RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events "It's not about oil or Iraq..."

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whomod said:

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britneyspearsatemyshorts said:
Whomod, isn't that what you do all day about Bush? You know it's really sad your obsession and blind hatred. In all seriousness have you ever considered help? It can't be healthy to have these kinds of feelings about someone.

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Yeah. I realize you're still reeling from Clark's 1-2 punch. So i'll give you time to come back later with a better retort.





KEE-YAH!!! (a swift kick to the gut).

WAAAAHH! Everyone hates Bush! WAAAAHH! Sour Grapes!! WAAAHH! "Liberal media!! WAAAH!

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The Clinton and Bush administrations' failure to pursue military action against al-Qaida operatives allowed the Sept. 11 terrorists to elude capture despite warning signs years before the attacks, a federal panel said Tuesday.

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But while the president pushed for quick legislation, Republican lawmakers hardened their stance against some of the proposed anti-terrorism measures.


Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, doubted that the Senate would rush to action before they recess this weekend. The Senate needs to study all the options, he said, and trying to get it done in the next three days would be tough.

One key GOP senator was more critical, calling a proposed study of chemical markers in explosives "a phony issue."


President wants Senate to hurry with new anti-terrorism laws

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1998-99

-- Clinton sponsors legislation to freeze the financial assets of international organizations suspected of funneling money to bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, but it is killed, on behalf of big banks, by Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas. George Bush will later call for identical legislation

-- but only after September 11, 2001.

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whomod said:

The issue is that Bush was warned about terrorist plots and DID NOT RESPOND.

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Whomod said: Clinton recieved similar warnings in the 1990s and put everyone at high alert meeting with his security staff every day. A CAR WAS STOPPED WITH EXPLOSIVES AT THE CANADA BORDER. These explosives were to be used to carry out an attack by Al-Queda on LAX .

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whomod said:


The CIA (or FBI I forget exactly) knew about two of the people who took part in the 9/11 terror attacks. If they had been warned about the increase in chatter that had only been seen back in the Clinton administration when they found explosives in the car, then they might have acted on that information. THEREFORE, IT IS POSSIBLE THAT THEY COULD HAVE PREVENTED 9/11.

I rest my case.

(This all according to interview with former Clinton security staffer on 60 Minutes and inependent investigative work by 60 minutes crew.)

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( from the "It's not about oil or Iraq..." topic, page 24: )
Mister JLA said:
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That doesn't change the fact that blahblahblah neocons this, neocons that, conspiracy...Haliberton...Cheney, where was Bush on 9/11...? he duped the American public...lies, lies, lies, the average American doesn't question things like I do, since I care more and am smarter...here in California...blahblahblah.


Signed,

whomod.

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Rob Kamphausen said:
whomod, that sounds like a lot of "what ifs," and even still, i simply disagree.

bush had nine months. for the president of the US, thats such a small period of time -- especially the first nine months, when weeks at a time are spent answering questions about your favorite shoe, your favorite meal, etc, etc.

i simply can't imagine how it would be possible to stop something on a scale of 9-11 within that brief a period of time.

you repeatedly claim how much clinton did to prevent terrorism, ....and yet even with all that, the US still suffered several high profile attacks during his term.

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On 26 February 1993, a car loaded with 1,200 pounds of explosives blew up in a parking garage under the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring about a thousand others. The blast did not, as its planners intended, bring down the towers — that was finally accomplished by flying two hijacked airliners into the twin towers on the morning of 11 September 2001.
Four followers of the Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman were captured, convicted of the World Trade Center bombing in March 1994, and sentenced to 240 years in prison each. The purported mastermind of the plot, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, was captured in 1995, convicted of the bombing in November 1997, and also sentenced to 240 years in prison. One additional suspect fled the U.S. and is believed to be living in Baghdad.


On 13 November 1995, a bomb was set off in a van parked in front of an American-run military training center in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, killing five Americans and two Indians. Saudi Arabian authorities arrested four Saudi nationals whom they claim confessed to the bombings, but U.S. officials were denied permission to see or question the suspects before they were convicted and beheaded in May 1996.

On 25 June 1996, a booby-trapped truck loaded with 5,000 pounds of explosives was exploded outside the Khobar Towers apartment complex which housed United States military personnel in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing nineteen Americans and wounding about three hundred others. Once again, the U.S. investigation was hampered by the refusal of Saudi officials to allow the FBI to question suspects.
On 21 June 2001, just before the American statute of limitations would have expired, a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicted thirteen Saudis and an unidentified Lebanese chemist for the Khobar Towers bombing. The suspects remain in Saudi custody, beyond the reach of the American justice system. (Saudi Arabia has no extradition treaty with the U.S.)


On 7 August 1998, powerful car bombs exploded minutes apart outside the United States embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people and wounding about 5,000 others. Four participants with ties to Osama bin Laden were captured, convicted in U.S. federal court, and sentenced to life in prison without parole in October 2001. Fourteen other suspects indicted in the case remain at large, and three more are fighting extradition in London.

On 12 October 2000, two suicide bombers detonated an explosives-laden skiff next to the USS Cole while it was refueling in Aden, Yemen, blasting a hole in the ship that killed 17 sailors and injured 37 others. No suspects have yet been arrested or indicted. The investigation has been hampered by the refusal of Yemini officials to allow FBI agents access to Yemeni nationals and other suspects in custody in Yemen.
(The USS Cole bombing occurred one month before the 2000 presidential election, so even under the best of circumstances it was unlikely that the investigation could have been completed before the end of President Clinton's term of office three months later.)

In August 1998, President Clinton ordered missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan in an effort to hit Osama bin Laden, who had been linked to the embassy bombings in Africa (and was later connected to the attack on the USS Cole). The missiles reportedly missed bin Laden by a few hours, and Clinton was widely criticized by many who claimed he had ordered the strikes primarily to draw attention away from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. As John F. Harris wrote in The Washington Post:


In August 1998, when [Clinton] ordered missile strikes in an effort to kill Osama bin Laden, there was widespread speculation — from such people as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) — that he was acting precipitously to draw attention away from the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, then at full boil. Some said he was mistaken for personalizing the terrorism struggle so much around bin Laden. And when he ordered the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House after domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City, some Republicans accused him of hysteria.
. . . the federal budget on anti-terror activities tripled during Clinton's watch, to about $6.7 billion. After the effort to kill bin Laden with missiles in August 1998 failed — he had apparently left a training camp in Afghanistan a few hours earlier — recent news reports have detailed numerous other instances, as late as December 2000, when Clinton was on the verge of unleashing the military again. In each case, the White House chose not to act because of uncertainty that intelligence was good enough to find bin Laden, and concern that a failed attack would only enhance his stature in the Arab world.

. . . people maintain Clinton should have adapted Bush's policy promising that regimes that harbor terrorism will be treated as severely as terrorists themselves, and threatening to evict the Taliban from power in Afghanistan unless leaders meet his demands to produce bin Laden and associates. But Clinton aides said such a policy — potentially involving a full-scale war in central Asia — was not plausible before politics the world over became transformed by one of history's most lethal acts of terrorism.

Clinton's former national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger . . . said there [was] little prospect . . . that Pakistan would have helped the United States wage war against bin Laden or the Taliban in 1998, even after such outrages as the bombing of U.S. embassies overseas.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/clinton.htm

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"Clinton's advisors met nearly weekly on how to stop bin Laden...I didn't detect that kind of focus from the Bush adminsitration."
- Two Star General Donald Kerrick

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Following September 11, many on the right made an instant pastime out of lambasting anyone who dared suggest that U.S. foreign policy might be partially responsible for the attacks -- "blame America first" thinking, as they liked to call it. Recently, though, conservatives have discovered the joys of blaming one American in particular: Bill Clinton. In the process, they have seized upon a spate of lengthy serial reviews in the The New York Times and The Washington Post examining the history of the hunt for bin Laden and painting a tableau of indecisiveness, uncertainty, and missed opportunities by the Clinton administration. Andrew Sullivan summarized the Times-Post case against the former president recently in Salon.com: "[Clinton] was more responsible than anyone for the gaping holes in national security and intelligence that made Sept. 11 possible. The buck must stop with him."

For a while, it almost seemed as though Sullivan's analysis was becoming conventional wisdom. Yet the serial reviews have rolled on, in their methodical way, so that finally the latest front-page Washington Post installment examines the Bush administration's own anti-terror accomplishments in 2001. And it turns out that compared to Bush, Clinton was practically Wyatt Earp. In fact, the latest Post article suggests a whole new line of inquiry: Did Bush, at a key moment, dismantle the Clinton administration's increasingly effective anti-Al Qaeda apparatus (which, though hardly flawless, was far better than nothing)? And on a related note: Would a less meddling Gore administration have been able to prevent tragedy?

