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Recent
Stories
April
15, 2003
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Robert
Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the
US Must Leave
Dr.
Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again
Robert
Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad
Col. Dan
Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions
Ali
Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/15
April
14, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush's War Without End
Uri Avnery
Gunboat Democracy: This is Only the Beginning
Wayne
Madsen
Americans: The New Mongols of the Mideast?
Shahid
Alam
Iqra: Iraq is Free
Hani
Shukrallah
Day of the Chicken Hawks
Terry
Jones
The Iraq Gravy Train
John
Chuckman
The Iraq War's Trashiest Piece of Propaganda
Patrick
Cockburn
US has a Lot to Answer For: Violence,
Misery and Poverty in Iraq
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/14
April
12 / 13, 2003
Carol
Lipton
Wag the Kennel: the Kenneth Joseph
Story
Wayne
Madsen
Meet the New Butcher of Baghdad: Maj.
Gen. Buford Blount III
John
Brown
"They Got It Down": the Toppling
of the Saddam Statue
Kathy and
Bill Christison
Final Thoughts from Palestine
William
Blum
Our Vulnerable Warmongers' Rush to Justify Devastation
Wallace
Gagne
Let the Stealing Begin
Ann
Harrison
Rosenthal Update: Judge Delays Ruling in Medical Pot Mistrial
Case
Henry Miller
What is the Greatest Treason?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Render Unto Cesar
Zeljko
Cipris
Mocking Militarism: On Ishikawa Jun's Song of Mars
Ishikawa
Jun
The Song of Mars
Jamey Hecht
Chairman of the Sandwich Board
Adam
Engel
Hell of a Town: Mayor Bloomberg and
the News
Poets'
Basement
Chang Yang-Hao, Adam Engel and Hammond Guthrie
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/12
April
11, 2003
Omar
Barghouti
From Saddam to Uncle Sam
Ron
Jacobs
Greed is Rewarded
David
Vest
The Corporate War on Iraq
Paul
de Rooij
Propaganda Stinkers: Fresh Samples from the Field
Anthony
Gancarski
Foreign Aid: Embezzlement as Public Policy
Mas'ood
Cajee
Franklin Graham: Spiritual Carpetbagger
Michael
Neumann
Now What?
Michael
Berry
The Neo-Cons Have a Dream
Stew Albert
Oh Freedom
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/11
Website
of the Day
About Those Dancing Crowds
April
10, 2003
Zoltan
Grossman
The Perils of Occupation: the Easier
the Victory, the Harder the Peace
Uri
Avnery
The Night After
Wayne Madsen
The Telltale Signs of Empire
David Krieger
Before You Become Too Flushed with Victory, Think of Ali Ismaeel
Abbas
Jeremy
Brecher
What Can the World Do Now That Tanks Prowl Baghdad?
Robert
Jensen
The Unseen War
Geoffrey
Neale
Ashcroft's War on the Constitution:
A Patriot Attack on America
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Last Tango in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
Rumors of War
Joseph
Heller
Nately's Old Man
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/10
Website
of the Day
The
Third Page
April
9, 2003
David
Lindorff
Secret Bechtel Docs Reveal: Yes,
the War Is About Oil
Doug
Lummis
Saving Private Lynch: Hollywood and
War
Susan
Davis
The New York Times and the Peace Movement
David Vest
Smoking Gun? You're Watching It
John
Chuckman
America's Sovereign Right to Do
as It Damn Well Pleases
Akiva
Eldar
Gary Bauer and AIPAC: an Unholy Alliance
with the Christian Right
Ray
Hanania
Suicide Bombers without the Suicide:
Racism, Hypocrisy and the War on Iraq
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/9
April
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Killing the Messengers: It Doesn't
Matter If It's Deliberate or Accidental
Richard
Lichtman
Dr. Phil in the Trenches
John
Brown
Why Uncle Ben Hasn't Sold Uncle Sam:
a Former Foreign Service Staffer on Bush's Policy Failures
Ben
Terrall
Report from the Oakland Docks: "The
Cops Had No Reason to Open Up on Them"
Jason Leopold
FERC and Wall Street: Conversations
May Have Violated Federal Law
Anthony
Gancarski
Conyers Heeds the Call on Perle
Linda Heard
Journalists Die, the Networks Lie, Iraqis Ask "Why?"
