US AND THEM: US, UN & Iraq, version 8.0

Both the USA Clinton and Bush administrations, the USA Congress, and the British Blair administrations were fooled by the false findings of their respective intelligence services into believing Iraq possessed ready-to-use WMD and was an accomplice of al Qaeda in its 9/11 terrorist attack on the USA. Neither of these intelligence services were politically pressured by their governments into their foolish findings. However, one fundamental finding by both these intelligence services has been verified after our invasion of Iraq. The former government of Iraq did harbor (i.e., allow) al Qaeda training camps in Iraq beginning in December 2001.

The USA invaded Afghanistan October 2001 when the then Afghanistan government ignored USA government requests and would not stop harboring (i.e., allowing) al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. The USA invaded and destroyed the al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, and began the process of replacing the then Afghanistan government with a democratic government in order to reduce the probability that al Qaeda would return and re-establish its training camps when the USA left Afghanistan.

The USA invaded Iraq March 2003 when the then Iraq government ignored USA government requests and would not stop harboring (i.e., allowing) al Qaeda training camps in Iraq. The USA invaded and destroyed the al Qaeda training camps in Iraq, and began the process of replacing the then Iraq government with a democratic government in order to reduce the probability that al Qaeda would return and re-establish its training camps when the USA left Iraq.

Of the 23 whereases (i.e., reasons) Congress gave in its resolution, “Authorization for use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002,” Oct. 16, 2002, only these following six subsequently verified reasons were fundamental reasons for invading Iraq:

(10) Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

(11) Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens;

(20) Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the President to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;

(21) Whereas the President and Congress are determined to continue to take all appropriate actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;

(22) Whereas the President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States, as Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40); and,

(23) Whereas it is in the national security interests of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region:

While the Blair and Bush administrations and the USA Congress were gullible fools about some of the intelligence they were provided, they were not frauds; they were not liars about that intelligence. They did not manipulate that intelligence to serve their political objectives.

www.wmd.gov/report/report.html
Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction
[Boldface added]

Quote:

REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT, MARCH 31, 2005.
(Robb-Silberman Report)

Finally, we closely examined the possibility that intelligence analysts were pressured by policymakers to change their judgments about Iraq's nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs. The analysts who worked Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments. That said, it is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom.

-----

http://intelligence.senate.gov/conclusions.pdf

Quote:

Senate Intelligence Committee Report, July 9, 2004

The committee found no evidence of the IC’s (i.e., Intelligence Community’s) miss characterization or exaggeration of the intelligence on Iraq’s WMD (i.e., Weapon’s of Mass Destruction) capabilities was the result of political pressure.

-----

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3892809.stm

Quote:

At-a-glance: Butler report published on 14 July 2004.
Lord Butler's inquiry has published its verdict on the intelligence used to justify the war against Iraq. Here are the main points.
The reliability of intelligence
 Doubt has been cast on a "high proportion" of human intelligence sources - and so on the quality of intelligence assessments given to ministers and officials

Joint Intelligence committee (JIC)
 No evidence has been found of "deliberate distortion or of culpable negligence"
 In general, original intelligence was reported correctly in JIC assessments, with the exception of the 45-minute claim

-----

Wall Street Journal, Thursday November 3, 2005, page A12.

Quote:

Al Gore from September 23, 2002, amid the Congressional debate over going to war: “We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.”

Quote:

Hillary Clinton from October 10, 2002: “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. …”

Quote:

Senator Jay Rockefeller from October 10, 2002: “There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons within the next five years. … We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.”

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Not that I think anti-Bush types will consider anything other than what they wish to believe, but the following clearly underscores the outline Ican presents:

Quote:

Those who say Bush "lied us into war" based on "manufactured" intelligence are either ignorant or malicious. Either way, they are dangerously undermining whatever chance we still have of rescuing Iraq from chaos and catastrophe.

National Security & Defense

Democrats Push Big Lie About War
by Allan H. Ryskind
Posted Nov 4, 2005

President Bush lied us into war and the revelations produced by the Scooter Libby indictment only confirm this terrible scandal.

