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

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MisterJLA said:
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"PNAC member and neocon Batman, a notorious billionaire who made his money the old fashioned way (he inherited it from his rich daddy) is clearly seen plotting neocon imperialism with the father of LIES, Bush. During this call, the LA Times reported that Batman offered the services of the Batplane in exchange for a pipeline that would pump oil from Iraq, right to Wayne Manor. Bush and his oil buddies loved the idea, but they can't HIDE THE TRUTH."
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-whomod

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Bravo, Mr JLA !

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whomod said:
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"You're talking about the late period of November, when things were winding down in Afghanistan," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters, confirming that Bush spoke to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at that time "about planning related to Iraq."

"But there is a difference between planning and making a decision" to go to war, McClellan said.

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Woodward Shares War Secrets

April 18, 2004

Journalist Bob Woodward calls his new book, “Plan of Attack,” the first detailed, behind-the-scenes account of how and why the president decided to wage war in Iraq.

It’s an insider’s account written after Woodward spoke with 75 of the key decision makers, including President Bush himself.

The president permitted Woodward to quote him directly. Others spoke on the condition that Woodward not identify them as sources.

Woodward discusses the secret details of the White House's plans to attack Iraq for the first time on television with Correspondent Mike Wallace.
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Woodward permitted 60 Minutes to listen to tapes he recorded of his most important interviews, to read the transcripts, and to verify that the quotes he uses are based on recollections from participants in the key meetings. Both CBS News and Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Woodward's book, are units of Viacom.

Woodward says that many of the quotes came directly from the president: “When I interviewed him for the first time several months ago up in the residence of the White House, he just kind of out of the blue said, ‘It's the story of the 21st Century,’ his decision to undertake this war and start a preemptive attack on another country."

Woodward reports that just five days after Sept. 11, President Bush indicated to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that while he had to do Afghanistan first, he was also determined to do something about Saddam Hussein.

”There's some pressure to go after Saddam Hussein. Don Rumsfeld has said, ‘This is an opportunity to take out Saddam Hussein, perhaps. We should consider it.’ And the president says to Condi Rice meeting head to head, ‘We won't do Iraq now.’ But it is a question we're gonna have to return to,’” says Woodward.

“And there's this low boil on Iraq until the day before Thanksgiving, Nov. 21, 2001. This is 72 days after 9/11. This is part of this secret history. President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically, and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, ‘What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.’"

Woodward says immediately after that, Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam - and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check.

”Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the preparations in Kuwait, specifically to make war possible,” says Woodward.

“Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. …Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the Treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this."
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Woodward says there was a lot happening that only key Bush people knew about.

”A year before the war started, three things are going on. Franks is secretly developing this war plan that he's briefing the president in detail on,” says Woodward. “Franks simultaneously is publicly denying that he's ever been asked to do any plan.”

For example, here's Gen. Franks’ response to a question about invading Iraq, in May 2002, after he's been working on war plans for five months: “That’s a great question and one for which I don’t have an answer, because my boss has not yet asked me to put together a plan to do that.”

But according to Woodward, the general had been perfecting his war plan, and Vice President Dick Cheney knew all about it. Woodward reports that Cheney was the driving force in the White House to get Saddam. Cheney had been Secretary of Defense during the first Gulf War, and to him, Saddam was unfinished business – and a threat to the United States.

In his book, Woodward describes Cheney as a "powerful, steamrolling force obsessed with Saddam and taking him out."

"Colin Powell, the secretary of state, saw this in Cheney to such an extent, he, Powell, told colleagues that ‘Cheney has a fever. It is an absolute fever. It’s almost as if nothing else exists,’” says Woodward, who adds that Cheney had plenty of opportunities to convince the president.

”He’s just down the hall in the West Wing from the president. President says, ‘I meet with him all the time.’ Cheney's back in the corner or sitting on the couch at nearly all of these meetings.”

The president had hoped Saddam could be removed in some way short of war. But early in 2002, Woodward reports, the CIA concluded they could not overthrow Saddam. That word came from the CIA's head of Iraq operations, a man known simply as “Saul.”

"Saul gets together a briefing and who does he give it to first? Dick Cheney. He said, ‘I can count the number of sources, human sources, spies we have in Iraq on one hand,’” says Woodward. “I asked the president, ‘What was your reaction that the CIA couldn't overthrow Saddam? And the president said one word. 'Darn.'"

The vice president led the way on declaring that Saddam Hussein definitely had weapons of mass destruction. Before that, the president had said only that Saddam “desires them.”

But ten days later, the vice president said Saddam already had weapons of mass destruction. And 12 days after that, the president too had apparently been persuaded: “A lot of people understand he holds weapons of mass destruction.”
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Three months later, on Dec. 21, 2002, Woodward says CIA Director George Tenet brought his deputy, John McLaughlin, to the oval office to show the president and the vice president their best evidence that Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction.

”McLaughlin has access to all the satellite photos, and he goes in and he has flip charts in the oval office. The president listens to all of this and McLaughlin's done. And, and the president kind of, as he's inclined to do, says ‘Nice try, but that isn't gonna sell Joe Public. That isn't gonna convince Joe Public,’” says Woodward.

In his book, Woodward writes: "The presentation was a flop. The photos were not gripping. The intercepts were less than compelling. And then George Bush turns to George Tenet and says, 'This is the best we've got?'"

Says Woodward: “George Tenet's sitting on the couch, stands up, and says, ‘Don't worry, it's a slam dunk case.’" And the president challenges him again and Tenet says, ‘The case, it's a slam dunk.’ ...I asked the president about this and he said it was very important to have the CIA director – ‘Slam-dunk is as I interpreted is a sure thing, guaranteed. No possibility it won't go through the hoop.’ Others present, Cheney, very impressed.”

What did Woodward think of Tenet’s statement? “It’s a mistake,” he says. “Now the significance of that mistake - that was the key rationale for war.”
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It was just two weeks later when the president decided to go to war.

