2002: September: This Far and No Further

Back to 2002 | On to 2002: October

Fall 2002

Fall: Pressure mounts on the intelligence community to "toe the line" on Iraq. Says one former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, "People [kept] telling you first that things weren't right, weird things going on, different people saying, 'There's so much pressure, you know, they keep telling us, go back and find the right answer,' things like that." For the most part, this pressure isn't reflected in the CIA's classified reports, but it will become increasingly evident in the agency's declassified statements and in public statements by CIA director George Tenet. Tenet himself realizes that Bush is determined to go to war with Iraq during a brief conversation with him in which Bush tells Tenet that war with Iraq is both necessary and inevitable. "We're not going to wait," Bush tells Tenet. (The New Republic, Bob Woodward)
Fall: The CIA training camp for Operation Anabasis (see above item) is set up in the Nevada desert. The existence of the camp is a closely guarded secret. When Democratic senator Bob Graham, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, learns of the camp, he immediately thinks of the southern Florida camp set up by the CIA in the early 1960s to train Cuban exiles for the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Dozens of Iraqi exiles are brought to the site to train for a mission that Anabasis team leader John Maguire and his superiors hope will trigger a war with Iraq.
This is the core rationale behind Anabasis. The idea is for a group of Iraqi commandos, trained and supported by the CIA, to take over the isolated Iraqi military base at Nukhaib, near the Saudi Arabian border. Then they will go on the radio, announce that a military coup is underway, and call for other Iraqi units to rise up against Hussein. They will ask for the support of other nations as well. Hussein's response, the CIA believes, will be to send troops in to regain control of the base. That will force Hussein to violate the no-fly zone agreement between Iraq and the UN. The US and Britain will then use that violation as a pretext for a full-scale military attack. Maguire later says that he believed the idea would give the Bush administration an alternative to the WMD issue to justify a war with Iraq: "The idea was to create an incident in which Saddam lashes out," he recalls. If all goes as planned, "you'd have a premise for war; we've been invited in."
Maguire had chosen a former Iraqi special forces commander, General Mohammed Abdullah al-Shahwani, to lead the Iraqi commandos on the raid on Nukhaib. Al-Shahwani is a military hero of the Iraq-Iran war, who fled Iraq in 1989 after coming to the conclusion that Hussein considered him a threat to his rule; al-Shahwani went to Jordan, where he set up an import-export business and began assembling a group of former and current military officers to plot a coup against Hussein. The CIA recruited al-Shahwani shortly thereafter, and Maguire became his control officer. Maguire and other CIA officials pressured Clinton administration officials to move ahead with al-Shahwani's coup attempt, but those administration officials, spooked by the failed coup attempt by Ahmad Chalabi in 1995, refused to get on board with al-Shahwani. By the spring of 1995, al-Shahwani's organization had been rolled up by Hussein's forces. Eighty of his operatives were executed, including three of his sons. Others were tortured. An enraged Maguire blamed Clinton officials for failing to support Al-Shahwani's coup, and for a time considered resigning from the CIA. But a colleague talked him out of it, saying, "This will come around again." And the colleague was right.
Maguire contacted al-Shahwani on September 12, 2001, and said to him, "It's showtime." Al-Shahwani brought in some of his old network of Iraqi military officials, many of whom were flown secretly to Nevada by the CIA. (The CIA used some of the same planes it uses for its "extraordinary rendition" program.) Others came into the US on CIA-supplied passports. Al-Shahwani nicknames them "Scorpions 77 Alpha," named after a special forces unit Hussein had abandoned years earlier. Another non-Iraqi Arab team, made up of around fifteen Egyptians and Lebanese saboteurs, is also training at the site. The fighters and saboteurs train hard, using their own battle cry: "Back to Baghdad."
Other Iraqi opposition groups have no idea of the existence of the Scorpions. Chalabi had previously tried to recruit al-Shahwani, but his overtures were ignored (in fact, al-Shahwani's group held Chalabi's group in contempt for having no support inside Iraq). "Nobody knew about us," one Scorpion later recalls. Even most White House officials are out of the loop, or only have a general idea of the program. "We only knew that there were Iraqis who were being trained in small acts of sabotage and it was all being done by Tenet," one NSC aide recalls. The training, the aide recalls, is in "dirty tricks" that will cause "chaos behind enemy lines." But the goal was not just to pull off "dirty tricks," the goal was to spark an invasion.
Meanwhile, Maguire had made contact with the leader of Iraq's Sufis. The Sufis are a sect of mystical Muslims, and the leader, who claims to be able to levitate, commands a large and fiercely devoted following throughout Iraq, including people scattered throughout the Iraqi leadership, and if he asks his followers to cooperate with the CIA, they could provide the agency with invaluable assets. But the Sufi leader isn't about to take such a risk without good reason. Maguire had had the Sufi flown to Washington, where Maguire wined and dined him at a popular Moroccan restaurant. The Sufi asked Maguire the same question that the Kurdish leaders had repeatedly asked other agents: "You're not just going to come to Iraq, poke Saddam in the eye, and leave, are you?" Maguire assured him that this time Hussein was going down for good. The Sufi was willing -- for $1 million a month and a role in postinvasion Iraq. "It was a rental agreement," Maguire later recalls. The Sufis who agreed to aid the CIA were soon dubbed the "ROCKSTARS" by the agency, and over time provided the best information the CIA had on Hussein's own movements.
One of the ideas for sabotage proposed by Maguire and "Luis," his CIA partner, is to destroy the fleet of cars used by Hussein's representatives in Jordan. They argue that the Iraqi auto fleet, of around 200 vehicles, is an easy target. Since Jordan houses one of the Middle East's largest collections of Iraqi government officials outside Iraq itself, the destruction or sabotage of these automobiles would embarrass Hussein and cripple his effectiveness in Jordan. Maguire rates the level of sabotage from simple -- slashing tires and drilling holes in windshields -- to more direct: blowing up or burning the cars. But actual destruction of the vehicles could be tracked back to the CIA. Maguire settles on a plan for pouring contaminants into the vehicles' gas tanks. The motors will be corroded and the vehicles will be immobilized. However, the CIA station chief in Amman won't cooperate, sending a cable to CIA headquarters that says he will not take part in what he considers "juvenile college pranks." Maguire is outraged. Maguire says the Amman station chief's resistance is emblematic of the CIA bureaucracy's refusal to take risks. He shouts at the station chief, "We have a directive from the president of the United States to do this! So shut the f*ck up and do this! We're not interested in your grousing as to whether this is a wise move or not. The president has made a decision!" But the vandalism plan is never implemented.
Maguire and Luis become increasingly agitated by what they see as a fatal lack of cooperation from other CIA officials. Their plan calls for aggressive action that needs to take place right now. They want to use other CIA stations to disrupt Hussein's finances and communications, frighten and intimidate his spy service, and take other actions that will disrupt Hussein's rule. One of Maguire's ideas is to set up Hussein's top moneyman in Geneva with prostitutes, get photos, and blackmail the man into shutting down Hussein's accounts -- a classic "honey trap," in CIA parlance. But like the vandalism idea, nothing is ever done to implement this operation. Maguire and Luis are reduced to griping about the inaction of the various CIA station chiefs.
In a few instances, some CIA stations take action. In Athens, CIA agents set up Greek-based Iraqi security officials to make it appear as if they were buying guns for terrorists, an embarrasment that Maguire and Luis consider a modest success.
Eventually, Maguire's boss, Director of Operations James Pavitt, calls a meeting of the European and Middle Eastern station chiefs, and gives them the word: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is a foregone certainty, and they need to get on board and cooperate. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
Fall: Dick Cheney calls together a coterie of his favorite conservative intellectuals to discuss the upcoming war in Iraq, the latest in a series of sporadic, informal get-togethers at the US Naval Observatory in Washington. The guest list includes Cheney's confidante and chief of staff Lewis Libby, Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis, columnist George Will (obviously trusted not to actually report on anything he learns), and Victor Davis Hanson, a California raisin farmer and classical scholar whose books on the virtues of the American military have caught Cheney's fancy. The New York Times's Maureen Dowd dubbed Hanson Cheney's "war guru." Hanson had written an influential op-ed in the Wall Street Journal two weeks after 9/11 saying, in part, that the US "need[s] generals who this time may well resign if told not to go to Baghdad."
The gathering is called in part to discuss Hanson's book The Soul of War. The book paints glowing portraits of three of the most iconic, and fearsome, military leaders in history: General George Patton from World War II, General William Tecumseh Sherman from the Civil War, and Epaminondas, a Theban general who had destroyed the Spartan army in ancient Greece. Hanson contends that all three, roundly vilified throughout history for their brutal and ruthless tactics, are misunderstood. Hanson says their willingness to thoroughly crush their enemies, and in Sherman's and Patton's case, to terrorize the indigeneous populations, had been effective. "I think he was interested in the idea of people who are criticized as warmongers," Hanson later recalls. According to Hanson, Cheney wanted to explore the "reaction that society has toward people who want to create freedom and a better life...[but] have to do it in such a way that shocks people sometimes."
It is clear to Hanson that Cheney views himself as one of those leaders. During the evening, Cheney and Hanson discuss the historical parallels between the wars each of the three generals had fought, and the modern-day struggle against Islamic fundamentalism and rogue dictators like Saddam Hussein. Cheney is particularly interested in the "bum rap" that the three generals had suffered in their respective day, and how each would eventually be "vindicated" by history. Hanson warns Cheney and Libby that they, too, would face such scorn. "I just said, 'I hope you people know that once you go into Iraq, you're going to experience a level of invective that you wouldn't believe...like nothing you've ever witnessed,'" Hanson recalls. Cheney isn't worried about that. In fact, Hanson recalls, Cheney seems impervious to such concerns. Defying such criticism is "the responsibility of a statesman," Hanson recalls. Cheney is, in Hanson's words, "taking the long view." (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
Fall: The Bush administration intervenes in a labor dispute in order to bail out the Carlyle Group. Carlyle was nearing completion of a deal to buy a majority stake of CSX Lines, a domestic ocean shipping subsidiary of the CSX railroad conglomerate, when dock workers lock out employees of the International Longshore Workers Union in an effort to win contract concessions. A prolonged work stoppage threatens to lower CSX Lines' value as an investment. Both the Department of Labor and the Defense Department, rushing to answer Carlyle's call for government intervention, try to end the work stoppage, claiming that the labor dispute is threatening "national security." A friendly judge grants a judicial injunction in late October that forces a settlement. Carlyle buys the controlling interest in CSX Lines six weeks later; CSX chief executive John Snow will be named Secretary of the Treasury shortly thereafter. (Joe Conason)