That's the essence of the vicious slur Democrats are hurling at the GOP these days, with Minority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) shutting down the U.S. Senate to dramatize the charge.

The White House, as the Democrats would now have it, had virtually no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, but the President, Dick Cheney and their gang were so intent on removing Saddam from power they invented facts. And when critics such as Joe Wilson spoke truth to power, the "Scooters" in the administration slimed their reputations.

Unpatriotic Mud-Slinging

The episode involving Libby and Wilson, summed up Reid, "is about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the President."

This is unpatriotic mud-slinging, with a touch of Black Helicopter looniness tossed in. To believe that the White House concocted a fable about WMD in Iraq, you would have to believe in a massive conspiracy involving not only the Bush people, but both Bill Clinton's and George Bush's CIA director, George Tenet; Bush's first term secretary of state, Colin Powell; Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright; Clinton's key NSC Persian Gulf adviser, Kenneth Pollack; and numerous WMD experts at the United Nations.

How many people, for instance, know that Wilson himself, the Democrats' big stick to beat up on Bush, believed that when the war began Saddam had weapons of mass destruction?

Here is what he wrote in his now infamous July 6, 2003, column in the New York Times, attempting to disprove, unsuccessfully, that the Bush Administration was wrong when it insisted Iraq had been seeking nuclear materials in Niger:

"I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program?-all of which were in violation of U.N. resolutions."

What Wilson said in this column, of course, contained the core rationale the administration gave as to why this country went to war. Was Wilson in on the White House conspiracy, too?

Even though Wilson argued that his oral report to the CIA refuted Bush's claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger?-the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence forcefully asserted quite the opposite?-he did believe what virtually the whole world believed: that Saddam Hussein had plenty of WMD and was energetically attempting to acquire more.

Madeleine Albright, appearing on the Sept. 21, 2003, edition of NBC's "Meet the Press," had been certain that Saddam had stockpiled those terrible weapons. She admitted she was very "surprised" that they hadn't yet been discovered, adding: "But what worries me most now," is "where is it [WMD], and could it be in the hands of terrorists?"

From 1995 to 1996 and from 1999 to 2001, Kenneth M. Pollack served as director for Gulf affairs at the National Security Council, where he was the principal working-level official responsible for implementation of Clinton's policy toward Iraq.

Prior to serving Clinton, he spent seven years in the CIA as a Persian Gulf military analyst.

Was Clinton's seasoned expert on the Gulf also in on the Bush plan to fabricate evidence? The conspiracy buffs may think so, for in 2002, when Bush was in office and worrying about what to do about Saddam, Pollack wrote a book titled The Threatening Storm. The subtitle was more provocative: The Case for Invading Iraq.

After analyzing all the WMD evidence at his command, and Saddam Hussein's career as an aggressor, a mass murderer and a political thug who could not be trusted to keep his word, Pollack concluded: "Unfortunately, the only prudent and realistic course of action left to the United States is to mount a full-scale invasion of Iraq to smash the Iraqi armed forces."

When the WMD weren't found, Pollack wrote an article for the Atlantic Monthly for its first issue in 2004.

He was critical of the Bush Administration's handling of the war, but he made several informative observations in his critique. Among them:

"The U.S. intelligence community's belief that Saddam was aggressively pursuing weapons of mass destruction pre-dated Bush's inauguration and therefore cannot be attributed to political pressure."
"In October of 2002, the National Intelligence Council, the highest analytical body in the U.S. intelligence community, issued a classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's WMD representing the consensus of the intelligence community. Although after the war some complained that the NIE had been a rush job and that the NIE should have been more careful in its choice of language, in fact, the report accurately reflected what intelligence analysts had been telling Clinton Administration officials like me for years in verbal briefings."
?'Manufactured' Intellligence

A declassified version of the 2002 NIE was released to the public in July 2003. Among its findings:

"Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions."
"Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions. . . ."
"Since inspections ended in 1998, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program and invested more heavily in biological weapons; most analysts assess [that] Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."
Pollack, citing this crucial report, then said: "U.S. government analysts were not alone in these views. In the late spring of 2002, I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraq WMD. Those present included nearly 20 former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq.

