Read the stories that TV news networks forget to report!
Bush Administration’s Lies About Iraq: Compendium of the relentless lies by the Bush/PNAC administration related to the invasion of Iraq, as sold to America by the corporate media.
"Criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government" Senator Robert Taft 1941
The Most Heinous Crime of the New Millennium - "We have satellite photos that indicate that banned materials have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction facilities. There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." - Colin Powell on February 6, speaking to the UN Security Council, demanding their support for the invasion of Iraq
What is war? - (A must see. Turn speakers on first if you have them.)
Warnings on WMD 'Fabricator' Were Ignored, Ex-CIA Aide Says - In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare. - Drumheller instantly recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar. The CIA officer took his pen, he recounted in an interview, and crossed out the whole paragraph. - A few days later, the lines were back in the speech. Powell stood before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 and said: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails."
Mr. PRESIDENT WE DO NOT BELIEVE YOU - The reality is that George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George Bush, the father, took parts in the destruction of Iraq; they are responsible and that history will condemn them for destroying the cradle of civilization.
White House knew there were no WMD CIA - The CIA had evidence Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction six months before the 2003 US-led invasion but was ignored by a White House intent on ousting Saddam Hussein, a former senior CIA official said, according to CBS. - "The (White House) group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested." - "We said: 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said: 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change'," added Drumheller, whose CIA operation was assigned the task of debriefing the Iraqi official. - "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy," the former CIA agent told CBS.
General Appeals for More Troops Were Denied - Adding to criticism of the Bush administration's prosecution of the war in Iraq, a retired senior general who commanded an infantry division in the conflict said Monday that requests by commanders for more soldiers were repeatedly turned down. - "Many of us routinely asked for more troops," retired Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste said, contradicting statements by President Bush and his senior aides that the administration had given the military all the resources it had asked for. - TVNL Comment: “Adding to the criticism?” How about “exposing the relentless lies of the Bush administration; most notably those of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld!
Audit Finds U.S. Hid Cost of Iraq Projects - The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found. - TVNL COMMENT: The lies never stop and nobody is being held accountable!
WHAT DID APRIL SAY? - The Iraqis did not know at that time that the CIA and Kuwait (in collaboration) had already instituted measures to further undermine the Iraqi economy. - After listening, Glaspie then assured Saddam that the U.S. was on Iraq’s side and that the U.S. was in sync with the desires of Iraq to rebuild. She explained: - I think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border dispute with Kuwait.
Assumptive and Malicious Disinformation - That Saddam was a ruthless ruler is hardly debatable. - He was just as dictatorial as all his neighbors and many others, but perhaps more ruthless in suppressing active opposition. However, he was also a true revolutionary and achieved much that is positive for Iraq, and provided support to revolutionary movements in the Arab world and Africa. He reclaimed his country's resources, embarked on serious development, and became an obstacle to imperial designs on the region. This is the basic reason why he was singled out for demonization by imperialism as well as the oil booty that lay in wait there. And he could not be bought.
No WMDs; They Report it in the UK - The UK may demand an inquiry; what about the US, after all we started all of this. But the Laci Peterson case is today’s orange alert distraction in the US.
What's the real story of Lynch's rescue? - In the fog of a media frenzy, facts hard to discern from fiction- TVNL comments: Whatever the facts are the truth is that the Bush administration used this event for PR proposes
The myth of Private Jessica - IT WAS one of America’s greatest tales of modern war heroism. - An episode that had looked set to be turned into a Hollywood drama was in part nothing but "Hollywood crap", according to one witness.
Private Lynch 'not shot and stabbed' - A US army report into the capture of American soldier Jessica Lynch is expected to reveal the private was not shot or stabbed by Iraqis.- The Correspondent programme said the US military knew there were no Iraqi forces guarding the hospital, and quoted a local doctor saying that the troops used blank rounds to "make a show" of the operation. - Dr Anmar Uday, who worked at the hospital, said: "It was like a Hollywood film. They cried: 'Go, go, go', with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. - "They made a show for the American attack on the hospital - action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan."
Private Jessica returns and she's still a heroine to the folks at home - Her M16 rifle jammed, a US Army report concluded, and she may never have opened fire. The severe injuries she sustained were the result of her Humvee crashing. - Even her rescue by US Special Forces appeared to have been over-hyped - Iraqi forces had already left the hospital where she was being kept.
507th weapon records gone - The U.S. Army on Tuesday revealed that all records and documents about the weapons that jammed during the March 23 ambush that led to the death of nine Fort Bliss soldiers were destroyed in the Iraqi attack and that there is no way to trace the weapons' histories. - The Army, responding to an El Paso Times request under the Freedom of Information Act, said any official information about the weapons used by Fort Bliss' 507th Maintenance Company was lost on a supply truck taken into combat. - An official report on the ambush near Nasiriyah said that several weapons, including M-16s, M249 Squad Automatic Weapons and a .50-caliber machine gun, jammed or failed to operate properly during the firefight. - TVNL Comment: This is the company that Jessica Lynch belonged to.
Jessica Lynch Criticizes U.S. Accounts of Her Ordeal - In her first public statements since her rescue in Iraq, Jessica Lynch criticized the military for exaggerating accounts of her rescue and re-casting her ordeal as a patriotic fable. - Asked by the ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer if the military's portrayal of the rescue bothered her, Ms. Lynch said: "Yeah, it does. It does that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff. Yeah, it's wrong," according to a partial transcript of the interview to be broadcast on Tuesday. - Asked how she felt about the reports of her heroism, Ms. Lynch told Ms. Sawyer, "It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell the story. So I would have been the only one able to say, yeah, I went down shooting. But I didn't."
Doctors Dismiss Lynch Bio's Rape Claims - Iraqi doctors who treated former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch dismissed on Friday claims made in her biography that she was raped by her Iraqi captors. - Although Lynch said she has no memory of the sexual assault, medical records cited in "I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story" indicate that she was raped by her Iraqi captors, according to U.S. media who said they had advance copies. - "When she was brought there she was fighting for her life," said Dr. al-Saeidi at his private clinic. "She was in shock because of the severity of her injury." - He said Lynch was fully clothed with her field jacket buttoned up. "Her clothes were not torn, buttons had not come off, her pants were zipped up," al-Saeidi said. - Al-Saeidi said he found no signs of rape during an examination although he acknowledged he was not looking for signs of sexual assault.
Jessica Lynch's Hero - Lynch was unconscious and appeared to be dead. All four others inside were killed. - TVNL Comment: Lynch did not act as a hero; she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She is lucky to be alive. Very simply Jessica Lynch was a victim of war who was lucky to survive here ordeal.
Tape confirms Iraqis tried to save U.S. POWs - Recording shows doctors working valiantly on Lynch, others - The tape, which was never aired in Iraq but has been obtained by NBC News, provides a new look at the treatment the Iraqis gave Lynch and other members of the Army's 507th Maintenance Co. after they were ambushed March 23. Lynch and four other soldiers were rescued by U.S. special forces on April 1, but 11 of their colleagues died during and after the ambush in Nasiriyeh. - TVNL Comment: They were “rescued” from the people who saved their lives?
Iraq: A necessary war? - Not according to U.N. monitors—or to U.S. intelligence, which has watched the situation even more carefully. TVNL asks: Does a bear, you know what, in the woods?
Robert Fisk: So what was the war for? - ‘Thank you, Mr Bush and Mr Blair, for making our world safer by ridding us of the one tyrant - Saddam Hussein - who never had any connection with 11 September 2001, or with the Riyadh bombings or with the bombings in Casablanca’
Right! It was all wrong - Winston Churchill's famous words a new twist. "Rarely," said Rumsfeld, "had so many been so wrong about so much." And if one shifts the focus of his remarks, he was absolutely right! The whole rationale for the war put forwarded by Rumsfeld, President Bush, Colin Powell and all their cohorts was wrong.
Yo, Ayatollahs! - The delicious part is that the review was suggested by Donald Rumsfeld, a main culprit in twisting the intelligence to justify a strike on Baghdad. It's like O. J. vowing to find the real killer.
At Saddam's Bombed Palace - The Air Force dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on the site because intelligence said there was a bunker complex hidden beneath the buildings. But Madere has yet to find it.
Wolfowitz reveals Iraq PR plan - Wolfowitz says that stressing Iraq's alleged chemical and biological weapons as the main argument for going to war with Iraq was the only one that all arms of the bureaucracy could agree on.
EXPOSED: BUSH AND BLAIR'S WAR OF LIES - Former Labour MP Tony Benn said: "I believe the Prime Minister lied to us and lied to us." MP Jeremy Corbyn said the war was "based on deception". - TVNL comment: No kidding! (Wwe wanted to use another word!)
DUBYA'S PHONY WAR - Bush has ensured his place in the history books - as the first man to wage a war and then dream up the excuse for it once the fighting's over.
Waggy Dog Stories - An administration hypes the threat posed by a foreign power. It talks of links to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism; it warns about a nuclear weapons program. The news media play along, and the country is swept up in war fever. The war drives everything else — including scandals involving administration officials — from the public's consciousness.
Save Our Spooks - "The American people were manipulated," bluntly declares one person from the Defense Intelligence Agency who says he was privy to all the intelligence there on Iraq.
Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims - Jack Straw and his US counterpart, 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 Guardian has learned.
Insiders Say Iraq Intel Deliberately Skewed - A growing number of U.S. national security professionals are accusing the Bush administration of slanting the facts and hijacking the $30 billion intelligence apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq
Powell was under pressure to use shaky intelligence on Iraq - US Secretary of State Colin Powell was under persistent pressure from the Pentagon and White House to include questionable intelligence in his report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction he delivered at the United Nations last February, a US weekly reported.
USA lied about Iraq's weapons - A US-based Norwegian weapons inspector accuses the USA and Secretary of State Colin Powell with providing the United Nations Security Council with incorrect and misleading information about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), newspaper Dagbladet reports.
Actor Sean Penn Bashes Bush, Iraq War in Newspaper - “Our flag has been waving, it seems, in servicing a regime change significantly benefiting U.S. corporations," said Penn, questioning whether rebuilding the nation would benefit the "people of either Iraq or the United States."
Powell Defends Information He Used to Justify Iraq War - TVNL Comments: Powell has lost all credibility. He sold out months ago. He was arguably the only respectable member of the Bush administration until he sat there and knowingly spewed lies to the UN security council. He tried to discredit the UN and Hans Blix for the purpose of selling his boss’s war. Let me say that again; he sold WAR! WAR! WAR! Do people understand the ramifications of war? We are not talking about a video game, we are talking about dead people and lives forever ruined. He is, as Mr. Belafonte said, the house slave. For those of you who remember Dan Akroyd’s Saturday Night Live characters; Powell is the Irwin Maimway of the Bush Administration; selling his Johnny Flame On game to the world. Powell is has turned out to be the surprise disappointment of the new millennium
Public was misled, claim ex-CIA men - A GROUP of former US intelligence officials has written to President Bush claiming that the US Congress and the American public were misled about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war.
