Liberal Media?, White-Out of bush’s Impeachable Offense!!!
- Thread starter muckraker10021
- Start date
A demand for a retraction has nothing to do with US law or where the paper is located. To make a public statement that the Downing Street Memo is a Lie has nothing to do with US law or where the paper is located.tian said:
Is <u>Silence</u> on the part of the Administration a <u>Tacit Admission</u> of the truth of the Memo ???
QueEx
they did. most people dont care. they called it "just flat out wrong." exact quote as far as i know.QueEx said:
this is what i was talking about in the taylor thread. some things are reported and conveniently allowed to be forgotten.
its easy to see a non-statement as an admission of guilt. however, there was a statement...what now, are they any less guilty in your mind? thats why, in my opinion, the downing street memo wont ever gain steam because the people that made past unfounded extreme accusations are leading this charge. iraq was never vietnam, world war 3 didnt happen, and now muckraker wants to be taken serious for this.
should have been more selective in your battles and you probably would make more headway.
T
tehuti
Guest
QueEx,
I posted an article stating the White House's refutation of the assertions of the memo here:
http://64.255.174.200/board/showthread.php?t=35296
But, McClellan doesn't address the Memo itself and acknowledges he's never read it. I maybe wrong, but I haven't seen the White House address this issue any where outside of McClellan's comments. If this is accurate, it would seem that they are avoiding the issue entirely.
I posted an article stating the White House's refutation of the assertions of the memo here:
http://64.255.174.200/board/showthread.php?t=35296
But, McClellan doesn't address the Memo itself and acknowledges he's never read it. I maybe wrong, but I haven't seen the White House address this issue any where outside of McClellan's comments. If this is accurate, it would seem that they are avoiding the issue entirely.
S
Stages
Guest
I agree totally with anybody whom says that it's not that people don't think it was wrong what Bush and his colleagues did but noone will try to impeach him for fear of being considered Anti-American and then placed on trial and convicted under the Patriot Act somehow. THis is why Bush is pushing for the FBI to have more power to violate our privacy under the Patriot Act. It's a damn shame how Bush has munipulated the whole so-called American Democrecy. Bush is damn near a Dictator the way he been pulling all these moves to benefit numero uno- himself.
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The reality of the Bush Junta's Deliberate lies, about Iraq’s bogus weapons of mass destruction, which has led to the current carnage in Iraq is slowly beginning to emerge on the radar screen.
It will take some non-neutered senate and congressional members to put this “Impeachable Offense” on the 50 yard line. Some are trying
- <a target="_blank" href="http://www.rawstory.com/aexternal/conyers_iraq_letter_502">
<u>Eighty-eight members of Congress call on Bush for answers on secret Iraq plan</u></a>
- but more are needed.
We'll see how this progresses.
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/index.php?p=953"><u>White House does not dispute substance of Downing Street Memo</u></a>
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.rawstory.com/aexternal/conyers_iraq_letter_502">
<u>Eighty-eight members of Congress call on Bush for answers on secret Iraq War Plan</u></a>
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/06-05/06-02-05/a01lo167.htm"><u>Kerry to bring issue of Downing Street Memo to the Senate</u></a>
<a target="_blank" href="http://rawstory.com/aexternal/conyers_petition_downing_street_527"><u>
Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) to amass 100,000 signatures from U.S. citizens calling on President Bush for more answers about Downing Street Memo</u></a>
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The Lies That Led To War</font>
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A leaked British memo, and other documents, make it clear that Bush intended all along to invade Iraq -- and lied about it to the American people. The full gravity of his offense has not yet sunk in.</b></font><p>
<img src="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/19/lies/story.jpg"><br>
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President Bush (left), on a New York visit, tells reporters in September 2002 that Saddam Hussein will probably not comply with U.S. demands to disarm. A government building in Baghdad (right) goes up in flames after a missile hit in March 2003. </b></font><p>
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<font face="arial" size="4"><b>By Juan Cole
www.juancole.com</b></font><p>
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<br><b>May 19, 2005</b> | <p>When Newsweek's source admitted that he had misidentified the government document in which he had seen an account of Quran desecration at Guantánamo prison, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"
<br>Di Rita could have said the same things about his bosses in the Bush administration.
<br>Tens of thousands of people are dead in Iraq , including more than 1,600 U.S. soldiers and Marines, because of false allegations made by President George W. Bush and Di Rita's more immediate boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, about Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and equally imaginary active nuclear weapons program. Bush, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeatedly made unfounded allegations that led to the continuing disaster in Iraq, much of which is now an economic and military no man's land beset by bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and political gridlock.
<br>And we now know, thanks to a leaked <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/19/downing_street_memo/index.html">British memo </a> concerning the head of British intelligence, that the Bush administration -- contrary to its explicit denials -- had already made up its mind to attack Iraq and "fixed" those bogus allegations to support its decision. In short, Bush and his top officials lied about Iraq .
<br>Going to war is the most serious decision a president can make. It should never be approached in a cavalier fashion. American lives, the prestige and influence of the country, international relations, the health of its defenses, and the future of the next generation are at stake. Yet every single piece of evidence we now have confirms that George W. Bush, who was obsessed with unseating Saddam Hussein even before 9/11, recklessly used the opportunity presented by the terror attacks to march the country to war, fixing the intelligence to justify his decision, and lying to the American people about the reasons for the war. In other times, this might have been an impeachable offense.
<br>The media circus around the Newsweek story arrived in time to further divert attention from the explosive British memorandum. Although the leaked Downing Street memo, published by the London Times on May 1, revealed the deeply dishonest and manipulative way that the Bush administration took the United States (and the United Kingdom ) to war against Iraq , the American press corps studiously ignored it for two weeks.
<br>The memo reported a July 2002 meeting of key British Cabinet and other officials, held when Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the British intelligence service, MI6, returned from a trip to Washington . It revealed that the decision to go to war had already been made by that point: "Military action was now seen as inevitable," the notes by British national security aide Matthew Rycroft revealed. Dearlove reported, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD . But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
<br>Members of the British Cabinet were worried by the news, the memo shows, since they knew that the case against Iraq was tissue-thin in international law and that there were several more egregious sinners in the weapons area than Iraq . Because the United Kingdom, unlike the United States, is a member of the International Criminal Court, its officials had to worry about being tried for war crimes if they became involved in an illegal war of aggression launched by Bush and lacking U.N. Security Council sanction. Prime Minister Tony Blair put his hopes in a ploy. He thought that Bush should arrange for the United Nations to demand a return to Iraq of weapons inspectors, with the hope that Saddam Hussein would refuse, thus creating a legal justification for war acceptable to the international community.
<br>On May 6, Knight Ridder reporters Warren Strobel and John Walcott said that a former high official in the U.S. government told them that Dearlove's remarks were "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" during his visit. This past Monday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan finally responded to the leaked document but denied that he had read it. Regarding the allegation that Bush fixed the intelligence around the Iraq war policy he said, "The suggestion is just flat-out wrong. Anyone who wants to know how the intelligence was used only has to go back and read everything that was said in public about the lead-up to the war."
<br>It is hard to see how this absurdly vague methodology could actually refute the memo's charges or, indeed, to know what exactly McClellan was driving at. He added, "The president of the United States , in a very public way, reached out to people across the world, went to the United Nations, and tried to resolve this in a diplomatic manner." But as the memo makes clear, that "reaching out" was fraudulent, a smoke screen to cover a decision that had already been made. Bush went to the United Nations reluctantly and against the advice of the Cheney and Rumsfeld faction, mainly as a way of giving Saddam an ultimatum that would form the basis for a war.
<br>The Bush administration, and some credulous or loyal members of the press, have long tried to blame U.S. intelligence services for exaggerating the Iraq threat and thus misleading the president into going to war. That position was always weak, and it is now revealed as laughable. President Bush was not misled by shoddy intelligence. Rather, he insisted on getting the intelligence that would support the war on which he had already decided. A good half of Americans, opinion polls show, now believe that the president actively lied to them about Iraq . In another, less cynical, flag-waving and intimidated age, this conclusion would provoke a scandal. The question would be, What did George W. Bush decide about Iraq , and when did he decide it?
<br>The leaked British document demonstrates that the moment of decision was far earlier than the Bush administration publicly admitted. On Aug. 7, just weeks after the Dearlove visit to Washington , Cheney said in California that no decision had been made on Iraq . When Bush met with Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan on Aug. 26, 2002 , CNN reported that White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press, "The president stressed that he has made no decisions, that he will continue to engage in consultations with Saudi Arabia and other nations about steps in the Middle East, steps in Iraq ." On Sept. 8, 2002 , Cheney was interviewed by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press." Russert asked, "Will militarily this be a cakewalk? Two, how long would we be there and how much would it cost?" Cheney replied, "First of all, no decision's been made yet to launch a military operation."
<br>The administration continued the charade that no decision had been taken through the end of 2002 and into 2003. In a White House press conference on Dec. 17, 2002 , a questioner asked Fleischer, "The L.A. Times today published a poll that found that 72 percent of Americans, including 60 percent of Republicans, said the president has not provided enough evidence to justify starting a war with Iraq . Is the president losing the public relations battle here in the United States ?"
<br>"Well, one, I think that I'll just state what is well known," Fleischer replied. "The president will not make any decision about war and peace and the possibility of putting some of our nation's best men and women in harm's way on the basis of a poll. He will do it on the basis of his judgment as commander in chief and what it will take to save and protect American lives in the event that he reaches the conclusion Saddam Hussein will indeed engage in war against the United States or provide terrorists with weapons to engage in war against the United States, just like on September 11th with the attack. And if he reaches that judgment, he will do so because the information he has and the judgment he makes suggest that, not because of a poll."
<br>The British memo is only the most decisive in a long list of documents that make it inescapably clear that Bush had decided to go to war long before. Indeed, Bush had decided as early as his presidential campaign in the year 2000 that he would find a way to fight an Iraq war to unseat Saddam. I was in the studio with Arab-American journalist Osama Siblani on Amy Goodman's <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/11/1449253">"Democracy Now" </a> program on March 11, 2005 , when Siblani reported a May 2000 encounter he had with then-candidate Bush in a hotel in Troy, Mich. "He told me just straight to my face, among 12 or maybe 13 Republicans at that time here in Michigan at the hotel. I think it was on May 17, 2000 , even before he became the nominee for the Republicans. He told me that he was going to take him out, when we talked about Saddam Hussein in Iraq ." According to Siblani, Bush added that "he wanted to go to Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, and he considered the regime an imminent and gathering threat against the United States ." Siblani points out that Bush at that point was privy to no classified intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs and had already made up his mind on the issue.
<br>Siblani's account of Bush's stance is virtually identical to the impressions Dearlove brought back from Washington a little over two years later: "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD ." Iraq had long played the great white whale to W.'s Ahab, and the chance to move decisively against Saddam was intrinsic to his presidential ambitions.
<br>Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill described to Ron Susskind in "The Price of Loyalty" the first Bush national security meeting of principals on Jan. 30, 2001 . He writes that after Bush announced he would simply disengage from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and "unleash Sharon ," he made it clear that Iraq would be a priority. "The hour almost up, Bush had assignments for everyone ... Rumsfeld and [Joint Chiefs chair Gen. H. Hugh] Shelton , he said, 'should examine our military options.' That included rebuilding the military coalition from the 1991 Gulf War, examining 'how it might look' to use U.S. ground forces in the north and the south of Iraq ... Ten days in, and it was about Iraq ." Bush hit the ground running with regard to Iraq , shunting aside key U.S. foreign-policy goals -- such as a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict -- in favor of exploring military options against Saddam Hussein. O'Neill reports a sense at the meeting that the reluctance to commit ground forces to an Asian war, a legacy of the Vietnam War, had ended with the advent of the Bush presidency.
<br>An Iraq war might have been a hard sell, even for the skilled and highly manipulative Bush team. But Sept. 11 ensured that they could get congressional approval and public support for a war. Americans were angry and willing to lash out in any direction specified by the president. Former terrorism czar Richard Clarke related that on the evening of Sept. 12, 2001 , Bush "grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. 'Look,' he told us, 'I know you have a lot to do and all ... but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way...'" When Clarke protested that it was clearly an al-Qaida operation, Bush insisted, "Just look. I want to know any shred ... Look into Iraq , Saddam." According to Clarke, Bush said it "testily."
<br>Clarke reveals that Rumsfeld was already, on the afternoon of Sept. 12, "talking about broadening the objectives of our response and 'getting Iraq .'" Although early accounts of National Security Council meetings after the attacks highlighted the role of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in pressing for an immediate war on Iraq , it has become increasingly clear that he was only one such voice, and hardly the most senior.
<br>Astonishingly, the Bush administration almost took the United States to war against Iraq in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. We know about this episode from <a href="http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,929464,00.html">the public account </a> of Sir Christopher Meyer, then the U.K. ambassador in Washington . Meyer reported that in the two weeks after Sept. 11, the Bush national security team argued back and forth over whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan . It appears from his account that Bush was leaning toward the Iraq option.
<br>Meyer spoke again about the matter to Vanity Fair for its May 2004 report, "The Path to War." Soon after Sept. 11, Meyer went to a dinner at the White House, "attended also by Colin Powell, [and] Condi Rice," where "Bush made clear that he was determined to topple Saddam. 'Rumors were already flying that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq ,' Meyer remembers." When British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in Washington on Sept. 20, 2001 , he was alarmed. If Blair had consulted MI6 about the relative merits of the Afghanistan and Iraq options, we can only imagine what well-informed British intelligence officers in Pakistan were cabling London about the dangers of leaving bin Laden and al-Qaida in place while plunging into a potential quagmire in Iraq . Fears that London was a major al-Qaida target would have underlined the risks to the United Kingdom of an " Iraq first" policy in Washington .
<br>Meyer told Vanity Fair, "Blair came with a very strong message -- don't get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaida, Afghanistan , the Taliban." He must have been terrified that the Bush administration would abandon London to al-Qaida while pursuing the great white whale of Iraq . But he managed to help persuade Bush. Meyer reports, "Bush said, 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan , we must come back to Iraq .'" <a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1185407,00.html">Meyer also said, </a> in spring 2004, that it was clear "that when we did come back to Iraq it wouldn't be to discuss smarter sanctions." In short, Meyer strongly implies that Blair persuaded Bush to make war on al-Qaida in Afghanistan first by promising him British support for a later Iraq campaign.
<br>That the Afghanistan war went so well quickly enabled Bush to begin planning for an attack on Iraq . Bob Woodward reports in "Plan of Attack" that Bush asked Cheney for an Iraq war plan on Nov. 21. On Nov. 26 the Independent reported that Bush had called Saddam Hussein "evil" and demanded that he accept U.N. weapons inspectors. On Nov. 27 Howard Fineman of Newsweek reported a conversation with Bush aboard Air Force One in the wake of the successful Afghanistan campaign. "He wants to avoid the more profound mistakes his dad made...: his failure, at the end of the Gulf War, to stop -- once and for all -- Saddam Hussein in Iraq from threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction."
<br>Nov. 27, 2001 , was a significant date. Gen. Tommy Franks in his memoirs reveals that he received an unexpected call from Rumsfeld. "General Franks, the president wants us to look at options for Iraq ." Franks knew exactly what the call portended. "Son of a bitch, I thought. No rest for the weary." There would be another war. The die had already been cast.
<br>On Dec. 31 Newsweek reported, "In principle, Bush and his national-security team have decided that Saddam has to go, U.S. officials say. 'The question is not if the United States is going to hit Iraq ; the question is when,' says a senior American envoy in the Middle East ." The article notes Bush's oft-stated caution that no final decision had been made, but dismisses it on the basis of insider information. The main credit for this article was given to Christopher Dickey and John Barry, but Sami Kohen is listed as reporting from Turkey . Since a U.S. ambassador is quoted, and Kohen was the only one of the coauthors in the Middle East , he is likely the one who got the quote. Was his source Ambassador W. Robert Pearson?
<br>Former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida says in his memoirs, "Intelligence Matters," that on Feb. 19, 2002 , he visited the U.S. Central Command. Franks revealed to him that the command was no longer engaged in a war in Afghanistan . Graham was taken aback. Franks told the stunned senator, "Military and intelligence personnel are being re-deployed to prepare for an action in Iraq ." The implementation phase had already begun.
<br>In April 2002, Tony Blair went to see Bush at his Crawford, Texas , ranch. Vanity Fair reports that Blair stressed the need to get the backing of the United Nations for an Iraq war if he was going to swing Parliament behind it.
