How the story changed
... on WMD
"The Iraqi regime possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas" 7 OCTOBER 2002
"He had the capacity to have a weapon, make a weapon. We thought he had weapons" YESTERDAY
"America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud" 8 OCTOBER, 2002
"He could have developed a nuclear weapon over time - I'm not saying immediately but over time" YESTERDAY
... on Osama bin Laden
"I don't know whether we're going to get him tomorrow or a month from now or a year from now. I don't really know. But we're going to get him" 14 DECEMBER, 2001
"I have no idea whether we will capture or bring him to justice" YESTERDAY
posted by Lorenzo 3:10 PM
Something to think about
In the wake of the Hutton fiasco, one truth remains unassailed: Tony Blair ordered an unprovoked invasion of another country on a totally false pretext, and that lies and deceptions manufactured in London and Washington caused the deaths of up to 55,000 Iraqis, including 9,600 civilians.
-- John Pilger
posted by Lorenzo 3:58 PM
US army admits killing Iraqi child
by aljazeera.net, 04 February 2004
The US army has apologised for killing an Iraqi child even as the death toll from double bombings in Arbil, the deadliest post-war attacks in Iraq, climbed to more than 100. Colonel William Mayville acknowledged that his forces were responsible for mortar fire that killed an Iraqi boy during a major Muslim holiday, the Eid al-Fitr, as his family picnicked in the northern oil region of Kirkuk. Mayville told a meeting with local government officials, attended by an AFP correspondent, that he had ordered an investigation into the shelling that also wounded the boy's mother and two siblings. He said his troops had opened fire because they suspected insurgents were in the area, but that those responsible for the deadly error would be held accountable. Mayville added that he ordered the payment of $2500 in compensation for the family of the nine-year-old boy, Basssam Sami Awwad, and $1500 for each of the three injured. But it was not enough for the grief-stricken family, who told AFP they will sue for compensation in the Kirkuk courts. "We will never let this matter rest, especially as my child was a boy who had nothing to do with the violence in Iraq. He was just playing with his brothers when it happened," the boy's father, Sami Awwad, 31, said.
*****Hmmm. This should be interesting as they have not come to an agreement as yet on the Status of Forces Agreement, which usually protects US military from authorities in foreign countries. Of course, this is assuming this really is investigated and charges brought, if warranted. But more to the point of the issue, I think, is the lack of coverage by the US media - not one of the major media outlets has mentioned one word of this. Sad. -- but that's just this old Curmudgeon's opinion. ****
posted by A Curmudgeon 3:00 PM
Tenet Exposes Bush's Misleading on WMD
(Daily Mis-lead, February 5, 2004)
[COMMENT: Sources for the following information are available from the link above.]
In a stunning blow to the president's credibility, CIA Director George Tenet said this morning that intelligence "analysts never said there was an imminent threat" from Iraq before the war. His comments are consistent with various warnings sent to the White House from the intelligence community that specifically told the president his claims that Iraq definitely had chemical/biological and nuclear weapons were unsubstantiated. Tenet's comments call into question whether the Bush Administration was knowingly ignoring intelligence and misleading the country by claiming definitively that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was therefore an "imminent," "immediate," "urgent" and "mortal" threat to the American people. . . . Though the White House has claimed it never said Iraq was an imminent threat, the record proves otherwise. When White House communications director Dan Bartlett was asked before the war whether Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat, he responded, "Of course he is." When White House spokesman Scott McClellan was asked why NATO (and thus the United States) should support Turkey's request for defensive troops, he responded, "This is about an imminent threat." When White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked whether the invasion of Iraq was because Iraq was an imminent threat, he responded, "Absolutely." . . . The president also used other language aimed at misleading Americans into thinking that U.S. intelligence definitively knew Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that threatened America - even though the intelligence community told the president it had no such evidence. The president said before the war that Iraq was an "urgent threat" and a "grave threat" to "any American." In his speech informing Americans that the invasion had started, the President said Iraq "threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." . . . These comments were echoed by other top Administration officials. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on September 19, 2002 that "no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq." And Vice President Cheney called Iraq a "mortal threat," and said "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction...to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." And Secretary of State Colin Powell, in pressing for U.N. support, said definitively that Iraq possessed "deadly weapons programs" that "are real and present dangers to the region and to the world."
