Video on the Republican Rhetoric on Iraq

Good video showing the Bush Administration Talking Points about Iraq and how they changed. Now more than 1 million Iraqs are dead more than 4 thousand US soldiers.

As Donald Rumsfeld said: There are some people who lie and get away with it.

Paul Wolfowitz invited back to advise Rice

Fallen Neocon offered new Chance




The Bush administration has offered former Deputy Defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz a position as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, a prestigious State Department panel, according to two department sources who declined to be identified discussing personnel matters. The 18-member panel, which has access to highly classified intelligence, advises Rice on disarmament, nuclear proliferation, WMD issues and other matters. The position doesn't require Senate confirmation.

Why is this a bad idea?

Defense Department's Office of the Inspector General that said Wolfowitz played a key role in the cooking of intelligence related to Iraq's ties to al-Qaeda and its supposed cache of chemical and biological weapons. That effort helped the White House lay the groundwork for a US-led invasion.


Paul Wolfowitz has proven to be a not so intelligent adviser:

His selection has raised more than a few eyebrows within State because he'll be providing advice on some of the same issues that critics say the administration got spectacularly wrong when Wolfowitz was pushing the case for the Iraq War at the Pentagon. (One of the department sources called the appointment "amazing.")(Newsweek)

Wolfowitz said the U.S. would be greeted as liberators, that Iraqi oil money for pay for the reconstruction, and that Gen. Eric Shinseki’s estimate that several hundred thousand troops would be needed was “wildly off the mark.” [Washington Post, 12/8/05]


Wolfowitz judged to have questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self-interest

Wolfowitz forced to step as President of the World Bank after facing an outcry over a pay and promotion deals given to his partner - who also works for the World Bank.

In January 2006, an e-mail was sent to the bank by "John Smith" using a Yahoo address. This appeared to be from a staff insider and it accused Mr Wolfowitz of "important ethical lapses of a corrupt nature".

It complained about the level of Shaha Riza's salary which it said had gone up from $130,000 to the $180,000 mentioned by Mr Wolfowitz. It also said that Mr Wolfowitz had not submitted this increase to the bank's board.

It complained about his appointment of two US nationals (Robin Cleveland and Kevin Kellems) formerly with the Bush administration, whom he appointed as close advisors with $250,000 tax-free contracts.( Another appointee, Juan José Daboub has been criticized by his colleagues and others for attempts to change policies on family planning and climate change towards a conservative line.)

In April 2006, Mr Wolfowitz said he was sorry for the way in which he handled the case. "I made a mistake," he said. He stated that he wished he had followed his first instinct, which had been not to involve himself in the negotiations over Ms Riza's future.

In March 2007 that the Washington Post gave details that generated new public comment. It reported that Ms Riza's salary at the State Department (though she had been transferred in the meantime to a new organisation called Foundation for the Future) had risen to "$193,590, which is $7,000 more than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice makes". The increase, it was claimed, was more than double what she would have got at the World Bank.

The bank set up a senior "Ad Hoc Group" to make further investigations.

The special panel set up to investigate the issue released its report on 14 May and said that Mr Wolfowitz had violated staff rules and the bank's code of conduct. His actions in determining the terms of Ms Riza's external assignment constituted "a conflict of interest", it said.

The salary he had directed on her behalf was "in excess" of that established and so was the annual increase.

It said that the board would have to consider whether he "will be able to provide the leadership needed" to ensure that the Bank could achieve its mandate.

It accused Mr Wolfowitz of casting himself "in opposition to the established rules of the institution" and of seeking "to negotiate for himself a resolution different from that which would be applied to the staff he was selected to head".

"It evidences questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self-interest over institutional best interest," it stated.


Why did the White House want him back? Target Iran?

Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution Wolfowitz has been a notable advocate for Iranian dissidents, including Azar Nafisi, the bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran.[citation needed] Larry Franklin, who was both a member of his staff and an associate of the American Israel Political Affair Committee (AIPAC), investigated for alleged espionage for Israel on U.S. soil, including leaking information to Israel in order to damage Iranian-US relations, pled guilty to some of those charges, pursuant to a plea agreement in which he would "cooperate in the larger federal investigation" involving "two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman.

Refrences:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6655019.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070528/world-bank-wolfowitz/

Iraq strikes back at US Merceneries- Blackwater

Iraq wants Blackwater out; may put men on trial

By STEVEN R. HURST and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA

Iraq : US must stop ussing Blackwater

BAGHDAD — Iraqi authorities want the U.S. government to sever all contracts in Iraq with Blackwater USA within six months and pay $8 million in compensation to each of the families of 17 people killed when the firm's guards sprayed a traffic circle with heavy machine gun fire last month.

Iraqi Report

"The investigation committee appointed by [Mr Maliki] has finished its inquiry and has found that there was no evidence that the convoy of Blackwater came under fire directly or indirectly," a Government statement said, quoting the inquiry's findings. "Employees of the company violated the rules governing use of force by security companies. They have committed a deliberate crime and should be punished under the law."

The Iraqi Government would now take "judicial measures to punish the company", the statement said.

The demands — part of an Iraqi government report examined by The Associated Press — also called on U.S. authorities to hand over the Blackwater security agents involved in the Sept. 16 shootings to face possible trial in Iraqi courts.

The tone of the Iraqi report appears to signal further strains between the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the White House over the deaths in Nisoor Square — which have prompted a series of U.S. and Iraqi probes and raised questions over the use of private security contractors to guard U.S. diplomats and other officials.



Al-Maliki ordered the investigation by his defense minister and other top security and police officials on Sept. 22. The findings — which were translated from Arabic by AP — mark the most definitive Iraqi positions and contentions about the shootings last month.

The report also highlights the differences in death tolls and accounts that have complicated efforts to piece together the chain of events as one Blackwater-protected convoy raced back toward Baghdad's Green Zone after a nearby bombing, while a second back-up team in four gun trucks sped into the square as a back-up team.

The Iraqi investigation — first outlined Thursday by The Associated Press — charges the four Blackwater vehicles called to the square began shooting without provocation. Blackwater contends its employees came under fire first.

The government, at the conclusion of its investigation, said 17 Iraqis died. Initial reports put the toll at 11.

The report found that Blackwater guards also had killed 21 Iraqi civilians and wounded 27 in previous shootings since it took over security for US diplomats in Baghdad after the US invasion.

It said the compensation — totaling $136 million — was so high "because Blackwater uses employees who disrespect the rights of Iraqi citizens even though they are guests in this country."

The U.S. military pays compensation money to the families of civilians killed in battles or to cover property damage, but at far lower amounts.

The United States has not made conclusive findings about the shooting, though there are multiple investigations under way and Congress has opened inquiries into the role of private security contractors. Last week, the FBI took over a State Department investigation, raising the prospect that it could be referred to the Justice Department for prosecution.

The Iraqi government report said its courts were to proper venue in which to bring charges.

It said Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq expired on June 2, 2006, meaning it had no immunity from prosecution under Iraqi laws set down after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The government report also challenged the claim that a decree in June 2004 by then-Iraqi administrator L. Paul Bremer granted Blackwater immunity from legal action in incidents such as the one in Nisoor Square. The report said the Blackwater guards could be charged under a criminal code from 1969.

