We really are living in the Theater of the Absurd

This has got to be one of the silliest things I have ever heard in my lifetime.

Bomb people 'til hell won't have it, occupy their country for over 4 years while committing one heinous crime after another against their citizenry, do little or nothing to repair the damage you've done and then tell them you are "there to help them."

"We will help you"

What kind of idiot would believe such a thing.

Iraqis aren't stupid.

But we are, apparently, because there will be a whole bunch of wing-nuts who will be pushing and believing this silly mantra.

What is it going to take to get it though the thick skulls of the D.C. Dumb-asses that the Iraqis don't want us there, period. They don't want our help. They have had quite enough of our "help" as it is.

How is it possible that anyone can be so stupid as to believe a word of this blather?

The Pentagon Gets a Lesson From Madison Avenue

U.S. Needs to Devise a Different 'Brand' to Win Over the Iraqi People, Study Advises

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 21, 2007; A01

In the advertising world, brand identity is everything. Volvo means safety. Colgate means clean. IPod means cool. But since the U.S. military invaded Iraq in 2003, its "show of force" brand has proved to have limited appeal to Iraqi consumers, according to a recent study commissioned by the U.S. military.

The key to boosting the image and effectiveness of U.S. military operations around the world involves "shaping" both the product and the marketplace, and then establishing a brand identity that places what you are selling in a positive light, said clinical psychologist Todd C. Helmus, the author of "Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation." The 211-page study, for which the U.S. Joint Forces Command paid the Rand Corp. $400,000, was released this week.

Helmus and his co-authors concluded that the "force" brand, which the United States peddled for the first few years of the occupation, was doomed from the start and lost ground to enemies' competing brands. While not abandoning the more aggressive elements of warfare, the report suggested, a more attractive brand for the Iraqi people might have been "We will help you." That is what President Bush's new Iraq strategy is striving for as it focuses on establishing a protective U.S. troop presence in Baghdad neighborhoods, training Iraq's security forces, and encouraging the central and local governments to take the lead in making things better.

Many of the study's conclusions may seem as obvious as they are hard to implement amid combat operations and terrorist attacks, and Helmus acknowledged that it could be too late for extensive rebranding of the U.S. effort in Iraq. But Duane Schattle, whose urban operations office at the Joint Forces Command ordered the study, said that "cities are the battlegrounds of the future" and what has happened in Baghdad provides lessons for the future. "This isn't just about going in and blowing things up," Schattle said. "This is about working in a very complex environment."

In an urban insurgency, for example, civilians can help identify enemy infiltrators and otherwise assist U.S. forces. They are less likely to help, the study says, when they become "collateral damage" in U.S. attacks, have their doors broken down or are shot at checkpoints because they do not speak English. Cultural connections -- seeking out the local head man when entering a neighborhood, looking someone in the eye when offering a friendly wave -- are key.

The most successful companies, the Rand study notes, are those that study their clientele and shape their workplace and product in ways that incorporate their brand into every interaction with consumers.

Wal-Mart's desired identity as a friendly shop where working-class customers can feel comfortable and find good value, for example, would be undercut if telephone operators and sales personnel had rude attitudes, or if the stores offered too much high-end merchandise. For the U.S. military and U.S. officials, understanding the target customer culture is equally critical.

Helmus recommends expanding military training to include shaping and branding concepts such as cultural awareness, and the study underscores the perils of failing to understand your consumer.

"Certain things do not translate well," the study warned. "Danger lies behind assumptions of similarity." A gesture Bush made during his 2005 inaugural parade -- the University of Texas "hook 'em horns" salute with raised index and pinkie fingers -- stands for the "sign of the devil" in some cultures and an indication of marital infidelity in others. A leaflet dropped to intimidate Iraqi insurgents, the study noted, "also reached noncombatants" and "gave everyone who picked it up the 'evil eye.' "

"Words cause similar cultural confusion," it said. The Arabic word "jihad," for example, has religious connotations for Muslims; its repeated use to connote terrorism is insulting and also perversely lends legitimacy to violent acts.

Schattle acknowledged that much of what works for consumer advertising in the United States might not translate well in Baghdad. But urban ops, he said, is all about experimenting and adapting to new realities.

