said Dave Swindle, IAP President. "Supporting the warfighter and the Army is a responsibility that allows no compromise. IAP and its team members understand the magnitude of this program and the issues associated with its complexity. We place a high priority on using our proven Business Operating System (BOS) to provide effective oversight and tracking to responsibly meet the customer’s needs from Day One. Through BOS we will act as one team through a management and business system that is completely transparent to the customer."

http://www.iapws.com/...

***

Cerberus a Major Stockholder in Bankrupt MCI, Takes Over a Mismanaged $8.8 DoD Project to Create Secure Computer systems for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps

By Matt Kelley
USA TODAY The fundraiser, which took place July 7, 2003, and the subsequent vote illustrate the kind of relationship between congressman and contributor that's under increased scrutiny in the nation's capital.

~snip~

Both Lewis and the investment company, Cerberus Capital Management, benefited from the relationship. Eighteen months after the fundraiser and the House vote, Lewis won the chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee. He acknowledges that the fundraising efforts of Cerberus "played a very significant role" in winning the post. The ties between Cerberus and Lewis, a 14-term congressman from Redlands, Calif., have not been publicly examined before.

~snip~

Created in 1992, Cerberus is a hedge fund, a type of private investment group that's not regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. ...

~snip~

In 2003, Cerberus owned more than $140 million in stock and bonds of the bankrupt telecommunications giant WorldCom, financial records show. Its stake in the company, which had filed for bankruptcy protection the previous year, was large enough that a Cerberus executive joined the board of directors of MCI, the company's post-bankruptcy name. ... MCI has been a major subcontractor since 2000 on an $8.8 billion project to build a secure computer network for the Navy and Marines. ...The committee report noted the program's cost overruns, schedule delays and management foul-ups in its report accompanying the 2003 defense spending bill, also sponsored by Lewis. That report called for more and better testing of the program before more computers were added to the network.

Lewis himself had criticized the Navy-Marine computer project in October 2002, telling The Washington Post he was not satisfied with its progress. He also said he was concerned about MCI's involvement. "When you have a big piece of the pie in trouble, it just gums up a process that already has great difficulty," he said. ... Other members of Congress were pushing the federal government to ban MCI from any future contracts because of the $11 billion accounting scandal, which eventually landed former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers a 25-year prison term. MCI now has about $2 billion in annual revenue from government contracts, and the Navy project remains one of its biggest.

On May 16, 2003, the House Armed Services Committee voted to cut 10% of the Navy project's $1.6 billion budget for the upcoming year. Federal lobbying records show that two months earlier, Cerberus hired its first lobbyist, the powerhouse firm Patton Boggs. ... The firm's lobbyists for Cerberus included Laurence Harris, a former FCC staffer who would join MCI's board of directors that August; retired Marine colonel John Garrett; and Marcus Dunn, a former aide to two members of the House Armed Services Committee. ...Cerberus paid Patton Boggs $1.1 million for lobbying from 2003 to the middle of 2005, the last date that records are available. Separately, Cerberus hired former senator Jake Garn, a Utah Republican, as a lobbyist for $410,000 over the same period, lobbying records show.

~snip~

http://cache.zoominfo.com/...

***
Cerberis donated $100,000 at a single fundraiser to Rep. Jerry Lewis, fmr. Chair of the House Appropriations Comm., who served as intermediary to distribute money to fellow GOP lawmakers favored by Cerberus

http://www.usatoday.com/...

Lewis' Future Leaders PAC gave $407,000 to 69 House candidates in the 2004 election. The Cerberus-related money was equal to nearly a third of that amount. In 2003, the PAC collected $522,725 — a quarter of it connected to Cerberus.
Boustany's 2004 campaign got $15,000 in contributions from Lewis' Future Leaders PAC in three separate $5,000 contributions, according to Federal Election Commission records. Lewis also kicked in another $2,000 from his own campaign in two separate contributions to Boustany's 2004 campaign. Boustany picked up another $5,000 from Future Leaders PAC in the current election cycle.

But, Boustany also benefited from the Lewis/Cerberus relationship in another way: Lewis also got Cerberus to help with his fundraising for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the arm of the GOP that gives money to House candidates. Lewis said he invited Cerberus executives to an April 2004 NRCC fundraiser he chaired that included a speech by President Bush.

The NRCC got $70,000 in Cerberus-related donations during the first two weeks of April 2004, including $25,000 from Cerberus founder Stephen Feinberg, records show. "I had been doing this for over a dozen years, helping to raise money for our members," Lewis said. "Others (candidates for Appropriations chairman) began to be helpful with fundraising, but that had been a recent and newfound interest of theirs."

Federal Election Commission records show that the National Republican Congressional Committee spent $72,620 in coordinated spending on Boustany's 2004 campaign and another $96,593 on independent expenditures on behalf of Boustany's campaign. Now, of course, the national parties raised millions of dollars for congressional races, so Boustany's share of that Cerberus/Lewis effort might well have been small through this particular channel. In any event, it was no where near as large as Cerberus's impact on Future Leaders PAC dollars.

Wilkes employed a lobbyist named Bill Lowery who is unusually close with House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Lewis. Copley News Service conducted a three month investigation of their relationship:

From powerful positions on the House Appropriations Committee, California Rep. Jerry Lewis has greenlighted hundreds of millions of dollars in federal projects for clients of one of his closest friends, lobbyist and former state Congressman Bill Lowery.

Meanwhile, Lowery, the partners at his firm and their clients have donated 37 percent of the $1.3 million that Lewis’ political action committee received in the past six years...The Lewis-Lowery relationship, however, is remarkable for the closeness and mutual dependence...They’ve even exchanged two key staff members, making their offices so intermingled that they seem to be extensions of each other.

Serberus founder Stephen Feinberg is reported to have made particularly substantial donations to Republican organizations, with a 2004 contribution of $25,000 to the RCCC. Feinberg also contributed $2000 to the Senate campaign that year of Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman. http://www.fundrace.org/...

Both Serberus and MZM were giving GOP House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis large amounts of money for distribution to other GOP Congressmen through Lewis' PAC. Serberus appears to have been the senior partner in the scheme. Lewis was being investigated by the US Attorney for the Southern District of CA, Debra Wong Yang, who resigned on Nov. 10 to go to work for the powerhouse LA law firm that's defending Lewis. USA Lam, who had the MZM case, meanwhile was fired along with six others in a January purge of the US Attoneys Office that is just now receiving considerable attention.

Laura Rozen speculates that Yang, upon learning of her impending firing last year, accepted a rather comfortable exit package rather than be fired as was here her colleague, USA Caroline Lam. See, http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/... /

http://thehill.com/...

