-->Gary North's REALITY CHECK
>
> Issue 219 February 28, 2003
>
>
> RUMSFELD: SADDAM HUSSEIN'S ORIGINAL CONNECTION
>
>
> Before coming to this issue's main topic, I need to
> review a crucial fact of political life in the United
> States: most American voters believe whatever they are told
> by the President. No matter how corrupt a politician is
> before he is elected President, his election shrouds him in
> legitimacy. From this point on, either his lies are
> believed or shrugged off by the voters, unless the media
> keep hammering on the issue (e.g., Watergate).
>
> Voters operate on the assumption that a candidate's
> gaining a majority vote, if only in the Electoral College,
> somehow purifies his character. To assume otherwise would
> call into question the good judgment of the sovereign
> voters. Therefore, Clinton got away with lie after lie.
> So have all the others, Nixon excepted. Voters do throw
> out a President, but never for lying, Nixon excepted. If
> there had not been White House tapes, and, even more
> important, a mole inside the White House who illegally
> leaked the incriminating sections of the tapes to the
> investigators, Nixon would not have resigned. The public
> would not have believed the story. The mole got him, but
> the media have always refused to pursue the story."Deep
> Throat" was a media side show. The mole got him, and
> successfully remained below ground. See my brief report:
>
> http://reformed-theology.org/ice/bo...conspiracy/html/bibliography.htm
>
>
> WARS FOR WONDERFUL GOALS
>
> This phenomenon of the voters' willful belief is most
> obvious in modern American wars. Where the stakes are
> highest -- human life -- and the costs are highest --
> wartime spending -- Presidential lies are sacrosanct. The
> public will believe anything.
>
> Voters believed in 1941 that Roosevelt had no advance
> warning on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. They still
> do. Yet anyone who reads Robert Stinnett's DAY OF DECEIT
> is unlikely to believe that myth -- a myth that was exposed
> as a lie as early as 1946 by CHICAGO TRIBUNE reporter
> George Morgenstern. You don't even have to read Stinnett's
> book, although it is close to irrefutable, which is why the
> book has been given the memory hole treatment. Click this
> link and read his summary:
>
> http://www.independent.org/tii/news/001207Stinnett.html
>
> Then there was Korea, where North Korea's Army just
> happened to cross the border when its ally and supplier,
> the Soviet Union, had walked out of the UN's Security
> Council in an unrelated protest. How convenient! Without
> the USSR, there was no nation to veto the resolution.
> Truman was able to get UN official cover for the non-war in
> Korea. Congress never voted for that war, despite the
> Constitution. Truman called it a"police action," in
> response to a reporter's leading question.
>
> We still station 37,000 troops on the 38th parallel's
> border. The United States has refused to sign the 1997
> treaty against the use of land mines, specifically because
> of Korea. We have installed them along the demilitarized
> zone.
>
> http://www.fcnl.org/issues/arm/sup/landmine_uspolicy201.htm
>
> We are there permanently, despite the fact that the newly
> elected President of South Korea wants us to leave. Once
> invited in, US troops become Sheridan Whiteside: the man
> who came to dinner. Like Whiteside, the troops don't
> leave.
>
> Then there was the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
> Congress approved the escalation of the US military
> commitment in South Vietnam. That resolution was based on
> President Johnson's report of an attack by North Vietnam on
> an American ship, the MADDOX. There had been an initial
> attack on the MADDOX, but the second attack, on which the
> resolution was based, didn't happen.
>
> http://www.uiowa.edu/~c030162/Common/Handouts/War/Tonkin.htm
>
> http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/CRASH/TWA/TONKIN.html
>
> Within weeks, President Johnson suspected that no such
> attack had taken place, but he never told Congress.
>
> http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/110601johnson.html
>
> More recently, the American attack on Afghanistan had
> been planned by the Bush Administration and its regional
> allies at least three months before the attack on the World
> Trade Center in September, 2001. This fact was published
> by an obscure Web site in India on June 26, 2001. The
> report is still on-line.
>
> India in anti-Taliban military plan
>
> India and Iran will"facilitate" the planned
> US-Russia hostilities against the Taliban.