"We want to look at new concepts, new business practices, to see if there are things that we can learn," he said. Since his office was established after the U.S. military issued a new doctrine for urban warfare in 2002, "we've been collecting lessons learned from all over the world," he said. "Not just Iraq and Afghanistan, but places like the Philippines and South America. Wherever there have been fights, we went out and looked at them."

The challenge for the advertising study, he said, was to find "something we can learn from Madison Avenue or from the marketers, the best in the world, that might help us when we're trying to deliver a message about what democracy is." In Iraq, Schattle said, the "urban population is the center of gravity" and the problem is "how we influence them to be on our side, or at least not be an enemy" when "what they see is armor." The goal of such studies, Schattle said, is to distill what works and incorporate it into future training.

Adversaries are doing their own shaping on Iraq's urban battlefields. While intimidation, coercion and assassination might not make them beloved, such techniques effectively limit public outreach to U.S. forces, the Rand study notes. Enemy forces have also learned that "doing good works is a classic approach to winning friends and influencing people" and frequently provide basic services that the U.S. military is unable to match.

At the same time, Helmus said, U.S. military and civilian authorities must stop thinking of themselves as a "good-idea factory" whose every thought has greater merit than those of their customers. "Procter & Gamble doesn't even do that," he said.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Pentagon Extends Marine Tours Of Duty in Iraq, Again

WASHINGTON, July 19 (Reuters) - The Pentagon has extended the combat tours of 2,200 Marines in Iraq for 30 days, keeping the troops on the ground to help stabilize Anbar province, a Marine Corps spokesman said on Thursday. The 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is conducting counterinsurgency operations in Iraq's western province, will stay until at least the end of September, under the extension. "It's to contribute to stability operations," said Maj. Jay Delarosa, who called the extension typical. "The bottom line is if they're extended another month, that's when you kind of have to be concerned," Delarosa said. The United States has boosted force levels to about 158,000 troops under a plan aimed at establishing enough security to allow progress on political benchmarks seen by Washington as critical to long-term stability in Iraq. The Pentagon is due to provide a progress report on the so-called surge in September. While an increasing number of lawmakers are calling for a strategy shift in Iraq, some commanders have urged for more time beyond the September assessment.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

War Machine And Energy. Just stop the damn wars!

The Pentagon vs. Peak Oil
Posted on Jun 15, 2007
Michael T. Klare


Sixteen gallons of oil. That’s how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis—either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone.

Multiply that daily tab by 365 and you get 1.3 billion gallons: the estimated annual oil expenditure for U.S. combat operations in Southwest Asia. That’s greater than the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million—and yet it’s a gross underestimate of the Pentagon’s wartime consumption.

Such numbers cannot do full justice to the extraordinary gas-guzzling expense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, for every soldier stationed “in theater,” there are two more in transit, in training, or otherwise in line for eventual deployment to the war zone—soldiers who also consume enormous amounts of oil, even if less than their compatriots overseas. Moreover, to sustain an “expeditionary” army located halfway around the world, the Department of Defense must move millions of tons of arms, ammunition, food, fuel and equipment every year by plane or ship, consuming additional tanker-loads of petroleum. Add this to the tally and the Pentagon’s war-related oil budget jumps appreciably, though exactly how much we have no real way of knowing.

And foreign wars, sad to say, account for but a small fraction of the Pentagon’s total petroleum consumption. Possessing the world’s largest fleet of modern aircraft, helicopters, ships, tanks, armored vehicles and support systems—virtually all powered by oil—the Department of Defense (DoD) is, in fact, the world’s leading consumer of petroleum. It can be difficult to obtain precise details on the DoD’s daily oil hit, but an April 2007 report by a defense contractor, LMI Government Consulting, suggests that the Pentagon might consume as much as 340,000 barrels (14 million gallons) every day. This is greater than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland.

Not “Guns vs. Butter,” but “Guns vs. Oil”

For anyone who drives a motor vehicle these days, this has ominous implications. With the price of gasoline now 75 cents to a dollar more than it was just six months ago, it’s obvious that the Pentagon is facing a potentially serious budgetary crunch. Just like any ordinary American family, the DoD has to make some hard choices: It can use its normal amount of petroleum and pay more at the Pentagon’s equivalent of the pump, while cutting back on other basic expenses; or it can cut back on its gas use in order to protect favored weapons systems under development. Of course, the DoD has a third option: It can go before Congress and plead for yet another supplemental budget hike, but this is sure to provoke renewed calls for a timetable for an American troop withdrawal from Iraq, and so is an unlikely prospect at this time.
Nor is this destined to prove a temporary issue.

