Liberal Media?, White-Out of bush’s Impeachable Offense!!!

QueEx · Apr 6, 2007

<font size="5"><center>Pentagon report debunks
prewar Iraq-Al Qaeda connection</font size>
<font size="4">Declassified document cites lack of 'evidence
of a long-term relationship,' although No. 3
Defense staffer called contact 'mature and symbiotic.' </font size></center>

By Jesse Nunes
Christian Science Monitor
April 6, 2007

A declassified report by the Pentagon's acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble provides new insight into the circumstances behind former Pentagon official Douglas Feith's pre-Iraq war assessment of an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection — an assessment that was contrary to US intelligence agency findings, and helped bolster the Bush administration's case for the Iraq war.

The report, which was made public in summary form in February, was released in full on Thursday by Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In a statement accompanying the 121-page report, Senator Levin said: "It is important for the public to see why the Pentagon's Inspector General concluded that Secretary Feith's office 'developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship,' which included 'conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community.' "

The Feith office alternative intelligence assessments concluded that Iraq and al Qaeda were cooperating and had a "mature, symbiotic" relationship, a view that was not supported by the available intelligence, and was contrary to the consensus view of the Intelligence Community. These alternative assessments were used by the Administration to support its public arguments in its case for war. As the DOD IG report confirms, the Intelligence Community never found an operational relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda; the report specifically states that," the CIA and DIA disavowed any 'mature, symbiotic' relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida."

The Los Angeles Times reports that in excerpts of the report released in February, Mr. Gimble called Feith's alternative intelligence "improper," but that it wasn't illegal or unauthorized because then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz assigned the work. The Times also reports that a prewar memo from Mr. Wolfowitz to Feith requesting that an Al Qaeda-Iraq connection be identified was among the newly released documents.

"We don't seem to be making much progress pulling together intelligence on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda," Wolfowitz wrote in the Jan. 22, 2002, memo to Douglas J. Feith, the department's No. 3 official.

Using Pentagon jargon for the secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, he added: "We owe SecDef some analysis of this subject. Please give me a recommendation on how best to proceed. Appreciate the short turn-around."

The Times reports that the memo "marked the beginnings of what would become a controversial yearlong Pentagon project" to convince White House officials of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a connection "that was hotly disputed by U.S. intelligence agencies at the time and has been discredited in the years since."

The New York Times reports that presentation slides used during a Pentagon briefing at the White House were also released Thursday. The slides showed how Feith criticised US intelligence agencies that had found little or no Al Qaeda-Iraq link.

The slide used by the Pentagon analysts to brief the White House officials states the intelligence agencies assumed "that secularists and Islamists will not cooperate, even when they have common interests," and there was "consistent underestimation of importance that would be attached by Iraq and Al Qaeda to hiding a relationship."

The Pentagon, in written comments included in the report, strongly disputed that the White House briefing and the slide citing "Fundamental Problems" undercut the intelligence community.

"The intelligence community was fully aware of the work under review and commented on it several times," the Pentagon said, adding that [former CIA Diector George] Tenet, at the suggestion of the defense secretary then, Donald H. Rumsfeld, "was personally briefed."

The Times notes that the Pentagon analysts' appraisal of the CIA's approach was "in contrast" to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in its 2004 report on prewar intelligence, which praised the CIA's approach as methodical, reasonable, and objective.

On a website set up to challenge Gimble's assessment in his report, Feith argues that the key issue at hand is "whether the CIA should be protected against criticism by policy officials." Feith also challenged Gimble's characterization of his intelligence assessment as "inappropriate."

The IG got this point wrong and it would be dangerous to follow his badly reasoned opinion on the issue. It would damage the quality of the government's intelligence and policy. The CIA has made important errors over the years - think of the Iraqi WMD assessments. To guard against such errors, policy officials should be praised, not slapped, for challenging CIA products.

Despite the release of Gimble's report, the Associated Press reports that Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday appeared on a conservative radio show and reiterated his stance that Al Qaeda had links to Iraq before the US invasion in 2003.

"[Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June," Cheney told radio host Rush Limbaugh during an interview. "As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."

The Washington Post, however, reports that Mr. Zarqawi only publicly allied himself with Al Qaeda after the US invasion, and until then "was not then an al-Qaeda member but was the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al-Qaeda adherents, according to several intelligence analysts."

Link to Christian Science Monitor article: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0406/p99s01-duts.html

Links cited in the Christian Science Monitor article:

Pentagon: Prewar intel on Al Qaeda-Hussein link not illegal but 'dubious'
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0209/p99s01-duts.html

Levin Releases Newly Declassified Pentagon Inspector General Report on Intelligence Assessment Activities of the Office of Under Secretary of Defense Doug Feith
[ur]http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=271875[/url]

Pentagon probe fills in blanks on Iraq war groundwork
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...r06,0,6863264.story?track=mostviewed-homepage

Hussein-Qaeda Link ‘Inappropriate,’ Report Says
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/w...gin&adxnnlx=1175891537-kUy+HYwMNgVm+yKleNtp5g

REPORT ON THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY'S PREWAR INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENTS ON IRAQ
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_toc.htm

Cheney: Iraq, al-Qaeda linked pre-war
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-06-cheney_N.htm

Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/05/AR2007040502263_2.html?hpid=topnews

QueEx · Apr 6, 2007

... wonder where actinanass is ???