>
> By Our Correspondent
>
> 26 June 2001: India and Iran will"facilitate" US
> and Russian plans for"limited military action"
> against the Taliban if the contemplated tough new
> economic sanctions don't bend Afghanistan's
> fundamentalist regime.
>
> The Taliban controls 90 per cent of Afghanistan
> and is advancing northward along the Salang
> highway and preparing for a rear attack on the
> opposition Northern Alliance from
> Tajikistan-Afghanistan border positions.
>
> Indian foreign secretary Chokila Iyer attended a
> crucial session of the second Indo-Russian joint
> working group on Afghanistan in Moscow amidst
> increase of Taliban's military activity near the
> Tajikistan border. And, Russia's Federal Security
> Bureau (the former KGB) chief Nicolai Patroshev
> is visiting Teheran this week in connection with
> Taliban's military build-up.
>
> Indian officials say that India and Iran will
> only play the role of"facilitator" while the US
> and Russia will combat the Taliban from the front
> with the help of two Central Asian countries,
> Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, to push Taliban lines
> back to the 1998 position 50 km away from
> Mazar-e-Sharief city in northern Afghanistan.
>
> http://www.indiareacts.com/archivef...es/nat2.asp?recno=10&ctg=%20
>
> The attack on the WTC can be regarded as a pre-emptive
> strike by the Taliban's ally, Osama bin Laden. As I have
> written repeatedly ever since that attack, bin Laden has
> done whatever he could to escalate the confrontation
> between Islam and the United States. He wants to provoke
> conflict. This has been his plan ever since the 1991
> Kuwaiti war, which was used by President Bush to persuade
> the Saudis to allow permanent US troops on Saudi soil. I
> have covered this in detail elsewhere. If you want the
> whole story, click here:
>
> http://www.321gold.com/editorials/north/north022703.html
>
> In that war, the US government pulled a fast one on
> the Saudis by showing them faked satellite photos of Iraqi
> troops massing on the Saudi border. The Saud family
> panicked and allowed US troops in. They even funded the
> war. A year later Colin Powell admitted that there had
> been no build-up of such magnitude. By then, our troops
> were in Saudi Arabia on a permanent basis. But the ST.
> PETERSBURG TIMES had reported at the time that there was no
> build-up, and that the satellite photos revealed this. The
> American media ignored this spectacular report, which was
> based on the actual satellite photos -- photos that no
> other newspaper was willing to spend $3,200 to purchase.
> As the reporter who wrote the story later said:
>
>"If the story had appeared in the New York Times
> or the Washington Post, all hell would have
> broken loose. But here we are, a newspaper in
> Florida, the retirement capital of the world, and
> what are we supposed to know?"
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,889419,00.html
>
>
> WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
>
> Last Sunday night,"60 Minutes" had an interview with
> an Iraqi defector. He had been asked by Saddam's
> government in the late 1980's to work on a nuclear bomb.
> He refused. He was arrested and tortured. He still
> refused. He escaped during the Iraq war.
>
> During that interview, he made an important
> observation: there is no way today that Iraq could have a
> nuclear weapon or be close to having one. The UN
> inspectors compelled the destruction of all of the
> facilities.
>
> If he is correct about the lack of nuclear capability,
> then the debate over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
> must focus on chemical and biological warfare.
>
> He made another important point about our prospective
> allies in the south, the Shi'ites. Remember them? They
> belong to the Islamic sect that gave us the Ayatollah
> Khomeini. (Note: they are the good guys now.) He reminded
> the interviewer that President Bush in 1991 told them to
> rise up against Saddam, which they did. The US did not
> intervene, any more than it did after Eisenhower told the
> Hungarians to rise up in 1956. The result in both cases
> was the same: a slaughter. So, he said, they probably will
> not trust the United States when we invade. That is a safe
> bet. But we will have to get them into the government with
> their arch enemies to the north.
>
> The Shi'ites are enemies of Saddam's Ba'ath Party and
> also the Sunni Muslims of central Iraq. This leads us to
> an earlier version of the WMD story, namely, the Rumsfeld
> connection.