"One of the senior people put a question to the group. Did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did. Three people added that they believed Iraq was also operating a secret calutron plant (a facility for separating uranium isotopes.)

"Other nations' intelligence services were similarly aligned with U.S. views. Somewhat remarkably, given how adamantly Germany would oppose the war, the German Federal Intelligence Service held the bleakest view of all, arguing that Iraq might be able to build a nuclear weapon within three years [without outside fissile material]. Israel, Russia, Britain, China and even France held positions similar to that of the United States."

Pollack's account alone puts the lie to the charge that Bush took us to war on "manufactured" intelligence.

And does anyone seriously believe that Bush's then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was deliberately deceiving the American people when he made his spectacularly convincing speech against Saddam before the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, just weeks prior to the war?

Powell's major accusation, that Iraq was awash in WMD, came from CIA Director George Tenet, who had also served as Bill Clinton's CIA director in the last four years of the Clinton presidency.

George Bush had been assured by Tenet that there was "slam dunk" evidence against Saddam, so the secretary of State descended upon the CIA in Mclean, Va., spending four difficult days sifting through the intelligence, sometimes with his deputy, Richard Armitage.

After the final rehearsal in Washington, Tenet, according to Bob Woodward's most thorough report, "announced that he thought their case was ironclad and he believed that they had vetted each sentence."

Powell then informed Tenet that the CIA director would have to sit behind him at the UN, a visible sign that he was backing the secretary of State's findings.

Powell's presentation on Feb. 5, 2003, was a tour de force, with even ultra-liberal Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory succumbing. "I can only say," she wrote, "that he persuaded me, and I was as tough as France to convince."

History will determine whether the Bush Administration did the right thing in invading Iraq and we may yet discover definitively why so many experts appeared to have misjudged the WMD threat. But we can conclude that the President took us to war based on convincing, uncooked data compiled by intelligence analysts in both the Clinton and Bush Administrations.

Those who say Bush "lied us into war" based on "manufactured" intelligence are either ignorant or malicious. Either way, they are dangerously undermining whatever chance we still have of rescuing Iraq from chaos and catastrophe.
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=10090

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That article of Ryskind's is crap of a most pernicious kind.

A good antidote to it is contained in this satire posted by Piffka.

http://www.thefrown.com/frowners/becomerepublican.swf

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McTag wrote:

That article of Ryskind's is crap of a most pernicious kind.
...

Alas, Foxfyre's assessment of Bush haters is right!

Quote:

Not that I think anti-Bush types will consider anything other than what they wish to believe

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I toss a coin and it comes down heads.

I consider the possibility that it came down tails, but it came down heads.

That is what I wish to believe.

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The thing is, Ryskind (or Ican for that matter) offers not a single fact that cannot be verified. It is those facts that the anti-Bush people will not even look at, much less consider. They just dismiss it with an uncomplimentary adjective or ad hominem and go right back to the slurs with little or no substance to back them up.

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While we're at it, I can't resist posting this one too. Do you think the Democrats will be demanding an investigation of the Washington Post?

November 04, 2005, 11:58 a.m.
Overt Inconsistency
The Washington Post plays covert games.

By William J. Bennett

Moral consistency may never have been a strong virtue of the Left or the Mainstream Media (Am I being redundant?). I suppose, then, we should perhaps thank Joe Wilson for getting the Left and the MSM to finally support and think of the value of the CIA and its agents, even its agents whose jobs are classified.

However, that support for the CIA, and that respect for secrecy in war and intelligence, lasted only as long as they thought it might bring down a high official like Karl Rove. Now they're back to their old selves.

Item: Dana Priest of the Washington Post writes a front-page story on Wednesday headlined, CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons. Pay close attention to the second sentence of the story: "The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents."