Sullivan defends Bush in his Salon.com article by emphasizing reports of a supposed Al Qaeda retaliation proposal that arrived on the president's desk, fatefully, one day before the attacks. "It was too late," he writes. "But it remains a fact that the new administration had devised in eight months a strategy that Bill Clinton had delayed for eight years." Yet the Post and other press accounts allow us to see that this is a ridiculous claim. Al Qaeda was not a static threat it took us eight years to discover; it was a rapidly growing cancer that only became terminal within the last few years. Clinton-bashers attempt to trace the beginning of the Al Qaeda era back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, but bin Laden couldn't be linked to that attack until the 1995 arrest of Ramzi Yousef. And even then, he could only be classified as one of many hostile Arab terror financiers (as late as 1997 the Post still referred to him as a "wealthy Saudi businessman," not a terrorist). Real evidence of bin Laden's unique capability arrived only with the synchronized embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

At this point, the Clinton administration acted pretty darn fast, building up retaliation capability against a shadowy enemy ensconced in a no man's land in a politically hyper-sensitive region of the world. From 1998 onward, according to an earlier Post story, Clinton stationed two submarines in the Indian Ocean so as to be able to strike within six hours of reliable intelligence on bin Laden's location. The first 1998 cruise missiles fired into Afghanistan and Sudan reportedly missed bin Laden by just one hour. Looking to score political points at home, Republicans spun these attacks as a political ploy by the president to distract attention from the Lewinsky scandal; and the public, having just seen the eerily coincidental Wag the Dog, swallowed the spin. Nevertheless, Clinton authorized three more strikes in the next two years, though each was called off at the last second due to questionable intelligence.

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( from the "It's not about oil or Iraq..." topic, page 24: )
Mister JLA said:
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That doesn't change the fact that blahblahblah neocons this, neocons that, conspiracy...Haliberton...Cheney, where was Bush on 9/11...? he duped the American public...lies, lies, lies, the average American doesn't question things like I do, since I care more and am smarter...here in California...blahblahblah.


Signed,

whomod.

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Dave the Wonder Boy said:
Whomod again ignores the facts.

Dumps liberal propaganda (click-and-dragged from liberal-slanted sites)

Wipes.

And flushes...

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Within a week of the Inauguration I wrote to [Assistant to the President for National Security] Rice and [Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security] Hadley asking "urgently" for a Principals... meeting to review the imminent al Qaeda threat.
Rice told me that the Principals [NSC] Committee, which had been the first venue for terrorism policy discussions in the Clinton administration, would not address the issue until it had been "framed" by the Deputies.... [M]onths of delay....
Finally, in April, the Deputies [NSC] Committee met on terrorism for the first time. The first meeting... did not go well.
Rice's deputy, Steve Hadley, began... by asking me to brief.... I turned immediately to the pending decisions needed to deal with al Qaeda. "We need to put pressure on both the Taliban and al Qaeda by arming the Northern Alliance and other groups in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, we need to target bin Laden and his leadership by reinitiating flights of the Predator."
Paul Wolfowitz... fidgeted and scowled.... "Well, I just don't understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man"....
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Hadley suggested a compromise. We would begin by focusing on al Qaeda and then later look at other terrorism.... Because dealing with al Qaeda involved its Afghan sanctuary... Hal dley suggested that we needed policy on Afghanistan in general and on the related issue of U.S.-Pakistani relations, including the return of democracy in that country and arms control with India. All of these issues were a "cluster" that had to be decided together. Hadley proposed that several more papers be written and several more meetings be scheduled over the next few months....

...

The delay in the Deputies Committee continued....

Rice promised to get to it soon. Time passed....

[And as al Qaeda moved its operational assets into position for the September 11 attack: ]

By late June, Tenet and I were convinced a major series of attacks was about to come....

...

During the first week in July I convened the C[ounterterrorism ]S[ecurity ]G[roup].... Each agency should report anything unusual, even if a sparrow should fall from a tree.... "You've just heard that CIA thinks that al Qaeda is planning a major attack on us So do I.... [M]aybe it will be here.... Tell me, tell each other, about anything unusual."

Somewhere in CIA there was information that two known al Qaeda terrorists had come into the United States. Somewhere in FBI there was information that strange things had been going on at flight schools.... None of that information got to me or the White House....

[Finally, on September 4, the Principals NSC Committee meets to approve Clarke's anti-al Qaeda plan:( "put pressure on both the Taliban and al Qaeda by arming the Northern Alliance and other groups in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, we need to target bin Laden and his leadership by reinitiating flights of the Predator":

On September 4... the Principals Committee meeting on al Qaeda that I had called for "urgently" on January 25 finally met... a non event. Tenet and I spoke passionately about the urgency and seriousness of the al Qaeda threat. No one disagreed. Powell laid out an aggressive strategy for putting pressure on Pakistan.... Rumsfeld... looked distracted... took the Wolfowitz line that there were other terrorist concerns, like Iraq.... CIA had said it could not find a single dollar... to transfer to the anti-al Qaeda effort. It demanded additional funds.... The only heated disagreement came over whether to fly the armed Predator over Afghanistan to attack al Qaeda. Neither CIA nor the Defense Department would agree to run that program. Rice ended the discussion without a solution...

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Ex-Adviser: Terrorism Not Urgent for Bush

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The government's former top counterterrorism adviser testified Wednesday that the Clinton administration had "no higher priority" than combatting terrorists while the Bush administration made it "an important issue but not an urgent issue."

Richard Clarke told a bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that "although I continued to say it (terrorism) was an urgent problem I don't think it was ever treated that way" by the current administration in advance of the strikes two and a half years ago.

Clarke slid into the witness chair for widely anticipated testimony days after publishing a book that criticized President Bush (news - web sites) for his response to the threat of terrorism. The White House has sharply criticized the book and mounted a counteroffensive against its author.

The white-haired former government official spoke after the commission released a written report saying that confusion about the scope of the CIA (news - web sites)'s authority to kill Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) had hampered efforts to eliminate the man who heads al-Qaida. The result was a continued reliance on local forces in Afghanistan (news - web sites) that had scant chance of success, the commission said.

"The commission needs to ask why that strategy remained largely unchanged throughout the period leading up to 9-11," it said.

But Clarke drew sharp questioning from Republican commissioners, who said his pointed criticism of Bush officials in his book contradicted his praise for the administration's policies as late as fall 2002.

"I hope you resolve that credibility problem, because I hate to see you shoved aside in the presidential campaign as an active partisan trying to shove out a book," said John Lehman, the former Navy secretary who now is chairman of J.F. Lehman & Co., a private equity firm.

Clarke responded that he was not working for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) and had no political motivations.

"I will not accept any position in the Kerry administration should there be one," he said, adding that he voted Republican in the 2000 election.

The commission's report said that officials from Clinton's National Security Council had told investigators the CIA had sufficient authority to assassinate al-Qaida.

But it also said that agency officials, including Director George Tenet "told us they heard a different message. ... They believed the only acceptable context for killing bin Laden was a credible capture operation."

Sandy Berger, who served as Clinton's national security adviser, testified that the former president gave the CIA "every inch of authorization that it asked for" to carry out plans to kill bin Laden.

"If there was any confusion down the ranks, it was never communicated to me nor to the president, and if any additional authority had been requested I am convinced it would have been given immediately," Berger said in nationally televised testimony before the panel.

Tenet, who preceded Berger in the witness chair, was asked about the issue.

"I never went back and said, 'I don't have all the authorities I need,'" he replied.

"If I felt that I had developed access or capability that required dramatically different authorities, I would have gone in and said, 'This is what I have, this is what I think I can do; please give me these authorities,' and I don't doubt that they would have been granted," Tenet said.

The CIA director, whose tenure has spanned both the Clinton and Bush administrations, praised aides to both presidents for their attentiveness to terrorism. "Clearly there was no lack of care or focus in the face of one of the greatest dangers our country has ever faced" after the Bush administration took office, Tenet said.

He also said unambiguously the nation should be prepared for another attack.

"It's coming. They are still going to try and do it, and we need to sort of — men and women here who have lost their families have to know that we've got to do a hell of a lot better," he said. His remarks brought applause from members of victims' families seated in the audience.

The two days of hearings were remarkable by any account.

Secretaries of state and defense from the two administrations testified on Tuesday, followed on the second day by senior officials who served alongside them in a budding era of terrorism that finally struck home two and a half years ago.

Less than eight months before a presidential election, political jockeying was evident during the day.

Two Democrats on the panel, former Sen. Bob Kerrey, and Richard Ben Veniste, publicly lamented the refusal of the Bush administration to allow National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) to testify in public.

Republican former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson asked Tenet whether he had ever been dissatisfied with the pace of preparation of an anti-terrorism plan by the new Bush administration in 2001. "No," he replied.

Berger was emphatic in his declaration that Clinton had given the go-ahead for plans to kill bin Laden.

"Some of these authorities were kill. Some of these authorities were capture or kill," Berger said.

"There could have not been any doubt about what President Clinton (news - web sites)'s intent was after he fired 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at bin Laden in August 1998," he said, referring to strikes at a camp in Afghanistan where the al-Qaida leader was believed present. Bin Laden escaped.

But the commission said Tenet and every other CIA official it had interviewed had a different view. "CIA managers, operators and lawyers uniformly said that they read the relevant authorities signed by President Clinton as instructing them to try and capture Bin Laden. ... They believed that the only acceptable context for killing bin Laden was a credible capture operation."

An unidentified former chief of the CIA's bin Laden section told the committee that officers "always talked about how much easier it would have been to kill him," the written report said.

Additionally, the commission said that when the leader of one of the Afghan groups was given his instructions, he "laughed and said, `You Americans are crazy. You guys never change.'"

The commission's preliminary written report said the CIA's reliance on local Afghan forces reduced the chances for success.

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the G-man said:
Also not under oath:



Like President Bush, former President Clinton "refuse[s] to testify before the commission publicly."