“That decision was first conveyed to Condi Rice in early January 2003 when he said, ‘We're gonna have to go. It's war.’ He was frustrated with the weapons inspections. He had promised the United Nations and the world and the country that either the UN would disarm Saddam or he, George Bush, would do it and do it alone if necessary,” says Woodward. “So he told Condi Rice. He told Rumsfeld. He knew Cheney wanted to do this. And they realized they haven’t told Colin Powell, the Secretary of State.”

“So Condi Rice said, ‘You better call Colin in and tell him.’ So, I think probably one of the most interesting meetings in this whole story. He calls Colin Powell in alone, sitting in those two famous chairs in the Oval Office and the president said, ‘Looks like war. I'm gonna have to do this,’” adds Woodward.

“And then Powell says to him, somewhat in a chilly way, ‘Are you aware of the consequences?’ Because he'd been pounding for months on the president, on everyone - and Powell directly says, ‘You know, you're gonna be owning this place.’ And the president says, ‘I understand that.’ The president knows that Powell is the one who doesn't want to go to war. He says, ‘Will you be with me?’ And Powell, the soldier, 35 years in the army, the president has decided and he says, ‘I'll do my best. Yes, Mr. President. I'll be with you.’” And then, the president says, ‘Time to put your war uniform on.’"

Woodward says he described Powell as semi-despondent “because he knew that this was a war that might have been avoided. That’s why he spent so much time at the United Nations.”
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But, it turns out, two days before the president told Powell, Cheney and Rumsfeld had already briefed Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador.

”Saturday, Jan. 11, with the president's permission, Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney's West Wing office, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, is there with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says, ‘Top secret. No foreign.’ No foreign means no foreigners are supposed to see this,” says Woodward.

“They describe in detail the war plan for Bandar. And so Bandar, who's skeptical because he knows in the first Gulf War we didn't get Saddam out, so he says to Cheney and Rumsfeld, ‘So Saddam this time is gonna be out, period?’ And Cheney - who has said nothing - says the following: ‘Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.’"

After Bandar left, according to Woodward, Cheney said, “I wanted him to know that this is for real. We're really doing it."

But this wasn’t enough for Prince Bandar, who Woodward says wanted confirmation from the president. “Then, two days later, Bandar is called to meet with the president and the president says, ‘Their message is my message,’” says Woodward.

Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told 60 Minutes that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election - to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day.

Woodward says that Bandar understood that economic conditions were key before a presidential election: “They’re [oil prices] high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly.”
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For his book, Woodward interviewed 75 top military and Bush administration officials, including two long interviews with the president himself. Mr. Bush spoke on the record, but others talked to Woodward on condition that he not reveal their identities.

60 Minutes won’t name those Woodward interviewed, but we've listened to the tapes and read the transcripts of his key interviews to verify that his accounts are based on recollections from people who took part in the meetings he describes, including a historic meeting on March 19, when Bush gives the order to go to war.

He’s with the National Security Council, in the situation room. Says Woodward: “They have all these TV monitors. Gen. Franks, the commander, is up on one of them. And all nine commanders, and the president asks each one of them, ‘Are you ready? Do you have what you need? Are you satisfied?’ And they all say, ‘Yes, sir.’ and ‘We're ready.’”

Then the president saluted and he rose suddenly from his chair. “People who were there said there were tears in his eyes, not coming down his cheeks but in his eyes,” says Woodward. “And just kind of marched out of the room.”

Having given the order, the president walked alone around the circle behind the White House. Months later, he told Woodward: “As I walked around the circle, I prayed that our troops be safe, be protected by the Almighty. Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray that I be as good a messenger of his will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for forgiveness."

Did Mr. Bush ask his father for any advice? “I asked the president about this. And President Bush said, ‘Well, no,’ and then he got defensive about it,” says Woodward. “Then he said something that really struck me. He said of his father, ‘He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength.’ And then he said, ‘There's a higher Father that I appeal to.’"

Beyond not asking his father about going to war, Woodward was startled to learn that the president did not ask key cabinet members either.

”The president, in making the decision to go to war, did not ask his secretary of defense for an overall recommendation, did not ask his secretary of state, Colin Powell, for his recommendation,” says Woodward.

But the president did ask Rice, his national security adviser, and Karen Hughes, his political communications adviser. Woodward says both supported going to war. And in the run-up to war, Woodward reveals the CIA hired the leaders of a Muslim religious sect at odds with Saddam, but nonetheless with numerous members highly placed in Saddam's security services. The CIA's code name for them: the Rock Stars.

"Before the war, they recruit 87 of them all throughout the country and they give them satellite phones. And they report in regularly on secret things that are going on,” says Woodward.

And it turns out, reports from the Rock Stars led to the first bombing attack, on March 19, to try to kill Saddam – at a place called Dora Farm, a farm south of Baghdad that Saddam’s wife used.

"And Saddam went there at least once a year with his two sons. The security person at Dora Farm was a CIA spy, a Rock Star, and had a telephone, a satellite phone, in which he was reporting what he was seeing."

Other Rock Stars are apparently there too, so Rumsfeld and Tenet rush to the oval office to tell the president what the spies are seeing.

"They’ve seen the son. There is communications equipment coming in that would show that Saddam is going there. They get overhead satellite photos that show dozens of security vehicles parked under palm trees. And they say, ‘Holy Moses, this is for real.’ And they start getting better and more detailed reports that they think Saddam is coming. And the question is, do we take them out,’” says Woodward.

“The president asks everyone, and they all recommend doing it. And then he kicks everyone out, except Cheney. And he says, ‘Dick, what do you think?’ And Cheney says, ‘I think we ought to do it, and at minimum, it will rattle Saddam's cage.’ ...They start getting intelligence that maybe they hit Saddam."