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo said the diplomatic mission would have no comment on the report. Iraq's Interior Ministry spokesman, Abdul-Karim Khalaf, said the document was in American hands.



The report found that Blackwater guards also had killed 21 Iraqi civilians and wounded 27 in previous shootings since it took over security for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad after the U.S. invasion. The Iraqi government did not say whether it would try to prosecute in those cases.


The State Department has counted 56 shooting incidents involving Blackwater guards in Iraq this year. All were being reviewed as part of the comprehensive inquiry ordered by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The US has not made conclusive findings about the shooting, though there are multiple investigations under way and Congress has opened inquiries into the role of private security contractors.

Short Clips: Colin Powell on Meet the Press

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was host Tim Russert's guest on Meet The Press.



We were not unaware of the problems we would face.

We didn't prepare ourselves well enough.

We didn't have enough troops on the ground- that's my assesment."



Knowing what you know today- would you do it again? Russert asks.




"Cut and run is not an option."

Powell said that he would close Gitmo "this afternoon" and put its inmates into our general prison population. He said that it was "too early" to say if he would support the Republican Presidential nominee.

Powell said that he was advising Barack Obama on foreign policy matters. He would not rule out returning to public service at some future date.



Books:: With the announcement of Powell advising Obama - I thought it might be a good time for people to look at the `race' card in terms of foreign policy recently:



Review
"Clarence Lusane offers a critique, not only of two individuals, but of a foreign policy that has further isolated the USA in a sharply polarizing world. Lusane contextualizes Powell and Rice as both part of a minority political tendency within Black America, as well as individuals the political Right utilizes in order to make more palatable its message of US global domination. Lusane's scholarship and passion make this a compelling book, and one which all students of US foreign policy and the politics of Black America should consider an invaluable text." - Bill Fletcher, Jr. President, TransAfrica Forum Visiting Professor, Brooklyn College/City University of New York

"In a much-needed expose', Clarence Lusane documents the Bush administration's craven attempts to use the civil rights legacy to justify its war in Iraq, and the willful collaboration of Colin and Condi in that shameful equation. This thoroughly researched analysis of the twisted relationship between US racial politics and US foreign policy is a must-read for both academics and activists. Highly recommended!" - Howard Winant UC Santa Barbara author of The World Is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since World War II.

Other Powell Books:

Secretary of State Rice doesn't want to have to answer any more of those bothersome questions

Rice Signals Rejection of House Subpoena

Condoleezza Rice has become the apologist for the Bush Administration - not just for the President's mis-steps but also for her own.

This week she paraded through the Sunday Talk shows to defend herself from accusations made by former CIA director George Tennent. Previously she went against statements made by former Secretary of State Collin Powell who has sought to distance his fault in the Iraq mess.

Yes, she has time for the talk show host, most all of whom treat her with great respect. But no, she does not have time to our Governments House oversight comittee that would call on her to `speak under oath'.

She most probably would use the favorite line of the Bush administration- `I don't recall.' When asked the tough questions, so why should she waste her valuable time. Time that could be better spent basking in the presence of the man who calls her `his sister' and of whom she accidentally once called her husband (I am referring to President Bush.)

Bush has pressed upon all those in the Administration that they serve at his pleasure. This is a great untruth- the Administration serves at the pleasure of the people - and the people are not pleased. Treating Congress as though it does not matter is criminal for the Secretary of State a position that she has proven herself to be ineffectual at. She like Attorney General Gonzales should be instructed again and again to resign - not because it would serve the President best - but because it would serve our country best.

Note: A new biography about Ms. Rice is coming out this week by a Newsweek writer.


Secretary of State Rice Signals Rejection of House Subpoena, Citing Executive Privilege
By MATTHEW LEE
The Associated Press

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday she has already answered the questions she has been subpoenaed to answer before a congressional committee and suggested she is not inclined to comply with the order.

Rice said she would respond by mail to questions from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the Bush administration's prewar claims about Saddam Hussein seeking weapons of mass destruction, but signaled she would not appear in person.

"I am more than happy to answer them again in a letter," she told reporters in Oslo, where she is attending a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.

The comments were her first reaction to a subpoena issued on Wednesday by the committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Rice said she respected the oversight function of the legislative branch, but maintained she had already testified in person and under oath about claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa during her confirmation hearing for the job of secretary of state.

"I addressed these questions, almost the same questions, during my confirmation hearing," she said. "This is an issue that has been answered and answered and answered."

Rice noted that she had been serving as President Bush's national security adviser during the period covered by the panel's questions and stressed the administration's position that presidential aides not confirmed by the Senate cannot be forced to testify before Congress under the doctrine of executive privilege.

"This all took place in my role as national security adviser," she said. "There is a constitutional principle. There is a separation of powers and advisers to the president under that constitutional principle are not generally required to go and testify in Congress.

"So, I think we have to observe and uphold the constitutional principle, but I also observe and uphold the obligation of Congress to conduct its oversight role, I respect that. But I think I have more than answered these questions, and answered them directly to Congressman Waxman."

Rice declined to respond when asked if she would absolutely refuse to testify under subpoena.

Her spokesman, Sean McCormack, said later that no final decision had been made about Rice appearing before the committee.

Waxman's committee voted 21-10 on Wednesday to subpoena Rice despite the State Department's insistence that the questions have already been answered and that the doctrine of executive privilege .

The congressman has complained for weeks that Rice and the State Department have failed to respond to questions about the claim that Saddam Hussein had tried to by uranium from Niger.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

NY Times Editorial: Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?

Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?

By ANTONIA JUHASZ
Published: March 13, 2007

TODAY more than three-quarters of the world’s oil is owned and controlled by governments. It wasn’t always this way.

Until about 35 years ago, the world’s oil was largely in the hands of seven corporations based in the United States and Europe. Those seven have since merged into four: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. They are among the world’s largest and most powerful financial empires. But ever since they lost their exclusive control of the oil to the governments, the companies have been trying to get it back.

Iraq’s oil reserves — thought to be the second largest in the world — have always been high on the corporate wish list. In 1998, Kenneth Derr, then chief executive of Chevron, told a San Francisco audience, “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas — reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.”

A new oil law set to go before the Iraqi Parliament this month would, if passed, go a long way toward helping the oil companies achieve their goal. The Iraq hydrocarbon law would take the majority of Iraq’s oil out of the exclusive hands of the Iraqi government and open it to international oil companies for a generation or more.

In March 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force), which included executives of America’s largest energy companies, recommended that the United States government support initiatives by Middle Eastern countries “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.” One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve. It does so to the benefit of the companies, but to the great detriment of Iraq’s economy, democracy and sovereignty.

Since the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has been aggressive in shepherding the oil law toward passage. It is one of the president’s benchmarks for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a fact that Mr. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Gen. William Casey, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and other administration officials are publicly emphasizing with increasing urgency.

The administration has highlighted the law’s revenue sharing plan, under which the central government would distribute oil revenues throughout the nation on a per capita basis. But the benefits of this excellent proposal are radically undercut by the law’s many other provisions — these allow much (if not most) of Iraq’s oil revenues to flow out of the country and into the pockets of international oil companies.