As recently as two years ago, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) was confidently predicting that the price of crude oil would hover in the $30 per barrel range for another quarter-century or so, leading to gasoline prices of about $2 per gallon. But then came Hurricane Katrina, the crisis in Iran, the insurgency in southern Nigeria and a host of other problems that tightened the oil market, prompting the DoE to raise its long-range price projection into the $50 per barrel range. This is the amount that figures in many current governmental budgetary forecasts—including, presumably, those of the Department of Defense. But just how realistic is this? The price of a barrel of crude oil today is hovering in the $66 range. Many energy analysts now say that a price range of $70-$80 per barrel (or possibly even significantly more) is far more likely to be our fate for the foreseeable future.

A price rise of this magnitude, when translated into the cost of gasoline, aviation fuel, diesel fuel, home-heating oil and petrochemicals will play havoc with the budgets of families, farms, businesses and local governments. Sooner or later, it will force people to make profound changes in their daily lives—as benign as purchasing a hybrid vehicle in place of an SUV or as painful as cutting back on home heating or healthcare simply to make an unavoidable drive to work. It will have an equally severe effect on the Pentagon budget. As the world’s No. 1 consumer of petroleum products, the DoD will obviously be disproportionately affected by a doubling in the price of crude oil. If it can’t turn to Congress for redress, it will have to reduce its profligate consumption of oil and/or cut back on other expenses, including weapons purchases.

The rising price of oil is producing what Pentagon contractor LMI calls a “fiscal disconnect” between the military’s long-range objectives and the realities of the energy marketplace. “The need to recapitalize obsolete and damaged equipment [from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan] and to develop high-technology systems to implement future operational concepts is growing,” it explained in an April 2007 report. However, an inability “to control increased energy costs from fuel and supporting infrastructure diverts resources that would otherwise be available to procure new capabilities.”

And this is likely to be the least of the Pentagon’s worries. The Department of Defense is, after all, the world’s richest military organization, and so can be expected to tap into hidden accounts of one sort or another in order to pay its oil bills and finance its many pet weapons projects. However, this assumes that sufficient petroleum will be available on world markets to meet the Pentagon’s ever-growing needs—by no means a foregone conclusion. Like every other large consumer, the DoD must now confront the looming—but hard to assess—reality of “peak oil”; the very real possibility that global oil production is at or near its maximum sustainable ("peak") output and will soon commence an irreversible decline.

That global oil output will eventually reach a peak and then decline is no longer a matter of debate; all major energy organizations have now embraced this view. What remains open for argument is precisely when this moment will arrive. Some experts place it comfortably in the future—meaning two or three decades down the pike—while others put it in this very decade. If there is a consensus emerging, it is that peak-oil output will occur somewhere around 2015. Whatever the timing of this momentous event, it is apparent that the world faces a profound shift in the global availability of energy, as we move from a situation of relative abundance to one of relative scarcity. It should be noted, moreover, that this shift will apply, above all, to the form of energy most in demand by the Pentagon: the petroleum liquids used to power planes, ships and armored vehicles.

The Bush Doctrine Faces Peak Oil

Peak oil is not one of the global threats the Department of Defense has ever had to face before; and, like other U.S. government agencies, it tended to avoid the issue, viewing it until recently as a peripheral matter. As intimations of peak oil’s imminent arrival increased, however, it has been forced to sit up and take notice. Spurred perhaps by rising fuel prices, or by the growing attention being devoted to “energy security” by academic strategists, the DoD has suddenly taken an interest in the problem. To guide its exploration of the issue, the Office of Force Transformation within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy commissioned LMI to conduct a study on the implications of future energy scarcity for Pentagon strategic planning.

The resulting study, “Transforming the Way the DoD Looks at Energy,” was a bombshell.

