GWB vs. Rockefeller

[syracus]

Weil's so lang ist und weil's um sowas geht gleich ein eigener Thread, so als Grundlage zur Diskussion. AP, UPI und APF sind übrigens "seriöse" Nachrichtenquellen;)....



The Real Stakes Behind the War

- With the UN Neutralized There Are No More Rules
- The U.S. Economy on the Brink
- Global Oil Shortages and Massive Price Hikes Imminent
- Paralysis Looming in U.S. Government
- The WTO and Rockefellers Turning on Bush
- A World War that Will Pit the U.S. Against Europe and Russia in a Struggle for Survival with the Winners Facing China

THE PERFECT STORM - Part I

by Michael C. Ruppert

- And most of the American people, with their bankrupt and corrupt economy, will welcome cheap oil, while it lasts, and they will engage in a multitude of psychological and sickening rationales that will, in the end, amount to nothing more than saying, "I don’t care how many women and children you kill. Just let me keep my standard of living." -- From The Wilderness, August 27, 2002.

- What does big oil want in Iraq? To regain influence over the great Middle East oilfields... and the race seems likely to be won by American and British firms: ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Shell and BP – Newsweek, March 24, 2003 issue

- The most common cause of recessions, a surge in oil prices, is again afflicting the global economy – The New York Times, March 2, 2003

- French and Russian oil and gas contracts signed with the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq "will not be honored," Kurdish Prime Minister Barhim Salih said in Washington Friday. – Newsmax Wires March 14, 2003

March 19, 2003 1700 PST, (FTW) – Diplomacy ended on Monday and the reality and risks of a global war are now placed in the immediate and unavoidable focus of a world which has for the most part chosen not to understand what is at stake. This war will not be fought solely with bullets and bombs. The chain of events which is about to be set in motion dictates that the United States, assuming its Iraqi conquest is successful, continue upon a series of global military occupations to control the last remaining significant oil reserves on the planet. With the shedding of the first blood, the dropping of the first bomb, the killing of the first Iraqi child, and the death of the first American serviceman, a one-way border will have been crossed. And with that crossing economic and political forces that might combine to form the Perfect Storm aimed at America have made themselves visible.

George W. Bush’s United States will punish its recent adversaries at the UN. They will be cut out of the Iraqi spoils. But Germany, France, Russia and China have a much more realistic view of Iraqi oil than the U.S. does. Bush and his corporate allies have marketed to the markets that sometime in the next month or two we’re going to see a real bonanza as oil prices fall back to $15-20 dollar per barrel and stay there. It is not going to happen.

On March 7, FTW Contributing Editor for Energy, Dale Allen Pfeiffer broke down the reality of Iraqi oil. It’s not what’s in the ground that counts now, it’s what can be gotten to market. The Bush gamble is a big long shot and getting longer by the minute. Iraqi oil infrastructure is crumbling after twelve years of sanctions and there won’t be any increase in Iraqi production without major investment and rebuilding. That takes time. The Guardian disclosed on January 26 that the U.S. is currently buying more than a million barrels per day (Mbpd) from Iraq out of the ten million that it imports from around the world. What might happen if just that million barrels went away?

For a detailed look at the current state of Iraq’s oil industry please visit:

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/030703_us_intentions.html

What we know from previous stories in FTW is that the world has no spare production capacity to make up for any significant loss of supply in Iraq. Sure OPEC has stated that they will increase production by three to five Mbpd. Venezuela has staged a remarkable recovery after the recently failed "strike" to reach 3 Mbpd of its pre-strike level of 4 Mbpd. But Venezuelan fields are old, tired, depleting fast and the oil is heavy and expensive to refine. Venezuela offers no cushion. The promises of Saudi Arabia and the other mid east OPEC nations, on their face, sound comforting but they mean nothing because the planet is consuming a billion barrels (Gb) of oil every 12 days and that rate of consumption is increasing. Recent stories by the Agence France Presse (March 12) and the BBC (March 10) tell us that auto sales jumped 48% last year in Thailand and 50% in China respectively. This is the double edged sword behind Peak Oil. Without increased sales of consumer goods and autos, the Western economies collapse anyway and the emerging economies of the Far East are steadily increasing both consumption and demand.

So if Iraqi production drops as a result of war, where will the U.S. make up the difference and how much will it cost? Bush has indirectly threatened to punish France, Germany and Russia by locking them out of the promised booty. All of them, especially France and Russia have major investments there. But those countries still have something the U.S. does not, access to a ready supply of oil in the short term from Russia which no doubt has guaranteed its allies supply to make up for any losses from Iraq. If he really wanted to play hardball Russian President Vladimir Putin could bifurcate his pricing structure to favor the Moscow-Berlin-Paris alliance. He would find ready sympathy from Russian oil companies now eliminated from collecting on approximately $40 billion worth of new oil construction contracts and an $8 billion Iraqi debt. Russia has not forgotten how it was shamelessly looted out of an estimated $500 billion by Goldman Sachs, The Harvard Endowment and the U.S. Treasury during the 1990s. That shameless episode, which rendered Russia incapable of resisting U.S. military moves post-9/11, resulted in what a committee chaired by Congressman Christopher Cox, R-CA described as three times worse than the Great Depression.

The whole issue of Peak Oil has been moved ahead of schedule by Europe. Within a few short years the entire planet will begin to suffer societal collapse as a result of diminishing non-renewable resources. Russia has long passed its production peak and cannot continue pumping at wildly expanded rates for very long. It might take two to five years before production costs for the dregs inevitably shrink exports. But Moscow, Paris and Berlin don’t need three years. The complete devastation of the U.S. economy might be a sure thing in three to six months. That’s how fragile it is.

And what has Putin got to lose? He knows that the American agenda is to secure those reserves that have not yet peaked (i.e. The Persian Gulf sans Iran), drive the price of oil down to $13-20 per barrel, break OPEC’s back and simultaneously destroy the economic recovery that $40 oil is bringing to Russia which spends much more to produce its oil than OPEC does.

France, Germany and Russia have not opposed the American Empire lightly, nor will their resistance end now. In fact, it must intensify. The fact that these nations have not introduced a Security Council resolution condemning the invasion might signal that they are hedging their bets and it might also signal that they are just awaiting the first U.S. misstep which is sure to come. But a clue is that, of the three, Russia has bluntly labeled the U.S. invasion illegal. These countries know that the Bush administration has placed the United States in a violent, all-or-nothing position and that it has less than a 50-50 chance of winning.

While the blood is being shed the real battle will be economic and political; the dollar vs. the Euro, images of bombs and tanks vs. images of reason, caution and diplomacy. In the meantime the U.S. economy has placed all its hopes and stability on a bonanza of cheap oil which careful analysis shows is more fantasy than probable outcome. Even the Council on Foreign Relations agrees on this point.

In a brilliant Feb. 11th analysis of the current oil situation, Marshall Auerback, writing for The Prudent Bear web site quoted from a recent CFR report co-sponsored by Bush crony, oil man and former Secretary of State James Baker:

"Notwithstanding the value of Iraq’s vast oil reserves, there are severe limits on them both as a source of funding for post-conflict reconstruction efforts and as the key driver of future economic development. Put simply, we do not expect a bonanza."

Worse, according to a March 17 story in the Miami Herald revenues from Iraqi oil would not cover the costs of rebuilding the bridges, dams, power generating stations and roads that are sure to be destroyed in the coming weeks. The U.S., of necessity, will turn all cash flow toward rebuilding the oil fields while it must leave the devastated Iraqi populace to live in pestilence among the rubble. In light of America’s unilateral bullishness the EU announced last week that there might be limits to how much assistance it could render to the Iraqi people, especially if their countries were prevented from performing on their legal contracts.

Multiple recent reports from the oil industry state clearly that recent price hikes are the result of over-stretched production capacity and historically low reserve levels. Currently U.S. oil reserves are at a 28-year low and the White House has acknowledged plans to tap the 700 million barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve at the start of the conflict. That’s enough to protect the U.S. economy from further price shocks for about 70 days. Then what? Under the best of circumstances it takes mid-east oil about six weeks to get from the oil fields into your gas tank.

Further confirmation of Peak Oil’s arrival is found in recent stories from AP and The Guardian stating that Norway, once a major exporter, is expecting a decline in production and drilling due to dwindling reserves and that Shell has just eliminated one fifth of its North Sea jobs. And on March 18 Hong Kong announced that it will allow eight airlines to levy an emergency fuel surcharge of between $8.50 and $13 per passenger.

At home soaring gasoline prices are just the ticket the Bush administration wants to curb demand and exploit a subliminal unspoken deal with consumers that will sanction the slaughter and keep the poll numbers manageable for a while. But economic demons are bashing down the door. Americans vote with their wallets says the cliché. On March 16, angry black residents staged a protest in Los Angeles claiming that they could not afford to drive to work while paying two dollars a gallon. On the one hand they don’t have a clue about what the global oil reality is and on the other they will achieve nothing by demanding lowered prices and more supply without realizing that there is no more cheap oil to supply them – or anybody else for that matter. At least there is certainly not enough to make a difference for more than a few months or a year. But with less discretionary income to absorb the price shocks, the inner city poor are the prototypes for what the rest of us will be doing soon enough.

The poor always die first. And this is just one of the many signs that the Empire is starting to crumble from within.

Consider:

- The Bush Administration refuses to put a price tag on the war as budget deficits approach all-time record levels and the tax base is shrinking. Both the U.S. government and its people are awash in debt. Unemployment is skyrocketing as consumer confidence crashes. State and local governments are screaming for money and facing their worst budget shortfalls in sixty years.

- Writing at The Ether Zone, http://www.etherzone.com/, Ed Henry notes that with the national debt at over $6 trillion the U.S. government is bouncing along the debt ceiling which means that it legally cannot borrow any more money. Its options are to sell more bonds (not likely with an anemic dollar, bad management, and an expanding trade deficit) or liquidate assets. One of the few assets available to Treasury Secretary John Snow is the stock portfolio of the Federal Employees Thrift Savings Plan which has about $44 billion in stock investments. What do you think would happen on Wall Street if Uncle Sam dumped $40 billion in stock?

- Backbones of the housing mortgage market Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which, according to the New York Posts’ brilliant reporter John Crudele, own or guarantee $3.1 trillion or 45 per cent of outstanding residential debt, are in serious trouble. They don’t have enough cash to handle what might be a serious economic shock as the housing bubble collapses. Their collapse could imperil the entire economy and Crudele observed that the Federal Reserve was taking serious note of the way these "mortgage cowboys" had managed their business in inflating share prices which are now in steep decline.

- Market Oracles Warren Buffet and George Soros are issuing dire predictions about the U.S. and world economies. Soros is blasting at George W. Bush’s management style and Buffet is warning of derivatives time-bombs in what Britain’s Telegraph calls an "apocalyptic warning."

There are serious signs of a major political revolt brewing in the United States – one that could end the Bush Presidency – George W. Bush still has his finger on the trigger and he knows that his only hope for survival is to pull it. U.S. and British intelligence agencies are leaking documents left and right disputing White House "evidence" against Iraq that has repeatedly been shown to be falsified, plagiarized and forged. Quiet meetings are being held in Washington between members of Congress and attorneys like Ramsey Clark discussing Bush’s impeachment. Leaders of the World Trade Organization (WTO), as reported in a March 15 story in the International Herald Tribune have said, "All international institutions would suffer a loss of credibility if the one superpower appeared to be choosing which rules to obey and which to ignore." And a Rockefeller has called for an investigation of a Bush. On March 14 The Associated Press reported that W. Va. Senator Jay Rockefeller has asked the FBI to investigate forged documents which were presented first by Britain and then the United States showing that Iraq had been trying to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger for its weapons program. Of all the glaring falsehoods told by the administration the fact that these forgeries were noted by a Rockefeller may make them the second-rate Watergate burglary of the 21st century. (See Part II)

There are few things more closely connected to or identified with Bush family power than globalization and the Rockefellers. He has most likely failed both of them and both have the power to remove him.

Too much, too little, too late; at least as far as preventing a war and massive carnage is concerned. But these developments suggest that the real powers that be might be getting ready to have Bush impeached just as soon as he has humiliated the United States, started a World War leading to the deaths of perhaps millions of people, destroyed the efficacy of the United Nations and secured the Iraqi oil fields. This is a playing field which the biggest money might desire and for which it might be willing to offer a sacrifice if it becomes necessary. If the war turns out to be a dismal failure then the scapegoat has volunteered for his own hanging and there are signs that it is being prepared.

One thing is certain. If George W. Bush is removed from within, it will signal nothing other than a new "kinder, gentler" set of managers pursuing the exact same agenda as before. The dirtiest work will have been done.

*************************************************

THE PERFECT STORM - Part II

"Shock and Awe" Is "Mocked and Flawed" -- War Plan Stumbles as Bush Tells CNN, "It’s Gonna Take a While to Achieve Our Objective... This Is Just the Beginning of a Tough Fight." -- U.S. Soldiers Captured, Iraqi Resistance Significant and Toughening
U.S. Press/Political Hostility to Bush Administration Intensifies – Major Papers Discussing Criminal Behavior, Impeachment as Focus Intensifies on Forged Niger Uranium Docs – Cheney, Powell and Rumsfeld Implicated
Oil Bonanza Fading as Economic Indicators Weaken in an Unstable Environment – Iraqi Oil Deliveries Interrupted – Reality Tramples Market Exuberance
Turk-Kurdish Chaos More Likely
Has the U.S. Been Set Up by Europe, Russia and China?

by Michael C. Ruppert


March 24, 2003, 2100 EDT (FTW) – Atlanta, Military, economic, oil, and political storms continue to gather and converge in what may become a Perfect Storm for the Bush Administration and the United States economy.

On the fifth day of a U.S. military campaign rejected by the U.N. Security Council, at least 12 U.S. soldiers have been captured by Iraqi forces near al Nasiriyah even as various foreign news sources are reporting that as many as four to ten of the vaunted M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks have been destroyed in combat. A helicopter aircrew has been captured further north. ABC has reported that coalition casualties are approaching 200. Promises that Iraqi civilians expecting liberation would greet coalition troops with open arms have been unfulfilled as Iraqi resistance stiffens on a daily basis. In a tragic event, an African-American Sergeant of the 101st Air Assault Division staged a grenade attack on tents occupied by his comrades-in-arms, killing one and wounding fourteen. The fallout from this tragedy will have lasting repercussions on the psyches of both U.S. military and civilian populations. Images of an American Black man face down and handcuffed - no matter how serious the offense - will not fade quickly and will further erode an extremely fragile and increasingly volatile domestic landscape. The suspect is Muslim.

Saddam Hussein and his forces are now gaining strength, political cachet, and popular support with each new engagement while coalition forces lose it with every casualty and delay. One of the first questions asked at a somber, live press conference at Central Command headquarters in Qatar on Sunday was, "Has America gotten itself into another Vietnam?" This question came after only three days of ground combat. Around the Arab and Muslim world, Saddam Hussein’s picture is becoming an icon of anti-colonial resistance. Over a thousand years of European and American history, the Arab world has never given in easily to occupying forces; they always prefer one of their own – no matter how distasteful – to an outsider. The Crusades were the earliest lesson for Europe and the Suez crisis of 1956 the most recent.

Consistent with predictions made in FTW, the Turkish government, poised to send several brigades into northern Iraq, is threatening to turn Northern Iraq into absolute chaos. The Kurds who live in the region ethnically blur the borders of Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran and their support is critical to U.S. military plans. Having sought an independent homeland for decades, they have been consistently used by the U.S. and western powers for covert operations and destabilization programs and they have always been betrayed later. At the moment FTW gives a 50-50 likelihood that the U.S. will ultimately – and after much protestation for effect – allow the Turkish incursion. That will instantly create a highly unstable and balkanized region. The U.S. has historically both created and preferred "balkanization" to secure commercial control of natural resources and civilian populations with devastating results for anyone living in the region. This could ultimately – if the U.S. invasion is successful - result in Iraq being divided into three or more separately governed regions.

The instability created by such a development would likely spread throughout the Middle East quickly. None of the region’s borders has existed for more than eighty years and all of them were drawn by departing colonial powers. Perceptions in Saudi Arabia of this kind of trend might automatically require U.S. forces to engage in a two-front war if the already unstable Saudi regime begins to fracture and weaken.

To date, this writer has seen no reportage of how the Saudi populace is reacting to a war plan that is stumbling. For approximately six months, FTW has been reporting that Saudi Arabia would likely become unstable with the invasion and that American war planners might be planning for a nearly simultaneous operation to control Saudi oil fields, which contain 25% of all the oil on the planet. But as the efficacy of U.S. military might comes into question, the brass ring of oil becomes ever more elusive and a Saudi occupation becomes a military goal out of reach.

In the meantime, there are increasing signs that the U.S. political and economic elites are laying the groundwork to make the Bush administration, specifically Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Perle and Wolfowitz, sacrificial scapegoats for a failed policy in time to consolidate post 9-11 gains, regroup and move forward. These indications include: written press attacks on the Bush administration by select journalists long known for their loyalty and obedience to financial interests and the CIA; a growing revolt from within the intelligence communities of the U.S. and the U.K. including damaging leaks undermining the credibility of the administration; serious economic consequences closing in on the financial markets; growing signs of pending oil shortages; and indications that the use of forged documents by the Bush and Blair regimes may become the Watergate burglary of the 21st century.

THE WRITTEN PRESS TURN ON BUSH, BIG TIME

While most of the American people rely on television coverage for their worldview, those within the government, politics and the financial markets look to a select group of entrenched print journalists to sniff the winds of political change. Those winds started blowing against George W. Bush and his administration before the war began. In what appears to be intensifying anti-Bush rhetoric, an unprecedented media effort is beginning to cut the legs from under the administration even as it gambles everything on an increasingly elusive military victory.

March 12 – Beginning with a relatively unknown press organization, it was reported at www.informationtimes.com that 35 members of the U.S. Congress, overwhelmingly Democrat, had flatly rejected the U.S. war effort and were calling for a repeal of the February resolution authorizing the president to use force against Iraq.

March 12 – On the same day, journalistic heavyweight Howard Fineman of NEWSWEEK reported that the "blame game" had already begun for a war that had not. He wrote "But few think it’s going to be easy. And my guess is that team discipline inside the Bush administration is about to be fractured by the collateral damage that already is being caused by a war we have yet to fight. We are embarrassingly alone diplomatically, and State Department underlings (privately) blame Rumsfeld & Co. Inside the Pentagon - but outside of Rumsfeld’s office – I’m told that E-Ring brass have adopted what one source calls a ‘Vietnam mentality,’ a sense of resignation about a policy...they seriously doubt will work...

"This time around is a different story. The closer we get to the event, the less Bush is in control of events..."

March 14 – The Los Angeles Times’ Greg Miller reported that a State Department document was contradicting the Bush administration’s claim that the Iraqi invasion would encourage the spread of democracy.

"A classified State Department report expresses doubt that installing a new regime in Iraq will foster the spread of democracy in the Middle East, a claim President Bush has made in trying to build support for a war, according to intelligence officials familiar with the document.

"The report exposes significant divisions within the Bush administration over the so-called domino theory, one of the arguments that underpins the case for invading Iraq."

The story specifically singled out Pentagon hawks Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz as objects of criticism by the U.S. intelligence community.

March 15 – The International Herald Tribune reported that top officials of the World Trade Organization had also started turning on Bush by reporting, "...officials said they feared that American moves within the organization and toward a war in Iraq would weaken respect for international rules and lead to serious practical consequences for the world economy and business.

"In the past months the United States has compiled one of the worst records for violating trade rules...

"They said they were worried that all international institutions would suffer a loss of credibility if the one superpower appeared to be choosing which rules to obey and which rules to ignore."

The WTO, globalization, is the heart of the economic power bloc that brought Bush into power.

March 16 – The big guns at The Washington Post begin to open fire. In a lengthy story on the controversial Carlyle Group, a major private investment bank with which both the President and his father have deep financial connections, Greg Schneider made some absolutely stunning statements:

"David M. Rubenstein is exasperated, and he blurts something that a quick look around the room proves is outrageous: "We’re not," he nearly shouts, "that well connected!

"Behind him is a picture of Rubenstein on a plane with then-Gov. George W. Bush. Across the room, a photo of Rubenstein with the President’s father and mother. Next to that, Rubenstein and Mikhail Gorbachev. Elsewhere: Rubenstein and Jimmy Carter. On a bookshelf: Rubenstein and the pope...

"Rubenstein, after all, is founder of the Carlyle Group...

"But the connections have cost Carlyle, in ways that are hard to measure. It has developed a reputation as the CIA of the business world – omnipresent, powerful, a little sinister...

"Last year then-congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) even suggested that Carlyle’s and Bush’s ties to the Middle East made them somehow complicitous in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. While her comments were widely dismissed as irresponsible, the publicity highlighted Carlyle’s increasingly notorious reputation. Internet sites with headlines such as "The Axis of Corporate Evil" purport to link Carlyle to everything from Enron to Al Qaeda.

"’We’ve actually replaced the Trilateral Commission’ as the darling of conspiracy theorists, says Rubenstein – who, truth be told, happens to be a member of the Trilateral Commission.

"It didn’t help that as the World trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden. Former President Bush, a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day...

"The company has rewarded its faithful with a 36 percent average annual rate of return...

"Times are changing, though. It’s no longer valid to assume that Carlyle’s golden roll of all-stars automatically opens doors in certain parts of the world, says Youssef M. Ibrahim of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. ‘George Bush junior is kind of screwing his father up, slowly but surely, in terms of securing relationships in the region,’ Ibrahim says of the Mideast. The current administration’s support for Israel, its hostility toward Iraq and its rocky dealings with the Saudi royal family have soured business and political relationships alike, he says."

[To view previous FTW stories on the Carlyle group please visit http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index.html#bush.]

March 16 – On the same day as the Carlyle story, one of The Washington Post’s biggest pundits for several decades, Walter Pincus, fired a serious shot into the administration’s belly. To veterans of the 1996-98 popular nationwide campaign to expose CIA connections to cocaine trafficking, Pincus’ name will be remembered as one of the chief defenders of the CIA. In fact, Pincus has been one of the Post’s primary CIA conduits for more than thirty years. In 1967, he wrote a short feature for the Post titled, "How I Traveled the World on a CIA Stipend."

In a story titled "U.S. Lacks Specifics on Banned Arms", Pincus described how U.S. "Senior intelligence analysts say they feel caught between the demands from the White House, Pentagon and other government policymakers for intelligence that would make the administration’s case ‘and what they say is a lack of hard facts,’ one official said.

"The assertions, coming on the eve of a possible decision by President Bush to go to war against Iraq, have raised concerns among some members of the intelligence community about whether administration officials have exaggerated intelligence in a desire to convince the American public..."

Pincus went on to detail how key U.S. Senators like Carl Levin and John Warner were questioning data that had apparently been misrepresented and/or hidden from the U.N.

An ominous note at the end of the story, reminding anyone who read it of Watergate and the demise of the Nixon presidency, added "Staff Writer Bob Woodward contributed to this report."

March 18 – Pincus returned again, in the company of Post Staff Writer Dana Milbank, to place more bricks in the wall that might seal the administration’s fate. The story titled, "Bush Clings to Dubious Allegations About Iraq" opened with the lead, "As the Bush administration prepares to attack Iraq this week, it is doing so on the basis of a number of allegations against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein that have been challenged – and in some cases disproved – by the United Nations, European governments and even U.S. intelligence reports."

The story went on to document misrepresentations by George Bush, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell that made it clear that if George W. Bush was going down his whole administration was going with him. It was now a part of the official Washington record that all three had been guilty of misrepresentations to the press and the American people.

March 20 – Columnist Craig Roberts, writing in the traditionally pro-Republican, conservative Washington Times delivered perhaps the most shocking signal that the power establishment, which should have stopped the war before it started, was moving to set the administration up for a fall.

In a column titled "A Reckless Path", Roberts’ lead paragraph read:

"Will Bush be impeached? Will he be called a war criminal? These are not hyperbolic questions. Mr. Bush has permitted a small cadre of neoconservatives to isolate him from world opinion, putting him at odds with the United Nations and America’s allies."

It got worse from there.

"...On the eve of Mr. Bush’s ultimatum, it came to light that a key piece of evidence used by the Bush administration to link Iraq to a nuclear weapons program is a forgery. Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, has asked the FBI to investigate the forged documents that the Bush administration has used to make its case that Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction."

Amazingly, Roberts then went on to make a comparison with Adolf Hitler’s faked attacks by SS soldiers dressed as Polish troops in 1939 to justify the invasion of Poland, which started the Second World War.

Roberts closed his column with a dire warning. "Mr. Bush and his advisers have forgotten that the power of an American president is temporary and relative."

March 22 – One of The New York Times’ chief experts on intelligence, with close contacts at the CIA, is James Risen. Whenever reading a Risen story it’s a safe bet to assume that it was fed to him directly by CIA headquarters. In a story headlined, "CIA Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports" Risen wrote:

"The recent disclosure that reports claiming Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger were based partly on forged documents has renewed complaints among analysts at the C.I.A. about the way intelligence related to Iraq has been handled, several intelligence officials said.

"Analysts at the agency said they had felt pressured to make their intelligence reports on Iraq conform to Bush administration policies.

"For months, a few C.I.A. analysts have privately expressed concerns to colleagues and Congressional officials that they have faced pressure in writing intelligence reports to emphasize links between Saddam Hussein's government and Al Qaeda.

"As the White House contended that links between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda justified military action against Iraq, these analysts complained that reports on Iraq have attracted unusually intense scrutiny from senior policy makers within the Bush administration.

"’A lot of analysts have been upset about the way the Iraq-Al Qaeda case has been handled,’ said one intelligence official familiar with the debate."

INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES TURN ON BUSH/BLAIR

It has been happening for two months now. Leaks, protests, even overt criticisms from those like former senior CIA analyst Stephen Pelletier, who has revealed that it was Iran rather than Iraq which had killed thousands of Kurds in massive poison gas attacks in the 1980s. More recently we have seen British intelligence personnel leak information to the press showing that Britain’s infamous intelligence dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had been plagiarized from outdated information in graduate student papers and that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has engaged in illegal wiretapping of U.N. officials in attempts to secure enough votes for a resolution in support of the invasion. One or perhaps two of these events could be explained as the actions of individuals. But the frequency and number of these attacks is suggesting that the intelligence services, which view themselves as permanent and enduring institutions as compared to passing administrations, are slowly pulling structural supports from underneath the Bush and Blair administrations’ platform.

On February 8, Counterpunch published a statement by a group calling itself Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) which gave Secretary of State Colin Powell a C- grade for providing "context and perspective" on Iraqi weapons and intent. The statement specifically and correctly chided the Bush administration for making the violation of a U.N. resolution a pretext for war pointing out that Israel’s refusal to comply from a U.N. resolution calling for its withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967 has never been addressed.

[NOTE: Israel is currently in violation of 64 U.N. resolutions as opposed to Iraq’s 17]

The VIPS statement also vigorously disputed any notion that Iraq posed any immediate threat to the U.S. and quoted CIA reports supporting that position. It also disputed Bush/Powell contentions that Iraq had any previous involvement with terrorist activities. Revealing what may actually be an intention of the Bush administration, VIPS stated, "Indeed, it is our view that an invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future."

And, striking a chord that is sure to resonate in millions of U.S. military veterans, VIPS observed, "Reminder: The last time we sent troops to the Gulf, over 600,000 of them, one out of three came back ill – many with unexplained disorders of the nervous system. Your Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs recently closed the VA healthcare system to nearly 200,000 eligible veterans by administrative fiat."

Stories from early March in Britain’s The Observer actually produced a copy of a Top Secret NSA memorandum calling on allied intelligence agencies to increase their wiretapping and monitoring of U.N. diplomats who might swing a Security Council vote in favor of the U.S. While reportage on this major breach of international trust and protocol has gone away, the rage felt by many diplomats has not. It was later disclosed that an employee of British intelligence who was outraged by its contents had leaked the memo. However, reading between the lines, this writer suspects that the leak took place with a wink and a nod from higher ups.

By March 14, the activities of VIPS were getting favorable coverage by the Associated Press, a sign that powers controlling both the media and the intelligence services were pushing the agenda. Although varying editions of the story appeared in print, on the AP web site and in different parts of the country, the basic story retained a key lead sentence. "A small group comprised mostly of retired CIA officers is appealing to colleagues still inside to go public with any evidence the Bush administration is slanting intelligence to support its case for war with Iraq."

Such a statement from intelligence veterans has serious repercussions in a discipline that is noted for never leaking information. That is, unless there is an agenda that intelligence agencies themselves are pursuing. In those cases the CIA plays the media, as one CIA executive once described, "like a Mighty Wurlitzer."

As resignations of outraged civil servants are stacking up on both sides of the Atlantic like freshly cut firewood, the Bush administration was also seriously hurt by the resignation of the top Bush National Security Council official in charge of terrorism, Rand Beers. A March 19 UPI story, while repeating the Bush administration position that Beers’ resignation was not because of administration deceit and vanishing credibility, left no doubt that Beers, widely respected in Washington, was just plain fed up and possibly sensing a sinking ship.

OIL'S NOT WELL

The utterly ridiculous and unjustified drop in oil prices and upsurge in the Dow last week is belied by real data on oil supplies as the Iraqi invasion stumbles. As the war intensifies some real garbage and some occasional gems of truth are coming from the major media.

First, it is a given that while the war is in progress, Iraqi oil exports are virtually non-existent. The port region around Basra – which accounts for well more than half of Iraqi exports -- is virtually shut down. One pipeline running from northern Iraq to the Turkish port of Ceyhan is reported to be intact but there are no reports as to whether oil is actually flowing. It’s not likely. What this means is that it is a safe bet that two million plus barrels per day (Mbpd) have been taken out of world supplies.

In the face of this, BusinessWeek, in the February 24 issue, has engaged in the outrageously dishonest reporting that the Caspian basin may hold 200 billion barrels (Gb) of reserves and that there are some three trillion barrels of proven conventional oil remaining on the planet. Extensive research conducted by FTW has shown that Caspian reserves have been verified by drilling results over the last three years to be only around 40 Gb and are a major disappointment. FTW data was derived through extensive research in oil and gas journals, official government reports and by direct interviews with oil executives who have been in the region.

Planetary reserves of conventional oil are only about one trillion barrels or enough to keep the world supplied for approximately 30 years in an ever tightening and ever more expensive marketplace that threatens economies all over the globe. Motives for the BusinessWeek deception would include providing propaganda cover for the fact that the invasion of Iraq is totally about oil and also give false confidence to investors as financial and equity markets teeter on the brink of collapse.

The Wall Street Journal, however, on March 18, recently engaged in some serious truth telling. In a page-one story titled "Why the U.S. IS Still Hooked On Oil Imports", the Journal reported:

"President Bush says hydrogen power will lead to energy independence... Mr. Bush is almost certain to be proved wrong, at least in the next couple of decades."

After acknowledging that oil price spikes have always led to recessions, the Journal relied on an extensive body of research of the statements of OPEC founder, Saudi Sheikh Zaki Yamani to hit at one of the core motivators for the Iraqi invasion – oil production costs. Not every country or region spends the same amount of money to produce a barrel of oil. And nowhere is oil cheaper to produce than in the Persian Gulf. The Journal quoted Yamani as stating at a 1980s OPEC meeting, "Let’s see how the North Sea can produce oil when prices are at $5 a barrel."

The Journal continued: "At low prices, the Persian Gulf countries have an unbeatable edge. In the mid 1980s it cost them a couple of dollars a barrel to produce oil. It cost about $15 a barrel off the coast of Britain and Norway or in the U.S." That was in the 1980s. Credible estimates of North Sea production costs in dying fields now place the cost per barrel at over $20.

Russia has current estimated production costs of between $19 and $27 a barrel which reveal the key to everything that’s going on now. The world is running out of oil. In order to save a teetering U.S. economy the Bush administration is betting on the rapidly diminishing hope that it can get Iraqi oil back on the markets and available to the U.S. at a price of between $15 and $20 per barrel. If the prices drop to the levels Bush needs, OPEC loses its profits and Russian oil becomes uncompetitive in the market place.

Bush is not going to get his way.

In a major development, it was reported on Saturday that growing unrest in Nigeria, an OPEC member and the world’s sixth largest exporter, had shut down the Chevron Texaco pumping facilities. A story in today’s Economist confirmed earlier reports that both Chevron and French giant TotalFinaElf had not only shut down production but ordered evacuations of all their personnel. These moves take an immediate 330,000 barrels a day out of world supplies and they also hearken back to recent lessons learned in Venezuela after a massive strike shut down Venezuelan production. Refineries and wells don’t operate at the flip of a switch. They require a constant flow of chemicals and products to keep their systems primed. When recovering from a shut down, it often takes a considerable period to reach previous production levels.

While OPEC has announced that it will increase production to offset shortages, its ability to do so is limited to perhaps a 3-5 Mbpd increase. That’s a drop in the bucket in current tight markets and in a world that consumes a billion barrels every twelve days. Iraqi oil fields will require billions of dollars of investment and years to increase Iraqi production to five or eight Mbpd. And that clock will only start ticking once the country is secure and safe, an outcome that is not at all guaranteed at the moment.

In the meantime, according to The Financial Times today, the Mexican government has announced its intent to start selling U.S. dollars on world currency markets. This move could further weaken an already shaky U.S. dollar, especially if other nations, angered at the U.S. invasion of Iraq, follow suit. Since oil is currently purchased in dollars, inevitable future oil price spikes could become doubly painful for the U.S. economy as the dollar loses value.

BUSH'S WATGERATE BURGLARY :D :D :D

"At the Security Council, some are questioning the veracity of any U.S. claim regarding Iraq." – The Boston Globe, March 16, 2003

The first official report that documents prepared on stationery of the governments of Niger and Iraq detailing a planned sale of uranium to Iraq were forged came on March 7. Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief nuclear inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency told the U.N. Security Council that the documents, "were not authentic." The first paper to break the news was London’s Financial Times. The documents, not very clever or convincing, failed to convince the U.N. but were, however, included in British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s now legendary flawed intelligence dossier, which had been presented to Parliament on Sept. 24, 2002.

The Washington Post picked up on the story on March 8 where it reported that, "The forgers had made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away – including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written, the officials said."

The Post reported administration officials as giving the somewhat lame excuse, "We fell for it." No one even tried to suggest a motive for someone other than the Bush or Blair regimes to commit the crime.

Not everyone fell for it. As reported in what are now at least a half dozen stories, the CIA was suspicious of the documents and purposely left them out of their own report on Iraqi weapons. That did not, however, prevent George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney from touting them as authentic. The State Department even authoritatively referred to the documents in a December 19, 2002 Fact Sheet titled "Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council".

By March 13, The Post was back with a story indicating that the FBI was looking into the source of the documents and "the possibility that a foreign government is using a deception campaign to foster support for military action against Iraq."

Huh? Is there some country out there we haven’t heard of that really hates Iraq other than the U.S., Britain or Israel?

The Post story closed by saying, "The CIA, which also had obtained the documents, had questions about ‘whether they were accurate,’ said one intelligence official, and it decided not to include them in its file on Iraq’s program to procure weapons of mass destruction."

This begs the question as to whether CIA Director George Tenet told Bush or Cheney or Powell that the documents were forged. That’s his job above all else: to give the President reliable and trustworthy intelligence.

:D >>>>>On March 14, Ken Guggenheim of The Associated Press reported that Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee had called the FBI and asked for an investigation of the documents. Rockefeller’s full name is John D. Rockefeller, IV and he is a direct descendant of the same family that essentially brought the Bush family into power. What is amazing here is not only that someone has requested an investigation of just one of the hundreds of Bush administration inconsistencies and proven lies since 9-11, but that it was a Rockefeller who requested it. That reality has thundered throughout Washington’s power corridors like an earthquake.

FTW placed calls to both FBI headquarters and Rockefeller’s Washington offices asking for comment or further information. An FBI spokesperson told FTW that the Bureau had nothing to say. After hearing what the topic was, a Rockefeller spokesperson promised to call back but did not.

Colin Powell immediately started denying that the State Department had anything to do with creating the forgeries. No one had accused him! And the story picked up "legs" in print media around the world.

By the 15th, CNN had picked up the story on its web site and had added damning observations about the childish, crude and "obvious" nature of the forgeries that "should never have gotten past the CIA." But the CIA had already established a record saying that it never trusted the documents. Asked about the documents on Meet the Press the previous Sunday, Powell simply stated, "It was the information that we had. We provided it. If that information is inaccurate, fine."<<<<<<<< :D

Not so fine.

Where did the documents come from? Already inconsistent finger pointing, eerily reminiscent of the loose threads pulled on by Woodward and Bernstein in 1972 and 1973 are starting to surface. Powell says he doesn’t know where the documents came from. Britain is remaining silent and the government of Niger has issued a blunt statement indicating that the documents were forged in London and Washington.

My guess is that they were forged inside the National Security Council rather than at the CIA. The CIA would have done a better job. Can you say, "Iran-Contra"?

The most scathing blow to date – and there are sure to be more – came from Congressman Henry Waxman (D, Ca.) who, in a six-page March 17 letter to George Bush, created a locked-down record of Bush’s, Cheney’s, Rumsfeld’s and Powell’s use of the documents, even pointing out that the President had made reference to the documents in his State-of-the-Union address in January by saying, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Waxman noted next that, "a day later, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at a news briefing that Iraq "recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Waxman closed his letter with three chilling questions that may now distance George Tenet from George W. Bush and his cabinet, who will all go down together if it becomes necessary. Waxman asked the President to directly address:

Whether CIA officials communicated their doubts about the credibility of the forged evidence to other Administration officials, including officials at the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the White House;
Whether the CIA had any input into the "Fact Sheet" distributed by the State Department on December 19, 2002; and
Whether the CIA reviewed your statement in the State of the Union address regarding Iraq’s attempts to obtain uranium from Africa and, if so, what the CIA said about the statement.
I can hear the distant echoes of Senator Howard Baker in the Senate Watergate hearings asking, "What did the President know and when did he know it?"

THE PERFECT STORM

It’s all coming together on the radar screen and the chances are that these storms are going to merge. In this all out economic war of survival, as Peak Oil forces its way into the public consciousness, Russia will likely continue to provide Saddam with arms and technical assistance. France may well share intelligence. China, with the slightest nod, can contribute tactical advice and many mines for the Mediterranean. All of them can indirectly, and through plausibly deniable methods, foster and supply revolts in oil producing regions around the globe. And they can all laugh and deny as the U.S. tries to point a finger at them. This has all been done before.

In the meantime Vladimir Putin can cushion his allies with cheap oil as the U.S. starts to die of thirst.

Before Americans become outraged that such a scenario might be unfolding, I would remind them that every one of these tactics has been employed by the United States in spades against each of these countries for more than fifty years. It was the U.S. that chose this course to begin with. The tragedy, of course, is that the American people will suffer greatly as the storms converge. The truth is that the American people have never been any more of a concern to the powers that be than the people in the rest of the world have, except that giving them a higher standard of living made them compliant and dumb. It appears as if even that is no longer necessary. The destruction of American credibility and the transfer of its wealth are necessary steps in the creation of the New World Order.

Everything might just come crashing down all at once and if that happens the powers that rule will sacrifice their little Caesar and cut a deal with the other nations quickly. Just as in Shakespeare’s play, there will be many wounds in Caesar’s body, inflicted by many different people. But most certainly one of the daggers will be found in the hand of George Tenet and the CIA. He knows where the real power resides.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/031903_perfect_storm_1.html

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/032503_perfect_storm_2.html

Thanx @ pecami, saubere Arbeit.....

syr

[schloss]

Das macht äusserst viel Sinn!
Danke syr!

[syracus]

Just 1 day after FTW published Part II of The Perfect Storm, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh - fresh on the heels of his coup in forcing the resignation of Richard Perle from the Defense Policy Board - :cool: confirms that powerful forces and mysterious events are auguring the fall of the Bush regime. -- MCR


http://www.bighula.com/ftw/images/NYMimage001.gif
http://www.bighula.com/ftw/images/NYMimage005.gif
Issue of 2003-03-31

WHO LIED TO WHOM?

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq’s nuclear program?

Last September 24th, as Congress prepared to vote on the resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to wage war in Iraq, a group of senior intelligence officials, including George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq’s weapons capability. It was an important presentation for the Bush Administration. Some Democrats were publicly questioning the President’s claim that Iraq still possessed weapons of mass destruction which posed an immediate threat to the United States. Just the day before, former Vice-President Al Gore had sharply criticized the Administration’s advocacy of preëmptive war, calling it a doctrine that would replace “a world in which states consider themselves subject to law” with “the notion that there is no law but the discretion of the President of the United States.” A few Democrats were also considering putting an alternative resolution before Congress.

According to two of those present at the briefing, which was highly classified and took place in the committee’s secure hearing room, Tenet declared, as he had done before, that a shipment of high-strength aluminum tubes that was intercepted on its way to Iraq had been meant for the construction of centrifuges that could be used to produce enriched uranium. The suitability of the tubes for that purpose had been disputed, but this time the argument that Iraq had a nuclear program under way was buttressed by a new and striking fact: the C.I.A. had recently received intelligence showing that, between 1999 and 2001, Iraq had attempted to buy five hundred tons of uranium oxide from Niger, one of the world’s largest producers. The uranium, known as “yellow cake,” can be used to make fuel for nuclear reactors; if processed differently, it can also be enriched to make weapons. Five tons can produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a bomb. (When the C.I.A. spokesman William Harlow was asked for comment, he denied that Tenet had briefed the senators on Niger.)

On the same day, in London, Tony Blair’s government made public a dossier containing much of the information that the Senate committee was being given in secret—that Iraq had sought to buy “significant quantities of uranium” from an unnamed African country, “despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it.” The allegation attracted immediate attention; a headline in the London Guardian declared, “african gangs offer route to uranium.”

Two days later, Secretary of State Colin Powell, appearing before a closed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also cited Iraq’s attempt to obtain uranium from Niger as evidence of its persistent nuclear ambitions. The testimony from Tenet and Powell helped to mollify the Democrats, and two weeks later the resolution passed overwhelmingly, giving the President a congressional mandate for a military assault on Iraq.

On December 19th, Washington, for the first time, publicly identified Niger as the alleged seller of the nuclear materials, in a State Department position paper that rhetorically asked, “Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?” (The charge was denied by both Iraq and Niger.) A former high-level intelligence official told me that the information on Niger was judged serious enough to include in the President’s Daily Brief, known as the P.D.B., one of the most sensitive intelligence documents in the American system. Its information is supposed to be carefully analyzed, or “scrubbed.” Distribution of the two- or three-page early-morning report, which is prepared by the C.I.A., is limited to the President and a few other senior officials. The P.D.B. is not made available, for example, to any members of the Senate or House Intelligence Committees. “I don’t think anybody here sees that thing,” a State Department analyst told me. “You only know what’s in the P.D.B. because it echoes—people talk about it.”

President Bush cited the uranium deal, along with the aluminum tubes, in his State of the Union Message, on January 28th, while crediting Britain as the source of the information: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” He commented, “Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.”



Then the story fell apart. On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes. “The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic,” ElBaradei said.

One senior I.A.E.A. official went further. He told me, “These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking.”

The I.A.E.A. had first sought the documents last fall, shortly after the British government released its dossier. After months of pleading by the I.A.E.A., the United States turned them over to Jacques Baute, who is the director of the agency’s Iraq Nuclear Verification Office.

It took Baute’s team only a few hours to determine that the documents were fake. The agency had been given about a half-dozen letters and other communications between officials in Niger and Iraq, many of them written on letterheads of the Niger government. The problems were glaring. One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a Niger Minister of Foreign Affairs and Coöperation, who had been out of office since 1989. Another letter, allegedly from Tandja Mamadou, the President of Niger, had a signature that had obviously been faked and a text with inaccuracies so egregious, the senior I.A.E.A. official said, that “they could be spotted by someone using Google on the Internet.”

The large quantity of uranium involved should have been another warning sign. Niger’s “yellow cake” comes from two uranium mines controlled by a French company, with its entire output presold to nuclear power companies in France, Japan, and Spain. “Five hundred tons can’t be siphoned off without anyone noticing,” another I.A.E.A. official told me.

This official told me that the I.A.E.A. has not been able to determine who actually prepared the documents. “It could be someone who intercepted faxes in Israel, or someone at the headquarters of the Niger Foreign Ministry, in Niamey. We just don’t know,” the official said. “Somebody got old letterheads and signatures, and cut and pasted.” Some I.A.E.A. investigators suspected that the inspiration for the documents was a trip that the Iraqi Ambassador to Italy took to several African countries, including Niger, in February, 1999. They also speculated that MI6—the branch of British intelligence responsible for foreign operations—had become involved, perhaps through contacts in Italy, after the Ambassador’s return to Rome.

Baute, according to the I.A.E.A. official, “confronted the United States with the forgery: ‘What do you have to say?’ They had nothing to say.”

ElBaradei’s disclosure has not been disputed by any government or intelligence official in Washington or London. Colin Powell, asked about the forgery during a television interview two days after ElBaradei’s report, dismissed the subject by saying, “If that issue is resolved, that issue is resolved.” A few days later, at a House hearing, he denied that anyone in the United States government had anything to do with the forgery. “It came from other sources,” Powell testified. “It was provided in good faith to the inspectors.”

The forgery became the object of widespread, and bitter, questions in Europe about the credibility of the United States. But it initially provoked only a few news stories in America, and little sustained questioning about how the White House could endorse such an obvious fake. On March 8th, an American official who had reviewed the documents was quoted in the Washington Post as explaining, simply, “We fell for it.”



The Bush Administration’s reliance on the Niger documents may, however, have stemmed from more than bureaucratic carelessness or political overreaching. Forged documents and false accusations have been an element in U.S. and British policy toward Iraq at least since the fall of 1997, after an impasse over U.N. inspections. Then as now, the Security Council was divided, with the French, the Russians, and the Chinese telling the United States and the United Kingdom that they were being too tough on the Iraqis. President Bill Clinton, weakened by the impeachment proceedings, hinted of renewed bombing, but, then as now, the British and the Americans were losing the battle for international public opinion. A former Clinton Administration official told me that London had resorted to, among other things, spreading false information about Iraq. The British propaganda program—part of its Information Operations, or I/Ops—was known to a few senior officials in Washington. “I knew that was going on,” the former Clinton Administration official said of the British efforts. “We were getting ready for action in Iraq, and we wanted the Brits to prepare.”

Over the next year, a former American intelligence officer told me, at least one member of the U.N. inspection team who supported the American and British position arranged for dozens of unverified and unverifiable intelligence reports and tips—data known as inactionable intelligence—to be funnelled to MI6 operatives and quietly passed along to newspapers in London and elsewhere. “It was intelligence that was crap, and that we couldn’t move on, but the Brits wanted to plant stories in England and around the world,” the former officer said. There was a series of clandestine meetings with MI6, at which documents were provided, as well as quiet meetings, usually at safe houses in the Washington area. The British propaganda scheme eventually became known to some members of the U.N. inspection team. “I knew a bit,” one official still on duty at U.N. headquarters acknowledged last week, “but I was never officially told about it.”

None of the past and present officials I spoke with were able to categorically state that the fake Niger documents were created or instigated by the same propaganda office in MI6 that had been part of the anti-Iraq propaganda wars in the late nineteen-nineties. (An MI6 intelligence source declined to comment.) Press reports in the United States and elsewhere have suggested other possible sources: the Iraqi exile community, the Italians, the French. What is generally agreed upon, a congressional intelligence-committee staff member told me, is that the Niger documents were initially circulated by the British—President Bush said as much in his State of the Union speech—and that “the Brits placed more stock in them than we did.” It is also clear, as the former high-level intelligence official told me, that “something as bizarre as Niger raises suspicions everywhere.”