September

"You can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." -- George W. Bush, quoted by Arianna Huffington

September: The Defense Intelligence Agency reports that is unable to find any reliable evidence of Iraqi WMDs: "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities." Additionally, Iraq's embryonic nuclear weapons development program is determined to be less advanced than it was in 1991 before the Persian Gulf war. This does not deter Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials from publicly claiming that Iraq was proven to be in possession of such weapons; instead, Rumsfeld tells Congress that same month that Hussein's "regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons -- including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas." In addition, around 30 CIA "moles," agents with relatives in Iraq who are close to Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, are sent into Iraq to find out about Hussein's WMD programs. Their reports that the programs have long since been abandoned are ignored by the CIA, with some analysts reporting that the moles have all been duped. (Albuquerque Tribune, Working for Change, Mother Jones)
September: USA Today reports that "the Bush administration is expanding on and in some cases contradicting U.S. intelligence reports in making the case for an invasion of Iraq, interviews with administration and intelligence officials indicate. ...Administration officials accuse Iraq of having ties to al-Qaeda terrorists and of amassing weapons of mass destruction despite uncertain and sometimes contrary intelligence on these issues, according to officials. ...In some cases, top administration officials disagree outright with what the CIA and other intelligence agencies report. For example, they repeat accounts of al-Qaeda members seeking refuge in Iraq and of terrorist operatives meeting with Iraqi intelligence officials, even though U.S. intelligence reports raise doubts about such links. On Iraqi weapons programs, administration officials draw the most pessimistic conclusions from ambiguous evidence." Democratic Representative Rush Holt later says of his discussions with constituents, "When someone spoke of the need to invade, [they] invariably brought up the example of what would happen if one of our cities was struck. They clearly were convinced by the administration that Saddam Hussein -- either directly or through terrorist connections -- could unleash massive destruction on an American city. And I presume that most of my colleagues heard the same thing back in their districts." (The New Republic)
September: The Defense Intelligence Agency reports, "A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM [United Nations Special Commission] actions. ...There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities." (The New Republic, Working for Change)
September: German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder reverses his dropping parliamentary fortunes in national elections by opposing Bush's threats against Iraq. Similarly, Pakistani religious extremists win unprecedented gains in the Pakistani elections by opposing Bush's objectives. Observers warn that more European, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries will adopt a harder anti-American, or at least an anti-Bush, position if Bush continues to threaten Iraq. (Consortium News)
September: Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey and other House Republicans privately warn Bush that he risks plunging the country into a "quagmire" if he invades and occupies Iraq. For political reasons, Armey and the Republicans are afraid to publicly challenge Bush's claims that justify the upcoming war. (Booman Tribune)
September: At the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the US delegation attempts to monkey-wrench the proceedings by, among other things, opposing the classification of female genital mutilation, forced child labor, and "honor" killings as human-rights violations; once again, the US finds itself siding with a motley group of Islamic fundamentalist regimes against the rest of the world. The proceedings are deadlocked by the US delegation's opposition before the delegation finally, reluctantly, and rudely accedes to the language of the proposals. (Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose)
September: Fifteen committee members of the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health come up for renewal. In previous years, Health and Human Services has asked for recommendations from the committee chairman. This time, chairman Thomas Burke is informed that Bush's HHS does not want his recommendations, but intends to restock the committee with their own people. Burke himself is replaced, as are many others. In their places are people like Lois Swirsky Gold, an industry representative who has made a career out of denying links between pollutants and cancer; Dennis Paustenbach, who testified for Pacific Gas & Electric in the real-life "Erin Brockovich" case; and others. (Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
September: Bush gives the Department of Agriculture the right to classify any information it likes as "secret." (Stephen Pizzo/Daily Misleader)
September 1: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says, "If you [the US] strike Iraq and kill the people of Iraq while Palestinians are being killed by Israel...then not one Arab leader will be able to control the angry outburst of the masses." Several European nations are alarmed at the "growing unilateralist attitudes in the US. ...Even the United States' staunchest ally in Europe [the UK] still prefers the diplomatic course to the military one at this stage." (CNN)
September 4: Bush meets with 18 senior Congress members to discuss the upcoming invasion of Iraq. Bush and his aides realize that they need to get Congress behind the invasion before launching their long-planned public relations assault on the American people to justify the war. Bush gives the Congressional members a letter his aides have written for him, which says in part, "America and the civilized world face a critical decision in the months ahead. The decision is how to disarm an outlaw regime that continues to possess and develop weapons of mass destruction. [Since 9/11,] we have been tragically reminded that we are vulnerable to evil people. And this vulnerability increases dramatically when evil people have access to weapons of mass destruction." Bush says he will work with Congressional leaders on Iraq, but now he wants a quick vote in Congress to grant him the authority to move against Saddam Hussein. He doesn't have the language of his proposed legislation down yet, but he wants the vote within six weeks so Congressional members can campaign for re-election.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle later recalls that during the meeting, he feels trapped. Bush's stated willingness to work with Congress is a victory of sorts, since White House counsel Alberto Gonzales insists that Bush has the authority to launch a war with Iraq without Congressional approval. (Gonzales is basing his argument on a memo by Justice Department counsel John Yoo, who wrote after 9/11 that there are "no limits" on Bush's power to fight global terrorism, and Bush can "deploy force preemptively" against any terrorist group "or the states that harbor them" whether or not those nations or groups can be specifically linked to the 9/11 attacks. Yoo wrote that Bush's decisions are "for him alone" and "unreviewable." Yoo's memo, in blatant defiance of over 200 years of Constitional interpretations, will be used to justify an entire range of controversial actions, including clandestine domestic wiretapping by the NSA.) Daschle realizes that to win Congressional backing, Bush will have to offer evidence that Iraq is an imminent threat to American security, which means the secret intelligence Bush has been given on Iraq. But Daschle suspects that Bush has another string to his bow, one with political consequences. Bush is declaring that the 2002 midterm elections will focus, not on the economy or health care or the environment -- areas where the Democrats are strong -- but on Iraq and the potential threat to America. Democrats are already deeply divided on the idea of going to war with Iraq, but few want to be seen as "coddling terrorists" or to be portrayed as "willing to allow another 9/11 attack." With the Senate up for grabs, could Democrats running for re-election dare to oppose Bush's assault on a brutal dictator ready to launch weapons of mass destruction?
Daschle knows that the White House, and Karl Rove in particular, plan to hammer the Democrats on security and on the economy. He wonders if Bush isn't cynically pushing Iraq as a threat as a campaign gambit. Daschle had asked Bush, the day before, if it wouldn't be better to wait on the decision to take action against Iraq until after the elections and therefore take the politics out of the issue; Bush had merely said, after a sidelong glance at Dick Cheney, "We just have to do it now." Daschle believes that Bush and Cheney have already thought the strategy through. Now Bush is pressing for quick approval for his move against Iraq. "The issue isn't going away," he tells the assemblage. "You can't let it linger."
But it is a Republican, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who is most critical of Bush's plans for war. He can't see any justification for invading Iraq as long as Saddam Hussein isn't directly threatening the US. "We Americans don't make unprovoked attacks," he is on record as saying, a statement that had earned Armey a slapdown from White House communications director Dan Bartlett, who told Armey's press secretary, Terry Holt, that "it isn't helpful for Armey to be out there speaking out against the president." Armey, no foreign policy expert, assumes that Bush's bluster is merely an attempt to force Hussein to accept the return of UN weapons inspectors. But, sitting with the other Congressional leaders, Armey realizes that Bush is deadly serious about invading Iraq. Armey can't help but think of another Texan, Lyndon Johnson, whose presidency floundered because of Vietnam. Armey warns Bush, "Mr. President, if you go in there, you're likely to be stuck in a quagmire that will endanger your domestic agenda for the rest of your presidency." Armey concludes his impassioned plea for restraint with a paraphrase of Shakespeare: "Our fears make cowards of us all." He believes that Bush and his officials are overreacting to the 9/11 attacks, and are gripped by what he later calls a "he-man macho psychosis where they feit the need to go out and shoot somebody to show they're the tough guy on the block." Armey's remarks don't go over well with the Bush officials at the meeting. "I was the skunk in the garden party," he later recalls.
Cheney curtly tells Armey that it would be best if he not dissent from Bush's position in public. Armey retorts that he isn't aware of a particular public position yet. Then Bush asks Armey "if I would withhold any public comments until I had all the briefings. So I could understand how necessary this was." Until Armey had seen all the intelligence briefings on Iraq, Bush is saying, and seen the proof of the necessity of immediate action against Iraq, it would be better for Armey not to speak out. Armey agrees, and thus gives up an opportunity to stir up any controversy that might have helped derail the plans for war. "I won't speak publicly about this again until I'm fully briefed," Armey promises.
After the meeting, several of the Congressional leaders give short statements to the press. Senator John McCain tells reporters that Bush had made a "convincing case" for action against Iraq. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert says the House will vote on a resolution before the elections. Democratic House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, who has promised to work with the White House on Iraq, says Bush has yet to demonstrate that Iraq "is something that we need to do and to take seriously." A more guarded Daschle repeats his questions from the meeting: "What new information exists? What has changed in recent months or years?" He wants "more information and greater clarity" in the weeks to come. And true to his promise, Armey doesn't speak against the war. In fact, he doesn't speak to reporters at all. His questions -- why a war, and why now? -- remain private, and unanswered. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
September 4: Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, knowing that his position in the White House is shaky at best, decides to stand up to Bush, Cheney, and Rove on the issue of deficits. The recent Social Security restructuring proposals would add a staggering $44 trillion over the life of the program to already-skyrocketing federal debt, and both O'Neill and his friend Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, know that, in O'Neill's words, such deficits will "cripple the government" and "must be stopped." O'Neill knows that recent economic information released by the White House has been vetted and cherrypicked, largely by Bush's economic advisor and yes-man Larry Lindsey, to bolster the case for Bush's tax cuts and Social Security privatization proposals. Even the idea of eliminating what some call "double taxation" on stock dividends, an idea that O'Neill likes, should not be done, in O'Neill's opinion, until deficits are brought under control. "I'm going to make a stand on principle -- a principle actually supported by fact," O'Neill tells Greenspan. "Call it a human sacrifice."
O'Neill meets with Bush the same day. Bush has a new nickname for O'Neill -- "Big O." O'Neill now knows that such nicknames are a technique used by Bush, not to spark camaraderie, but as a bullying tactic: "I've given you a name, now wear it," as O'Neill's biographer Ron Suskind writes. (Even communications director Dan Bartlett, a Bush loyalist, tells O'Neill the nickname is not a good thing -- it sounds like an appliance dealer in Austin, Texas, Bartlett says.) At the meeting, attended by O'Neill, Bush, and several other economic policy principles, including Lindsey, O'Neill says directly, "It's a time when we have to think clearly about being fiscally responsible -- about looking at the real facts, and not theories of what might or might not happen." No one else dares to speak or look at O'Neill. He lays out the bare facts -- that Bush's tax cuts are not likely to provide any economic stimulus to speak of, and will ratchet up deficit spending enormously. O'Neill knows he is on dangerous ground, both by challenging Bush's own pet ideas, and because Bush is always impatient with any discussion of complex issues. O'Neill says, "Now's the time to keep your powder dry. Any other path is not responsible." O'Neill knows he is drawing a line in the sand, saying in effect, that if you choose to go in the direction you've been proposing, you'll have to fire me first. Bush merely says, "Got it. Okay, then." (Ron Suskind)