But Woodward says that Tenet was wrong. Again. And to this day, Woodward reports, the CIA still doesn’t know if the information from the Rock Stars was reliable, or if Saddam was really there that night. “Again, we have the fog of war, the fog of intelligence,” says Woodward.
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Although Saddam has finally been captured, Woodward says that so far, interrogators are learning very little from him.

”What people have told me is that he he's kind of out of it. Unreliable,” says Woodward. “That he, at some moments, thinks he's still president. He's not in touch with reality, to the point where they can find what he says is reliable.”

And in the wake of the war, according to Woodward, there's a deep rift between Powell and Cheney.

”The relationship between Cheney and Powell is essentially broken down. They can't talk. They don't communicate,” says Woodward. “Powell feels that Cheney drove the decision to go to war in Iraq. And Cheney feels that Powell has not been sufficiently supportive of the president in the war or in the aftermath.”

Which of the two was more prescient about how Iraq would turn out? “All of Powell's warnings think of the consequences, Pottery Barn rules: If you break it, you own it. And that's exactly what has happened in Iraq. We own it. In a way, they've had victory without success,” says Woodward.

“Dick Cheney’s view is that in a way, it doesn't matter how long the aftermath is... What matters is the ultimate outcome... Whether there’s stability and democracy.”

Are there post-war plans? “There were innumerable briefings to the president about currency about oil. And on the real issue of security and possible violence, they did not see it coming,” says Woodward.

Did the administration really believe that they were going to get flowers and kisses? “Some of the exiles told them that,” says Woodward. “I think the president was skeptical of that. I think people like Cheney believed it more.”
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Today, while most doubt that Saddam still possessed any weapons of mass destruction, the president told Woodward he has no doubts at all about going to war.

”The president still believes with some conviction, that this was absolutely the right thing, that he has the duty to free people, to liberate people. And this was his moment,” says Woodward.

But who gave President Bush the duty to free people around the world? “That's a really good question. The Constitution doesn't say that's part of the commander in chief's duties,” says Woodward. “That’s his stated purpose. It is far-reaching, and ambitious, and I think will cause many people to tremble.”

How deep a man is President George W. Bush? “He’s not an intellectual. He is not what I guess would be called a deep thinker,” says Woodward. “He chastised me at one point because I said people were concerned about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. And he said, ‘Well you travel in elite circles.’ I think he feels there is an intellectual world and he's indicated he's not a part of it … the fancy pants intellectual world. What he calls the elite.”

How does the president think history will judge him for going to war in Iraq?

“After the second interview with him on Dec. 11, we got up and walked over to one of the doors. There are all of these doors in the Oval Office that lead outside. And he had his hands in his pocket, and I just asked, ‘Well, how is history likely to judge your Iraq war,’” says Woodward.

“And he said, ‘History,’ and then he took his hands out of his pocket and kind of shrugged and extended his hands as if this is a way off. And then he said, ‘History, we don’t know. We’ll all be dead.’”
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Prior to publication, the contents of Woodward's book were closely guarded to prevent any leaks, and 60 Minutes agreed not to interview anyone else for this report.

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Woodward Shares War Secrets

April 18, 2004

Journalist Bob Woodward calls his new book, Plan of Attack, the first detailed, behind-the-scenes account of how and why the president decided to wage war in Iraq.


Both CBS News and Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Woodward's book, are units of Viacom.

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Three months later, on Dec. 21, 2002, Woodward says CIA Director George Tenet brought his deputy, John McLaughlin, to the oval office to show the president and the vice president their best evidence that Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction.

”McLaughlin has access to all the satellite photos, and he goes in and he has flip charts in the oval office. The president listens to all of this and McLaughlin's done. And, and the president kind of, as he's inclined to do, says ‘Nice try, but that isn't gonna sell Joe Public. That isn't gonna convince Joe Public,’” says Woodward.

In his book, Woodward writes: "The presentation was a flop. The photos were not gripping. The intercepts were less than compelling. And then George Bush turns to George Tenet and says, 'This is the best we've got?'"

Says Woodward: “George Tenet's sitting on the couch, stands up, and says, ‘Don't worry, it's a slam dunk case.’" And the president challenges him again and Tenet says, ‘The case, it's a slam dunk.’ ...I asked the president about this and he said it was very important to have the CIA director – ‘Slam-dunk is as I interpreted is a sure thing, guaranteed. No possibility it won't go through the hoop.’”

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Powell Denies He Was Out of Loop on Iraq

31 minutes ago Add White House - AP Cabinet & State to My Yahoo!


By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON - Denying he was out of the loop or hesitant about taking on Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said Monday he was committed to President Bush (news - web sites)'s war plan in the event diplomacy failed at the United Nations (news - web sites) last year.


AP Photo



"I was as committed as anyone else to seeing an end to this regime, the destruction of this regime that put people in mass graves," Powell told The Associated Press in an interview.


Disputing an account by Bob Woodward in a new book, "Plan of Attack," Powell said Bush and all his national security advisers had agreed in August 2002 to ask the U.N. Security Council to seek a peaceful resolution and to go to war if the effort failed.


Powell dismissed Woodward's suggestion that Bush already had made up his mind by Jan. 11 last year to go to war against Iraq (news - web sites) and that Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar, had been informed of the decision that day.


Asserting that the final decision did not come until March, Powell said he was "intimately familiar with the plan and I was aware that Prince Bandar was being briefed on the plan."


"I knew as much as anybody," Powell said.


Asked about Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) — Woodward wrote that the two were barely on speaking terms — Powell described the relationship as excellent.


On another subject, Powell said one or two countries may follow Spain's lead and withdraw its troops from Iraq. He said he expected the United Nations to approve a resolution on peacekeeping before the end of the U.S. occupation June 30.


And, on the Middle East, Powell said the Palestinians should seize the opportunity of a promised Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank. He said Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia was being undercut by Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) as predecessor Abu Mazzen had been before resigning.

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whomod said:
Hopefully [Powell will] put out his own book once he's no longer beholden to these guys.

