Zgram - 6/21/2004 - "The Neo-Cons have had their day"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

June 21, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

The title says it all:

[START]

"The Neo-Cons Have Had Their Day
Now It's Time for a Clean Sweep!"

  {General Joseph P. Hoar (USMC-ret.), a four-star general, was 
Commander in Chief, U.S. Central Command (1991-94),  commanding the 
U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf after the 1991 war.   He also served 
in the Vietnam War, as a battalion and brigade advisor with the 
Vietnamese Marines.  He was interviewed by Jeffrey Steinberg [of the 
Executive Intelligence Review] on May 6, 2004.}

  EIR   You were one of the people who had been critical before the 
outbreak of fighting, over whether or not the situation warranted 
going to war. I believe you also had some rather accurate warnings 
about what might happen, as the war unfolded, especially after the 
hot phase. What's your thinking on these issues now, in hindsight, as 
we're over a year past the formal fighting phase?

  HOAR   There's small comfort in realizing that perhaps you were 
closer to reality than the elected and appointed figures in the 
civilian government. Those of us that have had some experience in the 
region over the years, and don't necessarily have ulterior 
motivations, particularly people that know very much about Iraq--and 
I don't necessarily put myself in that category; specifically, I know 
a fair amount about the political-military situation in the region, 
but know enough about Iraq to know that any military operation and 
any subsequent reconstruction efforts, to include the interjection of 
democracy, were going to be extremely difficult, and perhaps 
impossible.

  But, my major concern, Jeff, really was, that while I was in favor 
of regime change, I was not in favor of it a year and a half or two 
years ago, and certainly not these means. And the reason, of course, 
was the much higher priorities: the protection of the United States 
through the development of the Homeland Securities activities; the 
completion, successfully, of the Afghanistan campaign; and the 
destruction of al-Qaeda; all seem to me to be much higher priorities 
than going after Iraq. And you know the arguments as well as I do: 
the weapons of mass destruction, the threat to the United States, the 
connection between al-Qaeda, and then finally, the reason was 
indicated that this was a rogue regime, that punished its citizens, 
and its human rights record was abysmal and so forth. We all know 
that story. The fact remains, that this would have been a very 
difficult undertaking under the best of circumstances, and 
unfortunately, with the exception of the Phase I military operation, 
which terminated essentially with the end of organized resistance 
over a year ago, the rest of it has been a disaster.

  EIR    I was at an event, where both Gen. [Anthony] Zinni 
[USMC-ret.] and Chas Freeman, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, 
spoke, and this was about eight months before the outbreak of 
fighting, in March 2003, and they both basically thought that the 
real troubles would begin after the ``hot phase'' of combat, when 
American forces would be there as an occupying force. And they 
rejected the neo-con and Cheney thesis, that this would be a cakewalk 
and we'd be greeted as liberators.

  What was your sense of the neo-con vision of what was doing to happen in Iraq?

  Hoar    Well I think that there were two problems: The first one was 
that they created a set of circumstances that didn't exist on the 
ground, and they were aided and abetted in this process by Ahmed 
Chalabi, who, to this day, is still on the U.S. government payroll. 
And Chalabi is a fraud. He was in the early 1990s, when I first came 
across him. Tony Zinni has spoken out against him, and got in a lot 
of trouble with [Sen.] Trent Lott [R-Miss.], for fighting to prevent 
the Congress from giving Chalabi's Iraqi Congress $94 million a few 
years ago.  Chalabi very quickly realized that the neo-cons wanted to 
hear certain things, and he obliged them, by giving them information, 
including planting erroneous intelligence. All of the stories, from 
dancing in the streets, to the locations of weapons of mass 
destruction, were all fabrications. And the people in the government 
bought into this, and there's some evidence that they even cooked the 
books, with respect to intelligence information, so that they could 
cherry-pick unrefined information that had come to the United States, 
through intelligence sources, in order to make the case.

  The second piece, of course, is that once they had made the case--if 
erroneously--to invade Iraq, they did an unbelievably poor job in 
planning for the reconstruction of the country. And this is evidenced 
by the fact, that a year after that phase of the operation began, 
that services, jobs, and security, are still woefully lacking in the 
country as a whole, and that we have done something that virtually no 
ruler of Iraq has been able to accomplish, in the past: and that's to 
unite Sunnis and Shi'as in a common cause, against an external enemy; 
namely, the United States. 

