posted 07-17-2003 08:07 PM            

'Here, boy! Sit! Here y'go! Good boy!'

Poor George Bush. All week he's been practicing his lines for presenting Tony Blair with a special medallion for his services to the USA when the British Prime Minister arrives in Washington tomorrow. Unfortunately for Bush, Mr. Blair's handlers realized what joy it would bring to England's political cartoonists for the President to hang a gilded collar around the man now known as 'Bush's poodle,' a nasty, if wholly justified, sobriquet.

Blair is in the doghouse with his own Labour Party for having been caught in a fib. Seems the Brits have their knickers in a twist about their leader's ludicrous fabrication of evidence that Saddam Hussein had jars of bad bugs, piles of atomic mud and an evil chemistry set in his basement capable of wiping away London. I've just read a Parliamentary report in which Blair's own minister calls his boss' claims about the bogus Weapons of Mass Destruction, 'a bunch of Horlicks.' The phrase defies translation, but you get the idea. So does Tony ñ which is why England's bookies are giving 2-to-9 odds Blair will ask our president for political asylum.

To Americans, the English Parliament's bad attitude is a mystery. After all, our own President repeated Blair's goofy allegations that Saddam was buying nuclear bomb fixings from Africa -- among other WMD howlers and whoppers. But in America, if you believe Fox TV, only whiners, traitors and the last three Democrats had some kind of problem with official mendacity. In fact, that's why Blair was supposed to get the medal. Hell, anyone can go to war based on the facts; it takes a true ally like Mr. Tony to send kids into gunfire based on a packet of fictions.

How did Blair get into this fix? The answer is, he can't help himself: Blair's an Ameriphiliac. I watched the Prime Minister's mad affection for all things American while working for BBC and the Guardian/Observer in London, a Yank in King Tony's court. Over the past six years of his administration, I've seen his puppy love for Bill Clinton degenerate into pathetic poodledom at the heel of George Bush. His need to pad along behind Bush is the result of the strange pathologic politics that Blair calls, 'modernization.' Blair, you see, hates Britain.

This Prime Minister despises his storybook countryside and its grumbling farmers with their two little pigs and their tiny fields edged with dry stone. He cringes at the little bell ringing over the door of the village post office - so quaint and so maddeningly inefficient. He cannot fathom a nation that weeps when he shuts the last filthy coal pits.

Blair is frustrated to tears by what he sees as fossilized trade unions which chain workers to dead industries, rather than building new ones. Britain's Prime Minister dreams of birthing the Entrepreneurial State. Instead, he finds himself caretaker of a museum of nineteenth-century glories made somnolent by easy welfare and low ambitions.

So Tony gazes across the water with almost erotic envy at a thoroughly 'modernized' America Inc., where Wal-Marts and McDonald's and Microsoft roam free, creating a shiny New Economic Order.

I saw Blair's America-mania up close and inside in 1998 when I went undercover to investigate US corporate influence on his government for the Observer, the Guardian's Sunday paper. Working out of an expensive hotel suite overlooking the Tower of London, my confederates and I pretended to represent Blair's favorite American corporation, a Texas company called, 'Enron.' We wanted to find out how much it would cost in 'consulting fees' to overturn England's environmental laws for the benefit of our US client.

It turns out the price for bending the rules for Enron would be ludicrously low. Blair's ministers and cronies were selling policy changes dirt cheap because they knew that Tony, like an amateur hooker, was giving it away for free. While I was pretending to get Blair to change energy policy rules for Enron, I discovered the real Enron was doing the same thing. The sleazy Houston power pirates successfully talked Blair, for example, into reversing his sworn campaign pledge not to let American companies build proposed electricity plants on English soil. It was no wonder that, one of Blair's closest advisors, after he weighed my checkbook, had no hesitation calling me from 10 Downing Street to invite me in. When it came to Enron and other handsome 'modern' American corporations, he knew his boss Mr. Blair just could not say, 'no.'

From faith in Enron to faith in Enron's President is a short lover's leap. In January 2000, just before George Bush's inauguration, Rupert Murdoch's lobbyist warned the prime minister that for Blair to satisfy his lust for corporate America's affection, Britain must accede as well to the new US president's military mission.

Blair's decision to take that advice looked pretty good just after September 11, when tail-gunner Tony jumped into Bush's cockpit to avenge in Afghanistan the attacks on the USA. British sympathy for America was deep, sincere and wide ñ the one minute of silence for the World Trade Center victims was better observed in London than in New York. But joining in the conquest of Iraq has made Blair a prisoner of Bush's warmongering. Parliamentarians must now decide if their prime minister is a fraud or just a fool.

So Blair's one subtle act of independence is to refuse the award of Congress's golden collar. But Bush is hardly likely to let Tony off the leash.

Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Contact Palast or view his reports for BBC television and Britain's Guardian newspapers at www.GregPalast.com

posted 07-17-2003 09:40 PM            

That article was written by former BBC reporter Greg Palast..posted at Rense.com not at NYtimes.

His BOOK is on the NY times bestseller list.

Palast doesn't work for the NYtimes.

Plus, I don't support any "democrat agenda"...never voted for one either.

posted 07-18-2003 07:14 AM            

The Media's War Against Bush
Christopher Ruddy
Monday, July 14, 2003

As President Bush has been fighting a war against terrorism, the Democrats and the big media are fighting a war against President Bush.
The latest case in point: the non-issue of President Bush’s fleeting reference to intelligence that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger.

In hindsight, the Bush administration honestly admits the evidence wasn’t strong enough to have made that specific statement. The British disagree, however. They say they have seen the evidence and it’s true.

So what? The war against Iraq was never waged because of the Niger evidence. Nor was it waged because we had definite evidence Saddam was behind Sept. 11.

After Sept. 11, President Bush warned that terrorism would loom over us unless we dealt with the nations behind terrorism. He named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the most dangerous, “the Axis of Evil.”

All, said President Bush, were developing weapons of mass destruction.

In an age when anthrax, a poor man’s atom bomb or a “dirty nuke” – plutonium encased in dynamite – could be easily produced and deployed against us, the threat is real.

There was little political reason for Bush to wage this war. It was fraught with risk for him and the nation. Because he is so committed to dealing with terrorism before we see weapons of mass destruction used in New York or elsewhere in our nation, he was willing to take those risks.

Saddam: Top of the Clinton Terror List

We knew that Saddam was put at the top of terrorist threat list, not by the Bush administration, but by the Clinton administration.

In 1998, Clinton said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, was developing still more weapons, and would use them at some point. Nobody in the media accused him of politicizing intelligence data. (Nor did the media accuse him of manipulating data for his “wag the dog” war against Serbia – when, after the war, no evidence of genocidal atrocities was ever found.)

The State Department has had Iraq on its list of rogue nations sponsoring terrorism for years, well before Bush showed up in the White House.

As Notra Trulock notes: “The clearest public expression of the intelligence community’s judgments on Iraqi WMD may be found on the CIA’s Internet Web site. Posted in October 2002, the community judged that Iraq had continued its WMD programs, it had chemical and biological weapons, and ‘left unchecked,’ it would probably have a nuclear weapon in this decade.”

If the major media were exposing a real crime committed by the Bush administration, I would say let them do it.

But this media campaign is nothing more than one orchestrated to undermine the president’s popularity and boost Democratic chances for 2004.