Massive air strike in Iraq launched in preparation for invasion

September 5: While Bush speaks on his intention to hold further discussions with both political parties, the UN, and foreign leaders, the US and Britain carry out a massive air strike involving 100 warplanes against one of Iraq's main air bases in the western part of that country, near the Jordanian border. The air raid, the largest since 1998's "Desert Fox," is ostensibly because of violations of the UN "no-fly" zone, but later it is proven to be one of the first military actions taken in preparation for the March 2003 invasion. The air strike gets extensive coverage overseas, but the US media uniformly ignores it, except for a single mention in Salon, decrying its lack of coverage. (Mark Crispin Miller)
September 5: The Senate Intelligence Committee questions CIA director George Tenet about the plans to invade Iraq. Committee chairman Bob Graham, a Democrat, later writes that he asks Tenet what the National Intelligence Estimate provides for a rationale surrounding the invasion. "I was stunned when Tenet said no NIE had been requested by the White House, and none had been prepared." Graham requests that the CIA prepare the document; it proves to be one of the most controversial documents ever released about the invasion. (Mother Jones)
September 5: As of this date, George W. Bush has spent 42% of his time as President vacationing either at Camp David, Kennebunkport, or at his Crawford, Texas ranch. (Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose)
September 5: The Senate rejects Texas Supreme Court justice Priscilla Owen nomination to the federal appellate bench for her extreme right-wing views and her record of unacceptable judicial activism (she even drew criticism from White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez). Attorney General John Ashcroft baselessly accuses Senate Democrats of opposing Owen's nomination because she is a woman. Ashcroft's criticism of Senate Democrats ignores his own Senate record of unilaterally holding up judicial nominees named by former president Bill Clinton due to their failure to meet his own ideological standards. Bush will renominate Owen in January 2003, an unprecedented move by a sitting president. (Owen is a former client of political guru Karl Rove.) A filibuster by outraged Democrats once again blocks her nomination. Bush will again renominate her, and in June 2005 Owen will be named to the Fifth Appeals Court. She is considered a likely nominee for any US Supreme Court position that will come open during Bush's second term.
Other nominees are equally troublesome. South Carolina District Court judge David Shedd, nominated to the federal appeals court by Bush in 2002, is best known for an act of judicial activism which essentially kills the federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act when he rules that the government is not required to keep drivers' license information private; Shedd's decision is unanimously overruled by the US Supreme Court. Shedd, who faced contentious hearings in the Senate in June 2002, is also known for unilaterally striking down a major portion of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, by attacking a provision that allows state agencies to be sued by one of its employees for violating the law. And federal appellate court nominee D. Brooks Smith found his nomination difficult when he is proven to have agreed in 1988, upon his naming to the federal bench, to withdraw his membership from a country club that barred women from being members; Smith failed to resign his membership until 1999. A 2003 nominee, Miguel Estrada, will fail to win Senate confirmation when his record as a judge is proven to be non-existent, in contrast with Bush's own contention that Estrada is "highly qualified." Estrada, a far-right lawyer with no judicial experience, will claim that he has never given any thought to the issues surrounding Roe v. Wade, and tells the Senate that he is "not even sure I could think of three [Supreme Court cases during the past forty years] that I would be...that I would have a sort of adverse reaction to." Few, if anyone, will believe Estrada's dodging and weaving. Estrada's direct supervisor from 1993 to 1996, deputy solicitor general Paul Bender, testifies that Estrada is so "ideologically driven that he couldn't be trusted to state the law in a fair, neutral way.... Miguel Estrada is smart and charming but he is a right-wing ideologue." After a harsh, contentious process marred by baseless Republican accusations of Democratic racism, Estrada will withdraw his name from consideration in September 2003. (San Diego Union-Tribune, Eric Alterman and Mark Green)

Intensive "marketing strategy" for selling the Iraq invasion launched

September 6: The New York Times reports on the intensive marketing campaign launched by the Bush administration to sell both Congress and the American people on the necessity to invade Iraq. (See the above item on WHIG, the White House Iraq Group.) The decision to wait until Labor Day to begin the launch is explained by Andrew Card, Bush's chief of staff, who is coordinating the effort: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." Card and White House political advisor Karl Rove have planned on using Bush's speech commemorating the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to sell the citizenry on the need to take out Saddam Hussein. Part of that effort is the decision to have Bush speak, not from Governors Island in New York City, where the speech was originally envisioned, but from Ellis Island, where TV cameras can record Bush speaking in front of the Statue of Liberty. The Times reports, "the television camera angles were more spectacular from Ellis Island, where the Statue of Liberty will be seen aglow behind Mr. Bush." Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, says, "We had made a decision that this would be a compelling story either place. We sent a team out to go look and they said, 'This is a better shot,' and we said O.K." A tougher, less emotional speech by Bush to the United Nations is slated for the following day. Bush has already brought skeptical leaders of Congress to the White House to pressure them into supporting the war on September 3, and two dozen senators were brought in the next day to hear presentations from Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and George Tenet. The idea is to make it nearly impossible for Congress to refuse to authorize the invasion, says an anonymous White House official. "In the end it will be difficult for someone to vote against it," the official says. Former Reagan communications strategist Michael Deaver says of the Bush marketing team, "They have a history of doing it their way, and doing very well from a communications standpoint. Once they get started, and once it is clearly part of a strategic plan, it moves well." (New York Times/blogAmY, Mother Jones)
September 6: Dick Cheney meets with the four leaders of the House and Senate, Democrats Tom Daschle and Richard Gephardt, and Republicans Trent Lott and Dennis Hastert, in an attempt to persuade the more reluctant members of Congress to back the upcoming invasion of Iraq. (The day before, Donald Rumsfeld had tried to convince the entire Senate of the necessity to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein, in a briefing that the White House considered a failure, mostly because of Rumsfeld's arrogant, condescending tone and his insistence that the senators take his word for assertions about Iraq that he refused to back up with details. Democrats complained to reporters that Rumsfeld had wasted their time; Lott had marched out halfway through the briefing.) This time Cheney brings a sheaf of highly secret intelligence reports -- carefully selected and cherrypicked to reflect the White House's position. Cheney is joined by CIA director George Tenet, who had once been the staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee before being named by Bill Clinton to head the CIA. Tenet is unique among CIA directors for his extreme personal loyalty to his superiors, particularly Bush, and his willingness to dive into the political side of issues. CIA directors have traditionally held themselves aloof from political considerations. But Tenet is essentially another member of the White House staff by now, as partisan and as committed to the White House agenda as any staffer or advisor. Some CIA staffers worry that Tenet has lost his objectivity by becoming too close to the White House, and is more concerned with pleasing his boss than providing objective, accurate information.
This time, Lott is sold. Cheney shows them secret photos of what he calls Iraqi nuclear weapons sites, drawings of what Cheney describes as mobile biological laboratories, and, most importantly for Lott, photos of unmanned aerial vehicles -- UAVs -- that, Cheney says, can deliver WMD payloads on Israeli targets. "We have to take Saddam out," Lott remembers thinking after the briefing. Daschle is less convinced. The photos are blurry and, of themselves, all but meaningless -- the Congressional leaders will have to take Cheney's word that the photos and drawings mean what Cheney says they mean. Daschle later says he is "embarrassed" that he didn't challenge Cheney on the interpretations of the evidence Cheney displays. Daschle had once been a photo analyst intelligence officer for the Air Force, and knows the photos are far from solid proof. But Daschle feels he should grant Cheney and Tenet the benefit of the doubt. He doesn't trust Cheney, but he can't help but wonder, "What if they're right about this?" Gephardt is on board, much more so than Daschle. As for Hastert, he has always been in the White House's pocket. If the White House wants war, Hastert supports it.
The same day, Tenet meets with the Senate Intelligence Committee in a secret session to push the war intelligence. He tells the committee members that the CIA is sure that Hussein is building new nuclear weapons facilities. He says that the CIA estimates Iraq has built, or is building, 550 WMD sites. He says that Iraq has UAVs that can deliver biological or chemical agents as far as the US mainland. After Tenet's glossy presentation, Democrats Bob Graham and Dick Durbin ask to see the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate for Iraq, the agency's detailed summation of the intelligence community's knowledge of a given issue, in this case Iraq's WMDs. Durbin and Graham are shocked when Tenet admits that no NIE has been prepared. Bush is heading for war, and the White House hasn't asked the CIA to prepare an NIE? The two senators ask Tenet to prepare an NIE, but Tenet retorts that his people are too busy with other matters.
Publicly, the Cheney briefing is portrayed as a rousing success. The media even portrays the wavering, doubtful Daschle as being on board. "Will miracles never cease?" conservative pundit Robert Novak says on CNN. Daschle "has a good word to say about Dick Cheney!" With Congress more or less behind the push for war, the PR blitz on the public is the next step for the White House. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)

"From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." -- White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card on the timing of the Iraqi war and the White House PR blitz, quoted by the New York Times on August 7