QueEx · Apr 6, 2007

<font size="5"><center>Cheney Sticks to His Delusions</font size></center>

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, April 6, 2007; 1:20 PM

Faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, even President Bush has backed off his earlier inflammatory assertions about links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

But Vice President Cheney yesterday, in an interview with right-wing talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, continued to stick to his delusional guns.

Cheney told Limbaugh that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading al-Qaeda operations in Iraq before the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

"[A]fter we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney said. "And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq." (Think Progress has the audio clip.)

But Cheney's narrative is wrong from beginning to end. For instance, Zarqawi was not an al-Qaeda member until after the war. Rather, intelligence sources now agree, he was the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al-Qaeda adherents. And although he worked hard to inflame sectarian violence after the invasion, he certainly didn't start it.

As it happens, just in case anyone needed more evidence of the spuriousness of Cheney's views, yesterday also marked the release of yet another report confirming that that al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government were not working together before the invasion.

The report also further documents how Cheney willfully ignored reliable intelligence in favor of broadcasting invented assertions emerging from a rogue Defense Department office -- a habit he apparently has yet to break.

<u>The Latest Report</u>

R. Jeffrey Smith writes in The Washington Post: "Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides 'all confirmed' that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.

"The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information."

According to the report, "a key Pentagon office -- run by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith -- had inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion alleging connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq that the U.S. intelligence consensus disputed.

"The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith's office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was 'mature' and 'symbiotic,' marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics."

Those conclusions, running so contrary to traditional intelligence findings, were "leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine before the war" and then "were publicly praised by Cheney as the best source of information on the topic."

Tony Capaccio writes for Bloomberg that the report draws "a direct connection between the Sept. 16 White House briefing and Cheney's public comments thereafter.

"Four days later, Cheney referred at fundraiser to a 'well-established pattern of cooperation between Iraq and terrorists.'

"And on Dec. 2, Cheney warned in a speech that Hussein's regime 'has had high-level contact with al-Qaeda going back a decade and has provided training to al-Qaeda terrorists.' His language mirrored that on briefing chart entitled 'Summary of Known Iraq-al-Qaeda Contacts -- 1990-2002.'"

Here is the full text of the report; as well as the slides used by Feith's office in its presentation to senior White House officials.

On one slide entitled "Fundamental Problems with How Intelligence Community is Assessing Information," Feith's office suggests that the CIA and others were underestimating how hard Iraq and Al Qaeda would be trying to hide their relationship -- so that, in their words, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

That, of course, is highly reminiscent of the administration's key pre-war assertion that the lack of evidence of Iraqi WMDs proved how diligently Saddam was hiding them. In both cases, the administration stood traditional intelligence-gathering methodology on its head by insisting that lack of evidence was more indicative than evidence -- in other words that conviction trumped facts.

<u>The Limbaugh Connection</u>

It's not a coincidence that Cheney was talking to Limbaugh yesterday. The show has been one of Cheney's favorite venues.

As I wrote in my January 29 column, The Unraveling of Dick Cheney, Cheney is increasingly out of touch with reality. He seems to think that by asserting things that are simply untrue, he can make others believe they are so.

In Limbaughland, he's right.

In Limbaughland, not only were Saddam and Al Qaeda linked but -- more significantly -- liberals hate America. In Limbaughland, Cheney can say a lot simply by failing to disagree with his host's assertions.

Consider a few of yesterday's exchanges.

Limbaugh was complaining to Cheney about how the Democrats seem to be primarily motivated by a desire "to make sure we come home defeated."

Limbaugh: "Can you share with us whether or not you understand their devotion, or their seeming allegiance to the concept of U.S. defeat?"

Cheney: "I can't."

I wrote yesterday about Bush's recess appointment of three controversial officials including Sam Fox, whose nomination to be ambassador to Belgium was opposed by Democrats on account of his 2004 donation to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Limbaugh called Fox "a great American" and praised the White House for making an end-run around Democratic opposition.

Limbaugh: "This is the kind of move that garners a lot of support from the people in the country. This shows the administration willing to engage these people and not allow them to get away with this kind of -- well, my term -- you don't have to accept it -- Stalinist behavior from these people on that committee."

Cheney: "Well, you're dead on, Rush."

The two also chuckled about the White House move.

Limbaugh: "You go on vacation, this is what happens to you."

Cheney: "If you're a Democrat." They both laughed.

<u>Cheney v. Pelosi</u>

And that's not all.

Joel Havemann writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Vice President Dick Cheney scolded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday for 'bad behavior' in traveling to Syria. . . .