What went wrong? Did a poorly conceived propaganda effort by British intelligence, whose practices had been known for years to senior American officials, manage to move, without significant challenge, through the top layers of the American intelligence community and into the most sacrosanct of Presidential briefings? Who permitted it to go into the President’s State of the Union speech? Was the message—the threat posed by Iraq—more important than the integrity of the intelligence-vetting process? Was the Administration lying to itself? Or did it deliberately give Congress and the public what it knew to be bad information?

Asked to respond, Harlow, the C.I.A. spokesman, said that the agency had not obtained the actual documents until early this year, after the President’s State of the Union speech and after the congressional briefings, and therefore had been unable to evaluate them in a timely manner. Harlow refused to respond to questions about the role of Britain’s MI6. Harlow’s statement does not, of course, explain why the agency left the job of exposing the embarrassing forgery to the I.A.E.A. It puts the C.I.A. in an unfortunate position: it is, essentially, copping a plea of incompetence.

The chance for American intelligence to challenge the documents came as the Administration debated whether to pass them on to ElBaradei. The former high-level intelligence official told me that some senior C.I.A. officials were aware that the documents weren’t trustworthy. “It’s not a question as to whether they were marginal. They can’t be ‘sort of’ bad, or ‘sort of’ ambiguous. They knew it was a fraud—it was useless. Everybody bit their tongue and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if the Secretary of State said this?’ The Secretary of State never saw the documents.” He added, “He’s absolutely apoplectic about it.” (A State Department spokesman was unable to comment.) A former intelligence officer told me that some questions about the authenticity of the Niger documents were raised inside the government by analysts at the Department of Energy and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. However, these warnings were not heeded.

“Somebody deliberately let something false get in there,” the former high-level intelligence official added. “It could not have gotten into the system without the agency being involved. Therefore it was an internal intention. Someone set someone up.” (The White House declined to comment.)

Washington’s case that the Iraqi regime had failed to meet its obligation to give up weapons of mass destruction was, of course, based on much more than a few documents of questionable provenance from a small African nation. But George W. Bush’s war against Iraq has created enormous anxiety throughout the world—in part because one side is a superpower and the other is not. It can’t help the President’s case, or his international standing, when his advisers brief him with falsehoods, whether by design or by mistake.

On March 14th, Senator Jay Rockefeller, of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, formally asked Robert Mueller, the F.B.I. director, to investigate the forged documents. Rockefeller had voted for the resolution authorizing force last fall. Now he wrote to Mueller, “There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq.” He urged the F.B.I. to ascertain the source of the documents, the skill-level of the forgery, the motives of those responsible, and “why the intelligence community did not recognize the documents were fabricated.” A Rockefeller aide told me that the F.B.I. had promised to look into it.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030331fa_fact1

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

Nun hat es auch die "Trivialpresse" :cool:........

Montag, 14. April 2003

Schwere Vorwürfe gegen USA: Beweise waren gefälscht

Mehrere von der US-Regierung vorgelegte angebliche Beweise für irakische Massenvernichtungswaffen haben sich offenbar als Fälschung herausgestellt. Das sagten zwei ehemalige UN-Waffeninspekteure dem ARD-Magazin "Report".

Eine Vielzahl der US-Informationen über angebliche irakische B- und C-Waffen und deren Verstecke seien Fehlinformationen gewesen, sagten ein deutscher und ein norwegischer Inspekteur. So habe US-Außenminister Colin Powell vor dem UN-Sicherheitsrat am 5. Februar Satellitenfotos irakischer Dekontaminationsfahrzeuge präsentiert, die sich vor Ort als Feuerwehrfahrzeuge entpuppt hätten. Auch Ventilationssysteme auf Fabrikdächern, die laut US-Regierung Rückschlüsse auf die Produktion von Chemiewaffen zulassen, hätten sich als harmlos herausgestellt, sagte der norwegische Inspekteur Jörn Siljeholm dem Magazin zufolge. Eine Produktion von verbotenen Waffen habe in den betroffenen Gebäuden nicht stattgefunden. Der ebenfalls interviewte deutsche Ex-Inspekteur wollte seine Identität nicht preisgeben.

Bereits Anfang März hatten die UN-Chefinspekteure Hans Blix und Mohamed ElBaradei öffentlich erklärt, dass einige der von den USA vorgelegten Beweise über das irakische Massenvernichtungsprogramm auf Fälschungen beruhten.

Adresse:
http://www.n-tv.de/3153512.html

Waterloo 2004;)........

syr

[schloss]

Eine weitere Ratte seilt sich ab...

Ari Fleischer gab gestern seinen Rücktritt bekannt.

Bald steht Georgieboy als der Oberdepp am Pranger und keiner war dabei. Nur seine "Gesetze" und geopolitischen Veränderungen bleiben der Welt erhalten...

[syracus]

http://www.atimes.com/images/f_images/atime_logo1.gif

Middle East May 29, 2003

WMD: Will the real culprit stand up

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - The failure of the US military to find any strong evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), let alone links between former president Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, is creating growing unease within both Congress and the administration of President George W Bush.

The administration sold the war it launched in March with it allies the United Kingdom and Australia based on its contention that Baghdad had massive quantities of WMD, some of which could have been transferred to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda or similar groups to carry out an attack against the United States or its allies.

But after seven weeks of uncontested control of Iraq's territory, it has yet to find even one gram of biological, chemical or nuclear material designed for weapons use, despite an intensive search by specially trained teams that have investigated all of the sites identified by the intelligence community before the war as most likely to hold WMD.

"The Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a preemptive invasion has become more than embarrassing," said Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, the longest-serving lawmaker in Congress, who has emerged as its most scathing critic of the war.

"It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraq civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world?" he asked in a blistering address on the Senate floor last week.

It is not only Democrats who are raising such questions. "Obviously it concerns us that we have what I think are credible reports that weapons exist that cannot be accounted for," said the chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Representative Porter Goss of Florida. Goss and his Senate counterpart, Pat Roberts, are already planning hearings to assess information acquired by the intelligence community and used by the administration to rally public opinion behind the war.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has also launched a review, reportedly at the behest of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, whose own pressure on the intelligence community to unearth evidence of WMD and links between Baghdad and al-Qaeda ironically has been blamed by retired intelligence officers for distorting the process that led to the US-led attack.

Rumsfeld last year created an Office of Special Plans (OSP) under the direction of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary William Luti precisely because they were unhappy that the evidence compiled by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, particularly about alleged ties between Baghdad and al-Qaeda, was extremely weak.

As explained by W Patrick Lang, former director of Middle East analysis at the Defense Intelligence Agency, to the New York Times, the OSP "started picking out things that supported their thesis and stringing them into arguments that they could use with the president ... It's not intel," he said, using an insider's word for intelligence, "it's political propaganda."

The Pentagon naturally strongly denies this, and even the CIA, some of whose analysts were reportedly furious about what they saw as manipulation of intelligence by the Pentagon, insists that, while the al-Qaeda evidence was always considered shaky, its own evidence that Baghdad did retain significant quantities of WMD in violation of United Nations resolutions was strong.

Both agencies have offered explanations for why no WMD have been uncovered. Pentagon Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith recently told Congress that only about 20 percent of roughly 600 suspected sites have been investigated, although he conceded that most of those considered most likely to hold WMD have been examined.

"I am confident that we will eventually be able to piece together a fairly complete account of Iraq's WMD programs, but the process will take months and perhaps years," he testified this month. "We're learning about new sites every day."

Other Pentagon officials have suggested that perhaps Saddam did destroy all his WMD just before the war, or that he had a "just in time" weapons system that kept key chemicals separated in civilian neighborhoods or other unlikely areas until the moment they would be combined and used, or that the weapons remain hidden in remote mountain areas deep in the ground where they are unlikely ever to be discovered, or that all the suspect sites were looted before US troops could secure them, as happened with a major nuclear site.

Some have even suggested that Baghdad may have destroyed all the weapons in the early 1990s, but then acted as if it still had them in order to deter an attack. Kenneth Adelman, a member of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board and a major war booster, said he thought that Saddam might have launched a "massive disinformation campaign" to that end.

The strongest evidence collected to date, aside from special chemical-warfare gear that could have been left over from the Iran-Iraq war, is the discovery two weeks ago of two trailers of the kind that Secretary of State Colin Powell described to the UN Security Council before the war as mobile units used to create biological weapons on site.

While Pentagon officials have insisted that no other purpose for the vans could be explained, they have still failed to find any specific biological or chemical evidence, such as residues in the equipment, that proves they were used for that purpose. The trailers remain under investigation.

Even before their discovery, however, the chief task force created by the Pentagon to find the weapons - consisting of biologists, chemists, arms-treaty experts, nuclear operators, translators and computer experts - was told to wind down its operations and prepare to return home.

Meanwhile, the administration, in addition to reducing expectations over WMD, has tried to focus public attention instead on the discovery and exhumation of mass graves of alleged victims of Saddam's rule, in part to provide an alternative justification for going to war.

Some analysts have argued that the administration relied far too heavily on defectors, particularly those supplied by the Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by Ahmed Chalabi who has made little secret of his ambitions since 1992 - when he created the group - to replace Saddam in Baghdad.

Indeed, the highest-ranking Iraqi official ever to defect from Iraq and Saddam's own son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, told US, British and UN interrogators in 1995 that Iraq had destroyed all its WMD after the first Gulf War in 1991, and also warned them against Kidhir Hamza, a nuclear scientist who defected in 1994, as "a professional liar".

Like other defectors used by the INC, Hamza played a key role in convincing Washington that Saddam was revving up his nuclear program, for which no evidence has been found. Hamza is now in Baghdad working with the US occupation.

"This could conceivably be the greatest intelligence hoax of all time," noted Representative Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee last week. "I doubt it, but we have to ask."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EE29Ak01.html

syr :rolleyes:

[kadeem]

Der britische Ex-Minister Robin Cook forderte angesichts ausbleibender Beweise für Massenvernichtungswaffen eine parlamentarische Untersuchung. «Wenn Rumsfeld nun zugibt, dass die Waffen nicht dort sind, ist die Wahrheit, dass sie wahrscheinlich schon seit langem nicht mehr dort gewesen sind», sagte Cook. (sda)
:rolleyes:

quellle: http://www.tagi.ch/dyn/news/ausland/282009.html

brani

[syracus]

Da kann man gleich Trine's Kommentar übernehmen "Das hätte ich nicht gedacht....(dass sie es zugeben)"......

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 30. Mai 2003, 15:22


Massenvernichtungs- waffen nur Kriegsvorwand

Von Severin Weiland

Acht Wochen dauert die Suche nach Saddams totbringenden Waffen - ohne Erfolg. Erstmals räumt nun der US-Vizeverteidigungsministers Paul Wolfowitz ein, dass das Waffenargument vor allem aus bürokratischen Gründen benutzt wurde, um genügend Unterstützung zu rekrutieren. Rumsfelds Dementi kann die Empörung nicht stoppen. Auch SPD-Vizefraktonsvize Erler sieht USA in der Bringschuld.

London - Ein Interview des stellvertretenden US-Verteidigungsministers Paul Wolfowitz nährt die Befürchtungen der Kriegsgegner, die USA hätten nur nach einem Vorwand für den Einmarsch im Irak gesucht. Gegenüber dem britischen Hochglanzmagazin "Vanity Fair" sagte Wolfowitz: "Aus bürokratischen Gründen haben wir uns auf eine Sache konzentriert, die Massenvernichtungswaffen."

Als wesentlichen Kriegsgrund, der so gut wie nie publik gemacht worden sei, nennt Wolfowitz den Umstand, dass die USA nach der Entmachtung von Saddam Hussein nun ihre Truppen aus Saudi-Arabien abziehen könnten. Damit verringere sich für die USA das Risiko von Terroranschlägen.

Rumsfelds schwaches Dementi

Die Reaktion auf die amerikanische Erklärung gleicht einem Donnerschlag. Der britische "Independent" titelt: "Massenvernichtungswaffen nur bequeme Entschuldigung für den Krieg, gibt Wolfowitz zu". "Lügen, Lügen, Lügen", schimpft der "Daily Mirror", und vom rechten "Daily Telegraph" bis zum linken "Guardian" sah die Presse eine "Glaubwürdigkeitskrise" des Premierministers Tony Blair.


Der beeilte sich im Chor mit US-Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld, den Vorwandsverdacht auszuräumen. Rumsfeld beteuerte in einem Radiointerview, den Krieg nicht unter falschem Vorwand betrieben zu haben. Unbeirrt ob des Fehlens jeglicher Beweise behauptet er weiter, dass Saddam chemische und biologische Kampfstoffe besessen habe. Möglicherweise habe der Diktator diesen aber vor dem Krieg vernichten lassen.

SPD-Fraktionsvize Erler: Bringschuld der Amerikaner

Das Auswärtige Amt in Berlin äußerte sich am Freitag nicht direkt zu den Presseberichten und Äußerungen von Rumsfeld und Wolfowitz. Eine Sprecherin verwies jedoch auf die jüngst verabschiedete Uno-Resolution 1483. Darin sei festgehalten worden, dass die "Frage der Zertifizierung" von Massenvernichtungswaffen im Irak weiterhin im Sicherheitsrat auf der Tagesordnung bleibe.

Deutliches Unbehagen drückte hingegen der SPD-Fraktionsvize Gernot Erler gegenüber SPIEGEL ONLINE aus. Er sehe eine "eindeutige Bringschuld der Amerikaner und Briten, was die Informationen über angebliche Massenvernichtungswaffen angeht". Schließlich habe der Verweis auf das Vorhandensein dieser Waffen als Legitimation des Krieges gedient, so der Außenpolitiker weiter.

Nach Einschätzung Erlers könnten die Äußerungen von Rumsfeld und Wolfowitz auch "Testballons sein, um Reaktionen der internationalen Gemeinschaft hervorzurufen". Beide Staaten befänden sich weiterhin in der "unangenehmen Lage", dass die Beweggründe für den Anlass des Krieges nicht gefunden worden seien. Es sei jedoch nicht so einfach möglich, die "Legitimation für den Krieg nachträglich beliebig durch neue Begründungen zu ersetzen", so Erler in Anspielung auf Wolfowitz Äußerung, den USA sei es eigentlich um eine Verlegung ihrer Truppen von Saudi-Arabien in den Irak gegangen.

Kritik äußerte der SPD-Politiker auch an der Geheimdienst-Politik beider Staaten. Entweder hätten beide Regierungen "falsche Geheimdienstinformationen erhalten oder diese wurden falsch interpretiert". Erler betonte, er gehe nach wie vor davon aus, dass die US-Regierung die Völkergemeinschaft "nicht willentlich hinters Licht geführt hat".

Dennoch müssten beide Länder hier für Aufklärung sorgen. Mittlerweile gehe es auch um die "internationale Glaubwürdigkeit" beider Staaten, so Erler. In beiden Ländern werde schließlich mit Verweis auf Geheimdienstinformationen nach wie vor Politik gemacht, so jüngst gegenüber Syrien, Iran, aber auch gegenüber Frankreich. Kürzlich hatten US-Medien behauptet, Paris habe mit falschen Papieren führenden Anhängern des Regimes von Saddam Hussein zur Flucht verholfen.

CDU-Außenpolitiker Pflüger wiegelt ab :rofl

Als "ziemlich abenteuerlich" bezeichnete hingegen der außenpolitische Sprecher der CDU/CSU-Bundestagsfraktion, Friedbert Pflüger, die jetzt entstandene Debatte. Er habe "nicht den Hauch eines Zweifels", dass Saddam Hussein zu Beginn des Krieges Massenvernichtungswaffen besessen habe. "Wenn man sie nicht findet, heißt es doch noch lange nicht, dass es sie nicht gibt - sondern dass er sie gut versteckt hat", so der CDU-Politiker gegenüber SPIEGEL ONLINE. Es sei bislang ja auch nicht Saddam Hussein gefunden worden. "Und es zweifelt wohl doch niemand, dass es ihn nicht gegeben hat", so der Christdemokrat. :dumm

"Das amerikanische Eingeständnis", titelt die französische Tageszeitung "le Monde" und schreibt: "Die Wahrheit, die die Amerikaner kannten, wird heute offensichtlich: Der Krieg wurde nicht geführt, um diese Waffen zu zerstören, sondern um das Regime in Bagdad auszuwechseln und den Nahen Osten neu zu ordnen. Die Waffen haben nur als Vorwand gedient.

Blair gerät wieder unter Druck

Auch Tony Blair sieht sich durch Wolfowitz' Enthüllung empfindlich in die Ecke gedrängt. Statt bei seiner Visite im Irak als Sieger aufzutreten, muss er wieder einmal seine Rolle als Kriegsherr verteidigen - auch in der eigenen Partei. "Der ganze Krieg war auf Unwahrheit gebaut, die britische Demokratie wird langfristig Schaden nehmen", sagte der Labour-Veteran Tony Benn. Linke Parteirebellen forderten, Blair müsse sich vor dem Parlament verantworten.

Hinzu kommen Berichte, wonach ein vor dem Krieg veröffentlichtes Dossier über die Gefährlichkeit Saddam Husseins von der Downing Street absichtlich dramatisiert worden ist. Gegen den Willen der Geheimdienste, auf deren Informationen der Bericht beruhte, habe Blair im Vorwort geschrieben, einige der irakischen Massenvernichtungswaffen könnten innerhalb von nur 45 Minuten einsatzbereit sein. US-Soldaten suchen nunmehr seit acht Wochen so hartnäckig wie erfolglos nach einem Corpus Delicti.

Ein oppositioneller britischer Staatssekretär sagte dem "Independent", falls tatsächlich keine Massenvernichtungswaffen gefunden werden sollten, wäre dies "das größte Versagen der britischen Geheimdienste überhaupt".

Blair bestritt am Freitag in Polen alle Vorwürfe als "völlig absurd". Er habe "keinen Zweifel" am Wahrheitsgehalt der von den Geheimdiensten vorgelegten Beweise. Vor Soldaten in Basra jedoch räumte der Premier "Unstimmigkeiten" über die Gründe für den Krieg ein.

URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,250863,00.html
US-Geständnis

Fortsetzung in diesem Politkrimi folgt. Die Welt wurde verarscht.....

syr :gomad

[syracus]

Die Tonlage wird zunehmend schärfer :lach....

02. Juni 2003, 12:20

Streit um Irak-Kriegsgrund

"Die Basis des Irak-Kriegs ist Betrug"

Von Marc Pitzke, New York

Ehemalige US-Geheimdienstprofis zweifeln öffentlich an der Behauptung des Weißen Hauses, das Irak-Regime von Saddam Hussein habe Massenvernichtungswaffen besessen. Doch während George W. Bush beim G-8-Gipfel in Evian in Erklärungsnot kommt, lässt die Waffendebatte die amerikanische Öffentlichkeit weitgehend kalt.

New York - Ray McGovern weiß, wovon er spricht. Fast drei Jahrzehnte lang hat er für den US-Geheimdienst CIA gearbeitet, danach, bis 1985, vier Jahre lang im Weißen Haus. Täglich leitete er dort die Briefings für George Bush senior, damals Vizepräsident unter Ronald Reagans. McGovern hat das geheimste Innenleben so mancher Krise miterlebt: Vietnamkrieg, Kennedy-Mord, Watergate, Kalter Krieg, Mauerfall.

So was aber ist dem CIA-Veteran noch nicht untergekommen. Von "manipulierte Meldungen" ist die Rede, "nach politischem Rezept zusammen gekochte Informationen", "systematische Verdrehung von Tatsachen, um unsere Abgeordneten in einen Krieg hineinzusteuern". Kurz: "ein politisches und geheimdienstliches Fiasko von monumentalem Ausmaß".

Die Aufgeregtheit bezieht sich auf die - vor allem in Europa angezweifelte - Behauptung der USA, das Regime Saddam Husseins habe Massenvernichtungswaffen besessen. Dies, sagt McGovern, sei bestenfalls eine "Auffrisierung der Wahrheit", produziert auf Anweisung des Weißen Hauses von der CIA. Längst stünden diese drei Buchstaben nicht mehr für Central Intelligence Agency. Sondern für "Culinary Institute of America" - Lügenküche der Nation.

Ex-Geheimdienstler für Vernunft

McGovern, heute Direktor einer christlichen Schule in Washington, und eine Handvoll weiterer CIA-Pensionäre haben sich unter dem Titel "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" (Ehemalige Geheimdienst-Profis für Vernunft) zusammengetan. Seit Wochen schon bombardieren sie den Präsidenten mit Memos und Appellen. Doch abgesehen von ein paar linken Websites und demokratischen Kongressmitgliedern nimmt das in den USA bislang kaum jemand zur Kenntnis.

Dies überrascht nicht. Während Europa das Thema heiß diskutiert, lässt es die Amerikaner kalt. Die große Mehrheit hält den Irak-Krieg auch ohne Waffenfunde noch für gerechtfertigt - die Umfragewerte schwanken, je nach Fragestellung, zwischen 79 Prozent bei Gallup/CNN und 60 Prozent bei CBS. Ende der Diskussion.

Jonathan Tucker, ein Waffenexperte am U.S. Institute for Peace, erklärt die Diskrepanz zwischen dem Aufruhr im Ausland und der Nonchalance der Amerikaner mit deren kurzer Aufmerksamkeitsspanne: "Für die Öffentlichkeit hier ist das kein Thema mehr. Die Staaten dagegen, die dem Krieg skeptisch gegenüber standen, werden auch weiter darauf beharren."

US-Außenminister Powell: die Welt mit windigen Beweisen getäuscht

Dabei mehren sich auch in den USA Zweifel an den Erklärungen Bushs und seines Geheimdienstapparats. Diese Kritik kommt aber ausschließlich aus Insider-Kreisen - und bleibt auch dort. Informationen seien offenbar "von oben" manipuliert worden, sagt Greg Thielmann, vormals Waffenexperte des State Departments. Ein Geheimteam habe die Irak-Meldungen "wie Kirschen aussortiert", um Bagdad als unmittelbare Bedrohung darzustellen, sekundiert Patrick Lang, ein Ex-Experte der Pentagon-Geheimbehörde Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

Lang wundert es folglich nicht, dass das einzige, was die US-Spähtrupps im Irak bisher entdeckt haben, zwei fahrbare Bio-Labors sind, auf deren Zweck sich selbst die CIA nicht hundertprozentig festlegen will. Doch die Regierung kümmert das wenig. Im Gegenteil: "Wir haben die Massenvernichtungswaffen gefunden", posaunte Bush am Wochenende im polnischen Fernsehen, die Fragezeichen seines Geheimdienstes dreist zum politischen Ausrufzeichen in eigener Sache umschreibend.

Keine politische Gefahr für Bush

Der Präsident weiß, dass er sich eine solch freizügige Interpretation der Fakten innenpolitisch durchaus leisten kann. "Für Bush", schreibt die "Washington Post", "scheint das Scheitern der Suche nach chemischen, biologischen und nuklearen Waffen im Irak keine politische Gefahr darzustellen."

Denn auch im Kongress stellen bisher nur wenige unangenehme Fragen, und sie sind allesamt in der demokratischen Minderheit. Der Abgeordnete Dennis Kucinich etwa: "Die Basis des Irak-Kriegs ist Betrug." Oder dessen Kollegin Jane Harman: "Dies könnte gut der größte Geheimdienst-Schwindel aller Zeiten sein."

Dagegen rudern selbst Vorkriegs-Kritiker wie die Demokratin Nancy Pelosi sogar schon wieder zurück: Zwar sei es "schwierig zu verstehen", warum immer noch keine Waffen aufgetaucht seien. Doch sehe sie das inzwischen gelassen und "agnostisch".

Diese phlegmatische Haltung hat auch historische Gründe. Lügen und Fälschungen gehören seit ehedem ins außenpolitische Repertoire der USA. Im Vietnamkrieg wimmelte es von getürkten "Informationen", die die militärischen Mittel heiligen sollten. Richard Nixon belog das Volk über Kambodscha. Reagans CIA-Chef William Casey fabrizierte "Beweise", um die gewaltsame Lateinamerika-Politik der USA zu rechtfertigen. Als Ouvertüre zum ersten Golfkrieg rührte die Aussage einer 15-jährigen Kuweiterin den Kongress zu Tränen; später stellte sich heraus, dass sie von einer PR-Agentur engagiert worden war. :mad:wie 1939...

Alles also nichts Neues. Und so steht nach dem Irak nun der Iran auf der Liste. Schon wärmt Pentagon-Chef Donald Rumsfeld die Gerüchteküche neu an - mit der bewährten Rezept-Mischung.

"Natürlich befinden sich im Iran hohe al-Qaida-Mitglieder", verbürgte sich Rumsfeld vorige Woche. "Das ist eine Tatsache." Und dann, ohne zu zögern: "Der Iran ist einer der Staaten, der aus unserer Sicht nukleare Fähigkeiten entwickelt." Déja-vu.

Der konservative Kommentator Bill Kristol blies im TV-Sender Fox News ins gleiche Horn: "Bin Ladens Sohn ist wahrscheinlich im Iran ... Sind wir willens, mit Iran Ernst zu machen?"

URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,251224,00.html

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

Deshalb müssen wohl erneut "Spezialisten" in den Irak & der Blättersturm hat einen Namen ;).



Rockefeller says Iraq's weapons should have been found by now

(05-29) 14:46 PDT WASHINGTON (AP)

If Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed enough of a threat to
justify war, they should have been found by now, the top Democrat on the
Senate Intelligence Committee said Thursday.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia challenged comments by Bush
administration officials that the weapons were well-hidden and may not
be located soon.

"You can't quite say that it's going to take a lot more time if the
intelligence community seemed to be in general agreement that WMD was
out there," Rockefeller said in an interview.

Rockefeller said that if the weapons were so well concealed, the United
States should have considered giving U.N. inspectors more time to find
them.

The Bush administration's main argument for the war was that Iraq
possessed chemical and biological weapons and was possibly developing
nuclear weapons. Those weapons threatened the region and, if given to
terrorists, could be used against the United States, it said.

In recent weeks the administration has tried to diminish expectations
that weapons will be found soon. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith
told a House committee May 15 that it "will take months, and perhaps
years," for a complete account of Iraq's weapon programs to emerge.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday, as he has before,
that U.S. teams are unlikely to find any weapons of mass destruction
unless Iraqis involved in the programs tell the officials where to look.

"It's not because they're not there. We do believe they are there,"
Rumsfeld said in an interview on the Infinity Broadcasting radio
network. "We never believed that we or the inspectors would just trip
over them."

In a speech Tuesday, Rumsfeld joined others who have been saying for a
month that Iraq may have destroyed chemical and biological weapons
before the war. On Thursday, Rumsfeld said there was "speculation and
chatter" among intelligence agencies that such weapons may have been
moved to other countries or buried.

Iraq also may have developed the capability to quickly make biological
or chemical weapons, eliminating the need for storing large amounts of
dangerous material, Rumsfeld said. Proof of that, he said, includes the
two trailers found in northern Iraq which American intelligence
officials say were mobile biological weapons production facilities.

Rockefeller said that, based on the intelligence he saw before the war,
he was persuaded that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological
weapons. He said it is still possible "something may very well turn up."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer Thursday called the two trailers
" proof positive" that Iraq lied about not having mobile labs.

But Rockefeller said it's not enough to prove the weapons existed.

"In the business of WMD, and proving to the American people your case,
you've got to come up with WMD. It's not happened," he said.

In a related matter, Rockefeller criticized the FBI response to his
request for an investigation into forged documents used by the Bush
administration as evidence against Saddam before the war. The documents
indicated that Iraq tried to buy uranium from the West African nation of
Niger.

He said the FBI sent a "bland" letter saying the forgery was not an
administration attempt to manipulate public opinion, but offered no
specifics. He said an aide told the FBI this was unacceptable and asked
for more details.

FBI spokesman Bill Carter said the bureau was continuing to look at
issues raised by Rockefeller and his staff. "We have not closed the book
on this," he said.

Rockefeller and Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan.,
this week also requested that the State Department and CIA inspectors
general investigate the forgery.

Rockefeller said either intelligence agencies hadn't detected the
forgery, or they suspected the documents were forged, but may have faced
political pressures to rethink that view.

"In either case, it's not a very happy outcome," he said.



San Francisco Gate (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/05/29/national1746EDT0683.DTL )

syr ;)

[syracus]

Das wir ja immer wilder, jetzt bekommt Tony von der Insel gewaltig Probleme.....



Short: Blair lied to cabinet and made secret war pact with US

Tory threat to break ranks on Iraq

Nicholas Watt and Michael White in Evian
Monday June 2, 2003
The Guardian

Tony Blair is facing mounting pressure from across the House of Commons to hold an independent inquiry into the Iraq war after Clare Short levelled the incendiary allegation at the prime minister that he had lied to the cabinet.

As an increasingly exasperated prime minister once again swept aside calls for a public inquiry into the failure to uncover banned Iraqi weapons, the former international development secretary accused Mr Blair of bypassing the cabinet to agree a "secret" pact with George Bush to go to war.

To compound the prime minister's difficulties - as MPs prepare to return to Westminster tomorrow after the Whitsun recess - Robin Cook demanded an independent inquiry into the "monumental blunder" by the government.

His criticisms were echoed last night by the Tories who said they were giving "very serious consideration" to calls for an inquiry.

Michael Howard, the shadow chancellor, indicated to the BBC last night that the Tories were considering abandoning their bipartisan approach to Iraq because of fears that Downing Street might have "doctored" last year's dossier on Iraq's banned weapons to strengthen the case for war.

The interventions by such senior figures from across the house gave heart to Labour MPs who are planning to ambush the prime minister on Wednesday at his weekly Commons appearance and during a subsequent statement on the G8 summit.

They are demanding an emergency Commons statement after an unnamed intelligence source told the BBC last week that Downing Street had "sexed up" a dossier on Iraq's banned weapons.

Tam Dalyell, the father of the house who has a question to the prime minister on Wednesday's Commons order paper, is expected to step up the pressure by asking about Ms Short's accusation that he was deceitful to the cabinet on three occasions.

In her BBC interview yesterday, she accused Mr Blair of:

· Agreeing in "secret" with Mr Bush at Camp David last September to go to war - and then telling the cabinet that he would try to act as a constraint on the US.

· Misleading the cabinet over Iraq's weapons capability - by "spinning" the claim that Iraq could launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes. "Where the spin came was the suggestion that it was all weaponised, ready to go, immediately dangerous, likely to get into the hands of al-Qaida, and therefore things were very very urgent."

· Falsely telling the cabinet and the world that Jacques Chirac, the French president, would veto a second UN security council resolution authorising war. The transcript of Mr Chirac's interview, which she subsequently read, showed the prime minister's claim to be wrong.

Ms Short, who was widely criticised after she failed to carry out a threat to resign on the eve of war, accused the prime minister of riding roughshod over the conventions of cabinet. "It was all done in Tony Blair's study ... The normal Whitehall systems to make big decisions like this broke down and were very personalised in No 10."

Warning that civil servants and troops were ready to disobey an order to go to war, Ms Short said that the prime minister swung round the Whitehall machinery at the last moment when the attorney general declared that military action would be legal. But she added: "I think, given the attorney's advice, it was legal. But I think the route we got there didn't honour the legality questions."

Some of her criticisms were echoed by the former foreign secretary, Robin Cook, who demanded an independent inquiry into the failure to uncover any weapons of mass destruction, despite the dire warnings from Downing Street.

"It is beginning to look as if the government's committed a monumental blunder," he told The World This Weekend on Radio 4.

"The government should admit it was wrong and they need to set up then a thorough independent inquiry into how they got it wrong so that it never happens again and we never again send British troops into action on the basis of a mistake."

As a growing number of Labour MPs joined the clamour for an emergency statement and a full investigation by the parliamentary intelligence committee, an angry prime minister hit back at his critics.

Speaking en route to Evian, Mr Blair predicted that the next US-UK intelligence dossier on Saddam Hussein's arsenal would make sceptical voters "very well satisfied" that he was right.

Expressing frustration about what he sees as his critics' attempt to refight the war by other means, Mr Blair insisted for the third time in as many days that intelligence reports had not been doctored under political pressure and would be vindicated.

Appealing for voters to be patient, he declared: "I have said throughout that when this is put together, the evidence of the scientists and witnesses, the investigations from the sites, people will be very well satisfied."

The new dossier on which Downing Street pins its hopes will be produced by US intelligence and weapons inspection teams which are now fanning out over Iraq while colleagues work on humanitarian aid and reconstruction.



http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0%2C12956%2C968599%2C00.html

Und damit ist so in etwa jeder Beteiligte angeschossen, mal sehen wie's weitergeht.....

syr :rolleyes:

[schloss]

Rockefeller jr. beantragt Kriegslügenausschuss... Wann wird Bush abgesägt??
-------
Republikaner lehnen Ausschuss wegen Irak-Krieg ab
Bagdad/Kuwait-Stadt - Die Republikanische Partei von US-Präsident George W. Bush hat die Forderung der oppositionellen Demokraten nach einer parlamentarischen Untersuchung in der so genannten Kriegslügendebatte abgelehnt. Es gebe keinen Hinweis auf grundlegende Verfehlungen im Verhalten der Regierung, sagte am Donnerstag der Vorsitzende des Geheimdienste-Ausschusses im Senat, Pat Roberts.

Die Demokraten machen jedoch geltend, dass die Glaubwürdigkeit der Geheimdienste auf dem Spiel stehe, da in Irak keine Massenvernichtungswaffen gefunden worden seien. Der demokratische Senator Jay Rockefeller warf den Republikanern vor, "wie Schlafwandler durch die Geschichte zu gehen". Er werde sich im Geheimdienste-Ausschuss weiter für eine formelle Untersuchung stark machen.

Bei einer groß angelegten Militäraktion in Irak haben die US-Streitkräfte unterdessen rund 400 Verdächtige festgenommen. Mehrere tausend Soldaten setzten am Donnerstag die am Dienstag begonnene Großfahndung nördlich von Bagdad fort, die den Urhebern von Anschlägen auf die Streitkräfte gilt. Die US-Truppen wurden von Kampfjets, Hubschraubern und unbemannten Aufklärungsflugzeugen unterstützt. DW

Artikel erschienen am 13. Jun 2003
http://www.welt.de/data/2003/06/13/117044.html

[syracus]

Noch ein sehr prominenter Name ;)...

Hillary Clinton calls for inquiry over Iraq

Friday 13th June 2003

Hillary Clinton has called for independent inquiries to review the credibility of the intelligence used to justify war in Iraq.

The New York senator joined the mounting pressure in both Britain and the US to investigate allegations that details of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were exaggerated.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Tony Blair said he would not appear before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee to give evidence on alleged misuse of reports in the so-called 'dodgy dossier'.

But Senator Clinton said that although the jury was still out on whether weapons would ever be found, it was essential to discover what happened with the intelligence in both nations.

In an interview with Sir Trevor McDonald in Washington, she said: "I hope that in both our countries we have independent inquiries that get to the facts about the intelligence."

Asked if she thought there was a problem, she said: "I think there could be.

"What is important is that we really do find out what the truth was because this is not just about the past, whether or not the intelligence was either wrong or skewed for whatever purpose, but going forward."

Mrs Clinton said she did not know if people were misled but said: "That is why this cannot be left unanswered.

"I voted for the Iraqi resolution, and I did it in large measure based on the intelligence that I was privy to."

Mrs Clinton was interviewed for ITV1's Tonight with Trevor McDonald programme.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_789871.html?menu=news.latestheadlines

Hillary for President, 2008 :D.....

syr

[schloss]

@syr

Interessant ist aber, dass die gute Hillary früher mit Bush senior ganz gute Geschäftskontakte hatte... wenn die sich nun zu weit herauslehnt, entweder wird sie tatsächlich Präsidentin, oder Mordopfer ;):D

[syracus]

Aus den Problemen kommen sie nicht mehr raus, Tony von der Insel am weni^gsten, Augen auf;). Vorallem wenn es sich um "mobile Labors" dreht. Wenn's das erwähnte ist, hat GB nach Jane's 72 Stück davon :rofl....

As the WMD scandal grows, the end could be nearing for Bush and Blair

By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher

June 13, 2003—It appears that the only weapons of mass destruction are George W. Bush and Tony Blair who destroyed Iraq based on a pack of lies that are now blowing up (pun intended) in their faces.

Last week, sitting before television cameras in Europe, Bush, citing what he described as two mobile biological or chemical weapons labs, declared the WMD had been found. Bush completely dismissed the skepticism of his own experts.

Late Friday, a knowledgeable source, who was a certified nuclear-biological-chemical (NBC) officer in the US military and is familiar with the oil business, suggested to Online Journal that the vans might actually be "mobile oil analysis labs, which are customarily deployed at the corps level within the Iraqi, former Soviet and US armies." The source said that "oil analysis is completed on a periodic basis, especially on aircraft, including helicopters, and on heavy equipment, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, etc. This is preventive maintenance and was completed in Iraq as well as throughout all armies and air forces of the world."

The source said the idea of mobile biological or chemical labs "is extremely bold and dangerous. Chemical agent productions are very unstable activities subject to low tolerances even on humidity within the air. The manufacture of biologicals is even less stable. Moving into the unstable environment of a mobile lab is ludicrous and the stuff from comic books, not science, nor weapons production."

But "the stuff from comic books" is one of the many lies Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, among others in the administration, and Blair and his cabinet allies told in order to justify an unprecedented and illegal attack on Iraq.

Sunday, the UK's Observer reported it "has established that it is increasingly likely that the units were designed to be used for hydrogen production to fill artillery balloons, part of a system originally sold to Saddam by Britain in 1987."

No traces of chemicals or pathogens have been found in the units—one of which was found in April and the other in May. Experts contend that it is impossible to do such a thorough cleaning. Moreover, they point out that canvass-sided trailers are hardly the things one would use to work on such volatile and dangerous substances.

According to the Observer the CIA stated, "Senior Iraqi officials of the al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development, and Engineering facility in Mosul were shown pictures of the mobile production trailers, and they claimed that the trailers were used to chemically produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons."

Artillery weather balloons are used to determine wind speed and direction "allowing more accurate artillery fire. Crucially, these systems need to be mobile," the Observer noted.

The paper said it "discovered that not only did the Iraq military have such a system at one time, but that it was actually sold to them by the British. In 1987 Marconi, now known as AMS, sold the Iraqi army an Artillery Meteorological System or Amets for short."

But mobile biological and chemical weapons labs are just one set of lies told by Bush & Co. and Blair & Co. There is the plagiarized dossier supplied by Blair and used by Powell before the UN as absolute proof that Saddam Hussein had WMD. There is the forged letter claiming Saddam tried to buy uranium for his alleged nuclear weapons program from Niger. There are the lies that, within 45 minutes, Saddam was capable of loosing his WMD on the UK; that he intended to use WMD on US, British and Australian troops. All the above and more were given as reasons as to why Bush and Blair had to immediately strike Iraq.

While Powell and Rice made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows trying to spin away the truth—Rice even accusing those who charge the administration cooked the intelligence to make their case for invasion of "revisionist history"—members of the British Parliament are demanding that Downing Street explain why it suppressed a "six-page report, from the Joint Intelligence Committee staff" that "said there was no evidence Saddam posed a significantly greater threat than in 1991," according to Monday's Independent.

The false reasons given for invading Iraq have become a scandal of epic proportion in the UK. The prime minister now faces a possible judicial review, called for by the co-founder of his wife's law firm, Rabinder Singh QC, who is considered a leading international and human rights barrister at Matrix chambers, on the ground that no WMD have been found, according to Sunday's Observer.

In his summary, the Observer reported, Singh wrote, "The allegations made by former members of the Cabinet in the recent past, that the evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction was exaggerated by the UK and the US prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, call into question the factual foundation for the Attorney-General's view that the invasion was lawful in international law. In our view there is therefore a strong case for establishing a judicial inquiry to examine that legal question."

If the action is successful, according to the Observer, "it could lead to the Prime Minister being prosecuted for war crimes in an action led by his wife's chambers."

With not a single WMD yet found in Iraq, there is speculation here that the Bush administration may, in an act of desperation, plant them in order to stave off impeachment as the scandal grows at home and in case the downgrading of the certainty of what Saddam had to "capabilities" and "programs" don't wash. "Capabilities" and "programs" don't add up to imminent threats to Saddam's neighbors, the US, the UK or the world.

The Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committee has ordered an investigation into the administration's alleged abuse of intelligence information. A 2002 Pentagon intelligence report concluded that there was "no reliable information" that Iraq had biological or chemical weapons and that there was no reliable evidence that it was stockpiling chemical weapons.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh), who is seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for president, last week led 30 House members in introducing a Resolution of Inquiry to force the Bush administration to prove its claims that Iraq has WMD. Kucinich used a similar privileged resolution last March to force the administration to release the 12,000-page weapons report Iraq submitted to the UN.

"This administration owes an explanation to this Congress and to the American people," Kucinich said. "Now is the time for truth telling."

On June 5, which marked the second anniversary of his departure from the Republican Party, Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont made the following remarks before the National Press Club in Washington:

In place of thoughtful policy we now have superficial and cynical sound-bites. Instead of confronting pressing national problems, our President lands airplanes while Rome burns.

While our troops search for W-M-D's in Iraq—we have found our own W-M-D's right here in Washington—at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They are President Bush's weapons of mass distortion, or better distraction. The Bush Administration says one thing and does another to take the focus off the present realities.

Does he think we don't notice?

In Iraq, we have seen the inexcusable results of what happens when the Bush Administration says one thing and does another. Last fall, the President said UN weapons inspectors would be allowed to do their job, but in reality, he didn't give them the time they needed. I am pleased to see calls for Congressional investigations to determine whether the President manipulated intelligence information to build support for the war. Why the hurry to invade a country and use military force in such an unprecedented manner? Where was the imminent threat to the United States? And where are the weapons of mass destruction?

As he prepared to invade Iraq and win the support of other nations, the President promised the world that the US had a plan in place to rebuild that nation. But it quickly became apparent that there was no plan. While our military guarded the oilfields, we showed no compassion for the Iraqi people as we allowed their national treasures to be looted. All we see now is growing unrest with the US presence in Iraq. Every day we see more lawlessness, more upheaval and more US soldiers being killed. Is it any surprise that a recent Pell Research Center survey of 16,000 people from 20 nations shows a dramatic rise in distrust and skepticism toward the United States?

Does he think we don't notice?

But people are noticing—even the corporate media are noticing. John Dean, who as counsel to the president told Richard Nixon "there is a cancer on the presidency," also is noticing.

In an article, Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction: Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?, Dean wrote "To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be 'a high crime' under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony 'to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.'"

Former UN senior weapons inspector Scott Ritter, speaking to the Swiss daily Le Temps last Friday, called upon Bush and Blair to "admit their lies" about WMD. Ritter, a former US Marine intelligence officer who headed up the UN inspections team in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, contended Hussein could not have destroyed the weapons, as Rumsfeld recently suggested, "without leaving traces . . . Donald Rumsfeld has furnished no proof of their supposed destruction, just as he has never furnished the slightest proof of their existence."

Even neoconservative William Kristol, chairman of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and editor of the Weekly Standard, is noticing. PNAC is the architect of much of Bush's foreign policy, especially the unleashing of military might on any nation the US declares an enemy.

Kristol, one of the prime movers and shakers behind the invasion of Iraq, told NewsMax, "I don't think we need to be apologetic about the war." NewsMax added, "But he said the U.S.'s inability to uncover significant quantities of Iraqi WMDs means that the war may not have been as necessary and urgent as previously believed."

"People like me, who were hawks, said the war was both just, prudent and urgent," Kristol said. "I think just and prudent—fine. But it is fair to say that if we don't find serious weapons of mass destruction capabilities, the case for urgency, which Bush and Blair certainly articulated, is going to be undercut to some degree."

Some might call that an understatement, because Bush also has to wrestle with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's admission, "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on" and that Iraq "swims on a sea of oil."

Was it all about oil? Not quite, as Paul Bremer, the viceroy of Occupied Iraq, is proving as he dismantles what is left of Iraqi civilization to pave the way for turning the country into Corporate Iraq, and Washington debates which of Iraq's utilities to privatize. Rumsfeld, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, "has already said he wants to see some of Iraq's state-run businesses sold off, although he did not specifically mention the utilities."

The promised representative government of, by and for Iraqis is not about to be allowed any time soon, either—at least not until June 2004, according to Rumsfeld. Nor is it in the cards for the Iraqis to choose what form that government will take, especially if they want a form of Islamic rule.

At a press briefing last Thursday, Rumsfeld was asked, "Are you concerned at all about the pace of establishing an Iraqi government, the Iraqis establishing an Iraqi government?"

The defense secretary replied, "I'm really not, it seems to me that it's a hard thing to do, to go from a dictatorship to a—on a path towards some sort of representative government and it has to be an Iraqi model that evolves that they have ownership in. If you think about it, Adolf Hitler was elected, so elections are not the certain judge. You don't want to have an election one time and then a dictator and then go right back to some dictator model. And you don't want to have a model that is, in Iraq, that is different from the one that has been generally set forth, namely a single country, a country that doesn't threaten its neighbors, a country that is respectful of the religious and ethnic composition of the country and that they have voice in their government. Now, does that happen in five minutes? No it doesn't. Think of how long it took us in the United States—eleven years from the Articles of Confederation to a Constitution. It takes time for Eastern Europe to do it. It's taking time for Afghanistan to do it. They're not going to have their elections for a permanent government I don't believe until June of next year. So I think its important that there constantly be progress going forward, I think it's important that Iraqis be engaged in all of those activities that will get them there—that is to say a constitutional convention of some sort, a process that will move it forward to an interim authority of some kind, and then some participation and then ultimately a permanent government. What that pace ought to be I don't know and I know that Ambassador Bremer is doing a darn good job working on it.

Rumsfeld got it wrong when he said Hitler was elected. Hitler was no more elected than was George W. Bush. As historian Alan Bullock put it, "Hitler came to office in 1933 as the result, not of any irresistible revolutionary or national movement sweeping him into power, nor even of a popular victory at the polls, but as part of a shoddy political deal with the 'Old Gang' whom he had been attacking for months . . . Hitler did not seize power; he was jobbed into office by a backstairs intrigue." Yet, the defense secretary has used this falsehood to deny the Iraqis the liberty and self-determination that the Bush administration repeatedly promised them.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/061303Conover/061303conover.html

Watergate 2004 :sss.......

syr :D

[RIVA]

Ehrlich gesagt wäre ich sehr erstaunt, wenn es in den USA zu einer Art "fallout" des Irak-Krieges käme... leider.

In Great Britain könnte ich mir das aber sehr wohl vorstellen. Und ich würde es sogar ein Stück weit bedauern. Der Blair hatte teilweise ganz vernünftige Ideen...

[syracus]

Den Thread aus aktuellem Anlass mal wieder aus der Versenkung holen, da ist ja einiges in Bewegung geraten die letzten Tage.
Der CIA-Boss soll schuld sein, nur ist GWB sein Boss. Aber alles halb so schlimm, schliesslich waren die falschen Informationen vom britischen Geheimdienst. Gar nicht gewusst zu was alles so ein Tony Blush nützlich sein kann ;). Somit wird der Inselbub wohl Ende Jahr weg vom Fenster sein, Untergang mit Ansage. Nur GWB hat auch dann mit dem CIA-Boss noch einen Schutzschild. Und der ist ein ehemaliger "Clintionist", der nächste Schritt wär also noch nicht so schmerzhaft. Das Wochenende wird dann die nächsten Tage aufgearbeitet. Mal etwas auf die Pirsch :lach......

syr :o

[syracus]

Der Skandal kostet ein weiteres Leben. "Brisantes Wissen kann ihre Gesundheit gefährden" :(.....



