The US, UN & Iraq III

This is why we went to war?


DECLASSIFIED - KEY JUDGMENTS - FROM OCTOBER 2002
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE

Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction

U.S. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

October 2002



We judge that 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; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade. (See INR alternative view at the end of these Key Judgments. )

We judge that we are seeing only a portion of Iraq's WMD efforts, owing to Baghdad's vigorous denial and deception efforts. Revelations after the Gulf war starkly demonstrate the extensive efforts undertaken by Iraq to deny information. We lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's WMD programs.

Since inspections ended in 1998, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program, and invested more heavily in biological weapons; in the view of most agencies, Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.

• Iraq's growing ability to sell oil illicitly increases Baghdad's capabilities to finance WMD programs; annual earnings in cash and goods have more than quadrupled, from $580 million in 1998 to about S3 billion this year.

• Iraq has largely rebuilt missile and biological weapons facilities damaged during Operation Desert Fox and has expanded its chemical and biological infrastructure under the cover of civilian production.

• Baghdad has exceeded UN range limits of 150 km with its ballistic missiles and is working with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which allow for a more lethal means to deliver biological and, less likely, chemical warfare agents.

• Although we assess that Saddam does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent on acquiring them. Most agencies assess that Baghdad started reconstituting its nuclear program about the time that UNSCOM inspectors departed?- December 1998.

How quickly Iraq win obtain its first nuclear weapon depends on when it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material.

• If Baghdad acquires sufficient fissile material from abroad it could make a nuclear weapon within several months to a year.

• Without such material from abroad, Iraq probably would not be able to make a weapon until 2007 to 2009, owing to inexperience in building and operating centrifuge facilities to produce highly enriched uranium and challenges in procuring the necessary equipment and expertise.

- Most agencies believe that Saddam's personal interest in and Iraq's aggressive attempts to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes for centrifuge rotors?-as well as Iraq's attempts to acquire magnets, high-speed balancing machines, and machine tools?-provide compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program. (DOE agrees that re constitution of the nuclear program is underway but assesses that the tubes probably are not part of the program. )

- Iraq's efforts to re-establish and enhance its cadre of weapons personnel as well as activities at several suspect nuclear sites further indicate that reconstitution is underway.

- All agencies agree that about 25, 000 centrifuges based on tubes of Che size Iraq is trying to acquire would be capable of producing approximately two weapons' worth of highly enriched uranium per year.

• ID a much less likely scenario, Baghdad could make enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon by 2005 to 2007 if it obtains suitable centrifuge tubes this year and has all the other materials and technological expertise necessary to build production-scale uranium enrichment facilities.

We assess that Baghdad has begun renewed production of mustard, sarin, GF (cyclosariu), and VX; its capability probably is more limited now than it was at the time of the Gulf war, although VX production and agent storage life probably have been improved.

• An array of clandestine reporting reveals that Baghdad has procured covertly the types and quantities of chemicals and equipment sufficient to allow limited CW agent production hidden within Iraq's legitimate chemical industry.

• Although we have little specific information on Iraq's CW stockpile, Saddam probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons (MT) and possibly as much as 500 MT of CW agents?-much of it added in the last year.

• The Iraqis have experience in manufacturing CW bombs, artillery rockets, and projectiles. We assess that that they possess CW bulk fills for SRBM warheads, including for a limited number of covertly stored Scuds, possibly a few with extended ranges.

We judge that all key aspects?-RAD, production, and weaponization?-of Iraq's offensive BW program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf war.

• We judge Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives.

- Chances are even that smallpox is part of Iraq's offensive BW program.

- Baghdad probably has developed genetically engineered BW agents.

• Baghdad has established a large-scale, redundant, and concealed BW agent production capability.

- Baghdad has mobile facilities for producing bacterial and toxin BW agents; these facilities can evade detection and are highly survivable. Within three to six months* these units probably could produce an amount of agent equal to the total that Iraq produced in the years prior to the Gulf war.

*[Corrected per Errata sheet issued in October 2002]

Iraq maintains a small missile force and several development programs, including for a UAV probably intended to deliver biological warfare agent.

• Gaps in Iraqi accounting to UNSCOM suggest that Saddam retains a covert force of up to a few dozen Scud-variant SRBMs with ranges of 650 to 900 km.