There are a lot of reasons, due to National Security and Constitutional Separation of Powers issues, why Presidents--or ex-Presidents--wouldn't testify before a Congressional committee.

You can choose to accept those or not. However, if you don't accept them for the sitting President you can't excuse the ex-President.

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(from page 1 of this topic: )
MisterJLA said:
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Originally posted by PJP:
.......whomod come on man you're smarter than that.

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No really, he isn't.

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( from the "It's not about oil or Iraq..." topic, page 24: )
Mister JLA said:
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That doesn't change the fact that blahblahblah neocons this, neocons that, conspiracy...Haliberton...Cheney, where was Bush on 9/11...? he duped the American public...lies, lies, lies, the average American doesn't question things like I do, since I care more and am smarter...here in California...blahblahblah.


Signed,

whomod.

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"The Whomod Technique"
http://www.rkmbs.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=258330&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=&vc=1&PHPSESSID=

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whomod said:

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the G-man said:
Also not under oath:



Like President Bush, former President Clinton "refuse[s] to testify before the commission publicly."

There are a lot of reasons, due to National Security and Constitutional Separation of Powers issues, why Presidents--or ex-Presidents--wouldn't testify before a Congressional committee.

You can choose to accept those or not. However, if you don't accept them for the sitting President you can't excuse the ex-President.

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The keyword, again, is "UNDER OATH".

Bush just wants to shoot the shit for an hour NOT UNDER OATH, of course, and with only a couple of people rather than before the full panel. If he's not UNDER OATH and refuses to speak UNDER OATH, what reason is there to beleive a word he says? Why does he fear talking UNDER OATH? Prosecution for perjury?

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If he's half the imperialistic tyrant that you constantly portray him to be, being tried for perjury would the least of his worries, dumbfuck.

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whomod said:
[The keyword, again, is "UNDER OATH".

Bush just wants to shoot the shit for an hour NOT UNDER OATH, of course, and with only a couple of people rather than before the full panel. If he's not UNDER OATH and refuses to speak UNDER OATH, what reason is there to beleive a word he says? Why does he fear talking UNDER OATH? Prosecution for perjury?

Clinton (and Gore)has given the panel unlimited access to them UNDER OATH.

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MisterJLA said:

If he's half the imperialistic tyrant that you constantly portray him to be, being tried for perjury would the least of his worries, dumbfuck.

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It's a good start though.

Nice to see you're starting to crack right alongside Dr. Rice and the White House.



That's Richard Clarke greeting and consoling family members of victims of the September 11 attacks. Somehow I doubt they think he's a lying scumbag. Especially considering he actually bothered to show up and testify for the commision hearings.

Condi Rice not pictured. I highly doubt the 9/11 families would be hugging her though. And Bush has spent the past month campaigning on his Yale cheerleading squad-borne machismo at NASCAR and the rodeo so I doubt he'd do all that 'touchy-feely" stuff either.

Ex-Terror Adviser Lashes Out CBS News video

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Ex-Adviser: Terrorism Not Urgent for Bush

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Bush White House scaled back the struggle against al-Qaida after taking office in 2001 and spurned suggestions that it retaliate for the bombing of a U.S. warship because "it happened on the Clinton administration's watch," a former top terrorism adviser testified Wednesday.

The Clinton administration had "no higher priority" than combatting terrorists while the Bush administration made it "an important issue but not an urgent issue" in the months before Sept. 11, 2001, said Richard Clarke, who advised both presidents. He testified before the commission investigating the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history.

Clarke's turn in the witness chair transformed what has been a painstaking, bipartisan probe of pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures and bureaucratic missteps into a nationally televised criticism of President Bush on the terrorism issue at the core of his campaign for re-election.

The White House redoubled efforts to undermine Clarke, the author of a recent book critical of the president.

Officials also took the unusual step of identifying him as the senior official who had praised the president's anti-terrorism efforts in an anonymous briefing for reporters the year following the attacks.

"He needs to get his story straight," said Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser and Clarke's boss while he served in the administration.

(why don't you come down to the f**ing commision and straighten us out then?? )

Former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson, a Republican, took up the president's cause inside the commission hearing. "We have your book and we have your press briefing of August 2002. Which is true?" he challenged the witness.

Despite the flare-up, commission members worked later to distance themselves from the sort of partisanship that could undermine the credibility of the final report they are expected to release this summer.

"Nobody has clean hands in this one," said former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, a Republican and the commission chairman, referring to the Bush and Clinton administrations. "It was a failure of individuals. The question now is whether or not we learned from our mistakes."

Clarke began his appearance with an apology to "the loved ones of the victims of 9-11. ... Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you," he added, as some relatives of those killed in the attacks dabbed at their eyes with handkerchiefs.

The appearance of the white-haired former official overshadowed the release of a commission staff report that said bureaucratic disagreements about the extent of the CIA's authority to kill Osama bin Laden hampered efforts to eliminate al-Qaida's leader during the Clinton era. The result was a continued reliance on local forces in Afghanistan that all sides recognized reduced the chance of success, both before and after Bush took office, the report added.

"If officers at all levels questioned the effectiveness of the most active strategy the policy-makers were employing to defeat the terrorist enemy, the commission needs to ask why that strategy remained largely unchanged throughout the period leading up to 9-11," it concluded.

Officials from Clinton's National Security Council told investigators the CIA had sufficient authority to assassinate al-Qaida, the report said, but Director George Tenet and other spy agency officials "believed the only acceptable context for killing bin Laden was a credible capture operation."

Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security adviser, testified that the former president gave the CIA "every inch of authorization that it asked for" to kill bin Laden.

"There could have not been any doubt about what President Clinton's intent was after he fired 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at bin Laden in August 1998," Berger said, referring to strikes at a camp in Afghanistan where the al-Qaida leader was believed present. Bin Laden escaped.

Tenet, who preceded Berger in the witness chair, also was asked about the issue of authorization to kill bin Laden.

"I never went back and said, 'I don't have all the authorities I need,'" he replied.

Tenet said that even if bin Laden had been captured or killed in 2001, he did not think it would have prevented the 9-11 attacks, an assertion that mirrored testimony by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday.

Tenet's tenure has spanned two administrations. And unlike Clarke, he praised aides to both presidents. "Clearly there was no lack of care or focus in the face of one of the greatest dangers our country has ever faced" after the Bush administration took office, he said.

In the course of his testimony, Clarke criticized the FBI, the CIA and Congress as well as the Bush administration.

Despite his catalogue of complaints, he said under questioning by former GOP Sen. Slade Gorton that nothing he proposed to Bush officials would have prevented the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. More than 3,000 people were killed that day when terrorists flew hijacked planes into the twin World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington. Another plane crashed in a field outside Pittsburgh as passengers struggled with the terrorists aboard.

Clarke said that early in the Bush administration, he had tried to persuade officials to make the elimination of al-Qaida official government policy.

"I was told ... that was overly ambitious and that we should take the word 'eliminate' out and say `significantly erode,'" he recalled. Later, after the terrorists struck, he said, "we were able to go back to my language of eliminate, rather than significantly erode."

A second question from Gorton prompted Clarke to raise the issue of the USS Cole a warship bombed while refueling in a harbor at Aden, Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed in the attack, later blamed on al-Qaida.

The former White House aide said he suggested the month Bush took office that "the Cole case was still out there" and suggested retaliation.

He added, "I was told on a couple of occasions, 'Well, you know, that happened on the Clinton administration's watch.'"

Clarke shook off Thompson's attack on his credibility regarding the 2002 White House briefing. "I was asked to highlight the positive aspects of what the administration had done and to minimize the negative aspects of what the administration had done," he said. "I've done it for several presidents."

Later he said his criticism had nothing to do with politics. "I will not accept any position in the Kerry administration should there be one," he said, adding that he voted Republican in the 2000 election.

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Clarke Is Hero to Some Families of 9/11 Victims

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Relatives of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks praised former counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke on Thursday for publicly apologizing for not doing enough to prevent the tragedy.

Clarke, whose credibility has been questioned by the Bush administration, began his testimony on Wednesday to a commission probing the attacks by asking for grieving relatives' forgiveness, prompting clapping and tears from the packed hearing room on Capitol Hill.

"It's the first time we have had a public apology by any of the officials that were in office on that terrible morning," said Patty Casazza, who lost her husband when a hijacked plane rammed into the World Trade Center in New York.

"An apology goes a long way to healing the wounds and moving forward," Casazza told ABC's "Good Morning America" program.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites). Relatives of those killed have been pushing for answers and some have voiced criticism over the Bush administration's cooperation with the commission.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims of 9/11. The president has personally met with hundreds of these families to convey his sympathies and he has grieved with them, and his commitment is to do everything we can to ensure we are not attacked again," said White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan.

Clarke, who served the last four U.S. presidents until he quit 13 months ago, has incensed the White House by saying publicly and in a book published this week that President Bush did not take the terrorism threat seriously enough.

EMOTIONAL MOMENT

In his testimony, Clarke turned around to directly face the relatives and said: "Those entrusted with protecting you, failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard but that doesn't matter because we failed."

He added: "I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness."

Beverly Eckert, whose husband died in the World Trade Center, said she "totally broke down" at Clarke's apology.