Ahmad
Faruqui
Wallowing in Hypocrisy
Wallace
Gagne
Baghdad Babble
Harry
Browne
Report from the Protests at the Bush/Blair
Summit
Larry Kearney
I Understand There's a Boy in
a Baghdad Hospital
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/8
M. Shahid
Alam
The Israelization of America
April
7, 2003
Todd
Chretien
Wooden Bullets & Grenades: Oakland
Cops Attack Peace Protesters and Dock Workers
David
N. Gibbs
Spying, Secrecy and the University:
The CIA is Back on Campus
Harry Browne
War and Peace Summit a Royal Farce
Gideon
Levy
America is Not a Role Model
Diane
Christian
A Scene from an Obscene War
Jules
Rabin
Remembering Deir Yassin
James Davis
Oddsmaking in Dublin: Will Bush
Shake Gerry's Hand?
Robert
Fisk
The Twisted Language of War
Patrick
Cockburn
Slaughter on the Road to Dibagah
John
Mackay
War and Art
Seth Sandronsky
Wars and the Color Line
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/7
April
5, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Iraqi Humanitarian Relief is
in Shambles
Anne
Gwynne
A Drowning in Salem
Uri
Avnery
Roadmap to Nowhere
Chris
Floyd
Hell for Leather: Bombs, Bullets, Bibles and Bush
William
Cook
Would You Have Sent Your Son (or Daughter) Off to War If...
Gila
Svirsky
A Busy Day for Bulldozers
Mike Ferner
Back from Baghdad: What Next for the Peace Movement?
Joanne
Mariner
Civilian Deaths and Official Apologies
John Stanton
Bush Takes His Killing Orders
from the Lord
Romi
Mahajan
Learning to Count the Dead
Aluf Benn
After Iraq, US Vows to Deal with
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Mary
Ellen Peterson
Gay Marine Refuses to Fight
William
MacDougall
Country Music and the Crimes of Patriotism
Ron
Jacobs
War and Occupation
Bernie
Pattison
Aborigines and the Different God
Mark
Engler
Iraq War as Arms Expo
Adam Engel
Li'l Box of Love: a Novelini
Poets'
Basement
Tripp, Albert, Katz
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Flesh and Its Discontents: the Paintings of Lucian Freud
Norman
Madarasz
Canada and the War
April
4, 2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame
John
Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?
David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support
or Treason?
Adam
Federman
The Absence of War
Vijay
Prashad
There Are No More Arguments
Tom
Stephens
The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
Show
Hammond
Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/04
April
3, 2003
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
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April 17,
2003
Zalmay Khalilzad
The Neocon's Bagman to Baghdad
by
ISSAM NASHASHIBI
In addition to "weakening, containing and
even rolling back Syria," Israel should "focus on removing
Saddam Hussain from power in Iraq-an important Israeli objective
in its own right."
These recommendations were contained
in a 1996 paper prepared for then-incoming Israeli Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and
Political Studies. The paper's authors included the current Under
Secretary for Defense Policy and chair of the Defense Policy
Board, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, respectively.
Perle whet his neo-conservative whistle
under Albert Wohlstetter, a University of Chicago mathematician
who was key in drawing up the Pentagon's strategic and nuclear
blueprints during the Cold War. That same Wholstetter mentored
many of the Bush administration's reigning neo-conservatives,
including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the
most pro-Zionist of the so-called chickenhawks, and Zalmay Khalilzad.
