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

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Paul Mandral said:


a picture of a pro-war demonstrator holding up a sign that reads 'Get a
Brain Morans.

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Paul Mandral said:

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TEXT OF LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH
Spy Agencies Called 'Dead Wrong' in Prewar Analyses on Iraqi Arms

Mr. President:

With this letter, we transmit the report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Our unanimous report is based on a lengthy investigation, during which we interviewed hundreds of experts from inside and outside the intelligence community and reviewed thousands of documents. Our report offers 74 recommendations for improving the U.S. intelligence community (all but a handful of which we believe can be implemented without statutory change). But among these recommendations a few points merit special emphasis.

We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure. Its principal causes were the intelligence community's inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions, rather than good evidence. On a matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude.

After a thorough review, the commission found no indication that the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. What the intelligence professionals told you about Saddam Hussein's programs was what they believed. They were simply wrong.

As you asked, we looked as well beyond Iraq in our review of the intelligence community's capabilities. We conducted case studies of our intelligence agencies' recent performance assessing the risk of WMD in Libya and Afghanistan, and our current capabilities with respect to several of the world's most dangerous state and non-state proliferation threats. Out of this more comprehensive review, we report both bad news and good news. The bad news is that we still know disturbingly little about the weapons programs and even less about the intentions of many of our most dangerous adversaries. The good news is that we have had some solid intelligence successes — thanks largely to innovative and multi-agency collection techniques.

Our review has convinced us that the best hope for preventing future failures is dramatic change. We need an intelligence community that is truly integrated, far more imaginative and willing to run risks, open to a new generation of Americans and receptive to new technologies.

We have summarized our principal recommendations for the entire intelligence community in the overview of the report.

Here, we focus on recommendations that we believe only you can effect if you choose to implement them:

• Give the DNI powers — and backing — to match his responsibilities.

In your public statement accompanying the announcement of Ambassador [John] Negroponte's nomination as director of national intelligence, you have already moved in this direction. The new intelligence law makes the DNI responsible for integrating the 15 independent members of the intelligence community. But it gives him powers that are only relatively broader than before. The DNI cannot make this work unless he takes his legal authorities over budget, programs, personnel and priorities to the limit. It won't be easy to provide this leadership to the intelligence components of the Defense Department, or to the CIA. They are some of the government's most headstrong agencies. Sooner or later, they will try to run around — or over — the DNI. Then, only your determined backing will convince them that we cannot return to the old ways.

• Bring the FBI all the way into the intelligence community.

The FBI is one of the proudest and most independent agencies in the United States Government. It is on its way to becoming an effective intelligence agency, but it will never arrive if it insists on using only its own map. We recommend that you order an organizational reform of the bureau that pulls all of its intelligence capabilities into one place and subjects them to the coordinating authority of the DNI — the same authority that the DNI exercises over Defense Department intelligence agencies. Under this recommendation, the counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources of the bureau would become a single National Security Service inside the FBI. It would of course still be subject to the attorney general's oversight and to current legal rules. The intelligence reform act almost accomplishes this task, but at crucial points it retreats into ambiguity. Without leadership from the DNI, the FBI is likely to continue escaping effective integration into the intelligence community.

• Demand more of the intelligence community.

The intelligence community needs to be pushed. It will not do its best unless it is pressed by policy-makers — sometimes to the point of discomfort. Analysts must be pressed to explain how much they don't know; the collection agencies must be pressed to explain why they don't have better information on key topics. While policy-makers must be prepared to credit intelligence that doesn't fit their preferences, no important intelligence assessment should be accepted without sharp questioning that forces the community to explain exactly how it came to that assessment and what alternatives might also be true. This is not "politicization"; it is a necessary part of the intelligence process. And in the end, it is the key to getting the best from an intelligence community that, at its best, knows how to do astonishing things.

• Rethink the president's daily brief.

The daily intelligence briefings given to you before the Iraq war were flawed. Through attention-grabbing headlines and repetition of questionable data, these briefings overstated the case that Iraq was rebuilding its WMD programs. There are many other aspects of the daily brief that deserve to be reconsidered as well, but we are reluctant to make categorical recommendations on a process that in the end must meet your needs, not our theories. On one point, however, we want to be specific: While the DNI must be ultimately responsible for the content of your daily briefing, we do not believe that the DNI ought to prepare, deliver, or even attend every briefing. For if the DNI is consumed by current intelligence, the long-term needs of the intelligence community will suffer.

There is no more important intelligence mission than understanding the worst weapons that our enemies possess, and how they intend to use them against us. These are their deepest secrets, and unlocking them must be our highest priority. So far, despite some successes, our intelligence community has not been agile and innovative enough to provide the information that the nation needs. Other commissions and observers have said the same.