<br>This long-term obsession of George W. Bush, then, was the background of the meeting in Washington with Dearlove in July 2002. Although Dearlove reported on a change of mood, such that the Iraq war was now a sure thing, he was probably actually observing that Bush had moved it to the front burner. By late July or very early August 2002, according to Vanity Fair, Blair had called Bush. A senior White House official who saw the transcript remarked, "The way it read was that, come what may, Saddam was going to go; they said they were going forward, they were going to take out the regime, and they were doing the right thing." Blair, he said, did not need any convincing. Both Blair and Bush would go on telling the public for months afterward that no final decision had been made about going to war.
<br>It was also in midsummer 2002 that Franks asked Rumsfeld for $750 million to begin making preparations in Kuwait toward an Iraq war. The request, reported in Woodward's "Plan of Attack," provoked a good deal of controversy. Many in Congress felt that no specific appropriation had been made for such preparations, and the money was essentially taken from Afghanistan appropriations without congressional approval.
<br>From Bush's meeting in May 2000 with Osama Siblani and 12 Republicans in a hotel room in Troy , Mich. , until July 2002, his obsession with attacking Iraq never wavered. His first national security meeting was all about Iraq . He seriously considered attacking Iraq before Afghanistan after Sept. 11, and Blair had to argue him into the Afghanistan war. He had Rumsfeld ask Gen. Franks for an Iraq war plan on Nov. 27, 2001 . The sense that Dearlove had, that the die had been inexorably cast by July 2002, was entirely correct.
<br>But it is no positive reflection on the head of MI6 that he had not been able to discern that the die had been cast long before. The Downing Street memo is remarkable only for the frankness with which it acknowledges the illegality of the planned war and Bush's policy of "fixing" the intelligence around the policy. That the decision was made first, and various pretexts advanced for it in the aftermath, is now clear to the public.
<br>Why has there not been more outrage in the United States at these revelations? Many Americans may have chosen to overlook the lies and deceptions the Bush administration used to justify the war because they still believe the Iraq war might have made them at least somewhat safer. When they realize that this hope, too, is unfounded, and that in fact the war has greatly increased the threat of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, their wrath may be visited on the president and the political party that has brought America the biggest foreign-policy disaster since Vietnam .
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Proof Bush Fixed The Facts</font>
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<font face="arial" size="4">by Ray McGovern
May 4th 2005
<a target="_blank" href="http://faculty.schreiner.edu/tomwells/ray_mcgovern_bio.htm">
<u>Ray McGovern bio</u></a></font>
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"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."</b></font>
<b>Never in our wildest dreams</b> did we think we would see those words <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html" target="_blank">in black and white—and beneath a SECRET stamp</a>, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity.
It has been a hard learning—that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.
Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from official documents—this time authentic, not forged. Whether prompted by the open appeal of the international <a href="http://www.tompaine.com/articles/appeal_for_truth_telling.php" target="_blank">Truth-Telling Coalition</a> or not, some brave soul has made the most explosive "patriotic leak" of the war by giving London's Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq.
Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document, which immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral. Apparently no one felt free to ask the obvious questions. Or, worse still, the obvious questions did not occur.
<b><u>Juggernaut Before The Horse</u></b>
In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush has decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification would be a challenge, since "the case was thin." Straw noted that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.
In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by a well-honed U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine. The argument would be made "solid" enough to win endorsement from Congress and Parliament by conjuring up:
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• Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear related;
• Forgeries alleging Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa;
• Tall tales from a drunken defector about mobile biological weapons laboratories;
• Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped missiles within 45 minutes of an order to do so;
• Dodgy dossiers fabricated in London; and
• A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for good measure.</font>
All this, as Dearlove notes dryly, despite the fact that "there was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." Another nugget from Dearlove's briefing is his bloodless comment that one of the U.S. military options under discussion involved "a continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli"—the clear implication being that planners of the air campaign would also see to it that an appropriate casus belli was orchestrated.
The discussion at 10 Downing St. on July 23, 2002 calls to mind the first meeting of George W. Bush's National Security Council (NSC) on Jan. 30, 2001, at which the president made it clear that toppling Saddam Hussein sat atop his to-do list, according to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil, who was there. O'Neil was taken aback that there was no discussion of why it was necessary to "take out" Saddam. Rather, after CIA Director George Tenet showed a grainy photo of a building in Iraq that he said might be involved in producing chemical or biological agents, the discussion proceeded immediately to which Iraqi targets might be best to bomb. Again, neither O'Neil nor the other participants asked the obvious questions. Another NSC meeting two days later included planning for dividing up Iraq's oil wealth.
<b><u>Obedience School</u></b>
As for the briefing of Blair, the minutes provide further grist for those who describe the U.K. prime minister as Bush's "poodle." The tone of the conversation bespeaks a foregone conclusion that Blair will wag his tail cheerfully and obey the learned commands. At one point he ventures the thought that, "If the political context were right, people would support regime change." This, after Attorney General Peter Goldsmith has already warned that the desire for regime change "was not a legal base for military action,"—a point Goldsmith made again just 12 days before the attack on Iraq until he was persuaded by a phalanx of Bush administration lawyers to change his mind 10 days later.
The meeting concludes with a directive to "work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action."
I cannot quite fathom why I find the account of this meeting so jarring. Surely it is what one might expect, given all else we know. Yet seeing it in bloodless black and white somehow gives it more impact. And the implications are no less jarring.
One of Dearlove's primary interlocutors in Washington was his American counterpart, CIA director George Tenet. (And there is no closer relationship between two intelligence services than the privileged one between the CIA and MI-6.) Tenet, of course, knew at least as much as Dearlove, but nonetheless played the role of accomplice in serving up to Bush the kind of "slam-dunk intelligence" that he knew would be welcome. If there is one unpardonable sin in intelligence work, it is that kind of politicization. But Tenet decided to be a "team player" and set the tone.
<b><u>Politicization: Big Time</u></b>
Actually, politicization is far too mild a word for what happened. The intelligence was not simply mistaken; it was manufactured, with the president of the United States awarding foreman George Tenet the Medal of Freedom for his role in helping supervise the deceit. The British documents make clear that this was not a mere case of "leaning forward" in analyzing the intelligence, but rather mass deception—an order of magnitude more serious. No other conclusion is now possible.
Small wonder, then, to learn from CIA insiders like former case officer Lindsay Moran that Tenet's malleable managers told their minions, "Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."
Small wonder that, when the only U.S. analyst who met with the alcoholic Iraqi defector appropriately codenamed "Curveball" raised strong doubt about Curveball's reliability before then-Secretary of State Colin Powell used the fabrication about "mobile biological weapons trailers" before the United Nations, the analyst got this e-mail reply from his CIA supervisor:
"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about."
When Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, took over as director late last year, he immediately wrote a memo to all employees explaining the "rules of the road"—first and foremost, "We support the administration and its policies." So much for objective intelligence insulated from policy pressure.
Tenet and Goss, creatures of the intensely politicized environment of Congress, brought with them a radically new ethos—one much more akin to that of Blair's courtiers than to that of earlier CIA directors who had the courage to speak truth to power.
Seldom does one have documentary evidence that intelligence chiefs chose to cooperate in both fabricating and "sexing up" (as the British press puts it) intelligence to justify a prior decision for war. There is no word to describe the reaction of honest intelligence professionals to the corruption of our profession on a matter of such consequence. "Outrage" does not come close.
<b><u>Hope In Unauthorized Disclosures</u></b>
Those of us who care about unprovoked wars owe the patriot who gave this latest British government document to The Sunday Times a debt of gratitude. Unauthorized disclosures are gathering steam. They need to increase quickly on this side of the Atlantic as well—the more so, inasmuch as Congress-controlled by the president's party-cannot be counted on to discharge its constitutional prerogative for oversight.
In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S. government officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said this:
<blockquote>
We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm's way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties...Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.
</blockquote>
If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and analyses bring them to light, the chances become less that a president could launch another unprovoked war—against, say, Iran
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Afraid To Tell The Truth</font>
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A secret memo publicized in Britain confirms the lies on which Bush based his Iraq policy. Why has it received so little notice in the U.S. press? </b></font><p>
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<font face="arial" size="4"><b>By Joe Conason</b></font><p>
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<br>May 6, 2005 | <p> Are Americans so jaded about the deceptions perpetrated by our own government to lead us into war in Iraq that we are no longer interested in fresh and damning evidence of those lies? Or are the editors and producers who oversee the American news industry simply too timid to report that proof on the evening broadcasts and front pages?
<br>There is a "smoking memo" that confirms the worst assumptions about the Bush administration's Iraq policy, but although that memo generated huge pre-election headlines in Britain , its existence has hardly been mentioned here.
<br>On May 1, the Sunday Times of London published the confidential minutes of a meeting held almost three years ago at 10 Downing Street , residence of the British prime minister, where Tony Blair and members of his Cabinet discussed the British government's ongoing consultations with the Bush administration over Iraq . Those in attendance included the defense secretary, the foreign secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence chief and Blair's closest personal aides.
<br>The minutes of that meeting, set down in a <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html">memorandum </a> by foreign policy advisor Matthew Rycroft, were circulated to all who were present. Dated July 23, 2002 , the Rycroft memo begins with the following admonishment: "This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents." Evidently that doesn't include those of us living in the United States , although press coverage of the document in Britain created a sensational 11th-hour backlash against Blair. (The prime minister admitted that the Iraq war had been a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4521627.stm">"deeply divisive" </a> issue as he savored a narrow election victory Friday.)
<br>What the minutes clearly show is that Bush and Blair secretly agreed to wage war for "regime change" nearly a year before the invasion -- and months before they asked the United Nations Security Council to support renewed weapons inspections as an alternative to armed conflict. The minutes also reveal the lingering doubts over the legal and moral justifications for war within the Blair government.
<br>But for Americans, the most important lines in the July 23 minutes are those attributed to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/286128.stm">Sir Richard Dearlove, </a> the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, who in spy jargon is to be referred to only as "C." The minutes indicate that Sir Richard had discovered certain harsh realities during a visit to the United States that summer:
<br>"C reported on his recent talks in Washington . There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD . But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the U.N. route ... There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
<br>At the same meeting, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirmed Sir Richard's assessment:
<br>"The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya , North Korea or Iran ."
<br>Those few lines sum up everything that went wrong in the months and years to come -- and place the clear stamp of falsehood on the Bush administration's public pronouncements as the president pushed the nation toward war.
<br>When Bush signed the congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq on Oct. 16, 2002 -- three months after the Downing Street memorandum -- he didn't say that military action was "inevitable." Instead, the president <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021016-1.html">assured </a> Americans and the world that he still hoped war could be avoided.
<br>"I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary," he said at a press conference. "Hopefully this can be done peacefully. Hopefully we can do this without any military action." He promised that he had "carefully weighed the human cost of every option before us" and that if the United States went into battle, it would be "as a last resort."
<br>In the months that followed, as we now know, the president and his aides grossly exaggerated, and in some instances falsified, the intelligence concerning the Iraqi regime's supposed weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. Defenders of his policy have since insisted that he too was misled with bad information, provided by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies.
<br>But "C" heard something very different from Blair's allies in Washington .
<br>According to him, Bush, determined to oust Saddam, planned to "justify" a preventive war by tying the terrorist threat to Iraq's WMD arsenal -- and manipulating the intelligence to fit his policy instead of determining the policy based on the facts.
<br>That is precisely what happened, and precisely the opposite of what the president vowed to do. Not only did Bush and his top aides lie about their approach to the alleged threat posed by Iraq , but they continued to lie about that process in the war's aftermath.
<br>And what of the aftermath of the war in Iraq ? Evidently "little discussion" was devoted to that topic as the Bush administration prepared to sell the war, or so "C" reported to his colleagues in London . Iraqis and Americans, as well as their coalition partners, have been suffering the dismal results of that lack of planning ever since.
<br>Despite much happy talk from Washington about the successes achieved in Iraq , recent polls show that Americans are more disenchanted than ever with the war. Nearly 60 percent now say the president made the wrong decision and that the outcome is not worth the price in lives and treasure. What would they say if the media dared to tell them the truth about how it all happened?
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The reality of the Bush Junta's Deliberate lies, about Iraq’s bogus weapons of mass destruction, which has led to the current carnage in Iraq is slowly beginning to emerge on the radar screen.
It will take some non-neutered senate and congressional members to put this “Impeachable Offense” on the 50 yard line. Some are trying
- <a target="_blank" href="http://www.rawstory.com/aexternal/conyers_iraq_letter_502">
<u>Eighty-eight members of Congress call on Bush for answers on secret Iraq plan</u></a>
- but more are needed.
We'll see how this progresses.
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/index.php?p=953"><u>White House does not dispute substance of Downing Street Memo</u></a>
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.rawstory.com/aexternal/conyers_iraq_letter_502">
<u>Eighty-eight members of Congress call on Bush for answers on secret Iraq War Plan</u></a>
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/06-05/06-02-05/a01lo167.htm"><u>Kerry to bring issue of Downing Street Memo to the Senate</u></a>
<a target="_blank" href="http://rawstory.com/aexternal/conyers_petition_downing_street_527"><u>
Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) to amass 100,000 signatures from U.S. citizens calling on President Bush for more answers about Downing Street Memo</u></a>
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The Lies That Led To War</font>
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A leaked British memo, and other documents, make it clear that Bush intended all along to invade Iraq -- and lied about it to the American people. The full gravity of his offense has not yet sunk in.</b></font><p>
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President Bush (left), on a New York visit, tells reporters in September 2002 that Saddam Hussein will probably not comply with U.S. demands to disarm. A government building in Baghdad (right) goes up in flames after a missile hit in March 2003. </b></font><p>
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<font face="arial" size="4"><b>By Juan Cole
www.juancole.com</b></font><p>
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<br><b>May 19, 2005</b> | <p>When Newsweek's source admitted that he had misidentified the government document in which he had seen an account of Quran desecration at Guantánamo prison, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"
<br>Di Rita could have said the same things about his bosses in the Bush administration.
<br>Tens of thousands of people are dead in Iraq , including more than 1,600 U.S. soldiers and Marines, because of false allegations made by President George W. Bush and Di Rita's more immediate boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, about Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and equally imaginary active nuclear weapons program. Bush, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeatedly made unfounded allegations that led to the continuing disaster in Iraq, much of which is now an economic and military no man's land beset by bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and political gridlock.
<br>And we now know, thanks to a leaked <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/19/downing_street_memo/index.html">British memo </a> concerning the head of British intelligence, that the Bush administration -- contrary to its explicit denials -- had already made up its mind to attack Iraq and "fixed" those bogus allegations to support its decision. In short, Bush and his top officials lied about Iraq .
<br>Going to war is the most serious decision a president can make. It should never be approached in a cavalier fashion. American lives, the prestige and influence of the country, international relations, the health of its defenses, and the future of the next generation are at stake. Yet every single piece of evidence we now have confirms that George W. Bush, who was obsessed with unseating Saddam Hussein even before 9/11, recklessly used the opportunity presented by the terror attacks to march the country to war, fixing the intelligence to justify his decision, and lying to the American people about the reasons for the war. In other times, this might have been an impeachable offense.
<br>The media circus around the Newsweek story arrived in time to further divert attention from the explosive British memorandum. Although the leaked Downing Street memo, published by the London Times on May 1, revealed the deeply dishonest and manipulative way that the Bush administration took the United States (and the United Kingdom ) to war against Iraq , the American press corps studiously ignored it for two weeks.
<br>The memo reported a July 2002 meeting of key British Cabinet and other officials, held when Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the British intelligence service, MI6, returned from a trip to Washington . It revealed that the decision to go to war had already been made by that point: "Military action was now seen as inevitable," the notes by British national security aide Matthew Rycroft revealed. Dearlove reported, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD . But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
<br>Members of the British Cabinet were worried by the news, the memo shows, since they knew that the case against Iraq was tissue-thin in international law and that there were several more egregious sinners in the weapons area than Iraq . Because the United Kingdom, unlike the United States, is a member of the International Criminal Court, its officials had to worry about being tried for war crimes if they became involved in an illegal war of aggression launched by Bush and lacking U.N. Security Council sanction. Prime Minister Tony Blair put his hopes in a ploy. He thought that Bush should arrange for the United Nations to demand a return to Iraq of weapons inspectors, with the hope that Saddam Hussein would refuse, thus creating a legal justification for war acceptable to the international community.
<br>On May 6, Knight Ridder reporters Warren Strobel and John Walcott said that a former high official in the U.S. government told them that Dearlove's remarks were "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" during his visit. This past Monday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan finally responded to the leaked document but denied that he had read it. Regarding the allegation that Bush fixed the intelligence around the Iraq war policy he said, "The suggestion is just flat-out wrong. Anyone who wants to know how the intelligence was used only has to go back and read everything that was said in public about the lead-up to the war."
