The State Department's extreme makeover

[seemslikeadream]

A veteran Foreign Service officer warns that when Colin Powell departs in a second Bush term, America will lose its last bulwark against the radical ideologues who are planning more Iraqs.

Editor's note: "Anonymous" is a veteran Foreign Service officer currently serving as a State Department official. The views expressed are personal and not related to his official position.

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By Anonymous



Oct. 4, 2004 | Secretary of State Colin Powell is not staying for a second Bush term. When he goes the last bulwark against complete neoconservative control of U.S. foreign policy goes with him. The implications are enormous, yet the American electorate appears to be blinded by the Bush campaign's deliberate manipulations of 9/11.

Powell has served both as the reasoned voice of career diplomats and the experienced voice of career U.S. military in the Bush administration. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ignored military advice and excluded Department of State career professionals from Iraq planning. Power was concentrated in the hands of a clique of neocon ideologues he placed in key policy positions, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. In the first term of George W. Bush, protégés of now disgraced former Defense Policy Board member and neocon godfather Richard Perle achieved control or subordination of every executive branch foreign policy making body -- except the Department of State.

more
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/10/04/foggybottom/index_np.html

[ixion]

1. while Powell has been the 'littlest' neocon

he has towed the party line, and parroted lies to the UN, making him just as culpable as the rest, IMO.

[allemand]

4. I don't think that Powell is a neocon.

There is a reason that Joe Biden speaks of "this battle that still goes on between Powell and Cheney and Powell and Rumsfeld".
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0409/30/lkl.00.html

[ixion]

5. Powell sat in front of the UN and lied

whether he is a neocon or not is really beside the point, IMO.

[seemslikeadream]

2. more from the article

...

In December 2002, Wolfowitz, Feith, Wurmser and Vice President Cheney's national security advisor, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, acting together, maneuvered Condoleezza Rice into appointing Elliott Abrams to the position of special assistant to the president and senior director for the Middle East at the National Security Council. This appointment gave the neocons everything they wanted -- the NSC, Executive Office of the President, Office of the Vice President, the Pentagon, a cornered director in George Tenet at CIA, and Wurmser at State.

The neocons had control of the information reaching the president and a channel for their pseudo-intelligence product from Wolfowitz and Feith's secret Pentagon Office of Special Plans. The only wild card was Colin Powell and State's elite and independent Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR).

Neither Powell nor his deputy, Richard Armitage, who is also leaving with Powell, seems to have been fooled by Wurmser's desire to leave the Pentagon and join John Bolton's staff -- in effect, to come work for Powell. They cornered and then neutralized Wurmser. Wurmser's target was to get at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, a thorn in the neocons' side and Powell's intelligence ace-in-the-hole against Tenet's "slam-dunk" sellout at the CIA.

INR kept telling Powell the truth about Saddam's nonexistent WMD. State's Future of Iraq project, led by a career Foreign Service officer, who was cold-shouldered by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, laid out what might happen if we took over control of Iraq. Unfortunately, even the sober minds of INR could not stop Powell from lending his credibility to the "unfortunate error" show at the U.N. Security Council. Modeled on Adlai Stevenson's Oct. 25, 1962, Cuban missile presentation to the Security Council, Powell's Feb. 5, 2003, presentation marks the low point of his tenure and, in retrospect, underscores how badly his credibility was needed and then was abused by Vice President Cheney and the president.

The whole time Wurmser was at State, career professionals around him saw someone acting more like an agent of influence than as a subordinate of the secretary of state. He was in constant contact with his Pentagon intelligence cell. Questions were asked -- but never answered -- as to how Wurmser got a full security clearance when he never registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act for his 1996 policy work for Israel's incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (including advice on how to lobby the U.S. Congress) and as someone who was married to an Israeli citizen with close ties to Israel's Likud Party -- in theory, a party to U.S.-brokered Middle East peace negotiations.

more
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/10/04/foggybottom/

[gottaB]

3. good reminder

I shudder to think of what would happen with Rice in charge.

[Penndems]

6. EVERY American should read this article

I can't stress the importance of what's being said here. Every word of it is true. It ranks right up there with Dick Clarke's book as a warning to all of us about the arrogance and ignorance of this group of right-wing neocons that's controlling our foreign policy. They literally believe they're on a mission from God - and they're determined to go forward and implement their interpretation of it, no matter what the cost in American dollars - or, more importantly, American LIVES.

The State Department is our first line of defense. Never, in our entire history, have we ever gone to war without ever using every diplomatic means at our disposal to avert it. That's one of the aspects that separates us from third-world countries: It shows the world that we're a civilized people who doesn't just invade countries without justification. Or, at least we USED to be, until this group of nutjobs foisted themselves on an unsuspecting electorate.

Think about it: Folks, we're going to be up to our asses in war for several generations to come if the loons on the right decide Junior "deserves" to stay in the Oval Office. These lunatic bastards are reveling in the death and bloodshed of our armed forces as a glorious sacrifice for their "grand plan".

For the good AND the sanity of this country, they HAVE to be stopped on November 2nd. Do you really want your children fighting for their insane, apocalyptic doctrine that is so frighteningly disconnected from reality?

Our very future and our reputation in the world community - as well as the future of all of our young people - really does depend on it.