Determining that the Pentagon’s favored strategy of global military engagement is incompatible with a world of declining oil output, LMI concluded that “current planning presents a situation in which the aggregate operational capability of the force may be unsustainable in the long term.”
LMI arrived at this conclusion from a careful analysis of current U.S. military doctrine. At the heart of the national military strategy imposed by the Bush administration—the Bush Doctrine—are two core principles: transformation, or the conversion of America’s stodgy, tank-heavy Cold War military apparatus into an agile, continent-hopping, high-tech, futuristic war machine; and pre-emption, or the initiation of hostilities against “rogue states” like Iraq and Iran, thought to be pursuing weapons of mass destruction. What both principles entail is a substantial increase in the Pentagon’s consumption of petroleum products—either because such plans rely, to an increased extent, on air and sea power or because they imply an accelerated tempo of military operations.

As summarized by LMI, implementation of the Bush Doctrine requires that “our forces must expand geographically and be more mobile and expeditionary so that they can be engaged in more theaters and prepared for expedient deployment anywhere in the world”; at the same time, they “must transition from a reactive to a proactive force posture to deter enemy forces from organizing for and conducting potentially catastrophic attacks.” It follows that, “to carry out these activities, the U.S. military will have to be even more energy intense. ... Considering the trend in operational fuel consumption and future capability needs, this ‘new’ force employment construct will likely demand more energy/fuel in the deployed setting.”

The resulting increase in petroleum consumption is likely to prove dramatic. During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the average American soldier consumed only four gallons of oil per day; as a result of George W. Bush’s initiatives, a U.S. soldier in Iraq is now using four times as much. If this rate of increase continues unabated, the next major war could entail an expenditure of 64 gallons per soldier per day.

It was the unassailable logic of this situation that led LMI to conclude that there is a severe “operational disconnect” between the Bush administration’s principles for future war-fighting and the global energy situation. The administration has, the company notes, “tethered operational capability to high-technology solutions that require continued growth in energy sources”—and done so at the worst possible moment historically. After all, the likelihood is that the global energy supply is about to begin diminishing rather than expanding. Clearly, writes LMI in its April 2007 report, “it may not be possible to execute operational concepts and capabilities to achieve our security strategy if the energy implications are not considered.” And when those energy implications are considered, the strategy appears “unsustainable.”

The Pentagon as a Global Oil-Protection Service

How will the military respond to this unexpected challenge? One approach, favored by some within the DoD, is to go “green”—that is, to emphasize the accelerated development and acquisition of fuel-efficient weapons systems so that the Pentagon can retain its commitment to the Bush Doctrine, but consume less oil while doing so. This approach, if feasible, would have the obvious attraction of allowing the Pentagon to assume an environmentally friendly facade while maintaining and developing its existing, interventionist force structure.

But there is also a more sinister approach that may be far more highly favored by senior officials: To ensure itself a “reliable” source of oil in perpetuity, the Pentagon will increase its efforts to maintain control over foreign sources of supply, notably oil fields and refineries in the Persian Gulf region, especially in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This would help explain the recent talk of U.S. plans to retain “enduring" bases in Iraq, along with its already impressive and elaborate basing infrastructure in these other countries.

The U.S. military first began procuring petroleum products from Persian Gulf suppliers to sustain combat operations in the Middle East and Asia during World War II, and has been doing so ever since. It was, in part, to protect this vital source of petroleum for military purposes that, in 1945, President Roosevelt first proposed the deployment of an American military presence in the Persian Gulf region. Later, the protection of Persian Gulf oil became more important for the economic well-being of the United States, as articulated in President Jimmy Carter’s “Carter Doctrine” speech of January 23, 1980, as well as in President George H. W. Bush’s August 1990 decision to stop Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, which led to the first Gulf War—and, many would argue, the decision of the younger Bush to invade Iraq over a decade later.

Along the way, the American military has been transformed into a “global oil-protection service” for the benefit of U.S. corporations and consumers, fighting overseas battles and establishing its bases to ensure that we get our daily fuel fix. It would be both sad and ironic if the military now began fighting wars mainly so that it could be guaranteed the fuel to run its own planes, ships and tanks—consuming hundreds of billions of dollars a year that could instead be spent on the development of petroleum alternatives.

Michael T. Klare, professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, is the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books).

