What Is Musharraf Up To?

So Pervez Musharraf claims that Dick Armitage told a Pakistani general that the US would bomb Pakistan back to the stone age if they didn't cooperate in the war on terror. Armitage now denies it, George Bush say if it happened it was Colin Powell's fault. My question is: why on earth is Musharraf disclosing this? As the story linked above notes, it hurts him badly on the domestic front. It is impossible for him to claim to be helping the US on a principled basis now. And while capitulating to US threats might have been a wise policy choice it is politically indefensible. The Islamic extremists in Pakistan have already tried to assassinate Musharraf (more than once). It is hard to imagine him wanting to pour more fuel on that fire.

I can only come up with two possible explanations: a) he is selling his book or b) looking for an excuse to resist cooperating with the US. Certainly he has succeeded at moving copies of his book with this claim, but I don't buy that as a real explanation. I look at this in conjunction with the news clip I posted a couple weeks ago about Pakistan bailing on the hunt for Al Qaeda as possibly representing a major repositioning for Musharraf and Pakistan. When the US comes and starts leaning on Musharraf to buck up and kill some terrorists he will now respond, "well hey guys, I'd love to cooperate, but I'm so unpopular now (and so by the way are you Americans) because of this 'stone age' thing I really can't afford to help. But have fun storming the castle!" Maybe that's not it, but there's something going on here. Musharraf is not so stupid as to not realize political price he would pay for going public on this. Somewhere there's a payoff for him...

Had Enough

Let the speculation end, Colin Powell is out. Looks like damned near the entire cabinet is being replaced.

A CIA Analyst Punches Back

After the release of the damning report on prewar intelligence by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, it seems at least one CIA agent is not comfortable with intelligence analysts taking all the blame. The Washington Post reports that an analyst has revealed to them that he tried to warn his superiors that much of the content that Colin Powell was about to report the UN Security Counsel was of dubious quality. He mentioned that one major intel source nicknamed "Curve Ball" had supplied data that was especially unreliable. He said his superior responded that "This war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say, and . . . the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about". This seems to be a contradiction to the report's contention that pressure from the administration did not affect the output of the CIA's assessments. In a discussion between DIA official Bruce Hardcastle and the Post mentioned in the article, Hardcastle says that he was not pressured to change his assessments on Iraq, but adds that "Generally it was understood how receptive [Defense policy officials] were to our assessments and what kind of assessments they would not be receptive to." That sounds like pressure to me...

Re: Colin Powell Questions Case For War

The Washington Post conducted the interview with Secretary Powell and provides these excerpts.

Colin Powell Questions Case For War

Is it too late for Colin Powell to grow a backbone? Let's see, in the last few weeks he has said a) Hussein's regime had no provable connection to Al-Qaeda, b) there are no weapons of mass destruction, c) that the absence of WMD's "changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get." Rarely is stating the obvious such a mark of high character as it is when you work in the Bush administration.

Article: It's Official

Powell will not stick around for a second term. No great shock there... At least Gingrich will be happy.

Discussion: Congressional Committee Records
Discussion: Unified Front Crumbling?

I was able to catch part of the hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with Paul Wolfowitz regarding reources for the reconstruction of Iraq. Although there is some sentiment against Real, I would highly recommend viewing the Senators' questioning of Wolfowitz and others in the C-span video. These discussions are not on the Senate Foreign Relations website because they are not scripted, yet I found them very informative and interesting. Note that the questioning starts at 1:16:00 if you watch the video clip.

One very common them was evident from the questioning. Both Republican and Democratic Senators were very concerned that Congress and the American people are not being informed of the sacrifice needed for reconstruction of Iraq. The senators were very upset that there was not even a request for a conservative estimate of reconstruction costs in the 2004 budget which are likely to be substantial. In addition to financial sacrifice, there were complaints that the duration of stay of our troops and the sacrifice of American soldiers are not being adequately explained. It seems the senators are very concerned about losing the support of the American public over time, and this could prove disastrous for an effort that we must be tied into for the long haul. This was some of the most intense grilling of these individuals (especially Wolfowitz) that I have seen to date and suggests to me that Congress has been left largely out of the loop in the Iraq process.

