EDWARD ELLIS

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A relatively harmless con man from a tiny but strategically important country becomes the tool of a more powerful government. This hand-picked shyster is a first-world westerner in every way, as are his masters (to whom he lies repeatedly and extravagantly). The spies stories about secret strike plans and imminent uprisings are tailored to the needs and agenda of the major power operatives, who swallow the fantasies whole. Soon the spy, the western government operatives and many of their associates have all been corrupted by the vast sums of free money the stories make available but nothing in life is ever really free. Ultimately, at least three countries are drawn into the web of deceit and the full price includes war, chaos, and death.

The details are slightly altered to implicate the guilty, but the synopsis is of John Le Carres canny novel The Tailor of Panama and not of Gulf War II. It may be an injustice to compare Mr. Le Carres masterpiece about deeply flawed individuals undone by snowballing events with the blatant embezzlement of billions of taxpayer dollars taking place in Iraq. However, the comparison illustrates the importance of scrutinizing the details of $160 billion spent fighting terrorism in a country that had no terrorists before we got there. More importantly, it highlights just one of the countless preventable intelligence failures which have occurred on the watch of President George W. Bush and his gang of Scary Red Republicans.

Not every Republican has shamelessly manipulated post-September 11 anxieties to win funding for pet projects and force through extremist legislation. But the vast majority has basked unquestioningly in the glow of Mr. Bushs so-called leadership on national security, while threats in fact have increased.

The scenario of terrorists using planes as missiles had been contemplated for years not that it stopped the administration from acting shocked after the tragedy occurred. Yet CIA Director George Tenet, who claims to have declared war on terrorism months before the World Trade Center disaster, failed to warn the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), vilified for not knowing they were allowing known terrorists to gain citizenship, were never informed that US intelligence had allowed killers to slip through their fingers. Four airplanes in three different locations went drastically off-course and violated occupied airspace without a single alarm being raised.

The Bin Laden family, long time business associates of the Bush family, was protected from an investigation before the disaster and some were even whisked out of the country by the American Air Force after the attack even as thousands of Middle Eastern people with far more tenuous links to terrorism and much less information about Osama Bin Laden were probed and detained. Mr. Bush continues to censor important reports that some legislators maintain would reveal the extent of Saudi Arabias culpability in international terrorism.

The same country that uses state-of-the-art technology to identify individuals in crowded football stadiums and can read a license plate from outer space cannot find Osama Bin Laden. Or Saddam Hussein. Or the terrorist who terrorized Congress with a substance that only a few people in the world have the knowledge, skill and facilities to weaponize.

There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and its unacceptable that the President of the United States did not know that when he deceived the entire planet in his State of the Union address. With the insurgency gaining momentum every day, the first order of business to protect the troops would be to locate biological and chemical weapons. The soldiers are walking around defenseless against such tactics. There is no such priority.

The litany of unanswered questions, obstructed investigations, and unforgivable errors of intelligence leadership is endless. Yet President Bush holds none of the failed entrenched intelligence leaders accountable just as the Scary Red Republicans fail to hold him accountable. It is a house of cards and each card is a lie in a stupid game that the US must stop playing. The American people are losing and the cost is endless war, rising unemployment and death.

Next issue in the conclusion of this three part series we look at what remains of the American Way: what is the status of opportunity, justice and democracy in the United States under President Bush and the Scary Reds?