>
>
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> -----------------------
>
>
> THE RUMSFELD CONNECTION
>
> What I am about to reveal here ought to be common
> knowledge. It isn't. The main source of my information
> comes from the MSNBC Web site (Aug. 18, 2002). It's an
> Associated Press story that relies heavily on a story in
> the NEW YORK TIMES. What I am trying to get across here is
> that the media can make or break a story by its headlines
> and by the amount of coverage given to it. A story can be
> national and still be ignored by the media. Call it the
>"St. Petersburg phenomenon." MSNBC story's headline
> announced a boring fact:
>
> Rumsfeld key player in Iraq policy shift
>
> Ho hum.
>
> The subhead got a little more interesting:
>
> State Department cables and court records reveal
> a wealth of information on how U.S. foreign
> policy shifted in the 1980s to help Iraq.
> Virtually all of the information is in the words
> of key participants, including Donald Rumsfeld,
> now secretary of defense.
>
> Well, now. What's this all about? You mean Rumsfeld
> has been around for a long time? Indeed, he has.
>
> THE NEW INFORMATION on the policy shift toward
> Iraq, and Rumsfeld's role in it, comes as The New
> York Times reported Sunday that United States
> gave Iraq vital battle-planning help during its
> war with Iran as part of a secret program under
> President Reagan -- even though U.S. intelligence
> agencies knew the Iraqis would unleash chemical
> weapons.
>
> The covert program involved more than 60 officers
> of the Defense Intelligence Agency who helped
> Iraq in its eight-year war with Iran by providing
> detailed information on Iranian military
> deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans
> for airstrikes and bomb-damage assessments, the
> Times said.
>
> There's nothing a covert US military program to lead
> to its opposite effect. It just takes time.
>
> This covert program had to do with scorpions in the
> sands: Iran and Iraq. The Iranians are Shi'ites. The
> Iraqis who have the votes aren't. (Note: when I speak of
> Middle Easter Muslims who"have the votes," I'm speaking
> metaphorically.)
>
> Iraq and neighboring Iran waged a vicious war
> from September 1980 to August 1988. An estimated
> 1 million people were killed and millions more
> were dislocated by the fighting.
>
> Now, that's serious warfare. The United States lost
> fewer than 300,000 men killed during World War II. In
> 1940, the US population was 130 million. Iraq in 1980 had
> a population of 13 million.
>
> http://www.library.uu.nl/wesp/populstat/Asia/iraqc.htm
>
> Iran had 39 million.
>
> http://www.library.uu.nl/wesp/populstat/Asia/iranc.htm
>
> It has been known for some time that the United
> States provided intelligence assistance to Iraq
> during the war in the form of satellite
> photography to help the Iraqis understand how
> Iranian forces were deployed. But the full scope
> of the program had not been known until now, the
> Times said.
>
> Then what is known now? What new revelations add
> significant light on the picture?
>
> President Reagan and then-Vice President Bush
> personally sent advice to Saddam Hussein, both
> directly and through intermediaries, a NSC staff
> member said.
>
> Indeed, the record shows that in 1983, Rumsfeld -
> - then President Reagan's special envoy to the
> Middle East, now secretary of defense -- told
> senior Iraqi officials that the use of poison gas
>"inhibited" normal relations between the two
> countries.
>
> Nevertheless, at those same meetings in Baghdad
> with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and
> then-Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, Rumsfeld
> stated the Reagan administration was so concerned
> about an Iranian victory that it offered Saddam
> unspecified assistance.
>
> This was in 1983. At this time, Iraq seemed to be
> losing the war against Iran. Most of the official evidence
> is still sealed.
>
> But in a January 1995 affidavit in a civil case
> involving Iraqi arms sales, NSC staff member
> Howard Teicher provides the most detailed
> discussion of the rationale behind the Iraq tilt.
> Moreover, Teicher, who accompanied Rumsfeld to
> Baghdad in 1983, lays out in the affidavit how
> both President Reagan and then-Vice President
> Bush personally delivered military advice to
> Saddam Hussein, both directly and through
> intermediaries....