• Iraq is deploying its new al-Samoud and Ababi-100 SRBMs, which are capable of flying beyond the UN-authorized 150-km range limit; Iraq has tested an al-Samoud variant beyond 150 km?-perhaps as far as 300 km.

• Baghdad's UAVs could threaten Iraq's neighbors, US forces in the Persian Gulf, and if brought close to, or into, the United States, the US Homeland.

- An Iraqi UAV procurement network attempted to procure commercially available route planning software and an associated topographic database that would be able to support targeting of the United States, according to analysis of special intelligence.

- The Director, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, US Air Force, does not agree that Iraq is developing UAVs primarily intended to be delivery platforms for chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents. The small sue of Iraq's new UAV strongly suggests a primary role of reconnaissance, although CBW delivery is an inherent capability.

• Iraq is developing medium-range ballistic missile capabilities, largely through foreign assistance in building specialized facilities, including a test stand for engines more powerful than those in its current missile force.

We have low confidence in our ability to assess when Saddam would use WMD.

• Saddam could decide to use chemical and biological warfare (CBW) preemptively against US forces, friends, and allies in the region in an attempt to disrupt US war preparations and undermine the political will of the Coalition.

• Saddam might use CBW after an initial advance into Iraqi territory, but early use of WMD could foreclose diplomatic options for stalling the US advance.

• He probably would use CBW when he perceived he irretrievably had lost control of the military and security situation, but we are unlikely to know when Saddam reaches that point.

• We judge that Saddam would be more likely to use chemical weapons than biological weapons on the battlefield.

• Saddam historically has maintained tight control over the use of WMD; however, he probably has provided contingency instructions to his commanders to use CBW in specific circumstances.

Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger cause for making war.

Iraq probably would attempt clandestine attacks against the US Homeland if Baghdad feared an attack (bat threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge. Such attacks?-more likely with biological than chemical agents?- probably would be carried out by special forces or intelligence operatives.

• The Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) probably has been directed to conduct clandestine attacks against US and Allied interests in the Middle East in the event the United States takes action against Iraq. The US probably would be the primary means by which Iraq would attempt to conduct any CBW attacks on the US Homeland, although we have no specific intelligence information that Saddam's regime has directed attacks against US territory.

Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qa'ida?-with worldwide reach and extensive terrorist infrastructure, and already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States?-could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct.

• In such circumstances, he might decide that the extreme step of assisting the Islamist terrorists in conducting a CBW attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.

State/INR Alternative View of Iraq's Nuclear Program

The Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research (INR) believes that Saddam continues to want nuclear weapons and that available evidence indicates that Baghdad is pursuing at least a limited effort to maintain and acquire nuclear weapon-related capabilities. The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to State/INR Alternative View acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment, Lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, INR is unwilling to speculate that such an effort began soon after the departure of UN inspectors or to project a timeline for the completion Of activities it does not now see happening. As a result, INR is unable to predict when Iraq could acquire a nuclear device or weapon.

In INR's view Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is. central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors. INR accepts the. judgment of technical experts at the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose. INR considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets. The very large quantities being sought, the way the tubes were tested by the Iraqis, and the atypical lack of attention to operational security in the procurement efforts arc among the factors, in addition to the DOE assessment, that lead INR to conclude that the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq's nuclear weapon program.

Confidence Levels for Selected Key Judgments in This Estimate

High Confidence:

• Iraq is continuing, and in some, areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and, missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.

• We are not detecting portions of these weapons programs.

• Iraq possesses proscribed chemical and biological weapons and missiles.

• Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once if acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material,

Moderate Confidence:

• Iraq does not yet have a nuclear weapon or sufficient material to make one but is likely to have a weapon by 2007 to 2009. (See INR alternative view, page 84).

Low Confidence:

• When Saddam would use weapons of mass destruction.

• Whether Saddam would engage in clandestine attacks against the US Homeland.

• Whether in desperation Saddam would share chemical or biological weapons with al-Qa'ida.

Uranium Acquisition

Iraq retains approximately two-and-a-half tons of 2. 5 percent enriched uranium oxide, which the IAEA permits. This low-enriched material could be used as feed material to produce enough HEU for about two nuclear weapons. The use of enriched feed material also would reduce the initial number of centrifuges that Baghdad would need by about half. Iraq could divert this material?-the IAEA inspects it only once a year?-and enrich it to weapons grade before a subsequent inspection discovered it was missing. The IAEA last inspected this material in late January 2002.