  EIR     How do you assess the present situation on the ground? Word 
came back a few hours ago, that there's fairly heavy bombing and 
fighting in Karbala and Najaf, in addition to the situation up north, 
in the Fallujah area. How serious do you consider the situation on 
the ground, in terms of the building resistance against this U.S. 
occupation?

  Hoar    Well, I think, that going back to the beginning of the 
reconstruction phase, all activities, once organized resistance was 
defeated a year ago, should have been turned over to political 
people, under the supervision of the Department of State. Because all 
activities going forward are, in fact, political activities. The 
military's responsibility is to provide security, and the exercise of 
force, in this circumstance, is much more useful when it's threatened 
than when it's actually used. And we find again and again, 
particularly in counterinsurgency operations, that when force is used 
amid an uncommitted, or generally hostile population, that the 
perpetrator of the force continues to lose political support.

  And this, after all, is what this campaign, this current campaign, 
should be all about: Is winning the willing support of Iraqi citizens 
for the U.S. program going forward? And, by conducting large-scale 
operations in key cities, like Najaf and Karbala, we risk the popular 
support, or even grudging support of the Shi'a population, which we 
badly need, in order to bring about any successful transfer of power 
and movement toward democracy.

   EIR   It seems that there are widely different approaches being 
taken in different parts of the country, and even disagreements on 
implementation. I'm referring to Gen. [James] Conway's decision to 
attempt to bring stability to Fallujah by putting together a new 
Iraqi military force in the city, to take up the primary security 
responsibilities. It seemed as if, after he had taken that move, 
which seemed to be a pretty smart move in my view, there was a lot of 
flak from back in the Pentagon civilian bureaucracy back in 
Washington, from [Paul] Wolfowitz and [Douglas] Feith and people like 
that. What's your assessment of what General Conway was doing up 
there, in Fallujah?

   Hoar      Well, I have said it several times, and at least a couple 
of times publicly: Paul Wolfowitz is a very bright guy, but he 
doesn't know anything about war-fighting, and I suspect he knows less 
about counterinsurgency operations; and that Jim Conway has done 
exactly the right thing.

   The attempt is to pacify Fallujah. If we get into the business of 
trying to conduct punitive operations against people in Fallujah, 
without specific actionable intelligence about who was responsible 
for the killing and the atrocities against the four civilian 
contractors, we're going to ultimately lose out.

  Fallujah is a tribal city. It was a problem for Saddam Hussein. It 
has been a problem for virtually every government that has ruled 
Iraq, with the exception of a period prior to Saddam Hussein's rule; 
there was a military ruler who came from Fallujah. The solution to 
Fallaujah has to be, to work through the tribal leaders in that city 
and that area, and that includes security, and ultimately to gain 
intelligence about the people that are in that city that are a 
problem.

  The difficulty, of course, is that there is a larger disagreement 
within the U.S. military environment, and it extends to the uniformed 
services. The disagreement on how to conduct counterinsurgency 
operations, between the Army and the Marine Corps, goes back to 
Vietnam. When, in Vietnam, the Army's view was to meet and destroy 
main force Vietnamese units out in the hinterland. And the Marines' 
view, was to conduct counterinsurgency operations, to overcome the 
Vietcong infrastructure in the more populated areas. And, it seems to 
me, that these two divergent mind-sets have perpetuated themselves 
into Iraq. There is evidence that the U.S. Army continues to favor 
major operations, although I think a major diversion from that point 
of view was the 101st Air Mobile Division, which conducted very 
successful counterinsurgency operations in their area of 
responsibility, before rotating back to the States. But, other 
divisions, for the most part, favored large military operations, as 
well.

  As I said earlier, these kinds of operations tend to alienate a 
population, and most especially those people that might have had 
positive attitudes towards the U.S. occupation, or at least were 
neutral in their views.

    EIR     There's another dimension to what's going on now in Iraq, 
that I think is a rather new phenomenon in American experience, and 
that's the significant role of private contractors, both fulfilling 
logistical-type functions, and also a large number of security 
functions. The original idea of this outsourcing and privatization, 
as far as I know, emerged during the period when Vice President 
Cheney was Secretary of Defense, when he commissioned the original 
Halliburton study of which functions could be outsourced. What's your 
evaluation of this added factor of private contractors, including 
private security, quasi-mercenary elements on the ground, there, in 
Iraq?

