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home THE COMING WARS by SEYMOUR M HERSH What the Pentagon can now do in secret. Issue of 2005-01-24 and 31 Posted 2005-01-17 George W Bushs relection was not his only victory last fall. The Presi dent and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over t he military and intelligence communities strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agend a for using that controlagainst the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorismduring his second term. The CIA will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as o ne government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as fac ilitators of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Di ck Cheney. Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administra tion has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region. Bushs rel ection is regarded within the Administration as evidence of Americas su pport for his decision to go to war. It has reaffirmed the position of t he neoconservatives in the Pentagons civilian leadership who advocated the invasion, including Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-secretary for Policy. According to a forme r high-level intelligence official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American peo ple did not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was commit ted to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing. This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone, the former high- level intelligence official told me. Weve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, ar e the enemy. This is the last hurrahweve got four years, and want to c ome out of this saying we won the war on terrorism. Bush and Cheney may have set the policy, but it is Rumsfeld who has direc ted its implementation and has absorbed much of the public criticism whe n things went wrongwhether it was prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib or lack of sufficient armor plating for GIs vehicles in Iraq. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for Rumsfelds dismissal, and he i s not widely admired inside the military. Nonetheless, his reappointment as Defense Secretary was never in doubt. Rumsfeld will become even more important during the second term. In inter views with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was t old that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election , and much of it would be Rumsfelds responsibility. The war on terroris m would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagons control . The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders aut horizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduc t covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as te n nations in the Middle East and South Asia. The Presidents decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the b ooksfree from legal restrictions imposed on the CIA Under current la w, all CIA covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Preside ntial finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committe es. T hey dont even call it covert opsits too close to the CIA phrase. Theyre not even going to t ell the cincsthe regional American military commanders-in-chief. Everyone is saying, You cant be serious about targeting Iran. But they say , Weve got some lessons learnednot militarily, but how we did it poli tically. For more than a year, France, Germany, Britain, and other countries in th e European Union have seen preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon as a race against timeand against the Bush Administration. They have b een negotiating with the Iranian leadership to give up its nuclear-weapo ns ambitions in exchange for economic aid and trade benefits. Iran has a greed to temporarily halt its enrichment programs, which generate fuel f or nuclear power plants but also could produce weapons-grade fissile mat erial. Iran insists, in return, that it needs to see some concrete benefits from the Europeansoil-production technology, heavy-industrial equipment, and perhaps even permission to purchase a fleet of Airbuses. The civilian leade rship in the Pentagon has argued that no diplomatic progress on the Iran ian nuclear threat will take place unless there is a credible threat of military action. The core problem is that Iran has successfully hidden the extent of its n uclear program, and its progress. Many Western intelligence agencies, in cluding those of the United States, believe that Iran is at least three to five years away from a capability to independently produce nuclear wa rheadsalthough its work on a missile-delivery system is far more advanc ed. EA to have serious technical problems with its weapons system, m ost notably in the production of the hexafluoride gas needed to fabricat e nuclear warheads. A retired senior CIA official, one of many who left the agency recentl y, told me that he was familiar with the assessments, and confirmed that Iran is known to be having major difficulties in its weapons work. He a lso acknowledged that the agencys timetable for a nuclear Iran matches the European estimatesassuming that Iran gets no outside help. The big wild card for us is that you dont know who is capable of filling in th e missing parts for them, the recently retired official said. One Western diplomat told me that the Europeans believed they were in wha t he called a lose-lose position as long as the United States refuses to get involved. France, Germany, and the UK cannot succeed alone, an d everybody knows it, the diplomat said. If the US stays outside, we dont have enough leverage, and our effort will collapse. The alternat ive would be to go to the Security Council, but any resolution imposing sanctions would likely be vetoed by China or Russia, and then the Unite d Nations will be blamed and the Americans will say, The only solution is to bomb. A European Ambassador noted that President Bush is scheduled to visit Eur ope in February, and that there has been public talk from the White Hous e about improving the Presidents relationship with Americas EU allie s In that context, the Ambassador told me, Im puzzled by the fact tha t the United States is not helping us in our program. How can Washington maintain its stance without seriously taking into account the weapons i ssue? The Israeli government is, not surprisingly, skeptical of the European ap proach. Silvan Shalom, the Foreign Minister, said in an interview last w eek in Jerusalem,with another New Yorker journalist, I dont like what s happening. We were encouraged at first when the Europeans got involved . For a long time, they thought it was just Israels problem.
missiles themselves were longer range and cou ld reach all of Europe, and they became very concerned. Their attitude h as been to use the carrot and the stickbut all we see so far is the car rot. He added, If they cant comply, Israel cannot live with Iran havi ng a nuclear bomb. In a recent essay, Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert who is the deputy dire ctor of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (and a supporter o f the Administration), articulated the view that force, or the threat of it, was a vital bargaining tool with Iran. Clawson wrote that if Europe wanted coperation with the Bush Administration it would do well to re mind Iran that the military option remains on the table. In a subsequent conversation with me, Clawson suggested that, if some kind of military action was inevitable, it would be much more in I sraels interestand Washingtonsto take covert action. The style of th is Administration is to use overwhelming forceshock and awe. There are many military and diplomatic experts who dispute the notion tha t military ...
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