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whomod said:
Powell also stands by his UN pre-Iraq war WMD speech even though he was quoted as saying "i'm not reading this. This is bullshit" beforehand.

But of course his credibility is still intact with you neocon lovers so long as it doesn't hurt the President. Hopefully he'll put out his own book once he's no longer beholden to these guys. Then he'll move to your forum of lying digruntled insiders trying to sell books.

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britneyspearsatemyshorts said:
on cue

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But he forgot the witty image from www.wissatan.com

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( Early February:)"Bush went AWOL while in the National Guard, and is a deserter..."
Unproven, no basis. Bush was honorably discharged. /quote]

There's plenty of basis behind this.

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JQ said:

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( Early February:)"Bush went AWOL while in the National Guard, and is a deserter..."
Unproven, no basis. Bush was honorably discharged. /quote]

There's plenty of basis behind this.

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Post the concrete evidence that clearly illustrates this.

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Use of term 'neocon' is good sign for Bush
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Isaiah Z. Sterrett
April 21, 2004

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The difference between liberals and lemmings is becoming increasingly unclear. Left-wing columnists, especially, have a mysterious gift for writing exactly the same things as their colleagues. If one writer decides to start shrieking about a certain issue, so will all the others. It is a perpetually hilarious phenomenon.
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For the past few weeks, the liberal argument has consisted of calling President Bush and members of his Administration "neocons," or, "neoconservatives."
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Neoconservatism, of course, is the movement which calls, in part, for an activist foreign policy aimed at spreading freedom throughout the world. (Just from that definition, you can see why liberals don't care for it.)
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A website called IslamOnline featured an editorial recently which proclaimed that we went to war in Iraq because of racism. "Perhaps," wrote the author, "[this] explains why 'the axis of evil' slogan was so popular with Washington neocons."
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Salon.com, in a column entitled "The Neocon Conundrum," said that "a sense of gloom about Iraq" has increased lately, as have "neoconservative calls to 'stay the course', even if it's a course to nowhere."
Striking a decidedly similar note, syndicated liberal Molly Ivins wrote that "we can conclude that bringing democracy at the point of a missile is a lot trickier than the neocons believed it would be."
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In a truly racist op-ed piece, Maureen Dowd wrote that Colin Powell had been "used" by Dick Cheney's "Pentagon neocons." They'd forced Powell, she wrote, to abandon his beliefs and support a war based on "bogus intelligence."
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Joe Klein wrote in Time magazine that Bush was wrong for filling his Cabinet with "neoconservative" people, according to Klein, "who had big ideas about how the world should work." Evidently Klein prefers small ideas that do nothing but protect the status quo.
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The reason liberals are insisting that we call conservatives "neoconservatives" is that the word "conservative" no longer frightens the American public. Adding that prefix, which means "new", makes the whole concept much scarier.
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The most successful step toward demystifying conservatism was taken by Gov. George W. Bush in 2000. One of his favorite slogans was "compassionate conservatism," and it was intended to hinder liberals' ability to call him mean, as they had succeeded in calling every other Republican in the history of the universe.
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Ronald Reagan, it should be remembered, has been called mean. So has Phyllis Schlafly, Rush Limbaugh, and everybody else who likes low taxes. But not George Bush! They said he was a stupid cowboy, but never was he labeled mean.
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So now, having observed a President who is both conservative and completely non-mean, America has learned that conservatives are good people, after all. Because of "compassionate conservatism," voters are no longer alarmed by the c-word.
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This presents a tremendous problem to liberals. If they can't call conservatives mean, and they can't call their opponents conservatives, what in Sam Hill are they supposed to do?
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We know they can't make a reasonable argument. Lately they've been trying to tell us that Bush caused the 9/11 attacks. Republicans, of course, used the same argument against Roosevelt in the months after Pearl Harbor -- or, wait, actually, they didn't. Imagine: the party out of power supported America.
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They also want us to believe that there's some sort of cosmic connection between Iraq and Vietnam, even though the two nations are in different parts of the world, involve different problems, have been fought with vastly different numbers of casualties, and have lasted very different amounts of time. Luckily, I don't really worry about this particular notion. Ted Kennedy said it, so surely it was the booze talking. (Or maybe he still has water in his ears.)
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Clearly this argument isn't going to work for liberals. Their only choice is to find another name to call conservatives. At the moment, it's "neocon," but what next? At some point, they'll either have to argue, or be shunned from political debate forever.
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_______________________________________

Isaiah Z. Sterrett is a Lifetime Member of the California Junior Scholarship Federation, Sustaining Member of the Republican National Committee, and Basic Member of the American Conservative Union. He writes a weekly political column from his home in northern California.

© Copyright 2004 by Isaiah Z. Sterrett
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/sterrett/040421

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the G-man said:
Am I the only one who's noticed that whomod has abandoned the posting of unrelated images and now, instead, makes a sarcastic or inaccurate comment, followed by a graemlin?

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I thought he always did that

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Saudi Ambassador: Iraq Pay-Off Could Avoid Bloodshed

Sun Apr 25, 2:07 PM ET


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration might have avoided a deadly insurgency in Iraq by buying the loyalty of its former military for about $200 million, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States said on Sunday.

But Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan declined to say whether he had actually advised President Bush to offer former members of Saddam Hussein 's military three months' pay in exchange for their services in securing Iraq.

Bandar was asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether journalist Bob Woodward was correct when he said that Bandar had advised Bush to take $200 million and "buy off, in effect, the Iraqi army."

Bandar replied: "I don't talk about my conversations with the president ... but I believe that would have been the right way to go."

Earlier on the same program to discuss his new book about the Bush administration, "Plan of Attack," Woodward said he was told last week that Saudi officials including Bandar had recommended the $200 million strategy to Bush and top aides.

Woodward noted that the war is costing the United States $5 billion per month.

"And I understand that was briefed to the highest level, and it might have been the thing that would have saved the tragedy that's going on now," Woodward said.

