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Order of BattleWar and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism by Douglas FeithHarper. 688 pp. $27.95 "The stupidest f—ing guy on the planet� is how General Tommy Franks, the head of U.S. Central Command, summed up Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Pentagon from July 2001 until his resignation in August 2005. Franks was cruder than most, but Feith was under almost continuously hostile scrutiny and controversy throughout his tenure. As the third-highest ranking civilian official in Donald Rumsfeld’s wartime Pentagon, he oversaw the Defense Department’s relations with foreign governments at...

Much has been written about the George W. Bush administration's attitude toward promoting democracy. President Bush often spoke of ending tyranny in the world and the unselfish, humanitarian benefits he hoped to achieve. But he never argued, in public or private, that America should go to war in order to spread democracy. Neoconservatives, including myself, were accused of wanting to spread democracy by the sword. But I saw no evidence of that. We supported war in Iraq to defend America against threats. The Saddam Hussein regime was posing serious dangers, as the United Nations containment strategy for Iraq deteriorated. The...

A Tale of Two Books   By Frank J. Gaffney Jr. FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, June 03, 2008 I don’t generally make a habit of disagreeing with Peggy Noonan.  She is after all, one of the most thoughtful, accomplished and influential wordsmiths of our time.  She is also a much-admired friend and colleague.In an essay published last week in the Wall Street Journal last weekend, however, Peggy offered what amounted to a defense of Scott McClellan’s new memoir of his years in the George W. Bush administration, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. To...

In trying to understand news about the conflicts in Iraq, I work to keep in mind the difference between what we know now about decision making in World War II and what most Americans knew at the time. From the memoirs and documents published after the war, we've learned how leaders made critical judgments. But at the time, even well-informed journalists only could guess at what was going on behind the scenes. Today we're only beginning to learn about what went on behind the scenes in regard to Iraq. One important new source is the recently published "War and Decision"...

The war over Iraq – not to be confused with the conflict actually taking place there – is back in the headlines. This week's report to Congress by America's top two emissaries in Baghdad, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, will provide a backdrop for the momentous decisions to come concerning whether and how to pursue victory in Iraq. Before the politicians and their constituents make such decisions about where we go from here, they should be sure to ground themselves in the facts about how we got to this point. After all, as George Santayana put it, "Those...

In the first insider account of Pentagon decision-making on Iraq, one of the key architects of the war blasts former secretary of state Colin Powell, the CIA, retired Gen. Tommy R. Franks and former Iraq occupation chief L. Paul Bremer for mishandling the run-up to the invasion and the subsequent occupation of the country. Douglas J. Feith, in a massive score-settling work, portrays an intelligence community and a State Department that repeatedly undermined plans he developed as undersecretary of defense for policy and conspired to undercut President Bush's policies. Among the disclosures made by Feith in "War and Decision," scheduled...

Claim: Iraq invasion was botched From correspondents in Washington March 10, 2008 02:30am Article from: Agence France-Presse A former Pentagon official who played a key role in planning the US-led war in Iraq has written a new book accusing former top diplomat Colin Powell, the CIA and other colleagues of botching the invasion and occupation of Iraq, The Washington Post reported today. Douglas Feith, who served as under secretary of defence for policy until 2005, alleges Mr Powell as secretary of state "downplayed" the degree and urgency of Iraq's threat but was never willing to openly oppose the invasion, the...

Much of the continued controversy over the recent Pentagon inspector-general's report on pre-Iraq war intelligence focuses on whether former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith's office acted "misleadingly" — the word used by Sen. Carl Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee — or perhaps even "unlawfully" — as Sen. Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has claimed may be the case. The fact is that the inspector general has absolved Mr. Feith of misleading Congress, the most serious accusation that had been leveled against him. The IG notes that Mr. Feith's actions "were not illegal or...

February 27, 2007, 0:00 a.m. Feith on Trial Facts don’t matter to Carl Levin. By Mario Loyola It is one of the oldest and dirtiest political tricks in Washington: Hurl scurrilous charges at someone and then call for investigations into his conduct. When the investigations clear your target of all wrongdoing, as they almost always do, just go on repeating the charges as if they were true. With any luck and enough of a media echo, you will succeed in creating an alternative reality in which your target is guilty simply because “everyone knows it.” To learn more about the...