The law would transform Iraq’s oil industry from a nationalized model closed to American oil companies except for limited (although highly lucrative) marketing contracts, into a commercial industry, all-but-privatized, that is fully open to all international oil companies.

The Iraq National Oil Company would have exclusive control of just 17 of Iraq’s 80 known oil fields, leaving two-thirds of known — and all of its as yet undiscovered — fields open to foreign control.

The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers or share new technologies. They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability” by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country. The vast majority of Iraq’s oil would then be left underground for at least two years rather than being used for the country’s economic development.

The international oil companies could also be offered some of the most corporate-friendly contracts in the world, including what are called production sharing agreements. These agreements are the oil industry’s preferred model, but are roundly rejected by all the top oil producing countries in the Middle East because they grant long-term contracts (20 to 35 years in the case of Iraq’s draft law) and greater control, ownership and profits to the companies than other models. In fact, they are used for only approximately 12 percent of the world’s oil.

Iraq’s neighbors Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia maintain nationalized oil systems and have outlawed foreign control over oil development. They all hire international oil companies as contractors to provide specific services as needed, for a limited duration, and without giving the foreign company any direct interest in the oil produced.

Iraqis may very well choose to use the expertise and experience of international oil companies. They are most likely to do so in a manner that best serves their own needs if they are freed from the tremendous external pressure being exercised by the Bush administration, the oil corporations — and the presence of 140,000 members of the American military.

Iraq’s five trade union federations, representing hundreds of thousands of workers, released a statement opposing the law and rejecting “the handing of control over oil to foreign companies, which would undermine the sovereignty of the state and the dignity of the Iraqi people.” They ask for more time, less pressure and a chance at the democracy they have been promised.

Origionally published: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/opinion/13juhasz.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Antonia Juhasz is the Ida Tarbell Fellow at Oil Change International (www.priceofoil.org), a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (www.ips-dc.org), and a former Project Director at the International Forum on Globalization (www.ifg.org). She is also a Project Censored Award recipient and co-author of Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible, 2 nd Ed. Her articles have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Cambridge University Review of International Relations Journal, and the Johannesburg Star. Her new book is The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time (Regan Books of Harper Collins Publishers, April 2006).

Neocon Eliot Cohen Chosen as State Department Counselor

Rice Picks Neocon Champion of Iraq War as Counselor

In a move that has surprised many foreign policy analysts here, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has appointed a prominent neoconservative hawk and leading champion of the Iraq war to the post of State Department Counselor.

Counselor of the department

The Counselor of the Department, is a principal officer who serves the Secretary as a special advisor and consultant on major problems of foreign policy and who provides guidance to the appropriate bureaus with respect to such matters. The Counselor conducts special international negotiations and consultations, and also undertakes special assignments from time to time, as directed by the Secretary.

Eliot A. Cohen

Eliot A. Cohen, who teaches military history at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) here and has also served on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board (DPB) since 2001, will take up the position next month that was left vacant late last year by Rice's long-time confidant and "realist" thinker, Philip Zelikow.

A close friend and protégé of former Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz ( See Wolfowitz Emerges as Key Figure in Intel Manipulation )and advisory board member of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Cohen most recently led the harsh neoconservative attack on the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG), co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton.

Like his fellow neocons, he was particularly scathing about its recommendations for Washington to directly engage Syria and Iran and revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process – recommendations which Rice herself has explicitly endorsed in the last few weeks.
"This is a group composed, for the most part, of retired eminent public officials, most with limited or no expertise in the waging or study of war," Cohen wrote in column entitled "No Way to Win a War," published by the Wall Street Journal the day after the ISG released its report in early December.

"A fatuous process yields, necessarily, fatuous results," he went on in a wholesale dismissal of the relevance of what he called the "Washington establishment whose wisdom was exaggerated in its heyday, and which has in any event succumbed to a kind of political-intellectual entropy since the
1960s..."

Will he be a Counselor or a critic
for Rice?

"Eliot brings a lot to the table in terms of being a counselor, being somebody who can be an intellectual sounding board for her [Rice]," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack in confirming Cohen's appointment Friday.

Some analysts here, however, said they thought the appointment was designed instead to reduce or pre-empt criticism from neoconservatives and other hawks in and outside the administration for the direction she hopes to take U.S. policy, particularly in the Middle East. With no operational responsibilities, the State Department Counselor can be used – or ignored – at the secretary's discretion.

"Condi may feel she needs to have a neocon right next to her to protect her flanks," said Chris Nelson, editor of the widely read Washington insider newsletter, The Nelson Report.

"And, if she's really planning to put her foot down on the Israelis, which [Washington] will have to do if it wants to get a real process with the Palestinians underway as part of a bigger regional deal with the Saudis and Iranians, then a guy like Cohen up there on the [State Department's] seventh floor who is in on it and can claim influence on the outcome can help."

Rice may be appeasing Vice President Cheney

"Bringing on Cohen could help inoculate her from criticism by the Cheney camp," agreed Steven Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation in a reference to the vice president and the neoconservatives and other hawks who surround him. "One of the things that's been consistent is that Rice never takes Cheney head-on and is very careful not to take on people who might antagonize him."

In that respect, Cohen is a nearly ideal choice. Like Cheney, Cohen was a founding member in 1997 of the Project for the New American Century whose positions on how to prosecute the "war on terror" – including the invasion of Iraq and cutting ties to the Palestinian Authority (PA) under Yassir Arafat – he has consistently endorsed.

Elliot is Opinionated

Although lacking in any regional expertise or policy-making experience, Cohen has written prolifically in recent years on U.S. policy in the Middle East.
(See books below) Cohen first gained national prominence shortly after the 9/11 attacks when he published a Wall Street Journal column entitled "World War IV" – a moniker quickly adopted by hard-line neocons like former CIA director and fellow-DPB member James Woolsey, former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, and Center for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney (on whose board Cohen also sits) – to put Bush's "war on terror" in what he considered to be the appropriate historical context and to define its enemy as "militant Islam."

After defeating the Taliban, he argued, Washington should not only "finish off" Iraq's Saddam Hussein, whom he accused of having "helped al Qaeda," but also seek to overthrow "the mullahs" in Iran whose replacement by a "moderate or secular government would be no less important a victory in this war than the annihilation of [Osama] bin Laden."

Elliot Strong Supporter of Israel -Against Palestinian Authority


In another Journal article in April 2002 when the second Palestinian intifada was at its height, Cohen, who had just signed a PNAC letter which called for severing ties to the PA and asserted that "Israel's fight against terrorism is our fight," argued that proposals to send an international force that would separate Israeli forces from the Palestinians were "not serious." "[T]here are times when well-intentioned measures can only make matters worse," he warned.
Cohen has also been quick to label critics of Israel and the so-called "Israel Lobby" in the U.S. as anti-Semites.
"Only a reshuffling of the deck – through the disappearance of Arafat, or an event, (such as the overthrow of Saddam Hussein) that profoundly changes the mood in the Arab world – will make something approaching truce, let alone peace, possible," he argued in a favorite pre-Iraq war neoconservative theme.

May have Promoted Bush's Personal Identification as a War President

The following summer, Cohen achieved new fame when Bush was photographed carrying Cohen's just-published book, "Supreme Command," which argued that the greatest civilian wartime leaders, such as Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, had a far better strategic sense than their generals. It was a particularly timely message in the months that preceded the Iraq war when a surprising number of recently military brass here were voicing strong reservations about the impending U.S. invasion.