Wolfowitz Confesses the Lies - The US Administration has probably arrived at an opinion that it's time to open up the secret of the Iraqi war reasons
Bush: 'We Found' Banned Weapons - TVNL comments: Is this embarrassing or what? I was embarrassed for the nation when he was selected President; but this is ridiculous! OK, so American’s are fairly stupid; the polls show that, but how stupid does he think the rest of the world is?
The lies that led us into war - Glen Rangwala shows how the UK and the US manipulated UN reports - and conjured an anthrax dump from thin air
Truth and consequences - New questions about U.S. intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass terror - ‘Vice President Cheney's office played a major role in the secret debates and pressed for the toughest critique of Saddam's regime, administration officials say.’ - ‘ The first draft of Powell's speech was written by Cheney's staff and the National Security Council.’ - "It was over the top and ran the gamut from al Qaeda to human rights to weapons of mass destruction," says a senior official. "They were unsubstantiated assertions”. - TVNL translates” “unsubstantiated assertions” = LIES!
Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits - Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials.
Iraq's arms: Hill raises new doubts - The Defence Minister, Robert Hill, has conceded that flawed intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons capability may have influenced Australia's decision to join the war against Iraq and has backed a thorough and open review of the information.
Weapons of Mass Disappearance - The war in Iraq was based largely on intelligence about banned arms that still haven't been found. Was America's spy craft wrong — or manipulated?
Bush special office 'justified war' - The office of special plans was created by the deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, late last year in what was seen as an effort to justify the war.
Standard Operating Procedure - Suggestions that the public was manipulated into supporting an Iraq war gain credibility from the fact that misrepresentation and deception are standard operating procedure for this administration, which — to an extent never before seen in U.S. history — systematically and brazenly distorts the facts.
Credibility Gap, Anyone? - TVNL asks: While people question if there is a credibility gap, TVNL questions is there or has there ever been any credibility at all?
'Dumb' bombs used to topple Saddam - A third of the bombs dropped on Iraq were old-style "dumb weapons" - despite suggestions from the Pentagon that 90 per cent of munitions used would be precision-guided.
Lingering doubts about US intelligence on Iraq: reports
U.S. Won't Probe Secret Iraqi Documents - "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."
How Their Big Lie Came to Be - Bush and his band of hawks seem to believe the ends justify the means. Thus, the terror of 9/11 and the boogeyman of Iraq's supposed WMD stash became the key to pushing an ambitious plan to redraw the map of the Middle East.
Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil - Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.
There must be weapons of mass destruction in here somewhere - HELEN THOMAS - Bush apparently based his war decisions on the intelligence advice of his close coterie of conservative aides who had been itching to invade Iraq since they came into office.
Republican leader berates calls for WMD investigation as political ploy - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said the calls for congressional hearings were being made by "detractors who want to undermine the successful war." - TVNL comment: Spending years investigating and impeaching President Clinton over a personal domestic issue not related to the presidency was OK with Republicans. This shows how insane these people are! Unreal. This is why the rest of the world, made up of people who are more educated than Americans, laugh at us and now hate us.
September intelligence didn't find Iraq WMD - The time frame is notable because it coincided with Bush administration efforts to mount a public case for the urgency of disarming Iraq, by force if necessary. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others argued that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical, biological and other weapons and was hiding them.
Pentagon in 2002 Found `No Reliable' Iraq Arms Data (Update3) - A U.S. Defense Department report in September 2002 found ``no reliable information'' proving that Iraq had chemical weapons, even as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was saying the country had amassed stockpiles of the banned arms.
Admit your lies: Former UN inspector tells Bush, Blair - The United States and Britain should admit they lied when claiming that the ousted Baghdad regime had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), Scott Ritter, a former UN senior weapons inspector in Iraq, said in an interview published in Geneva
Bush Rides Into Credibility Gulch - Did the secret services on both sides of the pond hype, “sex up” or spin intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to please their hawkish masters and justify a war? Did Teams Blair and Bush cook the books? - CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer says Congress has three choices: It can avoid the job altogether, hold circus hearings or do the job right. TVNL asks: Will CBS talk about this on TV?
Intelligence Historian Says CIA 'Buckled' on Iraq - The CIA bowed to Bush administration pressure to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs ahead of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, a leading national security historian concluded in a detailed study of the spy agency's public pronouncements. - "What is clear from intelligence reporting is that until about 1998 the CIA was fairly comfortable with its assessments on Iraq," John Prados wrote in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. - "But from that time on the agency gradually buckled under the weight of pressure to adopt alarmist views," he said. "After mid-2001, the rush to judgment on Iraq became a stampede."
Ex-Official: Evidence Distorted for WarThe Bush administration distorted intelligence and presented conjecture as evidence to justify a U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a retired intelligence official who served during the months before the war. - "What disturbs me deeply is what I think are the disingenuous statements made from the very top about what the intelligence did say," said Greg Thielmann, who retired last September. "The area of distortion was greatest in the nuclear field."
Blow to Blair over 'mobile labs' - Saddam's trucks were for balloons, not germs - Instead The Observer has established that it is increasingly likely that the units were designed to be used for hydrogen production to fill artillery balloons, part of a system originally sold to Saddam by Britain in 1987. - TVNL asks: What about a Blow to Bush? Why just Blair?
Kristol: Bush Made Misstatements on Iraq WMDs - In comments sure to be seized upon by Bush administration critics at home and abroad, one of the leading proponents of the war in Iraq said Sunday that President Bush may have misstated the case that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. attacked. - TVNL asks: What the hell is does “misstated” mean? Can’t anyone just say the word “lie?”
Bush Adamant Iraq Had Banned Weapons 'Program' - "Iraq had a weapons program," Bush told reporters after a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House. "Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out they did have a weapons program." - But he stopped short of repeating previous vows that the weapons themselves would be found. - TVNL comment: He keeps lying and nobody says a thing. Today I watched a reporter ask him if the US credibility was at steak if no weapons were found Part of Bush’s response was a comment about how the world is safer now that we did this. The reported should have asked “How exactly is the world safer”; but he did not. Everyone is terrified to ask this administration anything.
Who's Accountable? - Yet dishonest salesmanship has been the hallmark of the Bush administration's approach to domestic policy. And it has become increasingly clear that the selling of the war with Iraq was no different.
Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction: - Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense? - By JOHN W. DEAN - President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake - acts of war against another nation.
Blix: I was smeared by the Pentagon - Hans Blix, the UN chief weapons inspector, lashed out last night at the "bastards" who have tried to undermine him throughout the three years he has held his high-profile post.
Senate closed hearings to probe U.S. intelligence on Iraq - TVNL Comment: Once again the Bush/PNAC/GOP slam the door shut and operate in private. Have you ever seen this many secrets in one government? Maybe the qustion should be have we ever had a government with so much to hide?
GOP Rejects Formal Probe of Iraq Intel - Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts said some of the Democratic criticism of the handling of the intelligence has "been simply politics and for political gain." - TVNL points out that if they were not guilty of anything there would be nothing to gain politically by the Dems. This is an outright admission of guilt.
Analyst says intel was ignored - A senior CIA analyst says evidence that didn't support the administration's agenda was discarded.
Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds - An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist. - TVNL comment: The British should know, they sold them to Iraq!
White House in Denial - TVNL comment: The White House is lying! Someone please just say it already!
A mission in Iraq built on a lie - The spurious justification constitutes, in my opinion, one of the greatest foreign policy scandals involving Western governments since 1945. - TVNL comment: Finally, someone used the ‘L’ word!
Bush again on defensive over Iraq - He said the most important fact was that “the people of Iraq are free.” - TVNL comment: He should have added: “Except for the 10s of thousands that we killed and maimed! Oh yeah, and except for the women of Iraq who will have to wear veils and lose all the equal rights that they had under Saddam! Oh yea, the dead American soldiers aren’t so free either! The rest are free to do as we say, and to get cancer from the tons of depleted uranium that we left there! Oh yeah, I almost forgot, the treasures of Iraq are frr to looters! Hey, the oil is free; for us that is! That’s what I meant to say; the oil of Iraq is free! That’s it!”
Former CIA chief blasts Bush - A FORMER CIA director accused the administration of President George W Bush of "overstretching the facts" about Baghdad's banned weapons in order to justify a war on Iraq.
Meacher attacks US motives in Iraq - Sacked environment minister Michael Meacher has joined the growing chorus of scepticism over Saddam Hussein's weapons programme, saying that the US president, George Bush, invaded Iraq because the US wanted a "political and military platform in the Middle East".
The Case of the Missing WMDs - The proposition that Saddam Hussein was willing to hand over WMD to terrorists appears to have been based on sheer speculation, and implausible speculation at that. Despite over 20 years of supporting terror against Israel, Hussein never turned over chemical or biological weapons to Palestinian terror groups, reasoning, correctly, that such action would provoke massive retaliation. Still less was he likely to hand over such weapons to Al Qaeda, a group that has long opposed his "socialist infidel" rule and could not trust to keep the deal secret. - TVNL comment: This is from the Cato Institute; a conservitive think tank.
Bush speech overstated key Iraq report - In a nationally televised address last October in which he sought to rally congressional support for a resolution authorizing war against Iraq, President Bush declared that the government of Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat to the United States by outlining what he said was evidence pointing to its ongoing ties with al Qaeda.- TVNL comment: He knew that he wa lying!
Denial and Deception - There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential people are in denial, unwilling to admit the obvious.
Embarrassed CIA Removes WMD Report - The CIA report that had been used by U.S. Secretary Powell, during his speech to the UN as evidence of Iraq's hidden WMD capacity has been removed from the CIA's web site.
CIA and DOD Attempted To Plant WMD In Iraq - A DOD whistleblower detail an attempt by a covert U.S. team to plant weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The team was later killed by friendly fire due to CIA incompetence.
US tried to plant WMDs, failed: whistleblower - According to a stunning report posted by a retired Navy Lt Commander and 28-year veteran of the Defense Department (DoD), the Bush administration’s assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plan to “plant” WMDs inside the country. Nelda Rogers, the Pentagon whistleblower, claims the plan failed when the secret mission was mistakenly taken out by “friendly fire”, the Environmentalists Against War report.
