{"id":272507,"date":"2024-09-02T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2024-09-02T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=272507"},"modified":"2024-08-29T05:17:10","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T04:17:10","slug":"what-they-talk-about-when-they-talk-about-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/09\/what-they-talk-about-when-they-talk-about-war\/","title":{"rendered":"What They Talk about When They Talk about War"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at the Armed Forces Farewell Tribute to Rumsfeld at the Pentagon 15 Dec 2006 in Arlington, Virginia.<\/p><\/div>\n

How reporting, and the way the US government speaks about the wars it sponsors, has changed between the Bush and Biden administrations.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

27 Aug 2024 <\/em>– The last week of August is usually a slow one in my business. Whether at the New York Times<\/em> or the New Yorker<\/em>, as an investigative reporter I stayed the hell away from late August. It\u2019s just the worst time to drop a good story because few people are paying attention.<\/p>\n

I did the same last August, while on vacation with my family, when I republished one of my old stories in this space. I am doing so again today. Below is a long dispatch for the New Yorker<\/a><\/em>, from 2006, about the war then raging between Israel and Hezbollah. It shows in troubling detail, the vast difference between today, with the Democratic Party in power, and 2006, when Vice President Dick Cheney dominated foreign policy.<\/p>\n

The story linked below is replete with seven sources from here and abroad cited by name and ten more unnamed sources In Israel and in Washington, whose job description is made as explicitly as possible. All sources, when on or off the record, agreed to talk to a New Yorker fact checker to verify their quotes. Those would not agree to confirm their words with me were not published.<\/p>\n

One important element in the 2006 article is the extent to which those at the top of the Bush administration had no qualms about discussing America\u2019s role in supplying and working with the Israeli military as it engaged Hezbollah. It was clear that we were all in.<\/p>\n

What about America\u2019s role in the current Israeli war with Hezbollah? Are our generals providing intelligence and other forms of help, including additional weaponry, to Israel? If so, was it a policy decision made by President Joe Biden with the advice and counsel of Vice President Kamala Harris, the vice president, now facing Donald Trump in this fall\u2019s election. She said as much in her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention last week, when she declared that she would never deny Israel with the means to defend itself.<\/p>\n

Has the vice president been in the loop all along, in terms of America\u2019s support for Israel in Gaza and America\u2019s support to Ukraine Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky in the current war with Russia, which she defended so vigorously in her acceptance speech last week?. It is known that\u00a0 Cheney was an active participant in war planning for Afghanistan just as Vice President Biden was in the killing of Osama Bin Laden during the Obama administration. Has Harris been equally involved in such life-and-death decisions in her years as vice president?<\/p>\n

Is Harris, once elected and in office, committed to Biden\u2019s disastrous support of what clearly is an unwinnable war against Russia in the Ukraine? Is she also committed to spending billions of American dollars on munitions and other aid to Israel, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu avoids a ceasefire in Gaza and pursues a war against Hamas that is less and less winnable while killing and maiming tens of thousands of Gazans.<\/p>\n

Is Biden\u2019s foreign policy going to be hers? She seemed to be upholding it in her acceptance speech at last week\u2019s Democratic Convention.<\/p>\n

If so, is it also fair to ask when she learned that President Biden was beginning to fail or, at the least, having moments of minimal lucidity. As a Washington journalist, I was told long ago by others that there were moments when the president blanked out during an interview and needed his wife to finish sentences for him.<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s bad day at the office in June, his disastrous debate with Donald Trump, did not happen suddenly but revealed a condition that had been apparent to many for months at least. A lot of hard questions are not being asked by the press about when Vice President Harris and the White House staff who still support her knew the truth about Biden\u2019s impairment. It was an internal secret for how long? More than one year?<\/p>\n

There is a lot of explaining for the Democrats to do between now and the election in November. I also think it\u2019s fair to ask if the White House is as involved in the planning and execution of the current Israeli war with Hezbollah as it was during the Bush administration. It is our bombs and other munitions that are being fired.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Watching Lebanon<\/h3>\n
Washington\u2019s interests in Israel\u2019s war<\/em><\/h5>\n

21 Aug 2006<\/em>\u2014In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive. \u201cIt\u2019s a moment of clarification,\u201d President George W. Bush said at the G-8 summit, in St. Petersburg, on July 16th. \u201cIt\u2019s now become clear why we don\u2019t have peace in the Middle East.\u201d He described the relationship between Hezbollah and its supporters in Iran and Syria as one of the \u201croot causes of instability,\u201d and subsequently said that it was up to those countries to end the crisis. Two days later, despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until \u201cthe conditions are conducive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel\u2019s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah\u2019s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel\u2019s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American pre\u00ebmptive attack to destroy Iran\u2019s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.<\/p>\n