"In a conversation with fellow conservative Rush Limbaugh on Limbaugh's radio show, Cheney belittled Pelosi's public statement after she met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus on Wednesday. . . .

"All week the White House has criticized Pelosi's trip to the Middle East, but no comments have been as colorful as Cheney's."

Pelosi expressed hope for peace between Syria and Israel, and said that she had conveyed Israel's readiness to engage in peace talks.

Said Cheney: "It was a non-statement, non-sensical statement and didn't make any sense at all that she would suggest that those talks could go forward as long as the Syrians conducted themselves as a prime state sponsor of terror."

But by Pelosi's own account, she cleaved precisely to previous U.S. and Israeli policy statements. (And, as Frank James blogs for the Chicago Tribune, State Department officials were present and therefore could dispute her account if it were wrong.)

Elizabeth Williamson wrote in yesterday's Washington Post: "Foreign policy experts generally agree that Pelosi's dealings with Middle East leaders have not strayed far, if at all, from those typical for a congressional trip. But in a nation deeply divided over America's role and standing in the world, the Democratic-led Congress's push into foreign policy has prompted a ferocious reaction from a White House doubly protective of its turf."

Joe Conason writes in Salon: "With her brief visit to Syria, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has provoked an outburst of flaming hysteria from the Bush administration, as well as from the neoconservatives who fashioned its ruinous war and failed foreign policies. . . .

"Pelosi was attacked for her remarks about the possibility of peace talks between Syria and Israel, as if this radical prospect had never been broached before. Before arriving in Damascus, she had met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and addressed the Knesset, pledging Democratic support for the defense of the Jewish state.

"Although Olmert later attempted to embarrass Pelosi by declaring that he had given her no message for Assad, his own spokeswoman issued a statement after their meeting on April 1, which clearly indicated that they had discussed what she might say to the Syrian president. According to that statement, Olmert told her that he would enter negotiations with Assad only if Syria withdrew its support for Hamas and Hezbollah. There is no evidence that Pelosi said anything different in Damascus."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html?hpid=topnews

QueEx · Apr 8, 2007

<font size="5"><center>How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War</font size>
<font size="4">Intelligence Failures Surrounded Inquiry on Iraq-Niger Uranium Claim</font size></center>

Washington Post
By Peter Eisner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 3, 2007; Page 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."

<font size="4">The Tip</font size>

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.

<font size="4">'Let's Go to the Americans'</font size>

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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040201777.html

QueEx · Apr 8, 2007

<font size="5">How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War
2 of 2

</font size>

<font size="4">
CIA Role</font size>

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."

<font size="4">Pushing the Africa Claim</font size>

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.

<font size="4">A Fraud Unravels</font size>

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.

`

Makkonnen · Apr 9, 2007

Cheney is a liar? Im shocked.
I've been saying this war was bullshit since before it started. The Niger letters were obvious frauds from when they first emerged.
None of this info is new. Too bad no one in the media was this critical back before half a million Iraqis were killed.

QueEx · Apr 25, 2007

<font size="4">Seeking the truth </font size>

McGlatchy Newspapers
April 25, 2007

<font size="4">On Wedneday at 9 p.m. EDT, PBS stations will air the first in a new season of the "Bill Moyers Journal" that reports how some of the nation’s most influential news organizations failed to challenge the Bush administration’s faulty case for war in Iraq. Moyers’ show highlights, by contrast, the skeptical reporting by journalists from this bureau that raised questions about the intelligence relied on by the president to make the argument for war. </font size>

`

blackIpod · Apr 25, 2007

All that shit QueEx post on here.
All the links to memo's they don't mean shit.
BUSH won not once but twice! :dance:

It's a sad political fact for you democrat's.
:lol:

Look all you have to do is this.
On election day put the weed down.
Tivo Current TV.
Pick up the girlfriend from the abortion clinic earlier.
Just get your ass to the polling station on time!
I bet if you do all that.
Your side may just win.
But it won't get back into power by ways of impeachment.

QueEx · Apr 25, 2007

<font size="3">

(1) I'm not a Democrat; and

(2) You're just shuffling :dance:

and grinning :lol:

.... nahmean

</font size>

QueEx · May 22, 2007

<h1>Assessments Made in 2003
Foretold Situation in Iraq</h1><h2>Intelligence Studies List Internal
Violence, Terrorist Activity</h2><P><FONT SIZE="2">
<div id="byline">By <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/walter+pincus/" title="Send an e-mail to Walter Pincus">Walter Pincus</a></div>Washington Post Staff Writer<br/>
Sunday, May 20, 2007; Page A06</FONT><P>
<div id="article_body"><p>Two intelligence assessments from January 2003 predicted that the overthrow of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/Saddam+Hussein?tid=informline" target="">Saddam Hussein</a> and subsequent <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/United+States?tid=informline" target="">U.S.</a> occupation of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/Iraq?tid=informline" target="">Iraq</a> could lead to internal violence and provide a boost to Islamic extremists and terrorists in the region, according to congressional sources and former intelligence officials familiar with the prewar studies.</p><p>The two assessments, titled "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq" and "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq," were produced by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and will be a major part of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's long-awaited Phase II report on prewar intelligence assessments about Iraq. The assessments were delivered to the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/The+White+House?tid=informline" target="">White House</a> and to congressional intelligence committees before the war started.</p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="right" width="238"><tr><td width="10"></td><td width="228">
<div class="media_photo"><a href="javascript:void(popitup('http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/postphotos/orb/asection/2007-05-20/index.html?imgId=PH2007051900862&imgUrl=/photo/2007/05/19/PH2007051900862.html',650,850))"><img src="http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/largerPhoto/images/enlarge_tab.gif" width="103" height="12" border="0" align="bottom" alt=""></a><br/><a href="javascript:void(popitup('http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/postphotos/orb/asection/2007-05-20/index.html?imgId=PH2007051900862&imgUrl=/photo/2007/05/19/PH2007051900862.html',650,850))"><img src="http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2007/05/19/PH2007051900858.jpg" border="0" alt="George J. Tenet discussed the NIC assessments as well as the CIA's own prewar intelligence analyses." height="190" width="144" align="top"></a><div id="caption">George J. Tenet discussed the NIC assessments as well as the CIA's own prewar intelligence analyses.<span id="credit"> (By Bebeto Matthews -- Associated Press) </span></div></div>
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<p>The committee chairman, <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/r000361/" target="">Sen. John D. Rockefeller</a> IV (D-W.Va.), and the vice chairman, <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/b000611/" target="">Sen. Christopher S. Bond</a> (R-Mo.), announced earlier this month that the panel had asked Director of National Intelligence <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/Mike+McConnell?tid=informline" target="">Mike McConnell</a> to declassify the report for public release. Congressional sources said the two NIC assessments are to be declassified and would be part of a portion of the Phase II report that could be released within the next week.</p><p>The assessment on post-Hussein Iraq included judgments that while Iraq was unlikely to split apart, there was a significant chance that domestic groups would fight each other and that ex-regime military elements could merge with terrorist groups to battle any new government. It even talks of guerrilla warfare, according to congressional sources and former intelligence officials.</p><p>The second NIC assessment discussed "political Islam being boosted and the war being exploited by terrorists and extremists elsewhere in the region," one former senior analyst said. It also suggested that fear of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/U.S.+Armed+Forces?tid=informline" target="">U.S. military</a> dominance and occupation of a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/Middle+East?tid=informline" target="">Middle East</a> country -- one sacred to Islam -- would attract foreign Islamic fighters to the area.</p><p>The NIC assessments paint "a very sobering and, as it has turned out, mostly accurate picture of the aftermath of the invasion," according to a former senior intelligence officer familiar with the studies. He sought anonymity because he is not authorized to speak about still-classified assessments.</p><p>The former senior official said that after the NIC papers were distributed to senior government officials, he was told by one CIA briefer that a senior <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/U.S.+Department+of+Defense?tid=informline" target="">Defense Department</a> official had said they were "too negative" and that the papers "did not see the possibilities" the removal of Hussein would present.</p><p>A member of the Senate committee, without disclosing the contents of the studies, said recently that the release will raise more questions about the Bush administration's lack of preparation for the war's aftermath.</p><p>In his book, "At the Center of the Storm," former <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/Central+Intelligence+Agency?tid=informline" target="">CIA director</a> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/George+Tenet?tid=informline" target="">George J. Tenet</a> discussed the NIC assessments as well as prewar intelligence analyses his own agency prepared on the same issues. Some of the language in the CIA reports that Tenet describes are similar to judgments in the NIC assessments because the agency is a major contributor to such papers, according to present and former intelligence analysts.</p><p>While Tenet admits that the CIA expected Shiites in southern Iraq, "long oppressed by Saddam, to open their arms to anyone who removed him," he said agency analysts were "not among those who confidently expected coalition forces to be greeted as liberators."</p><p>Tenet writes that the initial good feeling among most Iraqis that Hussein was out of power "would last for only a short time before old rivalries and ancient ethnic tensions resurfaced." The former intelligence analyst said such views also reflected the views in the NIC paper on post-Hussein Iraq.</p><p>The NIC assessments also projected the view that a long-term Western military occupation would be widely unacceptable, particularly to the Iraqi military. It also said Iraqis would wait and see whether the new governing authority, whether foreign or Iraqi, would provide security and basic services such as water and electricity.</p><p>Tenet wrote that the NIC paper on Iraq said that "Iraqi political culture is so imbued with norms alien to the democratic experience . . . that it may resist the most vigorous and prolonged democratic treatments."</p><p>The senior intelligence official said that the prewar analysis of challenges in post-Hussein Iraq contained little in the way of classified information since it was an assessment of future situations and was almost all analysis. The assessment of regional consequences of regime change in Iraq would require deletions since it contains "comments on the policies and perspectives of some friendly governments."</p><p>The committee focused on the two NIC assessments -- rather than analyses by the CIA, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/Defense+Intelligence+Agency?tid=informline" target="">Defense Intelligence Agency</a> or the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/related-topics.html/U.S.+Department+of+State?tid=informline" target="">State Department</a> -- because they were written under the supervision of national intelligence officers and coordinated with all intelligence agencies. Such papers are similar to more formal National Intelligence Estimates except they are not finalized and approved by the National Foreign Intelligence Board, made up of the heads of the agencies.</p></div></div>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...2007051900843.html?nav=rss_world/mideast/iraq