Pro Iraq War - Shifting Opinion on it's Execution

He also became a charter member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), an administration-supported group both to lobby for war in Iraq, largely on behalf of Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC). Indeed, Cohen, like his friend Wolfowitz, was already arguing publicly for Washington to rely heavily on the INC in any effort to overthrow Hussein in December 2001.

After the Iraq invasion, however, Cohen became progressively more critical of the way in which the subsequent occupation and counterinsurgency were being carried out, although, after a Pentagon-sponsored tour of Iraq that featured interviews with top U.S. military commanders there, including Gen. George Casey, last February, he became briefly more optimistic.

"After a wretched start, we have the right people at the top and the right policies in effect – and even more importantly, the right philosophy behind it all," he wrote in yet another Journal article entitled "Will We Persevere?"
Just nine months later, however, he had changed his mind.

In the same article in which he attacked the ISG, he described U.S. difficulties as "stem(ming) not so much from failures to find the right strategy, as from an astounding and depressing inability to implement the strategic and operational choices we have nominally made" – an inability, for example, "as personal as picking the wrong people for key positions."

Surge Booster (supporter of President Bush's plan to send in more troops.)


Still, while admitting in a Vanity Fair interview late last year that U.S. choices in Iraq range between "bad and awful," Cohen has called for perseverance and played a key role in selling AEI-hatched plan to add some 30,000 troops to the 140,000 soldiers in Iraq to Bush with whom he met personally as part of a small group of "surge"-boosters at the White House in mid-December.

Elliot's Plan B

If the surge should fail, however, Cohen's preferred and "most plausible" option, which he laid out in an October 2006 Journal column titled "Plan B," would be a coup d'etat ("which we quietly endorse") that would bring to power a "junta of military modernizers," a development which, as he noted himself, would call into question the administration's and Rice's avowed goal of democratization.

In any event, he argued in the same column, "American prestige has taken a hard knock [in Iraq]; it will probably take a harder knock, and in ways that will not be restored without a considerable and successful use of American military power down the road."

"The tides of Sunni salafism (Salafism is not a sect per se but describes a simplified version of Islam, in which adherents follow a few commands and practices) and Iran's distinct combination of messianism
(Messianism is any field of philosophy which concerns itself with the interpretations of stories about a world hero or the establishment of a Utopian world) and power politics have not crested, and will not crest without much greater violence in which we too will be engaged," he asserted.

In a Vanity Fair interview last fall, Cohen said, "I'm pretty grim. I think we're heading for a very dark world, because the long-term consequences of this are very large, not just for Iraq, not just for the region, but globally – for our reputation, for what the Iranians do, all kinds of stuff."

f Rice's intent was to reassure Cheney and the neoconservatives that she is not a captive of the ISG and the "Washington establishment," that passage alone should do the trick. (Inter Press Service)

Books by Mr. Cohen




Books including contributions by Mr. Cohen





First Sentence:
WE SHALL BEGIN OUR EXPLORATION of military misfortune by looking at the five explanations most commonly offered by historians trying to account for defeat and disaster on the field of battle




Condoleezza Rice in Baghdad

When the war was being planned Condoleezza Rice stood with the hawks when she was the President's security adviser. Some feel that she has metamorphosed into pragmatist with her move from the White House to the State Department. It was a pragmatic idea to make a surprise stop in Baghdad as the U.S. Senate deadlocked on whether to repeat a symbolic rebuke that the U.S. House handed Bush on Friday when it opposed the administration's deployment of additional combat troops to Iraq.


Her visit occurred a day after the U.S. House of Representatives renounced President George W. Bush's latest strategy to resolve the four-year-old war in Iraq, passing a nonbinding resolution that disapproves of his decision to send about 21,500 more U.S. troops to the conflict. Most of those troops are being dispatched to Baghdad.

The U.S. House vote was the strongest rebuke of a president during wartime since Congress in 1970 rescinded the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that authorized military action in Southeast Asia.

Bush's approval rating stands at 32 percent, tied for his lowest standing in Associated Press-Ipsos polling, and most people in the United States find fault with his handling of the nearly four-year-old Iraq war.

"Some do not think that this was the right war to fight, and others think that we in the administration haven't fought this war quite right," but still support U.S. forces and others in harm's way." Rice said. "I keep hearing and reading the American people don't want to fight this war anymore. I don't think that's right. The American people want to know that we can succeed,"

Problematic Maliki

Rice met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and U.S. officials in the protected Green Zone that houses the U.S. embassy.

Of Maliki, Rice said she has been ``quite impressed with his performance.''

Although Rice used her visit to publicly praise the Iraqi government's role in a new security crackdown in Baghdad, an Iraqi official said she was more critical in private.

Nouri al-Malikibecame prime minister in May 2006, and his time in office has been defined by a surge in sectarian violence and lack of progress in improving services, curbing soaring unemployment and fighting crime.

In July of 2006 al-Maliki was quoted as declining to condemn Hezbollah and blamed the violence in Israel and Lebanon, triggered by Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, on “Israeli aggression.” Making matters worse, Iraqi parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani accused Jews of masterminding killings in Iraq that were carried out by Sunni or Shiite insurgents

Last November, a Bush national security adviser had expressed doubts about the Iraqi prime minister's ability to end sectarian tensions ahead of a meeting between Bush and Maliki in Amman, Jordan. A confidential White House memo leaked in November questioned his ability to deal with the violence, and the Iraq Study Group report, prepared by a bipartisan commission, recommended that Washington should reduce military and political support to his government if it fails to make progress in curbing the violence.

In January of this year Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in a published report that he wishes he could leave office before his four-year term is up and would not run again."I didn't want to take this position," al-Maliki told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. "I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again."

And though Rice spoke approvingly of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's leadership, she urged Iraqi officials to enact laws to fairly administer the country's vast oil reserves.

Rice's message to the Iraqi's:

"The American people want to see results and aren't prepared to wait forever," Rice said during a 30-minute conversation with reporters in U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's living room. "But we're also not saying to the Iraqis: 'Get it done by X date or else.' That's not the way one treats a partnership in these difficult circumstances."

Rice met with al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani and later had lunch at the U.S. ambassador's residence with a group that included the Kurdish deputy prime minister and the country's foreign minister.

"The Baghdad security plan is just beginning to unfold, and I think it's important to realize it wasn't ever intended to be a sort of single day -- it was intended to ramp up over time.''

Rice told Iraqi government leaders Saturday that the contentious debate in Washington over President Bush's war strategy reflects U.S. doubts that democracy will prevail over violence.

"Some of the debate in Washington is in fact indicative of the concerns that some of the American people have ... if the Iraqi government doesn't do what it has said it will do," Rice said she told leaders from all of Iraq's factions.


Meeting with US troops:

In a talk with U.S. personnel in Baghdad, Rice described their mission as essential ``for the security and well-being of the United States.''

Rice acknowledged the debate about the war in the U.S. and told the soldiers and civilians that their sacrifice is ``appreciated.''

