All spin all the time
By Russ Baker
Viva Nihilism! It must be great working in the Bush White House. Zero
accountability. Its All Spin, All the Time. Nothing matters but
politics, hence no unfounded claim requires correction or apology. Unless,
of course, they are pushed to the end of the plank, as they were recently
with the tale about Niger and nuclear materials.
Take those elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction. Despite the failure of
the concentrated might of the US military-intelligence complex to find
anything that might qualify in the remotest possible way, the administration
labels critics revisionist historians and imperturbedly moves
on. The initial assertions and touted discoveries usually
get more attention than does the sound of a balloon deflating. Thats
why polls find a sizable chunk of the American public still under the
impression that WMD have been found.
Whatever Saddams interest in WMD, the administration didnt
know what he had and didnt have solid evidence to make the claims
it did much less to launch a war over them. For those amateur revisionist
historians out there, here is a partial, unscientific reconstruction
of the claims that fizzled.
THE CLAIM: Iraq has trained Al-Qaida members in bombmaking and
poisons and deadly gasses... [which] could allow the Iraqi regime to attack
America without leaving any fingerprints. - President Bush, Oct.
7, 2002.
THE FACTS: The alleged Al-Qaida training camp, which Colin Powell described
to the United Nations in February, is later revealed to be outside Iraqs
control and patrolled by Allied warplanes. By late June, Michael Chandler,
the head of the UN team monitoring global efforts to counter Al-Qaida,
tells Agence France Press: We have never had information presented
to us even though weve asked questions which would
indicate that there is a direct link.
THE SPIN: State Dept. spokesman Richard Boucher responds: Secretary
Powell provided clear and convincing evidence of the links between Iraq
and Al-Qaida.
THE CLAIM: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein
recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, Bush
declares in the State of the Union address.
THE FACTS: In March, Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), tells the UN Security Council that the documents
substantiating the claim of alleged Iraqi efforts to buy uranium in Niger
were fakes (and bad ones at that) and that these specific allegations
are unfounded. The unnamed ex-ambassador whom the CIA sent to check
out the story tells The New Republic: They knew the Niger story
was a flat-out lie.
THE SPIN: Pass the buck, finally fessing up in a White House statement
delivered on July 7 that Bush should not have used the uranium allegations
in his address.
THE CLAIM: US officials present evidence suggesting that Iraq tried to
buy aluminum tubes for use in centrifuges for the uranium enrichment process.
THE FACTS: IAEAs ElBaradei later reports that extensive investigation
failed to uncover any evidence that Iraq intended to use the
tubes for any project other than the reverse engineering of rockets.
THE SPIN: Powell releases a contradictory interpretation of the tubes,
then the matter disappears.
THE CLAIM: In early April, the Pentagon confirms discovery
of a biological and chemical weapons storage site near the town of Hindiyah,
complete with suspected sarin and tabun nerve agents.
THE FACTS: Fourteen barrels of liquids are reassessed to be pesticide.
THE SPIN: Silence.
THE CLAIM: In early April, a white powder found at a site near Najaf
is described as possible chemical agents, and presented as a likely smoking
gun.
THE FACTS: The powder is an explosive.
THE SPIN: Silence.
THE CLAIM: Biological laboratories described by our Secretary of
State to the whole world that were not supposed to be there, that are
a direct violation of the U.N. resolutions, have been discovered,
Bush tells reporters, on May 29, referring to trailers the administration
says are mobile labs.
THE FACTS: For weeks, numerous independent experts express serious doubts
about the trailers purposes; a classified State Department intelligence
memo cited by The New York Times also cautions about premature conclusions.
THE SPIN: The experts have spoken and the judgment of the experts
is very clear on this matter, says Fleischer. Colin Powell splits
hairs in backing the White House: State experts werent saying
it was not a mobile lab, they just were not quite up in that curve of
confidence that the rest of the intelligence community was at...
THE CLAIM: We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear
weapons. -- Vice President Cheney, Mar. 16, 2003 on Meet the Press.
THE FACTS: After the fighting, an Iraqi nuclear scientist cuts a deal
for refuge with the United States. Buried in his garden are documents
and parts of a gas centrifuge, which could be used to enrich uranium for
bombmaking. But the process of enriching uranium would require hundreds
or thousands of precisely machined centrifuges, working together perfectly.
THE SPIN: The administration declares this to be evidence that Bush and
Cheney were correct in saying that Saddam had never given up hope of building
nuclear weapons. From possession to hope in one
easy spin.