We should not wait for another commission or another administration to force widespread change in the intelligence community.

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— Associated Press

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MisterJLA said:
So the Intelligence Community was mistaken, which means Bush didn't lie.

Thanks for playing.

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And a great big RACK to JLA!

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Paul Mandral said:

a picture of a pro-war demonstrator holding up a sign that reads 'Get a
Brain Morans.

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Again this raises the question, wich is the greater sign of mental deficiency, poor spelling or a total lack of understanding of the concepts you're discussing?

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the G-man said:

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MisterJLA said:
So the Intelligence Community was mistaken, which means Bush didn't lie.

Thanks for playing.

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And a great big RACK to JLA!

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This is quite the week I'm having!

Thanks G-man!

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Paul Mandral said:
It's official. We invaded another country based almost entirely on the testimony of some guy called "curveball".

Over 1500 dead servicemen dead because we chose to beleive some guy called "curveball".

Thousands of Iraqi civilians dead because we insisted on beleving a guy named "curveball".

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Pariah said:


The White House believed a guy named "Deepthroat"

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Pariah said:

The White House believed a guy named "Deepthroat" which turned out good info.

Where's the point to this?

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Is this revisionist history?

Nixon WANTED Deep Thoat's 'good info'?




I think G-man might want a word with you.....

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Paul Mandral said:

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Pariah said:

The White House believed a guy named "Deepthroat" which turned out good info.

Where's the point to this?

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Is this revisionist history?

Nixon WANTED Deep Thoat's 'good info'?




I think G-man might want a word with you.....

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Paul Mandral said:


Is this revisionist history?

Nixon WANTED Deep Thoat's 'good info'?

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the G-man said:

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MisterJLA said:
So the Intelligence Community was mistaken, which means Bush didn't lie.

Thanks for playing.

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And a great big RACK to JLA!

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MisterJLA said:

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And a great big RACK to JLA!

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This is quite the week I'm having!

Thanks G-man!

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I guess after that, more audio-visual is also in order:

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britneyspearsatemyshorts said:
poor paul didnt read about clinton, russia, and france believeing he had WMD too. maybe the news doesnt reach your island.

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Paul Mandral said:

You guys completely miss the big picture in your rush to defend the president.

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The POINT of the report was that we went to war based amlmost completely on the testimony of ONE dodgy informant! Despite the fact that there was information that he was unrelaible.

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What the report fails to do is blame the President for not demanding more corroborating evidence of WMDs.

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Sometimes I think it's just pointless to argue with people like you because you'll buy anything you hear, spin every news story, only to protect a man that made an incredibly poor decision. It's to the point of delusion sometimes. You don't even care that the WMD info was faulty.

What more justification do I need for labeling it blind support?

The "Curveball" figure was at fault for the intelligence failure. But Bush is the one that made the decision to invade based on this information. What kind of leader doesn't get 100% assuredness before sending our brave men and women off to die for our country?


Instead of doing that, they just bought it lock, stock and barrel as if it was TRUTH, when in fact, it should have been questioned. I seroiusly doubt it made it into the "check this out" pile of evidence.

Serious lies of omission occurred when this intelligence was not actually scrutinized or questioned, but taken at face value.

Then there's the UN weapon's inspectors.

The administration chose to NOT regard those findings at all, you know the ones that said there weren't any WMD's in Iraq since, what was it, 1998? Another lie of omission, if you ask me.

So don't be claiming any victory when in fact you can't see the forest from the trees.

Unfortunately, the 1,500 soldiers who have been killed so far are the one who have lost.

This is an issue of them as well as thousands or 10's of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead. And a few thousand Iraqi soldiers. That's a lot of people that are dead for no reason. "Conservatives" didn't win. "libtards" didn't lose. WE ALL LOST. So much for that "culture of Life" I keep hearing about.

Recall the statements that Bush made regarding "yellowcake" to the UN, and the director of the CIA wanted him to censor that?

No, not to be squelched at all, but George just went and BLURTED it out like a foul stinking belch, and used it as persuasion to gain UN support.

(He) didn't seem to know how or what to screen, just add any suggestive info that put him in iraq by March 2004.

Lies or not, that shows if anything, some crappy if not criminal judgement.

If German intelligence was telling them Curveball was a phony, then that puts the lie to the claim that "everybody in the world thought Saddam had WMD."
They didn't. It was clear when Powell was making his case to the U.N. that nobody was buying it. Of course, that didn't make it into the newspapers here or onto the cable news channels.

It also makes it clear why Germany didn't join the "Coalition of the Willing." (Of course, since Palau was with us, I guess Germany doesn't matter.)