>
>"CIA Director [William] Casey personally
> spearheaded the effort to ensure that Iraq had
> sufficient military weapons, ammunition and
> vehicles to avoid losing the Iran-Iraq war," the
> affidavit continued."Pursuant to the secret
> NSDD, the United States actively supported the
> Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with
> billions of dollars of credits, by providing U.S.
> military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis,
> and by closely monitoring third country arms
> sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had the
> military weaponry required." [Teicher co-
> authored the secret NSDD, or National Security
> Decision Directive -- GN]
>
> Moreover, says Teicher, the U.S. actually
> provided military advice to the Iraqis, relaying
> U.S. intelligence to Saddam from the highest
> levels of the U.S. government, from President
> Reagan and then-Vice President Bush, father of
> the current president....
>
>"The United States also provided strategic
> operational advice to the Iraqis to better use
> their assets in combat," says Teicher's
> affidavit."For example, in 1986, President
> Reagan sent a secret message to Saddam Hussein
> telling him that Iraq should step up its air war
> and bombing of Iran. This message was delivered
> by Vice President Bush who communicated it to
> Egyptian President Mubarak, who in turn passed
> the message to Saddam Hussein."....
>
> Critical to Iraqi success was finding a way to
> overcome Iran's human wave attacks which
> persisted throughout the war, although Teicher's
> affidavit gives no indication that the United
> States condoned the use of chemical weapons,
> which were used against those human-wave attacks.
> Nevertheless, the U.S. government certainly was
> aware of how important it was to Iraq to stop
> those human wave attacks. U.S. intelligence
> officers never opposed such action because they
> considered Iraq to be struggling for its survival
> and feared that Iran would overrun the crucial
> oil-producing Persian Gulf states, the Times
> reported.
>
> So, what we have here is a question of lethal sauce
> for the goose and lethal sauce for the gander. It gets
> even more interesting because of the players on both sides.
>
> President Reagan authorized Rumsfeld to travel to
> Baghdad as part of a trip throughout the Middle
> East, the arrangements being made between the
> U.S. Interests Section in Baghdad and then-Iraqi
> Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Mohammed Sahhaf,
> according to State Department documents obtained
> by the National Security Archives under the
> Freedom of Information Act. [Sahhaf is now Iraqi
> Foreign Minister.]
>
> The visit, which included meetings with Aziz and
> Saddam Hussein, was laid out in cables sent by
> the Interests Section and Rumsfeld himself to
> George Shultz, then the secretary of state.
>
> Rumsfeld informed the Interests Section that he
> was"pleased with the positive response... to
> your sounding," adding that he would"probably be
> carrying a presidential message for Saddam [cq]."
> Arrangements were made for a visit on the night
> of Dec. 19-20, 1983....
>
> Rumsfeld did carry a conciliatory letter from
> Reagan to Saddam. The letter has not been
> released, but parts of it were quoted in the
> State Department cables. Saddam at one point
> expressed"great pleasure" at the letter, and
> Aziz quoted Reagan as saying"the Iran-Iraq war
> could pose serious problems for the economic and
> security interests of the U.S., its friends in
> the region and in the free world."
>
> Rumsfeld first met with Tariq Aziz, then foreign
> minister on Dec. 19. Rumsfeld laid out the shared
> interests of the two countries, telling Aziz:
>"While there were a number of differences of view
> between us, we also see a number of areas of
> common interest. We both desire regional peace,
> stability and correcting regional imbalance."
>
> All of this may seem bizarre, but it isn't. It's
> business as usual. When a nation adopts Britain's balance
> of power strategy, as the United States has, it gets into
> these bizarre situations all the time.
>
> Rumsfeld lamented that it was unfortunate an
> entire generation of Iraqis and Americans were
> growing up without contact with each other and
> promised the United States"would approach our
> allies in terms of specific instances where they
> are either directly or indirectly providing
> weapons which enable Iran to continue the war,
> and would try to foster strategic understanding
> of the dangers of focusing on narrow, short-term
> interests."....
>
> In a talking-points memo prepared by the State
> Department, Rumsfeld was asked to note that the
> United States hoped for a peaceful solution to
> the Iran-Iraq war, but to also deliver the
> following message to Saddam:"The [United States
> government] recognizes Iraq's current
> disadvantage in a war of attrition since Iran has
> access to the Gulf while Iraq does not would
> regard any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as
> strategic defeat for the west," a clear
> indication of which side the U.S. was prepared to
> support.