White House officials were not immediately available to comment on either Woodward's or Bandar's remarks.

U.S.-led forces are battling an insurgency in Iraq that has made April the bloodiest month since the toppling of Saddam and raised debate in Washington over the need for additional troops and funding.

Some of the anger U.S. troops face stems from a decision last year to dissolve Saddam's armed forces and fire thousands of public sector workers in a drive to cleanse Iraq of its Baathist past.

On Friday, Iraq's U.S. administrator Paul Bremer said the policy had been applied unjustly. He announced that thousands of teachers would be allowed to return to work and thousands of others would receive pensions.

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Chant said:
hey, if it works, it works, if it saves lives, then that's good too

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Clearly this argument isn't going to work for liberals. Their only choice is to find another name to call conservatives. At the moment, it's "neocon," but what next?

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Dave said:

The G-man posted: Clearly this argument isn't going to work for liberals. Their only choice is to find another name to call conservatives. At the moment, it's "neocon," but what next?

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I didn't post that.

DWB did.

Try to keep us straight. Especially when you're commenting on others' grouping people together.

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Chant said:
I just thought of something

I know some of you may not agree, so I'm offering this as a topic for discussion and not a personal opinion (even though it is a personal opinion of mine)

What if turning over control of rebuilding Iraq to the UN might actually work to improve the situation, wouldn't it be worth it?

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This is a letter from Ray Reynolds,
a medic in the Iowa Army National Guard, serving in Iraq:

As I head off to Baghdad for the final weeks of my stay in Iraq, I wanted to say thanks to all of you who did not believe the media. They have done a very poor job of covering everything that has happened. I am sorry that I have not been able to visit all of you during my two week leave back home. And just so you can rest at night knowing something is happening in Iraq that is noteworthy, I thought I would pass this on to you. This is the list of things that has happened in Iraq recently: (Please share it with your friends and compare it to the version that your paper is producing.)

• Over 400,000 kids have up-to-date immunizations.
  
• School attendance is up 80% from levels before the war.
  
• Over 1,500 schools have been renovated and rid of the weapons stored there so education can occur.
  
• The port of Uhm Qasar was renovated so grain can be off-loaded from ships faster.
  
• The country had its first 2 billion barrel export of oil recently.
  
• Over 4.5 million people have clean drinking water for the first time ever in Iraq.
  
• The country now receives 2 times the electrical power it did before the war.
  
• 100% of the hospitals are open and fully staffed, compared to 35% before the war.
  
• Elections are taking place in every major city, and city councils are in place.
  
• Sewer and water lines are installed in every major city.
  
• Over 60,000 police are patrolling the streets.
  
• Over 100,000 Iraqi civil defense police are securing the country.
  
• Over 80,000 Iraqi soldiers are patrolling the streets side by side with US soldiers.
  
• Over 400,000 people have telephones for the first time ever
  
• Students are taught field sanitation and hand washing techniques to prevent the spread of germs.
  
• An interim constitution has been signed.
  
• Girls are allowed to attend school.
  
• Textbooks that don't mention Saddam are in the schools for the first time in 30 years.
  

Don't believe for one second that these people do not want us there. I have met many, many people from Iraq that want us there, and in a bad way. They say they will never see the freedoms we talk about but they hope their children will. We are doing a good job in Iraq and I challenge anyone, anywhere to dispute me on these facts. So If you happen to run into John Kerry, be sure to give him my email address and send him to Denison, Iowa. This soldier will set him straight. If you are like me and very disgusted with how this period of rebuilding has been portrayed, email this to a friend and let them know there are good things happening.

Ray Reynolds, SFC
Iowa Army National Guard
234th Signal Battalion

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Agency: Chalabi group was front for Iran

BY KNUT ROYCE
WASHINGTON BUREAU

May 21, 2004, 7:29 PM EDT


WASHINGTON -- The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources.

"Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein," said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents.

The Information Collection Program also "kept the Iranians informed about what we were doing" by passing classified U.S. documents and other sensitive information, he said. The program has received millions of dollars from the U.S. government over several years.

An administration official confirmed that "highly classified information had been provided [to the Iranians] through that channel."

The Defense Department this week halted payment of $340,000 a month to Chalabi's program. Chalabi had long been the favorite of the Pentagon's civilian leadership. Intelligence sources say Chalabi himself has passed on sensitive U.S. intelligence to the Iranians.

Patrick Lang, former director of the intelligence agency's Middle East branch, said he had been told by colleagues in the intelligence community that Chalabi's U.S.-funded program to provide information about weapons of mass destruction and insurgents was effectively an Iranian intelligence operation. "They [the Iranians] knew exactly what we were up to," he said.

He described it as "one of the most sophisticated and successful intelligence operations in history."

"I'm a spook. I appreciate good work. This was good work," he said.

An intelligence agency spokesman would not discuss questions about his agency's internal conclusions about the alleged Iranian operation. But he said some of its information had been helpful to the U.S. "Some of the information was great, especially as it pertained to arresting high value targets and on force protection issues," he said. "And some of the information wasn't so great."

At the center of the alleged Iranian intelligence operation, according to administration officials and intelligence sources, is Aras Karim Habib, a 47-year-old Shia Kurd who was named in an arrest warrant issued during a raid on Chalabi's home and offices in Baghdad Thursday. He eluded arrest.

Karim, who sometimes goes by the last name of Habib, is in charge of the information collection program.

The intelligence source briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions said that Karim's "fingerprints are all over it."

"There was an ongoing intelligence relationship between Karim and the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, all funded by the U.S. government, inadvertently," he said.

The Iraqi National Congress has received about $40 million in U.S. funds over the past four years, including $33 million from the State Department and $6 million from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

In Baghdad after the war, Karim's operation was run out of the fourth floor of a secure intelligence headquarters building, while the intelligence agency was on the floor above, according to an Iraqi source who knows Karim well.

