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Recent
Stories
July
29, 2003
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
July
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
July
25, 2003
Francis
A. Boyle
Impeaching Bush
David
Krieger
15 Questions
Harvey
Wasserman
Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah
Steve Dunifer
Seize the Airwaves!
Dan
Bacher
Federal Judge Throws Out Bush Salmon Plan for Klamath River
Kurt Nimmo
Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Stop the Wall!
July
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses...Again
Robert
Fisk
The Ugly Story of Camp Cropper: The
US Torture Camp in Iraq
David
Lindorff
Dumb and Dumber in Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Ashcroft Demands Death Penalty in
Puerto Rico
David
Vest
Dylan in Bend
Tom Turnipseed
Killing Saddam & His Family Won't Stop Killing of US Troops
Douglas
Valentine
A Nation of Assassins
Stew Albert
Contract Killing
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Report on Palestinian Child Prisoners
July
23, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Caesar's Favor
David
Lindorff
Lynne Stewart's Big Win: Ashcroft
Rebuked
Mano
Singham
Iraq's Missing WMD Scientists
Steve
Perry
Better Late Than Never: the Press, the Dems, and Bush's Lies
John Stanton
Avoiding Plato's Republic in America: Is Anarchy the Only Hope?
Patrick
Bond
Bush and South Africa: a Petro-Military-Commerce Mission
Harry Browne
A Victory for a Disarming Irishwoman
Paul
Beaulieu
When the WTO Comes to Montreal
Robert
Fisk
The Sons are Dead, But the Resistance
Will Grow
William
Witherup
Georgie Porgie
Website
of the Day
Lieberman & Falwell:
True Love at Last
July
22, 2003
Diane
Christian
Bad Guy / Good Guy: War Forces;
Peace Frees
Jeremy
Brecher
Solidarity and Student Protests in Iran
Steve
Kretzmann
and Jim Vallette
Plugging Iraq into Globalization
Sam
Smith
Greening the Golden Triangle
James
Plummer
Smile, You're on Federal Camera
Lucretia
Stewart
This Day Shall Not Define My Life:
January 18, 2003
Website
of the Day
Iraq Coalition Casualties
July
21, 2003
Edward
Said
Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping
of Arabs
Ron
Jacobs
Shut Up and Shoot
Allan J.
Lichtman
Why is George Bush President?
Elaine
Cassel
How's the Occupation Going? Ask the People of Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
History Recapitulates: Guantanamo and the Japanese Internment
Camps
Bruce
Jackson
Third and Arizona, Santa Monica
Website
of the Day
John Dean: Taking Apart Bush's State of the Union Speech, Claim
by Claim
July
19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
July
18, 2003
David
Vest
Drowning in Deep Doo-Doo
Rahul
Mahajan
Deceit Runs Deep
John Chuckman
Enron-style Management in a Dangerous World
Harold
A. Gould
The Bush-Musharraf Conclave
Alvaro
Angarita
In the Eye of the Storm: Colombia's War on Journalists
David
Grenier
Sovereignty and Solidarity in Indian Country...Rhode Island
Dave Lindorff
Bush and Hitler: a Response to the Wall Street Journal
Website
of the Day
Murder of a Whistleblower? Timeline in David Kelly Affair
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
July
29, 2003
Did
Chalabi Help Write Bush's Speech?
White
House Said in January It Used Info from Iraqi Exiles in State
of the Union Address
By JASON LEOPOLD
Last weekend, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz explained that the United States at times relied on
"murky" intelligence in trying to link Iraq to the
al-Qaeda terrorist group, but the war against Iraq was justified
despite the fact that the White House is now being dogged by
questions about the accuracy of its prewar intelligence.
"The nature of terrorism intelligence
is intrinsically murky," Wolfowitz said on "Meet the
Press. "If you wait until the terrorism picture is clear,
you're going to wait until after something terrible has happened."
