Absent at least a rudimentary, non-mythologized understanding of mid-East history, not a moment of today is the least comprehendible.

Unlike Native Americans, “Indians” as the progeny of all who composed North America north of the Rio Grande would dub those who would eventually fade unseen into the wallpaper of the United States, the Arab and Persian peoples in the mid-East, though as politically disorganized and militarily weak, were united under an overarching common faith Muslim umbrella. And as with all peoples, they have and keep their own versions of historical truth, an historical truth that is as plastic and mythological as any ethnocentric identity may from time to time demand. We are none of us the least different in that regard. And just as equivalently: we disregard that fact of human nature at our terrible, mutual peril.

But let’s leap ahead to ten years ago, to a scheme concocted by a handful who would become top foreign policy advisors in the Bush administration. The “Plan” is as diabolical as any hatched in all human history. The Creators of it were all well-to-the-manor born. Not a one felt the first itch of an obligation to serve a moment in the military service of their birth country. None, however had qualms devising to send to their death and mutilation the tens of thousands whose task it would be to bring the “Plan” to fruition, and perhaps the millions who would perish as a consequence of the “Plan.” They are Richard Perle (George Bush’s chairman of Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee), Douglas Feith (Bush’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy), David Wurmser (Middle-East advisor to Cheney and special assistant to John Bolton, the UN Ambassador), and Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense and the major architect of the Iraq policy). 

By steps, the Plan was ultimately to effectuate the removal via assassination of Saddam Hussein. The original idea was to employ as our proxy, the Israeli military under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In broad strokes, the US was to first withdraw absolutely from the peace negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis, enabling the latter to deal with the former however harshly they wished.

Once Iraq and Hussein were decapitated, a puppet friendly to Israel, and by extension to the US as well, was to be installed. Following Iraq, Syria would then be invaded, also by Israel. Everything was according to the doctrine of preemption, and by “rolling back" Israel's Arab neighbors. It was strike first and expand, launching a major unprovoked regional Middle East war that would eventually also include the overthrow and occupation of Lebanon. To secure American backing, the causus belli was to be the need to halt “Syria’s drug-money and counterfeiting infrastructure.” According to the authors, the provocation was one Israel had no interest in but one “with which America can sympathize.” And if that reason was inadequate, then the focus would “draw attention to its [Syria’s] weapons of mass destruction program.” The admittedly false premise that would justify it all was the need to protect the US from drugs, counterfeit money, and WMD.

But you have not learned enough! Or been sufficiently sickened.  

There was more, much more to the convoluted “Plan” by this cabal of Bush 43 insiders. After the incursion into Lebanon, the war was to broaden via Lebanese forces who would be acting on Israel’s behalf to invade Syria “by establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from [italics mine] Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces.” Then, as immediately as combat began, Israel would strike “Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper [italics in original].”  

And yet there is even gut-retching more. Feith et al sent to Netanyahu the following recommended speech that was to be read by the prime minister on Israeli TV: “Negotiations with repressive regimes like Syria’s require cautious realism. One cannot sensibly assume the other side’s good faith. It is dangerous for Israel to deal naively with a regime murderous of its own people, openly aggressive toward its neighbors, criminally involved with international drug traffickers and counterfeiters, and supportive of the most deadly organizations.” 

Now comes the removal of Hussein. The next suggestion was that Israel open a second front with a “focus on removing Saddam Hussein…” Here’s how this aspect detail — code-named “Bramble Bush” — was to proceed. A close friend of Saddam’s from his hometown of Tikrit was to be killed. Once the details of the funeral that Hussein was certainly attend had been learned, a team of commandos would be secreted into the country to carry out the assassination, executed by using “smart” missiles fired at the Iraq dictator.

What was all that short-circuited the Plan? Five members of the team were killed accidentally in a dry run.

Understand, the Plan, a component of PNAC, Project for a New American Policy, was formally hatched in 1996. There exists no evidence whatsoever that anyone in the Clinton administration had a first clue. Nonetheless, as all four of the authors obtained significant presence in the Bush administration, it is intentional blindness not to presume that those recommending Mssrs Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz, and Wurmser to be senior advisors knew who these fellows were, and what they had in mind as Mid-East foreign policy. After all, they were put in charge of it!  

Part 2 follows in a second post. 

—   Ed Tubbs 

PS: Can I document any of this? You’re durned tootin’ I can. And I will, but only for those who give a damn enough to add a comment and a promise not to keep this info to oneself, but to pass it on to as many as possible.