"It was a very emotional moment. As Patty said, no one has ever apologized. Most of the witnesses who come to these hearings come with, I would categorize them, as rather self-serving statements and everything they tried to do."

The commission, which held public hearings for two days in Washington, is billed as a non-partisan body but some relatives said they were upset certain members had attacked Clarke.

Kristen Breitweiser, who lost her husband in the World Trade Center attack, told NBC's "Today" show some of the commission members had "sunk to a level of partisan politics" by criticizing Clarke and questioning his credibility.

Relatives have also voiced disappointment that White House national security advisor Condoleezza Rice has refused to appear publicly at a commission hearing. Others feel the president should also take the stand.

"From the president on down, if they have nothing to hide, they should testify," said Eckert.
Breitweiser was more cutting in her criticism and said she believed the White House had done a "cost benefit analysis" and decided it was better for Rice to take the heat rather than testify publicly about what went wrong.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, speaking at her weekly briefing with reporters, praised Clarke for speaking out and urged Rice to change her mind.

"I think that for the public to have the answers they expect and that the families deserve, that it is important for the national security adviser to testify in public," she said.

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How many people inside the Bush White House ...like Hans Blix

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He wrote his replacement, Stephen Hadley, a two-page memo. "I said they needed to pay attention to al-Qaida and counterterrorism. I said we were going to be struck again. They never once asked me a question, nor did I see them having a serious discussion about it ... I agree with Dick [Clarke] that they saw those problems through an Iraqi prism. But the evidence, the intelligence, wasn't there." - General Donald Kerrick (NSC: deputy national security adviser under Clinton/Bush Admns.)

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JIM LEHRER: And to Ray Suarez for a White House response:
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RAY SUAREZ: And that response comes from White House communications director Dan Bartlett. He joins us from the Old Executive Office Building in Washington.
Mr. Bartlett, I guess you just heard Richard Clarke talking about the findings that he reports in his book, the ideas he reports in his book, among them that there was a de-emphasis of the offensive against al-Qaida that it was important but not urgent in the early days of the Bush White House. Your response?
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DAN BARTLETT: Well, [ I ] might need to write my own book just to be able to cover all the territory. But let me start there first.
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President Bush did come into office taking the threat of terrorism intelligence and al-Qaida very seriously. In fact that's exactly why he reconstituted the practice of having his intelligence briefings every morning in the Oval Office, with the director of intelligence himself so he could hear firsthand from the person responsible with reporting threats to the United States of America and our other interests overseas.
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He also did another important step and that was to keep Dick Clarke and his counter intelligence team in place for the very reason of having the continuity, institutional knowledge necessary to make sure that there was no effort to drop the ball in the middle of a transition. That's highly unlikely to happen in an administration to keep such a large organization intact in the White House.
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Dick Clarke did talk about a memo that was sent to Condi Rice and this was a memo that he said [was] urgent, underlined and he was calling for a meeting. Well, also he called for a lot of ideas that was focused inside that memo.
There were approximately five [ideas in the memo]:
it was focusing on increasing counter intelligence budget overseas,
increasing funding for Uzbekistan to help put pressure on al-Qaida,
arming the Predator -- this is something that's used in case there was a high value target you could use the civilian aircraft as a weapon.
He also wanted to fund and give weapons to the northern alliance in Afghanistan -- another important measure that required a lot of study.
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All of these measures that Dick Clarke proposed in this memo were being acted upon by the administration. But what the president said and what Dr. Rice and the members of the national security team said was, wait a minute, these are good proposals, but what I want is a strategy that's not going to contain them or roll them back, we want to eliminate al-Qaida.
Now you would think that this would be music to Dick Clarke's ears to hear a president who wants to get really serious about eliminating al-Qaida, so in the 230-day timeframe that we're in office [from inauguration to 9-11-2001], compared to the eight years in which Dick Clarke worked for the prior administration, this [Bush] administration was putting a focus on having a comprehensive plan that was going to eliminate al-Qaida.
Now, another thing that Dick Clarke said which I think is very important to point out -- he talked about if we would have just followed the model of the Clinton administration on the eve of the millennium festivities in which there was a high threat level, he said that the Clinton administration went to the battle stations that we had people working around the clock, and that's why we prevented any attacks during the millennium. Well, in fact the history proves a little bit different than that. A customs agent on a border of Canada came across the person who was going to explode the bomb in LAX in California, she was not given my prior information about this, the customs agency in general was not on heightened state of alert, they didn't do that until after they caught this person, so it was just good intelligence work by one individual in the field, not because some people [in the Clinton administration] back in Washington were meeting.
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RAY SUAREZ: But the memo that you're discussing, Richard Clarke seems to put a lot of emphasis on that request for a meeting that brought together department heads from various agencies of responsibility because he felt, as someone without his own ability to send armies into the field and to change the procedure that was being followed, that he needed the political backing of the White House, that he needed the umpf that comes with having the backing of senior department leaders, that if he had gotten everybody around that table, a meeting he says he didn't get until September of that same year, 2001, that some of the things that people already knew about the coming attacks -- perhaps the dots would have been connected sooner.
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DAN BARTLETT: Well, Ray, I must disagree with his assessment. And it's important, because I know this can get complicated, to make a distinction between the policy process that was under way, compared to what was being done on a daily basis.
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We adopted and took over not only the team that was in place by the Clinton administration, but the current strategy. So every day people in the White House, in the agencies, were taking threats very seriously. In fact, the battle station really was in the Oval Office.
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I mean, the president himself was meeting with the head of intelligence giving him orders, giving Dr. Rice orders, giving members of his team right there in the Oval Office orders, on a daily basis, after he learned about the daily intelligence that was coming over the transom.
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Now in addition to this, was a policy process to enhance or make more, a more comprehensive strategy.
Now everybody including Dick Clarke, who was involved in that, knew that that strategy that was being developed was a three to five-year strategy.
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In fact, when Sandy Berger for example who testified last year on this very subject, was asked if he gave over a strategy document [from] the Clinton administration to the Bush administration -- and he answered that question no.
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But later in that summer of 2001, which is when this was the increased threat alerts -- that was happening in June and July, the president was traveling to Genoa for a world economic meeting, there was a lot of concern both in Saudi Arabia and other parts [of the world] that there was going to be a terrorist attack, everybody was very concerned about it, including the president.
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Dick Clarke at that time did ask for a meeting with the president. He was granted that meeting. You would think it would be about the al-Qaida threat, but in fact he [Dick Clarke] chose to use that time to talk to the president about cybersecurity. So as he [Clarke] cast judgments on the decisions and the actions and the behavior of other members of the administration, I think it's only fair [to] look at the actions and the behavior of Dick Clarke himself, who was in charge of counterterrorism for the last decade.
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RAY SUAREZ: Onto Iraq and the war that followed the Sept. 11 attacks, first in Afghanistan and then the invasion of Iraq, Richard Clarke says it was in his words an idee fixe -- a fixed idea -- on the part of the administration that they were going to go after Iraq and they were working really hard to connect the 9/11 attacks to the state of Iraq, in order to justify the invasion.
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DAN BARTLETT: Well, it's not true. Now one thing is clear. The Clinton administration was not satisfied with their actions with Iraq, remember the [U.N. weapons] inspectors were kicked out [in 1998], they [the Clinton administration] used Cruise missile strikes to blow up a training camp or a factory I believe in Iraq.
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When the president took office [George W. Bush, in January 2001], the status quo wasn't acceptable, remember the sanctions regime at the time. He [President George W. Bush] likened it to Swiss cheese because money was still funneled in to Saddam so he could fund his programs and keep his fear over the Iraqi people.
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We had pilots flying daily into a hostile environment in which they were being shot at to enforce the no-fly zone. We also have the fact that the [U.N. weapons ] inspectors were no longer in Iraq and had been out for several years [out from 1998-2002], all these things were of grave concern to the president.
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And we were fashioning a new policy, a new sanctions policy, reevaluating the fly zone policy, to make sure there was not a better way than to put pilots into harm's way. These were all very important measures that were taken.
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But Dick Clarke now fast forwards to 9/11 and in the hours and days after 9/11, and the president made very clear where his focus was. Now, he did point out that we don't have logs at this meeting but I'm not here to dispute that there wasn't a conversation and the fact that President Bush [did ] ask questions about Iraq, I'm sure he did and I'm glad he did, and the fact that Iraq was a sworn enemy of the United States who had tried to assassinate a prior president [Bush Sr., in 1992] and gone to war with us [1990-1991], that we not at least ask those questions. I think it would have been irresponsible for him not to. So the president did ask them.
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Now Dick Clarke says that it was an intimidating meeting, I've worked for President Bush about a decade now, and I've never been intimidated in a meeting and I've done plenty wrong for him to come down on me and he's never done that.
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But we did have a conversation.
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But I think it's also important to understand that it was only 72 hours later, approximately, that the president in Camp David during a national security meeting, made the decision, took the information that the Dick Clarkes of the world and the CIA and the FBI, all of them, as he [Clarke] said, had this information.
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Well, it was provided to the president, and the president made a very clear decision that the focus of the campaign was going to be on al-Qaida and it was going to be in Afghanistan.
You did not hear the president saying that 9/11 was directly linked to Iraq, he's never made that point. The point he has made is that 9/11 had to change the way we conducted foreign policy in America.
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What it means is we can no longer wait and hope and think that oceans protect us, that we need to confront threats before they fully materialize. And that's why he brought the case to the international community about enforcing demands of the world to remove Saddam Hussein from power if he doesn't eliminate his programs of mass destruction. So he is trying to combine those two things and the president was very clear and his efforts in Afghanistan were very successful.
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RAY SUAREZ: White House communications director Dan Bartlett, thank for being with us.
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DAN BARTLETT: Thanks, Ray.