This comes in contrast to Presidential hopeful Senator Barak Obama, who got his candidacy off to an inauspicious start by saying last weekend that the war “should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and on which we've now spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.''


Whats happening now:


Iraqi and U.S. forces expanded searches in Baghdad and cleared neighborhoods of suspected militants this past week in an operation to beef up security in Iraq as violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims continued.

Rice said the joint operations were ``off to a good start, " and that she was `Impressed'.

But then Rice told Iraqi leaders that the Baghdad security operation needs to "rise above sectarianism" and noted that no U.S. or Iraqi forces have yet moved into the capital's major Shiite militia stronghold, the Iraqi official said.

The official said Rice told Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that the initial stage of the crackdown, which began Wednesday, appeared to focus on Sunni areas and had left Sadr City, stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia, nearly untouched.

Explosions last week in Baghdad killed at least 59 people on the first anniversary of the blast at the Shiite Muslim al-Askari mosque in Samarra, an event that triggered a wave of bloodshed between Shiites and Sunnis. The United Nations has said the sectarian violence last year left 34,452 civilians dead.


Then on Sunday following Rice's visit there were twin explosions in an open-air market that claimed 62 lives and a third blast that killed one. The first blast tore through a produce market in the mostly Shiite area of New Baghdad, toppling the wooden stalls and leaving pools of blood and vegetables trampled in the chaos. Minutes later, another car bomb exploded near a row of stores.


More than 129 people were injured, including many women who were shopping, said police and rescue officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

Victims were carried to hospitals on makeshift stretchers or in the arms of rescuers.

Another car bomb in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City left at least one dead and 10 wounded, police said.

It was by far the deadliest day since the security sweeps began. On Thursday, a string of car bombs killed seven civilians on the first full day of the house-to-house searches for weapons and suspected militants.

The U.S.-led teams have faced limited direct defiance as they set up checkpoints and comb neighborhoods. But that could change as they move into more volatile sections of the city. The next could be Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

U.S. soldiers pressed closer to Sadr City on Sunday and the reception changed noticeably. In previous days, Shiite families opened their doors to welcome the troops _ feeling that the American presence would be a buffer against feared attacks from Sunni militia.

On Sunday, in areas closer to Sadr City, parents slapped away the candy and lollipops given to children by soldiers.

Iran & Syria borders

The borders with Iran and Syria _ shut for three days as the plan got under way _ reopened Sunday. But new and strict rules will apply.

Moussawi, the plan's spokesman, was quoted in the Azzaman newspaper as saying the crossing points to the two nations would be open for only several hours a day and under "intense observation."
In Tehran, Syrian President Bashar Assad held talks with Iranian leaders, including President Mahmoud Ahamedinejad. The two leaders are generally on opposing sides of Iraq's sectarian divide: Iran backs the majority Shiites, and Syria is seen as a key supporter of Sunnis.Iran denies any role in the US claim that Iraqi militants receive aid and supplies from Iran, including parts for lethal roadside bombs targeting U.S. forces.Iran also denies that the anti-American cleric al-Sadr has crossed over from Iraq into Iran.

Next on Rice's agenda

Rice is due to meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni Sunday and with Palestinian and Israeli officials Monday ahead of a three-way summit with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Feb. 19. That summit is designed to jumpstart negotiations toward the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

That mission was complicated by last week's announced power-sharing pact between the U.S-backed Palestinian President and Hamas militants whom the Bush administration considers terrorists.
-posted by Paul Grant (follower of Basho)

Rice: Iraq worth investment of American Lives and Dollars

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The Associated Press on Thursday that Iraq is "worth the investment" in American lives and dollars.

The top U.S. diplomat said the United States can win in Iraq, although the war so far has been longer and more difficult than she had expected. She made the remarks at a time when President Bush is under pressure from the public and members of Congress to find a fresh course in the long-running and costly war, which has shown no signs of nearing an end and cost the lives of more than 2,950 American troops.

In the AP interview, Rice was asked whether an additional $100 billion the Pentagon wants for the Iraq and Afghan wars might amount to throwing good money after bad in Iraq. The U.S. has already spent more than $350 billion on the conflict.

"I don't think it's a matter of money," Rice said. "Along the way there have been plenty of markers that show that this is a country that is worth the investment, because once it emerges as a country that is a stabilizing factor you will have a very different kind of Middle East."

Piecing together the story of the weapons that weren't

Piecing together the story of the weapons that weren't
By Charles J. Hanley, The Associated Press

Beneath the giant dome of a Baghdad palace, facing his team of scientists and engineers, George Tenet sounded more like a football coach than a spymaster, a coach who didn't know the game was over.

Weapons of mass destruction were not found by these U.N. weapons inspectors, right, in Baghdad Feb. 5, 2003, nor since.

By David Guttenfelder, AP

"Are we 85% done?" the CIA boss demanded. The arms hunters knew what he wanted to hear. "No!" they shouted back. "Let me hear it again!" They shouted again.

The weapons are out there, Tenet insisted. Go find them.

Veteran inspector Rod Barton couldn't believe his ears. "It was nonsense," the Australian biologist said of that February evening last year, when the then-chief of U.S. intelligence secretly flew to Baghdad and dropped in on the lakeside Perfume Palace, chandelier-hung home of the Iraq Survey Group.

"It wasn't that we didn't know the major answers," recalled Barton, whose account matched that of another key participant. "Are there WMD in the country? We knew the answers."

In fact, David Kay, quitting as chief of the U.S. hunt for WMD, or weapons of mass destruction, had just delivered the answer to the world. The inspectors were 85% finished, Kay said, concluding: "The weapons do not exist."

The story of the weapons that weren't there, the prelude to war, was over, but a long post-mortem is still unfolding — of lingering questions in Washington, of revelations from investigations, leaks, first-person accounts. Some 52% of Americans believe the Bush administration deliberately misled them about the presence of banned arms in Iraq, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll taken in June.

Hans Blix, U.N. inspector, says Washington's "virtual reality" about Iraq eventually collided with "our old-fashioned ordinary reality." Now, drawing from findings of the Iraq Survey Group and other official investigations, from U.N., U.S., Iraqi and British documents, from Associated Press interviews and on-scene reporting, from books by Blix and others, it's possible to reconstruct much of the "ordinary reality" of this extraordinary story, one that has changed the course of history.

By Mario Tama, Getty Images
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, left, and Hans Blix listen as Colin Powell make a case against Iraq on Feb. 5, 2003. Blix battled U.S. impatience for war while leading inspections in Iraq.

Destroyed in 1991

The story could begin behind the creamy stone walls of another palace, the hilltop Hashemiyah outside Amman, Jordan, where in August 1995 a prize Iraqi defector was pouring out for interrogators whatever they wanted to know about Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction.

Hussein Kamel, son-in-law of President Saddam Hussein, had headed Iraq's advanced arms programs during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, when the Baathist regime unleashed chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Iraqi civilians in rebellious Kurdish areas.

What the U.N., American and other debriefers learned from Kamel led to headline-making successes for U.N. inspectors as they tracked down banned arms-making gear inside Iraq.

But an interrogation transcript shows he told them something else as well, something they questioned and kept to themselves: All Iraqi WMD were destroyed in 1991.

Hussein Kamel, soon to be killed by fellow clansmen as a traitor, was telling the truth.