Expert Said to Tell Legislators He Was Pressed to Distort Some Evidence - A top State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons told Congressional committees in closed-door hearings last week that he had been pressed to tailor his analysis on Iraq and other matters to conform with the Bush administration's views - TVNL question: Why isn’t this dominating the news broadcasts?
Weapons inspector: «Powell bluffed the UN» - Secretary of State Colin Powell was bluffing the UN when claiming that Iraq had a robust program of weapons of mass destruction, according to the Norwegian weapons inspector Jørn Siljeholm.
Missiles: Return to Sender - A cache of missiles that were made in the United States found in Iraq - Though details of the discovery are classified, sources in Washington say that military and intelligence agencies launched an urgent investigation to find out how the weapons got to Iraq and whether American firms might have violated U.N. embargoes and U.S. laws. - TVNL reminds you: Of the joke; how does Bush/PNAC know Iraq has WMDs? Because they sold them to Iraq!
Who Lost the WMD? - As the weapons hunt intensifies, so does the finger pointing. A preview of the coming battle - Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, "Are you in charge of finding WMD?" - What Was Cheney's Role? - s Powell Trying To Have It Both Ways? - Will Tenet Be Left Holding the Bag?
Scandal lurks in shadow of Iraq evidence - It's getting harder to ignore. More and more evidence is emerging to suggest that U.S. intelligence was manipulated to justify going to war with Iraq.
London and Washington ignored Iraq weapons counter-evidence: press - London and Washington deliberately overlooked a pre-war report discrediting claims that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from Niger, the Independent on Sunday newspaper quoted a former US ambassador and CIA investigator as saying.
$140 million of frozen Iraqi assets 'gifted' to US - Banks in the Cayman Islands have transferred $140 million in frozen Iraqi assets to the US Federal Reserve, the British territory's government said. - TVNL Emglish lesson: New definition: “gifted” = “stolen and given to someone other than it’s rightful owner”.
Iraqi doubts about liberators - President George W Bush's declaration that the United States is preparing for a "massive and long-term undertaking" in Iraq will have confirmed the fears of many in Baghdad - that the US is establishing itself as a force for occupation, not liberation.
Iraq has no hidden weapons: top scientist - A senior Iraqi scientist involved in the country's original program of weapons of mass destruction says he is not aware of any hidden stockpiles or concealed research. - TVNL comment: We only listen to the scientists who tell us that there are WMDs. You know which ones I am talking about; the ones who have not been to Iraq in 40 years!
Bush 'warned over uranium claim' - The CIA warned the US Government that claims about Iraq's nuclear ambitions were not true months before President Bush used them to make his case for war, the BBC has learned. - TVNL translation: Bush Lied.
A Diplomat's Undiplomatic Truth: They Lied - They may have finally found the smoking gun that nails the culprit responsible for the Iraq war. Unfortunately, the incriminating evidence wasn't left in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces but rather in Vice President Dick Cheney's office. - What is startling in Wilson's account, however, is that the CIA, the State Department, the National Security Council and the vice president's office were all informed that the Niger-Iraq connection was phony. No one in the chain of command disputed that this "evidence" of Iraq's revised nuclear weapons program was a hoax. - Yet, nearly a year after Wilson reported back the facts to Cheney and the U.S. security apparatus, Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, invoked the fraudulent Iraq-Africa uranium connection as a major justification for rushing the nation to war: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa." What the president did not say was that the British were relying on their intelligence white paper, which was based on the same false information that Wilson and the U.S. ambassador to Niger had already debunked. "That information was erroneous, and they knew about it well ahead of both the publication of the British white paper and the president's State of the Union address," Wilson said
Iraq war not about banned weapons: Rumsfeld - Rumsfeld said the U.S. declared war because it saw existing evidence of Iraqi arms programs in "a dramatic new light," through the prism of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. - TVNL comment: Is this a joke? Are we crazy or did Rumsfeld just admit that Bush & PNAC lied when they told us why we broke international law and invaded a sovereign nation?
Iraq weapons 'unlikely to be found' - Senior figures inside Whitehall no longer believe weapons of mass destruction are likely to turn up in Iraq, the BBC has learned. - BBC political editor Andrew Marr says "very senior sources" have virtually ruled out the possibility of finding weapons in Iraq. - TVNL comment: Wow! I wonder if they are still searching for the tooth fairy? Well, they are not. Why? Becuase they know that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist either!!!
White House 'lied about Saddam threat' - A former US intelligence official who served under the Bush administration in the build-up to the Iraq war accused the White House yesterday of lying about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. - TVNL comment: FINALLY! SOMONE USED THE RIGHT WORD! “LIED”!
Two U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq - Two U.S. soldiers have been killed in separate attacks in Iraq as their convoys came under fire
Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False - Senior administration officials tell CBS News the President’s mistaken claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was included in his State of the Union address -- despite objections from the CIA. - Before the speech was delivered, the portions dealing with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were checked with the CIA for accuracy, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin. - CIA officials warned members of the President’s National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa. - But the bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be true. - TVNL comment: He lied!
Revealed: first dossier also dodgy - Tony Blair's first Iraq weapons dossier used material culled from the internet to buttress the Government's case for war - exactly as the now-discredited second, so-called dodgy dossier did. - The document, released last September, shows at least six separate items on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction were lifted from reports up to 21 months old. The revelation will be acutely embarrassing to the Prime Minister who, only this week, defended the first dossier robustly, and insisted it supported the need for action.
20 Lies About the War - Falsehoods ranging from exaggeration to plain untruth were used to make the case for war. More lies are being used in the aftermath.
Lack of planning contributed to chaos in Iraq - he small circle of senior civilians in the Defense Department who dominated planning for postwar Iraq failed to prepare for the setbacks that have erupted over the past two months.
President Caught In Another Lie. - "And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power" - TVNL comment: I saw him say this live on TV and I was stunned. The press did not say one word!
Pattern of Corruption - The case of the bogus uranium purchases wasn't an isolated instance. It was part of a broad pattern of politicized, corrupted intelligence. - Literally before the dust had settled, Bush administration officials began trying to use 9/11 to justify an attack on Iraq. Gen. Wesley Clark says that he received calls on Sept. 11 from "people around the White House" urging him to link that assault to Saddam Hussein. His account seems to back up a CBS.com report last September, headlined "Plans for Iraq Attack Began on 9/11," which quoted notes taken by aides to Donald Rumsfeld on the day of the attack: "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
Core of weapons case crumbling - Of the nine main conclusions in the British government document "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction", not one has been shown to be conclusively true.
Rumsfeld's personal spy ring - The defense secretary couldn't count on the CIA or the State Department to provide a pretext for war in Iraq. So he created a new agency that would tell him what he wanted to hear.
America wanted war - Dossiers and proof of WMD are a sideshow - Blair backed Bush for one simple reason - Ladies and gentlemen, it looks as if we have a smoking gun.
The spies who pushed for war - Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force
U.S. ignored WMD message, analyst says - A conference of top-level military analysts was told that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — a message that later fell on deaf ears in the U.S. capital, analysts say. - Former Canadian military officer-turned-analyst Sunil Ram remembers the January, 2001, conference Understanding the Lessons of Nuclear Inspections and Monitoring in Iraq: A Ten-Year Review. What he heard at the meeting he has repeated for months, he says, getting little attention from the mainstream media: that U.S. President George W. Bush had no grounds to base the invasion of Iraq on the disarmament issue.
White House Didn't Gain CIA Nod for Claim On Iraqi Strikes - Gist Was Hussein Could Launch in 45 Minutes - The White House, in the run-up to war in Iraq, did not seek CIA approval before charging that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes, administration officials now say. - For example, the same Rose Garden speech and Sept. 28 radio address that mentioned the 45-minute accusation also included blunt assertions by Bush that "there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq." This claim was highly disputed among intelligence experts; a group called Ansar al-Islam in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, who could have been in Iraq, were both believed to have al Qaeda contacts but were not themselves part of al Qaeda.
Ex-Spies: CIA Workers Outraged - "Never before in my 40 years of experience in this town has intelligence been used in so cynical and so orchestrated a way." - Retired spy Raymond McGovern
Office of Special Plans Behind Phony 'Intelligence' - When George Tenet, the director of the CIA, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week about dubious intelligence data on the Iraqi threat that made it into President Bush’s State of the Union address in January, he said an ad-hoc committee called the Office of Special Plans, set up Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and other high-profile hawks rewrote the intelligence information on Iraq that the CIA gathered and gave it to White House officials to help Bush build a case for war, according to three Senators on the intelligence committee.
Something to Hide? - Saadi (the seven of diamonds in the coalition's deck of cards) surrendered voluntarily to U.S. authorities in Baghdad on April 12. He was the first senior Iraqi official to do so. Because he had never been a member of the Baath Party, U.S. officials were hopeful that he would provide honest information. - - What's bothersome about these cases is that they reinforce the impression that the Bush administration has something to hide. Why not disclose the testimony of people the coalition worked so hard to catch?
Oct. Report Said Defeated Hussein Would Be Threat - Last fall, the administration repeatedly warned in public of the danger that an unprovoked Iraqi President Saddam Hussein might give chemical or biological weapons to terrorists. - But declassified portions of a still-secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released Friday by the White House show that at the time of the president's speech the U.S. intelligence community judged that possibility to be unlikely. In fact, the NIE, which began circulating Oct. 2, shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the United States. - TVNL comment: So tell us how the administration did not lie here. Tell us how the media did not lie here. This news was public last year yet the press never broguth it up.
Who's Unpatriotic Now? - Some nonrevisionist history: On Oct. 8, 2002, Knight Ridder newspapers reported on intelligence officials who "charge that the administration squelches dissenting views, and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary." One official accused the administration of pressuring analysts to "cook the intelligence books"; none of the dozen other officials the reporters spoke to disagreed.
CIA probe finds secret Pentagon group manipulated intelligence on Iraqi threat - A half-dozen former CIA agents investigating prewar intelligence have found that a secret Pentagon committee, set up by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2001, manipulated reams of intelligence information prepared by the spy agency on the so-called Iraqi threat and then delivered it to top White House officials who used it to win support for a war in Iraq.
Senators Assail Bush Aides for Lack of Data on Iraq's Future - Senators from both parties assailed two senior Bush administration officials today for failing to give even rough projections on the length, cost and troop levels for the postwar effort in Iraq.
Bush's Vietnam-sized credibility gap - By HELEN THOMAS - President Bush has a huge credibility gap stemming from his exaggerated rhetoric that led the United States to attack Iraq. - The Bush hype recalls the Lyndon B. Johnson era when LBJ's misleading statements and deceptions led us deeper into the disastrous Vietnam War.
