What has the Iraq War wrought?

Weapons and Terror
Did the Iraq war really boost al-Qaida?

The State Department acknowledged Thursday it was wrong in reporting terrorism declined worldwide last year, a finding that was used to boost one of President Bush's top foreign policy claims -- success in countering terror.

Instead, both the number of incidents and the toll in victims increased sharply, the department said. Statements by senior administration officials claiming success were based "on the facts as we had them at the time; the facts that we had were wrong,'' department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

"no more torture chambers and rape rooms." I guess they forgot that part at one point in the course of things considering the abuse scandal.

"Someone said that if we told the truth as to the real reason we went to war the American public eyes would glaze over and they wouldn't support it. (something like that) Is that supposed to be a serious justification for lying or misleading the American public about a serious matter like going to war? "

"The reason we don't support an international court is because we might subject to it one day? With that justification why don't we do away with our own laws and prisons, after all if we commit a crime we might be subject to it."

In paragraph 14 of the speech, a first secondary argument is mentioned: "We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms.

"no more torture chambers and rape rooms." I guess they forgot that part at one point in the course of things considering the abuse scandal.

[You] seem to imply that nothing has changed in Iraq since Saddam's ouster and that American culture is no different then that of Saddam's Iraq.

"A temporary coup"

Author Thomas Powers says the White House's corruption of intelligence has caused the greatest foreign policy catastrophe in modern U.S. history -- and sparked a civil war with the nation's intel agencies.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Mark Follman

June 14, 2004 | The U.S. is now waging three wars, says intelligence expert Thomas Powers. One is in Iraq. The second is in Afghanistan. And the third is in Washington -- an all-out war between the White House and the nation's own intelligence agencies.

Powers, the author of "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda," charges that the Bush administration is responsible for what is perhaps the greatest disaster in the history of U.S. intelligence. From failing to anticipate 9/11 to pressuring the CIA to produce bogus justifications for war, from abusing Iraqi prisoners to misrepresenting the nature of Iraqi insurgents, the Bush White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies they corrupted, coerced or ignored have made extraordinarily grave errors which could threaten our national security for years. By manipulating intelligence and punishing dissent while pursuing an extreme foreign-policy agenda, Bush leaders have set spy against U.S. spy and deeply damaged America's intelligence capabilities.

"It's a catastrophe beyond belief. Going into Afghanistan was inevitable, and in my opinion the right thing to do. But everything since then has been a horrible mistake," Powers says. "The CIA is politicized to an extreme. It's under the control of the White House. Tenet is leaving in the middle of an unresolved political crisis -- what really amounts to a constitutional crisis."

The bitterest dispute, though not the only one, is between the CIA and the Pentagon, whose own secret intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans, aggressively promoted the war on Iraq. While departing CIA Director George Tenet played along with the Bush administration -- a fact which Powers says reveals the urgent need for a truly independent intelligence chief -- much of the agency is enraged at the Pentagon, which put intense pressure on it to produce reports tailored to the policy goals of the Bush White House. The simmering tensions between the Pentagon, with its troika of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith, and rank and file CIA personnel boiled over in July 2003, when the White House trashed the career of veteran CIA operative Valerie Plame by leaking her identity. The move was a crude retaliation against Plame's husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had exposed the Bush administration's specious claim that Saddam had sought "yellowcake" from Africa to build a nuclear bomb.

The struggle between the CIA and the Defense Department reached a bizarre climax a few weeks ago when Ahmed Chalabi's office was very publicly ransacked by officers working under the command of the CIA; the Iraqi exile leader was later accused of leaking vital information to Iran, among other allegations. The abrupt fall from grace of the man hand-picked by neoconservative policymakers to lead post-Saddam Iraq, says Powers, lays bare the brutal turf war between the two sides.

"It reveals an extraordinary level of bitter combat between the CIA and the Pentagon. It's astonishing that the CIA actually oversaw a team of people who broke into Chalabi's headquarters -- which was paid for by the Pentagon -- and ransacked the place. The CIA single-handedly destroyed him."

