Larry Johnson, CIA vs President Bush

JOHNSON versus PRESIDENT BUSH

by Larry C Johnson

July 25, 2005

With the rightwing smear machine gearing up to try to draw attention from the treasonous behavior of prominent White House officials who participated in the outting of CIA undercover officer, Valerie Plame, it is time to look back and determine who was right on Iraq? Me or the President?

The rightwing is resurrecting an op-ed I wrote in July 2001. I stand by the full article. It is still relevant today. I am accused, incorrectly, of ignoring the threat of terrorism. In fact, I correctly noted that the real threat emanated from Bin Laden and Islamic extremism.

President Bush, for his part, ignored the CIA warning in August of 2001 that Al Qaeda was posed to strike inside the United States.

Reprinted below is the article I wrote in January 2003. My key warning is contained in the second paragraph. I wrote, "In fact there is a serious risk that a U.S. led war against Iraq may crystallize the diffused anger in the Arab and Muslim world -- a heretofore unattained goal of bin Laden and his followers -- and persuade more Muslim youths to take up the terrorist banner against American and her citizens."

Full article at the link:

http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/07/johnson_versus_.html

Plot to assassinate Bush - reports

Bin Laden: Believed to have a network of guerrillas

July 9, 2001 Posted: 9:23 AM EDT (1323 GMT)

MOSCOW, Russia -- Osama bin Laden has threatened to assassinate U.S. President George W. Bush at a G8 meeting in Italy, the head of Russia's Federal Bodyguard Service has said, according to reports.

The Associated Press said Yevgeny Murov was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying: "Bin Laden is threatening the American president, but we know what international terrorism is today and therefore all the bodyguard units concerned are preparing for this.

"We view the threats as totally serious, but hope that with joint efforts we can solve all the problems."

The Group of Eight summit is meeting between July 20-22 in Genoa, Italy. Leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States are expected to attend the summit.

Murov -- Russian President Vladimir Putin's chief bodyguard -- did not elaborate on the threats. He said agents from Russia's Federal Bodyguard Service have travelled to Genoa to coordinate with their counterparts from the other nations taking part in the summit to investigate the threats.

CONTINUED...

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/06/20/russia.binladen/

Missiles to protect summit leaders

Special report: globalisation

Rory Carroll in Rome
Wednesday July 11, 2001
The Guardian

Italy has installed a missile defence system at Genoa's airport to deter airborne attacks during next week's G8 summit, fuelling hysteria about looming violence.

A land-based battery of rockets with a range of nine miles and an altitude of 5,000 feet has been positioned in the latest security measure against perceived threats from terrorists and protesters.

Unidentified planes, helicopters and balloons risk being shot down should they drift too close to the heads of state from the group of seven leading industrialised nations and Russia.
Colonel Alberto Battaglini, of the ministry of defence, said the precaution was not exces sive. "The measure, which was planned by the previous government, may seem open to criticism, but in reality it is merely to act as a deterrent against any aerial incursion during the summit.

"They are little missiles ... which only have a deterrent function to discourage any aerial-led attack and they do not present any danger to the residents of the city," he said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,7369,519925,00.html

Michael in NY at Americablog (as is often the case) noted this interesting item in Mr Shane's article on Sunday:

<clip>It was, in fact, a story that had everything to do with politics and not much to do with national security -- a story that illuminates a signature disgrace of the Bush presidency: its tendency to treat the war in Iraq as an issue to be spun, rather than a life-and-death struggle to be won.

In this case the White House was trying to "knock down" a former ambassador, Joseph Wilson, who had disputed the claim--made by President Bush in his State of the Union address--that Iraq attempted to buy uranium in Niger. The Administration had built its case for war on the probability that Saddam Hussein had "reconstituted," in Vice President Dick Cheney's felicitous and inaccurate phrase, his nuclear-weapons program. Eventually, the White House was forced to retract the Niger claim.

<clip>

The election is long over, but the campaign-style spinning persists. Last week, after Rove's name was divulged, the Republican National Committee engaged in a freestyle vitriol spew, attempting once again to discredit Wilson and suggest that Rove was merely trying to "knock down" a bum story. This was so much smoke and baloney -- and all too typical of the persistent fecklessness on the part of the Administration and its allies when it comes to Iraq.

