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In reply to the discussion: Funny how that works. [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)87. The Jeb Bush Adviser Who Should Scare You
Paul Wolfowitz not only championed the Iraq Warhe obsessively promoted a bizarre conspiracy theory.
By David Corn
Mother Jones | Wed May 13, 2015
Last week, Jeb Bush, the all-but-announced GOP presidential candidate, stirred up a fuss when he privately told a group of Manhattan financiers that his top adviser on US-Israeli policy is George W. Bush. Given that Jeb has tried mightily to distance himself from his brother, whose administration used false assertions to launch the still highly unpopular Iraq War, this touting of W.even at a behind-closed-doors session of Republican donorsseemed odd. But perhaps more noteworthy is that Jeb Bush has embraced much of his brother's White House foreign policy team. In February, his campaign released a list of 21 foreign policy advisers; 17 of them served in the George W. Bush administration. And one name stood out: Paul Wolfowitz, a top policy architect of the Iraq Warfor the prospect of Wolfowitz whispering into Jeb's ear ought to scare the bejeezus out of anyone who yearns for a rational national security policy.
Wolfowitz, who was deputy defense secretary under George W. Bush, was a prominent neocon cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq. He was also the top conspiracy theorist in the Bush-Cheney crowd. As Michael Isikoff and I reported in our our 2006 book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Wolfowitz, prior to the Iraq War, was a champion of a bizarre theory promoted by an eccentric academic named Laurie Mylroie: Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, not Islamic extremists such as Al Qaeda, was responsible for most of the world's anti-United States terrorism.
For years, Mylroie, who had been an assistant professor of political science at Harvard University, had promoted the notion that Saddam was the real terrorist threat to the United States, and law enforcement and intelligence officials had dismissed her thesis, which was based on assorted elaborate conspiracies that apparently only she could divine. After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, she developed a complicated hypothesis that the mastermind of that attack, an Islamic radical who went by the name of Ramzi Yousef and who had spent time in Afghan training camps affiliated with Al Qaeda, was actually an Iraqi intelligence agent who had somehow stolen Yousef's identity. Actually, according to Mylroie the Iraqi agent had stolen the identity of a deceased Pakistani and then taken on the name Ramzi Yousef. In any event, this would mean that Saddam, not Islamic extremists, was behind this act of war.
Mylroie made the rounds of the then-small world of counterterrorism studies. FBI investigators, federal prosecutors, and the CIA considered her theory and tossed it aside. She had no compelling evidence. (One CIA analyst noted, "Not only was it not true, we proved the opposite"that Saddam was not connected to the 1993 bombing.) But Mylroie pressed on, and neocons, who had long been diehard supporters of Israel who yearned to drum up support for US military action against Iraq, flocked to her ideas.
Wolfowitz was one of her fiercest advocates. At one point during the Clinton years, when Wolfowitz was serving as the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, he met with Martin Indyk, who was overseeing Iraq policy for the National Security Council, and asked why the Clinton administration had not accepted Mylroie's view. Indyk told him that the CIA and FBI had settled this issue. But Wolfowitz was not persuaded. "He was convinced that we were purposely refusing to see the link for policy reasons," Indyk told Isikoff and me for our book.
CONTINUED...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/jeb-bush-adviser-paul-wolfowitz
By David Corn
Mother Jones | Wed May 13, 2015
Last week, Jeb Bush, the all-but-announced GOP presidential candidate, stirred up a fuss when he privately told a group of Manhattan financiers that his top adviser on US-Israeli policy is George W. Bush. Given that Jeb has tried mightily to distance himself from his brother, whose administration used false assertions to launch the still highly unpopular Iraq War, this touting of W.even at a behind-closed-doors session of Republican donorsseemed odd. But perhaps more noteworthy is that Jeb Bush has embraced much of his brother's White House foreign policy team. In February, his campaign released a list of 21 foreign policy advisers; 17 of them served in the George W. Bush administration. And one name stood out: Paul Wolfowitz, a top policy architect of the Iraq Warfor the prospect of Wolfowitz whispering into Jeb's ear ought to scare the bejeezus out of anyone who yearns for a rational national security policy.
Wolfowitz, who was deputy defense secretary under George W. Bush, was a prominent neocon cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq. He was also the top conspiracy theorist in the Bush-Cheney crowd. As Michael Isikoff and I reported in our our 2006 book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Wolfowitz, prior to the Iraq War, was a champion of a bizarre theory promoted by an eccentric academic named Laurie Mylroie: Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, not Islamic extremists such as Al Qaeda, was responsible for most of the world's anti-United States terrorism.
For years, Mylroie, who had been an assistant professor of political science at Harvard University, had promoted the notion that Saddam was the real terrorist threat to the United States, and law enforcement and intelligence officials had dismissed her thesis, which was based on assorted elaborate conspiracies that apparently only she could divine. After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, she developed a complicated hypothesis that the mastermind of that attack, an Islamic radical who went by the name of Ramzi Yousef and who had spent time in Afghan training camps affiliated with Al Qaeda, was actually an Iraqi intelligence agent who had somehow stolen Yousef's identity. Actually, according to Mylroie the Iraqi agent had stolen the identity of a deceased Pakistani and then taken on the name Ramzi Yousef. In any event, this would mean that Saddam, not Islamic extremists, was behind this act of war.
Mylroie made the rounds of the then-small world of counterterrorism studies. FBI investigators, federal prosecutors, and the CIA considered her theory and tossed it aside. She had no compelling evidence. (One CIA analyst noted, "Not only was it not true, we proved the opposite"that Saddam was not connected to the 1993 bombing.) But Mylroie pressed on, and neocons, who had long been diehard supporters of Israel who yearned to drum up support for US military action against Iraq, flocked to her ideas.
Wolfowitz was one of her fiercest advocates. At one point during the Clinton years, when Wolfowitz was serving as the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, he met with Martin Indyk, who was overseeing Iraq policy for the National Security Council, and asked why the Clinton administration had not accepted Mylroie's view. Indyk told him that the CIA and FBI had settled this issue. But Wolfowitz was not persuaded. "He was convinced that we were purposely refusing to see the link for policy reasons," Indyk told Isikoff and me for our book.
CONTINUED...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/jeb-bush-adviser-paul-wolfowitz
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How far would some people go to become billionaires? Now, assume those people are
GoneFishin
Aug 2015
#2
Thanks for the great links. Will need to bookmark and read most later.
Dark n Stormy Knight
Aug 2015
#21
Carlyle Group pioneered the way forward. Others, like Trireme Partnerships followed...
Octafish
Aug 2015
#40
It's to show them for what they are: supporters of warmongers, war criminals and traitors.
Octafish
Aug 2015
#36
People who say: ''Bush lied America into war'' are like NAZIs, BFEE Judge Silberman said.
Octafish
Aug 2015
#89
Rummy & Cheney are conspirators from WAYYY back, to the Ford Administration IIRC... One was
Ghost in the Machine
Aug 2015
#97