Call Liars what they are . . . Liars

[Originalwombman]

From http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/13/opinion/13KRIS.html

White House in Denial
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


Let me give the White House a hand.

Condoleezza Rice was asked on "Meet the Press" on Sunday about a column of mine from May 6 regarding President Bush's reliance on forged documents to claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. That was not just a case of hyping intelligence, but of asserting something that had already been flatly discredited by an envoy investigating at the behest of the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Ms. Rice acknowledged that the president's information turned out to be "not credible," but insisted that the White House hadn't realized this until after Mr. Bush had cited it in his State of the Union address.

And now an administration official tells The Washington Post that Mr. Cheney's office first learned of its role in the episode by reading that column of mine. Hmm. I have an offer for Mr. Cheney: I'll tell you everything I know about your activities, if you'll tell me all you know.

To help out Ms. Rice and Mr. Cheney, let me offer some more detail about the uranium saga. Piecing the story together from two people directly involved and three others who were briefed on it, the tale begins at the end of 2001, when third-rate forged documents turned up in West Africa purporting to show the sale by Niger to Iraq of tons of "yellowcake" uranium.

Italy's intelligence service obtained the documents and shared them with British spooks, who passed them on to Washington. Mr. Cheney's office got wind of this and asked the C.I.A. to investigate.

The agency chose a former ambassador to Africa to undertake the mission, and that person flew to Niamey, Niger, in the last week of February 2002. This envoy spent one week in Niger, staying at the Sofitel and discussing his findings with the U.S. ambassador to Niger, and then flew back to Washington via Paris.

Immediately upon his return, in early March 2002, this senior envoy briefed the C.I.A. and State Department and reported that the documents were bogus, for two main reasons. First, the documents seemed phony on their face — for example, the Niger minister of energy and mines who had signed them had left that position years earlier. Second, an examination of Niger's uranium industry showed that an international consortium controls the yellowcake closely, so the Niger government does not have any yellowcake to sell.

Officials now claim that the C.I.A. inexplicably did not report back to the White House with this envoy's findings and reasoning, or with an assessment of its own that the information was false. I hear something different. My understanding is that while Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet may not have told Mr. Bush that the Niger documents were forged, lower C.I.A. officials did tell both the vice president's office and National Security Council staff members. Moreover, I hear from another source that the C.I.A.'s operations side and its counterterrorism center undertook their own investigations of the documents, poking around in Italy and Africa, and also concluded that they were false — a judgment that filtered to the top of the C.I.A.

Meanwhile, the State Department's intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, independently came to the exact same conclusion about those documents, according to Greg Thielmann, a former official there. Mr. Thielmann said he was "quite confident" that the conclusion had been passed up to the top of the State Department.

"It was well known throughout the intelligence community that it was a forgery," said Melvin Goodman, a former C.I.A. analyst who is now at the Center for International Policy.

Still, Mr. Tenet and the intelligence agencies were under intense pressure to come up with evidence against Iraq. Ambiguities were lost, and doubters were discouraged from speaking up.

"It was a foregone conclusion that every photo of a trailer truck would be a `mobile bioweapons lab' and every tanker truck would be `filled with weaponized anthrax,' " a former military intelligence officer said. "None of the analysts in military uniform had the option to debate the vice president, secretary of defense and the secretary of state."

I don't believe that the president deliberately lied to the public in an attempt to scare Americans into supporting his war. But it does look as if ideologues in the administration deceived themselves about Iraq's nuclear programs — and then deceived the American public as well.  

[Ayinde]

Good article!

The only part I disagree with is the assertion by the writer that the lies were not deliberate. IT WAS DELIBERATE LIES!

###

People shouldn't believe a thing Bush says on Iran

O. Ricardo Pimentel  

PHOENIX -- The Iraqi war was intended to teach a lot of folks, among them Iranians, a lesson.  
Arguably, here's what Iran, now in U.S. crosshairs for doing all those things we said Iraq was doing, might have learned.  

-If, after you are accused of developing weapons of mass destruction, you submit to international inspection, get ready to be invaded anyway.  

-If you say you don't have any such weapons, you are, of course, lying. If inspectors can't find any, you're hiding them. And if, after invasion, they still can't be found, you were just awfully good at both of the above.  
-If one of the charges is, specifically, that you're developing nuclear weapons, best you speed things along.  

You see, as Iraq demonstrated, countries that we say are oh-so-close to having nukes get invaded.  

On the other hand, we use diplomacy and stinging rebukes for countries such as North Korea. You know, countries that are apparently far along in nuke development, hint that they might actually have the little nasties and have the means to deliver them.  

If you have nukes, are an authoritarian government, and help us with terrorists, you become an ally. Just ask Pakistan.  

And if you're an authoritarian government in a country with no religious freedom, supply the world with terrorists and have an abundance of oil, you're also a bosom buddy. Just like Saudi Arabia.  

The most effective lesson of the Iraqi war, however, is not really for the Iranians, Syrians, Libyans or North Koreans.  

It's for the Bush administration. It learned that it can stretch the facts, fabricate out of whole cloth, spin nuggets into "truth" and frighten Americans at will. And it's all OK as long as "liberated" folks are jubilant at some point on the evening news.  

And therein lies a cautionary note for Americans in general. If virtually none of what this administration said about Iraq -- from nuclear weapons to imminent threat -- has been borne out, why should we believe what is now being said about Iran?  

We are, after all, getting much of our information from Iranian opposition groups, just as we got a lot of our information from all those reliable Iraqi opposition groups.  

But the biggest conundrum about the war aftermath and the countdown to the next confrontation is that no one here really seems to give a hoot.  

The Bush administration force-fed us whatever information was useful to make a case for what it wanted to do, disregarding any and all countervailing and inconvenient intelligence.  

Whether this was mere reckless disregard for the truth or outright fabrication, it amounts to the same thing.  

And it matters little if we eventually find WMDs. It's clear that we lied about the certainty that they existed, that they posed any imminent threat at all and that war was necessary to protect us all from them.  

In other words, WMD hype was just a matter of convenience.  

We've just recently had terrorist bombings in Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaida allegedly masterminded them. Osama bin Laden is still slinking about. And we have a bad case of "orange alert" jitters in this country.  

The question: Do you feel any safer because "imminent-threat" Iraq has been conquered (with Saddam Hussein still unaccounted for)?  

If you do, current events might not be your strong suit. If we're going to consider war again, how about we wait for all the facts -- real ones -- before the shooting starts?  