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Bill Plante, Washington correspondent, on the CBS Evening News broadcast, Thursday, March 25, 2004:
"In 22 hours of Senate testimony, Richard Clarke never once voiced the allegations that he raised in his book..."

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( from the "It's not about oil or Iraq..." topic, page 24: )
Mister JLA said:
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That doesn't change the fact that blahblahblah neocons this, neocons that, conspiracy...Haliberton...Cheney, where was Bush on 9/11...? he duped the American public...lies, lies, lies, the average American doesn't question things like I do, since I care more and am smarter...here in California...blahblahblah.


Signed,

whomod.

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his only listed political contributions during the two most recent election cycles have gone to former colleagues running as Democrats for Congress.

In 2002, Clarke contributed $2,000 to Steven Andreasen, who headed arms control policy in the Clinton administration's National Security Council and was running for Congress in Minnesota. Andreasen was defeated by Republican Rep. Gil Gutknecht.

This year, Clarke has given $1,000 to Jamie Metzl, another Clinton-era NSC staffer. Metzl is running for the House seat from Missouri left vacant by the retirement of Democratic Rep. Karen McCarthy and so far has raised far more money than any other candidate.

Prior to his testimony Wednesday before the independent 9/11 commission, Richard Clarke conferred privately with one of its Democratic members, according to commission sources.

These sources say Clarke huddled with Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana. Roemer's subsequent questioning of Clarke contained a few barbs but consisted largely of open-ended questions giving the witness a chance to criticize President Bush. Roemer confirmed he had met ''a couple of times'' with Clarke

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March 28, 2004


THE WORLD
Iraqi Defector's Tales Bolstered U.S. Case for War

Colin Powell presented the U.N. with details on mobile germ factories, which came from a now-discredited source known as 'Curveball.'

By Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's prewar claims that Saddam Hussein had built a fleet of trucks and railroad cars to produce anthrax and other deadly germs were based chiefly on information from a now-discredited Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball," according to current and former intelligence officials.

U.S. officials never had direct access to the defector and didn't even know his real name until after the war. Instead, his story was provided by German agents, and his file was so thick with details that American officials thought it confirmed long-standing suspicions that the Iraqis had developed mobile germ factories to evade arms inspections.

Curveball's story has since crumbled under doubts raised by the Germans and the scrutiny of U.S. weapons hunters, who have come to see his code name as particularly apt, given the problems that beset much of the prewar intelligence collection and analysis.

U.N. weapons inspectors hypothesized that such trucks might exist, officials said. They then asked former exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, a bitter enemy of Hussein, to help search for intelligence supporting their theory.

Soon after, a young chemical engineer emerged in a German refugee camp and claimed that he had been hired out of Baghdad University to design and build biological warfare trucks for the Iraqi army.

Based largely on his account, President Bush and his aides repeatedly warned of the shadowy germ trucks, dubbed "Winnebagos of Death" or "Hell on Wheels" in news accounts, and they became a crucial part of the White House case for war — including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's dramatic presentation to the U.N. Security Council just weeks before the war.

Only later, U.S. officials said, did the CIA learn that the defector was the brother of one of Chalabi's top aides, and begin to suspect that he might have been coached to provide false information. Partly because of that, some U.S. intelligence officials and congressional investigators fear that the CIA may have inadvertently conjured up and then chased a phantom weapons system.

David Kay, who resigned in January as head of the CIA-led group created to find illicit weapons in Iraq, said that of all the intelligence failures in Iraq, the case of Curveball was particularly troubling.

"This is the one that's damning," he said. "This is the one that has the potential for causing the largest havoc in the sense that it really looks like a lack of due diligence and care in going forward."

Kay said in an interview that the defector "was absolutely at the heart of a matter of intense interest to us." But Curveball turned out to be an "out-and-out fabricator," he added.

Last May, the CIA announced that it had found two of the suspect trucks in northern Iraq, but the agency later backtracked. However, in the absence of evidence to support many of its prewar claims, the Bush administration has continued to cling to the possibility that biowarfare trucks might still exist.

Vice President Dick Cheney as recently as January referred to the trucks as "conclusive" proof that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction. CIA Director George J. Tenet later told a Senate committee that he called Cheney to warn him that the evidence was increasingly suspect.

Tenet gave the first hint of the underlying problem in a speech at Georgetown University on Feb. 5.

"I must tell you we are finding discrepancies in some claims made by human sources" about mobile biological weapons production, he said. "Because we lack direct access to the most important sources on this question, we have as yet been unable to resolve the differences."

U.S. and British intelligence officials have acknowledged since major combat ended in Iraq that lies or distortions by Iraqi opposition groups in exile contributed to numerous misjudgments about Iraq's suspected weapons programs. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress is blamed most often, but the rival Iraqi National Accord and various Kurdish groups also were responsible for sending dubious defectors to Western intelligence, officials say.

Still, the Curveball case may be especially damaging because no other credible defector has provided firsthand confirmation that Iraq modified vehicles to produce germ agents, and no proof has been found before or after the end of major combat. Iraqi officials interrogated since the war have all denied that such a program existed.

The story of Curveball is now under close review by an internal panel at the CIA, as well as House and Senate oversight committees. All are seeking to determine why so much of the prewar intelligence now appears seriously flawed.

Richard J. Kerr, a former CIA deputy director who is leading the internal review, defended the agency's handling of the case. He said there were strong reasons to believe that the vehicles existed because the defector's information was consistent with years of intelligence on Iraq's covert efforts to obtain chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

"It was detailed and specific and made a lot of sense," Kerr said. He said the CIA believed that Iraq was developing and concealing banned weapons programs in civilian chemical and pharmaceutical facilities. "You get reporting on mobile production facilities … and you say it makes some sense."

Nor did Kerr fault the agency for relying so heavily on an anonymous source whom it could not interview. In this case, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, known as the BND, repeatedly rejected CIA requests to meet Curveball, saying it needed to protect its source. But U.S. and German officials said the BND furnished its file on the defector to U.S. authorities and at times had him answer specific questions from U.S. intelligence.

"Intelligence is often based on information where you can't go back and talk to the source or verify it," Kerr said. "So you turn to the basic questions. 'Does it make sense? Is it logical? Does it appear he could have been at the right place at the right time to know these things?' " The defector met those tests, he said.

One focus of the ongoing investigations is whether the CIA should have known Curveball was not credible. A former U.S. official who has reviewed the classified file said the BND warned the CIA last spring that it had "various problems with the source." Die Zeit, a German newsweekly, first reported the warning last August.

The official said the BND sent the warning after Powell first described the biowarfare trucks in detail to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003. It's unclear whether the German warning arrived before the war began on March 20 last year.

"You can imagine the consternation it kicked off," the official said. "It suggested that what [the Germans had] been passing to us was false. They were backing away."

Mark Mansfield, a CIA spokesman, declined to comment Friday on that charge or questions about the case. An official at BND headquarters in Berlin, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also declined to answer questions. "We believed that Iraq had these mobile biological facilities," the official said.

Although previous CIA reports had referred to the biowarfare trucks, Powell's U.N. presentation put them in the spotlight.

Citing "eyewitness accounts," he called them "one of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq."

"We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails," Powell said. He showed what he called "highly detailed and extremely accurate" diagrams of how the trucks were configured, and warned that they could spew enough anthrax or botulinus toxin "in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people."

But Kay, who sought to confirm Curveball's claims in Iraq after the end of major combat, said Powell's account was "disingenuous."

Kay added: "If Powell had said to the Security Council: 'It's one source, we never actually talked to him, and we don't know his name,' as he's describing this, I think people would have laughed us out of court."

Powell assured U.N. diplomats that two other Iraqi sources, who he said were "in a position to know," had corroborated the "eyewitness account." The CIA later said those reports arrived in December 2000 and mid-2002.

Kay said the debriefing files on the pair showed that they never had direct contact with the biowarfare trucks. "None of them claimed to have seen them," he said. "They said they were aware of the mobile program. They had heard there was a mobile program."

CIA files showed that another Iraqi defector, an engineer who had worked with Curveball, specifically denied that they had worked on such facilities, Kay said. Powell did not cite that defector.

The CIA acknowledged last month that a fourth defector whom Powell cited at the U.N., a former major in Iraq's intelligence service, had lied when he said that Baghdad had built mobile research laboratories to test biological agents. The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency twice debriefed that defector in early 2002 and reported his claims. But it then concluded that he did not have firsthand information and probably was coached by Chalabi's exile group.

In May 2002, the agency posted a "fabrication notice" on a classified computer network to warn other U.S. intelligence agencies that the defector had lied. But CIA officials said the notice was overlooked, and his information was cited both in Powell's speech and the CIA's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate to Congress.

The Curveball case began in 1992, when weapons inspectors from the U.N. Special Commission in Iraq, frustrated at their failure to find Iraq's germ weapon factories, wrote an internal report in which they speculated that Baghdad could have hidden small, mobile versions in modified vans or trucks.

