That's some "debate". Everyone involved is on the left side of the political spectrum.

Sometime ago I wrote a piece on this very same subject-

it mainly centered around Israel's involvement in false information about Saddam
here is one quote from the piece my editor refused to run.claiming it was anti-semetic
The American media is now reporting what the Jerusalem Post reported as far back as December 31,2003. Shlmo Brom, a former Israeli intelligence officer, working for the Jaffee Institute, revealed the following; He said “exaggerated, Israeli assessments of Iraqi missile and WMD capability contributed to the mistakes of the British and U.S. intelligence communities.” His investigation goes on to paint a picture of a deliberate plan to feed this false information to all parties concerned. You can take it from there.

That's some "debate". Everyone involved is on the left side of the political spectrum.

Posted by Laura

Oh. Well golly Laura, won't that make it easier for you to target them with your asinine droolings about "anti-semitism"???

Keep crying Laura while the intellectuals debate the real issues.

I suggest you read CPAN's interview with Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski from April 2. Here's the link: http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1069

Karen worked in the Office of Special Plans headed by Doug Feith, conceived by Wolfowitz and staffed by mostly political appointees who are Israeli-firsters. This is the same office that Larry Franklin worked in who was convicted in the AIPAC spy case. This is the same office that funneled false intelligence from Chalabi/INC and the Israelis. These are the very same people who outed Valerie Plame. Here's a little taste if you dare to read the ugly truth:

LAMB: OSP, Office of Special Plans?

KWIATKOSKI: Yes.

LAMB: You just - you wrote in 2004, ”Luti was known at times to treat his staff, even senior staff, with disrespect, contempt and derision.” Did he treat you that way?

KWIATKOSKI: No, he treated me wonderfully. Treated me very nicely. But, I didn’t matter. I was not someone who was challenging him. I was one of many faceless, or mild-mannered Lieutenant Colonels who were doing their job and working hard for him, and he treated me very nicely. But, he - and when I say that, it’s not just the people that he worked with. That’s a personality trait and, unfortunately, many military officers and other people in civilian world tend to sometimes not treat their workers very well. But, Luti also was kind of notorious for saying bad things about higher-ups. He bad mouthed guys like Zinni, and there was an Admiral in the Pacific Command that, for some reason, didn’t do something he wanted (ph), a four-star Admiral, and here’s a retired Navy Captain, granted a senior executive service guy. But, you know, you just don’t - it’s contrary to good order and discipline. Again, it’s something that you notice. When you’ve been in the military 20 years, you notice it. It stands out at that level when you see it.

LAMB: You wrote one of the things that we don’t often hear from inside, that Bill Luti referred to the Chief of Central Command, Anthony Zinni, as a traitor.

KWIATKOSKI: Former Chief of Central Command Anthony Zinni, Tommy Frank’s predecessor. Yes, he did, and right in front of the refrigerator that sat two feet from my desk.

LAMB: Who is Michael Ledeen?

KWIATKOSKI: Michael Ledeen, he’s, well, a friend of Carl Rose, for one. He’s connected with Iran Contra, got in a little trouble in the Reagan Administration. He’s part of a deal - he did some Iran arms for Contra money deals. He’s that kind of a guy. And he works for the American. He is an adjunct or a member fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, which is a key institute. And I think even George Bush admitted that - proudly so, not admitted, he was happy that the American Enterprise Institute provided 25 or 30 people into this administration, very much a neo-conservative outfit, lots of big vision, lots of nice things about democracy and democracy promotion, that kind of thing.

But anyway, Ledeen is one of those guys. He was not, I don’t think, technically in the Office of Special Plans, but we saw him around, and he was a presence. And anyway, he’s - a lot of the things that these folks wrote outside the Pentagon reflected things that Bill Luti might say maybe in the heat of passion, very condemning of critics of anything that they were doing.

LAMB: But, you did suggest that a lot of people, or enough people so that your references came from the Washington Institute.

KWIATKOSKI: Yes, Washington Institute for Near East Affairs, sure, yes. That’s another very pro-Israel think tank, which puts forth lots of papers on what Israel should do and what America should do as Israel’s ally. And a lot of the things that they advocate, as well as a number of other think tanks, is precisely what we ended up doing in 2003, and that is to destroy Iraq.

LAMB: But, if you get on their Web site and look at their advisory board, the names, almost all of them are recognizable. The Washington Institute for Near-East Policy, Warren Christopher, Larry Eagleburger, Alex Hague, Alexander Hague, Max Kempleman, Jean Kirkpatrick, Sam Lewis, Edward Luttwak, Robert McFarland, Marty Parris (ph), Richard Perle, James Roach, George Schultz, Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Mandelmaun (ph), James Woolsey and Mortimer Zuckerman.

KWIATKOSKI: Yes, those - and those are just the top guys. If you go down to the next level, you’re going to see guys that I actually know who were assigned into the Pentagon doing political appointed type work on policy, yes. Yes, very influential. And really, if you want to study neo-conservatism, you’ve got quite a few key names there, as well as some folks that people would consider to be more traditional conservatives. But, I can tell you, I’ll tell you something about George Schultz, that - there was a fax that came into the office. It wasn’t for me. I happened to get it, and I looked at this fax. It was a short note from George Schultz, who was on - who at that time, I don’t know if he still is - but he was on the Defense Policy Board, along with Richard Perle. It was a fax, a copy of a fax that he had sent to Don Rumsfeld in June of 2002, June of 2002 I believe it was. It was the summer of 2002.

