The Blatant Truth - Archive - June 2003

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

From Radical Anarchist Posters

As if we needed further evidence that the Bush Administration is completely and utterly full of BS in its phony “sympathy” for victims of “brutal dictators,” its rush to go to wars of “liberation,” its fraudulent “War on Terror,” and its “concern” over WMDs, this is an important article:

The honored guest
Terrorism-sponsoring nuclear weapons-equipped dictator visits the White House today
Geov Parrish
WorkingForChange.com, June 24, 2003

The dictator rose to power by launching a bloody military coup against a democratically elected government. Political prisoners, torture, and repression followed. Three years later, after changing his title from “General” to “President” because it sounded better, this dictator was “elected” in an election boycotted by opposition groups and most voters, and considered by the rest of the world to be a complete farce.

His country is now considered one of the world’s leading havens for Muslim fundamentalist terror groups; if Osama bin Laden is alive, it’s thought likely he is here. Our dictator’s intelligence agency trains and arms terror groups sympathetic to bin Laden, and the country’s ongoing support of such groups in a campaign against its largest neighbor — a secular democracy — nearly led to full-blown war last year.

In that confrontation, this dictator threatened to use nuclear weapons. He has them. North Korea has gotten its nuclear weapons materials from this country, which is now believed to be only months away from developing the capacity to launch missiles with nuclear warheads.

The man is “President” Pervez Musharraf; his country, Pakistan. And today, Musharraf will probably ask for still more American weaponry while visiting the White House for an amiable chat with Pres. George W. Bush. . . .

Is it no wonder the United States is the laughingstock of the entire world?? With that kind of double standard, how can anybody respect us??

Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) is still kicking Bush’s butt, though, in his latest speech on the floor of Congress:

The Road to Coverup is the Road to Ruin
June 24, 2003

. . . Whether or not intelligence reports were bent, stretched, or massaged to make Iraq look like an imminent threat to the United States, it is clear that the Administration’s rhetoric played upon the well-founded fear of the American public about future acts of terrorism. But, upon close examination, many of these statements have nothing to do with intelligence, because they are at root just sound bites based on conjecture. They are designed to prey on public fear.

The face of Osama bin Laden morphed into that of Saddam Hussein. President Bush carefully blurred these images in his State of the Union Address. Listen to this quote from his State of the Union Address: “Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans - this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.” [State of the Union, 1/28/03, pg 7] Judging by this speech, not only is the President confusing al Qaeda and Iraq, but he also appears to give a vote of no-confidence to our homeland security efforts. Isn’t the White House, the brains behind the Department of Homeland Security? Isn’t the Administration supposed to be stopping those vials, canisters, and crates from entering our country, rather than trying to scare our fellow citizens half to death about them? . . .

On September 26, 2002, just two weeks before Congress voted on a resolution to allow the President to invade Iraq, and six weeks before the mid-term elections, President Bush himself built the case that Iraq was plotting to attack the United States. After meeting with members of Congress on that date, the President said: “The danger to our country is grave. The danger to our country is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons.... The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material, could build one within a year.”

These are the President’s words. He said that Saddam Hussein is “seeking a nuclear bomb.” Have we found any evidence to date of this chilling allegation? No. . . .

We hear some voices say, but why should we care? After all, the United States won the war, didn’t it? Saddam Hussein is no more; he is either dead or on the run. What does it matter if reality does not reveal the same grim picture that was so carefully painted before the war? So what if the menacing characterizations that conjured up visions of mushroom clouds and American cities threatened with deadly germs and chemicals were overdone? So what?

Mr. President, our sons and daughters who serve in uniform answered a call to duty. They were sent to the hot sands of the Middle East to fight in a war that has already cost the lives of 194 Americans, thousands of innocent civilians, and unknown numbers of Iraqi soldiers. Our troops are still at risk. Hardly a day goes by that there is not another attack on the troops who are trying to restore order to a country teetering on the brink of anarchy. When are they coming home? . . .

It is in the compelling national interest to examine what we were told about the threat from Iraq. It is in the compelling national interest to know if the intelligence was faulty. It is in the compelling national interest to know if the intelligence was distorted. . . .

We are already shading our terms about how to describe the proposed review of intelligence: cherry-picking words to give the American people the impression that the government is fully in control of the situation, and that there is no reason to ask tough questions. This is the same problem that got us into this controversy about slanted intelligence reports. Word games. Lots and lots of word games.

Well, Mr. President, this is no game. For the first time in our history, the United States has gone to war because of intelligence reports claiming that a country posed a threat to our nation. Congress should not be content to use standard operating procedures to look into this extraordinary matter. We should accept no substitute for a full, bipartisan investigation by Congress into the issue of our pre-war intelligence on the threat from Iraq and its use. . . .

But some people have felt that the invasion of Iraq was justified after the discovery of an estimated 15,000 Iraqis in mass graves. It has been pointed out more than once, however, that Saddam ordered their slaughter after the U.S. urged them to rise up against him after the first Gulf War in 1991. Bush Sr. and the whole American war machine basically abandoned them and also maintained sanctions that ensured the Iraqi citizens would live in misery.