O. Ricardo Pimentel, a columnist for Gannett News Service, appears on this page periodically.
 
©2003 The Olympian
 
http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20030607/opinion/22701.shtml

[Originalwombman]

Indeed deliberate lies . . . I&I can't for the life of me figure out why the American public is not insulted by Bush and his administration's complete disregard for the the truth.  They don't even make an effort to make up a good cover story!  They make up lies that any kindergartner could come up with and then if anyone asks an obvious question, then that person is unpatriotic and then persecuted.  But I&I know what kind of backwards upside down Babylon system this is anyway so it doesn't really bother I.  I do feel bad, however, for all these illusioned Americans who feel like the "war" (or rather attack) on Iraq is over.  Like an earthquake, aftershocks soon follow.  

[Ayinde]

by Harley Sorensen, www.sfgate.com

Why mince words? These are the facts:

1) President George W. Bush is a liar.

2) Secretary of State Colin Powell is a liar.

3) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is a liar.

4) National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice is a liar.

To the above facts we might add these: There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, none were there when our war against Iraq began, and none will be found unless we plant them there.

These are the conclusions one could reasonably reach after reading California Congressman Henry Waxman's web site, the section about forged documents used as a justification for war.

One might also conclude that Waxman has found the smoking gun that could -- and should -- bring down the corrupt Bush Administration.

But, observing the events in Congress last Wednesday, one might conclude further that the Republicans in Congress, by blocking the call for a decent investigation, intend to do their best to see that the Bush Gang is never brought to account for its lying ways.

The sordid truth is that the Bush team lied through its teeth to justify its desire to go to war against Iraq.

This does not surprise me. As long as a year before we started the war, I e-mailed a friend: "Sooner or later Bush will conclude that Saddam has done something horrible, or is about to do something horrible, and the American public will be led to believe we have no choice but to destroy Iraq."

I am not a seer. I have no magical powers that allow me to see the future. But obvious is obvious, and it was obvious long before the war began that Bush would not be satisfied until he could send our young people off to avenge Saddam's attempt to assassinate his father.

The term "weapons of mass destruction" is used these days to cover a multitude of sins. Personally, I believe one "bunker buster" bomb qualifies as such a weapon, or one fighter bomber. But in Bushspeak, a WMD seems to be limited to nuclear devices, biological weapons or chemical weapons.

Before the war, the Bush people sought to provide future cover for their lies by inventing mobile weapons labs. By asserting ahead of time that Saddam's chemical and biological weapons were mobile, the Bushies would have an excuse for not finding them later. They could have been driven off anyway, perhaps to our next target country, Syria or Iran.

Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, cannot be created and then made to disappear so handily, so the Bushies satisfied themselves by "proving" the Iraqis had sought to buy the materials necessary to make nuclear devices.

That "proof" came from our co-conspirators in the war, the British, who said breathlessly that they had uncovered documents that proved the Iraqis had tried to buy uranium from Niger.

So there it was: "proof"! Bush cited this startling "fact" in his 2003 State of the Union address. His merry crew later repeated it and congressmen who believed their president voted in favor of military action against Iraq.

One small problem, however: it was a lie. There was no proof that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger. The documents that "proved" it were forgeries, and not very good forgeries at that. (For instance, they were printed on stationery of a previous Niger regime, and "signed" in part by a guy who had been out of government for more than 10 years. They were so poorly done, Rep. Waxman says, that a simple Google search would have exposed their lack of authenticity.)

That particular Bush lie became public knowledge a few months ago. Now that it's well known, the Bush people are blaming their intelligence agencies. They're throwing up their hands in dismay. Tain't our fault, they say, it's that danged old CIA.

Yeah. Right.

Congressman Waxman, a Democrat who's been in the House since 1974, is focusing his search for truth on one small issue: Why did the president, when he knew it to be untrue, cite the phony uranium-from-Niger fact in his State of the Union Address? So far, after months of trying, Waxman hasn¹t been able to get any satisfactory answers to his question.

Bush's reference to the non-existent uranium deal was a classic of presidential duplicity. What he actually said was, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." That was technically true, as was, "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

Folks, I know we expect politicians to lie to us. There's the old joke: "How can you tell when a politician is lying? … When his lips are moving."

So we expect a little gilding of the lily or shading the truth in an effort to squirm out of an embarrassing situation.

But should we sit back complacently and let politicians lie to us about something as important as going to war? We did that with Lyndon Johnson, and his lies about North Vietnamese attacks on American ships in 1964, and it led to our massive involvement in the Vietnam War with more than 50,000 Americans killed.

It is easy to argue that the war against Iraq was a "good war" because it rid the world of a horrible dictator. In that sense it was a good war, but that doesn¹t justify the lies that led us into that war.

We not only got rid of Saddam with that war, but we destroyed a country and left it in chaos, at a cost of American lives in the hundreds and still rising. Our military is overextended, our reservists are being used as permanent regular troops, and, in a shaky economy, we're putting the cost on credit and hoping our children can some day find a way to pay for it.

Even if you assume all that is good, should we tolerate being lied to on such major issues?

Congressman Waxman is on to something. He's caught the Bushies in baldfaced lies. But even though he's a powerful congressman, he's just one man, and he can be shunted aside.

What we need, I believe, is a hue and cry in this country to match the hue and cry that went up when Bill Clinton lied about sex. We shouldn't leave Waxman dangling out there all by himself. He needs our support.

For the sake of our country's future, we should expose the White House liars for what they are.

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist and liberal iconoclast. His column appears Mondays.

[RasIene]

You know Ayinde I and I thank you for this post. I have noticed that you were the one that originally fill us in on the Iraq situation when none of us hardly paid any attention to it.
But now I know why you did. Because you knew what you know that there were  no true WMD in Iraq. Why would Sadam allowed the Inspectors in? Why he did not fight back when the soldiers came in? Because he wanted the world to know that what was judged against him will someday set his name in history. Especially, against and in comparison to an American and British Prime Minister.
You right my Idren. I have also, think the world has become too complacent. More so alot of Rases do not pay any attention to world events. Bob Marley and Marcus Garvey paid much attention to social condition. And thus they put what they see in the message of music and poetry.
Where are the strong leaders today! Where are the voices with Icience. Our youths are been sold lies by our leaders, no wonder they are use video games as escapism from reality. But we must help Brother Bob carry on the message. Chant down Babylon one more time, cause them soft in the head. Selah...continue to raise perspective on these leaders. It is us the common people who must check them.
Selah...Iance unto the I.

