There is a new pro-war congressman in town...






















Representative-elect Chris ("Let's Win the war first") Carney
























Called to congragulate Chris
























Raised money for Chris


And he is Chris Carney (seen above), the representative-elect from the 10th Congressional District of Pennsylvania. According to the New York Times' James Risen:
In early 2002, Mr. Carney, a Naval Reserve officer, was assigned to work in a tiny intelligence unit created by Douglas J. Feith, then the under secretary of defense for policy, to search for links between terrorist groups and their possible state-sponsors, most notably Iraq. After the 2003 invasion, the Feith unit, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, was caught up in the debate over the Bush administration’s handling of prewar intelligence, and the office was investigated by a Senate committee and an independent presidential commission.
In the summer and fall of 2002, Mr. Carney was at the center of the storm, briefing George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, and Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, on the Feith unit’s assessment of any links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. At the time, the unit was creating controversy within the government for arguing that there was significant evidence of ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Ultimately, the Bush administration emphasized the threat the United States supposedly faced from Iraq’s unconventional weapons as the primary justification for invading, while the Iraq-Qaeda connection gradually faded as a major talking point. In 2004, the independent Sept. 11 commission said it had seen “no evidence” that the contacts “ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship,” challenging the administration’s prewar assertions.
Today, Mr. Carney says he still believes there were links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, although he is careful not to overstate them.
“On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 was no connection and 10 was operational control, I would say it’s about a 2½,” he said in an interview. “It was a relationship of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer,” he added. “Saddam was a savvy guy, and I think he wanted to make sure that if Al Qaeda someday became a force, that he wanted to keep his options open. I thought that there was a relationship. Whether it was strong enough to go to war, that’s the president’s decision.”

Yep...This is one of the guys that was helping Feith "disinform" the American people into the war, and now, it seems, he is critical of the way that war was managed (sounds you know like who):
Mr. Carney said he was far more troubled by the way the Bush administration dealt with Iraq after the invasion, when he said it became clear that the United States was not prepared to deal with the growing chaos in the country. Mr. Carney recalled that there was a wealth of prewar intelligence predicting that an insurgency would develop quickly after the invasion, and he said he was stunned by the Pentagon’s failure to plan for it or even acknowledge its scope.
“There was a lot of intelligence prewar,” Mr. Carney said, “saying that Saddam wasn’t going to fight force-on-force, like in the gulf war; it would be an insurgency.” Referring to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, he added: “It bothered me when the secretary started calling the insurgency a bunch of dead-enders. The intel certainly didn’t depict them as dead-enders.”
He said of Pentagon officials: “They were saying that the looting was just the way the Iraqis behaved. It showed that we didn’t seem to get it.”
“I think they still thought they were fighting Desert Storm,” he added. “That’s the war they thought they had, and that’s how they managed it.”

So it shouldn't surprise you that:
Mr. Carney’s campaign certainly caught the attention of some major players in the Bush administration’s decision to go to war. Richard Perle, the former senior adviser to Mr. Rumsfeld who was an influential advocate of war with Iraq but has more recently criticized the administration’s conduct of the war, was the host of a fund-raiser for Mr. Carney.

Or that:
Immediately after Mr. Carney’s election, Mr. Feith called to congratulate him. “He’s a talented, intelligent person,” Mr. Feith said.

Or that:blockquote>Mr. Carney is not enthusiastic about the possibility of a new Congressional investigation of prewar intelligence, which he said would be a major distraction. For Mr. Carney, there is an element of been there, done that to looking back at the now-familiar cast of prewar characters, including Mr. Feith; Mr. Tenet; Paul D. Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary; and Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi opposition leader who was a prewar favorite of many in the Defense Department to take the reins of a future Iraqi government.
“Let’s win the war first, then maybe look at how we got into it,” Mr. Carney said. “The more energy spent on answering Congressional investigations, the less time will be spent on winning the war.
But you would be surprised to learn that Chris Carney is a DEMOCRAT. In fact
Mr. Carney’s victory was one of the building blocks in the Democratic takeover of the House, and as it happens, the Democrats will soon be considering whether to use their new power to further investigate the Bush administration’s handling of prewar intelligence.

Indeed
Today, Mr. Carney is one of at least four newly elected Democratic members of the House with recent military credentials, a fact that was emphasized during the campaign by the Democratic Party leadership. Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, who ran the party’s Congressional campaign nationwide, said he thought Mr. Carney and the others would have a significant impact on the debate over Iraq in the new Congress.
“They are going to affect the debate on what you do for the troops, for veterans, and on what questions get asked,” Mr. Emanuel said.

For more read here.
Posted here as a public service for all of you who expect the Democrats to get us out of Iraq.

Comments

Anonymous said…
He will be seen as one of the visionary Neo-Liberals for McCain. When Perle et al. finish their self criticism stint, they can be welcomed to their party along with Marshall Wittmann.
Anonymous said…
Do you think Feith & Co. privately doubted some of the 'intel' they put together for consumers? Do you think they knowingly injected disinformation into the debate?
Anonymous said…
Carney is right that there is STILL intelligence about Saddam's links to al Qaeda that has yet to be made public.

I have an interview with a very prominent and respectable 3 star general about to go up at www.regimeofterror.com who discusses why it wasn't only Feith's people but Military planners who had very credible intel that Saddam's regime, although maybe not Saddam himself, were assisting al Qaeda fighters into Iraq before the invasion and were helping Ansar al Islam in Northern Iraq.
Brian said…
Feith knowingly used information that was, at best, unreliable. For example, everyone knew "curve ball" was a liar and unreliable.

Feith also purposefully ignored other information that contradicted his preconceived outcome.

The CIA did not come to the conclusions Feith et al. wanted. Neither did normal pentagon intelligence.

That is why they formed the "Office of Special Plans" loaded up with Zionists to "find" the right information.

Feith is a law partner with an Israeli settler, his father was a founding member of betar, a fascist Zionist group that eventually morphed into Likud. This is not your run of the mill "Jew" or even Israeli.

He is a militant Israeli firster who had been calling for regime change in Iraq many YEARS before 9/11.

That this person could be the leader for gathering intelligence regarding an invasion into Iraq is an embarrassment to the US system of government.

There is no possible way he could gather information reliably. He has bias in his blood.

If you are an american without a strong interest in Israel and you still support this war (including all the spending and deaths) you are a FOOL.
Anonymous said…
If you suggest we run from Iraq you have have never read anything from the terrorist handbook Guerrilla Warfare written by Communist Che Guevara.

Also you were too busy with your parties in school to have paid attention in history. WWII and Beruit have any meaning??? Didnt think so.
Anonymous said…
If you suggest we run from Iraq you have have never read anything from the terrorist handbook Guerrilla Warfare written by Communist Che Guevara.

Also you were too busy with your parties in school to have paid attention in history. WWII and Beruit have any meaning??? Didnt think so.

"it is possible to paralyze entire armies, to suspend the industrial life of a zone, leaving the inhabitants of a city without factories, without light, without water, without communications of any kind, without being able to risk travel by highway at certain hours. If all this is achieved, the morale of the enemy falls, the morale of his combatant units weekens, and the fruit ripens for the plucking at the precise moment"

Sound familiar?

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