QueEx · May 27, 2008

nyyyyce · May 28, 2008

Temujin said:
I recall the anger over clinton being way more extreme than this and he was impeached. And all he did was get a bj. Bush spent 320 billion on a fraudulent war If the republiklans had this kinda of ammo their would be riots in the streets.

agreed.

QueEx · May 28, 2008

<font size="5"><Center>Ex-aide Scott McClellan says </font size><font size="6">
Bush misled the U.S. on war</font size></center>

Former White House
spokesman Scott
McClellan

Seattle Times
By Michael D. Shear
Wednesday, May 28, 2008

WASHINGTON — Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

McClellan, 40, includes the charges in his book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," that delivers a harsh look at the White House and the man he served for close to a decade. He describes Bush as demonstrating a "lack of inquisitiveness," says the White House operated in "permanent campaign" mode and says he was deceived by some in the president's inner circle about the leak of a CIA operative's name.

He accuses former White House adviser Karl Rove of misleading him about his role in the CIA case. He describes Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as being deft at deflecting blame and calls Vice President Dick Cheney "the magic man" who steered policy behind the scenes.

McClellan, who was a tight-lipped defender of administration aides and policy, stops short of saying Bush purposely lied about his reasons for invading Iraq, writing that he and his subordinates were not "employing out-and-out deception" to make their case for war.

But in one chapter, "Selling the War," he alleges that the administration repeatedly shaded the truth and that Bush "managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."

McClellan resigned from the White House on April 19, 2006, after nearly three years as Bush's press secretary.

A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on the book, some contents of which were first disclosed by Politico.com. The Washington Post acquired a copy of the book Tuesday, in advance of its official release Monday.

The criticisms of Bush in the book are striking, given that they come from a man who followed Bush to Washington from Texas.

Bush is depicted as an out-of-touch leader, operating in a political bubble, who stubbornly refused to admit mistakes. McClellan defends the president's intellect — "Bush is plenty smart enough to be president," he writes — but casts him as unwilling or unable to be reflective about his job.

The former aide describes Bush as a willing participant in treating his presidency as a permanent political campaign, run in large part by his top political adviser, Rove.

"The president had promised himself that he would accomplish what his father had failed to do by winning a second term in office," he writes. "And that meant operating continually in campaign mode: never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating. Unfortunately, that strategy also had less justifiable repercussions: never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising. Especially not where Iraq was concerned."

He charges that the campaign-style focus affected Bush's entire presidency. The ill-fated Air Force One flyover of New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina struck the city, was conceived of by Rove, who was "thinking about the political perceptions" but ended up making Bush look "out of touch," McClellan writes.

McClellan admits to letting himself be deceived about the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame, which resulted in his relentless pounding by the White House media corps over the activities of Rove and Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the matter. He also suggests that Rove and Libby may have worked to coordinate their stories about the Plame leak.

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004442374_scott28.html

QueEx · Jun 5, 2008

nyyyyce · Jun 7, 2008

Why these -itches are facing NO jail time or having to at least sit through a Congressional accountability hearing is mind boggling.

GET YOU HOT · Jun 8, 2008

Senators and congressmen, as well, should be charged with aiding and abetting criminals...

nyyyyce · Jun 8, 2008

GET YOU HOT said:
Senators and congressmen, as well, should be charged with aiding and abetting criminals...

agreed.

QueEx · May 16, 2009

<font size="3">

I'm bumping what I think is one of the most indepth threads ever
posted covering the assumptions in the lead up to the invasion of
Iraq.

I know, if you haven't already scrolled through it, you probably
won't, but if you have the time, forget that "Colin" ignorance
and -- just do it. Remarkably, this thread relates to many of the
issues being raised recently by Dick Cheney.

</font size>

QueEx · Jun 23, 2009

QueEx said:
<font size="6"><center>Bush Was Set on Path to War </font size>
<font size="5">Memo by British Adviser Says </font size></center>

The New York Times
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
Published: March 27, 2006

LONDON — In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war.

But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

The timetable came at an important diplomatic moment. Five days after the Bush-Blair meeting, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was scheduled to appear before the United Nations to present the American evidence that Iraq posed a threat to world security by hiding unconventional weapons.

Although the United States and Britain aggressively sought a second United Nations resolution against Iraq — which they failed to obtain — the president said repeatedly that he did not believe he needed it for an invasion.