The links between the INC and U.S. intelligence go back to at least 1992, when Karim was picked by Chalabi to run his security and military operations.

Indications that Iran, which fought a bloody war against Iraq during the 1980s, was trying to lure the U.S. into action against Saddam Hussein appeared many years before the Bush administration decided in 2001 that ousting Hussein was a national priority.

In 1995, for instance, Khidhir Hamza, who had once worked in Iraq's nuclear program and whose claims that Iraq had continued a massive bomb program in the 1990s are now largely discredited, gave UN nuclear inspectors what appeared to be explosive documents about Iraq's program. Hamza, who fled Iraq in 1994, teamed up with Chalabi after his escape.

The documents, which referred to results of experiments on enriched uranium in the bomb's core, were almost flawless, according to Andrew Cockburn's recent account of the event in the political newsletter CounterPunch.

But the inspectors were troubled by one minor matter: Some of the techinical descriptions used terms that would only be used by an Iranian. They determined that the original copy had been written in Farsi by an Iranian scientist and then translated into Arabic.

And the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded the documents were fraudulent.

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Gen. Zinni: 'They've Screwed Up'

“There has been poor strategic thinking in this,” says Zinni. “There has been poor operational planning and execution on the ground. And to think that we are going to ‘stay the course,’ the course is headed over Niagara Falls. I think it's time to change course a little bit, or at least hold somebody responsible for putting you on this course. Because it's been a failure.”

"In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption."

“I think there was dereliction in insufficient forces being put on the ground and fully understanding the military dimensions of the plan. I think there was dereliction in lack of planning,” says Zinni. “The president is owed the finest strategic thinking. He is owed the finest operational planning. He is owed the finest tactical execution on the ground. … He got the latter. He didn’t get the first two.”

Zinni says Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time - with the wrong strategy. And he was saying it before the U.S. invasion. In the months leading up to the war, while still Middle East envoy, Zinni carried the message to Congress: “This is, in my view, the worst time to take this on. And I don’t feel it needs to be done now.”

But he wasn’t the only former military leader with doubts about the invasion of Iraq. Former General and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Centcom Commander Norman Schwarzkopf, former NATO Commander Wesley Clark, and former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki all voiced their reservations.

Zinni believes this was a war the generals didn’t want – but it was a war the civilians wanted.

“I can't speak for all generals, certainly. But I know we felt that this situation was contained. Saddam was effectively contained. The no-fly, no-drive zones. The sanctions that were imposed on him,” says Zinni.

“Now, at the same time, we had this war on terrorism. We were fighting al Qaeda. We were engaged in Afghanistan. We were looking at 'cells' in 60 countries. We were looking at threats that we were receiving information on and intelligence on. And I think most of the generals felt, let's deal with this one at a time. Let's deal with this threat from terrorism, from al Qaeda.”

One of Zinni's responsibilities while commander-in-chief at Centcom was to develop a plan for the invasion of Iraq. Like his predecessors, he subscribed to the belief that you only enter battle with overwhelming force.

But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thought the job could be done with fewer troops and high-tech weapons.

How many troops did Zinni’s plan call for? “We were much in line with Gen. Shinseki's view,” says Zinni. “We were talking about, you know, 300,000, in that neighborhood.”

What difference would it have made if 300,000 troops had been sent in, instead of 180,000?

“I think it's critical in the aftermath, if you're gonna go to resolve a conflict through the use of force, and then to rebuild the country,” says Zinni.

“The first requirement is to freeze the situation, is to gain control of the security. To patrol the streets. To prevent the looting. To prevent the 'revenge' killings that might occur. To prevent bands or gangs or militias that might not have your best interests at heart from growing or developing.”
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Last month, Secretary Rumsfeld acknowledged that he hadn't anticipated the level of violence that would continue in Iraq a year after the war began. Should he have been surprised?

“He should not have been surprised. You know, there were a number of people, before we even engaged in this conflict, that felt strongly we were underestimating the problems and the scope of the problems we would have in there,” says Zinni. “Not just generals, but others -- diplomats, those in the international community that understood the situation. Friends of ours in the region that were cautioning us to be careful out there. I think he should have known that.”

Instead, Zinni says the Pentagon relied on inflated intelligence information about weapons of mass destruction from Iraqi exiles, like Ahmed Chalabi and others, whose credibility was in doubt. Zinni claims there was no viable plan or strategy in place for governing post-Saddam Iraq.

“As best I could see, I saw a pickup team, very small, insufficient in the Pentagon with no detailed plans that walked onto the battlefield after the major fighting stopped and tried to work it out in the huddle -- in effect to create a seat-of-the-pants operation on reconstructing a country,” says Zinni.

“I give all the credit in the world to Ambassador Bremer as a great American who's serving his country, I think, with all the kind of sacrifice and spirit you could expect. But he has made mistake after mistake after mistake.”
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What mistakes?

“Disbanding the army,” says Zinni. “De-Baathifying, down to a level where we removed people that were competent and didn’t have blood on their hands that you needed in the aftermath of reconstruction – alienating certain elements of that society.”

Zinni says he blames the Pentagon for what happened. “I blame the civilian leadership of the Pentagon directly. Because if they were given the responsibility, and if this was their war, and by everything that I understand, they promoted it and pushed it - certain elements in there certainly - even to the point of creating their own intelligence to match their needs, then they should bear the responsibility,” he says.

“But regardless of whose responsibility I think it is, somebody has screwed up. And at this level and at this stage, it should be evident to everybody that they've screwed up. And whose heads are rolling on this? That's what bothers me most.”

Adds Zinni: “If you charge me with the responsibility of taking this nation to war, if you charge me with implementing that policy with creating the strategy which convinces me to go to war, and I fail you, then I ought to go.”

Who specifically is he talking about?