The BBC News asked for reader comments on the significance of the discovery of mass graves as justification for war; many remarks in Iraq mass graves: Was the war justified? are most eloquent (just a small sampling):

The US has failed to accept responsibility for aiding Saddam in taking power in Iraq and from supplying him with weapons of mass destruction during the Iran/Iraq war. As long as the US fails to act responsibly and fails to admit mistakes the world will continue down the road of spiralling violence, fear, and overall lack of safety.—Jim Clements, USA

The blatant search for ANY reason to legitimize this war after the fact is ridiculous. . . .Let’s focus on the fact that our government has used fear to get the people to support a war against an imaginary threat that just happens to be one of the greatest power grabs in recent history. And are we any safer today than before this war? I think not.—Anthony, US

How many new graves have been created as a result of the war? What black irony, that having survived Sadaam’s regime these people were killed by their liberators. The mourning process has only just begun for families of these victims.—Kelly, UK

As an Iraqi, we know what Saddam did but we also know who gave him the green light to do what he had done for the past 30 years - it is the USA. The US was far worse than Saddam by insisting on placing the murderous sanctions for the past 13 years that did more damage to the fabric of the society, people, culture and more then Saddam ever did.—Falah, Iraq

It’s like Mexico invading Texas claiming Texans planned to nuke Mexico and then justifying it by pointing out all the people Texas has executed.—David, United States

I always thought you went to war for a reason. Not to make up one afterwards.—Frank Geurts, Netherlands

And for the most impassioned, cynical, and damning castigation to date of how those mass graves relate to the current actions of American forces in Iraq, be sure to read Chris Floyd in the June 20th Moscow Times, Global Eye—Cry Freedom:

They were digging mass graves in Iraq last week.

No, not the mass graves that George W. Bush now reflexively invokes to justify his murder of up to 10,000 innocent Iraqi civilians and the needless deaths of more than 200 American soldiers in the aggressive war he launched on the basis of proven lies and outright fabrications. Those mass graves, containing victims of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, were dug years ago, back when powerful U.S. officials like Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz were pursuing “closer ties” to the Saddam regime at the signed, insistent order of another president named George Bush.

They were also being dug all over Iraq when Donald Rumsfeld was eagerly pressing Saddamite flesh as Ronald Reagan’s special envoy, restoring diplomatic ties with the CIA-supported killer. Oh, to have been a fly on that wall as Rumsfeld squinted tenderly into Saddam’s beady eyes and pledged to lavish him with American money to build his war machine, American technology to fuel his internal repression and American military intelligence for his poison gassing of Iranian troops and missile attacks on Iranian civilians. How many thousands of lives were sacrificed in that moment of explosive power-guy passion! It must have been a real bodice-ripper.

We’re now told that those mass graves are bad mass graves, although they were perfectly acceptable at the time. (Then again, fashions change, don’t they? Remember when presidential deceit was an impeachable offense? When military aggression was a war crime? Ah, those silly fads of yesteryear.) But the new mass graves being dug in Iraq today — for the innocent collaterals killed during the American military sweeps last week — are good mass graves, you see, because the aged farmers, retarded teenagers, young fathers and fleeing women now being shoveled into fetid desert pits were killed by the bombs and bullets of liberation!

This article is an important expression of outrage that also ties together other key aspects of Bush’s Iraq policies:

Yes, we know that Bush’s viceroy in Iraq, the preppy-monikered L. Paul Bremer III, has forbidden the liberated Iraqi people from using their liberty to verbally oppose the occupation of their land by a foreign power. Stifling dissent by force of arms might seem a counterintuitive expression of freedom, but it chimes perfectly with the Bush Regime’s masterful use of Zen paradox in statecraft. After all, this is the same crew that introduced the American people to such mind-bending concepts as loser-take-all democracy, charity for the rich, and prosperity through bankruptcy. Do the noble Iraqis deserve any less?

And yes, it’s true that Bushist Party bosses in Baghdad have announced plans to start "privatizing" the county’s assets — which, as you doubtless recall, are being “held in trust for the Iraqi people” — before said Iraqi people can form a government and make their own decisions about it, Agence France Presse reports. But is that so wrong? Indeed, hath not the Leader himself proclaimed, in the official National Security Policy of the United States, that unbridled crony capitalism is “the single sustainable model of national success?” Since there is no real choice, why bother to let the locals decide? [Memo to the Leader: possible strategy for 2004?] . . .

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) reported last week that Former General Wesley Clark, in an appearance on Meet the Press, made the point that the connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein was concocted immediately following the attacks.

Clark’s assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story that aired on September 4, 2002. As correspondent David Martin reported: “Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.” According to CBS, a Pentagon aide’s notes from that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the “best info fast” to “judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only UBL.” (The initials SH and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.) The notes then quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously, that the administration’s response “go massive. . . sweep it all up, things related and not.”

Despite its implications, Martin’s report was greeted largely with silence when it aired. Now, nine months later, media are covering damaging revelations about the Bush administration’s intelligence on Iraq, yet still seem strangely reluctant to pursue stories suggesting that the flawed intelligence--and therefore the war--may have been a result of deliberate deception, rather than incompetence. The public deserves a fuller accounting of this story.

FAIR includes a link to a Media Contact List that it hopes people will use to complain that this story deserves more coverage. Sounds like a good story also to send along to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, particularly Chair Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Vice Chair Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and the seven other Democrats on the committee. Yes, their investigation is a review of intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but doesn’t this story add credibility to the idea that that “intelligence” was manufactured, doctored, and otherwise fraudulent?

In what to me is an incredible display of chutzpah U.S. says donors must come to the aid of Iraq, according to a Reuters story by Mona Megalli and Peg Mackey published on June 21st:

DEAD SEA, Jordan (Reuters) - World donors must provide money as well as debt relief to Iraq whose massive reconstruction needs dwarf its potential income from the world’s second largest oil reserves, a senior U.S. Treasury official said on Saturday.

John Taylor, Treasury undersecretary for International Affairs, told Reuters in an interview that the United States and Britain -- now occupying Iraq -- were using Iraqi assets frozen in the United State during the reign of Saddam Hussein and some funds from U.N.-supervised oil sales.

But more would be needed even as crude exports restart, he said on the sidelines of a Davos, Switzerland-based World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan.

“With respect to the amount of resources that are going to be coming in through oil you compare that with the needs, there is going to be a need for donor support,” Taylor said. . . .

Talks to reduce or deal with Iraq’s debt -- estimated at some $120-$130 billion -- could not realistically start until the Paris Club and the International Monetary Fund come up with firm figures for what is owed to official and non-official creditors, Taylor said.

