Comments on: Intelligence reports

By: q

Sun, 13 Jun 2004 04:29:40 +0000

Was Big Brother a farmer? I don’t think so! I must have been referring to Orwell’s Animal Farm!

By: q

Sun, 13 Jun 2004 04:18:46 +0000

Mitch – Speculation of whether it is this enemy or that is fascinating and worthy of many books, but it is like a farmer complaining about which of the animals are getting restless (Orwell’s 1984). As Greg Hunter points out this misses the main dymanic. “wood for the trees” – Washington has few friends in the lands from Hanoi, Dehli, Islamabad, Tehran, Baghdad, Beirut to Istanbul. The more interesting questions are surely: (1) How will the farmer retain control (2) if the farm gets overthrown, what will replace it?

By: Max

Max — Sat, 12 Jun 2004 22:44:58 +0000

mitch—I’ve been told that the best work on the Iraqi Communist Party is Hanna Batatu’s The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq”.

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Sat, 12 Jun 2004 14:13:31 +0000

“It is very difficult to convince a man of a fact when his income depends on his not understanding that fact” – GB Shaw (I think) The CIA, the military and the pollies that funded them all depended for their income on the existence of a strong Soviet threat. So of course they all sincerely believed in it, and all believed it their duty to keep the population in fear of that threat. A bit like the war on terrorism actually.

By: mitch

mitch — Sat, 12 Jun 2004 08:19:57 +0000

Scott, my point certainly wasn’t that Iran under Khomeini was some sort of Soviet satellite state. It was that socialist, pro-Moscow movements (such as Tudeh in Iran) were strong in the Muslim world at that time (late 1970s, early 1980s). In fact, I’d very much like to know the extent to which the triumph of Baathism in Iraq and Islamism in Iran, over the Iraqi Communist Party and the Tudeh People’s Party respectively, was enabled by the CIA. With respect to the Baluch, they have been the object of many foreign intrigues. Both Bhutto in Pakistan and the shah in Iran warned of Soviet backing for an independence movement, possibly coming through Afghanistan and Iraq. Pakistan also worried that Iran might attempt to annex Pakistani Baluchistan, as part of a deal with Afghanistan and India to dismember the country. (I have the impression that today it’s China which is seeking Gulf access through Pakistan, via the Baluch port city of Gwadar, while Russia is now trying to work with Iran.) This is all relevant to my debate with Greg, since the two men at the core of Al Qaeda’s war against America in the 1990s aren’t just Kuwaitis, they’re also Baluch. They were born and raised in Kuwait, but they come from a family of Pakistani Baluch guest workers. Another member of that family, Zahid Sheikh Mohammed (Zahid al-Sheikh), was reportedly a Muslim Brotherhood leader in Kuwait, and ran a major Kuwaiti charity for Afghan refugees in Peshawar. Now consider this essay by India’s former counterterrorism chief. He flatly says that in the 1980s, Iraqi and American intelligence cooperated in Pakistani Baluchistan to subvert Iran. Meanwhile, a Kuwaiti Baluch is one of the chief administrators for Gulf Arab assistance to the American-sponsored jihad in Afghanistan. Jump ahead ten years, and you find that the USA has become Iraq’s enemy, and there’s another Kuwaiti Baluch – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of Zahid’s brothers – in charge of Al Qaeda’s martyrdom brigades. I would suggest that somewhere in this thicket of relationships (between Iraq, Kuwait, the USA, the mujahideen, and the Baluch) which existed in the 1980s, lie the seeds of 9/11.

By: Greg Hunter

Greg Hunter — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 19:20:33 +0000

Ok Mitch, Since no one else will play. I have looked at your assertions and have tried to determine where the information that you presented was sourced. I cannot determine if they are credible, but they mention some of your listed items, indicating that Iraq was responsible for all of the terrorist attacks perpetrated on the US. Even some that have not been confirmed as fact (TWA 800). What is your point? That invading Iraq was justifiable? Just because groups of people happen to be from or visited Iraq seems to mean that Saddam H. was so efficient and sneaky that he was able to pull all of the attacks in some coordinated effort. Get a clue. The Muslims hate us because we are hypocrites; we talk democracy but would no risk the flow of oil to get it done. Mr. McVeigh was privy to this hypocrisy during the first Gulf War and used it as part of his rationalization for the OK City bombing. The more likely scenario is that the boys (UK & US) in charge determined that 911 was a perfect opportunity to get a foothold in the Middle East, before the nuclear option became available to a Muslim country. They are fighting a war in a proxy country and are in a position to take advantage of any destabilization of Saudi Arabia and Iran. Besides, with the Chinese and the Indians ramping up Industrialization, they are going to need resources as well. Don’t you think it is very wise to have the British and the US at the spigot now, instead of worrying how much oil China or India would dole out the West? Wake up Mitch, the white nations always win and they win because they convince people like you that brownie would kill them given the opportunity, so killing them first is justifiable.

