Tin Foil General
Oh Jeez. Here’s another article about Wes Clark, this time coming from the Weekly Standard, in which he’s portrayed as delusional (if not “turtlesque”) for saying that he had heard that the Pentagon was drawing up plans for Iran, Syria and other mideast countries in the fall of 2002.
Yeah. This is a real shocker all right. Why in the world would anyone believe such a thing?
As George W. Bush has cast the battle as a war against terrorism wherever it may be, Wolfowitz and others have reportedly argued that this approach necessitates taking the fight not just to Iraq but to Syria and Lebanon–which would please the Israelis to no end.
In a meeting with U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton yesterday, Sharon said that Israel was concerned about the security threat posed by Iran, and stressed that it was important to deal with Iran even while American attention was focused on Iraq.
Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials that he had no doubt America would attack Iraq, and that it would be necessary thereafter to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea.
After Saddam Hussein is ousted, United States foreign policy plans call for regime change in Iran, Libya and Syria, reports World Tribune.com.
Intensifying concerns of Arab leaders who feel caught between a rock and a hard place over the issue of war against Iraq, a U.S. official told Arab journalists the tactic would differ for each country, but the end result would be the same – democracy throughout the Arab world.
“Change is needed in all those three countries, and a few others besides,” Richard Perle told the London-based author and analyst Amir Taheri.
Norman Podhoretz in Commentary:
The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil. At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as “friends” of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Ararat or one of his henchmen.
It is understandable that people in positions like Feith’s and Cambone’s have to speak very carefully. One can, however, get a sense from other sources of at least one version of a remade Middle East. Lately, Washington hawk-watchers have been passing around a document called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” which was written in 1996, by an eight-member committee, as advice for Benjamin Netanyahu, the newly elected Israeli Prime Minister. The head of the committee was Richard Perle, who is probably Washington’s leading vocal advocate of regime change in Iraq; another committee member was Douglas Feith. The title refers to a foreign policy for Israel that would deëmphasize the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians and move “to a traditional concept of strategy based on balance of power.”
In the eyes of the prime minister, the war in Iraq is an opportunity to change the balance of power in the area. Sharon proposes a division of labor: Israel will take care of Arafat. America will smash the sources of Arab power: terrorism, missiles and weapons of mass destruction. Sharon reminds U.S. visitors that a victory in Iraq won’t solve all the problems in the region and that Syria, Libya and Iran have to be dealt with. This week, Undersecretary of State John Bolton visited Jerusalem. He’s an administration hawk. There was no sign of any difference of views in the conversations he had with his Jerusalem hosts.
In the address to a group of college students, Woolsey described the Cold War as the third world war and said “This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War.”
Woolsey has been named in news reports as a possible candidate for a key position in the reconstruction of a postwar Iraq.
He said the new war is actually against three enemies: the religious rulers of Iran, the “fascists” of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like al Qaeda.
Woolsey told the audience of about 300, most of whom are students at the University of California at Los Angeles, that all three enemies have waged war against the United States for several years but the United States has just “finally noticed.”
“As we move toward a new Middle East,” Woolsey said, “over the years and, I think, over the decades to come … we will make a lot of people very nervous.”
In an interview with editors of the International Herald Tribune, Perle said that the threat posed by terrorists he described as “feverishly” looking for weapons to kill as many Americans as possible obliged the United States to follow a strategy of preemptive war in its own defense.
Asked if this meant it would go after other countries after Iraq, he replied: “If next means who will next experience the 3d Army Division or the 82d Airborne, that’s the wrong question. If the question is who poses a threat that the United States deal with, then that list is well known. It’s Iran. It’s North Korea. It’s Syria. It’s Libya, and I could go on.”
U.S. officials said Bolton was prepared to tell members of a House International Relations subcommittee that Syria’s development of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons had progressed to where they posed a threat to the region’s stability.
The CIA and other intelligence agencies said that assessment was exaggerated, sources said.
Where do these Democratic conspiracy nuts get their ridiculous ideas? Nothing could be more ridiculous than the idea that somebody in the Pentagon was drawing up plans to invade a number of other countries in the mideat after Iraq. General Clark obviously needs medication or worse. He’s out of his mind.