Israeli military and intelligence experts I spoke to emphasized that the country\u2019s immediate security issues were reason enough to confront Hezbollah, regardless of what the Bush Administration wanted. Shabtai Shavit, a national-security adviser to the Knesset who headed the Mossad, Israel\u2019s foreign-intelligence service, from 1989 to 1996, told me, \u201cWe do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America\u2019s requirements, that\u2019s just part of a relationship between two friends. Hezbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time. We had to address it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hezbollah is seen by Israelis as a profound threat\u2014a terrorist organization, operating on their border, with a military arsenal that, with help from Iran and Syria, has grown stronger since the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon ended, in 2000. Hezbollah\u2019s leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has said he does not believe that Israel is a \u201clegal state.\u201d Israeli intelligence estimated at the outset of the air war that Hezbollah had roughly five hundred medium-range Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets and a few dozen long-range Zelzal rockets; the Zelzals, with a range of about two hundred kilometers, could reach Tel Aviv. (One rocket hit Haifa the day after the kidnappings.) It also has more than twelve thousand shorter-range rockets. Since the conflict began, more than three thousand of these have been fired at Israel.<\/p>\n

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah\u2014and shared it with Bush Administration officials\u2014well before the July 12th kidnappings. \u201cIt\u2019s not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into,\u201d he said, \u201cbut there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, \u201cThe White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Administration officials denied that they knew of Israel\u2019s plan for the air war. The White House did not respond to a detailed list of questions. In response to a separate request, a National Security Council spokesman said, \u201cPrior to Hezbollah\u2019s attack on Israel, the Israeli government gave no official in Washington any reason to believe that Israel was planning to attack. Even after the July 12th attack, we did not know what the Israeli plans were.\u201d A Pentagon spokesman said, \u201cThe United States government remains committed to a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran\u2019s clandestine nuclear weapons program,\u201d and denied the story, as did a State Department spokesman.<\/p>\n

The United States and Israel have shared intelligence and enjoyed close military co\u00f6peration for decades, but early this spring, according to a former senior intelligence official, high-level planners from the U.S. Air Force\u2014under pressure from the White House to develop a war plan for a decisive strike against Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities\u2014began consulting with their counterparts in the Israeli Air Force.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big question for our Air Force was how to hit a series of hard targets in Iran successfully,\u201d the former senior intelligence official said. \u201cWho is the closest ally of the U.S. Air Force in its planning? It\u2019s not Congo\u2014it\u2019s Israel. Everybody knows that Iranian engineers have been advising Hezbollah on tunnels and underground gun emplacements. And so the Air Force went to the Israelis with some new tactics and said to them, \u2018Let\u2019s concentrate on the bombing and share what we have on Iran and what you have on Lebanon.\u2019\u201d The discussions reached the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits,\u201d a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. \u201cWhy oppose it? We\u2019ll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House \u201chas been agitating for some time to find a reason for a pre\u00ebmptive blow against Hezbollah.\u201d He added, \u201cIt was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it.\u201d (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)<\/p>\n

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush\u2019s first term\u2014and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah \u201cmay be the A team of terrorists\u201d\u2014Israel\u2019s campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. \u201cIf the most dominant military force in the region\u2014the Israel Defense Forces\u2014can\u2019t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million,\u201d Armitage said. \u201cThe only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several current and former officials involved in the Middle East told me that Israel viewed the soldiers\u2019 kidnapping as the opportune moment to begin its planned military campaign against Hezbollah. \u201cHezbollah, like clockwork, was instigating something small every month or two,\u201d the U.S. government consultant with ties to Israel said. Two weeks earlier, in late June, members of Hamas, the Palestinian group, had tunnelled under the barrier separating southern Gaza from Israel and captured an Israeli soldier. Hamas also had lobbed a series of rockets at Israeli towns near the border with Gaza. In response, Israel had initiated an extensive bombing campaign and reoccupied parts of Gaza.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon consultant noted that there had also been cross-border incidents involving Israel and Hezbollah, in both directions, for some time. \u201cThey\u2019ve been sniping at each other,\u201d he said. \u201cEither side could have pointed to some incident and said \u2018We have to go to war with these guys\u2019\u2014because they were already at war.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Siegel, the spokesman at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said that the Israeli Air Force had not been seeking a reason to attack Hezbollah. \u201cWe did not plan the campaign. That decision was forced on us.\u201d There were ongoing alerts that Hezbollah \u201cwas pressing to go on the attack,\u201d Siegel said. \u201cHezbollah attacks every two or three months,\u201d but the kidnapping of the soldiers raised the stakes.<\/p>\n

