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Ted Rall speaks.
2003-06-16 15:00:36
THEY IMPEACH MURDERERS, DON'T THEY?
By Ted Rall
Bush Must Step Down
NEW YORK--George W. Bush told us that Iraq and Al Qaeda were working together. They weren't. He repeatedly implied that Iraq had had something to do with 9/11. It hadn't. He claimed to have proof that Saddam Hussein possessed banned weapons of mass destruction. He didn't. As our allies watched in horror and disgust, Bush conned us into a one-sided war of aggression that killed and maimed thousands of innocent people, destroyed billions of dollars in Iraqi infrastructure, cost tens of billions of dollars, cost the lives of American soldiers, and transformed our international image as the world's shining beacon of freedom into that of a marauding police state. Presidents Nixon and Clinton rightly faced impeachment for comparatively trivial offenses; if we hope to restore our nation's honor, George W. Bush too must face a president's gravest political sanction.
As the Bush Administration sold Congress and the public on the "threat" posed by Saddam Hussein last winter, White House flack Ari Fleischer assured the American people: "The President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense would not assert as plainly and vocally as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it." That's unambiguous rhetoric. But since allied occupation forces have failed to find WMDs, Bush is backtracking: "I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out that they did have a weapons program," the C-in-C now says.
What's next? Claiming that Saddam had WMDs because, you know, you could just feel it?
A ferocious power struggle is taking place between Langley and the White House. "It's hard to tell if there was a breakdown in intelligence or a breakdown in the way intelligence was used," says Michele Flournoy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. No it's not. Career analysts at the Central and Defense Intelligence Agencies, furious at Bush for sticking them with the blame for the weapons scandal, are leaking prewar memoranda that indicate that the Administration covered up the spooks' assessments, making the case for war with a pile of lies constructed on a bedrock of oil-fueled greed.
A September 2002 DIA study said that there was "no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons," but Bush ignored the report--and told us the exact opposite. After Bush used the discovery of two alleged mobile weapons labs to claim "we found the weapons of mass destruction," CIA "dissenters" shot back that Bush had lied about their reports and that they "doubted the trailers were used to make germ agents, not[ing] that the plants lacked gear for steam sterilization, which is typically necessary for making bioweapons." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld parried: "Any indication or allegation that the intelligence was in any way politicized, of course, is just false on its face...We haven't found Saddam Hussein either, but no one's doubting that he was there." Rummy also floated the CIA-debunked tale of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link.
Both factions are missing the point.
Calling for a full Congressional investigation, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) of the Armed Services Committee, says: "I think that the nation's credibility is on the line, as well as Bush's." But not even the discovery of a vast WMD arsenal should save Bush now. Assuming that one accepts preemption as a legitimate cause for war--and one ought not--you must possess airtight substantiation that a nation poses an imminent and significant threat before you drop bombs on its cities. Evidence that falls short of 100 percent proof, presented in advance, doesn't pass the pre-empt test.
Bush claimed to have that proof. He said that Iraq could deploy its biological and chemical weapons with just 45 minutes notice. He painted gruesome pictures of American cities in ruins, their debris irradiated by an Iraqi "dirty bomb." It was all a bald-faced lie, and lying presidents get impeached.
George W. Bush, like Richard Nixon, "endeavor[ed] to misuse the Central Intelligence Agency." George W. Bush, like Richard Nixon, "[made] or caus[ed] to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States." (The legalese comes from the first Article of Impeachment against Nixon, passed by the House Judiciary Committee on July 27, 1974. Faced with certain impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate, Nixon resigned two weeks later.)
In the words of Bill Clinton's 1998 impeachment, George W. Bush "has undermined the integrity of his office, has brought disrepute on the Presidency, has betrayed his trust as President, and has acted in a manner subversive of the rule of law and justice, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States."
Nixon and Clinton escaped criminal prosecution for burglary, perjury and obstruction of justice. George W. Bush, however, stands accused as the greatest mass murderer in American history. The Lexington Institute estimates that the U.S. killed between 15,000 and 20,000 Iraqi troops during the fraudulently justified invasion of Iraq, plus 10,000 to 15,000 wounded. More than 150 U.S. soldiers were killed, plus more than 500 injured. A new Associated Press study of Iraqi civilian casualties confirms at least 3,240 deaths. Although Bush, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice denied such legal niceties to the concentration-camp inmates captured in their illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, these high-ranking Administration henchmen should be quickly turned over--after impeachment proceedings for what might properly be called Slaughtergate--to an international tribunal for prosecution of war crimes.
Anything less would be anti-American.
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Interesting points...
2003-06-06 21:11:01
"Republicans like you talk as if they want less government but every time they get elected, the bureaucracy gets bigger. They fire 10 government workers to make it look good, then they hire a consulting firm with 175 employees to do the work of the 10 government workers they fired.
You say government should let business alone. Well, it left Enron alone and look what happened. Big business pretends it doesn't like big government, but big business and big government are in business together. The government is the biggest customer big business has.
