THE IRAQ FORGERY

Revel, thanks for the good data. I gather from it that there is nothing yet that is solid. Thus, I hope there will soon be hearings that will clarify the matter.

Supposedly there are more tapes. However; I seriously doubt congress has any hearings about it. There is just not any appetite for that sort of thing these days.

Yeah, I agree. The useless congress that doesn't reign in the president is guilty of a crime also - IMHO. They have forfeited their responsibility to represent the American people.

Happily, the House Judiciary Committee is going to look into a number of aspects in connection with the alleged forged Iriaqi letter.


House Judiciary To Probe Allegations White House Ordered Forged Letter Linking Saddam-Al Qaeda
By Andrew Tilghman - August 11, 2008, 6:49PM
After pundits have commented about the muted reaction to author Ron Suskind's explosive allegations last week, the House Judiciary Committee said today it will "review" the reports of White House and CIA misconduct.

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) didn't mention anything about hearings or subpoenas in his press release this afternoon. But the committee chairman did say he instructed his staff to look into the report that former CIA Director George Tenet in late 2003 ordered agents to concoct a letter showing false evidence linking Saddam to 9/11.

"Mr. Suskind reports that the Bush Administration, in its pursuit of war, created and promoted forged documents about Iraq," Conyers said in the press release. "I am particularly troubled that the decision to disseminate this fabricated intelligence is alleged to have come from the highest reaches of the administration."

After Suskind's new book was released last week, the White House promptly denied the accusation and two of Suskind's key CIA sources criticized the report, claiming Suskind misrepresented their remarks. Suskind responded by releasing a partial transcript of one taped interview with a key CIA source.

While that allegedly forged letter got all the press attention last week, Conyers indicated he would review several other questions raised in the book, "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism."


A number of issues raised in Mr. Suskind's book to be reviewed include:

· The origin of the allegedly forged document that formed the basis for Bush's 2003 State of the Union assertion that Iraq sought yellowcake uranium from Niger;

· The role of this document in creating the false impression that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had a working relationship with Iraq;

· The relationship between this document and other reported examples of the Bush Administration considering other deceptive schemes to justify or provoke war with Iraq, such as the reported consideration of painting a U.S. aircraft with UN colors in order to provoke Iraq into military confrontation;

· Allegations that the Bush Administration deliberately ignored information from Iraq's chief intelligence officer that Iraq possessed no WMDs;

· The payment of $5 million to Iraq's chief intelligence officer and his secret settlement in Jordan, beyond the reach of investigators;

· The September 2007 detainment and interrogation of Mr. Suskind's research assistant, Greg Jackson, by federal agents in Manhattan. Jackson's notes were also confiscated.

Documents reveal PR push for Iraq war preceded intel findingsNick Juliano
Published: Friday August 22, 2008

New documents from within the Bush administration and US intelligence community during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq reveal that the White House began assembling a case for war before it had compiled the intel that ostensibly formed the basis of that case.

A new report on the documents from George Washington University's National Security Archive also presents compelling evidence that the Bush administration pressured the CIA and other intelligence agencies to tailor their reports to back-up Bush's desire to invade. The report suggests the bulk of this effort was run out of Vice President Dick Cheney's office, backing up numerous other post-war examinations of the path to invasion that saw Cheney as the mastermind of the plan to oust Saddam Hussein.

The Archive published a July 2002 draft of a CIA "White Paper" on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. The draft was prepared months before a National Intelligence Estimate on Saddam's regime, which Congress did not demand until September, although the final "White Paper" released in October purportedly summarized that very NIE.

In addition to the Archive's newly obtained documents, Dr. John Prados, who compiled the report, examined previous investigations of pre-war intelligence manipulation such as the recently completed Senate Intelligence Committee "Phase II" report on administration officials' pre-war rhetoric and books on the subject such as former White House spokesman Scott McClellan's memoir.

He concluded, in essence, that the Bush administration cherry picked intelligence to justify an invasion, that Tony Blair's British government was complicit in producing shaky intelligence on Saddam's WMDs, that administration figures -- especially Cheney -- pressured the CIA to give them what they wanted, and that intelligence undercutting the case for war was ignored in favor of less reliable sources who backed administration beliefs.