“Well, it starts with at the top. If you're the secretary of defense and you're responsible for that. If you're responsible for that planning and that execution on the ground. If you've assumed responsibility for the other elements, non-military, non-security, political, economic, social and everything else, then you bear responsibility,” says Zinni. “Certainly those in your ranks that foisted this strategy on us that is flawed. Certainly they ought to be gone and replaced.”

Zinni is talking about a group of policymakers within the administration known as "the neo-conservatives" who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel. They include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle; National Security Council member Eliot Abrams; and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Zinni believes they are political ideologues who have hijacked American policy in Iraq.

“I think it's the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody - everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do,” says Zinni.

“And one article, because I mentioned the neo-conservatives who describe themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it. I certainly didn't criticize who they were. I certainly don't know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I'm not interested.”

Adds Zinni: “I know what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years. And what they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I don't believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in Washington that doesn't know where it came from.”

Zinni said he believed their strategy was to change the Middle East and bring it into the 21st century.

“All sounds very good, all very noble. The trouble is the way they saw to go about this is unilateral aggressive intervention by the United States - the take down of Iraq as a priority,” adds Zinni. “And what we have become now in the United States, how we're viewed in this region is not an entity that's promising positive change. We are now being viewed as the modern crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world.”
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Should all of those involved, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, resign?

“I believe that they should accept responsibility for that,” says Zinni. “If I were the commander of a military organization that delivered this kind of performance to the president, I certainly would tender my resignation. I certainly would expect to be gone.”

“You say we need to change course -- that the current course is taking us over Niagara Falls. What course do you think ought to be set,” Kroft asked Zinni.

“Well, it's been evident from the beginning what the course is. We should have gotten this U.N. resolution from the beginning. What does it take to sit down with the members of the Security Council, the permanent members, and find out what it takes,” says Zinni.

“What is it they want to get this resolution? Do they want a say in political reconstruction? Do they want a piece of the pie economically? If that's the cost, fine. What they’re gonna pay for up front is boots on the ground and involvement in sharing the burden.”

Are there enough troops in Iraq now?

“Do I think there are other missions that should be taken on which would cause the number of troops to go up, not just U.S., but international participants? Yes,” says Zinni.

“We should be sealing off the borders, we should be protecting the road networks. We're not only asking for combat troops, we’re looking for trainers; we’re looking for engineers. We are looking for those who can provide services in there.”

But has the time come to develop an exit strategy?

“There is a limit. I think it’s important to understand what the limit is. Now do I think we are there yet? No, it is salvageable if you can convince the Iraqis that what we're trying to do is in their benefit in the long run,” says Zinni.

“Unless we change our communication and demonstrate a different image to the people on the street, then we're gonna get to the point where we are going to be looking for quick exits. I don't believe we're there now. And I wouldn't want to see us fail here.”
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Zinni, who now teaches international relations at the College of William and Mary, says he feels a responsibility to speak out, just as former Marine Corps Commandant David Shoup voiced early concerns about the Vietnam war nearly 40 years ago.

“It is part of your duty. Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else. And that's the idea that when the troops are in combat, everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning, and troops were dying as a result,” says Zinni.

“I can't think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak up. Well, what's the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that's getting just as many troops killed? It’s leading down a path where we're not succeeding and accomplishing the missions we've set out to do.”

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oh poo poo. We're not naive dupes, he's just another "liberal" Bush-hater trying to sell a book!

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Some traditional Republican conservatives have begun to charge that "neoconservatives" have led their party — and their president — astray with expansive foreign ambitions.

"We need to restrain what are growing U.S. messianic instincts, a sort of global social engineering where the United States feels it is both entitled and obligated to promote democracy, by force if necessary," Sen. Pat Roberts (news, bio, voting record) (R-Kan.), the conservative chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a speech. "Liberty cannot be laid down like so much Astroturf. Law and order must come first."

"I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure," retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, a former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "We are looking into the abyss. We cannot start soon enough to begin the turnaround."

"If the current situation persists, we will continue fighting one form of Iraqi insurgency after another — with too little legitimacy, too little will and too few resources," warned Larry Diamond, a former advisor to the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad. "There is only one word for a situation in which you cannot win and you cannot withdraw: Quagmire."

Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, which returned from Iraq in April, has given reporters an equally blunt view. "We are winning tactically, but have made a few tactical blunders … [which] created strategic consequences in world opinion," Swannack said in an e-mail message. "We are losing public support regionally, internationally and within America — thus, currently, we are losing strategically."
Another active-duty officer who recently returned from Iraq — and spoke on condition he not be identified — was crisper. "We could not have screwed up more if we had set out to do it deliberately," he said. "We gave ourselves all the disadvantages of occupation, but none of the advantages."


Even Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R.-Ind.), the cautious chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, warned that the U.S. might be headed for a dead end unless the administration outlined a clearer strategy.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&e=8&u=/latimests/20040523/ts_latimes/iraqsetbackschangemoodinwashington

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On Friday, members of the House Armed Services Committee challenged Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to explain the raid on Chalabi after so many years of support.

"This seems to be a substantial development in the war, when one of the most highly paid and trusted advisors may have deliberately misled our nation for months and years and some of our officials may have swallowed it hook, line and sinker," said Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.).

A U.S. official confirmed that defectors from Chalabi's organization had provided suspect information to numerous Western intelligence agencies. "It's safe to say he tried to game the system," the official said.

A discredited INC defector to Germany who was code-named "Curveball" was the chief source of information on Iraq's supposed fleet of mobile germ weapons factories. Another INC defector who provided similar information was deemed a liar. So was an INC defector who said he had helped build 20 underground germ weapons laboratories, a now-discredited claim that made headlines when the INC made him available to some reporters in December 2001.

The CIA was unable to interview two other supposedly senior Iraqis who spied for British intelligence in Baghdad before the war and claimed to provide detailed information from within Hussein's inner circle.