posted by Lorenzo 12:04 PM
Faulty Intelligence My Eye
(David Morris, AlterNet, February 3, 2004)
David Kay was the perfect choice to head up Bush's search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He was in Iraq in 1991 with the UN inspection team. He was one of the most visible and vocal believers in the existence of WMDs in Iraq. And he was one of those who thought only an invasion and occupation would allow us to find and destroy them. . . . In short, no one wanted to find WMD more than David Kay. . . . Not surprisingly, Kay first declared that "we were almost all wrong." Then he blamed the CIA, not the White House or the Pentagon or the State Department. Indeed, he insisted, "I think if anyone was abused by the intelligence it was the president of the United States." . . . Within days President Bush had called for an Independent Commission. Its charge would be limited to discovering how the intelligence community could have been so inept. The Commission will report back after the election. The newspapers are now full of stories about intelligence blunders. . . . Have we suffered from collective amnesia? . . . Have we forgotten that there were highly credible people who were telling the White House that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction? Scott Ritter, former intelligence officer and senior official in the UN's inspection team in Iraq for seven years was one such highly visible – and highly credible – critic. Back in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm, Ritter told his superiors something they not only didn't want to hear but didn't believe: that the allies had failed to destroy any Iraqi Scud missile launchers. He was later vindicated. . . . Ritter indicated that as of 1998, when the UN team was withdrawn from Iraq, 90-95 percent of its capacity to produce chemical and biological weapons had been eliminated. And there was no evidence that Iraq had nuclear weapons. . . . Ritter wasn't the only credible skeptic. Have we forgotten the repeated rebuttals of assertions by the White House of mobile and underground biological labs by Hans Blix, head of the UN inspection team in 2003? Have we forgotten the terse refutation by Mohamed El Baredi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency of the Pentagon assertion that Iraq had nuclear weapons? . . . Have we forgotten the flurry of stories in national newspapers in late 2002 and early 2003 that described how the White House and Pentagon were pressuring the CIA to come up with "intelligence" that would support their position? In March 2003 the Washington Post quoted a senior administration official with access to the latest intelligence who said, "I have seen all the stuff. I certainly have doubts." The U.S., he said, will "face significant problems in trying to find" such weapons. . . . Have we forgotten how Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld set up an intelligence unit in the Pentagon to help him undermine the CIA's cautionary intelligence reports on Iraq? . . . "Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency," wrote Robert Dreyfuss in the American Prospect in December 2002. Dreyfuss quotes Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior CIA official and counter-terrorism expert who describes the "tremendous pressure on (the CIA) to come up with information to support policies that have already been adopted."
posted by Lorenzo 8:35 PM
Former UK Intelligence Chief Says Blair Dossier Was Misleading about Iraqi WMD
(Brian Jones, Independent, 04 February 2004)
It is clear from the evidence to the Hutton inquiry that the experts of the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) who dealt with chemical and biological warfare, including those working directly with me, had problems with some aspects of what was being said in various drafts of the dossier that was published on 24 September 2002. . . . The problem was that the best available current evidence that Saddam actually had chemical and biological weapons (CW and BW) was the inference that this must be so from the claim of an apparently unproven original source that such weapons could be "deployed" within 45 minutes. Although the information was relayed through a reliable second source, there was no indication the original or primary source had established a track record of reliability. Furthermore, the information reported by the source was vague in all aspects except, possibly, for the range of times quoted. . . . I believe the DIS experts who worked for and with me were the foremost group of analysts in the West on nuclear, biological and chemical warfare intelligence. It is their job to consider all other related evidence. What was missing was, for example, strong evidence of the continuing existence of weapons and agents and substantive evidence on production or storage. . . . There was no indication that the Iraqi military had practiced the use of CW or BW weapons for more than a decade. But it was known that Iraq had previously possessed CW and BW capabilities and used chemical weapons. Further, Saddam had failed to satisfy the UN that the capability had been eliminated. . . . My recollection is that the disagreement of the experts in the DIS was not so much resolved as finessed. My belief is that right up to the publication of the dossier there was a unified view amongst not only my own staff but all the DIS experts that on the basis of the intelligence available to them the assessment that Iraq possessed a CW or BW capability should be carefully caveated. . . . By