BUSH VS. SADDAM: WHO WILL BLINK?





Are we really going to go to war with Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein and his regime?

That question has dominated the news since last week’s State of the Union speech. And Secretary of State Colin Powell’s testimony in the Congress this week only further reinforced the belief that an attack could come sometime this year. Powell even said the US would go to war with Iraq – alone, if need be - and shun the so-called ‘Coalition’ that supported our Afghan campaign and our Desert Storm effort 11 years ago.

But Iraq thinks otherwise.

Saddam thinks he can “talk” his way out of this pickle.

As reported in Wednesday’s New York Daily News column by Michael Kramer, Baghdad sent Kramer an email. It read, “Watch us again. It’s worked for us in the past. It’ll work for us again.”

Sure enough, Baghdad – clearly reacting to President Bush’s speech – sent a message through Arab League chief Amr Moussa that it is ready to talk with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan – “without preconditions.”

Annan, who has been regularly used and duped by Saddam in the late 1990’s, replied that he’d “check his calendar.” He then indicated that he is prepared to talk to Iraq.

What does this all mean?

It means that Saddam is going to use ‘talks’ with the UN to divide the US from the rest of the Coalition.

He is gambling that Bush-Cheney-Powell will not go to war alone.

And he believes that by talking to the United Nations he might even get what he really wants: sanctions either totally lifted or at least relaxed. These are restrictions on how much oil Saddam can sell – legally – for invaluable hard currency which he then uses to secretly buy military equipment and materials to construct nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

The key question is: How long can Saddam stall, filibuster and delay the inevitable realization that he will never really allow us to monitor his weapons programs?

He is behind all the terrorist attacks against the US. From the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to the Embassy attacks, the USS Cole – and, finally, to September 11, Saddam’s security forces have waged a war against America to avenge his massive defeat in the Gulf War.

For some reason our government in DC – under both Clinton and G.W. Bush – does not want to admit this, at least not publicly.

Sure, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are – and were – involved. But they carry out Saddam’s wishes. Osama and his followers are the perfect ‘fanatics’ – ‘true believers’ – who, in Saddam’s eyes are just crazy enough to kill themselves while killing Americans. How can you beat it? No surviving witnesses to tell who really orchestrated the attacks.

We should all fear two things: 1) that Saddam will hit us again; and 2) that the Bush Administration will ‘wimp’ out yet again when it comes to finishing the job begun in 1991.

If Saddam Hussein – or his family or Ba’th Party remain in power when G.W. Bush finishes his term as President, then his presidency will have been a failure. Period. This isn’t my judgement; it is based on Bush’s own words and promises. Having ID’d the Axis of Evil last week, how can we tolerate its continued existence?

And if you think a tiger can change its stripes, you are very naïve.

CIA: SCANDAL WAITING TO EXPLODE




CIA Director George Tenet is testifying today before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Tenet – the only Clinton Cabinet officer remaining in his original post – has been able to artfully avoid having the CIA take the blame for sloppy and poor intelligence work leading up to 9-11.

In fact, because of his good personal relationship with both George Bushes, Tenet has twice since 9-11 been able to secure increases in the CIA budget.

In October, President Bush granted an emergency budget increase of $1 billion to the CIA. And now, in his fiscal 2003 budget, the President has proposed another $1.5 billion increase – that we know of. In fact, the overall intelligence budget is highly classified – and ‘hidden’ in the budgets of other federal departments. Only a handful of Congressmen and Senators know the ‘actual’ amount.

It is also believed that even more money is secretly spent on intelligence than even these select members of the House and Senate are aware of. ‘Black funds’ exist – off-the-books accounts that CIA, NSA, DIA and the service Intel agencies have access to.

All of this is to point out that whatever happened on 9-11 is not the result of too little money being spend on intelligence gathering. No, the problem is how that money is spent.

Over the past thirty years our Intel agencies have fallen in love with satellites, eaves-dropping equipment and high tech means of ‘listening’ to our enemies – and our friends, too.

‘HUMINT’ – the gathering of intelligence through human beings on-the-ground infiltrating and getting up-close-and-personal – has taken a back seat to this fascination with high tech means.

