Daily Star: When did you begin to have doubts about the effectiveness of the US intelligence and how the US government was handling it?

McGovern: As soon as it became clear to me that the Bush administration was going to exploit the trauma of 9-11 to make war on Iraq.

DS: Is your critique of US intelligence widespread among members of the US intelligence community?

McGovern: Certainly, but it's a complicated situation. People (in the intelligence community) have their careers, mortgages and children in college. The most important thing to remember, though, is that those people do love doing intelligence work. It's very important work. I can't imagine doing anything more important for your country.

But I believe there is a moral authority that's higher than government rules and regulations to which one must answer to when it comes to matters of war and peace. And when deliberate deception is involved, adhering to this higher moral authority means that it's important to do what you can to prevent an unnecessary war.

DS: It's interesting that George Bush, Jr. also has claimed to be responsible to a higher moral authority. What do you think of Bush referring to a higher moral authority to justify his actions in the War on Terrorism?

McGovern: He really can't justify the taking of lives in Iraq. It's demonstrably true that Congress approved the War on Iraq. But it was deceived. The war has created a constitutional crisis that I have never seen in my 40 years of watching developments in Washington very closely. I have never seen such a deliberate attempt by one branch of government to trick the other two branches. Historically, when our founding fathers wrote the constitution, they knew war was the most serious thing a leader could get their country involved with. So they were hell bent and determined that the authority to wage war would not be vested in a single person, but rather in the country's elected representatives. That's why they gave the legislative branch the exclusive right to declare war. But the Bush administration has deliberately undermined this prerogative of Congress. How? By deliberately deceiving Congress into believing that Saddam Hussein was about to cause a mushroom cloud above our cities.

DS: If your analysis is true, then a good cause can be made that George Bush should be impeached. But I can recall only one public figure -- Ralph Nader -- using the "I" word.

McGovern: John Dean and other folks who have worked in the White House have done that. The reason why none of our politicians have done it is because they are all a bunch of wimps. Their willingness to believe the stuff Bush was feeding them demonstrated that.

DS: You have also been critical of the US media and its role in this deception.

McGovern: The media represents the most dramatic change in the (US) body politic. We no longer have an independent media in this country. Thousands of examples can be used to demonstrate that the corporations control the media. We have a media that's slavishly devoted to the administration's line. Incredibly, Fox News is what most Americans watch. Europeans who comes to America are astonished by what they see and hear in our media. It's like Radio Moscow.

DS: Bush should be vulnerable because of what's happened since 9-11, but he is leading the presidential polls at this moment. I wouldn't bet against him to win in November. How do you explain this?

McGovern: Remember Bob Woodward's book (Plan of Attack). Woodward asked Bush how do you feel about the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq? The President answered, "You must be part of the elite." Woodward said, "What do you mean by that?" Bush answered: "Only the elite care about that." So Bush puts out lie after lie and the media reports them. It's the old Joseph Goebbels tactic. You say it three times and people start believing it. Say it five times and most people believe it.

DS: You have said that anybody who wants to know what's going on with the Bush administration should go to the Project for a New American Century website (http://newamericancentury.org). Could you please explain why?

McGovern: At the end of the Gulf War in 1991, Bush talked about the "New World Order." There could have been one, but that (first) war with Iraq went to everybody's heads. Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and their (neo- conservative) crowd formulated a strategy for the future. It would be Pax America because the US was the sole remaining super power. We would prevent the growth of any rival to our power, and we would exert our power and influence wherever and whenever we felt like. A document called the Defense Planning Guidance outlined this strategy. It was so extreme that Bush I, on the advice of James Baker and Brent Scrowcroft, threw it into a circular file. They (the neo-cons) were considered so extreme that during Bush I's term of office they were kept in lower level positions. Imagine our surprise when Bush Jr. gets elected in 2000. Who comes with him? The crazies. They are in charge now. Those (neo con) documents were written with the help of people in the Israeli government. Netanyahu and others. So the vision is crooked, and there is dual loyalty.

DS: So are you saying Israel is playing a role in shaping US policy (in the War on Terrorism)?

McGovern: It's become very clear to me that the Iraq War was fought at least as much for perceived Israeli strategic objectives as it was for our objectives. Ariel Sharon has so cleverly manipulated our government that the US is now in a position where Muslims and Arabs throughout the world hate us as much as they do the Israelis. That's why they are coming to Iraq to fight the US Now Sharon is trying to ensure that US can't extricate itself from Iraq. That's why Sharon wouldn't come to Washington to give a boast to Bush's campaign until he signed on to his strategic view. Meanwhile, American fathers, mothers, wives and husbands are fighting and dying in a war in Iraq for Ariel Sharon and his distorted view of what's best for Israel.

