9/11 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton Book Indicts Neocons for Iraq Lies, But Eases Up On Bush.
Without having to listen for very long, it became clear that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and the inimitable Co-President Dick “Dick” Cheney were three of the Four Horsemen, whip hands beating us again and again to war in Iraq.
Bush Looked Good, By Comparison. Somewhat surprisingly, and contrary to the accepted truth, President Bush (alas) – at least according to Shelton – was unimpressed by the Three Horsemen. Shelton, in the passages excerpted below, makes that quite clear, bluntly and with a certainty I find credible. One must recognize Bush’s achievement and not, in his iconic words, “misunderestimate” him: he actively resisted the onslaught of the neoconservative mandate, a virtual force of nature. Led as it was by the abrasive-on-a-good-day Donald Rumsfeld, this was no easy task.
During the initial days following the 9/11 attacks, Shelton portrays a commander in chief acting like a commander in chief, rejecting half-baked arguments to invade Iraq. He kept firmly to his focus on Afghanistan, Bin Laden, and Al Qaida. Well, obviously that determination wilted, to say the least – after all, Bush did say (below) that “We’re gonna get that guy,” but not just yet. We all know now that Bush fairly quickly joined the neocons, heart and soul, but initially, he accepted Shelton’s and Secretary of State Colin Powell’s urgent pleadings that there was simply not an iota of evidence hinting at Iraq’s of Saddam’s involvement in 9/11.
[All italics and bolding added]
“What we’re proposing is an aggressive covert-action plan directed primarily toward al Qaida and the Taliban, and to achieve this we will insert a CIA paramilitary team into Afghanistan to work closely with opposition forces — primarily the Northern Alliance — to prepare the way for Special Operations forces.”
It was an aggressive plan, and Cofer presented it with a dynamic enthusiasm that completely captivated the President; he was totally on board. The plan would be refined in the days to come, but it would be the foundation of the CIA’s Camp David presentation over the weekend.
[Then, on September 13th the group met at Camp David and the meeting took a quick Rumsfeldian curve:]
In spite of the setting, it didn’t take long for the meeting to turn ugly, with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz pushing hard to invade Iraq, Colin Powell and I countering that we should go after bin Laden at this time.
At one of the breaks, President Bush pulled me aside and asked, “What am I missing here, Hugh?”“You’ve got it exactly right, Mr. President,” I told him. “I have neither seen nor heard anything from either the CIA or the FBI that indicates any linkage whatsoever to Iraq. Stand firm, because it will destroy us in the eyes of the Arab World if we go after Iraq under the guise of Saddam somehow being tied to this when the facts show otherwise. What you’ll have is the extremists and the fundamentalists painting it as the Americans are going after their Arab brothers just because they want to.”
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Earlier both Colin and I had reiterated that there was not one shred of evidence that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attack — it had all the earmarks of bin Laden, but no link whatsoever to Saddam. By the time I was finished stating my case, the President seemed to have made his decision.
“We’re going to get that guy [Saddam], but we’re going to get him at a time and place of our own choosing,” he said, nailing the lid on any further discussions about Iraq for the moment.
The meeting reconvened, and the President went around the table for opinions, much as he had in the Cabinet Room.”General, what have you come up with?” he asked when he came to me, referring to our plans to attack the al-Qaida in Afghanistan, as well as the Taliban. I presented three escalating options: The first entailed TLAM strikes, cruise missiles — that most likely, would hit a few vacant training camps and cause some very expensive craters in the ground. The second option involved the TLAMs supplemented with manned bomber attacks on additional targets — an escalation from the first option, but still, most likely, not of the intensity we were after at this point.
Before I could get to option three, a voice from behind the SECDEF and me interrupted. It was Wolfowitz again. “But we really need to think broader than that right now; that’s not big enough.We’ve got to make sure we go ahead and get Saddam out at the same time — it’s a perfect opportunity.”
The President became irate. “How many times do I have to tell you, we are not going after Iraq right this minute, we’re going to go after the people we know did this to us. Do you understand me?” Colin and I just looked at each other and rolled our eyes.
So perhaps some further downgrading of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Cheney is needed – their hunger for Iraq is clearer in Shelton’s prose than I’ve encountered in a credible source. Yet, too, President Bush needs some more positive reassessment. At first, he acted Presidential in parrying the punches of the neocon cabal. At first. What happened? With President Bush’s memoirs due out on November 9th, will we learn more . . .?
Below is an interview of General Shelton by ABC’s Christiana Amanpour that has other revelations and biographical goodies:
