- Douglas Feith, the number three man at the Pentagon who
went there from the pro-Likud Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
(JINSA) and the Project for a New American Century, will leave the Pentagon
as of this summer. Feith's office is the subject of an FBI investigation
as well as two Congressional investigations, one by the Senate Intelligence
Committee. Feith helped set up an Office of Special Plans in the Near East
and South Asia desk of the Pentagon to cherry-pick Iraq intelligence and
create a case for Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and having operational
links with al-Qaeda.
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- At one point, contrary to Federal law, Feith's people
actually briefed officials in the Executive on intelligence. Feith sent
David Wurmser from the Office of Special Plans, once its work was well
under way, over to the staff of Vice President Dick Cheney, so that he
could stove pipe OSP analyses into the VP's office and thence directly
to the president, doing an end run around the CIA and the State Department
Intelligence and Research division.
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- Having a Likudnik as the number three man in the Pentagon
is a nightmare for American national security, since Feith could never
be trusted to put US interests over those of Ariel Sharon. In the build-up
to the Iraq War, Feith had a phalanx of Israeli generals visiting him in
the Pentagon and ignored post-9/11 requirements that they sign in. Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was a vocal advocate of a US war against Iraq,
who "put pressure" on Washington about it. (If Sharon wanted
a war against Iraq, why didn't he fight it himself instead of pushing it
off on American boys?)
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- Feith has been questioned by the FBI in relation to the
passing by one of his employees of confidential Pentagon documents to the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which in turn passed them to
the Israeli embassy. The Senate Intelligence Committee is also investigating
Feith. There seems little doubt that he operated in the Pentagon in such
a way as to produce false and misleading "intelligence," that
he created an entirely false impression of Iraqi weapons capabilities and
ties to al-Qaeda, and that he is among the chief facilitators of the US
war in Iraq.
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- Feith is clearly resigning ahead of the possible breaking
of major scandals concerning his tenure at the Department of Defense, which
is among the more disgraceful cases of the misleading of the American people
in American history.
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- There are several downsides to Feith's departure, as
welcome as it is for anyone who cares about US security in particular.
The first is that now we probably have to see him forever on cable news
channels as one of those dreary neocon talking heads flogged by the American
Enterprise Institute, a far rightwing "think tank" funded by
cranky rich people to obscure the truth. Another is that his departure
now may help keep Bush from being blamed for his shady dealings in intelligence
"analysis."
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- It is important to note that what is objectionable about
Feith is a) his playing fast and loose with the truth, producing poor intelligence
analysis that has been shown to be completely false and b) his doing so
on behalf of not only American nationalist aspirations but also on behalf
of a non-American political party, the Likud coalition of Israel, which
desired to destroy the Oslo peace process initiated by Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin (and which was therefore on the same side of this issue as the fanatic
who assassinated Rabin). There is no objection to Americans having multiple
identities or love for more than one country.
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- Someone of Serbian heritage would make a perfectly good
Pentagon administrator. But you wouldn't want a vehement supporter of Slobodon
Milosevic as the number three man in the Pentagon. It is ideological dual
loyalty that is dangerous. Mere sentiment based on multiple ethnic identities
is not dual loyalty, and hyphenated Americans mostly have other countries
they wish well (and rightly so).
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- It is also important to underline that only a small minority
of American Jews support the Likud Party or its policies, and that a majority
of Jewish Americans opposed the Iraq war. In short, the problematic nature
of Feith's tenure at the Department of Defense must not be made an excuse
for any kind of bigotry.
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- http://www.juancole.com/
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