Based on that hypothesis, the U.N. weapons hunters and U.S. intelligence analysts studying U-2 spy plane and high-altitude satellite images of Iraq were instructed to watch for a potential "signature" of a germ factory on wheels — pairs of 35-foot trucks, working in tandem, parked parallel, with communications gear, high security and a water source.

Eavesdropping on Iraqi military communications had already proved that they were moving sensitive documents to avoid detection. U.N. inspectors also knew that Iraq used tanker trucks to fill chemical warheads on the battlefield in the 1980s, raising suspicions that it might also have produced chemical or biological agents in trucks.

In 1994, Israel's military intelligence passed word that Iraq was hiding poison factories in commercial trucks — red-and-white "Tip Top Ice Cream" trucks and green moving vans from "Sajida Transport," named for the dictator's wife.

The U.N. inspectors concluded that neither company existed, and some inspectors were skeptical about the whole idea.

Raymond A. Zilinskas, who helped inspect 61 biological facilities in Iraq in 1994, said he had argued that biowarfare trucks were difficult to build, dangerous to operate and hard to hide. "They just didn't make sense from a technical or a security viewpoint," he said.

But the theory gained new credence when Gen. Amir Saadi, then a senior Iraqi weapons official, told U.N. inspectors in August 1995 that he had proposed building germ-producing trucks and other mobile facilities in 1988, chiefly to avoid air attack, but that regime officials rejected his concept as impractical.

Saadi, who became science advisor to Hussein and chief liaison to U.N. inspectors before the war, turned himself in to U.S. forces in Baghdad on April 12, 2003, after telling German TV that Iraq had no illicit weapons. He remains in U.S. custody.

Saadi's 1995 statement rang alarms at the CIA and elsewhere, however. Intelligence reports soon referred to a possible series of three trucks that would operate as a single biological agent factory. One truck would carry fermenters, another would carry mixing and preparation tanks, and the third, equipment to process and store the product.

U.N. inspectors stepped up their search in response. So did Western spy services.

In 1996, Holland's National Intelligence and Security Agency, known as the BVD, sent word that an informant code-named "Fulcrum," a former Iraqi intelligence officer, had supplied a list of government-issued, blue-and-white, sequentially numbered license plates that supposedly were used on the germ trucks. But the inspectors could never find licenses with those numbers.

Then, in March 1997, a U-2 spy plane that the U.S. government operated for the U.N. photographed three or four large box-type trucks parked outside a garage used by Iraq's intelligence service, the Mukhabarat. U.N. teams swooped in — and found that the trucks were filled with construction material.

The U.N. team members then asked headquarters in New York to let them run random roadblocks in Iraq. They also asked for "hot pursuit" authority, with fast cars and helicopters capable of spraying foam on the roads, in case they had to chase a fleeing germ truck. Officials in New York quickly rejected both proposals.

"We were told that was insane," said Scott Ritter, a former chief U.N. inspector who headed a special investigations unit and who served as the U.N. team's liaison to U.S. intelligence. "And they were right."

But the U.N. inspections operation in New York, then headed by Australian diplomat Richard Butler, did approve another plan.

The inspectors long had relied on intelligence from sympathetic governments and dissident groups. Chalabi had lobbied Washington for years to overthrow Hussein and claimed that he had spies inside the Baghdad regime.

In December 1997, Ritter said, he and his deputy, a former British army major attached to the U.N. team, flew to London to ask Chalabi for help. They met for three hours over dinner at Chalabi's Mayfair residence with the influential Iraqi exile and Ahmed Allawi, who headed intelligence operations for the Iraqi National Congress.

"Chalabi outlined what he could do for us," Ritter recalled. "His intelligence guy outlined their sources and said he had people inside the government. They told us they had the run of Iraq. Just tell them what we needed. So we outlined the gaps in our understanding of the Iraqi program, including the mobile bioweapons labs. Basically, we gave them a shopping list."

"They began feeding us information," Ritter said. "We got hand-drawn maps, handwritten statements and other stuff flowing in. At first blush, it looked good. But nothing panned out. Most of it just regurgitated what we'd given them. And the data that was new never checked out."

Haider Musawi, an INC media liaison in Baghdad, said in a telephone interview Saturday that he could not confirm the meetings had occurred. Asked about INC ties to Curveball, he replied, "I really can't think of such a defector."

U.S. officials say Curveball apparently showed up in Germany in 1998, but it is unclear how he got there. The Times was unable to ascertain Curveball's real name or his current location.

What is clear is that by 2000, Curveball had provided a vast array of convincing detail about the illicit program he claimed to manage.

He outlined how each office was set up and the names on each door. He described how walls were moved to help hide trucks. He identified several dozen fellow team members — even a lowly aide who rented their cars. He provided diagrams showing how stainless steel tanks, pumps, compressors and other parts were configured on nickel-plated flooring in each truck.

U.N. weapons hunters who returned to Iraq in November 2002 considered the trucks a "high priority," said a former inspector who helped supervise more than 70 raids for evidence of germ weapons in the four months before the war.

They checked every site Curveball had identified, as well as others picked by U.S. intelligence. They tested waste lines in food-testing vans, took samples from refrigerator trucks, and searched for truck parts, blueprints, purchase orders or other evidence in factories, laboratories and elsewhere.

"We didn't find anything," the former inspector said.

After Powell's U.N. speech, inspectors demanded that Baghdad identify every mobile facility it owned.

In letters delivered on March 3 and March 15, just days before the war started, Iraqi officials handed over detailed descriptions, backed by 39 photographs and four videotapes, of mobile disease analysis labs, mobile military morgues, X-ray trucks, military bakery vans, mobile ice factories, refrigerated drug and food transport trucks and other special vehicles. Some had stainless steel equipment that appeared similar to the diagrams Powell had shown the U.N.

After major combat ended, the U.S. forces recovered two suspect trailer trucks in northern Iraq. A CIA report last May 28 concluded that two trucks "probably" were designed to produce lethal toxins in liquid slurry, and Bush said U.S. forces thus had "found" Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

But Pentagon analysts warned that the trucks probably produced hydrogen for artillery weather balloons, and the CIA backtracked. It now says there is "no consensus" on the trucks' use.

During the summer, Kay's investigators visited Curveball's parents and brother in Baghdad, as well as his former work sites. They determined that he was last in his class at the University of Baghdad, not first as he had claimed. They learned he had been fired from his job and jailed for embezzlement before he fled Iraq.

"He was wrong about so much," Kay recalled. "Physical descriptions he gave for buildings and sites simply didn't match reality. Things started to fall apart."

Chalabi, now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, retains strong support in the White House. He was a guest of First Lady Laura Bush at the president's State of the Union address last January, and his organization still receives several hundred thousand dollars a month from the Pentagon to help collect intelligence in Iraq.

Chalabi says he has been unfairly blamed for the failure to find germ trucks or any other unconventional weapons in Iraq since major combat ended. He blames the CIA instead.

"Intelligence people are supposed to do a better job for their country, and their government did not do such a good job," he told CBS' "60 Minutes" in a recent interview. "This is a ridiculous situation."

INC defectors were always accused of having an ax to grind, he said. "So why did the CIA believe them so much?"

Times staff writer Jeffrey Fleishman in Berlin contributed to this report.

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Iraqis Drag Bodies Through Streets After Attack
2 hours, 6 minutes ago

By Michael Georgy

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - A vengeful crowd of cheering Iraqis dragged the burned and mutilated bodies of four contractors -- three of them American -- through the streets of Falluja Wednesday after killing them in a vehicle ambush.

In a separate attack five American soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb was detonated beside their armored vehicle convoy west of Baghdad, the U.S. army said.

The White House vowed that the United States would stay the course in Iraq (news - web sites) despite another bloody day.

The Falluja violence began when guerrillas attacked two four-wheel-drive vehicles on a main road. A crowd set the vehicles ablaze and dragged the bodies through the streets of the town 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, witnesses said.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the U.S. army in Iraq, said all four contractors in the vehicles were killed. He said they were working for the U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq.

A State Department official in Washington said three of the four were U.S. citizens but gave no further details.

"These are horrific attacks by people who are trying to prevent democracy from moving forward, but democracy is taking root," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. He said the United States was holding fast to a June 30 deadline for handing over power in Iraq to a transitional Iraqi government.

Television pictures from Falluja showed one incinerated body being kicked and its head being stamped on by a member of the jubilant crowd, while others dragged a charred and blackened body by its feet.

As one corpse lay burning on the ground, an Iraqi came and doused it with petrol, sending flames soaring into the air. At least two bodies, their skin burned away, were tied to cars and pulled through the streets, witnesses said.





"THE FATE OF ALL AMERICANS"

"This is the fate of all Americans who come to Falluja," said Mohammad Nafik, one of the crowd surrounding the bodies.

Some body parts were pulled off and left hanging from a telephone cable, while two incinerated bodies were later strung from a bridge and left dangling there.

A young boy beat one of the incinerated bodies after it was pulled down with his shoe as a crowd cheered.

"I am happy to see this. The Americans are occupying us so this is what will happen," said Mohammad, 12, looking on.

As the victims lay burning, a crowd of around 150 men chanted "Long live Islam" and "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Greatest") while flashing victory signs for the television cameras.

