HUH?!!! OUR government LIE?!!! NEVER!!!!
"It Was A Pretty Serious Fib"
– When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf – to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait – part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.
Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid–September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.
But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border – just empty desert.
"It was a pretty serious fib," says Jean Heller, the Times journalist who broke the story.
The White House is now making its case. to Congress and the public for another invasion of Iraq; President George W. Bush is expected to present specific evidence of the threat posed by Iraq during a speech to the United Nations next week.
But past cases of bad intelligence or outright disinformation used to justify war are making experts wary. The questions they are raising, some based on examples from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, highlight the importance of accurate information when a democracy considers military action....
That [Iraqi buildup] was
the whole justification for Bush sending troops in there, and it just didn't exist," says Heller. Three times Heller contacted the office of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney (now vice president) for evidence refuting the Times photos or analysis – offering to hold the story if proven wrong. The official response:
"Trust us." To this day, the Pentagon's photographs of the Iraqi troop buildup remain classified....
"My concern in these situations, always, is that
the intelligence that you get is driven by the policy, rather than the policy being driven by the intelligence ," says former US Rep. Lee Hamilton (D) of Indiana, a 34-year veteran lawmaker until 1999, who served on numerous foreign affairs and intelligence committees, and is now director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. The Bush team "understands it has not yet carried the burden of persuasion [about an imminent Iraqi threat], so they will look for any kind of evidence to support their premise," Mr. Hamilton says. "I think we have to be skeptical about it." --
CSM, Sept. 6, 2002
BLAIR-POWELL "DECEPTION CAN ONLY CORRODE PUBLIC TRUST"
"The Government has grudgingly admitted a failure to acknowledge sources - while insisting that the information remains valid. This misses the point. Plagiarism is not the main issue. The central issue is that of public trust. At best, this episode demonstrates incompetence and the failure to oversee the most important claims which the Government puts into the public domain. At worst, a deliberate attempt to hoodwink and mislead the public will undermine trust in anything the Government says about the Iraqi threat at this vital time." 02.09.03
guardian ed
INTELLIGENCE DOCUMENT POWELL PRAISED AS EVIDENCE CUT AND PASTED BY SECRETARY OF BLAIR'S SPIN DOCTOR AND GOFERS FROM PUBLIC SOURCES, MAJOR ONE 12 YEARS OLD
"Late last Tuesday night, a three-page email started circulating among a select group of friends concerned about the impact of sanctions on Iraq... Full of academic outrage, it explained how the so-called 'secret spy dossier' published last week by the Government as a crucial plank in the argument for why the West should go to war was largely cribbed from an American postgraduate's doctoral thesis - grammatical mistakes and all - based on evidence 12 years out of date... And, to cap it all, the finished document appeared to have been cobbled together not by Middle East experts, but by the secretary of Alastair Campbell, the Government's chief spin doctor, and some gofers...One crumb of comfort is that with Blair's reputation for trustworthiness on the war already dented - a poll last week found that, while 81 per cent of Britons believe UN inspector Hans Blix, only 43 per cent trust Blair to tell the truth over the war and only 22 per cent trust Bush - the dossier debacle is unlikely to make it any worse." 02.09.03
guardian
Britain Admits That Much of Its Report on Iraq, Cited by Powell As Reason For War, Came From Magazines With Obsolete Data
"The British government admitted today that large sections of its most recent report on Iraq, praised by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as "a fine paper" in his speech to the United Nations on Wednesday, had been lifted from magazines and academic journals.... The document, "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation," was posted on No. 10 Downing Street's Web site on Monday. It was depicted as an up-to-date and unsettling assessment by the British intelligence services of Iraq's security apparatus and its efforts to hide its activities from weapons inspectors and to resist international efforts to force it to disarm. But much of the material actually came, sometimes verbatim, from several nonsecret published articles, according to critics of the government's policy who have studied the documents. These include an article published in the Middle East Review of International Affairs in September 2002, as well as three articles from Jane's Intelligence Review, two of them published in the summer of 1997 and one in November 2002. In some cases, the critics said, parts of the articles — or of summaries posted on the Internet — were paraphrased in the report. In other cases, they were plagiarized — to the extent that even spelling and punctuation errors in the originals were reproduced.... But critics of the government said that not only did the document appear to have been largely cut and pasted together, but also that the articles it relied on were based on information that is, by now, obsolete.... Critics of the British and American policy toward Iraq said the report showed how little concrete evidence the two governments actually have against Iraq, as well as how poor their intelligence sources were. " 02.08.03