"Secret"! "Covert"! So after the press and the Left make a meal of the allegation that people in the White House might have leaked the name of a covert operative, and after we find out that Plame was indeed not a covert operative under the law, the Washington Post ?- by its own admission ?- can print classified information that involves covert CIA activity?

This is an outrage. It took less than a day for al Jazeera to run with the story. And by Dana Priest's own admission in an online discussion forum on the Washington Post's website she states, "The article [I wrote] is bommeranging [sic] around Europe, especially Eastern Europe."

It sure is, and now the European Union, the Hague, and other organizations are investigating our allies who are working with us in holding high-value targets like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin Al-Shib. It's not enough that our allies in Europe have suffered terrorism (cf. Spain, the U.K.) because of their siding with us ?- we now have to expose others, and give more justification to terrorists to attack our allies? And we have to suffer the war-time distraction of rebuilding sites and moving these prisoners?

This is irresponsibility at its highest; it's also hypocrisy. As for Plame? Well, here again is Dana Priest in her online forum: "I don't actually think the Plame leak compromised national security, from what I've been able to learn about her position."

You wouldn't know the foregoing from the way the Left and the press have handled the Scooter Libby story. Not only did he not out a covert agent, neither did Karl Rove ?- who is now the focus of the Left's wrath and the media's investigation. Who did out a secret and covert operation? The Washington Post. Shame on them. The consequences of what they've done will continue to rattle and distract our efforts ?- so too our allies'. In the meantime, the next time a White House correspondent tries to put Scott McClellan on the line for his involvement in the Wilson-Plame affair, I hope he unloads on them for what they've done here. I hope, too, that Jay Rockefeller and Harry Reid call for an investigation of just where this leak came from.

?- William J. Bennett is the host of the nationally syndicated radio show, Bill Bennett's Morning in America, and the Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute.
SOURCE

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Loss of Feith in Douglas
Undisputed factual articles, such as the following published in 2003, have been published and posted on A2K since the war in Iraq began. But the Bush supporters continue to post republican party talking points that are outright fables (read that lies).

The Bush administration continues to try to shift intelligence failure blame to the CIA when, in fact, it was the "intelligence" solicited and collected by Vice President Cheney via his now-defunct Office of Special Plans (OSP) that was the real culprit. Cheney had Feith set up the OSP to create his own intelligence office to be independent from the CIA. It was the corruption of the OSP and it's participants that "misled" the Congress, other countries, some of the Media, and the American people. That's why the CIA is so angry at the Bush administration. Bush is trying to make the CIA the scapegoat when the blame should be placed at the door of the president and vice president.

The Congress should have learned it's lesson from the "off the wall" U.S. government established by Admiral Fitzwater and Marine Oliver North that was the basis of the Iran-Contra scandal. Their actions were a violation of the Constitution and US Law and nearly brought down the Reagan presidency.

Trust is the coin of the land. The Bush administration is bankrupt.

---BBB

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EK07Ak03.html

Loss of Feith in Douglas
By Jim Lobe
November 7, 2003

WASHINGTON: "What's gonna happen with Feith?"

That, in a nutshell, is the question of the month for the Washington cognoscenti trying to figure out whether a major shift in the Bush administration's unilateralist and ultra-hawkish foreign policy is or is not under way.

The reference is to Douglas Feith, the administration's rather obscure but nonetheless strategically placed under secretary of defense for policy, who reports directly to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.

If the administration is looking for a scapegoat for the situation it faces in Iraq, Feith is the most likely candidate, both because of his relative obscurity compared to other administration hawks and the fact that, of virtually all of them, his ideas - particularly on the Middle East - might be the most radical.

A protege of Richard Perle, the former chairman of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB) who stands at the center of the neo-conservative foreign policy network in Washington, Feith has long opposed territorial compromise by Israel.

He was an outspoken foe of the Oslo process and even the Camp David peace agreement mediated by former president Jimmy Carter between Egypt and Israel. His former law partner, L Marc Zell, is a spokesman for the Jewish settlers' movement on the occupied West Bank.