The Paris Club of sovereign country creditors has just started the process of gathering data on Iraqi debt, which has not been serviced since the 1980s, but expects figures to emerge by the middle of July. . . .

Iraq’s once relatively prosperous developing economy, where the average per capita income was $4,000 in 1980, has now sunk to the level of the poorest nations on earth at $150 a year. . . .

How about hitting up the “Coalition of the Willing”--or maybe Kellogg Brown & Root, Bechtel, Halliburton, and the rest of the greedy war-profiteering scum could cough up some of their blood money--or is it that they now “want to empty the purses of the entire world into their greedy little pockets,” as patdem commented in a Democratic Underground discussion. “You break it, you buy it,” said rooboy.

Saturday, June 21, 2003, updated

Newest desperate spin on the missing WMD:

Bush says Iraqi weapons sites were looted
Khaleej Times via Reuters News Service
June 21, 2003

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush, trying again to explain the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, said on Saturday that suspected arms sites had been looted in the waning days of Saddam Hussein’s rule. “For more than a decade, Saddam Hussein went to great lengths to hide his weapons from the world. And in the regime’s final days, documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned,” Bush said in his weekly radio address.

It is believed to be the first time Bush has cited looting to explain the inability of U.S. forces to uncover chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, a U.S. official said. . . .

Okay let me get this straight: Back in February he knows the world isn’t exactly buying his insistent declaration that Hussein has WMDs capable of blowing up &/or gassing the whole entire world on a moment’s notice. He knows he needs to vindicate himself, to be able to say look at what I was talking about, I just saved the world. So during the war they FAIL to target and protect known weapons sites? He never made it a priority to secure weapons sites?? Not even ONE? So the WMD were freely available to all wannabe terrorists? All this says, then, is that Bush and all of his advisors are COMPLETELY INSANE and OBVIOUSLY UNFIT FOR OFFICE.

Meanwhile, looking at another false rationalization for war: a review of the ways that the Iraqi people have been “liberated”:

• Their elections have been canceled.
• Their guns have been taken away by force.
• Their doors are being kicked in and homes entered and searched without warning.
• The Iraqi soldiers’ jobs have been taken away; they are owed back wages and threatening insurrection.
• Their press has been curbed.
• “Gatherings, pronouncements or publications” (see link below) in opposition to U.S. policy have been outlawed.
• Innocent civilians are killed on a daily basis.
• Those who are suspected of opposing the U.S. are detained without evidence.
• The Red Cross has been prevented from inspecting detention camps.
• Saddam Hussein is reputed still to be alive and well in Bagdhad.

I am going to be updating that list with links and additional points. Two excellent summaries of the true situation in Iraq:

The right to resist
Seumas Milne
The Guardian, June 19, 2003

It would have been hard to predict in advance that the US and British occupation of Iraq could go so spectacularly wrong so quickly. The words of the historian Tacitus about the Roman invasion of Scotland in the first century AD might just as well have been written about our latter-day Rome’s latest imperial adventure: “They create a wasteland and they call it peace.”

More than two months after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iraq is sinking deeper into chaos and insecurity, as US forces lash out at the Iraqi resistance, which is now killing an average of one American soldier a day. Another was shot dead in Baghdad yesterday, while US troops killed more protesters - as they have repeatedly done since the massacres of demonstrators in Mosul and Falluja in April. . . .

In Iraq, the mounting social and human cost of the invasion and occupation has become ever clearer. The country’s first Burger King may have opened at Baghdad airport and the Queen’s birthday may once again be celebrated on the banks of the Tigris, but the impact of war and regime collapse on essential services and infrastructure, on top of the havoc wreaked by the first Gulf war and 13 years of grinding sanctions, has been devastating.

Add to that the rampant lawlessness, insecurity, looting of all public institutions, destruction of national treasures, epidemic of murder and robbery, and it is little wonder that most Iraqis appear to find it hard to see themselves as having been liberated. And far from being lower than expected, the number of Iraqi civilians killed is now estimated - on the basis of hospital, mortuary and media records - to have been between 5,500 and 7,200, while Iraqi military deaths are thought to run into tens of thousands. . . .

Frustration and foreboding in Iraq
Anthony Shadid
Washington Post, June 19, 2003

FALLUJAH, Iraq, June 18 -- A little before 1 p.m., in a city seething with discontent, the men emerged from the washroom, their wet faces glistening under a searing sun. A woman in a long black abaya sat expectantly at the steel gate of the Shaker Thahi Mosque, seeking alms from gathering worshipers. From a scratchy loudspeaker sounded the phrase “God is greatest,” repeated four times.

The crowd of men paused at the call to prayer, a gesture of respect. But only for a moment.

“I’m angry! I’m angry at this filthy life!” shouted Adnan Mohammed, who was wearing a soiled blue tunic called a dishdasha.

“We’re becoming like the Palestinians,” added another worshiper, 27-year-old Khaled Abdullah.

The Americans should get out of our city. It’s a Muslim city. We’re a Muslim country,” cried out Shihab Mohammedi, as the muezzins’ chants echoed among the market’s minarets. “Who said they were liberators? Liberators from whom?” . . .

The Iraqi mess has become so obvious, even Republicans are deserting the Bush camp in increasing numbers. Yet another account:

Congressman chides Bush on Iraq contracts, leadership
Lynn Sweet
Chicago Sun-Times, June 20, 2003

WASHINGTON--Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.), who travels to Jordan and possibly Baghdad this weekend, said the Bush administration must figure out an “exit strategy” on Iraq, quickly install Iraqis in key positions and end non-emergency, no-bid reconstruction contracts.

“I am impatient about seeing an Iraqi face on this government,” Kirk said Thursday.

He is part of a congressional delegation flying to the Jordanian capital of Amman for a meeting on the future of the Mideast sponsored by the World Economic Forum.

Kirk expects to meet there with L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S.-appointed civil administrator for Iraq.