In a plea agreement with prosecutors, Cunningham named four people who had conspired with him to commit the crimes. Although the plea agreement does not refer to the co-conspirators by name, they are widely believed to be Mitchell Wade, the former president of defense intelligence firm MZM Inc., Brent Wilkes, president of defense contractor ADCS Inc., Tom Kontogiannis, a New York real-estate developer, and an unnamed family member of Kontogiannis.

Wade and Wilkes gave heavily to congressional Republicans in recent years, and now lawmakers must decide whether to keep the campaign largesse.

Wade, Wilkes, Kontogiannis and others remain under investigation, according to a statement made by the lead federal prosecutor in the case, U.S. Attorney Carol Lam.
Congressional ethics experts predict that one or more of the co-conspirators would be charged, especially because Cunningham has agreed to continue to cooperate with the investigation.

"Given that they were both described as co-conspirators in the plea agreement and that the agreement calls for former Rep. Cunningham to cooperate in the investigation, it’s very likely that both Mitchell Wade and Brent Wilkes will be indicted," said Brett Kappel, an ethics lawyer at Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP.

Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.) has returned money from lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the center of another congressional ethics scandal, while Republican Reps. Jeb Bradley (N.H.), Kenny Hulshof (Mo.), Heather Wilson (N.M.) and Steve LaTourette (Ohio) gave back contributions from DeLay after he was indicted in September.

Republican Reps. Tom DeLay (Texas), John Doolittle (Calif.) and Jerry Lewis (Calif.) all received at least $30,000 in donations — either through their campaign committee or their leadership PACs — from Wade, Wilkes, their family members and their companies’ PACs over the past four years. These totals do not include individual contributions from employees of these firms. Early this year, Lewis became the chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. Before that, he headed the defense appropriations subcommittee. Because of these high-profile roles, Lewis often receives more donations than most House members. Doolittle also sits on the Appropriations Committee.

But Cunningham, who was simply a member of the defense appropriations subcommittee, received the most — at least $66,000 during the same period.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, received just over $28,000, as did Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.). Rep. Jerry Weller (R-Ill.) was the recipient of $20,000.

Wilkes is a prominent Bush fundraiser, earning a designation as a "Bush pioneer" in 2004 for raising more than $100,000. If Wilkes is indicted, he will be the third Bush pioneer, after Abramoff and Ohio fundraiser Tom Noe, to be indicted this year.

Wade resigned from MZM earlier this year. The company was sold to a private equity firm in August.

Senate Judiciary Committee Goes Into Closed Hearings to Discuss Firing of U.S. Attorney Who Prosecuted CIA Contractor Case

On Tuesday, Judiciary Committee member Arlen Specter revealed publicly that the committee he used to Chair would be going behind closed doors to discuss still-classified details about the retaliatory firing of U.S. Attorney Caroline Lam, who had aggressively prosecuted the MZM Wade-Cunningham contracting case. (Source C-Span Radio, 03/05/2007, @ 7:20 pm).

According to Specter, the Senate Judiciary Committee went into closed session to talk about an ongoing TOP SECRET investigation that stems from the Cunningham case. Three Hill Committees reached an agreement with the Department of Justice to receive files compiled by the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Diego, and are just beginning to hold public hearings into the unlawful dismissal of Lam. (See, generally, http://thehill.com/... ; http://www.signonsandiego.com/... ; http://www.scoop.co.nz/...

These closed hearings are most likely related to contracts that MZM had with CIA, including one that led to the falsification of data about aluminum tubes shipped to Iraq that allegedly were going to be used to reconstitute Saddam's nuclear program. That's right, those aluminum tubes, the one's that were falsely used by White House and Vice President to justify the invasion of Iraq.

***

On background, it should be noted that Laura Rozen's WAR&PIECE column of December 11, 2005, "Wade, Wilkes and Bad Intelligence?" identified Mitchell Wade's MZM defense contracting firm as a culprit in faulty intelligence generation that led to the Iraq invasion. See, http://www.warandpiece.com/...

A source cited by Rozen identified MZM as the private contractor cited for support of an errant CIA Iraq WMD assessment used to justify the Bush Administration's argument for war. An MZM analysis erroneously concluded that aluminum tubes ordered by Saddam Hussein were intended for use in a clandestine nuclear fuel enrichment program that didn't exist. Rosen came up with the extraordinary finding that consultants working for MZM and other intelligence contractors staffed the Robb-Silberman Commission that investigated the faulty Iraq WMD findings.

***

During testimony in the Scooter Libby trial, we learned that Valerie Plame was involved in the aluminum tube issue within the CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Division (CPD), where she worked before being "outed" by Libby and others in the White House and Vice President’s office.

***

Dan Quayle is chair of new Leumi owner Cerberus-Gabriel, Interceded With SEC Head to Block Rules Governing Hedge Funds

www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=645933
Dan Quayle is chair of new Leumi owner Cerberus-Gabriel
Ha’aretz 11/16/2005
Cerberus is chaired by former U.S. vice president Dan Quayle. — The Cerberus-Gabriel group was led by Gabriel president J. Ezra Merkin, assisted by CPA Avi Berger, the general manager of the Kesselman & Kesselman accounting firm, and attorney Yaakov Ne’eman. Stephen Feinberg, 45, a Jew from New York and the wunderkind of the hedge funds world who, within 20 years, turned a $10 million fund into a holding company whose companies have combined sales of $30 billion a year, is the founder and manager of Cerberus Global Investment.

http://www.globes.co.il/...
Experts: Ultimate owners of Leumi unclear
Globes 11/16/2005
Banking sources: US investor disclosure regulations will cause Cerberus-Gabriel problems.— Ministry of Finance officials have declared a great victory in the Bank Leumi (TASE: LUMI) tender, but banking specialists are not so enthusiastic. They say that the victory wasn’t so great: the buyers (Cerberus Capital Management LP and Gabriel Capital Management) are too anonymous, their business isn’t transparent enough, and, most of all, the saga is far from over...these owners have specific problems in connection with operating a bank in the US, and they are looking for indirect ways to operate there, perhaps without a banking license.

(Can't get that top link to work yet -- Globe link requires registration and installation of their software. Found these links from: http://72.14.253.104/... )

In 2004,Met with then The SEC Chairman William Donaldson a month prior to Donaldson's vote on whether to open hedge funds to periodic inspections:

~snip~
Canary Scandal

Former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle, an adviser to Cerberus, met in June with Donaldson to discuss fund regulation. Craig Whitney, executive vice president of Quayle & Associates, denied that Quayle was lobbying Donaldson to weaken the SEC's hedge fund plan.