<br>It is hard to see how this absurdly vague methodology could actually refute the memo's charges or, indeed, to know what exactly McClellan was driving at. He added, "The president of the United States , in a very public way, reached out to people across the world, went to the United Nations, and tried to resolve this in a diplomatic manner." But as the memo makes clear, that "reaching out" was fraudulent, a smoke screen to cover a decision that had already been made. Bush went to the United Nations reluctantly and against the advice of the Cheney and Rumsfeld faction, mainly as a way of giving Saddam an ultimatum that would form the basis for a war.
<br>The Bush administration, and some credulous or loyal members of the press, have long tried to blame U.S. intelligence services for exaggerating the Iraq threat and thus misleading the president into going to war. That position was always weak, and it is now revealed as laughable. President Bush was not misled by shoddy intelligence. Rather, he insisted on getting the intelligence that would support the war on which he had already decided. A good half of Americans, opinion polls show, now believe that the president actively lied to them about Iraq . In another, less cynical, flag-waving and intimidated age, this conclusion would provoke a scandal. The question would be, What did George W. Bush decide about Iraq , and when did he decide it?
<br>The leaked British document demonstrates that the moment of decision was far earlier than the Bush administration publicly admitted. On Aug. 7, just weeks after the Dearlove visit to Washington , Cheney said in California that no decision had been made on Iraq . When Bush met with Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan on Aug. 26, 2002 , CNN reported that White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press, "The president stressed that he has made no decisions, that he will continue to engage in consultations with Saudi Arabia and other nations about steps in the Middle East, steps in Iraq ." On Sept. 8, 2002 , Cheney was interviewed by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press." Russert asked, "Will militarily this be a cakewalk? Two, how long would we be there and how much would it cost?" Cheney replied, "First of all, no decision's been made yet to launch a military operation."
<br>The administration continued the charade that no decision had been taken through the end of 2002 and into 2003. In a White House press conference on Dec. 17, 2002 , a questioner asked Fleischer, "The L.A. Times today published a poll that found that 72 percent of Americans, including 60 percent of Republicans, said the president has not provided enough evidence to justify starting a war with Iraq . Is the president losing the public relations battle here in the United States ?"
<br>"Well, one, I think that I'll just state what is well known," Fleischer replied. "The president will not make any decision about war and peace and the possibility of putting some of our nation's best men and women in harm's way on the basis of a poll. He will do it on the basis of his judgment as commander in chief and what it will take to save and protect American lives in the event that he reaches the conclusion Saddam Hussein will indeed engage in war against the United States or provide terrorists with weapons to engage in war against the United States, just like on September 11th with the attack. And if he reaches that judgment, he will do so because the information he has and the judgment he makes suggest that, not because of a poll."
<br>The British memo is only the most decisive in a long list of documents that make it inescapably clear that Bush had decided to go to war long before. Indeed, Bush had decided as early as his presidential campaign in the year 2000 that he would find a way to fight an Iraq war to unseat Saddam. I was in the studio with Arab-American journalist Osama Siblani on Amy Goodman's <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/11/1449253">"Democracy Now" </a> program on March 11, 2005 , when Siblani reported a May 2000 encounter he had with then-candidate Bush in a hotel in Troy, Mich. "He told me just straight to my face, among 12 or maybe 13 Republicans at that time here in Michigan at the hotel. I think it was on May 17, 2000 , even before he became the nominee for the Republicans. He told me that he was going to take him out, when we talked about Saddam Hussein in Iraq ." According to Siblani, Bush added that "he wanted to go to Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, and he considered the regime an imminent and gathering threat against the United States ." Siblani points out that Bush at that point was privy to no classified intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs and had already made up his mind on the issue.
<br>Siblani's account of Bush's stance is virtually identical to the impressions Dearlove brought back from Washington a little over two years later: "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD ." Iraq had long played the great white whale to W.'s Ahab, and the chance to move decisively against Saddam was intrinsic to his presidential ambitions.
<br>Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill described to Ron Susskind in "The Price of Loyalty" the first Bush national security meeting of principals on Jan. 30, 2001 . He writes that after Bush announced he would simply disengage from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and "unleash Sharon ," he made it clear that Iraq would be a priority. "The hour almost up, Bush had assignments for everyone ... Rumsfeld and [Joint Chiefs chair Gen. H. Hugh] Shelton , he said, 'should examine our military options.' That included rebuilding the military coalition from the 1991 Gulf War, examining 'how it might look' to use U.S. ground forces in the north and the south of Iraq ... Ten days in, and it was about Iraq ." Bush hit the ground running with regard to Iraq , shunting aside key U.S. foreign-policy goals -- such as a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict -- in favor of exploring military options against Saddam Hussein. O'Neill reports a sense at the meeting that the reluctance to commit ground forces to an Asian war, a legacy of the Vietnam War, had ended with the advent of the Bush presidency.
<br>An Iraq war might have been a hard sell, even for the skilled and highly manipulative Bush team. But Sept. 11 ensured that they could get congressional approval and public support for a war. Americans were angry and willing to lash out in any direction specified by the president. Former terrorism czar Richard Clarke related that on the evening of Sept. 12, 2001 , Bush "grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. 'Look,' he told us, 'I know you have a lot to do and all ... but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way...'" When Clarke protested that it was clearly an al-Qaida operation, Bush insisted, "Just look. I want to know any shred ... Look into Iraq , Saddam." According to Clarke, Bush said it "testily."
<br>Clarke reveals that Rumsfeld was already, on the afternoon of Sept. 12, "talking about broadening the objectives of our response and 'getting Iraq .'" Although early accounts of National Security Council meetings after the attacks highlighted the role of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in pressing for an immediate war on Iraq , it has become increasingly clear that he was only one such voice, and hardly the most senior.
<br>Astonishingly, the Bush administration almost took the United States to war against Iraq in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. We know about this episode from <a href="http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,929464,00.html">the public account </a> of Sir Christopher Meyer, then the U.K. ambassador in Washington . Meyer reported that in the two weeks after Sept. 11, the Bush national security team argued back and forth over whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan . It appears from his account that Bush was leaning toward the Iraq option.
<br>Meyer spoke again about the matter to Vanity Fair for its May 2004 report, "The Path to War." Soon after Sept. 11, Meyer went to a dinner at the White House, "attended also by Colin Powell, [and] Condi Rice," where "Bush made clear that he was determined to topple Saddam. 'Rumors were already flying that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq ,' Meyer remembers." When British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in Washington on Sept. 20, 2001 , he was alarmed. If Blair had consulted MI6 about the relative merits of the Afghanistan and Iraq options, we can only imagine what well-informed British intelligence officers in Pakistan were cabling London about the dangers of leaving bin Laden and al-Qaida in place while plunging into a potential quagmire in Iraq . Fears that London was a major al-Qaida target would have underlined the risks to the United Kingdom of an " Iraq first" policy in Washington .
<br>Meyer told Vanity Fair, "Blair came with a very strong message -- don't get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaida, Afghanistan , the Taliban." He must have been terrified that the Bush administration would abandon London to al-Qaida while pursuing the great white whale of Iraq . But he managed to help persuade Bush. Meyer reports, "Bush said, 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan , we must come back to Iraq .'" <a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1185407,00.html">Meyer also said, </a> in spring 2004, that it was clear "that when we did come back to Iraq it wouldn't be to discuss smarter sanctions." In short, Meyer strongly implies that Blair persuaded Bush to make war on al-Qaida in Afghanistan first by promising him British support for a later Iraq campaign.
<br>That the Afghanistan war went so well quickly enabled Bush to begin planning for an attack on Iraq . Bob Woodward reports in "Plan of Attack" that Bush asked Cheney for an Iraq war plan on Nov. 21. On Nov. 26 the Independent reported that Bush had called Saddam Hussein "evil" and demanded that he accept U.N. weapons inspectors. On Nov. 27 Howard Fineman of Newsweek reported a conversation with Bush aboard Air Force One in the wake of the successful Afghanistan campaign. "He wants to avoid the more profound mistakes his dad made...: his failure, at the end of the Gulf War, to stop -- once and for all -- Saddam Hussein in Iraq from threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction."
<br>Nov. 27, 2001 , was a significant date. Gen. Tommy Franks in his memoirs reveals that he received an unexpected call from Rumsfeld. "General Franks, the president wants us to look at options for Iraq ." Franks knew exactly what the call portended. "Son of a bitch, I thought. No rest for the weary." There would be another war. The die had already been cast.
<br>On Dec. 31 Newsweek reported, "In principle, Bush and his national-security team have decided that Saddam has to go, U.S. officials say. 'The question is not if the United States is going to hit Iraq ; the question is when,' says a senior American envoy in the Middle East ." The article notes Bush's oft-stated caution that no final decision had been made, but dismisses it on the basis of insider information. The main credit for this article was given to Christopher Dickey and John Barry, but Sami Kohen is listed as reporting from Turkey . Since a U.S. ambassador is quoted, and Kohen was the only one of the coauthors in the Middle East , he is likely the one who got the quote. Was his source Ambassador W. Robert Pearson?
<br>Former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida says in his memoirs, "Intelligence Matters," that on Feb. 19, 2002 , he visited the U.S. Central Command. Franks revealed to him that the command was no longer engaged in a war in Afghanistan . Graham was taken aback. Franks told the stunned senator, "Military and intelligence personnel are being re-deployed to prepare for an action in Iraq ." The implementation phase had already begun.
<br>In April 2002, Tony Blair went to see Bush at his Crawford, Texas , ranch. Vanity Fair reports that Blair stressed the need to get the backing of the United Nations for an Iraq war if he was going to swing Parliament behind it.
<br>This long-term obsession of George W. Bush, then, was the background of the meeting in Washington with Dearlove in July 2002. Although Dearlove reported on a change of mood, such that the Iraq war was now a sure thing, he was probably actually observing that Bush had moved it to the front burner. By late July or very early August 2002, according to Vanity Fair, Blair had called Bush. A senior White House official who saw the transcript remarked, "The way it read was that, come what may, Saddam was going to go; they said they were going forward, they were going to take out the regime, and they were doing the right thing." Blair, he said, did not need any convincing. Both Blair and Bush would go on telling the public for months afterward that no final decision had been made about going to war.
<br>It was also in midsummer 2002 that Franks asked Rumsfeld for $750 million to begin making preparations in Kuwait toward an Iraq war. The request, reported in Woodward's "Plan of Attack," provoked a good deal of controversy. Many in Congress felt that no specific appropriation had been made for such preparations, and the money was essentially taken from Afghanistan appropriations without congressional approval.
<br>From Bush's meeting in May 2000 with Osama Siblani and 12 Republicans in a hotel room in Troy , Mich. , until July 2002, his obsession with attacking Iraq never wavered. His first national security meeting was all about Iraq . He seriously considered attacking Iraq before Afghanistan after Sept. 11, and Blair had to argue him into the Afghanistan war. He had Rumsfeld ask Gen. Franks for an Iraq war plan on Nov. 27, 2001 . The sense that Dearlove had, that the die had been inexorably cast by July 2002, was entirely correct.
<br>But it is no positive reflection on the head of MI6 that he had not been able to discern that the die had been cast long before. The Downing Street memo is remarkable only for the frankness with which it acknowledges the illegality of the planned war and Bush's policy of "fixing" the intelligence around the policy. That the decision was made first, and various pretexts advanced for it in the aftermath, is now clear to the public.
<br>Why has there not been more outrage in the United States at these revelations? Many Americans may have chosen to overlook the lies and deceptions the Bush administration used to justify the war because they still believe the Iraq war might have made them at least somewhat safer. When they realize that this hope, too, is unfounded, and that in fact the war has greatly increased the threat of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, their wrath may be visited on the president and the political party that has brought America the biggest foreign-policy disaster since Vietnam .
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Proof Bush Fixed The Facts</font>
<img src="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/images/fed_agencies/july-dec04/0810spymc1.jpg"><br>
<font face="arial" size="4">by Ray McGovern
May 4th 2005
<a target="_blank" href="http://faculty.schreiner.edu/tomwells/ray_mcgovern_bio.htm">
<u>Ray McGovern bio</u></a></font>
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"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."</b></font>
<b>Never in our wildest dreams</b> did we think we would see those words <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html" target="_blank">in black and white—and beneath a SECRET stamp</a>, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity.
It has been a hard learning—that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.
Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from official documents—this time authentic, not forged. Whether prompted by the open appeal of the international <a href="http://www.tompaine.com/articles/appeal_for_truth_telling.php" target="_blank">Truth-Telling Coalition</a> or not, some brave soul has made the most explosive "patriotic leak" of the war by giving London's Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq.
Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document, which immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral. Apparently no one felt free to ask the obvious questions. Or, worse still, the obvious questions did not occur.
<b><u>Juggernaut Before The Horse</u></b>
In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush has decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification would be a challenge, since "the case was thin." Straw noted that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.
In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by a well-honed U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine. The argument would be made "solid" enough to win endorsement from Congress and Parliament by conjuring up:
<font face="arial" size="3" color="#333333">
• Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear related;
• Forgeries alleging Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa;
• Tall tales from a drunken defector about mobile biological weapons laboratories;
• Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped missiles within 45 minutes of an order to do so;
• Dodgy dossiers fabricated in London; and
• A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for good measure.</font>
All this, as Dearlove notes dryly, despite the fact that "there was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." Another nugget from Dearlove's briefing is his bloodless comment that one of the U.S. military options under discussion involved "a continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli"—the clear implication being that planners of the air campaign would also see to it that an appropriate casus belli was orchestrated.
The discussion at 10 Downing St. on July 23, 2002 calls to mind the first meeting of George W. Bush's National Security Council (NSC) on Jan. 30, 2001, at which the president made it clear that toppling Saddam Hussein sat atop his to-do list, according to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil, who was there. O'Neil was taken aback that there was no discussion of why it was necessary to "take out" Saddam. Rather, after CIA Director George Tenet showed a grainy photo of a building in Iraq that he said might be involved in producing chemical or biological agents, the discussion proceeded immediately to which Iraqi targets might be best to bomb. Again, neither O'Neil nor the other participants asked the obvious questions. Another NSC meeting two days later included planning for dividing up Iraq's oil wealth.
<b><u>Obedience School</u></b>
As for the briefing of Blair, the minutes provide further grist for those who describe the U.K. prime minister as Bush's "poodle." The tone of the conversation bespeaks a foregone conclusion that Blair will wag his tail cheerfully and obey the learned commands. At one point he ventures the thought that, "If the political context were right, people would support regime change." This, after Attorney General Peter Goldsmith has already warned that the desire for regime change "was not a legal base for military action,"—a point Goldsmith made again just 12 days before the attack on Iraq until he was persuaded by a phalanx of Bush administration lawyers to change his mind 10 days later.
The meeting concludes with a directive to "work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action."
I cannot quite fathom why I find the account of this meeting so jarring. Surely it is what one might expect, given all else we know. Yet seeing it in bloodless black and white somehow gives it more impact. And the implications are no less jarring.
One of Dearlove's primary interlocutors in Washington was his American counterpart, CIA director George Tenet. (And there is no closer relationship between two intelligence services than the privileged one between the CIA and MI-6.) Tenet, of course, knew at least as much as Dearlove, but nonetheless played the role of accomplice in serving up to Bush the kind of "slam-dunk intelligence" that he knew would be welcome. If there is one unpardonable sin in intelligence work, it is that kind of politicization. But Tenet decided to be a "team player" and set the tone.
<b><u>Politicization: Big Time</u></b>
Actually, politicization is far too mild a word for what happened. The intelligence was not simply mistaken; it was manufactured, with the president of the United States awarding foreman George Tenet the Medal of Freedom for his role in helping supervise the deceit. The British documents make clear that this was not a mere case of "leaning forward" in analyzing the intelligence, but rather mass deception—an order of magnitude more serious. No other conclusion is now possible.
Small wonder, then, to learn from CIA insiders like former case officer Lindsay Moran that Tenet's malleable managers told their minions, "Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."
Small wonder that, when the only U.S. analyst who met with the alcoholic Iraqi defector appropriately codenamed "Curveball" raised strong doubt about Curveball's reliability before then-Secretary of State Colin Powell used the fabrication about "mobile biological weapons trailers" before the United Nations, the analyst got this e-mail reply from his CIA supervisor:
"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about."
When Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, took over as director late last year, he immediately wrote a memo to all employees explaining the "rules of the road"—first and foremost, "We support the administration and its policies." So much for objective intelligence insulated from policy pressure.
Tenet and Goss, creatures of the intensely politicized environment of Congress, brought with them a radically new ethos—one much more akin to that of Blair's courtiers than to that of earlier CIA directors who had the courage to speak truth to power.