“We need to see Iraqis running Iraq,” Kirk said. “When do I see a national police chief? When do I see a minister of health? When do we expect to see an interim government?

“I am very frustrated that on television so far, we are only seeing Americans, and we want to see Iraqis,” he said.

His impatience and criticism of the Bush administration are telling, coming from one of the lawmakers the White House deputized to help sell the war authorization vote to Congress. . . .

Thursday, June 19, 2003

Oh, so it’s finally starting to hit them: US worried about mounting casualties in Iraq, from Agence France-Presse:

WASHINGTON, June 18 (AFP) - 22:08 GMT - US lawmakers on Wednesday expressed alarm at the rising number of dead and wounded US troops in Iraq, with some highlighting fears that US forces may be overextended. . . .

Representative Ike Skelton, ranking Democrat on the committee, said the unsettling number of US casualites calls for a review of how the US occupation of Iraq is being conducted.

Skelton highlighted how more Americans have been killed in Iraq since April 14 than throughout the past year that US troops have been chasing al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives in Afghanistan.

“This morning -- like most recent mornings -- we awoke to the news of another servicemember killed in Iraq,” he said.

Skelton said there had been at “one dead American each day” since President George W. Bush declared the end of major combat on May 1. . . .

In testimony at the hearing, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the 146,000 US military personnel in Iraq should not need to be supplemented.

“We are pleased that the number and capability of coalition forces pledged to contribute to those operations is growing,” Wolfowitz said, adding that the United States needed and would get more help from other countries in coming months.

“As we expected and planned for, smaller combat operations in Iraq continue, even as we work with Iraqis to establish stable and secure areas throughout Iraq,” Wolfowitz said.

He said US troops in Iraq were fighting forces waging a “guerrilla war.”

Wolfowitz sounding glib--“as we expected and planned”--? Likewise Rumsfeld Downplays Resistance in Iraq, according to Newsday via the Associated Press:

June 18, 2003, 3:14 PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- American forces in Iraq are "rooting out pockets of dead-enders" who are loyal to Saddam Hussein and who have been launching deadly attacks against U.S. soldiers, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

His comments followed those of Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, who said troops are making progress against Iraqi resistance and asserted that the recent increase in U.S. casualties is “militarily insignificant.”

Asked at Pentagon press conference about the Iraqi resistance, Rumsfeld described it as “small elements” of 10 to 20 people, not “large military formations” or large networks of attackers. . . .

He said there “is a little debate” in the administration over whether there is any central control to the resistance, which officials say is coming from Saddam’s former Baath Party, Fedayeen paramilitary and other loyalists.

For a more detailed account of the Iraqi resistance, see Iraqi Regional Leaders Directing Attacks, from the June 18 Las Vegas Sun via AP.

General Odierno may consider American casualties “militarily insignificant,” but Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson is still asking What Are Americans Dying For Now?

OIL IS TO DIE for. More to the point, oil is precious enough for the government to send off your children, your husbands, your wives, your partners, your brothers, and your sisters to die for. That is a rapidly escalating conclusion as American soldiers continue to die at the rate of one a day in Iraq without destruction have been found. What we do have are sniper shootings, grenade attacks, and the deaths of nearly 50 US soldiers 48 days after Bush said major combat operations were over in Iraq. . . .

As the Republicans sit on the intelligence, as Democrats sit on their thumbs, and as Americans plan summer vacations depending on the cheapest gasoline for the biggest cars in the world, our soldiers - many of them teenagers - are halfway around the world, taking bullets for a mission that is rapidly losing meaning - at least the stated meaning. . . .

On May 1, Vice President Dick Cheney claimed that “one of the most successful military campaigns ever waged” displayed to the world “a new American way of war.” The new American way is already dissolving into a disgusting result that has grown old in the half-century after World War II - a quagmire. It is about time to ask why we accept a quagmire for Iraq when we would not do it for Somalia.

Without the weapons of mass destruction, it has to be for the oil.

In the campaign to get rid of Bush in 2004, MoveOn.org has announced its online presidential candidate primary, to begin June 24th for 48 hours. “The MoveOn.org PAC Primary will allow hundreds of thousands of voters to speak out now, adding their weight to the campaigns of their choice. Voting in the MoveOn.org PAC primary starts Tuesday, June 24 and will last 48 hours. Existing MoveOn members will be sent a unique email ballot, which is good for one vote only.” People new to MoveOn can register at the web site to vote in the primary.

MoveOn has also published interviews with all 9 Democratic candidates and a letter from each outlining his or her platform.

Monday, June 16, 2003

A couple of news items from the Howard Dean campaign: MoveOn.org, a cyber-network of more than 1 million people, will be holding an online primary of the Democratic candidates in about one week. An article in the Saturday, June 14 Washington Post, Democratic hopefuls to vie for early endorsement, notes that “the group will endorse, direct volunteers and raise money -- including holding an “urgent” fundraiser in time for the Federal Election Commission’s June 30 deadline -- for whomever is able to win at least 50 percent of its members’ votes. . . . Michael Cornfield, a political scientist at George Washington University, . . . estimated the group raised $2.4 million during the 2000 election, when its membership was about one-third its current size. He said the group now might raise more than $10 million.” Click on the link above, sign up at MoveOn.org, and then vote in the online primary for Howard Dean!

Also of note: Howard Dean will be formally announcing his candidacy on June 23rd. Plan to register for an event in order to be counted among the grassroots support that will be noted by the media!

The corporate swine are swilling at the trough of Iraqi war spoils:

Downsizing in Disguise
Naomi Klein
The Nation, June 23, 2003

The streets of Baghdad are a swamp of crime and uncollected garbage. Battered local businesses are going bankrupt, unable to compete with cheap imports. Unemployment is soaring and thousands of laid-off state workers are protesting in the streets.

In other words, Iraq looks like every other country that has undergone rapid-fire “structural adjustments” prescribed by Washington, from Russia’s infamous “shock therapy” in the early 1990s to Argentina’s disastrous “surgery without anesthetic.” Except that Iraq’s “reconstruction” makes those wrenching reforms look like spa treatments.