Hedge fund executives also say the SEC should focus its resources on better protecting the 91 million U.S. holders of mutual funds. The SEC's move to increase regulation of the private investment pools has gained pace since New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer alleged 10 months ago that ``illegal trading schemes'' enabled some hedge funds to buy mutual fund shares at prices not available to most investors.

Canary Capital Partners LLC and its managing principal, Edward Stern, agreed on Sept. 3 to return $30 million in profits and pay a $10 million fine. Since then, regulators have imposed more than $2.3 billion in sanctions against about a dozen companies including Bank of America Corp. and Alliance Capital Management Holding LP. ~snip~

http://quote.bloomberg.com/...

DONALD RUMSFELD - CERBERUS INVESTOR

During the tenure of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon awarded a large contract to the company at the center of the Walter Reed Army Hospital scandal. Rumsfeld may have financially benefited from it along with other major GOP figures, including former Vice President Dan Quaile also invested or were employed by, or received campaign contributions from the same Wall Street hedge fund that owns the company.

In his last financial disclosure before becoming Defense Secretary, Rumsfeld revealed that he held shares in Cerberus, a large NY Hedge Fund that acquired International American Products, Inc., the company awarded a Pentagon contract to privatize facilities management services at Walter Reed. http://www.businessweek.com/...

2005 - CERBERUS PURCHASES SECOND-LARGEST BANK IN ISRAEL, COMPLETING THE PRIVATIZATION OF THE ISRAELI BANKING SYSTEM

Cerberus group, which in 2005, acquired the second largest Israeli bank, Leumi Bank, completing a process of privatization of the Israeli financial sector pushed by the Right-wing Likud Party and its successor under the present Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert.

Cerberus holding Leumi Bank privatized Israeli banks - IAP privatized VA hospitals

Strange symmetry to this, isn't there? Perhaps, no coincidence to any of it. Here's why.

You have to read a seminal neocon document written in 1997 for then-Israeli PM Netanyahu by the guys who went on to run the Office of Special Plans (OSP), Feith, Wurmser, and Perle. That paper, "A CLEAN BREAK: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" -- http://www.iasps.org/... -- lays out a battle plan for conquering the Mid-East, starting with Iraq and Lebanon as means to undermine and discourage Syria, and then, finally, a forced reorientation of the region’s enormous Shi’a population away from Iran and the elevation of the Heshemite Kingdom of Morocco’s King Hussein. The point of all this isn't just military conquest, and the elimination of regional threats, it's actually to set the preconditions for a PRIVATIZED Israeli economy, and the "clean break" is with Israeli's social-democratic past.

It is also meant to map out a profound shift in Israel’s relationship with the United States, away from a traditional client state that submits to bi-partsian Washington, with the an alliance with the ascendant GOP Right-wing, the authors planned to elevate Israel into a new regional Superpower.

A Clean Break is a daringly blunt statement of those commercial, ideological and strategic ambitions:

Israel has a large problem. Labor Zionism, which for 70 years has dominated the Zionist movement, has generated a stalled and shackled economy. Efforts to salvage Israel’s socialist institutions—which include pursuing supranational over national sovereignty and pursuing a peace process that embraces the slogan, "New Middle East"—undermine the legitimacy of the nation and lead Israel into strategic paralysis and the previous government’s "peace process." That peace process obscured the evidence of eroding national critical mass— including a palpable sense of national exhaustion—and forfeited strategic initiative.

SNIP

Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by:

SNIP

• striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper.

SNIP

Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right . . . Since Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites in their efforts to redefine Iraq.

SNIP

King Hussein may have ideas for Israel in bringing its Lebanon problem under control. The predominantly Shia population of southern Lebanon has been tied for centuries to the Shia leadership in Najf, Iraq rather than Iran. Were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najf to help Israel wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hizballah, Iran, and Syria. Shia retain strong ties to the Hashemites: the Shia venerate foremost the Prophet’s family, the direct descendants of which — and in whose veins the blood of the Prophet flows — is King Hussein.

SNIP

Forging A New U.S.-Israeli Relationship

In recent years, Israel invited active U.S. intervention in Israel’s domestic and foreign policy for two reasons: to overcome domestic opposition to "land for peace" concessions the Israeli public could not digest, and to lure Arabs — through money, forgiveness of past sins, and access to U.S. weapons — to negotiate. This strategy, which required funneling American money to repressive and aggressive regimes, was risky, expensive, and very costly for both the U.S. and Israel, and placed the United States in roles is should neither have nor want.

Israel can make a clean break from the past and establish a new vision for the U.S.-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity and mutuality — not one focused narrowly on territorial disputes. Israel’s new strategy — based on a shared philosophy of peace through strength — reflects continuity with Western values by stressing that Israel is self-reliant, does not need U.S. troops in any capacity to defend it, including on the Golan Heights, and can manage its own affairs. Such self-reliance will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past.

To reinforce this point, the Prime Minister can use his forthcoming visit to announce that Israel is now mature enough to cut itself free immediately from at least U.S. economic aid and loan guarantees at least, which prevent economic reform. [Military aid is separated for the moment until adequate arrangements can be made to ensure that Israel will not encounter supply problems in the means to defend itself]. As outlined in another Institute report, Israel can become self-reliant only by, in a bold stroke rather than in increments, liberalizing its economy, cutting taxes, relegislating a free-processing zone, and selling-off public lands and enterprises — moves which will electrify and find support from a broad bipartisan spectrum of key pro-Israeli Congressional leaders, including Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.

SNIP

Israel’s new agenda can signal a clean break by abandoning a policy which assumed exhaustion and allowed strategic retreat by reestablishing the principle of preemption

SNIP

Israel’s new strategic agenda can shape the regional environment in ways that grant Israel the room to refocus its energies back to where they are most needed: to rejuvenate its national idea, which can only come through replacing Israel’s socialist foundations with a more sound footing; and to overcome its "exhaustion," which threatens the survival of the nation.

Ultimately, Israel can do more than simply manage the Arab-Israeli conflict though war.

SNIP

****

The rush to privatize many of the functions of the Pentagon, including the VA system, is really the same strategy as that advocated by Feith, Perle and Wurmser in their strategic vision for Israel in 1997. Seize upon the opportunities created by a series of wars in the Mid-East that expand the military, and then privatize that economic engine. That is at heart a fascist vision. That, in short, is what has been going on in the United States during the Bush-Cheney era. It's military Keynesianism turned into a killing and maiming machine for profit.