Senators Slam Shifting Iraq War Justification - During a stormy three-hour hearing, Republican and Democratic senators said the administration's prewar focus on Iraq's alleged WMDs had now been replaced by reports on Saddam's human rights violations and arguments by grilled Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz that Iraq has become the "central battle in the war on terror,"
Dying in Iraq - Why are these kids dying? - The United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. But instead of using all the means available to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, the Bush administration became obsessed with the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the takeover of Iraq. - More on the Iraq/Al Quaeda links here.
Scientists deny Iraqi arms program - Interrogations net no evidence on WMD - Despite vigorous efforts, the U.S. government has been unsuccessful so far in finding key senior Iraqi scientists to support its prewar claims that former president Saddam Hussein was pursuing an aggressive program to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, according to senior administration officials and members of Congress who have been briefed recently on the subject.
US killed Uday, Qusay to cover up past dealings - Troops could have captured Saddam’s sons alive, says Syrian official - BEIRUT: A Syrian official said the US could have captured Saddam Hussein’s sons alive and hinted that killing the pair in a US military raid in Iraq may have been to cover up past American political dealings with the defunct regime.
US bartering arms for soldiers for Iraq - "When they were seeking UN support for a war on Iraq, they were twisting arms," one Asian diplomat said. "Now they are offering carrots in exchange for our troops." - TVNL comment: they keep takling about this multi-national coalition yet the US is paying the way for the other troops. In essense we are hiring help, we are not getting support. Now we are offering arms. This too is hiring help yet the White House and the media will describe this as support or as a growing coalition. Lies. Simple lies.
Aide: Saddam did get rid of Iraq WMD - BAGHDAD, Iraq - A close aide to Saddam Hussein says the Iraqi dictator did in fact get rid of his weapons of mass destruction but deliberately kept the world guessing about it in an effort to divide the international community and stave off a U.S. invasion.
Blair and Bush join forces to spin away weapons issue - The British and US governments are drawing up a controversial new strategy to convince the public that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction - an admission that they have so far failed to make a convincing case. - The "big impact" plan is designed to overwhelm and silence critics who have sought to put pressure on Tony Blair and George Bush. At the same time both men are working to lower the burden of proof from finding weapons to finding evidence that there were programmes to develop them, even if they lay dormant since the 1980s.- TVNL comment: Outrageous!!!
Bush's Top WMD Inspector David Kay is NOT a scientist of any kind - I was alerted to the error -and the illusion of Kay's competence- by Dr. Prather himself, who wrote a note to inform me that Kay was no scientist - his pHD is is foreign affairs or some other nonscientific discipline. He's about as qualified to search for nukes as Ronald McDonald. Funny, when you search for David Kay's biographical info via google.com, you come up empty handed. Now I see why. Yet this is the man to whom Bush has entrusted one of the most scientifically rigorous tasks possible (the make or break provision of "proof" of WMD)?
U.S. wants Saddam, but dead - not alive - If put on public trial, Saddam would have a field day revealing the embarrassing alliance between his brutal regime and Washington: - The CIA's role in bringing the Ba'ath Party to power in a 1958 coup, opening the way for Saddam to take control. - U.S., Israeli, and Iranian destabilization of Iraq during the 1970s by fueling Kurdish rebellion. - Washington's egging on the aggressive shah of Iran in the Shatt al-Arab waterway dispute, a primary cause of the Iran-Iraq War. - The U.S. secretly urging Iraq to invade Iran in 1980 to overthrow that nation's revolutionary Islamic government.- Covert supply of Saddam's war machine by the U.S. and Britain during the eight-year Iran-Iraq conflict, plus biological warfare programs and germ feeder stocks, poison gas manufacturing plants and raw materials. - Billions in aid, routed through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Italy's Banco del Lavoro and the shadowy BCCI. Heavy artillery, munitions, spare parts, trucks, field hospitals and electronics. - Equally important, the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency and CIA operated offices in Baghdad that provided Iraq with satellite intelligence data on Iranian troop deployments that proved decisive in the war's titanic battles at Basra, Majnoon and Faw. - The murky role played by Washington just before Iraq's 1991 invasion of Kuwait. The U.S. ambassador told Saddam "The U.S. takes no position in Arab border disputes." Was this a trap to lure Saddam to invade Kuwait, then crush his army, or simple diplomatic bungling? Saddam could supply the awkward answers.
Someone owes Hans Blix a big apology! - The US has officially been in Iraq for 115 days. - UN weapons inspectors were in Iraq for 111 days, ending March 18, 2003 when the Bush Administration said, "They've had enough time."
Immunity for Iraqi Oil Dealings Raises Alarm - An executive order signed by President Bush more than two months ago is raising concerns that U.S. oil companies may have been handed blanket immunity from lawsuits and criminal prosecution in connection with the sale of Iraqi oil. - The Bush administration said Wednesday that the immunity wouldn't be nearly so broad. - But lawyers for various advocacy organizations said the two-page executive order seemed to completely shield oil companies from liability — even if it could be proved that they had committed human rights violations, bribed officials or caused great environmental damage in the course of their Iraqi-related business.
As ordered, it's about oil - President Bush has signed a slew of executive orders that have gone unreported for weeks or months -- most notably, changes to environmental regulations and restricted access to former presidential papers and Freedom of Information Act information. - Now, a potentially explosive executive order has just been discovered by SEEN, the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network. Signed on May 22, it appears to give U.S. oil companies in Iraq blanket immunity from lawsuits and criminal prosecution. - Here's what happened:
Iraq war's 20,000 wounded civilians ignord - Around 20,000 civilians were wounded in the Iraq war and the U.S.-British occupiers are ignoring their suffering, a research group said on Thursday in what it termed the first study of the conflict's casualty toll. - "The maimed civilians of Iraq have been brushed under the carpet," the Iraq Body Count (IBC) said.
Blix Denounces U.S.-Led War In Iraq - The former head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, who retired last month, said the war violated international law and questioned the Bush administration's motives for waging war. -Speaking on Swedish Radio, Blix questioned whether Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat to his neighbors or to the United States. And, Blix said, the Bush administration had other reasons to invade besides finding and destroying weapons of mass destruction it said were in Iraq.
Insider fires a broadside at Rumsfeld's office - Kwiatkowski's comments echo the worst fears of some lawmakers, who have begun looking into the OSP's role in the administration's mistaken assumptions in Iraq. Some are even comparing it to the off-the-books operation run from the National Security Council (NSC) during the Ronald Reagan administration that later resulted in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Iraqi Exiles Say They're Excluded From Rebuilding - A member of the new development panel has quit, and others may follow. They say the U.S. is reluctant to share policymaking duties. - TVNL Comment: We liberated them from a dictator so that the US can be the new dictator.
Senator: Iraq Assumptions ‘Flawed’ - “In other words, the basic assumptions, whoever was making them, at State, at NSC, at Defense, simply were inadequate to begin with.” NSC is the National Security Council.
Wolfowitz Admits Iraq War Planned Two Days After 9-11 - While the hawks in the Bush administration attempt to justify the logic behind a pre-emptive strike against Iraq now that it's become clear the country's alleged weapons of mass destruction are nowhere to be found, the true reasons for going to war are finally coming to light. - On September13, 2001, during a meeting at Camp David with President Bush, Rumsfeld, and others in the Bush administration, Wolfowitz said he discussed with President Bush the prospects of launching an attack against Iraq, for no apparent reason other than a "gut feeling" Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, and there was a debate "about what place if any Iraq should have in a counter-terrorist strategy."
Family of Tariq Aziz Says U.S. Reneged on Surrender Agreement - Months after Tariq Aziz, the urbane public face of Saddam Hussein's regime, turned himself in to U.S. forces, his family has accused American officials of reneging on the surrender agreement of the former Iraqi deputy prime minister.
Lessons in how to lie about Iraq - The problem is not propaganda but the relentless control of the kind of things we think about - In the West the calculated manipulation of public opinion to serve political and ideological interests is much more covert and therefore much more effective.
Australia Accused of Distorting Iraq Data - Andrew Wilkie, who quit as a senior intelligence analyst in March to protest the Australian government's support for war in Iraq, told lawmakers that information passed to the government had been distorted for political purposes. - "Sometimes the exaggeration was so great, it was clear dishonesty," he told the inquiry.
CIA Accused Of Bank Heist - Shortly before U.S. forces began streaming across the Iraqi border, commencing Persian Gulf War II, the CIA and the Department of Defense, with a little help from Israel and some Europeans, pulled off a massive bank heist in Iraq to the tune of several billion dollars.
It's official - Saddam was not an imminent threat - Hutton's remit was narrow - yet he has exposed the truth about the Iraq war - Many of us have said that, deliberately or otherwise, Alastair Campbell's decision to go to war with the BBC had the potential to distract attention from the most important questions arising from the Iraq crisis - whether the nation was deceived on the road to war, and where responsibility lies for the continuing chaos and loss of life in Iraq.
Australian case for Iraq war was 'fabricated' - The Australian government "skewed, misrepresented, used selectively and fabricated" the intelligence used to justify its decision to send troops to Iraq, a parliamentary inquiry in Canberra was told yesterday. - TVNL Comment: Wow, I guess the US and Austrailia are true kindred spirits!
Former UN chief: bomb was payback for collusion with US - THE reason the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad were bombed is because the UN has been taken over by the US and turned into a “dark joke” and a “malignant force”, according to one of the UN’s most internationally respected former leaders.
Lynchpin of Deceit: The Misrepresentations of Hussein Kamel’s Testimony - “This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and is capable of killing millions.” George W. Bush, 10/02 - "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we've gotten this from firsthand testimony from defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law."
Blix felt US intimidating him before Iraq war - Former chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix felt Washington was intimidating him to produce reports that would justify military action in the run-up to the Iraq war, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said
Spy Agencies Warned of Iraq Resistance - U.S. intelligence agencies warned Bush administration policymakers before the war in Iraq that there would be significant armed opposition to a U.S.-led occupation, according to administration and congressional sources familiar with the reports.
Britain and US will back down over WMDs - Britain and the US have combined to come up with entirely new explanations of why they went to war in Iraq as inspectors on the ground prepare to report that there are no weapons of mass destruction there.
Wolfowitz Shifts Rationales on Iraq War - With Weapons Unfound, Talk of Threat Gives Way to Rhetoric on Hussein, Democracy - As the Bush administration's leading hawk on Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz has been a tireless proponent of the argument that Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction was a compelling enough reason for the United States to resort to war. - These days, his emphasis is different. In testimony to congressional committees and interviews with reporters, Wolfowitz prefers to stress the evil, dictatorial nature of former president Saddam Hussein's defunct government and the opportunity to turn Iraq into a beacon of hope for the rest of the Middle East.