I thought you guys might also be particularly interested in the comments of two senators. The first is from D-Chris Dodd from Connecticut. He pointed out that the outlined chain of command for Iraq proceeds from the President to the Sec of Def to Bremer. Notably absent, he pointed out, was the Sec of State. I found this partcularly interesting in light of Joe's comments of the Bush/neo-con attacks on Powell. It seems that the Sec of State has been left out of the command and decision making structure for Iraq with the exception of an advisory role to the President on the NSC. Dodd was quite concerned because the military is essentially running the show, and they are not likely the best qualified to address issues that would be better handled by the State Dept. While this may be a more efficient command structure, it leaves out the expertise of the State Dept. I also wonder if it isn't due to the likelihood of Powell stepping down after Bush's current term.

The second comes from our beloved Russ Feingold. Wolfowitz claimed in his statement that "In fact, the battle to secure the peace in Iraq is now the central battle in the global war on terror". Feingold was very concerned that we are being misled and that American resources are not effectively being used in the "war on terrorism". Given the questionable links between Iraq and terrorist organizations, Feingold argued that our efforts should be focused heavily on areas such as Afghanistan and eastern Africa where the majority of the terrorists are.

Very interesting stuff... there are definitely some pissed off Senators out there.

Discussion: Unified Front Crumbling?

Adding fuel to my theories that the tight coupling between the political elements (ie Rove and his people) and the neo-con power center of the adminstration are not on the best speaking terms has been the recent incident over the market on terror. The program, as I understand it, had some merit, and I don't doubt that Rove could have sold it. But it is obvious that nobody with an ounce of political cluefulness was aware of its existence. It is unclear how aware the upper tier of the neo-con leadership was of the program, but it was proposed by John Poindexter, one of their favorite sons, and as a part of the TIA, one of their pet projects.

The basic idea was sound. DARPA was to hand-pick 1000 people to participate, presumably middle-east experts, terror experts, and other knowledgeable folk, and allow them to put their money where their mouth was. It seems a useful manner in which to sort out the wide variety of opinions on issues of great importance to the country, providing DARPA with a constantly updated reading not only on the opinions of the community of experts, but also on their confidence level in those opinions.

While the idea was fine, the political handling of it was a complete disaster. It was kept secret from everyone, including Congress, and, by all reports, most of the administration, despite the fact that it required the participation of 1000 people not directly affiliated with the government. They had to know that someone would leak the existence of the project. By allowing this to happen without first publicly spinning the program themselves they allowed their political enemies to brand it however they wished. Which they did quite effectively. Once this hit the public the goals and mechanisms of the system were completely lost and most people were left scratching their heads over the absurdity of the idea. In the /. discussion of it most people seemed to think it was a honeypot, designed to lure terrorists into trying to make money from their attacks. They thought DARPA would watch for sudden influxes of money into particular attack predictions and use this to first thwart the attack, then track down where the money came from and apprehend the terrorists.

If someone who were politically shrewd (ie Rove) had been aware of the program the results could have been quite different. First thing would be to remove the direct use of money on the market. Allocate some bogus bucks to the participants then come up with a system to reward the winning players with prestige or government grants for their research. The idea of people directly profiting from disastrous attacks on the US is simply too perverse to survive public scrutiny. The next thing would be to present it to the public on their own terms, spinning it not as a "market on terror", but as an interactive system by which to mine the talent and expertise of the American academics and intellectuals. It could even serve as an answer to the common criticism of the administration as being too closetted and isolated. Certainly there would still be those who would have tried to brand it as a market on terror, but the administration has shown a great talent for branding, and I think their sales pitch would have stuck.

In any case this serves to reinforce my perception that the neo-cons have tired of sharing power. As I stated previously, the presence of Rove and Powell and the non-neoconservative elements of the administration has served a vital role in allowing the neo-cons to do what they want. But the neo-cons have always, even from their modern inception during Bush I's term, fought against the reins of political pragmatism. In 1992, while serving in the George HW Bush administration Paul Wolfowitz drafted a Defense Planning Guildance document, which later served as the core of PNAC's mission. It was quickly quashed by the administration for being too radical, although not before causing a bit on an international incident. They made a marriage of necessity in order to sweep into power with George Bush in 2001, sharing power with more moderate and politically-minded elements of the administration, and for some time have operated within those confines. But with egos inflated from the perceived victories in the war on terror, it seems as if they are fighting those constraints as they try to run Powell out of office and launch their own programs without so much as a by-your-leave from the rest of the administration. If a divide is growing between these two factions, with the neo-cons holding this upper hand, this may offer the best chance yet to see Bush defeated in 2004. It has been those outside the neo-con camp who have done a masterful job of spinning and selling the eminently questional policies the neo-cons have implemented. If they abandon these allies they may find themselves in a heap of trouble, as they did in this instance.

