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
December 2003
Week One
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Rumsfeld creates American assassination squads to operate against insurgents in Iraq
- December: The Bush administration has authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
The main target is the group of hard-core Ba'athists believed to be behind much of the underground insurgency against the US and British occupation forces. A new Special Forces group, Task Force 121, is assembled from Army Delta Force squads, Navy SEALs, and CIA paramilitary operatives. It is tasked to neutralize Ba'athist insurgents by either capture or assassination. The restructuring is a major victory for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld against the resistance of senior Pentagon officials and generals; Rumsfeld has gotten rid of dozens of senior generals and planners whose opinions he does not like. "The only way we can win is go unconventional," says an American advisor in Baghdad. "We're going to have to play their game. Guerrilla versus guerrilla. Terrorism versus terrorism. We've got to scare the Iraqis into submission." Even those who are against Rumsfeld's ideas of American hit squads patrolling Iraq are displeased with the conventional methodologies being employed in Iraq. "We've got this large conventional force sitting there and getting their *ss shot off," says a former Pentagon official with extensive experience in Special Forces, "and what we're doing is counterproductive. We're sending mixed signals." The biggest problem the US has in fighting the insurgency, he says, is lack of intelligence and "we're too squeamish to operate in this part of the world." Referring to the US retaliation against a suspected mortar site, he says, "Instead of destroying an empty soccer field, why not impress me by sneaking in a sniper team and killing them while they're setting up a mortar? We do need a more unconventional response, but it's going to be messy." - By this point, the Pentagon leadership realizes that it isn't enough simply to go after the Ba'athist leadership -- knocking off the so-called "deck of cards." Instead, the new operations targets the "broad middle" of the Ba'athist underground. Unfortunately, many in the administration are skeptical of the efficacy of the new program. Many fear it will turn into another "Phoenix Program," the cowboy operation mounted in Vietnam that turned into out-of-control Americans shooting innocents to rack up body counts and Vietnamese siccing American snipers on other Vietnamese for personal reasons. "These guys have their own agenda," says a former Special Forces official of the newly cooperative Iraqi intelligence operatives. "Will we be doing hits on grudges? When you set up host-nation elements [units composed of Iraqis instead of Americans], it's hard not to have them going off to do what they want to do. You have to keep them on a short leash." A Pentagon advisor, an expert on unconventional war, says, "The proboem is that we've not penetrated the gad buys. The Ba'ath Party is run like a cell system. It's like penetrating the Viet Cong -- we never could do it." And a Middle Eastern businessman who has advised the Bush administration adds that the reorganized Ba'ath Party is "extremely active, working underground with permanent internal communications. And without Saddam." A former Israel military intelligence officer says that the insurgency, like Iraq itself, is highly factionalized and decentralized: "Unless you settle this, any effort at reconstruction in the center is hopeless."
- Stephen Cambone, the neoconservative undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and one of Rumsfeld's favorites, is deeply involved in developing the new Special Forces deployment. Cambone has long been seeking operational authority over Special Forces. Cambone's assistant, and one of the key planners of the Special Forces manhunts, is Lieutenant General William Boykin. Boykin postponed his retirement to take the new position offered him by Rumsfeld, and a third star. Boykin drew the ire of Muslims around the world in October when he equated Islamic worship with Satanism, and the ire of many others when he boldly proclaimed that Bush was not elected by the American people, but placed in the presidency by the intervention of God. Rumsfeld ignored the calls for Boykin's dismissal, at one point denying any knowledge of Boykin's inflammatory statements and later saying that he found Boykin's videotaped comments difficult to understand. Boykin is also infamous for his incompetence while he commanded Army forces in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, as well as for his authorization of rogue operations by Delta Force troops in the assassination of Peruvian drug czar Pedro Escobar earlier that year. A retired general praises Boykin for his courage, but says, "when you get to three stars you've got to think through what you're doing." Of Rumsfeld and Boykin, he says, "These guys are going to get a bunch of guys killed and then give them a bunch of medals."
- Rumsfeld also seeks active, secret help from Israel. Israeli commandos and intelligence units work closely with their American counterparts at the Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as well as in Israel, training them for operations in Iraq. Rumsfeld wanted Israel commandos to serve as secret ad hoc advisors in the field when operations began. "No one wants to talk about this," says an Israeli official. "It's incendiary. Both governments have decided at the highest level that it is in their interests to keep a low profile on US-Israeli cooperation." The Israelis focus on teaching "targeted killing" and other techniques perfected by the Israeli Army's small commando units, the Mistaravim, which operate undercover in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. (Seymour Hersh)
- December: Weapons inspector David Kay informs CIA director George Tenet that the Iraqi defector known as "Curveball" is a liar. Kay's organization, the Iraq Survey Group, recently found Curveball's personnel file. Among other revelations, Kay learned that Curveball graduated last in his class at engineering school -- Curveball claimed to have graduated first in his class. He was a low-level trainee engineer, not a project chief or site manager, as he had claimed. Most importantly, the records show that Curveball was fired in 1995 -- Curveball had claimed to have begun working on mobile biological laboratories in 1995. Instead of being a bioweapons engineer, Curveball served jail time in Baghdad for a sex crime and went on to drive a taxi. "The Iraqis were all laughing," one ISG member recalled. "They were saying, 'This guy? You've got to be kidding.'" This is not the first time Kay has been the messenger of unwelcome news to Washington. For his pains, he is exiled to a small, windowless office without a working telephone. (Frank Rich [PDF file])
- December: Iraqi administrator Paul Bremer arrests the entire board of the Iraqi Workers Federation of Trade Unions.
Iraq war and occupation
They are eventually released, but not until US soldiers vandalize the Federation headquarters by painting over the union's marquee. The arrests are part of Bremer's absolute prohibition against any labor union activity. (Greg Palast) - December: The Washington Monthly analyzes the tremendous inexperience and neoconservative loyalities of many bureaucrats and officials sent to Iraq by the Bush administration to run the reconstruction efforts.