Why Bush escaped an Iraq row - Why hasn't George Bush encountered the same storm of criticism in the US over his intelligence claims on Iraq as Tony Blair has received in the UK? - In the end, George Bush did not need the intelligence to make his case, in the same way that Tony Blair did. - After going through the trauma of 11 September, Mr Bush knew that if he told the American people he needed to attack Iraq they would support him.
Seeking honesty in U.S. policy - EX-U.S. DIPLOMAT SAYS WHITE HOUSE IS IN FULL RETREAT FROM IRAQ REALITY - But before we can hope to win back international trust or start down a truly new path in Iraq, the administration has to start playing it straight, with the American people and with the world. Recent administration statements, including the president's speech, suggest that it still prefers to live in a fantasy world.
Iraqi fighters reject label of terrorist - "We are Islamist in that we are protecting our religion. We are nationalist in that we are protecting our country," Abu Mohammed said. "We don't care about our lives. We care about the lives of our fellow Iraqis." - TVNL Comment: The people who are called terrorists in Iraq are simply soldiers who are still at ware and they are fighting with the only weapons they have. They are “resistance fighters”. not terrorists!
The case for going to war against Iraq - The case for going to war against Iraq was a fraud ''made up in Texas'' to give Republicans a political boost, Sen. Edward Kennedy said Thursday. - In an interview with The Associated Press, Kennedy also said the Bush administration has failed to account for nearly half of the $4 billion the war is costing each month. He said he believes much of the unaccounted-for money is being used to bribe foreign leaders to send in troops.
Kennedy stands by criticism of Bush on Iraq - Under fire from Republicans on Friday, Sen. Edward Kennedy defended his harsh criticism of President Bush's policy on Iraq, in which he charged that the threat from Saddam Hussein was exaggerated by the administration for political purposes. - "There was no imminent threat," Kennedy told the AP. "This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud."
Blix adds to US and UK worries - The former head of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, Hans Blix, has accused the American and British Governments of using spin and hype in making the case for war.
The stories get stranger by the day - The truths about Iraq that President Bush isn't telling - Bush made headlines Thursday when he said something that was known to everyone--well, everyone except 69 percent of the American people. "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with Sept. 11," he informed reporters. - But the real scandal is not that the president contrived to frame a poor, innocent dictator. It's that he depicted the invasion as a vital part of the war on terror and continues to do so--even as the evidence accumulates that, from the standpoint of the war on terror, it was about the worst thing we could have done. - Before March 19, when the war began, Iraq offered little hospitality to anti-American terrorists and little threat to American security. Today, it's a vast arena for any fanatics who are willing to risk their lives to spill American blood, some of whom are succeeding. But take it from the administration, that's a good thing.
AP Obtains Details on Iraq Reconstruction - The war and subsequent looting destroyed over 165 firehouses throughout the country. - The 53 pages of justifications flesh out the size of the task of rebuilding the country, almost literally brick by brick. It also paints a painstaking picture of the damage Iraq has suffered.
Bush’s U.N. fiasco - President’s message: If you don’t want to help us, you’re on the side of the terrorists - Has an American president ever delivered such a bafflingly impertinent speech before the General Assembly as the one George W. Bush gave this morning? Here were the world’s foreign ministers and heads of state, anxiously awaiting some sign of an American concession to realism — even the sketchiest outline of a plan to share not just the burden but the power of postwar occupation in Iraq. And Bush gave them nothing, in some ways less than nothing.
House Probers Conclude Iraq War Data Was Weak - Leaders of the House intelligence committee have criticized the U.S. intelligence community for using largely outdated, "circumstantial" and "fragmentary" information with "too many uncertainties" to conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda.
CIA rejects Iraq failings charge - The CIA has been accused of using intelligence from 1998 - The CIA has rejected charges that there were serious failings in its intelligence-gathering before the war in Iraq. - The CIA said the intelligence committee had not yet taken the time to evaluate fully how its assessment was made.
Bush's Marshall Plan Comparison to Iraq Questioned - "If they want to give money to Iraq to make them a nice democracy, that's OK with me. But we ought not to fool ourselves that we're doing a Marshall Plan," said Larry Bland, a leading authority on the Marshall Plan and editor of the Marshall Papers at the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington, Virginia. - "The economic elite isn't kidded. So it's political spin rather than reality. We're not going to do a Marshall Plan for them. We're going to do a big, expensive influx of money," Bland added.
Is Bush's War in Iraq A "Brain Fart"? - Zinni raised the issue that Bush might have purposefully misled the public and not shared with it the true reason for the war: "If there's a strategic decision for taking down Iraq, if it's the so-called neoconservative idea that taking apart Iraq and creating a model democracy, or whatever it is, will change the equation in the Middle East, then make the [public] case based on that strategic decision....I think it's a flawed--like the domino theory--it's a flawed strategic thought or concept....But if that's the reason for going in, that's the case the American people ought to hear. They ought to make their judgment and determine their support based on what the motivation is for the attack."
PRESIDENT BUSH ACCUSED BY THE PRESS OF DISTORTING DATA TO SUPPORT THE IRAQ WAR. - "According to the Press, in the months preceding the decision to go to war with Iraq, the Bush administration frequently exaggerated or distorted US Intelligence analysis in its campaign to cast Iraq as an evil and outlaw state according to federal documents and officials who have reviewed the intelligence." - BUT THIS IS NOT PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH 2003, THIS WAS PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH SENIOR 1991
Iraqi defectors' weapons claims were 'false' - US military intelligence has concluded that almost all the claims made by Iraqi defectors about Saddam Hussein's alleged secret weapons were either useless or false, it was reported yesterday - Much of the US and British case against Saddam was built on the testimony of defectors, and in Washingtonat least, most of those defectors were shepherded out of Iraq by the INC.
US paid $1m for 'useless intelligence' from Chalabi - Information from Iraqi defectors made available by Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress before the US invasion was of little or no use, a Pentagon intelligence review shows. - The Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) said defectors introduced to US intelligence agents by the organisation invented or exaggerated their claims to have personal knowledge of the regime and its alleged weapons of mass destruction. The US paid more than $1m for such information.
Report Offered Bleak Outlook About Iraq Oil - The Bush administration's optimistic statements earlier this year that Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq were at odds with a bleaker assessment of a government task force secretly established last fall to study Iraq's oil industry, according to public records and government officials. - TVNL Comment: The Bush/PNAC administration set out to, and accmlised the task of looting the American surplus.
Bush should face an inquiry over Iraq war, says general - He called for an independent review of what he called the "possible manipulation of intelligence" to convince the American people that war with Iraq was necessary. - "Nothing could be a more serious violation of public trust than consciously to make a case for war based on false claims," he was due to say in a speech last night. "We need to know if we were intentionally deceived. - "This administration is trying to do something that ought to be politically impossible to do in a democracy, and that is to govern against the will of the majority," he said. "That requires twisted facts, silence, secrecy and very poor lighting."
Australian Senate censures PM Howard over Iraq war - Australia's Senate censured Prime Minister John Howard on Tuesday for misleading the country about the reasons for going to war against Iraq. - The motion to censure the prime minister was put by Greens' Senator Bob Brown, who said Howard misled Australians by claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to Australia. - TVNL Asks: Why is it that all of the other “coalition” members are holding their leaders responsible for misleading them regarding Iraq, yet Bush/PNAC face no questions or inquiry?
Gorbachev calls Bush decision to invade Iraq `mistake' - Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said he believes President Bush made "a mistake" by invading Iraq and has been less than forthright in explaining his reasons for the attack. - "I do believe there is some other agenda, other than weapons and Saddam Hussein," Gorbachev told a news conference Tuesday at an environmental meeting held at the City University of New York. "What kind of hidden agenda, well, that needs to be understood."
Reality Bites: Claims vs. Facts in President Bush’s New Hampshire Speech to Air National Guard Reservists - A BUZZFLASH GUEST NEWS ANALYSIS by Center for American Progress
Many soldiers, same letter - Newspapers around U.S. get identical missives from Iraq - Letters from hometown soldiers describing their successes rebuilding Iraq have been appearing in newspapers across the country as U.S. public opinion on the mission sours. - And all the letters are the same. - A Gannett News Service search found identical letters from different soldiers with the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, also known as "The Rock," in 11 newspapers, including Snohomish, Wash. - The Olympian received two identical letters signed by different hometown soldiers: Spc. Joshua Ackler and Spc. Alex Marois, who is now a sergeant. The paper declined to run either because of a policy not to publish form letters.
Turks trade troops for hard U.S. cash - The Turks, it seems, will send troops into Iraq. When and how many is uncertain, but in a momentous decision, Turkey's parliament voted decisively to aid the U.S. military occupation. - Just weeks after Washington announced $8.5 billion in desperately needed new loans to Ankara, - Most Turks bitterly oppose intervention in Iraq. But their politicians cannot face them and admit it's either rent out their troops as mercenaries - oops, "peacekeepers" - or watch the lights go out when they run out of imported fuel.
Iraqi bomb boy's anger at pilot - Iraqi war orphan Ali Abbas says he hopes the U.S. pilot who bombed his family will be made to suffer as he has. - Ali lost both arms and suffered 60 percent burns in a U.S. bombing raid on Baghdad that killed his parents and 13 other family members. - I keep asking myself: 'Why are they bombing Iraqi people? What have we done to them?' I hoped that the pilot who hit our house would be burned as I am burned and my family were burned."
Wilson adds ammo to hit war credibility gap - Wilson tells us he plans to circulate the text of a briefing by analyst Sam Gardiner that suggests the White House and Pentagon made up or distorted over 50 war stories. You know some tall tales, like the Pvt. Jessica Lynch story. But there's more, says Gardiner, a war gamer who has taught at the National War College. Like how defense officials said the first Iraqi unit marines encountered, the 51st Mechanized Infantry Division, had surrendered four days before it actually did.
Army's Iraq Media Plan Criticized - Lugar Wants to Transfer Project's Funds to State Department - Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) wants the Senate to block the U.S. Army's $100 million plan to expand Iraq's fledgling radio and television network and create a major national newspaper out of the small publication now printed in Baghdad, according to congressional sources. - According to the solicitation proposal, the proposed private contractor would have as "objectives" the creation of "quality" radio and television programming for the stations, television and film production facilities in "each major region of Iraq" and training of an indigenous Iraqi workforce that would take over independent operation of the network within two years. - TVNL Comment: This kind of sounds like media control. Hmm...where have we seen this before?