So, this is the Israeli state they ended up with, led by
Kadima’s Ehud Olmert, a Tool of Oligarchs ... Cerberus-Gabriel

Forbes Reinforces Claim That Kadima is Tool of Oligarchs

by Ezra HaLevi

(IsraelNN.com)
According to the report, the business groups are controlled by the following families: Sami Ofer, Nochi Dankner, Shari Arison, the Cerberus-Gabriel consortium, Charles Bronfman, Yitzchak Tshuva, the Saban group, Lev Leviev, Matthew Bronfman, Tzadik Bino, the Borovich family, and Eliezer Fishman. The 12 families own 60 percent of the aggregate market value of all Israeli public companies (excluding the even larger Teva Pharmaceutical Industries), Forbes reported.

The report goes on to say that the families have constructed their empires, which consist of Israel's largest companies, using organizational structures that have long ago been done away with in the Western world.

The report explains that the groups have an inordinate amount of control over Israel's economy, political leaders and media due to the structuring of their holdings as pyramids – meaning several layers of companies each own others beneath them but are all beholden to the leading families. Such a phenomenon was eliminated in the US in the early 20th century through restrictions on ownership and the double taxation of dividends a company paid its owner company.

~snip~
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/...

In that light, consider the article about the conflict surrounding the Serberus-Leumi group privatizing the Israeli banking system. Bear in mind that Israel’s banks, including Leumi, had been bailed out by the government in the disastrous year of 1983, after Ariel Sharon led the IDF into an ill-fated and incompetently led invasion of Lebanon. An "optional" war that resulted in the massive withdrawal of international capital, and a steep recession in Israel’s reputation and fortunes:

http://209.85.165.104/...
Leumi on the way to going global

By Nehemia Shtrasler

A historic decision will be made next week. The Bank of Israel will announce whether it approves the sale of Bank Leumi to the Cerberus-Gabriel consortium. This would mark the end of the long process of privatizing Israel's banking system.

As early as November 2005 a tender was issued for the bank's sale, and it was won by Cerberus-Gabriel. The consortium offered to pay NIS 4.62 billion for a controlling stake of 20 percent in the bank - a very high price indeed. But the consortium failed to close the deal because the Bank of Israel did not approve its becoming a controlling partner.

The decision will now be made by the Bank of Israel Governor, Professor Stanley Fischer, who has said in internal meetings that this is one of the most difficult decisions he has been asked to make. At those same meetings, Rony Hizkiyahu, the new Supervisor of Banks, said that he wished the problem with the New York branch of Bank Leumi were resolved because then there would be no obstacle to selling the bank to the consortium. Indeed, this is the only problem that is keeping Cerberus-Gabriel from Bank Leumi, the subsidiary in New York.

According to American law, the Cerberus-Gabriel consortium will not be able to hold the bank in New York because it is invested in non-financial sectors. According to American rules, it is not permitted to have industrial and real estate holdings and also a bank - out of concern for possible conflict of interest.

During those same internal meetings at the Bank of Israel a number of proposals were put forth for a solution to the problem. For example, to sell Leumi New York, and in its place set up a financial entity that could offer business loans but not be able to accept deposits or offer retail banking services. The problem is that such a financial firm will not operate under the supervision of the Federal Reserve (because it is not a bank). As for Israeli supervision, it will not be easy to keep an eye on a company that is situated so far away.

SNIP

Indeed, the deal went through and the regulatory obstacles removed to the privatiziation that is pushed by Prime Minister Olmert, one of the leading proponents of the scheme, as this article makes clear:

http://www.fundstreet.org/...
December 13, 2005

Cerberus-Gabriel hedge fund buys stake in Leumi Bank
Israel is on its way to privatization. The banking sector is amongst the first ones to take a step in this direction. Bank Leumi was in the market recently and attracted bids from several players. Bidder names include strategic investors like Lev Leviev, IDB and Bill Davidson and also financial contenders like UBS, Deutsche Bank and Citibank. However the winner was an American Hedge fund, Cerberus-Gabriel.

Cerberus-Gabriel has purchased 9.9% of the shares of the bank. The purchase of this stake was for approximately $500 million. The fund also has the option of buying an additional 10.01% in the bank. This will bring the total shares quantum to 20% and is roughly valued at $1 billion. This option of additional purchase has to be utilized with in the next one and a half years.

Ehud Olmert, Finance Minister of Israel, is reportedly quite satisfied with the outcome. He feels that this is a positive development and will help the over all Israeli economy. He is amongst the top promoters of privatization move. In his statement he also mentioned that the purchase will ensure healthy competition between the banks and will definitely contribute a lot to the local market.

Another person quite happy with the development is Yaron Zelekha, the treasury's accountant-general, who led the tender. He sees it as fulfillment of the promise made to the people of Israel about privatization of the entire banking system in 2005.

CONCLUSION

Both the MZM-Cunningham and Jerry Lewis cases involve the funneling of foreign money to the GOP through a neocon controlled global hedge fund, Cerberus Capital Management, that was dispersing money to a number of key GOP figures and organizations in various ways, including Bush, Rumsfeld, a number of GOP Congressmen, and the RNC. The case is also tied up with the Walter Reed scandal, and the effort to privatize many Pentagon and CIA functions, which resulted in catastrophic failures at both. http://www.democraticunderground.com...

Let's recap: a corrupt Israeli PM - has a stake in a corrupt Israeli bank- owned by a corrupt Wall Street global hedge fund - which owns a corrupt US defense contractor - which contributes to corrupt GOP Congressmen - who also receive money from another corrupt defense contractor - that defense contractor produced faulty intel under contract to a corrupt CIA Assn't Director - that faulty intel was used to justify a corrupt US Administration's case for invading Iraq - that was planned and executed by corrupt neocons inside DoD who had written a proposal years earlier to wage wars to privatize the Israeli economy.

What a tangled web. One wishes Chairman Waxman’s staff and other Congressional investigators the strength of Hercules in taking down the Three-headed Dog, Cerberus, that guards the gates to Hell.

___________________________________________________________

2007. Mark G. Levey. Fair use applies. Acknowledgement: Some material compiled from a research thread at Democratic Underground.com, with particular thanks to "bobthedrummer" and "Emit", and other DU researchers: http://www.democraticunderground.com...

Carl Bernstein on the Bush Administration

More from 'Frontline' Interviews: Carl Bernstein on Nixon vs. Bush

By E&P Staff

Published: February 14, 2007 12:15 PM ET

Excerpt

"I think what we're talking about with the Bush administration is a far different matter in which disinformation, misinformation and unwillingness to tell the truth -- a willingness to lie both in the Oval Office, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, in the office of the vice president, the vice president himself -- is something that I have never witnessed before on this scale."