So far, the media’s drumbeat is working. The president’s overall approval rating has sagged, and his rating for his handling of Iraq had dropped a precipitous 21 points from April, falling from 74 percent to 53 percent.

The one poll that the public needs to remember is the one taken in 1992. The Roper study found that 89 percent of the Washington press corps said they voted for Bill Clinton, as opposed to 6 percent for the elder Bush.

posted 07-18-2003 07:21 AM            

Thursday, July 17, 2003 12:10 p.m. EDT
Sen. Levin Repeatedly Cited Iraq Nuclear Threat

One of the most vocal critics of the Bush administration's decision to include a reference to Iraq's nuclear program in President Bush's State of the Union address repeatedly cited the same threat himself in the years prior to Bush's January 2003 comments.

In quotes unearthed by the Landmark Legal Foundation, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., confirmed the existence of Iraq's nuclear program four months before Bush's comments, telling CBS's "Face the Nation," "I assume [Saddam] would continue to attempt to hide those chemical and biological weapons and continue with a clandestine nuclear program if he can."

In fact, as far back as 1998, the top Democrat was warning that Iraq was shopping for nuclear fuel – almost the exact same allegation that has Levin and his party pointing the finger at Bush.

In a speech on the Senate floor, Levin told his colleagues, "With respect to Iraq's history, the Security Council noted Iraq's threat during the Gulf War to use chemical weapons in violation of its treaty obligations, Iraq's prior use of chemical weapons, Iraq's use of ballistic missiles in unprovoked attacks, and reports that Iraq attempted to acquire materials for a nuclear weapons program contrary to its treaty obligations."

Landmark Legal's director, Mark Levin [no relation], called on the Michigan Democrat to come clean on his intelligence sources.

"There are numerous other examples in which you've alleged unequivocally the existence of an Iraqi nuclear program (and other weapons of mass destruction) – in the media, in committee hearings, and on the Senate floor – over the course of the last 4-5 years," the Landmark chief wrote, in an open letter addressed to Levin's office.

posted 07-18-2003 09:55 AM            

I guess criticizing the Bu$h administration and finding out the TRUTH makes you "democrat?"

Oh god forbid! How DARE you question LORD BU$H and his minions...you must be a "liberal"!

You are full of $#!+.

Pull your head out of your @$$ CY/Fart-talker.

Go back to MAV's

You're starting to LIE just as bad as the Bu$h administration does.

Then again most NEO-CON nazis will lie about anything to push their agenda through.

posted 07-18-2003 10:07 AM            

quote:

---

That makes me a "democrat"?

---

posted 07-18-2003 10:12 AM            

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 17, 2003
Contact: Press Office
(202) 646-5172

MEDIA ADVISORY

CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS
http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.b_PR.shtml

Commerce & State Department Reports to Task Force Detail Oilfield & Gas Projects, Contracts & Exploration

Saudi Arabian & UAE Oil Facilities Profiled As Well

(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org.

The Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates (UAE) documents likewise feature a map of each country’s oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals. There are supporting charts with details of the major oil and gas development projects in each country that provide information on the projects, costs, capacity, oil company and status or completion date.

Judicial Watch has been seeking these documents under FOIA since April 19, 2001. Judicial Watch was forced to file a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Department of Energy, et al., Civil Action No. 01-0981) when the government failed to comply with the provisions of the FOIA law. U.S. District Court Judge Paul J. Friedman ordered the government to produce the documents on March 5, 2002.

The documents were produced in response to Judicial Watch’s on-going efforts to ensure transparency and accountability in government on behalf of the American people. Judicial Watch aggressively pursues those goals by making FOIA requests and seeking access to public information concerning government operations. When the government fails to abide by these “sunshine laws” Judicial Watch files lawsuits in order to obtain the requested information and to hold responsible government officials accountable.

“These documents show the importance of the Energy Task Force and why its operations should be open to the public,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Click here for: MAPS AND CHARTS OF OILFIELDS: CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE

BLOOD FOR OIL!!!!!!!

posted 07-18-2003 10:32 AM               

Bush Obstructs 9-11 Investigation http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=447

Cycle Of War Culture http://www.rense.com/general39/cycle.htm

How To Deal With a Meltdown http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/iraq-meltdown.html
The great lesson of the fiasco in Iraq is this: it is much easier to destroy a nation than to build one. To destroy a country requires doing things that government does well: blowing up buildings, killing people, and generally creating chaos. To build a nation requires what government cannot provide: time and liberty. Unable to provide those things, government chooses another of its ancient methods: the lie. In the middle ages, kings didn't smash countries they conquered because to conquer meant to take possession for themselves and their heirs, and hence there was an incentive to preserve anything of value (buildings, people, and networks of associations). But modern governments that conquer merely become "administrators" of the country, which is to say they have every incentive to take what they can and no incentive to clean up the mess.

Iraq war has cost Pentagon $48 billion so far http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/07/15/national1702EDT0679.DTL

GI's Wonder 'Why Can't We Come Home?' http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=106&ncid=742&e=3&u=/nypost/20030716/cm_nypost/giswhycantwecomehome

US Death Toll Now Equals '91 Gulf War http://www.rense.com/general39/usdeath.htm

US Troops In Iraq - 'Let Down' And 'Losing Faith' http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/iraq030716_2ndBrigade.html

US Troops Shocked By Move To Keep Them In Iraq http://www.rense.com/general39/shoclked.htm

Key US Army Division To Remain In Iraq Indefinitely http://www.rense.com/general39/remain.htm

Attacks On US Troops More Sophisticated, Coordinated http://www.rense.com/general39/coor.htm

FBI Looking Into Forged Iraq-Niger Documents http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/07/16/fbi.niger/index.html

Wolfowitz Advised Iraq-Uranium Refernece In Bush Speech http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4123.htm

US General Says Iraq Has Become A Guerrilla War http://www.rense.com/general39/geur.htm

Missile Fired At US C-130 Landing In Baghdad http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_AIRPORT_ATTACK?SITE=MELEE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Rape (And Silence About It) Haunts Baghdad http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/16/international/worldspecial/16RAPE.html?ex=1058932800&en=86243e51010a04ec&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

16 Words And Counting
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/15/nyt.16words/index.html

Desert treks become even more deadly http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/local/7_17_03border.html

Cheney under pressure to quit over false war evidence
Anger grows on both sides of Atlantic at misleading claims on eve of Iraq conflict http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=424786

Mortar Attacks on U.S. Bases Growing
Mortar Attacks on U.S. Bases in Iraq Becoming a Growing Problem for Troops http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20030716_142.html

Low Morale Plagues U.S. Troops in Iraq
Low Morale Plagues U.S. Troops in Iraq After Pentagon Extends Their Stay http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20030716_1607.html

A Big Letdown
Soldiers Learn They’ll Be in Baghdad Longer Than Expected http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/iraq030715_2ndBrigade.html

Pro-American Mayor, Son Killed in Iraq
U.S. Soldier, Iraqi Child, Pro-American Mayor and Son Killed in Iraq As Saddam Loyalists Attack http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20030716_1075.html

Revisionist Iraq history from the White House http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/auto/epaper/editions/thursday/opinion_f351dc6c85f4a0d000d7.html

Missile fired at US plane in Iraq
Suspected pro-Saddam Hussein insurgents fired a surface-to-air missile at a US military C-130 transport plane as it was landing at Baghdad International Airport today, but missed the target, a coalition military spokesman said http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,6765434%5E401,00.html