  Hoar    Well, I think, as a concept, the idea really goes back to 
the Vietnam War, where there were contractors that deployed with Air 
Force, Navy, and Marine aviation units, in order to help service the 
aircraft. And to my knowledge this was the first time that major 
combat operations were undertaken with civilians working under 
contract to directly assist the military in performing their 
functions.

  Additionally, there was a great deal of construction work that was 
done in Vietnam, by, I believe, American construction companies, but 
I'm not sure of that. Cam Ranh Bay was an example of the large port 
that was built in central Vietnam.

  So, the concept predates Mr. Cheney's time as the Secretary of the 
Defense. Further, in the 1970s, the United States Army reorganized, 
to make sure--as I understand it--that the U.S. Army would never go 
to war, again, without activating the Reserves. You'll recall that in 
Vietnam, the Reserves were never called up, and the United States 
Army had a well-balanced force, in which virtually everybody that 
served was in an active-duty unit.

  The change that took place in the '70s took many combat support 
activities--for example, medical hospitals, stevedore battalions that 
would open ports--in fact, all the day-to-day requirements for 
logistic throughput in a combat zone, from ships to ports, to trucks, 
and movement to the front, were accomplished by military units that 
had been transferred to the Reserves. And this makes a lot of sense, 
because in peacetime operations, there is no requirement for 
literally tens of thousands of soldiers, whose primary responsibility 
is to run a port operation, or to drive an 18-wheel truck in a combat 
zone.

  And so, the theory made sense from a practical point of view, and 
perhaps from an ideological point of view as well. I think that the 
logical extension of this, was in the '90-91 war, that the Reserves 
{had} to be called up. There was no way that we could conduct an 
operation that involved 500,000 American forces, without calling on 
the Reserves to perform these absolutely essential combat support 
missions. And so, I think, that while Halliburton has done a great 
deal of work, Halliburton was doing work for the U.S. government, in 
places like Yugoslavia and Somalia, prior to this time. And indeed, 
if I'm not mistaken, Halliburton's association with providing 
contractual support to the U.S. government goes back to the time when 
Mr. Lyndon Johnson was the President. 

  EIR   We talked last week, about a proposal that Mr. LaRouche has 
put forward to stabilize the situation, through a fairly dramatic 
change in the present concept underlying the mission there: to keep 
American forces there, but under a radically different status of 
forces agreement; put much more emphasis on reconstruction, and turn 
the whole effort really officially, over to [Lakhdar] Brahimi and the 
UN to try to work out some kind of arrangement, with a more credible 
interim government, minus the Chalabi types.

  What's your recipe for what can be done now? It's obviously a year 
into an insurgency situation; it's more difficult. But, what kinds of 
things do you think need to be done, to both bring stability to the 
Iraq situation, and to repair whatever damage has been done to the 
U.S. image in the Arab world and more broadly?

  Hoar    Well, I think--to speak, first of all, about the image--I 
think it's imperative that there be some major changes. The most 
recent disclosure about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is a good 
example of this. One of the reasons the Administration has used for 
the need to go and invade Iraq, was the abusive nature of the Saddam 
Hussein regime. It does us no good, to find ourselves being abusive 
to prisoners in the same prison where Saddam Hussein was abusive to 
Iraqis!

  There is no question that we need to broaden the international 
support. And the place to start, is with the UN. And the place, more 
specifically, is with the UN Security Council. We need a UN Security 
Council resolution that would authorize a UN Chapter 7 peacekeeping 
operation, with the United States as the lead; that would allow us to 
continue going forward with the UN operation, rather than solely a 
U.S. operation; with the UN taking the lead on the transition from 
the occupation force to an independent Iraqi government, and the 
conduct of elections there sometime in the future.

  The fact of the matter is, there have never been enough troops on 
the ground to provide adequate security, starting with Day One when 
the invasion began, up until the present time. We have tried to get 
by on the cheap, with disastrous results. There have never been 
adequate resources, directed toward the reconstruction of Iraq. I'm 
told that unemployment in the country still remains at about 80%. 
[The United States] is a country that, during the Depression, put 
people to work on public transportation, public welfare projects for 
roads, dams, buildings, power. It seems to me, that so much more 
could be done to enhance the quality of life of Iraqis, more than 
just painting schools, and going about some of these minor programs; 
but rather, major programs to help revitalize the Iraqi economy, 
particularly since the original estimates about the ability of the 
oil sector of the Iraqi government to pay for the most of the 
expenses incurred during this reconstruction period, have been 
woefully incorrect.