Body 'matches' Iraq expert

Police searching for the weapons expert suggested by the government as the possible source for a BBC story on Iraq say the body they have found matches Dr David Kelly's appearance.
The body was found at 0920 BST by a member of the police team searching for Dr Kelly in a wooded area at Harrowdown Hill, near Faringdon, Oxfordshire.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39293000/gif/_39293419_abingdon4_oxford_203.gif
*1500 BST: Told wife going for a walk near their home
*2345 BST: Police informed he is missing
*Last seen: Clothed in off-white cotton shirt, blue jeans, brown shoes

Government adviser Dr Kelly, 59, went missing from his home in Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, at about 1500 BST on Thursday. The body was found lying on the ground, a police spokeswoman said. She said items had been removed from Dr Kelly's house as they would in any missing person's inquiry. The body was found around five miles from Dr Kelly's home.

Attention

Earlier this week, Dr Kelly denied being the BBC's main source for a story claiming Downing Street had "sexed up" a dossier about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He appeared before the Commons foreign affairs committee on Tuesday. MPs on the committee reacted with shock and disbelief at news of Dr Kelly's disappearance.

His family had contacted the police when he failed to return home by 2345 BST on Thursday.

Tony Blair, who is heading to Japan after his speech to Congress in Washington, has been informed about the discovery of the body.

Huge media attention has been on Dr Kelly since the Ministry of Defence said he had admitted meeting Andrew Gilligan, the BBC correspondent behind the controversial Iraq story. Mr Gilligan said a source had told him that the dossier on Iraq had been "sexed up" by Downing Street.

The BBC correspondent has refused to name his source, but the MoD said Dr Kelly had come forward to say it may have been him.

Sensitive

Acting superintendent Dave Purnell, of Thames Valley Police, speaking to reporters in Wantage, Oxfordshire, said: "We haven't ruled anything out yet. Clearly there are people at the scene now and there is no further information as to the body that has been found apart from to say it is a male. "This is clearly a sensitive inquiry at the moment. The family of Dr David Kelly have been aware of what the police have been doing in relation to the search for him."

Superintendent Purnell said the search for Dr Kelly continued with the police helicopter and around 70 officers. He said the official's family were aware that a body had been found. A police family liaison officer is with them. Harrowdown Hill, where the body is found, is an area popular with walkers but "quite off the beaten track", he added. Graham Atkins, landlord of the Waggon and Horses pub in Southmoor, told BBC News Online: "Everybody at the pub really sends their best to the family. It is shocking news."

Police say Dr Kelly is an avid walker and has good local knowledge of the many footpaths surrounding his home.

His disappearance and failure to make contact with anyone was described by his family as 'out of character'. Initial searches of the house, outbuildings and grounds of the property were completed in the early hours of Friday. Checks of local hospitals have also shown no trace of Dr Kelly. Dr Kelly is 5ft 8ins, of slim build and with grey receding hair and a white well-trimmed beard. He has green/grey eyes and was last seen wearing an off-white cotton shirt possibly striped, blue jeans, with a brown leather belt and brown shoes.

Anyone who feels they may have information that can help in tracing Dr Kelly should call 08458 505 505.

A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said: "We are aware that Dr David Kelly has gone missing and we are obviously concerned." The ministry said Dr Kelly had at no point been threatened with suspension or dismissal for speaking to Mr Gilligan.

It was made clear to him that he had broken civil service rules by having unauthorised contact with a journalist, but "that was the end of it", said a spokesman.

Downing Street says it is "very concerned about news that David Kelly has gone missing". A spokesman said thoughts were with Dr Kelly's family. Number 10 says "normal personnel procedures" were followed after Dr Kelly volunteered that he might have been the source of Mr Gilligan's report.

It was made clear to Dr Kelly that his name was likely to become public knowledge because he was one of only a small number of people it could have been about, the spokesman said.
After questioning Dr Kelly earlier this week, the Commons foreign affairs select committee said it was "most unlikely" he was the main source for the BBC story. And they said Dr Kelly, who has worked as a weapons inspector in Iraq, had been "poorly treated" by the government - a charge strongly rejected by the MoD.

There must be more to this than we had thought. I do not know what that means, I just think there is
John Maples, Foreign affairs committee

Committee chairman Donald Anderson told the BBC his "heart went out" to Dr Kelly's family as the search for the official went on. Another member of the committee, Tory John Maples said he was "speechless" after hearing of the discovery of a body.

"If it is (Dr Kelly), it is just awful. What can you say? Nothing," he said. "There must be more to this than we had thought. I do not know what that means, I just think there is."

Tory MP Richard Ottaway, another committee member, said: "He is not used to the media glare, he is not used to the intense spotlight he has been put under."

The BBC has rejected Mr Anderson's claim that Mr Gilligan was an "unreliable witness" who had changed his story about the Iraq dossier claims when he met the committee in private on Thursday.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/3076801.stm



dafür ist Tony von der Insel nur noch lächerlich, nachdem er Bush regelrecht in den A.... gekrochen ist. Letztes intaktes Halteseil von Blair: GWB ?

syr :rolleyes:

[Ibykus]

Jetzt gibt´s erst einmal five points for syracus :)

[syracus]

http://www.handykult.de/plaudersmilies.de/person/pfiade.gif

Weiter geht es, nun bekommt George W. Bush selber Probleme. CNN macht's weniger drastisch, seine bisherigen Freunde von NewsMax.com dagegen sind deutlicher: wenn Clinton wegen Monicagate fast abtreten musste, besteht kein Grund nicht die gleichen Regeln bei GWB anzuwenden, Hearings, Untersuchungen, Impeachment :p....... Der eine hat über Sex gelogen, der andere über einen, bzw. gleich mehrere verschiedene Punkte welche zum Krieg führten. Aber CNN hat einfach die viel schönere Aufstellung. --> Letzten Abschnitt beachten ;).



Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?

By John W. Dean
FindLaw Columnist
Special to CNN.com


(FindLaw) --President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a joint resolution authorizing the use of U.S. military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake -- acts of war against another nation.

Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away -- unless, perhaps, they start another war.

That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President Bush's warmaking.

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.

Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues.

President Bush's statements on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction

Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said about weapons of mass destruction; I certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled these statements below. In reviewing them, I saw that he had, indeed, been as explicit and declarative as I had recalled.

Bush's statements, in chronological order, were:

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."
United Nations address, September 12, 2002

"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons."

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."
Radio address, October 5, 2002

"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."

"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States."

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."
Cincinnati, Ohio speech, October 7, 2002

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."
State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Address to the nation, March 17, 2003

Should the president get the benefit of the doubt?

When these statements were made, Bush's let-me-mince-no-words posture was convincing to many Americans. Yet much of the rest of the world, and many other Americans, doubted them.

As Bush's veracity was being debated at the United Nations, it was also being debated on campuses -- including those where I happened to be lecturing at the time.

On several occasions, students asked me the following question: Should they believe the president of the United States? My answer was that they should give the President the benefit of the doubt, for several reasons deriving from the usual procedures that have operated in every modern White House and that, I assumed, had to be operating in the Bush White House, too.

First, I assured the students that these statements had all been carefully considered and crafted. Presidential statements are the result of a process, not a moment's though. White House speechwriters process raw information, and their statements are passed on to senior aides who have both substantive knowledge and political insights. And this all occurs before the statement ever reaches the President for his own review and possible revision.

Second, I explained that -- at least in every White House and administration with which I was familiar, from Truman to Clinton -- statements with national security implications were the most carefully considered of all. The White House is aware that, in making these statements, the president is speaking not only to the nation, but also to the world.

Third, I pointed out to the students, these statements are typically corrected rapidly if they are later found to be false. And in this case, far from backpedaling from the President's more extreme claims, Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer had actually, at times, been even more emphatic than the President had. For example, on January 9, 2003, Fleischer stated, during his press briefing, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

In addition, others in the Bush administration were similarly quick to back the President up, in some cases with even more unequivocal statements. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly claimed that Saddam had WMDs -- and even went so far as to claim he knew "where they are; they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."

Finally, I explained to the students that the political risk was so great that, to me, it was inconceivable that Bush would make these statements if he didn't have damn solid intelligence to back him up. Presidents do not stick their necks out only to have them chopped off by political opponents on an issue as important as this, and if there was any doubt, I suggested, Bush's political advisers would be telling him to hedge. Rather than stating a matter as fact, he would be say: "I have been advised," or "Our intelligence reports strongly suggest," or some such similar hedge. But Bush had not done so.

So what are we now to conclude if Bush's statements are found, indeed, to be as grossly inaccurate as they currently appear to have been?

After all, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and given Bush's statements, they should not have been very hard to find -- for they existed in large quantities, "thousands of tons" of chemical weapons alone. Moreover, according to the statements, telltale facilities, groups of scientists who could testify, and production equipment also existed.

So where is all that? And how can we reconcile the White House's unequivocal statements with the fact that they may not exist?

There are two main possibilities. One, that something is seriously wrong within the Bush White House's national security operations. That seems difficult to believe. The other is that the president has deliberately misled the nation, and the world.

A desperate search for WMDs has so far yielded little, if any, fruit

Even before formally declaring war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the president had dispatched American military special forces into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, which he knew would provide the primary justification for Operation Freedom. None were found.

Throughout Operation Freedom's penetration of Iraq and drive toward Baghdad, the search for WMDs continued. None were found.

As the coalition forces gained control of Iraqi cities and countryside, special search teams were dispatched to look for WMDs. None were found.

During the past two and a half months, according to reliable news reports, military patrols have visited over 300 suspected WMD sites throughout Iraq. None of the prohibited weapons were found there.

British and American press reaction to the missing WMDs

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also under serious attack in England, which he dragged into the war unwillingly, based on the missing WMDs. In Britain, the missing WMDs are being treated as scandalous; so far, the reaction in the U.S. has been milder.

New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, has taken Bush sharply to task, asserting that it is "long past time for this administration to be held accountable." "The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat," Krugman argued. "If that claim was fraudulent," he continued, "the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history -- worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra." But most media outlets have reserved judgment as the search for WMDs in Iraq continues.

Still, signs do not look good. Last week, the Pentagon announced it was shifting its search from looking for WMD sites, to looking for people who can provide leads as to where the missing WMDs might be.

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, while offering no new evidence, assured Congress that WMDs would indeed be found. And he advised that a new unit called the Iraq Survey Group, composed of some 1400 experts and technicians from around the world, is being deployed to assist in the searching.

But, as Time magazine reported, the leads are running out. According to Time, the Marine general in charge explained that "[w]e've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad," and remarked flatly, "They're simply not there."

Perhaps most troubling, the president has failed to provide any explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe?

The absence of any explanation for the gap between the statements and reality only increases the sense that the President's misstatements may actually have been intentional lies.

Investigating The Iraqi War intelligence reports

Even now, while the jury is still out as to whether intentional misconduct occurred, the President has a serious credibility problem. Newsweek magazine posed the key questions: "If America has entered a new age of pre-emption �when it must strike first because it cannot afford to find out later if terrorists possess nuclear or biological weapons�exact intelligence is critical. How will the United States take out a mad despot or a nuclear bomb hidden in a cave if the CIA can't say for sure where they are? And how will Bush be able to maintain support at home and abroad?"

In an apparent attempt to bolster the President's credibility, and his own, Secretary Rumsfeld himself has now called for a Defense Department investigation into what went wrong with the pre-war intelligence. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd finds this effort about on par with O.J.'s looking for his wife's killer. But there may be a difference: Unless the members of Administration can find someone else to blame -- informants, surveillance technology, lower-level personnel, you name it -- they may not escape fault themselves.

Congressional committees are also looking into the pre-war intelligence collection and evaluation. Senator John Warner, R-Virginia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee would jointly investigate the situation. And the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence plans an investigation.

These investigations are certainly appropriate, for there is potent evidence of either a colossal intelligence failure or misconduct -- and either would be a serious problem. When the best case scenario seems to be mere incompetence, investigations certainly need to be made.

Sen. Bob Graham -- a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- told CNN's Aaron Brown, that while he still hopes they finds WMDs or at least evidence thereof, he has also contemplated three other possible alternative scenarios:

One is that [the WMDs] were spirited out of Iraq, which maybe is the worst of all possibilities, because now the very thing that we were trying to avoid, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could be in the hands of dozens of groups. Second, that we had bad intelligence. Or third, that the intelligence was satisfactory but that it was manipulated, so as just to present to the American people and to the world those things that made the case for the necessity of war against Iraq.

Sen. Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is the final scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN "there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration."

Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times, he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After reviewing it, Graham requested that the Bush administration declassify the information before the Senate voted on the administration's resolution requesting use of the military in Iraq.

But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a letter discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's letter only addressed "findings that supported the administration's position on Iraq," and ignored information that raised questions about intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that the Administration, by cherrypicking only evidence to its own liking, had manipulated the information to support its conclusion.

Recent statements by one of the high-level officials privy to the decision making process that lead to the Iraqi war also strongly suggest manipulation, if not misuse of the intelligence agencies. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, during an interview with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine, said: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." More recently, Wolfowitz added what most have believed all along, that the reason we went after Iraq is that "[t]he country swims on a sea of oil."

Worse than Watergate? A potential huge scandal if WMDs are still missing :sss

Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.

===> This administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, which was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a President to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case. <=== :D

John Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the president of the United States.

Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/06/06/findlaw.analysis.dean.wmd



Also, weg mit ihm, Tony ist bereits stehend KO nach der letzten Woche, hätte für ihn nicht unglücklicher laufen können, selber schuld.....

syr

[syracus]

US tried to plant WMDs, failed: whistleblower

Daily Times Monitor
Tuesday, August 12, 2003

According to a stunning report posted by a retired Navy Lt Commander and 28-year veteran of the Defense Department (DoD), the Bush administration’s assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plan to “plant” WMDs inside the country. Nelda Rogers, the Pentagon whistleblower, claims the plan failed when the secret mission was mistakenly taken out by “friendly fire”, the Environmentalists Against War report.

Nelda Rogers is a 28-year veteran debriefer for the DoD. She has become so concerned for her safety that she decided to tell the story about this latest CIA-military fiasco in Iraq. According to Al Martin Raw.com, “Ms Rogers is number two in the chain of command within this DoD special intelligence office. This is a ten-person debriefing unit within the central debriefing office for the Department of Defense.”

The information that is being leaked out is information “obtained while she was in Germany heading up the debriefing of returning service personnel, involved in intelligence work in Iraq for the DoD and/or the CIA. “According to Ms Rogers, there was a covert military operation that took place both preceding and during the hostilities in Iraq,” reports Al Martin Raw.com, an online subscriber-based news/analysis service which provides “Political, Economic and Financial Intelligence”.

Al Martin is a retired Lt Commander (US Navy), the author of a memoir called “The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider,” and is considered one of America’s foremost experts on corporate and government fraud. Ms Rogers reports that this particular covert operation team was manned by former military personnel and “the unit was paid through the Department of Agriculture in order to hide it, which is also very commonplace”.

According to Al Martin Raw.com, “the Agriculture Department has often been used as a paymaster on behalf of the CIA, DIA, NSA and others”. According to the Al Martin Raw.com story, another aspect of Ms Rogers’ report concerns a covert operation which was to locate the assets of Saddam Hussein and his family, including cash, gold bullion, jewelry and assorted valuable antiquities. The problem became evident when “the operation in Iraq involved 100 people, all of whom apparently are now dead, having succumbed to so-called ‘friendly fire’. The scope of this operation included the penetration of the Central Bank of Iraq, other large commercial banks in Baghdad, the Iraqi National Museum and certain presidential palaces where monies and bullion were secreted.”

“They identified about $2 billion in cash, another $150 million in Euros, in physical banknotes, and about another $100 million in sundry foreign currencies ranging from Yen to British Pounds,” reports Al Martin.

“These people died, mostly in the same place in Baghdad, supposedly from a stray cruise missile or a combination of missiles and bombs that went astray,” Martin continues. “There were supposedly 76 who died there and the other 24 died through a variety of ‘friendly fire’, ‘mistaken identity’ and some of them—their whereabouts are simply unknown.” Ms Rogers’ story sounds like an updated 21st-century version of Treasure Island meets Ali Baba and the Bush Cabal Thieves, writes Martin.

“This was a contingent of CIA/ DoD operatives, but it was really the CIA that bungled it,” Ms Rogers said. “They were relying on the CIA’s ability to organise an effort to seize these assets and to be able to extract these assets because the CIA claimed it had resources on the ground within the Iraqi army and the Iraqi government who had been paid. That turned out to be completely bogus. As usual.”

“CIA people were supposed to be handling it,” Martin continues. “They had a special ‘black’ aircraft to fly it out. But none of that happened because the regular US Army showed up, stumbled onto it and everyone involved had to scramble. These new Iraqi “asset seizures” go directly to the New US Ruling Junta. The US Viceroy in Iraq Paul Bremer is reportedly drinking Saddam’s $2000 a bottle Napoleon-era brandy, smoking his expensive Davidoff cigars and he has even furnished his office with Saddam’s Napoleon-era furniture.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_12-8-2003_pg1_9

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

Good Morning Vietnam

By DOUG THOMPSON
Oct 10, 2003, 07:55

Vietnam. So long ago yet so vivid still in the minds of so many. Long enough ago that the history of the conflict is now taught in high schools and colleges – all too often by young men and women too young to have served there if – in fact – they served at all.

Vietnam. A name conjured up now whenever somebody wants to question what is happening in Iraq. Another Vietnam, they say. Another debacle for America.

Had lunch the other day with an old friend, a career soldier just back from Iraq. He missed Vietnam. Too young. He used to say he was glad. Vietnam raised too many questions for someone who wanted to make the military his life.

He survived other conflicts. Somalia. Lebanon, Grenada, Desert Storm. After Desert Storm, he marched down the streets of Washington to cheers, a hero’s welcome that had eluded American military men and women since World War II.

My father was “Class of ’45,” veteran of World War II, mustered out after the war ended. He came home to cheers, parades and a grateful nation. It didn’t start out that way. Even with the national horror over Pearl Harbor, some doubted the wisdom of entering the war. When American soldiers fell in the first battle in North Africa, Winston Churchill called our military “the unqualified leading the untrained into the unknown for the ungrateful.”

Four years later, Churchill – and the rest of the world – held a much higher opinion of American capabilities in war. The nation that had never lost a war stood proud.

Then came Korea. No victory there. Just a truce – of sorts – and more questions than answers.

Then Vietnam.

“I missed Vietnam,” my friend said at lunch. “I thought about retiring after Desert Storm. I should have.”

I couldn’t help but notice how much older he looked. More lines in the face. More gray in the hair. More emptiness behind the eyes.

Was it that bad? I had to ask.

“Bad,” he said. “Classic FUBAR.”

In military terms, FUBAR is the worst-case scenario. Most military operations start out as SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up). If things get worse, they graduate to TACFU (Totally And Completely Fucked Up). When things get really bad, they reach FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Repair).

“A mission without a goal,” he said. “An engagement without rules. The intel was pure FUBAR. No exit strategy. We’re going to be there for a long, long time. Maybe people are right. Maybe it is another Vietnam.”

Vietnam was 10 years, 58,325 dead and many more left scarred permanently. More Americans died in one day of battle in Vietnam than the total casualty count of the Iraq war.

“So far,” he said. “We were in Vietnam for 10 years.”

The news out of Iraq usually brings reports of more American deaths at the hands of Saddam loyalists who use snipers, ambushes and car bombs to continue a war that President George W. Bush says ended months ago. Those who support the Bush administration say the press is exaggerating the problems in Iraq.

“No,” my friend said. “They’re not. The situation is worse. Far worse.”

So why not speak out? Won’t people listen to a career soldier?

“Not this career soldier. I want to get out on my own terms, with my rank and pension intact. My family’s future is more important. I’m no fool.”

From the restaurant window we could see the Pentagon, including the section taken out by a hijacked airliner on September 11, 2001.

“I’ve been a professional soldier most of my adult life,” he said. “I’ve been proud to serve my country even when I thought we might be wrong. But I’m not proud now. And that makes me want to puke.”

As we walked back to our cars, I thought about a day more than 30 years earlier. A young man returning home from war walked through an airport terminal in Los Angeles, back on American soil after too long away.

An older man approached and asked: “You been in Vietnam son?”

“Yes sir, I have. Just got home.”

Tears welled up in the old man’s eyes. He spat in the young man’s face and walked away.

As my friend, a no-longer-proud career soldier, walked away to his car, I fought back my own tears.

Good morning Vietnam.

(My apologies to my friend Adrian Cronauer for the use of his signature sign-on during his tour with Armed Forces Radio - Saigon. We've known each other for more than 30 years and often debate -- and disagree on -- not only Vietnam but the war in Iraq.)

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_3244.shtml

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

The White House whine: 'It's all the media's fault'

By Dante Chinni

WASHINGTON - After several months of bad news, the Bush administration has discovered the source of its problems. It turns out that it's not the Democrats, not really anyway. It's not Saddam or Osama. It's not even Bill Clinton. No, the problem, it turns out, is the media.

The press, particularly the Washington press, has created a "filter" that's blocking the good news from getting out, the president says. He insists that positive stories abound in Iraq and in the US economy. Things are looking up all over. But you in the public aren't being allowed to hear about it. And if you could hear about it, you'd feel a lot better about the direction of the country.

This is the new line from the White House as it's taken its good-news message around the country, in speeches and in interviews with local television stations and smaller newspapers.

The motives here aren't hard to discern.

Presidents have long sought to reach beyond the Washington press corps to take their message directly to the people. More than 80 years ago, President Woodrow Wilson went on a whistle-stop tour to try to generate public support for the League of Nations.

In terms of strategy, the new White House approach is something of a no-brainer. The press ranks just below trial lawyers, telemarketers, and the French as a favorite piñata for surly Americans.

And then there's the chance to suggest that the press leans left politically and simply can't be fair in its reporting. This argument, in case you haven't talked to Anne Coulter recently, was put forward again last week by the president's mom. Barbara Bush told NBC News that "my gut feeling is that all the media is against George, Republicans, any Republican."

Ah, yes. It's lonely at the top, particularly if you have the misfortune of being a Republican. But even with the odds and the media- industrial complex stacked against him, the president is soldiering on, or so the story goes.

This is all very interesting, even compelling, save for one small problem. When one looks at the facts, the argument just doesn't hold up. In fact, up until the last few months, one could argue that the Bush administration has had a relatively easy time of it with the press. Most of the potential "scandals" the press could have latched on to - Enron, Halliburton, etc. - were mostly overlooked, even by the usually tenacious Washington press corps, in large part probably because since Sept. 11 there are bigger issues at stake.

But now, as much as the president wants good news reported, there simply isn't a lot to be had at the moment. The nation's former surplus is now a record deficit, thanks in large part to tax cuts the president advocated. School principals and parents are unhappy with the education reform he pushed for and then underfunded. States aren't pleased that they're seeing more federal mandates, some of which involve homeland security, without seeing more money coming their way.

On top of all of this is Iraq, where the president maintains the press isn't reporting on the major progress being made. But at the same time, his secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, said in a candid memo that it's "pretty clear" the US and its allies can carry the day "but it will be a long, hard slog."

And as time goes by, it's becoming clearer that the US went into Iraq on faulty information that was either poorly gathered and assembled or put together to be deliberately misleading.

Of course, not all of these problems are completely the president's fault - though some unmistakably bear his stamp of responsibility - but that's the negative side of sitting in the Oval Office, just as the positive side comes when one gets credit for things one has nothing to do with. If the president has any questions about this aspect of the office he holds, he'd be well advised to talk with his father, who watched his ratings hit the 90 percent range before plummeting quickly to the 40s.

Much the president's support is based on the fact that people find him to be personally likeable. Like it or not, that's increasingly the nature of politics in America. But the press's job isn't to cover personality; it is to cover the news. And you can call it a filter, if you like, or you can call it bias, but the news, of late, is not good.

And that's why strategies like the one Mr. Bush is employing now rarely work. You can rail against the messenger all you want, but when the message is bad, it doesn't sound like defending yourself, it sounds like whining.

from the October 28, 2003 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1028/p09s01-codc.html

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

October 27, 2003

Bush Won't Commit to Giving Classified Reports to 9/11 Panel

By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — President Bush declined today to commit the White House to turning over highly classified intelligence reports to the independent federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, despite public threats of a subpoena from the bipartisan panel.

The president said in a brief meeting with reporters that the documents were "very sensitive" and that the White House was still discussing the issue with the panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey.

Mr. Bush's remarks and subsequent comments today from his press secretary suggested that the White House may ultimately refuse the commission's demand for access to the documents, setting up a possible showdown between the White House and the independent investigators.

Last week, Mr. Kean said for the first time that he was prepared to issue a subpoena and risk a courtroom battle with the White House if the documents were not turned over within weeks.

Commission officials say the documents include copies of the so-called Presidential Daily Briefing — the summary prepared each morning by the Central Intelligence Agency for the Oval Office — that President Bush received in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks. The White House refused to provide the briefing reports to House and Senate investigators last year for their investigation of the attacks, citing executive privilege.

As a result of Mr. Kean's comments on Friday, a number of prominent lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, have joined in urging the White House to make the documents available to the panel, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which was created by Congress last year over the initial objections of the White House.

In remarks to reporters after a White House meeting to discuss American policy policy in Iraq, the president was asked if and when the White House would provide the commission with the intelligence documents.

"Those are very sensitive documents," Mr. Bush said, adding only that "my attorney, Al Gonzales, is working with Chairman Kean."

In subsequent comments, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, turned aside questions of whether the White House would make the documents available.

"There are a lot of ways to provide information to the commission," Mr. McClellan said. "We will continue working with them to make sure they have the information they need to complete their work and meet the deadline that Congress created."

Bush administration officials said that the White House was wary of turning over the documents for several reasons, including concerns over possible leaks of sensitive national security information in the documents.

They said the White House was also alarmed at the prospect of establishing a precedent in which some of the most secretive intelligence information reaching the Oval Office — the Presidential Daily Briefing is available only to Mr. Bush and a handful of his aides — could be turned over to investigators outside of the executive branch.

"There are national security issues, executive privilege issues, common-sense issues," a senior White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We want to be as helpful as we can to Governor Kean and the commission, but these are not the sort of documents you freely share with the outside world."

The political risks to Mr. Bush of refusing to share the information with the bipartisan panel became clearer today, with two of the leading Democrats seeking their party's presidential nomination accusing Mr. Bush of trying to hide something from the commission and the public.

"I am very concerned by the president's foot-dragging on cooperation with the bipartisan 9/11 commission," Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, said in a statement released by his presidential campaign committee. "The administration's current stonewalling suggests that there is more that they knew and want to hide from the American public."

Another Democratic candidate, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, an author of the bill that created the commission, said, "President Bush may want to withhold the truth about Sept. 11, but the American people, and especially the victims' families, demand and deserve it."

In an interview today with The Associated Press, Mr. Kean said he would resume negotiations with the White House this week and hoped to reach a resolution "one way or the other" on the documents sought by the panel.

"We've gotten a number of documents from the White House, including some very sensitive documents that Congress did not have," Mr. Kean said in the interview. "We need more, and that's why we have the ongoing negotiations. We're not going to be satisfied until we have everything we need to do our job."

Other members of the panel said today that they supported Mr. Kean in his threat to issue a subpoena for the White House documents.

"The commission has unanimously determined that these are important documents that relate directly to the commission's work," said Richard Ben-Veniste, a Washington lawyer who was appointed to the commission by Congressional Democrats.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/politics/27CND-TERROR.html?amp;ei=5062&en=5513e848b0040921&partner=GOOGLE&ex=1067922000&pagewanted=print&position=

syr :cool:

[syracus]

FRANK RICH

Why Are We Back in Vietnam?

Published: October 26, 2003

In his now legendary interview last month with Brit Hume of Fox News, George W. Bush explained that he doesn't get his news from the news media — not even Fox. "The best way to get the news is from objective sources," the president said, laying down his utopian curriculum for Journalism 101. "And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world."

Those sources? Condoleezza Rice and Andrew Card. Mr. Hume, helpfully dispensing with the "We Report" half of his network's slogan, did not ask the obvious follow-up question: What about us poor benighted souls who don't have these crack newscasters at our beck and call? But the answer came soon enough anyway. The White House made Condoleezza Rice's Newshour available to all Americans by dispatching her to Oprah.

"No camera crews have ever been granted this much access to this national security adviser," Oprah told her audience as she greeted her guest. A major scoop was not far behind. Is there anything you can tell us about the president that would surprise us? Oprah asked. Yes, Ms. Rice said, Mr. Bush is a very fast eater. "If you're not careful," she continued, "he'll be on dessert and you're still eating the salad."

And that's the way it was, Oct. 17, 2003.

This is objective journalism as this administration likes it, all right — news you can't use. Until recently, the administration had often gotten what it wanted, especially on television, and not just on afternoon talk shows. From 9/11 through the fall of Saddam, the obsequiousness became so thick that even Terry Moran, the ABC News White House correspondent, said his colleagues looked "like zombies" during the notorious pre-shock-and-awe Bush news conference of March 6, 2003. That was the one that Mr. Bush himself called "scripted." The script included eight different instances in which he implied that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11, all of them left unchallenged by the dozens of reporters at hand.

Six months later, the audience is getting restless. The mission is not accomplished. The casualty list cannot be censored. The White House has been caught telling too many whoppers, the elucidation of which has become a cottage industry laying siege to the best-seller list. Vanity Fair, which once ran triumphalist photos of the administration by Annie Leibovitz, now looks at this White House and sees Teapot Dome. The Washington Post, which killed a week of "Boondocks" comic strips mocking Ms. Rice a few days before her Oprah appearance, relented and ran one anyway last weekend on its letters page, alongside the protests of its readers.

But print, even glossy print, is one thing, TV another. Like it or not, news doesn't register in our culture unless it happens on television. It wasn't until the relatively tardy date of March 9, 1954, when Edward R. Murrow took on Joseph McCarthy on CBS's "See It Now," that the junior senator from Wisconsin hit the skids. Sam Ervin's televised Watergate hearings reached a vast audience that couldn't yet identify the pre-Redford-and-Hoffman Woodward and Bernstein. Voters didn't turn against our Vietnam adventure en masse until it became, in Michael Arlen's undying phrase, the Living Room War.

However spurious any analogy between the two wars themselves may be, you can tell that the administration itself now fears that Iraq is becoming a Vietnam by the way it has started to fear TV news. When an ABC News reporter, Jeffrey Kofman, did the most stinging major network report on unhappiness among American troops last summer, Matt Drudge announced on his Web site that Mr. Kofman was gay and, more scandalously, a Canadian — information he said had been provided to him by a White House staffer. This month, as bad news from Iraq proliferated, Mr. Bush pulled the old Nixon stunt of trying to "go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people" about the light at the end of the tunnel. In this case, "the people" meant the anchors of regional TV companies like Tribune Broadcasting, Belo and Hearst-Argyle.

Last Sunday, after those eight-minute-long regional Bush interviews were broadcast, Dana Milbank, The Washington Post's White House reporter, said on CNN's "Reliable Sources" that the local anchors "were asking tougher questions than we were." I want to believe that Mr. Milbank was just being polite, because if he's right, the bar for covering this White House has fallen below sea level. The local anchors rarely followed up any more than Brit Hume did. They produced less news than Oprah. Will countries like France, Russia and Germany provide troops for Iraq? one of them asked Mr. Bush. "You need to ask them," was the reply.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/arts/26RICH.html?fta=y

syr :D

[syracus]

Vol. 4 Num 212 Mon. December 29, 2003

Bremer takes U-turn on WMD

AFP, London

The US civil administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer yesterday denied the existence of laboratories in Iraq making weapons of mass destruction for which British Prime Minister Tony Blair says US-led teams have massive evidence. :D

But in a pre-taped interview scheduled for transmission here yesterday, Bremer retreated when he learned that it was Blair who had made the claim.

Asked about the claim without being told first of the source, Bremer said: "I don't know where those

words come from but that is not what (Iraq Survey Group chief) David Kay has said."

The US-led Iraq Survey Group is hunting for weapons of mass destruction.

"I have read (Kay's) reports so I don't know who said that," Bremer said in an interview on the British ITV1 channel with Jonathan Dimbleby.

"It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me," the American continued. "It sounds like someone who doesn't agree with the policy sets up a red herring then knocks it down."

But Bremer retreated when told the claims were made by none other than President George W. Bush's staunchest ally Blair.

"There is actually a lot of evidence that had been made public," he said.

Blair said this month the Iraq Survey Group had found "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories" in Iraq.

http://www.thedailystar.net/2003/12/29/d31229011717.htm

Zum Glück kann man's ja dem Toni von der Insel anhängen :schaf: :rofl.....

syr

[syracus]

Und Toni erklärt's nun zum "Testfall" :schaf: ......

Blair: Iraq war was test case

Tony Blair has described the war in Iraq as a "test case" for the handling of countries which possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

He said if Britain had backed down from dealing with Iraq, it would have been unable to deal with other rogue states.

The prime minister was speaking to reporters while on his way back from Iraq after a surprise visit to Basra.

He told UK troops there they fought for a "noble cause" toppling Saddam Hussein and normality was slowly returning.

But he also later warned the next six months in Iraq would be difficult, in the run-up to the handover of power to the Iraqis in July.

Mr Blair's trip lasted less than 24 hours, and his plane landed at Heathrow airport on Sunday evening.

On the journey home, he told journalists he wanted to send out the message there were other ways of dealing with WMD.

"I believe as strongly as I ever have this is the security threat and if we don't deal with it we will rue the day we didn't," he said.

He did not mention any countries by name but is understood to have been referring to Iran and North Korea, whose nuclear ambitions continue to cause international tension.

The comments echo the prime minister's New Year message, in which he said the decision by Libya to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction showed the fruits of "discussion and engagement".

'Win the peace' :ne

Speaking to the troops earlier, Mr Blair reiterated his personal belief in the necessity of the war.

He said: "The conflict here was a conflict of enormous importance because Iraq was a test case."


Iraq had a proven record, he said, of not just developing but using weapons of mass destruction and repressing its own people.

"If we had backed away from that, we would never have been able to confront this threat in the other countries where it exists."

He thanked British servicemen and women - "the new pioneers of soldiering" - for their part in winning last year's conflict, but told them they now had to "win the peace".

The Daily Telegraph says Mr Blair told military commanders in Basra that the 10,000 British troops stationed in the country would not be scaled down until next year.

He said several thousand UK troops would remain there until at least 2006, the paper says.

Mr Blair was cautious about the prospects of rapid progress in dealing with insurgency in Iraq, saying that getting on top of the security situation by July would be difficult.

Asked by reporters if he still believed WMD would be found in Iraq, Mr Blair said: "The first thing is to wait for the Iraq Survey Group report.

"I don't believe that the intelligence we got was wrong. :hihi

The prime minister flew to Basra on a military jet from the Egyptian resort of Sharm-el-Sheik, where he spent the Christmas break with his family.

During his visit, he met US civilian administrator Paul Bremer and his deputy, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's top diplomat in Iraq.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/3367717.stm

Published: 2004/01/05 03:07:21 GMT

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

Nichtas als Lügen wurden letztes Jahr aufgetischt. Aber alles kommt irgendwann raus :lach!

Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper

Since Gulf War, Nonconventional Weapons Never Got Past the Planning Stage

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 7, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- Of all Iraq's rocket scientists, none drew warier scrutiny abroad than Modher Sadeq-Saba Tamimi.

An engineering PhD known for outsized energy and gifts, Tamimi, 47, designed and built a new short-range missile during Iraq's four-year hiatus from United Nations arms inspections. Inspectors who returned in late 2002, enforcing Security Council limits, ruled that the Al Samoud missile's range was not quite short enough. The U.N. team crushed the missiles, bulldozed them into a pit and entombed the wreckage in concrete. In one of three interviews last month, Tamimi said "it was as if they were killing my sons."

But Tamimi had other brainchildren, and these stayed secret. Concealed at some remove from his Karama Co. factory here were concept drawings and computations for a family of much more capable missiles, designed to share parts and features with the openly declared Al Samoud. The largest was meant to fly six times as far.

"This was hidden during the UNMOVIC visits," Tamimi said, referring to inspectors from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission. Over a leisurely meal of lamb and sweet tea, he sketched diagrams. "It was forbidden for us to reveal this information," he said.

Tamimi's covert work, which he recounted publicly for the first time in five hours of interviews, offers fresh perspective on the question that led the nation to war. Iraq flouted a legal duty to report the designs. The weapons they depicted, however, did not exist. After years of development -- against significant obstacles -- they might have taken form as nine-ton missiles. In March they fit in Tamimi's pocket, on two digital compact discs.

The nine-month record of arms investigators since the fall of Baghdad includes discoveries of other concealed arms research, most of it less advanced. Iraq's former government engaged in abundant deception about its ambitions and, in some cases, early steps to prepare for development or production. Interviews here -- among Iraqi weaponeers and investigators from the U.S. and British governments -- turned up unreported records, facilities or materials that could have been used in unlawful weapons.

But investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage . And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a "grave and gathering danger" by President Bush and a "mortal threat" by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s.

A review of available evidence, including some not known to coalition investigators and some they have not made public, portrays a nonconventional arms establishment that was far less capable than U.S. analysts judged before the war. Leading figures in Iraqi science and industry, supported by observations on the ground, described factories and institutes that were thoroughly beaten down by 12 years of conflict, arms embargo and strangling economic sanctions. The remnants of Iraq's biological, chemical and missile infrastructures were riven by internal strife, bled by schemes for personal gain and handicapped by deceit up and down lines of command. The broad picture emerging from the investigation to date suggests that, whatever its desire, Iraq did not possess the wherewithal to build a forbidden armory on anything like the scale it had before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

David Kay, who directs the weapons hunt on behalf of the Bush administration, reported no discoveries last year of finished weapons, bulk agents or ready-to-start production lines. Members of his Iraq Survey Group, in unauthorized interviews, said the group holds out little prospect now of such a find. Kay and his spokesman, who report to Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet, declined to be interviewed.

Poxes and Professors


On Dec. 13, as a reporter waited to see the dean of Baghdad University's College of Science, two poker-faced men strode into the anteroom. One was an ex-Marine named Dan, clad in civilian clothes, body armor, a checkered Arab scarf and a bandolier of eight spare magazines for his M-16 rifle. The other identified himself to the receptionist only as Barry.

He asked to see the dean, Abdel Mehdi Taleb, immediately. Dan preceded Barry into Taleb's office, weapon ready, then stood sentry outside.

According to Taleb, Barry asked -- once again -- about the work of immunologist Alice Krikor Melconian. For months, Taleb said, the Americans had sent scientists and intelligence officers to investigate the compact, curly-haired chairman of the university's biotechnology department.

Three Iraqi scientists said U.S. investigators asserted they have reason to believe Melconian ran a covert research facility, location unknown. In July, colleagues said, Melconian emerged from her office with a burly American on each arm and was placed into the back seat of a car with darkened windows. U.S. investigators held her for 10 days in an open-air cell and then released her.

Described by associates as shaken by her arrest, Melconian said she has done no weapons research and knows of no secret labs. "I have never left the university," she said. "I have nothing more to say about this. I do not want to make any more trouble."

Like others on campus, and at a few elite institutes elsewhere, Melconian remains under scrutiny in part because investigators deem her capable of doing dangerous biological research. Investigators said they are casting a wide net at Iraq's "centers of scientific excellence" in an effort to confirm intelligence that is fragmentary and often lacks essential particulars.

Kay's Iraq Survey Group, which has numbered up to 1,400 personnel from the Defense Department, Energy Department national laboratories and intelligence agencies, is looking for biological weapons far more dangerous than those of Iraq's former arsenal. A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, published in October 2002, said "chances are even" that Iraqi weaponeers were working with smallpox, one of history's mass killers. It also said Iraq "probably has developed genetically engineered BW agents."

As the Associated Press first reported, a scientific assessment panel known as Team Pox returned home in late July without finding reason to believe Iraq possessed the variola virus, which causes smallpox. Even so, interviews with Iraqi scientists led to a redoubled search for work on animal poxes, harmless to humans but potentially useful as substitutes for smallpox in weapons research.

Rihab Taha, the British-educated biologist known in the west as Dr. Germ, has generally been described by U.S. officials as uncooperative in custody since May 12. But according to one well-informed account of her debriefing, she acknowledged receiving an order from superiors in 1990 to develop a biological weapon based on a virus. That same year, a virologist who worked for her, Hazem Ali, commenced research on camelpox.

If truthful and correctly recounted, Taha's statement exposed a long-standing lie. Iraq's government denied offensive viral research. One analyst familiar with the debriefing report, declining to be identified by name or nationality, said investigators believe that Taha's remarks demonstrate an intent to use smallpox, since camelpox resembles no other human pathogen.

"Hearing that from the lips of the people involved is kind of like that MasterCard commercial: 'Priceless,' " the analyst said.

There is no corresponding record, however, that Iraq had the capability or made the effort to carry out such an intent.

Taha, according to the same debriefing account, said Iraq had no access to smallpox. Ali's research halted after 45 days, with the August 1990 outbreak of war in Kuwait, and did not resume. And Taha, like all those in custody, continues to assert that biowar programs ceased entirely the following year.

Chimeras, Science Fiction


More alarming even than Taha's statement, investigators said, were highly classified indications that Iraq sought to produce a genetically altered virus. Australian scientists reported in 2001 that an apparently innocent change in mousepox DNA transformed the virus into a rampant killer of mice. Investigators spent months probing for evidence that Iraq sought to master the technique, then apply it to vaccinia -- a readily available virus used to inoculate against smallpox -- and finally to smallpox itself.

Survey group scientists discovered no sign of pox research save at the Baghdad College of Veterinary Medicine, which declared the work to U.N. inspectors in 2002. Researchers there were manipulating the viruses that cause goatpox and sheeppox, in well-documented efforts to develop vaccines. U.S. investigators arrested Antoine Banna, the Cornell-trained dean, but soon released him. Much the same result followed a probe of avian virus research at the Ghazi Institute.

"It was legitimate research, but if they wanted to swing the other way they had some of the wherewithal to do that," said an analyst apprised of the results.

When investigators paid a call on Noria Ali, a genetic engineer who wears the head cover and long robes of an observant Muslim, "they said they knew there was [genetic] research on these viruses, and we had secret labs for this work," Ali said.

Ali acknowledged a history that attracted suspicion. In 1990, she said, Rihab Taha ordered her to build a genetic engineering lab at Iraq's principal bioweapons research center. The Special Security Organization warned her that "any person who talks about his work will be executed," Ali said. But Iraq's invasion of Kuwait left the lab unfinished, an account confirmed by U.S. and European experts.

"We could have done a lot in this lab, but the fact is that this lab never existed," Ali said.

The survey group's most exotic line of investigation sought evidence that Iraq tried to create a pathogen combining pox virus with cobra venom. A 1986 study in the Journal of Microbiology reported that fowlpox spread faster and killed more chickens in the presence of venom extract. Investigators received a secondhand report that Iraq sought to splice them together.

Such an artificial life form -- created by inserting genetic sequences from one organism into another -- is called a "chimera," after the fire-breathing monster of Greek mythology commingling lion, serpent and goat.

"They have asked about developing some kind of chimera, a pox with snake-venom gene," said Ali Zaag, dean of the university's Institute for Biotechnology. "You have seen our labs. For us, these capabilities are science fiction."

Investigators also searched for what one of them termed "starter sets" of pathogens, laboratory samples that could be used for later production. For each suspected weapon, the investigators carried a supply of "labeled antibodies," a classified technology used in field kits that resemble home pregnancy tests. "We didn't find anything, so certainly not anything engineered," a coalition scientist said.

Team Pox, as the group of investigators dubbed itself, eventually dropped the chimera investigation.

"You've got to learn to walk before you start running," said a European government scientist who studied Iraq's biological programs last year. "The evidence we have about the virus program is they hadn't started to walk yet."

Recently, Zaag said, the chimera hunt resumed. This time the investigators are intelligence officers. Their approach, Zaag said, is "We'll give you a few more days to reveal something, and then we'll have to take you." Spokesmen for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency declined requests for interviews.

What 'the Traitor' Knew

Late last month, fresh evidence emerged on a very old question about Iraq's illegal arms: Did the Baghdad government, as it said, rid itself of all the biological arms it produced before 1991? The answer matters, because the Bush administration's most concrete prewar assertions about Iraqi germ weapons referred to stocks allegedly hidden from that old arsenal.

The new evidence appears to be a contemporary record, from inside the Iraqi government, of a pivotal moment in Baghdad's long struggle to shield arms programs from outside scrutiny. The document, written just after the defection of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law on Aug. 8, 1995, anticipates the collapse of cover stories for weapons that had yet to be disclosed. Read alongside subsequent discoveries made by U.N. inspectors, the document supports Iraq's claim that it destroyed all production stocks of lethal pathogens before inspectors knew they existed.

The defection of Hussein Kamel was a turning point in the U.N.-imposed disarmament of Iraq in the 1990s. Kamel, who had married one of Saddam Hussein's daughters, Raghad, and controlled Baghdad's Military Industrial Commission, told his Western debriefers about major programs in biological and nuclear weaponry that had gone undetected or unconfirmed. Iraq was forced to acknowledge what he exposed, but neither inspectors nor U.S. officials were sure Kamel had told all there was to tell.

A handwritten Iraqi damage report, composed five days after the defection, now suggests that Kamel left little or nothing out.

The author is Hossam Amin, then -- and until his April 27 arrest -- the head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate. As liaison to the inspectors he provided information and logistical support, but he also concealed the government's remaining secrets.

Sufiyan Taha Mahmoud, who was private secretary to Amin in 1995, said in an interview that Amin flew into a rage when he learned Kamel had slipped across the border to Jordan. "It was as if he was hit with a hammer," Mahmoud said.

Five days later, Amin dispatched a six-page letter to the president's son Qusay.

The person who provided a copy to The Washington Post had postwar access to the presidential office where he said he found the original. Iraqis who know Amin well and experienced government investigators from the United States and Europe, who analyzed the document for this article, said they believe it to be authentic. They cited handwriting, syntax, contemporary details and annotations that match those of previous samples. Markings on the letter say that Qusay read it, summarized it for his father and filed it with presidential secretary Abed Hamid Mahmoud.

Just before his "sudden and regrettable flight and surrender to the bosom of the enemy," Amin wrote, "the traitor Hussein Kamel" received a detailed briefing on "the points of weakness and the points of strength" in Iraq's concealment efforts.

Amin then listed, in numbered points, "the matters that are known to the traitor and not declared" to U.N. inspectors.

Inspectors knew Iraq tried to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon, but not, Amin wrote, about the "crash program" to fabricate a bomb with French reactor fuel by 1991. They knew Iraq made biological toxins, but not that it put them in Scud missile warheads. There were major facilities -- Dawrah Foot and Mouth Disease Institute, a centrifuge factory in Rashdiya, and the Al Atheer bomb-fabrication plant -- whose true purposes were unacknowledged to inspectors.

Shortly after Amin sent the letter, Kamel's debriefings and subsequent inspections exposed every item in Amin's catalogue.

Until now, Kamel's debriefers suspected that "maybe he decided to keep something for himself," said Ali Shukri, a Jordanian military officer who debriefed Kamel on behalf of the late King Hussein, speaking in an interview in Amman. After reading Amin's letter in silence and then rereading it, Shukri looked up and said Kamel had held back nothing.