Who? "Precisely," said a former
associate of the 52-year-old Afghani American and Pashtun native
who was appointed last December as the president's "special
envoy and ambassador at large for free Iraqis." "Part
of his genius is that the people who are supposed to know about
him, don't even know he exists." According to the White
House announcement, Khalilzad "will serve as the focal point
for contacts and coordination among free Iraqis for the U.S.
government and for preparations for a post-Saddam Iraq."
Khalilzad's qualifications include not only advocating Saddam's
ouster since the 1980s, but also his proven prowess in orchestrating
the installation of the Hamid Karzai regime in Afghanistan after
being appointed special U.S. envoy to Afghanistan in December
2001.
Neo-con Credentials
More importantly, perhaps, Khalilzad's
impeccable credentials make him a natural for membership in the
neo-conservatives cabal which is the driving force behind Washington's
Iraq policy. "He has a narrow of view of the Middle East
and South Asia," his former associate stressed. "[Zalmay
thinks of] security to the exclusion of everything else. He tends
to look at military solutions as the first, not the last policy
option."
Such views may not have been inculcated
during his education at the elitist Ghazi Lycée school
in Kabul, where his father worked as an adviser to the Afghan
king, Zahir Shah, or at the American University of Beirut in
the early 1970s.
His hawkish views most likely were formed
at the University of Chicago, where he studied under Wholstetter.
After obtaining his Ph.D. in 1979, Khalilzad taught political
science at Columbia University, where he worked with Zbigniew
Brezezinsky, the Carter administration's architect of the policy
supporting the Afghan mujahideen resistance to the Soviet Union's
invasion of Afghanistan. In 1984 Khalilzad accepted a one-year
fellowship to join the State Department, where he worked for
Paul Wolfowitz, then the director of Policy Planning. His fellowship
turned into a full-time position that extended through the Reagan
administration.
In the first Bush administration, Khalilzad
became assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for policy,
again working for Paul Wolfowitz, who by then was the Number
3 man at the Pentagon. In that capacity, Khalilzad rejoined the
coterie of policymakers who had successfully pressed the Reagan
administration to provide arms to the Afghan mujahideen. During
the 1991 Gulf war, Khalilzad caught the notice of then-Defense
Secretary Dick Cheney, who stayed in close touch with him throughout
the Clinton administration.
During the Clinton years, Khalilzad served
as senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, a California
think tank that performs policy studies for the U.S. military.
At RAND, he was the director of strategy and doctrines for Project
Air Force and founder of the Center for Greater Middle East Studies.
Khalilzad also signed the 1998 open letter
calling on the Clinton administration to adopt a "comprehensive
political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam and
his regime." The letter's other signers include a litany
of Bush administration hawks on Iraq, including Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, and four of his top Pentagon deputies-Wolfowitz,
Douglas Feith, Dov Zakheim and Peter Rodman-as well as the State
Department's undersecretary for arms control, John Bolton, and
Undersecretary for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky. Another signatory
to the 1998 letter was the person who, last December, replaced
Khalilzad at the National Security Council as Advisor on Middle
East Affairs: Elliot Abrams.
The letter was issued by the Committee
for Peace and Security in the Gulf, a 1991 spin-off of the Project
for a New American Century, a group consisting mainly of neo-conservative
Zionist Jews and Christians whose public recommendation for fighting
the "war on terrorism" and alignment with Israeli Prime
Minster Ariel Sharon have been an accurate predictor to the current
administration's policies.
That confirms the observation of a former
Khalilzad associate: "He, Wolfowitz and Perle tend to reinforce
each other. "
Oil Credentials
Khalilzad's oil credentials are no less
impeccable than those of President Bush, Vice President Cheney,
or National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who served on
Chevron's board of directors. Like current Deputy Secretary of
State Richard Armitage, Khalilzad was a paid adviser to UNOCAL
Corp., a U.S. oil company that was competing for Taliban approval
to construct a $2 billion gas and oil pipeline across Afghanistan.
