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Feb. 13, 2007 From before the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003 and perhaps almost until his resignation and retirement in August of 2005, Douglas J. Feith, then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, was the eye of a storm of invective and accusations brewed mostly by a plethora of non-mainstream websites. Every day, a number of websites carried the most detailed descriptions of what was going on in Feith's bailiwick. I looked and I looked, but most of the commentary never made the major newspapers. One might almost have concluded that a myriad of bloggers had created a house of cards by linking to each others' websites again and again. For one thing, Feith headed a unit called the Office of Special Plans, created by Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense, to build a case for the invasion and continuation of the war. It was stated in the blogophere that Feith and the OSP were circumventing regular intelligence from the CIA and the DIA by creating their own brand of intelligence or disinformation based largely on the often unfounded allegations of so-called Iraqi dissidents, like Ahmad Chalabi. After all, calling Chalabi, who'd left Iraq at the age of 12, a 'dissident' was stretching it. And Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) was not a government in exile, as the name might suggest, but rather a vaudeville act scripted by the Rendon Group, a Washington public relations firm paid millions to market Chalabi. The OSP was disbanded in June, 2003, when most of the damage in Iraq had been done. According to USAF Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, several Israelis enjoyed informal access to the OSP at a time when even high-ranking Pentagon operatives needed security checks to enter. Feith was born in Philadelphia, but, judging from his political orientation, you'd think he'd come from Jerusalem, where he was the partner in an international law firm by the name of Feith and Zell. At one point Condoleezza Rice said to him, "Thanks Doug, but when we want the Israeli position we'll invite the ambassador." Colin Powell viewed him with suspicion, calling the Department of Defense 'JINSA' (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs). Feith was said to have 'stovepiped' disinformation to influential journalists like former New York Times writers William Safire and Judith Miller, and William Kristol of The Weekly Standard, who, in turn, would write devastating articles in support of the war. It's strange that as the war began to age, key proponents of the war, like Safire, Miller, Feith and Wolfowitz began to withdraw quietly from the scene. One of Feith's subordinates, Larry Franklin, has been convicted of passing classified documents to Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, then agents of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The trial of Rosen and Weissman will go ahead on June 4 of this year. But, as far as I know, a general investigation of AIPAC has not been undertaken so far. Quite the contrary, AIPAC is still entertaining all the important people in Washington at its lavish banquets, as if everything were proper. Some people see Feith as the real linchpin in the juggernaut that rolled over Iraq. They perceive in him a more effective organizer and manipulator than even Paul Wolfowitz or Donald Rumsfeld. Then with Feith's retirement, the whole matter seemed to cool and be forgotten. Now the Pentagon has issued its report on pre-war intelligence, which seems so far to confirm what was being reported all over the blogosphere in 2003. And Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has taken the matter in hand, with very critical statements about Feith's role in cooking the books. It's too bad Levin wasn't more vocal in the summer of 2003, when the iron was hot. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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