The most significant point in Amin's letter, U.S. and European experts said, is his unambiguous report that Iraq destroyed its entire inventory of biological weapons. Amin reminded Qusay Hussein of the government's claim that it possessed no such arms after 1990, then wrote that in truth "destruction of the biological weapons agents took place in the summer of 1991."

It was those weapons to which Secretary of State Colin L. Powell referred in the Security Council on Feb. 5 when he said, for example, that Iraq still had an estimated 8,500 to 25,000 liters of anthrax bacteria.

Some things Amin's letter did not say may also be meaningful. If Iraq had succeeded in spray-drying anthrax spores to extend their life and lethality, that would have been among the most important secrets of its wide-ranging weapons program. The letter did not speak of it. The letter also enumerated Baghdad's nuclear secrets, but mentioned nothing to suggest Iraq manufactured unknown parts of an "implosion device" to detonate uranium.

There was only one important thing, Amin said, that Hussein Kamel did not know: some of the locations where Iraq hid its library of arms research. That supports long-standing suspicions that Iraq held back portions of a knowledge base that could speed revival of development and production one day.

A U.S. intelligence official, who was provided with a copy of Amin's letter for comment, said the government would not discuss it in detail. He said an initial check of records "suggests that we have not previously seen the letter." Without the original and an account of its origins, he said, government analysts "cannot verify the authenticity of the letter." He added, "It is plausible and, from a quick scan of it, presents no immediate surprises."

'The Stupid Army'


Thair Anwar Masraf, an affable project engineer, made an appointment last summer to see an investigator from David Kay's survey group. He had information, he said in an interview, that might help the Americans interpret two trailer-mounted production plants found near Mosul in April and May.

"I waited more than one hour in the Palestine Hotel," Masraf said. "He did not show up."

Masraf watched with curiosity, in coming months, as the Bush administration touted its discovery of mobile germ-weapon factories.

A joint study released May 28 by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency called the trailers "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program." Two days later, in Poland, President Bush announced: "For those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them."

When Iraqi engineers told investigators that the discovered trailers were meant for hydrogen, the CIA dismissed the "cover story."

By July, with contrary evidence piling up, Kay described the trailer episode as a "fiasco." He told BBC Television, which broadcast the tape Nov. 23: "I think it was premature and embarrassing."

Even so, Kay's October report to Congress left the question unresolved. Kay said he could not corroborate a mobile germ factory, but he restated the CIA argument that the trailers were not "ideally suited" for hydrogen.

Had Masraf found Kay's investigator at the Palestine Hotel, he said he would have explained that Iraq actually used such trailers to generate hydrogen during the eight-year war with Iran. Masraf and his former supervisor at the Saad Co. said Masraf managed a contract to refurbish some of the units beginning in 1997.

According to the two men, Iraq bought mobile hydrogen generators from Britain in 1982 and mounted them on trucks. The Republican Guard used one type, Iraq's 2nd Army Corps another.

Iraqi artillery units relied on hydrogen-filled weather balloons to measure wind and temperature, which affect targeting. Munqith Qaisi, then a senior manager at Saad Co. and now its American-appointed director-general, said the trailers used a chemical -- not biological -- process to make hydrogen from methanol and demineralized water.

The feature that analysts found most suspicious in May -- the compression and recapture of exhaust gases -- is a necessity, Masraf said, when gas is the intended product.

In the late 1990s, the Republican Guard sent some of its trailers for refurbishment at the Kindi Co. The 2nd Army Corps signed a similar contract with Saad Co. Masraf said the first units were finished in 2001, including the two discovered by coalition forces around Mosul.

Qaisi's account may also clear up an unexplained detail from the May 28 intelligence report: traces of urea in the reaction vessel aboard one of the trailers. Qaisi said the vessels corroded badly because Iraqi troops disregarded strict orders to use only demineralized water.

"The stupid army pissed in it, or used river water," he said.

Said's Last Experiment


On Thursday, Dec. 11, a rumpled man with a high, balding crown arrived late for work at the University of Technology. In his unpainted office, about the size of a family sedan, electrical fixtures drooped from cement walls.

Sabah Abdul Noor once moved among the nation's elites. He played a part in the most ambitious undertaking of Iraqi industrial science: creation from scratch, and largely in secret, of the wherewithal to design and manufacture an atomic bomb. When the 1991 Gulf War intervened, an Iraqi bomb was -- informed estimates vary -- six months to two years from completion.

Abdul Noor watched as that multibillion-dollar enterprise was reduced to slag under the cutting torches of U.N. inspectors, who arrived under Security Council mandate after Iraq's defeat in Kuwait. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Abdul Noor said, U.S. forces have been questioning him for indications that the nuclear program was secretly revived.

"I have just come from such an interview," he said, apologizing for the hour. "They didn't give names. They did not say where they were from. I am kept as long as they wish to keep me."

What the Americans want to talk about, almost always, is Khalid Ibrahim Said.

Until 1991, Said was going to be the man who built Iraq's atomic bomb. Other leading figures were responsible for uranium enrichment. Said led the team -- "PC-3, Group 4," in Iraq's cryptic organization chart -- that would form 40 pounds of uranium into a working nuclear device. Abdul Noor was Said's powder metallurgist.

Said died on April 8 when Marines opened fire on his moving car near a newly established checkpoint. His loss grieved Kay's nuclear investigators, who had many questions for him. When they came across Said's last experiment, the late bomb designer moved to the center of their probe.

Said spent his final days in a warehouse filled with capacitors and powerful magnets. He and his team were building what they described -- in a mandatory disclosure to the International Atomic Energy Agency -- as a "linear engine." The purpose, Iraq declared, was air defense.

The machine in Said's warehouse was more commonly known as a "rail gun." It used electromagnetic pulses to accelerate a small object to very high speed.

When U.S. investigators arrived, they found the gun had been "shooting an aluminum projectile at an aluminum target plate like the skin of an airplane," said an analyst who reviewed their report. But rail gun technology is thought to be decades from use in a practical weapon, and investigators believed Said might have something else in mind.

Impact of an extremely high-velocity projectile in a target chamber, they said, might be used to measure the behavior of materials under pressures that compare to a nuclear implosion. Such "equation of state" experiments, as physicists call them, could be applied to nuclear warhead design. When the U.S. nuclear team looked closely at that question, however, it "saw no evidence of equation of state work" with the rail gun, according to an authoritative summary of the team's report.

A sad look crossed Abdul Noor's face when he tried to explain his bafflement at suspicions that Iraq had secretly rebuilt -- "reconstituted," as the Bush administration put it in the summer and fall of 2002 -- a nuclear weapons program. He and his colleagues still know what they learned, Abdul Noor said, but their material condition is incomparably worse than it was when they began in 1987. "We would have had to start from less than zero," he said, with thousands of irreplaceable tools banned from import. "The country was cornered," he said. "We were boycotted. We were embargoed. The truth is, we disintegrated."

Of his late friend Said, Abdul Noor said: "I don't know what was in his heart. Probably he wanted to return to [nuclear weapons work] one day. That is in the category of dreams."

A common view among investigators today is that Said had the motive but not the means. One Western physicist who knew Said well said the rail gun enabled Said to maintain his team and "hone their skills on diagnostics, flash X-ray cameras, measuring very high speeds, and measuring impacts of ramming things together." The physicist added, "It's basic science. There's no relation to actual design and fabrication."

Some investigators have yet to be convinced. They continue to look for warhead research in the guise of the rail gun.

"Today they were asking me that again," Abdul Noor said. "I was not on the same wavelength. I could see they were not pleased with me."

[B]Red on Red on Blue


There is another explanation for the rail gun, according to one man who worked on it and does not want to be named. It was, he said, a deception operation against Saddam Hussein.

Hussein resented U.S. air patrols over "no-fly zones" where Iraqi aircraft were forbidden in northern and southern Iraq. After trying for years to challenge the patrols, another Iraqi said, "we had yet to scratch the wing of one American F-15."

Said gave the president an answer involving futuristic technology. He was a good enough applied physicist to understand the long odds against success, Said's anonymous colleague said, but the project earned him favor, prestige and a substantial budget.

In every field of special weaponry, Iraqi designers and foreign investigators said, such deceit was endemic. Program managers promised more than they could deliver, or things they could not deliver at all, to advance careers, preserve jobs or conduct intrigues against rivals. Sometimes they did so from ignorance, failing to grasp the challenges they took on.

Lying to an absolute ruler was hazardous, Iraqi weaponeers said, but less so in some cases than the alternatives. "No one will tell Saddam Hussein to his face, 'I can't do this,' " said an Iraqi brigadier general who supervised work on some of the technologies used in the rail gun.

David Kay's survey group has turned up other such cases. Analysts are calling the phenomenon "red-on-red deception," after the U.S. practice of using red to stand for enemy forces and blue to stand for friendly ones. In some cases, they said, "red on red" amounted to "red on blue" -- because Western intelligence collected the same false reports that fooled Hussein.

Sufiyan Taha Mahmoud, who worked for Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate throughout its 12 years, said spurious programs also led to needless conflict with U.N. arms inspectors.

"They couldn't build anything," Mahmoud said of overpromising weaponeers, "but they had to hide the documents because they related to prohibited activities."

Secrecy and a procurement system based on smuggling, Iraqi scientists said, abetted those who inflated their reports.

George Healey, a Canadian nuclear physicist and longtime inspector in Iraq, said entire programs were devised, or their design choices distorted, in order to siphon funds.

"They had a system to graft money out of oil-for-food," he said, referring to the U.N. program that supervised Iraqi exports and imports after 1991. "What you had to have was a project -- the more expensive the better, because the more you can buy, the more you can graft out of it. You'd have difficulty believing how much that explains."

Intertwined with internal deception, many analysts now believe, was deception aimed overseas. Hussein plainly hid actual programs over the years, but Kay, among others, said it appears possible he also hinted at programs that did not exist.

Hans Blix, who was executive chairman of UNMOVIC, the U.N. arms inspection team, said in a telephone interview from Sweden that he has devoted much thought to why Hussein might have exaggerated his arsenal. One explanation that appeals to him: "You can put a sign on your door, 'Beware of the dog,' without having a dog. They did not mind looking a little bit serious and a little bit dangerous."

Defectors who sold false or exaggerated stories in Washington, Iraqi and American experts said, layered on still another coat of deception.

"You end up with a Picasso-like drawing -- distorted," said Ali Zaag, the Baghdad University biotechnologist.

'Long Pole in the Tent'

One line of thought in the survey group now, as it constructs a narrative of the Iraqi threat, is that the Baghdad government set out to revive its nonconventional programs in sequence. Instead of beginning with "weapons of mass destruction" -- nuclear, biological or chemical -- Iraq began with the means to deliver them .

"Missiles are very significant to us because they're the long pole in the tent," Kay told "BBC Panorama." "They're the thing that takes the longest to produce. . . . The Iraqis had started in late '99, 2000, to produce a family of missiles that would have gotten to 1,000 kilometers [625 miles]."

Kay was referring to Tamimi's work, though the designer and details have not been made public before. If reached, a 625-mile range would have menaced Tel Aviv, Tehran, Istanbul, Riyadh, the world's richest oil fields and important U.S. military installations from Turkey to the Persian Gulf.

When that might have happened -- or whether -- is difficult to forecast. Of all Iraq's nascent programs, Tamimi's was among the most advanced. A closer look at its prospects helps answer a question common to all four fields of forbidden arms: Was the country capable of carrying out the presumed intentions of its leader?

Tamimi is a man of robust self-esteem, but he expressed no confidence about his long-range missile, which depended on clustering five engines in a single stage. (An intermediate version called for two engines.) Western missile experts, who suggested questions and reviewed answers from a reporter in multiple rounds of interviews with Tamimi, emerged uncertain of the timetable or outcome.

Their best estimate was that it would take six years -- if the missile worked at all -- to reach a successful flight test. Tamimi would need less time with major help from abroad, but considerably more if he had to conceal the work from U.N. monitoring that persisted until the United States invaded in March. U.S. government spokesmen declined to provide an estimate.

Tamimi "was the star" of Iraq's three rival rocket establishments, said a French expert who has known him for years. Another European rocket scientist said of Tamimi: "In our country he would be a very good design engineer."

But Tamimi lacked access to the modern tools and technical literature of his profession. He left Czechoslovakia's Antonin Zapotecky Military Academy in 1984 with a doctorate degree and a collection of Russian rocketry texts now entering their third decade in print. For the essential modeling of thrust, flight qualities, trajectory and range, he relied on unsophisticated software written in Baghdad. In an e-mail exchange, Tamimi expressed strong curiosity about what the "more accurate modeling programs" of overseas experts might show about his designs.

Tamimi faced challenges he had not encountered before, some of which he knew about and others he did not. He knew he would have difficulty lashing together multiple engines and igniting them at the same instant. "The main problem was synchronization, which we hadn't solved yet," he said.

To fit multiple engines in an airframe based on the existing Al Samoud missile, Tamimi's designs called for a flared missile that nearly doubled in diameter -- from 760mm (30 inches) to 1500mm (59 inches) -- from top to bottom. Foreign experts said the shape would produce enormous strains. "If it didn't break up going up, it would most likely do so on reentry," said a Western expert who did not want to be named, after submitting Tamimi's sketches and descriptions to an evaluation team. "To avoid that, they would have to develop some sort of separation system to abandon the wider bit, and also master terminal guidance after the separation."

Tamimi said "we did not consider the problem of separation." For terminal guidance, which steers a missile in its final approach to target, Tamimi pinned his hope on Russian technology he did not have in hand.

In test flights, the Al Samoud missile never landed -- literally -- within a mile of its target. In 2001, Tamimi obtained a small black-market supply of precision Russian gyroscopes. He hoped they would increase the missile's accuracy from about 1.5 miles to 500 yards. To increase accuracy still further, he said "we were near success" in negotiating a contract -- he would not say with whom -- for a complete Russian-built inertial navigation system.

"He knew very well where he was going, especially in guidance and gyroscope equipment," a foreign expert said.

An enormous problem for Tamimi's program, however, was that he designed it to allow procurement of parts under cover of the openly declared Al Samoud. When inspectors ruled the Al Samoud illegal and destroyed its production lines in March, Tamimi said, he began to doubt the project's viability.

"Saddam Hussein ordered this work, but where would we get the materials?" said an Iraqi general who declined to be named and who kept close tabs on Tamimi's missile designs. "This was the case in every field. People would prepare reports under the order of Saddam Hussein and the supervision of the people around Saddam Hussein. But it was not real."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60340-2004Jan6?language=printer

syr:sss

[syracus]

I will resign if found lying: Tony Blair

Express India ^ | 1/11/04
Reuters

London, January 11: British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Sunday that he would resign if an imminent report into the suicide of a government expert on Iraq finds that he lied about the incident.

Senior Judge Lord Hutton is due to publish his report into the death of weapons expert David Kelly in coming weeks and is likely to apportion some blame to the government for Kelly's death, which rocked Blair's premiership last year.

Kelly killed himself in July after the government outed him as the source of a BBC report that claimed Blair had inflated the threat from Iraq's armament to justify the conflict.

His death and the Hutton inquiry unleashed months of speculation about Blair's role in driving Kelly to kill himself and about the primary reason given for the US-led Iraq war — its alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Asked if he stood by the principle that a minister should resign if found lying, Blair told the BBC Television, "Of course."

"These are very serious allegations that the Conservative Party and parts of the media are making against the prime minister," Blair said in an interview.

He added that he was "enthusiastic" about the chance to confront his opponents over the Hutton report. Blair's critics accuse him of lying over the Kelly affair.

Ministry of Defence official Sir Kevin Tebbit told the Hutton inquiry that Blair had chaired a meeting where it was decided to make a statement clarifying the government's position — a move that led to Kelly's exposure.

Days after Kelly's death, Blair emphatically denied authorising the leaking of the scientist's name to the media. The Iraq war and Kelly's suicide last year plunged Blair into the worst period of his premiership as his critics took him to task over the failure to find any banned weapons in Iraq.

Blair's popularity and public trust ratings sank. Blair said that Hutton's findings will be final and pledged that he would not "hide away" from a debate with his opponents on the report.

"What the judge finds will be of huge persuasive importance for the public, for parliament and I hope for the media," Blair said. "It's final.

I think speculation comes to an end with the report."

http://www.newsdirectory.com/go/?f=&r=as&u=www.expressindia.com

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

Monday, 12. January 2004 | 16:40 Uhr

Zweifel an US-Beweisen für Iraks ABC-Waffen

Ex-Minister O-Neill kritisiert weiter Bushs Politik


Der frühere US-Finanzminister Paul O´Neill hat seine Kritik an der Irak-Politik von Präsident George W. Bush erweitert und die Beweise Washingtons für irakische Massenvernichtungswaffen in Zweifel gezogen. "Ich habe in den Geheimdienstberichten nichts gesehen, was ich als echten Beweis werten würde", sagte O´Neill dem US-Magazin "Time". Zwischen der US-Zivilverwaltung in Irak und der geistigen Führung der schiitischen Bevölkerungsgruppe bahnt sich derweil eine neue Runde im Streit um die Machtübergabe an.

Zu den angeblichen US-Beweisen für irakische ABC-Waffenprogramme sagte O´Neill: Es habe zwar "Beteuerungen und Behauptungen" gegeben. "Aber ich kenne den Unterschied zwischen einem Beweis und Behauptungen oder Illusionen oder Schlussfolgerungen, die man aus einem Bündel von Annahmen ziehen kann." US-Präsident Bush hatte in den Monaten vor dem Krieg die angeblichen Massenvernichtungswaffen in Irak als einen Hauptgrund für den Einmarsch der USA angeführt. Bislang wurden keine Waffen gefunden.

Bereits am Sonntag war O´Neill mit Äußerungen an die Öffentlichkeit getreten, die die US-Regierung in einem ungünstigen Licht stehen lassen. In einem Interview mit dem US-Sender CBS hatte O´Neill gesagt, Bush habe schon in den ersten Monaten seiner Amtszeit mit der Planung eines Einmarsches in Irak begonnen. Dabei sei im Kabinett nie nach dem Grund gefragt worden, es sei stets nur um das Wie gegangen. O´Neill war Ende 2002 von seinem Posten zurückgetreten - nach Medienberichten auf Druck des Präsidenten.

Ein US-Regierungsmitarbeiter spielte die Vorwürfe herunter: Informationen "wie diese" seien nur an Personen weitergegeben worden, "die über sie Bescheid wissen mussten". Der Finanzminister habe nicht dazu gehört.

In der Frage der Übergabe der Souveränität an die Iraker trat erneut die Kluft zwischen der Geistlichkeit der schiitischen Bevölkerungsmehrheit und der US-geführten Verwaltung offen zu Tage. US-Zivilverwalter Paul Bremer forderte den irakischen Regierungsrat zur raschen Umsetzung des Abkommens vom 15. November auf, das unter anderem die rasche Einsetzung einer Übergangsregierung vorsieht. Im Gegensatz dazu forderte Ayatollah Ali el Sistani faire und transparente Wahlen in den nächsten Monaten.

http://www.wallstreet-online.de/ws/news/news/main.php?action=viewnews&newsid=947243&m=3.0.0&

syr;):D

[syracus]

Blair faces new 'war crimes' accusation

By Severin Carrell
18 January 2004

An eminent panel of legal experts is to accuse Tony Blair of committing war crimes in Iraq in a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The panel, which includes law professors from universities in Britain, Ireland, France and Canada, will claim on Tuesday there is compelling evidence that the Prime Minister broke international law and UN treaties by invading Iraq last year.

The eight experts will recommend that the ICC launches a formal investigation into the Government's conduct - the first step towards indicting ministers for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Their dossier will add to the renewed controversy over Mr Blair's stance on Iraq. It will be published a week before Lord Hutton issues his report into the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly, which examines the Prime Minister's role in the decision to name him.

The ICC has already rejected several attempts by Greek and Belgian lawyers to investigate the Government's behaviour, but in this case its lawyers have contacted the panel in advance to ask for a copy of their report.

The panel includes Guy Goodwin-Gill QC of All Souls, Oxford, Professor Christine Chinkin of LSE, Professor Upendra Baxi from Warwick University and Professor William Schabas, director of the Irish Centre of Human Rights.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=482331

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

THE NEW BARBARIANS

LIES "R" US

By Novakeo

What does it take to overwhelm the better angels of our nature and enter the dark psychosis of malevolence and fear? What possesses human beings to choose the path of lies, thievery, and mass murder, to do things that in normal circumstances would be impossible to contemplate let alone implement. Could it simply be pure unadulterated ambition mixed in with avarice and vanity?

Behind the eyes of a neocon in the position of power is a cold calculating murderer, a new barbarian, and what makes the neocon so effective is that they disguise themselves brilliantly as pious Romans. They project an image of normality, rational thinking individuals who have successfully convinced the masses that their idealism and intellectual mendacity is the true righteous path for national salvation and virtue.




Of course, we have known the true motives of the Bush clan as reported here since boy George took office. Neocon diehards regarded us as a fringe element, un-patriotic shills for the Bush-haters in the liberal establishment. Such sour grapes, what are they to do with all those internet writers who are free from corporate sleaze and report the truth? Their only recourse then and now was to smear the truth seekers and engage in character assassination in a retreating action worthy only of chicken hawks, and if all else fails they use their disingenuous trump card, the often used prevarication of anti-Semitism.

One fundamental aspect in a neocon that ordinary Americans must come to realize is that they hate God, and since they hate God and all His attributes like - God is Truth, they choose to serve the god of forces and illusion. They cannot acknowledge to this simple truth, instead, they present themselves as godly servants who are working for your interests and that of your nation.

From the outset, the Bush clan was engaged in warmongering and pursued a course for the criminal invasion of another sovereign nation. In this criminal conduct, the murder of tens of thousands has taken place. September 11th was the perfect smoke screen for their violent policies for a New American Century. The recent revelation by former treasury secretary Paul O’Neill further revealed to us that when President Bush took office in January 2001 he fully intended to invade Iraq and needed to find an excuse for preemptive war against Saddam Hussein, then the twin towers came down, setting the stage for the neocons, and the delusional war on evil began.

None of this is new to us, one by one, we exposed the lies that the Bush administration perpetrated against the American people concerning their illegitimate war on Iraq.

They lied to us when war profiteer extraordinaire Vice-President Dick Cheney declared on August 26th 2002 – "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

They lied to us when President Bush stated on September 12th 2002 - "Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."

They lied to us when Secretary of State Colin Powell stated on February 5th 2003 - "We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more."

They lied to us when President George Bush on March 17th 2003 declared - "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

They lied to us when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on March 30th 2003 revealed that - "We know where they are (WMD). They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."

They lied to Congress, a criminal act in itself in a long trail of criminality; they made wild erroneous claims to the house of pusillanimous imposters. The Bush administration went to congress and warned palm greased senators of the specter of a fast approaching apocalypse, according to Senator Bill Nelson, the Bush clan claimed that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities. The senators lapped up the pretense like the loyal pavlovian lap dogs that they are.

Secretary of State Colin Powell lied to us and to the Security Council when he declared on February 5th 2003 – "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants." And that a "sinister nexus" existed "between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder." Powel recently admitted that there was no hard evidence linking the two.

They lied to us about Iraqi attempts to acquire “yellowcake” from Niger, and used the yellowcake forgeries as evidence in President Bush’s State of the Union to congress. In attempt to cover up this fabrication which was exposed as such by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, the Bush administration outed a CIA operative in a classic Mafioso hit on Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame, a CIA operative whose function was to run an undercover network to track the proliferation of WMD to terrorist organizations, another criminal act defined under Section 421 of the Intelligence Identities act of 1982. They put at risk all those undercover agents associated with her.

So what, the sullied deed is done right? Why harp on such trivial aspects to the portrait when one needs to see the big picture? The question now for Americans is - do you want to continue to die and kill for nothing other than stale clichés, to lose your sons and daughters for murky intelligence, for contrived threats? Think about it, killing and dying for the economic gain of your elites, for the augmentation of the interests of Israel, for the defense of the mighty dollar, for the resources of oil and strategic positioning against perceived rivals, are you willing to sacrifice your lives for these? Would your founding fathers die for such policies or did they shed their blood against the murderous sophistries of the empire at large.

Iraq is but one piece to the neocon puzzle for world domination or at least domination of the Middle East. Take a trip to PNAC, one of many intellectual mansions for neocons such as Vice President Dick Cheney, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is a member, and a host of other slimy characters like Bill Kristol.

It is all out in the open to see, their megalomania, their determination to create murder and chaos, they do not hide their intentions as far as formulating policy in their think tanks, and the subterfuge only begins when they try to convince Americans to lay down their lives for their portfolios, for the illusion of a greater national good, for a virtual peace and security.

The neocons are far from being finished with only the assets of Iraq liberated; they are screaming for regime change in Syria and Iran, and a Cuba-style military blockade of North Korea backed by planning for a preemptive strike on its nuclear sites. Its all in a new book titled – “An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror” penned by the “dark prince” himself - Richard Perle, along with his sidekick and intellectual midget David Frum.

The title of the book reveals much, specifically “An End to Evil” if that was ever a human possibility for such an event outside the power of God. These pernicious jokers, clowns of the big stage do not know what evil looks like; if they did, they would recognize themselves as instruments to the forces of iniquity. Reminds me of the axiom - men never do more evil then when they believe that they are doing the greater good.

The Barbarians are within the gates, cleverly disguised as Romans. They have become the keepers of boy George’s sandbox, they are running the asylum, and have extended their intrigue and hypocrisy to the point of mass murder and have permanently defiled the last remnants of a once great republic.


http://www.etherzone.com/2004/nova011904.shtml

syr:sss

[syracus]

Sept. 11 Leak Probe Focuses on Sen. Shelby, Paper Reports

Reuters | 01.22.04 |

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Justice Department probe of the leak of classified information about intercepted messages prior to the Sept. 11 attacks is focusing on Sen. Richard Shelby, former chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, The Washington Post reported on Thursday .

The newspaper cited a law enforcement official and congressional sources as saying that the probe has focused on the Alabama Republican who was head of the intelligence panel at the time of the disclosure.

The FBI is trying to determine the source of the leaked information that the super secret National Security Agency (NSA) had intercepted two messages hinting at an impending action on the eve of Sept. 11, 2001, but did not translate them until Sept. 12.

The information was first disclosed publicly on CNN after a 2002 classified hearing in which the director of the NSA spoke to lawmakers behind closed doors.

Citing unnamed sources, The Washington Post reported that a grand jury has been hearing information and has taken testimony from at least two witnesses including Shelby's former press secretary.

Shelby, who now heads the Senate Banking Committee, told the newspaper in a statement that he had never compromised classified information.

"To my knowledge, the same can be said about my staff," the statement said. The Post quoted the statement as saying Shelby had had no contact with investigators for more than a year.

A spokesman for Shelby could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Post said it was unclear how long the 18-month investigation had focused on Shelby or how close the FBI was to concluding the probe.

The NSA, based at Fort Meade, Maryland, is one of the government's most secretive intelligence agencies. Much of its information carries a higher classification than other sorts of intelligence. It is illegal to release classified information.

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

Tuesday, January 20, 2004 by the Boston Globe

Addressing Bush's State of Disunion

by James Carroll

IN HIS STATE of the Union address tonight, President Bush will speak of the nightmare he has created in Iraq as if it is a dream come true. Yet the contrary facts of the American misadventure have begun to speak for themselves.

When the awful story of the Iraq war is written, the two weeks just past may be recognized as a time when the deception and disarray of Bush's policy were made more clear than ever. These are events to which the president will not refer tonight, yet taken together, they reveal the true state of his disunion:

On Jan. 4, the tape of a belligerent voice claiming to be Osama bin Laden was broadcast on Al Jazeera television. The next day the CIA confirmed that it was bin Laden, and that, made recently, the tape showed he is still alive.

On Jan. 8, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace rebutted major Bush claims on Iraq, concluding that "administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq WMD and ballistic missile programs."

On Jan. 11, on television, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill confirmed reports in Ron Suskind's "The Price of Loyalty" that the Bush administration planned war against Iraq before 9/11, "from the very beginning."

On Jan. 12, a paper published at the Army War College described the war on terrorism as "strategically unfocused." The assessment from within the military itself blasted the Bush-led effort because it "promises more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate US military resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security."

On Jan. 13, the Bush administration reversed itself to announce that Canada could participate in contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq. Washington's punitive rejection of countries that had opposed the war was not working.

On Jan. 14, Human Rights Watch issued a report that held some US tactics in Iraq to be in violation of the Geneva Conventions, including home demolitions that "did not meet the test of military necessity." The report accused the army of arresting and holding Iraqi civilians simply because they were relatives of fugitives.

On Jan. 14, it was reported that the captured Saddam Hussein was in possession of a letter he had written instructing his followers not to throw in with foreign fighters, further puncturing the myth that Hussein was in active alliance with Al Qaeda.

On Jan. 14, a secret study conducted by the US Army Command in Baghdad was published. It faulted the army's tactics in Iraq as needlessly confrontational, and it asserted -- against the claims of the Bush administration -- that "the capture of Saddam will have nominal effect within Iraqi borders."

On Jan. 15, responding to Shi'ite leader Ayatollah Ali Sistani, 30,000 Iraqis took to the streets to protest American plans for transition to Iraqi rule, making even more unlikely Washington's fantasy that Iraq will not join Iran as a Shi'ite dominated state. Will that put Iraq back on the axis of evil?

On Jan. 15, the Bush administration was reported to be considering opening Iraq reconstruction contracts to France, Germany, and Russia, as it had to Canada. Washington is scrambling.

By Jan. 19, yesterday, the Bush administration had reversed itself to press at the United Nations for urgent help with the transition to Iraqi self-government, the clearest sign yet that Washington's go-it-alone policy had failed.

In the days before the State of the Union address one year ago, the Bush administration denigrated UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, dismissing the inspections and containment strategy favored at the United Nations. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld mocked what he called "old Europe." Secretary of State Colin Powell promised to provide compelling evidence of Saddam Hussein's imminent threat. The State Department published an indictment of Saddam entitled "Apparatus of Lies."

In the State of the Union address itself, President Bush bragged that he had "liberated" Afghanistan -- a country which today, except for a small zone around Kabul, belongs to warlords. He boasted that "one by one terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice" -- thinking, perhaps, of the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, where American justice is mocked.

Bush detailed a long list of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. He said that Iraq had obtained "uranium from Africa," and he referred to certain metal tubes to suggest a nuclear weapons program. He said that Saddam Hussein "aids and protects" Al Qaeda, and, projecting into the future, he linked the 9/11 hijackers with Saddam. He promised that Colin Powell would provide evidence of the link between Saddam and the terrorists.

The president set a rigorous standard last year, constructing an apparatus of lies it will be hard to match tonight. One bald falsehood not even he will dare repeat: "We seek peace," Bush said a year ago, "We strive for peace."

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0120-03.htm

syr :schaf:

[syracus]

24.01.2004

Ex-US-Inspekteur: Keine ABC-Waffen im Irak

Der Leiter der US-Waffeninspektoren im Irak, David Kay, ist von seinem Posten zurückgetreten und vermutet nach eigenen Worten keine großen Bestände an chemischen oder biologischen Waffen in dem Land. "Ich denke nicht, dass sie existieren", sagte Kay der Nachrichtenagentur Reuters. "Alle haben über Bestände gesprochen, die nach dem letzten Golf-Krieg (1991) produziert worden sind, und ich denke nicht, dass es ein sehr großes Produktionsprogramm in den 90er Jahren gegeben hat", sagte Kay nun. Erst kurz zuvor hatte der US-Geheimdienst CIA Kays Rücktritt mitgeteilt und als Nachfolger Ex-UN-Waffeninspektor Charles Duelfer vorgestellt.

Fast vollständiger Überblick über Iraks Waffenprogramm

Zwar werde es vermutlich noch weitere Entdeckungen geben, sagte Kay weiter. Jedoch habe man inzwischen einen fast vollständigen Überblick über Iraks Waffenprogramm gewonnen. "Ich denke, wir haben wahrscheinlich 85 Prozent von dem gefunden, was wir finden werden." US-Präsident George W. Bush und der britische Premierminister Tony Blair begründen nach wie vor den Einmarsch in den Irak mit dem Streben von Iraks Präsident Saddam Hussein nach atomaren, biologischen und chemischen Waffen.

http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID2860774_TYP6_THE_NAVSPM1_REF1_BAB,00.html

syr:D

[syracus]

Cheney war am WEF, Irak war Thema, neben anderem wie etwa Iran..... Auszug:

24.01.2004 -- Tages-Anzeiger Online
Cheney fordert mehr Engagement

Cheney verteidigte erneut den Irak-Krieg. Dank des Angriffs der US-geführten Kriegskoalition sei der gefangene irakische Ex-Diktator Saddam Hussein «nicht länger in der Lage, Terroristen Unterschlupf zu gewähren», erklärte er.

Die Nummer zwei des Weissen Hauses insistierte darauf, dass die Welt durch die Massenvernichtungswaffen Saddam Husseins bedroht gewesen seien . Dies obwohl am Freitag der eben zurückgetretene Chef der US-Waffeninspektoren in Irak David Kay erklärt hatte, dass dieses Waffenarsenal «ohne Zweifel» niemals existiert habe. :hihi

http://www.tagi.ch/dyn/news/ausland/342690.html

Eigentlich eine Schande für's WEF und wer nimmt dem Weissen Haus das eigentlich noch ab? Die eigenen Waffeninspektoren nicht mehr, die eigene Army nicht mehr, die IAEA noch nie, die UN noch nie, etc......

syr

[syracus]

Spy chiefs warn PM: don’t blame us for war

By Neil Mackay, Sunday Herald
25 January 2004

BRITISH intelligence chiefs launched a pre-emptive strike against Tony Blair last night, ahead of the publication of the Hutton report, and blamed the government for pressurising them into cherry-picking intelligence to justify the war on Iraq.

The UK’s leading spies believe the political fallout from the publication on Wednesday of the Hutton Inquiry’s report will result in an attempt by the Prime Minister and his senior Cabinet colleagues to blame the intelligence services for the shoddy information which was used by the government to convince the British people and parliament that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were a threat to the UK.

The views of senior members of the intelligence community were passed to the Sunday Herald. They include those from:


* The Defence Intelligence Staff, which helped supply intelligence for Blair’s disputed September 2002 WMD dossier.

* The Joint Intelligence Organisation, which includes John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) the body which liaises between the intelligence services and the government and which was supposed to have sole control of the drafting of the dossier and the JIC’s support staff.

* MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, the main agency responsible for gathering the intelligence which went into the dossier.
The intelligence community is speaking out now in order to pre-empt any attack. It is warning the government that it will not be blamed for the failure to prove the case for war, the death of Dr David Kelly and the lack of WMD in Iraq.

The key points it wants on the record are:


* Many had been openly sceptical about the presence of WMD in Iraq for years.

* The intelligence community was under pressure to provide the government with what it wanted, namely that Iraq possessed WMD and was a danger.

* Intelligence was "cherry-picked", with damning intelligence against Iraq being selectively chosen, while intelligence assessments, which might have worked against the build-up to war, were sidelined. lIntelligence work had become politicised under Labour , and spies were taking orders from politicians. They provided worst-case scenarios which were used by politicians to make factual claims.

They accept that intelligence was used for political ends, but believe it is not their job to help politicians justify their actions, as that distorts the nature of intelligence work.

Britain’s senior spies believe they are not in the firing line over Hutton, but realise that a rethink is needed over the future of British intelligence. They say they want changes made in order to maintain their integrity.

The first attacks on British intelligence, ahead of the Hutton report, came from Donald Anderson, a Labour loyalist and chairman of the influential foreign affairs committee.

His attack followed the resignation on Friday of David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group. Kay, who was appointed by the CIA to lead the hunt for Saddam’s WMD, quit his post saying he didn’t think WMD existed in Iraq.

Anderson said Blair and President George Bush had relied on intelligence regarding Iraq’s WMD, adding that Kay’s claims "raise very important questions about the quality of that intelligence".

Kay’s successor, Charles Duelfer, said earlier this month that he did not believe banned weapons would ever be found.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell also conceded yesterday that Iraq may not have possessed any WMD, even though he gave a presentation to the United Nations in the run-up to war saying Saddam had large stockpiles of banned weapons.

what we think: Now we know. We were lied to about WMD. So now Blair should go


http://www.sundayherald.com/39548

Mittwoch soll der Untersuchungsbericht vorgestellt werden. Wird wohl kaum positiv für Toni Blush verlaufen wenn sich der Geheimdienst schon mal im Vorfeld absichert. Mal sehen ob er wenigstens das Rückgrat zu einem Rücktritt hätte wie angekündigt falls er gelogen haben sollte (in dem und nicht den anderen, schon bekannten falschen Punkten).....

syr:sss

[syracus]

11:54am 01/27/04 BUSH: U.S. HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO MOVE AGAINST SADDAM

11:51am 01/27/04 BUSH: NO DOUBT SADDAM WAS A "GATHERING THREAT"

11:52am 01/27/04 BUSH: WORLD IS SAFER WITHOUT SADDAM

11:50am 01/27/04 BUSH: HAS "GREAT CONFIDENCE" IN U.S. INTELLIGENCE

Baum brennt http://www.handykult.de/plaudersmilies.de/devil/firedevil.gif.......

syr

[syracus]

Toni hat's formal überlebt, nur sind die Umfragewerte nochmals eingebrochen. Scheint am Ende der Glaubwürdigkeit angekommen zu sein ;)......

Aber viel wichtiger :D:

Bush rejects inquiry into Iraqi WMD

Saturday 31 January 2004, 15:56 Makka Time, 12:56 GMT

President George Bush has declined to endorse calls for an independent inquiry into intelligence failures regarding Saddam Hussein's alleged cache of WMDs.

Bush said on Friday that he wanted “to know the facts" about any intelligence failures about the deposed Iraqi President's supposed weapons programme.

But the issue of an independent commission has blossomed into an election-year problem for the president, with Democrats and Republicans alike supporting the idea.

Former chief weapons inspector David Kay has concluded that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, which Bush had cited as a rationale for going to war against Iraq.

Bush said he wants to be able to compare the administration's pre-war intelligence with what will be learned by inspectors who are now searching for weapons in Iraq. There is no deadline for those inspectors, the Iraq Survey Group, to complete their work.

"I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts. I want to be able to compare what the Iraq Survey Group has found with what we thought prior to going into Iraq.

"One thing is for certain - one thing we do know from Mr Kay's testimony, as well as from the years of intelligence that we had gathered, is that Saddam Hussein was a danger. He was a growing danger.

"And given the circumstances of September the 11th, this country went to the United Nations and said, 'Saddam Hussein's a danger, let us work together to get him to disarm.'

"He was defiant, he ignored the request of the international community and this country led a coalition to remove him," Bush said after meeting with economists.

Independent commission

Parting company with many of his fellow Republicans, Senator John McCain said on Thursday he wants an independent commission to take a sweeping look at recent intelligence failures.

Some of the Democratic candidates for president said they support an independent commission.

Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean criticised Vice President Dick Cheney for berating CIA operatives because he did not like their intelligence reports.

"It seems to me that the vice president of the United States therefore influenced the very reports that the president then used to decide to go to war and to ask Congress for permission to go to war," Dean said during a campaign debate on Thursday night.

John Edwards said his support for the Iraq war was based on years of intelligence briefings and evidence of Saddam's atrocities against his own people. He supports an independent commission "that will have credibility and that the American people will trust, about why there is this discrepancy about what we were told and what's actually been found there."

Senator John Kerry said whether Cheney berated CIA officials to shape the intelligence that he wanted is "a very legitimate question. ... There's an enormous question about the exaggeration by this administration."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1F4E2A5A-C1A9-4F12-BEA3-8AD948C17205.htm

syr :schaf:

[syracus]

7:20am 02/02/04
Britain to address 'valid questions' on WMD and Iraq

By Emily Church

LONDON (CBS.MW) -- The British government expects to "shortly" detail to parliament how it will address calls for an inquiry into the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and Iraq, the BBC reported Monday. Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman said there was a need "to address valid questions" about WMDs intelligence, the BBC report said. Reuters reported the spokesman saying "we are close to announcing how we are going to address these questions but we want first to announce that to parliament."

Quelle (http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/newsfinder/pulseone.asp?dateid=38019.3057638889-811742087&siteID=mktw&scid=0&doctype=806&)

************************************

For Bush, a Tactical Retreat on Iraq

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 2, 2004; Page A01


In deciding to back an independent review of the intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, President Bush is implicitly conceding what he cannot publicly say: that something appears to be seriously wrong with the allegations he used to take the nation to war in Iraq .

Most everybody in a position to know has agreed that a huge mistake has been made.

"We were almost all wrong," David Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, testified last week.

"In this case, there's no question that there was an intelligence failure, in some form or another," Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said yesterday on "Fox News Sunday." "Clearly this is not the immediate threat many assumed before the war," is how Charles Duelfer, Kay's replacement, put it a few months ago when he noted "the apparent absence of existing weapons stocks."

Bush will announce this week that he is creating, by executive order, a bipartisan independent panel of at least nine members that will make a report in 2005, the White House confirmed yesterday. But those close to the president say he is doing so while continuing to avoid any explicit public acknowledgment that the intelligence was wrong. Why the reluctance to state what appears increasingly obvious as Kay spent the past 10 days dashing prospects that significant weapons stockpiles would be found in Iraq? Although the tactic may appear to be obtuse, there is a real strategy behind the Bush response -- and one that has been used before, to great effect.

Bush aides have learned through hard experience that admitting error only projects weakness and invites more abuse. Conversely, by postponing an acknowledgment -- possibly beyond Election Day -- the White House is generating a fog of uncertainty around Kay's stark findings, and potentially softening a harsh public judgment.

"They aren't giving up," Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, said recently. Blix's failure to find weapons of mass destruction before the war was ridiculed by the administration. "They all prefer to retreat under a mist of controversy rather than say, 'I'm sorry, this was wrong,' " he said.

Of course, Bush and his top aides are as aware as anyone -- and acknowledge as much in private -- that Kay's remarks of the last week have dispelled remaining hope that the intelligence might prove correct. Although some in the White House favor having Bush admit publicly that the intelligence was flawed, a high-ranking Republican source said such a step is not yet being contemplated.

Instead, for the White House, agreeing to allow an external review -- which Kay advocates -- amounts to a tacit acknowledgement of reality without an admission of error that would encourage opponents. Indeed, having a commission could postpone Bush's need to admit error indefinitely; in that sense, it is something of a tactical retreat.

Nobody expects any hard conclusions to be reached before the Nov. 2 election -- either by congressional probes or an independent inquiry -- on what went wrong with the intelligence. Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House intelligence committee and a former CIA case officer, said recently that partisan politics would make it impossible to get any real work done before the election. "Not this year," Goss said. "You couldn't get the members together, or even the rules set up."

Bush has lately found many of his rationales for the war in Iraq being challenged. Just as Kay has undermined the WMD rationale, a report published by the Army War College challenged the notion that the war in Iraq was part of the overall war on terrorism, while the group Human Rights Watch has disputed Bush's notion that the Iraq war was a humanitarian mission. Vice President Cheney has implicitly acknowledged that the Iraq war has not spurred peace in the Middle East, saying peace is not possible while Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat remains in power.

To all of these challenges, though, there is a simple solution for Bush: If the on-the-ground situation improves in Iraq, with violence abating and U.S. troops returning home, the American public will almost certainly forgive any flaws in the rationale for going to war. Discussing the weapons dilemma, Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), who backs the president on Iraq, sees it this way: "If people feel things are under control in Iraq, the WMD issue doesn't have traction. If things go badly, then it does have traction."

Also, the alternative for Bush -- admitting an error in the prewar allegations -- has not worked well for him in the past. Administration officials now say it was a mistake to acknowledge that Bush should not have included in last year's State of the Union address an allegation that Iraq tried to buy nuclear material in Africa. The admission of error, they say, made Bush appear weak and encouraged more skeptical coverage than if the White House had refused to budge.

Before deciding to endorse an independent review, White House officials had little alternative but to rely on some unsatisfying answers when asked about the intelligence failure. On Wednesday, for example, Bush suggested that war came because Saddam Hussein did not let inspectors into Iraq, when in fact it was the United States that called for inspections to end. "It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in," Bush said.

That same day, Bush press secretary Scott McClellan said the White House never said Iraq was an "imminent" threat. But when McClellan's predecessor, Ari Fleischer, was asked whether Iraq was an imminent threat, he replied: "Absolutely." And when White House communications director Dan Bartlett was asked whether Hussein was an imminent threat to U.S. interests, he replied: "Well, of course he is."

In addition, Bush aides have regularly said that they were following the advice of intelligence experts. On Thursday, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the weapons conclusion "was the judgment of our intelligence community, the judgment of intelligence communities around the world." Yet the White House, at various times, went beyond what the CIA advised. In addition to the allegation about Hussein's nuclear purchases in Africa, which the CIA discouraged, the White House asserted, without consulting with the CIA, that Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given."

In all their efforts last week to blunt the issue, though, White House officials have been careful not to say the intelligence was wrong. Invited to do so in a television interview Thursday with CBS News, Rice replied: "I don't think . . . that we know the full story of what became of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction." Those close to the White House said that, now that Bush has backed an independent review, there is no need for an immediate revision of that official position.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3980-2004Feb1.html?nav=hptop_tb

Waterloo 2004 :lach :schaf:.......

syr:sss

[syracus]

12:10 02.02.2004

Britische Opposition fordert Irak-Untersuchung wie in den USA

[sda] - Die Opposition im britischen Unterhaus hat Premierminister Tony Blair aufgefordert, nach dem Vorbild der USA die Geheimdienstinformationen über die Existenz irakischer Massenvernichtungswaffen überprüfen zu lassen.

"Ich hoffe, dass Tony Blair nicht weiter isoliert bleiben wird", sagte der konservative Oppositionsführer Michael Howard im britischen Fernsehen. "Jeder erkennt doch jetzt, dass bei den Geheimdienstinformationen etwas schief gegangen ist."

Es sei "interessant", dass US-Präsident George W. Bush dies nun anscheinend von einer unabhängigen Kommission untersuchen lassen wolle. Auch die britischen Liberaldemokraten und einzelne Abgeordnete aus Blairs Labour-Partei forderten eine Untersuchung darüber, ob sich die Geheimdienste in der Existenz irakischer Massenvernichtungswaffen getäuscht hätten.

Die Regierung Blair lehnt eine solche Untersuchung bisher jedoch ab. "Es würde wenig bringen", sagte Justizminister Lord Falconer, ein Vertrauter von Blair. Allerdings berichteten am Montag mehrere Zeitungen, Blair wolle in Kürze erstmals zugeben, dass im Irak wohl keine Massenvernichtungswaffen mehr auffindbar seien.

Unterdessen deuten sechs verschiedene Umfragen darauf hin, dass der für Blair so positiv ausgefallene Untersuchungsbericht von Lordrichter Hutton die Öffentlichkeit nicht überzeugt hat. So bezeichnete in einer Umfrage des Fernsehsenders ITV mehr als die Hälfte der Befragten den Bericht als ein einseitiges Reinwaschen der Regierung.

Hutton war zu dem Schluss gekommen, dass die Regierung keine Mitverantwortung für den Selbstmord des Waffenexperten David Kelly trägt.

http://information.bluewin.ch/de/info/international/article/0,2269,40979,00.html

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

11:04 03.02.2004

Blair kündigt Untersuchung der Irak-Geheimdiensterkenntnisse an

[sda] - Der britische Premierminister Tony Blair hat eine unabhängige Untersuchung der Geheimdienstberichte über angebliche irakische Waffenprogramme angekündigt. Dies sagte er vor einem Unterhaus-Ausschuss in London.