--MORE--

Here we go. World war at hand. Gates says United States has evidence of Iranian involvement in helping insurgents in Iraq

Recall the U.S. has double agents, Special Forces, and their own favorite terrorist group, the MEK, as well as the U.K . Joint Support Group operating in Iran. How easy it would be for them to aquire Iranian weapons and plant them in Iraq and say , "See! Smoking gun! Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!

Related
UK Telegraph Reveals Brit Terrorist Ops in Iraq
---
You can trust the Bush gang's word, right? Douglas Feith is cookin' that intel. A real dual patriot, reich, er, right?

Related
The war is illegal
---

SEVILLE, Spain -- Serial numbers and markings on explosives used in Iraq provide "pretty good" evidence that Iran is providing either weapons or technology for militants there, Defense Secretary Robert Gates asserted Friday.

Offering some of the first public details of evidence the military has collected, Gates said, "I think there's some serial numbers, there may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found," that point to Iran.

At the same time, however, he said he was somewhat surprised that recent raids by coalition and Iraqi forces in Iraq swept up some Iranians.

Just last week, Gates said that U.S. military officers in Baghdad were planning to brief reporters on what is known about Iranian involvement in Iraq but that he and other senior administration officials had intervened to delay the briefing in order to assure that the information provided was accurate.

Speaking to reporters at a defense ministers conference here, Gates said Friday, "I don't think there was surprise that the Iranians were actually involved, I think there was surprise we actually picked up some."

He and other U.S. officials have said for some time that Iranians, and possibly the government of Iran, have been providing weapons technology, and possibly some explosives to Iraqi insurgents.

The improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have been a leading killer of U.S. forces in Iraq, where more than 3,000 servicemen and women have died in the nearly four-year-old war.

The Bush administration has promised a detailed accounting of allegations that Iran is contributing to violence or instability in Iraq but has not yet released that dossier. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other officials have faced skeptical questions from lawmakers about the strength of the evidence and the parallels to administration claims about Iraq before the 2003 invasion.

"Under the circumstances and given the attention that this has gotten we want to make sure that we provide you the best information possible, but do so in a way that doesn't compromise sources and methods, that doesn't make it harder for us to deal with the situation that's there," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Friday.

Gates, who is attending his first NATO defense ministers meeting, said Iran is "very much involved in providing either the technology or the weapons themselves for these explosively formed projectiles. Now they don't represent a big percentage of the IED attacks but they're extremely lethal."

Gates said the raids combined with the movement of an additional U.S. aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf have created a stir, but said the Bush administration has no intention of attacking Iran.

Meanwhile, the defense secretary has been getting a lukewarm response here to his plea for allies to send more troops and aid for a spring offensive in Afghanistan.

Gates said the U.S. made no additional commitments for more troops of its own. He recently extended the tour of a brigade in Afghanistan, where the U.S. has 27,000 troops -- the most since the war began in 2001.

U.S. and NATO military leaders in recent months have repeatedly called on alliance members to send reinforcements and lift restrictions on where their troops can serve. On Thursday, Gates secured smaller offers from some nations, but he met resistance from key allies.

France and Germany are questioning the wisdom of sending more soldiers, while Spain, Italy and Turkey have also been wary of providing more troops.

"When the Russians were in Afghanistan, they had 100,000 soldiers there and they did not win," German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung told reporters.

The meeting in southern Spain did produce some offers, however.

Lithuania, which already has 130 troops in Afghanistan, offered to send an unspecified number of special forces, helping to fill a key shortfall.

Germany says it will provide six Tornado reconnaissance jets but not significantly augment its 3,000 troops in the north. The Italian government said it would send a much-needed transport plane and some unmanned surveillance aircraft, but it is struggling to secure parliamentary backing for the finances needed to maintain a contingent of 1,950.

Spain also said it would send four unmanned planes and more instructors to help the Afghan army.

Gates said that after nearly five years at war with the Taliban, this spring will be critical because it could give the people of the country more hope.

"Each spring for the last several years, the Taliban have been more aggressive and there has been an increasing level of violence," he said. "There is a consensus on the part of the ministers that it is important that this year we knock the Taliban back."

The end of winter has traditionally brought an upsurge in attacks by Taliban militants in Afghanistan. U.S. commanders have already predicted that this spring will be even more violent than last year, when a record number of attacks included nearly 140 suicide bombings.

About 15,000 of the American troops are serving in the NATO-led force, which now totals about 36,000, while the other 12,000 are special operations forces or are training Afghan troops.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Full Text: Declassified summary of Pentagon's Iraq report sees problem resolved - makes NO recommendations

Everything is just hunky dorey down at the Pentagram.
---
02/09/07 Unclassified Executive Summary from (Classified) Report No. 07-INTEL-4 “Review of Pre-Iraqi War Activities of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy” (.pdf 239kb)

DoD Report Appears to Confirm Downing Street Memo

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Friday 09 February 2007

A long-awaited report on the veracity of pre-war Iraq intelligence has found that a secretive policy shop exaggerated the Iraqi threat, providing the White House with cherry-picked information about links between Iraq and al Qaeda. The shop, operating out of the Pentagon, was set up by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Its goal was to lay the groundwork for a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq.

The report would appear to confirm British intelligence assertions that surfaced in a document widely referred to as the Downing Street Memo that the facts against the threat posed by Iraq were being fixed around the Bush administration's policy leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said the report is a "a devastating condemnation of the activities of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. Those activities supported the Bush administration's misleading case for war against Iraq."

The Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General produced the report, which focuses largely on the work of former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. Feith's Office of Special Plans sent the Bush administration bogus intelligence on Iraq's weapons program and ties to terrorist organizations that supported the administration's policy.

An executive summary of the report was released late Thursday by Senator Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Levin has spent the past two years battling the former Senate Republican leadership to conclude its so-called Phase II investigation into pre-war Iraq intelligence.

Last month, in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he was told by Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kans.), who was formerly in charge of the second phase of the Senate's investigation, that Vice President Dick Cheney applied "constant" pressure on Roberts to drag out the probe on pre-war intelligence. A spokeswoman for Cheney denied the allegation.

Levin will chair an armed services committee hearing Friday, at which acting Pentagon Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble will discuss the findings of the report. On Thursday, Levin released an unclassified executive summary of the inspector general's findings: specifically, the role Feith's Office of Special Plans played in helping the White House to mislead the public about Iraq. Levin said he is trying to get the entire report declassified.