Cheney continues to spin dross from the hard currency of military intelligence: he recently said that the insurgency was in its "last throes." The President makes a prime-time television address to the nation about Iraq in late June and merely rehearses campaign platitudes without offering a serious discussion of the problems on the ground and the real sacrifices needed to overcome them.

From Stop trying to spin the Iraq war

by Joe Klein

July 25, 2005

Link:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/07/25/klein.iraq.tm/


What is most significant about this item is that it is written by someone who still thinks we should send more troops, 'root out the insurgency,' .... blah, blah, blah. Thus, the criticism indicates the growing frustration among those who would be ardent supporters of the neocon agenda as long as we were winning 'the war on terrorism.'

Mr. Klein best expresses his frustration with -- "There are, after all, oaths more important than those between reporters and sources. One is the oath between the Commander in Chief and his people. I mean, Mr. President, you are going to protect us on this, right?

Let me answer that question honestly - Nope.

The only people who are going to protect America are those of us who go to the White House and demand that Mr Bush, Mr Cheney and their neoconster entourage exit.


Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us

Sometimes it’s not the crime or the cover-up that does you in. Sometimes it’s the counter-attack.

Plamegate (aka the Rove-Libby-Gonzalez-Card scandal) is truly opening a window on the soul of the Republican Party … and it’s not a pretty view. We've seen the GOP attack machine in action many times before. But this time, the targets of the smears are intertwined with national security concerns -- putting the attackers in the tricky position of having to choose which comes first, their country or their party.

Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas has clearly chosen the latter. No longer is the smear campaign confined to the surrogates on the margins, now Roberts has opted to use the Senate to do his dirty work.

<clip>

My guess is that one person who won't be testifying at Senator Roberts' hearings is Larry Johnson, the former CIA analyst who has spoken out on Plame’s behalf. Too bad, because it turns out he's got a very solid grasp of the concept of “undercover” and might be able to enlighten chairman Roberts. You know, generically speaking…

From Covert Operative: Sen. Roberts Uses the Cover of the Senate to Flame Plame

by Arianna Huffington

July 26, 2005

Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/arianna-huffington/covert-operative-sen-ro_4692.html

<clip>Bruce Kovner would never raise his voice in the provocative manner of that morning’s panel, but he has continually underwritten hard-right ideas, giving them legitimacy in political discourse. Lefties may dominate discussions in universities and New York dinner parties, but neocons never fade into that distance. They hang around Pennsylvania Avenue.

Kovner, over two decades, has underwritten the infrastructure the neocons have used to achieve their current prominence. On the fifth floor of the AEI building, the Project for the New American Century helped lay the ground for the Iraq war by regular statements describing Saddam Hussein as the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East. The Sun ran an editorial asserting that people protesting the Iraq war were committing treason, while AEI’s Perle and David Frum published An End to Evil, in which they argued that extreme Islam wants to dominate the world, and the U.S. faces “victory or holocaust.” The U.S. should show as little compunction about “destroying regimes” as a police sniper feels icing a hostage-taker. When George Bush was elected in 2000, Dick Cheney swept in a raft of neoconservative thinkers, many from AEI.

<clip>

The hedge king’s country borders are heavily defended. The shapely wooden gates are all locked. The berms keep the curious from glimpsing the glades and rock walls and water features that visitors have said lie inside. Still, it appears that “Altamont Farms” is even more impressive than Kovner’s pied-à-terre. You can see the hilltop manor house from the road, and something else that seems brick Federalist, something else in Carpenter Gothic. Then there is the “Glass House Complex,” a stunning array of large greenhouses adjoined by a barn and the head gardener’s residence. The spread is the best answer there is to Kovner’s revolutionary Russian grandfather, for it is Tolstoyan in scope. Neighbors talk of his indifference to invitations from the horsey set, even as he brings in trailer-truckloads of exotic trees and plants. It is always the same story with him: lordly, vast, abstract, and ringed by fear.

Link:
http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/people/features/12353/index5.html