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
August 2003
Week One
- August: Condoleezza Rice, concluding that Donald Rumsfeld just won't get involved enough in planning for postwar Iraq, decides, with her deputy Stephen Hadley, to appoint Robert Blackwill as the NSC's coordinator for strategic planning. Blackwill, the former US ambassador to India and a former aide to Henry Kissinger, has the reputation for steamrollering his subordinates; he often refers to himself as "Godzilla." Hadley ensures that Blackwill understands he can't be as difficult to work with as his reputation suggests, and Blackwill goes to work. Within a couple of weeks, he tells Rice and Hadley, "We're losing. We're just losing this whole thing. The public opinion's going against us. This is awful. We're losing the battle for Iraq heart and soul." Like Rice, Blackwill feels one of the biggest problems is the antagonism between the Defense and State Departments. Deputy Secretary of State often seems to have to physically restrain himself from attacking undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith during meetings. Rumsfeld and Colin Powell refuse to listen to one another or respond to one another's briefings during meetings with Bush, depriving Bush of, in reporter Bob Woodward's words, "substantive discussion between his principal advisors." And Bush seems impatient, bored, and never forces a discussion. Rice's intervention accomplishes nothing. As a result, critical discussions about military strategy or anything else never occurs.
- Blackwill soon recommends a large escalation of US forces in Iraq, around 40,000 more troops. Rice is cool to the idea. Blackwill and Bremer, longtime friends, decide to work together to make a dramatic presentation to Rice to convince her of the need for more troops on the ground. Their presentation fails to move Rice. Afterwards, Bremer turns to Blackwill and says, "Swing and a miss." Blackwill retorts, "Deep space shot," predicting that their proposal is now heading out to Mars and then beyond, never to be heard from again. (Bob Woodward)
- August: David Kay's WMD hunters find the explanation for why Iraq bought so many of the now-infamous high-capacity aluminum tubes, once considered hard evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions but now determined to be for convention artillery shells. The explanation is simple: Saddam Hussein's son Qusay owned the factory that produced the propellant for the shells. The propellant was weak and unsuitable, but no one in the Hussein regime dared protest the use of the propellant, so the scientists working on the shells decided to use smaller, lighter, more high-specification aluminum tubes as a workaround to make the use of the poor propellant viable. "We never wanted these," says one informant. "We kept trying to cancel the contract, but they told us we had to honor the contract." To Kay, it sounds like the Pentagon's penchant for buying $500 toilet seats and $1000 hammers.
- Kay has $10 million in funds for rewards for information leading to the discovery of WMDs, and as a result his team is plagued with hoax attempts. Informants bring all sorts of items to the team's attention, claiming that this or that gadget proves the existence of Hussein's chemical or biological weapons. Nothing proves true. One communication intercept, a conversation between an Iraqi scientist and his wife, is particularly telling. The wife begs her husband to find a way to secure some of the reward money so they can have money for food. Her husband says, "I don't know anything. We didn't have anything. I can't give the Americans anything. We didn't have it." After extensive interrogation sessions with one scientist after another, it becomes increasingly clear that Saddam's entire WMD arsenal was a giant hoax on his own people, useful for keeping the populace cowed, but in reality never extant. Kay is coming to the conclusion that the reason he isn't finding the weapons stockpiles is because they never existed.