Copyright 2007 Michael T. Klare


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

OMG! Amputees Being Sent Back To Iraq

U.S. soldiers with missing limbs allowed to return to active duty
By AP
May 30, 2007


SAN ANTONIO (AP) — In the blur of smoke and blood after a bomb blew up under his Humvee in Iraq, Sgt. Tawan Williamson looked down at his shredded leg and knew it couldn't be saved.

His military career, though, pulled through.

Less than a year after the attack, Williams is running again with a high-tech prosthetic leg and plans to take up a new assignment, probably by the fall, as an Army job counselor and affirmative action officer in Okinawa, Japan.

In an about-face by the Pentagon, the military is putting many more amputees back on active duty — even back into combat, in some cases.

Williamson, a 30-year-old Chicago native who is missing his left leg below the knee and three toes on the other foot, acknowledged that some will be skeptical of a maimed soldier back in uniform.

"But I let my job show for itself," he said. "At this point, I'm done proving. I just get out there and do it."

Previously, a soldier who lost a limb almost automatically received a quick discharge, a disability check and an appointment with the Veterans Administration.

But since the start of the Iraq war, the military has begun holding on to amputees, treating them in rehab programs like the one here at Fort Sam Houston and promising to help them return to active duty if that is what they want.

"The mind-set of our Army has changed, to the extent that we realize the importance of all our soldiers and what they can contribute to our Army. Someone who loses a limb is still a very valuable asset," said Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, a spokesman for the Army's Human Resources Command at the Pentagon.

Also, just as advances in battlefield medicine have boosted survival rates among the wounded, better prosthetics and treatment regimens have improved amputees' ability to regain mobility.

So far, the Army has treated nearly 600 service members who have come back from Iraq or Afghanistan without an arm, leg, hand or foot. Thirty-one have gone back to active duty, and no one who asked to remain in the service has been discharged, Arata said.

Most of those who return to active duty are assigned to instructor or desk jobs away from combat. Only a few — the Army doesn't keep track of exactly how many — have returned to the war zone, and only at their insistence, Arata said.

To go back into the war zone, they have to prove they can do the job without putting themselves or others at risk.

One amputee who returned to combat in Iraq, Maj. David Rozelle, is now helping design the amputee program at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. He has counted seven other amputees who have lost at least part of a hand or foot and have gone back to combat in Iraq.

The 34-year-old from Austin, Texas, said he felt duty-bound to return after losing his right foot to a land mine in Iraq.

"It sounds ridiculous, but you feel guilty that you're back home safe," he said. "Our country is engaged in a war. I felt it was my responsibility as a leader in the Army to continue."

Rozelle commanded a cavalry troop and conducted reconnaissance operations when he returned to Iraq, just as he had before the mine blast. Other amputees who have returned to combat, ranging from infantry grunts to special forces soldiers, have conducted door-to-door searches, convoy operations and other missions in the field.

"Guys won't go back if it means riding a desk," Rozelle said.

He said his emotions at the start of his second tour in Iraq, which lasted four months, were a lot like those during his first stint: "I was going back to war, so it was as heart-pounding as the first time."

Mark Heniser, who worked as a Navy therapist for 23 years before joining the amputee program at Fort Sam Houston in 2005, said both the military and the wounded benefit when amputees can be kept on active duty: The military retains the skills of experienced personnel, while the soldiers can continue with their careers.

Staff Sgt. Nathan Reed, who lost his right leg a year ago in a car bombing, is 21/2 years from retirement and has orders to head in July to Fort Knox, where he expects to be an instructor.
"My whole plan was to do 20 years," said the 37-year-old soldier from Shreveport, La. "I had no doubt that I would be able to go back on active duty."

Not everyone comes through treatment as rapidly or as well as Williamson, Reed and Rozelle. Some have more severe injuries or struggle harder with the losses, physically or emotionally. Soldiers who lose a limb early in their careers are more likely to want out. Those with long service are more motivated to stay, Heniser said.

Williamson did not want to return to combat, and it is not clear he could have met the physical qualifications anyway.

The military planned to discharge him on disability, but he appealed, hoping to become a drill instructor. The Army ruled that would be too physically demanding for Williamson, a human resources officer before being sent to lead convoys in Iraq, but it agreed to let him return to active duty in some other capacity.

He is regaining his strength and balance at the new $50 million Center for the Intrepid, built to rehabilitate military amputees. A hurdler in high school, he ran the Army minimum of two miles for the first time in mid-May, managing a 10-minute-per-mile pace on his C-shaped prosthetic running leg decorated with blue flames.