But, more to the point, virtually everything that has gone wrong in Iraq - especially those matters that Congress is either investigating or is poised to probe - is linked directly to his office. "All roads lead to Feith," noted one knowledgeable administration official this week.

His now-defunct Office of Special Plans (OSP) is alleged to have collected - often with the help of the neo-conservatives' favorite Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi - and "cooked" the most alarmist pre-war intelligence against Saddam Hussein and then "stovepiped" it to the White House via Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, unvetted by the intelligence agencies.

It was also his office that was in charge of post-war planning, and rejected the product of months of work by dozens of Iraqi exiles and Mideast experts in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency who anticipated many of the problems that have wrong-footed the occupation.

The OSP also excluded many top Mideast experts from the State Department from playing any role in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq. And it is Feith's office that, with the CPA, recommended companies for huge, and in some cases no-bid, contracts in Iraq that have amounted, in the eyes of some critical lawmakers, to flagrant profiteering. Among the firms that have profited most are those whose consultants or officers also serve on the Pentagon's DPB, members of which are chosen by Feith.

In a particularly provocative move that raises a host of conflict-of-interest questions, Feith's former partner Zell has set up shop with Chalabi's nephew in Baghdad to help interested companies win contracts for reconstruction projects.

"Until they get rid of Feith, no one is going to believe that the administration is seriously reassessing its policies," one congressional aide whose boss has been a strong critic of Bush's policy in Iraq, told Inter Press Service.

There are hints that Feith has seen his authority dwindle since the first half of October, when National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice announced that she would head a new interagency Iraq Stabilization Group (ISG).

The move appeared designed not only to give the appearance that the White House was taking control of a situation that had contributed to a precipitous decline in Bush's approval ratings, but also to ensure that the Pentagon could no longer simply ignore other bureaucracies, Rice included, as it had for much of the past year.

Creation of the ISG followed growing public criticism, even by otherwise loyal Republican lawmakers, of the administration's failure to anticipate post-war problems. It came soon after the appointment of former US ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill - who was Rice's boss on the National Security Council (NSC) in the first Bush administration - to a special, high-ranking NSC post.

Other hints that Feith's and other hawks' grip on policy has been loosened came in the form of a distinct softening of the rhetoric against the other two members of the "axis of evil" - Iran and North Korea. Then, last week, a top Feith aide, former assistant defense secretary for international security policy J D Crouch, abruptly resigned his position without explanation.

There have been unconfirmed reports that top White House officials decided two months ago that Feith had to go, but were then dissuaded by Rumsfeld who argued that his departure would be seen as an admission that things had gone seriously wrong in Iraq. It was in that context, according to these reports, that the administration moved to quietly reduce Feith's authority, in part by creating the ISG.

Like his mentor Perle, Feith has long been a hardliner on foreign policy and arms control. He was an outspoken opponent of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Chemical and Biological Weapons conventions, which he criticized as ineffective and dangerous to US interests.

Among other clients, his law firm represented arms giants Lockheed-Martin and Northrop Grunman.

Also like Perle, Feith has long taken a strong interest in Israel and its security. His father, Dalck Feith, a philanthropist and major Republican contributor from Philadelphia, was active in the militantly Zionist youth movement Betar, the predecessor of Israel's Likud Party, in Poland before World War II.

Both father and son have been honored by the Zionist Organization of America, which, unlike other mainstream Jewish groups in the US, has consistently supported Likud positions and the settlement movement in the occupied territories and actively courted the Christian Right.

Feith also served with Perle on the board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a think tank that promotes military and strategic ties between the US and Israel.

Feith first entered government as a Middle East specialist on the NSC under Ronald Reagan in 1981, but was abruptly fired after only one year. Perle, who was then serving in the Pentagon as assistant secretary of defense for international security, hired him as his deputy, a post he retained until leaving in 1986 to found Feith & Zell.

Three years later, Feith was retained as a lobbyist by the Turkish government and, in that capacity, worked with Perle to build military ties between Turkey and Israel.

