Iraq War Could Have Been Avoided?

Iraq War Could Have Been Avoided?

Quote:
A possible negotiated peace deal was laid out in a heavily guarded compound in Baghdad in the days before the war, but a top former Pentagon adviser says he was ordered not to pursue the deal, ABCNEWS has learned.

* * *

A week later, according to Hage, he and an associate were asked to come to Baghdad, when Hage says he met with Saddam Hussein's chief of intelligence, Gen. Tahir Habbush, later labeled the Jack of Diamonds in the deck of cards depicting the most-wanted members of Saddam Hussein's regime. Habbush is still at large.

"He was conveying a message," said Hage. "He was conveying an offer." Hage said Habbush laid out terms of a negotiated peace during a four-hour session beginning at midnight at a compound in Baghdad.

Hage said Habbush repeated public denials by the regime that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but offered to allow several thousand U.S. agents or scientists free rein in the country to carry out inspections. "Based on my meeting with his man," said Hage, "I think an effort was there to avert war. They were prepared to meet with high-ranking U.S. officials."

Hage said Habbush also offered U.N.-supervised free elections, oil concessions to U.S. companies and was prepared to turn over a top al Qaeda terrorist, Abdul Rahman Yasin, who Haboush said had been in Iraqi custody since 1994.

(Yasin is one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists, indicted in connection with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Hage says Habbush claimed the United States had refused earlier offers to turn him over. Yasin remains at large and is now thought to be one of the people behind the recent wave of attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq.)

Throughout the period of the negotiations claimed by Hage, the Bush administration publicly maintained it would not conduct negotiations with Baghdad to avoid a war that did not first involve the unconditional departure of Saddam Hussein from Iraq or his surrender.

But Richard Perle, then chairman of the Defense Policy Advisory Board, said in the weeks leading up to war he told the CIA, but they refused the plan to meet with Iraqi officials to discuss a possible peace deal along the lines of the plan outlined by Hage to ABCNEWS.

"Although I was not enthusiastic about the offer, I was willing to meet with the Iraqis," Perle told ABCNEWS. "The United States government told me not to." Perle would not disclose which official or arm of the government rejected the talks.

According to Pentagon e-mails obtained by ABCNEWS, Hage's report of the Iraqi offer was forwarded to Defense Department officials on Feb. 20, including Jaymie Durnan, who at the time was the top aide to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. However, Pentagon officials said Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were not aware of the talks.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/World/hage031105-1.html

*If this is indeed factual I believe that the Pres., VP and the rest of the staff should be charged with fraud by the Justice Dept. with an Independent Prosecuter to investigate the fraud.