Pro-US mayor killed by Iraqi guerrillas
The mayor of Hadithah, Mohammed Nayil al-Jurayfi, was shot dead in his car as he drove through the city. Some local residents had accused him of collaborating with coalition forces, the pan-Arab satellite channel, al-Jazeera, reported. His son was killed in the same attack. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,999271,00.html

US soldiers: We want to come home
Fed up with being in Iraq and demoralized by their role as peacekeepers in a risky place, a group of U.S. soldiers aired their plight on U.S. television on Wednesday and said they had lost faith in the Army.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64236-2003Jul16.html

Iraq pressure on Bush mounts as U.S. soldier killed
The latest death heaped pressure on U.S President Bush, who is facing mounting criticism for the cost of the war and accusations the United States exaggerated intelligence on Iraq's weapons to justify the conflict. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=3101740

Little progress in finding MIA in Iraq
A secret Pentagon report states that once-promising leads in the hunt for Capt. Michael Scott Speicher in Iraq have turned up no evidence of his whereabouts, contradicting public official comments that the search was producing positive results. http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030715-114916-4526r.htm

Watergate II? Domestic criticism mounts over intelligence used to justify war
"So far there is no hard evidence that President George Bush or his top aides knowingly falsified the case for war. In the absence of evidence, there has been an extraordinary amount of attention paid to marginal issues - most recently, those 16 words in Mr. Bush's state of the union speech that said, accurately, that British intelligence believed Iraq had been seeking to obtain uranium in Africa.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,999544,00.html

Panel: Iraq arms stockpile unlikely, data `fragmentary'
U.S. intelligence officials had only ''fragmentary information'' on banned weapons in Iraq before the war, and large stockpiles of such weapons probably do not exist, the bipartisan leaders of the House Intelligence Committee concluded Tuesday after a trip to Baghdad. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/6312155.htm

Australian analyst joins US push for weapons inquiry
The Australian former intelligence analyst Andrew Wilkie has been enlisted by Democrats in the United States to help campaign for a full, open inquiry into whether Washington - and, by association, Canberra - manipulated or ignored prewar intelligence on Iraq http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/16/1058035074618.html

Bush, only three days ago, speaking to reporters, said of Iraq's President, Saddam Hussein,
"We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56336-2003Jul14.html?nav=hptop_tb
According to the Washington Post, Bush uttered that amazing sentence to justify the war in Iraq. The context shows that he was not speaking of any other world leader but Saddam Hussein. The truth is that Saddam had the inspectors in, the Inspectors were in and were saying that they were getting cooperation from Hussein. Saddam even offered the CIA to send in its own teams in addition to the UN inspectors already there, which Bush refused.

Cheney's Spy Network Competes with DIA and CIA
According to former Bush officials, all defense and intelligence sources, senior members of the administration created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defense Intelligence Agency. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,999737,00.html

Cheney under pressure to quit
Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President and the administration's most outspoken hawk over Iraq, faced demands for his resignation last night as he was accused of using false evidence to build the case for war. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=424786

Cheney Under Pressure To Quit Over False Evidence http://www.rense.com/general39/CHENY.HTM

Yet Another Major Bush 'Misstatement' http://www.rense.com/general39/another.htm

President Bush Has More Explaining To Do http://tennessean.com/opinion/archives/03/07/35960351.shtml

Tenet's Confession May Have Sealed Bush's Fate http://www.rense.com/general39/blood.htm

An Afternoon With Eustace Mullins http://www.rense.com/general39/EUSTACE.htm
"I WROTE about the Bush family in my book The World Order which came out in 1985. They'd been lackeys of the Harriman family at Union Pacific, and the Harrimans were lackeys of the Rothschilds who put up the money for Union Pacific. George Herbert Walker, who was the first President Bush's grandfather, was appointed head of Brown Brothers Harriman which handled all the Harriman investments. He did a very good job and the Bushes have been working for them ever since. They were all members of Skull and Bones at Yale. - More
"We'll get our own government and America will begin to have a history. We have no history. All we have is a history of Zionist intrigue" --Eutace Mullins (author of "Secrets of the Federal Reserve")

Bush's Data Dump http://slate.msn.com/id/2085481/

Bush - Busted Again http://www.rense.com/general39/behind.htm

Killing Africans For Profit - Bush's AIDS Offer http://www.rense.com/general39/ff.htm

THE SKULL AND BONES SOCIETY THAT BUSH BELONGS TO http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8425/BONES.HTM http://www.jeremiahproject.com/prophecy/nworder03.html http://www.freedomdomain.com/skullbones.html

Washington Times:
Letter from US diplomat is a forgery
A letter to the editor of The Washington Times, purported to be from a senior U.S. diplomat with scathing criticism of the Foreign Service for lack of loyalty to the Bush administration, was exposed yesterday as a forgery. http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030715-114911-5946r.htm

The Liberty Committee: Congressman Ron Paul addresses the U.S. House of Representatives
July 10, 2003 "Neo-conned" http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/neo-conned.htm

posted 07-18-2003 10:37 AM            

"You liberals want Saddam to bomb the U.S. he has "weapons of mass destruction" and plans on using them..."this war is not about oil."

I should go back in the CTC archives and find their HYPOCRITICAL statements.

I think I will.

posted 07-23-2003 02:09 PM            

By: William Rivers Pitt - 07/23/03

The scandal axiom in Washington states that it is not the crime that destroys you, but the cover-up. Today in Washington you can hear terms like 'Iraqgate' and 'Weaponsgate' bandied about, but such obtuse labels do not provide an explanation for the profound movements that are taking place.

Clearly, there is a scandal brewing over the Iraq war and the Bush administration claims of Iraqi weapons arsenals that led to the shooting. Clearly, there is a cover-up taking place. Yet this instance, the crimes that have led to the cover-up are worse by orders of magnitude than the cover-up itself.

The simple fact is that America went to war in Iraq because George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and virtually every other public face within this administration vowed that Iraq had vast stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. America went to war because these people vowed that Iraq had direct connections to al Qaeda, and by inference to the attacks of September 11.

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," said Bush on March 17, 2003.

"We know now that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," said Cheney on August 26, 2002.

"There is no doubt'' that Saddam Hussein ''has chemical weapons stocks,'' said Powell to FOX News on September 8, 2002.

"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda," said Bush in his State of the Union address. On September 26, 2002, Don Rumsfeld laid the groundwork for Bush's statement by claiming that America had "bulletproof" evidence of Iraqi involvement with al Qaeda.

These public statements, augmented by hundreds more in the same vein, stoked fears within an already shellshocked American populace that Iraqi nuclear weapons and anthrax would come raining out of the sky at any moment, unless something was done. This same information was delivered in dire tones to Congress, which voted for war on Iraq based almost exclusively on the testimony of CIA Director George Tenet.

None of it was true. Not one ounce of chemical, biological or nuclear weaponry has been found in Iraq in the 82 days since "hostilities ceased" on May 1, 2003. Not one ounce of chemical, biological or nuclear weaponry has been found in Iraq in the 124 days since the shooting in Iraq officially started on March 19, 2003. Not one ounce of chemical, biological or nuclear weaponry has been found in Iraq in the 230 days since the UNMOVIC weapons inspections began in Iraq in late November of 2002. No proof whatsoever of Iraqi connections to al Qaeda has been established.