nyt
POWELL'S CLAIMS OF IRAQ-AL QAEDA CONNECTION NOT CREDIBLE
"The Bush administration creates the impression that the US is still as wounded and ready to lash out as it was in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the World Trade Centre. I am not sure that this is true of the majority of Americans, but the country's moribund political structure and the Democrats' horror of appearing unpatriotic combine to make effective opposition very difficult. The President may take comfort from the thought that Tony Blair's Gladstonian vision lends him some moral authority, but it does not wash over here. If the world has become a more dangerous place since 11 September 2001, it is not solely because of the activities of a bunch of Islamic terrorists. " 02.09.03
smith
POWELL'S "TERRORIST FACTORY" TURNS OUT TO BE RUINS, BAKERY
"If Colin Powell were to visit the shabby military compound at the foot of a large snow-covered mountain, he might be in for an unpleasant surprise. The US Secretary of State last week confidently described the compound in north-eastern Iraq - run by an Islamic terrorist group Ansar al-Islam - as a 'terrorist chemicals and poisons factory.' Yesterday, however, it emerged that the terrorist factory was nothing of the kind - more a dilapidated collection of concrete outbuildings at the foot of a grassy sloping hill. Behind the barbed wire, and a courtyard strewn with broken rocket parts, are a few empty concrete houses. There is a bakery. There is no sign of chemical weapons anywhere - only the smell of paraffin and vegetable ghee used for cooking." " 02.09.03
hardy
***
"MUCH U.S. EVIDENCE MUST BE ACCEPTED ON TRUST"
"This is the heart of the matter. Much of the US evidence must be accepted, if it is accepted at all, on trust. Mr Powell's sources were mostly anonymous defectors, detainees, third country spooks and US intelligence. His overall case was undercut by the recycling of old tales about al-Qaida "poison plotters" in Baghdad. He refused to accept the IAEA's conclusions on Iraqi nuclear bomb-making. His evidential interpretations were often harsher than those of Hans Blix. Mr Powell certainly did the UN a service in finally opening his Iraq dossier to public view. But the way forward must now be expanded, intensified inspections equipped with this new evidence, as France proposes. Iraq must disarm. The US and Britain must not jump the gun." 02.06.03
guardian ed
BRITISH INTELLIGENCE CONTRADICTS POWELL. NO LINK BETWEEN SADDAM AND AL QAEDA, THEY SAY
"There are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network, according to an official British intelligence report seen by BBC News. The classified document, written by defence intelligence staff three weeks ago, says there has been contact between the two in the past. But it assessed that any fledgling relationship foundered due to mistrust and incompatible ideologies. That conclusion flatly contradicts one of the main charges laid against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein by the United States and Britain - that he has cultivated contacts with the group blamed for the 11 September attacks. The report emerges even as Washington was calling Saddam a liar for denying, in a television interview with former Labour MP and minister Tony Benn, that he had any links to al-Qaeda. " 02.06.03
bbc
IRAQI TERRORIST GROUP POWELL IDENTIFIES AS LINK BETWEEN SADDAM AND AL QAEDA RULES KURDISH TERRORITY NOT CONTROLLED BY SADDAM AND TARGETS SADDAM AS THEIR ENEMY
"As part of Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council today, he said there was a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network" — the nexus being a small, little known terrorist group called Ansar al-Islam, which is now at the center of the U.S. case. Powell showed a satellite photograph of what he said was a chemical weapons training center in Northern Iraq, used by al Qaeda and protected by Ansar al-Islam. "Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq," said Powell. The group, whose name means "Supporters of Islam," rules a remote portion of the autonomous northern Kurdish territories in Iraq near the Iran border, which is not controlled by Saddam Hussein. In fact, their leaders say they seek to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his government...In an interview with ABCNEWS, the man considered the leader of Ansar al-Islam, Majamuddin Fraraj Ahmad, who is also known as Mullah Krekar, denied all allegations that he is in any way linked to al Qaeda. "They are our enemy," he said, adding that his group opposes Saddam Hussein because, unlike Osama bin Laden, Saddam is not a good Muslim." 02.06.03
abc
***
SMOLDERING GUN OF IRAQ'S NUKE PROGRAM LEFT IRAQ IN '95 FOR U.S.