- Meanwhile, Rumsfeld is trying to reassign Kay's team to take additional missions, such as counterterrorism. Kay protests to George Tenet that if his team gets multiple missions, he won't be able to perform any of them. Tenet gets Rumsfeld to back off by telling the secretary that Kay has threatened to resign if Rumsfeld reassigns his team. (Bob Woodward)
- August: After months of intense wrangling and posturing, the Bush administration succeeds in dramatically watering down an international pact to combat corporate corruption. The Wall Street Journal calls the Bush position "a striking turnaround from several years ago, when the Clinton adminstration pressed a reluctant Europe to crack down on bribes," the Bush team fights passionately to dilute and undermine the agreement, "in effect protecting the practice of bribes, illicit payments, and nepotism," in the words of Eric Alterman and Mark Green. US negotiators, interested in protecting the rights of large corporations to make large illegal donations to political parties without suffering any penalty, complain that funding issues are too complex because of the different political systems involved -- a ludicrous charge, considering that these self-same corporate interests deal with these different political and financial systems every day. The Wall Street Journal announces in August that the Bush delegates have "reached preliminary agreement with Europe and developing nations to water down a proposed global treaty against corruption by largely exempting businesses and political parties from the requirements." The fact that a crackdown on global business corruption is a major element in the war on terrorism seems to have little, if any, impact on the Bush administration's position. (Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
- August: Bush and the House Republicans unveil a new environmental package, the "Healthy Forests Initiative" (HR 1904). Like so many others of his environmental proposals, the Orwellian name hides the true intent of the proposals: to turn much of the control of the nation's woodlands over to lumber companies and real estate developers. The environmental group Defenders of Wildlife says that the bill is part of "a near-total overhaul of the national forest regulatory and policy system as the administration rewrites practically every important forest policy on the books. A major focus of this administrative overhaul is the elimination of safeguards and procedures designed to sustain environmental values and ensure an effective role for the public in public forest management." Mark Crispin Miller adds, "Thus 'healthy forests' means tree stumps, hotter climate, toxic runoff, vanished species." (Mark Crispin Miller)
- August: The Bush administration, at the behest of the US pharmaceutical industry, strongly opposes a global agreement in the works to provide low-cost medicines to developing nations. All 143 member nations of the World Trade Organization have already agreed upon a new plan on the trade of medicines, the Bush administration suddenly blocks the proposal. Under the lash of the pharmaceutical lobby, the Bush delegates instead submit a list of twenty infectious diseases that it was willing to address. Left off the list are heart-related problems, diabetes, cancer, and chronic respiratory illnesses, diseases that affect far more people than the ones for which the US is willing to help provide low-cost medicines. Talks remain stalled due to US recalcitrance, a situation which suits the US pharmaceutical industry and its record-breaking profit margins just fine. It is worth noting that the industry contributed $50 million to help Republicans regain control of Congress in the November 2002 elections alone. (Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
- August: Uruguayan journalist and historian Eduardo Galeano calls Iraqi leader Ahmad Chalabi one of "the finest liars in the world." He begins his profile of Chalabi by documenting Chalabi's embezzlement of $500 million from Jordan's Petra Bank, for which he was sentenced in 1992 to twenty years' hard labor in absentia; by that point Chalabi was already in London, forming the anti-Hussein exile group the Iraqi National Congress. Despite the fact that Chalabi pocketed at least $4 million in CIA funds allocated to the INC, Chalabi became the darling of American neoconservatives determined to replace Saddam Hussein with a ruler more suitable to their needs. He notes that Chalabi, who had not set foot in Iraq between 1958 and 2003, is "the favorite mascot of the occupation forces." Galeano turns his attention to Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, also set up as his country's leader by the United States. Under Karzai's rule, Afghanistan has become the world's principal supplier of opium, heroin, and morphine. In 2002, the production of drugs increased 1800%, from 185 to 3,400 tons. It has increased since then. British prime minister Tony Blair recently acknowledged that 90 percent of the heroin consumed in England came from Afghanistan. "The government of Hamid Karzai, which controls only the city of Kabul, is tight with Washington," writes Galeano. "Of its sixteen ministers, ten have US passports. And Karzai himself, a former consultant for the U.S. oil company Unocal, lives surrounded by soldiers from the United States, which gives him orders and watches wherever he goes and as he sleeps. The invaders were supposed to stay just two months, but there they remain. This is why: The incorruptible warriors of the war on drugs have set up shop in Afghanistan to guarantee the freedom to grow, the freedom to traffic, and the freedom to cross borders. Of the reconstruction of this razed country, there is little mention any more. Ahmed Karzai, brother of the virtual president and prominent figure in the government, recently lamented: 'What did they do for us? Nothing. The people are exhausted and I don't know what to tell them.'" (Progressive/Nation Institute)