Stamped "extremely sensitive," the five-page memorandum, which was circulated among a handful of Mr. Blair's most senior aides, had not been made public. Several highlights were first published in January in the book "Lawless World," which was written by a British lawyer and international law professor, Philippe Sands. In early February, Channel 4 in London first broadcast several excerpts from the memo.

Since then, The New York Times has reviewed the five-page memo in its entirety. While the president's sentiments about invading Iraq were known at the time, the previously unreported material offers an unfiltered view of two leaders on the brink of war, yet supremely confident.

The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.

The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.

Those proposals were first reported last month in the British press, but the memo does not make clear whether they reflected Mr. Bush's extemporaneous suggestions, or were elements of the government's plan.

Consistent Remarks

Two senior British officials confirmed the authenticity of the memo, but declined to talk further about it, citing Britain's Official Secrets Act, which made it illegal to divulge classified information. But one of them said, "In all of this discussion during the run-up to the Iraq war, it is obvious that viewing a snapshot at a certain point in time gives only a partial view of the decision-making process."

On Sunday, Frederick Jones, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said the president's public comments were consistent with his private remarks made to Mr. Blair. "While the use of force was a last option, we recognized that it might be necessary and were planning accordingly," Mr. Jones said.

"The public record at the time, including numerous statements by the President, makes clear that the administration was continuing to pursue a diplomatic solution into 2003," he said. "Saddam Hussein was given every opportunity to comply, but he chose continued defiance, even after being given one final opportunity to comply or face serious consequences. Our public and private comments are fully consistent."

The January 2003 memo is the latest in a series of secret memos produced by top aides to Mr. Blair that summarize private discussions between the president and the prime minister. Another group of British memos, including the so-called Downing Street memo written in July 2002, showed that some senior British officials had been concerned that the United States was determined to invade Iraq, and that the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush administration to fit its desire to go to war.

The latest memo is striking in its characterization of frank, almost casual, conversation by Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair about the most serious subjects. At one point, the leaders swapped ideas for a postwar Iraqi government. "As for the future government of Iraq, people would find it very odd if we handed it over to another dictator," the prime minister is quoted as saying.

"Bush agreed," Mr. Manning wrote. This exchange, like most of the quotations in this article, have not been previously reported.

Mr. Bush was accompanied at the meeting by Condoleezza Rice, who was then the national security adviser; Dan Fried, a senior aide to Ms. Rice; and Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff. Along with Mr. Manning, Mr. Blair was joined by two other senior aides: Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide and the author of the Downing Street memo.

By late January 2003, United Nations inspectors had spent six weeks in Iraq hunting for weapons under the auspices of Security Council Resolution 1441, which authorized "serious consequences" if Iraq voluntarily failed to disarm. Led by Hans Blix, the inspectors had reported little cooperation from Mr. Hussein, and no success finding any unconventional weapons.

At their meeting, Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair candidly expressed their doubts that chemical, biological or nuclear weapons would be found in Iraq in the coming weeks, the memo said. The president spoke as if an invasion was unavoidable. The two leaders discussed a timetable for the war, details of the military campaign and plans for the aftermath of the war.

Discussing Provocation

Without much elaboration, the memo also says the president raised three possible ways of provoking a confrontation. Since they were first reported last month, neither the White House nor the British government has discussed them.

"The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

It also described the president as saying, "The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam's W.M.D," referring to weapons of mass destruction.

A brief clause in the memo refers to a third possibility, mentioned by Mr. Bush, a proposal to assassinate Saddam Hussein. The memo does not indicate how Mr. Blair responded to the idea.

Mr. Sands first reported the proposals in his book, although he did not use any direct quotations from the memo. He is a professor of international law at University College of London and the founding member of the Matrix law office in London, where the prime minister's wife, Cherie Blair, is a partner.

Mr. Jones, the National Security Council spokesman, declined to discuss the proposals, saying, "We are not going to get into discussing private discussions of the two leaders."

At several points during the meeting between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, there was palpable tension over finding a legitimate legal trigger for going to war that would be acceptable to other nations, the memo said. The prime minister was quoted as saying it was essential for both countries to lobby for a second United Nations resolution against Iraq, because it would serve as "an insurance policy against the unexpected."

The memo said Mr. Blair told Mr. Bush, "If anything went wrong with the military campaign, or if Saddam increased the stakes by burning the oil wells, killing children or fomenting internal divisions within Iraq, a second resolution would give us international cover, especially with the Arabs."

Running Out of Time

Mr. Bush agreed that the two countries should attempt to get a second resolution, but he added that time was running out. "The U.S. would put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution and would twist arms and even threaten," Mr. Bush was paraphrased in the memo as saying.

The document added, "But he had to say that if we ultimately failed, military action would follow anyway."

The leaders agreed that three weeks remained to obtain a second United Nations Security Council resolution before military commanders would need to begin preparing for an invasion.

Summarizing statements by the president, the memo says: "The air campaign would probably last four days, during which some 1,500 targets would be hit. Great care would be taken to avoid hitting innocent civilians. Bush thought the impact of the air onslaught would ensure the early collapse of Saddam's regime. Given this military timetable, we needed to go for a second resolution as soon as possible. This probably meant after Blix's next report to the Security Council in mid-February."