RasIene.

[Ayinde]

The Pirates' Blunt, Useless Instruments

http://www.blackcommentator.com/

The Bush men looked out upon the expanses of Iraq and saw the perfect staging ground for a glorious, global offensive that would lead, inexorably, to a New American Century. From Kurdistan and the Shi'ite south the United States would commandeer sufficient oil to become OPEC, thus thwarting any move to unhitch petroleum prices from the dollar and sustaining a domestic fossil fuel feast that might last through a hundred corporate quarterly reports. Once the U.S. military and its corporate camp followers were fully embedded on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the whole of the Eurasian land mass would be open to American power projection. Syria would swing wide the gates to Damascus, lest they be knocked down. Jubilant Iranians would sing Farsi songs in praise of Coca-Cola over Ayatollahs, while contributing their crude to the U.S.-controlled mix. Saudi Arabia would crumble from princely rot, ridding the U.S. of fat royal skimmers of profits rightfully belonging to people of Aramco.

France, Germany, Russia, China – every combination of nations – would accept the Borgian pronouncement: "Resistance is futile!" For all the world's peoples but Americans, time would stop, the dimension itself awaiting final definition by the Centurions.

For more than a decade the Pirates-in-waiting savored the moment that U.S. tanks would cross the Rubicon of history at the Kuwaiti border, the first leg of a short march to global hegemony. In April they stepped – into space. Like Wile E. Coyote, they are absolutely incapable of finding their way back.

Blind, deaf and dumb to history

This is an occupation unlike any other in modern history. Acting solely on greed and delusions, the Pirates dismissed the collective experience of humanity to attempt the occupation of a large and sophisticated society without a reasonable expectation of collaboration from any significant segment of the population. It cannot be done, as confirmed by the daily dispatches from Iraq and beyond.

Absent some modus vivendi with a social group large enough and sufficiently well placed to act on the occupier's behalf, the foreign power is left with only his blunt instruments. He can destroy the society, but he cannot make it run along lines that are to his benefit. He can shoot the civil service and essential workforce, but he cannot reap the value that he sought from that nation. He can inflate and restructure his army to perform vital economic and civil missions while simultaneously protecting itself against the population – for as long as he is willing to pay the huge cost. He has won himself a liability that will drain him of treasure and blood.

Unaided, the foreigner is also blind and deaf. Not only will he be shot, but he will not know why or by whom. He cannot control events, because he cannot anticipate the actions of others. He is lost and pitiful, clutching his blunt instruments. Lacking societal intelligence, he is dumb.

During the buildup to invasion, the Bush men went through the motions of considering the experiences of American occupation forces in post-World War II Japan and Germany. However, their useless corporate think tanks understood nothing. The Emperor of Japan told his people to cooperate with the Americans, and they did, collaborating in their own occupation. The surviving German high command accepted American terms of surrender and, joined by the economic elite and civil service, cooperated in the enforcement of those terms. (Under both occupations, huge chunks of the wartime regime were left in place at the end of hostilities, to later flourish as part of the post-occupation ruling circles.)

Japanese troops remained in Vietnam and Korea as armed protectors of the American occupation, until the French could be reinstated as Vietnam's colonial rulers and the Korean collaborators became viable. The French had maintained dominion over Vietnam from the 1800s by converting and empowering a collaborative Catholic population – the group the United States inherited after 1954. When minority Vietnamese Catholics became spent and were discarded in 1963 – no longer capable of effective collaboration – the puppet presidency devolved into a game of military musical chairs. U.S. troop strength began climbing to the half-million mark.

Faces in the crowd

The occupation lessons of the 20th century are totally lost on George Bush and his deluded Pirate crew. Instead, they perceived an undifferentiated Iraqi population without classes, hierarchies, centers of actual influence, defined social structures – in short, a history-less, inhuman mass. "Just a bunch of hajis," as the U.S. soldiers say.

The most profound racism led the Bush men to believe that the Iraqi people have no society, that they are a blank slate to be written on by the victor. Now the occupiers are reaping the whirlwind of centuries, the final denouement of their own murderous history. Shi'ites will not help the Pirates write their final, glorious chapter. Kurds have every reason to believe that they liberated themselves. To the Americans, Marsh Arabs are just Shi'ites with darker complexions. Chaldean Catholics are not numerous enough to play a collaborative role, and must seek American protection for their liquor stores. The Americans cannot distinguish between devout Sunni Muslims and the disproportionately Sunni Baath Party, treating both the same and ensuring that both will act, accordingly.

The political fairy tale that justified the war made it impossible for the U.S. to "properly" occupy Iraq by acting through the logical societal group: the existing Baath Party structures, a significant social force comprising millions of family members that is also dominant in the civil service and the oil industry. Instead, the most coherent secular segment of Iraqi society has been irreversibly demonized – an active enemy of the occupation. (The Communist Party, once 25,000 members strong until the U.S.-backed Baath Party attempted to exterminate it, is the other significant secular political presence in Iraq.) The Iraqi Army has been told to go home and calmly wait for private employment – wishful thinking on a massive scale.

Bush is left with his handpicked exiles, who will drown in the country of their birth.

Most Iraqi business sectors have reason to fear American schemes to transform their nation into something resembling Texas, especially as they see that American corporations are already acting as if they have powers of eminent domain over the country. Iraqi businessmen needn't worry. The U.S. occupation cannot take hold, because it is not rooted in reality or connected to anything Iraqi. The Bush men are unfit to occupy anyone, the worst possible candidates for world hegemony. Like Wile E. Coyote, they are going down.

Reproduced from:
http://www.blackcommentator.com/47/47_pirates_pr.html

[Ayinde]

Simply call it lies and stop looking at the world like Bush



By Diane Carman, Denver Post Columnist

It's getting harder to ignore. More and more evidence is emerging to suggest that U.S. intelligence was manipulated to justify going to war with Iraq.

Among the allegations:

U.S. officials cited documents provided by foreign ambassadors - documents that they knew to be forgeries - as proof of the existence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.

Aluminum tubes and gas centrifuges that President Bush said were used to "enrich uranium for nuclear weapons" had already been determined by the CIA to be ordinary rocket materials too flimsy to handle nuclear material.

Claims by the administration that Iraq had unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering deadly biological agents around the world to the U.S. were known to be false; analysts estimated they didn't have the range even to reach Tel Aviv.