The U.N. experts had entered Iraq in 1991, after U.S.-led forces drove Iraq's invasion army from Kuwait in a lightning war, and the U.N. Security Council required the defeated nation to submit to inspections and destruction of its unconventional arms.

The inspectors withdrew in late 1998, in a dispute over access to sites. By then, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) teams could report that Iraq's nuclear program, which never built a bomb, had been dismantled. As for chemical and biological weapons, only scattered questions remained about possible hidden stockpiles.

In fact, as President George W. Bush took office 25 months later, the CIA was reporting, "We do not have any direct evidence" Baghdad was rebuilding its WMD programs.

Baghdad on his mind

Bush, however, concentrated on Iraq's capital.

The new president quickly called an inner Cabinet meeting to discuss Iraq as a destabilizing force in the Mideast, ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill recalls in the book, The Price of Loyalty. Tenet unrolled a grainy satellite photo of an Iraqi factory, suggested it was making banned weapons, but said his CIA didn't really know, O'Neill said.

Washington and Baghdad had glowered at each other throughout Bill Clinton's presidency, but for a decade it was largely a cold war. Now Bush was ending this White House meeting by ordering Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to study possible military action, O'Neill said. Soon U.S. policymakers began hearing more about Iraq.

In April 2001, Pentagon intelligence said satellites spotted construction at old nuclear sites. Was Iraq resuming bomb research? That same month a CIA report told of another "indicator": Iraq was shopping for thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes, said to be useful as cores of centrifuges to enrich uranium, the stuff of atom bombs.

Then a shipment of the tubes was intercepted in neighboring Jordan, news that upset Baghdad's military industry chief. Abdel Tawab Huweish needed those tubes — 3 feet long, 3 inches wide — to make standard artillery rockets. He now ordered another metal be found, one that wouldn't arouse U.S. suspicions, Huweish later told U.S. arms investigators.

On April 11, 2001, a day after the classified CIA report was distributed, the Energy Department filed a swift dissent. Energy, home of U.S. centrifuge specialists, said the tubes' dimensions weren't well-suited for centrifuges, and were more likely meant for artillery rockets. The U.N. nuclear agency, the Vienna-based IAEA, told U.S. officials the same.

Evidence shows Iraq in 2001 had little interest in nuclear "reconstitution." In one captured document from that May, Iraqi diplomats in Kenya reported to Baghdad that a Ugandan businessman had offered uranium for sale, but they turned him away, saying U.N. sanctions forbade it.

Other 'indicators' surface

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for months had been receiving reports from German intelligence about an Iraqi defector, code-named "Curveball," who claimed to have worked on a project to build concealed bioweapons labs atop truck trailers.

Around this time, in June 2001, the trailers that U.S. officials later thought confirmed his account were ordered built at the al-Kindi factory in northern Iraq, inspectors would learn. Contract No. 73/MD/RG/2001 called not for secret weapons labs, however, but for two trailer units to make hydrogen for weather balloons. By this time, too, U.S. intelligence had been informed that Curveball was a possible alcoholic and "out of control."

The tubes tale, Curveball's account and other questionable stories about Iraqi WMD would survive for two years, in presidential speeches and newspaper headlines, on the road to war.

For now, in the summer of 2001, Iraq was back-page news. But Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser, assured an interviewer, "Saddam Hussein is on the radar screen." By summer's end, in the traumatic aftermath of Sept. 11's terror, he was in the crosshairs.

Post-9/11

On the day after Sept. 11, the talk in the White House Situation Room was of "getting Iraq," says former White House anti-terrorism chief Richard A. Clarke. Clarke's memoir says an insistent Bush ordered him to look for "any shred" to tie Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks — even though U.S. agencies knew al-Qaeda was responsible and Iraq wasn't linked to the terror group.

By Alex Wong, AFP/Getty Images
Joseph Wilson reported the story of Iraq receiving uranium from Nigeria was unfounded.

The immediate target was Afghanistan, however, invaded by U.S. forces in October 2001, and as 2002 began the WMD case against Iraq remained unimpressive. In his annual unclassified review, Tenet didn't even cite evidence of an imminent Iraqi nuclear threat. But Vice President Dick Cheney apparently thought he'd found such evidence, in a DIA report.

It told of a deal in 2000 in which Iraq bought 500 tons of uranium concentrate from Niger in central Africa. The information came from Italian intelligence, based on what it said was an official Niger document. Because of Cheney's interest, the CIA dispatched a seasoned Africa hand, ex-diplomat Joseph Wilson, to Niger to check it out.

After dozens of interviews, Wilson reported back that the story appeared unfounded. The State Department's intelligence bureau also deemed it implausible. In addition, the text of the supposed Niger document, transcribed for the Americans by the Italians, contained misspellings and mistaken titles for people that should have been easily detectable.

It was a forgery. But "Niger uranium" had won a place in the case against Iraq.

Building a coalition

In Iraq itself, the government was far from resurrecting a bomb program: In April 2002 workers in the western desert were busy smelting down the last gear from a long-defunct uranium-enrichment project, U.S. inspectors later learned.

Around this time, U.S. satellite reconnaissance was doubled over suspected Iraqi WMD sites, and analysts soon reported stepped-up activity, suggesting renewed production, at possible chemical weapons factories. What they apparently didn't realize, however, was that activity was being photographed more frequently — not that there necessarily was more activity.

The White House, meanwhile, worked on a political plan.

Leaked British documents show that Prime Minister Tony Blair told Bush at his Texas ranch in April 2002 that London would support military action to oust Saddam. But the British set conditions: Washington should seek re-entry of U.N. inspectors — which Saddam was expected to refuse — and then Security Council authorization for war.

Blair's Cabinet fretted. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in the secret minutes of a July 2002 meeting, observed that the case for war was "thin" but Bush had made up his mind. Intelligence chief Richard Dearlove, fresh from high-level Washington talks, also told the 10 Downing St. session that war had become inevitable, and U.S. intelligence was being "fixed" around this policy.

Blair and U.S. officials now deny war was predetermined and intelligence "fixed" to that end. From midsummer 2002 on, however, the Bush administration sharply stepped up its anti-Iraq rhetoric, along with U.S. air attacks on Iraqi defenses, done under cover of patrols over the "no-fly zones," swaths of Iraqi airspace denied to Iraqi aircraft. It also stepped up its citing of questionable intelligence.

As early as July 29, Rumsfeld spoke publicly of reports of Iraqi bioweapons labs "on wheels in a trailer" that can "make a lot of bad stuff."

A second Iraqi exile source had echoed Curveball's talk of such trailers. He was judged a fabricator by the CIA in early 2002, but by July his statements were back in classified U.S. reports. As for Curveball, whose veracity was never checked by the DIA, within three months his German handlers would be telling the CIA he was unreliable, a "waste of time."

As the summer wore on, Cheney struck an urgent, unequivocal tone in public.

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," the vice president told veterans assembled at an Opryland hotel in Nashville.

In an unusual move, Cheney shuttled to the CIA through mid-2002 to visit analysts 10 times, according to Patricia Wald, a member of the presidential investigative commission headed by Judge Laurence Silberman and ex-U.S. Sen. Charles Robb. The commission concluded analysts "worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom."