September 7: Bush and Blair make a joint appearance at the White House to kick off the joint campaign to convince the world that Saddam Hussein has nuclear and other WMDs, with Blair intoning, "[T]he threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability -- that threat is real." Bush cites satellite photos and a report by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as proof that Iraq is rearming with WMDs: "We only need to look at the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency this morning, showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapons sites to realize this." However, a senior administration official acknowledges that the photo has been "misinterpreted" and the report drew no such conclusion. Even more egregriously, Bush and British PM Tony Blair use a 1998 IAEA report to claim that Iraq is "six months away from developing nuclear weapons," and claim that the report is brand new. "I don't know what more evidence we need," Bush adds, and Blair chimes in, "Absolutely right." The IAEA report makes no such assertion, nor gives any evidence that such an assertion is based in reality. The IAEA report does claim that Iraq was "six to 24 months" away from such a program before the Persian Gulf war, but that American military strikes destroyed Iraq's capability to produce nuclear energy of any kind. Bush and Blair's joint speech is the beginning of a huge, carefully orchestrated PR blitz to convince the public that Iraq presents a clear and present danger to the security of the free world. The IAEA will release a statement, largely ignored by the US media, to "make it clear there is nothing new."
Bush cites the 1998 IAEA report as providing definitive evidence that Hussein is only months away from producing nuclear weapons. "I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied -- finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic -- the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need." The report contains no such information, and actually shows that Iraq has no nuclear potential at all. Whatever nuclear program Iraq was developing was destroyed in 1991. Most American media outlets never run anything else except Bush's false assertion; MSNBC posts an article on its Web site showing that Bush gave false information, but within hours the article is purged. During the same speech, Bush claims that "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorist," an alliance that "could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." This claim, while theoretically possible, is completely unsubstantiated and contradicted by evidence compiled by the CIA. It is in this speech that Bush also raises the specter of unmanned aerial drones that could be used "for missions targeting the United States." The claim is complete drivel; the CIA report on this particular program reports it as completely experimental, and even if completed, could never pose a threat to any but Iraq's immediate neighbors, certainly not any overseas country such as the US. The US Air Force believes that any threat of Iraqi drones to American soil is nonsense. It is later established that if the program had ever reached completion, any such drones would have been targeted at Iran. White House press secretary Scott McClellan later backpedals, saying that the claim is from a 1991 IAEA report about Iraq's nuclear program. The IAEA did not release a report on Iraq's nuclear program in 1991. (MSNBC/Awesome Library, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, MSNBC/Memory Hole, Mother Jones, Amy Goodman and David Goodman, Mark Crispin Miller, White House/Eric Alterman and Mark Green)

White House uses New York Times to spread propaganda about Iraq's WMDs and introduce threat of "mushroom cloud"