Vice President Dick Cheney had visited CIA headquarters several times in the months before the war to pressure analysts to find evidence that would justify an attack on Iraq.

And evidence that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda was deliberately withheld from Congress and the public in an attempt to mislead everyone about the danger Iraq posed.

Several members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, including Democrats Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Richard Durbin, D-Ill., told The New Republic that they knew that evidence contradicting the Bush administration's claims had been concealed, but they were unable to reveal it because it was classified.

Still, Congress, which spent $80 million to prove that, yes, Bill Clinton did have sexual relations with that woman, has yet to order an investigation.

Rep. Diana DeGette claims to know why.

"It's obvious. It's because the Republicans control Congress and the White House," the Colorado Democrat said.

Last week, she called for a bipartisan investigation to determine if there was a "massive intelligence failure" leading up to the war in Iraq.

Either there never was the irrefutable evidence of weapons of mass destruction and we were deceived, she said, or the deadly weapons exist in Iraq where Hussein is believed to be hiding and our intelligence is not capable of finding them.

Regardless of which scenario Americans prefer to embrace, it's a troubling situation.

We deserve an explanation.

Before the war, DeGette said, "both (Secretary of State) Colin Powell and the president unequivocally said there were biological, chemical and possibly nuclear weapons that were poised to strike and that created an imminent threat."

In fact, when Powell made his dramatic presentation of the purported evidence against Iraq to the United Nations in February, DeGette admitted that she found it disturbing.

The congresswoman, who had voted against the resolution to go to war with Iraq, said Powell raised "very serious questions" about the danger Iraq posed.

She had company. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., called it "shocking."

The public responded similarly.

In the days following Powell's U.N. appearance, polls showed opposition to the pre-emptive war evaporating in the U.S.

Seventy percent of Americans believed that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. Sixty percent thought the country was developing nuclear weapons.

"On that basis, we went out and attacked another country," DeGette said.

It was the rationale we presented to the world for going to war.

"Now, it's becoming more and more clear that evidence of those weapons never existed," DeGette said.

And while it's unclear whether the intelligence was flawed, misinterpreted or simply manipulated to produce a predetermined outcome, DeGette said, it's clear something went wrong.

"There's one thing the American public doesn't like," she said, "and that's being duped."

If Congress succeeds in stonewalling an investigation, the damage to the intelligence agencies will be severe. Once their integrity is undermined, they become objects of contempt and ridicule.

That's why DeGette predicts that despite her Republican colleagues' loyalty to Bush, Congress ultimately will vote for an investigation.

"The public will demand it," she said.

As the weeks and months go by, if evidence of weapons of mass destruction isn't found in Iraq, containing the scandal will be impossible, she said. The truth will have to emerge.

"This is not about a political gotcha situation," DeGette said.

"One reason people like me are trying to be respectful and not make this into a political issue is that it goes so much deeper than that. This goes to the integrity of our intelligence, the integrity of our foreign policy.

"This is heavy-duty stuff."

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%7E115%7E,00.html

[Bantu_Kelani]

I look in amazement at the way American citizens are led like cattle and I'm so Disgusted that I do not even entertain discussions about the Iraq War and Invasion anymore. I see why Bush II is in office as a number of Americans called themselves taking a stance to return the country to its original Racist, Conservative mindset that establishes Privilege for some and works to repeal the civil rights gains of others.

As I see the Iraqis offensive transpire and listen to the flag waving clones, I see that:

1. Osama was never caught and no link was made to Iraq.

2. No weapons of mass destruction were found.

3. WMD was not the issue at all because they would have been when used in the past. Oil and Revenge and an Egotistical drive to alter History is.

4. The people who started the War and Invasion will gain the MOST from it.

5.Contracts are being awarded to the war-hawk cronies through a closed-bid process that eliminates small and minority owned businesses from inclusion. But I guess that is okay as many of us who do nothing but rail on their own once again look the other way, a sad group of people they are....

6. The very people who decry social programs and big government has nothing to say about handouts to Israel or the money being spent on the war that will reduce Educational and Social spending in the U.S. In the meantime, the Poverty and Homeless American population gains significantly.

7. Blacks and People of color are supposed to fall in line with Iraqis Occupation while still having to wage fights for AA and other Civil rights in the U.S.  ...

8.This war will destabilize the Middle-East and cause repercussions to the U.S here and abroad in the future as Iran and other countries arm (N. Korea) themselves based on the brazen way we said to hell with missile treaties and UN efforts.

9.How in the hell does "liberation" with U.S Military personnel and an interim gov't in Iraq come across to the Arab world? We see now the repercussions in form of Attacks on Americans troops by Iraqis and will see Attack Israel by other Middle Eastern countries as they feel they are next on the "hit list" of the US. They damn sure will not let Israel remain a lone superpower in that region..

Overall, I see this as a Imperialistic move by the U.S under that Arrogant "Pre-emptive strike" nonsense developed by Rumsfeld the Anti-Krst as a way of seeing America into the future. I think all it did was make the U. S Enemy list long and adamant about the demise of this place and endanger all Americans. BIN LADEN is fine and well and corporate cronies rob the country blind. But I forgot, the priorities are to kill Arabs and keep Blacks out of Colleges and Professions .


Kelani-

[Bantu_Kelani]

GOP blocks probe of WMD intelligence

I guess Republicans are going to circle the wagons.

WASHINGTON - Congressional Republicans on Wednesday rejected Democratic calls for a formal investigation into intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs, contending that such a probe could harm intelligence agencies' work.

More like such a probe could harm Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld when they're exposed as blatant deliberate LIARS.

Republican lawmakers say there is no evidence of wrongdoing and an investigation would suggest "there's something dreadfully wrong and you're going to have to set things straight," said Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

No, an investigation would suggest the U.S is a Democracy, not an Autocracy.

And WITHOUT a probe--the Bush show takes its theatre production on the road.

On Sunday, Condoleezza Rice admitted that President Bush had used a forged document in his State of the Union speech to prove Iraq represented a nuclear threat: "We did not know at the time — maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency — but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery. Of course it was information that was mistaken."

United Nations inspectors, belatedly presented with the same document, realized within hours it was a crude forgery.

http://www.robertscheer.com/

Yeah Right. 'No one in our circle of the masters of the universe knew. We were just the hapless pawns of some anonymous cipher-breaker in the basement. '..    