Iraq has about 550 metric tons of yellow cake and low-enriched uranium at Tuwaitha, which is inspected annually by the IAEA. Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake; acquiring either would shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons.

• A foreign government service reported that as of early 2001, Niger planned to send several tons of "pure uranium" (probably yellowcake) to Iraq. As of early 2001, Niger and Iraq reportedly were still working out arrangements for this deal, which could be for up to 500 tons of yellowcake. We do not know the status of this arrangement.

• Reports indicate Iraq also has sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

We cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources. Reports suggest Iraq is shifting from domestic mining and milling of uranium to foreign acquisition. Iraq possesses significant phosphate deposits, from which uranium had been chemically extracted before Operation Desert Storm. Intelligence information on whether nuclear-related phosphate mining and/or processing has been reestablished is inconclusive, however.

Annex A - Iraq's Attempts to Acquire Aluminum Tubes

[This excerpt from a longer view includes INR's position on Che African uranium issue]

INR's Alternative View: Iraq's Attempts to Acquire Aluminum Some of the specialized but dual-use items being sought are, by all indications, bound for Iraq's missile program. Other cases are ambiguous, such as that of a planned magnet-production line whose suitability for centrifuge operations remains unknown. Some effort involve non-controlled industrial material and equipment?-including a variety of machine took?-and are troubling because they would help establish the infrastructure for a renewed nuclear program. But such efforts (which began well before the inspectors departed) are not clearly linked to a nuclear end-use. Finally, the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR's assessment, highly dubious.

a
From a Baghdad blog


So we have a government at last…. and what a government a twenty five heads amebic Governing Council
"Habibi we are like a drowned man, we will grab the first piece of **** flouting on the water" Ali Muhssin, 35, taxi driver " I m not a very sophisticated man you know, I m a very poor man but I can understand very well that an Iraqi GOVERMENT will solve lots of issues. By the way habibi how come we still have power cuts? I thought the day we have a PRESIDENT everything will go back to normal!!
That's another issue for the Iraqis after almost half a century of the rule of
"the Leader the necessity" Iraqis are so confused, what is a governing council ?
Is it a government?
No.
A parliament?
No.
A cabinet of ministers?
No.
Is it a 25 heads president?
Well hmmm it could be but no. so what the **** is it !!! My son asked me yesterday is it true daddy that now instead of one picture of Saddam in my class ill have the whole set of 25 pictures?
Imagine the chaos 25 big mural in every street corner with 25 set of statues in the main plazas. God help ambassador Bremer, even Jesus had to deal with only 12.
If I could summarize the Iraqi reaction in a very mechanical unpoetic way it is:
-Oh they don't represent us they are foreigners
-I don't believe they could achieve any thing the Americans will always have the final say
-Hey when will they fix the electricity and you know I don't mind voting for a shiat-and or a sunny depends on your settings, shiat mode or a sunny mode- as long as he will help my people.

Again provide jobs, electricity, security and Iraqis will vote to elect you president for life
That's not true you know
Now there is something else. Of coarse not as important as electricity but as good as most of the Iraqis will tell you, It's the "mukhabarat free society", no more security thugs with ugly faces demanding to see your ID, your history and your mothers love letters- well of coarse apart from those hanging around the head quarters of Chalabis, Allawies and the king to be

God I swear INC/SCIRI/INA/ are different from the baathist thugs only in there names
You go to the headquarters of Chalabi and all you see is a bunch of kids and men armed to the teeth, pure thugs -Saddam thugs but in a different form. Why would I exchange one tyrant with another?
Unlike what al-Jazeera says I think Iraqis gained something form the Americans.
We got some amebic concept, some call it freedom others call it chaos,
I call it a fuzzy dream of democracy.

a
U.S. SAUDI SCANDAL

DID FBI CALL OFF PROBE OF SAUDIS TO PROTECT OIL TIES?

