Anonymous Bush Administration Critic

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Anonymous CIA employee rips U.S. war on terror

By Katherine Pfleger Shrader
June 27, 2004


WASHINGTON – A CIA employee is making a stir, but, as might be expected in the spy world, the public doesn't know his name. He's ''Anonymous.'' ...

...

Why write a book?

''I thought it was very clear that the American people and certainly our elected officials did not have a good handle on the nature of the threat,'' a failure of senior career intelligence officials, he said in an interview.

''I also meant to draw attention to the fact that we have not yet recognized that our enemy really doesn't care about our way of life, or our democracy, or our values.''...

[ For Full Text of Article ]


Asking Anonymous
by Ray McGovern
June 28, 2004


[Anonymous] added that the United States has “waged two failed half-wars and, in doing so, left Afghanistan and Iraq seething with anti-U.S. sentiment, fertile grounds for the expansion of Al Qaeda and kindred groups.”

Asked yesterday to comment on these biting charges, National Security assistant Condoleezza Rice refused on grounds that she did not know who Anonymous is. Did she not think to ask the CIA? If I had no trouble finding out, certainly she should have none.

Worse still for the administration, during an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on June 23, [Anonymous] rubbed salt in White House wounds, subjecting to ridicule the dumbed-down bromide that what motivates bin Laden and his Muslim followers is hatred of our “freedom,” our “democracy."


It’s the Policy, Stupid!

“It’s not hatred of us as a society, it’s hatred of our policies,” [Anonymous] insisted. He gave pride of place to the neuralgic issue of Israel. With candor not often heard on American television, he emphasized “It’s very hard in this country to debate policy regarding Israel,” adding that bin Laden’s “genius” is his ability to exploit those U.S. policies most offensive to Muslims—“Our support for Israel, our presence on the Arabian peninsula, in Afghanistan and Iraq, our support for governments that Muslims believe oppress Muslims.”

Asked how bin Laden views the war in Iraq specifically, [Anonymous] said bin Laden looks on it as proof of America’s hostility toward Muslims; that America “is willing to attack any Muslim country that dares defy it; that it is willing to do almost anything to defend Israel. The war is certainly viewed as an action meant to assist the Israeli state. It is…a godsend for those Muslims who believe as bin Laden does.”

[ For Full Text of Article ]

 

[Clare Quilty]

Asked how bin Laden views the war in Iraq specifically, [Anonymous] said bin Laden looks on it as proof of America’s hostility toward Muslims; that America “is willing to attack any Muslim country that dares defy it; that it is willing to do almost anything to defend Israel. The war is certainly viewed as an action meant to assist the Israeli state.

Bin Laden and I have this opinion in common.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Exactly. It's not a matter of stupid, dress-wearing barbarians who sit out in the desert and worship the devil, hating law and order and freedom and the american dream.

It's about people who build libraries and wrote poetry while the forefathers of today's americans were still fighting to survive the plague and towns' lack of sanitary solutions in a medieval Europe.
It's about that same people, being pissed off at strangers from the other side of the puddle, who step in and take sides, and kill thousands of people in a war concerning territory miles and miles from their own.

It's not a matter of USA being the biggest and most powerful nation in the world, it's about USA rubbing that fact in people's face. USA is the only country in the world were it's not considered borderline criminal to boast and show off.

I'm glad to see that someone from inside is stepping forward and starts the debate of what's REALLY the issue. Violence breeds violence.

 

[Guest]

Jewmerica the beautifull...

Note: I love naked Jewish women. I just hate naked male Zionists.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

You know, Chilly, you really are a shit!

 

[Lisa Denton]

Heck, I don't understand the anonymous part. Seems like everybody today wants the name spelled correctly and the views shouted from the rooftops. Sometimes it seems like the anonymous ones are the cowards, or un-sure, or covering up............thier own backsides.

 

[Somme]

Heck, I don't understand the anonymous part. Seems like everybody today wants the name spelled correctly and the views shouted from the rooftops. Sometimes it seems like the anonymous ones are the cowards, or un-sure, or covering up............thier own backsides.

......or maybe it's just because the White House will 'out' them? I recall that there's a wee problem with one agent already?

 

[cantdog]

Being a "known" CIA spook isn't healthy at all. Of course he spoke anonymously.


You can't be very effective any more as a spy if they all know you for what you are, and some of them might decide to kill you.

I agree about anonymous complainers. As a manager, I ignore them. If they want to go on record and let the one they are complaining about face his accuser, then fine. But I don't have a lot of CIA people to manage.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Lisa Denton,

The book, which is coming out next month (and I failed to identify in the original post) is Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror.

Maybe this paragraph from Outside The Beltway will help you understand why the author must be Anonymous.