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They didn't name him fastball, or even knuckleball.
No, they named him for a pitch that is tough to hit because it is deceptive. The one whose name every sixth grader knows is a slang phrase for deception.

Does one really need to be told TO NOT to trust someone named "curveball"??

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You sure are hung up on this dude's code name, or whatever it was.

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Paul Mandral said:

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britneyspearsatemyshorts said:
poor paul didnt read about clinton, russia, and france believeing he had WMD too. maybe the news doesnt reach your island.

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"RIGHT, THEY DID! BUT THEY DIDN'T SEND OUR BOYS TO WAR FOR IT, YOU JACKOFF!".

You'd think the level of certitude required for a "Pre-emptive Strike" would be a bit higher than "Uh, well, geez, Bill Clinton said they were bad guys too!"

Just about everybody who reads this, and knows who Scott Ritter is, most likely owes him an apology. Over and over I read that the information Bush was using to take us to war was wrong, and I read it BEFORE we invaded Iraq.

How is it that the discrediting of these "moles" is just NOW being reported? Scott Ritter told us over and over what the reality was, and he was the one labled the liar?

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Investigators have discovered several mass graves in southern Iraq that are believed to contain the bodies of people killed by Saddam Hussein's government, including one estimated to hold 5,000 bodies, Iraqi officials say.

The graves, discovered over the past three months, have not yet been dug up because of the risks posed by the continuing insurgency and the lack of qualified forensic workers, said Bakhtiar Amin, Iraq's interim human rights minister. But initial excavations have substantiated the accounts of witnesses to a number of massacres. If the estimated body counts prove correct, the new graves would be among the largest in the grim tally of mass killings that have gradually come to light since the fall of Mr. Hussein's government two years ago. At least 290 grave sites containing the remains of some 300,000 people have been found since the American invasion two years ago, Iraqi officials say.

Forensic evidence from some graves will feature prominently in the trials of Mr. Hussein and the leaders of his government. The trials are to start this spring.

One of the graves, near Basra, in the south, appears to contain about 5,000 bodies of Iraqi soldiers who joined a failed uprising against Mr. Hussein's government after the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Another, near Samawa, is believed to contain the bodies of 2,000 members of the Kurdish clad led by Massoud Barzani.

As many as 8,000 men and boys from the clan disappeared in 1983 after being rounded up in northern Iraq by security forces at the command of Ali Hassan al-Majid, widely known as Chemical Ali. It remains unclear, however, how the victims ended up in the south.

Investigators have also discovered the remains of 58 Kuwaitis spread across several sites, including what appears to be a family of two adults and five children who were crushed by a tank, Mr. Amin said. At least 605 Kuwaitis disappeared at the time of the first gulf war, and before the latest graves were discovered, fewer than 200 had been accounted for, he added.

A smaller site was discovered near Nasiriya earlier this week. Arabic satellite television showed images of residents digging up remains there.

Mr. Amin declined to give the exact locations of the graves, saying it could endanger witnesses to the massacres and anyone working at the sites.

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May 01, 2005

Blair hit by new leak of secret war plan
Michael Smith


A SECRET document from the heart of government reveals today that Tony Blair privately committed Britain to war with Iraq and then set out to lure Saddam Hussein into providing the legal justification.
The Downing Street minutes, headed “Secret and strictly personal — UK eyes only”, detail one of the most important meetings ahead of the invasion.


It was chaired by the prime minister and attended by his inner circle. The document reveals Blair backed “regime change” by force from the outset, despite warnings from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, that such action could be illegal.

The minutes, published by The Sunday Times today, begins with the warning: “This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. The paper should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know.” It records a meeting in July 2002, attended by military and intelligence chiefs, at which Blair discussed military options having already committed himself to supporting President George Bush’s plans for ousting Saddam.

“If the political context were right, people would support regime change,” said Blair. He added that the key issues were “whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan space to work”.

The political strategy proved to be arguing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed such a threat that military action had to be taken. However, at the July meeting Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said the case for war was “thin” as “Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran”.

Straw suggested they should “work up” an ultimatum about weapons inspectors that would “help with the legal justification”. Blair is recorded as saying that “it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors”.

A separate secret briefing for the meeting said Britain and America had to “create” conditions to justify a war.

The papers, the second sensitive leak close to the election, appear to be an attempt by disaffected Whitehall insiders to attack Blair’s integrity. They are likely to fuel claims he misled the country on Iraq.

One reason for the secrecy is that the minutes record discussion of US plans for invasion; another is that at the time Blair had given no indication that plans were so advanced.