BY ALEX ROSLIN

observers have spilled a lot of ink lately on the delicate positioning of the Saudi regime as it tries to harmonize its support for the U.S. war with its tolerance for extremism on its own soil. Generally accepted, too, is the idea that the monarchy boosted al Qaeda through its funding of the Wahhabi movement, a militant Islamist sect.But a book written by two French intelligence experts, published by Denoel Press and not yet available in North America, takes the story further. Ben Laden: La Vérité Interdite (Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth) says the FBI was hamstrung prior to September 11 not only because U.S. officials were unwilling to make an issue of al Qaeda's connections to wealthy Saudis, but also because the U.S. didn't want to disrupt talks with the Taliban over building an oil pipeline to Central Asia.

Starting in the mid 90s, the book says, the U.S. made clumsy attempts to bribe the Taliban while at the same time threatening them with military action if they didn't make a deal. The U.S. repeatedly demanded bin Laden's extradition, not realizing until too late that the Taliban were joined at the hip to their Saudi millionaire guest.

The blundering and cynical U.S. diplomatic scheme may actually have set the stage for September 11, says co-author Jean-Claude Brisard in an interview from Paris. Talks finally collapsed in late August, and the Trade towers attack may have been bin Laden's pre-emptive response, he says. "The State Department diverged considerably from the FBI's investigators. The U.S. negotiated with the Taliban despite (their) brutality because the important thing for the U.S. was oil."

It's a thesis that certainly resonates with other intelligence experts. "You had an American pro-Taliban faction (inside the U.S. government). They were totally in bed with the Taliban," says the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center's Wayne Madsen, who used to work for the U.S. National Security Agency.

Abdul Raheem Yaseer, assistant director of the University of Nebraska's centre for Afghanistan studies, believes the Saudi tie helped stymie FBI investigations of bin Laden. "The U.S.'s activities were slowed because of our relationship with the Saudis,'' he says. It was clear to the U.S., he says, that the Wahhabis are a key pillar of support for the Saudi monarchy and that the unpopular regime would be undermined by a strong FBI probe.

Even after bin Laden turned his wrath on the U.S. in the 1990s, he maintained close contact with key Saudi figures including Prince Turki al-Faisal, the powerful intelligence chief and brother of King Fahd. "If you're going to go after terrorism, you have to go after the Saudis,'' says Brisard, who wrote a report on bin Laden's finances for a French intelligence agency.

The book also reveals that a former top FBI counterterrorism official who was killed in the World Trade Center attack had complained bitterly about how U.S. oil politics had shut down FBI investigations. The former official, John O'Neill, resigned in protest as head of the FBI's national security division in August and was hired as chief of security at the twin towers. "All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama bin Laden's organization, can be found in Saudi Arabia," O'Neill is quoted as saying in the book. Agents trying to probe last year's bombing of the USS Cole constantly knocked heads with the U.S. State Department, which ended up barring O'Neill, the head of the investigation, from entering Yemen. Brisard says O'Neill told him about the problems last June and July. "He was profoundly frustrated with the situation."

The book's thesis was also advanced independently in a report on BBC-TV's investigative show Newsnight in early November. "(The U.S. Department of) State wanted to keep the pro-American Saudi royal family in control of the world's biggest oil spigot, even at the price of turning a blind eye to any terrorist connection,'' it reported.

The show asked whether September 11 could have been prevented if the FBI had been allowed to do its job. As it happened, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, mostly from wealthy families.

"(FBI investigators) were pursuing these matters, but were told to back off," said David Armstrong, an intelligence expert at the Washington, D.C.-based Public Education Center, a nonprofit investigative organization that helped the BBC research its report.

Boston University international relations professor Adim Najamat, who has studied Saudi politics, says the notion of an FBI retreat from investigations does seem plausible given the regime's precariousness. "Bin Laden seems to have a big following in Saudi Arabia. It is quite clear that the Saudi government is playing a game for its life. The irony is, bin Laden might get what he wants due to U.S. actions in Afghanistan," he says.

http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2001-11-22/news_story3.html

Ge, did you read this one about Saudi Arabia and the US?

Atlantic Unbound | May 29, 2003
 
Addicted to Oil

Robert Baer, a former CIA agent and the author of "The Fall of the House of Saud" (May Atlantic), discusses the perils of our dependence on Saudi Arabia and its precious supply of fuel





Read the whole article:

House of Saud

a
Thanks Kara..... this conjures a vision of the world being held hostage by the greed of a few mad men that are willing to pursue power to the complete demise of those that are the very source of their power.