No U.S. soldiers or Iraqi police were seen in the area for several hours after the attack, but a U.S. fighter plane roared overhead, prompting the crowd to scatter.

Falluja has been one of the most violent, restive towns in Iraq since the U.S.-led occupation began. There are almost daily strikes against U.S. military convoys in the area.


An Iraqi hits a burning car with a shovel in Fallujah where four civilian contractors were shot dead.(

More than 400 U.S. soldiers have been killed in action since the start of the war, many of them in attacks using improvised explosive devices -- charges hidden in a plastic bag, soft drink can or dead animal and wired to a simple detonator.

As well as attacks on U.S. and coalition troops, there has been a sharp increase in insurgent strikes against foreign civilians in recent weeks.

In March alone, 12 foreign civilians have been killed in drive-by shootings or similar attacks.

With less than 100 days to go before U.S. authorities hand over sovereignty to an Iraqi government, the U.S. military, Iraqi police and other local security forces are still battling to bring security to the country.

Wednesday's scenes were reminiscent of an October 1993 incident in Somalia when 18 U.S. Army Rangers and one Malaysian were killed in the downing by Somali militias of two U.S. helicopters. Mobs dragged the corpses of Americans through the streets of Mogadishu. (Additional reporting by Fiona O'Brien)


An Iraqi boy holds a leaflet in broken English that reads 'Fallujah, the cemetery of the Americans,' near a burning car in Fallujah.(

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Anti-American Voices Get Louder Across Iraq
32 minutes ago


By Fiona O'Brien

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The people who burned and kicked the corpses of four American contractors in the Iraqi town of Falluja this week were not armed insurgents or foreign fighters.

Children joined in as jubilant crowds played with the charred bodies, dragging them like trophies through the streets of a town overwhelmed by hatred for the occupying forces.

Those who participated in the brutality may represent just a tiny minority of Iraqis, but across the country anti-American voices are getting louder and more insistent.

"There's an increasing feeling of anti-Americanism definitely," said Paola Gasparoli of Occupation Watch, an independent organization that monitors the occupation.

"It's like all their hopes were destroyed. Families who had some hope the Americans would help Iraq (news - web sites) now have sons who were killed or arrested, houses destroyed. This hope has died."

The U.S. authorities in Iraq cite polls showing that a vast majority of Iraqis are happy to have them in the country.

But one survey of 2,500 Iraqis released in March found that while they were happy to be rid of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), 41 percent said they were humiliated by the invasion, four in 10 had no confidence in occupation troops, and one in five believed attacks on foreign soldiers in Iraq were justified.

A number of factors fuel the growing resentment.

A year since the invasion, there has been no let-up in violence, infrastructure is still poor, jobs scarce. There is often friction between civilians and occupying troops.

Raids across the country leave houses damaged and property broken. Iraqis complain that troops coming under attack are quick to fire in self defense, but fire randomly and without regard for civilians nearby.

In Tikrit last month, U.S. soldiers killed a three-year-old boy when they fired on a car carrying four children and three women. The troops said the car jumped a checkpoint, the Iraqis said they never saw one.

Rights groups say that in the so-called battle for hearts and minds, the occupying forces are often their own worst enemy.

One tank rumbles through Baghdad with "Bloodlust" painted on its barrel. Another says "Kill them all."

DUTY TO FIGHT

Frustration at the breakdown of order since Saddam's fall on April 9, 2003, has been compounded by a perceived disregard for Iraqi lives.

"They come and destroy our houses, it's the duty of all Muslims to fight them," Ahmad Muhammad, a Falluja resident who watched the carnage on Wednesday said. "We're happy to see this...This is the democracy that Bush was waiting for."

Falluja and the region west of Baghdad have long been a hotspot for resistance, but the problem is wider. When two foreigners were shot dead in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday, Iraqis cheered as their bodies lay in the street.

Anyone linked to the U.S.-authorities is a target. Iraqi policemen, foreigners, local politicians have been killed in Baquba, Kirkuk, Basra, Baghdad.

Rumors stoke the hatred and Americans are blamed for everything. When Iraqi insurgents fire rockets and mortars, locals shout "Death to America" and "Bush is the enemy of Islam," and often claim sightings of U.S. aircraft.

"It was a plane, the Americans dropped a bomb from a plane," a small girl wounded in a rocket attack on a residential neighborhood in Baghdad recently wailed from her hospital bed.

The U.S. army has increasingly linked the insurgency to foreign terror networks, but Wednesday's killings showed their No. 1 enemy within Iraq is hatred of the occupiers.

"On the issue of hearts and minds, trust and confidence, that's something we need to work on every day with the people of Iraq," the deputy director of operations for the U.S. army in Iraq, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, told Reuters.

"It's an active battle. It's as important for us to win the moral battle, the trust and confidence as it is to provide a safe and secure environment for the people of Iraq."

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Rioting Across Iraq Kills Nearly 60

By KHALID MOHAMMED, Associated Press Writer

NAJAF, Iraq - Supporters of an anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric rioted in Baghdad and four other Iraqi cities, sparking fighting that killed at least 50 Iraqis, eight U.S. troops and a Salvadoran soldier, in the worst unrest since the spasm of looting and arson immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

The fiercest battle took place Sunday in the streets of Sadr City, Baghdad's largest Shiite neighborhood, where Shiite militiamen fired from rooftops and behind buildings at U.S. troops, killing seven Americans. At least 28 Iraqis were killed in the fighting, a doctor at one local hospital said Monday.

In fighting in the holy city of Najaf Sunday, two soldiers — a Salvadoran and an American — died and at least nine other soldiers were wounded, the Spanish Defense Ministry said. Twenty-two Iraqis died and more than 200 were wounded, said Falah Mohammed, director of the Najaf health department.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops on Monday sealed off Fallujah, apparently ahead of a major operation to pacify the city, one of the most violent cities in the heartland of the insurgency against the American occupation.



U.S. commanders have been vowing a massive response after insurgents killed four American security contractors in the city, west of Baghdad, on Wednesday. After the slayings, residents dragged the Americans' bodies through the streets, hanging two of their charred corpses from a bridge, in horrifying scenes that showed the depth of anti-U.S. sentiment in the city.

The insurgency that has plagued U.S. troops in Iraq (news - web sites) for months has been led by Sunni Muslims. But Sunday's clashes in Baghdad and three other cities threatened to open a dangerous new front: a confrontation with Iraq's powerful Shiite Muslim majority, which has until now largely avoided violence with the Americans.

Hundreds were wounded in Sunday's violence in Baghdad, Najaf, Nasiriyah and Amarah. The riots were ignited by the arrest on Saturday of an aide to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Followers of al-Sadr also took over the offices of the governor in the southern city of Basra.

The U.S. troops moved into Baghdad's Sadr City after militiamen took over five police stations in the neighborhood. At least two Humvees burned in the streets, and tanks rolled in, crushing cars.

Al-Shawadir hospital, one of two hospitals in Sadr City, received 28 dead Iraqis and 90 wounded from the fighting, said a doctor, Qassim Saddam. It was not immediately known if the second hospital had received any casualties.

By Monday morning, the militiamen had been forced out of the police stations, and U.S. tanks were parked in one of the neighborhood's main markets.

During a street protest by some 5,000 people Sunday, al-Sadr supporters opened fire on the base of Spanish troops near the Shiite holy city of Najaf, sparking a battle that lasted several hours.

In nearby Kufa, al-Sadr supporters took over a police station.



The unrest appeared to be a show of force by al-Sadr, a 30-year-old cleric known to his reverent followers as `al-Sayed,' or master. Al-Sadr has the backing of hundreds of young seminary students and many impoverished Shiites, devoted to him because of his anti-U.S. stance and the memory of his father, a Shiite religious leader gunned down by suspected Saddam agents in 1999.

"I am happy to die for al-Sayed," said one protester, 21-year-old Ali Hussein, after he was shot in the arm in the Najaf fighting. "Take me to see my mother first then let me die."

Al-Sadr issued a statement later Sunday calling off street protests and saying he would stage a sit-in at a mosque in Kufa, where he has delivered fiery weekly sermons for months.

But the statement also called on followers to "do what you see fit in your provinces. Strike terror in the heart of your enemy ... We can no longer be silent in the face of their abuses."



Some of al-Sadr's followers in Baghdad said they interpreted this as a call for armed resistance against U.S. forces.

Sunday's violence — along with the unrelated killings of two Marines in Anbar province — pushed the U.S. death toll to at least 610.

The violence was touched off by the arrest of Mustafa al-Yacoubi, a senior aide to al-Sadr, on charges of murdering Abdel-Majid al-Khoei, a rival Shiite cleric. A total of 25 arrest warrants have been issued in the case, and 13 suspects have been taken into custody, an official at the coalition headquarters said.

Al-Sadr supporters also were angered by the March 28 closure of his weekly newspaper by U.S. officials. The Americans alleged the newspaper was inciting violence against coalition troops.

Militiamen demonstrating on Sunday against al-Yacoubi's detention also traded fire with Italian troops in the southern city of Nasiriyah and British troops in Amarah.

Shiites comprise about 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people but were brutally repressed by Saddam, a Sunni Muslim. Al-Sadr is at odds with most Shiites, who hope to gain substantial power in the new Iraqi government.

In other developments Sunday:

_Two U.S. Marines, both assigned to the 1st Marine Division, were killed by an "enemy action" in Anbar province Saturday, the military said. One died Saturday and the other Sunday, the statement said without providing details.

