Iraq
The US is now the "occupying power" in Iraq. How is it progressing? What are the patterns ... or contrasts? Are there parallels to Israel's role in the occupied territories?
Sunday, July 18, 2004
PM Blair admits graves claim 'untrue': 5,000 corpses so far, not 400,000: scale of crimes increasingly politicised after no WMD
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | PM admits graves claim 'untrue': "Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor | Sunday July 18, 2004 | The Observer
Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.
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And while few have any doubts that Saddam's regime was responsible for serious crimes against humanity, the exact scale of those crimes has become increasingly politicised in both Washington and London as it has become clearer that the case against Iraq for retention of weapons of mass destruction has faded.
Powell treated with contemptuous manipulation by his own administration: Feith's version was presented to the deputy NSA and VP Cheny
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Learn the code: "The Senate's report is very revealing about Bush and his apostles - but the clues are buried deep | Sidney Blumenthal | Thursday July 15, 2004 | The Guardian
The Senate intelligence committee report is the Da Vinci code of the Iraq war. Some of the clues are in plain sight but unless one knows how to read them they remain cryptic. Deletions, covering one-fifth of the report, and omissions, stretching endlessly, are as significant as what's included. The storyline is jumbled into incoherence, the main characters are often spectral and it's all extremely dangerous.
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For months, Bush and his national security team escalated its rhetoric about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But there was no national intelligence estimate (NIE) until demands by Democratic senators on the intelligence committee forced its writing.
Most take months to assemble, but this one was slapped together in about three weeks. "Most of the major key judgments in the intelligence community's October 2002 NIE, Iraq's Continuing Programmes for Weapons of Mass Destruction, were either overstated, or were not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting," the report states.
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The report also does not deal with the creation of an alternative intelligence operation inside the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans, which bypassed regular channels to send fabricated material originating mostly in Ahmed Chalabi's disinformation factory.
But buried in the appendix, Senator John D Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, included an account of an internal operation against the CIA conducted by the under-secretary of defence, Douglas Feith, an entrenched neo-conservative.
While the CIA composed a report on the Iraq-al-Qaida connection, which the administration still trumpets, and for which the intelligence community could never find proof, Feith held briefings trashing the CIA on its impending report. Then, without informing the CIA, Feith's version was presented to the deputy national security adviser and vice-president.
Colin Powell put himself in the hands of people he hoped would protect him. Predictably, he was betrayed. Before his February 5 2002 speech to the United Nations, making the case for WMD, Powell spent days at the CIA. He was given disinformation about mobile biological weapons laboratories, which came from Iraqi exile sources that the CIA didn't trust. The day before Powell's speech, one CIA official wanted to warn him. Another replied, "As I said last night, let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what [the source] said or didn't say, and the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether [the source] knows what he's talking about." Powell was sent before the world to speak the falsehoods with CIA director George Tenet sitting behind him. Never before has a secretary of state, the highest ranking cabinet officer, been treated with such contemptuous manipulation by his own administration.
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Powell treated with contemptuous manipulation by his own administration: Feith's version was presented to the deputy NSA and VP Cheny
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Learn the code: "The Senate's report is very revealing about Bush and his apostles - but the clues are buried deep | Sidney Blumenthal | Thursday July 15, 2004 | The Guardian
The Senate intelligence committee report is the Da Vinci code of the Iraq war. Some of the clues are in plain sight but unless one knows how to read them they remain cryptic. Deletions, covering one-fifth of the report, and omissions, stretching endlessly, are as significant as what's included. The storyline is jumbled into incoherence, the main characters are often spectral and it's all extremely dangerous.
...
For months, Bush and his national security team escalated its rhetoric about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But there was no national intelligence estimate (NIE) until demands by Democratic senators on the intelligence committee forced its writing.
Most take months to assemble, but this one was slapped together in about three weeks. "Most of the major key judgments in the intelligence community's October 2002 NIE, Iraq's Continuing Programmes for Weapons of Mass Destruction, were either overstated, or were not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting," the report states.
...
The report also does not deal with the creation of an alternative intelligence operation inside the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans, which bypassed regular channels to send fabricated material originating mostly in Ahmed Chalabi's disinformation factory.