Iraq war and occupation
"[H]istorians will also consider the lack of experience and abundant political connections of the hundreds of American bureaucrats sent to Baghdad to run Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority," it writes. One example, of many, is the appointment of Simone Ledeen as a senior economic advisor to northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance. Ledeen, the daughter of neoconservative luminary Michael Ledeen, is 29, with a new MBA and little or no experience in foreign countries: "[b]ut as an advisor for northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad, she is, in essence, helping shape one quarter of that nation's economy." [Note: On April 17, 2004, I received an e-mail from Ms. Ledeen stating that her position with the Ministry of Finance was misrepresented. She writes, "While it is true I was in Baghdad working for the Coalition Provision Authority, I was never senior advisor for anything. Nor did I control any policy for the north whatsoever. My role as an Advisor to the Ministry of Finance was as a member of a large team working to excute [sic] the 2003 and 2004 Iraqi budget. My boss, many years my senior and with decades more experience was the senior advisor and as such was responsible for all policy decisions. Your readers deserve to know the truth as there is much misinformation floating around on all sides. I appreciate your correcting the error on your site." I appreciate the correction, but it turns out that Ms. Ledeen is lying.] - While some administration officials have plenty of experience, relatively few of those with experience in these various deployments got the call to serve or even had their opinions solicited. Instead, the assignments went to those whose political loyalties were unquestioned. "In their place, the architects of the war chose card-carrying Republicans -- operatives, flacks, policy-wonks and lobbyists -- for almost every key assignment in the country. Some marquee examples include US civil administrator Paul Bremer's senior advisor and liaison to Capitol Hill, Tom Korologos, one of the most powerful GOP lobbyists on Capitol Hill. Then there's the man in charge of privatizing Iraq's 200-odd state owned companies, Tom Foley, a venture capitalist and high-flying GOP fundraiser. Foley was one of the Bob Dole's top-ten career donors, Connecticut finance chair for Bush 2000 and a classmate of the president's from Harvard Business School. The chief advisor to the Agriculture Ministry is Dan Amstutz, a Reagan administration veteran who until recently served as the president of the North American Export Grain Association. Oxfam's Director of Policy Kevin Watkins recently quipped that with his record of opening up developing economies to cheap American agricultural exports, 'putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission.' The presence of so many GOP lobbyists and fat-cats on the CPA roster has led many to suspect that the staffing was driven by the desire to award prized contracts to friendly companies and campaign donors."
- Yet the reasoning goes beyond the desire to give contractual payoffs to loyal corporate contributors. The ideological and tactical divide between the State and Defense Departments led to the staffing of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the real government in Iraq, with neoconservative ideologues whose lack of experience was balanced by their utter political loyalty. "CPA officials say that the older GOP functionaries do a reasonable job keeping their partisanship publicly under wraps. But the younger Republicans in Iraq spend much of their time plotting against the Democrats. 'Everything is seen in the context of the election, and how they will screw the Democrats,' said one CPA official. 'It was really pretty shocking to hear them talk.' 'They are all on the campaign trail,' said another official. 'They see this as a stepping stone to a better job in the next Bush administration.' 'I don't always know if they are Republicans,' said yet another senior CPAer. 'But what is clear is that they know nothing about development, and nothing about transitional economies.' They're trying to do the right thing, this official adds, 'but they do what they do without any knowledge of how the post-war world works in reality. They come up with hare-brained schemes that cause so many problems they take more time to fix than to create.' It's also driven journalists on the ground, watching these operatives move in and out of Saddam's marble Republican Palace, which CPA commandeered as its headquarters, to joke: 'They don't call it the Republican Palace for nothing.'" (Washington Monthly)
- December: Though Bush has long stated that he does not know Jack Abramoff and has never met him personally,
Jack Abramoff scandal
the following photo, taken at a December fundraiser, disproves that claim. If Bush is lying about his personal knowledge of Abramoff (as he did about his personal relationship with Enron's Kenneth Lay), then it is reasonable to assume he is lying about his lack of connections to Abramoff and Abramoff's lobbying outfit. (CREW)
Bush and Abramoff smile for the camera
- December: Bush's campaign manager, Karl Rove, has planned throughout the election season to use an anti-gay push for mobilizing pro-Bush voters.
GOP campaign strategies
Using the anti-gay sentiment in the election is tricky, and Rove knows it: the question is, how to use the issue to inflame conservatives and drive them to the polls in numbers exceeding their 2000 turnout, without causing a backlash among moderate voters still on the fence as well as mobilizing the one million gays and lesbians who voted for Al Gore in 2000. Rove, of course, is a past master at such election manipulation. - Patrick Guerriero, the executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, the small and not particularly influential organization of overtly gay Republicans, tries and fails to get the Bush campaign to stay away from the issue. He recalls speaking with Bush around the Christmas holidays in 2003, and asking Bush to refuse to endorse a proposed Constitutional amendment banning gay marriages. Bush hears Guerriero out, but refuses to take the stand, partially on Rove's advice, who called the push against gays a "no-brainer." Guerriero later recalls, "The only thing that could have stopped it was the president marching into Karl Rove's office and saying, 'Hey, I don't have the stomach for this. I think we're going to win based on these other issues, and I don't want to go this far.' And he didn't do it."
- What Guerriero doesn't know is that Rove has already made a promise to a powerful organization of religious conservatives, the Arlington Group. The group's officials meet via conference call with Rove in early December 2003 at the Washington headquarters of the Family Research Council, a group affiliated with James Dobson's Focus on the Family and radio ministry. The Arlington Group includes televangelist Jerry Falwell, the Southern Baptists' Richard Land, conservative activist Gary Bauer, the influential GOP powerbroker Paul Weyrich, Don Wildmon of the American Family Association, and Dobson, who has taken Pat Robertson's place as the most influential arbiter of religious conservatives. They represent a far larger and more influential power base in the GOP than Guerriero's Log Cabin Republicans. Between them, they can mobilize over 4 million evangelical and conservative Christian voters in November 2004.