Kennedy to assail Bush over Iraq war - "The administration still refuses to face the truth or tell the truth," Kennedy says, accusing the White House of misleading the public about every aspect of the war, from the financial costs to the motivation and the aftermath. "Instead the White House responds by covering up its failures and trying to sell its rosy version of events by repeating it with maximum frequency and volume, and minimum regard for realities on the ground."
State Dept. Study Foresaw Trouble Now Plaguing Iraq - A year long State Department study predicted many of the problems that have plagued the American-led occupation of Iraq, according to internal State Department documents and interviews with administration and Congressional officials. - Several officials said that many of the findings in the $5 million study were ignored by Pentagon officials until recently, although the Pentagon said they took the findings into account. The work is now being relied on heavily as occupation forces struggle to impose stability in Iraq.
THE STOVEPIPE - by SEYMOUR M. HERSH - How conflicts between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq’s weapons.
Analyst: White House lied on Iraq - The Bush administration lied to Congress to pave the way for war with Iraq, alleged a former CIA analyst who visited Rochester on Sunday. - President Bush also gave “many” speeches linking Iraq to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, McGovern said. - “Never have I seen such a cynically orchestrated campaign over a year and a half,’’ he said. “Only a few weeks ago did Bush admit that Iraq was not involved in any way with 9/11.”
Dr. James J. Zogby: US bends statistical data on Iraqi surveys - Early in President Bush's recent public relations campaign to rebuild support for the US war effort in Iraq, Vice-President Cheney appeared on "Meet the Press." Attempting to make the case that the US was winning in Iraq, Cheney made the following observation: - One of the questions it asked is: "If you could have any model for the kind of government you'd like to have" - and they were given five choices - "which would it be?" The US wins hands down. If you want to ask them do they want an Islamic government established, by 2:1 margins they say no, including the Shia population. - If you ask how long they want Americans to stay, over 60 per cent of the people polled said they want the US to stay for at least another year. - But the AEI's "spin" and the Vice-President's use of their "spin" created a faulty impression of the poll's results and, therefore, of the attitudes of the Iraqi people. - So while technically Cheney might say that "over 60 per cent (actually it's 59 per cent) … want the US to stay at least another year," an equally correct observation would be that 65.5 per cent want the US and Britain to leave in one year or less.
British Aid Group: U.S.-Run Iraqi Authority Fails to Account for Billion - Christian Aid said in its report that the Coalition Provisional Authority had only explained publicly how it had spent $1 billion of the $5 billion it has been given for Iraqi development. - The funds include $1 billion from the former United Nations Oil for Food program, $2.5 billion in assets seized from Saddam Hussein's former regime an $1.5 billion in oil revenues, the group said.
Looting Iraq by Executive Order - On May 22, 2003 President Bush issued Executive Order 13303, “Protecting the Development Fund for Iraq.” This order invoked the “National Emergency Act” to effectively seize Iraqi oil and oil revenues, ostensibly to ensure they are spent on “Iraqi reconstruction.” - But that’s not the way this Order has been used, or the funds spent. - What money that is accounted for now lines the pockets of Halliburton.
Europeans say US should pay to rebuild Iraq - Two-thirds of European Union citizens think the US-led invasion of Iraq was unjustified and the United States should pay to rebuild the country, an opinion poll taken for the European Commission shows.
No time to be smug - The anti-war camp has been proved right on every point. Now we need a fast-track plan for a peaceful pullout - Those who opposed the war need to start thinking ahead. Some activists are already doing just that, debating what needs to happen next. - TVNL Comment: In other words we have to bail Bush and PNAC out!
Congress issues Iraq deadline to CIA - A powerful committee of the US Senate has given the CIA 48 hours to supply files on intelligence it gathered on Iraq prior to the outbreak of war. - US media say the report the committee plans to publish is likely to be strongly critical of the CIA and its director. - Correspondents say the attack on the CIA may be rooted in domestic politics. - The committee also demanded that CIA Director George Tenet appear in person before its panel although it set no date for the hearing.
Pentagon keeps dead out of sight - Bush team doesn't want people to see human cost of war - Even body bags are now sanitized as `transfer tubes' - Americans have never seen any of the other 359 bodies returning from Iraq. Nor do they see the wounded cramming the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington or soldiers who say they are being treated inhumanely awaiting medical treatment at Fort Stewart, Ga.- In order to continue to sell an increasingly unpopular Iraqi invasion to the American people, President George W. Bush's administration sweeps the messy parts of war, the grieving families, the flag-draped coffins, the soldiers who have lost limbs, into a far corner of the nation's attic.- No television cameras are allowed at Dover. - Bush does not attend the funerals of soldiers who gave their lives in his war on terrorism.
Bush's other war - US intelligence is being scapegoated for getting it right on Iraq - In Baghdad, the Bush administration acts as though it is astonished by the postwar carnage. Its feigned shock is a consequence of Washington's intelligence wars. In fact, not only was it warned of the coming struggle and its nature - ignoring a $5m state department report on The Future of Iraq - but Bush himself signed another document in which that predictive information is contained. - In advance of the war, Bush (to be precise, Dick Cheney, the de facto prime minister to the distant monarch) viewed the CIA, the state department and other intelligence agencies not simply as uncooperative, but even disloyal, as their analysts continued to sift through information to determine what exactly might be true. For them, this process is at the essence of their professionalism and mission. Yet the strict insistence on the empirical was a threat to the ideological, facts an imminent danger to the doctrine. So those facts had to be suppressed, and those creating contrary evidence had to be marginalised, intimidated or have their reputations tarnished.
Operation Iraqi Lawsuit - The United States and Britain, as well as their private contractors engaged in rebuilding Iraq, could face an onslaught of lawsuits—perhaps claiming hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and taking up years of court time. The grounds? That the coalition broke international law in the way it invaded and occupied Iraq, and in the way it is using Iraq's wealth and resources. This warning comes from an international lawyer who has just finished a detailed study of the possible legal consequences of America's first pre-emptive war. - He argues that Geneva Convention IV limits what the Coalition Provisional Authority and its contractors can legally do in Iraq. "Occupation law was not designed to transform society," Scheffer said. "The fundamental premise of occupation law has been to confine the occupying power to humanitarian objectives that essentially preserve the status quo, not entitle the occupying power to transform the territory it holds. Otherwise, the door would be wide open for abuse by aggressive and benevolent armies alike." - Article 147 of the convention forbids occupying powers from engaging in the "extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."
John Pilger: `Bring the criminals to justice’ - This demonstration, and our anger, is not simply directed at a foreign politician we don't like and like to poke fun at. It's directed at the criminality of George W Bush. In attacking Iraq, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and PM John Howard broke every rule of international behaviour and every convention of international law. - To call them war criminals is not to take a cheap shot. It is to speak the truth. In 1946, the judges at the Nuremberg war crimes trials said that unprovoked aggression against another state was, and I quote, “the supreme international war crime because it contains all the evils of other war crimes. - There is now no doubt that at least 10,000 civilans were killed in Iraq by Bush and Blair's forces, backed by Howard. If you count the Iraqi teenagers conscripted into the army, the figure is probably more than 30,000.
Historians: modern Iraq is no postwar Germany - At the end of September, faced with increasing public pressure against the US mission in Iraq, President George Bush said America had "done this kind of work before. - "Following World War II, we lifted up the defeated nations of Japan and Germany and stood with them as they built representative governments," Bush said in his September 27 address to the nation. - A number of historians beg to differ. - "The historical settings and the international and local and cultural peculiarities are so different in our two cases ... that even the most imaginative and daring historians would think twice about taking on such a comparative project," believes Christof Mauch of the German Historical Institute in Washington.
Frist Freezes Senate Probe of Prewar Iraq Data - Angry about a leaked Democratic memo, the Republican leadership of the Senate yesterday took the unusual step of canceling all business of the committee investigating prewar intelligence on Iraq. - TVNLComment: Notice that the Clinton/Monica investigation was to vital a national interest to freeze.
Mossad chief: invasion has created a holy war - A former chief of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, has accused the United States and Britain of lack of foresight over the Iraq invasion and warned of even greater violence unless the civic infrastructure is established quickly. - Major General Danny Yatom said the presence of Western forces in Iraq has presented the opportunity for a holy war, or jihad, by Islamists in a country surrounded by Muslim neighbours.
Non-US firms frozen out of Iraq - The US is to reaffirm that non-American companies cannot win government contracts in the multi-billion dollar effort to rebuild Iraq. - TVNL Comment: That’s a great way to prove to the Iraqi’s that this invasion was not about financial profit! Is it any wonder that the world laughs at us?
Rumsfeld retreats, disclaims earlier rhetoric - Rumsfeld denies he ever made several pre-war statements. - In the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S. forces would be welcomed by the Iraqi citizenry and that Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. - Now, after both statements have been shown to be either incorrect or vastly exaggerated, Rumsfeld - with the same trademark confidence that he exuded before the war - is denying that he ever made such assertions. - "There is no question but that they would be welcomed," Rumsfeld replied, referring to American forces - On March 30, 11 days into the war, Rumsfeld said in an ABC News interview when asked about WMDs: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
Case for war confected, say top US officials - An unprecedented array of US intelligence professionals, diplomats and former Pentagon officials have gone on record to lambast the Bush administration for its distortion of the case for war against Iraq. In their view, the very foundations of intelligence-gathering have been damaged in ways that could take years, even decades, to repair. - A new documentary film beginning to circulate in the United States features one powerful condemnation after another, from the sort of people who usually stay discreetly in the shadows - a former director of the CIA, two former assistant secretaries of defence, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even the man who served as President Bush's Secretary of the Army until just a few months ago. - Between them, the two dozen interviewees reveal how the pre-war intelligence record on Iraq showed virtually the opposite of the picture the administration painted to Congress, to US voters and to the world. They also reconstruct the way senior White House officials - notably Vice-President Dick Cheney - leaned on the CIA to find evidence that would fit a preordained set of conclusions.
How Do You Say 'I Told You So' in French? - "The French were right" about Iraq, - Not only was the invasion of Iraq a bad idea. It has also proven harmful to the war on terrorism. - "Bush is now stuck,"
I tried to stop Bush: Italian PM - ITALIAN Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said today he had tried to stop US President George W Bush from going to war against Iraq. - "I didn't support every action of the United States. I tried to persuade them not to intervene militarily," Berlusconi said. "But when I saw there was no way (to prevent it), I stood by the United States."
US has no evidence Iraq hid banned arms in Syria - The Bush administration said on Friday it had no evidence that any of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction had been hidden in neighboring Syria.