The inspector general's unclassified executive summary of the report, as characterized by Levin, states:

The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy developed, produced and disseminated to senior decision-makers alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaeda relationship. These assessments included some conclusions inconsistent with the consensus of the intelligence community,

The inspector general also stated that the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy "was inappropriately performing intelligence activities of developing, producing, and disseminating that should be performed by the intelligence community."

The inspector general concluded that these "inappropriate" activities were authorized by Donald Rumsfeld, former secretary of defense, or Paul Wolfowitz, former deputy secretary of defense.

Senior administration officials, including Vice President Cheney, made numerous public statements that reflected the views of the Feith alternative analysis, which were inconsistent with the analysis and judgments of the intelligence community. Indeed, Vice President Cheney said the principal Feith office assessment was the "best source of information" on the alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Rockefeller said the conclusions of the report are damning. Moreover, he said, his committee was kept in the dark about the Office of Special Plans and the fact that it was engaged in intelligence-gathering activities.

"The IG has concluded that this office was engaged in intelligence activities," Rockefeller said. "The Senate intelligence committee was never informed of these activities. Whether these actions were authorized or not, it appears that they were not in compliance with the law. In the coming days, I will carefully review all aspects of the report and will consult with [Senate intelligence committee] Vice Chairman [Kit] Bond to determine whether any additional action by the Senate intelligence committee is warranted."

The White House and the Pentagon have been dogged by questions about Feith and OSP's activities dating back to the beginning of the Iraq War. It was during that time that a number of CIA analysts spoke privately with Democratic lawmakers and complained that Feith's unit had been cherry-picking intelligence information that provided worst-case scenarios about Iraq's weapons programs. Levin and Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), called for an immediate investigation.

Republicans successfully thwarted a probe into the policy shop back then, but the issue resurfaced in November 2005, when the Iraq War took a turn for the worse. Levin and other lawmakers began to demand documents and the authority to conduct interviews with Feith and his staff. But Senator Roberts, who headed the Senate intelligence committee, sidestepped the Democratic lawmakers' requests and instead asked the inspector general in the Department of Defense to look into OSP's activities. That all but guaranteed that it would become bogged down in bureaucratic red tape and that tough questions would take years to answer.

In the months leading up to the war in Iraq, Rumsfeld became increasingly frustrated that the CIA could not find any evidence of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program - evidence that would have helped the White House to build a solid case for war in Iraq. Rumsfeld helped set up the Office of Special Plans in 2001 and tapped Feith to head the office.

The OSP, according to published reports, was to gather intelligence information on the Iraqi threat that the CIA and FBI could not uncover, and present it to the White House to build a case for war in Iraq. The committee relied heavily on information provided by Iraqi defector Ahmed Chalabi, who has provided the White House with reams of disputed intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. Chalabi heads the Iraqi National Congress, a group of Iraqi exiles who have pushed for regime change in Iraq.

The Office of Special Plans routinely provided President Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, who headed the National Security Council at the time, with questionable intelligence information on the Iraqi threat. Much of that information was included in various speeches by Bush and Cheney, and some was never vetted for accuracy by career CIA analysts.

In an article in the New York Times in October 2002, the paper reported that Rumsfeld had ordered the OSP to "to search for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists" that might have been overlooked by the CIA.

Patrick Lang, a former director of Middle East analysis at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in an interview with the New Yorker in May 2003 that the Office of Special Plans "started picking out things that supported their thesis and stringing them into arguments that they could use with the president. It's not intelligence. It's political propaganda."

Lang said the CIA and the OSP often clashed on the accuracy of intelligence information provided to the White House by Paul Wolfowitz.

By the fall of 2002, the White House had virtually dismissed all of the intelligence on Iraq provided by the CIA, in favor of the more critical information provided to the Bush administration by the Office of Special Plans. The CIA had failed to find any evidence of Iraq's weapons programs.

In a rare Pentagon briefing four years ago, Douglas Feith said the Office of Special Plans was not an "intelligence project," but rather a group of eighteen people who looked at intelligence information from a different point of view. Feith now teaches a seminar on Iraq War planning at Georgetown University.

---

Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.

The American Way of Life

February 06th 2007 Posted to General

While most Americans have no difficulty reciting the flattering components of the “American way” – the routine stuff of political speeches such as life, liberty, justice – far fewer seem willing to identify as “American” unflattering, complementary components of our national ethos.

For instance, George W. Bush claims we are a peaceful nation. He says it a lot. On military bases, to the VFW, at West Point. Of course, we are not now, nor were we ever, peaceful. Pacifists have never had an easy time with the American government, and in point, the term itself is used as pejorative. Not far behind is “passive”.

We behold the world not as a habitat suited for peaceful coexistence but as a bad neighborhood in need of control. Recent Pentagon figures (DoD Base Structure Report, FY 2006) list 2,965 military bases in all 50 states and 7 territories. In addition, it lists 766 bases in 40 foreign countries. Beyond that, we have active duty military personnel (some of it quite small) in about 150 foreign countries (DoD Personnel and Procurement Statistics, June 30, 2006). That’s not all the countries in the world. We missed some.

The DoD describes itself as one of the world’s largest “landlords”, with a physical plant consisting of more than 571,200 facilities (buildings, structures, and utilities) located on nearly 30 million acres. To give that acres figure perspective, DoD bases would fill, in entirety, the states of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and Hawaii.

And it’s not just land. There’s the United States Space Command. Positioning themselves as “stewards” for military space they stake out a vision to exploit the advantages of the space medium featuring this bold headline: “US Space Command – dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment . Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict.” (Vision for 2020 Report). The term “investment” is used without apparent embarrassment. Noticeably absent are the platitudes about life, liberty, and justice.

All this has grown out of a past that ravaged red, brown, and black skin. This past century has been a rolling of imperialism and state violence to secure resources and markets to feed our economy, while at the same time snuffing out independence movements around the world before they had a chance to set a “good example”, that is, by making it on their own. Our military has won for us great national wealth and, now, unrivalled and unchallenged power.

Our “peaceful” president has taken perhaps a million Iraqi lives and limbs (counting closely is not in the national interest), and thousands of the same for Americans, and no amount of yellow ribbons will bring back a single one of them, or make a single loss worthwhile. This, we must recognize, is part of the American way. In particular, we must first recognize it if we are ever going to change it.

What about rugged individualism? Is that a distinctive American trademark? If so, it doesn’t extend to independence of mind. We are a people steeped in orthodoxy – religious, governmental, military, educational – and orthodoxy must always be followed. We can be sold anything and we don’t know it. We can be lied to repeatedly and we don’t know it. Services can be stripped away from us and we don’t know that either because it’s in order to serve us better. Our privacy is suddenly important to large businesses in the public trust now that it is lost. Gullibility is American.