Mr. Blair was described as responding that both countries would make clear that a second resolution amounted to "Saddam's final opportunity." The memo described Mr. Blair as saying: "We had been very patient. Now we should be saying that the crisis must be resolved in weeks, not months."

It reported: "Bush agreed. He commented that he was not itching to go to war, but we could not allow Saddam to go on playing with us. At some point, probably when we had passed the second resolutions — assuming we did — we should warn Saddam that he had a week to leave. We should notify the media too. We would then have a clear field if Saddam refused to go."

Mr. Bush devoted much of the meeting to outlining the military strategy. The president, the memo says, said the planned air campaign "would destroy Saddam's command and control quickly." It also said that he expected Iraq's army to "fold very quickly." He also is reported as telling the prime minister that the Republican Guard would be "decimated by the bombing."

Despite his optimism, Mr. Bush said he was aware that "there were uncertainties and risks," the memo says, and it goes on, "As far as destroying the oil wells were concerned, the U.S. was well equipped to repair them quickly, although this would be easier in the south of Iraq than in the north."

The two men briefly discussed plans for a post-Hussein Iraqi government. "The prime minister asked about aftermath planning," the memo says. "Condi Rice said that a great deal of work was now in hand.

Referring to the Defense Department, it said: "A planning cell in D.O.D. was looking at all aspects and would deploy to Iraq to direct operations as soon as the military action was over. Bush said that a great deal of detailed planning had been done on supplying the Iraqi people with food and medicine."

Planning for After the War

The leaders then looked beyond the war, imagining the transition from Mr. Hussein's rule to a new government. Immediately after the war, a military occupation would be put in place for an unknown period of time, the president was described as saying. He spoke of the "dilemma of managing the transition to the civil administration," the memo says.

The document concludes with Mr. Manning still holding out a last-minute hope of inspectors finding weapons in Iraq, or even Mr. Hussein voluntarily leaving Iraq. But Mr. Manning wrote that he was concerned this could not be accomplished by Mr. Bush's timeline for war.

"This makes the timing very tight," he wrote. "We therefore need to stay closely alongside Blix, do all we can to help the inspectors make a significant find, and work hard on the other members of the Security Council to accept the noncooperation case so that we can secure the minimum nine votes when we need them, probably the end of February."

At a White House news conference following the closed-door session, Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair said "the crisis" had to be resolved in a timely manner. "Saddam Hussein is not disarming," the president told reporters. "He is a danger to the world. He must disarm. And that's why I have constantly said — and the prime minister has constantly said — this issue will come to a head in a matter of weeks, not months."

Despite intense lobbying by the United States and Britain, a second United Nations resolution was not obtained. The American-led military coalition invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003, nine days after the target date set by the president on that late January day at the White House.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/i...n=dfc6e34cd873a503&ex=1144126800&partner=IWON

<font size="3">The memo surfaces, again:</font size>

thoughtone said:
source: The Guardian

The Observer, Sunday 21 June 2009

A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.

The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.

Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.

The president expressed hopes that an Iraqi defector would be "brought out" to give a public presentation on Saddam's WMD or that someone might assassinate the Iraqi leader. However, Bush confirmed even without a second resolution, the US was prepared for military action. The memo said Blair told Bush he was "solidly with the president".

The five-page document, written by Blair's foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, and copied to Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK ambassador to the UN, Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, the chief of the defence staff, Admiral Lord Boyce, and the UK's ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, outlines how Bush told Blair he had decided on a start date for the war.

Paraphrasing Bush's comments at the meeting, Manning, noted: "The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled in for 10 March. This was when the bombing would begin."

Last night an expert on international law who is familar with the memo's contents said it provided vital evidence into the two men's frames of mind as they considered the invasion and its aftermath and must be presented to the Chilcott inquiry established by Gordon Brown to examine the causes, conduct and consequences of the Iraq war.

Philippe Sands, QC, a professor of law at University College London who is expected to give evidence to the inquiry, said confidential material such as the memo was of national importance, making it vital that the inquiry is not held in private, as Brown originally envisioned.

In today's Observer, Sands writes: "Documents like this raise issues of national embarrassment, not national security. The restoration of public confidence requires this new inquiry to be transparent. Contentious matters should not be kept out of the public domain, even in the run-up to an election."

The memo notes there had been a shift in the two men's thinking on Iraq by late January 2003 and that preparing for war was now their priority. "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," Manning writes. This was despite the fact Blair that had yet to receive advice on the legality of the war from the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, which did not arrive until 7 March 2003 - 13 days before the bombing campaign started.

In his article today, Sands says the memo raises questions about the selection of the chair of the inquiry. Sir John Chilcott sat on the 2004 Butler inquiry, which examined the reliability of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, and would have been privy to the document's contents - and the doubts about WMD running to the highest levels of the US and UK governments.