- Rove wants to lock the conservative Christian vote down. He has known for some time that this voting bloc is restless, unhappy with the Bush administration's failure to move more smartly on issues such as abortion and gay marriage. They want Bush to come out solidly against gay marriage, and firmly state his support for the Constitutional ban. "If the president leads on it and there's a real focused discussion, it will definitely have a huge difference in emerging the base," says Kelly Shackelford of the Liberty Legal Institute. "There really isn't another issue out there of the type to bring out the 4 million who weren't there four years ago." Rove assures the Arlington Group officials that Bush is squarely behind the amendment. Land demands a commitment: "Will you commit as much support and effort by the president and staff to support the marriage amendment as you did with prescription drugs?" Rove replies, "Yes." Two months later, Rove calls Dobson to tell him that Bush will come out publicly for the gay-marriage ban, and Dobson begins working his organization to mobilize evangelical conservatives to come out for Bush. Guerriero watches the February announcement on television. "It felt like someone kicking me in the stomach," he recalls.
- Guerriero can't understand why an administration whose vice-president has an openly gay daughter, who repeatedly comes out in favor of less intrusive government, and whose president ran in 2000 as a "compassionate conservative," would take such a stance. Guerriero doesn't understand that, for the all-important religious conservatives, gay marriage is, in evangelist Ted Haggard's words, "the blazing social issue of the campaign of 2004. The federal marriage amendment should be at the center of this election." And Rove will make sure to put it there.
- But the political director of the Log Cabin Republicans, Mark Mead, has a better understanding than some of his colleagues: "This is a move to start a culture war," he says.
- For himself, Bush isn't all that fired up to oppose gay marriage. He doesn't share the fanatical hatred of gay marriage (and gays themselves) espoused by his religious allies. He is more of an economic conservative than a social one, and doesn't spend much time worrying about the "homosexual threat" to America. And Bush, whose political instincts are far better than his understanding of democracy and actual leadership, knows that the politics of gay bashing can be treacherous. In spite of four years of zealous ideological activism, a lust for war, and a demostrated contempt for civil liberties, he still wants to echo his stance of four years ago of being a "compassionate conservative." But Rove understands that the election will not be won by unifying the country behind him. Instead, a win will be had by further dividing the electorate and energizing the fringes of radical, intolerant conservatives who aren't yet convinced that Bush is as jingoistic and hateful as they are. Authors James Moore and Wayne Slater write, "The 2004 race was about mobilizing the base and ginning up their numbers." Iraq and national security has deeply divided the country, and Rove knows there is no way to repair that rift; instead, he wants a wedge issue to further divide the electorate and mobilize the base. Anti-gay rhetoric is just the tool for accomplishing that goal.
- Rove has had success with the issue before, in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial race. That year, he engineered a vicious whispering campaign against popular Democratic incumbent Ann Richards on behalf of Bush. Perhaps his most memorable moment was the issuance of a flyer, placed under the windshield wipers of thousands of cars in East Texas church parking lots, depicting two men, one black and one white, stripped to the waist, and kissing, with the slogan, "This Is What Ann Richards Wants to Teach Your Children In Public Schools." (Naturally, Rove and the 1994 Bush campaign disclaimed all knowledge of the flyer.) Between the overt anti-homosexual message and the underlying racism of the flyer, thousands of conservative East Texas Christians were incensed, and trooped to the polls to vote for Bush. Rove surrounded the flyer distribution -- sent out a mere two days before the election -- with a whispering campaign that circulated from churches to barbershops, saying that Richards wanted to pack her administration with lesbians -- and that perhaps Richards was a lesbian herself. Richards made the same mistake that so many others of Rove's enemies made -- she didn't take the campaign seriously. "I thought it was a joke," she recalled later, adding, "I told [her ex-husband] David, you know that before this is over, they're going to have me sleeping with every man in the county. Little did I know it was going to be every woman." Richards was no lesbian, but she was committed to diversity, and Rove played on the fears and prejudices of the Texas conservative voter to mobilize them to vote against her in droves. Instead of letting Richards use her drive for diversity as a political advantage, he turned it against her -- a classic, and highly effective, Rovian campaign tactic, and one he will repeat with the "Swift Boat" attacks on John Kerry's heroic Vietnam service.
- And like so many other examples of Rove's hideously jingoistic and hate-mongering campaign strategies, he took pains to make sure that his own candidate would ride above the tide of hatred and anger that he had inflamed. Bush himself would move into the Texas governor's mansion with the reputation of a "compassionate conservative," on the surface denouncing such extreme campaign tactics while simultaneously taking advantage of them. Of the Richards whispering campaign, Bush's media chief, Don Sipple, later said, "It worked. It was always talked about. It was a subterranean text of the campaign." As for Rove's denial of any involvement in the whispering campaign, Sipple said bluntly, "If I had a nickel for all the things that Karl said he had nothing to do with, I'd be a wealthy man."
- "Fear is a tremendous organizer," Richards said in hindsight. "Fear will engender loyalty; it will engender commitment. We have seen that with the religious right. You have to keep people worried and afraid, or they aren't going to pay their dues." Like Kerry with the Swift Boat allegations in 2003 and 2004, and Bush's GOP opponent John McCain in 2004 (see the February 2004 page). Richards paid little attention to the slander campaign until it was far too late to address it. (Rove will also use a similar whispering campaign against Kerry, with ads and talking points distributed to talk radio hosts that question Kerry's heterosexuality and his patriotism.) (James Moore and Wayne Slater)
- Early December: Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, pose for a photo to accompany a long Vanity Fair profile of the couple.