Recently, the scandal over the missing Iraq weapons and the Bush administration claims has focused on whether or not Iraq was trying to procure uranium "yellow cake" from Niger in order to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program. The last two weeks have shown decisively that the Bush administration used manufactured evidence, which had been denounced from virtually all corners of the American intelligence community, to justify their war. The administration's explanation for this has changed by the hour - They weren't told by the CIA, and then they were told but Bush and Cheney never heard about it, but it was only sixteen words in one speech, so everybody calm down.

No one is calming down. When the President of the United States terrifies the American people in his constitutionally-mandated State of the Union speech with nuclear threats based upon evidence that was universally known to be shoddily forged garbage, no one should calm down. When he uses that terror to make war on a nation that was no threat to America, no one should calm down. When over 200 American soldiers and thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians die because of this, no one should calm down. When that grisly body count rises every single day, no one should calm down.

The Niger nuclear forgery scandal is merely an accent in this criminal symphony. It has become all too clear that a small cadre of ultra-conservative hawks within the administration led us to where we are today with absolutely no oversight from the rest of the government. This group managed the run-up to war by creating demonstrably exaggerated interpretations of intelligence reports, and used 'insider data' from people with many good reasons to help lie America into this war.

The Office of Special Plans, or OSP, was created by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld specifically to second-guess and reinterpret intelligence data to justify war in Iraq. The OSP was staffed by rank amateurs, civilians whose ideological pedigree suited Rumsfeld and his cabal of hawks. Though this group was on no government payroll and endured no Congressional oversight, their information and interpretations managed to prevail over the data being provided by the State Department and CIA. This group was able to accomplish this incredible feat due to devoted patronage from high-ranking ultra-conservatives within the administration, including Vice-President Cheney.

The highest levels of the OSP were staffed by heavy-hitters like Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, and William Luti, a former Navy officer who worked for Cheney before joining the Pentagon. These two men, along with their civilian advisors, worked according to a strategy that they hoped would recreate Iraq into an Israeli ally, destroy a potential threat to Persian Gulf oil trade, and wrap U.S. allies around Iran. The State Department and CIA saw this plan as being badly flawed and based upon profoundly questionable intelligence. The OSP responded to these criticisms by cutting State and CIA completely out of the loop. By the time the war came, nearly all the data used to justify the action to the American people was coming from the OSP. The American intelligence community had been totally usurped.

When the OSP wanted to change or exaggerate evidence of Iraqi weapons capabilities, they sent Vice President Cheney to CIA headquarters on unprecedented visits where he demanded "forward-leaning" interpretations of the evidence. When Cheney was unable to go to the CIA, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, went in his place.

On three occasions, former congressman Newt Gingrich visited CIA in his capacity as a "consultant" for ultra-conservative hawk Richard Perle and his Defense Policy Board. According to the accounts of these visits, Gingrich browbeat the analysts to toughen up their assessments of the dangers posed by Hussein. He was allowed access to the CIA and the analysts because he was a known emissary of the OSP.

The main OSP source of data on Iraqi weapons, and on the manner in which the Iraqi people would greet their 'liberators,' was Ahmad Chalabi. Chalabi was the head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group seeking since 1997 the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Chalabi had been hand-picked by Don Rumsfeld to be the leader of Iraq after the removal of Saddam Hussein, despite the fact that he had been convicted in 1992 of 32 counts of bank fraud by a Jordanian court and sentenced in absentia to 22 years in prison. It apparently never occurred to Rumsfeld and the OSP that Chalabi had a lot of reasons to lie. It seems they were too enamored of the data he was providing, because that data fully justified the course of action they had been set upon since September 11, 2001.

Chalabi was the main source behind claims that Iraq had connections to al Qaeda. Chalabi was the main source behind claims that Iraq was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Chalabi was the main source behind claims that the Iraqi people would rise up and embrace their American invaders. Chalabi's claims on this last matter are the main reason post-war Iraq is in complete chaos, because Rumsfeld assumed the logistics for repairing Iraq would be simple - The joyful Iraqis would do it for him.

According to a story entitled "Planners Faulted in Iraq Chaos" by Knight-Ridder reporters Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel, published on July 13, Chalabi proved to be a dangerous wild card. Chalabi's association with and influence over the OSP, however, continued unabated:

"The Chalabi scheme was dealt another major blow in February, a month before the war started, when U.S. intelligence agencies monitored him conferring with hard-line Islamic leaders in Tehran, Iran, a State Department official said. About that time, an Iraqi Shiite militia that was based in Iran and known as the Badr Brigade began moving into northern Iraq, setting off alarm bells in Washington. Cheney, once a strong Chalabi backer, ordered the Pentagon to curb its support for the exiles, the official said. Yet Chalabi continued to receive Pentagon assistance, including backing for a 700-man paramilitary unit. The U.S. military flew Chalabi and his men at the height of the war from the safety of northern Iraq to an air base outside the southern city of Nasiriyah in expectation he would soon take power."

Chalabi never took power. Instead, Paul Bremer was installed as the American proconsul in Iraq, ostensibly with orders to bring stability and liberty to the country. This last aspect is the final lie, the most repugnant crime, perpetrated against the civilians of that ravaged nation.

I spoke last week with a woman named Jodie Evans, long-time peace activist and organizer of a group called the International Occupation Watch Center, or IOWC. The purpose of the IOWC is to stand as watchdogs in Iraq over the corporate contracts being doled out, and to view in person what is happening to the Iraqi people. "I think that if you were against the war, then you need to be there," said Evans, "because there is no one in Iraq who is for the Iraqi people, and the people know it. They know it."

Evans had just returned from Baghdad. Upon her arrival to the city, she saw the demonstrable chaos caused by the war, and by the abject failure to repair the country in the aftermath. "It was 120 degrees, it was dusty, the air had a haze that makes everything gray," said Evans. "The buildings you see on the road are bombed out. In some, you can see the fire coming up. In some, you only see the scaffolding of contorted metal. We got across our bridge and turned right onto the street we know so well, the one we've stayed on, and every building was either boarded up or bombed out, including the United Nations DP. It was all bombed in, the windows were black from the fire."

"Immediately after we arrived," said Evans, "we hear that it is not only worse than before the war. It is worse than during the war. People are upset, people are angry. There were lots of stories about how the Americans are doing this on purpose. A month after the '91 war, which was much worse than this one, everything was back and working. Now, the people live in this chaos they can't even imagine. People can't go outside. Women haven't left their homes. Lots of people haven't come back from Syria or Kuwait or wherever they fled to get away from the bombing, because life in Iraq is unlivable. There is 65% unemployment, and even the doctors and nurses and teachers who are going to work don't get paid, so there's no money."

Evans met a number of Americans in Iraq who are part of the 'rebuilding process.' One such person was in the Compound, a guarded palace that is now home to Bremer's office and staff along with a number of other groups. The overall organization is called the Iraqi Assistance Center, or IAC. The man Evans met was a professor of religion and political theory at a religious college in America. He explained that his job was to collect intelligence for Bremer.

"That professor I spoke to, the one doing intelligence for Bremer, I told him that I had spoken to countless Iraqis and all of them felt this chaos was happening on purpose," said Evans. "He basically said this was true, that chaos was good, and out of chaos comes order. So what the Iraqis were saying - that this madness was all on purpose - this intelligence guy didn't discredit. He said, 'If you keep them hungry, they'll do anything for us.'"