The economy is down the drain under George W. Bush, the rest of the world hates us and now that our soldiers - most of whom are Democrats - have won the war in Iraq, Bush doesn't know what to do about the peace.
Tony Blair makes him sound like a high school dropout. You Republicans would be smart if you didn't even nominate him for a second term. " -
Sept. Intelligence Didn't Find Iraq WMD
2003-06-06 20:58:27
Sept. Intelligence Didn't Find Iraq WMD
Fri Jun 6,11:56 AM ET Add White House - AP Cabinet & State to My Yahoo!
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon's intelligence service reported last September that it had no reliable evidence that Iraq had chemical agents in weaponized form, officials said Friday.
The time frame is notable because it coincided with Bush administration efforts to mount a public case for the urgency of disarming Iraq, by force if necessary. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others argued that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical, biological and other weapons and was hiding them.
Two months after major fighting in Iraq ended, U.S. officials have yet to find any chemical or other mass-killing weapons, although they still express confidence that some will turn up.
Rumsfeld recently raised the possibility that Iraq destroyed the weapons before the war started March 20. He also has said he believes some remain and will be discovered when U.S. search teams find knowledgeable Iraqis who are willing to disclose the locations.
In making its case for invading Iraq, the administration also argued that Iraq was seeking to develop nuclear weapons and that it might provide some of its mass-killing weapons to terrorists.
On Friday, a small team of United Nations nuclear experts arrived in Baghdad to begin a damage assessment at Iraq's largest nuclear facility, known as Tuwaitha. It was left unguarded by American and allied troops during the early days of the war and then pillaged by villagers.
The arrival of the team — whose members are not weapons inspectors — marked the first time since the Iraq war began that representatives from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency returned to the country. The atomic energy agency had long monitored Iraq's nuclear program.
In its report last September, the Defense Intelligence Agency said it could find no reliable information to indicate that Iraq had any chemical weapons available for use on the battlefield. But the agency also said Iraq probably had stockpiles of banned chemical warfare agents.
The existence of the DIA report was disclosed by U.S. News & World Report, and a classified summary was reported by Bloomberg News on Thursday. Two Pentagon officials who had read the summary confirmed Friday that it said DIA had no hard evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons.
The DIA's analysis is just one piece of an intelligence mosaic that Rumsfeld and other senior administrations could consider in making their own assessment of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons capability. Congress is reviewing the prewar intelligence to determine whether the administration overplayed the weapons threat in order to justify toppling the Iraqi regime.
On Friday, the Senate Armed Services convened a closed-door hearing focusing on the mission of the 75th Exploitation Task Force, which made the initial effort to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at the conclusion of the war, and the follow-on search team, called the Iraq Survey Group.
The committee was hearing from Stephen A. Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence; Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the DIA; and an unidentified CIA representative.
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The CIA bowed to Bush administration pressure
2003-06-06 20:55:53
Intelligence Historian Says CIA 'Buckled' on Iraq
Fri Jun 6, 4:28 PM ET Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA bowed to Bush administration pressure to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs ahead of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, a leading national security historian concluded in a detailed study of the spy agency's public pronouncements.
"What is clear from intelligence reporting is that until about 1998 the CIA was fairly comfortable with its assessments on Iraq," John Prados wrote in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
"But from that time on the agency gradually buckled under the weight of pressure to adopt alarmist views," he said. "After mid-2001, the rush to judgment on Iraq became a stampede."
A CIA spokesman, Mark Mansfield, dismissed Prados' conclusion, saying "The notion that we buckled under and adopted alarmist views is utter nonsense."
The supposedly imminent threat from Iraq's feared chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs was cited by U.S. and British leaders as the chief justification for going to war in March. Eight weeks after Saddam's ouster, U.S. forces have yet to find any chemical or biological weapons in Iraq.
Prados is author of 11 books, including "Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations from World War II through the Persian Gulf." His biography of the late CIA chief William Colby has been praised as "meticulously researched" by Thomas B. Allen, co-author of "Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage."
In his study of unclassified Iraq intelligence judgments, Prados said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had no need for a specially created intelligence team at the Pentagon to search for terrorist links with Iraq and other countries -- "George Tenet's CIA had already been hounded" into building the case for war.
TENET DENIAL
Tenet, the director of central intelligence, denied last week a rising tide of charges, including from insiders who spoke on condition of anonymity, that intelligence on Iraq had been slanted to buttress President Bush's approach to Saddam.
"The integrity of our process was maintained throughout, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong," Tenet said ahead of a report by a CIA review team examining prewar intelligence judgments.
In an Oct. 7, 2002, letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, Tenet said that in response to a U.S.-initiated attack that put Saddam in danger of defeat, the chances of his use of weapons of mass destruction were "pretty high, in my view."
Much of U.S. prewar intelligence findings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was flimsy but policymakers' goals were clear, said Mel Goodman, a professor at the Pentagon's National War College and director of the Intelligence Reform Project at the Center for International Policy in Washington.