Seldom does one have documentary evidence that intelligence chiefs chose to cooperate in both fabricating and "sexing up" (as the British press puts it) intelligence to justify a prior decision for war. There is no word to describe the reaction of honest intelligence professionals to the corruption of our profession on a matter of such consequence. "Outrage" does not come close.
<b><u>Hope In Unauthorized Disclosures</u></b>
Those of us who care about unprovoked wars owe the patriot who gave this latest British government document to The Sunday Times a debt of gratitude. Unauthorized disclosures are gathering steam. They need to increase quickly on this side of the Atlantic as well—the more so, inasmuch as Congress-controlled by the president's party-cannot be counted on to discharge its constitutional prerogative for oversight.
In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S. government officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said this:
<blockquote>
We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm's way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties...Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.
</blockquote>
If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and analyses bring them to light, the chances become less that a president could launch another unprovoked war—against, say, Iran
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Afraid To Tell The Truth</font>
<font face="arial" size="4" color="#0000FF"><b>
A secret memo publicized in Britain confirms the lies on which Bush based his Iraq policy. Why has it received so little notice in the U.S. press? </b></font><p>
<img src="http://images.salon.com/src/salonlogo.gif">
<img src="http://www.nndb.com/people/413/000031320/JoeConason-sized.jpg" width="115" height="148">
<font face="arial" size="4"><b>By Joe Conason</b></font><p>
<font face="arial unicode ms, microsoft sans serif, verdana" size="3" color="#000000">
<br>May 6, 2005 | <p> Are Americans so jaded about the deceptions perpetrated by our own government to lead us into war in Iraq that we are no longer interested in fresh and damning evidence of those lies? Or are the editors and producers who oversee the American news industry simply too timid to report that proof on the evening broadcasts and front pages?
<br>There is a "smoking memo" that confirms the worst assumptions about the Bush administration's Iraq policy, but although that memo generated huge pre-election headlines in Britain , its existence has hardly been mentioned here.
<br>On May 1, the Sunday Times of London published the confidential minutes of a meeting held almost three years ago at 10 Downing Street , residence of the British prime minister, where Tony Blair and members of his Cabinet discussed the British government's ongoing consultations with the Bush administration over Iraq . Those in attendance included the defense secretary, the foreign secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence chief and Blair's closest personal aides.
<br>The minutes of that meeting, set down in a <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html">memorandum </a> by foreign policy advisor Matthew Rycroft, were circulated to all who were present. Dated July 23, 2002 , the Rycroft memo begins with the following admonishment: "This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents." Evidently that doesn't include those of us living in the United States , although press coverage of the document in Britain created a sensational 11th-hour backlash against Blair. (The prime minister admitted that the Iraq war had been a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4521627.stm">"deeply divisive" </a> issue as he savored a narrow election victory Friday.)
<br>What the minutes clearly show is that Bush and Blair secretly agreed to wage war for "regime change" nearly a year before the invasion -- and months before they asked the United Nations Security Council to support renewed weapons inspections as an alternative to armed conflict. The minutes also reveal the lingering doubts over the legal and moral justifications for war within the Blair government.
<br>But for Americans, the most important lines in the July 23 minutes are those attributed to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/286128.stm">Sir Richard Dearlove, </a> the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, who in spy jargon is to be referred to only as "C." The minutes indicate that Sir Richard had discovered certain harsh realities during a visit to the United States that summer:
<br>"C reported on his recent talks in Washington . There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD . But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the U.N. route ... There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
<br>At the same meeting, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirmed Sir Richard's assessment:
<br>"The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya , North Korea or Iran ."
<br>Those few lines sum up everything that went wrong in the months and years to come -- and place the clear stamp of falsehood on the Bush administration's public pronouncements as the president pushed the nation toward war.
<br>When Bush signed the congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq on Oct. 16, 2002 -- three months after the Downing Street memorandum -- he didn't say that military action was "inevitable." Instead, the president <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021016-1.html">assured </a> Americans and the world that he still hoped war could be avoided.
<br>"I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary," he said at a press conference. "Hopefully this can be done peacefully. Hopefully we can do this without any military action." He promised that he had "carefully weighed the human cost of every option before us" and that if the United States went into battle, it would be "as a last resort."
<br>In the months that followed, as we now know, the president and his aides grossly exaggerated, and in some instances falsified, the intelligence concerning the Iraqi regime's supposed weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. Defenders of his policy have since insisted that he too was misled with bad information, provided by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies.
<br>But "C" heard something very different from Blair's allies in Washington .
<br>According to him, Bush, determined to oust Saddam, planned to "justify" a preventive war by tying the terrorist threat to Iraq's WMD arsenal -- and manipulating the intelligence to fit his policy instead of determining the policy based on the facts.
<br>That is precisely what happened, and precisely the opposite of what the president vowed to do. Not only did Bush and his top aides lie about their approach to the alleged threat posed by Iraq , but they continued to lie about that process in the war's aftermath.
<br>And what of the aftermath of the war in Iraq ? Evidently "little discussion" was devoted to that topic as the Bush administration prepared to sell the war, or so "C" reported to his colleagues in London . Iraqis and Americans, as well as their coalition partners, have been suffering the dismal results of that lack of planning ever since.
<br>Despite much happy talk from Washington about the successes achieved in Iraq , recent polls show that Americans are more disenchanted than ever with the war. Nearly 60 percent now say the president made the wrong decision and that the outcome is not worth the price in lives and treasure. What would they say if the media dared to tell them the truth about how it all happened?
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Salon.com
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Salon.com is an Internet-based media company founded in 1995 by editor-in-chief David Talbot and several other colleagues from the San Francisco Examiner. Though providing several services, it is best known for its online magazine, with content updated each weekday. Its headquarters are located in downtown San Francisco, California.
Salon's magazine covers a variety of topics. American politics is a major focus, but by no means the only one. It has extensive reviews and articles about music, books, and films. It also has articles about "modern life" in all its forms, including relationships and sex. It covers technology, with a particular focus on the free software/open source movement.
Salon covers all of these issues from an unabashedly liberal political viewpoint, although the site has also featured regular columns from such conservatives as David Horowitz and Andrew Sullivan.
Its contributors include political cartoonists such as Tom Tomorrow who writes This Modern World
Its online subscription-only discussion boards, Table Talk and The WELL, are quite popular.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Salon.com is an Internet-based media company founded in 1995 by editor-in-chief David Talbot and several other colleagues from the San Francisco Examiner. Though providing several services, it is best known for its online magazine, with content updated each weekday. Its headquarters are located in downtown San Francisco, California.
Salon's magazine covers a variety of topics. American politics is a major focus, but by no means the only one. It has extensive reviews and articles about music, books, and films. It also has articles about "modern life" in all its forms, including relationships and sex. It covers technology, with a particular focus on the free software/open source movement.
Salon covers all of these issues from an unabashedly liberal political viewpoint, although the site has also featured regular columns from such conservatives as David Horowitz and Andrew Sullivan.
Its contributors include political cartoonists such as Tom Tomorrow who writes This Modern World
Its online subscription-only discussion boards, Table Talk and The WELL, are quite popular.
<font face="arial unicode ms, microsoft sans serif, verdana" color="#333333" size="4">
And the point is???? <img src="http://64.255.174.200/board/images/smilies/confused.gif "><img src="http://64.255.174.200/board/images/smilies/confused.gif "><img src="http://64.255.174.200/board/images/smilies/confused.gif "><img src="http://64.255.174.200/board/images/smilies/confused.gif "><img src="http://64.255.174.200/board/images/smilies/confused.gif "><img src="http://64.255.174.200/board/images/smilies/confused.gif ">
This is a non-partisan story!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,158228,00.html
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/may2005/cmar-m05_prn.shtml
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/justify/2005/0505fit.htm
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/justify/2005/0501start.htm
Are we waiting for RepubliKlan hate radio bloviators like Rush, Savage, Hannity etc. to tell us that this is a serious issue that should not be dumped into the memory hole???
Are we waiting for the Wall Street Journal to tell us that we've been duped by a corporatist cabal (neo-cons) into invading & occupying Iraq on the false premise of "weapons of mass destruction" , and the lie that "Iraq was within 45 minutes of launching weapons of mass destruction"???
Are we waiting for Bill O'Really? To tell us that the bush junta deliberately lied, 1,640+ American Solders are dead, $400,000,000,000. is missing from the US treasury, and that Impeachment proceedings should start at once???
The empirical facts of the Downing Street Minutes are not in question?
NO ONE disputes the transcript! NO ONE denies the transcript!
The RepubliKlan response to the Downing Street Minutes is to essentially say that:<font color="#0000ff">
IT DOSEN'T MATTER THAT BUSH & BLAIR LIED ABOUT WHY WE NEEDED TO INVADE IRAQ!! </font>
They acknowledge that the bush junta lied!!
They say <font color="#0000ff">"THERE WAS A GRAND STRATEGIC DESIGN AT WORK, NOT JUST SOME KNEE-JERK CONCERN WITH WMD"
Read this rationalization from one of the more erudite RepubliKlan goose-steppers.
READ: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18059
</font>
IMAGINE THAT! They acknowledge that the bush junta sold the invasion of Iraq on deliberate false premises because that was the only way they could get support for their <font color="#0000ff">"grand strategic design".</font> In other words the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) mantra was just a public relations campaign to sell their <font color="#0000ff">"grand strategic design".</font>
• 1,640+ American Solders are dead,
• $400,000,000,000. is missing from the US treasury
• Up to 100,000 Iraqis & Afghanis have been slaughtered.
• More than 14,000 US soldiers are seriously maimed physically & mentally for the rest of their life.
All of this in order to accomplish a corporatist <font color="#0000ff">"GRAND STRATEGIC DESIGN".</font>
Another revelation of the true character of today's RepubliKlan fascists has been revealed with the recent revelation that former FBI #2 honcho Mark Felt was "Deep Throat".
What do the RepubliKlans have to say about Mr. Felt?
They say "he was a traitor"!
IMAGINE THAT!
30+ years after Watergate and Nixon's resignation for a myriad of crimes that have been unequaled up until today and they call Felt a traitor.
<font color="#0000ff">Read : THE WARS OF WATERGATE
Link : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393308278/?tag=vp314-20
</font>
The best Watergate book in my opinion.
Felt is a patriot and a hero.
Nixon was setting up the fascist corporatist America that the bush junta is trying to emulate.
Most Americans, not surprisingly, have NO IDEA of the breath & scope of Nixon's crimes. This scrupulously documented book will illuminate it all for you.
30+ years after Watergate and the same people who were Nixon insiders, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Pat Buchanan, Chuck Colson, Gordon Liddy etc. call Mark Felt a traitor! or "not an honorable man"- IMAGINE THAT!
<font color="#D90000">
If anyone is still ignorant about who these RepubliKlans are, then you are just a permanent imbecile.</font>
<img src="http://www.smirkingchimp.com/images/topics/republicans.jpg"><img src="http://www.geobop.com/education/911/images/mine/bush/nazi.jpg"><img src="http://www.smirkingchimp.com/images/topics/republicans.jpg">
<img src="http://mywebpage.netscape.com/camarilla10024/RepubliKlan_Party_Leadership.jpg"><br><font color="#000000" face="verdana" size="4"><b><br>House & Senate RepubliKlans <img src="http://www.quibbles-n-bits.com/archives/bomber/kkk.gif" border="0" height="49" width="50"><br>with baby bush at the White House </b></font>
And the point is???? <img src="http://64.255.174.200/board/images/smilies/confused.gif "><img src="http://64.255.174.200/board/images/smilies/confused.gif "><img src="http://64.255.174.200/board/images/smilies/confused.gif "><img src="http://64.255.174.200/board/images/smilies/confused.gif "><img src="http://64.255.174.200/board/images/smilies/confused.gif "><img src="http://64.255.174.200/board/images/smilies/confused.gif ">
This is a non-partisan story!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,158228,00.html
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/may2005/cmar-m05_prn.shtml
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/justify/2005/0505fit.htm
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/justify/2005/0501start.htm
Are we waiting for RepubliKlan hate radio bloviators like Rush, Savage, Hannity etc. to tell us that this is a serious issue that should not be dumped into the memory hole???
Are we waiting for the Wall Street Journal to tell us that we've been duped by a corporatist cabal (neo-cons) into invading & occupying Iraq on the false premise of "weapons of mass destruction" , and the lie that "Iraq was within 45 minutes of launching weapons of mass destruction"???
Are we waiting for Bill O'Really? To tell us that the bush junta deliberately lied, 1,640+ American Solders are dead, $400,000,000,000. is missing from the US treasury, and that Impeachment proceedings should start at once???
The empirical facts of the Downing Street Minutes are not in question?
NO ONE disputes the transcript! NO ONE denies the transcript!
The RepubliKlan response to the Downing Street Minutes is to essentially say that:<font color="#0000ff">
IT DOSEN'T MATTER THAT BUSH & BLAIR LIED ABOUT WHY WE NEEDED TO INVADE IRAQ!! </font>
They acknowledge that the bush junta lied!!
They say <font color="#0000ff">"THERE WAS A GRAND STRATEGIC DESIGN AT WORK, NOT JUST SOME KNEE-JERK CONCERN WITH WMD"
Read this rationalization from one of the more erudite RepubliKlan goose-steppers.
READ: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18059
</font>
IMAGINE THAT! They acknowledge that the bush junta sold the invasion of Iraq on deliberate false premises because that was the only way they could get support for their <font color="#0000ff">"grand strategic design".</font> In other words the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) mantra was just a public relations campaign to sell their <font color="#0000ff">"grand strategic design".</font>
• 1,640+ American Solders are dead,
• $400,000,000,000. is missing from the US treasury
• Up to 100,000 Iraqis & Afghanis have been slaughtered.
• More than 14,000 US soldiers are seriously maimed physically & mentally for the rest of their life.
All of this in order to accomplish a corporatist <font color="#0000ff">"GRAND STRATEGIC DESIGN".</font>
Another revelation of the true character of today's RepubliKlan fascists has been revealed with the recent revelation that former FBI #2 honcho Mark Felt was "Deep Throat".
What do the RepubliKlans have to say about Mr. Felt?
They say "he was a traitor"!
IMAGINE THAT!
30+ years after Watergate and Nixon's resignation for a myriad of crimes that have been unequaled up until today and they call Felt a traitor.
<font color="#0000ff">Read : THE WARS OF WATERGATE
Link : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393308278/?tag=vp314-20
</font>
The best Watergate book in my opinion.
Felt is a patriot and a hero.
Nixon was setting up the fascist corporatist America that the bush junta is trying to emulate.
Most Americans, not surprisingly, have NO IDEA of the breath & scope of Nixon's crimes. This scrupulously documented book will illuminate it all for you.
30+ years after Watergate and the same people who were Nixon insiders, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Pat Buchanan, Chuck Colson, Gordon Liddy etc. call Mark Felt a traitor! or "not an honorable man"- IMAGINE THAT!
<font color="#D90000">
If anyone is still ignorant about who these RepubliKlans are, then you are just a permanent imbecile.</font>
<img src="http://www.smirkingchimp.com/images/topics/republicans.jpg"><img src="http://www.geobop.com/education/911/images/mine/bush/nazi.jpg"><img src="http://www.smirkingchimp.com/images/topics/republicans.jpg">
<img src="http://mywebpage.netscape.com/camarilla10024/RepubliKlan_Party_Leadership.jpg"><br><font color="#000000" face="verdana" size="4"><b><br>House & Senate RepubliKlans <img src="http://www.quibbles-n-bits.com/archives/bomber/kkk.gif" border="0" height="49" width="50"><br>with baby bush at the White House </b></font>
No, it is NOT a non-partisan story!
The Downing Street Memo did not say anything about Bush lying about WMDs. It doesn't say anything about that there are absolutely no WMDs. What it does say is that the ground of justifying going to war is "Shaky"... meaning that the war being justified by WMDs and terrorism. In other words, British intelligence could not emphatically affirm nor deny WMDs existence in Iraq during that time!
It never said that it was never there, because Saddam used them before against the Kurds, so everyone on Earth knew that Saddam HAD them, but British intel could not confirm them NOW.
So, does that prove that Bush lied? No, because other intelligence agencies said that they believed they were there... including British intel. The problem was, however, that they could not confirm them.
Now, the reason why it's no big shock or a newsworthy story about the Bush administration's insistence on going to war with Iraq over this was the fact that it has been US foreign policy since the Clinton Administration for regime change in Iraq. All that the Bush administration did was use intel from the international community to provide justification with the UN.
And all of this could have been avoided if Saddam would have complied with UN policy of having the weapons inspectors do their job instead of kicking them out. And he could have allowed the planes to enforce the 'No-Fly' zones instead of committing an act of war by shooting them down.
