All Mosquitos, No Swamp !!!!!!!!!!!!!

All Mosquitos, No Swamp
Ray McGovern
December 03, 2004


On November 24, the New York Times revealed that a Defense Science Board
panel directly contradicted President Bush's explanation of the motivation
driving Al Qaeda. They don't hate our freedoms, they hate our policies. At a
Capitol Hill briefing yesterday, Ray McGovern witnessed that, far from
opening the floodgates of reality, terrorism experts—and the NYT—are
avoiding the real message in the findings, putting us all at risk.

Ray McGovern’s duties during his 27-year career at CIA included daily
briefings of then-Vice President Bush and the most senior national security
advisers to President Ronald Reagan. McGovern is on the Steering Group of
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Yesterday’s conference on “Al Qaeda 2.0: Transnational Terrorism After
9/11,” sponsored by the New America Foundation and the New York University
Center on Law & Security, was a gift to those wanting an update on informed
opinion on the subject. The event also proved to be as highly instructive
for what was not addressed as for the issues that were. The elephants known
to be present remained largely unnoticed.

The cavernous Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building was full to
the gunnels. Panel after panel of distinguished presenters from near and
far, from right to left—including authors Peter Bergen, Michael Scheuer,
Jessica Stern and Col. Pat Lang— exuded and freely shared their expertise.
But there was myopia as well.

The mosquitoes of terrorism were dissected and examined as carefully as
biology students once did drosophila, but typing the generic DNA of
terrorism proved more elusive. Worse, no attention was given to the swamp
in which terrorists breed. Were it not for a few impertinent questions from
the audience, the swamps might have avoided attention altogether.

The first panel featured two experts from RAND both of whom touched—very
gingerly—on the need to drain the swamp. The first closed his remarks with
a 30-second observation that less attention might be given to kill/capture
metrics than to addressing the causes of terrorism and breaking the cycle of
terrorist recruitment.

The second speaker from RAND, referring to that organization’s numerous
studies on influencing public opinion, closed his remarks with this: “When
the message coheres with the context in which the message is transmitted, it
works.” Sending out the right message during the Cold War was easier, he
said, because the context (the United States being the only alternative to
the USSR) was very clear. On terrorism, he added, we need to ponder “the
mismatch between context and message.”

What About The Elephants?

Then came a rude question from the audience: Is it not striking that even
in an academic-type setting like this, elephants must remain invisible? Is
it not ironic, that the U.S. Defense Science Board, in an unclassified study
on “Strategic Communication,” completed on September 23 but kept under
wraps until after the November 2 election, let the pachyderms out of the
bag? Directly contradicting the president, a panel of the Defense Science
Board gave voice to what virtually all in that ornate Senate Caucus Room
knew, but were afraid to say. It named the elephants.

“Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The
overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided
support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the
longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as
tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf
States.

"Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to
Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy...

"...Nor can the most carefully crafted messages, themes, and words persuade
when the messenger lacks credibility.”

U.S. Support For Israel “Immutable”

Another questioner pressed the mismatch-context-message expert from RAND:
“What can we do to change the context?” In answer he acknowledged that the
United States has a bad reputation, but he insisted that this is
“unavoidable” because our support for Israel, for example, is “immutable.”
The United States is also connected to what many Muslims consider “apostate”
regimes, but it is difficult to escape what binds us, because we need their
“tactical support.” (Read: oil; military bases; intelligence.)

There was some wincing and squirming in the audience, but in the end it was
left to Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist, former CIA case officer, and
author of the book Understanding Terror Networks (published earlier this
year) to state the obvious on Israel and Iraq. Putting it even more bluntly
that the Defense Science Board panel, he asserted:

“We are seen as a hypocritical bully in the Middle East and we have to
stop!”

Now why should that be so hard to say, I asked myself. And I was reminded
of a frequent, unnerving experience I had while on the lecture circuit in
recent months. Almost invariably, someone in the audience would approach me
after the talk and congratulate me on my “courage” in naming Israel as a
factor in discussing the war in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism.
But since when did it take uncommon courage to state simply, without fear or
favor, the conclusions of one’s analysis? Since when did it become an
exceptional thing to tell it like it is?