"To deny that there was any pressure on the intelligence community is just absurd," said Goodman, who quit in 1990 as a CIA analyst over alleged skewing of intelligence.
The Defense Intelligence Agency, in a classified September 2002 report, said it lacked enough "reliable information" to conclude Iraq was amassing chemical weapons, even as the administration was pushing for war, an official said on Friday.
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Bush's war doctrine questioned
2003-06-06 20:50:59
Bush's war doctrine questioned Skepticism of intelligence on Iraq undercuts pre-emptive strike policy
By John Diamond
and Bill Nichols
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's policy of taking pre-emptive military action against dangerous nations faces growing scrutiny from members of Congress who voted for war in Iraq but now wonder why Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction have not been found.
Because pre-emption means striking an enemy before the enemy can attack, intelligence would be a key ingredient in any future pre-emptive action the president might propose. For example, Iran and North Korea are both said by U.S. intelligence to have active nuclear weapons programs that could be a threat to the United States. While the administration has said it has no plans to invade, those countries could be high on any list of pre-emption targets.
The inability to find banned weapons in Iraq has put U.S. intelligence under a cloud. Congress is beginning inquiries into whether intelligence claims about Iraq were accurate or exaggerated by the White House to smooth the way to war.
A failure by the Bush administration to prove its prewar allegations could undermine the pre-emption doctrine. The next time the president comes to Capitol Hill warning of an emerging threat, one that requires military action to pre-empt and defeat, some lawmakers of both parties say they will be skeptical.
''If you're going to have a doctrine of pre-emption,'' said Jay Rockefeller, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, ''then you sure as heck better have pluperfect intelligence.''
A Republican senator who spoke on condition of anonymity said that if President Bush went to Congress with another plan to strike an enemy state, ''It would have to be very clear and convincing intelligence for it not to cause a dispute.''
Sen. Joseph Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he worries that Bush administration officials may come to Congress with a valid warning but fail to win support because of lingering doubts about Iraq.
''They're damaged, period,'' Biden said. ''I think it undercuts our credibility. In that sense, I think it weakens us.''
Three committees in the Republican-controlled Congress have demanded that the CIA produce documents backing up the judgments it made before the war.
Bush administration officials say failure to find the weapons doesn't mean they aren't there. ''We haven't found Saddam Hussein, and I don't know anybody who's running around saying he didn't exist,'' Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday.
But the administration is clearly alarmed by the level of skepticism and has scrambled to get Republican members of Congress to delay formal inquiries. The effort has had mixed results.
Two weeks ago, Pat Roberts, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, was asked on NBC's Meet the Press what would happen if Bush went to Capitol Hill with another proposal for a pre-emptive war. ''Well, basically you have a real credibility problem,'' he replied.
This week, Roberts said he was in no hurry to hold hearings on U.S. intelligence on Iraq. A 1,400-person U.S. inspection team, newly arrived in Iraq, should be given time to search for hidden weapons, he said.
Nonetheless, even Roberts wants to review documents being assembled by the CIA under pressure from Congress to back up its prewar warnings.
Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, meanwhile, has stuck with his call for hearings into the accuracy of intelligence on Iraq.
''It is a basic concern that has to be answered,'' Warner said.
Bush told U.S. troops in Qatar on Thursday that the hunt for weapons will take time. ''This is a man who spent decades hiding tools of mass murder,'' Bush said. ''He knew the inspectors were looking for them.''
Robert Byrd, one of the few Senate Democrats to oppose the October resolution authorizing war on Iraq, took after Bush again in a Senate floor speech Thursday.
''What amazes me is that the president himself is not clamoring for an investigation,'' Byrd said. ''It is his integrity that is on the line.''
Much of the concern about pre-emptive wars comes from Democrats who were unenthusiastic about the doctrine to begin with but who supported the war in Iraq and now have doubts about their own votes. ''I don't buy the pre-emption doctrine, but they will never be able to sell it if they can't sell the accuracy and objectivity of their intelligence,'' said Rep. Jane Harman, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
The pre-emption doctrine represents a major shift in U.S. foreign policy. Bush first outlined it in a speech at West Point a year ago, breaking with decades of U.S. policy that sought to contain adversaries without conflict.
''If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long,'' the president said in the June 2002 speech. ''We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge.''
The controversy could evaporate in a single afternoon if U.S. forces find a cache of chemical or biological weapons, or equipment that Iraq used to make them. Until then, questions about the U.S. intelligence on Iraq linger even as the Bush administration ups the pressure on North Korea and Iran, which, along with Iraq, form what Bush called the ''axis of evil.''
U.S. intelligence believes North Korea has one or two nuclear weapons and an active program to produce more. Intelligence indicates that Iran is likely several years from making a nuclear weapon but is building facilities that could produce weapons material.
Intelligence professionals caution that the CIA rarely collects perfect information on adversaries and that waiting for it could be dangerous. ''We must act, even if intelligence is imperfect,'' said George Robertson, a former U.S. military intelligence analyst and Iraqweapons inspector.
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