Thus you get the odd occurrence: John ‘Taliban’ Walker can get into the Taliban and Al Qaeda – even meet Osama bin Laden – and yet our own agents could not get any where near Osama, Mullah Omar or the Taliban/Al Qaeda leadership before 9-11.

What has happened over the years to the CIA?

They have become a government inside a government.

The CIA – and this may shock many of you - spies on its own government!

Yes, for a fact, CIA places ‘agents’ into other federal departments and on the staffs of House and Senate committees to “keep an eye on things.”

Every congressional committee that oversees intelligence activities has CIA staff on its staff! That way Langley can keep track of trouble brewing it its own backyard.

That’s like having the fox ‘guarding’ the chicken coop.

This is the biggest – and so far unreported – scandal in the US today. Bigger than Enron, bigger than anything else. The very fact that the CIA is an uncontrollable agency operating outside the Constitution – and getting away with it – is something that one day is going to blow open and cause big trouble.

A small – but meaningful – example: in the mid-1980’s, then-Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage personally arranged for a uniformed military officer to be detailed to temporary White House duty. This officer had some innocuous job description. In reality his assignment was simple: to spy on the inner workings of the presidential office. Get the daily schedule of the senior staff, listen in on as many conversations as possible, find out what was ‘brewing’ before others knew – and then report all of this daily back to Armitage.

A career CIA man, Armitage wanted to know what was happening at the White House so that the Pentagon – and the CIA – could be ‘ahead of the curve.’

Armitage today is Deputy Secretary of State and may very well have a similar ‘operative’ placed in the White House and National Security Council.

This is plain out-and-out wrong.

Federal agencies should not be expending taxpayers’ money ‘spying’ on each other. But they do!

And that is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the enormous leeway the CIA has – because of the very nature of its’ ‘secretive’ mission – to do what it wants.

It is also protected by federal judges strategically placed on the federal bench who are pro-CIA – (some used to work for the CIA) – who will always get the CIA off the hook in case something bad happens. A case in point involved 7 World Trade Center. Crushed in the 9-11 attack, this building housed several federal offices, including CIA’s NY office. Furthermore, CIA was performing an illegal domestic operation on September 11 when the attack occurred. (By law, the CIA is prohibited from operating inside the US other than recruiting.)

When the building was smashed, CIA lost control of the evidence of their illegal activity. They rushed to a ‘friendly’ federal judge who granted a secret motion that has placed the CIA in charge of the excavation and search of 7 World Trade Center. All the workers, bulldozer operators and diggers on that particular site work for the CIA, not New York City or anyone else.

The so-called mainstream news media has missed this story.

My source: a federal judge in New York.

We are left to wonder what the ‘illegal domestic operation’ was – and how we have come to allow a secret US agency to have such unbridled power.

This is a huge scandal waiting to explode.

THE REAL AXIS OF EVIL

President Bush made the headlines last week with his "Axis of Evil"
phrase in his State of the Union Address. It was probably inspired by former
President Reagan's 'Evil Empire' speech almost 20 years ago.

In both cases the squishy, soft-headed diplomats whined about the
"inappropriateness" of such a phrase, and the countries involved – Iran,
Iraq and North Korea – squawked about their innocence.

The real story here is that these three rogue states should be
known as only the 'Sub-Axis of Evil.' The real evil nations are – and have
been for half a century – Russia and Red China. Period!

G.W. Bush can sit with career-KGB man Vladimir Putin and proclaim him
a man "with a good soul." But KGB men are selected primarily because they
do not have a soul!

Putin's Russia is more dangerous than at any time since the
fall of the Berlin Wall 12 years ago. Russia is re-arming its own military
and also manufacturing 'weapons of mass destruction' for its allies –
including Iran, Iraq and North Korea – to earn hard currency.

It is a plain fact that Moscow is helping Tehran build a nuclear
facility from which the Iranians will eventually be able to extract the
materials necessary to build a nuclear weapon. Russian scientists and
military advisers are frequently dispatched to Iran to help guide this
project.

Similarly, Moscow has long been a defender of Saddam's regime.
Longtime Soviet/Russian leader and one-time Prime Minister Primakov is a
great personal friend of the Iraqi strongman. Russia has equipped – and
re-equipped after the 1991 Gulf War defeat – the Iraqi military. Russian
military advisers frequently 'help' their Iraqi counterparts. Soviet/Russian
military doctrine is the 'order of the day' in the Iraqi military.