But the reasons behind the murky intelligence
used by the White House to build a case for war against Iraq
may have more to do with the people who provided the Pentagon
and the White House with its information on Iraq's alleged weapons
of mass destruction than the difficulties the intelligence
community already faces in trying to obtain reliable intelligence
from a variety of sources.
"Having concluded that international
inspectors are unlikely to find tangible and irrefutable evidence
that Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration
is preparing its own assessment that will rely heavily on evidence
from Iraqi defectors, according to senior administration officials,"
The New York Times reported Jan. 23.
In addition, Bush administration officials
said Jan. 23 some of the intelligence information provided by
the Iraqi defectors would likely be included in the president's
State of the Union address, which may explain why the White
House has come under fire for failing to paint an accurate picture
of the Iraqi threat_it is well-known among intelligence experts
that much of the information provided by Iraqi defectors is
unreliable.
"The White House asked administration
intelligence analysts ... to use the information from the defectors
as part of a "bill of particulars" that the administration
hopes will convince skeptical allies and the American public
that Iraq's behavior warrants military action, the officials
said," The Times reported. "In addition, they said,
it may be incorporated into President Bush's State of the Union
address on Jan. 28."
Many of the defectors were encouraged
to speak to intelligence officials by Ahmad Chalabi, head of
the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group with close ties
to the White House. There continue to be deep divisions in
Washington over the value of information from defectors associated
with Chalabi's group.
"The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence
Agency has been the most receptive to the defectors intelligence,
saying that defectors are critical to penetrating Iraq's deceptive
practices. The CIA has often been dismissive of the defectors
and questioned their credibility, according to administration
officials," the Times reported.
As lawmakers in Washington begin investigations
into the accuracy of pre-war intelligence, they should question
whether the White House and the Pentagon used dubious information
from Iraqi defectors to help sway public opinion in supporting
the war and whether some of that information was included in
Bush's State of the Union address in January.
Five days before President's Bush's State
of the Union Speech Jan. 28, Wolfowitz spoke to the Council
of Foreign Relations in New York and credited Iraqi defectors
with providing the Pentagon and other U.S. "intelligence
agencies" much of the information on Iraq's secret weapons
programs that has long been dismissed by military personnel
in Iraq as unreliable.
Wolfowitz said in his Jan. 23, presentation
to the Council of Foreign Relations that it was Iraqi defectors
who told the CIA and the Pentagon about mobile trailers in Iraq
that were allegedly used to produce biological weapons.
"We know about that capability from
defectors and other sources," Wolfowitz said during his
speech, which can be found at <http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2003/t01232003_t0123cfr.
html> "For a great body of what we need to know, we are
very dependent on traditional methods of intelligence _ that
is to say, human beings who are either deliberately or inadvertently
communicating to us."
Secretary of State Colin Powell in his
February presentation to the United Nations where he was trying
to win support for war, pointed to the trailers as evidence
of Iraq's secret weapons program.
When the trailers were found in May,
President Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National
Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice were quick to point out that
the trailers were used to produce lethal chemical weapons, even
though no traces of any chemical weapons were found inside
the trailers.
But the State Department in a June 2
classified memorandum disputed the conclusion that the trailers
were used to cook up deadly weapons. United Nations weapons
inspectors said that the trailers were likely used to produce
hydrogen for weather balloons.
Prior to the war in March, Wolfowitz
said some of the most valuable information it received came
from Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a contractor who escaped
Iraq in the summer of 2001. He told American officials that
chemical and biological weapons laboratories were hidden beneath
hospitals and inside presidential palaces and he provided documents
to back up some of his other assertions about Iraq's weapons
programs.
In December and January, the White House
highlighted Haideri's claims against Iraq in a report called
"Iraq; A Decade of Deception and Defiance" and in
a fact sheet on Iraq posted on the White Houses web site. But
when U.S. forces searched the hospitals and presidential palaces
where Haideri said weapons were hidden they found nothing, not
even evidence that weapons had ever been there.
Jason Leopold
can be reached at: jasonleopold@hotmail.com
Weekend Edition Features for July 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
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