  So, there's a great deal of things that need to be done. Services 
and jobs and security are the three key things that the occupying 
power, whether it is us or the UN, needs to provide; and that costs a 
lot of money. And it costs a lot of people on the ground, in terms of 
providing security. And without improving those three 
things--services, jobs, and security--we are not going to have a 
successful ability to change the attitudes of the people in Iraq.

  EIR     What would you see as the consequences, regionally, of 
failure to make those policy corrections?

  Hoar   Well, I think we are certainly at a pivotal point, in terms 
of what is going on in Iraq. The first thing is, that there is no 
possibility that we can walk away from Iraq. The consequences of that 
would be enormous. Secondly, the success of our efforts is really 
dependent on broadening the base of those that are involved in the 
operation, namely through the UN and perhaps ultimately bringing NATO 
into it, as well.

  But, the consequences for the neighbors are quite large, because, 
while there's no evidence that al-Qaeda was present before the 
invasion, it appears that a virtually misguided, but perhaps 
idealistic Muslim, who feels that the United States has been unfair 
to Muslim countries, wants to go to Iraq to fight Americans. And, if 
a power vacuum were created there, it would be fertile ground for 
terrorists of all stripes; it would be fertile ground for neighboring 
countries, particularly Iran, to attempt to make inroads in the 
political structure; and it would be fertile ground for al-Qaeda to 
enter into a failed state that was about to implode on itself.

  And so, the United States must stay. In order to be successful, in 
my judgment, we need to broaden our base of support through the UN, 
and spend more money and more time, and more ambitious programs, and 
more armed soldiers on the ground. And if those soldiers don't come 
from other countries, we're going to have to provide them ourselves, 
in order to make this work. Even at the cost of severely upsetting 
the nature of our rotation policy for soldiers and Marines, we must 
do this on an emergency basis, until we gain the upper hand, and gain 
some modicum of control. If we can bring other countries in to help 
us, so much the better.

   EIR   How significant a linkage do you see, between the 
Israel/Palestine situation, and the challenges on the ground in Iraq, 
and throughout the whole region?

  Hoar   There's enormous significance. And there are many people in 
government and elsewhere in the United States that have attempted to 
decouple the inter-connectedness of these two issues. They are 
connected, because 1.2 billion Muslims--worldwide, but largely spread 
out between the Philippines and all the way across South Asia and 
North Africa to Morocco--believe that the United States has unjustly 
taken the part of Israel, in the Palestine/Israel confrontation. Many 
of our activities in the region, including the invasion of Iraq, are 
connected to our support for Israel.

   And, our public diplomacy in this regard, has been horrendous, in 
that we have taken the back seat to Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, two of 
the most prominent cable television stations, which have cameramen 
and newspeople on the ground all the time, and are looking for 
opportunities to make this case. Now, whether the case is a good one 
or not, from our point of view as American citizens, it's important 
to point out that there is linkage in the eyes of Muslims worldwide; 
and if we don't deal with that problem, it makes the problem in the 
region--and more specifically in Iraq--more difficult.

  And so, when the President stands with Mr. Sharon, and makes 
statements that are patently not in congruence with the work of the 
Quartet and the Road Map that had been put together by the 
Quartet--namely, the United States, the EU, Russia, and Kofi Annan, 
UN Secretary General--that that is immediately read as another 
example of how the United States unjustly supports Israel. And in 
fact, the timing of it could not have been worse, given the internal 
unrest that exists right now in Iraq, and then, on top of that, the 
events of this maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners.

  So, it's a major part of this. It's a major issue in terms of public 
diplomacy. It's a major issue, because throughout the Arab world and 
the Muslim world, the larger Muslim world of 1.2 billion people, we 
are perceived as an occupying power, and treating the Palestinian 
issue unfairly, while at the same time, our circumstances in Iraq are 
not improving.

  EIR  As someone with a great deal of experience in the region as a 
whole, how do you appraise the situation with the major regimes that 
have been historically pro-American: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan? 
Does this combined Iraq problem and the failure to deal justly with 
Israel/Palestine create, in your judgment, serious threats of 
instability in those countries, also?