North Korea has – since its inception – been a Soviet/Russian 'client
state.' During the Korean War the Soviets supplied Pyongyang with military
technology, MiG jets and fuel. In return, the Soviets were given access to U.S.

POWs for drug experiments, brainwashing practice and tortured
'debriefings' about U.S. military technology.

In the 50 years since the Korean War, Moscow has kept a close
relationship with Kim Song-il – the longtime dictator of North Korea – and
now with his son, Kim Jong-il. (Moscow is not stupid; it wants allies next
to its simmering archenemy, Red China, despite any short-term
rapprochements that seem to occur from time to time.)

Beijing, too, has an equally close relationship with all three "Axis
of Evil" countries. Chinese missile technology has been sent to all three.
So, too, have Chinese scientists in hopes of expanding biological and
chemical weapons programs.

It is a shame that the Bush administration cozies up to Moscow and
Beijing at a time when those two nations are arming, supplying, supporting –
and encouraging – the very terrorist activities we have declared war
against.

We need to call a spade a spade. The "evildoers" that G.W. Bush
loves to lambaste are headquartered in Moscow and Beijing. They are not our
"friends." They have no "souls." They are just evil.

American foreign policy should not be cowed by the angry rhetoric
sure to come if we tell the world the truth about these two enemies of
freedom. Leadership means telling the world the truth. What good does it do
to hide from it?

That is not to say that Iran, Iraq and North Korea do not need to
have their governments removed; they most certainly do.

But it is like fighting cancer. Until you remove the main tumors, the
disease is still inside the body.

We have the unprecedented opportunity now – as the only superpower
– to use our influence and might to 'force' these evil governments out of
business. Through our economic power we can almost buy a change.
Through our trade power we can induce a change. And through our military
might we can demand a change.

This opportunity will not last forever. China is racing to become a
military superpower. Moscow is rebuilding quickly.

Now is not the time to squander this opportunity by lowered goals and
fear of a hostile reaction among the chattering classes and the striped-pants
diplomatic set.

Now is the time for America to attack the cancer of evil – wherever
it may reside.

OSAMA'S HIDING PLACE



A few weeks ago the Big Question every day in our news was: Where is Osama bin Laden?

Now entire days go by with not a single mention of the most despised terrorist in world history.

So, where is he?

Many have opinions. Still in Afghanistan, say some. Others opine he is next door in Pakistan, protected by the very same ISI faction that helped launch the Taliban six years ago. Pakistan’s pro-American president thinks the Al Qaeda leader has died from kidney failure.

The US military has quietly explored Yemen, Somalia and the Sudan for Osama.

Vice President Cheney believes he is still alive.

But one very likely hiding place for this mass murderer which gets scant mention is Baluchistan.

Where – and what – is Baluchistan, you ask?

The Baluch are a family of tribes of “tall, thin” Muslims who live in a swath of land reaching from Southeastern Pakistan, Southern Afghanistan and over to Southwestern Iran. Drug-running, smuggling and other illegal activities are a mainstay of the Baluch.

Tehran has no control over this ‘wild’ region of Iran. It is so wild there that it has been compared to the surface of the moon. Others say “it is the closest thing on Earth to Mars.”

One expert said Baluchistan “is a country with so little water that its dates are the worst of dates, and the inhabitants are the most warlike of men.”

Could you imagine a more perfect hiding place for Osama bin Laden? His height would not cause him to stand out. His corrupt business practices – which definitely include drug running and money laundering – would make him attractive to the Baluch.

And, best of all, no government controls it – and the USA ignores it!

Much has been made of Iran’s desire to join our Coalition. Ha! Colin Powell was almost giddy in October at the prospect of a rapprochement with Tehran.

But two nights ago the President included Iran – along with Iraq and North Korea – in the “Axis of Evil.”

The Iranian government is thoroughly involved with exporting terror – and is reportedly already trying to destabilize the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul.

Why no one has considered Iran as a temporary hiding place for Osama is beyond me. It seems most logical.

And let us all remember that the so-called War on Terror will not be won as long as Osama bin Laden remains alive and on the loose.


Reader Comments can be sent to: JohnLeBout@JohnLeBout.com.