September 8: In an article written by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, the New York Times reports that US intelligence has found that Iraq has "embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb" by trying to purchase "specially designed aluminum tubes" that the administration says are for centrifuges to enrich uranium: "Senior administration officials insist that the dimensions, specifications, and numbers of the tubes Iraq sought to buy show that they were intended for the nuclear program." "The jewel in the crown is nuclear," the report quotes a "senior administration official" as saying: "The closer he gets to a nuclear capability, the more credible is his threat to use chemical or biological weapons. Nuclear weapons are his hole card." The tubes are actually for construction of Italian-made Medusa 81 conventional rockets, and were proven as such by numerous organizations including the Livermore Laboratories. "Everybody in the intelligence community knew it," writes author James Moore, "and Rove and the White House Iraq Group sent down orders that government intelligence experts were to keep their mouths shut about dissenting information." The "evidence" is actually a repetition of groundless government claims that Hussein is actively engaged in a "stepped-up" nuclear weapons program and is engaged in a "worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb." More memorably, Gordon and Miller repeat the government phrase that will quickly become a mantra for the administration's justifications for military action in Iraq:"The first sign of a 'smoking gun,' [administration officials] argue, may be a mushroom cloud."
The article whips up concerns about Iraq's putative biological and chemical weapons stashes, as well, using innuendo and unsupported claims rather than verifiable fact. "Although administration officials say they have no proof that Baghdad possesses the smallpox virus, intelligence sources say they cannot rule that out," Miller and Gordon write. And the reporters are quick to lay the blame for the impending invasion: "Still, Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions, along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq's push to improve and expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war."
The "mushroom cloud" line was carefully crafted by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), suggested on September 5 by chief White House speechwriter Michael Gerson. Originally the line had been slated for an upcoming presidential speech, but WHIG members liked it so much that when Miller and Gordon contacted the White House for information about the upcoming article, they were given the quote with the phrase embedded within. The line will be used repeatedly in the upcoming weeks (see items below).
While Miller has been, and will continue to be, an enthusiastic promulgator of White House propaganda on the subject of Iraqi WMDs, the article was not crafted entirely at the behest of WHIG. The week before, Times editor Howell Raines had ordered up an "all known thoughts" article on what information US intelligence had on Iraq's WMDs. "All known thoughts" was Raines's phrase for huge Sunday "megastories," in the words of reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn, that would tell readers everything the Times could collect on a particular topic. It is clear that the administration is marshaling arguments for war based on Iraq's WMD capacities, and Dick Cheney's August speech in Nashville (see above item) had suggested that the administration has solid, if secret, intelligence to back up the claims. Raines wants his readers to know what the White House knows. Gordon, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, has long reported on nuclear weapons proliferation, and has a history of writing articles that contradicted the assertions of White House hardliners. Miller has extensive contacts with the Iraqi defectors of Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC), and had written extensively about allegations of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, though the information is entirely fabricated.
Gordon learned about the aluminum tubes that Iraq had supposedly purchased for the making of nuclear weapons, and ran into difficulties confirming the information about the tubes -- the information is classified. But it didn't take Gordon long to confirm, from White House officials, that some of the tubes are in the possession of the government, and the tubes have been confirmed to be planned for nuclear weapons construction. (The story of the aluminum tubes has been covered extensively elsewhere in these pages; the tubes are proven to have been intended for conventional missile construction.) Combined with Miller's information, sourced from a single anonymous Iraqi defector directed to her by the INC through a group of former Iraqi military officials, the story was shaping up to be a blockbuster. Gordon called the NSC for further verification, and that contact gave WHIG a headsup on the upcoming article, allowing them to decide how to use a leak the White House had not orchestrated. "They didn't want it out," recalls a Times source. "Then they totally used it."
Harper's publisher John MacArthur calls Gordon and Miller's article "disgraceful" and accuse the two of "inflat[ing] an administration leak into something resembling imminent Armageddon." But, administration officials are quick to use the article to bolster their own arguments -- interesting, in light of later evidence that Miller is working hand in glove with the administration. The same day, Condoleezza Rice appears on CNN and confirms the Times story, saying the tubes "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs." She also says, deliberately echoing the Times report, "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons, but we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Cheney also confirms the Times story that same day on NBC's Meet the Press (see next item), saying that intelligence has enough information "that tells us that he [Hussein] is in fact actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons" and justifying military action against Hussein by invoking both Hussein's use of chemical weapons in the 1980s and the "connection" between Hussein and 9/11. On Face the Nation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says, "Imagine a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction. It's not 3000 -- it's tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children." And Secretary of State Colin Powell tells Fox News Sunday that Bush is prepared to use "all of his authority and options" to defend the US. Rice and Cheney fail to mention that US intelligence has already determined that the aluminum tubes are unsuitable for use in building nuclear weapons; Cheney refuses to acknowledge that, in the 1980s, Hussein carried out his chemical attacks with the US's blessing and complicity. Rumsfeld's semantic attempt to juxtapose 9/11 and Saddam Hussein will be echoed time and again, without a single scrap of evidence. "Thus Bush/Cheney's war drive started well," writes Mark Crispin Miller, "with every player 'on message' loud and clear and the reporters suitably receptive."
By September 24, British intelligence concurs that the tubes cannot be used for nuclear purposes; Bush fails to mention the discrepancies in his State of the Union address, where he tells the world that Hussein is definitely building nuclear weapons. Cheney, in his appearance on Meet the Press, is quick to thank the Times for making the assertions. This, unbeknownst to the vast majority of Americans, is a classic example of a tactic that will be practiced relentlessly by the administration to justify its military intent in Iraq, a tactic labeled the "disinformation two-step" by journalist Amy Goodman: the administration leaks bogus information to journalists willing to serve as administration mouthpieces such as Gordon and Miller; the information is presented as fact in a newspaper article, and then the article is cited as "proof" by the same administration who provides the information. MacArthur calls the article, as well as further Times articles by Miller, "an unencumbered rollout of a commercial for war." Miller in particular is an egregrious example of a journalist who willingly serves the administration's disinformation purposes instead of presented non-partisan, fact-based journalism; Slate's Jack Shafer later observes, "If reporters who live by their sources were obliged to die by their sources, Miller would be stinking up her family tomb right now."
