WASHINGTON, 26 June 2004 — World War I was lost by the side running out of population first. World War II was lost by the side running out of weapons first. The Cold War was lost by the side running out of money first. And World War III (which is coming) will be lost by the side running out of information first.
And as the Second Iraq War has revealed, in painfully stunning detail, the United States does not excel convincingly in the information department.
The Chalabi misadventure proves this. No weapons of mass destruction proves this.
The exploding Iraqi insurgency, which apparently came as a shocking surprise to the Bush administration, proves this. US intelligence failures, linked directly to a dearth of agents being able to actually speak, read, or write Arabic, proves this.
The Bush administration’s foreign policy team’s inability to put data together anticipating Al-Qaeda attacks proves this.
The “Neocon News” machine, generating vivid “human interest” and heroic tales that are retracted weeks later as utter falsehoods, proves this.
White House lawyers’ creation of a broad torture policy that endangers soldiers and civilians abroad, and internationally shames a great nation, proves this.
And now the Pentagon’s reported proposal to appoint President Bill Clinton’s CIA Director R. James Woolsey to head Iraq’s new Information Ministry, proves this.
As The Nation’s David Corn reports, appointing the former head of a “secret” intelligence agency credited, rightly or wrongly, with disinformation campaigns throughout the world would seem, well, how to best put it? Not the best or the brightest thing to do. As Corn observed, surely the Iranians have a very good memory of the CIA’s adventurism in toppling Mossadegh’s socialist government and restoring the Shah. And one need not be Guatemalan to remember the CIA’s involvement in destabilizing the socialist government of the democratically-elected Arbenz. And the CIA’s repeated efforts to assassinate Cuba’s Castro and the assassination of Congo’s Patrice Lumumba are the stuff of intelligence legend.
Powerful CIA disinformation campaigns played great roles in such efforts. So why bring the CIA’s Woolsey to Iraq? And why put him in charge of the news there? Is the Pentagon seeking to build trust in Iraq, or does it have other plans? Woolsey, a patron and paid promoter of the now-officially spurned Ahmed Chalabi, is reportedly tight with Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, who want to add him to their neocon team in Iraq.
And like most neocons, Woolsey has a peculiar way of telling the “truth.”
Like his cocktail party circuit speech about what really caused Sept. 11. Woolsey blames the airline industry’s “flimsy cabin doors,” implying that the terrorists were able to break down these doors easily and gain access to the cabin.
But Woolsey’s claims are specifically discredited by the Federal Aviation Administration. Officially, the FAA was not in charge of investigating the Sept. 11 atrocities even though they involved aircraft, since there was no safety issue because of the deliberate nature of the Sept. 11 atrocities. But some FAA administrators unofficially posit that evidence shows the Sept. 11 terrorists never breached the cabin doors, flimsy or not. But Woolsey fails to mention in his cocktail lectures that the Sept. 11 Commission drew no conclusion on this point. In fact, the FAA rule is that the aircraft captain is to keep this door secure, especially during any aircraft commotion.
But all the evidence indicates that this is exactly what two of the aircraft’s pilots failed to do.
They opened the doors to terror.
The other plane’s terrorists entered the cockpit not by forcing the “flimsy” door, as Woolsey suggests, but by taking a stewardess’s extra set of cockpit door keys.
Had the pilots not opened the doors in response to cabin crews’ entreaties, and had the stewardess secured her own keys, Al-Qaeda would have likely failed. The terrorists might have murdered all the cabin crew and passengers, but there would have been no crashes into the Pentagon or World Trade Center. The planes would of course have been full of screaming, full of panic, full of bloody death and injury, but the terrorists would not have reached their targets, and would have had to either kill themselves or surrender. The pilots might have made emergency landings before too many people died.
The pilots could also have simply tipped the aircraft upside down. This might have seriously injured any passengers not firmly secured with their seat belts ... but guess who that would be? At least, the terrorists might have dropped their box cutters. The pilots could also have depressurized the aircraft. The pilots and crew have much better oxygen masks than generally available to passengers, and so could have saved themselves and flown the plane safely home, although all passengers would have eventually become unconscious, and some (but not all) not heavily dressed, would likely have succumbed to cold and lack of oxygen.
These are hard decisions that Westerners are not used to making anymore. But these hard decisions to follow hard rules actually save lives.
Woolsey doesn’t talk about this.
Instead, he spreads disinformation.
How can we send him to Iraq and put him in charge of information there?
US taxpayers funded Chalabi’s INC to the tune of $340,000 a month. How much of this did INC pay to Woolsey and his firm for representing them?
Time for Chalabi’s shill to find a real job.