THE CLAIM:
In his State of the Union address, Bush claimed Iraq had the capacity
to produce 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 25,000 liters of anthrax
and 500 tons of sarin, mustard gas and VX nerve agent. He said Iraq also
had 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical weapons, plus several
mobile biological weapons laboratories and an active nuclear weapons development
program.
THE FACTS: Despite coalition troops combing the country, and vast reward
monies offered, none of this arsenal has been uncovered.
THE SPIN: The administration remains confident that something
substantial will be found.
Source: TomPaine.com
The dubious suicide of George Tenet
By William Rivers Pitt
Things have reached a pretty pass indeed when you apologize
for making a mistake, but nobody believes your apology. So it is today
with CIA Director Tenet, and by proxy George W. Bush and his administration.
On Friday evening, CIA Director Tenet publicly jumped on the Niger evidence
hand grenade, claiming the use in Bushs State of the Union Address
in January 2003 of data from known forgeries to support the Iraq war
was completely his fault. He never told Bushs people that the
data was corrupted, and it was his fault those sixteen words
regarding Iraqi attempts to procure uranium from Niger for a nuclear
program made it into the text of the speech.
Problem solved, right? Condoleezza Rice and Don Rumsfeld had been triangulating
on Tenet since Thursday, claiming the CIA had never informed the White
House about the dubious nature of the Niger evidence. Tenet, like a
good political appointee, fell on his sword and took responsibility
for the error. On Saturday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told
the press corps that Bush had moved on from this controversy.
Not so fast, said the New York Times editorial board. The paper of record
for the Western world published an editorial on Saturday entitled The
Uranium Fiction. The last time the Times editors used language
this strong was when Bush, in a moment of seemingly deranged hubris,
tried to nominate master secret-keeper Henry Kissinger to chair the
9/11 investigation:
It is clear, however, that much more went into this affair than
the failure of the CIA to pounce on the offending 16 words in Mr. Bushs
speech. A good deal of information already points to a willful effort
by the war camp in the administration to pump up an accusation that
seemed shaky from the outset and that was pretty well discredited long
before Mr. Bush stepped into the well of the House of Representatives
last January. Doubts about the accusation were raised in March 2002
by Joseph Wilson, a former American diplomat, after he was dispatched
to Niger by the CIA to look into the issue. Mr. Wilson has said
he is confident that his concerns were circulated not only within the
agency but also at the State Department and the office of Vice President
Dick Cheney. Mr. Tenet, in his statement yesterday, confirmed that the
Wilson findings had been given wide distribution, although he reported
that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and other high officials had not been directly
informed about them by the CIA.
The sun came up over Washington DC on Sunday and shined on copies of
the Washington Post which were waiting patiently to be read. The lead
headline for the Sunday edition read, CIA Got Uranium Reference
Cut in October. The meat of the article states:
CIA Director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with White
House officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger
removed from a presidential speech last October, three months before
a less specific reference to the same intelligence appeared in the State
of the Union address, according to senior administration officials.
Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy
national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should
not be used because it came from only a single source, according to
one senior official. Another senior official with knowledge of the intelligence
said the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying
the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged.
What do we have here?
Here is CIA Director Tenet arguing in October of 2002 against the use
of the Niger evidence, stating bluntly that it was useless. He made
this pitch directly to the White House. These concerns were brushed
aside by Bush officials, and the forged evidence was used, despite the
warnings, in the State of the Union address. Now, the administration
is trying to claim they were never told the evidence was bad. Yet between
Tenets personal appeals in 2002, and Ambassador Wilsons
assurances that everyone who needed to know was in the know regarding
Niger, it appears the Bush White House has been caught red-handed in
a series of incredible falsehoods.
There are two more layers on this onion to be peeled. The first concerns
Secretary of State Powell. One week after the Niger evidence was used
by Bush in the State of the Union address, Powell presented to the United
Nations the administrations case for war. The Niger evidence was
notably absent from Powells presentation. According to CBS News,
Powell said, I didnt use the uranium at that point because
I didnt think that was sufficiently strong as evidence to present
before the world.
What a difference a week makes. The White House would have us believe
they were blissfully unaware of the forged nature of their war evidence
when Bush gave his State of the Union address, and yet somehow the Secretary
of State knew well enough to avoid using it just seven days later. The
moral of the story appears to be that rotten war evidence is not fit
for international consumption, but is perfectly suitable for delivery
to the American people.
The second layer to be peeled deals with the administrations newest
excuse for using the forged Niger evidence to justify a war. They are
claiming now that they used it because the British government told them
it was solid. Yet there was the story published by the Washington Post
on July 11 with the headline, CIA Asked Britain to Drop Iraq Claim.