He is working out five days a week — running, lifting weights and doing pool exercises — and just got his first ride on a wave machine used to improve balance.

"I could leave here today if they told me I had to," Williamson said.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Douglas Feith; Enemy of The State!

By Robert Scheer
02/14/07

"San Francisco Chronicle" -- -

SOMEDAY, you are going to read a whole lot about the shenanigans of one Douglas J. Feith and an elaborate scheme to get the United States to invade Iraq. That is because Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., has been determined to get to the bottom of this sordid tale and is now, fortunately, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee and thereby empowered to get at the truth.

Last week, his focus led to the partial declassification of a report produced by the Pentagon's inspector general. Although its shocking revelations did not get the coverage it deserved -- what with a jealous astronaut on the loose and the death of a certain voluptuous stripper/heiress -- efforts such as Levin's eventually will uncover the full picture of why President Bush committed to a war costing tens of thousands of lives and an expected $1 trillion that served no valid national security purpose.

The tale begins with Feith, who was appointed undersecretary of defense for policy in the Pentagon by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after Bush was installed in the White House in 2000 by the Supreme Court.

In that capacity, Feith's office manufactured an "Alternative Analysis on the Iraq-al Qaeda Relationship," which ignored the consensus of the intelligence community that the two natural enemies -- one a secular Arab government, the other a fundamentalist terror group bent on destruction of same -- were not, nor ever had been, working together, despite a shared enmity for the United States.

Most important, as the Pentagon's independent inspector general noted, the intelligence did not support any connection between Saddam Hussein's regime and the brutal Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Nevertheless, such an apocryphal connection was asserted repeatedly by the Bush administration based largely on cherry-picked information (compiled and presented by Feith's highly ideological group within the Pentagon)."[I]ntelligence indicates cooperation in all categories" and a "mature symbiotic relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda, Feith conveniently reported to superiors who had already decided on the need to overthrow Hussein and were seeking a way to link it to Americans' rage at Osama bin Ladin.

These alleged "multiple areas of cooperation" included "shared interest and pursuit of [Weapons of Mass Destruction]" and "some indications of possible Iraq coordination with al Qaeda related to 9/11."

All of those claims were known by the intelligence community to be false or completely unproven, as documented by the nonpartisan 9/11 commission.

Yet, they were presented by Feith's office "unbeknownst to the Director of Central Intelligence," according to the report, were "not vetted by the Intelligence Community" and were "not supported by the available intelligence."The most glaring distortion was Feith's indefensible reliance on a shaky, discredited report from a Czech intelligence agent that said 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had a meeting with a top Iraqi diplomat in Prague five months before Sept. 11, 2001.

As the 9/11 commission reported, there was never any good evidence of such a meeting, yet Vice President Dick Cheney continued to assert it as true, long after the facts were known. Cheney even called Feith's report the "best source of information" on the alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda after it was leaked to the neoconservative Weekly StandardSo was the White House in on this hustle? It is hard to imagine it wasn't, because Feith was selected by Cheney and Rumsfeld to run the "alternative" intelligence operation precisely because they knew he was an inveterate hawk, long committed publicly to a rollback strategy that would ensure Israel's security through regime change in the Arab world, beginning with Iraq.

That radical and dangerous notion, based on a deep hostility to the Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts pursued by all previous presidents, had been clearly outlined by Feith in a 1996 report he co-wrote with Richard Perle and other prominent neoconservatives called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," issued by an Israeli think-tank. The report spelled out a rosy scenario in which a new post-Hussein Iraq with a Shia majority would support a pro-Israel position.

The absurdity of that expectation has been well demonstrated by the close ties of the Iraqi Shia leadership with an Iranian government that is publicly committed to eliminating Israel. Of course, as a private citizen, Feith had the right to endorse such deeply erroneous views -- but why was a man given to such bizarre analysis placed in a position of critical importance in the federal government?More important, why did the president raise Feith's analysis over that of the government's lavishly funded intelligence agencies? That is the basic question begged by the report, and one that truth-diggers such as Levin eventually may be able to answer

E-mail Rscheer@truthdig.

....and the truth shall set us free.