• The Phase II report on Bush administration public statements, in conjunction with the SSCI’s original July 2004 report on Iraq’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction, indicates that political manipulation extended beyond the intelligence itself to affect investigation of the intelligence failures on Iraq as well as the Bush administration’s use of that information.
• In conjunction with other recently declassified materials, the Phase II report shows that the Bush administration solicited intelligence then used to “substantiate” its public claims.
• A recently declassified draft of the CIA’s October 2002 white paper on Iraqi WMD programs demonstrates that that paper long pre-dated the compilation of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi capabilities.
• The timing of the CIA’s draft white paper coincides with a previously available draft of the British Government’s white paper on Iraqi WMD, demonstrating that the Bush administration and the Tony Blair government began acting in concert to build support for an invasion of Iraq two to three months earlier than previously understood.
• A comparison of the CIA draft white paper with its publicly released edition shows that all the changes made were in the nature of strengthening its charges against Iraq by inserting additional alarming claims, in the manner of an advocacy, or public relations document. The draft and final papers show no evidence of intelligence analysis applied to the information contained. Similar comparison of the British white paper shows the same phenomenon at work.
• Declassified Pentagon documents demonstrate that the CIA white paper was modified in ways that conformed to the desires of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and his office, in much the same way that British documents indicate that country’s white paper was changed to conform to the desires of the Blair government.


The CIA was under enormous pressure, which resulted in its production of a White Paper that did not conform to the facts, according to the report.

"Under the circumstances, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the CIA and other intelligence agencies defended themselves against the dangers of attack from the Bush administration through a process of self-censorship," Prados writes. "That is the very essence of politicization in intelligence."

He goes on to report that CIA reports had "the character of rhetoric" and did not reflect "the kind of approach characteristic of intelligence analysis."
The Archive's report backs up similar contentions that first came to light with release of the Downing Street memo in 2005 and have been reinforced in scores of books and investigative articles. Most recently, investigative journalist Ron Suskind reported in his new book The Way of the World that the British government was secretly in contact before the invasion with the chief of Iraq's intelligence services who told them unequivocally that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons stockpiles. That revelation -- received in plenty of time to delay the invasion -- was ignored, Suskind wrote.

Prados reports on other sources the CIA had developed among scientists in Iraq and within Saddam's foreign minister. Information they provided was ignored in favor of what was later revealed to be untrue exaggerations passed along by Iraqi exiles.

The White Paper went through several drafts, Prados writes, and it is clear to see the administration's influence in its preparation.

"The net impression is that the CIA white paper was rewritten to conform to administration preferences. If so, U.S. intelligence a priori made itself a tool of a political effort, vitiating the intelligence function and confirming the presence of a politicized process," he writes. "The specific analytic failures on Iraq intelligence become much less significant in such a climate, especially in that they all yielded intelligence predictions of exactly the kind the Bush administration wanted to hear."

FULL ANALYSIS AT THIS LINK http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Documents_reveal_US_case_for_Iraq_0822.html

The useless congress that doesn't reign in the president is guilty of a crime also - IMHO. They have forfeited their responsibility to represent the American people.
CI don't vomit this kind of words. We are here to uphold patriotism and we should show our dirty linon( flag)

Here is some interesting new information from a former CIA officer. Doug Feith is the man.

Conyers calls for hearings into bogus letter linking Hussein to al-Qaeda
posted by gatekeeper50 08/21/2008 10:04:31 AM EST


If you like this story, digg it!

So, who or what did create the bogus letter linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda --- the CIA as reported by Ron Suskind in The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism or the DoD as reported by Philip Giraldi in an article published Aug. 8 in the magazine American Conservative as reported today at The Public Record (see below)

Rep. John Conyers has called for hearings into the matter (also below)



former CIA officer Philip Giraldi said the bulk of Suskind’s claim, that a forged letter was produced linking Iraq to al-Qaeda, is correct but a “number of details are wrong.”


Giraldi also said that “an extremely reliable and well placed source” told him that Richer did not play a role in the matter.


“The Suskind account states that two senior CIA officers Robert Richer and John Maguire supervised the preparation of the document under direct orders coming from Director George Tenet. Not so, says my source, “Giraldi wrote. Former CIA Director George “Tenet is for once telling the truth when he states that he would not have undermined himself by preparing such a document while at the same time insisting publicly that there was no connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Richer and Maguire have both denied that they were involved with the forgery and it should also be noted that preparation of such a document to mislead the media is illegal and they could have wound up in jail.”


