Sunday, February 25, 2007

Sy Hersh on the Middle East -- UPDATE

Note: For a video pertinent to this story, go to Crooks & Liars here.
The video is a must-watch. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STORY OF THE DAY.


Seymour Hersh offers the best current overview of the mad situation in the Middle East. In essence, we are supporting a pro-Iranian Shi'ite government in Iraq while counterbalancing Iran by supporting radical Sunnis everywhere else. These Sunni jihadists are quite often pro-Al Qaeda. One does not really have to read very far between the lines of Hersh's piece to discover that Al Qaeda is, in essence, Bush's friend -- in practice, though not in rhetoric.

This blog has seen some discussion of the partition-of-Iraq idea. Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah spoke to Hersh on that subject. Nasrallah thinks that the goal is partition not just of Iraq but all other nations in the region, including Saudi Arabia:
Partition would leave Israel surrounded by “small tranquil states,” he said. “I can assure you that the Saudi kingdom will also be divided, and the issue will reach to North African states. There will be small ethnic and confessional states,” he said. “In other words, Israel will be the most important and the strongest state in a region that has been partitioned into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement with each other. This is the new Middle East.”
Some readers, and some other bloggers, have voiced a similar view. But is this view accurate? In fact, Bush has done nothing to indicate that he favors the partition of Iraq. He could have accomplished that goal by now if he wanted it. Besides, even in Nasrallah's wildest fantasy, Iran cannot be partitioned. One of the main problems with the invasion of Iraq -- and this is a point Hersh drives home -- is that it left Iran without a countervailing power in the region.

Hersh saves some of his most fascinating material for the end, where some may miss it.
Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.
Yeah, we kind of figured as much. But:
The Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight, was accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.

“This goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council aide told me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it.” He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.”

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Joseph and everyone,

we all know we don't need another war with Iran that could likely escalate into a much bigger WWIII type war except for the neocons who can use war with Iran as justification for throwing out the whole Scooter Libby trial and of course declaring martial law.

If Bush and Cheney are not stopped, we could be in a new war with Iran as soon as April per latest news reports: "Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring" http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2010086,00.html

So I am asking you to please sign MoveOn's petition which I have signed. Congress can stop this new war but they need to hear from us. Maybe if enough of us sign a petition, enough of a fuss can be made to actually have some sort of influence and get Congress and the Senate to do something.

Here's the link for the MoveOn petition:

http://pol.moveon.org/noescalationiniran/

Also, if you have a few minutes, please read Seymour Hersh's latest article about Hersh: Bush Funneling Money to al Qaeda-Related Groups:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022607A.shtml

thanks Joseph for keeping up on this emerging story and not throwing in the towel--at least not yet.

Hey you might even like some of your readers in spite of our differences ( so slight) of opinion in that we agree to disagree!

Anonymous said...

The regime has floated the idea of partitioning the oil countries for some years.

The most outrageous example of this was the June 2006 article in Armed Forces Journal, which recommended splitting (among others) Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. This article urged creation of a "Arab Shia State" out of southern Iraq, eastern Saudi Arabia and western Iran. This new country would enclose most of the oil in the Middle East (since the US presumably does not want to control large stretches of sand that do not have oil).

a copy of the map and links to several analyses is at

http://www.oilempire.us/new-map.html

Anonymous said...

y'know, when i read that list of '3 things learned from iran-contra', and that last one about running things out of the VP's office as a reference to Dick, i actually wondered if it was also a reference to GHWBush. it was out of his office, after all, that all the nods to go ahead with the various schemes got their final ok.

dick is just following suite.