1 adulterous blowjob = $70 million investigation

10,000 dead Iraqis/100+ dead Americans = "no evidence of wrongdoing."


Kelani-

[Ayinde]

Falsehoods ranging from exaggeration to plain untruth were used to make the case for war. More lies are being used in the aftermath. By Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whitaker

13 July 2003, Independent UK

1 Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks

A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence official was the main basis for this claim, but Czech intelligence later conceded that the Iraqi's contact could not have been Atta. This did not stop the constant stream of assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which was so successful that at one stage opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Americans believed the hand of Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. Almost as many believed Iraqi hijackers were aboard the crashed airliners; in fact there were none.

2 Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working together

Persistent claims by US and British leaders that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in league with each other were contradicted by a leaked British Defence Intelligence Staff report, which said there were no current links between them. Mr Bin Laden's "aims are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq", it added.

Another strand to the claims was that al-Qa'ida members were being sheltered in Iraq, and had set up a poisons training camp. When US troops reached the camp, they found no chemical or biological traces.

3 Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons programme

The head of the CIA has now admitted that documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to import uranium from Niger in west Africa were forged, and that the claim should never have been in President Bush's State of the Union address. Britain sticks by the claim, insisting it has "separate intelligence". The Foreign Office conceded last week that this information is now "under review".

4 Iraq was trying to import aluminium tubes to develop nuclear weapons

The US persistently alleged that Baghdad tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges, needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes were not even suitable for centrifuges.

5 Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons from the first Gulf War

Iraq possessed enough dangerous substances to kill the whole world, it was alleged more than once. It had pilotless aircraft which could be smuggled into the US and used to spray chemical and biological toxins. Experts pointed out that apart from mustard gas, Iraq never had the technology to produce materials with a shelf-life of 12 years, the time between the two wars. All such agents would have deteriorated to the point of uselessness years ago.

6 Iraq retained up to 20 missiles which could carry chemical or biological warheads, with a range which would threaten British forces in Cyprus

Apart from the fact that there has been no sign of these missiles since the invasion, Britain downplayed the risk of there being any such weapons in Iraq once the fighting began. It was also revealed that chemical protection equipment was removed from British bases in Cyprus last year, indicating that the Government did not take its own claims seriously.

7 Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to develop smallpox

This allegation was made by the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in his address to the UN Security Council in February. The following month the UN said there was nothing to support it.

8 US and British claims were supported by the inspectors

According to Jack Straw, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix "pointed out" that Iraq had 10,000 litres of anthrax. Tony Blair said Iraq's chemical, biological and "indeed the nuclear weapons programme" had been well documented by the UN. Mr Blix's reply? "This is not the same as saying there are weapons of mass destruction," he said last September. "If I had solid evidence that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction or were constructing such weapons, I would take it to the Security Council." In May this year he added: "I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction, and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were not."

9 Previous weapons inspections had failed

Tony Blair told this newspaper in March that the UN had "tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm peacefully". But in 1999 a Security Council panel concluded: "Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated." Mr Blair also claimed UN inspectors "found no trace at all of Saddam's offensive biological weapons programme" until his son-in-law defected. In fact the UN got the regime to admit to its biological weapons programme more than a month before the defection.

10 Iraq was obstructing the inspectors

Britain's February "dodgy dossier" claimed inspectors' escorts were "trained to start long arguments" with other Iraqi officials while evidence was being hidden, and inspectors' journeys were monitored and notified ahead to remove surprise. Dr Blix said in February that the UN had conducted more than 400 inspections, all without notice, covering more than 300 sites. "We note that access to sites has so far been without problems," he said. : "In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew that the inspectors were coming."

11 Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes

This now-notorious claim was based on a single source, said to be a serving Iraqi military officer. This individual has not been produced since the war, but in any case Tony Blair contradicted the claim in April. He said Iraq had begun to conceal its weapons in May 2002, which meant that they could not have been used within 45 minutes.

12 The "dodgy dossier"

Mr Blair told the Commons in February, when the dossier was issued: "We issued further intelligence over the weekend about the infrastructure of concealment. It is obviously difficult when we publish intelligence reports." It soon emerged that most of it was cribbed without attribution from three articles on the internet. Last month Alastair Campbell took responsibility for the plagiarism committed by his staff, but stood by the dossier's accuracy, even though it confused two Iraqi intelligence organisations, and said one moved to new headquarters in 1990, two years before it was created.

13 War would be easy

Public fears of war in the US and Britain were assuaged by assurances that oppressed Iraqis would welcome the invading forces; that "demolishing Saddam Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk", in the words of Kenneth Adelman, a senior Pentagon official in two previous Republican administrations. Resistance was patchy, but stiffer than expected, mainly from irregular forces fighting in civilian clothes. "This wasn't the enemy we war-gamed against," one general complained.

14 Umm Qasr

The fall of Iraq's southernmost city and only port was announced several times before Anglo-American forces gained full control - by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, and by Admiral Michael Boyce, chief of Britain's defence staff. "Umm Qasr has been overwhelmed by the US Marines and is now in coalition hands," the Admiral announced, somewhat prematurely.

15 Basra rebellion

Claims that the Shia Muslim population of Basra, Iraq's second city, had risen against their oppressors were repeated for days, long after it became clear to those there that this was little more than wishful thinking. The defeat of a supposed breakout by Iraqi armour was also announced by military spokesman in no position to know the truth.

16 The "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch

Private Jessica Lynch's "rescue" from a hospital in Nasiriya by American special forces was presented as the major "feel-good" story of the war. She was said to have fired back at Iraqi troops until her ammunition ran out, and was taken to hospital suffering bullet and stab wounds. It has since emerged that all her injuries were sustained in a vehicle crash, which left her incapable of firing any shot. Local medical staff had tried to return her to the Americans after Iraqi forces pulled out of the hospital, but the doctors had to turn back when US troops opened fire on them. The special forces encountered no resistance, but made sure the whole episode was filmed.

17 Troops would face chemical and biological weapons

As US forces approached Baghdad, there was a rash of reports that they would cross a "red line", within which Republican Guard units were authorised to use chemical weapons. But Lieutenant General James Conway, the leading US marine general in Iraq, conceded afterwards that intelligence reports that chemical weapons had been deployed around Baghdad before the war were wrong.

"It was a surprise to me ... that we have not uncovered weapons ... in some of the forward dispersal sites," he said. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there. We were simply wrong. Whether or not we're wrong at the national level, I think still very much remains to be seen."