Am Vortag hatte bereits US-Präsident George W. Bush eine solche Prüfung angekündigt. Die Untersuchungen sollen klären, warum sich Berichte der Geheimdienste über Bestände von biologischen und chemischen Waffen in Irak bislang nicht bestätigt haben. Die Bedrohung durch irakische Massenvernichtungswaffen war einer der Hauptgründe für den Irak-Krieg.

Quelle (http://information.bluewin.ch/de/info/international/article/0,2269,41042,00.html)

syr :sss

[syracus]

Super, Spitze, einfach gut... Es hat Folgen, endlich :D:D:D.......

Disapproval of Bush's Iraq policy rises sharply: poll (Gallup)

Gallup Poll via Channel Asia | Feb 3, 04 |

WASHINGTON : US President George W. Bush's popularity has tumbled below 50 percent, with dissatisfaction mounting sharply over his handling of the Iraq war, foreign affairs and the economy, a new poll showed.

The poll published by USA Today, CNN and the Gallup organisation showed Senator John Kerry, the leading Democratic candidate for president, opening up a seven-point lead over the Republican Bush in a head-to-head matchup.

The poll was conducted from Thursday to Sunday, after the chief US arms inspector resigned and said he found no trace of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that Bush used to justify last year's invasion.

Forty-nine percent of the 1,001 people interviewed said they approved of the overall way Bush was doing his job, while 48 percent disapproved and three percent had no opinion.

A similar poll conducted January 2-5 found 60 percent approved of Bush and 35 percent disapproved. The president's popularity was also down from the 70 percent approval registered just after the fall of Baghdad last April.

The new survey showed that 46 percent approved of the president's performance on Iraq, down from 61 percent four weeks earlier. The disapproval rate rose from 36 to 53 percent.

For the first time in the USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll, less than half of those interviewed thought it was worth going to war in Iraq to oust the dictator Saddam Hussein.

Approval of Bush's foreign policies dropped from 58 to 46 percent, while disapproval jumped from 39 to 51 percent. Support for his handling of the economy fell from 54 to 43 percent.

The new poll came with Bush increasingly on the defensive over the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which he said had made military action urgent.

It was published the same day the president bowed to growing pressure from both Republicans and Democrats and announced an independent inquiry into pre-war intelligence on Saddam's weapons capabilities.

Bush also drew heat after unveiling Monday a revised budget for 2004 with a record 521 billion dollar deficit, leaving himself open to new charges from the Democrats that he was mismanaging the economy.

The poll, taken right after the New Hampshire primary, showed Kerry leading the field in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination with a 49-14 percent edge over former Vermont governor Howard Dean. North Carolina Senator John Edwards was third with 13 percent.

Kerry has opened up a 53-46 percent lead over Bush in a one-on-one contest for the White House, according to the poll. Edwards was also on top 49-48 percent in a face-off with the president.

But the poll showed Bush leading both Dean and former NATO commander Wesley Clark.

- AFP

syr :gusa

[syracus]

Billig, billiger, Blair...... :schaf:

01:54 05.02.2004

Blair hat 45-Minuten-These in Irak-Dossier missverstanden

[sda] - Der britische Premierminister Tony Blair hat eingeräumt, vor der Parlamentsabstimmung über die Teilnahme Grossbritanniens am Irak-Krieg die Zeitangaben zur Einsatzbereitschaft irakischer Waffensysteme missverstanden zu haben.

Vor der Debatte am 18. März 2003 habe er keine genaue Kenntnis über die Art der Waffen gehabt, die gemäss einem Geheimdienstdossier binnen 45 Minuten einsatzbereit gewesen wären, sagte Blair am Mittwoch im Parlament.

Die umstrittene 45-Minuten-These bezog sich laut Blair nicht auf Langstreckenraketen, sondern auf taktische Gefechtswaffen. "Ich habe bereits genau gesagt, wann ich davon Kenntnis erhalten habe. Das war nicht vor der Debatte am 18. März vergangenen Jahres", sagte der Premnier wörtlich.

Das Dossier vom September 2002 hatte der Regierung als Argumentationsgrundlage für die britische Beteiligung am Irak-Krieg gedient. Vor allem die Behauptung, Irak sei in der Lage, binnen 45 Minuten chemische oder biologische Waffen einzusetzen, stürzte die Regierung in eine tiefe politische Krise.

Lordrichter Brian Hutton hatte Downing Street vergangene Woche jedoch von dem Vorwurf freigesprochen, den Bericht aufgebauscht zu haben. Blair kündigte einen Untersuchungsausschuss zu den Geheimdienstberichten über die angeblichen irakischen Massenvernichtungswaffen an.

Der aussenpolitische Sprecher der britischen Konservativen, Michael Ancram, forderte Blair auf, sich zu "entschuldigen" und zu "korrigieren". Die Rede des Premiers werfe "schwerwiegende Fragen" bezüglich dessen auf , "was die Regierung wusste, als Grossbritannien in den Krieg eintrat".

Ausserdem stehe sie in Widerspruch zu Aussagen des früheren Aussenministers Robin Cook und des amtierenden Verteidigungsministers Geoff Hoon. Hoon habe gesagt, dass sich die 45-Minuten-Passage auf "einfache taktische Munition" und nicht auf "chemische und biologische Waffen von grosser Reichweite" bezogen hätten, sagte Ancram.

http://information.bluewin.ch/de/info/international/article/0,2269,41150,00.html

syr :schaf:

[syracus]

MASSENVERNICHTUNGSWAFFEN

CIA-Chef Tenet wäscht seine Hände in Unschuld

Falsche Analysen zur Existenz irakischer Waffenvernichtungsmittel? Davon will CIA-Chef George Tenet nichts wissen. Er beschuldigt vielmehr das Weiße Haus "falscher Wahrnehmung". In London kam es bei einer turbulenten Unterhaus-Debatte zu Festnahmen .

Washington/London - Überraschend hatte Tenet am Mittwoch eine Rede zur Verteidigung seiner Behörde für heute (15.30 Uhr MEZ) angekündigt.

Nach Angaben eines CIA-Sprechers wird sich der US-Geheimdienst gegen den Vorwurf falscher Analysen zur Existenz irakischer Massenvernichtungswaffen verteidigen. CIA-Direktor Tenet selbst will in einer Rede erklären, dass es bei der Interpretation dieser Geheimdienstberichte eine "falsche Wahrnehmung und eklatante Ungenauigkeiten" gegeben habe.
Für endgültige Schlüsse zur Existenz irakischer Massenvernichtungswaffen unter Saddam Hussein sei es aber noch zu früh, wird es in der Rede Tenets heißen, soweit sie vorab von einem hohen CIA-Funktionär bekannt gegeben wurde. Tenet wird damit auf Erklärungen des Waffenexperten David Kay reagieren, der am 23. Januar sein Amt als Leiter der Einsatzgruppe zur Suche nach Massenvernichtungswaffen in Irak niedergelegt hat. Danach erklärte Kay, es sei sehr unwahrscheinlich, dass es vor dem Krieg Massenvernichtungswaffen in Irak gegeben habe.

Die "Washington Post" berichtet, Tenet werde die Entscheidung Bushs für den Irakkrieg nicht kritisieren. Er werde es aber auch nicht zulassen, dass er selbst oder die CIA zum Sündenbock gestempelt werde. Tenet werde betonen, wer davon spreche, dass die Arbeit der Waffeninspektoren zu 85 Prozent erledigt sei, liege "zu 100 Prozent falsch", schrieb die "Post".

Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld verteidigte die Entscheidung zum Krieg erneut. Es sei zwar möglich, dass der Irak keine Massenvernichtungswaffen gehabt habe, aber er sei nicht bereit, dies als Fazit zu ziehen. Dafür sei es noch zu früh, sagte Rumsfeld bei einer Kongressanhörung. Zudem sei die Welt ohne Saddam Hussein besser dran.

"Mörder"-Rufe gegen Blair

In London verteidigte sich der britische Premierminister Tony Blair am Mittwoch in einer turbulenten Unterhaus-Debatte gegen wachsende Kritik an der Begründung des Irak-Krieg. Blair sagte, der Untersuchungsbericht von Lordrichter Hutton habe gezeigt, dass seine Regierung nicht wissentlich Geheimdienstmaterial aufgebauscht habe.

Wegen zahlreicher Zwischenrufe wie "Mörder" und "Weißwäscher" ließ Parlamentspräsident Michael Martin die Besuchertribüne räumen. Die Polizei nahm nach eigenen Angaben sieben Personen fest. Bei den vier Männern und drei Frauen handelt es sich um Mitglieder der Gruppe Oxford Residents for the Truth (Einwohner von Oxford für die Wahrheit). Außerdem wurden fünf Personen festgenommen, die das Tor von Downing Street 10, den Amtssitz Blairs, mit weißer Farbe übertünchten.

Bush vergleicht Blair mit Churchill

Mehr Unterstützung findet Blair bei US-Präsident George W. Bush. Dieser hat den Krieg gegen den Terror mit dem historischen Widerstand der USA und Großbritanniens gegen den Faschismus verglichen. Bei der Eröffnung einer Churchill-Ausstellung in der Kongressbibliothek in Washington sagte Bush, die Vereinigten Staaten würden in der Herausforderung durch Terroristen die gleiche Entschlossenheit zeigen wie der britische Premierminister im Zweiten Weltkrieg. "Wir akzeptieren die Verantwortung der Geschichte", sagte Bush.

Besonders starken Applaus erhielt er für einen Vergleich des britischen Regierungschefs Tony Blair mit Churchill. "In seiner Entschlossenheit, das Richtige zu tun und nicht den einfachen Weg zu gehen, sehe ich den Geist Churchills in Premierminister Tony Blair", sagte der Präsident. Unter den Zuhörern waren auch Churchills Tochter Mary Soames, sein Enkel Winston Churchill III, und der britische Botschafter in den USA, David Manning.


http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,284979,00.html

Überraschend hatte Tenet am Mittwoch eine Rede zur Verteidigung seiner Behörde für heute (15.30 Uhr MEZ) angekündigt.

Platzt heute die Bombe, Waterloo 2004 :lach?!?

syr:sss

[syracus]

Is the CIA To Blame?

by Jim Lobe


Badly wounded by the total collapse of its prewar contentions that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, the administration of President George W. Bush has embarked on a strategy of diversion and delay.

It hopes to divert attention from the role played by senior administration officials in influencing and exaggerating the intelligence assessments of the Iraqi threat in the run-up to the war by focusing debate instead on flaws in the intelligence and how it can be improved in the future.

It hopes to delay until well after the November presidential elections the reporting deadline for a proposed commission that will study the fiasco.

"This is damage control," said one Congressional aide, who added the president's reelection chances might well hinge on whether he is able to pull off the strategy. "Bush wants to get this out of the headlines and into a commission that won't say anything until he's reelected."

Bush, who is helped by the fact that Republicans control key committees in Congress, appears able to count as well on David Kay, whose statements after he resigned as the man in charge of the U.S. hunt for weapons of mass destruction (WMD), in Iraq last week set off the White House's latest maneuvers.

Kay's admission that "we were almost all wrong" about Iraq's WMD stockpiles and alleged reconstitution of a nuclear-weapons program, and his endorsement of the proposal to create a commission to examine the causes of the intelligence failures initially forced the administration on the defensive.

But, in absolving the administration of the charge of pressuring the intelligence community's analysts to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq's alleged WMD programs, Kay threw Bush a life preserver.

But to veteran intelligence analysts, Kay's life preserver could more accurately be called a lie preserver.

In their view, the professional intelligence community did indeed make serious mistakes. But they charge as well that the administration effectively encouraged it to make those mistakes and, to make matters worse, deliberately exaggerated the assessments to make the Iraqi threat sound more ominous than even the intelligence community's flawed reports said it was.

"Did the intelligence shape policy, or did the policy shape intelligence"? asked Melvin Goodman, a top Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Soviet expert during the Cold War who currently teaches at the National War College.

Like other intelligence veterans who have remained in touch with their former colleagues, Goodman says Kay's assertions the administration did not pressure analysts are simply "wrong."

"I've talked with analysts at CIA and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), and they all claim there was tremendous pressure put on them," Goodman told IPS.

The fact, according to Goodman, that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld created an Office of Special Plans (OSP) outside the formal intelligence channels with the specific mandate to reassess raw intelligence in order to find alleged links between Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist group suggests the administration was applying that pressure in unconventional ways.

"When Rumsfeld couldn't get what he wanted, he created his OSP," Goodman said. "That really gives away the whole game right there."

Other retired analysts, such as the CIA's former top counter-terrorist specialist, Vincent Cannistraro, have cited Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated trips to CIA headquarters to personally question analysts as another example of how pressure was exerted on analysts.

Greg Thielmann, a WMD specialist at the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research who worked on Iraq until his retirement in late 2002, also disputes Kay's assertion the administration had nothing to do with the intelligence failure.

"Everyone knew that the White House was deaf to any information that would not substantiate its charges; that is a very unproductive environment for any intellectual inquiry," he said in a telephone interview.

"The White House was never searching for the truth; it was searching for arguments to make the case for war," he continued. "They were searching for evidence to support the conclusions they had already reached."

"The perfect example is what the White House did not do in February, 2003, after U.N. inspectors had been on the ground in Iraq for three months looking under roofs, examining facilities, interviewing weapons scientists, and giving us a lot better and fresher information base than we had had for the previous four years," according to Thielmann.

"As far as I know, the White House never asked the intelligence community to update their October (2002) assessment to see whether any of its key judgments about Iraq should be modified in light of what the inspectors were seeing on the ground.”

"And the reason is that the administration did not care what was going on on the ground. It was interested in going to war and convincing the American people and the international community that war was necessary," he said.

The analysts' views about the way in which the administration's drive to war affected the intelligence assessments are largely shared by Democrats on the two congressional intelligence committees that have been investigating the performance of the intelligence community for months behind closed doors.

The committees, however, have split along partisan lines over the same question. Republicans have insisted that what faults have been uncovered lie exclusively with the intelligence professionals, while Democrats say they have accumulated evidence of constant pressure and interference by senior administration figures, particularly senior Pentagon officials, Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby.

But Republican control of the two intelligence committees means the administration has been able to effectively limit the scope of their investigations, making it far more difficult for Democrats to obtain additional evidence by forcing key officials to testify or to publicize their findings.

Democrats are clearly worried that a Bush-appointed presidential commission will be similarly limited in what it can or cannot investigate.

They are also concerned that the commission's work schedule might be designed to bury the issue of whether the administration deliberately misled the country into going to war until after the elections.

"You don't take national security and say, 'oh, let's just put it on hold for a year, until an election is over'," the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Jay Rockefeller, told Fox News on Sunday.

The administration is already pressuring the commission established to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon to either publish its final report by its May 29 deadline – six months before the elections – or to wait until early next year if it needs more time, presumably so as not to influence the elections.

Members of that body, which is headed by former Republican New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean but evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, have complained administration delays have pushed back its work schedule, but that they could finish its report by July or August.

February 3, 2004

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ips/lobe50.html

"You don't take national security and say, 'oh, let's just put it on hold for a year, until an election is over'," the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Jay Rockefeller , told Fox News.

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

Israel knew Iraq had no WMD, says MP

Associated Press
Wednesday February 4, 2004
The Guardian

A prominent Israeli MP said yesterday that his country's intelligence services knew claims that Saddam Hussein was capable of swiftly launching weapons of mass destruction were wrong but withheld the information from Washington.

"It was known in Israel that the story that weapons of mass destruction could be activated in 45 minutes was an old wives' tale," Yossi Sarid, a member of the foreign affairs and defence committee which is investigating the quality of Israeli intelligence on Iraq, told the Associated Press yesterday.

"Israel didn't want to spoil President Bush's scenario, and it should have," he said.

Another member of the committee, Ehud Yatom, said Israel had told the Americans it believed the weapons existed but had not seen them.

On Sunday, the former UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, told Y-Net, an Israeli newswire, that the Israeli intelligence services reached the conclusion years ago that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction.

"In the end, if the Israeli intelligence knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, so the CIA knew it and thus British intelligence too" he said.

Another MP, Roman Bronfman, said if Mr Ritter was correct, it meant the government had misled the Israeli public in the run-up to the war when it ordered people to prepare sealed rooms and gas masks in preparation for a potential WMD attack.

However, questions over the quality of Israeli intelligence are unlikely to concern the public as greatly as in Britain and the US. Israelis overwhelmingly welcomed the overthrow of the Iraqi leader.

In November 2003, a respected Tel Aviv thinktank concluded that Israeli intelligence had joined the US and Britain in an "exaggerated assessment" of Iraqi weapons.

In 2002, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency, Efraim Halevy, told a closed meeting of Nato that there were "clear indications" that Iraq had renewed its efforts to build WMD after the UN weapons inspections were halted in 1998. He also said Iraq had preserved elements of its ability to manufacture chemical and biological weapons.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1140399,00.html

syr :gomad

[syracus]

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
The White House
February 6, 2004

President Bush Announces Formation of Independent Commission

The James S. Brady Briefing Room
1:32 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Today, by executive order, I am creating an independent commission, chaired by Governor and former Senator Chuck Robb, Judge Laurence Silberman, to look at American intelligence capabilities, especially our intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.
Last week, our former chief weapons inspector, David Kay, reported that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons programs and activities in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and was a gathering threat to the world. Dr. Kay also stated that some pre-war intelligence assessments by America and other nations about Iraq's weapons stockpiles have not been confirmed. We are determined to figure out why.

We're also determined to make sure that American intelligence is as accurate as possible for every challenge in the future. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction poses the most serious of dangers to the peace of the world. Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorist or terror regimes could bring catastrophic harm to America and to our friends.

It is the policy of the United States government to oppose that threat by any means necessary. Our efforts against proliferation begin with and depend upon accurate and thorough intelligence. The men and women of our intelligence community and intelligence officers who work for our friends and allies around the world are dedicated professionals engaged in difficult and complex work.

America's enemies are secretive, they are ruthless, and they are resourceful. And in tracking and disrupting their activities, our nation must bring to bear every tool and advantage at our command. In Iraq, America and our coalition enforce the clearly stated demands of the world -- that a violent regime prove its own disarmament. In the aftermath of September the 11th, 2001, I will not take risks with the lives and security of the American people by assuming the goodwill of dictators.

And now, as we move forward in our efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, we must stay ahead of constantly changing intelligence challenges. The stakes for our country could not be higher, and our standard of intelligence gathering and analysis must be equal to that of the challenge.

The commission I have appointed today will examine intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and related 21st century threats and issue specific recommendations to ensure our capabilities are strong. The commission will compare what the Iraq Survey Group learns with the information we had prior to our Operation Iraqi Freedom. It will review our intelligence on weapons programs in countries such as North Korea and Iran. It will examine our intelligence on the threats posed by Libya and Afghanistan before recent changes in those countries. Members of the commission will issue their report by March 31, 2005.

I've ordered all departments and agencies, including our intelligence agencies, to assist the commission's work. The commission will have full access to the findings of the Iraq Survey Group. In naming this commission, these men as co-chairmen of the commission, I'm also naming, today, Senator John McCain; Lloyd Cutler, former White House Counsel to Presidents Carter and Clinton; Rick Levin, the President of Yale University; Admiral Bill Studeman, the former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Judge Pat Wald, a former judge on the D.C. Court of Appeals. Those are seven members named. The commission calls for up to nine members. As we vet and find additional members to fill out the nine, we will let you know.

Thank you for your attention.

END 1:37 P.M.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/20040206-3.html

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

Am Morgen unserer Zeit Macht McCain seine Position klar und am Nachmittag wird er in der Ausschuss berufen durch Bush selber, soviel zum Thema "unabhängig" und die Ergebnisse werden sicherlich wie gewünscht ausfallen :schaf:.....

Bush Did Not Manipulate Iraq Intelligence - McCain

Fri Feb 6, 2:31 PM ET

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - U.S. Senator John McCain, who will sit on a commission investigating failures in the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war, said on Friday he did not believe President Bush's administration had manipulated information.

"The president of the United States, I believe, did not manipulate any kind of information for political gain or otherwise," the Republican senator told reporters on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich, Germany.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/iraq_usa_mccain_dc

syr :gomad

[syracus]

Was sagt man dazu :gomad:

Bush Says Saddam Had Capacity for Nukes

Feb 8, 9:19 AM (ET)
By DEB RIECHMANN

WASHINGTON (AP) - Defending his decision to invade Iraq, President Bush said that although stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons have not been found, Saddam Hussein had the capacity to produce such arms and could have developed a nuclear weapon over time.

Bush, in an interview broadcast Sunday, denied he led the United States into war under false pretenses, but he acknowledged that some prewar intelligence apparently was inaccurate. He did not directly respond to election-year allegations that his administration exaggerated intelligence to bolster a march to oust the Iraqi president.

"We will find out about the weapons of mass destruction that we all thought were there," Bush said in the interview taped Saturday in the Oval Office with Tim Russert, host of NBC's "Meet the Press."

Bush, who pledged after the Sept. 11 attacks to get suspected mastermind Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," said Sunday: "I have no idea whether we will capture or bring him to justice."

Bush said former chief weapons inspector David Kay, who has said that U.S. intelligence was "almost all wrong" about Saddam's arms, said Saddam found the "capacity to produce weapons." Bush went on to speculate about what happened to the weapons.

"They could have been destroyed during the war. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq," Bush said. "They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we'll find out." blablabla :schaf:

Bush said he decided to go to war based on the intelligence he had at hand about Saddam, but said CIA Director George Tenet's job is not in jeopardy. "I strongly believe the CIA is ably led by George Tenet," he said.

While Bush heavily based the decision to wage war on the rationale that Saddam had forbidden weapons at the ready, the president continued in the interview to emphasize his contention about Saddam's dictatorial rule - that Saddam brutalized Iraqis and had connections to terrorist groups.

"I repeat to you what I strongly believe, that inaction in Iraq would have emboldened Saddam Hussein," Bush said. "He could have developed a nuclear weapon over time - I'm not saying immediately , but over time . ... We would have been in a position of blackmail. In other words, you can't rely upon a madman."

Among the other issues discussed in the interview, Bush:

_pledged to cooperate with the commission he set up last week to examine intelligence lapses. "I will be glad to visit with them," he said.

_defended his National Guard service during the Vietnam War. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, has accused Bush of being "AWOL," or absent without leave, for a year in the early 1970s after Bush transferred to an Alabama unit. :hihi :hihi :hihi (Weichei, Vietnam-Schlappschwanz, aber schützte den Himmel über Texas :hihi)

"I served in the National Guard," Bush said. "I flew F-102 aircraft. I got an honorable discharge." :lach

The president dismissed news reports saying there is no evidence he reported for duty in Alabama during the summer and fall of 1972. "They're just wrong," Bush said. :hihi

_said his policy to cut taxes was responsible for driving the economic rebound and putting the country on the road to recovering the more than 2 million jobs lost since he took office in 2001.

_expressed indifference to polls that showed him trailing Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who is leading the race to be the Democratic presidential nominee. "I'm not going to lose," Bush said . "I don't plan on losing." :hihi

_said he would "perhaps " submit to questions from the commission reviewing the Sept. 11 attacks .

The interview came at a time when Bush's approval rating has dipped to 47 percent in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll taken in early February; that compares with 56 percent just a month ago.


http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040208/D80J4ANO0.html

Und die Welt schaut zu und schweigt, Lämmer halt :schaf:......

syr :ne

[syracus]

Für einmal ein Beispiel, wes da auf der anderen Seite des Atlantiks für Meinungen daher kommen. Keine WMD's? Falscher Kriegsgrund? Spielt doch keine Rolle, denn die Welt ist heute sicherer als vor Irak (wer's glaubt :bad)

It doesn’t matter whether Iraq’s weapons are ever found
By TIMOTHY EMERY
Guest Commentary


In 1938 the Nazis possessed the infancy of what would become for a time the world’s most powerful air force.

However, at that point the Luftwaffe had few operational high-performance aircraft. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the Germans were required to submit to periodic Allied inspections. In a series of clever ruses the Allied inspectors ended up inspecting the same aircraft at numerous air bases simply by having the aircraft flown in advance of the inspector’s arrival to the next base.

Heavily guarded warehouses were naturally assumed to contain secret high-performance aircraft when in fact they were empty. In one famous incident, the French air chief of staff was flown in a specially modified German courier plane at an altitude at which one could not discern its true speed, which was less than 35 mph. This was staged to exaggerate the apparent speed of the new Heinkel fighter.

Conversations staged to be overheard by Allied observers suggested that three production lines were already mass producing the Heinkel, when in fact none existed. The ruse worked so well that the French air chief said upon arrival back in Paris: “If war breaks out, there won’t be a single French aircraft after 14 days.”

Interestingly, the Imperial Japanese Air Ministry simultaneously undertook the opposite strategy and went to great lengths to hide the truth from the Allies. At international flying exhibitions, Western military observers saw antiquated aircraft and heard of the extreme difficulty in training Japanese pilots to actually fly solo. Accidents were actually staged to convince foreign observers that they had little prowess in aviation.

Westerners naturally formed the opinion that the Japanese air force posed no threat. In reality, Japan possessed an extremely sophisticated air force that included the “Zero” fighter, and it had already perfected the art of midair refueling.

The Japanese intelligence service strategy was deployed so effectively that the United States’ only bomber wing in the Pacific remained totally unprotected the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and was destroyed on the ground at Clark Field in the Philippines.

Which strategy do you believe Saddam Hussein employed as he played his game of cat and mouse with the U.N. inspectors searching for weapons of mass destruction (WMD)? (wie kann man Katz und Maus spielen wenn die Maus fehlt :p?)

What would have been the outcry had the Allies mounted a pre-emptive strike against the Nazis in 1938 only to discover that the Luftwaffe was a feint? Does Saddam have any ownership for the results of his strategy? Does it really matter whether WMD are ever found?

The facts are irrefutable: Saddam had possessed chemical weapons; he had used them on his own people; he had waged war on his neighbors; he had threaten to do so again; he had ignored the U.N. resolutions regarding inspections; and he executed a strategy of feints to frustrate the process of U.N. inspections. (was man alles seit 1991 weiss, 11 Jahre wurde aber nichts getan...)

Many Americans are thankful that the Bush administration was not driven by world public opinion polls and acted prudently given the available facts. (welche Facts, etwa die gefälschten Dokumente aus Nigeria, etwa der falsche Geheimdienstbericht der Briten?!?) We chose to honor the 522 service members who have given their lives in order to protect the security of the civilized world. The world is indeed safer :hihi . A genocidal regime has been neutered, and we need not look any further than the recent events in Tripoli to see the positive impact of the Doctrine of Pre-emption. Thank God for men and women of moral conviction. It would have been so easy and convenient to do nothing.

Timothy Emery lives in Amherst and is director of worldwide sales for M/A-COM in Lowell, Mass.

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=33032

Ok, wer auf jeder Seite der HP eine wehende Flagge führt, nunja....

syr :o

[syracus]

Jetzt wird reiner Tisch gemacht :lach........

What Went Wrong

He was the most dangerous man alive, sitting atop a massive stockpile of deadly weapons. The only way to end the gathering threat was to take Saddam out—and fast. Only there wasn't any WMD. The fateful fictions that led to war

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Newsweek/Photos/mag/040209_Issue/040131_WMD_wide.hlarge.jpg
Key players in the WMD scandal are (clockwise from top center) Bush, Kay, Rumsfeld, Powell and Cheney (center)

By John Barry and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek Feb. 9 issue

- Saddam Hussein was holed up in his palace putting the final touches on his latest novel. His first, "Zabibah and the King," had been published in 2000 to reviews that only a dictator could get. Everyone seemed to adore the story of a righteous Iraqi king who dies, but only after restoring the honor of the beautiful Zabibah. The woman had been raped—and here's where the tricky historical allusion comes in—on Jan. 17, the day that American troops launched their 1991 offensive to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. The Iraqi National Theater was planning to turn the novel into a hit musical, the country's biggest-ever stage production. So the despot now had his own big act to follow. His second masterpiece, called "Al-Qala-ah Al-Hasinah," or "The Fortified Castle," also concerned a fierce battle between good and evil—"without boring details," Iraqi television had reported.

No writer likes to be disturbed. But so much was going on at the time: the United Nations was demanding greater access to Saddam's palaces, George W. Bush had declared Iraq part of an "Axis of Evil," the United States was pushing for war. Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who routinely consulted Saddam about U.N. demands, found that his boss was often distracted by his latest literary effort. When the subject did turn to weapons, the dictator seemed dangerously out of touch. As early as 2000, Saddam became convinced there was a loophole in United Nations resolutions—that long-range missiles were proscribed only if they were loaded with weapons of mass destruction. All of Saddam's top aides knew better, but they were terrified of contradicting the dictator. The illegal missile program went ahead.

Saddam's rich fantasy life extended to another weapons program. David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group tasked with finding Iraq's WMD after the war, told NEWSWEEK that Saddam was obsessed with building a system that could shoot down U.S. stealth aircraft. He "kept handing out money," says Kay, to scientists and military officers who claimed to be developing new techniques for spotting stealth planes. Many of the schemes were Potemkin projects that existed largely in the imaginations of the officials promoting them. Saddam would give away new cars to the inventor with the most ingenious idea; the more elaborate the invention, the fancier the car. Scientists and officials involved in wacky programs shared payoffs or tacitly blackmailed one another to ensure their programs weren't exposed as empty shells.

Saddam's real masterwork—the edifice of fear that had ensured his power for decades—was decaying beneath him. An air of decadence and decline had spread among the elite, and small to middling officials were trying to take what they could for themselves. But nobody could tell the dictator, because virtually everyone was implicated.

It seems that nobody told President Bush or his senior advisers, either. Saddam was more than just evil, according to their intelligence, he was also a master of control and deception. He had fooled U.N. inspectors for a decade. Now he had resumed production of chemical and biological weapons, and he was also trying to purchase parts for a nuclear-weapons program. Defectors were telling of labs hidden under Saddam's palaces. The 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which represented Washington's best available analysis, concluded that "Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction [WMD] programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions," that it had "invested more heavily in biological weapons" and that "most analysts" believed that it was "reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." Even the French and Germans believed that Saddam had WMD.

"It turns out we were all wrong, probably, in my judgment," Kay stammered before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. "And that is most disturbing." With perhaps 85 percent of the Survey Group's work done, Kay said it was likely that no WMD would be uncovered. His team did find evidence that Iraq was working to develop the poison ricin, and he warned of "unresolved ambiguity" about other Iraqi programs. Too much evidence had been destroyed and looted in the early days of the war, he said. But in Kay's mind, the absence of evidence should not obscure a larger fact: Iraq was a monumental intelligence failure.

How did it happen? The United States spends more to run spy satellites and supersecret listening devices than the gross domestic products of many countries, yet it didn't have a clue as to what was really going on inside a sanctions-racked dictatorship it was about to attack? A new Senate Intelligence Committee report, lambasting the CIA for major "errors in judgment," suggests that America's mastery of high-tech gadgetry is part of the problem, and Kay thinks much the same. The United States has become so dependent on what it can detect from a distance that it no longer does the dirty, painstakingly slow business of gathering human intelligence well. But that is only part of the story.

Kay himself believes that in order to get the full picture, an independent panel needs to investigate. He was very careful not to blame the administration—there were no accusations of "sexing up" the intelligence. On the contrary, he absolved policymakers of any misjudgments, and said he still supported the war. (Britain's Tony Blair got a similar reprieve last week, when the much-anticipated Hutton report found him innocent of making a 2002 WMD assessment "more exciting.") But intelligence is never gathered or assessed in a political vacuum, and leading Democrats will be sure to demand that any investigation extend to the White House.

The clamor for heads to roll has already begun. Democratic hopeful John Kerry last week called for CIA Director George Tenet to be fired, and he was seconded by Sen. Bob Graham, who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee in the run-up to the Iraq war. "If you're in the Navy and you're the captain of a ship that runs aground, you're responsible," Graham told NEWSWEEK. "I believe in the principle of accountability."

But the White House is, for now anyway, loath to scapegoat Tenet, a loyal soldier if ever there was one. (The CIA itself says its assessments were done with "professionalism and integrity," and believes WMD may still be found.) Nor did top officials immediately embrace the call for an independent commission. But with Bush insisting that he wanted "to know the facts," the seeming contradiction appeared untenable: NEWSWEEK learned late last week that the White House was moving toward endorsing the idea of a "presidential blue-ribbon panel" of elder statesmen and WMD experts. Officials had begun putting out feelers to possible chairs. Such an inquiry will have to examine, at least, whether direct or indirect pressure was placed on American spies to produce particular results. It will also have to examine the reluctance of spymasters to admit what they didn't know, and when they didn't know it.

Some proponents of the war now argue that analysts were relying on outdated information. Saddam did have a hidden weapons program, this argument goes, but must have gotten rid of it after U.N. inspectors were recalled in 1998. But this doesn't quite fit the facts. NEWSWEEK has learned of two separate American government panels whose members concluded, back in 1998, that reports of Saddam's secret programs were based on suspicions, not hard data.

The first panel was an independent group of a half-dozen members, most of them distinguished scientists, called the Arms Control & Non-Proliferation Advisory Board. One of ACNAB's pursuits was to examine what was known about Iraq's weapons programs. Panel members got access to CIA materials, and were able to quiz the analysts. What they found, according to three members reached by NEWSWEEK, was that the CIA's intel on Iraqi WMD was largely speculative. "There were suspicions, hints, but nothing hard," says one member. "The agency analysts' basic argument was: 'Saddam must be hiding something, or why would he be putting his people through all this?' " The absence of hard evidence was so striking, in fact, that panel members recall discussing "the Wizard of Oz theory: that the whole Iraq WMD program was smoke-and-mirrors, and Saddam was just a little guy behind a curtain."

Donald Rumsfeld himself led the second such investigation of Iraq's weapons program that year. The brief of his congressionally appointed commission was to assess the potential ballistic-missile threat to the United States from hostile powers. What is not generally known about Rumsfeld's commission is that it also reviewed current intelligence about the WMD various countries might be able to pack in their warheads. "The commission's findings on Iraq's WMD didn't materially differ from what ACNAB had concluded," says a panel member familiar with both reports. Rumsfeld spokesman Larry DiRita says, "The commission based its conclusions regarding WMD on the prevailing assessments."

Still, powerful suspicions persisted. These centered mainly on vast stockpiles of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons that were unaccounted for. Saddam had tons of anthrax, VX nerve agents and other deadly materials before the gulf war, and his regime would never produce documents showing they had been destroyed. Given Iraq's long history of deception, it seemed clear Saddam must have been hiding something. But this inference was questionable. Most of the alleged stocks of anthrax and VX were perishable, and would have degraded to uselessness. And in 1995, the most senior defector to emerge from Iraq—Hussein Kamel, who had been in charge of WMD—told debriefers that Iraq had destroyed "all weapons and agents." The phantom stockpiles nonetheless served a useful purpose to those who wanted to keep Saddam in a box. As long as Iraq was incapable of refuting the existence of the VX and anthrax, it was easy to argue that sanctions should remain in place.

But if Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction, why didn't he come clean? After all, he could have given U.N. inspectors free rein; he could have allowed them to interview all of his scientists in private—even outside the country—and let them rummage through his palaces. Faced with war, wasn't that the sensible option?

Getting inside Saddam's head isn't easy—the man is famous for miscalculating on a catastrophic scale—but the most likely explanation is the most simple: transparency is the enemy of all dictators. Saddam ensured his continued rule by keeping his many enemies—foreign and domestic—off balance. None could be allowed to know all his secrets, because in Iraq, what you didn't know, you feared. So Saddam wanted to open his regime enough to ensure sanctions were lifted, but not so much that he stood naked before the world.

This wasn't mere paranoia. The CIA had tried to orchestrate a coup in 1996, and the U.N. inspection teams were infiltrated by U.S. and British agents. When President Bill Clinton attacked Iraq in Desert Fox two years later, several bombs hit very specific "leadership targets," including the offices of Saddam and his chief of staff. In recent years some of Saddam's closest relatives had turned against him, including Hussein Kamel, who defected with another son-in-law and revealed many of Iraq's WMD secrets. (The two defectors inexplicably returned to Iraq, and Saddam immediately had them murdered.) Fear was Saddam's most effective ally. So the dictator often hinted that he had WMD, even as he was trying to persuade the world he was clean.

Once U.N. inspectors left Iraq, Saddam's malevolent history and intentions took on even greater significance, because the CIA was suddenly cut off from a critical source of information. (Kay calls the data produced by UNSCOM inspectors the CIA's "crack cocaine.") In February 2000, Tenet told Congress that the United States had no direct evidence that Iraq had reconstituted its WMD programs, "although given its past behavior this type of activity must be regarded as likely." Iraq had begun to rebuild parts of its chemical infrastructure "for industrial and commercial use," he said, and had also "attempted to purchase numerous dual use items."

Thin gruel. So how did the agency make the leap from suspect intentions to bold claims of existing WMD programs two years later? The impact of September 11 on policymakers and analysts is undeniable. At the first meeting of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board after 9/11, there was consensus that the United States should take out two regimes: Afghanistan and Iraq. It was deemed necessary to show American power, and Saddam was the perfect target. It's not clear how fast this view took hold within the White House, or when exactly the intelligence community digested it. What is clear is that to fight a pre-emptive war, you need evidence of a significant threat; suspect intentions alone are not sufficient.

At about this time, Iraqi defectors started to play a bigger role in the revelation of Saddam's resurgence. The media played a part here, too. Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress funneled defectors to the press, which reported claims of clandestine weapons programs. These claims, often disputed by CIA analysts, nevertheless got picked up by the Pentagon's intel shop, which passed them on to the White House. And the CIA was already under fire. It had failed to connect clues that could have foiled the biggest attack ever on the mainland United States. So officials like Alan Foley, the CIA officer who had the Iraq WMD portfolio inside the agency, knew they couldn't afford to underestimate another threat.

In comments to NEWSWEEK, Foley denied reports that he had been bullied by anyone in the White House: "I don't think I was pressured at all," he said. That may well be true, yet people who dealt with Foley during the run-up to war say they were struck by the lack of substance behind his assessments.

Prior to the invasion, the White House convened a series of working groups, and Foley was on the one that dealt with the threat posed to U.S. forces by Iraq's alleged WMD stocks. More than one member of the high-level group groused that it was extremely hard to get Foley to reveal exactly what the agency had on Iraq's WMD. U.N. chief inspector Hans Blix had the same problem. All he could get from the CIA was a list of sites that were already well known—from the United Nations' own inspection teams. At Central Command, this lack of hard information produced real problems. The Pentagon needed to know where Saddam's WMD stockpiles were, and what exactly was inside them, so they could plan to destroy them. After intense pressure, the CIA finally produced what one top administration official touted as "the crown jewels"—satellite photos of buildings. But the CIA admitted that it didn't know what was inside the buildings. "I'm coming to the conclusion that the agency really knew very little, but didn't feel it could admit that to anyone," says an insider deeply involved in one of the internal probes into the mess.

A CIA analyst frames it differently: "We said nothing that we knew to be untrue. But we did extrapolate." But to what extent, and why? That's where the question of political pressure comes in. Senior officials may not have bullied analysts, but they certainly made their expectations well known. They made a sport out of dissing U.N. assessments (which turned out to be the most reliable of all), and the Pentagon even set up its own secret war-planning bureau called the Office of Special Plans. "It was a more-nuanced form of pressure," says Greg Thielmann, a former top official in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

Most skepticism about U.S. claims now centers on the astonishingly assertive 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. The report itself was cobbled together in three weeks—and thudded on congressional desks just 10 days before the crucial vote authorizing Bush to use force against Iraq. Very few NIEs ever see public print, but key portions of this one did, and certainly influenced public debate. More disturbingly, perhaps, the declassified version was stripped of important caveats and footnotes.

Remember the aluminum tubes presented as evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program? It's now clear that the real experts in the United States' own nuclear-weapons program, at the Energy Department, fiercely challenged the CIA's assessment that the tubes were designed to build centrifuges. Remember the Iraqi drone aircraft that Colin Powell told the United Nations could be used to deliver bioweapons agents? When previously classified chunks of the NIE were released in July 2003, it was revealed that experts in Air Force intelligence regarded the idea of mini-UAVs' dispensing bioagents as nonsense. Remember the mobile bioweapons labs, which Vice President Dick Cheney cited yet again just two weeks ago as evidence of Saddam's WMD program? It seems they were made to generate hydrogen for weather balloons. Kay has called a CIA report endorsing the bio-weapons theory "premature and embarrassing." (The CIA still stands by the report.)

President Bush declared last week that he welcomed a debate with Democrats over the war. "I'm absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do," Bush said during a visit to New Hampshire two days after the Democratic primary. "And I look forward to explaining it clearly to the American people." Yet the fact that the president feels the need to re-explain the war—nine months after he declared an end to major hostilities—is an acknowledgment that he has a potential problem. A senior administration official acknowledged as much, saying that Bush must demonstrate—particularly to military families—that he "is as sure today as he was before the war that this was the right decision ... He doesn't have any doubt."

Inevitably, some doubts are emerging on the battlefield. In a recent letter home, a reservist with the 124th Infantry Regiment of the Florida National Guard told friends and family that violent days had become strangely ordinary. In the past week he and his buddies had faced RPG and mortar attacks, "even a car bomb in the area." But that was unexceptional: "It has been just another set of days going by. Most of us don't know what day it is anymore, the concept of a 'workweek' and a 'weekend' are as foreign to us as the Moon." The soldier then proudly told how his unit had uncovered "a large weapons cache" in the town of Ar Ramadi, adding parenthetically "(still no WMD, sorry)." Irony turned to cynicism: "On the subject of WMD, we once did a raid on a place where we heard they may have been storing 'mustard gas,' [and] being the patriots that we are and always out to prove our Commander in Chief's allegations, we geared up in our chemical suits and stormed the place. It turned out to be a restaurant ... but they did have mustard, and some guy there had gas."

Dark humor—at the expense of commanders, even the commander in chief—has always been as much a part of war as blisters and bad food. But still, there's a new danger here. American politicians told soldiers they had to fight—to die, if necessary—for a particular reason. That reason was a threat to the American homeland. Now the best piece of evidence about that threat may have been an illusion. The message is muddled, at a time when the country is being asked to gird itself for a long, expensive and bloody occupation. If the cynicism grows, and seeps back home, the whole Iraq enterprise could be undermined.

The Bush administration will focus on other justifications for the war. Many of them are reasonable: Saddam was an evil tyrant, and the world is better off without him; it was necessary to show other rogue nations that from now on, ambiguity about WMD is no longer acceptable; countries that aren't transparent about their programs and intentions need to know they will suffer, regardless of what those programs are, or were. The Bush team will point to Libya's new openness about its WMD, and recent cooperation by Iran and Pakistan, to bolster its case.

But if for no other reason than to restore American credibility, an unbiased review of the Iraq intelligence process may be vital. Yes, regime change was a Clinton policy aim, but it was the Bush team that came to office vowing to be "forward leaning." After the attacks on September 11, Bush himself outlined a new doctrine of pre-emption, a resolve to strike first—and ask questions later—"when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives." But now the cloud over American intelligence makes pre-emption all but untenable. Who will believe the next American official who goes to the United Nations wagging a vial of fake anthrax, arguing that North Korea or Iran or some other "rogue state" needs to be taken out before it attacks first? More worrisome still, the next dire warning may well be right.

[I]With Michael Isikoff and Tamara Lipper in Washington, Rod Nordland in Baghdad, Christopher Dickey in Paris and Christian Caryl in New York

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4123507

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

Have the neocons killed a presidency?

February 16, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Patrick J. Buchanan

George W. Bush "betrayed us," howled Al Gore.

"He played on our fear. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure, dangerous to our troops, an adventure that was preordained and planned before 9-11 ever happened."

Hearing it, Gore's rant seemed slanderous and demagogic. For though U.S. policy since Clinton had called for regime change in Iraq, there is no evidence, none, that Bush planned to invade prior to 9-11.

Yet, the president has a grave problem, and it is this: Burrowed inside his foreign-policy team are men guilty of exactly what Gore accuses Bush of, men who did exploit our fears to stampede us into a war they had plotted for years.

Consider:

* In 1996, in a strategy paper crafted for Israel's Bibi Netanyahu, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser urged him to "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power" as an "Israeli strategic objective." Perle, Feith, Wurmser were all on Bush's foreign policy team on 9-11.

* In 1998, eight members of Bush's future team, including Perle, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, wrote Clinton urging upon him a strategy that "should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein." ;)

* On Jan. 1, 2001, nine months before 9-11, Wurmser called for U.S.-Israeli attacks "to broaden the [Middle East] conflict to strike fatally ... the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Teheran and Gaza ... to establish the recognition that fighting with either the United States or Israel is suicidal."

"Crises can be opportunities," added Wurmser.

* On Sept. 11, opportunity struck.

* On Sept. 15, according to author Bob Woodward, Paul Wolfowitz spoke up in the War Cabinet to urge that Afghanistan be put on a back burner and an attack be mounted at once on Iraq, though Iraq had had nothing to do with 9-11. Why Iraq? Said Wolfowitz, because it is "doable."

* On Sept. 20, 40 neoconservatives in an open letter demanded that Bush remove Saddam from power, "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [9-11] attack ." Failure to do so, they warned the president, "would constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism."

While Bush had taken office as a traditional conservative skeptical of "nation-building" and calling for a more "humble" foreign policy, after 9-11, he was captured by the neocons and converted to an agenda they had worked up years before. Suddenly, he sounded just like them, threatening wars on "axis-of-evil" nations that had nothing to do with 9-11.

And here is where Bush's present crisis was created.

Though he had internalized the neoconservative agenda for war, he had no rationale, no justification, no casus belli. Iraq had not threatened or attacked us.

Enter the WMD. Neoconservatives pressed on Bush the idea that Iraq must still have weapons of mass destruction and must be working on nuclear weapons. And as Saddam was a figure of such irrationality – i.e., a madman – he would readily give an atom bomb to al-Qaida. An American city could be incinerated.

Therefore, Saddam had to be destroyed. Bush bought it.

The problem, however, was this: While there is much evidence Saddam is evil, there is no evidence he was insane. He had not used his WMD in 1991, when he had them. For he was not a fool. He knew that would mean his end. Why would he then build a horror weapon now, give it to a terrorist and risk the annihilation of his regime, family, legacy and himself, a fate he had narrowly escaped in 1991?

Made no sense – and there was no hard evidence on the WMD.

Thus, when the CIA was unable to come up with hard evidence that Saddam still had WMD, or was building nuclear weapons, neocon insiders sifted the intelligence, cherry-picked it, presented tidbits to the media as unvarnished truth, and persuaded Powell and the president to rely on it to make the case to Congress, the country and the world. Powell and the president did.

Now the WMD case has fallen apart. Powell has egg on his face. And the president must persuade Tim Russert and the nation that Iraq was a "war of necessity" because we "had no choice when we looked at the intelligence I looked at."

But, sir, the intelligence you "looked at" was flawed. Who gave it to you?

To its neocon architects, Iraq was always about empire, hegemony, Pax Americana, global democracy – about getting hold of America's power to make the Middle East safe for Sharon and themselves glorious and famous.

But now they have led a president who came to office with good intentions and a good heart to the precipice of ruin. One wonders if Bush knows how badly he has been had. And if he does, why he has not summarily dealt with those who misled him?


Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of the new magazine, The American Conservative. Now a political analyst for MSNBC and a syndicated columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national television shows, and is the author of seven books.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37139

syr :D

[syracus]

Soldier for the Truth

Exposing Bush’s talking-points war

by Marc Cooper


After two decades in the U.S. Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, now 43, knew her career as a regional analyst was coming to an end when — in the months leading up to the war in Iraq — she felt she was being “propagandized” by her own bosses.

With master’s degrees from Harvard in government and zoology and two books on Saharan Africa to her credit, she found herself transferred in the spring of 2002 to a post as a political/military desk officer at the Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia (NESA), a policy arm of the Pentagon.

Kwiatkowski got there just as war fever was spreading, or being spread as she would later argue, through the halls of Washington. Indeed, shortly after her arrival, a piece of NESA was broken off, expanded and re-dubbed with the Orwellian name of the Office of Special Plans. The OSP’s task was, ostensibly, to help the Pentagon develop policy around the Iraq crisis.

She would soon conclude that the OSP — a pet project of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld — was more akin to a nerve center for what she now calls a “neoconservative coup, a hijacking of the Pentagon.”

Though a lifelong conservative, Kwiatkowski found herself appalled as the radical wing of the Bush administration, including her superiors in the Pentagon planning department, bulldozed internal dissent, overlooked its own intelligence and relentlessly pushed for confrontation with Iraq.

Deeply frustrated and alarmed, Kwiatkowski, still on active duty, took the unusual step of penning an anonymous column of internal Pentagon dissent that was posted on the Internet by former Colonel David Hackworth, America’s most decorated veteran.

As war inevitably approached, and as she neared her 20-year mark in the Air Force, Kwiatkowski concluded the only way she could viably resist what she now terms the “expansionist, imperialist” policies of the neoconservatives who dominated Iraq policy was by retiring and taking up a public fight against them.

She left the military last March, the same week that troops invaded Iraq. Kwiatkowski started putting her real name on her Web reports and began accepting speaking invitations. “I’m now a soldier for the truth,” she said in a speech last week at Cal Poly Pomona. Afterward, I spoke with her.



L.A. WEEKLY: What was the relationship between NESA and the now-notorious Office of Special Plans, the group set up by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney? Was the OSP, in reality, an intelligence operation to act as counter to the CIA?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: The NESA office includes the Iraq desk, as well as the desks of the rest of the region. It is under Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Bill Luti. When I joined them, in May 2002, the Iraq desk was there. We shared the same space, and we were all part of the same general group. At that time it was expanding. Contractors and employees were coming though it wasn’t clear what they were doing.

In August of 2002, the expanded Iraq desk found new spaces and moved into them. It was told to us that this was now to be known as the Office of Special Plans. The Office of Special Plans would take issue with those who say they were doing intelligence. They would say they were developing policy for the Office of the Secretary of Defense for the invasion of Iraq.

But developing policy is not the same as developing propaganda and pushing a particular agenda. And actually, that’s more what they really did. They pushed an agenda on Iraq, and they developed pretty sophisticated propaganda lines which were fed throughout government, to the Congress, and even internally to the Pentagon — to try and make this case of immediacy. This case of severe threat to the United States.



You retired when the war broke out and have been speaking out publicly. But you were already publishing critical reports anonymously while still in uniform and while still on active service. Why did you take that rather unusual step?

Due to my frustration over what I was seeing around me as soon as I joined Bill Luti’s organization, what I was seeing in terms of neoconservative agendas and the way they were being pursued to formulate a foreign policy and a military policy — an invasion of a sovereign country, an occupation, a poorly planned occupation. I was concerned about it; I was in opposition to that, and I was not alone.

So I started writing what I considered to be funny, short essays for my own sanity. Eventually, I e-mailed them to former Colonel David Hackworth, who runs the Web page Soldiers for the Truth, and he published them under the title “Insider Notes From the Pentagon.” I wrote 28 of those columns from August 2002 until I retired.



There you were, a career military officer, a Pentagon analyst, a conservative who had given two decades to this work. What provoked you to become first a covert and later a public dissident?

Like most people, I’ve always thought there should be honesty in government. Working 20 years in the military, I’m sure I saw some things that were less than honest or accountable. But nothing to the degree that I saw when I joined Near East South Asia.

This was creatively produced propaganda spread not only through the Pentagon, but across a network of policymakers — the State Department, with John Bolton; the Vice President’s Office, the very close relationship the OSP had with that office. That is not normal, that is a bypassing of normal processes. Then there was the National Security Council, with certain people who had neoconservative views; Scooter Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff; a network of think tanks who advocated neoconservative views — the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy with Frank Gaffney, the columnist Charles Krauthammer — was very reliable. So there was just not a process inside the Pentagon that should have developed good honest policy, but it was instead pushing a particular agenda; this group worked in a coordinated manner, across media and parts of the government, with their neoconservative compadres.



How did you experience this in your day-to-day work?

There was a sort of groupthink, an adopted storyline: We are going to invade Iraq and we are going to eliminate Saddam Hussein and we are going to have bases in Iraq. This was all a given even by the time I joined them, in May of 2002.



You heard this in staff meetings?

The discussions were ones of this sort of inevitability. The concerns were only that some policymakers still had to get onboard with this agenda. Not that this agenda was right or wrong — but that we needed to convince the remaining holdovers. Colin Powell, for example. There was a lot of frustration with Powell; they said a lot of bad things about him in the office. They got very angry with him when he convinced Bush to go back to the U.N. and forced a four-month delay in their invasion plans.

General Tony Zinni is another one. Zinni, the combatant commander of Central Command, Tommy Franks’ predecessor — a very well-qualified guy who knows the Middle East inside out, knows the military inside out, a Marine, a great guy. He spoke out publicly as President Bush’s Middle East envoy about some of the things he saw. Before he was removed by Bush, I heard Zinni called a traitor in a staff meeting. They were very anti-anybody who might provide information that affected their paradigm. They were the spin enforcers.



How did this atmosphere affect your work? To be direct, were you told by your superiors what you could say and not say? What could and could not be discussed? Or were opinions they didn’t like just ignored?

I can give you one clear example where we were told to follow the party line, where I was told directly. I worked North Africa, which included Libya. I remember in one case, I had to rewrite something a number of times before it went through. It was a background paper on Libya, and Libya has been working for years to try and regain the respect of the international community. I had intelligence that told me this, and I quoted from the intelligence, but they made me go back and change it and change it. They’d make me delete the quotes from intelligence so they could present their case on Libya in a way that said it was still a threat to its neighbors and that Libya was still a belligerent, antagonistic force. They edited my reports in that way. In fact, the last report I made, they said, “Just send me the file.” And I don’t know what the report ended up looking like, because I imagine more changes were made.

On Libya, really a small player, the facts did not fit their paradigm that we have all these enemies.

One person you’ve written about is Abe Shulsky. You describe him as a personable, affable fellow but one who played a key role in the official spin that led to war.

Abe was the director of the Office of Special Plans. He was in our shared offices when I joined, in May 2002. He comes from an academic background; he’s definitely a neoconservative. He is a student of Leo Strauss from the University of Chicago — so he has that Straussian academic perspective. He was the final proving authority on all the talking points that were generated from the Office of Special Plans and that were distributed throughout the Pentagon, certainly to staff officers. And it appears to me they were also distributed to the Vice President’s Office and to the presidential speechwriters. Much of the phraseology that was in our talking points consists of the same things I heard the president say.



So Shulsky was the sort of controller, the disciplinarian, the overseeing monitor of the propaganda flow. From where you sat, did you see him manipulate the information?

We had a whole staff to help him do that, and he was the approving authority. I can give you one example of how the talking points were altered. We were instructed by Bill Luti, on behalf of the Office of Special Plans, on behalf of Abe Shulsky, that we would not write anything about Iraq, WMD or terrorism in any papers that we prepared for our superiors except as instructed by the Office of Special Plans. And it would provide to us an electronic document of talking points on these issues. So I got to see how they evolved.

It was very clear to me that they did not evolve as a result of new intelligence, of improved intelligence, or any type of seeking of the truth. The way they evolved is that certain bullets were dropped or altered based on what was being reported on the front pages of the Washington Post or The New York Times.


Can you be specific?

One item that was dropped was in November [2002]. It was the issue of the meeting in Prague prior to 9/11 between Mohammed Atta and a member of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence force. We had had this in our talking points from September through mid-November. And then it dropped out totally. No explanation. Just gone. That was because the media reported that the FBI had stepped away from that, that the CIA said it didn’t happen.



Let’s clarify this. Talking points are generally used to deal with media. But you were a desk officer, not a politician who had to go and deal with the press. So are you saying the Office of Special Plans provided you a schematic, an outline of the way major points should be addressed in any report or analysis that you developed regarding Iraq, WMD or terrorism?

That’s right. And these did not follow the intent, the content or the accuracy of intelligence . . .

They were political . . .

They were political, politically manipulated. They did have obviously bits of intelligence in them, but they were created to propagandize. So we inside the Pentagon, staff officers and senior administration officials who might not work Iraq directly, were being propagandized by this same Office of Special Plans.



In the 10 months you worked in that office in the run-up to the war, was there ever any open debate? The public, at least, was being told at the time that there was a serious assessment going on regarding the level of threat from Iraq, the presence or absence of WMD, et cetera. Was this debated inside your office at the Pentagon?

No. Those things were not debated. To them, Saddam Hussein needed to go.



You believe that decision was made by the time you got there, almost a year before the war?

That decision was made by the time I got there. So there was no debate over WMD, the possible relations Saddam Hussein may have had with terrorist groups and so on. They spent their energy gathering pieces of information and creating a propaganda storyline, which is the same storyline we heard the president and Vice President Cheney tell the American people in the fall of 2002.

The very phrases they used are coming back to haunt them because they are blatantly false and not based on any intelligence. The OSP and the Vice President’s Office were critical in this propaganda effort — to convince Americans that there was some just requirement for pre-emptive war.



What do you believe the real reasons were for the war?

The neoconservatives needed to do more than just topple Saddam Hussein. They wanted to put in a government friendly to the U.S., and they wanted permanent basing in Iraq. There are several reasons why they wanted to do that. None of those reasons, of course, were presented to the American people or to Congress.



So you don’t think there was a genuine interest as to whether or not there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

It’s not about interest. We knew. We knew from many years of both high-level surveillance and other types of shared intelligence, not to mention the information from the U.N., we knew, we knew what was left [from the Gulf War] and the viability of any of that. Bush said he didn’t know.

The truth is, we know [Saddam] didn’t have these things. Almost a billion dollars has been spent — a billion dollars! — by David Kay’s group to search for these WMD, a total whitewash effort. They didn’t find anything, they didn’t expect to find anything.



So if, as you argue, they knew there weren’t any of these WMD, then what exactly drove the neoconservatives to war?

The neoconservatives pride themselves on having a global vision, a long-term strategic perspective. And there were three reasons why they felt the U.S. needed to topple Saddam, put in a friendly government and occupy Iraq.

One of those reasons is that sanctions and containment were working and everybody pretty much knew it. Many companies around the world were preparing to do business with Iraq in anticipation of a lifting of sanctions. But the U.S. and the U.K. had been bombing northern and southern Iraq since 1991. So it was very unlikely that we would be in any kind of position to gain significant contracts in any post-sanctions Iraq. And those sanctions were going to be lifted soon, Saddam would still be in place, and we would get no financial benefit.

The second reason has to do with our military-basing posture in the region. We had been very dissatisfied with our relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly the restrictions on our basing. And also there was dissatisfaction from the people of Saudi Arabia. So we were looking for alternate strategic locations beyond Kuwait, beyond Qatar, to secure something we had been searching for since the days of Carter — to secure the energy lines of communication in the region. Bases in Iraq, then, were very important — that is, if you hold that is America’s role in the world. Saddam Hussein was not about to invite us in.

The last reason is the conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the Food for Oil program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this, by the way, long before 9/11, in November 2000 — selling his oil for euros. The oil sales permitted in that program aren’t very much. But when the sanctions would be lifted, the sales from the country with the second largest oil reserves on the planet would have been moving to the euro.

The U.S. dollar is in a sensitive period because we are a debtor nation now. Our currency is still popular, but it’s not backed up like it used to be. If oil, a very solid commodity, is traded on the euro, that could cause massive, almost glacial, shifts in confidence in trading on the dollar. So one of the first executive orders that Bush signed in May [2003] switched trading on Iraq’s oil back to the dollar.



At the time you left the military, a year ago, just how great was the influence of this neoconservative faction on Pentagon policy?

When it comes to Middle East policy, they were in complete control, at least in the Pentagon. There was some debate at the State Department.

Indeed, when you were still in uniform and writing a Web column anonymously, you expressed your bitter disappointment when Secretary of State Powell — in your words — eventually “capitulated.”

He did. When he made his now-famous power-point slide presentation at the U.N., he totally capitulated. It meant he was totally onboard. Whether he believed it or not.



You gave your life to the military, you voted Republican for many years, you say you served in the Pentagon right up to the outbreak of war. What does it feel like to be out now, publicly denouncing your old bosses?

Know what it feels like? It feels like duty. That’s what it feels like. I’ve thought about it many times. You know, I spent 20 years working for something that — at least under this administration — turned out to be something I wasn’t working for. I mean, these people have total disrespect for the Constitution. We swear an oath, military officers and NCOs alike swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. These people have no respect for the Constitution. The Congress was misled, it was lied to. At a very minimum that is a subversion of the Constitution. A pre-emptive war based on what we knew was not a pressing need is not what this country stands for.

What I feel now is that I’m not retired. I still have a responsibility to do my part as a citizen to try and correct the problem.

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/13/news-cooper.php

syr :p

[syracus]

Freitag, 27. Februar 2004
Tages-Anzeiger Online

Short attackiert Blair

Die ehemalige britische Ministerin für Entwicklungshilfe, Clare Short, hat im Uno-Abhörskandal Premierminister Tony Blair direkt angegriffen.

In einem BBC-Interview von heute hat Short Blair eine «aufgeblasene Ablenkungstaktik» vorgeworfen, wenn er ihr unverantwortliches Handeln vorwerfe. Die Ex-Ministerin hatte tags zuvor gesagt, der britische Geheimdienst habe vor dem Irak-Krieg Uno-Generalsekretär Kofi Annan abgehört.
«Entweder sagt er ‹Ja, es ist wahr› oder er muss sagen ‹Nein, das ist nicht wahr›, und dann würde er lügen», sagte Short in dem Interview. Der Premierminister hatte gestern bei seiner monatlichen Pressekonferenz die Vorwürfe weder bestätigt noch dementiert.

Short, die aus Protest gegen den Krieg zurückgetreten war, verteidigte sich gegen den Vorwurf, sie habe mit ihren Äusserungen die Sicherheit Grossbritanniens oder dessen Geheimdienste aufs Spiel gesetzt.

«Es gibt hierbei kein nationales Interesse. Wenn ich dies öffentlich mache, stellt das keinerlei Bedrohung für die Geheimdienste dar», sagte sie weiter. Short hatte gesagt, Grossbritannien habe vor dem Krieg «Spione auf Kofi Annans Büro angesetzt». Annan sei «eine ganze Zeit lang» abgehört worden.

Blair hatte Shorts Äusserungen als «völlig unverantwortlich» bezeichnet. Er könne zu den Vorwürfen im einzelnen nicht Stellung nehmen, da Premierminister nie öffentlich über Aktionen von Geheimagenten Auskunft gäben. (mu/sda)

quelle (http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/dyn/news/ausland/352521.html)

***************************************************


Freitag, 27. Februar 2004
07:26 -- Tages-Anzeiger Online

Auch Uno-Inspektoren belauscht

Die Spionage-Affäre um die Uno weitet sich aus: Neben Generalsekretär Kofi Annan wurden offenbar auch die ehemaligen Inspektoren Hans Blix und Richard Butler von Geheimdiensten abgehört.

Der frühere Uno-Chefwaffeninspektor Richard Butler erklärte am Freitag, er sei bei vertraulichen Gesprächen über die Entwaffnung des Irak abgehört worden. Sein Büro in New York sei «verwanzt» gewesen, sagte Butler dem australischen Radiosender ABC. Deshalb sei er mit Informanten spazieren gegangen.
Seine Unterredungen seien von den vier Veto-Mächten im Uno-Sicherheitsrat - den USA, Grossbritannien, Frankreich und Russland - mitgehört worden. Er wisse dies aus sicheren Quellen. Butler hatte bis 1998 die Waffeninspektionen in Irak geleitet. Heute ist er Gouverneur des australischen Bundesstaates Tasmanien.

Auch das Mobiltelefon des früheren Uno-Chefwaffeninspektors Hans Blix soll nach ABC-Informationen von britischen oder amerikanischen Geheimdiensten abgehört worden sein. Der Sender berichtete, australische Behörden hätten Mitschriften von Telefongesprächen von Blix im Irak gelesen.

Die Abschriften seien den USA, Australien, Kanada, Grossbritannien und auch Neuseeland zugängig gemacht worden, berichtete ein Reporter des Senders. Ein Sprecher des australischen Premierministers John Howard verweigerte jeden Kommentar zu den Anschuldigungen.

Ebenso stumm war am Donnerstag der britische Premier Tony Blair geblieben, als er auf die Anschuldigungen der früheren britischen Ministerin für Entwicklungshilfe, Clare Short, angesprochen worden war.

Diese hatte mit ihrer Aussage, Annan sei vom Geheimdienst ihres Landes abgehört worden, die ganze Affäre ins Rollen gebracht. Annan hatte darauf den sofortigen Stopp des Abhörens seiner Gespräche durch den britischen Geheimdienst gefordert, «wenn es das denn tatsächlich gibt».

Die Uno verstärkte darauf den Abhörschutz für Annan: «Das Sekretariat führt routinemässig technische Massnahmen zum Schutz gegen solche Verletzungen der Privatsphäre durch und solche Massnahmen werden jetzt intensiviert», sagte Annans Sprecher Fred Eckhard.

Er verwies auf Abkommen, die die Unantastbarkeit des Geländes der Uno garantierten. Das Abhören untergrabe die Geschäftsgrundlage des Generalsekretärs. Diejenigen, die mit Annan sprächen, hätten ein Recht darauf anzunehmen, dass die Unterredungen vertraulich blieben. (wim/sda)

quelle (http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/dyn/news/ausland/352502.html)

Waterloo 2004 :schaf:........

syr :D

[syracus]

09:41, ergänzt 17:32 -- Tages-Anzeiger Online

«Der Irak-Krieg war ein Desaster»


Der künftige spanische Ministerpräsident José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will die Koalition der Willigen verlassen und die 1300 spanischen Soldaten aus dem Irak zurückziehen. Er kritisiert den Irakkrieg scharf.

Zapatero greift nach seinem Wahlsieg die US-geführte Kriegs-Koalition scharf an: «Der Irak-Krieg war ein Desaster, die Besatzung des Iraks ist ein Desaster.»
«Ich glaube, die militärische Intervention war ein politischer Fehler für die Weltordnung, für die Suche nach Kooperation und für die Verteidigung der USA», sagte der künftige spanische Ministerpräsident in einem Interview.

Zapatero forderte eine grosse internationale Allianz gegen den Terror und gegen «unilaterale Kriege».

Seine Regierung wolle eine enge Beziehung mit den USA. Präsident Bush und Premierminister Blair müssten sich wegen ihrer Kriegsentscheidung in Selbstkritik üben, sagte Zapatero.

Die spanischen Soldaten dienen im Irak im polnischen Sektor. Der polnische Regierungschef Miller kritisiert Zapateros Entscheid bereits: «Es wäre ein Eingeständnis, dass die Terroristen Recht haben und stärker sind als die ganze zivilisierte Welt, die mit diesem Phänomen kämpft».

Zapatero hatte bereits im Wahlkampf wiederholt erklärt, er werde im Fall eines Wahlsiegs die 1300 spanischen Soldaten nach der für den 30. Juni geplanten Machtübergabe an eine irakische Übergangsregierung zurückrufen - es sei denn, es gebe ein Uno-Mandat.

Eine endgültige Entscheidung werde zwar erst nach seinem Amtsantritt und nicht ohne breite politische Konsultationen gefällt, sagte Zapatero. «Aber die spanischen Truppen im Irak werden heimkehren.»

Zapatero sagte weiter, seine Regierung werde die Bekämpfung des Terrorismus zu einem Schwerpunkt ihrer Arbeit machen. «In diesem Moment denke ich an all die Leben, die am Donnerstag vom Terror zerstört wurden.» (grü/sda)

quelle (http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/dyn/news/ausland/357710.html)

Nummer 1 der Kriegstreiber ist weg, Rest folgt. Waterloo 2004 wird realität :gusa........

syr

[syracus]

March 14, 2004

Bush's war is a financial disaster

The U.S. won an inevitable military triumph, but political victory remains elusive

By ERIC MARGOLIS

WASHINGTON -- The famous words of King Pyrrhus of Epirus after the bloody battle of Heraclea in 280 BC are as appropriate for America's conquest of Iraq: "One more such victory and we are ruined."

The March, 2003 invasion of Iraq pitted the world's greatest military power against the largely inoperative army of a small, dilapidated nation of only 17 million (deducting rebellious Kurds), crushed by 12 years of sanctions and bombing.

Thanks to total air superiority, invading U.S. forces achieved a brilliant feat of logistics, racing from Kuwait to Northern Iraq in under three weeks. The 15% of Iraq's army that stood and fought was pulverized by massive, co-ordinated U.S. air strikes and artillery barrages. Urban resistance failed to materialize.

The rout of Iraq's forces recalled another colonial war, the Dervish Campaign of 1898. Gen. Kitchener led the imperial British Army far up the Nile into Sudan where it met and massacred a primitive Islamic host at Omdurman. Britain's quick-fire guns and artillery mowed down Dervish cavalry and sword-waving "fuzzy-wuzzies" as murderously as U.S. precision munitions vapourized Iraqi units.

U.S. air and ground forces in Iraq displayed superb technical, electronic, logistic and combat prowess confirming they are two full military generations ahead of nearly all other nations.

But as the great modern military thinker, Maj.-Gen J.F.C. Fuller, observed 40 years ago, the proper objective of war is not military victory but a politically advantageous peace. While the U.S. won an inevitable military victory against a nearly helpless Iraq, political victory so far remains elusive.

Primary objectives

In my view, two primary objectives drove the U.S. invasion of Iraq: oil and its support for Israel.

White House claims about weapons of mass destruction and terrorism were propaganda smoke screens.

President George Bush's claims that impotent Iraq posed "a grave and gathering danger" to the U.S., Condoleezza Rice's hysterical warnings about "mushroom clouds over the U.S.," and Vice President Dick Cheney's bizarre jeremiads about "Iraq's reconstituted nuclear weapons" were absurd.

The U.S. now controls Iraq, a strategic nation with the Mideast's second largest oil reserves.

The CIA estimates China's and India's surging, oil-hungry economies will cause world oil shortages by 2030 - or sooner.

Accordingly, the Bush administration moved to assure America's global hegemony by seizing Mideast and Central Asian oil before the impending crisis. Doing so required occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. imports little oil from the Mideast or Central Asia. However, these regions are primary oil sources for Europe and Japan - and, increasingly, for India and China.

By dominating these oil sources, the U.S. controls the economies of its main commercial and potential military rivals. Control of the Muslim world's oil is the principal pillar of America's world power.

The Pentagon plans three permanent major military bases in Iraq from which powerful garrisons of U.S. air and ground forces, backed by mercenary native troops, will police not just Iraq but the entire Mideast and guard the new "imperial lifeline" of pipelines exporting oil from Central Asia and the Arab world.

Other U.S. bases in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, linked to bases in Bulgaria and Romania, will guard the new imperial route.

The second objective, in my view, was aiding Israel.

Influential American supporters of Israel's rightist prime minister, Ariel Sharon, played a significant role in building the case for war against Iraq.

From various positions in the White House, Pentagon, National Security Council, media, and taxpayer-supported Washington think tanks, these neo-conservatives helped to orchestrate the campaign about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction and trumpeted alleged threats from Iraq.

Mini-states

The neo-cons achieved their objective: Iraq, once the Arab world's most developed, industrialized nation, a bitter foe of Israel, was destroyed, and will likely end up split into three weak mini-states.

Israel is a primary beneficiary of the Iraq war: a potential nuclear rival was eliminated by the U.S.

Many neo-cons believed crushing Iraq would help to cement Israel's grip on the occupied West Bank and Golan, thwart a Palestinian state and force the Arab nations to accept Israel's regional hegemony.

But for the United States, Iraq was at best a pyrrhic victory. Invading and occupying Iraq has proven to be a financial disaster. The invasion cost $105 billion US in direct expenses - the price of five complete carrier battle groups, or one million low-cost apartments.

Occupying Iraq costs $9 billion monthly.

Pre-war neo-con plans to finance the occupation by plundering Iraq's oil have been frustrated by sabotage. Congress estimates the overall cost of "pacifying" and "rebuilding" Iraq for fiscal 2003 and 2004 at a staggering $200 billion.

This money will have to be borrowed by the empty treasury, which, thanks to Bush's reckless "war" spending, is running huge deficits heading toward $400 billion, risking an explosion of inflation that threatens to undermine the long-term bond market and further weaken the dollar.

The human cost of the war continues to rise. As of this writing, U.S. losses amount to 555 dead, and about 9,000 casualties from combat, accidents and serious illnesses.

Ten thousand Iraqi civilians were estimated to have been killed by U.S. forces - in a war now described as waged under "mistaken intelligence assumptions."

Iraqi military casualties are 6,000-10,000.

Iraq lies in ruins. "Rebuilding Iraq" means paying for all the damage caused by massive U.S. bombing and years of sanctions.

Puppet regime

In spite of rosy claims from the White House about handing sovereignty to Iraqis, American troops will garrison Iraq for years to guard the oil fields and maintain a "democratic" puppet regime in power in Baghdad that obeys Washington's orders.

U.S. forces will continue to face a simmering, low-grade guerrilla war that will kill or wound more American troops, and increasingly brutalize and corrupt occupation forces - the inevitable result of all colonial wars. In short, America now has its own West Bank, or Lebanon.

The brazen arrogance and profound ignorance shown by the Bush administration in its crusade against Iraq has turned the world against the United States. Occupied Iraq is acting as a terrorism generator. For the next generation of young Muslims, Iraq is becoming what Afghanistan was in the 1980s, a rallying point to fight foreign occupation, battle imperialism and defend the tattered honour of the Muslim world. Bush and his men have created millions of new enemies.

Half of all U.S. ground combat forces are tied down in and around Iraq. Reserves are being mobilized for long tours. Wear and tear on overstretched U.S. forces and their heavy equipment is a grave, though little discussed, problem.

Neo-con promises of "liberation" of Iraq, of joyous, flower-tossing crowds and of rapid "democratization" have turned to dust. Iraq remains a dangerous, volatile mess seething with violence and implacable Shia political demands. Twenty resistance groups now battle U.S. and allied occupation troops. Militant Islamic jihadis are heading for Iraq to fight "Great Satan" America. Yet Bush still claims invading Iraq made America safer.

However, because of Iraq, much of the world now regards America itself as a menacing, unstable threat.

President Bush has stuck his head into a hornet's nest. The U.S. will bleed men, money and reputation for a long time before it figures out how to get out of the first colonial misadventure of the 21st century.

Toronto Sun (http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_mar14.html)

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

Polen als "Teilhaber" am Irak-Krieg wählt den 50%-Joker......

Poland 'Misled' on Iraq, President Says

By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA, Associated Press Writer

WARSAW, Poland - Poland's president, a key Washington ally in Europe, said Thursday his country was "misled" about the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and added he may withdraw troops early if Iraq is stabilized.

At the same time, President Aleksander Kwasniewski defended the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam, saying it "made sense."

Referring to prewar Western intelligence assessments of Saddam's arsenal, he told a news conference: "From the information that we have, the word 'misled' seems to me the right word. This is the problem of the United States, of Britain and also of many other nations."

"We were informed that weapons of mass destruction are in Iraq, that there is a probability of the existence of such weapons," he said. "Today, this information is not confirmed."

Kwasniewski's remarks to a small group of European reporters were his first hint of criticism about war in Iraq, where Poland has 2,400 troops and commands one of three sectors of the U.S.-led occupation. The United States and Britain command the other two.

The 9,500-strong multinational force under Polish authority in south-central Iraq includes 1,300 Spanish troops. Spain's new government, elected in the wake of Madrid's worst terror attack, has said it will withdraw troops from Iraq by June 30 unless the United Nations (news - web sites) takes control of peacekeeping.

Kwasniewski, speaking after a meeting of his top security officials to discuss Poland's response to the Madrid railway bombings, said he will urge Spain to reconsider.

He also emphasized that Poland is not about to abandon its mission in Iraq, despite his shift in tone on the question of weapons of mass destruction.

"Naturally, one may protest the reasons for the war action in Iraq. I personally think that today, Iraq without Saddam Hussein is a truly better Iraq than with Saddam Hussein," Kwasniewski told the European reporters.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Washington does not believe Poland is wavering. "We have no reason to have any, sort of, questions or doubts about Poland's steadfast support of the mission in Iraq," Ereli said.

President Bush, in the chow line with troops at Fort Campbell, Ky., after delivering a speech, was asked about Kwasniewski's remarks but shook his head and said, "I'm here to eat."

Earlier in the day, Kwasniewski said Poland may start withdrawing its troops from Iraq early next year, months earlier than the previously stated date of mid-2005. He cited progress toward stabilizing Iraq.

"Everything suggests that pullout from Iraq may be possible after the stabilization mission is crowned with success and, in my assessment soon, it may be the start of 2005," Kwasniewski told RMF-FM radio.

Kwasniewski noted that Iraq now has an interim constitution and said should soon have an interim government that will allow current forces to be replaced by peacekeepers.

But he insisted that Poland's possible early withdrawal would not be prompted by fears of terror attacks or reprisals against his country for its role in Iraq.

"We are facing the same threat as Spain," Kwasniewski said, but "terrorism must be combatted, also with force."

"Spain is a very important partner in Iraq and I will try to persuade my Spanish friends to continue the mission because this is our joint goal, our plan for Iraq, that should be continued," he told the news conference.

Though Kwasniewski is a key Bush ally, support for the military presence in Iraq has been far from overwhelming among Poles. A poll last week found 42 percent of adults in favor and 53 percent opposed. The CBOS survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

yahoo (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=4&u=/ap/20040318/ap_on_re_eu/poland_iraq)

ob das gut geht :confused:......

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

FORMER WHITE HOUSE TERRORISM ADVISOR:

BUSH ADMIN WAS DISCUSSING BOMBING IRAQ FOR 9/11 DESPITE KNOWING AL QAEDA WAS TO BLAME

Fri Mar 19 2004 17:49:30 ET

Former White House terrorism advisor Richard Clarke tells Lesley Stahl that on September 11, 2001 and the day after - when it was clear Al Qaeda had carried out the terrorist attacks - the Bush administration was considering bombing Iraq in retaliation. Clarke's exclusive interview will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday March 21 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Clarke was surprised that the attention of administration officials was turning toward Iraq when he expected the focus to be on Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. "They were talking about Iraq on 9/11. They were talking about it on 9/12," says Clarke.

The top counter-terrorism advisor, Clarke was briefing the highest government officials, including President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in the aftermath of 9/11. "Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq....We all said, 'but no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan," recounts Clarke, "and Rumsfeld said, 'There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.' I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with [the 9/11 attacks],'" he tells Stahl.

Clarke goes on to explain what he believes was the reason for the focus on Iraq. "I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection [between Iraq and Al Qaeda] but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there, saying, 'We've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection,'" says Clarke.

Clarke, who advised four presidents, reveals more about the current administration's reaction to terrorism in his new book, "Against All Enemies."

Developing...

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash60.htm

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

Bush Admin Had Plan To Overthrow Taliban Before Sep 11

WASHINGTON (AP)--One day before the Sept. 11 attacks, senior Bush administration officials agreed that the U.S. would try to overthrow Afghanistan's Taliban rulers if a final diplomatic push to expel Osama bin Laden from the country failed, a federal panel reported Tuesday.

The panel, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, presented its findings as it began hearings with top-level Bush and Clinton administration officials.

Shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration was debating how to force bin Laden out of Afghanistan. At a Sept. 10, 2001, meeting of second- tier Cabinet officials, officials settled on a three-phase strategy. The first step called for dispatching an envoy to talk to the Taliban. If this failed, diplomatic pressure would be applied and covert funding and support for anti- Taliban fighters would be increased.

If both failed, "the deputies agreed that the United States would seek to overthrow the Taliban regime through more direct action," the report said. Deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley said the strategy had a three- year timeframe.


Dow Jones Newswires
03-23-041311ET


Neu für AP, Reuters, etc.... Aber nicht hier :lach..... Waterloo 2004 :schaf:......

syr:sss

[syracus]

Kerry's FBI-Akten wurden am Wochenende gestohlen, Meldung dazu kommt später, Waterloo :o........


George Bush, Lying, & the Dogs of War

by Harry Browne

March 26, 2004

"Cry ‘Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war."

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Before the Iraqi war, the Bush administration cried "Havoc!" and used a number of lies to justify setting the dogs of war loose.

The non-existent weapons of mass destruction and the phony uranium purchases from Niger weren't the only falsehoods. There also were lies about Al-Qaeda training camps in Iraq, aluminum tubes, Hussein kicking the UN inspectors out of Iraq, unmanned airplanes that could attack the East Coast of America, mobile bioweapon laboratories, and on and on and on.

Once the war was underway, the folks who brought us death and destruction peddled further lies: the triumphant toppling of the Hussein statue, the Jessica Lynch story (she actually got a medal for bravery despite not doing anything), the bogus stories to explain the killing of civilians, and more.

It Never Stops

Now that the war is over, the discredited prewar lies have been discarded, and the administration is resorting to new claims, such as:

• The world is a safer place with Saddam Hussein gone.

• The Iraqi people are finally free.

• Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator.

• "The defense of freedom is always worth it," as George Bush said last week.

Character Assassination

And we need to add to these prevarications the character assassination the administration fires at anyone who exposes its lies by relating personal experiences within the administration. Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke have felt the full force of the government-press partnership.

The moment Clarke went public with statements that Bush was determined to blame 9-11 on Iraq, and that Bush was much more eager to attack Iraq than attack Al-Qaeda, the administration redirected the dogs of war from Hussein to Clarke.

Top administration officials have already appeared on numerous national news shows. Condoleezza Rice showed up on all five national morning shows (on NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and CNN). The attack dogs said very little about the actual charges, preferring to attack Clarke personally as a hypocrite who previously praised President Bush's response to terrorism.

Providing their usual support for big government, TV and press reporters repeated and discussed statements Clarke made in 2001 and 2002 — statements that seemed to back up the charge that Clarke was an opportunistic hypocrite.

But did you notice that every reporter showed us exactly the same statements from Clarke? Some of the apparent "statements" weren't even complete sentences. Why did everyone who commented on Clarke's apparent flip-flop focus on exactly the same fragments?

They did so because those were the only fragments they had to work with. The quotes were all provided by the Bush administration — and they're the only quotes available. If the reporters had possessed the original documents, some of them would have picked out other statements or fragments from those documents.

It is very, very, very important to realize that . . .

Virtually everything we think we know about a foreign-policy issue is only what the government tells us.

We have no way of knowing whether the fragments are actually true statements Clarke once made. Nor do we know in what context the fragments appeared originally. All we know is that this is what the administration wants us to believe.

Even if every fragment is true and indicative of Clarke's previous opinions, it doesn't mean he's a hypocrite. What he said in 2001 or 2002 may have seemed true to him at the time, but has since been refuted by reality.

For example, Clarke supposedly said in 2002 that the Bush administration "changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course of five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda." But that doesn't mean the strategy did change. Politicians continually make statements promising revolutionary improvements that never come to pass. One year after making that statement, Clarke quit working for the government — partly, we presume, because Bush's actions didn't match his promises.

Fox TV News has provided a complete transcript of a press briefing Clarke gave in 2002 — from which the above quote was taken. You can search the entire transcript and not find unequivocal praise for George Bush.

We have no way of knowing what Clarke really thought about Bush in 2001 and 2002, because we have mostly only out-of-context fragments of statements Clarke made — fragments that have been carefully selected and released by the Bush administration in order to discredit Clarke. And the press dutifully publicizes those statements without pointing out that they are necessarily only small, out-of-context pieces of the puzzle.

So let me repeat what you should never forget . . .

Virtually everything we think we know about a foreign-policy issue is only what the government wants us to know.

Other Postwar Lies

What about the Bush administration's postwar lies? . . .

• The world is a safer place with Saddam Hussein gone.

Is it really?

Tell that to the 200 people who died in Spain two weeks ago — or to their families. Tell it to the Israelis who continue to be killed in Palestine suicide attacks. Tell it to the Palestinians who continue to be killed in Israeli military attacks. Tell it to the people in America who have been jailed without formal charges, without benefit of an attorney, without a speedy trial or the opportunity to confront their accusers.

Free At Last!, Thank God Almighty, We Are Free at Last!

• The Iraqi people are finally free.

Oh really?

The country is occupied by a foreign power.

Its officials are appointed by that foreign power.

Its citizens must carry ID cards, and submit to searches of their persons and cars at checkpoints and roadblocks.

They must be in their homes by curfew time.

Many towns are ringed with barbed wire.

The occupiers have imposed strict gun-control laws, preventing ordinary citizens from defending themselves — making robberies, rapes, and assaults quite common.

The occupiers have decreed that certain electoral outcomes won't be permitted.

Families are held hostage until they reveal the whereabouts of wanted resisters — much like the Nazis held innocent French people hostage during World War II.

Public protests are outlawed.

Private homes are raided or demolished — with no due process of law.

Newspapers, radio stations, and TV are all supervised by the occupiers.

Brutality

• Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator.

So what?

Is it the duty of the American people to give their resources — and maybe their lives — to topple every dictator in the world and make sure the Bill of Rights is enforced in every country (except, perhaps, the United States)?

And if toppling dictators is so important, why is George Bush cozying up to brutal dictators in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan?

If George Bush wants to donate his own money to revolutionary movements in oppressed countries, he has a right to do so. If he wants to quit his job and go fight in one of those revolutionary movements, he has a right to do so.

But he has no constitutional authority to commit American money and American lives to the fight for freedom in other countries.

Even the claims of Hussein's brutality are suspect, because they come mostly from the same administration that has already discredited itself. The "human shredder" atrocity story has already been refuted, and who knows how many more of George Bush's favorite horrors will be exposed as lies eventually?

Say What?

When confronted with the charge that he misled the American people about the need to go to war with Iraq, President Bush replied, "The defense of freedom is always worth it."

Is that right?

Worth what?

The loss of more of our freedoms in America?

A cost of hundreds of billions of dollars paid by Americans for the freedom of people in foreign countries?

And worth it to whom?

Obviously, the Iraqi war was worth it to George Bush. (At least it seemed so until now.)

But was it worth it to the hundreds of Americans who died?

Was it worth it to the thousands of Iraqis who died?

Was it worth it to the families of those who died?

And what freedom are we talking about?

The U.S. was never threatened by Saddam Hussein. He had no capability to attack America, and he never indicated any desire to attack America.

In short, American "freedom" was never threatened by Saddam Hussein. So why is an unprovoked attack on another country considered to be a "defense of freedom"?

The Dogs of War

So the lies continue.

And the dogs of war are unleashed on anyone who threatens to expose those lies and seems to have the public forum in which to do so.

http://www.harrybrowne.org/articles/DogsOfWar.htm

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

Dienstag, 06. April 2004

Bush droht Katastrophe

Kommentar
Von Martin Kilian

Die jüngsten Ereignisse in den schiitischen Metropolen des Irak könnten sich für die Regierung Bush zu einer politischen Katastrophe auswachsen. Denn nun droht die Eskalation eines schwelenden Aufstands, der sich bisher auf die sunnitische Region beschränkt hatte - und damit die Gefahr, dass der für Ende Juni geplante Amtsantritt einer irakischen Übergangsregierung verschoben werden muss. Zusehends entwickelt sich die Situation im Irak für Präsident George W. Bush zu einer politischen Bedrohung, die den amerikanischen Präsidentschaftswahlkampf beeinflussen könnte, falls sie nicht sofort entschärft wird.

Der republikanische Senator Richard Lugar, ein besonnener Aussenpolitiker, verlangt mehr amerikanische Truppen, um den Irak sicherer zu machen. Sein demokratischer Kollege Joe Biden ruft gar nach einem Gipfeltreffen Bushs mit den europäischen Verbündeten, um den transatlantischen Zwist über den Irak-Krieg endgültig beizulegen und sowohl die Nato als auch die Vereinten Nationen stärker im Irak einzubeziehen. Bidens Logik ist zwingend: Zurück könne man nicht mehr. Deshalb gehe es jetzt darum, den Irak mit vereinten Kräften zu befrieden und einer besseren Zukunft zuzuführen.

Angesichts der alarmierenden Ereignisse vor Ort ist aber ungewiss, ob es dafür nicht bereits zu spät ist. Und kopfschüttelnd mag man sich an die Szenarien und Begründungen der Regierung Bush und ihrer publizistischen Parteigänger vor Beginn des Krieges erinnern: Mit Rosenblättern würden die Invasoren empfangen werden, bald werde in Bagdad die Demokratie erblühen und eine irakische Föderation dem Demokratisierungsprozess im Nahen Osten mächtige Impulse verleihen. Vielleicht wird sich eines Tages dieser Traum erfüllen. Vorerst jedoch droht im Irak ein Debakel, dessen Ausmass in den kommenden Wochen sichtbar werden dürfte.

Ein Gipfeltreffen, wie es Senator Biden vorschlägt, ist dringend, um die Gemeinschaft der Demokratien mitsamt den Vereinten Nationen zu einem stärkeren Engagement zu bewegen. Die Regierung Bush aber muss sich fragen lassen, warum sie vor dem Krieg bizarren Fehleinschätzungen und Illusionen aufgesessen ist.

Quelle (http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/dyn/news/ausland/365235.html)

Über kurz oder lang, alles hat irgendwann seine Folgen :rolleyes: .......

syr:sss

[syracus]

Apr. 7, 2004. 01:00 AM

Spectre of Vietnam is stalking Bush

TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON—With U.S. troops fighting pitched battles on two Iraqi fronts last night, a question dismissed by the White House as naïve last summer has gained increasing currency this spring.

Is this George Bush's Vietnam?

The charge was made in a Monday speech by one of the country's most polarizing politicians, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, the 42-year veteran of Congress.

He struck a chord in this nation and the question was being put to the U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, on network television yesterday while most Americans were still digesting the latest Iraqi battles over their morning coffee.

By nightfall, with the Pentagon confirming at least 12 Americans dead in a firefight in Ramadi — and raging battles in Falluja suggesting the toll will rise — the Vietnam comparisons were everywhere.

"Oh, gee, I don't even know where to start with that comparison," Bremer told NBC's Today Show. "I think it's completely inappropriate. There's really nothing in common with Vietnam."

Others find much in common.

In strict terms, Iraq is not Vietnam, but the perception is taking hold and that alone could turn into a nightmare during an election campaign for Bush.

The differences are stark — some 58,000 Americans lost their lives in Vietnam in a conflict that lasted more than a decade against a well-entrenched and organized opponent.

When numbers are tallied from yesterday's fighting, the toll in Iraq will look like this:

More than 620 Americans dead in a conflict that's only in its 13th month, with most deaths the result of insurgents' guerrilla-style tactics.

"I completely agree this is Bush's Vietnam," said Terry Anderson, an expert on the Vietnam era and a veteran of the war who is now a historian at Texas A&M University.

"Just like (former U.S. president) Lyndon Johnson, (President George W.) Bush has totally misjudged the culture in which they are fighting," Anderson said in an interview.

"Just like LBJ, we are trying to bring democracy to people who are not particularly interested in U.S.-style democracy and just like LBJ, we are rotating out battle-hardened people with new troops. And just like LBJ, Bush is not telling Americans they are going to be there for years."

One difference, Anderson says, is that public support for the war in Iraq has ebbed much more quickly. He says the American electorate began turning against the Vietnam war only two years into the conflict, souring on it forever following the infamous 1968 Tet Offensive.

"You had massive rallies against this war even before Bush went in," he says, "because the Vietnam experience jump-started opposition to this war."

Two polls released this week show support for Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq hovering between 40 and 45 per cent, with mounting calls in Washington for a reappraisal of the June 30 target for handover of political power to Iraqis.

Bush was being briefed on last night's fighting at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., and the White House released a brief statement of resolve in response to reports of the U.S. deaths.

Bush will meet with his most steadfast ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, here next Friday, when the deteriorating situation and the June 30 handover will be discussed.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday if military commanders seek more troops to try to stabilize a worsening situation, they will get the help, although he said the U.S. has an artificially high number — 135,000 — in the country now because of the troop rotation under way.

"You're starting to hear that `Q' word — quagmire," pollster John Zogby told the Reuters news agency yesterday. That word has become synonymous with the Vietnam war which drove Johnson from office.

"The public seems confused," Zogby said. "How do we get out? Do we send more troops? How do we cut casualties? It's all becoming a big problem for Bush."

Rumsfeld said troops are involved in "dangerous work ... we're going to have good days and bad days."

But last June, when the words `Vietnam' and `quagmire' were put to Rumsfeld at a Pentagon briefing, he was dismissive of the questioners, even rejecting a dictionary definition of quagmire read to him by a reporter.

Part of that reaction is what some believe is another analogy to the Vietnam era — disingenuous reports of progress and good news from political leaders.

"We have to tell the American people that we are in this for the long haul. We cannot say, as we did in Vietnam, that the light is at the end of the tunnel," Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona said in an interview published yesterday in the Detroit Free Press.

Republicans railed against Kennedy, charging him with offering support to the enemy with Americans in peril and using American casualties for electoral advantage. But, as the most high-profile member of the Kerry team, Kennedy's words take on more weight with the distinct possibility he was speaking with tacit approval of the presumptive nominee.

Kerry would not make the Vietnam analogy yesterday, but said Bush had made a mistake in setting the arbitrary June 30 deadline for a political handoff in Iraq. (U.S. troops will remain, but there have been no official estimates of troop levels.)

"I have always said consistently that it is a mistake to set an arbitrary date and I hope that the date has nothing to do with the election here in the United States," Kerry said following a campaign stop in Cincinnati, Ohio. "I think they wanted to get the troops out and get the transfer out of the way as fast as possible... The test ought to be the stability of Iraq and not an arbitrary date."

Former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix also weighed in yesterday, telling a Danish newspaper the costs of the war in Iraq outweigh the benefits of removing Saddam Hussein.

"It's clearly the negative aspects that dominate," he Jyllands-Posten. "Bush declared war as a part of the U.S. war on terror, but instead of limiting the effects of terror, the war has laid the foundation for even more terror."

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1081289421201&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

Denmark's Defense Minister Resigning

Fri, Apr 23, 2004
36 minutes ago

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Danish Defense Minister Svend Aage Jensby said Friday he was resigning after lawmakers questioned pre-war intelligence reports on Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Denmark supported the U.S.-led war in Iraq and has 496 troops there under British command in the southern cities of Basra and Qurnah.

Jensby has been defense minister under Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen since November 2001.

Jensby notified Fogh Rasmussen Friday after the prime minister returned from a trip to the United States, then announced his decision in a written statement.