Here's the email I sent today to Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday: Chris - On yesterday's show, you quoted my February 11 on-air statement that my former office did not claim an operational relationship between Iraq and al Qaida. You then read from a Weekly Standard article and implied it contradicted that statement. I wish you had asked me about this matter before you aired it, because you wrongly attacked my credibility. What you quoted from the Standard was not my words. It was the magazine's interpretation of what it says was a document I sent to the Senate...

Much of what you know about Donald Rumsfeld is wrong. I know, because I worked intimately with him for four years, from the summer of 2001 until I left the Pentagon in August 2005. Through countless meetings and private conversations, I came to learn his traits, frame of mind and principles ? characteristics wholly at odds with the standard public depiction of Rumsfeld, particularly now that he has stepped down after a long, turbulent tenure as defense secretary, a casualty of our toxic political climate. I want to set the record straight: Don Rumsfeld is not an ideologue. He did...

The sordid tale now making the rounds in the "mainstream" press of a rogue Pentagon intelligence operation has all the elements of an urban legend: heavy breathing, a secret basement office "down by the ramp" and government officials who form a hidden alliance based on long-ago ties to an obscure but influential university guru. Only the work of a few good men with the courage to face up to this "cabal" - and a few crusader-journalists to help them - can make the demons scatter and scare the dark ones into the light. Or so the story goes on those...

By JAMES RISEN WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal. Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct an independent search. They also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the...

      The top policy adviser to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says the Bush administration erred by building its public case for war against Saddam Hussein mainly on the claim that he possessed banned weapons. The comment by Douglas J. Feith, in an interview with The Associated Press, is a rare admission of error about Iraq by a senior administration official. Feith, who is leaving after four years as the undersecretary of defense for policy, said he remains convinced that President Bush was correct in deciding that war against Iraq was necessary.       "I don't think...

Two items: [1] From Laurie Mylroie's "Iraq News" Newsletter - Tue, 17 May 2005 20:03:39 -0400 Subject: Michael Rubin, Prior Isikoff Use of Faulty Source From the list of Michael Rubin, previously at DoD and now at AEI (May 17, 2005): This was not the first time Michael Isikoff has used faulty or fabricated sources. In reporting the myth that Doug Feith’s office created its own intelligence unit, he relied on Karen Kwiatkowski, who associated with the Lyndon LaRouche movement. Kwiatkowski said on tape that she was Isikoff’s chief source. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Report on the U.S....

WASHINGTON (AP) - America's strength is being challenged by ``a strategy of the weak,'' a Pentagon document says, listing diplomatic and legal challenges in international forums in the same sentence with terrorism. The sentence is one of several that describe U.S. vulnerabilities in the document, released Friday, titled ``The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America.'' ``Our strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak focusing on international fora, judicial processes and terrorism,'' it says. It does not go into detail. Asked about the statement, Douglas Feith,...

Douglas J. Feith was becoming excited. After spending an afternoon discussing the war in Iraq with him, I asked what books had most influenced him. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy and a prominent neoconservative, raced across his large library and began pulling down gilt-edged volumes on the British Empire. Behind his desk loomed a bust of Winston Churchill. It was a telling moment. In England right-wing historians are portraying the last lion as a drunk, a dilettante, an incorrigible bungler who squandered the opportunity to cut a separate peace with Hitler that would have preserved the British...

Washington, D.C.): Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith's announcement Wednesday that he would return to private life brings to a close four distinguished, but grueling, years at the forefront of the War on Terror. It offers an occasion both to salute this outstanding public servant and to castigate his ever-voluble critics. Most of the reportage on Secretary Feith's departure this summer has dredged up various unsubstantiated charges that have been made against Mr. Feith and/or his subordinates. The fact that no credible evidence has yet been offered to back up any of these transparent attempts at character assassination for political...

The Bush administration has been carrying out secret reconnaissance missions to learn about nuclear, chemical and missile sites in Iran in preparation for possible airstrikes there, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday. The effort has been under way at least since last summer, Hersh said on CNN's "Late Edition." In an interview on the same program, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett said the story was "riddled with inaccuracies." "I don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing are based on fact," Bartlett said. He said his information on Iran came from "inside" sources who divulged it in the hope...