In interviews, several Israeli academics, journalists, and retired military and intelligence officers all made one point: they believed that the Israeli leadership, and not Washington, had decided that it would go to war with Hezbollah. Opinion polls showed that a broad spectrum of Israelis supported that choice. \u201cThe neocons in Washington may be happy, but Israel did not need to be pushed, because Israel has been wanting to get rid of Hezbollah,\u201d Yossi Melman, a journalist for the newspaper Ha\u2019aretz<\/em>, who has written several books about the Israeli intelligence community, said. \u201cBy provoking Israel, Hezbollah provided that opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were facing a dilemma,\u201d an Israeli official said. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert \u201chad to decide whether to go for a local response, which we always do, or for a comprehensive response\u2014to really take on Hezbollah once and for all.\u201d Olmert made his decision, the official said, only after a series of Israeli rescue efforts failed.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel told me, however, that, from Israel\u2019s perspective, the decision to take strong action had become inevitable weeks earlier, after the Israeli Army\u2019s signals intelligence group, known as Unit 8200, picked up bellicose intercepts in late spring and early summer, involving Hamas, Hezbollah, and Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader now living in Damascus.<\/p>\n

One intercept was of a meeting in late May of the Hamas political and military leadership, with Meshal participating by telephone. \u201cHamas believed the call from Damascus was scrambled, but Israel had broken the code,\u201d the consultant said. For almost a year before its victory in the Palestinian elections in January, Hamas had curtailed its terrorist activities. In the late May intercepted conversation, the consultant told me, the Hamas leadership said that \u201cthey got no benefit from it, and were losing standing among the Palestinian population.\u201d The conclusion, he said, was \u201c\u2018Let\u2019s go back into the terror business and then try and wrestle concessions from the Israeli government.\u2019\u201d The consultant told me that the U.S. and Israel agreed that if the Hamas leadership did so, and if Nasrallah backed them up, there should be \u201ca full-scale response.\u201d In the next several weeks, when Hamas began digging the tunnel into Israel, the consultant said, Unit 8200 \u201cpicked up signals intelligence involving Hamas, Syria, and Hezbollah, saying, in essence, that they wanted Hezbollah to \u2018warm up\u2019 the north.\u201d In one intercept, the consultant said, Nasrallah referred to Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz \u201cas seeming to be weak,\u201d in comparison with the former Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak, who had extensive military experience, and said \u201che thought Israel would respond in a small-scale, local way, as they had in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this summer, before the Hezbollah kidnappings, the U.S. government consultant said, several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, \u201cto get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear.\u201d The consultant added, \u201cIsrael began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council.\u201d After that, \u201cpersuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board,\u201d the consultant said.<\/p>\n

The initial plan, as outlined by the Israelis, called for a major bombing campaign in response to the next Hezbollah provocation, according to the Middle East expert with knowledge of U.S. and Israeli thinking. Israel believed that, by targeting Lebanon\u2019s infrastructure, including highways, fuel depots, and even the civilian runways at the main Beirut airport, it could persuade Lebanon\u2019s large Christian and Sunni populations to turn against Hezbollah, according to the former senior intelligence official. The airport, highways, and bridges, among other things, have been hit in the bombing campaign. The Israeli Air Force had flown almost nine thousand missions as of last week. (David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that Israel had targeted only sites connected to Hezbollah; the bombing of bridges and roads was meant to prevent the transport of weapons.) The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was \u201cthe mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran.\u201d (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran\u2019s nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)<\/p>\n

Uzi Arad, who served for more than two decades in the Mossad, told me that to the best of his knowledge the contacts between the Israeli and U.S. governments were routine, and that, \u201cin all my meetings and conversations with government officials, never once did I hear anyone refer to prior co\u00f6rdination with the United States.\u201d He was troubled by one issue\u2014the speed with which the Olmert government went to war. \u201cFor the life of me, I\u2019ve never seen a decision to go to war taken so speedily,\u201d he said. \u201cWe usually go through long analyses.\u201d<\/p>\n

