Now it's the Vulcans who are under attack

Now it's the Vulcans who are under attack
War advisers 'proved unable to do what they wanted, and that's what led to their decline'
By Bay Fang
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Published May 20, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Five years ago, the most powerful group in Washington was a coterie of President Bush's foreign policy advisers who called themselves the Vulcans after the Roman god of fire. Along with a select group of intelligence officials, they crafted the administration's strategy on Iraq and launched the country into war.

Now, as the war rages on and a new Democratic Congress goes on the offensive, the Vulcans are the ones under attack, finding themselves held up to scrutiny in a way they have rarely experienced before.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been subpoenaed to go before Congress. Paul Wolfowitz, former deputy defense secretary, just resigned as World Bank president under an ethics cloud. Former CIA Director George Tenet and former Pentagon policy chief Douglas Feith, both teaching at Georgetown University, have been fending off accusations from Congress, the public -- and each other.

"The Vulcans embodied a point of view that placed the highest priority on American military dominance as the prime aspect of America's dealings with the world," said James Mann, whose 2004 best seller, "Rise of the Vulcans," chronicled the ascendance of this influential war cabinet. "They proved unable to do what they wanted, and that's what led to their decline."

The underlying reason the Vulcans are in disarray is that the Iraq war, their grandest project, is increasingly seen as a foreign policy disaster. While some initially moved on to other powerful positions in and out of government, as violence worsened in Iraq, they have come under attack from a newly empowered Congress and an aggressive press corps, and some have turned to finger-pointing.

The first and most obvious casualty was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who resigned after the Democrats swept the midterm elections last November. "I recognize that many Americans voted last night to register their displeasure with the lack of progress being made" in Iraq, Bush said in announcing the resignation.

Vice President Dick Cheney, a charter member of the group, is still in office, but he has some of the lowest popularity ratings of anyone in the administration.

When the Democrats took over Congress, they immediately reopened issues from the prewar planning period, seeking responses to concerns they felt Congress did not pursue under Republican leadership.

"There is a real sense among Hill investigators that, after six years with a Republican Congress, administration officials became accustomed to having their explanations accepted at face value," said one senior Democratic congressional aide. "Many of the prior inquiries pulled punches, failing to ask the hardest questions, and now that's coming back to haunt them."

In February, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the new head of the Armed Services Committee, summoned the Pentagon's inspector general, and he testified that Feith's Pentagon office had given senior policymakers inappropriate "alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and Al Qaeda relationship" inconsistent with those of the intelligence community.

Last month, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House committee on oversight, revisited another issue -- how the administration dealt with prewar claims, later discredited, that Iraq sought uranium from Niger. The committee voted along party lines to subpoena Rice. Republicans called it a fishing expedition; Democrats said Rice, as national security adviser at the time, had "primary responsibility to get the intelligence ... right."

Rice said she would respond by letter: "This is an issue that has been answered and answered and answered." But Waxman last week postponed the hearing to June "to accommodate Secretary Rice's travel schedule," and said he was confident she would show up.

Republicans have accused Waxman of partisan pettiness, to which he responded that during the Clinton administration Republicans issued more than 1,000 subpoenas. "They were the ones who politicized oversight," he said in an interview. "When Clinton was president, there wasn't an accusation too small for them to rush out and hold hearings. When Bush became president, there wasn't a scandal too large for them to ignore."

Waxman has also called on Tenet and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, who was previously Rice's deputy, to testify alongside her.

Tenet's memoir, "At the Center of the Storm," portrays administration leaders such as Feith as mischaracterizing intelligence to push the country toward war.

In a book review first printed in The Wall Street Journal that Feith posted on his Web site, he defends his record: "Mr. Tenet is doing in his book just what my office had criticized the CIA for doing in its prewar analysis: omitting information that contradicts preconceived arguments."

In an interview, Feith said he has not seen Tenet since the book came out last month even though they teach on the same Georgetown campus, but that "I try always to be civil."

"It seems to me the real question is whether the Democrats politically think that raking over these questions that at this point are 5 years old, and by no means virgin territory, is the most effective political activity for them," Feith said.

Before the current administration, the Vulcans -- who also included Colin Powell and Richard Armitage -- were steeped in Cold War ideology, their beliefs shaped by the U.S. failure in Vietnam. With relationships going back some 30 years, they banded with other neoconservatives to embrace a vision of a military capable of unilaterally transforming the world.

While they worked together in the first Bush administration, it was not until the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that they found an opportunity to put their ideology into practice. The Iraq war was a chance, they reasoned, to put the American footprint in the heart of the Middle East and reshape a country run by a hostile regime.

With many of the Vulcans still in power, it may take years to see how history will judge them.


The roster of the Vulcans

DICK CHENEY

The VP has some of the lowest popularity ratings in the administration.

DOUGLAS FEITH

The former policy chief is teaching at Georgetown -- and defending his record.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE

The secretary of state has been subpoenaed to testify before Congress.

DONALD RUMSFELD

He resigned as defense secretary after the Democrats' election victories.

GEORGE TENET

The ex-CIA chief is teaching at Georgetown; his memoir is critical of Feith.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ

The former deputy defense secretary just resigned as World Bank chief.

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bfang@tribune.com