Plame outing
Critics of the couple pounce: months before, Wilson said that Plame would "rather chop off her right arm than say anything to the press, and she will not allow herself to be photographed." The critics take this as evidence that Plame is not worried about her covert status as a CIA agent (which was terminally breached on July 14 by Robert Novak's column outing her). They accuse the Wilsons of being publicity hounds. Right-wing blogger Glenn Reynolds accuses Plame of being a "self-promoter" before she is a "spy;" Slate columnist Timothy Noah goes further, accusing Plame of performing a "striptease" for the camera and the magazine. He wonders when Wilson and Plame "will start renting themselves out for birthday parties." Plame later apologizes for allowing her photo to be taken; Wilson defends his wife's decision, saying that with her cover already blown, "I saw no reason to deprive ourselves of the pleasure of being photographed together as the happily married couple that we are." (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
Cover photo for Vanity Fair article of Wilson and Plame
- December 1: Iraq's Governing Council is rethinking an agreement with the US for a transfer of power scheduled for July 2004;
Iraq war and occupation
council officials say the council has set up a committee to assess the best way to choose a provisional legislature. A delay or unraveling of the agreement would be a major setback for Iraq's US-led administration. The council is backtracking in part because of objections from Shi'ite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who demands that the legislature be elected directly. "The members of the Governing Council think that the mechanism proposed by the American administration... will not work as the way to elect the provisional assembly," says a spokesman for council leader Ahmad Chalabi. "An election process would be a much better way than what's on the table." The US says the agreement stands. "We intend to honor the agreement we signed," says a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, the real rulers of Iraq. "We are now working on issues related to the implementation of that process." (Guardian)
Actual contents of "sexed-up" British intelligence dossier revealed
- December 1: Material issued by the Hutton investigation reveals the actual contents of the infamous intelligence dossier used by British and American intelligence to justify invading Iraq.
Prewar intelligence on Iraq
Communications director Alastair Campbell was charged by Blair in September 2002 to prepare the dossier for release. On September 5, 2002, Campbell chaired a meeting about the dossier in his office at 10 Downing Street, attended by, among others, senior foreign policy advisor David Manning, later named ambassador to the US; Julian Miller, the head of the assessment staff at the Cabinet Office, an elite bureaucracy that provides administrative support to the government; and John Scarlett, the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, a secretive body that supplies intelligence assessments to the Prime Minister. The dossier, a draft version provided by British intelligence services and the Foreign Office, read in part, "Iraq has a capability to produce chemical and biological weapons," but did not say that Saddam had actually produced any such weapons in recent years. It also said, "Iraq has a nuclear weapons program," but added that Iraq "will find it difficult to produce fissile material while sanctions remain in place," and went on to say that even if sanctions were lifted "Iraq would need at least five years to produce a weapon." - Blair was known to be disappointed in the dossier. "We all knew why it wasn't put out," says one of David Kelly's former colleagues. "Because it didn't make the case strongly enough." Campbell thought the dossier was disappointingly thin; in his diary, he wrote that he hoped its replacement would be "revelatory" and "part of a bigger case." Scarlett, who took charge of revising the text in coöperation with Miller and his staff in the Cabinet Office, agreed that it did not contain enough "detail and information." After the meeting, Campbell sent an e-mail to Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, which read, "Re dossier, substantial rewrite, with JS and Julian M in charge.... Structure as per TB's discussion. Agreement that there has to be real intelligence material in their presentation as such." On September 10, Scarlett rewrote the dossier to incorporate unverified and dubious material from MI6. The Joint Intelligence Committee had incorporated this intelligence in an earlier secret draft assessment, which read in part, "Iraq has probably dispersed its special weapons, including its CBW" -- chemical and biological weapons. "Intelligence also indicates that from forward-deployed storage sites, chemical and biological munitions could be with military units and ready for firing within 45 minutes." This statement referred to battlefield weapons, such as mortar rounds and artillery shells, not longer-range weapons, such as ground- and air-launched missiles. But this crucial qualification was not included in the revised dossier, which suggested that Iraq's WMD constituted a regional threat. Iraq "envisages the use of weapons of mass destruction in its current military planning," the rewritten dossier said, "and could deploy such weapons within 45 minutes of the order being given for their use."
- The new draft also alleged that Iraq "has purchased large quantities of uranium ore" and "has acquired mobile laboratories for military use, corroborating earlier reports about the mobile production of biological warfare agents." Even the new material didn't impress some people in the government's media office: "Think we're in a lot of trouble with it as it stands now," Philip Bassett, a former Financial Times reporter, wrote in an e-mail to his press-office colleagues on September 11th. Another member of the press office, Daniel Pruce, added, "Our aim should also be to convey the impression that things have not been static in Iraq but that over the past decade he [Hussein] has been aggressively and relentlessly pursuing WMD while brutally repressing his own people." Scarlett again revised the dossier to strengthen the language even further, and to add an unsubstantiated charge that Iraq's misbehavior "has included recent production of chemical and biological agents." Campbell went even farther, having Scarlett rewrite such sentences as Iraq "might already have" started producing VX gas to state flatly that Iraq was producing the gas; and rewriting "The Iraq military may be able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within forty five minutes of an order to do so" to read, "Intelligence indicates that the Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within forty five minutes of an order to do so." Campbell also had the specious claim that Iraq was a year or two away from producing a nuclear weapon inserted after previous revisions had dropped it for lack of evidence.
- Many British intelligence officials privately repudiated the dossier, saying that Campbell and Scarlett had "cherry-picked" through intelligence reports to find what suited their justification for war, and had rewritten and revised intelligence material to state far more than the original data could support. David Kelly, the UN weapons expert who had forced Iraq to admit it had a biological weapons program, and had earned a reputation of being relentless about Iraq's WMD programs, reviewed the dossier and found it remarkably devoid of supportable intelligence. Kelly and his office made a number of criticisms and suggestions for toning down the assertive language of the dossier, none of which were incorporated. After the dossier's contents were released, and the UK media were clamoring for war as a result of the release, Kelly met with BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan to discuss the misleading contents of the dossier. Gilligan's notes from an interview with Kelly include the revelatory line, "Transformed week before publication to make it sexier. ...One source said it took 45 minutes to set up a missile assembly. That was misinterpreted. Most people in intelligence weren't happy with it because it didn't reflect the considered view they were putting forward." Gilligan asked Kelly how the dossier had been changed, and Kelly answered simply, "Campbell." Gilligan then followed up: "What, Campbell made it up?" Kelly replied, "No, it was real information. But it was unreliable, and it was in the dossier against our wishes." (A friend of Kelly's disputes this part of the story.)