Saudi/Bush connections to terrorist groups exposed
- August 1: The classified part of the Congressional report on 9/11 states that at least two of the Saudis who had links to the hijackers were Saudi intelligence agents who reported directly to the Saudi Arabian government. Senior Saudi officials deny the links, and are calling for the report to be made public, but Bush refuses, citing national security concerns. The two Saudis, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, operated in a complex web of financial relationships with officials of the Saudi government. Of further concern is the fact that during a meeting between Bush and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah that took place shortly after the attacks, Bassnan met with Saudis in Abdullah's entourage. No word of what was discussed between Bassnan and Abdullah's associates has been made public. (New York Times/CNN)
- August 1: FBI investigators have traced some of the major funding for the 9/11 attacks to Pakistan. The FBI estimates that the terrorists spent between $175,000 and $250,000 on the attacks. No specific information about the money, how it was provided or who specifically donated it, was provided, though they did say that captured terror suspect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed managed much of the money himself. (Guardian)
- August 1: The judge heading the inquiry into David Kelly's death intends to have Prime Minister Tony Blair testify. The judge, Lord Hutton, will ask Blair to give evidence about a government decision naming Kelly as the possible source for a disputed BBC news report on the government's handling of intelligence on Iraqi weapons. Hutton intends to conduct a wide-ranging inquiry that will cover not only Kelly's death, but the government dossier on Iraqi weapons which was at the core of the dispute that brought Kelly into the spotlight. Hutton said he would also seek to question Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon and Blair's communications director Alastair Campbell. "At some stage in the course of the inquiry, I propose to ask the prime minister and the Secretary of State for Defense Mr. Geoff Hoon to give evidence of their knowledge of the discussions that took place and the decisions which were taken in relation to Dr. Kelly," he said. (CBS)
- August 1: Investigative reporter Greg Palast writes that one of the reasons Bush is refusing to release 28 pages of the 9/11 report is to cover up his own connections to the Saudis. In 1986, the oil company that he partially owned, Harken Oil, was foundering when it was rescued from insolvency by a huge contribution from Sheikh Bakhsh of Saudi Arabia. His previous oil company, Arbusto, was rescued from insolvency by a huge cash infusion from the bin Laden family. Bush reversed the Clinton policy of pressuring the Saudi royal family from giving donations to terror groups such as al-Qaeda. In the summer of 2001, Bush disbanded the US intelligence unit tracking funding of Al Qaeda after the units revealed that a number of the same Saudis have funded both al-Qaeda and the Bush family political and business ventures. And just prior to the 9/11 attack, the Bush administration intervened to stop an investigation into two members of the bin Laden family suspected for working for an al-Qaeda front organization. (Greg Palast)
- August 1: The Bush administration, facing an increasingly difficult task in Iraq, is offering to "buy" foreign troops to supplement the American war effort. "When they were seeking UN support for a war on Iraq, they were twisting arms," one Asian diplomat says. "Now they are offering carrots in exchange for our troops." Inducements offered to India, Pakistan, and Turkey include state-of-the-art weapons platforms such as the US/Israeli Arrow-2 missile defense system and increased military aid for any or all of the three countries. India is considering sending 17,000 troops to Bush's aid. (Asia Times)
- August 1: The Washington Post reports that since May, a number of employees of the Department of Homeland Security have been working in Iraq as part of US reconstruction efforts. "We think helping to secure Iraq helps make the United States a more secure country," says a DHS spokesperson. A spokesperson for Senator Bob Graham disagrees: "The point of the Homeland Security Department is to make us safer -- safer from terrorists, safer from those who would do Americans harm and who would get inside the border of our country. ...So anything that George Bush is allowing the Homeland Security Department to do outside of that directive is a misuse of the department." Additionally, members of the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement are also working in Iraq. (Washington Post)