Strong as aluminum

That conventional wisdom took on more urgency on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002, when the lead article in The New York Times, citing unnamed administration officials, said Iraq "has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb."

The "tubes" story had been resurrected. Condoleezza Rice went on the TV talk circuit that morning saying the tubes were suited only for uranium centrifuges. Four days later in New York, President Bush was at the marble podium of the U.N. General Assembly, demanding the world body take action on Iraq or become "irrelevant." He, too, cited the aluminum tubes — proof of danger.

But neither the Times story nor administration officials hinted at the background debate over whether the tubes, in reality, were meant for Huweish's rockets. In fact, a CIA officer had recently suggested obtaining dimensions of an Italian rocket on which the Iraqi design was based, to compare them with the tubes. His idea was rejected.

As U.S. officials built up the threat, Saddam handed them a surprise: Iraq would allow Blix's U.N. inspectors back unconditionally.

Bush promptly labeled the Sept. 16 announcement a "ploy." But Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, told the General Assembly his country was "totally clear" of banned arms.

White Paper and not read

Democratic senators, wary as war momentum built in Washington, demanded a comprehensive intelligence report on Iraq. The CIA and other agencies patched together a classified National Intelligence Estimate, made available to lawmakers in early October.

Its unclassified version, a 25-page White Paper, was packed with "probablys," "mays" and "coulds," uncertainties that somehow led to certainties: "Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction programs," and "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons."

It would eventually emerge that the DIA, a month before the White Paper, had reported there was "no reliable information" on Iraqi chemical weapons production, and it didn't know the nature, amounts or condition of any biological weapons.

Across the Atlantic, Blair's government issued an assessment like the U.S. estimate, with conclusions unsupported by evidence.

"We were told there was other intelligence that we, the experts, could not see," senior British government analyst Brian Jones has since said. It later became clear such intelligence never existed, Jones said.

The Australian biologist Barton, a 1990s weapons inspector who by 2002 was a top Blix aide, was amazed at the British report's unexplained claim that Iraq could "deploy" chemical or biological weapons "within 45 minutes" — a claim picked up by Bush in a radio address.

Over an Irish-pub dinner in New York, Barton asked old friend David Kelly, a British bioweapons specialist, how he could have allowed something "so silly" in the report. "He just shook his head and said something like, 'People put in what they want to put in,'" Barton recalled.

Months later Kelly would commit suicide, caught in a political furor as a source for news reports that the WMD dossier was "sexed up."

The 93-page classified U.S. report had more qualifiers than the White Paper. But Wald says her commission learned that only 17 Congress members read the lengthier estimate. On Oct. 10-11, the two houses voted overwhelmingly to authorize Bush to use military force against Iraq.

U.N. debunking

Then the U.N. Security Council unanimously voted Nov. 8 to send Blix's inspectors to Iraq with expanded powers. It denied Washington "trigger" authority, however, to attack if the Americans deemed Iraq in violation of the resolution.

Blix knew U.S. leaders were impatient. In his book on the crisis, he writes that he met with Cheney at the White House and was told inspections could not go on forever, and Washington "was ready to discredit inspections in favor of disarmament" — that is, forcible disarmament.

On Nov. 27, 2002, the U.N. teams returned to Iraq. Springing surprise inspections across the countryside, the experts soon were debunking U.S. claims. At the Fallujah II chemical plant, for example, caught in a satellite's camera lens in the October U.S. estimate, they found the production line long broken-down.

By December, Saddam was informing senior generals in secret meetings that Iraq truly had no chemical or biological arms, U.S. investigators later learned. Baghdad's troops would have to fight without them.

Back in Washington, WMD "indicators" were being further undercut. "The Administration will ultimately look foolish — i.e. the tubes and Niger!" an Energy Department analyst told a colleague in an e-mail later uncovered by Senate Intelligence Committee investigators.

State of the Union

Preparing for Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, and sensing the weakness, Rice's national security staff asked the CIA for more. It responded with the report of a Niger uranium sale.

By Tim Dillon, USA TODAY
President Bush used shaky information in his State of the Union address in 2003. Vice President Dick Cheney, back, later told a TV audience that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons.

That story had grown still more dubious since Wilson's Niger visit 11 months earlier.

In October 2002, the State Department had obtained a copy of the original "Niger document." Its analysts told sister agencies they suspected forgery, and in mid-January alerted all that it "probably is a hoax." In October, too, Tenet had warned Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley, against using the alleged uranium sale in a Bush speech.

This time, however, Hadley accepted the uranium nugget — though attributed to the British — to bolster the State of the Union speech.

The tubes story also had slipped deeper into murkiness. State Department intelligence was siding with Energy in viewing them as likely rocket casings. The CIA arranged for centrifuge-like testing of the tubes in January, and they seemed to fail, only to supposedly pass after a "correction" was made.

On Jan. 28, 2003, with the world listening, Bush delivered his annual address.

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," he said. "Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

The U.S. chief executive also claimed Iraq had mobile bioweapons labs, but this story of Curveball's would fall further apart in the coming days.

On Feb. 3, 2003, word went up the CIA ladder that this Iraqi informant's German handlers "cannot vouch for the validity of the information." The next day, Senate investigators found, a CIA superior e-mailed a worried analyst that "this war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say."

Mr. Powell goes from Washington

The timing was critical — the eve of a pivotal presentation by Colin Powell.

By Mario Tama, Getty Images
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell held a vial of anthrax in trying to demonstrate to the U.N. Feb. 5, 2003 the threat Iraq posed.

That next morning, at the U.N. Security Council's horseshoe table, with CIA chief Tenet behind him, the secretary of state delivered an 80-minute indictment of Iraq, complete with aluminum tubes, up to "500 tons of chemical weapons agent," and artist's conceptions of Curveball's questionable "mobile labs."

Powell's sources went unidentified, tapes of intercepted conversation were cryptic, claims made about satellite photos were uncorroborated.

It turned out the State Department's own analysts had warned, futilely, against saying vehicles in spy photos were chemical "decontamination trucks," since they might be simple water trucks. And a senior CIA officer has told investigators he raised the Curveball concerns with Tenet the night before the speech, something Tenet denies.

After watching the performance on CNN in Baghdad, Amer al-Saadi, Iraqi liaison for the inspections, lamented that "the fiction goes on. It goes on and on."

But Powell's sober authority worked in America, where support for action soared.

Staunch against 'So-called inspections'

On the ground in Iraq, meanwhile, Blix's inspectors grew frustrated at the Iraqis' failure to explain leftover discrepancies from the 1990s. The chief inspector emphasized, however, that "unaccounted for" didn't necessarily mean weapons existed.

In one example, former Iraqi bioweapons specialists would eventually tell U.S. arms hunters that they never documented destruction of one batch of their anthrax in 1991 because it was dumped near a Saddam palace. They feared the dictator's wrath.

By January 2003, the experts from Blix's U.N. commission and Mohamed ElBaradei's IAEA had inspected 13 major "facilities of concern" from the previous fall's U.S. and British reports, and found no signs of weapons-making. The IAEA publicly exposed the Niger document as a forgery, and found the aluminum tubes poor candidates for centrifuges. Checking supposed sites for manufacturing mobile labs, Blix's teams debunked Curveball's tale at the Iraq end.

