Ray McGovern

FINALLY the Pentagon is applying the brakes to the delusional Antony Blinkens, Volodymyr Zelenskys & Boris Johnsons of this world. Biden has blinked on use of longer-range missiles. Putin spokesman Peskov: Putin VERY deliberate responding to such measures.

Blinken Blinks; Boris Johnson & Zelensky Commiserate: WH announced it “takes seriously” Putin’s warning yesterday of direct war with NATO/US, and so “there’s no change to our limits on long-range strike capability inside Russia”. Finally, guts in Pentagon?

Ricochet or Bull’s-Eye?
Another American Coed Killed by Israeli Sniper; “Israel is Investigating”

The first few minutes of my most recent “President’s Weekly Briefing” Monday focused on the typically limp response of the State Department to murder in the West Bank of Aysenur Eygi, yet another American woman shot in the head by an Israeli sniper on Friday, Sept. 6. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/10/israel-idf-operations-blinken-response-american-death/ American journalist Shireen Akleh was killed with a bullet through her head, by an Israeli sniper in the West Bank city of Jenin on July 6, 2022.

I told “President Scheer” on Sept. 9, that Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s spokesman had already trivialized the murder, leaving it to the Israelis to investigate. (It was not beyond hope, I thought, that someone with a conscience would give the real Biden an honest account of what happened, and that he might react appropriately.)

https://x.com/raymcgovern/status/1834100894784180282

https://x.com/raymcgovern/status/1834112707756195895

But the following day (Tuesday) Biden said it was his “understanding that American Aysenur Eygi was shot accidentally as a result of a ricochet.” On Tuesday evening, he said “a preliminary investigation has indicated that it was the result of a tragic error” and that he expects the Israeli investigation to continue.

On Wednesday, Biden called the shooting “totally unacceptable”, but added again that “the US government has full access to Israel’s preliminary investigation, and expects continued access”.

Don’t hold your breath.

Top US/UK Intelligence Directors Still “Fixing the intelligence and facts around the policy.”
By Ray McGovern, Sept. 9, 2024

https://raymcgovern.com/2024/09/09/pushing-rosy-narratives-on-ukraine/

The article below, written in early 2005, sums up how it all went down, with a look ahead to how things could get even worse – as they now have with intelligence on Ukraine. “Sham Dunk” in the title is a play on a sports expression used by former CIA Director George Tenet. When asked by President Bush how strong the evidence was on WMD in Iraq, Tenet bragged it was a “Slam Dunk!” – that is, it was sure as when a tall basketball player stuffs a ball in the net from above.

Sham Dunk: Cooking Intelligence for the President (2005)
By Ray McGovern

Chapter 19 in “Neo-CONNED! Again: Hypocrisy, Lawlessness, and the Rape of Iraq”
Light in the Darkness Publications, IHS press, 2005
Introduction by Scott Ritter

Book Dedication:

Ad Deum Iusticiae (To the God of Justice)

To the thousands of Iraqi dead and wounded, to their families, and to the entire Nation at the cradle of civilization. And to the British and American widows and orphans whose dear ones have sacrificed on the altar of cynical statecraft.

And to Bush, Blair, Cheney, Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the ideologues and hypocrites who have orchestrated the unjust and unnecessary war in Iraq. We implore God to have mercy on their souls for the ocean of innocent blood they have spilled in pursuit of their ambitions. 

Excerpt:

On May 1, 2005, a highly sensitive document published by The Sunday Times of London provided the smoking gun showing that President Bush had decided to make war on Iraq long before the National Intelligence Estimate was produced to conjure up “weapons of mass destruction” there and mislead Congress into granting authorization for war.The British document is classified “SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL – U.K. EYES ONLY.” And small wonder. It contains an official account of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s meeting with top advisers on July 23, 2002, at which Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 (the U.K. equivalent to the CIA) – simply “C” in the written document – reported on talks he had just held in Washington with top U.S. officials. (Blair has now acknowledged the authenticity of the document.)

As related in the document, Dearlove told Blair and the others that President Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein through military action, that this “was seen as inevitable,” and that the attack would be “justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.” He continued: “…but the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” (emphasis added), and tacked on yet another telling comment: “There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw concurred that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, but noted that finding justification would be challenging, for “the case was thin.” Straw pointed out that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran.

As head of MI6, Dearlove was CIA Director George Tenet’s British counterpart. We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) had been saying since January 2003 that the two intelligence chiefs’ marching orders were to “fix” the intelligence “around the policy.” It was a no-brainer. Seldom, however, does one acquire documentary evidence that this – the unforgivable sin in intelligence analysis – was used by the most senior government leaders as a way to “justify” a prior decision for war. …

If further proof were needed that the US and UK spy chiefs prefer to push rosy “narratives” on Ukraine
https://nytimes.com/2024/09/07/world/europe/cia-mi6-russia-ukraine.html
rather than facts. All too easy for them to call the fool’s errand into Kursk “audacious” & let them fight to the last Ukrainian.

Bald FACTS on the Ukraine war, showing that Americans have been majorly misled re. Russia’s intentions. The drum-beat deception https://consortiumnews.com/2024/09/04/ray-mcgovern-conditioning-americans-for-war-with-russia/ is consequential; it could lead those malnourished on accurate information to acquiesce in war w/Russia