Cheney ignored war chaos alert - British warnings that America was failing before the war to prepare properly for a crumbling security situation in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was ousted were ignored by Vice President Dick Cheney and the Pentagon. - Asked if the Government had warned the US about the need for planning the post-Saddam era, he said: 'Absolutely, absolutely - At their Washington summit in January, Bush had made it clear that America was ready to attack the following month, well before all the diplomatic avenues had been exhausted and before Britain felt that its military capability was ready.
A truly foolish adventure - The Iraq invasion has proved a gigantic disaster by almost every measure. - Seven months ago, neoconservative supporters of the war on Iraq proclaimed a stunning victory. Now, as the military situation in that country deteriorates, it is time to attempt a balance sheet on the progress of the invasion and occupation thus far.
Brit Envoy: We Warned U.S. - Britain warned the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq that it was not planning sufficiently for postwar reconstruction and pressed for the invasion to be delayed, a former British ambassador told a London newspaper. - Sir Christopher Meyer — ambassador to the United States from 1997 to just before the war — told The Observer in Sunday editions that the advice on postwar planning was ignored.
War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal - International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal. - In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing." - "They're just not interested in international law, are they?" said Linda Hugl, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which launched a high court challenge to the war's legality last year. "It's only when the law suits them that they want to use it." - Mr Perle's remarks bear little resemblance to official justifications for war, according to Rabinder Singh QC, who represented CND and also participated in Tuesday night's event
US hid vital war data from allies - Australian officers were denied access to critical US intelligence during the Iraq war, potentially putting their lives at risk, under a policy described by a senior US Air Force intelligence officer as "damn silly". - Australian and British officers were sometimes asked to leave the room during US intelligence briefings, even though some of the information came from Australian and British intelligence services, a conference in Washington was told this week.
Yes, Bush lied - According to the consensus of Bush's intelligence services, there was "low confidence" before the war in the views that "Saddam would engage in clandestine attacks against the U.S. Homeland" or "share chemical or biological weapons with al-Qaida." - Their message to the president was clear: Saddam wouldn't help al-Qaida unless we put his back against the wall, and even then it was a big maybe. If anything, the report was a flashing yellow light against attacking Iraq.
U.S. Didn't Want to Be Called Occupiers - Internal Review Shows U.S. Didn't Impose Restrictions in Iraq for Fear of Being Seen As Occupier - American military commanders did not impose curfews, halt looting or order Iraqis back to work after Saddam Hussein's regime fell because U.S. policymakers were reluctant to declare U.S. troops an occupying force, says an internal Army review examined by The Associated Press. - As a result, the Bush administration's first steps at reconstruction in Iraq were severely hampered, creating a power vacuum that others quickly moved to fill, and a growing mistrust on the part of ordinary Iraqis, the report said.
Iraqi Leaders Say U.S. Was Warned of Disorder After Hussein, but Little Was Done - "On many occasions, I told the Americans that from the very moment the regime fell, if an alternative government was not ready there would be a power vacuum and there would be chaos and looting," said Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and a longtime ally of the United States. "Given our history, it is very obvious this would occur." - Similar warnings came from international relief experts and from within the United States government. In 1999 the same military command that was preparing to attack Iraq conducted a detailed war game that found that toppling Mr. Hussein risked creating a major security void, said Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, who headed the command.
Iraqi colonel: I am WMD claim source - An Iraqi colonel said yesterday that he was the source of the Government's "dodgy dossier" claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.- Lieutenant-Colonel al-Dabbagh, who said he was the head of an Iraqi air defence unit in the desert, outed himself. But he explained that the weapons he was talking about were battlefield weapons to be fired from rocket-propelled grenades, and were not for use in missiles.
Health Ministry Ordered Halt to Counting of Civilian Dead From War, Iraqi Official Says - Iraqi Health Ministry officials ordered a halt to a count of civilian casualties from the war and told workers not to release figures already compiled, the head of the ministry's statistics department told The Associated Press on Wednesday. - TVNL Comment: OUTRAGEOUS!!!
Now, let's get to the truth - Bush led this country into war with Iraq not because Saddam Hussein threatened, tortured, and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Bush led us into war because, as he told us over and over again, Saddam was a direct, specific threat to the United States. The distinction involves more than semantics; it is about telling Americans the whole truth about a new foreign policy in the post-9/11 world.
Senators were told Iraqi weapons could hit U.S. - Nelson said claim made during classified briefing - U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities. - TVNL Comment: War under false pretenses. A black eye on American history.
Hoping for amnesia - "The United Stares supplied Iraq with intelligence throughout the war [with Iran] and provided it with more than $US5 billion in food credits, technology, and industrial products, most coming after it began to use mustard, cyanide, and nerve gases against both Iranians and dissident Iraqi Kurds." - During the worst decade of Saddam's rule (1980-90), the UK sold Iraq £2.3 billion in machinery and transport equipment and £3.5 billion in trade credits, supporting the creation of a local arms industry and freeing up valuable resources for the Iraqi military.
Iraq: Declassified Documents of U.S. Support for Hussein - The National Security Archive at George Washington University has published a series of declassified U.S. documents detailing the U.S. embrace of Saddam Hussein in the early 1980’s. The collection of documents, published on the Web, include briefing materials, diplomatic reports of two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, reports on Iraqi chemical weapons use during the Reagan administration and presidential directives that ensure U.S. access to the region's oil and military expansion.
How Saddam could embarrass the West - The role played by the United States turned out to be important diplomatically. And this is where Mr Rumsfeld came in. - President Reagan determined nevertheless that Iraq should be supported and he sent Mr Rumsfeld to Baghdad with a personal letter from himself to Saddam Hussein.
Still no mass weapons, no ties to 9/11, no truth - THE INVASION was still a lie. The capture of Saddam Hussein changes nothing about that. There were too many forked tongues in the road to his lair. The way we removed the dictator, we became a global dictatorship.
We got him: Kurds say they caught Saddam - Washington's claims that brilliant US intelligence work led to the capture of Saddam Hussein are being challenged by reports sourced in Iraq's Kurdish media claiming that its militia set the circumstances in which the US merely had to go to a farm identified by the Kurds to bag the fugitive former president
Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overture in '84 Despite Chemical Raids - As a special envoy for the Reagan administration in 1984, Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the defense secretary, traveled to Iraq to persuade officials there that the United States was eager to improve ties with President Saddam Hussein despite his use of chemical weapons, newly declassified documents show. - TVNL Comment: New documents? How new? Everyone on the Internet knew about this prior to the invasion. Maybe the Times should sign up for an account, we have an old 300 baud modem that we can donate to them.
Partners in Crime: US Complicity in the War Crimes of Saddam Hussein - There is a revealing photograph of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with a known war criminal in 1983-Saddam Hussein. If Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld were forced to testify at an impartial, international war crimes tribunal, no doubt he would be asked: "What did you know, and when did you know it?
Saddam’s Capture: Was a Deal Brokered Behind the Scenes? - When it emerged that the Kurds had captured the Iraqi dictator, the US celebrations evaporated. David Pratt asks whether a secret political trade-off has been engineered
Foresight Was 20/20 - The Bush administration has been hammered for failing to anticipate or plan for the many problems of postwar Iraq or to set aside the money to pay for them. - Yet, looking back at what Washington's foreign policy community expected from an intervention in Iraq, it's striking how much of the trouble the U.S. mission now faces was accurately and publicly predicted. - TVNL Comment: In other words, as every person who opposed the invasion of Iraq had said: “We told you so!”
Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper - Since Gulf War, Nonconventional Weapons Never Got Past the Planning Stage - The weapons they depicted, however, did not exist. After years of development -- against significant obstacles -- they might have taken form as nine-ton missiles. These are some of Modher Sadeq-Saba Tamimi's secret sketches for two illegal long-range missiles, one using two engines and one using five boosters.
White House 'distorted' Iraq threat - Bush administration officials "systematically misrepresented" the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to war, according to a new report to be published on Thursday by a respected Washington think-tank. - These distortions, combined with intelligence failures, exaggerated the risks posed by a country that presented no immediate threat to the US, Middle East or global security, the report says.
No WMDs, so American team pulls out of Iraq - The withdrawal of the 400-member military team was seen by some military officials as a sign that the US government may no longer expect to uncover chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, the daily said
Bush admits he targeted Saddam from the start - Comments could boost criticism of president's case for war against Iraq - President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he was mapping preparations to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as soon as he took office.
Bush forced to revisit the push to war - When Tony Blair came to Camp David for his first meeting with George W. Bush, the conversation, according to one official present, went something like this - Mr Bush, who by Friday, February 23 2001 had been US president for just over a month - Then, according to the official Mr Bush suggested they begin their discussions with foreign policy - starting with Iraq. War was not on the agenda but the leaders discussed efforts to make sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime more effective, the official recalls. In the margins, Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, discussed how they might in the future effect regime change in Baghdad. - TVNL Comment: They discussed this, prior to 9/11, even though it is against international law.
Corroborating O’Neill’s Account - Official Confirms Claims That Saddam Was Bush’s Focus Before 9/11 - President Bush ordered the Pentagon to explore the possibility of a ground invasion of Iraq well before the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, an official told ABCNEWS, confirming the account former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill gives in his new book. - TVNL Comment: They admit to exploring the possibilities of committing an international crime and a violation of American principles and out Constitution. This is like saying that it was OK for Germany to invade Poland or for Iraq to invade Kuwait.
Of course the White House fears free elections in Iraq - Only an appointocracy can be trusted to accept US troops and corporations - Under the current American plan for Iraq, the transitional national assembly would hold on to power from June 30 until general elections are held "no later" than December 31 2005. That's 18 leisurely months for a non-elected government to do what the CPA could not legally do on its own: invite US troops to stay indefinitely and turn Bremer's capitalist dream into binding law.
Iraq Illicit Arms Gone Before War, Departing Inspector States - Asked directly if he was saying that Iraq did not have any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the country, Dr. Kay replied, according to a transcript of the taped interview made public by Reuters, "That is correct."
US getting desperate for UN help in Iraq - CHANGE OF HEART: Having marginalized the United Nations before the Iraq war, the Bush administration is now appealing to the body to help arrange elections
Ousting Saddam 'no cause for war' - A leading human rights group has said the US and UK are wrong to use the toppling of a brutal regime in Baghdad to justify going to war against Iraq. - The group, Human Rights Watch asked why George Bush and Tony Blair did not try remove Saddam Hussein much earlier.
US denies 'imminent' threat warning - THE White House today denied it ever warned that Saddam Hussein posed an "imminent" threat to the United States - TVNL Comment: The Bush/PNAC administration have been wordsmith liars. They formulate words and phrases for the purpose of leaving a false impression. Then they and their supporters play on the technicalities of the individual sentences when they try to say that Bush/PNAC did not lie. Well lies come in many forms and intentionally misleading others is a form of lying. Very simply put the Bush/PNAC administration implied relentlessly that Iraq was a threat to the world. They are proving this fact every day. Today George W. Bush said once again that the world is a safer place now that Saddam is gone. How is this not saying that he was a threat?