While Khalilzad worked at the for-profit Cambridge Energy Associates,
he conducted a risk analysis for UNOCAL. By 1997 he was a participant
in UNOCAL's negotiations with the Taliban. Moreover, as paid
lobbyist for UNOCAL, he urged the Clinton administration to take
a softer line on the Taliban.
Khalilzad's attitude to the Taliban seems
to have correlated well with UNOCAL's efforts to build the pipeline.
At the time, he defended the Taliban in an opinion published
in The Washington Post. "The Taliban do not practice the
anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran," he
wrote in 1996. "We should...be willing to offer recognition
and humanitarian assistance and to promote international economic
reconstruction. It is time for the United States to re-engage,"
he concluded.
In 1998, however, when the Taliban were
implicated in the attack on the U.S. embassies in East Africa,
UNOCAL ended its contact with the Taliban, and Khalilzad changed
his tune. In the Winter 2000 issue of the Washington Quarterly,
he co-authored "Afghanistan:
Consolidation of a Rogue State". In that article he
proposed the following six-step strategy for transforming Afghanistan:
1) Change the balance of power by supporting
anti-Taliban forces;
2) Oppose the Taliban ideology by strengthening
Voice of America broadcasts;
3) Press Pakistan to withdraw its support
for the Taliban;
4) Aid the victims of the Taliban to
bolster their position;
5) Support moderate Afghanis through
funding those who are anti-Taliban in their diaspora;
and 6) Elevate the importance of Afghanistan
at home by raising the profile of the conflict with the Taliban
in the U.S.-a strategy that has materialized into the administration's
post-9/11 policy.
The Cheney Connection
His connection with Dick Cheney during
the Clinton years was influential in Khalilzad's being selected
to head George W. Bush's transition team for the Pentagon. Significantly,
however, he was not appointed to a sub-cabinet position-that
would have required Senate confirmation and might have engendered
uncomfortable questions for the administration. Khalilzad avoided
embarrassing question about his UNOCAL connections and his flip-flopping
views on the Taliban when he was appointed to the National Security
Council, which does not require confirmation. At Cheney's urging,
President Bush in May 2001 appointed Khalilzad as a special assistant
to the president and senior director for the Persian Gulf and
Southwest Asia, reporting to Condoleezza Rice.
Like the Seldom-seen Kid in Damon Runyan's
tales of 1920s Chicago mobsters, Khalilzad has worked in relative
obscurity as the president's special envoy to Afghanistan and
now to the Iraqi opposition.
Most recently, he shared the podium with
former Israeli Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz at last October's conference
of the pro-Israel think tank, the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy. There Khalilzad declared that he hoped for a post-Saddam
"broad-based and representative government that would renounce
terror, give all religions and ethnic groups a voice and have
no weapons of mass destruction and provides an example for peace.
"We will not enter Iraq as conquerors,"
he added, but as "liberators."
His many critics point out, however,
that Khalilzad has been wrong as often as he has been right-going
back to the days when he advocated arming the same Afghani groups
that later spawned the Taliban. "If he was in private business
rather than government," said Anatol Lieven, an analyst
with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace in Washington, "he
would have been sacked long ago."
Khalilzad's list of critics most recently
included the same exiled Iraqi leadership whom he has pledged
to help topple the Saddam Hussain regime. The London-based opposition
leaders objected to his efforts to reach out to Adnan Pachachi,
a strongly Arab nationalist octogenarian who once served as foreign
minister and Iraq's ambassador to the U.N.-and who supported
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
Issam M Nashashibi, a frequent writer on Arab issues, is a US-Based
Director of Deir Yassin
Remembered. This article originally appeared in Washington
Report On Middle East Affairs. He can be reached at inashashibi@hotmail.com
Today's
Features
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Robert
Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the
US Must Leave
Dr.
Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again
Robert
Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad
Col. Dan
Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions
Ali
Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/15
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