The collapse of U.S. intelligence and the arrogance and extremism at the top of the Bush administration are also at the root of the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib prison, Powers says. With U.S. troops facing a mounting insurgency from an enemy they couldn't find, Powers believes Bush officials signed off on a systematic policy of hardcore interrogation in a frantic attempt to deal with the problem. He says that while it's unlikely Defense Secretary Rumsfeld gave specific orders as to what type of abuse should be meted out to the Iraqi prisoners, there is strong reason to believe Rumsfeld "issued blanket permission for them to turn up the heat."

In an explosive conjecture, Powers also speculates that the Israelis, "who've had the most experience," cooperated with the U.S. on the techniques used to humiliate and break Arabs, including sexual degradation.

As for the dubiously timed Tenet resignation -- with its fairy-tale like cover story of "I'll be spending more time with my family" -- Powers thinks one possibility is that the CIA director may have been forced out after Pentagon officials, enraged by the Chalabi debacle, pressured Bush to get rid of him.

But what troubles Powers the most, he says, is that the Bush administration completely subverted American democracy, browbeating Congress and the national security agencies to launch a war. "They correctly read how the various institutions of our government could be used to stage a kind of temporary coup on a single issue: Whether or not to go to war with Iraq."

U.S. urges Americans to exit Saudi Arabia
-
By Pauline Jelinek
June 14, 2004 | WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government renewed its call on Monday for Americans to leave Saudi Arabia after the recent terrorist attacks, saying the safety of U.S. workers was more important than any effect on oil supplies or the Saudi economy.

In the days since the UN Security Council passed a resolution governing the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty that has no overt mention of Kurdish concerns, something has been brewing in the streets here that was unheard of just a few weeks ago: anti-American sentiment.
While the Kurds note that they are forever indebted to the U.S. for establishing a no-fly zone in 1991, they also say that the Americans have neglected them.
"We have been betrayed by the Americans," said San Karim Mohammed, 32, a law student. "If America doesn't solve these problems now, I don't know how we are going to make any progress in the future. The Shia are going to turn Iraq into an Islamist state like Iran."

The one thing that amazes me about this sudden surge in concern for the Kurds is that there was no similar concern when Saddam was systematically attempting to exterminate them completely

That's what I was wondering too. Was this in 1988? If so it would not be a Republican president.

Tout Torture, Get Promoted
Defending cruelty can be a career booster in Bush's administration.

By Robert Scheer
What a revelation to learn that the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the infamous memo in effect defending torture is now a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge. It tells you all you need to know about the sort of conservative to whom George W. Bush is turning in his attempt to pack the federal courts.

Conservatives once were identified with protecting the rights of the individual against the unbridled power of government, but this is not your grandfather's conservatism. The current brand running things in D.C. holds that the commander in chief is above all law and that the ends always justify the means. This has paved the way for the increasingly well-documented and systematic use of torture in an ad hoc gulag archipelago for those detained anywhere in the world under the overly broad rubric of the "war on terror."...
Was it as a reward for such bold legal thinking that only months later Bybee was appointed to one of the top judicial benches in the country? Perhaps he was anointed for his law journal articles bashing Roe vs. Wade and legal protection for homosexuals, or for his innovative attack on the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides for the popular election of U.S. senators. But it's hard to shake the notion that his memo to Counsel to the President Alberto Gonzales established Bybee's hard-line credentials for an administration that has no use for moderation in any form.

That's what I was wondering too. Was this in 1988? If so it would not be a Republican president.

Did the proposed sanctions and/or UN resolution include language that let Saddam off the hook? These are questions I would need answered before commenting.

In any case, my comments were not directed toward any president or Congress but rather to those on message boards such as A2K

Did the proposed sanctions and/or UN resolution include language that let Saddam off the hook? These are questions I would need answered before commenting.

Although Congress did not act to condemn Iraq for the gassing of Iranian soldiers on four verified occasions in the mid-1980s, Saddam's gassing of Kurdish civilians in 1988 from American-made helicopters did foment a significant congressional reaction, primarily from the Senate.

In early September the Senate unanimously passed the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988. In its original form, the legislation called for the following changes in US policy toward Iraq:

- An embargo on all dual-use technology exports

- The elimination of all CCC and Export-Import Bank credits

- An embargo on all US imports of Iraqi oil

- A requirement that all loans to Iraq under consideration in international financial institutions (the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, etc.) be opposed by the United States