Here is a Baghdad blog that is worth a read.

http://geeinbaghdad.blogspot.com/

Ge, interesting blog. But who is the writer? I am sure that what he is writing, in an enlightened way, about woman lawyers, and the patriarchal society, and all of that, is surely not a common viewpoint in that land. It would be instructive to know what men on the ground would say about female lawyers.

Hey K, I made a rhyme..... G is a friend of Salam..... I get a sense that it maybe closer to say G is raed or dear ... depending on your residency in relation to the mirror..... Saddam's world was a twisted one based on 13th century idealogy (as pointed out by Joenation.)

Suffrage is one of a thousand things unenforceable by rule of m-16. It has been ingrained by man, not God .... a huge difference in enforceability, instant pain as in 'sin now pay now', or, 'pay when you checkout '.

In Iraq itself, the Guardian reports that a broadcaster who was appointed by the US as director of the new Iraq Media Network (IMN), and who had became known as "the voice of free Iraq" after the fall of Saddam Hussein, walked out of his job late last week, saying the United States is losing the propaganda war. Ahmed al-Rikabi said Saddam Hussein is scoring propaganda successes over the Americans by sending audio tapes to Arab satellite channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. "The people of Iraq, including the Sunni Muslims, are not about to turn against their liberators, but they are being incited to do so. These [foreign] channels contribute to tension within Iraq," he said. Mr. Al-Rikabi cited a lack of resources and funds to do his job. Brit Stephen Claypole, who was a public affairs adviser to Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, said: "It's very typical of everything the Americans get involved in. They announce large budgets and the money is never released." The New York Times reports that with a booming media market in Iraq, the US-run IMN has won over few Iraqis. Salon.com reports these kind of comments would come as no surprise to Col. David Hackworth, a veteran of many US wars and now a well-known media commentator. Mr. Hackworth has been one of the most persistent critics of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq. In the interview with Salon, Hackworth accused Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his chief deputy Paul Wolfowitz of making a "horrible estimate of the situation." Hackworth also said the US could be in Iraq for as long as "30 years." Disgruntled soldiers in Iraq have become Hackworth's main sources for the detailed information he receives about the situation in Iraq. Hackworth runs two websites (Soldiers for the Truth and his own site, Hackworth.com), where soldiers send him hundreds of e-mails a day, such as the one below.
"We did not receive a single piece of parts-support for our vehicles during the entire battle ... not a single repair part has made to our vehicles to date ... my unit had abandoned around 12 vehicles ... .I firmly believe that the conditions I just described contributed to the loss and injury of soldiers on the battlefield."


But Hackworth is not the only retired military officer questioning Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Wolfowitz. Writing in the Houston Chronicle, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (who served from May 2002 through February 2003 in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Near East South Asia and Special Plans at the Pentagon) blasted the behavior she saw at the Secretary of Defense's office as "aberrant, pervasive, and contrary to good order and discipline."
If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of "intelligence" found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam occupation has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense

Yes, Au (where did that come from, BTW?). I'm going to scan in a couple of letters to the editor I just read in The Nation which clarify, I think, the "process" (such as it is) in DOD re: intelligence.
I'll post them here probably tomorrow morning -- not much time this evening. Could you like your above statements? Thanks.

Tartarin
It comes from the Christian Science Monitor"Daily Updates

Thanks. It's a really helpful piece, Au.

Read this quote in the Atlantic Monthly from a recent issue:

"Power," the moral realist John Adams warned the idealist Thomas Jefferson, in words he could have addressed to George W. Bush, "always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all His laws. Our passions possess so much metaphysical subtlely and so much overpowering eloquence that they insinuate themselves into the understanding and the conscience and convert both to their party."

It was picked up by a number of papers, au, too. I read it on the opinion page of the Bergen Record (NJ). Quite often, that means that papers across the country pick up on it. Which, considering the clamp that's been put on so much news, and all the censorship, is a hopeful sign that some of the restraints are beginning not to hold.

Thanks for that piece, au.

a
Bush lied, men died.....

From somewhere in Iraq

i hope iraq stands firmly on it's feet and we are allowed to go home...i hope that iraq is allowed to make up for all the time it has lost...i hope everyone is able to see eye to eye and there will be some bit of peace in this world...because i don't want my children back over here...and i would really like to make it through a generation with out a war...



