The Official James Petras website

The most superficial explanation was that Libby, by exposing Valerie Plame (a CIA agent), acted out of ?revenge? to punish her husband Wilson for exposing the lies put forth by Bush about Iraq?s ?importation? of uranium from Niger. Other journalists claim that Libby acted to ?cover up? the fabrications to go to war. The assertion however raises a deeper question ? who were the fabricators of war propaganda, who was Libby protecting? And not only the ?fabricators of war?, but the strategic planners, speech-makers and architects of war who acted hand in hand with the propagandists and the journalists who disseminated the propaganda? What is the link between all these high- level functionaries, propagandists and journalists?

Equally important given the positions of power which this ?cabal? occupied, and the influence they exercised in the mass media as well as in designing strategic policy, what forces were engaged in bringing criminal charges against a key operative of the cabal?

To best understand the rise and apparent fall of Irving Lewis ?Scooter? Libby, it is essential to recognize that he was a member of an ideologically cohesive group with a long history of a shared ideology, common purpose, and organizational collaboration.

Libby?s rise to power was part and parcel of the ascendancy of the Zionist neo-conservatives to the summits of US policymaking. Libby was a student, prot?g?, and collaborator with Paul Wolfowitz for over 25 years. Libby along with Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith, Kagan, Cohen, Rubin, Pollack, Chertoff, Fleisher, Kristol, Marc Grossman, Shumsky and a host of other political influentials were long term believers and aggressive proponents of a virulently militaristic tendency of Zionism organically linked with the rightwing Likud Party of Israel. Early in the 1980?s, Wolfowitz and Feith were charged with passing confidential documents to Israel, the latter temporarily losing his security clearance.

The Zioncon ideologues begin their ?Long March? through the institutions of the state. In some cases, advisers to rightwing pro-Israel congressmen, others in the lower levels of the Pentagon and State Department, in other cases as academics or leaders of conservative think tanks in Washington during the Reagan and Bush senior regimes. With the election of Bush in 2001, they moved into major strategic positions in the government, and as the principal ideologues and propagandists for a sequence of wars against Arab adversaries of the Israeli State. Leading Zioncons, like Libby, drew up a war strategy for the Likud government in 1996, and then recycled the document for the US war against Iraq before and immediately after 9/11/01. Along with their rise to the most influential positions of power in the Bush administration, the Zioncons attracted new recruits, like New York Times reporter Judith Miller. What is striking about the operations of the Zioncon ?cabal? is the very open and direct way in which they operated: former Director of the National Security Agency (under Reagan) Lt. General William Oden, retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, Colonel K. Wilkerson (former chief of staff of Powell), retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, National Security Adviser to President George Bush (the First) Brent Scowcroft, and numerous disenchanted officials, including veterans of the intelligence agencies, high level observers, and former diplomats openly criticized the Zioncon takeover of US policy and the promiscuous relationship between them and Israeli Generals, Israel?s secret international police, the Mossad, who had total access to their offices.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Zioncons Wolfowitz and Libby were the architects of the military strategy for Rumsfeld and Cheney, their putative bosses. Douglas Feith established the ?Office of Special Planning? to fabricate the lies to justify the war. Judith Miller, David Frum and Ari Fleisher served to disseminate the lies and war propaganda through articles, interviews, press conferences, and speechwriting for President Bush. A review of the leading newspapers and government documents reveals that at every point in time and policy, the Zioncons echoed, to the letter, the policy demands emanating from the Sharon regime: the US should invade and destroy the Iraq regime and state apparatus. Not a single Zioncon in the government, outside in the prestigious private universities or think tanks voiced the minimum deviation from the war policy of the Sharon regime. In what is probably one of the most cynical ploys in recent history, the Zioncons Anti-Arab, Anti-Islam crusade on behalf of Greater Israel was portrayed as a policy of democratizing the Middle East? from those who bombed Jenin into rubble to those who napalmed Fallujah into ruin.

The War Within

In their overweening drive for total control of government policy, motivated by their fanatical loyalty to Greater Israel, the Zioncons pushed to manipulate and marginalize many of the key institutions in the US imperial state. To circumvent intelligence from the CIA that didn?t promote the Israeli agenda of war with Iraq, Zioncon Douglas Feith (number 3 in the Pentagon) established the Office of Special Planning, which fabricated propaganda and channeled it directly to the President?s Office bypassing and marginalizing any critical review from the CIA. Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld totally marginalized the leading generals, promoting non-descript ?loyalists? and outsiders to the top positions, and discarding any advice which opposed or conflicted with their plans for war with Iraq. The Secretary of State referred to a speech prepared for him by Irving Libby as ?bullshit? because of its blatant falsehoods. His chief aide, Colonel Wilkerson has written disparagingly of the Zioncon cabal, which marginalized the State Department including his boss Powell.

Finally the FBI has been engaged in permanent warfare with the Israeli Mossad regarding the massive and conspicuous entry of Israeli spies into the US ? hundreds have been deported since September 2001.

Libby?s felony (perjury over revealing a CIA agent) is a minor crime, compared to the large scale, long term crimes against humanity, International Law and the US Constitution committed by the Zioncon embedded in the US State. The prosecution of Libby however reveals the intense internal struggle over the control of the US imperial state between the Zioncons and the traditional leaders of its major institutions. Along with the arrest of Libby by the Federal Prosecutor, the FBI has arrested the two leading policy makers of the most influential pro-Israeli lobby (AIPEC) for spying for the State of Israel. These are not simply isolated actions by individual officials or investigators. To have proceeded against powerful Zioncon leader Irving Libby and AIPEC leaders (Rosen and Weissman), they had to have powerful institutional backing; otherwise the investigations would have been terminated even before they began.

The CIA is deeply offended by the Zioncon usurpation of their intelligence role, their direct channels to the President, their prime loyalty to the State of Israel and their ignorance of reliable sources. The military is extremely angry at their exclusion from the councils of government over questions of war, the disastrous war policy which have depleted the armed forces of recruits, devastated troop morale, and the Zioncons grotesque ignorance of the costs of a colonial occupation. It is no wonder that General Tommy Frank referred to Zioncon Douglas Feith as ?the stupidest bastard I have ever met.?

The current institutional war recalls an earlier conflict between the rightwing Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Defense Department. At the time during the mid 1950?s, Senator McCarty was accumulating power first by purging trade unions, Hollywood, the universities, and promoting likeminded conservative officials. He successfully extended his investigations and purges to the State Department and finally tried to do the same to the military. It was here that Senator McCarthy met his ?Waterloo?, his attack backfired, the Army stood its ground, refuted his accusations and discredited his fabrications and grab for power.

Are we witnessing a similar process unfolding today? Will the Zioncon power grab be thwarted by its ?overreach? into the core of the US State? In any open hearings between the Zioncons and the constituted bodies of the State, the public would be exposed to the real nature of the conflict and what is at stake: namely the choice between ?Israel First? or US political interests.

In the meantime, the Zioncons are not at all daunted by the trials of their colleagues in AIPEC and the Vice President?s office: they are pressing straight ahead for the US to attack Syria and Iran, via economic sanctions and military bombing. On October 30, 2005 the former head of the Israel Secret Police (Shin Bet) told AIPEC to escalate their campaign to pressure in the US to attack Iran (Israel National News.com). The AIPEC secured a near unanimous vote in the US Congress in favor of economic sanctions against Syria. Despite mass demonstrations, and because of a ?captured? congress, it appears paradoxically that the only force capable of defeating the Zioncon juggernaut, like the earlier Joe McCarthy, are powerful voices in the State threatened by new disastrous wars not of their making.

November 2005