Paul Bremer, the US-appointed governor of Iraq, has already proved something of a flop in the democracy department in his few weeks there, nixing plans for Iraqis to select their own interim government in favor of his own handpicked team of advisers. But Bremer has proved to have something of a gift when it comes to rolling out the red carpet for US multinationals.

For a few weeks Bremer has been hacking away at Iraq’s public sector like former Sunbeam exec "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap in a flak jacket. On May 16 Bremer banned up to 30,000 senior Baath Party officials from government jobs. A week later, he dissolved the army and the information ministry, putting more than 400,000 Iraqis out of work without pensions or re-employment programs. . . .

But Bremer has gone far beyond purging powerful Baath loyalists and moved into a full-scale assault on the state itself. Doctors who joined the party as children and have no love for Saddam face dismissal, while low-level civil servants with no ties to the party have been fired en masse. Nuha Najeeb, who ran a Baghdad printing house, told Reuters, "I . . . had nothing to do with Saddam’s media, so why am I sacked?" . . .

Paul Bremer is, according to Bush, a "can-do" type of person. Indeed he is. In less than a month he has readied large swaths of state activity for corporate takeover, primed the Iraqi market for foreign importers to make a killing by eliminating much of the local competition and made sure there won’t be any unpleasant Iraqi government interference--in fact, he’s made sure there will be no Iraqi government at all while key economic decisions are made. Bremer is Iraq’s one-man IMF. . . .

But not all of Bush’s people are on board. Rand Beers, former special assistant to the president for combating terrorism, not only resigned from that position 8 weeks ago, he has just volunteered as national security adviser for Senator John Kerry, Democratic candidate for president. “The administration wasn’t matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They’re making us less secure, not more secure,” said Beers, “As an insider, I saw the things that weren’t being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out.”

See Former aide takes aim at war on terror, by Laura Blumenfeld in today’s Washington Post.

Thursday, June 12, 2003

Despite the fact that Republicans are rejecting calls for a full-blown investigation into “whether the Bush administration misread or inflated the threats posed by Iraq before going to war,” some Congress people are, thankfully, getting to be pains in the Bush-butt.

One is Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who you might recall made some noise about Haliburton’s cushy Iraq contracts back at the beginning of May. In a letter to Condaleeza Rice dated June 10, he notes that he has been trying since March 17 to “get a direct answer to one simple question. Why did President Bush cite forged evidence about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities in his State of the Union address?”

“The forged documents in question describe efforts by Iraq to obtain uranium from an African country, Niger. . . .”

In this long letter Waxman quotes senior Administration and CIA officials who expressed “serious doubts about the forged evidence” in interviews well before the State of the Union address. He takes Rice to task for “denying that senior officials were aware that the President was citing forged evidence,” and also for claiming that the Iraqis were seeking so-called yellowcake--uranium oxide--from Africa. He goes point by point through statements made on the Sunday hot air shows by Rice asking her to clarify vague and/or misleading statements she made.

On the 12th, Waxman issued a statement outlining three different responses the Administration have given to his questions regarding their blatant use of forged documents and noting that “Based on what is known publicly, it is apparent that this new story from the White House omits key facts and conflicts with others. Based on all the information that I have received, including from nonpublic sources, the new account is clearly incomplete.”

Waxman simply is not going to be put off with vague generalities. Among other points he is hammering, he keeps returning to the question of how that forged evidence ended up in the State of the Union address:

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and others have said that the CIA gave President Bush the lines he could use in his State of the Union address. If that account is true, the CIA affirmatively told President Bush to cite evidence that the CIA knew was forged.

And if that is true, this is a scandal of considerable consequence.

Moreover, there has been reporting that the CIA actually did convey its doubts about the forged evidence. . . .

“Today’s story presents us with an unavoidable obligation. We must find out whether the CIA deceived the President as he was developing his Iraq policy or whether it is deceiving the public now to protect the President and the Vice President. And the only way to answer this question is by uncovering and disclosing all the relevant facts.”

Another one not taking any crap is Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). On Thursday, June 5th, he led 30 Representatives in introducing a Resolution of Inquiry to Force Administration To Turn Over Intelligence On Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction.

According to a June 4th press release, “a Resolution of Inquiry is a rarely used House procedure that Kucinich used successfully in March to get the Administration to release the 12,000 page weapons report that Iraq had submitted to the UN.”

“It is long past time that the President and this Administration show its evidence,” stated Kucinich. “Today, we are introducing a Resolution of Inquiry to compel the White House to substantiate its claims. The President led the nation to war, and spent at least $63 billion on that war, on the basis of these unfounded assertions.”

The Resolution, which as of June 11th had been signed by 36 Representatives, must be voted on in committee within 14 days.

Kucinich has been taking to the House floor, on the 11th repeating Bush’s lies about “25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, and over 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. So where are those vast stockpiles? Where was the imminent threat?

“At the State of the Union Address, the President said: ‘Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.’ Where are those vast stockpiles? Where was the imminent threat?”

Today he noted that “The Administration capitalized on the fears of Americans. They misrepresented the nature of the Iraqi threat. They misled Congress. They misled the American people. By pushing for a quick vote before the election, they changed the election and manipulated the outcome.

“The Resolution of Inquiry will establish the truth once and for all.”

In the Senate, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, released a statement in response to an announcement by Senators Warner and Roberts and Congressman Goss that they intend to limit review of Hussein’s WMD program to documents provided by the Bush administration in closed hearings, basically calling their proposal “inadequate” and noting that “Anything less than a bipartisan approach is totally unsatisfactory and not in the best interest of the intelligence community, the administration or the American public.

“Effective intelligence is critical to our security and we need to analyze any concerns that have been raised and fix any problems that may exist. This investigation is exactly the type of responsibility that the intelligence committee is tasked with."