It is later proven by the US's own investigations that none of Miller's alarming reports about Iraq's weapons programs have any basis in fact whatsoever; in fact, most of Miller's information comes from Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, a source known by the US intelligence community to be completely unreliable and relentlessly self-serving. The September 8 news article by Gordon and Miller quotes an Iraqi named Ahmed al-Shemri, whose knowledge of Iraq's chemical weapons programs supposedly comes from his experience as an official in that program; al-Shemri (a pseudonym for an unidentified source) alleges that Iraq has stockpiled 12,500 gallons of anthrax toxin, 2,500 gallons of gas gangrene, 1,250 gallons of aflatoxin, and 2,000 gallons of botulinum. None of those toxin stockpiles have ever been found. Miller is embedded with an Army scientific investigation team known as MET Alpha, and her role in the team's operation is revealed by the Washington Post to have become so key to the team's functions that it became known as "the Judith Miller team." She will object to the team's later relocation to another area, and threaten the military with a story critical of the move; after personally complaining to a general, the order to relocate is reversed. Miller herself will play a key part in a MET Alpha promotion ceremony, personally pinning the new decoration of rank on the uniform of Chief Warrant Officer Rochard Gonzalez. In April 2003, Miller herself orders MET Alpha to relocate to the compound of Ahmad Chalabi, living in luxury in the most sumptuous of Saddam Hussein's confiscated palaces. There Miller takes part in the interrogation of an Iraqi prisoner, though she is a journalist and MET Alpha's mission is strictly investigative. "It's impossible to exaggerate the impact she had on the mission of this unit," says one officer, "and not for the better." Not until September 2003 will the Times publicly acknowledge that the Times had been taken for a ride by Chalabi and the INC.
A CIA official says, "You had senior American officials like Condoleezza Rice saying the only use of this aluminum really is uranium centrifuges. She said that on television. And that's just a lie." An Army intelligence official says, "deeply, almost pathologically distorting the evidence." And a DIA official says, "The American people were manipulated." (Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review/CommonDreams, Huffington Post, Amy Goodman and David Goodman, Time/New York Times/Eric Alterman and Mark Green, Mark Crispin Miller, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
September 8: Vice President Cheney appears on NBC's Meet the Press and says that it is "reprehensible" that anyone would try to infer that administration officials, including himself, waited until two months before the midterm elections to begin issuing dire warnings about Iraq: "that somehow, you know, we saved this and now we've sprung it on them [the Democrats] for political reasons." Of course, this is exactly what Cheney and the White House has done. Days later, press secretary Ari Fleischer reiterates Cheney's attack: "Even the suggestion that the timing of something so serious could be done for political reasons is reprehensible." Both are forgetting that Bush chief of staff Andrew Card admitted as much days before, when he said, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," and political guru Karl Rove told the New York Times that it wouldn't look right to begin pushing for a war while Bush was on his August vacation. Cheney also tells NBC listeners that Saddam Hussein "has indeed stepped up his capacity to produce and deliver biological weapons, that he has reconstituted his nuclear program to develop a nuclear weapon, that there are efforts under way inside Iraq to significantly expand his capability." All of these assertions are flat lies.
Cheney uses the day's top story from the New York Times (see above) as evidence of his claims; the story is based on leaks from administration officials who gave reporters Michael Gordon and Judith Miller false information about Hussein's WMD programs. Cheney says the story proves that Hussein "has been seeking to acquire" aluminum tubes (see above and below items) for his nuclear weapons program. We know this, he claims, "with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon." But the information is wrong, and Cheney is deliberately deceiving his audience, and by extension, the entire American populace.
He also asserts, again, that the CIA believes the story of the so-called meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official in April 2001 is "credible," even though both the CIA and FBI have investigated the story and found it to be false. Though Cheney gives himself some wiggle room by saying he isn't making "specific allegation[s] that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11," he says ominously, "[N]ew information has come to light" that apparently supports his broad hints of Iraq's complicity and participation in the 9/11 attacks. He tells the credulous Tim Russert that Saddam Hussein has strongly documented connections to al-Qaeda, though he knows that the single piece of "evidence" for that claim, the story of Atta's meeting with an Iraqi intelligence official, has been thorougly disproven. He dismisses the lack of solid evidence by saying, almost airily, "The debates about, you know, was he there or wasn't he there, again, it's the intelligence business." When asked if there is a direct link between Hussein and al-Qaeda, Cheney says coyly, "I'll leave it right where it's at. I don't want to go beyond that. I've tried to be cautious and restrained in my comments, and I hope that everybody will recognize that." The hope is, of course, that everydoby will fill in the very few blanks Cheney has left for them, and draw the conclusions he desires.
Taken as a whole, Cheney's untrue allegations help reframe the debate over invading Iraq from "if" to "when." They also, as noted in earlier items, serve to thoroughly suborn Colin Powell's attempts at finding a diplomatic solution. (Mother Jones, Paul Waldman [multiple sources], Michael Isikoff and David Corn. Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein, Frank Rich p.59)
September 8: In Baghdad, former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter urges Hussein's regime to wise up and stop giving the US any more pretexts to invade their country. He tells the Iraqi parliament, "My country wseems to be on the verge of making a historical mistake, one that will forever change the political dynamic which has governed the world since the end of the Second World War: namely, the foundation of international law that set forth a United Nations charter, which calls for the peaceful resolution of problems between nations. My government has set forth on a policy of unilateral intervention that runs contrary to the letter and intent of the United Nations charter." Ritter goes on to say, "The truth of the matter is that Iraq is not a sponsor of the kind of terror perpetrated against the United States on September 11, and in fact is active in suppressing the sort of fundamentalist extremism that characterizes those who attacked the United States on that horrible day." (Most Americans, both citizens and lawmakers, have little knowledge of the Hussein regime's entrenched hostility towards radical Islam.) He tells the Iraqi lawmakers that they must start now to take extraordinary steps towards complying with all UN resolutions, and ensure that they demonstrate their harmlessness and willingness to cooperate with the inspections, or else face an irresistable military foe. "Iraq must submit itself immediately to unconditional and unfettered resumption of the UN weapons inspections." Only this would "eliminate the remaining doubts of Americans, which the fearmongers are manipulating." He also urges them to extend their sympathies to the families of the 9/11 victims and thereby "make it clear to the world that, although they are a Muslim country, Iraq in no ways sponsors such terrorist activity." Finally, he proposes what might be the hardest pill for the Iraqi parliament to swallow: giving up Iraq's hard line against Israel and accepting a negotiated settlement: "It is time you stopped being more Palestinian than the Palestinians." Ritter is roundly denounced by many of the Ba'athists in the gathering. He will also face denunciation from a different source -- the American media, spearheaded by CNN. (BBC/Mark Crispin Miller)
September 8: CNN reports that ex-weapons inspector Scott Ritter doubts the Bush claims that Iraq is rebuilding any sort of WMD program. From Baghdad, Ritter says, "What I'm very certain of is that the Bush administration has not provided any evidence to substantiate its allegations that Saddam Hussein's regime is currently pursuing weapons of mass destruction programs or is in actual possession of weapons of mass destruction. Based upon my experience as a weapons inspector from 1991 to 1998, while we had serious concerns about unaccounted aspects of Iraq's weapons program, we did ascertain a 90 to 95 percent level of disarmament that included all of the production equipment and means of production used by Iraq to produce these weapons. So if Iraq has weapons today, like President Bush says, clearly they would have had to reconstitute these capabilities since December 1998. And this is something that the Bush administration needs to make a better case for, especially before we talk about going to war. ...We have a Constitution which says we will abide by the rule of law. We are signatories of the United Nations charter. Therefore, we are to adhere ourselves to the United Nations charter. And I see my government drifting decisively away from this. So I feel I have no other choice, as an American citizen, than to stand up and speak out. It's the most patriotic thing I can do."
