By Jacob Laksin
There are some criticisms of the Bush administration even Howard Dean declines to endorse. A rare example of the form was uttered on June 16 by Ray McGovern, an ex-CIA analyst who since his 1990 retirement from the agency has served as a full-time foot soldier in the army of antiwar left. The occasion was a mock hearing of the Judiciary Committee. Set up by one of the Iraq warâs most strident detractors, Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-MI, as a publicity-grabbing protest against the war, the stunt quickly backfired when McGovern, in his own distinctive fashion, laid out his objections to Operation Iraqi Freedom. In McGovernâs view, the sinister motivations for the war could be explained by the axiom O.I.L.: âO for Oil, I for Israel, and L for leveraging our land bases.â
Israel in particular concentrated his interest. Intolerant of the notion that Israel could be seen as Americaâs ally, McGovern contended that by toppling Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration was merely doing the dirty work of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. As evidence, McGovern was not above retailing anti-Israel conspiracy theories. Hence he claimed, inter alia, that an Israeli company had advanced warning of the 9/11 attacksâan accusation echoed in literature passed out by Democratic activists at the hearing. No immediate objections were raised, but McGovernâs conspiratorial musing did earn him the praise of at least one attendee, the notoriously anti-Semitic Rep. James P. Moran Jr., D-VA, who praised the former CIA man for his âcandidâ remarks. McGovern, for his part, sought to cast himself as a lone voice for sanity in an American political culture blind to the evils of the Middle Eastâs lone democratic country. âIsrael is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation,â he complained.
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