He had not revealed to MPs or the public that in April 2002 he had told Bush “the UK would support US military action to bring about regime change”, as recorded in the Foreign Office briefing paper. Both before and after the July meeting Blair insisted in public no decision had been made.

The July meeting was later mentioned by Lord Butler in his report on the use of intelligence on WMD as a “key stage” in the road to war; but its details have never been revealed until now.

The minutes show Goldsmith warned Blair eight months before war started on March 19, 2003 that finding legal justification would be “difficult”. The attorney-general only ruled unambiguously war was lawful a few days before the war started after Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the defence staff, demanded unequivocal written confirmation.

Boyce was never shown Goldsmith’s more equivocal advice to Blair of March 7, 2003, and says today ministers failed to give him protection from prosecution at the International Criminal Court. “I have always been troubled by the ICC,” he says, adding that if British servicemen are put on trial, ministers should be “brought into the frame as well”. Asked if that should include Blair and Goldsmith, he tells The Observer: “Too bloody right.”

Sir Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said the leaked minute showed Blair had “agreed to an illegal regime change with the Bush administration. It set out to create the justification for going to war. It was to be war by any means.”

Downing Street claimed the document contained “nothing new”.

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the G-man said:
I thought the slam against the Bush/Blair alliance was that they failed to adequately prepare for a war.

Now the slam is that they actually did prepare for a war.

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Blair 'knew war was illegal', report suggests
By David Hughes and Michael Smith
May 04, 2005
From:
TONY Blair ignored a series of dire warnings about the risks involved in invading Iraq, according to a leaked top secret briefing note.

In his determination to support President George W. Bush's plan to topple Saddam Hussein, the Prime Minister was ready to override legal, diplomatic, military and political obstacles.

The eight-page document, revealed by Britain's Daily Mail newspaper, is stamped "Secret - UK eyes only" and is entitled Iraq: Conditions For Military Action.

It was prepared for a secret meeting of senior ministers and military and intelligence chiefs on July 23, 2002, eight months before the invasion.

The report pulls no punches about the precarious nature of military action.

Specifically, it warns:

* THERE was no legal justification for invading Iraq;

* THE aftermath of war could be disastrous yet the Americans were simply ignoring the issue;

* A MAJOR campaign was needed to 'shape' public opinion; and

* BRITAIN'S defence chiefs had doubts about the US military strategy.

The briefing note also reveals the British Government was hopelessly misreading the diplomatic signals, predicting France might join in the invasion and Russia and China would not object.

All three countries vehemently opposed the war.

The note confirms that, contrary to Mr Blair's repeated claims, he decided to go to war on April 7, 2002, almost a year before the invasion, when he visited Mr Bush at his Texas ranch.

"When the Prime Minister discussed Iraq with Mr Bush at Crawford in April, he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change," the note says.

Mr Blair told the President certain conditions had to be met.

They were:

* EFFORTS had to be made to build a coalition;

* THE Israel/Palestine conflict had to be "quiescent"; and

* ATTEMPTS by UN weapons inspectors to find Saddam's weapons of mass destruction had to be "exhausted".

But the document warns: "regime change per se is not a proper basis for military action under international law".

It says military action would only be lawful on grounds of self-defence, to avert a humanitarian catastrophe or if authorised by the UN Security Council.

None of these conditions were met before the invasion.

The briefing note also warns what would happen after the war.

"A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise," it said.

"The US military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

On the PR front, it calls for a special Cabinet committee to be set up to plan an information campaign for the "preparation of domestic opinion".

There would also need to be "a substantial effort to secure the support of Parliament".

Two months later, the notorious Iraq dossier, with its spurious claim WMD could be deployed in 45 minutes, was issued by Downing Street.

UK military chiefs were unconvinced by the US plans.

The note says they had questioned the "extent to which the plans are proof against Iraqi counterattack using chemical or biological weapons and the robustness of US assumptions about Iraqi [un]willingness to fight".

At the July 23 meeting, these warnings were aired in discussions involving Mr Blair and senior members of his Cabinet.

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Poll: Most in U.S. say Iraq war not worthwhile

Tuesday, May 3, 2005 Posted: 11:22 PM EDT (0322 GMT)

According to a recent poll, most Americans do not believe going to war in Iraq was worth it.


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A majority of Americans do not believe it was worth going to war in Iraq, according to a national poll released Tuesday.

Fifty-seven percent of those polled said they did not believe it was worth going to war, versus 41 percent who said it was, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of 1,006 adults.

That was a drop in support from February, when 48 percent said it was worth going to war and half said it was not.

It's also the highest percentage of respondents who have expressed those feelings and triple the percentage of Americans who said that it was not worth the cost shortly after the war began about two years ago.