Bush Backs Away From His Claims About Iraq Arms - Asked by reporters if he would repeat earlier expressions of confidence that the weapons would be found in light of recent statements by the former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, David A. Kay, that Mr. Hussein had gotten rid of them well before the war, Mr. Bush did not answer directly. - "I think it's very important for us to let the Iraq Survey Group do its work, so we can find out the facts and compare the facts to what was thought," he said at an appearance with the visiting president of Poland.
Kay: 'We Were Almost All Wrong' - Former Weapons Inspector Says Search in Iraq Exposes Gaps in U.S. Intelligence - Former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay told members of the Senate Wednesday that the failure to turn up weapons of mass destruction in Iraq exposed weaknesses in America's intelligence-gathering apparatus. TVNL Comment: CIA probe finds secret Pentagon group manipulated intelligence on Iraqi threat- A half-dozen former CIA agents investigating prewar intelligence have found that a secret Pentagon committee, set up by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2001, manipulated reams of intelligence information prepared by the spy agency on the so-called Iraqi threat and then delivered it to top White House officials who used it to win support for a war in Iraq. - We all knew this last year yet the press seems to have forgotten it.
For Bush, a Tactical Retreat on Iraq - Bush has lately found many of his rationales for the war in Iraq being challenged. Just as Kay has undermined the WMD rationale, a report published by the Army War College challenged the notion that the war in Iraq was part of the overall war on terrorism, while the group Human Rights Watch has disputed Bush's notion that the Iraq war was a humanitarian mission. Vice President Cheney has implicitly acknowledged that the Iraq war has not spurred peace in the Middle East, saying peace is not possible while Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat remains in power.
The Lie Factory - Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.
Republican takes strong stand against war, Bush - When former Rep. Paul Findley openly broke with Bush over his Iraqi war policy, he didn't leave any asterisks in the text or wriggle room in the position. - "I believe President George W. Bush's decision to initiate war in Iraq will be the greatest and most costly blunder in American history,"
Israel knew Iraq had no WMD, says MP - A prominent Israeli MP said yesterday that his country's intelligence services knew claims that Saddam Hussein was capable of swiftly launching weapons of mass destruction were wrong but withheld the information from Washington.
There was no failure of intelligence - US spies were ignored, or worse, if they failed to make the case for war - According to Patrick Lang, the former head of human intelligence at the CIA, Hardcastle "told [the Bush administration] that the way they were handling evidence was wrong." The response was not simply to remove Hardcastle from his post: - When the CIA debunked the tales about Niger uranium and the Saddam/al-Qaida connection, its reports were ignored and direct pressure applied. - Meanwhile, senior intelligence officers were kept in the dark about the OSP. "I didn't know about its existence," said Thielman. "They were cherry picking intelligence and packaging it for Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to take to the president".
Britain spied on UN allies over war vote - Security Council members 'illegally targeted' by GCHQ after plea from US security agency - Britain helped America to conduct a secret and potentially illegal spying operation at the United Nations in the run-up to the Iraq war, The Observer can reveal. - Translators and analysts at the Government's top-secret surveillance centre GCHQ were ordered to co-operate with an American espionage 'surge' on Security Council delegations after a request from the US National Security Agency at the end of January 2003. This was designed to help smooth the way for a second UN resolution authorising war in Iraq.
Ex-judge on Iraq inquiry 'involved in cover-up' - Laurence Silberman, a retired judge nominated by the Bush administration as the co-chairman of the commission investigating pre-war intelligence on Iraq, was involved in a major cover-up during the Reagan era, his critics alleged yesterday.
Hans Blix Says Iraq War Was Unfounded - Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix argued Tuesday Saddam Hussein had not been an immediate threat, making the justification for the war against Iraq unfounded.
The missing people-shredder - The horror of one of Saddam's execution methods made a powerful pro-war rallying cry - but the evidence suggests it never existed - Forget the no-show of Saddam Hussein's WMD. Ask instead what happened to Saddam's "people shredder", into which his son Qusay reportedly fed opponents of the Ba'athist regime.
U.S., Certain That Iraq Had Illicit Arms, Reportedly Ignored Contrary Reports - In the two years before the war in Iraq, American intelligence agencies reviewed but ultimately dismissed reports from Iraqi scientists, defectors and other informants who said Saddam Hussein's government did not possess illicit weapons, according to government officials. - Other government officials said they knew of several occasions from 2001 to 2003 when Iraqi scientists, defectors and others had told American intelligence officers, their foreign partners or other intelligence agents that Iraq did not possess illicit weapons.
Spy Unit Skirted CIA on Iraq - Pentagon group’s role in shaping White House views about Hussein-Al Qaeda ties was greater than known, Senate panel hears. - The disclosure suggests that the controversial Pentagon office played a greater role than previously understood in shaping the administration's views on Iraq's alleged ties to the terrorist network behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and bypassed usual channels to make a case that conflicted with the conclusions of CIA analysts.
Democrats Tally 'Misleading' Iraq Statements - President Bush and four top advisors made a combined 237 misleading public statements on the threat posed by Iraq, Democrats charged in a congressional report released on Tuesday.
Bush and Blair made secret pact for Iraq war - ·President George Bush first asked Tony Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after the terror attacks of 11 September, 2001. - Decision came nine days after 9/11 - · Ex-ambassador reveals discussion - But the implications for Blair may be still more explosive. The discussion implies that, even before the bombing of Afghanistan, Blair already knew that the US intended to attack Saddam next, although he continued to insist in public that 'no decisions had been taken' until almost the moment that the invasion began in March 2003. - This reveals how, during the summer of 2002, when Blair and his closest advisers were mounting an intense diplomatic campaign to persuade Bush to agree to seek United Nations support over Iraq, and promising British support for military action in return, Blair apparently concealed his actions from his Cabinet. - TVNL Comment: Why, in the wake of 9/11, was Iraq an issue at all?
Book: Bush Secretly Ordered Iraq War Plan - President Bush secretly ordered a war plan drawn up against Iraq less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan and was so worried the decision would cause a furor he did not tell everyone on his national security team, says a new book on his Iraq policy. - The book says Gen. Tommy Franks, who was in charge of the Afghan war as head of Central Command, uttered a string of obscenities when the Pentagon told him to come up with an Iraq war plan in the midst of fighting another conflict. - Cheney's speech was viewed as the beginning of a campaign to undermine or overthrow Saddam. Woodward said Bush let Cheney make the speech without asking what he would say. - The vice president also figured prominently in an protracted decision March 19, 2003, to strike Iraq before a 48-hour ultimatum for Saddam Hussein to leave the country had expired. - TVNL Comment: Do the Bush supporters need more proof that this administration was obsessed with invading Iraq from day 1?
General assails U.S. policy on Iraq - "I'm surprised that he is surprised because there was a lot of us who were telling him that it was going to be thus," said Zinni, a Marine for 39 years and the former commander of the U.S. Central Command. "Anyone could know the problems they were going to see. How could they not?" - For years Zinni said he cautioned U.S. officials that an Iraq without Saddam Hussein would likely be more dangerous to U.S. interests than one with him because of the ethnic and religious clashes that would be unleashed. - "I think that some heads should roll over Iraq," Zinni said. "I think the president got some bad advice."
Vietnam war era defense secretary decries Bush's 'unilateral' policy - Former US defense secretary Robert McNamara, a central figure in the Vietnam war, denounced President George W. Bush's policy in Iraq on, saying the United States should not have used its power "unilaterally."
Some Dare Call It Treason: Wake Up America! - This war has nothing to do with national security or freedom or democracy or human rights or protecting our allies or weapons of mass destruction or defeating terrorism or disarming Iraq. It has to do with money. It has to do with oil. And it has to do with raw imperial power. It is based on a pack of lies. And it is wrong. Those who forced this war on an unwilling world are guilty of flagrantly violating the US Constitution, the UN Charter, and international law. What they have done is illegal, immoral, unconstitutional and TREASON.
Pictures Of A Flawed War - The White House's love of secrecy, its disagreeable mixture of paranoia and hauteur, is well-known; but in the case of the Iraq war, the cognitive autocracy of the administration has gone to strange, and immensely insulting, lengths.
The multibillion robbery the US calls reconstruction - In the run-up to the June 30 underhand (sorry, I can't bring myself to call it a "handover"), US occupation powers have been unabashed in their efforts to steal money that is supposed to aid a war-ravaged people. The state department has taken $184m earmarked for drinking water projects and moved it to the budget for the lavish new US embassy in Saddam Hussein's former palace.
Army Stage-Managed Fall of Hussein Statue - As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel — not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images — who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking.
They Knew... - Despite the whitewash, we now know that the Bush administration was warned before the war that its Iraq claims were weak
Rewriting History - In his debate with John Edwards, Dick Cheney had a brand-new version of the events that led to war - In last night's debate, Cheney largely skirted the administration's prewar claims about Iraqi WMD, although he did at one point refer to a presumed nexus between terrorists and Iraqi unconventional weapons. "The point is that that's the place where you're most likely to see the terrorists come together with weapons of mass destruction, the deadly technologies that Saddam Hussein had developed and used over the years," he said. The claim that Saddam's agents had instructed Al Qaeda terrorists in making "poisons and gasses" had in fact been a prominent feature of the administration's prewar assertions, highlighted by Powell in his Security Council speech and Cheney repeatedly in his TV appearances and speeches. But the allegation was almost entirely based on the claims of one high-level Al Qaeda detainee—first identified by NEWSWEEK as Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi—who, according to the 9/11 commission, has since recanted his story. Asked if Duelfer's team had found any evidence that Iraq had provided such training for terrorists, the U.S. official familiar with Duelfer's report shook his head and said simply: "No."
The source Duelfer didn't quote - Charles Duelfer has to date provided no documentation to back up his assertion regarding Saddam's "intent". Nor has he produced any confession from Saddam Hussein or any senior Iraqi official regarding the same. What has been offered is a compilation of hearsay and conjecture linked to unnamed sources whose identities remain shrouded in secrecy.
Blair and Bush 'conspired to go to war regardless of United Nations' - According to reports in The Mail on Sunday, the Prime Minister and the US President decided to go to war regardless of whether they obtained UN backing. The allegations will undermine claims that the final decision to go to war was not made until MPs voted in the Commons a day before military action. It will also bolster claims that the President and Mr Blair decided to go to war months before military action began.