- August 1: Senator Robert Byrd warns that the elements of a "perfect storm" are gathering to blast international stability. "The forces in play are centered on the escalating nuclear threat from North Korea, but they also include the emergence of Iran as a nuclear contender, the violence and desperate humanitarian situation in Liberia, the near forgotten but continuing war in Afghanistan, and the unrelenting threat of international terrorism. Just a few days ago, the Department of Homeland Security issued a chilling alert that al Qaeda operatives may be plotting suicide missions to hijack commercial aircraft in the coming weeks – possibly in the United States. Weather forecasters can do little more than watch a storm unfold. They cannot quiet the winds or calm the seas. We require more from the President of the United States when it comes to international crises. The President cannot afford to merely plot the course of the gathering storms over North Korea, Iran, Liberia, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The President needs to turn his attention to these countries and work with the international community to diffuse the emerging crises." (Robert C. Byrd)
- August 2: The Saudi government funnelled millions of dollars to the terrorists of 9/11 through a network of charities and other "humanitarian" organizations, according to the 28 pages deleted from the public release of Congress's report on the 9/11 attacks. "It's really damning," says one US official who has read the classified pages of the report. "What it says is that not only Saudi entities or nationals are implicated in 9/11, but the [Saudi] government" as well. There is dissension in the Bush administration and within the intelligence community over the possible involvement of the Saudi royal family, and whether or not the information in the report is entirely accurate. The report itself stresses that the investigation is incomplete and further digging is required to find the entire truth of the matter. "If this comes out, it will blow the top off the relations with [the Saudi] government because the American people will just be outraged," says another official. "People don't know how much is in there and how specific it is. The public hasn't gotten anywhere near the meat of it." (LA Times)
- August 3: The Ministry of Defence attempts to burn documents and other evidence associated with the "suicide" of Dr. David Kelly. The MOD confirms that copies of a "media plan" relating to Dr. Kelly were discovered in a garbage bag being taken to the incinerator. The documents detail the methods that the MOD would use in dealing with media inquiries into Kelly's death. (Sunday Mail)
- August 3: An audiotape apparently made by al-Qaeda deputy Ayman Al-Zawahri warns the US "will pay dearly for any harm done to any of the Muslim prisoners it is holding" in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. A Dubai-based television station received the tape and declares it authentic, but management refuses to divulge how the tape got in their hands. Al-Zawahri also declares, "But we tell America one thing: what you have seen so far is nothing but the first skirmishes. The real battle hasn't started yet." (Houston Chronicle)
Afghanistan descending into anarchy
- August 3: The consensus among aid workers, UN officials, and other non-governmental officials is that the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating into bloody anarchy, and the respoonsibility must be borne by the US-led coalition that invaded Afghanistan in 2001. One result of the increasing chaos is the reduction of a US military presence in northern Afghanistan, and warlords who proclaim putative alliance with the Karzai government are increasingly operating on their own, oftentimes in collusion with extremist Muslims and even the Taliban, resurgent in Pakistan and uncontrolled areas of Afghanistan. Often US policy has been simply to pay warlords to run the country outside Kabul, even warlords in open defiance of Karzai. (Mail and Guardian)
- August 3: After over a year of complaints, some American anti-war activists discover that they are being wrongly targeted as security risks by airport security. The Transportation Security Agency has issued a list, with possibly thousands of names on it, separate from the "no-fly" list which names potential terror suspects. Although the list itself is secret, the American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing to find out more about the list, suspects that the names on the list are of people who have legally protested the war against Iraq. The list was revealed after numerous requests by the ACLU were filed on behalf of, among others, two pacifist activists who have never been arrested and have no criminal records; a liberal constitutional lawyer who has been strip-searched repeatedly when travelling through US airports; and a 71-year-old nun from Milwaukee who was recently prevented from flying to Washington to join an anti-government protest. The TSA admits that it has no special procedure for ensuring how names get on the list, that there is no procedure from removing names from the list once they are placed there, and that it doesn't seem to care about these concerns: according to a TSA spokesperson, the agency sees "no pressing need" to ensure that citizens are treated legally and fairly. Right-wing activists and civil libertarians are also calling for an end to the list, and the conservative Eagle Forum says that its members have also been harassed at airports, apparently because of their placement on the list. (Independent)
- August 3: The Bush administration warns the Niger government to keep out of the dispute over claims that Saddam Hussein sought to buy uranium for his nuclear weapons program. US officials denied that there had been any attempt to gag the Niger government. A Nigerian official countered by declaring "a clear attempt to stop any more embarrassing stories coming out of Niger." (Daily Telegraph)