  Hoar   I think very much so. It's interesting, that in perhaps more 
elegant terms, both President Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of 
Jordan have said essentially what I've just said a moment ago, with 
respect to the linkage between the Iraqi business and the 
Israeli-Palestinian issue. Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has 
carried forward a peace proposal to the Arab League, and received 25 
votes to nothing, unanimously supporting it, which in large measure 
looked very much like the Oslo Accords, with some differences, but 
certainly, a place where the negotiations could begin again. It seems 
to me, as a representative of a government in the Middle East said to 
me some months ago, but after the invasion of Iraq, that the United 
States makes it very hard to be friends with them. And, I think, in 
the Middle East, the countries that encircle, or are neighbors of 
Iraq, which have historically had close ties to the United States, 
find it very difficult to be supportive of U.S. policy in the region, 
and at the same time, be responsive to their own, indigenous 
populations.

  EIR   Do you see any evidence, from within the particularly 
neo-conservative circles within the Bush Administration, that there's 
any sense of lessons learned, any kind of rethinking, as the result 
of the mess that we're in on the ground right now in Iraq?

   Hoar    Well, the military doesn't always get it right. But, one of 
the things that the military has learned over the years, is that you 
continually have reviews about how organizations perform. And you 
have after-action reports, you have critical discussions about what 
went well, and what went wrong. I see no evidence of anybody in this 
government going back and looking back at the events of the last 
couple of years, with an effort to try and determine what went well, 
and what went wrong. And, I mean on the ground. I don't mean the 9/11 
Commission, and some of these others that are more narrowly focussed. 
We have had a Congressional committee to look at intelligence.

   But, what went well with the offensive campaign, that allowed us to 
seize Iraq in a relatively short period of time; what went wrong in 
that portion of the campaign; and similarly, what steps had been 
taken during that period in planning, and what had taken place in 
execution in the post-offensive operation phase of this; without the 
ability to go back and be critical of your own actions, it seems to 
me that there's very little ability to make changes in the future.

   And I would just point out one example: the manner in which we 
handled the Iraqi Army. You will recall, shortly after the offensive 
operations terminated, the decision was made to disband the Iraqi 
Army. This was done, at least in part, on the recommendations of Mr. 
Chalabi, that these people were all Ba'athists and couldn't be 
trusted in the government. But, as I recall, within a day or two, 
soldiers came out on the street and rioted. U.S. Army troops were 
called out; they fired into the mob, killed some number of protesting 
former soldiers of the Iraq government. The next day, it was decided 
that there would be a stipend for soldiers. So, they were all sent 
home with their rifles and their rocket-propelled grenades, with a 
small stipend. And then, we come full circle, in almost a year, where 
we have now decided, that perhaps we're going to have to hire some of 
these people back again, if we're going to establish an effective 
force, border patrol, police, and so forth.

   And, finally coming to the realization that there were many people 
who joined the Ba'athist Party during the Saddam Hussein regime, only 
to make a living, and be able to get by, where any kind of promotion 
or any kind of status--whether they were academics or in the 
government or in the military--was dependent on their membership in 
the Ba'athist Party. And that all of those people were not 
necessarily ardent supporters of Saddam Hussein.

   So, I think that the neo-conservatives had their day, by selling to 
the President the need for invasion of Iraq. I think it's now time 
for a clean sweep--and it has been for some time, in my judgment--to 
get rid of these people. And, to see if we can put together a more 
coherent policy than has existed for the last couple years.  

  EIR  Any closing comments, you'd care to make? I very much 
appreciate your time.

  Hoar  Well, Jeff, I don't think all is lost. But, we're getting to 
the point, where it is becoming increasingly more difficult to make 
the case that our purposes were noble and that the end of this 
occupation will be a better day for the Iraqis. We have a lot of 
convincing to do, to convince the Iraqis of our nobility and our 
honest efforts, with regard to a new Iraq. And, without their belief 
in our noble efforts, and without their active support, the success 
of this endeavor is almost certainly doomed to failure.

  There are some things that can be done: the UN multinational effort; 
a serious increase in resources, both in terms of troops on the 
ground, and also money to help rebuild the country and convince these 
people that we have their best interests at heart.

  But, I think we're running out of time. If something is not done 
soon, I think it may be irretrievable.

  EIR    With some pretty horrifying consequences, both for the region 
as a whole, and also elsewhere around the planet.

  Hoar  Well, and for the reputation of the United States. We are 
certainly not going to come out of this, with our reputation as a 
beacon for democracy intact. In fact, it's seriously damaged already.

[END]

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