Washington was unmoved. Administration loyalists dismissed the "so-called inspections." In late February 2003, a Powell aide sternly told Blix nothing would suffice short of Iraq's unveiling its "secret hide sites." Most significantly, Bush ordered no reassessment of his government's collapsing claims.

Blix told the Security Council he could complete the work within months. The White House wasn't interested. "More time, more inspectors, more process, in our judgment, is not going to affect the peace of the world," Bush said on March 6, as the Pentagon counted down toward war.

Cheney at one point even told a TV audience — without challenge from the host — that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons. Of ElBaradei, whose IAEA refuted the claims about uranium and tubes, Cheney said, "I think Mr. ElBaradei, frankly, is wrong." But the CIA had already accepted ElBaradei's judgment on the Niger uranium document.

WMDs: 'That is what this war was about'

On March 17, in New York, U.S. diplomats gave up trying to win Security Council backing for war. That evening, on television, Bush told the American people there was "no doubt" Iraq had "some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

The bombing began two days later, and as U.S. troops swept up the Tigris and Euphrates plain to easy victory, they searched for WMD. "We know where they are," Rumsfeld claimed on March 30. But despite a flurry of false "finds" by eager troops, they weren't there.



Just before the war, al-Kindi company technicians had tested the unit and it worked, its tubes spewing hydrogen for weather balloons. They could deliver on the 2001 contract. To empty-handed U.S. analysts, however, the vehicle and a second trailer looked like the artist's conception of Curveball's mobile labs, ready to concoct killer germs.

The White House embraced this illusion. "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories," President Bush assured Polish television on May 29. By then, however, experts had tested a trailer and found no trace of pathogens or toxins.

"They have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said on April 10. But soon the Washington line shifted to claims Iraq had not weapons, but WMD "programs" — also untrue, inspectors later certified. Then the war was framed as one to democratize Iraq.

Through 2003, Iraqis watched their land slip into a chaos of looting, terror bombings and anti-American insurgency. "A country was destroyed because of weapons that don't exist!" Baghdad University's president, Nihad Mohammed al-Rawi, despaired to an AP reporter.

Month by month, David Kay and his 1,500-member Iraq Survey Group labored over documents, visited sites, interrogated detained scientists and came to recognize reality. But when he wanted to report it, Kay ran into roadblocks in Washington.

"There was an absolutely closed mind," Kay tells AP. "They would not look at alternative explanations in these cases," specifically the aluminum tubes and bioweapons trailers.

In December 2003, Kay flew back to Washington and met with Tenet and CIA deputy John McLaughlin. "I couldn't budge John, and so I couldn't budge George," he says. Kay resigned, telling the U.S. Congress there had been no WMD threat.

Ex-CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, speaking for Tenet, points out that Kay himself, in Senate testimony at the time, said the tubes remained an "open question," although it was "more than probable" they were rocket casings.

'Fool's gold'

The Bush administration then sent Charles Duelfer — like Kay a senior U.N. inspector from the 1990s — to take over the arms hunt. He arrived in time for Tenet's secret visit and palace pep talk on Feb. 12, 2004, but, like Kay before him, Duelfer could find no sign of WMD.

Still, the pressure continued. Barton, recruited as a Duelfer adviser, told AP the American chief inspector received an e-mail that March from John Scarlett, head of Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee, urging that nine "nuggets," past allegations, be dropped back into an interim report by Duelfer's group.

Those "sexy bits," as the Australian called them, are believed to have included, for example, baseless speculation that Iraq worked to weaponize smallpox. Duelfer called the nuggets "fool's gold," Barton says, and left them out.

Asked about this, the British Foreign Office said Scarlett contacted Iraq Survey Group leaders as part of his job, but that the report's content was Duelfer's responsibility alone.

Barton said CIA officers in the Iraq Survey Group insisted that its reporting should not discredit the mobile-labs story "because that contradicts what Tenet has said." They also wanted the report to suggest the tubes might have been for centrifuges, although Duelfer's experts concluded otherwise.

Duelfer's interim testimony to Congress in March 2004 said nothing about mobile labs and said the tubes remained under study.

As late as Sept. 30 last year, in an election debate, Bush stuck to his views.

"Saddam Hussein had no intention of disarming," Bush maintained.

A week before, Duelfer had conveyed his 1,000-page final report to the CIA, saying Saddam had disarmed 13 years earlier.

Note: This reconstruction of what happened on the road to war in Iraq is based on government inquiries, official documents, fresh interviews and other sources.

Powell gives bleak assessment of Iraq

Colin Powell, US secretary of state, says he would like to see US troops leave Iraq “as quickly as possible” but that the insurgency does not allow the Bush administration to set a timeframe for a withdrawal.

He said Mr Rumsfeld, criticised for the conduct of the war, had an interest in hiding the true picture from the president. According to Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and head of the independent Middle East Policy Council, Mr Bush recently asked Mr Powell for his view on the progress of the war. “We're losing,” Mr Powell was quoted as saying. Mr Freeman said Mr Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave.


One counterinsurgency expert said Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, had a “brutally accurate” picture of the situation and the potential dangers. But a member of an influential neoconservative policy group, who asked not to be named, said such warnings “stop well short of thepresident”.

He said Mr Rumsfeld, criticised for the conduct of the war, had an interest in hiding the true picture from the president. According to Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and head of the independent Middle East Policy Council, Mr Bush recently asked Mr Powell for his view on the progress of the war. “We're losing,” Mr Powell was quoted as saying. Mr Freeman said Mr Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave.

Asked to comment on this account, a senior White House official said he had no knowledge of such an exchange and added: “The president acknowledges there are significant challenges. He does not characterise them as insurmountable. Others do.”

Analysts are concerned that with the departure of Mr Powell and his replacement by Condoleezza Rice, the president's loyal national security adviser, the White House will be further shielded from dissent.


“A president is not well served when he has people in his cabinet who have points of view but are not prepared to argue those points of view forcefully for fear that it might leak or it looks like members of the cabinet are squabbling,” Mr Powell told Fox News.

The White House is stressing the January 30 election is just the start of a process that is scheduled to lead to a national referendum on a constitution by October and another parliamentary election by December.

Mr Powell said there must be Sunni representation in the government to be formed after the elections. This reflects US efforts to persuade the main parties of the Shia majority, who are expected to sweep the polls, to co-opt members of the Sunni minority into the administration and the process of drafting the constitution. US leverage rests upon awareness among the Shia that their government is unlikely to survive a civil war without continued US military support.

Charles Boyd, a former general who had opposed the war, said he was dismayed at the administration's lack of commitment in fighting it.

“Our government is not mobilised for war of this size and complexity. We are acting on a ‘business as usual' format,” he said.

Weapons hunt over

Although the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction has ended, the Iraqi Survey Group will continue gathering information to help US forces deal with insurgents in Iraq. Charles Duelfer, the CIA special adviser who led the search, is expected to issue a final addendum next month to his September report concluding Iraq had no such weapons.

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Video :Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice - Iraq Has No WMD's

 

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Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice - Iraq Has No WMD's

Colin Powelll states clearly in February 2001, that Iraq is in no position to pose any threat to the US and has no weapons of mass destruction.