- August 3: The US lays out stringent limits under which Iraqi civilians can claim compensation from the United States for death or damage caused by the occupying forces. A military spokesman says that under the rules, Iraqis would only be paid compensation when it could be proved soldiers had acted wrongfully or negligently during "non-combat activities." The spokesman said this would almost certainly rule out claims made against the US for acts before May 1, the date George Bush declared the main combat operations at an end. Since US commanders still say they are fighting a low intensity war, many claims after that date, including those made by civilians shot accidentally at checkpoints, may also be invalid. So far the US has received 2,400 claims and paid out $262,000 in compensation. The spokesman was unable to say if any payments had been made for loss of life, but said such claims would be paid at a local rate. "I hate to say it, but the value of a life in Iraq is probably less than a life in the US or UK," he says. (Guardian)
- August 3: Karen Kwiatkowski, a recently retired Air Force colonel who served in the office of the UnderSecretary of Defense for Policy, Near East South Asia and Special Plans (USDP/NESA and SP), writes about her disillusionment with the Bush administration's chaotic handling of post-invasion Iraq. "What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline. If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of 'intelligence' found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Hussein occupation has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense." She identifies three major problem areas. The first is a fundamental isolation of the professionals who should have been at the forefront of the information analysis process; instead, those individuals were uninvolved while less capable but "right-thinking" analysts told senior department officials Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith what they wanted to hear. Secondly, the cross-agency "clique" comprised of PNAC members took the upper hand time and again over more experienced, dispassionate officials. Her third area is what she calls "groupthink: Defined as 'reasoning or decision-making by a group, often characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view,' groupthink was, and probably remains, the predominant characteristic of Pentagon Middle East policy development. The result of groupthink is the elevation of opinion into a kind of accepted 'fact,' and uncritical acceptance of extremely narrow and isolated points of view." Kwiatkowski accuses Donald Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans of "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress." She is expected to be a prime witness when Congress reconvenes in September and begins to consider the question of how intelligence was manipulated to justify the war against Iraq. (Beacon Journal/Information Clearinghouse, InterPress News Service)
- August 4: Reports that Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage would resign from the administration after the 2004 elections were denied by State Department spokespersons, Powell, and President Bush, who defended Powell but refused to confirm that Powell would be asked to serve a second term if Bush wins the election. (Both Powell and Armitage will indeed leave the State Department after the election.) (Washington Post, MSNBC)
US casualties in Iraq far higher than Pentagon admits
- August 4: United States military casualties in Iraq are running at more than twice the number most Americans have been led to believe they are. The public is largely unaware of a high number of accidents, suicides and other non-combat deaths. As for American wounded, so many have been flown to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington that the hospital is "overwhelmed;" beds alloted to cancer victims have been taken for use by wounded military personnel. The Pentagon figure for wounded in action in Iraq is 827 [as of August 5], but the total of injuries appears much higher. The estimate given by central command in Qatar is 926, but Lieutenant-Colonel Allen DeLane, in charge of the airlift of wounded into Andrews Air Force Base, believes that too is understated: "since the war has started, I can't give you an exact number because that's classified information, but I can say to you over 4000 have stayed here at Andrews, and that number doubles when you count the people that come here to Andrews and then we send them to other places...." Ninety per cent of injuries were directly war-related, he said. (Sydney Morning Herald)
- August 4: The increasing number of deaths among Iraqi civilians at the hands of US troops is embittering Iraqis who formerly supported the US's overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The July 26 death of 12-year old Mohammed al-Kubaisi, shot in the head while he watched troop maneuvers from his apartment rooftop, is just one of dozens of examples cited as reasons for the growing resistance towards American occupation. They also cite rampant unemployment and shortages of everything from food and water to gasoline and electricity as sources of tension, but the steady number of civilian deaths is the biggest reason why Iraqis are souring on US occupation. "It has increased our hate against Americans," says a 23-year old computer science student at the University of Baghdad. "It also increases the violence against them. In Iraq, we are tribal people. When someone loses their son, they want revenge." The US terms the death of Mohammed al-Kubaisi an accident, but has promised an investigation. Family members believe the boy could have been saved had they not been stopped at US checkpoints on their way to the hospital; they were forced to turn back and return to their home. Mohammed bled to death in the backseat of the family car.