DS: That's interesting analysis. If you say that in the US, of course, you will be immediately branded as anti Semitic. How do handle that criticism?

McGovern: I said some of those things in an op-ed piece I wrote for the Miami Herald newspaper about a year ago. The Council of Rabbis in Greater Miami sent a diatribe to the Miami Herald about how I was anti-Semitic and had a hatred of Israel in my heart. They insisted the Herald publish the piece and it did. I was born and raised in the Bronx (New York City) and spent 20 years there. I made and still have many Jewish friends there. Yeshiva University awarded my father an honorary doctorate. I know Jewish people and I love them. I'm not against the Jewish people or the state of Israel. I am against the right wing terrorist Likud government in Tel Aviv. The truth will keep one free.

DS: What's your opinion of the widely held view in Bangladesh that the Iraq War was about oil?

McGovern: It was about oil. Bush, Jr. faced a serious problem when he came to office. There had just been brown outs and oil shortages. For the first time in our country's history, we were importing more oil than we were using. That's why Cheney's Energy Task Force was so secret. It had to come up with answers critical to our country's future. We had a choice. Either we go with alternative sources of energy or we go with oil.

To make a long story short, Cheney can't make a lot of money from alternative sources of energy, so the decision was made to go for Iraq, which has the second largest proven oil reserves. Oil was the first reason for war with Iraq; Israel, the second.

DS: But the Bush administration's script for Iraq hasn't gone according to plan and there is the danger of the situation spinning out of control.

McGovern: The Bush administration doesn't have a clue about what's going on in Iraq. Turning the situation over to the UN in a real way would be the sensible thing to do and would avoid the real possibility of getting us into a Vietnam type situation. But what are we going to do? God knows. Now we are bombing the hell out of Fallujah and the holy city of Najaf. It doesn't make much sense unless Sharon is running our foreign policy. Cheney has a picture on his office wall of the nuclear reactor in Syria that Israel destroyed in 1981. The UN -- the US included -- unanimously condemned that action. But in 2002 Cheney praised that action and said it was an effective way to deal with terrorism. So Cheney and Sharon are running our country. They are doing a wonderful job for Israel, but not a hell of a lot for our young people fighting in Iraq.

DS: Let's talk about the 9-11 Commission. Is it going to do anything that will help us in the War on Terrorism?

McGovern: The Commission is a political construct devised by Bush and Cheney. It's led by a Republican who knows nothing about Washington and brags about it. It consists of lawyers and politicians, and both. Tell me that the Commission is representative of the American people and those who died on 9-11. It's laughable. The Commission will not answer the big questions.

Besides, its membership is so hopelessly divided that Americans will have to decide for themselves.

DS: George Tenant (CIA Director) said it will take at least five years to reform the US intelligence apparatus so it works the way we want it to. Is that a realistic timetable?

McGovern: I hate to say it, but Tenant has absolutely no credibility. He is the antithesis of what is needed with respect to intelligence in the post 9-11 era. He is political animal. His career has been spent pleasing people. If we are to really reform the intelligence infrastructure we need integrity at the top. We need to have a (CIA) director who is not necessary in intelligence and doesn't need the job, but who is not afraid to tell the President the truth. We haven't had that kind of CIA director in 25 years.

DS: So why has Tenant survived the intelligence failures? Because he knows how to play the political game or because he knows where the skeletons are buried?

McGovern: It's both. He probably has a computer disk that documents the 37 warnings he gave Bush from June to September 2001. But Tenant also does what he's told. (As related in Woodward's book) Bush told Tenant: "We need an intelligence estimate that backs up what I say in my speech on Iraq. Can you do that, George?" Tenant said, "It's slam dunk, Mr. President. A slam dunk!"

In the old days, the director would not have come up with a totally contrived estimate. The CIA was established with the idea that there should be one agency in government that doesn't have a political agenda. That's why the CIA was not placed under the Department of Defense or State.

In the old days, the President would get the unvarnished truth. The State Department would tell the President that the Soviets are 10 feet tall. We'd say, "No way. They are 5'9."

The President has allowed the intelligence community to be corrupted so now he has no place to go for a straight answer. Today, when the President asks: "What's going to happen if I bomb the hell out of Fallujah?" He is not going to hear this from the intelligence community: "That's crazy. It's going to lengthen the lines for al-Qaida by ten percent." What he's going to hear instead is: "It's a slam dunk, Mr. President, a slam dunk."

Ron Chepesiuk, a South Carolina based journalist, is a Visiting Professor of Journalism at Chittagong University and a Research Associate with the National Defense College in Dhaka.