In closing, no one is crazy enough to believe that Bush decided back in 2002 that he wanted to remove Saddam. Everyone knew that, that's why the US brought Iraq up to the UN back then. the burden of proof was not on the US to prove that Iraq had WMDs, but for Saddam to prove that he didn't. To this day there's the mystery of what happened to the WMDs. But, just as Saddam felt that he won the first war because he was still in power, he felt that he will 'win' this war because he will still stay in power.
So, in short, no... Bush didn't lie because he told the UN the intel that was given to him. Like it or not, Saddam is gone. Bush got him, and it was legal... even if many believe unethical.
tian
The Downing Street Memo did not say anything about Bush lying about WMDs. It doesn't say anything about that there are absolutely no WMDs. What it does say is that the ground of justifying going to war is "Shaky"... meaning that the war being justified by WMDs and terrorism. In other words, British intelligence could not emphatically affirm nor deny WMDs existence in Iraq during that time!
It never said that it was never there, because Saddam used them before against the Kurds, so everyone on Earth knew that Saddam HAD them, but British intel could not confirm them NOW.
So, does that prove that Bush lied? No, because other intelligence agencies said that they believed they were there... including British intel. The problem was, however, that they could not confirm them.
Now, the reason why it's no big shock or a newsworthy story about the Bush administration's insistence on going to war with Iraq over this was the fact that it has been US foreign policy since the Clinton Administration for regime change in Iraq. All that the Bush administration did was use intel from the international community to provide justification with the UN.
And all of this could have been avoided if Saddam would have complied with UN policy of having the weapons inspectors do their job instead of kicking them out. And he could have allowed the planes to enforce the 'No-Fly' zones instead of committing an act of war by shooting them down.
In closing, no one is crazy enough to believe that Bush decided back in 2002 that he wanted to remove Saddam. Everyone knew that, that's why the US brought Iraq up to the UN back then. the burden of proof was not on the US to prove that Iraq had WMDs, but for Saddam to prove that he didn't. To this day there's the mystery of what happened to the WMDs. But, just as Saddam felt that he won the first war because he was still in power, he felt that he will 'win' this war because he will still stay in power.
So, in short, no... Bush didn't lie because he told the UN the intel that was given to him. Like it or not, Saddam is gone. Bush got him, and it was legal... even if many believe unethical.
tian
<font face="verdana" size="3" color="#000000">
It is absolutely inexplicable to me that you are having so much difficulty with the crux of this issue. It is very simple once you strip away all of the RepubliKlan “talking points” and spin. I’ll lay out a few more facts for you and then I’ll leave you on you own to do your own home work. If you already have “drunken the kool-aid” and have pledged your allegence to the RepubliKlan then don’t bother to try to deprogram yourself. Stay in “The Bunker”.
The Iraq Weapons Of Mass Destruction issue was ALWAYS A BOGUS ISSUE since the end of Gulf War One. DO your homework, if you can’t find the actual quotes & transcripts and are <b>TRULY</b> interested, let me know and I’ll post the actual speeches, the dates they occurred, & the video of the speech. I have Lexis-Nexis, which has it all documented & archived, but you can use Google which is free and find most of it yourself.
<b>Months before 9/11 both Condi Rice & Powell in public speeches before audiences of hundreds said that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq posses no military threat and is was contained.
In the year previous to becoming the Vice-Presidential candidate, while he was CEO of Halliburton. CHENEY WAS LOBBYING FOR THE SANCTIONS ON IRAQ TO BE REMOVED.
The poison gas Saddam used on the Kurds WAS SOLD TO HIM BY FIRMS REPRESENTED BY DONALD RUMSFELD.
Watch the video of the infamous meeting for youself
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/shakinghands_high.wmv
If you want copies of the actual contracts I can post them. Lexis-Nexis has it.</b>
The bottom line is. The bush junta knew that they could not sell an invasion of Iraq to the American people based on an "GRAND STRATEGIC DESIGN". That "GRAND STRATEGIC DESIGN". Had been talkied about by the neo-con cabal in their think tanks like the PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY and others for years.
9/11 was used as a pretext TO LIE to the American People about a non-existent threat of Weapons Of Mass Destruction in order to invade Iraq. It’s that simple. Cheney, Rice, Powell and others don’t go from declaring Iraq “CONTAINED” and (Cheney) wanting to lift sanctions, to Iraq becoming an imminent threat and danger in a few months time. If you can’t figure that out. Then so be it.
</font
It is absolutely inexplicable to me that you are having so much difficulty with the crux of this issue. It is very simple once you strip away all of the RepubliKlan “talking points” and spin. I’ll lay out a few more facts for you and then I’ll leave you on you own to do your own home work. If you already have “drunken the kool-aid” and have pledged your allegence to the RepubliKlan then don’t bother to try to deprogram yourself. Stay in “The Bunker”.
The Iraq Weapons Of Mass Destruction issue was ALWAYS A BOGUS ISSUE since the end of Gulf War One. DO your homework, if you can’t find the actual quotes & transcripts and are <b>TRULY</b> interested, let me know and I’ll post the actual speeches, the dates they occurred, & the video of the speech. I have Lexis-Nexis, which has it all documented & archived, but you can use Google which is free and find most of it yourself.
<b>Months before 9/11 both Condi Rice & Powell in public speeches before audiences of hundreds said that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq posses no military threat and is was contained.
In the year previous to becoming the Vice-Presidential candidate, while he was CEO of Halliburton. CHENEY WAS LOBBYING FOR THE SANCTIONS ON IRAQ TO BE REMOVED.
The poison gas Saddam used on the Kurds WAS SOLD TO HIM BY FIRMS REPRESENTED BY DONALD RUMSFELD.
Watch the video of the infamous meeting for youself
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/shakinghands_high.wmv
If you want copies of the actual contracts I can post them. Lexis-Nexis has it.</b>
The bottom line is. The bush junta knew that they could not sell an invasion of Iraq to the American people based on an "GRAND STRATEGIC DESIGN". That "GRAND STRATEGIC DESIGN". Had been talkied about by the neo-con cabal in their think tanks like the PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY and others for years.
9/11 was used as a pretext TO LIE to the American People about a non-existent threat of Weapons Of Mass Destruction in order to invade Iraq. It’s that simple. Cheney, Rice, Powell and others don’t go from declaring Iraq “CONTAINED” and (Cheney) wanting to lift sanctions, to Iraq becoming an imminent threat and danger in a few months time. If you can’t figure that out. Then so be it.
</font
T
tehuti
Guest
muckraker10021 said:
I posted the following articles on the Old Board.
Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies
Ultimatum Urged To Pentagon Board
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 6, 2002; Page A01
A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States.
"The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.
"Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," said the briefing prepared by Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corp. analyst. A talking point attached to the last of 24 briefing slides went even further, describing Saudi Arabia as "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" in the Middle East.
The briefing did not represent the views of the board or official government policy, and in fact runs counter to the present stance of the U.S. government that Saudi Arabia is a major ally in the region. Yet it also represents a point of view that has growing currency within the Bush administration -- especially on the staff of Vice President Cheney and in the Pentagon's civilian leadership -- and among neoconservative writers and thinkers closely allied with administration policymakers.
One administration official said opinion about Saudi Arabia is changing rapidly within the U.S. government. "People used to rationalize Saudi behavior," he said. "You don't hear that anymore. There's no doubt that people are recognizing reality and recognizing that Saudi Arabia is a problem."
The decision to bring the anti-Saudi analysis before the Defense Policy Board also appears tied to the growing debate over whether to launch a U.S. military attack to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. The chairman of the board is former Pentagon official Richard N. Perle, one of the most prominent advocates in Washington of just such an invasion. The briefing argued that removing Hussein would spur change in Saudi Arabia -- which, it maintained, is the larger problem because of its role in financing and supporting radical Islamic movements.
Perle did not return calls to comment. A Rand spokesman said Murawiec, a former adviser to the French Ministry of Defense who now analyzes international security affairs for Rand, would not be available to comment.
"Neither the presentations nor the Defense Policy Board members' comments reflect the official views of the Department of Defense," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said in a written statement issued last night. "Saudi Arabia is a long-standing friend and ally of the United States. The Saudis cooperate fully in the global war on terrorism and have the Department's and the Administration's deep appreciation."
Murawiec said in his briefing that the United States should demand that Riyadh stop funding fundamentalist Islamic outlets around the world, stop all anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli statements in the country, and "prosecute or isolate those involved in the terror chain, including in the Saudi intelligence services."
If the Saudis refused to comply, the briefing continued, Saudi oil fields and overseas financial assets should be "targeted," although exactly how was not specified.
The report concludes by linking regime change in Iraq to altering Saudi behavior. This view, popular among some neoconservative thinkers, is that once a U.S. invasion has removed Hussein from power, a friendly successor regime would become a major exporter of oil to the West. That oil would diminish U.S. dependence on Saudi energy exports, and so -- in this view -- permit the U.S. government finally to confront the House of Saud for supporting terrorism.
"The road to the entire Middle East goes through Baghdad," said the administration official, who is hawkish on Iraq. "Once you have a democratic regime in Iraq, like the ones we helped establish in Germany and Japan after World War II, there are a lot of possibilities."
Of the two dozen people who attended the Defense Policy Board meeting, only one, former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, spoke up to object to the anti-Saudi conclusions of the briefing, according to sources who were there. Some members of the board clearly agreed with Kissinger's dismissal of the briefing and others did not.
One source summarized Kissinger's remarks as, "The Saudis are pro-American, they have to operate in a difficult region, and ultimately we can manage them."
Kissinger declined to comment on the meeting. He said his consulting business does not advise the Saudi government and has no clients that do large amounts of business in Saudi Arabia.
"I don't consider Saudi Arabia to be a strategic adversary of the United States," Kissinger said. "They are doing some things I don't approve of, but I don't consider them a strategic adversary."
Other members of the board include former vice president Dan Quayle; former defense secretaries James Schlesinger and Harold Brown; former House speakers Newt Gingrich and Thomas Foley; and several retired senior military officers, including two former vice chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired admirals David Jeremiah and William Owens.
Asked for reaction, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, said he did not take the briefing seriously. "I think that it is a misguided effort that is shallow, and not honest about the facts," he said. "Repeating lies will never make them facts."
"I think this view defies reality," added Adel al-Jubeir, a foreign policy adviser to Saudi leader Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz. "The two countries have been friends and allies for over 60 years. Their relationship has seen the coming and breaking of many storms in the region, and if anything it goes from strength to strength."
In the 1980s, the United States and Saudi Arabia played major roles in supporting the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, pouring billions of dollars into procuring weapons and other logistical support for the mujaheddin.
At the end of the decade, the relationship became even closer when the U.S. military stationed a half-million troops on Saudi territory to repel Hussein's invasions of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Several thousand U.S. troops have remained on Saudi soil, mainly to run air operations in the region. Their presence has been cited by Osama bin Laden as a major reason for his attacks on the United States.
The anti-Saudi views expressed in the briefing appear especially popular among neoconservative foreign policy thinkers, which is a relatively small but influential group within the Bush administration.
"I think it is a mistake to consider Saudi Arabia a friendly country," said Kenneth Adelman, a former aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is a member of the Defense Policy Board but didn't attend the July 10 meeting. He said the view that Saudi Arabia is an adversary of the United States "is certainly a more prevalent view that it was a year ago."
In recent weeks, two neoconservative magazines have run articles similar in tone to the Pentagon briefing. The July 15 issue of the Weekly Standard, which is edited by William Kristol, a former chief of staff to Quayle, predicted "The Coming Saudi Showdown." The current issue of Commentary, which is published by the American Jewish Committee, contains an article titled, "Our Enemies, the Saudis."
"More and more people are making parts of this argument, and a few all of it," said Eliot Cohen, a Johns Hopkins University expert on military strategy. "Saudi Arabia used to have lots of apologists in this country. . . . Now there are very few, and most of those with substantial economic interests or long-standing ties there."
Cohen, a member of the Defense Policy Board, declined to discuss its deliberations. But he did say that he views Saudi Arabia more as a problem than an enemy. "The deal that they cut with fundamentalism is most definitely a threat, [so] I would say that Saudi Arabia is a huge problem for us," he said.
But that view is far from dominant in the U.S. government, others said. "The drums are beginning to beat on Saudi Arabia," said Robert Oakley, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan who consults frequently with the U.S. military.
He said the best approach isn't to confront Saudi Arabia but to support its reform efforts. "Our best hope is change through reform, and that can only come from within," he said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47913-2002Aug5?language=printer
___________________________________________________
Contents of the Power Point Presentation:
Taking Saudi Out of Arabia
Laurent Murawiec
RAND
Defense Policy Board
July 10, 2002
1
Taking Saudi out of Arabia:
Contents
* The Arab Crisis
* "Saudi" Arabia
* Strategies
2
The Arab Crisis
3
The systemic crisis of the Arab
World
* The Arab world has been in a systemic crisis for the last 200 years
* It missed out on the industrial revolution, it is missing out on the digital revolution
* Lack of inner resources to cope with modern world
4
Shattered Arab self-esteem
* Shattered self-esteem
* Could God be wrong?
* Turn the rage against those who contradict God: the West, object of hatred
* A whole generation of violently anti-Western, anti-American, anti-modern shock-troops
5
What has the Arab world
produced?
* Since independence, wars have been the principal output of the Arab world
* Demographic and economic problems made intractable by failure to establish stable polities aiming at prosperity
* All Arab states are either failing states or threatened to fail
6
The Crisis of the Arab world
reaches a climax
* The tension between the Arab world and the modern world has reached a climax
* The Arab world's home-made problems overwhelm its ability to cope
* The crisis is consequently being exported to the rest of the world
7
How does change occur in the
Arab world?
* There is no agora, no public space for debating ideas, interests, policies
* The tribal group in power blocks all avenues of change, represses all advocates of change
* Plot, riot, murder, coup are the only available means to bring about political change
8
The continuation of politics by other
means?
* In the Arab world, violence is not a continuation of politics by other means -- violence is politics, politics is violence
* This culture of violence is the prime enabler of terrorism
* Terror as an accepted, legitimate means of carrying out politics, has been incubated for 30 years ...
9
The crisis cannot be contained to the
Arab world alone
* The crisis has irreversibly spilled out of the region
* 9/11 was a symptom of the "overflow"
* The paroxysm is liable to last for several decades
* U.S. response will decisively influence the duration and outcome
10
"Saudi" Arabia
11
The old partnership
* Once upon a time, there was a partnership between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia
* Partnerships, like alliances, are embodied in practices, ideas, policies, institutions, people -- which persist after the alliance has died
12
"Saudi" Arabia
* An instable group: Since 1745, 58% of all rulers of the House of Saud have met a violent demise
* Wahhabism loathes modernity, capitalism, human rights, religious freedom, democracy, republics, an open society -- and practices the very opposite
* As long as enmity had no or little consequences outside the kingdom, the bargain between the House of Saud and the U.S. held
13
Means, motive, opportunity
* 1973: Saudi Arabia unleashes the Oil Shock, absorbs immense flows of resources -- means
* 1978: Khomeiny challenges the Saudis' Islamic credentials, provoking a radicalization and world-wide spread of Wahhabism in response -- motive
* 1979-1989: the anti-Soviet Jihad gives life and strength to the Wahhabi putsch within Sunni Islam -- opportunity. The Taliban are the result
14
The impact on Saudi policy
* Wahhabism moves from Islam's lunatic fringe to center-stage -- its mission now extends world-wide
* Saudis launch a putsch within Sunni Islam
* Shift from pragmatic oil policy to promotion of radical Islam
* Establish Saudi as "the indispensable State" -- treasurers of radical, fundamentalist, terrorist groups
15
Saudis see themselves
* God placed the oil in the kingdom as a sign of divine approval
* Spread Wahhabism everywhere, but keep the power of the al-Saud undiminished
* Survive by creating a Wahhabi-friendly environment -- fundamentalist regimes -- throughout the Moslem world and beyond
16
The House of Saud today
* Saudi Arabia is central to the self-destruction of the Arab world and the chief vector of the Arab crisis and its outwardly-directed aggression
* The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader
* Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies
* A daily outpouring of virulent hatred against the U.S. from Saudi media, "educational" institutions, clerics, officials -- Saudis tell us one thing in private, do the contrary in reality
17
Strategies
18
What is to be done?