The new poll question, asked by telephone on April 29-May 1, had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Asked how things are going for the United States in Iraq, 56 percent said "badly" or "very badly," up from 45 percent in March.

Forty-two percent said "well" or "very well," down from 52 percent in March.

The margin of error for that question was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Americans appeared evenly divided over whether the decision to send U.S. troops to Iraq was a mistake, with 49 percent saying yes and 48 percent saying no. The sampling error was plus or minus 5 points.

On Tuesday, House and Senate conferees agreed to an $82 billion supplemental spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That pushes the total cost of the Bush administration's war on terror to more than $300 billion, according to The Associated Press. (Full story)

In March 2003, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a House panel that Iraq, with its oil resources, "can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

Such forecasts proved to be off the mark. Oil revenues have been lower than predicted partly because the industry's infrastructure was in bad shape. Overall reconstruction costs also have been higher than expected.

White House claims that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq also failed to materialize.

Early Tuesday, the U.S. military found the body of a pilot from one of two missing Marine Corps F/A-18 jets that Navy officials believe collided while flying in operations in Iraq. (Full story)

The number of U.S. troops who have died in the Iraq war stood at 1,585 as of Tuesday, according to the Pentagon.

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the G-man said:
I thought the slam against the Bush/Blair alliance was that they failed to adequately prepare for a war.

Now the slam is that they actually did prepare for a war.

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unrestrained id said:
Well, here's a poll at least. We love our polls....

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Poll: Most in U.S. say Iraq war not worthwhile

Tuesday, May 3, 2005 Posted: 11:22 PM EDT (0322 GMT)

According to a recent poll, most Americans do not believe going to war in Iraq was worth it.


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A majority of Americans do not believe it was worth going to war in Iraq, according to a national poll released Tuesday.

Fifty-seven percent of those polled said they did not believe it was worth going to war, versus 41 percent who said it was, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of 1,006 adults.

That was a drop in support from February, when 48 percent said it was worth going to war and half said it was not.

It's also the highest percentage of respondents who have expressed those feelings and triple the percentage of Americans who said that it was not worth the cost shortly after the war began about two years ago.

The new poll question, asked by telephone on April 29-May 1, had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Asked how things are going for the United States in Iraq, 56 percent said "badly" or "very badly," up from 45 percent in March.

Forty-two percent said "well" or "very well," down from 52 percent in March.

The margin of error for that question was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Americans appeared evenly divided over whether the decision to send U.S. troops to Iraq was a mistake, with 49 percent saying yes and 48 percent saying no. The sampling error was plus or minus 5 points.

On Tuesday, House and Senate conferees agreed to an $82 billion supplemental spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That pushes the total cost of the Bush administration's war on terror to more than $300 billion, according to The Associated Press. (Full story)

In March 2003, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a House panel that Iraq, with its oil resources, "can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

Such forecasts proved to be off the mark. Oil revenues have been lower than predicted partly because the industry's infrastructure was in bad shape. Overall reconstruction costs also have been higher than expected.

White House claims that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq also failed to materialize.

Early Tuesday, the U.S. military found the body of a pilot from one of two missing Marine Corps F/A-18 jets that Navy officials believe collided while flying in operations in Iraq. (Full story)

The number of U.S. troops who have died in the Iraq war stood at 1,585 as of Tuesday, according to the Pentagon.

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Some claim that the "non-combat" death rate is little different than what you find in the usual "peacetime" Army.
I've found Department of Defense statistics ("Mortality Trends Among Active Duty Personnel, 1992-2001," MSMR Volume 09, Number 01, January 2003) which cite a peacetime mortality rate of 57.38 soldiers per 100,000 per year, all services.

Fifty-three percent of all deaths were "attributable to accidents," while twenty percent were suicides, and eighteen percent disease deaths. None were combat-related; this is a peacetime survey.

So, given the Iraq deployment of approximately 150,000 American soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and taking the first two months since Mr. Bush declared the end of major combat operations -- if you do the math you would expect 7.6 fatalities in peacetime [ at the time this reader-reply was posted in 2003. Now, as of today May 4 2005,
it would now statistically be about 120 non-combat fatalities expected].

But the number of stated accidental deaths among American military personnel in Iraq approximates 60 [ again, as of July 2003 ] for that period.

An army at war is much more accident-prone than one at peace these days, but is it more than eight times more so?

Or is reporting "combat deaths" (i.e., deaths directly caused by an enemy combatant) as distinctly different than "accidental deaths" making a facile distinction?

Shouldn't the cause of these deaths be examined and reported more fully, and categorized by the press according to a more subtle, independent standard, and not one that parrots the monochrome one of the Pentagon?
Reports that echo Pentagon pronouncements shaded to encourage Americans to believe that Iraq is a less dangerous place for its troops than it really is, serve an administration that seeks to minimize the cost of this invasion.