<p>WASHINGTON — A senior Defense official placed under investigation by the FBI (news - web sites) on allegations that he tried to steer Iraqi reconstruction contracts toward friends has been removed from office, Pentagon (news - web sites) officials confirmed Friday.</p>

"America is a strange country. All of its best generals are journalists," quipped Defense Undersecretary Douglas J. Feith in the middle of an interview Thursday. Touché, as fencers say. I never served in the military, haven't been to Iraq and don't know if the criticism that the Bush administration has not put enough troops in Iraq is accurate or not -- although I pay attention when veterans who return from Iraq say as much. So I'll pass on what Feith said to me and you can decide. Columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times Thursday that more troops...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Pentagon official accused by a leading Senate Democrat of deceiving Congress about intelligence on Iraq's pre-war links to the al-Qaida terrorist network says the dispute is based on a misunderstanding that could have been avoided if he had been asked to explain. In a letter to Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Douglas Feith laid out in detail his handling of CIA reports on the Iraq-al-Qaida relationship and denied that he ignored corrections requested by the CIA when he gave a summary of the reports to Congress in...

WASHINGTON -- A Pentagon official accused by a leading Senate Democrat of deceiving Congress about intelligence on Iraq's pre-war links to the al-Qaida terrorist network says the dispute is based on a misunderstanding that could have been avoided if he had been asked to explain. In a letter to Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Douglas Feith laid out in detail his handling of CIA reports on the Iraq-al-Qaida relationship and denied that he ignored corrections requested by the CIA when he gave a summary of the reports to Congress in January...

FBI probes DOD office By Richard Sale UPI Intelligence Correspondent 8/28/04 The FBI has intensified its investigation of senior members of what was formerly known as the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans on suspicion that one of them passed highly classified U.S. military information to the government of Israel, according to federal law enforcement officials. In some cases, colleagues, former associates and members of other government agencies have been interviewed as many as four times by teams of FBI agents, FBI officials told United Press International. Two of the people interviewed are Bill Luti, former chief of OSP, and Harold...

Rumsfeld Defends Aide From Franks Attack WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday defended a top aide who was severely criticized by Gen. Tommy Franks, the top U.S. commander in the Iraq war. In an interview with The Associated Press, Rumsfeld called Undersecretary Douglas Feith "without question one of the most brilliant individuals in government." Franks wrote in his autobiography "American Soldier" that Feith was "getting a reputation around here as the dumbest (expletive) guy on the planet." While Feith, a lawyer schooled at Harvard and Georgetown, had academic credentials and was personally likable, he posed "off-the-wall questions...

The Pentagon is accusing Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of distorting the intelligence work of its No. 3 civilian official, and calling on the Democrat to prove his charges or retract them.     It is unusual for the Pentagon to formally take on a sitting senator. In this case, the challenge came in a letter to Mr. Rockefeller on Friday from Powell A. Moore, the assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs.     "On behalf of the department, I request that, if you have any evidence supporting the serious charge you floated during your press conference, you provide it to the department,"...

Conventional Warfare: The Pentagon and the military respect the Geneva Conventions. BY DOUGLAS J. FEITH Monday, May 31, 2004 12:01 a.m. In the months following 9/11, the Bush administration asked itself how the laws of war apply to the war on terrorism. The question is not simple, for the Geneva Conventions say that they apply to conflicts between states that are parties; but al Qaeda is a terrorist network and not a state, let alone a party to the Geneva Conventions. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his team how best to think this through. The Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen....

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Pentagon (news - web sites) e-mail said Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) coordinated a huge Halliburton government contract for Iraq (news - web sites), despite Cheney's denial of interest in the company he ran until 2000. The March 5, 2003 e-mail, from an Army Corps of Engineers official, said that top Pentagon official Douglas Feith got the job of shepherding the contract, according to the newsweekly Time that hits newsstands Monday. Feith had approved the multi-billion-dollar deal "contingent on informing WH (the White House) tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been...

<p>Pentagon officials are moving to tighten control over security contractors whose intelligence-gathering activities in Iraq are largely outside the control of U.S., military, international or Iraqi law.</p> <p>Worried about the lack of oversight of the companies, and the nebulous relationship between them and the military, the Pentagon said it was moving to bring them into line.</p>

WASHINGTON: Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, a two-man intelligence team set up shop at the Pentagon, searching for evidence of links between terrorist groups and host countries. The men, Michael Maloof and David Wurmser, culled classified material, much of it uncorroborated data from the CIA. "We discovered tons of raw intelligence," said Maloof. "We were stunned that we couldn't find any mention of it in the CIA's finished reports." They recorded and annotated their evidence on butcher paper hung like a mural around their small office. By the end of 2001, they had constructed a startling new picture of...