* During and after World War I, Britain's India Office backed the House of Saud; the Foreign Office backed the Hashemites. The India Office won
* But the entire post-1917 Middle East settlement designed by the British to replace the Ottoman Empire is fraying
* The role assigned to the House of Saud in that arrangement has become obsolete -- and nefarious
19
"Saudi Arabia" is not a God-
given entity
* The House of Saud was given dominion over Arabia in 1922 by the British
* It wrested the Guardianship of the Holy Places -- Mecca and Medina -- from the Hashemite dynasty
* There is an "Arabia," but it needs not be "Saudi"
20
An ultimatum to the House of
Saud
* Stop any funding and support for any fundamentalist madrasa, mosque, ulama, predicator anywhere in the world
* Stop all anti-U.S., anti-Israeli, anti-Western predication, writings, etc., within Arabia
* Dismantle, ban all the kingdom's "Islamic charities," confiscate their assets
* Prosecute or isolate those involved in the terror chain, including in the Saudi intelligence services
21
Or else ...
* What the House of Saud holds dear can be targeted:
—Oil: the old fields are defended by U.S. forces, and located in a mostly Shiite area
—Money: the Kingdom is in dire financial straits, its valuable assets invested in dollars, largely in the U.S.
—The Holy Places: let it be known that alternatives are being canvassed
22
Other Arabs?
* The Saudis are hated throughout the Arab world: lazy, overbearing, dishonest, corrupt
* If truly moderate regimes arise, the Wahhabi-Saudi nexus is pushed back into its extremist corner
* The Hashemites have greater legitimacy as Guardians of Mecca and Medina
23
Grand strategy for the Middle
East
• Iraq is the tactical pivot
• Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot
• Egypt the prize
24
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2069119#powerpoint
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"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002
http://clinton.senate.gov/speeches/iraq_101002.html
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/iraq/iraq172.htm
"Here's why I say that. We know that he has stored away secret supplies of biological weapons and chemical weapons throughout his country. As yet, we have no evidence, however, that he has shared any of these weapons with terrorist groups."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/transcripts/gore_text092302.html
- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002
http://clinton.senate.gov/speeches/iraq_101002.html
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/iraq/iraq172.htm
"Here's why I say that. We know that he has stored away secret supplies of biological weapons and chemical weapons throughout his country. As yet, we have no evidence, however, that he has shared any of these weapons with terrorist groups."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/transcripts/gore_text092302.html
T
tehuti
Guest
The Pentagon Push (Perle, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld)
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 25, 2002; Page A24
The Pentagon's civilian leadership has ordered a small team of defense officials outside regular intelligence channels to focus on unearthing details about Iraqi ties with al Qaeda and other terrorist networks, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.
In addition, Pentagon authorities are seeking to take over an intelligence-gathering program once funded through the State Department under the Iraqi Liberation Act. State Department officials, skeptical of the program's efficiency and the wisdom of running a separate intelligence operation, have decided to drop the program. But the Pentagon wants to keep it alive and is looking for a way to finance its costs of more than $1 million -- money used in part to help pay Iraqi informants or bring them out of Iraq.
The special Pentagon information-gathering team was created shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to take on a variety of counterterrorism assignments. Set up by Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary for policy, the four- to five-member group has been given the task of sifting through much of the same databases available to government intelligence analysts but with the aim of spotlighting information the spy agencies have either overlooked or played down, officials said.
At a news conference yesterday, Rumsfeld denied suggestions that the initiative was meant to compete with the CIA or other intelligence agencies. He said it was intended simply to assist policymakers in assessing the intelligence they receive.
"Any suggestion that it's an intelligence-gathering activity or an intelligence unit of some sort, I think would be a misunderstanding of it," Rumsfeld said.
But the effort comes against a backdrop of persistent differences between the Pentagon and CIA over assessments of Iraq. Rumsfeld and senior aides have argued that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has strong links to international terrorism, poses an imminent threat and cannot be constrained from eventually unleashing weapons of mass destruction. The CIA's publicly released reports have painted a murkier view of Iraq's links to al Qaeda, its weapons capabilities and the likelihood that Hussein would use chemical or biological weapons unless attacked.
"The Pentagon is setting up the capability to assess information on Iraq in areas that in the past might have been the realm of the agency," said Reuel Gerecht, a former CIA case officer who has met with the people in the new Pentagon office. "They don't think the product they receive from the agency is always what it should be."
"They are politicizing intelligence, no question about it," said Vincent M. Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief. "And they are undertaking a campaign to get George Tenet [the director of central intelligence] fired because they can't get him to say what they want on Iraq."
Rumsfeld insisted yesterday that his relations with Tenet were very good, saying that he has lunch with the CIA chief once a week.
"George Tenet and I couldn't have a closer relationship," he said, adding at another point: "I'm not unhappy at all about intelligence."
Rumsfeld described his involvement with the information-gathering group as limited to a single briefing on a subject he did not specify. He was so impressed with the briefing, he said, that he directed it be given to Tenet.
Defense officials characterized the information team, whose existence was first disclosed yesterday by the New York Times, as an ad hoc group that has two full-time members and a rotating set of several others. It is known officially as the "policy counterterrorism evaluation group."
"The makeup has changed over the time it was established," an official said, declining to elaborate on the participants' background.
This is not the first time Rumsfeld and his aides have aroused concerns about Pentagon policymakers treading into traditional provinces of the intelligence community. Rumsfeld has proposed creating a civilian undersecretary post to oversee the Defense Intelligence Agency and the rest of the military's extensive intelligence operation. And earlier this year, a proposal to establish an office of "strategic information" under Feith was aborted after reports it might be used to spread disinformation abroad -- activity historically carried out covertly by the CIA.
Rumsfeld took over the top Pentagon job with his views of the intelligence community heavily influenced by his experience as chairman of a 1998 commission on the ballistic missile threat to the United States. The commission, which concluded that the threat was more urgent than government analysts had predicted, was highly critical of the methods and training of the intelligence agencies.
Referring to his commission experience yesterday, Rumsfeld said he was impressed by "the importance of having well-informed users of intelligence interact with the suppliers of intelligence, with the analysts." He added that "there is a very effective interaction going on."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14056-2002Oct24.html
Pentagon Team Told to Seek Details of Iraq-Al Qaeda Ties
Effort Bypasses Regular Intelligence Channels; CIA Rift Disputed
By Bradley Graham and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 25, 2002; Page A24
The Pentagon's civilian leadership has ordered a small team of defense officials outside regular intelligence channels to focus on unearthing details about Iraqi ties with al Qaeda and other terrorist networks, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.
In addition, Pentagon authorities are seeking to take over an intelligence-gathering program once funded through the State Department under the Iraqi Liberation Act. State Department officials, skeptical of the program's efficiency and the wisdom of running a separate intelligence operation, have decided to drop the program. But the Pentagon wants to keep it alive and is looking for a way to finance its costs of more than $1 million -- money used in part to help pay Iraqi informants or bring them out of Iraq.
The special Pentagon information-gathering team was created shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to take on a variety of counterterrorism assignments. Set up by Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary for policy, the four- to five-member group has been given the task of sifting through much of the same databases available to government intelligence analysts but with the aim of spotlighting information the spy agencies have either overlooked or played down, officials said.
At a news conference yesterday, Rumsfeld denied suggestions that the initiative was meant to compete with the CIA or other intelligence agencies. He said it was intended simply to assist policymakers in assessing the intelligence they receive.
"Any suggestion that it's an intelligence-gathering activity or an intelligence unit of some sort, I think would be a misunderstanding of it," Rumsfeld said.
But the effort comes against a backdrop of persistent differences between the Pentagon and CIA over assessments of Iraq. Rumsfeld and senior aides have argued that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has strong links to international terrorism, poses an imminent threat and cannot be constrained from eventually unleashing weapons of mass destruction. The CIA's publicly released reports have painted a murkier view of Iraq's links to al Qaeda, its weapons capabilities and the likelihood that Hussein would use chemical or biological weapons unless attacked.
"The Pentagon is setting up the capability to assess information on Iraq in areas that in the past might have been the realm of the agency," said Reuel Gerecht, a former CIA case officer who has met with the people in the new Pentagon office. "They don't think the product they receive from the agency is always what it should be."
"They are politicizing intelligence, no question about it," said Vincent M. Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief. "And they are undertaking a campaign to get George Tenet [the director of central intelligence] fired because they can't get him to say what they want on Iraq."
Rumsfeld insisted yesterday that his relations with Tenet were very good, saying that he has lunch with the CIA chief once a week.
"George Tenet and I couldn't have a closer relationship," he said, adding at another point: "I'm not unhappy at all about intelligence."
Rumsfeld described his involvement with the information-gathering group as limited to a single briefing on a subject he did not specify. He was so impressed with the briefing, he said, that he directed it be given to Tenet.
Defense officials characterized the information team, whose existence was first disclosed yesterday by the New York Times, as an ad hoc group that has two full-time members and a rotating set of several others. It is known officially as the "policy counterterrorism evaluation group."
"The makeup has changed over the time it was established," an official said, declining to elaborate on the participants' background.
This is not the first time Rumsfeld and his aides have aroused concerns about Pentagon policymakers treading into traditional provinces of the intelligence community. Rumsfeld has proposed creating a civilian undersecretary post to oversee the Defense Intelligence Agency and the rest of the military's extensive intelligence operation. And earlier this year, a proposal to establish an office of "strategic information" under Feith was aborted after reports it might be used to spread disinformation abroad -- activity historically carried out covertly by the CIA.
Rumsfeld took over the top Pentagon job with his views of the intelligence community heavily influenced by his experience as chairman of a 1998 commission on the ballistic missile threat to the United States. The commission, which concluded that the threat was more urgent than government analysts had predicted, was highly critical of the methods and training of the intelligence agencies.
Referring to his commission experience yesterday, Rumsfeld said he was impressed by "the importance of having well-informed users of intelligence interact with the suppliers of intelligence, with the analysts." He added that "there is a very effective interaction going on."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14056-2002Oct24.html
T
tehuti
Guest
Greed said:
No one!
(That does not however mean that impeachable offenses have not occurred).
But, lets stop pretending that the intelligence wasn't "fixed" to support a specific policy goal(s).
fixed intelligence to support an agenda executed by republicans in 2003 but advocated by democrats in the 90's?tehuti said:
so the democrats must've used different intelligence to come to their conclusions, but the republicans changed that intelligence to make the democrats come to the same conclusions?
i mean, where does it end. bush changed intelligence that already had the dems convinced 5 years prior?
T
tehuti
Guest
And when did we invade Iraq during the Clinton administration? He certainly didn't have an aversion to using the US military on foreign soil. He may have made the case, but based on the generality of the accusations of WMDs in Iraq, contained in your supporting USA Today article, it would seem that he lacked the specific intelligence to support his contention. With no 9/11 and disputed claims of actaul possesion of WMDs (included in the same article) an attack on Iraq couldn't be sold to the American people.
Now, fast forward to the Bush Administration: faked documents about nuclear material (cake), the use of a known alcoholic and dubious Iraqi informant, hyped up intel about a 45 minute drone strike capability, possesion of chemical and biological weaponry - that was denied by UN Inspectors (who were actually right), imaginery al qaeda links asserted (that CIA openly questioned), the de-emphasizing of CIA intelligence for Pentagon supplied intelligence, etc. That's how you sell a war to the American people with "fixed" information and the reason why Clinton could not. Seems like Bush learned from Clinton's inability to get support for another Iraq War.
The difference is not whether the shared a similar goal for regime change in Iraq, but to what extent each President was willing to go to to achieve that policy end.
Now if you want to discuss whether the ends justify the means thats a topic the really is debatable, but whether the evidence was "fixed" is not, as far as the pre-invasion and post invasion reports have indicated - including the Memo highlighted in this thread.
Now, fast forward to the Bush Administration: faked documents about nuclear material (cake), the use of a known alcoholic and dubious Iraqi informant, hyped up intel about a 45 minute drone strike capability, possesion of chemical and biological weaponry - that was denied by UN Inspectors (who were actually right), imaginery al qaeda links asserted (that CIA openly questioned), the de-emphasizing of CIA intelligence for Pentagon supplied intelligence, etc. That's how you sell a war to the American people with "fixed" information and the reason why Clinton could not. Seems like Bush learned from Clinton's inability to get support for another Iraq War.
The difference is not whether the shared a similar goal for regime change in Iraq, but to what extent each President was willing to go to to achieve that policy end.
Now if you want to discuss whether the ends justify the means thats a topic the really is debatable, but whether the evidence was "fixed" is not, as far as the pre-invasion and post invasion reports have indicated - including the Memo highlighted in this thread.
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Clinton was punked after the debacle in Somalia. He was extremely gun-shy, so of course Saddam was emboldened by the US's lack of response during the Clinton years.
Hell, Rwanda is a prime example. Clinton was to be the "first black President" and all, but when the Hutus were committing genocide, that administration turned the other cheek. By looking at Somalia, many terrorists organizations started seeing American resolve as "Soft." Even Al-Qaeda makes frequent references to it.
So, of course Clinton didn't do much. Even when terrorists bombed our ships, all he did was lob a couple of bombs, but not much else. The bottom-line was not Clinton restraint, but Clinton cowardice that prevented him from using the military to enact his policies.
In other words, it was a passed buck that was inherited that roosted on 9/11. And it was enboldened terrorism that allowed it to occur.
Now one thing I will say about Bush, though... people around the world think he's crazy. People around the world think he's dangerous. Why? Because he's crazy enough to topple an Islamic regime in the middle of the 10/40 window, and establish democracy. He think that he can actually win a war against "Terrorism". That junk is polarizing. That's jarring! Kinda reminds me of the '80s when Europeans were scared of Ronald Reagan because he said he can win a Cold War...
tian
Hell, Rwanda is a prime example. Clinton was to be the "first black President" and all, but when the Hutus were committing genocide, that administration turned the other cheek. By looking at Somalia, many terrorists organizations started seeing American resolve as "Soft." Even Al-Qaeda makes frequent references to it.
So, of course Clinton didn't do much. Even when terrorists bombed our ships, all he did was lob a couple of bombs, but not much else. The bottom-line was not Clinton restraint, but Clinton cowardice that prevented him from using the military to enact his policies.
In other words, it was a passed buck that was inherited that roosted on 9/11. And it was enboldened terrorism that allowed it to occur.
Now one thing I will say about Bush, though... people around the world think he's crazy. People around the world think he's dangerous. Why? Because he's crazy enough to topple an Islamic regime in the middle of the 10/40 window, and establish democracy. He think that he can actually win a war against "Terrorism". That junk is polarizing. That's jarring! Kinda reminds me of the '80s when Europeans were scared of Ronald Reagan because he said he can win a Cold War...
tian
T
tehuti
Guest
"gun-shy"? He sent troops into Haiti in '94 (which was a very precarious situation), 20,000 troops in Bosnia in 1995, and was still trying to sway the American people on an invasion of Iraq in 1998. The Mogadishu massacre was in October of '93.
Saddam was so emboldened? Emboldened to do what? You seem to be operating under the assumption that he had weapons of mass destruction. However, there is no evidence to support that belief, beyond blind faith in government assertions. Assertions that have been shown to false and not based on anything beyond grossly unsupported, circumstantial, and in some cases out-right fake intelligence information.
http://64.255.174.200/board/showthread.php?t=38269&highlight=reports
http://64.255.174.200/board/showthread.php?t=23505&highlight=reports
Inspectors Call U.S. Tips 'Garbage'
Feb. 20, 2003
While diplomatic maneuvering continues over Turkish bases and a new United Nations resolution, inside Iraq, U.N. arms inspectors are privately complaining about the quality of U.S. intelligence and accusing the United States of sending them on wild-goose chases.
CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips reports the U.N. has been taking a precise inventory of Iraq's al-Samoud 2 missile arsenal, determining how many there are and where they are.
Discovering that the al-Samoud 2 has been flying too far in tests has been one of the inspectors' major successes. But the missile has only been exceeding its 93-mile limit by about 15 miles and that, the Iraqis say, is because it isn't yet loaded down with its guidance system. The al-Samoud 2 is not the 800-mile-plus range missile that Secretary of State Colin Powell insists Iraq is developing.
In fact, the U.S. claim that Iraq is developing missiles that could hit its neighbors – or U.S. troops in the region, or even Israel – is just one of the claims coming from Washington that inspectors here are finding increasingly unbelievable. The inspectors have become so frustrated trying to chase down unspecific or ambiguous U.S. leads that they've begun to express that anger privately in no uncertain terms.
U.N. sources have told CBS News that American tips have lead to one dead end after another.
# Example: satellite photographs purporting to show new research buildings at Iraqi nuclear sites. When the U.N. went into the new buildings they found "nothing."
# Example: Saddam's presidential palaces, where the inspectors went with specific coordinates supplied by the U.S. on where to look for incriminating evidence. Again, they found "nothing."
