The theory that an internal war over Iraq policy is raging within the U.S. government, presented in  these pages in the article Information Warfare 101, receives support from Kenneth Timmerman's excellent piece in Insight on the News.  Timmerman details the disinformation campaign about Dr. Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress by means of false stories, planted in the compliant liberal media.  Further, in an interview with Insight, Kamran Makiya, an Iraqi intellectual,

explained just weeks after the liberation last year why the State Department was thwarting efforts to establish a new governing council.  'State wants to appease those people that they have long experience with,' he told Insight at the time.  'The nature of the State Department is to make people happy.  I am not in the business of making Arab governments happy.  Nor should any self—respecting Iraqi government be.'  The main State Department goal, he went on, was to ensure that whatever government emerged in Iraq after the liberation would not 'offend' or 'challenge' Saudi Arabia, by setting a strong example of democratic self—government.

It appears the information campaign of the Arabists in the State Department and US intelligence agencies is well thought—out and executed, as evidenced by the recent release of Abu Ghraib prison photos and the unauthorized disclosure of the Army's classified investigative report.  It's too bad they don't put at least half that amount of effort into fighting our real enemies.

Meanwhile, on the home front, Robert Novak opines that even some (unnamed) 'Republicans in Congress have privately informed the White House that if Rumsfeld is retained, somebody in authority must leave.'  That person is apparently Dr. Stephen Cambone, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.  Here again, the political hacks take a giant leap over the intermediate commanders in theater, and zero in on a political appointee at the highest levels of the President's administration.  While the actions of Other Government Agencies (OGAs) in the Abu Ghraib prison scandals are receiving greater attention, this does not justify ignoring the role of their commanders in the field either.  The American people are witnessing a concerted campaign by politicians and bureaucrats, both in and out of uniform, to take down the most effective SecDef in history, while they try to hang on to their Cold War era Saudi cash cows.

Posted by Doug  05 16 04