Again, it's hard to figure any of this to any reasonable degree of certainty due to the intense secrecy maintained by the administration, but in any case it's fun to speculate..

Article: Who Gave You Another 15 Minutes?

Joe, I have to admit that I am suprised that you find the Gingrich article in FP sensational and non-academic. While I don't agree with all of Gingrich's arguments, I do think he has valid arguments. While you seem to imply that the article is an attack on the Rogue Powell rather than the rogue State Department, Gingrich's arguments raise bigger questions about the role of the State Dept. Should the State Dept be exactly in line with the President's policies in an obligatory sense? If so, is this truly the best path to a successful international diplomacy? If you see Gingrich's article as an attack on Powell, then perhaps he is right. If you were running the country, would you want your appointees countering your policies and beliefs openly in the press? Wouldn't this undermine the ability of a president to instill confidence in the public and carry out policy? While discussion is clearly important, open contradiction is likely to be counterproductive. The exception to this, of course, is when no discussion occurs in the first place (as with Johnson and the Joint Chiefs prior to Vietnam).

I think you also missed the real criticism of the article, which Gingrich himself alludes to. He quotes a Los Angeles Times article about diplomats who "said they are profoundly worried about what they describe as the administration's arrogance or indifference to world public opinion, which they fear has wiped out, in less than two years, decades of effort to build goodwill toward the United States". Gingrich quickly dismisses this as simply being out of line with the Bush vision. However, this is another (more) plausible argument for the failure of the State Dept. In short, I contend that this administration's policies are so out of step with world views and processes that no restructuring of the State Dept would have solved our "image problem". Gingrich's failure to seriously address this point is a major limitation of the article. On the other hand, why hasn't the State Dept restructured according to the suggestions of the US Commission on National Security?

Article: Who Gave You Another 15 Minutes?

I'm sure you Foreign Policy Mag subscribers have already seen this article by Newt Gingrich blaming the State Department for making people hate the US. Apparently they haven't been cruel and arrogant enough for his tastes. Now that I've stopped laughing and wiped the tears from my eyes enough to actually read the article, I really have to say that it's one of the most pathetic pieces of literature I've ever read. I'm a bit disappointed that FP would this run as cover story. It's clearly intended (as have been all of Gingrich's recent statements) to be in the Rush Limbaugh/Bill O'Reilly vein of inflamatory, far-right pedagoguery. FP Mag usually tries to keep things on a more academic level... Apparently they're not immune from senationalism. That aside, I find these Gingrich statements to be most interesting in regards to the insight they give to the conservative machine. I recall that when he came out and blasted the State Dept a month or two ago it was widely rumored that he was doing so with the blessing or even at the request of many of the neo-cons in the administration.

I think it will be very interesting to hear, years from now, if ever, the inside story of what went on in this administration. There clearly have to be some different factions there, but I can never figure out exactly how they interact and who's really driving. I strongly suspect that the Powell State Department was one of the Rove's more clever moves. It's clear they never meant to let him have any real power in things. Right from the start, just a few months into the term, they very publicly humiliated him on the CO2 issue, and never let up from there. His presence has been useful from a political perspective, to take heat from the rest of the administration and have a moderate multilateral face that they can use when it suits their purposes. He has clashed frequently with the neo-cons, but they always win. It seems strange to me that they would use Gingrich to attack him so strongly and to lobby for a neo-con housecleaning of the State Department. Powell is a useful tool for their cause. I think Rove sees this, and apparently he has convinced the President as well. Given the dedication of the administration to presenting a unified front, is surprises me that they haven't been able to get the neo-con club on board with this. There has to be some sort of internal conflict in progress, but it's hard to figure exactly who the sides are or what they hope to accomplish.