[barb162]

7. I agree totally and have been saying this a long time. These jerks

have the power to destroy this country and the world and they are trying hard to do both

[baby_bear]

20. You sound like you know of what you speak, PennDems

Correct?

s_m

[Penndems]

21. I do indeed . . .

Oh, the stories I could tell . . . ;)

[barb162]

8. Powell could have quit rather than support and do that dumb UN

performance. Now that would have made a statement about bush

[allemand]

11. I wonder how you come to this conclusion after reading the article.

Powell was all what stood between the neocons and a war with Syria.

"Working with direct input from Israeli intelligence, Feith's Pentagon office coordinated with Libby and Wurmser in the vice president's office to spread the story that the missing WMD are to be found hidden in Syria."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/10/04/foggybottom/index1.html

Seymour Hersh:
"I don't have any empirical basis for it, but if I had to bet, the plan was to go right into Syria. That's why the fourth division was hanging for so long in the desert out there right on the border with Syria. In the early days of the war, before this government figured out how much trouble they were in -- which took them a long time -- they would drive practice runs... that amounted to the distance from the border to Damascus."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/18/hersh_inte...

[barb162]

15. very easily, through other sources, such as the Woodward, Clarke,

etc., books. The fact is Powell may argue his points with the Prez (like you go into Iraq, you own it) but in the end he goes along with the Prez rather than quitting and denouncing Bush policies.

[allemand]

16. BTW, the neocons also wanted him to resign

"Neoconservatives march as one phalanx in parallel opposition to those they hate. In the early winter of 2002, a co-worker U.S. Navy captain and I were discussing the service being rendered by Colin Powell at the time, and we were told by the neoconservative political appointee David Schenker that "the best service Powell could offer would be to quit right now.""
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/print.html

Why would that be? :eyes:

[barb162]

18. he opposes their goals? He has lost a lot of credibility, power,etc.,

in that administration battling the likes of Rummie,Wolfie, etal. But the fact he stays with them and plays along in the end also is disastrous for him.

[allemand]

17. Sorry, here is the correct link for the Hersh article

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/18/hersh_interview/index_np.html

[KoKo]

9. This article is odd....there's a glaring grammatical error and the person

writing it seems a little hysterical. Also sounds like they are not native English speakers from the way it's written which may be why it comes off a little odd. This quote from the article with the grammatical error and the statement that the NeoCons weren't responsible for postwar Iraq is what I'm talking about. Why is this person trying so hard to vindicate Powell and say the neocons are "endrunning" around Bremer? And, there's nothing new in this article except some insider plotting. Why is Congress not involved in this besides the "handful" he talks about?

What the hell is going on here? I hope Salon sourced this and knows exactly who wrote it and it's not another Dan Rather push to get a story out when there's one with more credibility waiting in the wings...sheesh!

Here's the quote from the article with the grammatical error:

Powell's early 2005 departure is the subject of intense jockeying among the neocons. A Perle neocon protégé, Michael Rubin, has been given the task of destroying the only competition -- L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, the former Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority chief, not a neocon insider and the favorite of traditional Republican conservatives. The neocon plan is to make Bremer the scapegoat: It was not bad neocon policy, it was bad Bremer decisions that has led to the fiasco in Iraq. Rubin was sent to Baghdad to be Wolfowitz's man inside the CPA. Bremer dissed Rubin as a lightweight. Rubin tried to push neocon policy inside the CPA -- what he, Perle and Ahmed Chalabi had pushed from the American Enterprise Institute -- restoring the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq by placing Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan on the throne. Bremer would have none of it. Rubin is now tasked by Perle and Wolfowitz to trash Bremer -- which he is dutifully doing in print and media appearances arranged by neocon handler, lecture agent and media booker Eleana Benador. They intend to close the Foggy Bottom door to any aspirations Bremer, a former Foreign Service officer and Kissinger protégé, might have to take over from Powell.

[Penndems]

10. Read this article - just came up on washingtonpost.com:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7053-2004Oct4.html

This seems to vindicate what the author was detailing in his/her piece about the nutbar cabal's intentions regarding Paul Bremer.

Looks like Ambassador Bremer's covering his own ass before the neocons start the smear campaign.

Am I surprised that Jerry Bremer says he's voting for The Village Idiot? Hell, no - he's a dyed-in-the-wool, my-party-right-or-wrong Pub. That doesn't mean he's gonna be the neocon's fall guy, though.

(On edit: additional text)

[KoKo]

12. Kick...I think the article title isn't catching folks eyes ....but it can'

be changed. This is an important story...

[ewagner]

13. Isn't this treason?

Look at this quote. If this can be proven, it is treason of the highest order.

Gotta get this out:

Working with direct input from Israeli intelligence, Feith's Pentagon office coordinated with Libby and Wurmser in the vice president's office to spread the story that the missing WMD are to be found hidden in Syria. Israeli agents have worked overtime to neutralize and undo Syrian cooperation with the CIA against al-Qaida. This comes on the heels of a similar highly successful destruction of CIA inroads with the Palestinian Authority. We are now light-years beyond the two-state solution focus of Middle East policy. Instead of chasing Laden, the neocons plan to put the U.S. on the road to Damascus -- and Tehran. The groundwork is laid.

[seemslikeadream]

14. That's what I wanted to know

Is this not TREASON?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x18796

[teryang]

19. Powell and Armitage, defense officials in state drag

They are the means by which state was subverted to always play the role of shining DOD shit.