- The "sound bite" of the story, delivered by Gilligan live on the BBC, was: "Downing Street, our source says, ordered a week before publication, ordered it to be sexed up, to be made more exciting, and ordered more facts to be, er, to be discovered." The story, broadcast by the BBC on May 29, 2003, hit the media, and the Blair administration, like a bomb. Kelly was not reticent about speaking with reporters, as long as he wasn't directly identified, and told another reporter that the dossier was full of questionable material because "No. 10 spin came into play." Kelly told another reporter, Susan Watts, that the main problem with the dossier was its implication that Iraq possessed a "vast arsenal," which wasn't what the experts believed. "The real concern that everyone had, it was not so much what they [the Iraqis] have now but what they would have in the future. But that, unfortunately, wasn't expressed strongly in the dossier, because that takes away the case for war, to a certain extent."
- On June 25th, Campbell appeared at a televised hearing of the Foreign Affairs Committee. After delivering a long, relatively unpersuasive defense of the September dossier, he attacked the BBC's reporting, declaring, "I simply say, in relation to the BBC story: It is a lie, it was a lie. It is a lie that is continually repeated, and until we get a public apology for it I will keep making sure that Parliament, people like yourselves, and the public know that it was a lie." Public reaction was powerful, and quite negative, towards Campbell's aggressive denials. Campbell and Geoffrey Hoon, head of the Foreign Office, decided to use Kelly, who had admitted to his superiors that he was Gilligan's source, as a weapon to discredit Gilligan and deflect the storm of public criticism. For the BBC's part, it had already found that Gilligan was careless in his language and his accusations, even though his assertions were factually accurate; nevertheless, the BBC stood by its reporter. The Ministry of Defense interviewed Kelly a number of times, and ensured that his name would appear in the public press; Kelly began to unravel under the pressure. July 15th, Kelly's wedding anniversary, saw him testifying on television to a hostile and aggressive set of interrogators from Parliament. On July 17, 2003, Kelly was found dead in a wood near his house, an apparent suicide. (New Yorker)
- December 1: Over 100 prisoners are to be released from US custody at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, with more to follow, in December and January.
Terrorism detainees and "enemy combatants"
It is unclear if the men and boys to be transferred from "Camp Delta" would face further detention or prosecution in their own countries. "We do expect there will be other transfers but because of operational procedures, I can't talk about any details," says an Army spokesperson. "We only talk about detainee movements after an operation is complete." One recently released prisoner, Canadian citizen Abdulrhaman Khadr, was captured in Afghanistan and held as an "enemy combatant" by US authorities for nine months. Khadr, whose apparent crime was being the son of a suspected al-Qaeda financier, was flown to Afghanistan after US authorities refused to return him to Canada. Khadr went to Iran and then Turkey before arriving late last week in Bosnia; after visiting the Canadian embassy in Sarajevo, he was allowed to return to Canada. The United States holds about 660 prisoners from 44 countries at the base in eastern Cuba but the government declines to provide a breakdown of their citizenship, ages or the reasons they are being held. The government has not charged them or given them access to lawyers. The United States has released 88 of the prisoners since the government began holding suspects at the base in Cuba in January 2002. Major General Geoffrey Miller, the official in charge of the detention mission, says that the three youngest boys at the jail, who range from 13 to 15 would be transferred soon, but he did not give a date. (AP/Guardian) - December 1: According to Marine General Anthony Zinni, former head of the US Central Command in the Middle East,
War in Afghanistan
the war in Afghanistan, dubbed "Operation Enduring Freedom," is going far worse than is widely understood. "We're going to have to refight Enduring Freedom because we didn't finish the job." he predicts. NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson says that NATO countries must send troops of their own to the wartorn country or risk further chaos, as well as undermine the alliance's credibility. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has suggested that NATO could take over the entire war effort in Afghanistan, a move the rest of the alliance has shown little interest in taking. (Newsweek/MSNBC, CNN) - December 1: The US Defense Department says it worries more and more about the Islamic madrassas, or training schools, in Afghanistan and other Middle East countries,
Islamist terrorism
saying that more and more children are being educated in the ways of radical Islam and brought up to hate America. One putative ally in the US's efforts to combat the teachings of the madrassas has been Pakistan, but its president, General Pervez Musharraf, recently formed a political alliance with the schools' radical Islamist supporters against the mainstream secular opposition. One principal of a Peshawar madrassa says, "Musharraf talks a lot, but nothing happens." (In the last few weeks, Pakistan has moved much more strongly, closing down a dozen madrassas affiliated with extremist groups and promising harsh reprisals on those that continue to teach extremism. Newsweek writes, "Many [madrassas] are peaceable institutions wishing only to train devout Muslims, not warriors or terrorists. But others steep their students in the doctrine of holy war and function openly as jihad enlistment centers. Many youngsters take inspiration from older schoolmates. Zahidullah, 31, a grad student in Islamic law at the Bahrul Uloom madrassa in Pakistan's northern mountains, boasts of how many recruits he has gained for the outlawed Kashmiri guerrilla force Harkatul Mujahedin: 'Many youths here are anxious to join the jihad when I tell them stories of our heroic Islamic resistance against Indian aggression.'" In recent months, thousands of young Afghan men have filled the madrassas of eastern Pakistan, absorbing the radical teachings that many of these schools impart and often returning to their home country to join the Taliban. (Newsweek/MSNBC) - December 1: The US Army finally admits that the cause of the crash of two Black Hawk helicopters on November 15 in Mosul, Iraq,
Iraq war and occupation
was a rocket-propelled grenade that struck one of the copters. Colonel Joe Anderson says that though the investigation cannot be conclusive, it appears that "some form of groundfire," likely an RPG, hit one of the helicopters, sending it into the path of the other Black Hawk. "Obviously it was a collision, and it appears that the collision was caused by one of them being hit by something from the ground, probably a rocket," says Anderson, whose 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division controls Mosul. (CNN) - December 1: A pair of independent studies shows that ten years of US intelligence gathering has "major gaps and serious intelligence problems."