The key military planner was Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the I.D.F. chief of staff, who, during a career in the Israeli Air Force, worked on contingency planning for an air war with Iran. Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, and Peretz, a former labor leader, could not match his experience and expertise.<\/p>\n

In the early discussions with American officials, I was told by the Middle East expert and the government consultant, the Israelis repeatedly pointed to the war in Kosovo as an example of what Israel would try to achieve. The NATO forces commanded by U.S. Army General Wesley Clark methodically bombed and strafed not only military targets but tunnels, bridges, and roads, in Kosovo and elsewhere in Serbia, for seventy-eight days before forcing Serbian forces to withdraw from Kosovo. \u201cIsrael studied the Kosovo war as its role model,\u201d the government consultant said. \u201cThe Israelis told Condi Rice, \u2018You did it in about seventy days, but we need half of that\u2014thirty-five days.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

There are, of course, vast differences between Lebanon and Kosovo. Clark, who retired from the military in 2000 and unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for the Presidency in 2004, took issue with the analogy: \u201cIf it\u2019s true that the Israeli campaign is based on the American approach in Kosovo, then it missed the point. Ours was to use force to obtain a diplomatic objective\u2014it was not about killing people.\u201d Clark noted in a 2001 book, \u201cWaging Modern War,\u201d that it was the threat of a possible ground invasion as well as the bombing that forced the Serbs to end the war. He told me, \u201cIn my experience, air campaigns have to be backed, ultimately, by the will and capability to finish the job on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kosovo has been cited publicly by Israeli officials and journalists since the war began. On August 6th, Prime Minister Olmert, responding to European condemnation of the deaths of Lebanese civilians, said, \u201cWhere do they get the right to preach to Israel? European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket. I\u2019m not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: don\u2019t preach to us about the treatment of civilians.\u201d (Human Rights Watch estimated the number of civilians killed in the NATO bombing to be five hundred; the Yugoslav government put the number between twelve hundred and five thousand.)<\/p>\n

Cheney\u2019s office supported the Israeli plan, as did Elliott Abrams, a deputy national-security adviser, according to several former and current officials. (A spokesman for the N.S.C. denied that Abrams had done so.) They believed that Israel should move quickly in its air war against Hezbollah. A former intelligence officer said, \u201cWe told Israel, \u2018Look, if you guys have to go, we\u2019re behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later\u2014the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Cheney\u2019s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was \u201cWhat if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it\u2019s really successful? It\u2019d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pentagon consultant told me that intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran is being mishandled by the White House the same way intelligence had been when, in 2002 and early 2003, the Administration was making the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. \u201cThe big complaint now in the intelligence community is that all of the important stuff is being sent directly to the top\u2014at the insistence of the White House\u2014and not being analyzed at all, or scarcely,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s an awful policy and violates all of the N.S.A.\u2019s strictures, and if you complain about it you\u2019re out,\u201d he said. \u201cCheney had a strong hand in this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The long-term Administration goal was to help set up a Sunni Arab coalition\u2014including countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt\u2014that would join the United States and Europe to pressure the ruling Shiite mullahs in Iran. \u201cBut the thought behind that plan was that Israel would defeat Hezbollah, not lose to it,\u201d the consultant with close ties to Israel said. Some officials in Cheney\u2019s office and at the N.S.C. had become convinced, on the basis of private talks, that those nations would moderate their public criticism of Israel and blame Hezbollah for creating the crisis that led to war. Although they did so at first, they shifted their position in the wake of public protests in their countries about the Israeli bombing. The White House was clearly disappointed when, late last month, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, came to Washington and, at a meeting with Bush, called for the President to intervene immediately to end the war. The Washington Post reported that Washington had hoped to enlist moderate Arab states \u201cin an effort to pressure Syria and Iran to rein in Hezbollah, but the Saudi move . . . seemed to cloud that initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n