Taking The Heat On Israel

I thought of the debate I had on Iraq with arch-neoconservative and former
CIA Director James Woolsey, on PBS’ Charlie Rose Show on August 20, when I
broke the taboo on mentioning Israel and was immediately branded
“anti-Semitic” by Woolsey. Reflecting later on his accusation, it seemed
almost OK, since it was so blatantly ad hominem , and so transparent coming
from the self-described “anchor of the Presbyterian wing of JINSA (the
Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs).” A flood of e-mail reached
me from all over the country—again, congratulating me on my “courage.”

I still don’t fully understand. And that was my candid answer to the
question I dreaded, the one that so often came up during the Q and A
sessions following my talks: Why is it that the state of Israel has such
pervasive influence over our body politic? No one denied that it does; most
seemed genuinely puzzled as to why. My embarrassment at my inability to
answer the question is somewhat attenuated by the solace I take in the
thought that I am in good company.

Gen. Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser to President George H. W.
Bush, and now chair of his son's President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board, has been known to speak out on key issues when his patience is
exhausted. For example, remember how, before the attack on Iraq, he
described the evidence of ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda as “scant” when
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was calling it “bulletproof?” Well, it
sounds like he has again run out of patience. Scowcroft recently told the
Financial Times that George W. Bush is “mesmerized” by Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon. “Sharon just has him wrapped around his little
finger,” Scowcroft is quoted as saying. Scowcroft and I must have less to
lose than those working for RAND.

Surgery At The Times

The Times gives off unfortunate signs of being similarly mesmerized and/or
intimidated. This shows through quite often; I’ll adduce but two recent
examples: protecting bad policies and editing bin Laden.

To his credit, Thom Shanker of the Times broke the story on the findings of
the Defense Science Board panel on November 24. However, the report was
delivered to the Secretary of Defense on September 23—before the election.
Faulting America's pro-Israel policies would have hurt both presidential
candidates—but would have helped American national security.

Further, Shanker quoted the paragraph beginning with “Muslims do not ‘hate
our freedom’” (see above), but he or his editors deliberately cut out the
following sentence about what Muslims do object to; i.e., U.S. “one-sided
support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights,” and support for
tyrannical regimes. The Times did include the sentence that immediately
followed the omitted one. In other words, the offending middle sentence was
surgically removed from the middle of the paragraph.

Similarly creative editing showed through the Times’ reporting on Osama bin
Laden’s videotaped speech in late October. Almost six paragraphs of the
story made it onto page one, but the Times saw to it that the key point bin
Laden made at the beginning of his speech was relegated to paragraphs 23 to
25 at the very bottom of page nine. Buried there was bin Laden’s assertion
that the idea for 9/11 first germinated after “we witnessed the oppression
and tyranny of the American-Israeli coalition against our people in
Palestine and Lebanon.”

With that kind of support from the “newspaper of record,” and with familiar
national security faces, sans Colin Powell, in place for the president’s
second term, it is a safe bet we are in for the same misguided policies—only
more so. The president's circle of advisers now has an even shorter
diameter, and it is unlikely that Gen. Scowcroft’s protégé, Condoleezza
Rice, will seek his counsel as secretary of state any more than she did as
national security adviser.

No Surprise

On the afternoon of Feb. 5, 2003, after Secretary of State Colin Powell made
his embarrassingly memorable speech at the UN, my colleagues and I of
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) drafted and sent a
Memorandum for the president, which concluded with this observation:

“After watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be
well served if you widened the discussion beyond... the circle of those
advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and
from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be
catastrophic.”

With the circle now narrowed, those widely known as “the crazies” as
mid-level officials, when George H. W. Bush was in the White House, are now
even more firmly ensconced—and in charge of things like wars. Hold onto
your hats!