True to its mission as a mouthpiece of the Bush administration, CNN sprinkles the Ritter interview with promos for the movie Four Feathers, a story of a coward who would not go to war. The promos are only one salvo in CNN's efforts to discredit Ritter, a former Marine and Gulf War veteran. Neocon Republican Clifford May calls Ritter "tremendously misguided" and "an apologist for and a defender of Saddam Hussein." CNN reporter Miles O'Brien, who interviewed Ritter via satellite, grilled Ritter on point after point, and, after receiving hard, clear answers in return, resorts to repeating Republican talking points: "[I]s there any doubt in your mind," he asks, "that Saddam Hussein would love to get a hold of nuclear weapons?" Ritter replies, "...It would invite the immediate harsh response of the international community and would result in his ultimate demise. So yes, I truly believe that Saddam Hussein today is not seeking to acquire, not only nuclear weapons, but weapons of mass destruction of any kind." A nonplussed O'Brien repeats the administration's bit that "the only smoking gun evidence we'll ever see...might well be a mushroom cloud. The stakes are pretty high, aren't they, Mr. Ritter? Isn't it time to act differently perhaps?" Ritter again replies that the stakes are indeed high, and therefore the US must act within international law: "If the United States shreds international law, rips up the United Nations charter and intervenes against Iraq unilaterally, we will be redefining the entire way the world chooses to deal with situations of this sort. ...[W]hat will then stop India and Pakistan from going to war? What will stop China from intervening in Taiwan? There will be no guarantees. There will be no mechanism. We will be unleashing, you know, chaos. This is a bigger fear than any hypothetical concept of an Iraqi mushroom cloud exploding anywhere in the world. ...This is reality. An Iraqi nuclear weapon, at this point in time, is sheer speculation." O'Brien falls back on his hole card: "I'm sure you've heard the criticism that...you are perhaps acting in a disloyal manner toward the United States. How do you respond?" Ritter slams the accusation of disloyalty back into O'Brien's teeth: "I'm acting as a fervent patriot who loves my country. As an American citizen, I have an obligation to speak out when I feel my government is acting in a manner which is inconsistent with the...principles of our founding fathers. We have a Constitution, which says we will abide by the rule of law. We are signatories of the United Nations charter. Therefore, we are...to adhere ourselves to the United Nations charter, and I see my government drifting decisively away from this. So I feel I have no other choice as an American citizen than to stand up and speak out. It's the most patriotic thing I can do."
CNN's "chief news executive" Eason Jordan takes to the airwaves to impugn Ritter's credibility, calling him "chameleon-like" and saying that Americans are "stunned...as to his position on these matters." He even implies that, because Iraq refuses to allow CNN to broadcast video of Ritter's earlier remarks to their parliament, that Ritter is colluding with the Ba'athists. "US officials no longer give Scott Ritter much credibility," Jordan concludes. (Ritter is surprised at Jordan's remarks, having contacted him to inform Jordan of his planned appearance in Baghdad and offering to give CNN exclusive interviews afterwards. On September 17, at the CNN offices, Ritter challenges Jordan to come up with any support for his on-air remarks; Jordan can cite nothing. Later, Jordan will reveal his own sympathies when he admits he went to the Pentagon for their approval of CNN's list of military analysts, telling the audience that it was "important" that he got the Pentagon's "thumbs-up" for the analysts the network would employ.
The next morning, the assault begins anew, with anchor Paula Zahn, herself a committed right-winger, interviewing Republican senator Richard Shelby about Ritter. Shelby calls Ritter an "idealist" and accuses him of "courting Saddam Hussein at the wrong time in the wrong place." Zahn then introduces Ritter by opening with a statement saying that the International Institute for Strategic Studies has released a report confirming Hussein's intense interest in developing nuclear weapons (the IISS report is nowhere near that conclusive) and citing the infamous aluminum tubes as "proof" of Hussein's nuclear ambitions. "What an absurd statement," Ritter retorts. "...[W]e're going to war over thousands of aluminum pipes? Even the [I]ISS report that you cite says that if Iraq was trying to do uranium enrichment, it would take them many years before they could do it. This is patently ridiculous. These are aluminum pipes coming in for civilian use. They are not being transferred to a covert nuclear processing plant or any covert nuclear activity whatsoever." (Ritter will later admit that he meant to say the aluminum tubes are to be used for artiller purposes, a point that the IAEA will confirm.) He says that the UN must send the weapons inspectors back in, and concludes, "We cannot go to war because Vice President Cheney's worried about some aluminum pipes. This is ridiculous. ...I'm going to need a hell of a lot more than some aluminum tubes before I'm convinced there's a case for war. The bottom line is that in 1998 the [IAEA] said that Iraq had no nuclear weapons capability, none whatsoever, zero. So how suddenly are they now an emerging nuclear threat? We'd better have a heck of a lot more to go on than some aluminum pipes." Zahn continues to press her misunderstanding about the IISS's report, claiming that the report concludes Hussein has an "enduring interest" in nuclear weapons, and Ritter slams her down again, making the point again that the UN weapons inspections worked admirably. "You build factories, not in a basement, not in a mountain cave, but it's a modern industrial capability. Where did it come from? Where are the facilities? Where are the weapons? I'm tired of speculation. I won't support a war in which the Marines that I used to associate with are going to go off and fight and maybe get killed. It's just not worth it." Zahn shouts back that former CIA head James Woolsey "says you're very far off the beam on this one!" and then asks him about Shelby's assertion that Ritter is "courting Saddam Hussein." Ritter's response: "Well, Senator Shelby, with all due respect, back off, buddy. ...[Y]ou want to debate Iraq, let's do it face-to-face in front of a TV camera, where we can put the facts on the table -- and I guarantee you, I'll win."
Ritter is soon interviewed by CNN reporter Kyra Phillips, whose tone is, if anything, even more unforgiving than Zahn's, accusing him of pretending to have "better intelligence than the president of the United States and his staff," and Ritter retorting, "This wouldn't be the first time a president...has lied to the American public to facilitate a war. Think back to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and how we got entangled in Vietnam. I believe the same thing is happening here. If President Bush has a case to be made, if this administration has a case to be made for war against Iraq, then by God, they'd better start making it. I'm tired of hearing the rhetoric of war. I'm tired of watching American troops deploy for war. I'm tired of seeing the world reject the stance that America takes, because there are no facts right now to back up anything the administration says in regards to Iraq. I'm concerned about Iraq's weapons programs. I've always been concerned. That's why I'm encouraging the Iraqis to allow return, unconditional return, of UN weapons inspectors and giving them unfettered access. I wish the United States would start talking about getting weapons inspectors back to work in Iraq and less about sending Marines into Iraq." After some back-and-forth about Hussein's 1988 gassing of Kurds, Phillips suddenly shifts into personal attack mode: "scott, who paid for your trip to Iraq?" Ritter says acidly, "I paid for my trip to Iraq. If you would like to check the bill or check my bank account, you are welcome to." Phillips retorts, "While I have you on air, I don't think I can check anything. I'm hoping we can take your word for it." She then asks the ugly question: "Are you saying that you won't regret not doing anything about Saddam Hussein?" Ritter's response is as eloquent as it is offended: "Excuse me; I went to war against Saddam Hussein in 1991. I spent seven years of my life in this country hunting down weapons of mass destruction. I believe I've done a lot about Saddam Hussein. The international community said that we must get rid of Saddam Hussein's weapons, and I dedicated a good portion of my adult life to doing just that. ...You show me where Saddam Hussein can be substantiated as a threat against the United States and I'll go to war again. I'm not going to sit back idly and let anybody threaten the United States. But at this point in time, no one has made a case based upon facts that Saddam Hussein or his government is a threat to the United States worthy of war." By the time the interview is over, Phillips has, in the words of Mark Crispin Miller, gone well down the road towards painting Ritter as an "enemy of the state."
The next morning, Zahn interviews former UNSCOM chief Richard Butler. Ritter resigned from Butler's command over Butler's complicity in allowing CIA spies to work inside UNSCOM, a decision which Ritter believes damaged the credibility of the weapons inspections teams and gave Iraq legitimate complaints about the objectivity and agenda of the inspectors. Though the accusations of CIA plants within UNSCOM have been proven true, Butler continues to insist that no such spies were ever in the organization. Zahn, either unaware of or deliberately choosing to ignore all of this, uses Butler to portray Ritter as a loose cannon, with Butler implying that Ritter's sanity is in question and calling him "sad, wrong, and frankly, a touch dangerous."