Lawmakers have questioned the military's reports on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction after a former military intelligence analyst was fired for leaking portions of two confidential reports to a newspaper in February. The analyst claimed that Fogh Rasmussen lied to lawmakers in 2002 when he sought support for the war to oust Saddam.

On Monday, Danish Defense Intelligence Service chief Rear Adm. Joern Olesen said the agency had always believed that Iraq "probably had biological and chemical weapons," adding that the documents were based on information gathered by the United Nations and NATO.

But a Danish intelligence report dated March 7, 2003, concluded that there was no "certain information" that Iraq had working weapons of mass destruction.

Ultimately, Denmark backed the invasion and contributed soldiers and a submarine, saying force was needed because Saddam would not cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040423/ap_on_re_eu/denmark_defense_minister&cid=518&ncid=1480

Dänen auch bald auf dem Heimweg ;)?

syr

[syracus]

Britain's Blair Faces Call for Resignation

Sun May 9,11:45 AM ET
By Astrid Zweynert

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair, dogged by speculation about his future, faced a call for his resignation Sunday by a senior member of his Labor Party as a new poll suggested he had become an electoral liability.

Lord David Puttnam, a Labor peer and personal friend of Blair, said months of negative headlines about Iraq would damage the party's electoral prospects and the prime minister should make way for finance minister Gordon Brown.

"The prime minister is synonymous with Iraq, and Iraq will only deliver bad news," Puttnam told ITV News television, the ITV Web site said. "If I were him, I would go before the summer (parliamentary) recess."

Former foreign secretary Robin Cook also waded into the debate, saying Blair was having enormous difficulty focusing attention on the domestic agenda instead of what he called the "major mistake" of Iraq.

"There will come a time when he has to ask himself whether he can succeed in that task or whether somebody else should do it," Cook told BBC Television.

Blair's support for the war in Iraq, a U-turn on a referendum on a European Union constitution and an immigration policy widely seen as bungled have crushed public trust and prompted speculation Brown will take over.

Spelling further bad news for Blair, a YouGov poll in the Mail Sunday newspaper said Labor could only win an overall majority at the next election if Blair hands over to Brown.

The poll also showed support for the war in Iraq at an all-time low following charges of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British and American troops.

Four out of 10 people now believe Britain was right to invade Iraq, compared with six out of 10 in April last year.

Puttnam, a renowned film producer, said if Iraq became a stable democracy over the next few years, Blair's decision to back the U.S.-led war would be proved right.

But in the short-term, Blair should quit to boost Labour's prospects at the next election expected in 2005, he said.

The YouGov poll showed Labor would win the election but fall short of a majority with Blair in charge. But it would win a majority of 77 seats if he handed over to Brown.

If there was an election tomorrow, with Blair in the top job, 40 percent of people would vote for the Conservatives, the main opposition party, and 36 percent Labor. But if Brown was Labor leader the parties would be level at 39 percent.

Because of the way those votes are spread across different constituencies that would leave Labor still with more seats than the Tories, but three short of an overall majority.

YouGov questioned a representative sample of 1,976 electors online between Thursday and Saturday.

Yahoo News (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=721&e=1&u=/nm/20040509/wl_nm/britain_blair_dc)


syr:schaf:

[syracus]

Original geschrieben von syracus
erstellt am 13.07.2003 20:21

Nur GWB hat auch dann mit dem CIA-Boss noch einen Schutzschild. Und der ist ein ehemaliger "Clintionist", der nächste Schritt wär also noch nicht so schmerzhaft. Das Wochenende wird dann die nächsten Tage aufgearbeitet. Mal etwas auf die Pirsch :lach......



03.06.2004

CIA-Direktor George Tenet zurückgetreten

Der Direktor des US-Geheimdienstes CIA, George Tenet, hat seinen Rücktritt eingereicht. Dies gab US-Präsident George W. Bush in Washington unmittelbar vor seiner Abreise nach Europa bekannt.

Tenet habe ihm seine Entscheidung bei einer Begegnung am Vorabend im Weissen Haus mitgeteilt, sagte Bush. Der CIA-Chef habe "persönliche Gründe" für seinen Entschluss angeführt. Der Präsident sagte, er bedauere die Entscheidung, habe sie jedoch akzeptiert. Bush würdigte die "überragende Leistung Tenets über viele Jahre".

Tenet soll Mitte Juli seine Arbeit vorübergehend an seinen Stellvertreter John McLaughlin übergeben. Ein Nachfolger soll danach ernannt werden.

Tenet war seit sieben Jahren Chef des CIA. Wegen zahlreicher Pannen - unter anderem auch wegen falscher Informationen über die Massenvernichtungswaffen in Irak und mangelnder Warnungen vor den Anschlägen vom 11. September 2001 - stand Tenet häufig in der Kritik.

Er war der einzige Spitzenbeamte, den Bush bei seiner Amtsübernahme 2001 von seinem Vorgänger Bill Clinton übernahm.

Quelle (http://www2.bluewin.ch/news/index.php/international/news/20040603:brd101)

11 Monate :cool: .......

syr:sss

[syracus]

:hihi........

Friday, 11 June, 2004, 19:23 GMT 20:23 UK

Labour suffers election 'kicking'

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott admits voters have given Labour a "kicking" in protest at the Iraq war. With only a few local election results in England and Wales to come, Labour has lost 461 seats and eight councils, including Newcastle, Swansea and Leeds.

The Tories gained 259 seats and won Trafford and Tamworth. Charles Kennedy said Lib Dem gains proved the UK now really had three party politics.

But Labour was cheered by Ken Livingstone's election as London Mayor.

Turnout across England and Wales is running at 40%, up an average of 9% on last year - an increase not confined to the four regions piloting all-postal ballots.

In London Assembly elections there were falls for all three main parties - and relatively strong showings by George Galloway's Respect party (5%) and the UK Independence party (10%).

Tony Blair acknowledged Britain's role in the Iraq invasion had cast a "shadow" over the polls.

And Home Secretary David Blunkett told BBC Radio 4's Today: "I'm mortified that we're not doing better than we have done. We know it's been a bad night ... but not meltdown - no take off for the Conservatives."

Tony Blair's deputy John Prescott told BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show the war in Iraq was a crucial factor, but he insisted the general election would be fought on the battleground of public services.

"People like those policies," he said. "But they didn't judge this election on that. Iraq was a cloud, or indeed a shadow, over these elections.

"I am not saying we haven't had a kicking. It's not a great day for Labour."

The elections are the biggest test of voter opinion before the next general election but the final picture will not be clear until the European results appear on Sunday night.

So far about 161 out of the 166 councils holding elections have declared the results.

On the basis of voting in 500 key wards the BBC is projecting an equivalent national vote for the parties of Tories 38%, Lib Dems 29% and Labour 26%.

If correct it would be the first time a party in government has finished third in terms of national share of the vote in local elections.

It would give the Tories a result on a par with its local election results achieved under William Hague's leadership in 2000.

But the Tories point out that it looks like being their biggest lead over Labour since John Major won the 1992 election.

Labour has lost control of the former mining area of Bassetlaw for the first time since 1979, as well as suffering defeats in Burnley, Hastings, Oxford, Swansea, Doncaster and its traditional stronghold of St Helens.

It also lost Newcastle to the Liberal Democrats, ending 30 years of Labour control.

But the party won Stoke-on-Trent, tightened its grip on Barrow-in-Furness and, despite seat losses, held Manchester and Sheffield.

There was also a high-profile victory for Labour's Ken Livingstone in the race to be London Mayor, defeating the Tories' Steve Norris and the Lib Dems' Simon Hughes.

BBC political editor Andrew Marr predicted Mr Blair's critics on Labour's back benches would use the results to reopen discussion about his leadership of the party.

BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3796075.stm)

syr:rolleyes:

[syracus]

COUP D'ETAT:

The Real Reason Tenet and Pavitt Resigned from the
CIA on June 3rd and 4th

Bush, Cheney Indictments in Plame Case Looming

by
Michael C. Ruppert

additional reporting by
Wayne Madsen from Washington

JUNE 8, 2004 1600 PDT (FTW) - Why did DCI George Tenet suddenly resign on June 3rd, only to be followed a day later by James Pavitt, the CIA's Deputy Director of Operations (DDO)?

The real reasons, contrary to the saturation spin being put out by major news outlets, have nothing to do with Tenet's role as taking the fall for alleged 9/11 and Iraqi intelligence "failures" before the upcoming presidential election.

Both resignations, perhaps soon to be followed by resignations from Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, are about the imminent and extremely messy demise of George W. Bush and his Neocon administration in a coup d'etat being executed by the Central Intelligence Agency. The coup, in the planning for at least two years, has apparently become an urgent priority as a number of deepening crises threaten a global meltdown.

Based upon recent developments, it appears that long-standing plans and preparations leading to indictments and impeachment of Bush, Cheney and even some senior cabinet members have been accelerated, possibly with the intent of removing or replacing the entire Bush regime prior to the Republican National Convention this August.

FTW has been documenting this Watergate-like coup for more than fifteen months and almost everything we will discuss about recent events was predicted by us in the following pages: Please see our stories "The Perfect Storm - Part I" (March 2003); "Blood in the Water" (July 2003); "Beyond Bush - Part I" (July 2003); "Waxman Ties Evidentiary Noose Around Rice and Cheney" (July 2003); and "Beyond Bush - Part II" (October 2003).

There were two things we didn't get right. One was the timing. We predicted the developments taking place now as likely to happen after the November election, not before. Secondly, we did not foresee the sudden resignations of Tenet and Pavitt. Understanding the resignations is the key to understanding a deteriorating world scene and that America is on the precipice of a presidential and constitutional crisis that will ultimately dwarf the removal of Richard Nixon in 1974.

So why did Tenet and Pavitt resign? We'll explain why and we will provide many clues along the way as we make our case.

HIGH CRIMES AND REALLY STUPID MOVES

Shortly after the "surprise" Tenet-Pavitt resignations, current and former senior members of the U.S. intelligence community and the Justice Department told journalist Wayne Madsen, a former Naval intelligence officer, that they were directly connected to the criminal investigation of a 2003 White House leak that openly exposed Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA officer. What received less attention was that the leak also destroyed a long-term CIA proprietary intelligence gathering operation which, as we will see, was of immense importance to US strategic interests at a critical moment.

The leak was a vindictive retaliation for statements, reports and actions taken by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, which had deeply embarrassed the Bush administration and exposed it to possible charges for impeachable offenses, including lying to the American people about an alleged (and totally unfounded) nuclear threat posed by Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Conservative columnist Robert Novak, the beneficiary of the leak, immediately published it on July 14, 2003 and Valerie Plame's career (at least the covert part) instantly ended. The actual damage caused by that leak has never been fully appreciated.

Wilson deeply embarrassed almost every senior member of the Bush junta by proving to the world that they were consciously lying about one of their most important justifications for invading Iraq: namely, their claim to have had certain knowledge, based on "good and reliable" intelligence, that Hussein was on the brink of deploying a nuclear weapon, possibly inside the United States. It was eventually disclosed that the "intelligence" possessed by the administration was a set of poorly forged documents on letterhead from the government of Niger, which described attempts by Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium for a nuclear weapons program.

It has since been established by Scott Ritter and others that Iraq's nuclear weapons program had been dead in the water and non-functioning since the first Iraq war.

Wilson was secretly dispatched in February 2002, on instructions from Dick Cheney to the CIA, to go to Niger and look for anything that might support the material in the documents. They had already been dismissed as forgeries by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the CIA, and apparently everyone else who had seen them. The CIA cautioned the administration, more than once, against using them. Shortly thereafter, Wilson returned and gave his report stating clearly that the allegations were pure bunk and unsupportable.

In spite of this, unaware of the booby traps laid all around them, the entire power core of the Bush administration jumped on the Niger documents as on a battle horse and charged off into in a massive public relations blitz. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz and others - to varying degrees - insisted, testified, and swore that they knew, and had reliable, credible and verified intelligence that Saddam was about to deploy an actual nuclear device built from the Niger yellowcake.

It was full court media press and they successfully scared the pants off of most Americans who believed that Saddam was going to nuke them any second.

George Bush made the charge and actually cited the documents in his 2003 State-of-the-Union address, even after he had been cautioned by George Tenet not to rely on them. In a major speech at the United Nations, Colin Powell charged that Iraq was on the verge of deploying a nuke and had been trying to acquire uranium. Dick Cheney charged in several speeches that Saddam was capable of nuclear terror. And shortly before the invasion, when asked in a television interview whether there was sufficient proof and advance warning of the Iraqi nuclear threat, a smug and confident Condoleezza Rice quipped, "If we wait for a smoking gun, that smoking gun may be a mushroom cloud over an American city." Rice was lying through her teeth.

By July of 2003, as the Iraqi invasion was proving to be a protracted and ill-conceived debacle, executed in spite of massive resistance from within military, political, diplomatic and economic cadres, there was growing disgust within many government circles about the way the Bush administration was running things. The mention of Wilson's report came in July though his name was not disclosed. It suggested corroborative evidence of criminal, rather than stupid, behavior by the administration.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported:

A senior CIA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intelligence agency informed the White House on March 9, 2002 - 10 months before Bush's nationally televised speech - that an agency source who had traveled to Niger could not confirm European intelligence reports that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from the West African country.

Note the reference to an Agency source.

It was inevitable that Wilson would move from no comment, to statements given on condition of anonymity, and finally into the public spotlight. That he did, in a July 6th New York Times Editorial titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa." Soon he was giving interviews everywhere.

On July 14th Novak published the column outing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame. As a result, any criminal investigation of the Plame leak will also go into the Niger documents and any crimes committed which are materially related to Plame's exposure.

Instead of retreating, Wilson advanced. In Septmeber he went public, writing editorials and granting interviews which thoroughly exposed the Bush administration's criminal use of the documents, Cheney's lies about the mission, and all the other lies used to deceive the American people into war.

At the moment he went on the record, Wilson became another legally admissible, corroborative evidentiary source; a witness available for subpoena and deposition, ready to give testimony to the high crimes and misdemeanors he has witnessed.

First Clue: James Pavitt was Valerie Plame's boss. So was George Tenet.

HOW THE TRAP WAS SET

Conflicting news reports suggest that perhaps several sets of the documents were delivered simultaneously to several recipients. I could find only one news story (out of almost 60 I have reviewed) which indicated just when the Niger papers were first put into play. One of the most fundamental questions in journalism, "when?" was omitted from every major press organization's coverage except for a single story from the Associated Press on July 13th.

… [T]he forged Niger government documents, showing attempts by Iraq to purchase yellowcake, were delivered by unknown sources to a journalist working for Italy's Corriere della Sera which then gave them to the Italian intelligence service. She then reportedly gave them to Italian intelligence agents who gave them to the US embassy. Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker also offered this version indicating that the documents had surfaced in Italy in the fall of 2001.

The fall of 2001. That means that the documents were created no more than three and a half months after September 11th.

The earliest press report mentioning the documents was a March 7, 2003 story in The Financial Times. On that day, Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency reported to the UN Security Council that the documents were forgeries. The story contained a revealing paragraph.

"The allegation about the uranium purchase first surfaced in a UK government dossier published on September 24 last year about Iraq's alleged weapons programmes, though it did not name Niger. Niger was first named when the US State Department elaborated on the allegations on December 19 [2002]…

Canada's Globe and Mail reported on March 8, 2003:

…[T]he forgeries were sold to an Italian intelligence agent by a con man some time ago and passed on to French authorities, but the scam was uncovered by the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] only recently, according to United Nations sources familiar with the investigation. The documents were turned over to the IAEA several weeks ago.

"In fact, the IAEA says, there is no credible evidence that Iraq tried to import uranium ore from the Central African country in violation of UN resolutions.

"Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents, which formed the basis for the reports of these uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger, are, in fact, not authentic," Mr. El Baradei told the UN Security Council Friday….

The Chicago Tribune reported on March 13, 2003, "Forged documents that the United States used to build its case against Iraq were likely written by someone in Niger's embassy in Rome who hoped to make quick money, a source close to the United Nations investigation said.

The Washington Post gave yet a different story, also on March 8, 2003:

…Knowledgeable sources familiar with the forgery investigation described the faked evidence as a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger. The documents had been given to the U.N. inspectors by Britain and reviewed extensively by U.S. intelligence. The forgers had made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away - including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written, the officials said…"

…The CIA, which had also obtained the documents, had questions about "whether they were accurate," said one intelligence official, and it decided not to include them in its file on Iraq's program to procure weapons of mass destruction.

In a follow-up story on March 13th the Post reported:

It's something we're just beginning to look at," a senior law enforcement official said yesterday. Officials are trying to determine whether the documents were forged to try to influence U.S. policy, or whether they may have been created as part of a disinformation campaign directed by a foreign intelligence service...


…The phony documents - a series of letters between Iraqi and Niger officials showing Iraq's interest in equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons - came to British and U.S. intelligence officials from a third country. The identity of the third country could not be learned yesterday.

What if it wasn't a foreign intelligence service? I had been suspicious that a Watergate-like coup was forming immediately after reading the first few stories about the documents. I was convinced when the AP reported on March 14, 2003 (just days before the Iraqi invasion) that the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee had called for an FBI investigation of the documents' origins. The Boston Globe reported two days later that the Senator was specifically seeking to determine whether administration officials had forged the documents themselves to marshal support for the invasion.

The request was not nearly as significant to me as who it had come from - Jay Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Rockefellers. An oil dynasty was calling for an investigation of a bunch of oil men. Somebody was screwing up big time.

Seymour Hersh dropped a major bombshell that went virtually unnoticed, 54 paragraphs deep into an October 27, 2003 story for the New Yorker titled "The Stovepipe."

Who produced the fake Niger papers? There is nothing approaching a consensus on this question within the intelligence community. There has been published speculation about the intelligence services of several different countries. One theory, favored by some journalists in Rome, is that [the Italian intelligence service] Sismi produced the false documents and passed them to Panorama for publication.

"Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, 'Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.' He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves. [emphasis added]

Hersh's revelation provided corroboration for something I and others, like the renowned political historian Peter Dale Scott, had been suspecting for a long time. The CIA was fighting back. This was a well orchestrated, long-term covert operation - exactly what the CIA does all over the world.

POINT OF NO RETURN

Willing disclosure of the identity of a covert operative is a serious felony under Federal law, punishable by fine and/or imprisonment. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 makes it a crime for anyone with access to classified information to intentionally disclose information identifying a covert operative. The penalties get worse for doing it to a deep cover Direcorate of Operations (DO) case officer (as opposed to an undercover DEA Agent).

After John Ashcroft was forced to recuse himself from the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, was transferred to Washington and appointed special prosecutor in the Plame case.

Robert Novak, rightly standing by the journalistic code of ethics, has steadfastly refused to identify his White House source. We would do the same thing in his shoes. The investigation is nearing a climax with pending issuance of criminal indictments. Press reports citing sources close to the investigation have directly and indirectly pointed fingers at Dick Cheney and his Chief of Staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, as suspects.

Second clue: The criminal investigation of the Plame leak was investigated after a September 2003 formal request from the CIA, approved by George Tenet.

Not only was Plame's cover blown, so was that of her cover company, Brewster, Jennings & Associates. With the public exposure of Plame, intelligence agencies all over the world started searching data bases for any references to her (TIME Magazine). Damage control was immediate, as the CIA asserted that her mission had been connected to weapons of mass destruction.

However, it was not long before stories from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal tied Brewster, Jennings & Associates to energy, oil and the Saudi-owned Arabian American Oil Company, or ARAMCO. Brewster Jennings had been a founder of Mobil Oil company, one of Aramco's principal founders.

According to additional sources interviewed by Wayne Madsen, Brewster Jennings was, in fact, a well-established CIA proprietary company, linked for many years to ARAMCO. The demise of Brewster Jennings was also guaranteed the moment Plame was outed.

It takes years for Non-Official Covers or NOCs, as they are known, to become really effective. Over time, they become gradually more trusted; they work their way into deeper information access from more sensitive sources. NOCs are generally regarded in the community as among the best and most valuable of all CIA operations officers and the agency goes to great lengths to protect them in what are frequently very risky missions.


By definition, Valerie Plame was an NOC. Yet unlike all other NOCs who fear exposure and torture or death from hostile governments and individual targets who have been judged threats to the United States, she got done in by her own President, whom we also judge to be a domestic enemy of the United States.

Moreover, as we will see below, Valerie Plame may have been one of the most important NOCs the CIA had in the current climate. Let's look at just how valuable she was.

ARAMCO ;)

According to an April 29, 2002 report in Britain's Guardian, ARAMCO constitutes 12% of the world's total oil production; a figure which has certainly increased as other countries have progressed deeper into irreversible decline.

ARAMCO is the largest oil group in the world, a state-owned Saudi company in partnership with four major US oil companies. Another one of Aramco’s partners is Chevron-Texaco which gave up one of its board members, Condoleezza Rice, when she became the National Security Advisor to George Bush. All of ARAMCO’s key decisions are made by the Saudi royal family while US oil expertise, personnel and technology keeps the cash coming in and the oil going out. ARAMCO operates, manages, and maintains virtually all Saudi oil fields – 25% of all the oil on the planet.

It gets better.

According to a New York Times report on March 8th of this year, ARAMCO is planning to make a 25% investment in a new and badly needed refinery to produce gasoline. The remaining 75% ownership of the refinery will go to the only nation that is quickly becoming America's major world competitor for ever-diminishing supplies of oil: China.

Almost the entire Bush administration has an interest in ARAMCO.

The Boston Globe reported that in 2001 ARAMCO had signed a $140 million multi-year contract with Halliburton, then chaired by Dick Cheney, to develop a new oil field. Halliburton does a lot of business in Saudi Arabia. Current estimates of Halliburton contracts or joint ventures in the country run into the tens of billions of dollars.

So do the fortunes of some shady figures from the Bush family's past.

As recently as 1991 ARAMCO had Khalid bin Mahfouz sitting on its Supreme Council or board of directors. Mahfouz, Saudi Arabia's former treasurer and the nation's largest banker, has been reported in several places to be Osama bin Laden's brother in law. However, he has denied this and brought intense legal pressure to bear demanding retractions of these allegations. He has major partnership investments with the multi-billion dollar Binladin Group of companies and he is a former director of BCCI, the infamous criminal drug-money laundering bank which performed a number of very useful services for the CIA before its 1991 collapse under criminal investigation by a whole lot of countries.

As Saudi Arabia's largest banker he handles the accounts of the royal family and - no doubt - ARAMCO, while at the same time he is a named defendant in a $1 trillion lawsuit filed by 9/11 victim families against the Saudi government and prominent Saudi officials who, the suit alleges, were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

Both BCCI and Mahfouz have historical connections to the Bush family dating back to the 1980s. Another bank (one of many) connected to Mahfouz - the InterMaritime Bank - bailed out a cash-starved Harken Energy in 1987 with $25 million. After the rejuvenated Harken got a no-bid oil lease in 1991, CEO George W. Bush promptly sold his shares in a pump-and-dump scheme and made a whole lot of money.

Knowing all of this, there's really no good reason why the CIA should be too upset, is there? It was only a long-term proprietary and deep-cover NOC - well established and consistently producing "take" from ARAMCO (and who knows what else in Saudi Arabia). It was destroyed with a motive of personal vengeance (there may have been other motives) by someone inside the White House.

From the CIA's point of view, at a time when Saudi Arabia is one of the three or four countries of highest interest to the US, the Plame operation was irreplaceable.

Third clue: Tenet's resignation, which occurred at night, was the first "evening resignation" of a Cabinet-level official since October 1973 when Attorney General Elliott Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, resigned in protest of Richard Nixon's firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Many regard this as the watershed moment when the Nixon administration was doomed.

SAUDI ARABIA

Given that energy is becoming the most important issue on the planet today, if you were the CIA, you might be a little pissed off at the Plame leak. But there may be justification to do more than be angry. Anger happens all the time in Washington. This is something else.

One of the most important intelligence prizes today - especially after recent stories in major outlets like the New York Times reporting that Saudi oil production has peaked and gone into irreversible decline - would be to know of a certainty whether those reports are correct. The Saudis are denying it vehemently but they are being strongly refuted by an increasing amount of hard data. The truth remains unproven. But the mere possibility has set the world's financial markets on edge. Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi came to Washington on April 27th to put out the fires. It was imperative that he calm everybody's nerves as the markets were screaming, "Say it ain't so!"

Naimi said emphatically that there was nothing to worry about concerning either Saudi reserves or ARAMCO's ability to increase production. There was plenty of oil and no need for concern.

FTW covered and reported on that event. Writer and energy expert Julian Darley noted that there were some very important ears in the room, listening very closely. He also noted that Naimi's "scientific" data and promises of large future discoveries did not sit well many who are well versed in oil production and delivery.

[See FTW's June 2nd story, "Saudi's Missing Barrels" and our May 2003 story, "Paris Peak Oil Conference Reveals Deepening Crisis." In that story FTW editor Mike Ruppert was the first to report on credible new information that Saudi Arabia had possibly peaked.]

If anybody has the real data on Saudi fields it is either ARAMCO or the highest levels of the Saudi royal family.

The answer to the Saudi peak question will determine whether Saudi Arabia really can increase production quickly, as promised. If they can't, then the US economy is going to suffer bitterly, and it is certain that the Saudi monarchy will collapse into chaos. Then the nearby US military will occupy the oilfields and the U.S. will ultimately Balkanize the country by carving off the oil fields - which occupy only a small area near the East coast. That U.S. enclave would then provide sanctuary to the leading members of the royal family who will have agreed to keep their trillions invested in Wall Street so the US economy doesn't collapse.

So far the Saudis haven't had to prove that they could increase production due to convenient terror attacks at oil fields, and more "debates" within OPEC.

Fourth clue: Bush and Cheney have both hired or consulted private criminal defense attorneys in anticipation of possible indictments of them and/or their top assistants in the Plame investigation. On June 3, just hours before Tenet suddenly resigned, President Bush consulted with and may have retained a criminal defense attorney to represent him in the Plame case.

According to various press reports Bush has either retained or consulted with powerhouse attorney Jim Sharp, who represented Iran-contra figure retired Air Force Major General Richard Secord; Enron's Ken Lay; and Watergate co-conspirator Jeb Stuart Magruder. All three were facing criminal rather than civil charges. Either way, a clear signal has been sent that Bush expects to be either called to testify (which was a precursor in Watergate to a criminal indictment of Richard Nixon) or be named as a defendant. Either way, the President's men are falling faster than their counterparts fell in Watergate, and the initial targets are much higher up the food chain.

Cheney's attorney is Terrence O'Donnell, a partner of the Williams and Connolly law firm. O'Donnell worked for then White House chief of staff Cheney in the Ford administration and as General Counsel for the Pentagon when Cheney was Defense Secretary under the first President Bush. He has been representing the Vice President in criminal and civil cases involving Cheney's chairmanship of Halliburton. These include a Justice Department investigation of Halliburton for alleged payment of bribes to Nigerian political leaders and a stockholders' fraud law suit against Halliburton. O'Donnell also represented former CIA director John Deutch when he was accused of violating national security by taking his CIA computer home and surfing the Internet while it contained hundreds of highly-classified intelligence documents.

SPRINGING THE TRAP

Now, seemingly all of a sudden, Bush and Cheney are in the crosshairs. Cheney has been questioned by Fitzgerald within the last week.

The CIA Director's job by definition, whether others like it or not, is to be able to go to his President and advise him of the real scientific data on foreign resources (especially oil); to warn him of pending instability in a country closely linked to the US economy; and to tell him what to plan for and what to promise politically in his foreign policy. In light of her position in the CIA's relationship with Saudi Aramco, the outing of Valerie Plame made much of this impossible. In short, the Bush leak threatened National Security.

Former White House Counsel and Watergate figure John Dean, writing for the prestigious legal website findlaw.com on June 4th made some very ominous observations that appear to have gone unnoticed by most.

This action by Bush is a rather stunning and extraordinary development. The President of the United States is potentially hiring a private criminal defense lawyer. Unsurprisingly, the White House is doing all it can to bury the story, providing precious little detail or context for the President's action…

…But from what I have learned from those who have been quizzed by the Fitzgerald investigators it seems unlikely that they are interviewing the President merely as a matter of completeness, or in order to be able to defend their actions in front of the public. Asking a President to testify - or even be interviewed - remains a serious, sensitive and rare occasion. It is not done lightly. Doing so raises separation of powers concerns that continue to worry many…

…If so - and if the person revealed the leaker's identity to the President, or if the President decided he preferred not to know the leaker's identity. - Then this fact could conflict with Bush's remarkably broad public statements on the issue. He has said that he did not know of "anybody in [his] administration who leaked classified information." He has also said that he wanted "to know the truth" about this leak.

If Bush is called before the grand jury, it is likely because Fitzgerald believes that he knows much more about this leak than he has stated publicly.

Perhaps Bush may have knowledge not only of the leaker, but also of efforts to make this issue go away - if indeed there have been any. It is remarkably easy to obstruct justice, and this matter has been under various phases of an investigation by the Justice Department since it was referred by the CIA last summer…

…On this subject, I spoke with an experienced former federal prosecutor who works in Washington, specializing in white collar criminal defense (but who does not know Sharp). That attorney told me that he is baffled by Bush's move - unless Bush has knowledge of the leak. "It would not seem that the President needs to consult personal counsel, thereby preserving the attorney-client privilege, if he has no knowledge about the leak," he told me.

What advice might Bush get from a private defense counsel? The lawyer I consulted opined that, "If he does have knowledge about the leak and does not plan to disclose it, the only good legal advice would be to take the Fifth, rather than lie. The political fallout is a separate issue."

I raised the issue of whether the President might be able to invoke executive privilege as to this information. But the attorney I consulted - who is well versed in this area of law - opined that "Neither 'outing' Plame, nor covering for the perpetrators would seem to fall within the scope of any executive privilege that I am aware of."

That may not stop Bush from trying to invoke executive privilege, however - or at least from talking to his attorney about the option. As I have discussed in one of my prior columns, Vice President Dick Cheney has tried to avoid invoking it in implausible circumstances - in the case that is now before the U.S .Supreme Court. Rather he claims he is beyond the need for the privilege, and simply cannot be sued. [Emphasis added]

Suffice it to say that whatever the meaning of Bush's decision to talk with private counsel about the Valerie Plame leak, the matter has taken a more ominous turn with Bush's action. It has only become more portentous because now Dick Cheney has also hired a lawyer for himself, suggesting both men may have known more than they let on. Clearly, the investigation is heading toward a culmination of some sort. And it should be interesting.

Last and final clue: Under Executive Privilege, a principle intended to protect the constitutional separation of powers, officials in the Executive Branch cannot give testimony in a legal case against a sitting President. The Bush administration has invoked or threatened to invoke the privilege several times. Dick did it over the secret records of his energy task force and George Bush tried to use it to prevent Condoleezza Rice from testifying before the "Independent" Commission investigating September 11th.

Former officials of the Executive Branch are, however, free to testify if they are no longer holding a government office when subpoenaed or when the charges are brought.

[To learn more about Executive Privilege visit www.findlaw.com]

The Bush administration has proved itself to be an insular group of inept, dishonest and dangerous CEO's of the corporation known as America. They have become very bad for business and the Board of Directors is now taking action. Make no mistake, the CIA works for "The Board" - Wall Street and big money. The long-term (very corrupt and unethical) agenda of the Board, in the face of multiple worsening global crises, was intended to proceed far beyond the initially destructive war in Iraq, toward an effective reconstruction and a strategic response to Peak Oil. But the neocons have stalled at the ugly stage: killing hundreds of thousands of people; destroying Iraq's industrial and cultural infrastructure as their own bombs and other people's RPGs blow everything up; getting caught running torture camps; and making the whole world intensely dislike America.

These jerks are doing real damage to their masters' interests.

But (not surprisingly) Tenet and the CIA were and remain much better at covert operations and planning ahead than the Bush administration ever was. Tenet and Pavitt actually prepared and left a clear, irrefutable and incriminating paper trail which not only proves that they had shunned and refused to endorse the documents, the CIA also did not support the nuke charges and warned Bush not to use them.

Where are those documents now? They're part of the Justice Department Plame investigation - and they're also in the hands of the Congressman who will most likely introduce and manage the articles of impeachment, if that becomes necessary: Henry Waxman (D), of California. If you would like to see how tightly the legal trap has been prepared, and how carefully the evidence has been laid out, I suggest taking a look around Waxman's web site at: http://www.house.gov/waxman/.


THE SWARM

There are a multitude of signs that the Bush administration is being "swarmed" in what is becoming a feeding frenzy as opposition is surfacing from many places inside the government, including the military. The signs are not hard to find.

The June 3rd issue of Capitol Hill Blue, the newspaper published for members of Congress, bore the headline "Bush Knew About Leak of CIA Operative's Name". That article virtually guaranteed that the Plame investigation had enough to pursue Bush criminally. The story's lead sentence described a criminal, prosecutable offense: "Witnesses told a federal grand jury President George W. Bush knew about, and took no action to stop, the release of a covert CIA operative's name to a journalist in an attempt to discredit her husband, a critic of administration policy in Iraq."

A day later, on June 4th Capitol Hill Blue took another hard shot at the administration. Titled "Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides", the story's first four paragraphs say everything.

President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader's state of mind.

In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies of the state."

Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

"It reminds me of the Nixon days," says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. "Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That's the mood over there."

The attacks have not stopped. On June 8th, the same paper followed with another story headlined, "Lawyers Told Bush He Could Order Suspects Tortured".

Journalist Wayne Madsen, a Washington veteran with excellent access to many sources has indicated for this story that the Neocons have few remaining friends anywhere. All of this is consistent with a CIA-led coup.

Ahmed Chalabi

Madsen reported that the Plame probe comes amid another high-level probe of Pentagon officials for leaking classified National Security Agency cryptologic information to Iran via Iraqi National Congress head Ahmed Chalabi. FBI agents have polygraphed and interviewed a number of civilian political appointees in the Pentagon in relation to the intelligence leak, said to have severely disrupted the National Security Agency's ability to listen in on encrypted Iranian diplomatic and intelligence communications.

Chalabi's leak has once again forced Iran to change equipment, resulting in impaired U.S. intelligence gathering of Iran's sensitive communications. The probe into the Chalabi leak is centering on Pentagon officials who have been close to Chalabi, including Office of Net Assessment official Harold Rhode, Director of Policy and Plans officials Douglas Feith and William Luti, Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. In addition, some former Pentagon advisers are also targeted in the probe.

Many press reports throughout 2003 indicated that Chalabi, distrusted and virtually discarded by the CIA, had been resurrected and inserted into the Iraqi political mix on the orders of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the other Neocons listed above.

Abu Ghraib and Torture

A former CIA official told Madsen that between the Plame leak and the Abu Ghraib torture affair, the Bush administration is facing something that will be "worse than Watergate."

PLANNING FOR SUCCESSION

If both Bush and Cheney are removed or resign, what happens? Madsen reported that lobbyists and political consultants in Washington are dusting off their copies of the Constitution and checking the line of presidential succession.

One lobbyist said he will soon pay a call on Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens, who, as President pro tem of the Senate, is second in line to House Speaker Dennis Hastert to become President in the event Bush and Cheney both go.

It is one of the greatest ironies of the Plame affair that the Bush administration, spawned and nurtured by oil, might have committed suicide by vindictively, cruelly and unthinkingly exacting personal retribution on an intelligence officer who had committed no offense, and who was, quite possibly, providing the administration with critical oil-related intelligence which the President needed to manage our shaky economy and affairs of state for a while longer to squeak through to re-election. In our opinion, nothing better epitomizes the true nature of the Neocons.

That being said, they have to go. FTW wishes that it was as certain that what will come after them will be better.

© Copyright 2004, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.

www.fromthewilderness.com (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/060804_coup_detat.html)

syr :schaf:

[syracus]

Mittwoch, 16. Juni 2004

11. September: Irak nicht involviert

Der Irak und al-Qaida haben nach Aussagen der US-Untersuchungskommission zum 11. September nicht zusammengearbeitet.

Bin Laden habe zwar in den 90er Jahren die Möglichkeit einer Kollaboration mit dem damaligen Regime von Saddam Hussein sondiert, ihm sei aber die kalte Schulter gezeigt worden, heisst es in einem vorläufigen Ermittlungsbericht der unabhängigen Kommission.

Die Erkenntnisse stehen im krassen Widerspruch zu wiederholten Angaben der US-Regierung über eine angebliche Verbindung zwischen dem Irak und dem al-Qaida-Terrornetzwerk von Osama bin Laden. Erst vor wenigen Tagen hatte US-Vizepräsident Richard Cheney erneut von einer Zusammenarbeit zwischen beiden Seiten gesprochen. :rofl

Der vom Kongress eingesetzte Ausschuss soll untersuchen, ob die Anschläge vom 11. September 2001 hätten verhindert werden können und welche Lehren für die Zukunft zu ziehen sind. Das Gremium trat am Mittwoch in Washington zu einer zweitägigen Anhörung zusammen, der letzten vor der Veröffentlichung seines Abschlussberichts Ende Juli.

In dem vorläufigen Report zur Geschichte und Rolle der al-Qaida bei verschiedenen Anschlägen heisst es im einzelnen, der Sudan habe Kontakte zwischen Bin Laden und dem Irak arrangiert, um seine eigenen Verbindungen zu Bagdad zu fördern. 1994 sei es zu einem Treffen zwischen Bin Laden und einem hochrangigen irakischen Geheimdienstbeamten gekommen.

Bin Laden habe dabei dem Vernehmen nach einen Vorstoss zur Einrichtung von Terroristen-Ausbildungslagern unternommen. «Aber der Irak hat anscheinend niemals geantwortet», heisst es in dem Report. Insgesamt gebe es keine glaubwürdigen Beweise dafür, dass der Irak und al-Qaida bei Anschlägen gegen die USA kooperiert hätten.

Der Bericht geht ausserdem auf die frühere Rolle Pakistans bei der Hilfe für al-Qaida ein. Mit seiner Unterstützung für die Taliban-Regierung im benachbarten Afghanistan habe Pakistan dazu beigetragen, dass dort ein Zufluchtsort für die Organisation Bin Ladens geschaffen worden sei.

Pakistan habe von der Verbindung zwischen den Taliban und al-Qaida profitiert, da in den Trainingslagern Bin Ladens Kämpfer für den pakistanischen Konflikt mit Indien um die Kaschmir-Region ausgebildet worden seien. Seine Verbindungen zu den Taliban habe Pakistan erst nach den Anschlägen des 11. September abgebrochen.

Wie weiter bekannt wurde, hat der Ausschuss bei seinen Ermittlungen herausgefunden, dass die US-Luftverteidigung auf die Anschläge vom 11. September «katastrophal schlecht» vorbereitet war. Das geht nach Medienberichten aus einem weiteren vorläufigen Bericht hervor, der im Zuge der letzten Anhörung veröffentlicht werden sollte.

Sie habe nur langsam und konfus auf die Entführung der vier Passagierflugzeuge am 11. September reagiert, heisst es weiter. Ein nach den beiden Flugzeuganschlägen auf das World Trade Center in New York erlassener Befehl von Vizepräsident Richard Cheney, entführte Maschinen abzuschiessen, habe die Piloten der US- Kampfjets nicht erreicht. (lbl/sda)

Quelle (http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/dyn/news/ausland/386854.html)

syr :D:D

[syracus]

Show Us the Proof

Published: June 19, 2004

When the commission studying the 9/11 terrorist attacks refuted the Bush administration's claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, we suggested that President Bush apologize for using these claims to help win Americans' support for the invasion of Iraq. We did not really expect that to happen. But we were surprised by the depth and ferocity of the administration's capacity for denial. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have not only brushed aside the panel's findings and questioned its expertise, but they are also trying to rewrite history.

Mr. Bush said the 9/11 panel had actually confirmed his contention that there were "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said his administration had never connected Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Both statements are wrong.

Before the war, Mr. Bush spoke of far more than vague "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said Iraq had provided Al Qaeda with weapons training, bomb-making expertise and a base in Iraq. On Feb. 8, 2003, Mr. Bush said that "an Al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990's for help in acquiring poisons and gases." The 9/11 panel's report, as well as news articles, indicate that these things never happened.

Mr. Cheney said yesterday that the "evidence is overwhelming" of an Iraq-Qaeda axis and that there had been a "whole series of high-level contacts" between them. The 9/11 panel said a senior Iraqi intelligence officer made three visits to Sudan in the early 1990's, meeting with Osama bin Laden once in 1994. It said Osama bin Laden had asked for "space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded." The panel cited reports of further contacts after Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, but said there was no working relationship. As far as the public record is concerned, then, Mr. Cheney's "longstanding ties" amount to one confirmed meeting, after which the Iraq government did not help Al Qaeda. By those standards, the United States has longstanding ties to North Korea.

Mr. Bush has also used a terrorist named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Mr. Bush used to refer to Mr. Zarqawi as a "senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner" who was in Baghdad working with the Iraqi government. But the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, told the Senate earlier this year that Mr. Zarqawi did not work with the Hussein regime, nor under the direction of Al Qaeda.

When it comes to 9/11, someone in the Bush administration has indeed drawn the connection to Iraq: the vice president. Mr. Cheney has repeatedly referred to reports that Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent. He told Tim Russert of NBC on Dec. 9, 2001, that this report has "been pretty well confirmed." If so, no one seems to have informed the C.I.A., the Czech government or the 9/11 commission, which said it did not appear to be true. Yet Mr. Cheney cited it, again, on Thursday night on CNBC.

Mr. Cheney said he had lots of documents to prove his claims. We have heard that before, but Mr. Cheney always seems too pressed for time or too concerned about secrets to share them. Last September, Mr. Cheney's adviser, Mary Matalin, explained to The Washington Post that Mr. Cheney had access to lots of secret stuff. She said he had to "tiptoe through the land mines of what's sayable and not sayable" to the public, but that "his job is to connect the dots."

The message, if we hear it properly, is that when it comes to this critical issue, the vice president is not prepared to offer any evidence beyond the flimsy-to-nonexistent arguments he has used in the past, but he wants us to trust him when he says there's more behind the screen. So far, when it comes to Iraq, blind faith in this administration has been a losing strategy.


Quelle (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/19/opinion/19SAT1.html?ex=1088222400&?en=22ba731e1d686bd1&?ei=5062&?partner=GOOGLE)

syr :D

[syracus]

Dienstag, 22. Juni 2004

Bush verliert an Boden

Die anhaltende Gewalt in Irak setzt US-Präsident George W. Bush in den jüngsten Umfragen, fünf Monate vor den Wahlen, zu. Bushs demokratischer Herausforderer John Kerry liegt demnach mit 48 Prozent vier Punkte vor dem amtierenden Präsidenten.

Dies ergab eine heute veröffentlichte Umfrage der «Washington Post» und des Senders ABC. Bei der Befragung vor einem Monat lagen die beiden noch Kopf an Kopf.

Auch beim Thema Antiterrorkampf büsste Bush seinen Vorsprung gegenüber Kerry ein. 48 Prozent der 1200 Befragten vertrauten Kerry eher, mit der Terrorbedrohung fertig zu werden. Busn erhielt dabei 47 Prozent. Im April hatte Bush noch 21 Prozentpunkte Vorsprung. 52 Prozent hielten Kerry für ehrlicher und vertrauenswürdiger, 39 sprachen sich für Bush aus.

In der Innenpolitik profitierte Bush von den starken Konjunkturdaten: 46 Prozent der Befragten beurteilten seine Wirtschaftspolitik positiv, sieben Prozent mehr als im März. (ben/sda)

Quelle (http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/dyn/news/ausland/388712.html)

Waterloo 2004 :gusa. Alles wird gut :p.......

syr

[syracus]

Report: CIA Gave False Info on Iraq


By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The key U.S. assertions leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq — that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was working to make nuclear weapons — were wrong and based on false or overstated CIA analyses, a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report asserted Friday.

Intelligence analysts fell victim to "group think" assumptions that Iraq had weapons that it did not, concluded a bipartisan report. Many factors contributing to those failures are ongoing problems within the U.S. intelligence community — which cannot be fixed with more money alone, it said.

Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who heads the committee, told reporters that assessments that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and could make a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade were wrong.

"As the report will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence," he said.

"This was a global intelligence failure."

The committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said: "Tragically, the intelligence failures set forth in this report will affect our national security for generations to come. Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in the world has never been lower. We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before."

The report repeatedly blasts departing CIA Director George Tenet, accusing him of skewing advice to top policy-makers with the CIA's view and elbowing out dissenting views from other intelligence agencies overseen by the State or Defense departments. It faulted Tenet for not personally reviewing Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, which contained since-discredited references to Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium in Africa.

White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, traveling with President Bush on a campaign trip Friday, said the committee's report essentially "agrees with what we have said, which is we need to take steps to continue strengthening and reforming our intelligence capabilities so we are prepared to meet the new threats that we face in this day and age."

Tenet has resigned and leaves office Sunday.

Intelligence analysts worked from the assumption that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was seeking to make more, as well as trying to revive a nuclear weapons program. Instead, investigations after the Iraq invasion have shown that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program and no biological weapons, and only small amounts of chemical weapons have been found.

Analysts ignored or discounted conflicting information because of their assumptions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the report said.

"This 'group think' dynamic led Intelligence Community analysts, collectors and managers to both interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD program as well as ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction programs," the report concluded.

Such assumptions also led analysts to inflate snippets of questionable information into broad declarations that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, the report said.

For example, speculation that the presence of one specialized truck could mean an effort to transfer chemical weapons was puffed up into a conclusion that Iraq was actively making chemical weapons, the report said.

Analysts also concluded that Iraq had a mobile biological weapons program based mainly on the since-discredited claims of one Iraqi defector code-named "Curve Ball," it said. American agents did not have direct access to Curve Ball or his debriefers, but the source's information was expanded into the conclusion that Iraq had an advanced and active biological weapons program, the report said.

Quelle (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=512&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20040709/ap_on_go_co/senate_intelligence_report)

syr :rolleyes:

[syracus]

:sss

[syracus]

As rationales for war erode, issue of blame looms large
ANALYSIS
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By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus
July 09, 2004

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Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Vice Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., holds a copy of the committee's report on pre-Iraq war intelligence failures released Friday.

Yesterday's report by the Senate intelligence committee left in shreds two of the Bush administration's main rationales for the war in Iraq: that Iraq had illicit weapons and that it cooperated with al Qaeda.

The conclusions are not earthshaking by themselves. Although President Bush and Vice President Cheney have not abandoned either rationale, both were already tattered after similar doubts were voiced over many months by U.S. weapons inspectors in Iraq, the commission probing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, CIA officials and others.

The larger question is whether voters will blame the White House for these two massive mistakes. Though officially agnostic on the White House role in using Iraq intelligence (that will come in a later report), the committee gives ammunition both to Bush and Democratic opponent John F. Kerry.

Panel condemns Iraq pre-war intelligence

On the question of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the bipartisan committee report absolved administration officials of pressuring CIA analysts to inflate the case against Hussein. And while making no judgment on whether the administration distorted the intelligence it was given, the committee made plain that the CIA's case against Iraq was plenty exaggerated on its own. Without "any evidence" of administration coercion, the committee found, the intelligence community's judgments on Iraq's weapons were "either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting."

On the issue of Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda, however, the committee's findings imply that the White House, not the CIA, is to blame for making dubious claims that there were working ties between Osama bin Laden's organization and Hussein's Iraq. "The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship," the committee found, echoing the Sept. 11 commission staff's finding of no "collaborative relationship" between the two.

"The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al-Qaeda attack was reasonable and objective," the committee found. "No additional information has emerged to suggest otherwise." Likewise, the report concluded: "No information has emerged thus far to suggest that Saddam did try to employ al-Qaeda in conducting terrorist attacks."

