Paul E. Vallely

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This article is about the soldier and military expert. For the journalist, see Paul Vallely.

Paul E. Vallely is the senior military analyst for FOX News. He graduated from West Point and was commissioned into the US Army in 1961. His career included two tours of duty in Vietnam. He retired in 1993, at the rank of Major General, from his position as Deputy Commanding General, Pacific.

Vallely serves as the Military Committee Chairman for the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and occasionally writes columns and lectures on the War on Terror. Some of his public statements have caused controversy, such as saying "we are not going to permit" a Shiite victory in an Iraqi election, and claiming that the war on terror is a war between Islam and Judeo-Christianity: "That's what's going on. If you don't understand that, then you don't get it."^[1]

General Valley is also a supporter of the Jerusalem Summit organization (http://www.jerusalemsummit.org/eng/) and an advocate of the organization's proposal (http://www.jerusalemsummit.org/eng/hs_short_eng.htm ) to "transfer" the Palestines to surrounding Arab countries as a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict and to bring about the organization's belief "that one of the objectives of Israel's divinely-inspired rebirth is to make it the center of the new unity of the nations, which will lead to an era of peace and prosperity, foretold by the Prophets

[edit] The Plame Affair

Vallely interjected himself into the Plame leak after two and a half years. He told the World Net Daily on November 5, 2005 that

Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely told WorldNetDaily that Wilson mentioned Plame's status as a CIA employee over the course of at least three, possibly five, conversations in 2002 in the Fox News Channel's "green room" in Washington, D.C., as they waited to appear on air as analysts. Vallely says, according to his recollection, Wilson mentioned his wife's job in the spring of 2002 -- more than a year before Robert Novak's July 14, 2003, column identified her, citing senior administration officials, as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."^[2]

Over that weekend Vallely supposedly recalled other times Wilson allegedly shared classified information on his wife's CIA status. As noted above Vallely said he was told once in Spring 2002, but the WND on November 9, 2005 reported:

After recalling further over the weekend his contacts with Wilson, Vallely says now it was on just one occasion – the first of several conversations – that the ambassador revealed his wife's employment with the CIA and that it likely occurred some time in the late summer or early fall of 2002.^[3]

On Saturday, WorldNetDaily published a story based on an interview with Maj. General Paul Vallely, a distinguished career military man and Fox News analyst, who said Ambassador Joseph Wilson, the man at the center of the CIA leak case, had told him in casual conversations in the Fox News studios that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA employee - more than a year before this was first disclosed publicly in a column written by journalist Robert Novak.^[4]

This was a serious charge to make, especially since there are 5 felony counts leveled against one White House official as of this date (See:Lewis Libby). Yet, there is no evidence of such event and this isn't the first time Vallely is known to have claimed something that is untrue. Joseph Wilson has currently threatened/pursued legal action against World Net Daily and Vallely.^[5]

[edit] Works

Vallely co-authored a book published in 2004 entitled Endgame: Blueprint for Victory for Winning the War on Terror.

Vallely also co-authored a 1980 paper entitled From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory. MindWar is defined as "the deliberate aggressive convincing of all participants in a war that we will win that war." The paper contrasts a use of psychological operations such as propaganda with a new approach. The paper contains this passage:

Unlike PSYOP, MindWar has nothing to do with deception or even with "selected" - and therefore misleading - truth. Rather it states a whole truth that, if it does not now exist, will be forced into existence by the will of the United States. The examples of Kennedy's ultimatum to Khrshchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Hitler's stance at Munich might be cited. A MindWar message does not have to fit conditions of abstract credibility as do PSYOP there; its source makes it credible. As Livy once said:

The terror of the Roman name will be such that the world shall know that, once a Roman army has laid siege to a city, nothing will move it - not the rigors of winter nor the weariness of the months and years - that it knows no end but victory and is ready, if a swift and sudden stroke will not serve, to preserve until that victory is achieved.

Unlike Ellul's cynical propagandist, the MindWar operative must know that he speaks the truth, and he must be personally committed to it. What he says is only a part of MindWar; the rest - and the test of its effectiveness - lies in the conviction he projects to his audience, in the rapport he establishes with it.^[6]