US intelligence
Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East and intelligence expert who is a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, says that "even a cursory review" of charges the US and British governments made in white papers released before the Iraq war "shows that point after point that was made was not confirmed during the war or after the first [six] months of effort following the conflict." Although the US has the most sophisticated technical systems for collecting and analyzing intelligence, Cordesman found, Iraq shows that US intelligence is "not yet adequate to support grand strategy and tactical operations against proliferating powers or to make accurate assessments of the need to pre-empt." Pre-emption, or waging war to prevent an enemy from attacking, is a key part of George Bush's war on terrorism. A second study proves that the Bush administration deliberatly drew false claims regarding the well-known aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq, supposedly for use in building nuclear weapons but actually for use in making conventional rockets. (Washington Post/Agence France-Presse/Sydney Morning Herald) - December 1: A major British survey shows that almost 80% of Iraqi civilians do not trust the US occupation forces,
Iraq war and occupation
and puts their faith in religious leaders instead. Nearly half regard the removal of former president Saddam Hussein as the best thing to have happened in the last 12 months while a third said the war, bombings and defeat of the Iraqi army in April was the worst. The survey authors say, "Interestingly, there appears no obvious link between best and worst thing. ...The very troops which liberated Iraqis from Saddam are the most mistrusted institution in Iraq today." Less than 1% want a religious regime similar to the theocracy in Iran. Two thirds of Iraqis regard "regaining public security" as the country's top priority and few seemed concerned with vendettas against the old regime -- 91 percent said dealing with members of the previous government was "of no priority at all." (Daily Mirror) - December 1: Republican Congressman Henry Hyde has blocked a Bush administration attempt to ease restrictions on US companies who want to sell weapons and munitions to Britain and Australia.
Military-industrial complex
Hyde reportedly believes that the move would make it easier for terrorists and international criminals to get their hands on the material. In a May 5 letter to Powell, Hyde wrote that a trend toward relaxing arms export controls "seems unwise and particularly incongruous with the increased threats to U.S. security and foreign policy interests since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ...Lowering our country's standards for munitions and other arms-related transfers in part because it is advantageous to US companies can only make more complicated the already difficult job you have'' in persuading other nations to tighten export controls. "This is a moment in our nation's history when it behooves us to strengthen, not relax, international standards for nonproliferation and military export controls." (New York Times) - December 1: Senator John Kerry, a front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president, explains his mixed feelings for the USA Patriot Act.
2004 presidential elections
Right-wing pundits will later claim, simplistically, that Kerry was "for it, then against it," as part of their orchestrated attempt to paint Kerry as a "flip-flopper." Kerry tells an audience at Iowa State, "I voted for the Patriot Act right after September 11 -- convinced that, with a sunset clause, it was the right decision to make. It clearly wasn't a perfect bill, and it had a number of flaws, but this wasn't the time to haggle. It was the time to act. But George Bush and John Ashcroft abused the spirit of national action after the terrorist attacks. They have used the Patriot Act in ways that were never intended and for reasons that have nothing to do with terrorism. That's why, as president, I will propose new anti-terrorism laws that advance the war on terror while ending the assault on our basic rights." While many on the left -- the editor of this Web site included -- opposed the Patriot Act from the outset, and disagree with Kerry's position, Kerry's explanation of why he voted for it, and why he feels the Bush administration abused its trust in implementing it, is clear and straightforward. To dismiss his position as "for it, then against it" is ridiculous. (Al Franken) - December 1: Newly formed liberal talk radio network Progress Radio says it is close to buying radio stations in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston, with other stations being added in the future.
Conservative media slant (backlash)
"We're steady as she goes to have a broadcast debut in early 2004, which gives us time to be part of the election year," says CEO Mark Walsh. The network plans to present a daily schedule filled with liberal personalities as hosts of a range of programs, including news analysis segments, talk shows and entertainment programs in the spirit of "The Daily Show," the spoof news program on cable television's Comedy Central that skewers Washington. Jon Sinton, Progress Media's president, said the company had hired Lizz Winstead, one of the creators of "The Daily Show," to oversee entertainment programming. Shelley Lewis, a longtime network news producer who was most recently in charge of "American Morning" on CNN, will oversee news programming. A deal is in the works to give comedian Al Franken a daily talk show; outspoken comedian Janeane Garofalo is also being courted. Martin Kaplan, an associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and a former speechwriter for Walter Mondale as well as a Disney studio executive, has already been signed to host an evening segment. Kaplan says that part of his charge would be to address some of the more extreme voices on the right. "It will be a chance to make fun of the pomposity and the bullying which the right has engaged in, and which a good chunk of the mainstream media has bought into," he said. "The self-righteousness of the right is now their greatest weakness, and I think we need to put those people on a whoopee cushion." Conservative Rush Limbaugh says shows like his merely provide a balance to the liberal bias in the mainstream media: "Please! On TV you own C-Span, PBS, C-Span 2, CNN, ABC, CNNfn, CBS, MSNBC, CNN Headline News, NBC, CNBC, Bloomberg, Lifetime, Oxygen, etc.," he wrote on his Web site this year. "simply for giving the conservative point of view equal time, you call Fox 'conservative.' You have radio guys on NPR 24/7!" Sinton responds, "While individuals on those networks may occasionally express views that are left of center, on balance we find those organizations to be pretty centrist. Our task is more than to be left leaning —- with the exception of Al, who wants to call his show 'The Liberal Show.' Our task is to be funny and entertaining, a no-sacred-cows sort of thing." Progress Radio will eventually be known as Air America Radio. (New York Times/CommonDreams) - December 1: Columnist Jay Bookman makes some painfully clear observations about the Iraqi situation:
Iraq war and occupation