In 1996, he participated in a study group chaired by Perle and sponsored by a right-wing Jerusalem-based think tank that produced a report calling for incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to build a strategic alliance with Turkey, Jordan and a new government in Iraq that would transform the balance of power in the Middle East in such a way that Israel could decisively resist pressure to trade "land for peace" with the Palestinians or Syria.

In 1997, he published a lengthy article, "A Strategy for Israel", published in Commentary magazine, where Feith argued that Israel should repudiate the Oslo accords and move to re-occupy those parts of the West Bank and Gaza that had been transferred to the Palestinian Authority.

Two years later, he and Perle signed an open letter to then-president Bill Clinton calling for Washington to work with Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress to oust Saddam Hussein.

In May 2000, they signed a report calling for the US to be prepared to attack the Syria militarily unless Damascus failed to withdraw its troops from Lebanon.

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Quote:

Iraq's Chalabi visits Iran before US trip

Nov 6, 2005 ?- TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi has met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other senior officials in Tehran to discuss next month's Iraqi election ahead of a visit by Chalabi to the United States.

Saturday's talks produced spare formal statements in public but were charged with significance, touching on competition between Washington and Tehran for influence in Iraq and on Chalabi's volatile personal ties to the Bush administration.

Ahmadinejad, quoted on Sunday by the official IRNA news agency, blamed the U.S. occupation for violence in Iraq and said he expected the vote on December 15 to produce a strong government.

Chalabi, IRNA said, called for closer trade ties with Iran.

But though the comments made by both sides were routine, the visit itself was full of intriguing potential; the recently elected Ahmadinejad is at daggers drawn with Washington over Iran's nuclear program, but is an influential ally of fellow Shi'ite Islamists running Iraq's U.S.-backed government.

Chalabi, a favorite of the Pentagon when he worked from exile against Saddam Hussein, fell out with his patrons last year, partly over their accusations that he leaked U.S. secrets to Tehran.

A secular Shi'ite, he joined the main Islamist-led bloc that took control of Iraq's parliament in an election in January. But last month he broke with the Alliance, and he is now campaigning on his own Iraqi National Congress ticket.

U.S. officials, briefing reporters anonymously, have given seemingly contradictory signals about the significance of next week's visit by Chalabi to Washington, his first in a year.

Chalabi himself said last week it showed there was no "wall of ice" between him and the Bush administration.

Some appear to indicate that his rehabilitation in favor could go so far as to make him an acceptable candidate to be prime minister in U.S. eyes, an alternative to the Islamists whose ties to Iran go back to their long years in exile.

Source

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ican711nm wrote:

Both the USA Clinton and Bush administrations, the USA Congress, and the British Blair administrations were fooled by the false findings of their respective intelligence services into believing Iraq possessed ready-to-use WMD and was an accomplice of al Qaeda in its 9/11 terrorist attack on the USA.

But Bush is on record as saying Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. And it was a deliberate lie dreamed up by the Office of Special Plans, Freith Rumsfeld Cheney Libby Wolfowitz etc, inserted into "intelligence" by the same men (and against the wishes of the real intelligence professionals in the CIA) which talked about yellowcake from Niger destined for Iraq, which was then quoted in Bush's state of the Union address as if it was real intelligence. No wonder people in the CIA are hacked off.

And similar happened in Britain. Blair is no fool. Do you really think, having ordered the production of the so called dodgy document, that he read it and was so shocked by his own propaganda that he decided to invade a forgein country?

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McTag wrote:

I toss a coin and it comes down heads.

I consider the possibility that it came down tails, but it came down heads.

That is what I wish to believe.

Ah ha! So the problem is merely a problem of definition. Truly, the coin came down tails! Heads is the side with the head on it.

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Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

ican711nm wrote:
Both the USA Clinton and Bush administrations, the USA Congress, and the British Blair administrations were fooled by the false findings of their respective intelligence services into believing Iraq possessed ready-to-use WMD and was an accomplice of al Qaeda in its 9/11 terrorist attack on the USA.