Many senior legal experts have expressed dismay that Chilcott has been selected to chair the inquiry as he is considered to be close to the security services after his time spent as a civil servant in Northern Ireland.

Brown had believed that allowing the Chilcott inquiry to hold private hearings would allow witnesses to be candid. But after bereaved families and antiwar campaigners expressed outrage, the prime minister wrote to Chilcott to say that if the panel can show witnesses and national security issues will not be compromised by public hearings, he will change his stance.

Lord Guthrie, a former chief of the defence staff under Blair, described the memo as "quite shocking". He said that it underscored why the Chilcott inquiry must be seen to be a robust investigation: "It's important that the inquiry is not a whitewash as these inquiries often are."

This year, the Dutch government launched its own inquiry into its support for the war. Significantly, the inquiry will see all the intelligence shared with the Dutch intelligence services by MI5 and MI6. The inquiry intends to publish its report in November - suggesting that confidential information about the role played by the UK and the US could become public before Chilcott's inquiry reports next year.

QueEx · Oct 22, 2010

GET YOU HOT · Mar 3, 2011

QueEx · Sep 22, 2012

Dick Cheney is at it, again. Speaking to nearly 2,000 movers, shakers, students and policy makers Thursday at Perspectives 2012, Cheney defended the U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying Saddam Hussein was on the verge of developing weapons of mass destruction:

"The story that we dreamed this up to attack Iraq is just not true," he said. "Saddam had no nuclear weapons stockpiled, but he had the people, the technology, the raw materials."

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/09/...uld.html#storylink=omni_popular#storylink=cpy

macker007 · Sep 22, 2012

Visualface said:
Really couldn't say it better myself.

QueEx · Jun 17, 2014

QueEx · Dec 11, 2014

Not just torture: Senator says CIA stalling
over bogus intelligence that led to Iraq war

John Brennan testifies before the Senate (Select) Intelligence Committee hearing on his nomination
to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency, February 7, 2013 in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON — CIA Director John Brennan, under fire over the Senate report on the CIA’s use of torture, is facing new heat over his role in what a senior lawmaker calls <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">an apparent coverup involving bogus intelligence used by the George W. Bush administration to help justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq</SPAN>.

FULL STORY HERE: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/12/...ator-says.html?sp=/99/100/&rh=1#storylink=cpy

thoughtone · Dec 11, 2014

Several frequent BGOL posters have plenty to highlight that Bush and Obama are the same.

Several frequent BGOL posters have plenty to highlight that Obamacare is the worst thing the federal government has ever done.

Several frequent BGOL posters have plenty to highlight that using drones are worse than using manned aircraft to kill civilians.

It's been several days and those posters have yet to comment on the Bush/CIA tourture report.

Typical! :hmm:

thoughtone · Dec 11, 2014

thoughtone · Dec 11, 2014

source: Time

What the Torture Report Reveals About Zero Dark Thirty

The Oscar-nominated film, revisited

<aside class="right-rail-module rr-related" data-name="rr-related">

</aside> The 2012 film Zero Dark Thirty implied the use of torture on al-Qaeda-affiliated detainees led to the discovery and eventual death of Osama bin Laden. The Oscar-nominated movie, which began with the declaration that it is “based on firsthand accounts of actual events,” came under fire from politicians and critics alike who said the film misrepresented the importance of the controversial interrogation techniques now widely condemned as torture. Now, a newly released Senate report documenting the CIA’s harsh interrogation tactics and their impact makes a convincing case that the movie got it wrong.

Mark Boal, a former journalist who penned the film’s script, said at the time that he conducted interviews (some of which were approved by the Obama Administration) with CIA agents, military officers and White House officials for the film. While he and director Kathryn Bigelow emphasized that they took some artistic license in creating the characters, they said the narrative was grounded in fact. In the film, CIA operatives use what they call “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding on detainees to identify bin Laden’s courier, known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Both in reality and in the film, following this courier led agents to bin Laden’s secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan—where the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks was killed by Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011.

But the Senate Intelligence Committee report released Tuesday rejects this narrative. “The vast majority of intelligence” about the courier who led the CIA to bin Laden’s compound “was originally acquired from sources unrelated to the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program, and the most accurate information acquired from a C.I.A. detainee was provided prior to the C.I.A. subjecting the detainee to the C.I.A.’s enhanced interrogation techniques,” the report says.

Revisiting the film in light of the report, it’s clear that even if the movie did not draw a direct connection between torture and this information, it did imply it. The protagonist—a CIA operative named Maya, played by Jessica Chastain—watches video footage of dozens of detainees providing information about al-Kuwait. It’s unclear to the audience how many of these informants have been tortured, but their exhausted, swollen faces suggest many have. The claim is brought out explicitly in one of Maya’s final interviews, during which a detainee tells her that he’ll provide information because he “has no desire to be tortured again.” Ultimately, Maya says 20 sources have helped to identify al-Kuwati and his relationship to bin Laden.<object id="flashObj" classid="clsid

Liberal Media?, White-Out of bush’s Impeachable Offense!!!

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