18 Interrogation of scientists would yield the location of WMD

"I have got absolutely no doubt that those weapons are there ... once we have the co-operation of the scientists and the experts, I have got no doubt that we will find them," Tony Blair said in April. Numerous similar assurances were issued by other leading figures, who said interrogations would provide the WMD discoveries that searches had failed to supply. But almost all Iraq's leading scientists are in custody, and claims that lingering fears of Saddam Hussein are stilling their tongues are beginning to wear thin.

19 Iraq's oil money would go to Iraqis

Tony Blair complained in Parliament that "people falsely claim that we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenues, adding that they should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN. Britain should seek a Security Council resolution that would affirm "the use of all oil revenues for the benefit of the Iraqi people".

Instead Britain co-sponsored a Security Council resolution that gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues. There is no UN-administered trust fund.

Far from "all oil revenues" being used for the Iraqi people, the resolution continues to make deductions from Iraq's oil earnings to pay in compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

20 WMD were found

After repeated false sightings, both Tony Blair and George Bush proclaimed on 30 May that two trailers found in Iraq were mobile biological laboratories. "We have already found two trailers, both of which we believe were used for the production of biological weapons," said Mr Blair. Mr Bush went further: "Those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons - they're wrong. We found them." It is now almost certain that the vehicles were for the production of hydrogen for weather balloons, just as the Iraqis claimed - and that they were exported by Britain.

[Ayinde]

http://www.sundayherald.com/35264

Investigation: Neil Mackay reveals why everyone now accepts that claims Saddam Hussein got uranium from Africa are fraudulent ... except, that is, Britain's beleaguered prime minister and his Cabinet supporters

In February 1999, Wissam Al Zahawie, the Iraqi ambassador to the Holy See in Rome, set off on a series of diplomatic visits to several African countries, including Niger. This trip triggered the allegations that Iraq was trying to buy tons of uranium from Niger -- a claim which could yet prove the most damning evidence that the British government exaggerated intelligence to bolster its case for war on Iraq.

Some time after the Iraqi ambassador's trip to Niger, the Italian intelligence service came into possession of forged documents claiming Saddam was after Niger uranium. We now know these documents were passed to MI6 and then handed by the British to the office of US Vice-President Dick Cheney . The forgeries were then used by Bush and Blair to scare the British and Americans and to box both Congress and Parliament into supporting war. There are an increasing number of claims suggesting Bush and Blair knew these documents were forged when they used them as evidence that Saddam Hussein was putting together a nuclear arsenal.

The truth behind claims that Blair's government 'sexed up' intelligence reports that Saddam could mobilise weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes may never be known, but the Niger forgeries lie like a smoking gun covered in Britain's fingerprints. At some point Tony Blair is going to have to answer questions about what the British government and MI6 were up to.

The fact that the documents were forged matters less than the purpose to which they were put. On September 24, 2002, Blair's dossier Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government said: 'There is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Iraq has no active civil nuclear power programme of nuclear power plants and, therefore, has no legitimate reason to acquire uranium.'

On January 28, 2003, Bush, in his State of the Union address, said: 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.' Bush didn't stop there -- later, there was talk of 'mushroom clouds' unless Saddam was taken out.

It was the International Atomic Energy Agency which rumbled the documents as forgeries -- a task that their experts were able to complete in just a matter of hours. Here are just four examples of how easy it was to work out the documents were, as one intelligence source said, 'total bullshit':

In a letter from the President of Niger a reference is made to the constitution of May 12, 1965 -- but the constitution is dated August 9, 1999;

Another letter purports to be signed by Niger's foreign minister, but bears the signature of Allele Elhadj Habibou, the minister between 1988-89;

An obsolete letterhead is used, including the wrong symbol for the presidency, and references to state bodies such as the Supreme Military Council and the Council for National Reconciliation are incompatible with the letter's date;

It wasn't until just before the war began that Mohamed El Baradei, IAEA director-general, told the UN Security Council on March 7 that his team and 'outside experts', had worked out that ' these documents ... are in fact not authentic'.

Exactly who was behind the forgeries is unclear but the finger of suspicion points towards some disaffected or bribed official in Niger . What looks more certain is that Bush and Blair were warned the documents were rubbish before El Baradei told the UN. The IAEA says it sought evidence about the Niger connection from Britain and America immediately after the US issued a state department factsheet on December 19, 2002, headed 'Illustrative Examples of Omissions from the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council'. In it, under the heading 'Nuclear Weapons', it reads: 'The declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger. Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?' But the IAEA, despite repeatedly begging the UK and US for access to papers, wasn't given any documents until February 2003 -- six weeks later.

Well before the IAEA rained on the pro-war parade, the CIA was telling its masters in the Bush administration that the British intelligence on the Niger connection was nonsense. Vice-President Dick Cheney's office received the forged evidence in 2002 -- before Bush's State of the Union address on January 28 this year -- and passed it to the CIA. The CIA then dispatched former US ambassador Joseph C Wilson to Africa to check out the claim. Wilson came back saying the intelligence was unreliable and the CIA passed Cheney the assessment. Nevertheless, Bush kept the claim in his speech, and Cheney said, just days before the war began in March, that: 'We know (Saddam's) been absolutely trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.' He also poured scorn on the IAEA for saying the documents were forged. 'I think Mr El Baradei frankly is wrong ... (The IAEA) has consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don't have any reason to believe they're any more valid this time than they've been in the past.'

Wilson said it was Cheney who forced the CIA to try to come up with a credible threat from Iraqi nukes. 'I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons programme was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. A legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretences,' he wrote. Wilson also said: 'It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war. It begs the question: 'What else are they lying about?''

Wilson is no rogue official. He was lauded by George Bush Snr for 'fighting the good fight' after he became the last US diplomat to confront Saddam in the run-up to the first Gulf war. The irony isn't lost on Wilson, who says: 'I guess he didn't realise that one of these days I would carry that fight against his son's administration.'

Greg Thielmann, director of the State Department's Office of Strategic, Proliferation and Military Issues, says the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research ruled the Niger connection implausible and told US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Thielmann also said Iraq posed no nuclear threat, and Team Bush distorted intelligence to fit its drive for war. Richard Kerr, a former CIA deputy director now leading a review of the agency's pre-war intelligence on Iraqi WMDs, says intelligence was ambiguous and the CIA was under pressure from the Bush administration.