- "I'm working very hard to ensure that with our tactics we aren't alienating the Iraqi people," Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US forces in Iraq, said on July 29. When asked whether officers had apologized to the families of five Iraqis killed during a botched raid in Mansour on July 27, Sanchez said, "Apologies are not something that we have as a normal procedure in the military processes." The total of American dead and wounded in Iraq is almost twice as the reported figures, because the Bush administration refuses to report non-combat deaths and injuries. The official total as of August 4 is 52 dead since May 1, when George W. Bush declared "mission accomplished," but when deaths from accidents, suicides, and other non-combat fatalities are added in, the number is 112 after May 1 and 248 overall. Additionally, the administration refuses to discuss the number of Americans wounded in battle, which currently stands at 827 officially -- unofficially, the number is said to run well over the thousand mark, and Lieutenant Allan DeLane, who is in charge of airlifting the wounded from Iraq to US hospitals, the number is tremendously higher. "since the war has started, I can't give you an exact number because that's classified information, but I can say to you over 4,000 have stayed here at Andrews [Air Force Base, which has a hospital on site], and that number doubles when you count the people that come here to Andrews and then we send them to other places like Walter Reed and Bethesda, which are in this area also." Some of that number may involve double-counting -- i.e, if a soldier stays at the Andrews clinic on the way to Washington and then again on the way back to the war or back home. But the actual number of wounded still appears to be much higher than the official figures. "When the facility where I'm at started absorbing the people coming back from theatre [in April], those numbers went up significantly -- I'd say over 1,200," says DeLane. "That number even went up higher in the month of May, to about 1,500, and continues to increase." The hospital staff at Walter Reed Medical Center is working 70- and 80-hour workweeks to handle the endless shipment of injured soldiers, and the hospital is turning out cancer patients in order for soldiers to occupy their beds. (Boston Globe, Guardian/Truthout)
- August 4: New details are emerging about the Pentagon's attempt to curb the ability of military personnel and their families to publicly discuss their questions and complaints about the conditions that US military personnel are suffering under in Iraq. The "embedded journalist" program so prominent during the actual invasion is being curtailed; many troops are not allowed to speak with journalists at all except during pre-approved, tightly controlled press conferences. Soldiers' families are being pressured to remain silent to the media. After being told that 3rd Infantry Division soldiers would be staying in Iraq longer than expected, families received an e-mail message from a rear-detachment commander warning against contacting the press "in a negative manner regarding the military and this deployment." (PR Week)
- August 4: Former senator Gary Hart characterizes the US presence in Iraq as "benign imperialism" and says it has "little to do with the real war on terrorism." He believes that the National Security Council has metastasized from its intended function as a coordinator between the major governmental agencies into a competitor for the State Department, and that US intelligence has come to rely far too much on technology and not enough on human sources: "[T]hese [terrorist groups] are non-state organizations that do not lend themselves to the kind of electronic surveillance that nation-states do, with capitals and governments, and established networks of communication and so on. So it's just kind of common sense that if you're going to fight terrorism in this new world, that you're going to have to get agents inside those organizations to tell you when, where and how they intend to act." He believes that if some of the recommendations that his commission made had been implemented -- particularly coordinating border control agencies such as the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Patrol, Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- then the 9/11 attacks could have possibly been prevented. Instead, nothing was done and the attacks succeeded. Hart says, "The President controlled the FBI and the CIA. And when the tragedy happened, no one was fired. Why is that? Why was there no accountability? So instead of pointing the finger at us, and saying, 'well, if you'd just told us they were going to use airplanes, and that the target was the World Trade Center, and it was going to be September 11th, maybe we could have done something.' That's total nonsense."
- He recommends that three steps be taken immediately to curb the threat of another attack: first, that the Department of Homeland Security move with urgency to integrate the 22 departments under its purview ("There is no sense of urgency."); second, that the federal system needs to learn how to train, equip, and provide resources to state and local first responders such as police and firefighters ("They are not doing that. They are not doing it nearly fast enough."); and third, for the federal government and private industry to work together to secure private concerns such as chemical plants, financial systems, communications networks, and so forth: "An example: legislation was introduced in the last Congress to get the chemical industry to harden its sites and protect them better. Every member of the chemical industry lobbied against that legislation. And no word was heard from President