As a second matter, today's combat evacuation and care system is the very best, and saves the lives of soldiers who would have surely died from their wounds if they had sustained them in World War II or even Vietnam.

That is an improvement that should be applauded, but it conceals the level of violence in modern American warfare generally, and in Iraq, specifically, when comparing it with past American conflicts. Failing to cite the number of wounded or accidentally injured along with the accidentally and deliberately killed makes Iraq seem safer than it is for American troops. Again, I think this a disservice to the truth and the press should expose it.

Brian Broadus
Charlottesville, Va.

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Especially when this bullshit has resulted in untold suffering and death?

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Posted on Tue, May. 03, 2005

Iraqi journalists intimidated by police

Despite initial flourishing of press freedom after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi journalists have found themselves increasingly harassed and intimidated by authorities.

BY MOHAMMED AL DULAIMY

Knight Ridder News Service


BAGHDAD - A photographer for a Baghdad newspaper says Iraqi police beat and detained him for snapping pictures of long lines at gas stations. A reporter for another local paper received an invitation from Iraqi police to cover their graduation ceremony and ended up receiving death threats from the recruits. A local TV reporter says she's lost count of how many times Iraqi authorities have confiscated her cameras and smashed her tapes.

All these cases are under investigation by the Iraqi Association to Defend Journalists, a union that formed amid a chilling new trend of alleged arrests, beatings and intimidation of Iraqi reporters at the hands of Iraqi security forces.

Reporters Without Borders, an international watchdog group for press freedom, tracked the arrests of five Iraqi journalists within a two-week period and issued a statement on April 26 asking authorities ``to be more discerning and restrained and not carry out hasty and arbitrary arrests.''

KEEPING LOW PROFILE

While Iraq's newly elected government says it will look into complaints of press intimidation, local reporters said they've seen little progress. Some have quit their jobs after receiving threats -- not from insurgents, but from police. As the United Nations celebrates World Press Freedom Day today, most Iraqi reporters are reluctant to even identify themselves as press when stopped at police checkpoints. Others say they won't report on events that involve Iraqi security forces, which creates a big gap in their coverage.


The fall of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship resulted in unprecedented freedom for Iraqi journalists, who'd suffered torture and prison terms for criticizing the former regime. More than 150 new newspapers and several local TV and radio stations sprang up immediately after the war began -- one of the biggest success stories of the U.S.-led invasion. But in recent months Iraqi police have begun cracking down on local journalists, creating a wave of fear reminiscent of Saddam's era.

''If things carry on like this, we will have to carry weapons along with our cameras and recorders,'' said Israa Shakir, editor of Iraq Today, an independent Baghdad newspaper. ``Under such circumstances, we should be worried about the future of democracy.''

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The truth as always is somewhere in the middle.

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Bush asked to explain UK war memo

Thursday, May 12, 2005 Posted: 2:49 AM EDT (0649 GMT)


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Eighty-nine Democratic members of the U.S. Congress last week sent President George W. Bush a letter asking for explanation of a secret British memo that said "intelligence and facts were being fixed" to support the Iraq war in mid-2002.

The timing of the memo was well before the president brought the issue to Congress for approval.

The Times of London newspaper published the memo -- actually minutes of a high-level meeting on Iraq held July 23, 2002 -- on May 1.

British officials did not dispute the document's authenticity, and Michael Boyce, then Britain's Chief of Defense Staff, told the paper that Britain had not then made a decision to follow the United States to war, but it would have been "irresponsible" not to prepare for the possibility.

The White House has not yet responded to queries about the congressional letter, which was released on May 6.

The letter, initiated by Rep. John Conyers, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the memo "raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own administration..."

"While various individuals have asserted this to be the case before, including Paul O'Neill, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, and Richard Clarke, a former National Security Council official, they have been previously dismissed by your administration," the letter said.

But, the letter said, when the document was leaked Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman called it "nothing new."

In addition to Blair, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, Attorney General Peter Goldsmith, MI6 chief Richard Dearlove and others attended the meeting.

A British official identified as "C" said that he had returned from a meeting in Washington and that "military action was now seen as inevitable" by U.S. officials.

"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

"The NSC had no patience with the U.N. route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

The memo further discussed the military options under consideration by the United States, along with Britain's possible role.

It quoted Hoon as saying the United States had not finalized a timeline, but that it would likely begin "30 days before the U.S. congressional elections," culminating with the actual attack in January 2003.

"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided," the memo said.

"But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

The British officials determined to push for an ultimatum for Saddam to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq to "help with the legal justification for the use of force ... despite U.S. resistance."