So is tolerance, seemingly without limit when it comes to our quasi-permanent political class. No amount of puffery and hypocrisy from the get-elected-and-stay-elected can completely alienate us. We submissively watch their political fortunes rise from “God bless this District”, to “God bless this State”, to “God bless this Nation” as they ascend, with God, in humble service to this republic.

Do Americans root for the underdog? Not if by “Americans” we mean national domestic and foreign policy. At a time when income inequality has reached unheard of levels in this country, bankruptcy law was “reformed” making it more difficult for individuals to file. It may be noted that poor individuals are more likely to find themselves in this position than rich individuals.

Corporations have double rights – those of corporations and those of individuals – including the rights to entice the poor into bankruptcy by questionable and deceptive lending schemes. Or eliminating 500 jobs at the bottom, instead of a single one at the top, and transferring the “savings” to the bottom line of the statement of income. Yes, the stock market is at an all-time high, thanks in part to the 500 here and the 500 there sacrificed on the alter of economic “progress”.

The President’s tax cuts, campaigned on in 2000, were widely criticized as a giveaway to the rich, but this did not seem to trouble the electorate. Protecting the minority of the opulent from the tyranny of the majority continues as long-standing tradition.

Since we can count scores of interventions into the affairs of foreign countries in this past half-century, we should be able to find some examples where we just happened to take the side of the underdogs – the peasants, the croppers, the indigenous, those most in need. But, of course, it’s not their needs that concern us when we intervene. It’s our needs, and the underclass can offer us nothing because they control nothing.

Maybe our love for the underdog is manifested in policies that guarantee their number will never decrease. Or could it be that we just find repressive dictators and autocrats impossible to resist? That’s meant to sound funny, but it’s true. We do find them impossible to resist because they’re good for business and that’s what we do with them. We do business.

The “American way of life” of popular understanding first came in our mother’s milk, and has since been drip-fed to us by those whose successes depend upon telling us what we wish to hear. We are susceptible to this propaganda because the inoculation (denying it) seems to deprive us of some of our exceptionality. Expectedly, though, the basic features of American life differ little from human life in other parts of the world, as there is no appreciable difference within the species.

All forms of governance rely on at least an implicit message to the people it means to control. Do as you are told and accept all compliments. Perhaps the President is not far off when he says we are peaceful. Considering his difficulties with language, he may have meant docile.


James Rothenberg, writer/activist - jrothenberg@taconic.net

DoD to request record $622.6 billion for 2008

DoD to request $622.6 billion for 2008

Posted : Friday Feb 2, 2007 20:31:47 EST

The Pentagon is expected to send Congress a $622.6 billion defense budget for 2008. The sum includes $141.7 billion to continue fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The numbers were confirmed by a Pentagon official Feb. 2.

The spending plan, to be delivered to lawmakers Feb. 5, is $6.2 billion more than the $616.4 billion the Pentagon is spending this year. But there are greater differences in the budget than those numbers alone suggest.

Basic “peacetime” spending for 2008 is set at $481.4 billion, up from about $440 billion approved for 2007. Peacetime spending is how much it costs each year to keep the U.S. military going — pay and train troops, buy and maintain weapons, conduct exercises and deployments. War costs are extra.

And there’s a substantial drop in war costs. The Pentagon wants $163.4 billion to fight the wars during 2007. The 2008 request is $21.7 billion less.

At about the same time the 2008 request goes to Capitol Hill, the Pentagon is expected to ask for $93.4 billion more in emergency war funding for 2007. That is slightly less than the $99.7 billion called for in a December draft of the supplemental.

The budget figures, closely held by the Pentagon, were first reported by Bloomberg news service.

With war costs included, defense spending in 2008 would be higher than it has been since World War II, said Steven Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).

If the requested total is not cut by Congress, the 2008 budget will mark 10 years of robust growth in military spending. The current run-up began in 1999, when the budget was $276.2 billion.

There is a growing sense in Congress, now controlled by the Democrats, that defense spending cannot continue its decade-long ascent.

“Half the discretionary budget goes into defense. We can’t keep adding to the top line,” said an aide to a senior House Armed Services Committee member. “We’re going to have to start making some choices.”

It’s not getting easier.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported Feb. 1 that the Pentagon’s estimate of $5 billion to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq may be understated by a factor of two or almost three. Sending support troops along with the combat troops is expected to push the cost to $9 billion to $13 billion, the CBO said.

To accommodate that, Congress will have to consider “cutting back, delaying or deferring new weapons to ensure that the people on the ground over there have the equipment they need,” the aide said.

The defense budget is not expected to call for eliminating — or even seriously trimming — any of the military’s major weapon programs. But lawmakers might as they weight war costs and their desire to bolster spending on domestic programs.

Potential Targets

The most vulnerable program is probably the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS), defense analysts agree.

FCS calls for building 18 separate systems — manned and unmanned ground and air vehicles — that are linked to one another through an electronic communications network.

Soldiers in the vehicles and on the ground would be fed volumes of information about where the enemy is on the battlefield.

But many of the systems exist at this point only in concept. And FCS, estimated in 2003 to cost $92 billion, ballooned to $161 billion last year.

Moreover, the Iraq war may be casting doubt on the FCS concept, said Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project.

Sensors and the network were supposed to give U.S. troops such a precise picture of the battlefield that U.S. troops could kill or avoid enemy forces. Old fashioned equipment such as heavy tanks would be unnecessary.

But it hasn’t worked out that way in Iraq, where U.S. technology has been largely unable to detect and defeat “improvised explosive devices” cobbled together by insurgents, Wheeler said.

“FCS will be messed around with,” Wheeler predicted, but possibly not until after 2008.

The Joint Strike Fighter is another program likely to face cuts, although it may survive unscathed in 2008. The multiservice, multicountry plane is a budget-cutter’s target because that’s where the money is. At $276 billion, it is the most expensive weapon program ever.

The JSF will almost certainly be “scaled back significantly” over the next six years, Wheeler said.

Supplemental Scrutiny?

For short-term cuts, look to the 2007 emergency supplemental. Under rules set by Gordon England, deputy defense secretary, last fall, the services were permitted to include requests in the supplemental for spending not directly related to the two wars.

Thus the $93.4 billion request is expected to include money for such items as Joint Strike Fighters, research-and-development projects and Army modularization.

House and Senate Appropriations Committee members have promised intense scrutiny of the emergency supplemental request.

“They’re going to scrub the hell out of it and all kinds of things are going to fall out,” the House aide said.