Never one to turn down a bash at any critic of the Bush administration, both Fox and MSNBC jump on the Ritter-slandering bandwagon. Fox's John Gibson accuses Ritter of "sticking up for Saddam Hussein...against the interests of the United States," and colleague David Asman accuses Ritter of taking $80,000 to represent Iraq, a charge that is absolutely false. (Ritter took $80,000 from Iraq-American businessman Shakir al-Khafaji to help fund his 2000 film, In Shifting Sands, documenting the Iraqi weapons inspections.) Gibson hysterically compares Ritter to Jane Fonda, and accuses him of appearing in Baghdad "to condemn the United States." Asman's subsequent Fox interview with Ritter is a circle of absurdities, with Asman repeatedly trying to get Ritter to admit that Hussein has weapons but is concealing them, and reiterating the already-discredited story about Iraq's complicity with 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta.
On September 13, Zahn asks Ritter about the 2000 film and says, "People out there are accusing you of drinking Saddam Hussein's Kool-Aid." Four days later, an irate Ritter visits CNN headquarters in Atlanta, meeting with Eason Jordan, Walter Isaacson, and other CNN honchos and reporters; Ritter's answers to the grilling are clear and substantial, and Isaacson admits that while he may disagree with some of Ritter's conclusions, he is a solid and trustworthy source of information that CNN and other networks should use. Of course, this is not played up on CNN or anywhere else. From there, Ritter joins CNN's Arthel Neville for what is easily the nastiest interview of the bunch. Neville again accuses Ritter of being in the pay of the Iraqi government, disputing his claim that he paid for his own trip to Baghdad, impugning his 2000 film as some sort of complicity with the Iraqis, and reading an e-mail from "Rob in Colorado" calling Ritter a traitor. Ritter is followed by Max Boot, the editor of the neocon Weekly Standard's editorial page, who charges Ritter with complicity.
The vilification of Ritter continues with MSNBC commentator Curtis Sliwa calling Ritter a "sock puppet" who "oughta turn in his passport for an Iraqi one." The print media jumps in, with stories in the Washington Post calling him a "loose cannon" and a New York Times Magazine profile that accuses Ritter of self-aggrandizement and neurosis. Ritter will even have to contend with baseless but damaging charges of pedophilia. Of course, Ritter's doubts turn out to be absolutely correct. Hussein is, as Ritter pointed out, monstrously self-interested and unwilling to do anything that might abort his rule, most particularly developing any proscribed weaponry. He has a long record of eagerly murdering many Islamic radicals instead of supporting them. Miller writes, "While the prescient Ritter was dismissed as a subversive flake, the press hailed the opposing views of men who knew far less than he did and were obviously not thinking straight, as their hearts and minds belonged to Daddy [Bush]. History, however, has been far less kind to them." Clifford May, who charged that Ritter was "tremendously misguided," admitted that he was seriously misguided himself about the aftermath of the invasion. Woolsey, who Paula Zahn reported as saying that Ritter was "way off the beam," has been proven dead wrong in his relentless optimism about the ease of conquering Iraq and installing an American-style democracy. And Max Boot went even farther, predicting that "plenty of Iraqis" would help US troops kick out Hussein and replace him with a democratic government. Instead, writes Miller, "[w]hile helping to discredit [Ritter, the press] also acquiesced as Bush & Co intensified its propaganda drive, circulating whopper after whopper." (CNN, Buzzflash, Toronto Star/CommonDreams, Mark Crispin Miller)
September 9: Alarmed by the apocalyptic pronouncements of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell about Iraq's "proven" nuclear weapons programs, Democratic senators Dick Durbin sends a letter to CIA director George Tenet asking, for a second time, for a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi WMDs. He also asks for an unclassified summary of the NIE so "the American people can better understand this important issue." Other Democrats from the Senate Intelligence Committee, including Dianne Feinstein, Bob Graham, and Carl Levin, join Durbin in his request. Tenet agrees to rush out an NIE.
Tenet may not be aware that NSC deputy Stephen Hadley is meeting today with the head of Italy's intelligence bureau, Nicolo Pollari. A spokesman calls the meeting nothing more than a "courtesy call," but the meeting comes only weeks after Italian reporter Elisabetta Burba, who works for Panorama, an Italian newsmagazine which is little more than a propaganda outlet for the conservative government of Silvio Berlusconi, has been given the forged documents "proving" that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger. As documented elsewhere in these pages (see above for some of the information, and the October 15, 2001 entry for more), Burba received the documents from a discredited former SISMI agent, Rocco Martino. Martino had been fired for unethical conduct, arrested in Germany for possession of stolen checks, and charged with extortion in Italy. However, Martino is still receiving a stipend from SISMI, and his story of Iraq attempting to revivify its nuclear program is exactly what Bush and Cheney want to hear. Burba isn't sure about the documents, so instead of writing a story about them, on October 9 she will eventually deliver them to the US embassy in Rome, headed by US ambassador Mel Sembler, a hardline Bush ally, on the advice of her editor, a close colleague of Berlusconi's.
By the time the embassy has the documents, the meeting between Hadley and Pollari has already taken place; former CIA counterterrorism expert Philip Giraldi believes that the meeting may have set up the document delivery, especially in light of the fact that the embassy expected the documents well before they were produced. Normal protocol would have been to deliver the documents to the CIA station chief in Rome, where CIA analysts would have had access to them. Indeed, the CIA analysts in Rome had already seen the documents, and the officer in charge had kicked Martino out after he immediately "saw that they were fakes."
Meanwhile, the dossier on the forged documents winds up on the desks of national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and of Dick Cheney, neither of whom has seen the report from former ambassador Joseph Wilson debunking the Niger claims. Shortly thereafter, a State Department analyst, poring over the suspicious documents, flags them as probable frauds. But British intelligence has already looked over the documents, and Tony Blair has already issued a public dossier asserting that there "is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The claim is quickly seized upon by the White House, who is trying to persuade a dubious Congress of the necessity to authorize military action against Saddam Hussein. A hastily written NIE -- the same one promised by Tenet -- claims, "A foreign government service reported that as of early 2001, Niger planned to send several tons of 'pure uranium' (probably yellowcake) to Iraq."
The forgeries ratchet up support for the war among Congress and the American public, with Bush, Cheney, and other officials hammering home the "fact" that Iraq is trying to restart its long-dormant nuclear research program. The forgeries give Bush, Cheney, Rice, and others the chance to reiterate over and over again the hollow but terrifying claim that if Iraq isn't invaded and Hussein overthrown, the results will be a "mushroom cloud" over America. The messaging is carefully orchestrated by Karl Rove and Karen Hughes. Now Rove's biggest task is to ensure that the facts behind the fraudulent Italian documents and the larger issue of the cooked intelligence on Iraq doesn't come to light until, at least, the war is well underway. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn, James Moore and Wayne Slater)
September 10: In preparation for Bush's 9/11 commemorative speech, planned to help lay the groundwork for the Iraq invasion, Attorney General John Ashcroft raises the terror level threat to "orange," or high, citing "chatter" indicating that a terrorist attack against US targets is planned for the one-year anniversary. No such attack takes place, and no evidence of any such attack is ever provided. It is highly likely that the threat level is raised for purely political reasons. For the same reasons, the White House announces that Dick Cheney had spent the night at an undisclosed, secure location. And a major presidential speech concerning the necessity of taking action against Iraq is planned for the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. (Mother Jones, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)

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THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy

Written and Compiled by Black Max

2002:

September

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September

Massive air strike in Iraq launched in preparation for invasion

Intensive "marketing strategy" for selling the Iraq invasion launched

White House uses New York Times to spread propaganda about Iraq's WMDs and introduce threat of "mushroom cloud"

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