The CIA, in what one British intelligence source described as a 'wise attempt at an ass-saving manoeuvre', also tried to have reference to Iraq's uranium links to Niger deleted from Bush's State of the Union address. CIA officials say they 'communicated significant doubts to the administration about the evidence'. Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, disputes the claim, saying the CIA cleared the reference made by Bush.

The CIA also tried to save Blair's ass too. In September, before publication of the UK dossier citing the Niger connection, the CIA tried to persuade Britain not to use the claim. CIA figures say the agency was consulted by the UK and 'recommended against using that material'. Blair, however, continues to defend the allegation, claiming the UK has separate intelligence -- or 'non-documentary evidence' -- to back up the Niger claim, proving Britain wasn't solely reliant on the forgeries. That's quite a different tack to the White House, which shamefacedly admitted on Monday that Bush's uranium claim was based on faulty British intelligence and shouldn't have been included in the State of the Union address. But Bush is determined not to find himself in the same situation as Blair -- facing calls for his resignation over claims that he lied. On Friday, CIA director George Tenet said he was to blame for Bush's use of the bogus uranium claim . He said the insertion was a 'mistake', the CIA cleared the speech and 'the President had every reason to believe the text presented to him was sound'. But that doesn't tally with high-level intelligence that the Niger claim was written into the President's Daily Brief -- one of the most top-level intelligence assessments in the US, prepared by the CIA and given to Bush and other very senior officials.

Also significant was the refusal by Colin Powell to use the uranium claim when he addressed the UN on February 5 calling for war. On Thursday, Powell said it was not 'sufficiently reliable'. With Bush trying to get off the hook, Blair looks as if he could be twisting in the wind -- unless he has this 'other evidence' to back up the Niger connection. It should be pointed out that it would be extremely difficult for Niger to sell uranium in quantities large enough to be weaponised as its mines are controlled by France and its entire output goes to France, Japan and Spain. E xperts say it couldn't be smuggled out unnoticed. One western diplomat said: 'As far as I know, the only other evidence Britain has about the Niger connection is based on intelligence coming from other western countries which saw the same forgeries. Blair's claim that he has other evidence is nonsense. These foreign intelligence agencies are basing their claims on the same forgeries as the Brits.'

The diplomat's accusations tally with a letter sent in April, before the White House climbdown, by the State Department to Democrat House of Representative's member Henry Waxman, who has been demanding answers on the deception carried out against the American and British people. In it, the State Department admits that it received intelligence from the UK and another 'western European ally' -- which many believe to be Italy -- that Iraq was trying to buy Niger uranium. But it adds: 'not until March 4 did we learn that, in fact, the second western European government had based its assessment on the evidence already available to the US that was subsequently discredited'. In other words, as one intelligence source said: 'It was based on the same crap the British used'. Given the letter is dated April 29, this information invites the question: why did it take until last week for the White House to admit the Niger connection was rubbish?

Another State Department letter to Waxman makes the astonishing admission that when America handed the Niger documents to the IAEA they included the qualification 'we cannot confirm these reports and have questions regarding some specific claims' -- hardly the same tune that Bush and Blair were singing with their claims that Saddam was chasing down Niger uranium.

We know that Blair's 'other' evidence backing the Niger connection includes second-hand or even third-hand intelligence -- and that it doesn't come from the UK. Nor has this intelligence been passed to the IAEA (in accordance with UN resolution 1414). The Foreign Office says: 'In the case of uranium from Niger, we did not have any UK-originated intelligence to pass on.'

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says the Niger uranium claim was based on 'reliable evidence', which was not shared with the US. Although the Foreign Affairs Select Committee hasn't seen the evidence either, Straw told its chairman, Donald Anderson, the 'good reasons' for withholding the intelligence from the US in a private session. Blair won't say why the information is being kept under wraps , but he tells the nation there is no reason to doubt its credibility.

Foreign Office minister Mike O'Brien said on June 10 that all relevant information on Iraqi WMDs had been sent to weapons inspectors -- but less than a month later he was contradicted by another Foreign Office minister, Denis MacShane, saying the UK didn't give the IAEA any information on Iraq seeking uranium. One senior western diplomat told the Sunday Herald: 'There were more than 20 anomalies in the Niger documents -- it is staggering any intelligence service could have believed they were genuine for a moment.

'I know that the IAEA told Britain and America, two weeks before El Baradei made his statement to the UN in March, that the documents were forgeries, that the IAEA was going to publicly state the documents were faked. At that point, the IAEA gave them a chance -- they asked the US and UK if they had any other evidence to back up the claim apart from the Niger forgeries. Britain and America should have reacted with shock and horror when they found that the documents were fake -- but they did nothing, and there was no attempt to dissuade the IAEA from its course of action.

'The IAEA had said it would follow up any other evidence pointing towards a Niger connection . If the UK and US had had such evidence they could have forwarded it and shut the IAEA up -- El Baradei would never have gone public if that had happened. My analysis is that Britain has no other credible evidence.' The source added: 'The weapons inspectors have friends in the CIA and the State Department . They made sure the documents made their way to the IAEA as they knew fine well they'd be exposed as forgeries.

'If I was prosecuting someone in a court of law and I brought in what I knew to be forgeries in an attempt to convict you, the case would be thrown out immediately and it'd be me in the dock. The case wasn't thrown out against Iraq, however, and what we are left with is an ominous sense of the way intelligence was treated to promote war. There are only two conclusions: one is that Britain has intelligence but kept it from the weapons inspectors, which they should not have done under international law, or that they don't have a thing. If they did have intelligence, then why not show it to the world now the war is over'.

An IAEA source said the issue was 'now a matter for the UK and the USA to deal with'. The IAEA, as well as UNMOVIC inspectors, feel discredited and humiliated after their bruising encounters with the UK and US. One UN diplomat said: 'They're bitter, but perhaps now they may have some solace as the truth seems to be coming out. It's obvious that we could have done this without a war -- but the evidence shows war would have happened regardless of what the inspectors could have done as that was the wish of Bush and Blair. Everyone, it seems, was working for peace -- except them.'

[Ayinde]

British intelligence says it was barred from passing on Niger uranium claims

Richard Norton-Taylor and Sophie Arie in Rome
Monday July 14, 2003
The Guardian

Relations between British and American intelligence agencies, a central pivot of "the special relationship", are in disarray over disputed claims about Iraq's attempts to procure weapons of mass destruction.