It is rare for a C.I.A. officer to publish a book while still serving at the agency and highly unusual for the book to focus on such a politically explosive topic. Under C.I.A. rules, the book had to be cleared by the agency before it could be published. It was approved for release on condition that the author and his internal agency not be identified.

The book itself identifies “Anonymous” only as “a senior U.S. intelligence official with nearly two decades of experience in national security issues related to Afghanistan and South Asia.” It identifies a previous book, “Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America,” as being written by the same author. Former intelligence officials identified the officer to The Times and noted that he was an overt employee of the C.I.A., but an intelligence official asked that his full name not be published because it could make him a target of Al Qaeda. The senior intelligence official said the book had been vetted to insure that it not include classified information. “We still have freedom of speech,” the official said. “It doesn’t mean that we endorse the book, but employees are free to express their opinions.”

Somme,

Famous and Nonfamous Strangers . . [WebBlog] has an entry which might aid in your speculations about how the White House is taking Anonymous’ book.

Could the wagons be circling already?

It hasn't been a good summer for the Bush Adminstration, what with Abu Ghraib and the 9/11 commission and Michael Moore to rub the salt into the wound. But something tells me things might get much, much worse.

No-one's saying it out loud yet, but the indications are there. Joe Klein in Time suggests that the recent irritability of Bushies -- Cheney's F-bomb, Wolfie's blast at journalists -- is related to looming revelations, rather than events already passed. Could it be the forthcoming tome from an anonymous CIA official describing failures in the war on terror? (As the author of Primary Colors, Klein has experience in anonymous revelations.) Or could it be simmering scandal around the uranium-from-Niger-to-Saddam story, hinted at on TalkingPointsMemo? And could those hints be related to these conspiracy-laden ramblings about an impeding coup d'état by the CIA following the Valerie Plame outing? Guess we'll have to wait and see.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

I think it's cowardly of agents, who have seen one of their own (a counterterrorism expert) outed by two unknown Administration officials over politics, to dare speak out on any portion of our glorious Christian Crusade Against Islam... I mean War on Terror. Don't they know the value of America and apple pie? I mean what have they done for this country (besides go into hostile countries where one wrong move means you're a bug smear that you're own country will deny all in order to stop threats aimed at the country)? Hell, I bet they don't buy half as many cheap Chinese knockoffs of the American flag as REAL AMERICANS do. Sheet, I mean Iraq, Afghanistan, who really cares where we fight or how hard or against whom as long as sand niggers die, right? Praise the Lord and his mighty American legions!

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

There is a misunderstanding here.

From what I have learned through various media ...

Anonymous has been a CIA analyst for twenty-two years, which would make him between fifty and sixty years of age. He is an overt agent who does not own even one cloak, and probably his closest possession to a dagger is his letter opener. He is a senior (upper management) official heading the anti-terrorist team particularly charged with profiling Al Queida. (What they want, what means they will use, how they organize, and how best to defeat them.)

This makes him the ideal person to ask about the state of the War on Terrorism. That he is going outside the agency to publish a book directly to the citizenry is one indication of how miffed he is that his job is being screwed up by a White House that is following its own agenda, rather than their expert advice. (That the White House screws up regularly, and then blames it all on their intelligence agencies, probably doesn’t endear them much, either.)

That the CIA is permitting Anonymous to publish, with only the token distancing of forcing him to publish with anonymity, indicates the level of the CIA’s miffedness!

Anonymous is making the rounds, promoting his book on television news shows, but only in silhouette. This, by the way, is probably the closest Anonymous has been to taking part in a covert mission.

Think less James Bond, and more Mycroft Holmes.

 

[shereads]

Why write a book?

Why indeed. It's just one more book to be ignored by people who will refuse to read it, convinced that it's full of lies because it says things they don't want to believe.

Invading Iraq played into Osama Bin Laden's hands? Golly, that's a novel idea.
Dr. Mabeuse said it over a year ago, and it's been repeated since because it's the one logical reason why Bin Laden hit us inside our borders: he either wanted to knock down some tall buildings, make the news for a while and then go into hiding; or he wanted George W. Bush to invade the Middle East, turning Osama into a prophet and recruiting most of the young adult males in that part of the world to the side of Jihad. He couldn't have done it with cautious president. With this one, he hit the jackpot.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

I thought he blew up the towers because he really wanted a pony and his parents didn't get him one.

Better yet it was Satan's influence. Yeah, I triple-dog-dared the fucker to blow up America.

Great White Satan. The Axis of Evil. Oh yeah, this isn't a Crusade at all. The wheels of history go round and round.

P.S. Bush knew who ratted out Valerie Plame. He contacted an outside lawyer about it and has buried the whole story in his other scandals. Once again high treason goes unmerited in this damn country. Pleased to see the CIA fucking Bush over for it at least. Teach him to mess with an agency famed for its regime-toppling.