SCOOP LINK:
What the Pentagon can now do in secret.
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2005-01-24 and 31
Posted 2005-01-17
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George W. Bush’s reëlection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have
consolidated control over the 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 agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on
terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as
one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President
Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.
Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range
policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region. Bush’s reëlection is regarded
within the Administration as evidence of America’s support for his decision to go to war. It has reaffirmed the position
of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon’s 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 former 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 people did not accept their
message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed 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. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve
declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want
to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”
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