>
> But what about the State of Israel? Hadn't the
> Israelis bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981? Why
> would the US be helping Israel's enemy? Because Iraq was
> not Israel's enemy in 1983.
>
> In his affidavit, Teicher noted that Rumsfeld was
> carrying a letter offering help from then-Israeli
> Foreign Minister Itzhak Shamir."Israeli Foreign
> Minister Yitzhak Shamir asked Rumsfeld if the
> United States would deliver a secret offer of
> Israeli assistance to Iraq. The United States
> agreed. I traveled with Rumsfeld to Baghdad and
> was present at the meeting in which Rumsfeld told
> Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz about Israel's
> offer of assistance. Aziz refused even to accept
> the Israelis' letter to Hussein offering
> assistance, because Aziz told us that he would be
> executed on the spot by Hussein if he did so."
>
> This is what the balance of power strategy always
> produces. The strategic goal was to keep either side from
> winning.
>
> Nevertheless, Rumsfeld said the United States
> opposed an Iranian victory and noted that"we
> [are] improving our contingency planning with
> Gulf states as to our goal of keeping the Straits
> [of Hormuz] open."...
>
> Repeatedly, Rumsfeld made clear that U.S.
> interests coincided with Iraq's in the war. He
> wrote in his own note to Shultz,"I said I
> thought we had areas of common interest,
> particularly the security and stability in the
> Gulf, which had been jeopardized as a result of
> the Iranian revolution. I added that the U.S.
> had no interest in an Iranian victory; to the
> contrary. We would not want Iran's influence
> expanded at the expense of Iraq. As with all
> sovereign nations, we respect Iraq's
> independence, sovereignty and territorial
> integrity."
>
> That last sentence bears repeating:"As with all
> sovereign nations, we respect Iraq's independence,
> sovereignty and territorial integrity."
>
> When Rumsfeld met with Saddam the following
> morning, accompanied by State Department Arab
> experts Robert Pelletreau and William Eagleton,
> Iraqi television videotaped the opening greetings
> and delivery of President Reagan's letter to the
> Iraqi leader. Saddam was dressed in military
> uniform, a pistol on his hip. Rumsfeld conveyed
> his pleasure at being in Baghdad.
>
> http://www.msnbc.com/news/795649.asp?cp1=1
>
>
> CONCLUSION
>
> America is in the tar baby. We will not get out
> anytime soon. President Bush's speech on Wednesday evening
> guaranteed that.
>
>
> Success in Iraq could also begin a new stage for
> Middle Eastern peace, and set in motion progress
> towards a truly democratic Palestinian state...
>
> Without this outside support for terrorism,
> Palestinians who are working for reform and long
> for democracy will be in a better position to
> choose new leaders. True leaders who strive for
> peace; true leaders who faithfully serve the
> people. A Palestinian state must be a reformed
> and peaceful state that abandons forever the use
> of terror.
>
> For its part, the new government of Israel -- as
> the terror threat is removed and security
> improves -- will be expected to support the
> creation of a viable Palestinian state --
> (applause) -- and to work as quickly as possible
> toward a final status agreement. As progress is
> made toward peace, settlement activity in the
> occupied territories must end.
>
> The United States and other nations are working
> on a road map for peace. We are setting out the
> necessary conditions for progress toward the goal
> of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side
> by side in peace and security. It is the
> commitment of our government -- and my personal
> commitment -- to implement the road map and to
> reach that goal. Old patterns of conflict in the
> Middle East can be broken, if all concerned will
> let go of bitterness, hatred, and violence, and
> get on with the serious work of economic
> development, and political reform, and
> reconciliation. America will seize every
> opportunity in pursuit of peace. And the end of
> the present regime in Iraq would create such an
> opportunity.
>
> Like Don Quixote, President Bush is pursuing an
> impossible dream. But, unlike Don Quixote, he doesn't have
> Sancho Panza at his side to remind him about reality.
> Instead, he has Donald Rumsfeld.