A summary of what congressional Democrats have been up to: Dems Call Bush Credibility Into Question, by Ron Fournier, AP Political Writer, yahoo news, June 12, 2003.

Sunday, June 8, 2003

Do I dare to gloat now? Expressions of outrage, here and in Britain, seem to be building exponentially, explosively. On the Senate floor on Thursday the 5th, Senator Robert Byrd pointedly asked, Where is the Outrage?

I am encouraged that the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees are planning to investigate the credibility of the intelligence that was used to build the case for war against Iraq. We need a thorough, open, gloves-off investigation of this matter and we need it quickly. The credibility of the President and his Administration hangs in the balance. We must not trifle with the people’s trust by foot-dragging.

What amazes me is that the President himself is not clamoring for an investigation. It is his integrity that is on the line. It is his truthfulness that is being questioned. It is his leadership that has come under scrutiny. And yet he has raised no question, expressed no curiosity about the strange turn of events in Iraq, expressed no anger at the possibility that he might have been misled. How is it that the President, who was so adamant about the dangers of WMD, has expressed no concern over the where-abouts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

Indeed, instead of leading the charge to uncover the discrepancy between what we were told before the war and what we have found—or failed to find—since the war, the White House is circling the wagons and scoffing at the notion that anyone in the Administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq.

Yes, curious indeed. Bush takes the O.J.-like stance of offended accused. At least O.J. made the phony gesture, as I remember, of offering a reward for the real killer. Bush hasn’t even hinted at wanting to “get at the bottom of things.” But ironically for Bush those are the very words Byrd uses:

Meanwhile, the President seems oblivious to the controversy swirling about the justification for the invasion of Iraq. Our nation’s credibility before the world is at stake. While his Administration digs in to defend the status quo, Members of Congress are questioning the credibility of the intelligence and the public case made by this Administration on which the war with Iraq was based. Members of the media are openly challenging whether America’s intelligence agencies were simply wrong or were callously manipulated. Vice President Cheney’s numerous visits to the CIA are being portrayed by some intelligence professionals as “pressure.” And the American people are wondering, once again, what is going on in the dark shadows of Washington.

It is time that we had some answers. It is time that the Administration stepped up its acts to reassure the American people that the horrific weapons that they told us threatened the world’s safety have not fallen into terrorist hands. It is time that the President leveled with the American people. It is time that we got to the bottom of this matter.

Interesting thread on the Democratic Underground: Question for Watergate era DU’ers: Is this how it started? To be honest, I can’t really remember, but the consensus seems to be yes, Nixon’s downfall as a result of Watergate built slowly, starting as little-noticed news bits. “Up until the week Nixon resigned,” posted Lorelei, “the press and all the cognoscenti talking heads (there were way fewer then) were saying the same thing: Nixon is too popular, he just got re-elected, congress wouldn’t dare, etc. etc. It was stunning how quickly it all reversed into first a MAJOR story and secondly, a sinking ship where the rats just bailed so quickly.”

“SURE IS!!!!” said LiberalLibra, “VERY SLOW trickle at a time and then all at once . . . about 2 1/2 to 3 years in the lid blew off. Get ready folks it is just now building and we have to wait for the next generation of ‘Watergate reporters.’ Just going to take a little time but be assured those reporters--whoever they are--are already on the story--we just don’t know it yet. Yes--there will be another ‘deep throat’ too.”

“Yes,” wrote DEMActivist, “it started as a drip. And the drips got bigger and bigger and became more steady. However, the big issue which was more similiar was the feeling that the Nixon administration had done some really nasty back room deals and were out to screw the nation. . . . Like the Bush administration, during their day the Nixonians were blatantly paranoid and secretive. The players were dirty and the nation was surprised at the boldness of their attitudes and arrogance. . . . there was a long list of dirty laundry which was eventually aired in public.” But, this poster added, “today, we see people who have been groomed as politicos all their lives. They aren’t as thuggish, they are ‘white collar’ criminals who are better at covering their tracks. They don’t assume, like the Nixon criminals, that the office of the President can protect them from their crimes. In that sense, the thugs have gotten better at covering themselves and covering their tracks.”

And KoKo01 cautioned, “Don’t get your hopes up yet! While there are “creepy” similarities between the Nixon administration, his cabinet and this one....people were more sensitive to ‘outrage’ in that time. Nixon didn’t do half (that was visible to us at least) that Chimp and Co. have (including these years since of BFEE control) BUT at the time even people weren’t that ‘outraged’ at the Watergate break-in, they were more disgusted with Haldeman, Erlichman and Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell and his weird wife.... I still am angry that Ford pardoned Nixon. If Nixon had been fully Impeached, I don’t think we would have had ‘PNAC building all these years.’ They thought they got away with it when Nixon didn’t go down.” Interesting line of discussion that leaves me feeling optimistic that, yes, Bush WILL face the music and his house of cards will come tumbling down.

On the subject of parallels with Watergate, one notable “drip” in what is hopefully going to become a torrent is Derrick Z. Jackson’s Boston Globe editorial of June 6, Bush’s deceptions on Iraq intelligence:

With about 180 American soldiers sacrificed and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and citizens killed, the unprecedented war is unraveling into a scandal that dwarfs President Clinton’s Thong-gate and threatens to surpass the violation of national trust symbolized by Watergate. Bill and Monica was about lying about sex. Watergate was about President Nixon lying about a break-in.

Iraq is about Bush sending Americans to die for what may have been a lie.

Ignoring that moral obligation may have needlessly wasted thousands of lives and lowered the United States onto the shelf of rogue states we claim to be saving the world from. Before the war, Bush said Saddam used “denial and deception” on weapons of mass destruction. Bush must now tell Americans to what level he deceived us. . . .

Patrick Lang, a former CIA analyst on Iraq, has said intelligence was “exploited and abused and bypassed” by the White House. Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of CIA counter-terrorism operations, said many intelligence officials “believe it is a scandal.” Cannistraro said Bush had a “moral obligation to use the best information available, not just information that fits your preconceived ideas.”