Britain's attorney general, Peter Goldsmith, advised the group that "the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action" and two of three possible legal bases -- self-defense and humanitarian intervention -- could not be used.

The third was a U.N. Security Council resolution, which Goldsmith said "would be difficult."

Blair thought that "it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the U.N. inspectors."

"If the political context were right, people would support regime change," the memo said.

Later, the memo said, Blair would work to convince Bush that they should pursue the ultimatum with Saddam even though "many in the U.S. did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route."

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THE WORLD

Indignation Grows in U.S. Over British Prewar Documents

Critics of Bush call them proof that he and Blair never saw diplomacy as an option with Hussein.

By John Daniszewski
Times Staff Writer

May 12, 2005

LONDON — Reports in the British press this month based on documents indicating that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair had conditionally agreed by July 2002 to invade Iraq appear to have blown over quickly in Britain.

But in the United States, where the reports at first received scant attention, there has been growing indignation among critics of the Bush White House, who say the documents help prove that the leaders made a secret decision to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein nearly a year before launching their attack, shaped intelligence to that aim and never seriously intended to avert the war through diplomacy.

The documents, obtained by Michael Smith, a defense specialist writing for the Sunday Times of London, include a memo of the minutes of a meeting July 23, 2002, between Blair and his intelligence and military chiefs; a briefing paper for that meeting and a Foreign Office legal opinion prepared before an April 2002 summit between Blair and Bush in Texas.

The picture that emerges from the documents is of a British government convinced of the U.S. desire to go to war and Blair's agreement to it, subject to several specific conditions.

Since Smith's report was published May 1, Blair's Downing Street office has not disputed the documents' authenticity. Asked about them Wednesday, a Blair spokesman said the report added nothing significant to the much-investigated record of the lead-up to the war.

"At the end of the day, nobody pushed the diplomatic route harder than the British government…. So the circumstances of this July discussion very quickly became out of date," said the spokesman, who asked not to be identified.

The leaked minutes sum up the July 23 meeting, at which Blair, top security advisors and his attorney general discussed Britain's role in Washington's plan to oust Hussein. The minutes, written by Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide, indicate general thoughts among the participants about how to create a political and legal basis for war. The case for military action at the time was "thin," Foreign Minister Jack Straw was characterized as saying, and Hussein's government posed little threat.

Labeled "secret and strictly personal — U.K. eyes only," the minutes begin with the head of the British intelligence service, MI6, who is identified as "C," saying he had returned from Washington, where there had been a "perceptible shift in attitude. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy."

Straw agreed that Bush seemed determined to act militarily, although the timing was not certain.

"But the case was thin," the minutes say. "Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capacity was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Straw then proposed to "work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam" to permit United Nations weapons inspectors back into Iraq. "This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force," he said, according to the minutes.

Blair said, according to the memo, "that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the U.N. inspectors."

"If the political context were right, people would support regime change," Blair said. "The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work."

In addition to the minutes, the Sunday Times report referred to a Cabinet briefing paper that was given to participants before the July 23 meeting. It stated that Blair had already promised Bush cooperation earlier, at the April summit in Texas.

"The U.K. would support military action to bring about regime change," the Sunday Times quoted the briefing as saying.

Excerpts from the paper, which Smith provided to the Los Angeles Times, said Blair had listed conditions for war, including that "efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion, the Israel-Palestine crisis was quiescent," and options to "eliminate Iraq's WMD through the U.N. weapons inspectors" had been exhausted.

The briefing paper said the British government should get the U.S. to put its military plans in a "political framework."

"This is particularly important for the U.K. because it is necessary to create the conditions in which we could legally support military action," it says.

In a letter to Bush last week, 89 House Democrats expressed shock over the documents. They asked if the papers were authentic and, if so, whether they proved that the White House had agreed to invade Iraq months before seeking Congress' OK.

"If the disclosure is accurate, it raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of our own administration," the letter says.

"While the president of the United States was telling the citizens and the Congress that they had no intention to start a war with Iraq, they were working very close with Tony Blair and the British leadership at making this a foregone conclusion," the letter's chief author, Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, said Wednesday.

If the documents are real, he said, it is "a huge problem" in terms of an abuse of power. He said the White House had not yet responded to the letter.

Both Blair and Bush have denied that a decision on war was made in early 2002. The White House and Downing Street maintain that they were preparing for military operations as an option, but that the option to not attack also remained open until the war began March 20, 2003.

In January 2002, Bush described Iraq as a member of an "axis of evil," but the sustained White House push for Iraqi compliance with U.N. resolutions did not come until September of that year. That month, Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly to outline a case against Hussein's government, and he sought a bipartisan congressional resolution authorizing the possible use of force.