The surprising strength of Hezbollah\u2019s resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, \u201cis a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. \u201cThere is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen the smoke clears, they\u2019ll say it was a success, and they\u2019ll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the White House, especially in the Vice-President\u2019s office, many officials believe that the military campaign against Hezbollah is working and should be carried forward. At the same time, the government consultant said, some policymakers in the Administration have concluded that the cost of the bombing to Lebanese society is too high. \u201cThey are telling Israel that it\u2019s time to wind down the attacks on infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similar divisions are emerging in Israel. David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that his country\u2019s leadership believed, as of early August, that the air war had been successful, and had destroyed more than seventy per cent of Hezbollah\u2019s medium- and long-range-missile launching capacity. \u201cThe problem is short-range missiles, without launchers, that can be shot from civilian areas and homes,\u201d Siegel told me. \u201cThe only way to resolve this is ground operations\u2014which is why Israel would be forced to expand ground operations if the latest round of diplomacy doesn\u2019t work.\u201d Last week, however, there was evidence that the Israeli government was troubled by the progress of the war. In an unusual move, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, Halutz\u2019s deputy, was put in charge of the operation, supplanting Major General Udi Adam. The worry in Israel is that Nasrallah might escalate the crisis by firing missiles at Tel Aviv. \u201cThere is a big debate over how much damage Israel should inflict to prevent it,\u201d the consultant said. \u201cIf Nasrallah hits Tel Aviv, what should Israel do? Its goal is to deter more attacks by telling Nasrallah that it will destroy his country if he doesn\u2019t stop, and to remind the Arab world that Israel can set it back twenty years. We\u2019re no longer playing by the same rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

A European intelligence officer told me, \u201cThe Israelis have been caught in a psychological trap. In earlier years, they had the belief that they could solve their problems with toughness. But now, with Islamic martyrdom, things have changed, and they need different answers. How do you scare people who love martyrdom?\u201d The problem with trying to eliminate Hezbollah, the intelligence officer said, is the group\u2019s ties to the Shiite population in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs, where it operates schools, hospitals, a radio station, and various charities.<\/p>\n

A high-level American military planner told me, \u201cWe have a lot of vulnerability in the region, and we\u2019ve talked about some of the effects of an Iranian or Hezbollah attack on the Saudi regime and on the oil infrastructure.\u201d There is special concern inside the Pentagon, he added, about the oil-producing nations north of the Strait of Hormuz. \u201cWe have to anticipate the unintended consequences,\u201d he told me. \u201cWill we be able to absorb a barrel of oil at one hundred dollars? There is this almost comical thinking that you can do it all from the air, even when you\u2019re up against an irregular enemy with a dug-in capability. You\u2019re not going to be successful unless you have a ground presence, but the political leadership never considers the worst case. These guys only want to hear the best case.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is evidence that the Iranians were expecting the war against Hezbollah. Vali Nasr, an expert on Shiite Muslims and Iran, who is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and also teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, said, \u201cEvery negative American move against Hezbollah was seen by Iran as part of a larger campaign against it. And Iran began to prepare for the showdown by supplying more sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah\u2014anti-ship and anti-tank missiles\u2014and training its fighters in their use. And now Hezbollah is testing Iran\u2019s new weapons. Iran sees the Bush Administration as trying to marginalize its regional role, so it fomented trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nasr, an Iranian-American who recently published a study of the Sunni-Shiite divide, entitled \u201cThe Shia Revival,\u201d also said that the Iranian leadership believes that Washington\u2019s ultimate political goal is to get some international force to act as a buffer\u2014to physically separate Syria and Lebanon in an effort to isolate and disarm Hezbollah, whose main supply route is through Syria. \u201cMilitary action cannot bring about the desired political result,\u201d Nasr said. The popularity of Iran\u2019s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a virulent critic of Israel, is greatest in his own country. If the U.S. were to attack Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities, Nasr said, \u201cyou may end up turning Ahmadinejad into another Nasrallah\u2014the rock star of the Arab street.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donald Rumsfeld, who is one of the Bush Administration\u2019s most outspoken, and powerful, officials, has said very little publicly about the crisis in Lebanon. His relative quiet, compared to his aggressive visibility in the run-up to the Iraq war, has prompted a debate in Washington about where he stands on the issue.<\/p>\n

Some current and former intelligence officials who were interviewed for this article believe that Rumsfeld disagrees with Bush and Cheney about the American role in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said that \u201cthere was a feeling that Rumsfeld was jaded in his approach to the Israeli war.\u201d He added, \u201cAir power and the use of a few Special Forces had worked in Afghanistan, and he tried to do it again in Iraq. It was the same idea, but it didn\u2019t work. He thought that Hezbollah was too dug in and the Israeli attack plan would not work, and the last thing he wanted was another war on his shift that would put the American forces in Iraq in greater jeopardy.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Western diplomat said that he understood that Rumsfeld did not know all the intricacies of the war plan. \u201cHe is angry and worried about his troops\u201d in Iraq, the diplomat said. Rumsfeld served in the White House during the last year of the war in Vietnam, from which American troops withdrew in 1975, \u201cand he did not want to see something like this having an impact in Iraq.\u201d Rumsfeld\u2019s concern, the diplomat added, was that an expansion of the war into Iran could put the American troops in Iraq at greater risk of attacks by pro-Iranian Shiite militias.<\/p>\n