If Bush cannot shoulder the burden of truth, his disgrace should be one that makes Bill Clinton’s lust a footnote in history and Richard Nixon’s tapes a petty larceny of democracy. The denial and deception of President Bush ended in debauchery and death.

And, yes, the “I” word was mentioned again a couple of days ago, in FindLaw’s Legal Commentary for Friday, June 6, in an article by John Dean, who is, ironically, former counsel to President Nixon. Missing Weapons of Mass Destruction: Is lying about the reason for war an impeachable offense? he asks. This is important reading. We feel intuitively that, yes, lies to justify mass murder must be grounds for impeachment at the very least (ordinary citizens would be executed post-haste). Dean spells out the legal ramifications in ordinary language, including the fact that “To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked.” Who would be in a better position to know?

Thursday, June 5, 2003

Yesterday I published a post from the Democratic Underground repeating lies concerning Iraqi WMDs by Bush and Blair and their henchmen; today I find that my hero William Rivers Pitt, longtime DU poster, senior writer and managing editor at truthout.org, and author of War on Iraq and The Greatest Sedition is Silence, had already come out with a highly expanded collection of quotes, all documented and the centerpiece of his straighforward must-read We Used to Impeach Liars:

We may hate someone with passion, and we may fear them in our souls, but if the facts cannot establish a clear and concise basis for our fear and hatred, if the facts do not defend the actions we would take against them, then we must look elsewhere for the basis of that fear. Simultaneously, we must take stock of those stubborn facts, and understand the manner in which they define the reality--not the rhetoric--of our world.

The case for war against Iraq has not been made. This is a fact. It is doubtful in the extreme that Saddam Hussein has retained any functional aspect of the chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons programs so thoroughly dismantled by the United Nations weapons inspectors who worked tirelessly in Iraq for seven years. This is also a fact.

This was a straightforward argument, set against stern and unrelenting prophesies of doom from Bush administration officials, and from Bush himself. I can tell you, as the writer [of the book War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know, published in Sept. 2002 and asserting that WMD claims were being highly exaggerated], that it was a tough sell. The facts contained in the book were absolutely accurate, as has been proven in the aftermath of war, but Americans are funny. They fall for Hitler’s maxim on lies over and over again: “The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.” . . .

Quote after quote from the speeches of Cheney, Fleischer, Powell, Franks, Rumsfeld, and Bush follow--for example, Ari Fleischer on March 21, 2003, “Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.” And Bush himself on September 12, 2002: “Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.”

The aggravation within the administration, after all these statements, caused George W. Bush to exclaim on May 30, “But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them.” He was referring to an alleged Iraqi mobile chemical laboratory, one of the “Winnebagos of Death” described by Colin Powell. Said mobile facility contained exactly zero evidence of having been used to produce weapons of any kind, and was in fact most likely used as a mobile food testing platform in the service of Saddam Hussein, who was always paranoid about assassination.

Over 170 American soldiers died in the second war in Iraq. The Iraqi populace is deeply angered by the American presence in their country, and they are armed to the teeth. More soldiers will die in the impossible police action that has become victory’s inheritance. Thousands of Iraqi civilians have died, along with untold scores of Iraqi soldiers. The Middle East has been inflamed by the war; bombings in Riyadh and Casablanca provide a bleak preview of what is to come. According to Mr. Bush, the entire thing was aimed at that one mobile lab. The thousands of tons of WMDs we were promised do not exist, so that empty mobile lab is what we must settle for if we are to justify this war in our hearts and minds. . . .

Today in America, we endure a sitting President who lied for months about the threat posed by a sovereign nation. That nation was invaded and attacked, and thousands died because of it. The aftereffects of this action will be felt for generations to come. The very democracy which gives us meaning as a country has been put in peril by these deeds. When the smoke cleared, every reason for that war was proven to be a lie.

Of course, there will be no impeachment with a Republican Congress. This must not dissuade us from demanding satisfaction. Let the House be brought to order. Gavel the members to attention, and let the evidence be brought forth. Let there be justice for the living and the dead. Let this man Bush be impeached and cleansed from office for the lies he has told. These are not innocent lies. The dead remember.

I am turning now to my word processor. I am not going to just e-mail my Congress people, I am going to take approximately 45 minutes to print out several copies of this article, write an accompanying outraged letter, and address some manila envelopes. I am going to spend 60 cents per person to get these onto their desks by a medium that hopefully will get some attention, and then I am going to follow up with letters, e-mails, and even phone calls. Pitt is right: we are sitting around like a pack of brainless, spineless fools letting these jackals get away with mass-scale murder. If you don’t know exactly who your senators and representative are or how to reach them, please see Congress.org and enter your zip code in the box under “Write Elected Officials,” right at the top of the home page. Letters to the editor of your local newspaper are also highly effective.

And why aren’t American legislators getting outraged like their British counterparts? Robin Cook, former Foreign Secretary and member of Blair’s cabinet who resigned over the decision to engage in the war against Iraq, admonishes Britain Must Not Let Iran Become the Next Iraq

There is always a bigger problem in denying reality than in admitting the truth. The time has come for the British government to concede that we did not go to war because Saddam was a threat to our national interests. We went to war for reasons of U.S. foreign policy and Republican domestic politics. . . .The blanket hostility to Iran of the Bush administration has undermined the reformers and provided a shot in the arm to the ayatollahs.

British policy on Iran makes sense in securing the advance of the reformers, which is in the interests of ourselves and of the Iranian people. This time we must make clear to the White House that we are not going to subordinate Britain’s interests to a U.S. policy of confrontation. Iran must not become the next Iraq.