"I met the man who was hired to create a new civil government in Baghdad, to bring Baghdad back to order," said Evans. "His name was Gerald Lawson. I asked him what his background was that allowed him to get this job. He said he was in the Atlanta Police for 30 years. I asked how this gave him the ability to create a stable, civil government. He said he was a manager. I asked him what he knew about Iraqis. He knew nothing, and didn't care to know anything. He didn't know their history, their government, didn't speak a word of Arabic and didn't care to learn. This guy doesn't work for the American government, doesn't work for the State Department, and doesn't work for the CPA. He works for a corporation created by ex-Generals. Their job is to create the new Iraqi government structure."

"We met the man whose job is to make sure the hospitals have what they need," said Evans. "He is a veterinarian. We met a British guy who showed up at the Compound gates one day and said he was a volunteer who wanted to help. The next day he was named the head of rubbish control in Baghdad, which is a huge problem there because there is garbage all over the street. I asked him what he had been doing with his time. He said he'd been hanging out at Odai's palace playing with the lions and the cheetahs. I met the guy in charge of designing the airport, where major jumbo jets are supposed to land. He had never designed an airport before."

"Another man I spoke to associated with this process is named Don Munson," said Evans. "His job is civilian affairs policy. He said to me, 'We are replacing one dictatorship with another.' He's there for two years, and he works in the palace on the first floor."

"Remember," said Evans, "that the first thing America did was to fire 80,000 police officers. These guys weren't associated with the Hussein regime. That's like connecting a cop in LA to the Bush administration. All the people I've talked to over there, the ambassadors and others, said they warned Bremer not to do that. The cops knew who the criminals were, and 80,000 cops are gone. So now there are these little mafias that run neighborhoods. With no other work and no way to survive, people are going to become criminals. The borders are wide open - we didn't even get stopped when we came in - so everything is just flowing into Iraq."

"A friend of mine's husband is an ambassador," said Evans. "I asked him if this was normal operating procedure. He said that, basically, no one will work on this Iraq project who has any respect for their work or career, because it is so clearly a farce. He said that later we will go in after these guys have blown it, but right now with Bremer there it is a farce. Even the press is over there are just shaking their heads and asking, can anyone fail so badly? Can anybody make so many mistakes? You can't imagine they can be so dumb."

"One Iraqi woman I spoke to," said Evans, "said she feels like Iraq is a wounded animal, and everyone is coming in to take their piece of flesh."

The cover-up is one thing, the crime is another. The Bush administration, mainly in the form of Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans, disregarded any and all intelligence which said Iraq was no threat. They supplanted reliable data with a slew of lies and exaggerations that were fed daily to the American people and Congress, and got their war. In the aftermath, nothing is being done for the millions of Iraqi civilians who suffer daily under their newfound 'liberty.'

American soldiers continue to die. Two more, men from the 101st Airborne, were killed early Sunday when their convoy was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. "You have these young American soldiers sitting in turrets," said Jodie Evans, "just sitting ducks for the rage and frustration and vengeance that is coming out."

This is a crime without peer in the annals of American history. The cover-up currently underway must not be allowed to succeed.

When the American government gets hijacked by extremists like the men staffing the Office of Special Plans, when intelligence data stating flatly that Iraq presents no threat to America is disregarded or exaggerated because the truth does not fit ideological desires, when Congress is lied to, when the American people are lied to, when innocent civilians at the sharp end of these lies are left to rot in the dust and the bomb craters on purpose, when American soldiers are shot down in the street because of these lies, no kind of cover-up can be allowed to succeed.

The time has indeed come for a reckoning. Let it begin, and let it begin soon.

William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA. He is a New York Times best-selling author of two books - "War On Iraq" (with Scott Ritter) available now from Context Books, and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," now available at http://www.silenceissedition.com/ from Pluto Press. William is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant. He is on the writing staff at www.truthout.com where this article was also published at: http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/072103A.shtml on July 21. You can E-mail William at: w_pitt@hotmail.com

Author's Note: The data surrounding this developing story is voluminous, and seems to change every time an administration representative opens his or her mouth. I have collected below the last few stories I have written on this subject in chronological order. Please utilize this data to further your understanding of this matter.

We Used To Impeach Liars (6/3/03) http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/060303A.shtml

The Dog Ate My WMDs (6/13/03) http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/061303A.shtml

Slaughtergate (6/23/03) http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/062303A.shtml

Interview with 27-Year CIA Veteran Ray McGovern (6/26/03) http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/062603B.shtml

The Insiders Are Coming Out (7/8/03) http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/070803A.shtml

Mr. Bush, You Are A Liar (7/11/03) http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/071103A.shtml

posted 07-23-2003 06:13 PM            

quote:

---

You see.....4 months ago..FART-TALKER and his NEO-CON buddies were saying...
"You liberals want Saddam to bomb the U.S. he has "weapons of mass destruction" and plans on using them..."this war is not about oil."

---

This quote is a paraphrase, of course, but it is the truth. You liberals would have been content to wait until Saddam completed his KNOWN nuclear program and handed a nuke over to a terrorist group which would have potentially killed a million Americans in a nuclear terrorist attack. Or you would have waited until he had enough bombs to control the entire Middle East through nuclear intimidation...OR used one on Israel. This is what you liberals would have waited for, so the paraphrase is correct.

This war was to pre-empt this near-term threat, which it did, and for a host of other valid criteria, such as enforcing UN resolutions, stabilizing the Middle East, and freeing the Iraqi people from the control of an evil mass-murdering tyrant who was a strong factor in inciting Islamic terrorism against the US and it‘s interests.

I never claimed that this war was about oil, because it was not. The US does not profit from Iraqi oil. The Iraqi people will. And the motivation is simply not there because the costs of the war far outweigh any profits (potential or otherwise) from the sale of oil.

Bush does not make any personal profit, and is personally very wealthy (as you are so happy to point out) therefore there is no personal motivation either, even if you could demonstrate how Bush personally intends to channel Iraqi oil profits to his own pockets (A ridiculous and ludicrous concept on it’s face). In addition, the war was an extremely risky political venture for Bush, as I’ve pointed out many times before. We are seeing this now. As more Americans get shot and killed, post war, Bush’s popularity ratings drop. A direct correlation to Bush’s popularity ratings and Americans coming home in body bags can be shown. The bottom line is that war is an extremely politically risky venture. The bottom line is that there was no PERSONAL motivations for war other than those that Bush indicated. We went to war for the exact reasons I’ve mentioned here. Oil is just not a logical motivation from any perspective. I can’t even believe someone would be so idiotic to be still making this argument. They made that argument about Afghanistan….and where’s that pipeline?

I am saying, however, that the strategy was to use Iraqi oil for the recovery of the Iraqi economy and to pay for some of the costs of war, but it certainly isn't a motivation for war. My perspective has been consistent as far back as you want to go.

quote:

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I should go back in the CTC archives and find their HYPOCRITICAL statements.

I think I will.

Nice links Larry!!!

---

posted 07-24-2003 10:37 PM            

**********************************

Cheney Was Bush’s Triggerman in Escalating Intelligence Catfight

Vice President Dick Cheney was the true triggerman behind waging the imperialist war on Iraq.

Exclusive To American Free Press

By Gordon Thomas

Vice President Dick Cheney was the trigger which exploded the long-simmering war between the White House and the CIA’s embattled director, George Tenet.