STATE OF UNION ANALYSIS

President Bush’s State of the Union just ended. Here is a quick analysis:

One hundred years ago the Germans were on the verge of invading Venezuela. Teddy Roosevelt was President. He threatened – and backed off Kaiser Wilhelm - without the American people, media or Congress ever even knowing about it!

TR did not believe in bluster; he believed in his now oft- repeated maxim: “Speak softly and carry a Big Stick.”

Both George Bushes have blustered and threatened Iraq – and have allowed the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein to stay in power.

G.W.’s words tonight were powerful. But how many times have we heard similar condemnations of Saddam and yet he is still in power!

It would be better if we did not talk all the time – and then just attacked and removed Saddam’s regime, family and Ba’ath Party once and for all.

For those who say that the President needs to rally support for an ultimate attack on Iraq, the facts show just the opposite: over 85% of the American people already favor a war to remove Saddam. It is as if the people are way ahead of the government, not the other way around.

And forget convincing our so-called Coalition Partners. They are wimps who want not part of a Final War against Iraq.

The other typically Bush Family maneuver was the President’s reaching out and praising the liberals such as Teddy Kennedy.

What a sad spectacle to see a supposed-Conservative Republican kiss a Kennedy’s ring – especially this Kennedy!

If the Bush Team believes the way to success is by adopting the Left’s agenda and then – as he did in Texas – claim success for himself, they are woefully wrong. A President is judged in history by many things. One of them is whether or not he achieved what he set out to do. G.W. Bush wanted to be another Reagan. Guess what? Reagan abhorred Teddy Kennedy.

True, all this White House cares about is not repeating the mistakes of the Father Bush. That means paying attention to the economic recession – and then getting re-elected in 2004. That means not squandering the high poll ratings (almost as high as Father Bush in August of ’91 when he had a 91% rating) as his father did.

Who could believe that a mere year and a half after winning the Gulf War (although in retrospect we did not win because Saddam is more of a threat than ever before) Bush I only received 37% of the vote?

Bush II is determined that that will not happen to him

One other note: did you notice which Time Man of the Year candidate was never even mentioned in tonight’s speech?

Osama bin Laden!

Why not?

Because we cannot find him – and most Americans do not consider the so-called War on Terror a success until we kill or capture bin Laden.

So, yes, lots of applause and nice-sounding talk tonight.

But the proof is in the pudding.

And it’s still in the oven.

THE E'S HAVE IT



The E’s have it!

Enron, Executive Privilege and the Economy are now dominating the news.

Let us examine how they are all related:

1) Enron is a ‘business scandal’ which threatens to become a political scandal. The left-leaning so-called ‘mainstream media’ and the Democrats up on the Hill hope they can somehow link this amoral corporate disaster to the Bush Administration. Partisans like Rep. Henry Waxman and Senator Joe Lieberman are flogging the story every day.

And last week’s suicide of Enron’s former Vice-Chairman, J. Clifford Baxter, is yet another ‘peg’ upon which this Axis – Media and Democrats – can hang this story.

Much to their chagrin, however, there is not one public piece of evidence showing that the Bush Administration did anything wrong.

Yes, many Bush Administration figures – from G.W. Bush himself on down - knew Enron executives or made money from Enron. So what? It is a crime to know someone who goes on to act horribly?

Perhaps it is an indication of bad judgement, but it is not the material of scandal.

Which leads us to the second E: Vice President Cheney’s insistence on invoking Executive Privilege regarding his Energy Policy Task Force last year.

His appearances yesterday on all the TV Talking Head Sunday Shows indicated a strong effort by the White House to fight hard not to release documents, meeting notes and minutes of those Task Force meetings in which Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay was a major participant.

Whenever a White House invokes Executive Privilege it looks like they are hiding something. That is simply the result – 30 years later – of misuse of this privilege by the Nixon White House during the Watergate scandal.

This Bush White House is cocky right now – with good reason. They have astronomically high poll ratings and can thus shrug off a little needling in the press. However, even GOP senators are grumbling about the Cheney Stonewall. Why create a political problem – Enron and the GOP – if there is none?

Prediction: the heat will increase and the Bush political team will over-rule Cheney and force the release of all these disputed materials.