Bush, Vice President Cheney, or Governor Ridge about the duty of the chemical industry as good citizens to help protect itself and the American people. And there was no meeting in the White House chaired by the President with the CEOs of any of these industries, saying: 'Ladies and gentlemen, here's what I expect you to do as loyal American citizens to help make this country invulnerable. You are not doing it. Now does anybody here have a problem with that? I want to see your hand.' No hand would be raised. That would be strong Presidential leadership." He also slams the Bush administration's tendency to characterize dissent from its policies as unpatriotic: "[I]t's nonsense. This is kind of the last refuge of scoundrels –- to say that anybody who disagrees with you is unpatriotic. It's almost not worthy of response. Anybody who says 'my way or the highway,' including the President of the United States, or any party that says 'we define patriotism and if you don't agree with us, you're unpatriotic,' hasn't read the Constitution or doesn't have a clue about what the history of this country's about." (Buzzflash, Gary Hart News)
- August 4: In an interview with Salon, Colonel David Hackworth predicts that the US occupation of Iraq will have to last "thirty years" and calls Defense Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld an "*sshole" who sent the US military into Iraq "light and on the cheap." He believes Saddam Hussein decided at the outset of the invasion to avoid challenging the US military on the battlefield, and instead adopted the tactics of Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh by deciding to fight a guerrilla war. "The mistake in Vietnam was we failed to understand the nature of the war and we failed to understand our enemy. In Vietnam we were fighting World War II. Up to now in Iraq we have been fighting Desert Storm with tank brigade attacks. The tanks move into a village, swoop down, the tank gunner sees a silhouette atop a house, aims, fires, kills and it turns out to be a 12-year-old boy. Now, the father of that boy said, 'We will kill 10 Americans for this.' This is exactly what happened in Vietnam; a village was friendly, then some pilot turns around and blows away the village, the village goes from pro-Saigon to pro-Hanoi." (Salon)
- August 4: Senator Ernest Hollings, a South Carolina Democrat, confirms that he will not run for re-election in 2004. He expresses his concerns about the current administration: "[W]e've got the weakest president and weakest government in the history of my 50 years of public service. I say weak president in that the poor boy campaigns all the time and pays no attention to what's going on in the Congress. Karl Rove tells him to do this or do that or whatever it is, but he's out campaigning. ...As a result the state and the country –- your state, my state, our country -– is headed in the wrong direction...." (Greenville News)
Treasury Department blocks investigation of bin Laden family
- August 5: The US Treasury Department is refusing to provide a list of Saudi individuals and organizations the federal government has investigated for possibly financing Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee has requested the list in an attempt to piece together information about what the Bush administration knew about the potential for a terrorist attack before 9/11. On July 28, the committee was told by senior Treasury official Richard Newcomb that the list was not classified and that his agency would turn it over to the Senate within 24 hours. Instead, the Treasury Department has decided to classify the information. Republican senator Arlen Specter says he will issue a subpoena for the information. (New York Times)
- August 5: The Blair administration admits that it attempted to smear Dr. David Kelly as "a Walter Mitty character" three days before his funeral. Kelly, who was found dead near his home on July 18, is one of the government officials who confirmed to the British press that the Blair administration had doctored a dossier on Iraqi intelligence to better make its case for war against the regime of Saddam Hussein. Until now, the Blair administration had flatly denied that it had made any attempt to smear Kelly's character. Now that the remarks have been confirmed, the administration contends that the character smear was "misrepresented" in the press. Richard Butler, a former United Nations weapons inspector who worked with Kelly in Iraq, said the remark was a severe insult to a man "who was wedded to the truth." (The Scotsman)
- August 6: Dick Cheney, who has refused to back down from his assertions that Iraq presented a clear and imminent threat to the security of the US, is being scrutinized for his role in the invasion. His pressure on the US intelligence community, his involvement in the claim that Iraq was attempting to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger, and his strong prewar statements are all under review. Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence director, says that Cheney was more interested in bolstering the administration's case for war than finding out the truth behind the Iraq claims: "One would think if Cheney was on some sort of noble pursuit of the truth and really wanted to get into details, he would have noticed that INR [the State Department's intelligence bureau] had very loud and lengthy dissents on some critical pieces of Iraq intelligence. ...You'd think he might want to hear from us. It never happened, of course, because Cheney wasn't engaged in an academic search for truth." The INR concluded in October 2002 that Iraq had no nuclear program nor the wherewithal to create one, and that the stories of Iraq trying to purchase uranium from Niger were false.
