Nemesis Stalks Chicken-Hawks:
Iraq Failure Fuels Countercoup

President Abraham Lincoln famously pointed to a principle of republican leadership in a national crisis, with his optimistic epithet, "You can't fool all of the people all of the time." And all signs are that time is up for the ignoble lies of the Straussian conspirators in the United States and Israel who pushed the Iraq war, and want America involved in world imperial "perpetual wars."

As of May 22, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was gone; Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had cancelled his trip to Washington to see President Bush; Gen. Tommy R. Franks, CENTCOM chief and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars' commander, was gone; calls were being made on the floor of the Congress for the resignation of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the leading warmonger, and disciple of fascist philosopher Leo Strauss, in the Bush Administration; Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) was denouncing the entire rationale of the Iraq war as a pack of deliberate lies coming from the Bush Administration; and the Central Intelligence Agency had assembled a panel of retired analysts to review "what went wrong" and "whodunnit" over the concocted intelligence reports that hyped a "clear and present danger" of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and predicted an Iraq where milk, honey, oil revenues, liberty, and democracy would flow after Saddam Hussein was defeated and ousted.

Throw into this boil, the fact that Godric Smith, press spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, resigned just hours after Fleischer. "Goddie" was second to Blair's chief spokesman Alistair Campbell, who pushed through the "British dossier" on Iraq's alleged ABC weapons on the eve of the crucial Feb. 5 UN Security Council debate; the dossier turned out to be a hoax.

The Role of Ariel Sharon

White House spokesman Fleischer did not resign, but was fired, say Washington sources. There were differences between Fleischer and the President, which likely overlap the question of why Prime Minister Sharon abruptly, on May 18, cancelled his May 20 meeting with Bush. This could be the beginning of "regime change" in Washington—and Jerusalem—what LaRouche has been calling the "countercoup" President Bush must implement to take back control of his Administration and the nation from the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz cabal.

LaRouche, acting as a "shadow President," accuses the Cheney cabal of having carried out a "coup d'état" under the cover of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, to implement a domestic police state, and put the United States at the head of an international "Waffen SS" imperial force. Iraq, for the Cheney gang, is only the first step in a succession of wars that include Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. A countercoup is the only way, says LaRouche, for the United States to exit from the Iraq mess, for which the neo-conservative cabal is fully responsible. This exit strategy must include a peace plan in the Middle East leading to a Palestinian state.

Various Republicans have told Bush that he will not be able to win the election in 2004, unless he can push through the "Road Map" in the Middle East. He will not be able to win if he enters another war, or does not do something about the economic crisis. This advice would put Bush at loggerheads with the neo-conservatives, especially Cheney, and with Sharon and his allies. As EIR reported on May 23, Powell didn't win the "Road Map" issue in his May 11 meeting with Sharon, but once back in Washington, did establish the point that Sharon shows no respect for President Bush, and has gone too far.

Just before the Israeli Prime Minister was due in Washington, signs emerged that Bush was not backing Sharon's stiff-arm of the Road Map; pro-Sharon events in the United States flopped entirely (see box). Without Bush's "green light," Sharon faces an existential crisis, needing U.S. backing to stay in power. That reveals the reason he stayed away from Washington.

On May 17, under intense pressure from Washington, Sharon met with Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen, in Jerusalem, in the first Israeli-Palestinian summit meeting in nearly three years. Sharon had done everything possible to avoid such a meeting, but despite a Palestinian suicide bombing incident in Hebron just hours earlier, it went ahead. As expected, a deadlock resulted when Sharon refused Abu Mazen's request that he accept the Road Map. Sharon boasted that he would only discuss his reservations with George W. Bush. Then abruptly, the meeting with Bush was off, when a second suicide bombing in Jerusalem on May 18—the first Jerusalem bombing in six months—killed seven Israelis.

But, Sharon didn't cancel his trip because of terror incidents; rather, he used the excuse of the terrorism, so he wouldn't have to come to Washington and face a potential reproach from Bush. American and Israeli intelligence circles that know Sharon intimately, suspect that the recent terror wave in Israel bears the mark of his dirty tricks, since it was he who built up Hamas and Islamist terror networks to counter the PLO. The extremists on both sides use terror to derail peace.