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on August 3rd, Rumsfeld was less than enthusiastic about the war\u2019s implications for the American troops in Iraq. Asked whether the Administration was mindful of the war\u2019s impact on Iraq, he testified that, in his meetings with Bush and Condoleezza Rice, \u201cthere is a sensitivity to the desire to not have our country or our interests or our forces put at greater risk as a result of what\u2019s taking place between Israel and Hezbollah. . . . There are a variety of risks that we face in that region, and it\u2019s a difficult and delicate situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pentagon consultant dismissed talk of a split at the top of the Administration, however, and said simply, \u201cRummy is on the team. He\u2019d love to see Hezbollah degraded, but he also is a voice for less bombing and more innovative Israeli ground operations.\u201d The former senior intelligence official similarly depicted Rumsfeld as being \u201cdelighted that Israel is our stalking horse.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are also questions about the status of Condoleezza Rice. Her initial support for the Israeli air war against Hezbollah has reportedly been tempered by dismay at the effects of the attacks on Lebanon. The Pentagon consultant said that in early August she began privately \u201cagitating\u201d inside the Administration for permission to begin direct diplomatic talks with Syria\u2014so far, without much success. Last week, the Times<\/em> reported that Rice had directed an Embassy official in Damascus to meet with the Syrian foreign minister, though the meeting apparently yielded no results. The Times<\/em> also reported that Rice viewed herself as \u201ctrying to be not only a peacemaker abroad but also a mediator among contending parties\u201d within the Administration. The article pointed to a divide between career diplomats in the State Department and \u201cconservatives in the government,\u201d including Cheney and Abrams, \u201cwho were pushing for strong American support for Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Western diplomat told me his embassy believes that Abrams has emerged as a key policymaker on Iran, and on the current Hezbollah-Israeli crisis, and that Rice\u2019s role has been relatively diminished. Rice did not want to make her most recent diplomatic trip to the Middle East, the diplomat said. \u201cShe only wanted to go if she thought there was a real chance to get a ceasefire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bush\u2019s strongest supporter in Europe continues to be British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but many in Blair\u2019s own Foreign Office, as a former diplomat said, believe that he has \u201cgone out on a particular limb on this\u201d\u2014especially by accepting Bush\u2019s refusal to seek an immediate and total ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. \u201cBlair stands alone on this,\u201d the former diplomat said. \u201cHe knows he\u2019s a lame duck who\u2019s on the way out, but he buys it\u201d\u2014the Bush policy. \u201cHe drinks the White House Kool-Aid as much as anybody in Washington.\u201d The crisis will really start at the end of August, the diplomat added, \u201cwhen the Iranians\u201d\u2014under a United Nations deadline to stop uranium enrichment\u2014\u201cwill say no.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even those who continue to support Israel\u2019s war against Hezbollah agree that it is failing to achieve one of its main goals\u2014to rally the Lebanese against Hezbollah. \u201cStrategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it,\u201d John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me. Arquilla has been campaigning for more than a decade, with growing success, to change the way America fights terrorism. \u201cThe warfare of today is not mass on mass,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to hunt like a network to defeat a network. Israel focussed on bombing against Hezbollah, and, when that did not work, it became more aggressive on the ground. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.\u201d<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Seymour M. Hersh\u2019s investigative journalism and publishing awards include one Pulitzer Prize, five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting. Hersh won a National Magazine Award for Public Interest for his 2003 articles <\/span><\/em>\u201cLunch with the Chairman,\u201d \u201cSelective Intelligence,\u201d and<\/span><\/em> \u201cThe Stovepipe.\u201d In 2004 he exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces; in 2005, he again received a National Magazine Award for Public Interest, an Overseas Press Club award, the National Press Foundation\u2019s Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism award, and his fifth George Polk Award, making him that award\u2019s most honored laureate. He lives in Washington DC.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 seymourhersh.substack.com<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

27 Aug 2024 – How reporting, and the way the US government speaks about the wars it sponsors, has changed between the Bush and Biden administrations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":229121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[2197,2862,234,373,2571,70,1594,481],"class_list":["post-272507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-biden","tag-george-bush-ii","tag-media","tag-news","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-usa","tag-war-economy","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272507"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272511,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272507\/revisions\/272511"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}