The article states:
The CIA tried unsuccessfully in early September 2002 to persuade
the British government to drop from an official intelligence paper a
reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa that President
Bush included in his State of the Union address four months later, senior
Bush administration officials said yesterday. We consulted about
the paper and recommended against using that material, a senior
administration official familiar with the intelligence program said.
We are supposed to believe that the Bush administration was completely
unaware that their Niger evidence was fake. We are supposed to believe
George Tenet dropped the ball. Yet the CIA actively intervened with
the British government in September of 2002, telling them the evidence
was worthless. The CIA Director personally got the evidence stricken
from a Bush speech in October of 2002. Intelligence insiders like Joseph
Wilson and Greg Thielmann have stated repeatedly that everyone who needed
to know the evidence was bad had been fully and completely informed
almost a year before the data was used in the State of the Union address.
In an interesting twist, the profoundly questionable nature of Tenets
confession has reached all the way around the planet to Australia. I
spoke on Sunday to Andrew Wilkie, a former senior intelligence analyst
for the Office of National Assessments, the senior Australian intelligence
agency which provides intelligence assessments to the Australian prime
minister. Mr. Wilkie notes the following:
In the last week in Australia, the Defense Intelligence Organization
has admitted they had the information on the Niger forgeries and says
they didnt tell the Defense Minister. The Australian Department
of Foreign Affairs has admitted they had the information on the Niger
forgeries and didnt tell the Foreign Minister. The place I used
to work, the Office of National Assessments, has admitted publicly that
they knew the Niger evidence was fake and didnt tell the Prime
Minister about it.
Youve got three intelligence organizations in Australia,
the intelligence organizations in the US, and every one is saying they
knew this was bad information, but not one political leader reckons
they were told. All three organizations have said they didnt give
this information to their political leaders. It is unbelievable to the
point of fantasy.
I also spoke on Sunday with Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA
who was interviewed by Truthout on these matters on June 26 2003. Mr.
McGovern is not buying what the White House is trying to sell.
Tenets confession is designed to take the heat off,
says McGovern, to assign some responsibility somewhere. Its
not going to work. Theres too much deception here. For example,
Condoleezza Rice insisted that she only learned on June 8 about Former
Ambassador Wilsons mission to Niger back in February 2002. That
means that neither she nor her staff reads the New York Times, because
Nick Kristof on May 6 had a very detailed explication of Wilsons
mission to Niger. In my view, it is inconceivable that her remark this
week -- that she didnt know about Joe Wilsons mission to
Niger until she was asked on a talk show on June 8 -- that is stretching
the truth beyond the breaking point.
Andrew Wilkie crystallized the issue at hand by stating, Remember
that the sourcing of uranium from Niger was the only remaining pillar
of the argument that Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear program.
By this stage, the aluminum tubes story about Iraqs nuclear program
had been laughed out of the room. That had been laughable since 2001,
leaving the sourcing of uranium as the last key piece of evidence about
Iraq reconstituting a nuclear program. Its not just sixteen words.
It is just downright mischievous to hear Condoleezza Rice on CNN
this morning saying it was just sixteen words. It was worth a hell of
a lot more than sixteen words. I can remember that October speech by
Bush where he talked about mushroom clouds from Iraq. The
nuclear story was always played up as the most emotive and persuasive
theme. It wasnt just sixteen words.
A page on the White Houses own website describes the Bush administrations
central argument for war in Iraq. The Niger evidence is featured prominently,
along with claims that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax;
38,000 liters of botulinum toxin; 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX
nerve agents; almost 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical
agents, and several mobile biological weapons labs. The Niger evidence
has been destroyed, and the mobile weapons labs have been
shown to be weather balloon launching platforms. The vast quantities
of anthrax, botulinum toxin, sarin, mustard gas, and VX, along with
the munitions to deliver them, have completely failed to show up.
Many people quail at the idea that the President and his people could
have lied so egregiously. What was in it for them? Besides the incredible
amounts of money to be made from the war by oil and defense corporations
like Halliburton and United Defense, two companies with umbilical ties
to the administration, there was an ancillary benefit to all this,
according to Ray McGovern. Not only did the President get an authorization
to make war, but there was an election that next month, the November
midterms. The elections turned out surprisingly well for the Bush administration
because they were able to use charges of being soft on Saddam
against those Democratic candidates who voted against the war.
As Andrew Wilkie says, this issue is not about sixteen words in a speech.
