James Woolsey has been on the speech circuit, most recently at the 2005 Camden Conference up in Camden, Maine. I wonder how much folks are paying him to come up and scare them with his World War IV rhetoric.
Woolsey believes in an economy of scale when it comes to fighting our enemies — and might as well just blur them all together. He argues that we are fighting three prongs of totalitarianism — Iranian theocrats, al Qaeda supporting Islamists, and supporters of Saddam Hussein.
One of the soldiers who spoke at a Gunner Palace screening I recently helped host made the apt comment, “though there wasn’t a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda before the war, there sure as hell is one now. . .” Woolsey conveniently ignores the fact that the ecosystem of battle we have designed drew together al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents — because America chose that line of attack, not because there was any substantive connection there.
And those theocrats in Iran were pretty much at war with Iraq — until we removed their chief nemesis to the north — so that we could take on all of them at the same time.
Woolsey has been talking about World War IV for a long time, but now he is re-casting it as what will be the “longest war of the 21st Century.” Let me put words in his mouth — though he says the war will “last decades,” he is getting ready to call this the new “hundred years war.”
Here is the report:
Former CIA chief James Woolsey said Sunday the United States faces three totalitarian movements in the Middle East and that conflict between the West and Islamic militants will continue for years. The three groups at war with the Americans are the clerics who control the theocracy of Iran, the Islamists who support al-Qaida, and the supporters of Saddam Hussein, the deposed leader of Iraq, he said Sunday at the 18th annual Camden Conference.
“I called it World War IV for a while,” he said, but now he refers to it as “the longest war of the 21st century. I think it will last for decades.”
“These are three totalitarian movements,” Woolsey said. “Totalitarian regimes around the world pretty much know they’re going to run into us” at some point.
Describing himself as the nearest thing to a neoconservative those attending the Camden Conference would hear, Woolsey said he supports the U.S. war with Iraq, while at the same time outlining what he believes are the mistakes of policy that led to it.
Forget Monica. I am still furious with Bill Clinton for appointing Woolsey to the CIA and empowering this guy.
— Steve Clemons