In November 2002, the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution demanding that Iraq readmit weapons inspectors.

An effort to pass a second resolution expressly authorizing the use of force against Iraq did not succeed.

*
Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.

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May 5, 2005

The Honorable George W. Bush President of the United States of America The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

We write because of troubling revelations in the Sunday London Times apparently confirming that the United States and Great Britain had secretly agreed to attack Iraq in the summer of 2002, well before the invasion and before you even sought Congressional authority to engage in military action. While various individuals have asserted this to be the case before, including Paul O'Neill, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, and Richard Clarke, a former National Security Council official, they have been previously dismissed by your Administration. However, when this story was divulged last weekend, Prime Minister Blair's representative claimed the document contained "nothing new." If the disclosure is accurate, it raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own Administration.

The Sunday Times obtained a leaked document with the minutes of a secret meeting from highly placed sources inside the British Government. Among other things, the document revealed:

* Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired a July 2002 meeting, at which he discussed military options, having already committed himself to supporting President Bush's plans for invading Iraq.

* British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw acknowledged that the case for war was "thin" as "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran."

* A separate secret briefing for the meeting said that Britain and America had to "create" conditions to justify a war.

* A British official "reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

As a result of this recent disclosure, we would like to know the following:

1) Do you or anyone in your Administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?

2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization go to war? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to this time?

3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?

4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?

5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?

We have of course known for some time that subsequent to the invasion there have been a variety of varying reasons proffered to justify the invasion, particularly since the time it became evident that weapons of mass destruction would not be found. This leaked document - essentially acknowledged by the Blair government - is the first confirmation that the rationales were shifting well before the invasion as well.

Given the importance of this matter, we would ask that you respond to this inquiry as promptly as possible. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Members who have already signed letter:
Neil Abercrombie
Brian Baird
Tammy Baldwin
Xavier Becerra
Shelley Berkley
Eddie Bernice Johnson
Sanford Bishop
Earl Blumenauer
Corrine Brown
Sherrod Brown
G.K. Butterfield
Emanuel Cleaver
James Clyburn
John Conyers
Jim Cooper
Elijah Cummings
Danny Davis
Peter DeFazio
Diana DeGette
Bill Delahunt
Rosa DeLauro
Lloyd Doggett
Sam Farr
Bob Filner
Harold Ford, Jr.
Barney Frank
Al Green
Raul Grijalva
Louis Gutierrez
Alcee Hastings
Maurice Hinchey
Rush Holt
Jay Inslee
Sheila Jackson Lee
Jessie Jackson Jr.
Marcy Kaptur
Patrick Kennedy
Dale Kildee
Carolyn Kilpatrick
Dennis Kucinich
William Lacy Clay
Barbara Lee
John Lewis
Zoe Lofgren
Donna M. Christensen
Carolyn Maloney
Ed Markey
Carolyn McCarthy
Jim McDermott
James McGovern
Cynthia McKinney
Martin Meehan
Kendrick Meek
Gregory Meeks
Michael Michaud
George Miller
Gwen S. Moore
James Moran
Jerrold Nadler
Grace Napolitano
James Oberstar
John Olver
Major Owens
Frank Pallone
Donald Payne
Charles Rangel
Bobby Rush
Bernie Sanders
Linda Sanchez
Jan Schakowsky
Jose Serrano
Ike Skelton
Louise Slaughter
Hilda Solis
Pete Stark
Ellen Tauscher
Bennie Thompson
Edolphus Towns
Stephanie Tubbs Jones
Chris Van Hollen
Nydia Velazquez
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Maxine Waters
Diane Watson
Melvin Watt
Robert Wexler
Lynn Woolsey
David Wu
Albert R. Wynn

To read the letter in PDF format, including signatures, click here.

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"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided," the memo said.

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"But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

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The British officials determined to push for an ultimatum for Saddam to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq to "help with the legal justification for the use of force ... despite U.S. resistance."

Britain's attorney general, Peter Goldsmith, advised the group that "the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action" and two of three possible legal bases -- self-defense and humanitarian intervention -- could not be used.

The third was a U.N. Security Council resolution, which Goldsmith said "would be difficult."

Blair thought that "it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the U.N. inspectors."

"If the political context were right, people would support regime change," the memo said.

Later, the memo said, Blair would work to convince Bush that they should pursue the ultimatum with Saddam even though "many in the U.S. did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route."

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( from the above L.A. Times article, posted by unrestrained id : )

In a letter to Bush last week, 89 House Democrats expressed shock over the documents. They asked if the papers were authentic and, if so, whether they proved that the White House had agreed to invade Iraq months before seeking Congress' OK.

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