"In the summer of 1998, when Hamza first went public with his story about Saddam's relentless desire for the Bomb, much of the press ignored him. The country was transfixed by the saga of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. But in March 2001, the scientist found himself sitting next to an influential Republican named Richard Perle at a seminar at George Washington University. He briefed Perle, one of the earliest and most vehement proponents of regime change in Iraq, about his past. "I came away very impressed, thinking this is a sensible, sober fellow," says Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's advisory Defense Policy Board. Hamza said he'd been debriefed only by low-level "civil servants" in the Clinton years. Perle soon introduced the defector to the top tier of the Bush administration, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. " 02.06.03
wp
IRAQI NUKE SCIENTIST LIVING IN CANADA SINCE '98 CONTRADICTS HAMZA
"Given its history, US intelligence should come with a health warning " "We know from experience that politicians about to go to war are not above manipulating information to heat up public opinion. They have manufactured international incidents - the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin "clash", for example, which President Johnson used to deceive the Senate into giving him a declaration of war against North Vietnam. They can be the simple peddling of "evil Hun" stories, as with the discredited accounts of Iraqi soldiers pulling Kuwaiti babies from incubators. History has revealed the truth about such episodes, but too late. On the few occasions we are allowed sufficient facts to form an independent assessment, the intelligence on offer is rarely persuasive. " 02.06.03
bennett+perman
QUESTIONED PENATGON CLASSIFIED PHOTOS USED PRIOR TO FIRST GULF WAR REMAIN CLASSIFIED
"The photographs, which are still classified in the US (for security reasons, according to Brent Scowcroft, President Bush senior's national security advisor), purportedly showed more than a quarter of a million Iraqi troops massed on the Saudi border poised to pounce. Except, when a resourceful Florida-based reporter at the St Petersburg Times persuaded her newspaper to buy the same independently commissioned satellite photos from a commercial satellite to verify the Pentagon's line, she saw no sign of a quarter of a million troops or their tanks." 02.06.03
o'kane
US claim dismissed by Blix
The chief UN weapons inspector yesterday dismissed what has been billed as a central claim of the speech the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, will make today to the UN security council. Hans Blix said
there was no evidence of mobile biological weapons laboratories or of Iraq trying to foil inspectors by moving equipment before his teams arrived. In a series of leaks or previews, the state department has said Mr Powell will allege that Iraq moved mobile biological weapons laboratories ahead of an inspection. Dr Blix said he had already inspected two alleged mobile labs and found nothing: "Two food-testing trucks have been inspected and nothing has been found." Dr Blix said that the problem of bio-weapons laboratories on trucks had been around for a while and that he had received tips from the US that led him to inspect trucks in Iraq. The Iraqis claimed that the trucks were used to inspect the quality of food production. He also contested the theory that the Iraqis knew in advance what sites were to be inspected. He added that they expected to be bugged "by several nations" and took great care not to say anything Iraqis could overhear. --
The Guardian, 02.05.03
BUSH SPEECH "SKIMMED ALONG EDGES OF REALITY," PARTICULARLY RE SADDAM AND AL QUEDA
"As far as the connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq is concerned, one of the most prominent authorities on the deadly terrorist group remains unimpressed by the evidence offered up to date - including Bush’s stab at connecting those dots in the State of the Union, during which he insisted that "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda." Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. (Free Press, 2001) and a fellow at the New America Foundation, told me after the speech that the Saddam/Osama connection "is really [the administration’s] default mode, isn’t it?" Bergen pointed me to his December article in the Nation, in which he pooh-poohs the Iraq/Al Qaeda link as "somewhere between tenuous and nonexistent." "Al Qaeda members live in 60 countries around the globe," Bergen wrote in the Nation, "so by the law of averages a few of them will show up in Iraq. Indeed, intelligence estimates suggest there are some 100 Al Qaeda members at large in the United States, although that is not an argument to start bombing Washington." " 02.03.03
byrne
U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENTS PUZZLED BY BUSH, POWELL CLAIMS OF SADDAM-AL QUEDA CONNECTION
"Intelligence officials said they are puzzled by the administration's new push. "To my knowledge, there's nothing new," said a senior U.S. intelligence official who asked not to be identified. The expectation within the CIA regarding Powell's speech, the source said, "is that it's going to be more comprehensive than bombastic and new." Intelligence officials have discounted if not dismissed other information believed to point to possible links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The CIA said it can find no evidence supporting post-Sept. 11 reports that Mohamed Atta, one of the hijackers in the attacks, met with an Iraqi agent in the Czech capital, Prague, in 2001. Similarly, intelligence officials described reports that Hussein is funding an Al Qaeda-connected extremist group in northern Iraq as "wildly overstated." There is no evidence so far to confirm that Iraq is arming, financing or controlling the group, known as Ansar al-Islam, one official said. "There isn't a factual basis for such assertions," the official said. " 02.03.03
lat