Smells Like Team Spirit



Bush's B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
By CHRIS FLOYD

The confession by the Bush Administration's chief arms investigator that
Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction before the war has sent a
thunderbolt of puzzlement through the pundits and politicians of the
Anglo-American elite. "How could the intelligence reports have been so
wrong?" they cry, wringing their hands in consternation. "Independent"
commissions filled with Establishment worthies are now in the offing, as

architects of the war -- and their media sycophants -- pledge to resolve
this disturbing mystery.

But of course there is no "mystery." Anyone with a passing acquaintance of
recent history knows exactly how, and why, the intelligence data

Iraq's non-existent WMD came to be used as a justification for military
aggression. Indeed, this history is so open, so transparent and so widely
available -- in news reports, unclassified government documents,

publications, etc. -- that a cynic might suspect that these
government-appointed "investigations" are actually designed to obscure the
already evident truth.

It began in 1976, when CIA Director George Bush established a new
intelligence analysis unit called "Team B." Championed by top White House
officials ***** Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the Bush unit was packed with
hardcore ideologues -- including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle -- bent

"proving" a predetermined conclusion: that regular CIA assessments of the
Soviet Union were "too soft," ignoring the "imminent threat" of Soviet
aggression and the Kremlin's ever-increasing political and economic might.
At every turn, the B-teamers cooked and distorted intelligence data to fit
their agenda. Scare stories were regularly leaked to credulous journalists
to whip up public fear; legislators were plied with "top-secret" briefings
to win Congressional support for massive increases in military spending.
During the Reagan-Bush years, the B-Teamers and their acolytes spread
throughout the corridors of power, where they launched covert operations

proxy wars around the world, always citing "credible evidence" of

threats" -- such as Ronald Reagan's famous warning that tiny Nicaragua,

besieged by a U.S.-backed terrorist army, could invade the sacred American
heartland of Texas "in a matter of hours."

As it turned out, even the "softest" CIA assessments vastly underestimated
the weakness and instability of the Soviet regime. Team B's wildly

perversions of reality were exposed as perhaps the most incompetent,
ignorant -- and costly -- intelligence failures in American history. For

addition to the lives and money wasted fighting phantom threats "to
America's very survival," the now thoroughly B-Teamed CIA armed and funded

horde of Islamic extremists in Afghanistan, schooling them in "asymmetric
warfare" and terrorist operations. No doubt the B-Teamer's ideologically
blinded "intelligence" told them that the Western-hating jihadists would
never turn this training against their American paymasters.

The end of the Soviet Union found Team B still entrenched in the White
House. In 1992, Bush, now president, directed Cheney, now Pentagon chief,
and his deputy, Wolfowitz, to draw up a plan for America's strategic

Despite the collapse of the Communist enemy, the plan called for -- what
else? -- massive increases in military spending and a more aggressive,
unilateral "pre-emptive" posture against perceived threats to American
interests, with "vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf Oil" listed

the first priority, as the NY Times reports. The objective, openly stated,
was American dominance over global economic and political development in

spheres.

The Cheney-Wolfowitz plan was then refined by the B-Teamers during the
Clinton interregnum. One of their groups, Project for the New American
Century, whose members included Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, published

manifesto in September 2000 that incorporated the 1992 plan and openly
called for the expansion of American military presence all over the

and into outer space as well -- "full spectrum dominance" for "U.S.
warfighters" and "economic interests." It specifically insisted on the
establishment of U.S military power in Iraq, a strategic need that
"transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." But PNAC warned,
openly, plainly, that this "revolutionary transformation" of American
society would probably not take place -- unless the American people were
"catalyzed" by a "new Pearl Harbor."

When George W. Bush took office, he restored Team B to glory and enshrined
PNAC's plan as the official national security strategy of the United

adding a new imperative to establish "the single sustainable model of
national success" -- Bush-Enron crony capitalism -- in every land. After

"new Pearl Harbor" of September 11, Rumsfeld created a new "Team B" at the
Pentagon: the Office of Special Plans, packed with hardline ideologues

on "proving" a predetermined conclusion: that regular CIA assessments of
Iraq were "too soft," ignoring the "imminent threat" of Saddam's

and his vast arsenal of WMD.

At every turn, the OSP cooked and distorted intelligence data to fit their
agenda. Scare stories were regularly leaked to credulous journalists to

up public fear; legislators were plied with "top-secret" briefings to win
Congressional support for the invasion. Rumor, hearsay, and forgeries were
"stovepiped" directly to the White House, bypassing professional analysts.
Anything that contradicted the Bush Regime's ideological delusions was
ruthlessly pruned away. Anything that flattered their desire for war -- no
matter how specious, how false -- was eagerly embraced.

So there's no mystery in the current situation. It's how "Team Bush" has
always operated. They pervert intelligence to suit their needs -- and

greeds. When they're proved wrong -- at a horrendous cost in blood and
money -- they never admit it, never apologize. They simply break out the
whitewash, blame someone else -- usually the very intelligence services
they've suborned -- and lumber on in their brutal quest for dominance:
ignorant, incompetent and untouchable to the end.


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