Wednesday, June 4, 2003

Quotes from the Leaders of the Free World concerning the “imminent threat” of Iraqi WMDs--as compiled by Democratic Underground member Patriot_Spear in a post titled Dim Son and crew: quotes that will haunt them:

“a vast Iraqi weapons program . . . The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax -- enough doses to kill several million people. He hasn’t accounted for that material. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed it. . . several mobile labs . . . 30,000 munitions . . . 500 tons of chemical weapons . . . 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin.” George Bush, State of the Union, January 28, 2003

“If we know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction -- and we do -- does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him?”

“[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, and VX gas.” George Bush, October 7, 2002

[Saddam Hussein’s] regime has large, unaccounted-for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and he has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons.” Donald Rumsfeld, January 20, 2003

“Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.

“In fact, [the Iraqi regime] can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions, and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents. If we consider just one category of missing weaponry, 6,500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq war. . . Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent. Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly five times the size of Manhattan.” Colin Powell, address to the UN Security Council, February 5, 2003

“[Going to war] is right because weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, are a real threat to the security of the world and this country.” Tony Blair, House of Commons, January 15, 2003

“What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, and that he has been able to extend the range of his ballistic missile programme.

[Saddam Hussein’s] military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them." Tony Blair, Foreword to Iraq “dossier” later proved to be mostly plaigarized work of a grad student in California.

Incredibly, though, in face of rising criticism that stories of Iraqi WMDs were fabricated and exaggerated, today’s Miami Herald reports that U.S. won’t probe secret Iraqi documents:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - More than a decade of suspicions about Iraq’s missile industry and its capabilities for delivering weapons of mass destruction could be investigated quickly now that American forces control the country.

But no U.S. weapons hunters or intelligence officials have visited the heart of Iraq’s missile programs - the state-owned al-Fatah company in Baghdad, which designed all the rockets Saddam Hussein’s troops fired in 1991 and again this year. Not only that, it’s not even on their agenda.

“We have the most sensitive documents here,” said Marouf al-Chalabi, director-general of al-Fatah. “We were sure the Americans would target us but they haven’t even dropped by.”

Looters, however, have ransacked the place. The three-building complex has been stripped of everything from drafting tables to light switches.

Among the few things left behind, though, are what U.N. inspectors long believed existed but never obtained: design plans and test results for every missile system and warhead the Iraqis developed. . . .

And bills of sale with the signatures of Reagan, Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell, Cheney . . .?

Speaking of which, looks like Bush is dealing with very intelligent people in Iran as he spews propaganda over that country’s “misdeeds”: Iran wants US to apologise for helping Osama in the past, the Hindustan Times reports:

Iran on Monday hit back at US allegations that it has failed to crack down on fugitive Al-Qaeda members, calling on Washington to apologise to the world for its own past support of the network.

“The Americans should present a full apology to the international community for the support they gave to Al-Qaeda,” foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.

The official was referring to a period in the 1980s when millions of dollars of covert US aid was channelled -- through the Pakistani secret service -- to Islamist groups battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Much of the cash went to hardline Mujahideen groups, which included a network of Arab volunteers -- the most prominent of whom was Osama bin Laden.

Some of these volunteers later emerged as Al-Qaeda (meaning "The Base" in Arabic), a network that took its name from the safe houses set up for Arab volunteers in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar.

The United States was also largely sympathetic -- and on some occasions supportive -- to the Taliban after the puritanical militia emerged in 1994, and even after the militia gave bin Laden safe haven from 1996. . .

Graphic courtesy of The Radical Fringe.

Monday, June 2, 2003

An excellent summary of the quickly-unfolding expose of WMD falsehoods used by Bush and Blair to prop up their rush to war:

WMD: Controversy over pre-war WMD evidence grows
Tom Regan
Christian Science Monitor, June 1, 2003

Time magazine reports that controversy continues to grow over the use of pre-war intelligence that justified US and British claims that Saddam Hussein’s regime had weapons of mass destruction and was poised to use them at a moment’s notice.

The Sunday Herald of Scotland writes that British Prime Minister Tony Blair disregarded the advice of his own intelligence agencies and chose instead to believe "selective and defective" information from a Pentagon unit set up to validate war against Mr. Hussein by proving that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The Herald says that British intelligence sources told the paper that France and Russia actually had the most accurate intelligence on what was going on inside Iraq and those countries were telling the US and Britain that "there was effectively no real evidence of a WMD program" in Iraq.

On Saturday, the Guardian reported that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and US Secretary of State Colin Powell privately expressed serious doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq’s banned weapons program "at the very time they were publicly trumpeting it to get UN support for a war on Iraq." The comments, which are being called the "Waldorf transcripts" were allegedly made shortly before a crucial UN security council session on February 5. The Age reports that a British Foreign Office spokesman quickly denied the report. Meanwhile the Daily Telegraph reports that the British Foreign Office says it was impossible for Straw to meet with Powell in the few moments before the February 5 United Nations meeting. . . .

But now they are piling lie on top of lie! A story from the March 9, 2003, UK Telegraph, as Blair “staked his political career” on the need for military invasion of Iraq, mentions that “Mr Straw arrived in New York on Thursday morning [and] went straight to the UK mission office and looked through the latest draft prepared by officials. With strokes of his red pen, he introduced some of his own ideas into the language - including the demand that Saddam “yield possession of” weapons rather than disarm. . . . With the final draft in his pocket, Mr Straw went to see Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Mr Powell was happy with the wording. . . .”

And now the CIA plans to release new evidence “of Iraq’s alleged weapons programs as early as next week. . . . in a bid to overcome growing doubts about the quality of the information that led to the war.

“There was a predisposition in this administration to assume the worst about Saddam,” a senior military officer told [Time] magazine.

“They were inclined to see and interpret evidence a particular way to support a very deeply held conviction,” said the recently retired officer, who was deeply involved in the war planning. . . .

Excuse me, but the invasion on the basis of “solid evidence” was several weeks ago. And why show “evidence”? Why not just produce the weapons??

Another by one of my favorites, genius Ward Sutton

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