# Example: Interviews with scientists about the aluminum tubes the U.S. says Iraq has imported for enriching uranium, but which the Iraqis say are for making rockets. Given the size and specification of the tubes, the U.N. calls the "Iraqi alibi air tight."
The inspectors do acknowledge, however, that they would not be here at all if not for the threat of U.S. military action.
So frustrated have the inspectors become that one source has referred to the U.S. intelligence they've been getting as "garbage after garbage after garbage." In fact, Phillips says the source used another cruder word. The inspectors find themselves caught between the Iraqis, who are masters at the weapons-hiding shell game, and the United States, whose intelligence they've found to be circumstantial, outdated or just plain wrong.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain are planning to present a new resolution to the U.N. Security Council on Monday in a bid for support to use force to disarm Iraq.
Finishing touches were being put on the resolution on Thursday. Adoption is by no means assured. A majority of the 15 council members are opposed to war at least until U.N. weapons inspectors report in mid-March.
Secretary Powell said a headcount was "academic" because the resolution demanding Iraqi disarmament had not been put forward.
Powell, who flies to Japan on Friday for the start of a five-day Asia trip, juggled resolution diplomacy with stressful negotiations with Turkey, a potential key ally in any war.
Turkey is balking at U.S. terms for an economic aid package. Powell, who interceded on Wednesday with Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, said he had told the Turkish leader "our position was firm with respect to the kind of assistance we could provide."
However, Powell said, "there may be some other creative things we can do."
As for the expected U.N. resolution, the Bush administration sees little value in extending inspections and much to worry about in Iraq's connection to al Qaeda and other terror groups.
One U.S. official said the projected day for presenting the resolution was Monday but that it could slip a day or two.
Powell said, "We won't put a resolution down unless we intend to fight for the resolution, unless we believe we can make the case that it is appropriate."
In Baghdad, meanwhile, Iraq allowed another flight by an American U-2 surveillance plane Thursday as President Saddam Hussein's government sought to convince the world that it is cooperating with the weapons inspectors.
In New York, a U.N. spokesman said Iraq also had submitted a list of people involved in the destruction of banned weapons — a key demand by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix.
It was the second flight this week by a U-2 in support of the U.N. inspection program. The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said the plane spent six hours and 20 minutes over Iraq's territory, searching for evidence of banned weapons.
In regard to the possible basing of U.S. troops in Turkey, Gul said in Ankara that a statement would be made on Friday. He did not elaborate.
Powell did not elaborate on the refinements under consideration, but another U.S. official said one approach might be to seek a $1 billion congressional appropriation that would then permit Turkey to obtain loans at preferential U.S.-government rates for many times that amount.
Ships carrying equipment for a U.S. infantry division are already at sea. The United States wants to base tens of thousands of soldiers in Turkey to open a possible northern front against Iraq.
The dispute with Turkey is one of many problems the Bush administration has as it tries to line up support for an attack on Iraq if Saddam doesn't disarm quickly.
Implying the United States might deploy troops elsewhere if terms could not be reached with Turkey, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said "we have to deal with realities, and we will."
Meanwhile, President Bush sought to keep the pressure on the Security Council, telling a suburban Atlanta audience, "Denial and endless delay in the face of growing danger is not an option."
The president has said the council risks irrelevance if it does not face up to Iraq's defiance of more than 10 years of disarmament resolutions.
Mr. Bush also has said if the council does not approve a second resolution he is prepared to go to war with a "coalition of the willing" — nations like Britain that agree with him that Iraq's arsenals of biological and chemical weapons pose a threat.
Mr. Bush planned to host Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, an ally, at his Texas ranch Friday and Saturday. Another potential ally, Prime Minister Simeon Saxcoburggotski of Bulgaria, is due next Tuesday at the White House.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/18/iraq/main537096.shtml
Saddam was so emboldened? Emboldened to do what? You seem to be operating under the assumption that he had weapons of mass destruction. However, there is no evidence to support that belief, beyond blind faith in government assertions. Assertions that have been shown to false and not based on anything beyond grossly unsupported, circumstantial, and in some cases out-right fake intelligence information.
http://64.255.174.200/board/showthread.php?t=38269&highlight=reports
http://64.255.174.200/board/showthread.php?t=23505&highlight=reports
Inspectors Call U.S. Tips 'Garbage'
Feb. 20, 2003
While diplomatic maneuvering continues over Turkish bases and a new United Nations resolution, inside Iraq, U.N. arms inspectors are privately complaining about the quality of U.S. intelligence and accusing the United States of sending them on wild-goose chases.
CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips reports the U.N. has been taking a precise inventory of Iraq's al-Samoud 2 missile arsenal, determining how many there are and where they are.
Discovering that the al-Samoud 2 has been flying too far in tests has been one of the inspectors' major successes. But the missile has only been exceeding its 93-mile limit by about 15 miles and that, the Iraqis say, is because it isn't yet loaded down with its guidance system. The al-Samoud 2 is not the 800-mile-plus range missile that Secretary of State Colin Powell insists Iraq is developing.
In fact, the U.S. claim that Iraq is developing missiles that could hit its neighbors – or U.S. troops in the region, or even Israel – is just one of the claims coming from Washington that inspectors here are finding increasingly unbelievable. The inspectors have become so frustrated trying to chase down unspecific or ambiguous U.S. leads that they've begun to express that anger privately in no uncertain terms.
U.N. sources have told CBS News that American tips have lead to one dead end after another.
# Example: satellite photographs purporting to show new research buildings at Iraqi nuclear sites. When the U.N. went into the new buildings they found "nothing."
# Example: Saddam's presidential palaces, where the inspectors went with specific coordinates supplied by the U.S. on where to look for incriminating evidence. Again, they found "nothing."
# Example: Interviews with scientists about the aluminum tubes the U.S. says Iraq has imported for enriching uranium, but which the Iraqis say are for making rockets. Given the size and specification of the tubes, the U.N. calls the "Iraqi alibi air tight."
The inspectors do acknowledge, however, that they would not be here at all if not for the threat of U.S. military action.
So frustrated have the inspectors become that one source has referred to the U.S. intelligence they've been getting as "garbage after garbage after garbage." In fact, Phillips says the source used another cruder word. The inspectors find themselves caught between the Iraqis, who are masters at the weapons-hiding shell game, and the United States, whose intelligence they've found to be circumstantial, outdated or just plain wrong.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain are planning to present a new resolution to the U.N. Security Council on Monday in a bid for support to use force to disarm Iraq.
Finishing touches were being put on the resolution on Thursday. Adoption is by no means assured. A majority of the 15 council members are opposed to war at least until U.N. weapons inspectors report in mid-March.
Secretary Powell said a headcount was "academic" because the resolution demanding Iraqi disarmament had not been put forward.
Powell, who flies to Japan on Friday for the start of a five-day Asia trip, juggled resolution diplomacy with stressful negotiations with Turkey, a potential key ally in any war.
Turkey is balking at U.S. terms for an economic aid package. Powell, who interceded on Wednesday with Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, said he had told the Turkish leader "our position was firm with respect to the kind of assistance we could provide."
However, Powell said, "there may be some other creative things we can do."
As for the expected U.N. resolution, the Bush administration sees little value in extending inspections and much to worry about in Iraq's connection to al Qaeda and other terror groups.
One U.S. official said the projected day for presenting the resolution was Monday but that it could slip a day or two.
Powell said, "We won't put a resolution down unless we intend to fight for the resolution, unless we believe we can make the case that it is appropriate."
In Baghdad, meanwhile, Iraq allowed another flight by an American U-2 surveillance plane Thursday as President Saddam Hussein's government sought to convince the world that it is cooperating with the weapons inspectors.
In New York, a U.N. spokesman said Iraq also had submitted a list of people involved in the destruction of banned weapons — a key demand by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix.
It was the second flight this week by a U-2 in support of the U.N. inspection program. The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said the plane spent six hours and 20 minutes over Iraq's territory, searching for evidence of banned weapons.
In regard to the possible basing of U.S. troops in Turkey, Gul said in Ankara that a statement would be made on Friday. He did not elaborate.
Powell did not elaborate on the refinements under consideration, but another U.S. official said one approach might be to seek a $1 billion congressional appropriation that would then permit Turkey to obtain loans at preferential U.S.-government rates for many times that amount.
Ships carrying equipment for a U.S. infantry division are already at sea. The United States wants to base tens of thousands of soldiers in Turkey to open a possible northern front against Iraq.
The dispute with Turkey is one of many problems the Bush administration has as it tries to line up support for an attack on Iraq if Saddam doesn't disarm quickly.
Implying the United States might deploy troops elsewhere if terms could not be reached with Turkey, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said "we have to deal with realities, and we will."
Meanwhile, President Bush sought to keep the pressure on the Security Council, telling a suburban Atlanta audience, "Denial and endless delay in the face of growing danger is not an option."
The president has said the council risks irrelevance if it does not face up to Iraq's defiance of more than 10 years of disarmament resolutions.
Mr. Bush also has said if the council does not approve a second resolution he is prepared to go to war with a "coalition of the willing" — nations like Britain that agree with him that Iraq's arsenals of biological and chemical weapons pose a threat.
Mr. Bush planned to host Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, an ally, at his Texas ranch Friday and Saturday. Another potential ally, Prime Minister Simeon Saxcoburggotski of Bulgaria, is due next Tuesday at the White House.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/18/iraq/main537096.shtml
Last edited by a moderator:
Greed said:
I will never understand the reasoning behind your argument. Sure other Administrations thought Iraq might have WMD but they did not start a full scale war over what might be. We had a policy of containment in effect and it was working very well. Iraq was not a threat to anyone nor was it close to becoming one again. The only thing that changed was our administration. Instead of reasoned will thought out policies towards Iraq we got a steady dose of Iraq isn't doing this to comply and we know they are doing this to defy us. Iraq told us they did not have the wmd but even today having found nothing we still claim they were lying. The fact is our white house and intelligence agencies knew the high probability there was no wmd. Scott Ridder(sp) and other peeps sounded the alarm and were branded unpatriotic loons.
Yes, he was still gunshy. The US troops, in Haiti, and Bosnia wore those cute powder blue helmets. They were called "UN Peacekeepers" during those times, so, yes... he was gunshy! And, sure he tried to persuade the American people to invade Iraq. And he did listen to exit polls and decided against it. And that's how he ran his presidency... through polls.
Damn... have you been listening? Saddam was emboldened to ignore the UN statutes that ended the Gulf War! Saddam was emboldened to shoot down US planes and capture US pilots protecting the 'No-Fly' zone. He was emboldened to violate UN statutes by financing terrorists organizations and continue to commit atrocities against his own people.
Saddam was emboldened to kick out the weapons inspectors before they finished their job. He was emboldened to defy the UN in their insistence to continue the weapons inspections. He was emboldened to defy those charters, and his insolence ultimately led to faulty intel, and eventually, his downfall.
tian
Tian,
Over the past several months, I've read a lot of your comments and I have to say, they engendered in me a certain respect for the author. Although an admitted conservative (labels don't mean much to me), I found what I thought was a certain even handedness in your reasoning. But on this issue, you've either gone overboard to support Bush or you are speaking without the benefit of research and/or a failing memory of the events before March of 2003.
So that you don't get it confused, I'm not a Clinton dick rider or flag toter. Clinton made some terrible mistakes and I don't buy the "black president" bullshit characterization.
The policy prior to GW Bush was "Containment." That is, attempts to control and weaken Iraq (and Iran) through strict economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation and protection of parts of the population and degradation of military capabilities through the no-fly zone/patrols. That was the Buck passed to GW Bush.
Was Iraq Contained When Bush Took Office ???
In 2001 and before, intelligence agencies noted that Saddam Hussein was effectively <u>contained</u> after the Gulf War. In fact, former weapons inspector David Kay now admits that the previous policy of containment – including Clinton's 1998 bombing of Iraq – destroyed any remaining infrastructure of potential WMD programs.
Responding to a question by Senator Bennet on January 24, 2001, Colin Powell stating the position of the Bush Administration, stated the following:
Well, tian, you might say: Colin Powell didn't speak for the Administration. But you damn sho can't argue that Tricky Dick Cheney didn't. What did Tricky Dick say ??? "Saddam Hussein's bottled up, at this point, but clearly, <u>we continue to have a fairly tough policy where the Iraqis are concerned</u>." When did Tricky Dick Cheney make that statement? - 5 days after 9-11, September 16, 2001. [2]
So, the "Buck" as you said was passed had Saddam "Bottled Up" (according to Cheney) and should have been continued, even if it could have been reconfigured (according to Powell).
QueEx
footnotes:
[1] http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/powell-no-wmd.htm
[2] The Vice President appears on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20010916.html
.
Over the past several months, I've read a lot of your comments and I have to say, they engendered in me a certain respect for the author. Although an admitted conservative (labels don't mean much to me), I found what I thought was a certain even handedness in your reasoning. But on this issue, you've either gone overboard to support Bush or you are speaking without the benefit of research and/or a failing memory of the events before March of 2003.
Of Course, all of the above is mere opinion not backed by a single fact to suggest its truth. I know Greed has a "boner of the most rigid kind" for Clinton and will readily invoke the Clinton Label to detract from anti-Bush arguments, but I didn't know that you would do the same, especially without sound argument supported by something other than, mere conjecture.tian said:
So that you don't get it confused, I'm not a Clinton dick rider or flag toter. Clinton made some terrible mistakes and I don't buy the "black president" bullshit characterization.
Emotionalism, LOL, but not factual. Cowardice ??? I believe that any som-bitch thats willing to send others into combat and not himself or his own, has a bit of cowardice. In that regard, one could argue that both Bush and Clinton have a part of the market cornered. Clinton obviously didn't do time in Viet Nam and it is just as obvious to reasonably thinking people that Bush campaigned for some som-bitch in Alabama instead of hitching a ride on the first boat or plane to Viet Nam -- in the same manner as he so eagerly committed troops to Iraq. Cowardice??? You're biased as hell if you don't pick GW up and body slam his ass into the Cowardice pool !tian said:
What was the "Buck" (policy) and what was passed ???tian said:
The policy prior to GW Bush was "Containment." That is, attempts to control and weaken Iraq (and Iran) through strict economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation and protection of parts of the population and degradation of military capabilities through the no-fly zone/patrols. That was the Buck passed to GW Bush.
Was Iraq Contained When Bush Took Office ???
In 2001 and before, intelligence agencies noted that Saddam Hussein was effectively <u>contained</u> after the Gulf War. In fact, former weapons inspector David Kay now admits that the previous policy of containment – including Clinton's 1998 bombing of Iraq – destroyed any remaining infrastructure of potential WMD programs.
Responding to a question by Senator Bennet on January 24, 2001, Colin Powell stating the position of the Bush Administration, stated the following:
- Senator Bennett: Mr. Secretary, the U.N. sanctions on Iraq expire the beginning of June. We've had bombs dropped, we've had threats made, we've had all kinds of activity vis-a-vis Iraq in the previous administration. Now we're coming to the end. What's our level of concern about the progress of Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons programs?
Secretary Powell: "The <u>sanctions, as they are called, have succeeded over the last 10 years</u>, not in deterring him from moving in that direction, but from actually being able to move in that direction. <u>The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. It doesn't have the capacity it had 10 or 12 years ago. It has been contained</u>. And even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological and nuclear -- I think the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful. There's no question that they have some stockpiles of some of these sorts of weapons still under their control, but they have not been able to break out, they have not been able to come out with the capacity to deliver these kinds of systems or to actually have these kinds of systems that is much beyond where they were 10 years ago.
So containment, using this arms control sanctions regime, I think has been reasonably successful. [1]
When we came into office on the 20th of January, the whole sanctions regime was collapsing in front of our eyes. Nations were bailing out on it. We lost the consensus for this kind of regime because the Iraqi regime had successfully painted us as the ones causing the suffering of the Iraqi people, when it was the regime that was causing the suffering. They had more than enough money; they just weren't spending it in the proper way. And we were getting the blame for it. <u>So reconfiguring the sanctions, I think, helps us and continues to contain the Iraqi regime</u>."
Well, tian, you might say: Colin Powell didn't speak for the Administration. But you damn sho can't argue that Tricky Dick Cheney didn't. What did Tricky Dick say ??? "Saddam Hussein's bottled up, at this point, but clearly, <u>we continue to have a fairly tough policy where the Iraqis are concerned</u>." When did Tricky Dick Cheney make that statement? - 5 days after 9-11, September 16, 2001. [2]
So, the "Buck" as you said was passed had Saddam "Bottled Up" (according to Cheney) and should have been continued, even if it could have been reconfigured (according to Powell).