He ordered Tenet last January to insert the now notorious 16 words that there was “credible” British intelligence that Saddam had tried in 2001 to buy uranium ore (yellowcake) from Niger, the impoverished West African nation.

Three months before, in October 2002, Tenet had personally intervened to stop President Bush from making such a claim in a speech asserting that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Tenet told Bush he could not support the claim. When Cheney told him last January about the “credible” British intelligence, Tenet repeated his warning that the CIA could not endorse it. In what one account says was a “tense meeting,” Cheney bluntly overruled Tenet.

The vice president’s action cast a shadow over British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s visit to Washington.

Bush feels Britain’s intelligence services, MI6 and MI5, have not kept the CIA properly informed. Blair insists his spy agencies could not pass on more information on the Niger yellowcake because, according to a London Foreign Office officer, “under the rules governing cooperation they have with foreign intelligence services, our service could not share intelligence from those sources without the originator’s permission.”

This impasse has created a deep anger between the CIA, MI6 and MI5. A British official at its embassy in Washington told AFP that “the CIA has been dumping on everybody and everybody is dumping on the CIA”.

A Bush administration official described Blair’s visit as “fallout time. Not finding WMD was always going to make his visit a time for plain speaking. To echo the president’s liking for a Texan example, this could be shootout time at the White House corral.”

More certain is that the intelligence fallout from the Iraq war is now the most serious rift in transatlantic secret relations since the post-World War II scandal of the British atom spies who stole U.S. nuclear secrets for the Soviet Union.

“We don’t believe for a moment that Tenet just fell on his own sword. What happened has all the hallmarks of Dick Cheney,” said an MI6 source close to the agency’s director-general, Sir Richard Dearlove.

The reverberations have led to calls in London for Blair to resign—and efforts by former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer to bring closure to the row on the eve of his own departure from the administration.

Clare Short, who resigned from Blair’s cabinet over Britain going to war “on a false pretense,” said Blair “should now resign before matters get nastier for him. Trust in him and Bush is going down by the day.”

How all this happened is one of the most shocking stories to emerge in the post-Iraq war inquest.

ORIGINS OF NIGER SCANDAL

The complex story has simple roots. In November 2001, Italian secret service agents were approached by a West African diplomat. He said he had details of a plot by the Iraqis to buy “hundreds of tons” of uranium ore from Niger. He produced supporting documents.

On the surface, the claim sounded credible. Iraq had already purchased 200 tons of yellowcake from Niger in 1986, the Italians told the CIA station in Rome. The station chief sent a detailed report to Langley, including the documents the African diplomat had provided.

The material was sent to the State Department. The U.S. ambassador to Niger at the time, Barbro Owens-Kirk Patrick, was asked to assess all the material.

But while she was doing so, Cheney intervened. He told a senior diplomat, Joseph Wilson—who had first-hand knowledge of Niger—that he wanted him to go there and investigate the claims.

By the time he arrived, Owens-Kirkpatrick had dismissed the documents as “crude forgeries”—and the African diplomat’s claims to the Italians as “pure fantasy.”

Wilson concurred. His own investigation showed that Niger’s security on yellowcake—introduced after Saddam’s previous purchase—was too rigorous for any Iraqi attempt to purchase uranium ore to have gone undetected.

In March 2002, Wilson briefed Tenet. He passed on Wilson’s findings to his British counterpart, Sir Richard Dearlove of MI6. He informed the head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, and John Scarlett, the former spy who now chairs Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee. His job is to know anything that can be known about Saddam and his WMD.

On Sept. 24, 2002, Blair published his government’s dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. It included the claim “Iraq has sought the supply of significant amounts of uranium from Africa.”

It did not say when—let alone whether—this had been in the 1980s. Neither was Niger mentioned. But to Wilson it was “obvious this was the same story as in the discredited documents.”

There the matter may have died as far as the White House went if Bush had not wanted to include the details in his October speech of last year.

Having headed him off, Tenet believed the bogus Niger connection was over. But then Cheney made his fateful visit to Langley last January to demand that Tenet should allow the Niger story to form part of Bush’s State of the Union speech.

Tenet, say credible sources, was horrified. He reminded Cheney that both Owens-Kirkpatrick and Wilson had refuted any Niger connection.

Cheney was insistent. He said there was credible evidence from British intelligence. He cited the Blair report. He reminded Tenet of Saddam’s previous acquisition of yellowcake in the 1980s.

Tenet had explained Niger had no capability to enrich uranium ore—the basic prerequisite to producing a nuclear bomb. He added that, after the first gulf war ended, UN inspectors had destroyed Saddam’s essential equipment that could turn the ore into fissionable material.

The CIA was certain that Iraq had not been able to repair the equipment. Tenet also reminded Cheney he had personally intervened to stop Bush including the “Niger story” in his speech three months before, in October 2002.

Cheney, according to one CIA source, “came close to critical mass.”

He told Tenet that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice had now received “good intelligence” from London that Saddam had tried to buy uranium ore from Niger in 2001. Therefore that would go into the State of the Union speech—and Tenet must accept the British intelligence.

“The clear implication from Cheney was that the Brits knew more than we did,” said the CIA source.

Bush, traveling back from his African trip, told reporters that Tenet had “cleared” the reference to Niger.

Rice went further: “If the CIA director had said take this out, it would have gone, without question.”

Tenet did say that. Cheney overruled him—once more citing the British “credible sources.” So who were they?

Intelligence sources believe there are two. The French secret service (DGSE) and Mossad.

Both have a strong presence in West Africa.

Niger is a former French colony.

Israel receives a substantial portion of its oil from adjoining Nigeria.

Niger’s uranium mines are run by a French company which is supervised by the French Atomic Energy Commission.

In London, MI6 insists the evidence from these sources remains “credible.”

British intel sources say that “a further factor in the refusal to share its information about Niger with the CIA is concern that the White House would publish it—and lead to our sources being uncovered,” said a London source.

On his trip to London to meet Blair, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was accompanied by Meir Dagan, head of Mossad. He met Sir Richard Dearlove and Eliza Manningham-Buller.

High on their list was the Niger uranium claim. No one still knows if the French-Mossad intelligence is credible.

Did Mossad provide it as part of Israel’s own strategy to ramp-up the war against Iraq?

Did French intelligence refuse to allow the CIA to see its own intelligence because the Paris government was strongly opposed to the coming war with Iraq—and would not wish to provide Washington with any support for military action?

At a recent meeting, Bush confronted Blair with these questions.

posted 08-05-2003 01:17 AM            

July 15, 2003, 0100 PDT (FTW) - The speed with which CIA Director George Tenet accepted responsibility last Friday for clearing George W. Bush's January 28 State of the Union Speech containing the bogus Iraq-uranium statement based upon forged documents was matched by the speed with which major news agencies - many of which had already been serving as conduits for CIA leaks - released stories that guaranteed deeper and more hostile probes. The writing appears to be on the wall for a beleaguered and disarrayed presidency, as key administration officials including Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice either wittingly or unwittingly line up like chess pieces to take the fall for a doomed King.

A multitude of stories appearing within hours of the Bush/Rice statements and Tenet's "confession" disclosed that the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) had successfully and personally argued for the removal of a similar line three months before the State-of-the-Union speech. His admission is not credible.

Statements by both Bush and departing press spokesman Ari Fleischer that the matter is now closed will likely go down as wishful and quite possibly delusional thinking. Famous last words. Recalled is the line from Watergate's John Dean, "There is a cancer growing on the Presidency." This is the kind of cancer that eats official after official until there is nothing left between it and the King.