By: Motoko Kusanagi

Motoko Kusanagi — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 16:15:16 +0000

I remember: followthenetwork.org (mirror)

By: Motoko Kusanagi

Motoko Kusanagi — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 16:03:38 +0000

Didn’t David Horowitz have a graph showing the connections between them and Michael Moore and Al-Zarqawi and John Kerry?

By: rea

rea — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 15:19:04 +0000

“The Iranisn revolution, and the Baluch independence movement has about as much to do with the USSR as Malcolm X did.” That is, nothing at all—although I’m sure you could find people on the right who think Malcom X was allied with the Soviets, too, just like Martin Luther King.

By: q

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 15:13:52 +0000

Well no-one is really criticizing the overestimation itself – so it sounds like everyone is happy with it. So when the next Cry-Wolf comes along – China, for example – do we mind the trillion dollar arms boost to oppose the Chinese. No, maybe not. We just ask for a high paid defence contract. The only downfall in this strategy I can see is perhaps less focus on social issue, and potentially keeping the focus in the wrong place. For example, while we build up against 1 “wolf”, another nukes Miami.

By: Motoko Kusanagi

Motoko Kusanagi — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 15:06:19 +0000

““Team B” was not a group of people selected by the CIA, it was selected by George Bush in 1976 to contradict the mainstream CIA…” You’re right that Team B was formed to counter the mainstreamers in the CIA, who thought that the Soviets only wanted to achieve nuclear parity. But Team B was a CIA creation – Bush was director at the time. “In 1976, when George Bush became the new director of central intelligence, the PFIAB lost no time in renewing its request for competitive threat assessments. Although his top analysts argued against such an undertaking, Bush checked with the White House, obtained an O.K., and by May 26 signed off on the experiment with the notation, “Let her fly!! O.K. G.B.”…” (The Trillion Dollar Experiment)

By: Scott Martens

Scott Martens — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 14:46:55 +0000

“Team B” was not a group of people selected by the CIA, it was selected by George Bush in 1976 to contradict the mainstream CIA, which was claiming that the Soviet Union was relatively weak and poor. Certain elements of the Goldwater wing of the Republican party believed (or wanted to believe) that the Soviet Union was a much bigger threat than it was. “Team B” drastically overestimated the Soviet Union. The CIA was much closer to the mark. Some people – not just Chomsky – have noted the links between regressive poltics, defense contractors, and the people who formed “Team B” and think we shouldn’t be surprised that their conclusions led to paranoia, a reactionary change in American government and increased defense spending. And when exactly did the Soviet Union try to take over in the Middle East? In what deluded Reaganite fantasy was the USSR at all close to Khomeni’s Iran? “Left-wing elements”? Yes, there were left wing elements to the Iranian revolution. There was a lot of disgust at Shah’s rather plutocratic government. But Khomeni was a theocrat. That’s pretty far from the Soviet Union. The Iranisn revolution, and the Baluch independence movement has about as much to do with the USSR as Malcolm X did.

By: LowLife

LowLife — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 14:24:32 +0000

I remember alot of short articles in the mid to late 70’s in my Detroit local papers talking about how bad the soviet economy was. They also emphasised the potential for many of the Soviet Republics to brake away. I don’t recall any time tables for these predictions but all the articles cited CIA reports as their sources.

By: q

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 13:32:49 +0000

I don’t know if we are supposed to take the idea “at the time we didn’t know that” seriously. If we were, we might replace the leaders with some competant ones. There are lots of experts and informers around, so information is not so hard to gather.

By: Max

Max — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 13:29:24 +0000

gavin—Privatisation of the Iraqi oil industry would surely lead to a short-term gain, but for the country sitting on the second largest know reserve it would lead to a loss of economic power and a reduced return. Also, the Iraqi people as a whole are unlikely to benefit from a privatised oil industry even if, like in Russia with GazProm, they can buy the oil below market price. To continue with a Russian analogy, privatisation there only made a handful of people rich. I’m not saying the situation in Iraq would be exactly the same, but it does seem like an attempt to deprive Iraq of its primary source of wealth and power. Obviously, it wouldn’t be given away for free. But the Ba’ath Party nationalised it for a reason and a lot of the good things about Iraq (universities, health care, etc.) were certainly a result of the wealth created by a nationalised oil industry. I’m interested to see what people here think about it.