- Also in question is Cheney's pressure on CIA and other intelligence analysts to produce intelligence reports favorable to the administration's position on Iraq. Congressman Silvestre Reyes said in mid-July at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee that he knew of "at least three" intelligence analysts who said they felt pressured to draw dramatic conclusions about Iraq. In the year preceding the war, unclassified CIA intelligence assessments provided to Congress went from expressing low-level concern about Iraq's weapons capability to expressing the same information in "alarmist" terms, says Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. At the same time, officials including Cheney began voicing their views of Iraq's illegal weapons in more certain terms. Cheney said in a speech last August to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." Yet that assertion had little credibility in the US intelligence community. Cheney also sent Joseph Wilson to Niger to verify claims that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger, claims that Wilson found to be false; yet both Cheney and CIA director George Tenet deny that Cheney was ever briefed on Wilson's findings. Former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham says, "I can't believe that the CIA did not provide to the vice president, since he was the one that requested it, all the information that they gathered about Niger." (Chicago Tribune/Billings Gazette)
- August 7: Plans to topple the North Korean government through military intervention have been drawn up and presented to the Department of Defense, aiding right-wing advisers who are pushing for immediate intervention in North Korea. Relations between the US and North Korea are more contentious than ever even in light of the peace talks currently scheduled to take place in Beijing in the near future. Former CIA director James Woolsey, a member of the Project for the New American Century, says that the plans entail 4,000 daily air strikes on North Korean targets, missile and stealth aircraft strikes on several nuclear facilities, and a possible Marine landing with intent to occupy Pyongyang. Two more Army divisions would join their counterparts in South Korea as part of a large-scale land attack from that country, and troops currently stationed in Iraq would also join the fray, with reserve and National Guard units rotating in to Iraqi duty slots. A report written by Woolsey and retired USAF Lieutenant Colonel Thomas McInerney reads, "We judge that the US and South Korea could defeat North Korea decisively in 30 to 60 days with such a strategy." They admit that an offensive against North Korea could unleash enormous amounts of radiation from stricken military facilities, and that North Korean missile bases could rain missiles upon Seoul and other South Korean targets. (Globe and Mail)
- August 7: The Jordanian embassy in Baghdad is almost destroyed by a car bomb. 19 people, mostly Iraqis, are killed in the explosion. No explanation of the bombing is forthcoming, and US forces are unsure as to who carried out the bombing, though Jordan is widely viewed by many Iraqis as a supporter of the American occupation. US officials later announce that they believe the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda, may be at least partly responsible for the bombing. (Newsweek/MSNBC)
- August 7: The father of an American soldier who died of pneumonia in Iraq is accusing the Army of covering up the facts behind his son's death. Army Spc. Rachael Lacy, who died April 4 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., became sick almost immediately after receiving anthrax and smallpox vaccinations in March. She was too ill to ever be deployed. Currently over 100 US soldiers in Iraq have contracted pneumonia; at least two others have died and 13 others are on respirators. "The common denominator is smallpox and anthrax vaccinations," says her father, Moses Lacy. "These young people have given their lives to the military and they are getting a raw deal. The Department of Defense is closing their eyes." The US has denied any connection between the vaccinations and the epidemic of pneumonia, and has all but ruled out any connection to biological or chemical exposure. The Army is refusing to investigate Lacy's death in conjunction with the other cases of pneumonia because she was never deployed to Iraq. The coroner who autopsied Lacy believes otherwise, and has listed "post-vaccine" problems as the cause of death. Another soldier in Cocoa Beach, Florida, developed severe pneumonia-like symptoms two days after receiving an anthrax vaccination. He is currently under medical care. The anthrax vaccine has already been proven by medical studies to cause pneumonia in some instances. (UPI)
- August 7: In a speech at New York University, former vice president Al Gore lambasts the Bush administration for chronic lying to the American people about the Iraqi occupation as well as the economy. "Here is the pattern that I see: The president's mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America's economy by his tax and budget proposals." He says that the Bush administration employs a "propaganda machine" that engages in "a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology that's felt to be more important than the mandates of basic honesty. ...I believe we must stand for a future in which the United States will again be feared only by our enemies; in which our country will again lead the effort to create an international order based on the rule of law; a nation which upholds fundamental rights even for those it believes to be captured enemies; a nation whose financial house is in order...a republic once again comfortable that its chief executive knows the limits as well as the powers of the presidency." Gore states that there was a time when he blamed Bush's advisers for the problems, but "obviously I was wrong. ...I've just about concluded that the real problem may be the president himself, and that next year we ought to fire him and get a new one." Gore reiterates his intention not to run for president in 2004. (CNN)
- August 7: In a speech to the National Association of Black Journalists, National Security Director Condoleezza Rice tells her audience, "Like many of you, I grew up around the home-grown terrorism of the 1960s. The bombing of the church in Birmingham [Alabama] in 1963 is one that will forever be in my memory because one of the girls who died was a friend of mine. ...[Forty years later we] should not let our voice waver in speaking out on the side of people who are seeking freedom. [Denying people freedom] was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad." Many are offended at Rice's equation of the civil rights movement with the occupation of Iraq. (Laura Flanders)