'The buck stops at the White House'

The undermining of the administration's case for war is potentially a grave threat to Bush, whose reelection prospects are closely tied to Americans' view of the merits of the Iraq war and whether it advances the fight against terrorism. For that reason, Bush has delayed a final reckoning on Iraq's forbidden weapons by naming a commission that will not report its findings until after the election. In the meantime, he continues to assert ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, and to place blame for any weapons miscalculation squarely on the CIA.

In that vein, Bush blessed the committee's work yesterday. "The idea that the Senate has taken a hard look to find out where the intelligence-gathering services went short is good and positive," he said in Pennsylvania, acknowledging "some failures" in the intelligence. "We thought there was going to be stockpiles of weapons," he said. "I thought so; the Congress thought so; the U.N. thought so. I'll tell you what we do know. Saddam Hussein had the capacity to make weapons."

Bush's distancing of himself from the flawed allegations may well be aided by the departure this week of CIA Director George J. Tenet, who was criticized in the Senate report for not always being informed about dissenting views when he met almost daily with Bush.

Democrats, in turn, are determined not to let Bush avoid blame. Even before the report came out, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) sent out a press release saying the administration asserted Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration that the CIA doubted. Yesterday, the Kerry campaign issued a statement saying: "Nothing in this report absolves the White House of its responsibility for mishandling of the country's intelligence. The fact is that when it comes to national security, the buck stops at the White House, not anywhere else."

A senior intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity agreed with that logic yesterday, saying the CIA's assertions, whatever their accuracy, did not in themselves justify going to war; the agency made no recommendation on this. "Policymakers should not be immune from the decision on what to do," the official said.

Controversy will continue

In an early indication of political debates to come, the Senate panel's Republican chairman yesterday emphasized the findings that left the White House blameless, while the Democratic vice chairman emphasized that the CIA was right to dismiss the notion of al Qaeda ties to Iraq.

"Before the war, the U.S. intelligence community told the president, as well as the Congress and the public, that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and if left unchecked, would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade," Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said in summarizing the report. "Well, today we know these assessments were wrong, and as our inquiry will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence."

Vice Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va.) found a different point of emphasis. "Our report found that the intelligence community's judgments were right on Iraq's ties to terrorists, which is another way of saying that the administration's conclusions were wrong, and that is, of the relationship, the formal relationship, however you want to describe it, between Iraq and al Qaeda," he said.

Rockefeller continued to assert yesterday there was administration "pressure" on the CIA, although he endorsed the bipartisan committee report stating otherwise. The report, while stating that no intelligence analysts said they felt pressured to change their conclusions, found "tremendous pressure" to avoid missing a potential threat. That made the CIA "purposefully aggressive," as the agency described it, in drawing potential links between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Whatever the source of that pressure, the committee's finding yesterday casting more doubt on an al Qaeda-Iraq link make it likely the controversy will continue through the election. The committee labeled as "accurate" the CIA's prediction that Hussein would rely on his own operatives to conduct attacks.

Even yesterday, after the committee report, Bush said Hussein's Iraq provided a safe haven for an "al Qaeda affiliate." Bush has previously described Hussein as "an ally of al Qaeda" and asserted that Iraq "provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."

Cheney last month said: "There clearly was a relationship. It's been testified to; the evidence is overwhelming."

Cheney's office yesterday pointed to the committee's findings that the CIA was rightly concerned about "reports of training" in chemical and biological weapons and was reasonable to believe "al Qaeda or associated operatives" were in Iraq. A spokesman said the committee findings are consistent with administration claims.

Quelle (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5406576)

alles kommt, wie es kommen muss, ist immer nur eine Frage der Zeit :gusa.......

syr:sss

[syracus]

Sonntag, 11. Juli 2004

Kerry wirft Bush Täuschung und Machtmissbrauch vor Irak-Krieg vor

WASHINGTON - Einen Tag nach der Veröffentlichung eines kritischen US-Senatsbericht über Fehler des Geheimdienstes CIA hat der demokratische US-Präsidentschaftskandidat John Kerry Präsident George W. Bush Täuschung und Machtmissbrauch vorgeworfen.

In einem Interview mit der Zeitung "New York Times" wirft Kerry Bush vor, die Öffentlichkeit in den USA über angebliche irakische Massenvernichtungswaffen und die Verbindungen der Machthaber in Bagdad mit dem Terrornetzwerk El Kaida "in die Irre geführt" zu haben.

Kerry betonte, dass der Präsident und weniger die Geheimdienste oder das US-Verteidigungsministerium verantwortlich seien.

Vor dem Krieg hatten die USA und ihr engster Verbündeter Grossbritannien angebliche irakische Massenvernichtungswaffen als einen der Hauptgründe für die Invasion genannt. Bislang sind keine dieser Massenvernichtungswaffen gefunden worden.

Zu seiner eigenen Rolle im Vorfeld des Iraks-Kriegs sagte Kerry, er habe auf der Grundlage der Informationen für den Krieg gestimmt, die dem Kongress damals vorgelegen hätten. Der Kongress hatte Bush Ende 2002 grünes Licht gegeben.

Der US-Senat hatte dem Geheimdienst CIA in einem am Freitag veröffentlichten Bericht gravierende Fehleinschätzungen der irakischen Waffenarsenale im Vorfeld des Krieges vorgeworfen.

Quelle (http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/dyn/news/newsticker/394828.html)

Bush's toast :sss........

syr

[syracus]

A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic

Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story


By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 9, 2006; A01


As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.

Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Cheney, in a conversation with Libby in early July 2003, was said to describe Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger the previous year -- in which the envoy found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there -- as "a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife," CIA case officer Valerie Plame.

Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for denying under oath that he disclosed Plame's CIA employment to journalists. There is no public evidence to suggest Libby made any such disclosure with Cheney's knowledge. But according to Libby's grand jury testimony, described for the first time in legal papers filed this week, Cheney "specifically directed" Libby in late June or early July 2003 to pass information to reporters from two classified CIA documents: an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and a March 2002 summary of Wilson's visit to Niger.

One striking feature of that decision -- unremarked until now, in part because Fitzgerald did not mention it -- is that the evidence Cheney and Libby selected to share with reporters had been disproved months before.

United Nations inspectors had exposed the main evidence for the uranium charge as crude forgeries in March 2003, but the Bush administration and British Prime Minister Tony Blair maintained they had additional, secret evidence they could not disclose. In June, a British parliamentary inquiry concluded otherwise, delivering a scathing critique of Blair's role in promoting the story. With no ally left, the White House debated whether to abandon the uranium claim and became embroiled in bitter finger-pointing about whom to fault for the error. A legal brief filed for Libby last month said that "certain officials at the CIA, the White House, and the State Department each sought to avoid or assign blame for intelligence failures relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

It was at that moment that Libby, allegedly at Cheney's direction, sought out at least three reporters to bolster the discredited uranium allegation. Libby made careful selections of language from the 2002 estimate, quoting a passage that said Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure uranium" in Africa.

The first of those conversations, according to the evidence made known thus far, came when Libby met with Bob Woodward, an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, on June 27, 2003. In sworn testimony for Fitzgerald, according to a statement Woodward released on Nov. 14, 2005, Woodward said Libby told him of the intelligence estimate's description of Iraqi efforts to obtain "yellowcake," a processed form of natural uranium ore, in Africa. In an interview Friday, Woodward said his notes showed that Libby described those efforts as "vigorous."

Libby's next known meeting with a reporter, according to Fitzgerald's legal filing, was with Judith Miller, then of the New York Times, on July 8, 2003. He spoke again to Miller, and to Time magazine's Matt Cooper, on July 12.

At Cheney's instruction, Libby testified, he told Miller that the uranium story was a "key judgment" of the intelligence estimate, a term of art indicating there was consensus on a question of central importance.

In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key judgments, which were identified by a headline and bold type and set out in bullet form in the first five pages of the 96-page document.

Unknown to the reporters, the uranium claim lay deeper inside the estimate, where it said a fresh supply of uranium ore would "shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons." But it also said U.S. intelligence did not know the status of Iraq's procurement efforts, "cannot confirm" any success and had "inconclusive" evidence about Iraq's domestic uranium operations.

Iraq's alleged uranium shopping had been strongly disputed in the intelligence community from the start. In a closed Senate hearing in late September 2002, shortly before the October NIE was completed, then-director of central intelligence George J. Tenet and his top weapons analyst, Robert Walpole, expressed strong doubts about the uranium story, which had recently been unveiled publicly by the British government. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, likewise, called the claim "highly dubious." For those reasons, the uranium story was relegated to a brief inside passage in the October estimate.

But the White House Iraq Group, formed in August 2002 to foster "public education" about Iraq's "grave and gathering danger" to the United States, repeatedly pitched the uranium story. The alleged procurement was a minor issue for most U.S. analysts -- the hard part for Iraq would be enriching uranium, not obtaining the ore, and Niger's controlled market made it an unlikely seller -- but the Niger story proved irresistible to speechwriters. Most nuclear arguments were highly technical, but the public could easily grasp the link between uranium and a bomb.

Tenet interceded to keep the claim out of a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, but by Dec. 19 it reappeared in a State Department "fact sheet." After that, the Pentagon asked for an authoritative judgment from the National Intelligence Council, the senior coordinating body for the 15 agencies that then constituted the U.S. intelligence community. Did Iraq and Niger discuss a uranium sale, or not? If they had, the Pentagon would need to reconsider its ties with Niger.

The council's reply, drafted in a January 2003 memo by the national intelligence officer for Africa, was unequivocal: The Niger story was baseless and should be laid to rest. Four U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge said in interviews that the memo, which has not been reported before, arrived at the White House as Bush and his highest-ranking advisers made the uranium story a centerpiece of their case for the rapidly approaching war against Iraq.

Bush put his prestige behind the uranium story in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address. Less than two months later, the International Atomic Energy Agency exposed the principal U.S. evidence as bogus. A Bush-appointed commission later concluded that the evidence, a set of contracts and correspondence sold by an Italian informant, was "transparently forged."

On the ground in Iraq, meanwhile, the hunt for weapons of mass destruction was producing no results, and as the bad news converged on the White House -- weeks after a banner behind Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln -- Wilson emerged as a key critic. He focused his ire on Cheney, who had made the administration's earliest and strongest claims about Iraq's alleged nuclear program.

Fitzgerald wrote that Cheney and his aides saw Wilson as a threat to "the credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq." They decided to respond by implying that Wilson got his CIA assignment by "nepotism."

They were not alone. Fitzgerald reported for the first time this week that "multiple officials in the White House"-- not only Libby and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who have previously been identified -- discussed Plame's CIA employment with reporters before and after publication of her name on July 14, 2003, in a column by Robert D. Novak. Fitzgerald said the grand jury has collected so much testimony and so many documents that "it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish' Wilson."

At the same time, top officials such as then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley were pressing the CIA to declassify more documents in hopes of defending the president's use of the uranium claim in his State of the Union speech. It was a losing battle. A "senior Bush administration official," speaking on the condition of anonymity as the president departed for Africa on July 7, 2003, told The Post that "the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech." The comment appeared on the front page of the July 8 paper, the same morning that Libby met Miller at the St. Regis hotel.

Libby was still defending the uranium claim as the administration's internal battle burst into the open. White House officials tried to blame Tenet for the debacle, but Tenet made public his intervention to keep uranium out of Bush's speech a few months earlier. Hadley then acknowledged that he had known of Tenet's objections but forgot them as the State of the Union approached.

Hoping to lay the controversy to rest, Hadley claimed responsibility for the Niger remarks.

In a speech two days later, at the American Enterprise Institute, Cheney defended the war by saying that no responsible leader could ignore the evidence in the NIE. Before a roomful of conservative policymakers, Cheney listed four of the "key judgments" on Iraq's alleged weapons capabilities but made no mention of Niger or uranium.

On July 30, 2003, two senior intelligence officials said in an interview that Niger was never an important part of the CIA's analysis, and that the language of Iraq's vigorous pursuit of uranium came verbatim from a Defense Intelligence Agency report that had caught the vice president's attention. The same day, the CIA referred the Plame leak to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, the fateful step that would eventually lead to Libby's indictment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040800916_pf.html

:D

[syracus]

08. September 2006

Bericht des US-Senats

Vernichtendes Urteil über Bushs Begründung für Irak-Krieg

400 Seiten dick ist der Bericht des US-Senats. Sein Inhalt ist eine schallende Ohrfeige für US-Präsident Bush: Für einen der Hauptgründe des Irak-Kriegs - eine Verbindung zwischen Diktator Saddam und dem Terrornetzwerk al-Qaida - gibt es demnach keinerlei Hinweise. Washington - Saddam Hussein und seine Schergen in Bagdad "hatten keine Verbindung, boten keine Zuflucht und drückten auch kein Auge zu in Richtung Sarkawi und dessen Anhänger", befindet der Bericht des Geheimdienstausschusses des US-Senats. Vielmehr sei Saddam misstrauisch gegenüber al-Qaida gewesen und habe die islamischen Extremisten als Gefahr für sein Regime angesehen. Die Bitte um ein Treffen mit Qaida-Kommandeuren habe er abgelehnt.

Eines der wichtigsten Argumente, das die Falken der Bush-Regierung vor mehr als vier Jahren gegen den Irak ins Feld führten, nämlich dass Diktator Saddam Hussein den Terrorismus des Netzwerkes von Osama Bin Laden unterstütze, ist damit von höchster legislativer Stelle widerlegt.

Es könne nicht einmal gesagt werden, dass die damalige irakische Regierung den al-Qaida-Führer Abu Mussab al Sarkawi - die angebliche Verbindung zu Bin Laden - geschützt habe, heißt es in dem heute in Washington veröffentlichten Bericht. Sarkawi habe sich zwar von Mai bis Ende November 2002 in Bagdad aufgehalten, aber Saddam habe während dieser Zeit versucht, ihn gefangen zu nehmen.

Damit wird nach Ansicht der oppositionellen Demokraten die Rechtfertigung von US-Präsident George W. Bush für die Invasion im Irak zu einem Zeitpunkt in Frage gestellt, da Bush ständig größten Wert darauf legt, dass der Krieg gegen den Terror im Irak gewonnen werden müsse.

Der gebürtige Jordanier Sarkawi wurde im Juni dieses Jahres bei einem US-Luftangriff im Irak getötet.

Die Senatoren stellten zudem fest, dass die irakische Führung kein aktives Atomprogramm und auch kein mobiles Labor zur Herstellung biologischer Waffen gehabt habe. Die Regierung habe Geheimdienstinformationen nicht so genutzt, wie sie es hätte tun sollen, nämlich "um Entscheidungsträger zu informieren", urteilte die Nummer zwei des Ausschusses, der Demokrat John Rockefeller. Die Verantwortlichen hätten vielmehr Hinweise "ausgewählt, übertrieben oder verschwiegen", um ihre Entscheidung zum Krieg gegen den Irak zu rechtfertigen, die sie ohnehin schon gefasst gehabt hätten.

Der lang erwartete, 400 Seiten dicke Bericht stelle der Regierung ein verheerendes Zeugnis aus, sagte der dem Geheimdienstausschuss angehörende Senator Carl Levin. Bush und Vizepräsident Dick Cheney hätten hartnäckig versucht, Saddam Hussein und al-Qaida in Verbindung zu bringen. Der über einen Zeitraum von zwei Jahren hinweg erstellt Bericht untersucht auch die zweifelhafte Rolle von Informationen der Exilgruppe Irakischer Nationalkongress während des Entscheidungsprozesses vor dem Krieg.

asc/AP/AFP/dpa

URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,436086,00.html

go JDR :) :sss

[syracus]

Tja :zz ........ ;) :)

30.03.2003 ;) , 09:57 #1
syracus

GWB vs. Rockefeller

The Real Stakes Behind the War

- With the UN Neutralized There Are No More Rules
- The U.S. Economy on the Brink
- Global Oil Shortages and Massive Price Hikes Imminent :cool .......

:verbeug........

und Rockefeller bleibt dran, auch im Jahr 4 nach Kriegsbeginn :a

Jan. 25, 2007

Rockefeller: Cheney applied 'constant' pressure to stall investigation on flawed Iraq intelligence

By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney exerted "constant" pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to stall an investigation into the Bush administration's use of flawed intelligence on Iraq, the panel's Democratic chairman charged Thursday.

In an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia also accused President Bush of running an illegal program by ordering eavesdropping on Americans' international e-mails and telephone communications without court-issued warrants.

In the 45-minute interview, Rockefeller said that it was "not hearsay" that Cheney, a leading proponent of invading Iraq, pushed Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to drag out the probe of the administration's use of prewar intelligence.

"It was just constant," Rockefeller said of Cheney's alleged interference. He added that he knew that the vice president attended regular policy meetings in which he conveyed White House directions to Republican staffers.

Republicans "just had to go along with the administration," he said.

In an e-mail response to Rockefeller's comments, Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea McBride, said: "The vice president believes Senator Roberts was a good chairman of the Intelligence Committee."

Roberts' chief of staff, Jackie Cottrell, blamed the Democrats for the investigation remaining incomplete more than two years after it began.

"Senator Rockefeller's allegations are patently untrue," she said in an e-mail statement. "The delays came from the Democrats' insistence that they expand the scope of the inquiry to make it a more political document going into the 2006 elections. Chairman Roberts did everything he could to accommodate their requests for further information without allowing them to distort the facts."

"I'm not aware of any effort by the vice president, his staff or anyone in the administration to influence the speed at which the committee did its work," said Bill Duhnke, who was Roberts' staff director.

Rockefeller's comments were among the most forceful he's made about why the committee failed to complete the inquiry under Roberts. Roberts chaired the intelligence committee from January 2003 until the Democrats took over Congress this month.

The panel released a report in July 2004 that lambasted the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies for erroneously concluding that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was concealing biological, chemical and nuclear warfare programs. It then began examining how senior Bush administration officials used faulty intelligence to justify the March 2003 invasion.

Robert promised to quickly complete what became known as the Phase II investigation. After more than two years, however, the panel published only two of five Phase II reports amid serious rifts between Republican and Democratic members and their staffs.

Rockefeller recalled that in November 2005, the then-minority Democrats employed a rarely used parliamentary procedure to force the Senate into a closed session to pressure Roberts to complete Phase II.

"That was the reason we closed the session. To force him" to complete the investigation, he said.

The most potentially controversial of the three Phase II reports being worked on will compare what Bush and his top lieutenants said publicly about Iraq's weapons programs and ties to terrorists with what was contained in top-secret intelligence reports.

In the two reports released in September, the panel said that the administration's claims of ties between Saddam and al-Qaida were false and found that administration officials distributed exaggerated and bogus claims provided by an Iraqi exile group with close ties to some senior administration officials.

Rockefeller said it was important to complete the Phase II inquiry.

"The looking backward creates tension, but it's necessary tension because the administration needs to be held accountable and the country . . . needs to know," he said.

Rockefeller said that he and the senior Republican member of the committee, Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., have put the frictions behind them and agree that the committee should press the administration for documents it's withholding on its domestic eavesdropping program and detainee programs.

Under the eavesdropping program, the National Security Agency monitored Americans' international telephone calls and e-mails without court warrants if one party was a suspected member or supporter of al-Qaida or another terrorist group.

Rockefeller charged that Bush had violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to obtain permission to eavesdrop on Americans from a secret national security court.

"For five years he's (Bush) has been operating an illegal program," he said, adding that the committee wants the administration to provide the classified documents that set out its legal argument that Bush has the power to wiretap Americans without warrants.

Rockefeller is among a handful of lawmakers who were kept briefed on the program after it started following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But he told Cheney in a handwritten note in July 2003 that he was deeply concerned about its legality.

In the interview, Rockefeller said the committee needs more details about how the program worked before it considers amending the eavesdropping act to give the administration the flexibility it says it requires to be able to track terrorists.

"How do we draw something up if we have no idea about what the president sent out in the way of orders to the NSA? What about the interpretation of the Department of Justice?" he asked. "Americans . . . should want us to discern what the facts are, what the truth is."

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16546019.htm

"Wer zu spät kommt, den.....".... gilt heute für die breite Masse welche vor 4 Jahren noch alle Lügen geglaubt haben und über die letzten Monate aufgewacht sind, auch in den USA drüben :schaf...

[syracus]

auch wenn es seit langem klar war :cool ......

Report Says Pentagon Manipulated Intel

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
Friday, February 9, 2007

Pentagon officials undercut the intelligence community in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq by insisting in briefings to the White House that there was a clear relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, the Defense Department's inspector general said Friday.

Acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the office headed by former Pentagon policy chief Douglas J. Feith took "inappropriate" actions in advancing conclusions on al-Qaida connections not backed up by the nation's intelligence agencies.

Gimble said that while the actions of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy "were not illegal or unauthorized," they "did not provide the most accurate analysis of intelligence to senior decision makers" at a time when the White House was moving toward war with Iraq.

"I can't think of a more devastating commentary," said Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

He cited Gimble's findings that Feith's office was, despite doubts expressed by the intelligence community, pushing conclusions that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague five months before the attack, and that there were "multiple areas of cooperation" between Iraq and al-Qaida, including shared pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

"That was the argument that was used to make the sale to the American people about the need to go to war," Levin said in an interview Thursday. He said the Pentagon's work, "which was wrong, which was distorted, which was inappropriate ... is something which is highly disturbing."

Republicans on the panel disagreed. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., said the "probing questions" raised by Feith's policy group improved the intelligence process.

"I'm trying to figure out why we are here," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., saying the office was doing its job of analyzing intelligence that had been gathered by the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Gimble responded that at issue was that the information supplied by Feith's office in briefings to the National Security Council and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney was "provided without caveats" that there were varying opinions on its reliability.

Gimble's report said Feith's office had made assertions "that were inconsistent with the consensus of the intelligence community."

At the White House, spokesman Dana Perino said President Bush has revamped the U.S. spy community to try avoiding a repeat of flawed intelligence affecting policy decisions by creating a director of national intelligence and making other changes.

"I think what he has said is that he took responsibility, and that the intel was wrong, and that we had to take measures to revamp the intel community to make sure that it never happened again," Perino told reporters.

Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman denied that the office was producing its own intelligence products, saying they were challenging what was coming in from intelligence-gathering professionals, "looking at it with a critical eye."

Some Democrats also have contended that Feith misled Congress about the basis of the administration's assertions on the threat posed by Iraq, but the Pentagon investigation did not support that.

In a telephone interview Thursday, Levin said the IG report is "very damning" and shows a Pentagon policy shop trying to shape intelligence to prove a link between al-Qaida and Saddam.

Levin in September 2005 had asked the inspector general to determine whether Feith's office's activities were appropriate, and if not, what remedies should be pursued.

The 2004 report from the Sept. 11 commission found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror organization before the U.S. invasion.

Asked to comment on the IG's findings, Feith said in a telephone interview that he had not seen the report but was pleased to hear that it concluded his office's activities were neither illegal nor unauthorized. He took strong issue, however, with the finding that some activities had been "inappropriate."

"The policy office has been smeared for years by allegations that its pre-Iraq-war work was somehow 'unlawful' or 'unauthorized' and that some information it gave to congressional committees was deceptive or misleading," said Feith, who left his Pentagon post in August 2005.

Feith called "bizarre" the inspector general's conclusion that some intelligence activities by the Office of Special Plans, which was created while Feith served as the undersecretary of defense for policy — the top policy position under then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld — were inappropriate but not unauthorized.

"Clearly, the inspector general's office was willing to challenge the policy office and even stretch some points to be able to criticize it," Feith said, adding that he felt it was subjective "quibbling." Feith maintains that the policy office and other, smaller groups created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks proved prudent and useful in challenging some of the CIA's analysis.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/02/09/national/w054306S80.DTL&type=politics

:kiss

[Sit]

Wake Up! The Next War Is Coming

By Ray McGovern

Senator Rockefeller? Stop the war against Iran before it starts. You are chair of the intelligence committee. You don’t have to be stonewalled, as previous chair Senator Bob Graham was in September 2002. Yes, he voted against the war in Iraq because he knew of the games being played with the intelligence. But he failed to play a leadership role; he didn’t tell his 99 colleagues they were being diddled. It’s time for some leadership

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17041.htm

[syracus]

Freshman WA state senator seeks Iraq probe, possible impeachment

Thursday, February 15, 2007
Associated Press


OLYMPIA, Wash. - A freshman Democratic state senator who represents a traditionally Republican district introduced a resolution Wednesday asking that Congress investigate the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war and possibly consider impeachment of the president and vice president.

Sen. Eric Oemig, D-Kirkland, a retired Microsoft millionaire, told a cheering audience of peace activists that a full investigation is needed to give Congress and ordinary citizens better information about the war and whether impeachable offenses occurred.

"Congress is not leading on this, the American people are," he said.

If enough state and local governments petition Congress, the Democrats may get tougher about investigations and possible impeachment, he said.

Later Wednesday, state House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, said of Oemig's resolution, "It's unlikely we will do that."

Oemig said he has eight Democratic co-sponsors in the state Senate and expects the bill to clear the upper chamber. A hearing is set for March 1. Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, recently said the war is a legitimate discussion topic for state lawmakers, but didn't want to spend a lot of committee or floor time on debate.

"I'm new around here and I do feel some pressure" to not pursue a federal issue, Oemig said. "I answer to my constituents who elected me and are asking for me to do this."

He displayed what he described as more than 700 e-mails of support, with

11 opposed.

House Speaker Chopp said the Legislature sometimes petitions Congress or the White House on issues that directly affect the state, such as budget concerns or homeland security.

"We have 105 days to get done on time and we have a lot to get done," he said. "I have very strong opinions on what a disaster the Iraq war has been, but do I need to say it by passing something on the floor and take up a lot of people's time on that?"

Republican lawmakers had no immediate comment.

Oemig's resolution said the president and his team "appear to have deliberately misrepresented the severity of the threat from Iraq by providing distorted intelligence to Congress and the public in order to justify war with Iraq."

The war has cost lives and "squandered" money and the administration has used surveillance on its own citizens, the resolution said. The proposal asks Congress to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to impeach the president and vice president.

http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_021507WABoemig_iraq_impeachTP.11ba9fc.html#

[syracus]

06. März 2007

Cheneys Ex-Berater Libby in CIA-Affäre schuldig gesprochen

Washington - Lewis "Scooter" Libby, der frühere Stabschef von US-Vizepräsident Dick Cheney, ist von einem Geschworenengericht schuldig gesprochen worden. In der Affäre um die Enttarnung der CIA-Agentin Valerie Plame habe er gelogen.

Libby habe sich unter anderem der Justizbehinderung schuldig gemacht, heißt es in dem Urteil der Jury. Die Geschworenen halten ihn in vier von fünf Fällen für schuldig, die Justizbehörden angelogen zu haben. Vom Vorwurf, die Bundespolizei FBI belogen zu haben, wurde Libby von der Jury in Washington freigesprochen. Ihm drohen bis zu 25 Jahre Haft.

Libby war im Skandal um die Enttarnung der US-Spionin Valerie Plame vor rund dreieinhalb Jahren des Meineids angeklagt. Er beteuert seine Unschuld.

Die Enttarnung Plames hatte eine der heftigsten Affären in der zweiten Amtszeit von Präsident George W. Bush ausgelöst. Bis zuletzt standen dessen engste Mitarbeiter in dem Verdacht, die Identität der Frau gezielt preisgegeben zu haben. Ziel sei gewesen, ihren Mann, den ehemaligen US-Botschafter Joseph Wilson, für seine Kritik am Irak-Krieg zu bestrafen.

Dieser hatte der Regierung im Sommer 2003 in einem Gastbeitrag für die "New York Times" vorgeworfen, zur Rechtfertigung des Irak-Kriegs fragwürdige Geheimdienstinformationen genutzt zu haben. Acht Tage später wurde seine Frau in einem Artikel des Journalisten Robert Novak als CIA-Agentin enttarnt.

Libby wurde in dem Fall vorgeworfen, Ermittler belogen zu haben, als sie versuchten herauszufinden, wer die Identität der Agentin im Jahr 2003 der Öffentlichkeit preisgab.

Der Mehrheitsführer der oppositionellen Demokraten im US-Senat Harry Reid begrüßte das Urteil. Es sei an der Zeit, dass jemand in der Bush-Regierung für die Kampagne zur Manipulierung von Geheimdienstinformationen und Diskreditierung von Irak-Kriegsgegnern zur Verantwortung gezogen werde. Bush müsse jetzt versprechen, Libby nicht zu begnadigen.

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,470265,00.html

:rolleyes

[syracus]

March 7, 2007

Analysis: Verdict Puts Focus on Cheney

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Campaigning in 2000, George Bush promised he would swear on the Bible to restore honor and dignity to a sullied White House and give it ''one heck of a scrubbing.'' The conviction of I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby gave the White House a scrubbing -- but not the one Bush had in mind.

The case laid bare the inner workings of a presidency under siege and the secretive world of Vice President Dick Cheney.

It showed the lengths to which Cheney went in early summer 2003 to discredit administration critic Joseph Wilson. The former ambassador's assertions had cast doubt on the administration's justification for having taken the country to war in Iraq. And the Libby case showed the president assisting Cheney in the leaked attacks on Wilson.

Libby, who was Cheney's chief of staff, was found guilty on Tuesday of four of five counts of obstructing justice, lying and perjury during an investigation into the administration's disclosure of the identity of undercover CIA official Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife.

The verdict ''does great damage to the Bush administration,'' said Paul C. Light, professor of public service at New York University. ''It undermines the president's pledge of ethical conduct. But the most serious consequence is that it will raise questions about Cheney's durability in office. It may be time for Cheney to submit his resignation.''

But don't count on it. Bush in the past has repeatedly come to the defense of his vice president.

The trial, which included a month of testimony, is also relevant as the U.S. seeks to build a case that Iran is providing sophisticated munitions to Shiite insurgents in Iraq who are using them against U.S. troops. Administration critics have suggested the administration is trying to lay the groundwork for isolating or even attacking Iran -- using flawed intelligence, like in Iraq.

Wilson, a retired career diplomat, had accused the administration of manipulating intelligence to build its case to invade Iraq.

The trial leaves a trail of unanswered questions leading to the doorsteps of Bush and Cheney.

Testimony and evidence did not clear up whether they directed the leaking of Plame's identity to the news media.

But the trial did show Bush declassified prewar intelligence that Libby leaked to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, a plan carried out in such secrecy that no one in the government except Bush, Cheney and Libby even knew about it.

Testimony showed the vice president was aware early on that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and told Libby about it. Cheney even scribbled a note to himself a week before Wilson's wife was exposed asking whether she had sent her husband on the CIA mission to Africa that triggered the controversy.

Cheney also directed Libby to speak with selected reporters to counter Wilson's accusations. Cheney developed talking points on the matter for the White House press office. He helped draft a statement by then-CIA Director George Tenet. And he moved to declassify some intelligence material to bolster the case against Wilson.

Lanny Davis, a lawyer who worked in the Clinton White House during several investigations, said Tuesday that, while Libby was the defendant, ''it was Vice President Cheney who was on trial today and who has the responsibility for what Libby did. The vice president has a personal and moral responsibility to take responsibility for what Mr. Libby did at his instruction -- and to apologize to Valerie Plame.''

Cheney said in a statement that he was ''very disappointed with the verdict'' and that Libby had ''served our nation tirelessly and with great distinction.'' Cheney said he would withhold further comment because Libby was seeking a new trial or, if necessary, an appeal.

Prosecutors said Libby concocted a story to avoid losing his job for disclosing classified information to reporters without authorization. Libby's attorneys said any errors resulted from memory flaws.

The White House refused to comment on the possibility that Bush would pardon Libby. He was the only one charged in the case, and he was not charged with deliberately disclosing Plame's identity, which can be a federal crime, but with lying to investigators and a grand jury. Testimony showed there were other leakers, including adviser Karl Rove, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

The White House has never corrected the denials it issued in the fall of 2003 saying neither Rove nor Libby was involved in the leak of Plame's CIA identity. Political observers doubt any correction will be made.

''What's really focused people's attention is the loss of American troops in Iraq and it's allowed Bush, Cheney and Rove -- once he wasn't indicted -- to kind of be pushed off the radar screen'' regarding the Plame affair, said presidential historian Robert Dallek.

Democrats used the verdicts to attack Cheney. ''Lewis Libby has been convicted of perjury, but his trial revealed deeper truths about Vice President Cheney's role in this sordid affair. Now President Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct,'' said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino would not characterize the verdict as embarrassing for the White House. ''I think that we have been able to continue on in moving forward on all sorts of different fronts,'' she said.

It's not the administration's first ethics-related conviction. Two former Bush administration officials have been convicted in investigations related to jailed Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Last June, a former White House aide, David H. Safavian, was convicted of lying to government investigators about his ties to Abramoff. He faces an 180-month prison sentence. Roger Stillwell, a former Interior Department official, pleaded guilty in August to a misdemeanor charge for not reporting tickets he received from Abramoff.

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Tom Raum has covered national and international affair for The Associated Press since 1973. Associated Press Writer Pete Yost contributed to this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Leak-Trial-Analysis.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[syracus]

How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War

Intelligence Failures Surrounded Inquiry on Iraq-Niger Uranium Claim

By Peter Eisner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 3, 2007; A01 ;)

It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous -- later retracted -- 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush's remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?

Burba felt uneasy because more than three months earlier, she had turned over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome documents about an alleged uranium sale by the central African nation of Niger. And she knew now that the documents were fraudulent and the 16 words wrong.

Nonetheless, the uranium claim would become a crucial justification for the invasion of Iraq that began less than two months later. When occupying troops found no nuclear program, the 16 words and how they came to be in the speech became a focus for critics in Washington and foreign capitals to press the case that the White House manipulated facts to take the United States to war.

Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable.

In February 2002, the CIA received the verbatim text of one of the documents, filled with errors easily identifiable through a simple Internet search, the interviews show. Many low- and mid-level intelligence officials were already skeptical that Iraq was in pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The interviews also showed that France, berated by the Bush administration for opposing the Iraq war, honored a U.S. intelligence request to investigate the uranium claim. It determined that its former colony had not sold uranium to Iraq.

Burba, who had no special expertise in Africa or nuclear technology, was able to quickly unravel the fraud. Yet the claims clung to life within the Bush administration for months, eventually finding their way into the State of the Union address.

As a result of the CIA's failure to firmly discredit the document text it received in February 2002, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was called in to investigate the claim. That decision eventually led to the special counsel's investigation that exposed inner workings of the White House and ended with the criminal conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was forced to resign as chief of staff to Vice President Cheney.

"You know I feel bad about it," Burba said later, discussing her frustrations about her role in giving the dossier to the Americans. "You know the fact is that my documents, with the documents I brought to them, they justified the war."

The Tip

In early October of 2002, a man mysteriously contacted Elisabetta Burba at her Milan office.

"Do you remember me?" the deep voice said, without identifying himself outright. It was Rocco Martino, an old source who had proved reliable in the past. He was once again trying to sell her information.

Martino said he had some very interesting documents to show her, and asked whether she could fly down to Rome right away.

They met at a restaurant in Rome on Oct. 7, where Martino showed Burba a folder filled with documents, most of them in French. One of the documents was purportedly sent by the president of Niger to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, confirming a deal to sell 500 tons of uranium to Iraq annually. This was the smoking gun in the package, claiming to show the formal approval of Niger's president to supply Iraq with a commodity that would in all likelihood only be used for a nuclear weapons program: Iraq had no nuclear power plants.

Though the document was in French it would later come to be known as "The Italian Letter." It was written in all capital letters, in the form of an old telex, and bore the letterhead of the Republic of Niger. The letter was dated July 27, 2000, and included an odd shield on the top, a shining sun surrounded by a horned animal head, a star and a bird. The letter was stamped Confidential and Urgent.

The letter said that "500 tons of pure uranium per year will be delivered in two phases." A seal at the bottom of the page read "The Office of the President of the Republic of Niger." Superimposed over the seal was a barely legible signature bearing the name of the president of Niger, Mamadou Tandja.

Burba listened without saying much as she took a first look at the documents. She recognized right away that the material was hot, if authentic. But confirming the origin would be difficult, she recalled thinking at the time. She didn't want to fall into a trap.

Burba and Martino made an agreement; she would take the documents, and if they checked out as authentic, then they could talk about money.

'Let's Go to the Americans'

Back in her magazine's Milan newsroom, Burba told her editors she thought it would make sense to fly to Niger and check around for confirmation. The editor of the magazine, Carlo Rossella, agreed. He then suggested they simultaneously pursue another tack.

"Let's go to the Americans," Rossella said, "because they are focused on looking for weapons of mass destruction more than anyone else. Let's see if they can authenticate the documents." Rossella called the U.S. Embassy in Rome and alerted officials to expect a visit from Burba.

On Wednesday morning, Oct. 9, Burba returned to Rome and took a cab to the U.S. Embassy, which is housed at the old Palazzo Margherita.

Burba came to a security gate and walked through a magnetometer, where an Italian employee of the embassy press department came down to meet her.

After a few formalities, an Italian aide introduced her to Ian Kelly, the embassy press spokesman. Kelly and Burba walked across the embassy's walled grounds and sat down for a cup of coffee in the cafeteria.

Burba told Kelly that she had some documents about Iraq and uranium shipments and needed help in confirming their authenticity and accuracy.

Kelly interrupted her, realizing he needed help. He made a phone call summoning someone else from his staff as well as a political officer. Burba recalled a third person being invited, possibly a U.S. military attache. She didn't get their names.

"Let's go to my office," Kelly said. They walked past antiquities, a tranquil fountain, steps and pieces of marble, all set in a tree-lined patio garden.

The Italian journalist's chat with Kelly and his colleagues was brief. She handed over the papers; Kelly told her the embassy would look into the matter. But Kelly had not been briefed on what others in the embassy knew.

CIA Role

One person who refused to meet with Burba was the CIA chief of station. A few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, Sismi, the Italian intelligence agency, had sent along information about the alleged sale of uranium to Iraq. The station chief asked for more information and would later consider it far-fetched.

On Oct. 15, 2001, the CIA reports officer at the embassy wrote a brief summary based on the Sismi intelligence, signed and dated it, and routed it to CIA's Operations Directorate in Langley, with copies going to the clandestine service's European and Near East divisions. The reports officer had limited its distribution because the intelligence was uncorroborated; she was aware of Sismi's questionable track record and did not believe the report merited wider dissemination.

The Operations Directorate then passed the raw intelligence to the CIA's Intelligence Directorate and to sister agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency. A more polished document, called a Senior Executive Intelligence Brief, was written at Langley three days later in which the CIA mentioned the new intelligence but added important caveats. The classified document, whose distribution was limited to senior policymakers and the congressional intelligence committees, said there was no corroboration and noted that Iraq had "no known facilities for processing or enriching the material."

Pushing the Africa Claim

Almost four months later, on Feb. 5, 2002, the CIA received more information from Sismi, including the verbatim text of one of the documents. The CIA failed to recognize that it was riddled with errors, including misspellings and the wrong names for key officials. But it was a separate DIA report about the claims that would lead Cheney to demand further investigation. In response, the CIA dispatched Wilson to Niger.

Martino's approach to Burba eight months later with the Italian letter coincided with accelerating U.S. preparations for war. On Oct. 7, 2002, the same day Martino gave Burba the dossier, President Bush launched a new hard-line PR campaign on Iraq. In a speech in Cincinnati, he declared that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a "grave threat" to U.S. national security.

"It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons," the president warned.

CIA Director George J. Tenet had vetted the text of Bush's speech and was able to persuade the White House to drop one questionable claim: that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa. The information was too fishy, Tenet explained to the National Security Council and Bush's speechwriters.

Bush dropped the shopping-for-uranium claim, but ratcheted up the bomb threat. He said in Cincinnati that if Hussein obtained bomb-grade uranium the size of a softball, he would have a nuclear bomb within a year. This particular doomsday scenario had first been unveiled several weeks earlier, on Aug. 26, by Cheney. In a speech in Nashville to the 103rd national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he declared with no equivocation that Hussein had "resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons."

On Oct. 16, Burba sat on a plane on her way to Niger, while in Washington, copies of the Italian letter and the accompanying dossier were placed on the table at an interagency nuclear proliferation meeting hosted by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

At this point, State Department analysts had determined the documents were phony, and had produced by far the most accurate assessment of Iraq's weapons program of the 16 agencies that make up the intelligence community. But the department's small intelligence unit operated in a bubble. Few administration officials -- not even Secretary of State Colin L. Powell -- paid much attention to its analytical product, much of which clashed with the White House's assumptions.

The State Department bureau, nevertheless, shared the bogus documents with those intelligence officials attending the meeting, including representatives of the Energy Department, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency. Four CIA officials attended, but only one, a clandestine service officer, bothered to take a copy of the Italian letter.

He returned to his office, filed the material in a safe and forgot about it.

The Niger uranium matter was not uppermost in the minds of the CIA analysts. Some of them had to deal with the issue in any case, largely because Cheney, his aide Libby and some aides at the National Security Council had repeatedly demanded more information and more analysis.

A Fraud Unravels

Burba arrived in Niamey, Niger's capital, on Oct. 17 and began tracking down leads on the Italian letter. Burba's investigation followed a series of similar inquiries by Wilson, the former ambassador, who investigated on behalf of the CIA eight months earlier. It became clear that Niger was not capable of secretly shipping yellowcake uranium to Iraq or anywhere else.

Burba found that a French company controlled the uranium trade, and any shipment of uranium would have been noticed. If a uranium sale had taken place, the logistics would have been daunting. "They would have needed hundreds of trucks," she said -- a large percentage of all the trucks in Niger. It would have been impossible to conceal.

Burba returned to Milan and reported her findings to her bosses in detail. She didn't believe the evidence provided by Martino; it was impossible. Her editors agreed. There was no story.

Five months later, on March 7, 2003, as preparations for the Iraq invasion were in their final stages, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, told the U.N. Security Council that the report that Iraq had been shopping for uranium in Niger was based on forged documents. The agency had received the document from the United States a few weeks earlier.

Not long after the invasion, other news media in Italy, elsewhere in Europe and then in the United States reported that the source of the information about a Niger yellowcake uranium deal had been a batch of bogus letters and other documents passed along several months earlier to an unnamed Italian reporter, who in turn handed the information over to the United States.

Although Burba knew that the Bush administration had also received information about the forged documents from Italian intelligence, she wished she could have acted earlier to reveal the fraud.

It remains unclear who fabricated the documents. Intelligence officials say most likely it was rogue elements in Sismi who wanted to make money selling them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040201777_pf.html

:lach

[syracus]

06. April 2007

Pentagon-Memo zeigt, wie US-Regierung Kriegsgründe konstruieren ließ

Washington/Los Angeles - Massenvernichtungswaffen, Atompläne, Qaida-Connection: Um den Irak-Feldzug zu rechtfertigen, ließ US-Präsident Bush munter Kriegsgründe erfinden. Jetzt tauchte erstmals ein Memo des Pentagons auf, das zeigt, wie die Administration ihre Beamten drängte, wohlfeile Analysen anzufertigen.

Die Anschläge vom 11. September 2001 waren gerade vier Monate her, als Paul Wolfowitz langsam die Geduld verlor: "Wir scheinen keine besonderen Fortschritte zu machen, Geheimdienstinformationen über die Verbindungen zwischen dem Irak und al-Qaida zusammenzutragen", schrieb der damalige Vize-Verteidigungsminister in einem Memo an Staatssekretär Douglas J. Feith, die Nummer drei im Pentagon. Man schulde Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld eine Analyse zu dem Thema, forderte Wolfowitz.

Das Memo wurde zum Anstoß für die vermeintliche Beweisführung über Verbindungen zwischen dem Regime von Saddam Hussein und dem Terrornetzwerk. Es ist Teil eines nun vollständig veröffentlichten Berichts des Pentagon-Generalinspekteurs Thomas Gimble. Bereits im Februar hatte Gimble Teile des Berichts vor dem Streitkräfteausschuss des US-Senats vorgestellt und nachgewiesen, dass führende Mitarbeiter des Verteidigungsministeriums vor dem Irak-Krieg Geheimdienstinformationen zuspitzten. Zwar sei das Vorgehen der Gruppe um Staatssekretär Feith nicht gesetzeswidrig gewesen, sie habe der Regierung um Präsident George W. Bush aber eine ungenaue Bewertung der vorhandenen Geheimdienstinformationen gegeben, kritisierte Gimble seinerzeit.

Die bislang geheimen Teile des 121 Seiten starken Sonderberichts enthüllen Berichten der "Washington Post" und er "Los Angeles Times" zufolge nun neue Details, wie Staatssekretär Feith und seine Leute es schafften, widersprüchliche Informationen einfach beiseite zu wischen und die Regierungsspitze davon zu überzeugen, es gebe eindeutige Beweise über Verbindungen zwischen dem Saddam-Regime und Terroristen. Diese angebliche Zusammenarbeit und den vermeintlichen Besitz von Massenvernichtungswaffen hatte die US-Regierung als Hauptgründe für ihren Irak-Feldzug im Jahr 2003 angeführt.

Unglaubwürdige Schlussfolgerungen

Der Bericht des Sonderinspekteurs macht deutlich, welche enorme Bedeutung die Feith-Gruppe etwa einem angeblichen Treffen zwischen Mohammed Atta, dem Anführer der 9/11-Terroristen, und einem irakischen Geheimdienstoffizier im April 2001 in Prag beimaß. Feith wertete diese Zusammenkunft als "known contact" zwischen dem irakischen Regime und Terroristen. US-Geheimdienste dagegen stellten den Bericht über das Treffen in Frage, weil er auf einer einzelnen Quelle, die in Kontakt mit dem tschechischen Geheimdienst stand, beruhte. Ob Atta sich tatsächlich mit dem irakischen Agenten traf, konnte niemals von zweiter Seite bestätigt werden.

Im Gimble-Report heißt es: Der US-Militärgeheimdienst DIA und die CIA hätten keinerlei "vollentwickelte, symbiotische Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem Irak und al-Qaida" feststellen können. Man sei sich einig, dass die Informationen über das angebliche Treffen zwischen Atta und dem irakischen Offiziellen zumindest widersprüchlich gewesen seien, von einem "known contact" könne auf keinen Fall die Rede sein.

Dem Sonderinspekteur fiel auch auf, dass Feith die Präsentationen seiner Erkenntnisse seinem jeweiligen Publikum anpasste. Demnach hatte er wenigstens drei verschiedene Versionen seiner Diavorführungen zusammengestellt. Als er es etwa mit dem damaligen CIA-Direktor George Tenet zu tun hatte, ließ er kurzerhand jenen Aspekt aus, an dem es um "fundamentale Probleme" bei der Art und Weise ging, wie Geheimdienste ihre Informationen bewerteten. Sehr wohl ließ Feith dagegen Bushs Stabschef Lewis Libby und den damaligen Vize-Chef des Nationalen Sicherheitsrates, Stephen Hadley seine Kritik an der Arbeit der Geheimdienste wissen.

Fast zeitgleich mit der vollständigen Veröffentlichung des Gimble-Reports verteidigte US-Vizepräsident Dick Cheney die amerikanischen Kriegsgründe erneut. In einem konservativen Rundfunksender beharrte er darauf, dass al-Qaida im Irak operierte, lange bevor die USA in den Krieg gezogen seien. So habe der im vergangenen Juni getötete irakische Qaida-Chef Abu Mussab al-Sarkawi zu dieser Zeit längst im Irak gelebt und Terroraktionen geleitet. "Sie waren dort, bevor wir im Irak einmarschierten", sagte Cheney.

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,476043,00.html