Giraldi claims that letter was prepared by former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who operated a top-secret shop inside the Pentagon known as the Office of Special Plans that exaggerated the Iraqi threat and provided the White House with bogus information about links between Iraq and al Qaeda. The shop, operating out of the Pentagon, was set up by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Its goal was to lay the groundwork for a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq.


In his article, Giraldi said Vice President Dick Cheney, “who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment.”


“The Pentagon has its own false documents center, primarily used to produce fake papers for Delta Force and other special ops officers traveling under cover as businessmen,” Giraldi wrote. “It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity.”




Conyers Asks Intelligence Officials to Discuss Bogus Iraq/Al-Qaeda Letter
Posted: 20 Aug 2008 03:00 PM CDT
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers sent a series of letters Wednesday to current and former White House and intelligence officials stating he is concerned the Bush administration may have violated federal law by allegedly ordering the CIA to create a bogus letter in late 2003 that linked Saddam Hussein to Al-Qaeda and wants to interview the officials to set the record straight.


The letters were addressed to former CIA Director George Tenet, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Rob Richer, the CIA's former associate deputy director of operations, John Hannah, Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs, John MaGuire, the former head of the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group, Near East Division, and A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard, the CIA’s former executive director, and requests that these intelligence officials provide the committee with information about the forged letter .


The officials were identified in the recently published book The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind as either having first-hand knowledge that the White House ordered the CIA to create the letter to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq after weapons of mass destruction were not found or played a direct role in drafting the letter.
Richer and MaGuire gave Suskind on-the-record interviews, which the author recorded, and discussed specific details about the reasons the letter was created and that it likely emanated from Cheney’s office. Both men have since recanted their statements. Richer said in a lengthy statement two weeks ago that he may sue Suskind for allegedly failing to inform him that the interviews he agreed to were being recorded.


“I am writing to follow up on recent serious allegations regarding the creation of a false letter from Tahir Jalil Habbush, Saddam Hussein's former Chief of Intelligence, to Saddam Hussein,” Conyers wrote in each of the five letters that contained identical language.


“The letter, which was allegedly backdated to July 1, 2001, attempted to establish an operational link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein in the period before the 9/11 attacks by specifically stating that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had received training in Iraq. At the time of the alleged decision in 2003 to concoct the false letter, the Vice President's Office had been reportedly pressuring the CIA to prove this connection as a justification to invade Iraq. The letter also falsely noted that Iraq had received a "shipment" (presumably uranium) from Niger with the assistance of al Qaeda.


“Upon careful review of the allegations concerning this matter, I have become very concerned with the possibility that this Administration may have violated federal law by using the resources of our intelligence agencies to influence domestic policy processes or opinion. The law specifically provides that "[n]o covert action may be conducted which is intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies, or media."


Suskind wrote in his book that such a violation might constitute an “impeachable offense.”


“It is not the sort of offense, such as assault or burglary, that carries specific penalties, for example, a fine or jail time,” Suskind wrote. “It is much broader than that. It pertains to the White House’s knowingly misusing an arm of government, the sort of thing generally taken up in impeachment proceedings
-- theyoungturks.com

CIA again denies Iraq deception/Book contends that White House knew Saddam had no WMD
August 24, 2008
The controversy over an account of forgery and deception in the White House deepened Friday with a new CIA denial that it helped the Bush administration produce phony papers linking Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

Ron Suskind's book "The Way of the World" contends that the White House learned in early 2003 that the Iraqi president no longer had weapons of mass destruction but went to war anyway.

The deception by the white house is so glaring, it only takes an idiot to believe this administration. Why do they think Bush changed the justifications for this war so many times? That's the real clue.

They also forget the language used by this administration at the beginning of this war; "shock and awe." That tells the world that the innocent bystanders in Iraq are fair game for killing. Show me different?

Here is more evidence of Bush perfidy relative to the war. The WH wrote a white paper justifying war three months before the intell was received.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/White-Paper-Justifying-Ira-by-Michael-Collins-080825-667.html

Holding the murderers accountable: the case against Bush, Cheney, et al.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3697.shtml

Just how does "shock and awe" translate into killing bystanders in Iraq?