This will happen especially if the economy continues to deteriorate and becomes more and more the major issue dominating the political world. Already worries about the economy nudge out the War on Terror in the latest Wall Street Journal and NY Times/CBS polls. If more layoffs and bankruptcies occur – with no discernable upswing in the economic indicators – a sourness is bound to creep into the collective American psyche.

That sourness can spell doom to incumbents running for re-election this year. The GOP wants to hold onto the House and try to win back the Senate. Republicans do not want distractions that feed into this sourness.

A nasty fight over Enron and Executive Privilege is exactly what these Republican candidates do not need in 2002.

Politically it would be much better if the White House released each and every document, note, email and mention of Enron in one fell swoop. Be done with it – once and for all!

By refusing to do this they are only keeping the Enron Scandal alive as a potential issue that can hurt GOP candidates this fall.

The ultimate fear, of course, is that there is something in those disputed notes/meetings that will indeed link the Bush White House more directly to Enron. If that happens then we will have yet another full-fledged political scandal inside Washington – a scandal that can only haunt the GOP for months and years to come.


Note to readers: I am presently in the process of creating an email response device so you can email me your Reader Comments. For now, please send comments to: johnlebout@johnlebout.com. I try to respond personally to each one. I am also updating my archives and trying to create a link to all my past columns. I ask your patience, please.

WALKER CASE: DRUG USE IS KEY

In all the coverage of John 'Taliban' Walker - Johnny Walker Red, as someone cleverly called him - no one in the media has mentioned the huge use of opiates - hashish and heroin - in Afghanistan. Only in the initial coverage of the capture of Walker there were reports that Walker was 'high' on hashish.

In fact, the so-called 'mainstream media' has been woefully short on coverage of the huge drug use in that region of the world - and on the possibility that Afghan soldiers - on both sides - are often under the influnce of drugs when they go on their murderous rampages.

Drug use seems to be "off-limits" to the mainstream media. Even in the OJ Simpson case there was little talk of Simpson's alleged purchase that night of "crystal meth" - a type of 'speed' that would escape the bloodstream quickly and could have explained a sudden "mood change."

If Walker was high on hash when he gave media interviews after his capture, you can be certain that his civilian lawyers will use that as a key element in his defense. In fact, they may use excessive drug use to plead some sort of mental disability.

It has also been forgotten that, right after his capture, Walker-Lingh disclosed a leg wound and was promptly treated with a morphine drip. Any competent lawyer will argue that Johnnie Walker 'Red' was not competent to give interviews to CNN - or to the US military - while morphine was coarsing through his veins.

Furthermore, withdrawal from this narcotic also can be used to discredit any "confession" he may have made or signed.

The bigger picture, however, is that this "poor fellow", as President Bush called him, is a 20-year old adult who chose to join the enemy forces and fight against the USA. Many of the US troops killed on the USS Cole last year were younger - 18 or 19. No one said they were "too young" to make a rational decision to fight for America. Similary, Walker-Lindh chose to fight against the United States of America.

This decision is the product of the 1960's counter-culture of his two wayward, leftist, PC liberal parents. These two disciples of 'Marin County Morals' have produced the personifaction of all that is wrong with the New Left. In their way of warped thinking, there is no right or wrong; no good or bad. Just grey areas. This 'invented ambiguity' is their crutch to justify their amoral behavior: free love, illegal drugs, no civic responsibility and a me-first attitude.

It is not too strong to say that this disastrous movement which exploded in the Vietnam era has produced a generation who despise traditional values - and often believe every bad event on the Planet Earth "has to be America's fault." In sum, they "hate America."

The so-called mainstream media shies away from a discussion of the prevalence of drug use in the Afghan-Pakistan region - the 'Golden Crescent" - because these media people "came of age" during the drug culture's heyday of the 1960's - and, frankly - they see nothing wrong with drug use.

Just yesterday Robert Altman, the famous movie director, who hates G.W. Bush so much that he said "there is nothing in this government I like," admited that he smokes a joint "every night."

Why should we be subjected to the views of people like this?

Illegal drugs are just that - illegal - and users are breaking the law. Period! And yet they seem to have some sort of X-tra Credibility!

Already today Mr. Brosnahan, Walker-Lindh's attorney, has gone out of his way to proclaim that "John loves America."

Well, his behavior says something else. He "Hates America" - and American laws, values and traditions.

That is his biggest crime.