"From the beginning, the Bush administration's inability to talk straight about its Iraq policy has generated deep and valid suspicion. Good policy doesn't need to be defended by deception; the truth will do just fine. We didn't get the truth a year ago, when Bush officials implausibly claimed that Saddam Hussein posed a dire threat to US security. We're not getting the truth today, as President Bush and others depict our struggle in Iraq as some sort of defense of the American homeland. 'We are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq, defeating them there,' Vice President Dick Cheney said a week ago, 'so we do not have to face them on the streets of our own cities.' 'You are defeating the terrorists in Iraq, so we don't have to face them in our country,' President Bush likewise told US troops during his lightning visit to Baghdad. Such statements are simply false. Our men and women in uniform are not fighting for their lives against international terrorists in Iraq. They are not fighting the people who attacked us on Sept. 11, nor are they fighting allies of those people. Instead, the guerrillas who are launching mortars at our military bases, attacking our troops on patrol or hiding booby traps on Iraqi highways are native Iraqis who are trying to evict American troops from their country. Despicable and cowardly as their tactics are, the Iraqi resistance is almost entirely Iraqi. They are not attacking us because they hate Americans. They are attacking us because they hate Americans who are occupying their country. ...Here is what the Bush administration does not want to admit to the American people: We are fighting two different wars today, against two very different enemies. The first war, against international terror, was brought to our shores by the attacks of Sept. 11, and we had no choice but to respond aggressively, with every bit of power we could muster. The invasion of Afghanistan, the toppling of its Taliban government and the destruction of al-Qaida bases in that country were justified and necessary responses, and if anything should have been prosecuted even more aggressively than they were. The war against Iraq, on the other hand, has been a war of choice, a war of opportunity launched by the Bush administration because the events of Sept. 11 gave it the cover to do so. If Iraq is now 'the central front on the war on terror,' it is because the Bush administration made it so by invading that country and threatening to turn it into the type of 'failed nation' that produces terrorism. ...The war on Iraq and the war on terror are two different struggles. Tackled separately, either would have taken us years to win. Tackling them simultaneously was tragic foolishness on a very large scale, no matter how much the president claims otherwise." (Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Information Clearinghouse) - December 1: Harpers magazine publisher Rick MacArthur says that the White House press corps has turned into a "full time press agency for the President of the United States."
Media manipulation and marketing by GOP
He castigates the press for going along with the Bush Thanksgiving PR stunt: "The proper thing to do in this case is to refuse the secrecy agreement and say we're not going to be participants in a photo opportunity, which is merely done to help your re-election campaign, and if that aborts the trip, well, it aborts the trip. [Instead,] the White House press corps, being what it is, they went along for the ride and agreed to play press agent." Most editors were not informed that their journalists were going to Baghdad with the president, but one, John Moody, the senior vice president of Fox News, was so informed. MacArthur responds, "Well, he [the Fox reporter] was probably permitted to do that, because Fox is so in the bag, so pro-administration, that they didn't see any particular security risk in telling the head office..." He continues, "[T]he point here is that the press...we don't have reporters anymore in the White House, and I'm afraid that we don't have reporters anywhere in Washington these days or hardly anywhere on the big papers anyway, and more and more, I'm thinking that the proper response for Americans, for readers and viewers of the news, is to ...assume that the press is now part of the government. ...You know, we are still at the point now where the phony atomic bomb threat story, the phony unconventional weapons story has just disappeared from the news. Why isn't anybody talking about that anymore? The fraudulent pretext for going to Iraq in the first place has disappeared as an item. T hat's, of course, because the big papers, particularly The New York Times, has so much to do with promoting the fraud. They have no interest in going back over the record and until the media admits that they were had or admits that they participated in the con job.... ...[T]hink of the poor guys of the 101st Airborne Division stuck in Baghdad. They're used as a photo op, as an advertising platform, as they may get killed in next day, the next three weeks, the next six months, and at this point, what good is George Bush's Thanksgiving visit for them? I don't see what material -- what material advantage there is to having the president come and have his picture taken with them. It's kind of cruel in a way." (Democracy Now) - December 1: Liberal talk-show host Doug Basham lambasts Bush's trip to Baghdad and the fawning media coverage it spawned.
Media manipulation and marketing by GOP
"While much of the focus of the president's trip to Iraq (rightly so, and primarily because it is so obvious) has centered on the fact that the very nature of the trip demonstrates how dire the security situation in Iraq truly is," he says, "there hasn't been as much mention as to how this 'nature' undermines the administration's claims to the contrary." Basham is livid at the news coverage of Bush's PR stunt: "Listen to this first line in a story from London's 'The Telegraph' on Friday: 'President George W. Bush was back at his Texas Ranch yesterday basking in the most adulatory coverage in months, as an admiring American media described his surprise trip to Iraq as one of the boldest ever presidential forays.' BOLD?!?! Doesn't anybody get it? Let's put the pieces together. First piece... I remember this pathetic, cowardly little man in the White House standing before the cameras and saying, 'Bring 'em on.' And I remember how his mindless boot lickers praised him for his bravado -- too damn stupid to realize that a comment like this was putting our troops in FAR more danger than any 10 stories the media could report - the same media who essentially handed Bush his war on a silver platter -- the same media this administration and their apologists now like to blame for the deaths or our soldiers. - "Second piece... Last Monday at Fort Carson, Colorado... the president said 'The United States of America will not be intimidated by a bunch of thugs.' Third piece... During his visit with the troops in Baghdad, he said 'We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost in casualties, defeat a brutal dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins.' Now first of all: What do you mean 'we,' Kemo Bushbey? The only charge you've led is the one against our values, intelligence, decency, reputation and civil liberties...although you have been charging a lot to America's American Express card, haven't you? Fourth piece... On the plane, just 3 hours from Baghdad, Bush said 'I was fully prepared to turn this baby around and come home.' Again -- YOU were prepared to turn the plane around, Mr. Resident? Is it starting to become clearer here what the main issue of this Iraq trip SHOULD be? Let me bottom line it, plain and simple. When the coward in chief is safe and sound in America, he says, 'Bring 'em On,' or 'We will not be intimidated by thugs.' Now don't you think a more appropriate time to say that -- if indeed you were a man of courage, honor, conviction and 'boldness' - would have been if you were planning to GO to Iraq, or when you were already THERE in Iraq? But what did he say instead? First thing he said was, 'Shhhhhhh.' The second was, 'I was fully prepared to turn this baby around and come home.' Put another way -- when it's the lives of our soldiers that are at risk, Bush says 'Bring 'em on' or, 'The United States will not be intimidated by a bunch of thugs.' When it's HIS sorry a** that might be in peril, he says, 'if anyone finds out I'm coming, I'M turning this plane around and going home.' And for this act of seemingly unnoticed cowardice, he's called... bold?! Where's the boldness? Where's the bravado? Where's the 'Bring 'em on,' and 'We won't be intimidated by thugs' when it really matters? Wouldn't THAT have been the time for the bra-a-a-v-e Commander in Chief to say 'Hey, you want a piece of me? I'm coming to 'gitcha'. Gonna' smoke you out. Dead or alive. Take your best shot...thug! Bring it on...THUG!! Nope. When there's a chance he might face the same kind of danger he himself has CREATED for our soldiers; and it's time for him to put action to words? No bravado and no courage at all. Instead there's 'Shhhhh' and 'I'll turn this baby around and come home.' And yet the 'liberal media' (God, that's one lie I am getting so sick of), the 'liberal media' absolutely gushes and slobbers all over this cowardly performance and calls it one of the boldest presidential forays EVER!!