Information from both informants has now "fallen apart," one U.S. official said. "Neither had direct knowledge of what they claimed. They were describing what they had heard."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&e=9&u=/latimests/20040523/ts_latimes/suspicionofchalabideceptionintensifies

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But we found an artillery shell!!!! Besides, we didn't know the intel was fake It must've been a "liberal plot" to embarass Bush!

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AP: Video Shows Iraq Wedding Celebration

A videotape obtained Sunday by Associated Press Television News captures a wedding party that survivors say was later attacked by U.S. planes early Wednesday, killing up to 45 people. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities, which ended Tuesday night before the planes struck.

The U.S. military says it is investigating the attack, which took place in the village of Mogr el-Deeb about five miles from the Syrian border, but that all evidence so far indicates the target was a safehouse for foreign fighters.


"There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Saturday. "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."

But video that APTN shot a day after the attack shows fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans and brightly colored beddings used for celebrations, scattered around the bombed out tent.

The wedding videotape shows a dozen white pickup trucks speeding through the desert escorting the bridal car — decorated with colorful ribbons. The bride wears a Western-style white bridal dress and veil. The camera captures her stepping out of the car but does not show a close-up.

An AP reporter and photographer, who interviewed more than a dozen survivors a day after the bombing, were able to identify many of them on the wedding party video — which runs for several hours.

APTN also traveled to Mogr el-Deeb, 250 miles west of Ramadi, the day after the attack to film what the survivors said was the wedding site. A devastated building and remnants of the tent, pots and pans could be seen, along with bits of what appeared to be the remnants of ordnance, one of which bore the marking "ATU-35," similar to those on U.S. bombs.

A water tanker truck can be seen in both the video shot by APTN and the wedding tape obtained from a cousin of the groom.

The singing and dancing seems to go on forever at the all-male tent set up in the garden of the host, Rikad Nayef, for the wedding of his son, Azhad, and the bride Rutbah Sabah. The men later move to the porch when darkness falls, apparently taking advantage of the cool night weather. Children, mainly boys, sit on their fathers' laps; men smoke an Arab water pipe, finger worry beads and chat with one another. It looks like a typical, gender-segregated tribal desert wedding.

As expected, women are out of sight - but according to survivors, they danced to the music of Hussein al-Ali, a popular Baghdad wedding singer hired for the festivities. Al-Ali was buried in Baghdad on Thursday.

Prominently displayed on the videotape was a stocky man with close-cropped hair playing an electric organ. Another tape, filmed a day later in Ramadi and obtained by APTN, showed the musician lying dead in a burial shroud — his face clearly visible and wearing the same tan shirt as he wore when he performed.

As the musicians played, young men milled about, most dressed in traditional white robes. Young men swayed in tribal dances to the monotonous tones of traditional Arabic music. Two children — a boy and a girl — held hands, dancing and smiling. Women are rarely filmed at such occasions, and they appear only in distant glimpses.

Kimmitt said U.S. troops who swept through the area found rifles, machine guns, foreign passports, bedding, syringes and other items that suggested the site was used by foreigners infiltrating from Syria.

The videotape showed no weapons, although they are common among rural Iraqis.

Kimmitt has denied finding evidence that any children died in the raid although a "handful of women" — perhaps four to six — were "caught up in the engagement."

"They may have died from some of the fire that came from the aircraft," he told reporters Friday.

However, an AP reporter obtained names of at least 10 children who relatives said had died. Bodies of five of them were filmed by APTN when the survivors took them to Ramadi for burial Wednesday. Iraqi officials said at least 13 children were killed.

Four days after the attack, the memories of the survivors remain painful — as are their injuries.

Haleema Shihab, 32, one of the three wives of Rikad Nayef, said that as the first bombs fell, she grabbed her seven-month old son, Yousef, and clutching the hands of her five-year-old son, Hamza, started running. Her 15-year-old son, Ali, sprinted alongside her. They managed to run for several yards when she fell — her leg fractured.

"Hamza was yelling, 'mommy,'" Shihab, recalled. "Ali said he was hurt and that he was bleeding. That's the last time I heard him." Then another shell fell and injured Shihab's left arm.

"Hamza fell from my hand and was gone. Only Yousef stayed in my arms. Ali had been hit and was killed. I couldn't go back," she said from her hospital bed in Ramadi. Her arm was in a cast.

She and her stepdaughter, Iqbal — who had caught up with her — hid in a bomb crater. "We were bleeding from 3 a.m. until sunrise," Shihab said.

Soon American soldiers came. One of them kicked her to see if she was alive, she said.

"I pretended I was dead so he wouldn't kill me," said Shihab. She said the soldier was laughing. When Yousef cried, the soldier said: "'No, stop," said Shihab.

Fourteen-year-old Moza, Shihab's stepdaughter, lies on another bed of the hospital room. She was hurt in the leg and cries. Her relatives haven't told her yet that her mother, Sumaya, is dead.

"I fear she's dead," Moza said of her mother. "I'm worried about her."

Moza was sleeping on one side of the porch next to her sisters Siham, Subha and Zohra while her mother slept on the other end. There were many others on the porch, her cousins, stepmothers and other female relatives.

When the first shell fell, Moza and her sisters, Subha, Fatima and Siham ran off together. Moza was holding Subha's hand.

"I don't know where Fatima and my mom were. Siham got hit. She died. I saw Zohra's head gone. I lost consciousness," said Moza, covering her mouth with the end of her headscarf.

Her sister Iqbal, lay in pain on the bed next to her. Her other sister, Subha, was on the upper floor of the hospital, in the same room with two-year-Khoolood. Her small body was bandaged and a tube inserted in her side drained her liver.

Her ankle was bandaged. A red ribbon was tied to her curly hair. Only she and her older brother, Faisal, survived from their immediate family. Her parents and four sisters and brothers were all killed.

In all, 27 members of Rikad Nayef's extended family died — most of them children and women, the family said.

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Chant said:
have you perhaps given thought to the possibility that the attack on the wedding was a mistake, an accident mayhap?

such things happen

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