The deliberate distortion and misrepresentation of intelligence data about Iraq is much broader than a single line in the President's speech, and the reliance on that lie by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell - both before and after the speech, and after it was known that the intelligence was bogus - is already being dragged into the light. The noose that will ultimately hang George W. Bush is a meticulous and carefully crafted official record compiled by California Congressman Henry Waxman (D) that has been in place since last March of this year.

On Sunday July 13, Britain's Independent, signaling a very rough road ahead for Prime Minister Tony Blair published a story titled "Twenty Lies About the War". The top two lies listed were that Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and that Iraq had been working with al Qaeda. The entire story is located at:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=424008. Every British and American assertion about Iraq is now on the table. So is 9/11. And there is no way out for either Blair or Bush.

It is critical to understand what last Friday's statement addressed, and what it did not. Tenet's ultimate position on the line in Bush's based-upon-fiction Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium was that "the statement was factually correct because the British government had released a report saying so." This is the same position taken by Rice. Since there is a clear record that George Tenet, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the State Department all knew that the charge was unfounded for months before the speech, this amounts to Tenet, Rice and Bush stating that the line was included after it was known that it was false, only because of a technicality. Six-year-old children deceive better than this.

That position is an admission of intent to deceive the American people and the world. Tenet's statement itself begs the question, "Well, if you knew it was false, why did you sign off on it?"

Secondly, there is a clear record showing that not only were the documents on which the allegations were based known to be forged well in advance of the speech, it had been demonstrated clearly that there was no other evidence supporting the claims. Tony Blair's assertions that he still believes the allegations "based upon separate intelligence which he has not shared with the US" are ludicrous, especially in light of the fact that the British government was at the time unaware that Vice President Cheney had ordered the dispatch of retired US Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV to personally investigate in February 2002. Wilson's recent statements on Meet The Press, to the New York Times and in TIME make that clear.

As TIME reported on July 13, just two days after the Bush gambit, Wilson, with no knowledge of the forged documents which had surfaced through the Italian government in late 2001, returned from Niger in March 2002 after conducting a thorough investigation and concluded that the sales or negotiations had not taken place. Wilson said that, "The question was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president. The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked, and that response was based upon my trip out there."

As retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern has pointed out, it is ludicrous to expect that Cheney sent Wilson to investigate, and then did not want a report when Wilson returned. Yet, that is the Vice President's position.

TIME wrote:
Wilson spent eight days sleuthing in Niger, meeting with current and former government officials and businessmen; he came away convinced that the allegations were untrue. When he returned to Washington in early March, Wilson gave an oral report about his trip to both CIA and State Department officials. On March 9 of last year, the CIA circulated a memo on the yellowcake story that was sent to the White House, summarizing Wilson's assessment. Wilson was not the only official looking into the matter. Nine days earlier, the State Department's intelligence arm had sent a memo directly to Secretary of State Colin Powell that also disputed the Italian intelligence. Greg Thielmann, then a high-ranking official at State's intelligence research unit, told TIME that it was not in Niger's self-interest to sell the Iraqis destabilizing ore. 'A whole lot of things told us that the report was bogus.'

Shooting from the Lip

Contrary to press stories indicating that Friday's African statements by Bush and Rice pointing fingers at Tenet for the crime were well-considered in advance, it is much more likely that an increasingly unstable Bush shot from the lip as he responded (again) to barrages of questions about his allegations that Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium from Niger for a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons program. "I gave my speech to the nation and it was cleared by the intelligence agencies," said Bush. A short time later, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was holding an unusual and hastily arranged press conference aboard Air Force One that many reports later described as a full broadside against DCI Tenet.

It was a moment the press had apparently been waiting for.

Confronted by official statements that he was responsible for the inclusion of the Niger/uranium references Tenet had but two choices. He could issue a confession that would ultimately not stand, or he could call George W. Bush an out-and-out liar. The latter would have crippled the US government.

Tenet's actions have been described as falling on his sword. Such a description is inaccurate because Tenet is far from dead. He has suffered only a flesh wound while the administration itself may be mortally wounded. For saving the government from an immediate and unavoidable constitutional crisis, Tenet, a shrewd political player who had previously served on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, will be viewed as a hero by some inside the Beltway. He may have to offer to resign at some point, and may choose to do so with this event as the pretext, rather than face heavy scrutiny for a bothersome list of contradictions about the 9/11 attacks which are now fully back on the table and soon to be under renewed scrutiny. Remember, Tenet holds the secrets to 9/11, which may explain why a post-foot-in-mouth Bush is kissing Tenet's clandestine buttocks in public and reaffirming his confidence in him.

Waiting for the Moment

It was almost as if the press had been waiting for the moment and had their stories already in the works. In fact, a number of stories preceding Friday's presidential foot-chewing session show that - as described in FTW's two-part series Beyond Bush - the inertia had already turned.

July 6 - In an op-ed piece written for The New York Times, Joseph Wilson wrote that the CIA had sent him to Niger at the request of Cheney. Wilson also wrote, (putting British intelligence and Tony Blair on the spot) that, "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." Niger's uranium industry is run by European, Japanese and Nigerian companies and monitored by agencies like the IAEA. Wilson wrote, "There's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired."

July 7 - A scathing editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle by Harley Sorenson titled "The Madness of King George" lambasted the president for his statements to Ha'aretz that he received direct instructions from God. Sorenson wrote, "I'm becoming convinced that our president, the man with his finger on the nuclear trigger, is a bona fide nutcase."

July 8 - CNN, after the White House admitted that the assertion was inaccurate, wrote "It remains unclear why senior administration officials did not know about Wilson's findings to the CIA that the reports... were bogus...

"A British panel also found intelligence on the Iraq allegations was inaccurate, according to reports."

Blair was already cooked.

"US officials said a report citing Wilson's conclusions was given to the White House and other agencies nearly a year before the president's State of the Union address."

July 10 - CBS publishes a lengthy and devastating poll headlined "US Losing Control in Iraq". In it, a wide range of questions showed that the Bush administration is losing support everywhere and on all major issues.

Ready, Set, Go!

After the fateful statements from Bush and Rice, the reactions came swiftly and unequivocally.

July 11 - First out of the gate was MSNBC's Michael Moran who has written some compelling stories since 9/11. "The familiar drip, drip, drip of a brewing political scandal echoes through the power centers of Washington and London these days." Moran quoted a source close to the Bush family as saying, "They have to get by this and they have to do it very soon." Moran then nailed Rice in a lie by quoting her statement that, if George Tenet had any objections about the uranium claim, "he did not make them known." In fact, he had done so three months before and in a variety of methods. Moran then re-emphasized a damning statement from Pentagon Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who stupidly admitted in a May Vanity Fair interview that the WMD issue had been selected (instead of oil) as an issue of convenience on which the war could be sold to the American people.

Moran then roasted Blair's goose by pointing out the public defection of former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and his statements that the pretext for the whole war was a concoction.

July 12 - CNN in an early follow-up story reported that Senate Intelligence Chairman and Bush loyalist Pat Roberts was criticizing Tenet for "extremely sloppy handling" of the uranium mess and that, "Roberts also accused the agency of orchestrating a 'campaign of press leaks' to discredit the president." The CNN story went on state, "Tenet said top administration officials - including Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney - were never briefed on CIA's skepticism... Nor did he tell members of the administration last fall."