More emotionalism, but you're right. Half the damn world knows he's crazy. But, your "establish democracy" has not been borne out, yet. Neither Iraq or Afghanistan has anything near a self-sufficient democracy not propped up and maintained by American presence and American BILLIONS. You're claiming success way too damn prematurely.tian said:
QueEx
footnotes:
[1] http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/powell-no-wmd.htm
[2] The Vice President appears on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20010916.html
.
If Iraq and Saddam was contained as of January and September 16, 2001
(according to Vice President Tricky Dick Cheney and Secretary of State
Powell), what happened between that time and 2003 that caused GW Bush
and those same people to change their minds ???
Did intelligence change ???
Did the intelligence get better ???
Or, Was it the decision to invade Iraq that came just 72 days after 911 and
67 days after Cheney said Iraq was "Bottled Up" that caused the intelligence
estimates and the way intelligence estimates were used to change ???
QueEx
(according to Vice President Tricky Dick Cheney and Secretary of State
Powell), what happened between that time and 2003 that caused GW Bush
and those same people to change their minds ???
Did intelligence change ???
Did the intelligence get better ???
Or, Was it the decision to invade Iraq that came just 72 days after 911 and
67 days after Cheney said Iraq was "Bottled Up" that caused the intelligence
estimates and the way intelligence estimates were used to change ???
QueEx
T
tehuti
Guest
A former Bolton deputy says the U.S. undersecretary of state felt Jose Bustani "had to go," particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050604/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/bolton_un_firing
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050604/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/bolton_un_firing
i dont use clinton to detract from anti-bush arguments...i try to limit my expressions of dislike for the man to where ever and whenever black people express admiration for him.
scottm often looked up to clinton and i let it slide. black people need to stop looking up to immoral people. whether its r kelly, 50 cent, jesse jackson, or bill clinton.
1st black president my ass. black incarerations at an all time high in the 90's and still getting higher. thanks brother man. play the sax some more and show us all your soul.
scottm often looked up to clinton and i let it slide. black people need to stop looking up to immoral people. whether its r kelly, 50 cent, jesse jackson, or bill clinton.
1st black president my ass. black incarerations at an all time high in the 90's and still getting higher. thanks brother man. play the sax some more and show us all your soul.
QueEx said:
Ok, since you have time, tell me how, when the Bush administration took office on January 20th, 2001, that in the course of 4 days, on January 24th, 2001, when Powell said that Iraq was "contained" could there not be a change of mind or new events that changed their mode of action?
Let's revisit your quote from Colin Powell:
Now, remember back in 1991, Iraq fired SCUD missiles into Israel. Remember, back then Saddam killed thousands of Kurds with biological weapons (WMDs) a few years earlier. So, Powell, speaking on behalf of the Bush Administration, said that
, they only re-iterated those thoughts when they made their case for war.
Again, where did they lie? Where did they commit this "Impeachable Offense?"
tian
C'mon Tian, ask a real question. "how, when the Bush administration took office on January 20th, 2001 ... could there not be a change of mind or new events that changed their mode of action?" -- because in 4 days (to 1/24/2001) or 193 days (9/16/01 five days after 9-11) when Tricky Dick Cheney reaffirmed that "Saddam Hussein's bottled up, at this " -- nothing changed in the collective minds of the Administration to cause them to change their minds or so say anything differently than what the Administration was saying on January 4, 2001 or at anytime prior to September 16, 2001.
<font size="4">So, the question for you Tian, is what, if anything, occurred between September 16, 2001 and 72 days later when Bush ordered the preparation of war plans for Iraq ???
In other words,
If Iraq and Saddam was contained as of January and September 16, 2001
(according to Vice President Tricky Dick Cheney and Secretary of State
Powell), what happened between that time and 2003 that caused GW Bush
and those same people to change their minds ???
Did intelligence change ???
Did the intelligence get better ???
Or, Was it the decision to invade Iraq that came just 72 days after 911 and
67 days after Cheney said Iraq was "Bottled Up" that caused the intelligence
estimates and the way intelligence estimates were used to change ???
</font size>
QueEx
no, the title of this thread is:Liberal Media?, White-Out of bush’s Impeachable Offense!!!
The true question is: what impeachable offense???
As to what happened from 2001 and 2003 in the White House would be speculative on my part and yours. In other words, I can't say what happened nor can you say that nothing happened.
There is a constant, though. Presidents George H.W, Clinton, and George W all believed that Saddam was stockpiling weapons. They all also had the policy for regime change in Iraq. So, there's nothing new there.
But, as to impeachable offenses, there are none. To ask: what happened between 2001 when "tricky" Dick Cheney said that Iraq was contained until 2003 when we went to war can be the source of another thread. But if there was another thread containing that subject, all I would ask is: "If it was in the mind of Dick Cheney from the outset to start a war, why would their first communication would be of Iraq's containment??"
tian
The true question is: what impeachable offense???
As to what happened from 2001 and 2003 in the White House would be speculative on my part and yours. In other words, I can't say what happened nor can you say that nothing happened.
There is a constant, though. Presidents George H.W, Clinton, and George W all believed that Saddam was stockpiling weapons. They all also had the policy for regime change in Iraq. So, there's nothing new there.
But, as to impeachable offenses, there are none. To ask: what happened between 2001 when "tricky" Dick Cheney said that Iraq was contained until 2003 when we went to war can be the source of another thread. But if there was another thread containing that subject, all I would ask is: "If it was in the mind of Dick Cheney from the outset to start a war, why would their first communication would be of Iraq's containment??"
tian
No, its not just speculation -- and, BTW, the operative period is not sometime in 2003. The operative period is 72 days after 9-11 when GW Bush ordered war plans drawn up for Iraq. So, starting from the beginning, I kinda laid the groundwork for where we started on this journey to Iraq and the question of whether there might be impeachable offenses along the way.tian said:
So far, you haven't put up anything to rebut that beginning, that is, that the Administration firmly held as late as September 16, 2001 (five days after the tragedy of 911) that Saddam Hussein was "Contained".
Why do you simply overlook the fact that Colin Powell and Tricky Dick Cheney BOTH unequivocally said that those so-called weapons were CONTAINED ??? AND, that they WERE CONTAINED on SEPTEMBER 16, 2001 ???tian said:
You see, it doesn't matter whether George H.W. Bush, William Jefferson Clinton or George W. Bush <u>thought</u> that Saddam had or was stock pilling weapons -- THEY ALL SAID that they were <u>CONTAINED</u>.
I think that is significant, don't you ???
[1] As to impeachable offenses, there may or may not be any, but we haven't finished, .... yet. BTW, even if there are sufficient grounds for folks in congress/government to act upon them, remember, the shit they got Nixon for started 4 years before they actually brought him down. In other words, while we would like to "resolve" the issue right here on BGOL -- in real life, it plays out a little slower.tian said:
[2]As to what Dick Cheney said on September 16, 2001 and 2003 being another thread: Nope, its part of this one, maybe you're just missing the significance. In my opinion, the significance is this: when did Saddam's so called weapons become "UNCONTAINED" to the point that they and Saddam had to be taken out !!! If they were never "uncontained" there was NO REASON to take them out -- so, if they were CONTAINED, saying that they were uncontained when they were'nt is a LIE itself . The question then would be whether its an impeachable lie. I wonder if invading another country based on such a distortion is impeachable ???
[3] As to your question, If it was in the mind of Dick Cheney from the outset to start a war, why would their first communication would be of Iraq's containment??" -- I think thats a damn good question. How about, there wasn't a sufficient reason to go into Iraq -- therefore, -- one had to be invented. What do you think about that ???
QueEx
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Now, as I recall, during an address to the American people, Bush talked about how they received intel from Britain, and first discussed by Tony Blair, about Saddam's WMD program.
This is Tony Blair's version:
24 September 2002
"(Saddam's) weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing. The policy of containment is not working. The weapons of mass destruction programme is not shut down. It is up and running....
"The intelligence picture (the intelligence services) paint is one accumulated over the past four years. It is extensive, detailed and authoritative.
"It concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population; and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability....
"On chemical weapons, the dossier shows that Iraq continues to produce chemical agent for chemical weapons; has rebuilt previously destroyed production plants across Iraq; has bought dual-use chemical facilities; has retained the key personnel formerly engaged in the chemical weapons programme; and has a serious ongoing research programme into weapons production, all of it well funded..."
House of Commons
We all know now that it was bad intel, but the dossier that came from Britain was repeated by George Bush after Tony Blair gave that speech.
So, according to this false information, Iraq ISN'T contained. And, since our long-standing policy was regime change, war was enacted.
So, in short, the question of what happened from 2001 and 2003 is a non-question, because you have just read the intel from Tony Blair.
But, to say that from the outset they they had plans to go to war with Iraq is negated by the first containment statement, IMO...
Now, there is a great question out there: How could the Intelligence be so bad??? Could it have been fabricated??? These are great questions, but it is not a question that could be answered here in this forum. To attempt to do so would be mere speculation.
tian
This is Tony Blair's version:
24 September 2002
"(Saddam's) weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing. The policy of containment is not working. The weapons of mass destruction programme is not shut down. It is up and running....
"The intelligence picture (the intelligence services) paint is one accumulated over the past four years. It is extensive, detailed and authoritative.
"It concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population; and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability....
"On chemical weapons, the dossier shows that Iraq continues to produce chemical agent for chemical weapons; has rebuilt previously destroyed production plants across Iraq; has bought dual-use chemical facilities; has retained the key personnel formerly engaged in the chemical weapons programme; and has a serious ongoing research programme into weapons production, all of it well funded..."
House of Commons
We all know now that it was bad intel, but the dossier that came from Britain was repeated by George Bush after Tony Blair gave that speech.
So, according to this false information, Iraq ISN'T contained. And, since our long-standing policy was regime change, war was enacted.
So, in short, the question of what happened from 2001 and 2003 is a non-question, because you have just read the intel from Tony Blair.
But, to say that from the outset they they had plans to go to war with Iraq is negated by the first containment statement, IMO...
Now, there is a great question out there: How could the Intelligence be so bad??? Could it have been fabricated??? These are great questions, but it is not a question that could be answered here in this forum. To attempt to do so would be mere speculation.
tian
T
tehuti
Guest
'Downing Street memo' gets fresh attention
By Mark Memmott,
USA TODAY
Wed Jun 8
A simmering controversy over whether American media have ignored a secret British memo about how President Bush built his case for war with Iraq bubbled over into the White House on Tuesday.
At a late afternoon news conference, Reuters correspondent Steve Holland asked Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair about a memo that's been widely written about and discussed in Europe but less so in the USA.
It was the most attention paid by the media in the USA so far to the "Downing Street memo," first reported on May 1 by The Sunday Times of London. The memo is said by some of the president's sharpest critics, such as Democratic Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, to be strong evidence that Bush decided to go to war and then looked for evidence to support his decision.
The Sunday Times said the memo is the minutes of a meeting that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had with some of his top intelligence and foreign policy aides on July 23, 2002, at 10 Downing Street, the prime minister's official residence. The story said the memo indicates that Blair was told by the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service that in 2002, the Bush administration was selectively choosing evidence that supported its case for going to war and ignoring anything to the contrary. The war began in March 2003.
"Intelligence and facts were being fixed" by the Bush administration "around" a policy that saw military action "as inevitable," the newspaper quoted from the memo.
"There's nothing farther from the truth," Bush told reporters as Blair stood at his side. "Both of us didn't want to use our military," Bush said in response to a question about the memo. "It was our last option."
Blair added, "The facts were not being 'fixed' in any shape or form at all."
Bush said that at the time the memo was written, no decision had been made about going to war. He pointed out that it was written two months before he went to the United Nations and asked for a Security Council resolution calling on Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction or face "serious consequences."
The Sunday Times' May 1 memo story, which broke just four days before Britain's national elections, caused a sensation in Europe. American media reacted more cautiously. The New York Times wrote about the memo May 2, but didn't mention until its 15th paragraph that the memo stated U.S. officials had "fixed" intelligence and facts.
Knight Ridder Newspapers distributed a story May 6 that said the memo "claims President Bush ... was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy." The Los Angeles Times wrote about the memo May 12, The Washington Post followed on May 15 and The New York Times revisited the news on May 20.
None of the stories appeared on the newspapers' front pages. Several other major media outlets, including the evening news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC, had not said a word about the document before Tuesday. Today marks USA TODAY's first mention.
Some activists who opposed Bush's decision to attack Iraq have been peppering editors with letters and e-mails to push the media into more aggressive coverage. Last week, a group known as Democrats.com offered $1,000 to anyone who can get Bush to answer "yes or no" to this question: Did he or his administration "fix the intelligence" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to terrorism?
"We want what the Michael Jackson, Paris Hilton and Star Wars stories have gotten: endless repetition until people have heard about it," says David Swanson, one of Democrats.com's organizers.
Robin Niblett of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, says it would be easy for Americans to misunderstand the reference to intelligence being "fixed around" Iraq policy. " 'Fixed around' in British English means 'bolted on' rather than altered to fit the policy," he says.
Ombudsmen at both The New York Times and The Washington Post have been critical of their newspapers for not covering the story more aggressively.
USA TODAY chose not to publish anything about the memo before today for several reasons, says Jim Cox, the newspaper's senior assignment editor for foreign news. "We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source," Cox says. "There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from (Blair's office). And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050608/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_guantanamo
<font size="6"><center>Bush and 'the memo'</font size></center>
Friday, June 10, 2005
PRESIDENT BUSH apparently thinks he can dismiss the damning "Downing Street memo" with a few glib words.
If he is right, it is a sad commentary on the state of American democracy and values.
The memo, recounting the details of a July 23, 2002, meeting at British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official residence on 10 Downing St., strongly suggested that the message had been sent across the Atlantic that the Bush White House had made the decision to wage war on Iraq. The minutes of the meeting indicated that Blair and his top-level intelligence and foreign-policy aides were given clear signals that military action was "inevitable."
In the most disturbing passage of the minutes, the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service, reporting on his recent trip to Washington, told the group that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
Bush was finally asked about the memo directly this week, during a media availability with Blair. Bush tried to discredit the memo because of the timing of its disclosure -- just days before Blair's re-election. But it is important to note that no one has challenged the authenticity of the memo nor the accuracy of its account of the meeting.
Bush also scoffed at the suggestion that the decision to go to war had been made by July 2002, nearly a year before U.S. bombs began raining on Baghdad. "There's nothing farther from the truth," Bush told reporters. "My conversation with the prime minister was, how can we do this peacefully?"
Americans deserve to have a more intensive investigation and expansive explanation to the extremely serious allegation that their government "fixed" intelligence to justify a pre-emptive war. The White House wants to dismiss it as "old news" and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress assume they can shrug off the demands of a bloc of Democrats -- led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. -- for hearings on the Downing Street memo.
There should be no statute of limitations -- or shortness of public attention span -- on an issue that cuts to the core of this government's integrity and credibility. Congress must fully investigate the actions in Washington that led the highest officials in Great Britain to be convinced that the Bush administration was hell-bent on war and working to concoct a rationalization for it.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/10/EDGMMD62O01.DTL
Friday, June 10, 2005
PRESIDENT BUSH apparently thinks he can dismiss the damning "Downing Street memo" with a few glib words.
If he is right, it is a sad commentary on the state of American democracy and values.
The memo, recounting the details of a July 23, 2002, meeting at British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official residence on 10 Downing St., strongly suggested that the message had been sent across the Atlantic that the Bush White House had made the decision to wage war on Iraq. The minutes of the meeting indicated that Blair and his top-level intelligence and foreign-policy aides were given clear signals that military action was "inevitable."
In the most disturbing passage of the minutes, the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service, reporting on his recent trip to Washington, told the group that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
Bush was finally asked about the memo directly this week, during a media availability with Blair. Bush tried to discredit the memo because of the timing of its disclosure -- just days before Blair's re-election. But it is important to note that no one has challenged the authenticity of the memo nor the accuracy of its account of the meeting.
Bush also scoffed at the suggestion that the decision to go to war had been made by July 2002, nearly a year before U.S. bombs began raining on Baghdad. "There's nothing farther from the truth," Bush told reporters. "My conversation with the prime minister was, how can we do this peacefully?"
Americans deserve to have a more intensive investigation and expansive explanation to the extremely serious allegation that their government "fixed" intelligence to justify a pre-emptive war. The White House wants to dismiss it as "old news" and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress assume they can shrug off the demands of a bloc of Democrats -- led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. -- for hearings on the Downing Street memo.
There should be no statute of limitations -- or shortness of public attention span -- on an issue that cuts to the core of this government's integrity and credibility. Congress must fully investigate the actions in Washington that led the highest officials in Great Britain to be convinced that the Bush administration was hell-bent on war and working to concoct a rationalization for it.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/10/EDGMMD62O01.DTL
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