It is now a problem for Sharon that he didn't go to Washington. For the first time in his 27-month tenure, he has not been able to use conveniently-timed terror to further his real desire—to cancel the Oslo Treaty, and move the Palestinians out of Israel and the Palestine National Authority completely. The five suicide bombings in 48 hours, from May 17-19, did not cause Bush to drop the Road Map. At the same time, a growing number in the American Jewish community are telling Sharon that the American Jews, like the majority of Israelis, actually support a Palestinian state, if that could bring an end to terrorism. The Sharonists are enraged that Bush phoned Prime Minister Abu Mazen on May 20, reiterating his commitment to a sovereign Palestinian state. Abu Mazen told Bush he is committed to combatting terrorism.

In Israel, the fascists in Sharon's cabinet are now calling for Israel to assassinate Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to stop the Road Map, and in the United States, Likudnik neo-cons are attacking Bush. Sharon wants to delay visiting Washington, hoping the neo-cons regain their monopoly around the Administration. But, Bush is now pressuring him to come before the President leaves for the G-8 summit in Evian, France on May 30.

Et Tu, Tommy?

But the biggest news was at the Pentagon, where on May 22, General Franks announced he was resigning. This left Rumsfeld twisting in the wind, reports a high-level Washington intelligence source, who agreed with LaRouche that Rumsfeld had acted like Adolf Hitler in running a purge of the traditional generals who opposed his utopian war plans for Iraq. Recall that Rummy had canned Secretary of the Army, retired Gen. Tommy White, as part of his plan to push through Notverordnung (emergency) laws to "transform" the military. Rumsfeld had also tried to silence Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, who warned that Rummy's plan for Iraq would lead to a disaster, endangering civilians and spreading disease and chaos, because of an inadequate deployment of U.S. forces. Rumsfeld announced Shinseki's replacement months before his term was up. But now, the purges are backfiring—Rummy's intended replacement for Shinseki, General Keane, announced he wasn't taking the job; Shinseki stuck to his guns, and is considered "prophetic," within uniformed military ranks, because he stood up to the chicken-hawks. Rummy has no Army Chief of Staff, and Franks, his "conquering hero," has quit.

The most important thing about these developments is that a fight started in Congress against the Rumsfeld plan after LaRouche declared that it was unconstitutional, and if it were pushed through, Rumsfeld was impeachable. LaRouche called the separation of powers concept the baseline of the Constitution, starting the fight which some Democrats and others have begun to join.

On May 21, the Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal also took a direct hit in Congress. Sen. Robert Byrd, during the debate on the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2004, said, "The American people have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing international law, under false premises." He accused the Administration of manipulating the events of Sept. 11, falsely equating Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. "It was the exploitation of [Americans'] fear," said Byrd. The Bush team's "extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a pre-emptive invasion has become more than embarrassing," since troops have so far found "fertilizer, vacuum cleaners, conventional weapons, and the occasional buried swimming pool." The hype has revealed, Byrd said, "the reckless use of power," with the "lucrative contracts" to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure. In the House, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) called for neo-con kingpin Wolfowitz to resign.

There is more to come. A Washington diplomatic source told EIR that there is tremendous anger in the capital against the neo-con coup, and there will likely be hearings—along the lines of Iran-Contra, or the 1970s Church Committee—to uncover how the Iraq fiasco was pushed through. Retired Marine Gen. Joseph Hoar, who opposed the utopian Iraq war plans, and remains a critic of what happened, called for full Congressional hearings, as soon as the combat ended.

On May 22, the first step of this emerged when the New York Times revealed that the CIA has begun a review of the reports circulated inside the government before the war—including sworn testimony to Congress—to compare them with what has actually been found—or not found—in Iraq. CIA Director George Tenet has named a team of retired intelligence analysts to run the review.

What is really targetted is the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz "deception" unit in the DOD Office of Intelligence, and leading Straussian Abram Shulsky, who ran a "Chicken-hawk Intelligence Agency" that cooked intelligence reports using information from convicted Iraqi crook Ahmed Chalabi, to present so-called evidence about Iraq. Shulsky, who is featured in LaRouche's campaign pamphlet, Children of Satan, the Ignoble Liars Behind Bush No-Exit War, is one of the first on the line.