Cost-consciousness in Congress may trigger a new a new era of rivalry among the three U.S. services for money, manpower and modernization.

For several decades there has been an unspoken truce among the services that has prevented any service from trying to gain budget share at the expense of another, said Kosiak. Now that truce may be in jeopardy.

For example, Congress seems sympathetic to an Army and Marine Corps request for 92,000 extra troops, and that makes the Navy and Air Force “very, very nervous,” said Robert Work, director of strategic studies at CSBA.

In recent years, the Air Force and Navy have been cutting troops to make more money available for new weapons. Now they fear the money they save from troop cuts may be diverted to add troops to the Army and Marine Corps.

Troop increases are expected to cost about $8 billon in 2008 and $58 billion over the next six years, according to Cindy Williams, a principal research scientist in the Security Studies Program at MIT.

Williams contends that even the massive new budget the U.S. military has prepared will fall some $30 billion short of paying for all of the weapons, additional troops and operations it has planned.

It is an “unrealistic budget” because big as it is, it does not cover the cost of all the Pentagon is planning to do, said Williams, who is a former assistant director of the CBO’s National Security Division.

By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer

Protesters Found in Pentagon Database

Protesters Found in Database
ACLU Is Questioning Entries in Defense Dept. System

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 17, 2007; A08

A Defense Department database devoted to gathering information on potential threats to military facilities and personnel, known as Talon, had 13,000 entries as of a year ago -- including 2,821 reports involving American citizens, according to an internal Pentagon memo to be released today by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Pentagon memo says an examination of the system led to the deletion of 1,131 reports involving Americans, 186 of which dealt with "anti-military protests or demonstrations in the U.S."

Titled "Review of the TALON Reporting System," the four-page memo produced in February 2006 summarizes some interim results from an inquiry ordered by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld after disclosure in December 2005 that the system had collected and circulated data on anti-military protests and other peaceful demonstrations.

The released memo, one of a series of Talon documents made public over the past year by the ACLU under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, said that the deleted reports did not meet a 2003 Defense Department requirement that they have some foreign terrorist connection or relate to what was believed to be "a force protection threat."

The number of deleted reports far exceeds the estimate provided to The Washington Post just over a year ago by senior officials of Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the Defense Department agency that manages the Talon program. At that time, then-CIFA Director David A. Burtt II said the review had disclosed that only 1 percent of the then 12,500 Talon reports appeared to be problematic.

The ACLU said in its own report that past disclosures about Talon "cried out for congressional oversight yet Congress was silent." It said the new memo indicated there "may be even more disturbing" information to discover and declared "it is time for Congress to act."

The ACLU noted the memo showed that Talon reports had a much wider circulation than previously disclosed, with about 28 organizations and 3,589 individuals authorized to submit reports or have access to the database. The organizations with access include various military agencies as well as state, federal and local law enforcement officials.

In early 2006, Burtt also said CIFA had not devised a formal way to notify its users when it decided to delete a Talon report on American citizens. The newly released memo says that a software enhancement was being initiated to permit users to edit and delete entries from the database and that it was scheduled for completion in April 2006.

A Pentagon spokesman said there are 7,700 reports in the Talon database. Some involve U.S. citizens, but the spokesman declined to say how many. Over the past year the program has instituted multiple layers of review for screening which reports should go into the database, the spokesman said.

CIFA has begun a process for analysts to review materials to make sure they fit the program's criteria before being uploaded and made available to Talon users. CIFA was established in 2002 in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, originally to coordinate the counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations of the various branches and agencies of the Defense Department. It has grown rapidly over the past four years, but not without problems. Along with discovery of the Talon data collection, CIFA was linked to the lobbying and earmarking activities that led to the conviction of former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.). Burtt and his top deputy retired in August 2006, and federal investigators are still looking at CIFA contracting activities.

Last week, the New York Times disclosed that CIFA had been using national security letters to gather financial data on U.S. citizens, but a Pentagon spokesman said yesterday that such information was for particular investigations and not made part of the Talon database.

Talon was started in May 2003 to capture raw, non-validated information about suspicious activity or potential terrorist threats to military personnel or facilities at home and abroad.

Flailing About, Blindly

Count Robert Gates as among the masters of the obvious: in a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, he informed Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer that the Taliban threat will grow in 2007. This meeting took place in the context of calling for “broad international support” for the Afghanistan mission, even though those calls have been made since at least 2004.

At least it’s finally getting some attention, most recently of Democratic White House hopeful Hillary Clinton. She just completed separate meetings with Karzai and Musharraf; we’ll see if anything useful comes from them.

Meanwhile, down south in Helmand, some intense fighting cleared the way for USAID contractors to continue construction work on the Kajaki Dam, which is meant to provide electricity to nearly 2 million people.

What a tremendously bad idea. Infrastructure is not the problem in Afghanistan, it is the symptom—of a failed occupation, a failed national police force, a failed policy at the highest levels of both governments. The U.S. was dumb to assume the Northern Alliance warlords wouldn’t give up power voluntarily, just as it was dumb to assume that the Taliban wouldn’t regroup in the free areas in Pakistan. Worse is siphoning off troops from Afghanistan to plug holes in Iraq. Karzai, on his part, hasn’t been the best enemy of corruption, though in his defense neither has NATO.

It is a society-wide, society-deep problem. Building a dam is a nice gesture, but it is merely the continuation of the failed “let’s be nice and hope they like us” policy, in which NATO troops clear out a local Taliban stronghold, chasing them into the mountains, and try to hand out public works projects and candy to win “hearts and minds.” The locals are smarter: they know the militants aren’t really gone, and that it usually only takes until nightfall for their return, often with new violence and terror should anyone cooperate with the Westerners.

As I said before, it is fundamentally a crisis of manpower. There are not enough troops to properly secure the country, and there are not enough troops to hold territory once it has been cleared. This has resulted in heart-breaking cases like Panjwai, in which not even those public works projects have materialized.

The very lack of security and control is what is causing these failures. Upgrading a dam is wonderful, but when NATO rolls through and bulldozes your orchard to build a road the Taliban then use to re-occupy your village, gratitude toward the West is probably one of the last things on your mind.

This leads to the uncomfortable conclusion that we don’t really seem to know what we’re doing in Afghanistan. Policies and actions clash with rhetoric, and all seem to change by the week. NATO responds by throwing money at the locals, and USAID throw its resources into building dams instead of social or political institutions. And everyone is pointing their fingers at each other, refusing to take responsibility for the fact that, in reality, this entire half of the country is slipping through their fingers.

Tags: Afghanistan, NATO.
Posted by Joshua Foust on January 15th, 2007
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