Now we have Tenet calling Wilson a liar. Then CNN chose to headline the concluding section of the story with a quote from Democratic challenger Howard Dean, This is "beginning to sound a little like Watergate."

July 12 - CBS News reported that many members of Congress were not satisfied with Tenet's statement. It then quoted a former National Security Council staff member as saying, "I anticipate that George Tenet... will probably be sacrificed on this one. He has taken the fall, and I think the administration will wait to see whether this flies. I'd doubt (it will)." CBS then quoted former Republican White House staffer David Gergen as saying, "Somebody in the administration, not in the agency, wanted to put this in the speech and got the CIA to sign off on it, even though everybody knew within the US government that there were real doubts about the validity of the report. And that's what constitutes the misleading quality of it."

July 12 - The Washington Times of London ran a story titled "Bush Team Split As CIA Becomes The Fall Guy". It said, "The first salvo in what degenerated into open warfare within the Bush Administration was fired by the President himself... It capped one of the worst weeks Mr. Bush has endured since the September 11 attacks and put the... White House on the defensive as it struggled to protect the President from allegations that he may have knowingly lied to the American public... In anonymous briefings to the US media on Thursday CIA officials insisted that the agency explicitly told the White House that the claim was false before the speech."

July 12 - In a scathing editorial titled "The Uranium Fiction", The New York Times wrote, "We're glad that someone in Washington has finally taken responsibility for letting President Bush make a false accusation about Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program... but the matter will not end there." After pointing to the Wilson investigation and reports the Times wrote, "The uranium charge should never have found its way into Mr. Bush's speech. Determining how it got there is essential to understanding whether the administration engaged in a deliberate effort to mislead the nation about the Iraqi threat."

July 12 - Eleanor Clift writing in Newsweek titled her story "No Mistakes Were Made". Her lead paragraph bespoke the escalating tone of criticism for Bush et al. "President Bush is certain he did the right thing by going to war in Iraq. Bush never second-guesses himself, a trait that permeates his administration and contains the seeds of his undoing... He can't let cracks appear or the whole edifice could crumble. The moment Bush landed on the USS Lincoln, he was caught in his own hubris." Clift then took apart the administrations boasts that it had a broad international coalition supporting the invasion quoting a democratic lawmaker as saying, "I'm not interested in three Latvians in bio-chem suits."

July 12 - The Associated Press, a little more reserved in its reporting, stated, "[Senate Intelligence Chair Pat] Roberts charged that unnamed intelligence officials were telling the press that the CIA warned the White House that the information about Iraq trying to obtain uranium from Africa were unfounded. But as late as ten days before the State of the Union speech, Roberts said the CIA was still saying that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Africa." That's interesting.

Where's the record of that Senator?

July 13 - In a page 1 story of the Sunday edition of The Washington Post, veteran reporter and CIA conduit Walter Pincus fired back at Bush. His headline was "CIA Got Uranium Reference Cut in October." In describing how Tenet had previously successfully intervened to have an October reference to the uranium removed from a Bush speech, Pincus wrote, "Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used... Another senior official with knowledge of the intelligence said the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged.

If Hadley knew, then Condoleezza Rice knew. And her finger pointing is an outright lie.

Pincus continued, "It is unclear why Tenet failed to intervene in January to prevent the questionable intelligence from appearing in the president's address to Congress when Tenet intervened three months earlier in a much less symbolic speech... But it is clear from the new disclosure about Tenet's intervention... that the controversy continues to boil, and as new facts emerge a different picture is being presented than the administration has given to date..."

"...Cheney, insisted on including Hussein's quest for a nuclear weapon as a prominent part of their public case for war in Iraq."

Pincus then dropped a bombshell. He reported that a senior administration official had stated, "seeking uranium from Niger was never in the drafts". He then followed it up by stating, "A senior administration official said Bush's chief speechwriter... does not remember who wrote the line that has wound up causing... so much grief."

July 13 - The New York Times, calling the matter a "political storm" drew the noose tighter by reporting that "[Tenet's] involvement [in pulling the statement from the October speech] indicates that both he and the White House were aware of the doubts about the intelligence three months before the State of the Union speech.

"With the matter threatening to undermine Mr. Bush's support at a time when American soldiers continue to be killed in Iraq...the White House was clearly seeking to put the matter to rest."

In a new twist, the Times also reported that, "After CIA officials raised concerns about the wording in an early draft the speech, the White House changed it to make it vaguer and to attribute it to Britain." Then the Times raised the specter that Tenet and Colin Powell might have set the administration up. "Participants in the process note that Mr. Tenet reviewed the same material with Mr. Powell as they prepared the presentation to the United Nations. The two men decided together that the story of Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium... could not be supported.

But Powell is not off the hook. (See below)

July 13 - The Los Angeles Times checked in with a major story that said, "But the administration effort to have Tenet accept responsibility triggered new recriminations on Saturday - including a sharp rebuke from a key Democrat on Capitol Hill - that suggest the issue is far from closed...

"...the administration continued to face persistent questions.

"Senator John D. 'Jay' Rockefeller IV (D-WVa) vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said the White House has yet to explain how discredited claims about Iraqi efforts... made their way into the speech to begin with..."

"Tenet and the CIA 'have been made to take the fall to shield the president and his advisers,' Rockefeller said, adding that he believes that the National Security Council pressed to include the allegation even though it 'knew the underlying information was not credible.'"

"Rockefeller directed particularly pointed criticism at National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, saying her very public role in pinning the blame on Tenet is 'dishonorable.'"

"'Why does this all fall on George Tenet? Because it's convenient,' Rockefeller said. 'My guess is [Rice] had a lot more to do with this mistake than Tenet did.'"

July 13 - TIME Magazine took the unraveling process further in a story titled, "A Question of Trust". In questioning whether Bush's credibility has taken a major hit, the article by Michael Duffy and James Carney pointed out that before the Friday statements by Bush and Rice the admission of the "error" in the speech had "instead sparked a bewildering four days of changing explanations and unusually nasty finger pointing by the normally disciplined Bush team."

In a statement that suggests to this writer that the original forged documents might have been planted by the CIA or the National Security Council (remember Iran-Contra?), TIME wrote, "Finally, in late 2001 [just after 9/11], the Italian government came into possession of evidence suggesting that Iraq was again trying to purchase yellowcake from Niger. Rome's source provided half a dozen letters and other documents alleged to be correspondence between Niger and Iraqi officials negotiating a sale. The Italians' evidence was shared with both Britain and the US.

"When it got to Washington, the Iraq-Niger uranium report caught the eye of someone important: Vice President Dick Cheney."

Then TIME began the process of naming names by listing top CIA analyst Alan Foley and presidential aide Robert Joseph as playing key roles in the battle over whether to use the information or not.

When the hearings start, just as with Watergate, these men will be among the first to testify, and their testimony will begin the long and excruciating death of the Bush presidency.

THE BRICK WALL

The brick wall against which all of the administration's chess pieces will be crushed was outlined in an unanswered March 17 letter from California Congressman Henry Waxman (D) to President Bush. The record laid out by Waxman also makes it perfectly clear that Secretary of State Colin Powell is as implicated as any member of the Bush administration.

Before presenting Waxman's irrefutable record, it is important to ask one question: Who or what is capable of orchestrating events to remove the Bush presidency and yet leave the US with the Patriot Act, Homelan