The Road to Iraq: Part 3
The Iran-Iraq War, lasting from 1980 to 1988, pitted the Arabs of Iraq against the Persians of Iran over a territorial dispute. Iraq sought to gain control over the Shatt al-Arab waterway and annex the Iranian province of Khuzestan. Khuzestan is, of course, is the major oil-producing region of Iran.
The official US policy supported Iraq. President Reagan stated in 1982 that the United States "would do whatever was necessary to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran" and issued a National Security Decision Directive to that effect. However, Reagan was never a hands-on kind of a president who paid much attention to the details and certain members of his administration began selling arms to Iran in 1985 in what became known as the Iran-Contra Affair.
Initially, the scheme was that Israel would sell the arms to Iran as an intermediary, with the profits going towards funding the Contras in Nicaragua. Michael Arthur Ledeen, acting as a consultant to Nation Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, brokered the deal. When the scandal broke, McFarlane was replaced by John Poindexter. Under a plan developed by Poindexter's aide, Oliver L. North, sales were later made directly to Iran. In both cases, the sales were in violation of US policy and law and, apparently, were made without President Reagan's knowledge or approval.
McFarlane, Poindexter and North received criminal conviction for their part; McFarlane was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.
Since leaving government in 1985, McFarlane has been active with Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Aegis Defence Services and The Partnership for a Secure America.
On April 18, 2001, McFarlane said of the George W. Bush adminstration:
In addition to working with Secretary of State Alexander Haig, CIA Director William Colby, and McFarlane, Micheal Leedan has been active with American Enterprise Institute and Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Leedan is reported to have been used by Karl Rove, George W Bush's closest adviser, as his main foreign affairs adviser. Leedan has also been linked to the forgery which claimed that Saddam Hussein had bought yellowcake in Niger. The investigation of this claim by Ambassador Robert Wilson lead to the leak of his wife Valerie Plame as a CIA agent and to the conviction of I. Lewis Libby, Chief of Staff for Vice-President Richard Cheney, whose sentence was commuted by President George W. Bush.
In criticism of the views of former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft in the Ford and George H.W. Bush administrations and Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, Ledeen wrote in 2002:
Hang on, folks. We have only begun our long journey.
The official US policy supported Iraq. President Reagan stated in 1982 that the United States "would do whatever was necessary to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran" and issued a National Security Decision Directive to that effect. However, Reagan was never a hands-on kind of a president who paid much attention to the details and certain members of his administration began selling arms to Iran in 1985 in what became known as the Iran-Contra Affair.
Initially, the scheme was that Israel would sell the arms to Iran as an intermediary, with the profits going towards funding the Contras in Nicaragua. Michael Arthur Ledeen, acting as a consultant to Nation Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, brokered the deal. When the scandal broke, McFarlane was replaced by John Poindexter. Under a plan developed by Poindexter's aide, Oliver L. North, sales were later made directly to Iran. In both cases, the sales were in violation of US policy and law and, apparently, were made without President Reagan's knowledge or approval.
McFarlane, Poindexter and North received criminal conviction for their part; McFarlane was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.
Since leaving government in 1985, McFarlane has been active with Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Aegis Defence Services and The Partnership for a Secure America.
On April 18, 2001, McFarlane said of the George W. Bush adminstration:
"I think in the Defense Department you may be seeing a little bit of a change, a significant change in how the Pentagon will contribute to policy formation, and that is that you have a very strong team, unusually strong team of service secretaries, who are usually irrelevant to the policy process. I think that'll be different in this administration."As we shall see, he got that right.
In addition to working with Secretary of State Alexander Haig, CIA Director William Colby, and McFarlane, Micheal Leedan has been active with American Enterprise Institute and Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Leedan is reported to have been used by Karl Rove, George W Bush's closest adviser, as his main foreign affairs adviser. Leedan has also been linked to the forgery which claimed that Saddam Hussein had bought yellowcake in Niger. The investigation of this claim by Ambassador Robert Wilson lead to the leak of his wife Valerie Plame as a CIA agent and to the conviction of I. Lewis Libby, Chief of Staff for Vice-President Richard Cheney, whose sentence was commuted by President George W. Bush.
In criticism of the views of former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft in the Ford and George H.W. Bush administrations and Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, Ledeen wrote in 2002:
"He fears that if we attack Iraq 'I think we could have an explosion in the Middle East. It could turn the whole region into a cauldron and destroy the War on Terror.'This, from the man who was advising Karl Rove, the adviser closest to George W. Bush until recently.
One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today. If we wage the war effectively, we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and either bring down the Saudi monarchy or force it to abandon its global assembly line to indoctrinate young terrorists.
That's our mission in the war against terror."
Hang on, folks. We have only begun our long journey.
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