But buried in the appendix, Senator John D Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, included an account of an internal operation against the CIA conducted by the under-secretary of defence, Douglas Feith, an entrenched neo-conservative.
While the CIA composed a report on the Iraq-al-Qaida connection, which the administration still trumpets, and for which the intelligence community could never find proof, Feith held briefings trashing the CIA on its impending report. Then, without informing the CIA, Feith's version was presented to the deputy national security adviser and vice-president.
Colin Powell put himself in the hands of people he hoped would protect him. Predictably, he was betrayed. Before his February 5 2002 speech to the United Nations, making the case for WMD, Powell spent days at the CIA. He was given disinformation about mobile biological weapons laboratories, which came from Iraqi exile sources that the CIA didn't trust. The day before Powell's speech, one CIA official wanted to warn him. Another replied, "As I said last night, let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what [the source] said or didn't say, and the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether [the source] knows what he's talking about." Powell was sent before the world to speak the falsehoods with CIA director George Tenet sitting behind him. Never before has a secretary of state, the highest ranking cabinet officer, been treated with such contemptuous manipulation by his own administration.
...
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Onward G.O.P. [Christian] Soldiers: Bush team's strategy disrespects religion as much as it does democratic ideals.
The New York Times > Opinion > Onward G.O.P. Soldiers: "Published: July 14, 2004
The Bush-Cheney campaign is buttonholing Christian churches nationwide to serve as virtual party precincts in the Republican drive to turn out voters in November. The campaign has sent congregation volunteers marching orders � a schedule of 22 'duties,' beginning with the submission of local church membership directories to party headquarters, the better to compare them with voter registration lists.
The Bush team maintains that this ham-handed proselytizing is legal and somehow nonpartisan. That is hard to comprehend, given that other 'duties' for pro-Bush volunteers include lobbying congregation groups to talk up the Bush-Cheney ticket and producing 'voters' guides' on hot issues. Ministers are being pressed to create registration drives and speak out about 'all Christians needing to vote.'
Churches have been a favorite campaign stop for political candidates throughout the nation's history. But this crude initiative crosses the line that separates organized religion from organized political parties. Last month, after Republican workers began soliciting hundreds of 'friendly congregations' in the swing state of Pennsylvania, the Internal Revenue Service sent out a blunt warning to political leaders that they could cost churches their tax-exempt status by enlisting them in transparent partisanship.
The Bush team's strategy disrespects religion as much as it does democratic ideals. Churchgoers are entitled to a little sanctuary from politicians.
'The boys were sodomised with the cameras rolling, ... shrieking. And this is your government at war.'
News: "'Secret film shows Iraq prisoners sodomised' | By Charles Arthur, Technology Editor | 16 July 2004
Young male prisoners were filmed being sodomised by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to the journalist who first revealed the abuses there.
Seymour Hersh, who reported on the torture of the prisoners in New Yorker magazine in May, told an audience in San Francisco that 'it's worse'. But he added that he would reveal the extent of the abuses: 'I'm not done reporting on all this,' he told a meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union.
He said: 'The boys were sodomised with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking. And this is your government at war.'
He accused the US administration, and all but accused President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney of complicity in covering up what he called 'war crimes'. "
Saturday, July 03, 2004
U.S. General Says Met Israeli Interrogator in Iraq: likely to irritate many in the Arab world
Excite - News: "U.S. General Says Met Israeli Interrogator in Iraq : Jul 3, 6:33 pm ET
LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S. general who was in charge of Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison said on Saturday she had met an Israeli interrogator in Iraq, a claim Israel denied but which was likely to irritate many in the Arab world.
Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, who was responsible for military police guarding all Iraqi jails at the time prisoners were abused by U.S. troops there, told the BBC she met the Israeli at a Baghdad interrogation center.
'He was clearly from the Middle East and he said: 'Well, I do some of the interrogation here and of course I speak Arabic, but I'm not an Arab. I'm from Israel',' she said.
'My initial reaction was to laugh because I thought maybe he was joking, and I realized he was serious,' said Karpinski who has been suspended from her command for failings at Abu Ghraib but has not been charged with any wrongdoing."