the time I returned from leave on 18 September to a very disgruntled team the deadline for production of the dossier was fast approaching. I examined the relevant reports and discussed them with my experts and decided they were right to be concerned. . . . My experience of the intelligence process made me suspicious of what was happening. I was not reassured when my boss said he had been assured by a representative of the SIS that the new sensitive material was reliable and negated our concerns. My boss was brand new to the intelligence business, unfamiliar with the assessment process and not in the compartment. . . . I considered who might have seen this ultra-sensitive intelligence and reached the conclusion that it was extremely doubtful that anyone with a high degree of CW and BW intelligence expertise was among the exclusive group. . . . It was becoming clear that it was very unlikely we could achieve the balance we desired in the dossier and it was important to register our misgivings formally. . . . I foresaw that after the likely invasion and defeat of Iraq, it was quite possible that no WMD would be found. If this happened scapegoats would be sought, so I decided that we should record our concerns about the dossier in order to protect our reputation. . . . Whether or not there was a failure of intelligence assessment should be judged, not on the dossier, but on relevant JIC papers. Similarly, whether or not there was a failure in intelligence collection should be judged on the reports the collectors issued. Arguably, the dossier revealed more about the top end of the process and the fashioning of a product that has hitherto been alien to the UK intelligence community. . . . In my view the expert intelligence analysts of the DIS were overruled in the preparation of the dossier in September 2002 resulting in a presentation that was misleading about Iraq's capabilities. . . . Events have shown that we in the DIS were right to urge caution. I suggest that now might be a good time to open the box and release from its compartment the intelligence that played such a significant part in formulating a key part of the dossier.
posted by Lorenzo 8:05 PM
Send the Children of Politicians to the Front Lines?
Stanley Kober, Cato Institute
"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well placed ... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units," Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in his memoirs. [speaking about Viet Nam] "Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country." "Would Bush be doing this if he were sending his daughters?" asked 22-year old Sally Brown, whose husband is in the Marines, shortly before the invasion of Iraq. ...an all-volunteer military is the wisest policy. If the political leadership does not demonstrate the courage of its convictions by risking its own flesh and blood, it cannot expect the professionals in the military to do so for long.
During the Vietnam War, people asked: What if they gave a war and nobody came? If the members of the armed forces feel betrayed by their leaders, we may find out.
posted by A Curmudgeon 7:15 PM
A Canadian Underground Railroad for "Deserters"
(Geoff Olson, Vancouver Courier, January 26, 2004)
According to an Associated Press wire story from last November, at least 17 U.S. troops have committed suicide in Iraq, and the actual number is almost certainly higher, prompting demands for answers from family members. . . . Rising-Moore suspects the suicides are the result of the pressures of combat, and lack of control of the situation in the embattled country, where U.S. soldiers have been targeted virtually daily in bomb attacks-deaths have already topped 500. . . . "For every death you've got 10 times as many injuries," says Rising-Moore. "I've heard 11,000 have been evacuated from illnesses or injuries due to combat." . . . The French weekly magazine Le Canard Enchaine reports that 1,700 U.S. soldiers have deserted their posts in Iraq, many of them failing to return to military duty after getting permission to go back to the United States. They simply disappear off the radar, and some of them may well be in Canada. . . . Rising-Moore believes the numbers of suicides will rise as U.S. soldiers returning to the States choose to take their own lives rather than face another tour of duty in Iraq. The so-called "stop-loss" orders to U.S. army duty, extending a soldier's tour beyond his or her contractual agreement, are expected to be expanded to greater numbers of troops. . . . The American activist's appearance in Vancouver is part of a cross-country effort to petition Canada for safe refuge for U.S. military deserters across the border. The "Freedom Underground" he's pitching would be an underground railroad, similar to the extensive formal and informal network that helped draft dodgers and deserters in B.C. in the '60s. . . . he regards the cross-border escape hatch as the last option for suicidal soldiers. "I'm telling them to go to their clergy, go to their commanding officers, and to claim conscientious objection while in the military, and to fight it out like that. But if they're considering pulling the trigger on themselves, I'm telling them to desert, just as George Bush Jr. did during the Vietnam War." (A gap in Bush's military service record from May 1972 to October 1973 has some critics accusing him of desertion.) . . . Fleeing to Canada should only be an option for soldiers, Rising-Moore says, "if all else fails, and they don't see any other way out."
posted by Lorenzo 3:45 PM