But Bush is on record as saying Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

Bush did not say that on or before October 2002 when Congress passed its joint resolution on Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40). After the USA invaded Iraq March 2003, Bush discovered that he was misled by his intelligence services and said that in 2004 to the 9/11 Commission.

Bush also said to the 9/11 Commission in 2004 that Saddam did not possess ready-to-use WMD. However, Bush learned that too after the USA invaded Iraq March 2003. As a consequence of the invasion of Iraq, Bush discovered he was misled by his intelligence services and Saddam did not possess ready-to-use WMD.

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Congressional Democrats, as well as Congressional Republicans and President Bush, were fooled by the false assertions of our intelligence services and did not lie. In particular, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Jay Rockefeller were fooled by the false assertions of our intelligence services and did not lie.
[quote]Wall Street Journal, Thursday November 3, 2005, page A12.

Quote:

Al Gore from September 23, 2002, amid the Congressional debate over going to war: “We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.”

Quote:

Hillary Clinton from October 10, 2002: “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. …”

Quote:

Senator Jay Rockefeller from October 10, 2002: “There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons within the next five years. … We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.”

[/quote]

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The USA invaded Afghanistan October 2001 when the then Afghanistan government ignored USA government requests and would not stop harboring (i.e., allowing) al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. The USA invaded and destroyed the al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, and began the process of replacing the then Afghanistan government with a democratic government in order to reduce the probability that al Qaeda would return and re-establish its training camps when the USA left Afghanistan.

The USA invaded Iraq March 2003 when the then Iraq government ignored USA government requests and would not stop harboring (i.e., allowing) al Qaeda training camps in Iraq. The USA invaded and destroyed the al Qaeda training camps in Iraq, and began the process of replacing the then Iraq government with a democratic government in order to reduce the probability that al Qaeda would return and re-establish its training camps when the USA left Iraq.

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I'd thaught, the United Kingdom invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq as well.

But thanks for clarifying that, ican.

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Big lead story in The Guardian tomorrow.

It says, Blair was misled and followed Bush uncritically.

Watch this space.

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Poor Tony - misled by those evil, scheming Americans.

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Wasn't it the Brits who first came up with the Niger yellowcake stuff? Who was misleading who when you get right down to it? Or is it possible that both were working from the best information available?

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georgeob1 wrote:

Poor Tony - misled by those evil, scheming Americans.

More like the star-struck junior following the school bully around, I think, desperate to appear on the winning side.

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McTag wrote:

Big lead story in The Guardian tomorrow.

It says, Blair was misled and followed Bush uncritically.

Watch this space.

Quote:

Blair's litany of failures on Iraq - ambassador's damning verdict

Meyer says PM failed to exert any leverage on Bush and was seduced by US power

Julian Glover and Ewen MacAskill
Monday November 7, 2005
The Guardian

Tony Blair repeatedly passed up opportunities to put a brake on the rush to war in Iraq, a failure that may have contributed to the country's present anarchy, according to Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's ambassador to Washington at the time, in his book DC Confidential, serialised in the Guardian from today.
Sir Christopher, highly critical of Mr Blair's performance in the run-up to the war, argues the prime minister and his team were "seduced" by the proximity and glamour of US power and reluctant to negotiate conditions with George Bush for Britain's support for the war.

He says Mr Blair failed to exploit his enormous leverage with Mr Bush not only to secure a precious delay but to plan for postwar Iraq. "We may have been the junior partner in the enterprise but the ace up our sleeve was that America did not want to go it alone. Had Britain so insisted, Iraq after Saddam might have avoided the violence that may yet prove fatal to the entire enterprise."
But Mr Blair did not have any appetite for bargaining with Mr Bush, according to Sir Christopher: "Tony Blair chose to take his stand against Saddam and alongside President Bush from the highest of high moral ground. It is the definitive riposte to Blair the Poodle, seduced though he and his team always appeared to be by the proximity and glamour of American power.