And on this fax, it was a short, one-note thing, from Schultz to Rummy. Basically, we have to get together and talk about what we do after the victory in Iraq, and this was in the summer of 2002, long before even the president and the vice president had begun their round of why we fight-type propaganda speeches.

LAMB: Michael Makovsky, recent MIT graduate, you referred in 2004. You said it was David Makovsky’s brother. Why is that important?

KWIATKOSKI: Yes. Well, David was - I think David’s with one of these think tanks. I think the ...

LAMB: Washington Institute.

KWIATKOSKI: ... The Washington Institute. There he goes, yes, and he had been a publisher of some things in Israel, as well. So, a media guy

LAMB: He’d been a former editor for Jerusalem Post.

KWIATKOSKI: There you go. So, he’s a media guy with a particular pro-Israel agenda. Again, not a thing wrong with that except that’s not how we make American foreign policy, OK? that’s not how we make American defense policy. We don’t call up our allies and say, ”Well, what would you like us to do next?” We don’t do that, OK? it’s not done and, if we lean or slip into that practice, then it needs to be corrected. And so, that’s why these things stick in my mind. That’s why these things I think are - should concern people.

LAMB: How important was the document that they wrote in 1998, New American Century?

KWIATKOSKI: Yes, partly. They wrote a document called, ”Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” and I had seen it before just because it’s a document that’s something that we would see, because it’s about views of a post-Cold War world and what we should do. This is the kind of thing that people in the Pentagon think about. Didn’t think much of it until I saw the president’s national security strategy, his very first one that George Bush put out. Of course, we do read that, and it’s on the Web site, White House Web site. And when I read it, not just me but lots of people saw almost word-for-word lifting of phrases and ideas and concepts from the Project for a New American Century’s previous document, ”Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” which is - sounds a very benign name, ”Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” That’s fine.

But, what it calls for is very much what George Bush has more overtly called for, which is America at the top of the world, a unilateral approach and that kind of thing. Very, very similar. I think that Bill Kristol underestimates modestly the - he’s a very modest man, and so he is not going to give the project for New American Century too much, but you can find it in the words, and you can also find it in the members. The Project for New American Century brought many, many key leaders and key political appointees, people that were working on the Project for New American Century moved seamlessly into government, and that starts with Dick Cheney.

KWIATKOSKI: The Office of Special Plans had one primary job, and that was to produce a set of talking points on the topic of Iraq, WMD and terrorism, and we were to use them in any document that we prepared exactly as they were written in their entirety. We were - all of us, myself included, very familiar with what the intelligence was saying about Iraq. But, the problem was, when you look at what was in these talking points, you could tell it was designed to convince the reader that Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically constituted a major serious, terrible, evil threat to not just his neighbors but to the United States.

"These are the very same people who outed Valerie Plame. Here's a little taste if you dare to read the ugly truth......."

Posted by ManagedChaos

"Laura" KNOWS the "truth". She just doesn't want US to know it.

Shlomo Brom's analysis of the Israeli contributions to the faulty assesment of Saddam's WMDs can be found here:
http://www.tau.ac.il/jcss/sa/v6n3p3Bro.html

Note that he posits that there was no political agenda driving the overblown conclusions because of the Israeli refusal to link Saddam with Al-Qaeda.

"The final question that needs to be asked is whether in Israel, as in the United States, the intelligence picture was slanted due to the pressure by the country's political leadership, which wanted to prepare the ground for war with the support of intelligence bodies. While there may have been political pressure in the US to distort intelligence findings, there is no indication of such pressure in Israel. The best proof of this was Israel's refusal to participate in the American administration's efforts to demonstrate a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda."

A rather weak, but illuminating defense.

Given that this was published in 11/03, one wonders if Gen Brom is still so certain that politcal pressures didn't shape the Israeli intel product.

Shlomo Brom's analysis of the Israeli contributions to the faulty assesment of Saddam's WMDs can be found here:
http://www.tau.ac.il/jcss/sa/v6n3p3Bro.html

Note that he posits that there was no political agenda driving the overblown conclusions because of the Israeli refusal to link Saddam with Al-Qaeda.

"The final question that needs to be asked is whether in Israel, as in the United States, the intelligence picture was slanted due to the pressure by the country's political leadership, which wanted to prepare the ground for war with the support of intelligence bodies. While there may have been political pressure in the US to distort intelligence findings, there is no indication of such pressure in Israel. The best proof of this was Israel's refusal to participate in the American administration's efforts to demonstrate a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda."

A rather weak, but illuminating defense.

Given that this was published in 11/03, one wonders if Gen Brom is still so certain that politcal pressures didn't shape the Israeli intel product.

nervermind and can someone please do due diligence and delete my dupe?

Sorry all.

lalla-tida..

I believe the myth of A-Q and Saddam has always been about "not what info or dis-info they pushed in Israel"..but what the pro Israelis here in the US to get us to attack Iraq.