It is about lies and American credibility. All of this breaking
news is actually distracting us from the core issue, says Wilkie.
The core issue is the credibility gap. We were sold this war on
the promise that Iraq had this massive WMD arsenal. Of course that hasnt
been found, and whatever might be found now is not going to satisfy
in any way that description of the massive arsenal, the
imminent threat, and all those great words used in Britain
and Australia and Washington. Weve got to be careful that, in
debating the details on the issue of Tenet and Niger, we are not distracted
from that core issue which is still left to be resolved.
Source: Truthout
Authoritarians gone wild
By Ted Rall
He has canceled elections in Iraq. He will probably cancel
them in Afghanistan. Will George W. Bush put the kibosh on elections
in the United States next year?
Frightened by Bushs rapidly accruing personal power and the Democrats
inability and/or unwillingness to stand up to him, panicked lefties
worry that he might use the war on terrorism as an excuse
to declare a state of emergency, suspend civil liberties, and jail political
opponents.
People who have spoken out against Bush are talking exit strategynot
Alec Baldwin style, just to make a statement, but fleeing the US in
order to save their skins. Do you or your spouse have a European-born
parent? is a query making the rounds. (If you do, you can obtain
dual nationality and a European Union passport that would allow you
to work in any EU member nation.) Those whose lineage is 100 percent
American are hoping that nations like Canada and France will admit American
political refugees in the event of a Bushite clampdown.
To these people, whether or not the 2004 elections actually take place
as scheduled is the ultimate test for American democracy. At Guantánamo
Bay the United States is converting a concentration camp into a death
camp where inmates will be executed without due process or legal representation.
Never before in history has a US president contemplated the denaturalization
of native-born citizens --thus far even people executed for treason
have died as Americans -- but Bush has drafted legislation that would
allow him to strip anyone he calls an enemy combatant of
their citizenship and have them deported. By any objective standard
he has already gone way too far, but for many it would take the cancellation
or delay of the elections to confirm that we are trading in our wounded
democracy for a fascist state.
Lincoln considered suspending the 1864 election because of the Civil
War, but ultimately tabled the idea. To date nothing has ever prevented
an American presidential election from being held on time.
Its easy to come up with a scenario in which cancelling the 2004
election could be made to appear reasonable. Imagine that, a few weeks
before Election Day, dirty bombs detonate simultaneously
in New York and Washington. Government, media, and political institutions
and personnel lie ruined in smoking rubble and ash; hundreds of thousands
of people have been murdered. The economy, already teetering on the
precipice, is shoved into depression. How could we conduct elections
under such conditions?
Republicans have already floated the dont-change-horses-in-midstream
argument. After Democratic presidential canidate Sen. John Kerry criticized
Bush recently, GOP National Committee Chairman Mark Racicot took him
to task not for his specific remarks, but rather for daring to
suggest the replacement of Americas commander-in-chief at a time
when America is at war. The White House web sites frequently
asked questions section indicates that the war is
expected to continue well beyond 2004: There is no silver bullet,
no single event or action that is going to suddenly make the threat
of terrorism disappear. This broad-based and sustained effort will continue
until terrorism is rooted out. The situation is similar to the Cold
War, when continuous pressure from many nations caused communism to
collapse from within. We will press the fight as long as it takes.
The Cold War lasted 46 years; does Bush intend to remain in office that
long?
Our boy president has plenty of reason to worry about his election chances.
A new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll says that only 50 percent of Americans
would vote for Bush over a generic unnamed Democrat the lowest
number since 9/11. Two-thirds say that Bush lied about or exaggerated
the threat from Iraqs WMDs, and a steady flow of body bags from
Afghanistan and Iraq has made 53 percent aware that the occupations
are going poorly. Pollsters report that most people trust Democrats
to rescue the sinking economy and few believe that Bushs
tax cuts will help them.
Bush may be the kind of guy who sees 99 percent odds as two percent
short of a sure thing, but I bet hell look at his $200 million
campaign war chest and decide to let the people decide. Hell surely
want to win legitimately in 2004 albeit for the first time. Though
theyre capable of anything, Bushs people probably know that
Americans wouldnt stand for two putsches in four years. Still,
you have to hand it to him: The fact that Democrats are terrified of
ending up imprisoned by an American Reich is the ultimate tribute to
Bushs artful bullying and sad confirmation of the impotence
of his would-be, should-be opponents.
Ted Rall is the author of Gas War: The Truth Behind the
American Occupation of Afghanistan, an analysis of the underreported
Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project and the real motivations behind the
war on terrorism.
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