In a dispute with serious political repercussions for Tony Blair and George Bush, the CIA and MI6 have made it clear that they do not believe each other's intelligence, notably about a claim that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from the west African state of Niger for nuclear weapons.

While George Tenet, the CIA's director, is expressing doubts about the claim, MI6 is adamant it is accurate.

Documents claiming that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger have turned out to be forgeries. But British intelligence sources said yesterday that MI6 had separate information to back the claim. MI6 was provided the information by a third party which insisted neither the source nor the intelligence could be passed on.

"Certain protocols have to be observed," an intelligence official said yesterday. He added that if Britain failed to respect such protocols, sources would refuse to provide MI6 with intelligence again.

Whitehall officials suggested yesterday that the claims came from a "close ally" but one which did not want Britain to give it to the US as a further pretext for war. It is extremely rare for Britain not to pass on intelligence to the US, even more so when it refers to a common enemy, in this case, Iraq.

In the past, the CIA's station chief in London has had close links with Whitehall's joint intelligence committee, the body which compiled the government's controversial September dossier.

In a further indication of Whitehall distancing itself from Washington, a British official said yesterday that even if the CIA had been provided with all the information available to British intelligence, "it may not have come to the same conclusion as us".

Britain's intelligence agencies are angry about America's treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, not least because of unfavourable impact on the Arab world and Muslim opinion in Britain. They were also angered by persistent and unfounded attempts by the US to link al-Qaida to Saddam Hussein. Officials are also dismayed by the way in which the dispute over Iraq's banned weapons has put them and the government in the spotlight.

They are even more alarmed about how the CIA is fuelling the unwelcome debate.

British intelligence is sticking to its story despite Jack Straw's statement in the Commons last month that he was unsure the claim was correct. "Until we investigate properly, we are simply not in a position to say whether that is so," the foreign secretary told MPs.

Under pressure from the White House, Mr Tenet was forced at the weekend to take the blame for including the claim in the president's state of the union to Congress in January.

Mr Tenet said that just because the British included the claim in their September dossier did not mean that the US should take Britain's word for it. "This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed," he said.

Piqued at Washington's attempt to use the British as an alibi, Mr Straw has said that although the CIA expressed doubts about the claims, they were "unsupported by explanation".

In a letter to the Commons foreign affairs committee, Mr Straw also said that Britain was unaware, until recently, that Joe Wilson, a former US ambassador, went to Niger to investigate the claim and found it could not be substantiated.

Meanwhile, the Italian government denied that it had passed documents about Niger's uranium to other countries. The denial came months after it was first reported that the forged documents were fed by Italy to Britain and the US.

Time magazine in the US said Italy passed on a dozen letters and other documents about the claims to Britain and the US in late 2001.

[Ayinde]

By John Helmer, www.russiajournal.com



Wars usually start with one large lie. Throwing more troops into the breach requires a great many little lies. Wars usually end when the lying can't staunch the bleeding and the stench.

According to the wife of the late David Kelly, the U.K. Defense Ministry expert on Iraqi weapons who committed suicide last Friday by cutting his left wrist and bleeding to death while on painkillers, "this was not really the kind of world he wanted to live in." But the kind of world prime ministers of England and presidents of the United States hatch when they go to war together should have been familiar to Kelly, as he was old enough to remember the Vietnam war. The Big Lie for which Kelly killed himself was no different from the one that created the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the invented Vietnamese attack on U.S. warships that was used to justify the first landings of U.S. troops 40 years ago. The little lies Tony Blair and George Bush go on telling as they too try to land more troops and fight against guerrilla war soon to expand into a national liberation struggle - these lies are no different. Not even the methods for feeding them to the press have changed.

I remember the day in 1972 when I was poking around the archives of Time in New York - I was a consultant to one of Time Inc.'s senior executives at the time - and I came across a file of telexes from the Time war correspondent in Saigon. His New York editor had begun by asking him to write a story on the effectiveness of the U.S. bombing in Vietnam, especially the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through which Vietnamese forces were being replenished and resupplied. The editor was being told by officials in Washington that the bombing was crippling the Vietnamese effort and the war would soon be over. The officials wanted Congressional backing for more money and more troops on the ground. They need the press to put the justification into print.

At the same time, the Saigon journalist reported back, someone had dropped an unusual package on his doorstep. It was a report on the impact of the U.S. bombing campaign. From the stamps on the document and the packaging, it appeared to have been drafted by British intelligence. But the Time man was suspicious, and he wrote New York. He wasn't sure about the facts, he said, because the capabilities of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army looked much better on the ground. The timing suggested to the reporter either that the British were working secretly with their American counterparts to fabricate information or that U.S. intelligence was forging British intelligence in order to make their own claims look more credible. The Time reporter told his editor that, while he was prepared to report U.S. military claims for what they were worth, he wasn't going to report that a secret British intelligence source had corroborated and confirmed them. A great many little lies were to follow, and Time's editors and reporters were not able to resist all of them. The outcome is well-known.

A great many people in newspaper editorial offices, as well as in government offices in Washington and London, know very well that the intelligence for which David Kelly killed himself was fabricated. They already know that the stream of little lies has begun. They know that it isn't worth their career prospects, let alone their lives, to expose them. In time, those who remember Vietnam realize, Blair and Bush won't be able to staunch the investigations of the family, business and other links they, their advisors and supporters have with the war machine they have set in motion in Iraq. In time, those who remember Vietnam understand, the fighting men of the U.S. army will fear every Arab they see and will lose the will to risk their lives for a cause they don't believe is worth it.

As the gap grows between the facts on the ground in Iraq and the facts in the air of Washington and London, even the media proprietors who have willingly retold the lies and fashioned many of their own - men as corrupt and conniving as Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch - will recognize the noses on their faces and smell the way the wind is blowing.

By themselves, Time's Saigon correspondent in 1972, and his New York editor couldn't stop the bombing campaign in Vietnam. By himself, David Kelly couldn't stop the Iraq war. That is going to require a great deal more transfer of treasure and loss of blood. Perfidious Blair and lying Bush aren't the kind of people who ask themselves whether this is really the kind of world they want to live in.

The Kelly Suicide? Naming The Elephant

Hoon Threw Kelly To The Wolves

Dr Kelly's Final Hours Did Not Indicate Suicide

[carter]

Weak speculation from spuriuos speculators.
Collectively you seek no truth, you seek comfort.