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US chose not to get zarqawi before war { May 5 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/05/1432203http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/05/1432203
Friday, May 5th, 2006
Retired CIA Analyst Ray McGovern Takes on Rumsfeld Over Justification for Iraq Invasion
AMY GOODMAN: That was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld responding to questions by retired C.I.A. analyst Ray McGovern at an event in Atlanta on Thursday. Ray McGovern joins us in our studio now from Atlanta. Some of the media said “alleged” former C.I.A. analyst. Ray McGovern has been with the agency for more than a quarter of a century and was one of the top briefers of Vice President George H.W. Bush. He's now co-founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, VIPS. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Ray.
RAY McGOVERN: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, tell us about this event yesterday, a quite raucous event, interruptions and then your questioning. A very rare moment for one of the more insulated government officials to be questioned by, well, a former C.I.A. analyst.
RAY McGOVERN: Well, Amy, just listening to this little clip here, I find it scary. These were ostensibly educated normal people, and their reaction was very much like the one that Goebbels stirred up. You can see it was a very unfriendly audience to anyone who posed any kind of question to the Defense Secretary. So -- and listening to it, I'm sort of scared, because if this is indicative of the brainwashing that has taken place, it's going be a long, long struggle to speak truth to power, as Fannie Lou Hamer so famously said, and Damu Smith, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Ray, let's go through the questions and how the secretary responded to you. The issue -- the last one, of Zarqawi, saying that there is a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq.
RAY McGOVERN: Yeah, that's the best they could come up with after all of this misinformation, with Cheney saying there were contacts between Iraqis and people in Prague and so forth. Zarqawi was up in the north part of the country. He had no contact with Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein was not ruling that part of the area.
AMY GOODMAN: Wasn't the U.S.?
RAY McGOVERN: Yeah, the U.S. and the Kurds were up there. They could have got Zarqawi in an eyelash, in a moment, but they chose not to. So it was completely disingenuous, and for the people not to be able to listen to that, to hear it, but simply join in the applause for Rumsfeld was a bit disquieting.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And when Secretary Rumsfeld responds about the troops believing that there were chemical weapons, because they were wearing uniforms or chemical suits. Your response?
RAY McGOVERN: Well, talk about that disingenuity. I mean, sure, they wore chemical [suits], because Rumsfeld and his generals ordered them to. This proves nothing, other than they went through with this charade. The Australian troops wore no such protective covering, because they knew there were no weapons there. The Australians knew these weapons were a figment of the propaganda put out by our Defense Department, so they blithely went in there without any protective covering. So it was all a charade.
And I suppose the good news is that finally someone had a chance to ask Don Rumsfeld -- if I were in Washington, I never would have got into a session where Rumsfeld spoke. I have to give him credit that he took questions and answers. But, you know, it's really interesting that when I walked into the place, I wrangled a ticket very surreptitiously. I was met with this little blurb on Donald Rumsfeld, and as I read it, I had to chuckle. It says, “There’s going to be a question-and-answer period, but please adhere to these guidelines. Refrain from using the word ‘lie’ in relation to the war in Iraq. Do not question the secretary’s personal responsibility for torture. And please don’t discuss first use of nuclear weapons against Iran. If you violate these guidelines, you'll be immediately removed from the auditorium, flown to an undesignated prison location somewhere in Eastern Europe and tortured. Thank you for your cooperation. The World Cannot Wait.” A wonderful, wonderful group. Those were the folks that spoke up and tried to brace Donald Rumsfeld with the lies and their charges of him being -- and he is, arguably -- a war criminal. And we shouldn't shy away from saying that.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Ray, when you were asking the questions, at one point off camera, you were saying, “This is America.” What was happening at that point?
RAY McGOVERN: Well, curiously enough, a very large man came down with a white coat on, and he stuck his elbow into my chest and started pushing me back. And I pushed back, literally and figuratively. And it was the moment of truth. Would Don Rumsfeld want me thrown out of there, having asked in a very civil manner simply pointed questions, or would he ask them not to remove me? He chose the wiser course. I first thought that this was him being gracious, but when I thought of the P.R. debacle it would have been for him to have me removed after simply posing these questions, which nobody else has the guts to pose him, that he chose the wiser course from a P.R. point of view, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Ray McGovern, I want to thank you very much for being with us, analyst with the C,I.A. for more than a quarter of a century and one of the top briefers of Vice President George H.W. Bush, co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
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