"But the high moral ground, and the pure white flame of unconditional support to an ally in service of an idea, have their disadvantages. They place your destiny in the hands of an ally. They fly above the tangled history of Sunni, Shia, Kurd, Turkomen and Assyrian. They discourage descent into the dull detail of tough and necessary bargaining: meat and drink to Margaret Thatcher but, so it seemed, uncongenial to Tony Blair."

The former diplomat accuses Mr Blair of weakness in failing to engage Mr Bush in the "plain-speaking conversation" that needed to take place. "Had Blair told Bush in clear and explicit terms that he would be unable to support a war unless British wishes were met? I doubted it."

The Washington embassy repeatedly advised Downing Street to use its leverage, but was ignored.

Delaying the invasion from March to the autumn would have allowed the United Nations weapons inspectors extra months to establish whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, enabled the US and Britain to reach an understanding with France and Russia, two of the biggest sceptics about war, and increased international support, instead of going to war "in the company of a motley ad hoc coalition of allies".

The former diplomat, who enjoyed unparalleled access to all the key members of Mr Bush's administration and supported the war, provides the most detailed account yet of the thinking inside the White House and Downing Street in the 18 months running up to the invasion in March 2003. He says of the war now: "History's verdict looks likely to be that it was terminally flawed both in conception and execution."

Publication comes at a time when Mr Blair is vulnerable domestically, and the indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the chief of staff of Vice-President Dick Cheney, has reopened the debate in the US about why the country went to war.

Sir Christopher records a conversation with Mr Libby who told him "we were the only ally that mattered. That was a powerful lever". But the former ambassador says London "was not fertile ground for the notion of leverage or the tough negotiating position that must sometimes be taken even with the closest allies - as Churchill did with Roosevelt and Thatcher did with Reagan".

He regrets that at precisely the moment that Mr Blair should have been bargaining, in the early autumn of 2002, "political energy in London had become consumed by a titanic struggle to keep public opinion, parliament and the Labour party onside for war. There was little energy left in No 10 to think about the aftermath. Since Downing Street drove Iraq policy, efforts made by the Foreign Office to engage with the Americans on the subject came to nothing."

He questions whether No 10 relied too heavily on British military and intelligence advisers fatalistic about the inevitability of war and "as a consequence underestimated its political leverage and ability to affect the course of events".

He takes a swipe at John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee, which was responsible for assessing intelligence, and one of the main authors of the controversial British dossier making a case against Saddam. Sir Christopher, who at one time was lined up to be head of the JIC, said he understood why Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's press secretary, wanted as categorical a public depiction of Saddam's threat as possible. "Equally, I would have expected the JIC to be rigorous in telling me how far I could go."

One of Sir Christopher's main charges is that Mr Blair failed to puncture the US administration's belief that it would be "sweetness and light in Iraq" after the war, and the descent of Iraq into chaos today is, in part, a result of this.

Sir Christopher recounts how Mr Bush told the inner circle at a US-British summit at Camp David in 2002 that the prime minister had "cojones" (balls). The former ambassador says Britain should have taken advantage of such praise, making its participation in the war dependent on a fully worked-out plan for postwar Iraq, which he describes as "defective" and "rudimentary".

"This would have been the appropriate quid pro quo for Blair's display of cojones at this Camp David meeting with Bush." He is adamant Mr Bush was amenable to pressure almost to the end. "Indeed, if it all went wrong at the UN, and the US was faced with going to war alone, it seemed to me that Bush might blink. Or, to put it another way: what Britain decided to do could be the decisive factor in the White House."

The former ambassador says a delay from March to autumn 2003 could have made a significant difference: "Even if the most optimistic predictions are finally realised for Iraq, the question will still be asked: why did the Americans and British make it so hard for themselves and even harder for Iraqis? The US and the UK would have stood a better chance of going to war in good order, and of doing the aftermath right, had they planned on an autumn, not a spring, campaign."

He reveals that Karl Rove, the political adviser to the president, told him there would have been no problem for Mr Bush in waiting until the end of 2003 or even early 2004 and this would not have risked entanglement in the US presidential campaign.

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