- "And you wonder why the majority of Americans still support this arrogant little coward? I'll TELL you why they do. Because no one is telling them he IS an arrogant, little coward, that's why. They're telling the American people...he's bold. And actually, he IS bold. He's bold with his LIES! That coupled with the fact that he lies so constantly -- many people who ARE aware of how long his nose is are in such shock by how blatant and in your face many of his lies are -- are left speechless with their jawbones dragging on the ground. Case in point -- right after he went on television and admitted there was no evidence to support a link between Saddam Hussein and 9-11, he went back to his very effective 'propaganda by segue' schtick, and the next time he tried to justify his misguided debacle in Iraq, he said it was important to learn the lessons of 9-11. RIGHT THERE -- someone should have raised their hand and said 'Uh, Mr. President? You're doing it again. You just said yesterday there was no link, but now by segueing from 9-11 into Iraq, you're implying there is. People with REAL values call that lying.' But did anyone say that? Besides me? Not that I heard. And you know why he was able to say again for the umpteenth time just the other day that the Taliban were gone forever? Because the very FIRST time he said it -- right after a barrage of reports that the Taliban were reconstituting themselves -- no one raised their hand and said, 'Uh, Mr. President, there is report after report coming out of Afghanistan that say the Taliban are not only resurging, they actually control several provinces in the country, and that we don't even completely control Kabul anymore. How can you in all good conscience -- being a man of God yourself, in fact, the man God himself chose to lead this great nation...how can you stand before this great nation and "boldly" LIE to them?'
- "I would like to ask the president these questions. Is this your way of making us all pay for not electing your father twice? Is it your way of making us pay for not electing you even ONCE? How badly do you feel we need to be punished for just not being smart enough to realize who God himself wanted in the oval office in the year 2000? And is this how your sick mind has justified acting like a dictator and stifling democratic dissent -- because you know you were never democratically elected in the first place, so like, what difference does it make? Bottom line is folks... we're losing the battle. No one seems to be able -- or they don't have the GUTS -- to look past the surface of this administration's shallow, deceitful crap and report what the REAL story is. Not one news show I watched on television, or one person I saw on any of the shows said 'The main thing this trip proves is that not only is Bush a LIAR, he's a GUTLESS liar as well!'
- "And here's one other element you can add to this story, just to use this administration's blustering bulls*it against them. By including a 'turn around and head home' provision in his travel plan, could not a case be made that while he was verbally saying 'We will not be intimidated by thugs,' what he was insinuating was 'I will be intimidated by thugs?' And then, using the president's own criteria for dissenter demonization, could not a further case be made that Mr. Bush provided aid and comfort to the enemy (now defined as anyone who disagrees with Bush's occupation or policies), by acknowledging how precarious the situation in Iraq really is by including a 'turn around' provision?... and by demonstrating to the 'terrorists' (now defined as anyone who disagrees with Bush's occupation or policies) how successful and feared their resistance is by the 'Top Goon' in the United States? When any other American does this, this administration and their hit men label them unpatriotic and unsupportive of the troops, but when Bush does it, he's called...bold? Just food for thought. ...Where I come from, 'boldness' must be rooted in honesty. And seeing as we cannot count on the media to inform the American people, let us never forget the one overriding truth in this entire Iraqmire. Bush lied and our soldiers died. Period. Our men and women -- our brothers and sisters -- and our kids. And the only 'boldness' in this equation are the repeated lies Bush, his administration and our compliant media keep shoving down America's throat with such force they would make Linda Lovelace herself gag. Bold...my...a*s."
- A soldier currently stationed in Iraq responds to Basham's piece: "I am stationed in the Iraq theater and have limited access to the WWW, but I know the truth when I see it. I just read your op-ed about the Coward making a trip and I couldn't agree more. You hit the nail on the head. I was a big supporter of Bush, but after being here for nearly a year now I know the truth and you are telling it. Thanks for your insight on the issue and not being afraid to tell it." And a former soldier responds, "I only have one thing to point out. As a former GI, having spent many years in combat arms fields in the US Army, I ask you to think of this from the GI's point of view. While I know that the rear-echelon GIs who whooped and hollered for Bush meant it from their hearts -- anything for them to get a feeling that they're not forgotten would have been welcome, especially a visit from the president -- but one ought to contemplate what the troops thought at noon on Thanksgiving day. Do the math. Remember, Bush snuck into Baghdad at 5-something AM and only spent 2 1/2 hours in the city before fleeing. That means those GIs who Bush served 'Thanksgiving dinner' to were ordered to get up at 5 or 6 AM and told to go eat a 'breakfast' of turkey, mashed potatoes and all the fixings. By noon it would have dawned on all but the most cerebrally-challenged GIs that they had been used like a cheap whore for a presidential photo-op propaganda ploy designed to generate warm fuzzies in the people watching football with full bellies back in the US. The president's actions were worse than being merely cowardly, they exploited the GIs on the ground for a few fleeting domestic political points." (OpEd News)