_ In Kirkuk, also in the north, a car bomb exploded, killing three civilians and wounding two others, police said.

_ U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer announced the appointments of Ali Allawi, the interim trade minister, as the new defense minister and Mohammed al-Shehwani, a former Iraqi air force officer who fled Iraq in 1990, as head of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service.

_ U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Baghdad with a team to help in the transition to an interim government after sovereignty is handed back to Iraqis on June 30.

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whomod said:
"BRING IT ON BABY!! OOO-WWWWW!!!"

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Rioting Across Iraq Kills Nearly 60

By KHALID MOHAMMED, Associated Press Writer

NAJAF, Iraq - Supporters of an anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric rioted in Baghdad and four other Iraqi cities, sparking fighting that killed at least 50 Iraqis, eight U.S. troops and a Salvadoran soldier, in the worst unrest since the spasm of looting and arson immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

The fiercest battle took place Sunday in the streets of Sadr City, Baghdad's largest Shiite neighborhood, where Shiite militiamen fired from rooftops and behind buildings at U.S. troops, killing seven Americans. At least 28 Iraqis were killed in the fighting, a doctor at one local hospital said Monday.

In fighting in the holy city of Najaf Sunday, two soldiers, a Salvadoran and an American, died and at least nine other soldiers were wounded, the Spanish Defense Ministry said. Twenty-two Iraqis died and more than 200 were wounded, said Falah Mohammed, director of the Najaf health department.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops on Monday sealed off Fallujah, apparently ahead of a major operation to pacify the city, one of the most violent cities in the heartland of the insurgency against the American occupation.



U.S. commanders have been vowing a massive response after insurgents killed four American security contractors in the city, west of Baghdad, on Wednesday. After the slayings, residents dragged the Americans' bodies through the streets, hanging two of their charred corpses from a bridge, in horrifying scenes that showed the depth of anti-U.S. sentiment in the city.

The insurgency that has plagued U.S. troops in Iraq (news - web sites) for months has been led by Sunni Muslims. But Sunday's clashes in Baghdad and three other cities threatened to open a dangerous new front: a confrontation with Iraq's powerful Shiite Muslim majority, which has until now largely avoided violence with the Americans.

Hundreds were wounded in Sunday's violence in Baghdad, Najaf, Nasiriyah and Amarah. The riots were ignited by the arrest on Saturday of an aide to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Followers of al-Sadr also took over the offices of the governor in the southern city of Basra.

The U.S. troops moved into Baghdad's Sadr City after militiamen took over five police stations in the neighborhood. At least two Humvees burned in the streets, and tanks rolled in, crushing cars.

Al-Shawadir hospital, one of two hospitals in Sadr City, received 28 dead Iraqis and 90 wounded from the fighting, said a doctor, Qassim Saddam. It was not immediately known if the second hospital had received any casualties.

By Monday morning, the militiamen had been forced out of the police stations, and U.S. tanks were parked in one of the neighborhood's main markets.

During a street protest by some 5,000 people Sunday, al-Sadr supporters opened fire on the base of Spanish troops near the Shiite holy city of Najaf, sparking a battle that lasted several hours.

In nearby Kufa, al-Sadr supporters took over a police station.



The unrest appeared to be a show of force by al-Sadr, a 30-year-old cleric known to his reverent followers as `al-Sayed,' or master. Al-Sadr has the backing of hundreds of young seminary students and many impoverished Shiites, devoted to him because of his anti-U.S. stance and the memory of his father, a Shiite religious leader gunned down by suspected Saddam agents in 1999.

"I am happy to die for al-Sayed," said one protester, 21-year-old Ali Hussein, after he was shot in the arm in the Najaf fighting. "Take me to see my mother first then let me die."

Al-Sadr issued a statement later Sunday calling off street protests and saying he would stage a sit-in at a mosque in Kufa, where he has delivered fiery weekly sermons for months.

But the statement also called on followers to "do what you see fit in your provinces. Strike terror in the heart of your enemy ... We can no longer be silent in the face of their abuses."



Some of al-Sadr's followers in Baghdad said they interpreted this as a call for armed resistance against U.S. forces.

Sunday's violence — along with the unrelated killings of two Marines in Anbar province — pushed the U.S. death toll to at least 610.

The violence was touched off by the arrest of Mustafa al-Yacoubi, a senior aide to al-Sadr, on charges of murdering Abdel-Majid al-Khoei, a rival Shiite cleric. A total of 25 arrest warrants have been issued in the case, and 13 suspects have been taken into custody, an official at the coalition headquarters said.

Al-Sadr supporters also were angered by the March 28 closure of his weekly newspaper by U.S. officials. The Americans alleged the newspaper was inciting violence against coalition troops.

Militiamen demonstrating on Sunday against al-Yacoubi's detention also traded fire with Italian troops in the southern city of Nasiriyah and British troops in Amarah.

Shiites comprise about 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people but were brutally repressed by Saddam, a Sunni Muslim. Al-Sadr is at odds with most Shiites, who hope to gain substantial power in the new Iraqi government.

In other developments Sunday:

_Two U.S. Marines, both assigned to the 1st Marine Division, were killed by an "enemy action" in Anbar province Saturday, the military said. One died Saturday and the other Sunday, the statement said without providing details.

_ In Kirkuk, also in the north, a car bomb exploded, killing three civilians and wounding two others, police said.

_ U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer announced the appointments of Ali Allawi, the interim trade minister, as the new defense minister and Mohammed al-Shehwani, a former Iraqi air force officer who fled Iraq in 1990, as head of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service.

_ U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Baghdad with a team to help in the transition to an interim government after sovereignty is handed back to Iraqis on June 30.

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At least, true to form, some of the right-wingers on talk radio and the internet have moved away from the post WMD' justification for the war of 'liberating the poor Iraqi's and reverted to their wartime calls to "NUKE 'EM ALL, MAN!". But then again, it was sort of predictable.

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britneyspearsatemyshorts said:
actually we can see through your posts your transparent, you take pleasure in all the killing because you have an obsession with Bush and in your mind this translates to him not being re-elected.....your a sad man whomod....

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Cleric: Iraq's Sadr Turns Down Elders' Peace Appeal
35 minutes ago Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has turned down an appeal by Iraq (news - web sites)'s powerful Shi'ite Muslim establishment to renounce violence, an aide to a leading cleric said on Monday.


Reuters Photo




Latest headlines:
· Iraqi Judge Issues Warrant for Cleric
AP - 9 minutes ago
· Cleric: Iraq's Sadr Turns Down Elders' Peace Appeal
Reuters - 35 minutes ago
· Most Americans oppose Bush policy in Iraq: poll
AFP - 43 minutes ago
Special Coverage





An aide to Mohammad Bahr al-Uloum, a member of the U.S.-installed Iraqi Governing Council, told Reuters Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, regarded as Iraq's most powerful cleric and a rival of Sadr's, supported the appeal.


Sistani has made declarations in the past calling on Iraqis to respect state institutions and public order. He has not spoken directly on the violence involving Sadr's supporters, but he is expected to make a statement in the next few days.


"The Hawza (seminary) is unanimous on this," the aide said.


"We asked Moqtada (al-Sadr) to stop resorting to violence, occupying public buildings and other actions that make him an outlaw. He insists on staying on the same course that could destroy the nation."


He said Moqtada had refused to meet a tribal delegation and representatives of Bahr al-Uloum at the main mosque of Kufa, near the holy city of Najaf, where he is staging a sit-in with armed followers.


"The delegation met Moqtada's aides, who did not express interest in relying on wisdom and patience," the aide said.


A Shi'ite religious source said Sadr has moved from Kufa to Najaf's Imam Ali shrine, the holiest Shi'ite site in Iraq, and armed followers have closed off streets leading to the shrine.


U.S. authorities occupying Iraq said on Monday an arrest warrant had been issued for Sadr in connection with the murder of a Shi'ite cleric a year ago. Sadr has denied involvement in the crime.


The murder of Sayyed Abdel Majid al-Khoei, the son of the late Grand Ayatollah Abu al-Qassem al-Khoei, shattered a peace that have reigned between Iraq's Shi'ite leadership for decades after agreeing to renounce violence as means for settling disputes.


Hamid al-Bayati, spokesman for the Shi'ite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), criticized the announcement of the arrest warrant against Badr.


"The incident took place a year ago and I don't think any Iraqi would believe that this arrest warrant is at the right time," he told CNN. "It is very bad timing, even if the basis is right. I don't know why they decided to act now.


"This comes after the closure of a newspaper which is nothing to do with the arrest warrant. So there must be some other things behind all these clashes."


Iraq's de facto U.S. governor Paul Bremer termed Sadr an outlaw on Monday, a day after battles between Sadr's militia and U.S.-led coalition troops in Baghdad and near Najaf killed 48 Iraqis, eight American soldiers and one Salvadoran soldier.


For the past week, Sadr has been at the head of violent anti-American protests. His followers have sworn to fight back if attempts are made to arrest him.


Unlike the Shi'ite religious establishment, Sadr has flatly denounced the U.S.-led occupation and demanded the withdrawal of U.S. troops.


His brand of nationalistic Islam appeals mainly to young poor Shi'ites who grew up under a crippling economic embargo and repression by the former Baathist government.

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