Bush lied

I mentioned a couple of pages back that I'd read three letters in the 8/18-25 Nation which seem pretty much sum up what we've been discussing about "intelligence" (always such an ironic term since 2000). Here they are:

DID SOMEONE SAY 'INTELLIGENCE'?
Washington, DC
• Robert Dreyfuss's "More Missing Intelli-
gence" [July 7] completely misstates the func-
tion and mode of operation of the Special Plans
directorate. It was created in October 2002 (not
fall 2001) by expanding the Near East and South
Asia Bureau's Northern Gulf section, in order
to provide enough manpower to handle policy
issues with respect to Iran, Iraq and the global
war on terrorism.

Special Plans is a policy planning group and
is a consumer, rather than producer, of intelli-
gence. It receives intelligence information via
normal US government channels. It is simply
wrong to suggest that Special Plans received
information from a "secret, rump unit.. .in the
office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel."

It is regrettable that The Nation did not check
its facts with the Pentagon before printing this
erroneous article. BRYAN G. WHITMAN

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Public Affairs


Decatur, Ga.
Robert Dreyfuss made several salient points
about how the Administration dropped the ball
in devising a postwar strategy in Iraq. How-
ever, he erred in closing with: "A massive failure
of US intelligence has led to an emerging dis-
aster in postwar Iraq."

The disaster had little to do with failures
in the intelligence community. Bush/Cheney/
Rumsfeld drove the events. They had access
to the best intelligence in the world. They de-
cided what to discount and what to believe.
This failure was one of political leadership, not
intelligence-gathering. JEFF BOATRIGHT


DREYFUSS REPLIES

Alexandria, Va.
Since fall 2001, the Pentagon has shrouded
the intelligence analysis unit in Under Secretary
of Defense Douglas Feith's office in octopus
ink-like secrecy. That's the unit that, according
to many accounts, including my own reporting,
was set up to manufacture skewed intelligence
reports that could justify the Administration's
drive to go to war in Iraq, by linking the former
regime in Baghdad to Al Qaeda and to weapons
of mass destruction. What the unit did, and why,
has remained unclear, and the Defense Depart-
ment isn't working hard to explain it.

By the same token, the relationship between
that intelligence unit and the so-called Office of
Special Plans has been kept murky. Perhaps they
are the same thing, or perhaps one replaced the
other, or perhaps they work side by side under
Feith. At one point, Feith claimed that the intel-
ligence unit was disbanded last August?-but last
October, in an on-the-record briefing. Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld referred to the unit in the
present tense, specifically acknowledging that it
gave him intelligence tidbits that he could use to
challenge the ClA's decidedly antiwar views. In
early June, at a stealthily called surprise brief-
ing, Feith said that the Office of Special Plans,
run by neocon intelligence specialist Abe Shul-
sky, was created in October?-yet the New York
Times has quoted senior Defense officials as
saying that the OSP and the supposedly dis-
solved intelligence unit had some sort of special
relationship. Whitman asserts that the OSP was
a "consumer, rather than producer," of intelli-
gence. But Rumsfeld himself said it was de-
signed to sift CIA intelligence to find nuggets
he could use to challenge agency conclusions.
These apparently included that Iraq had no sig-
nificant ties to Al Qaeda and that Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction were not an imminent threat
to the United States.

The role of the intelligence unit, and of the
OSP, must be at the very heart of the several
inquiries into whether the Bush Administration
altered or distorted intelligence about the threat
posed by Iraq. And, within that, the "smoking
gun" will be the forged documents alleging that
Iraq tried to buy uranium in Niger for a nuclear
weapons program. Someone, somewhere?-
obviously with an interest in leading the United
States to war against Iraq?-deliberately created
those forgeries. Who? And why? One of my
sources says the documents may. have been
generated by Ariel Sharon's office?-but if not,
well, someone forged them. And, as important,
Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney and others
apparently overlooked or ignored evidence that
the documents were bogus. Why? Maybe haul-
ing Abe Shulsky to the witness table can help
uncover the truth. ROBERT DREYFUSS

Bush lied, men died

Ge, good pic post of All hat, no Cattle.

I read the latest version of that saying in Europe: Fur coat, no knickers.

a
For getting that 'war taste' out of your mind.


Something entirely different.