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
July 2003
Week One
- July: As the war in Iraq reaches an increasingly higher pitch, Israel begins warning the Bush administration that the insurgency would continue to increase as summer wears on. Israeli intelligence assets in Iraq report that the insurgents have the support of Iranian intelligence operatives and foreign fighters crossing the unprotected border between Iran and Iraq at will. The Israelis urge that the US seal the 900-mile border at whatever cost. The administration declines. In 2004, Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who has close ties to the White House, explains: "The administration wasn't ignoring the Israeli intelligence about Iran. There's no question that we took no steps last summer to close the border, but our attitude was that it was more useful for Iraqis to have contacts with ordinary Iranians coming across the border, and thousands were coming across every day -- for instance, to make pilgrimages. The questions we confronted were 'Is the trade-off worth it? Do we want to isolate the Iraqis?' Our answer was that as long as the Iranians were not picking up guns and shooting at us, it was worth the price." Clawson notes that "[t]he Israelis disagreed quite vigorously with us last summer. Their concern was very straightforward -- that the Iranians would create social and charity organizations in Iraq and use them to recruit people who would engage in armed attacks against Americans." Even former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak privately warns Dick Cheney that America has, for all intents and purposes, lost in Iraq. The only issue, he tells Cheney, "was choosing the size of your humiliation." Cheney brushes off Barak's warnings. The warnings prove accurate; by the end of the summer, Israel's leaders will conclude that the US did not want to confron Iran. A former Israeli intelligence officer says in 2004, in terms of salvaging the situation in Iraq, "it doesn't add up. It's over. Not militarily -- the United States cannot be defeated militarily in Iraq—but politically." By the spring of 2004, Israel will begin taking steps to give itself other options, most overtly by building its own alliance with the Kurds of northern Iraq, and running covert operations inside Kurdish territory that expand into Iran and Syria. Though publicly denied, the Israeli presence inside Kurdish territory is well known inside the intelligence community, and known to Israeli intelligence as "Plan B." The Israeli move heightens tensions with Turkey, who moves to form its own alliance with Iran and Syria against their common enemy. The three countries fear a resurgent "Kurdistan," with the newly empowered Kurds claiming territory in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. Inside Iraq, many fear that the Kurds will take over the city of Kirkuk and its surrounding oil fields. "If Kirkuk is threatened by the Kurds," says an American military expert on the region, "the Sunni insurgents will move in there, along with the Turkomen, and there will be a bloodbath."
- The Kurds are outraged when, in early July, the Americans accede to a UN resolution that restores Iraqi sovreignity without affirming the interim constitution that granted the Kurds veto power over any permanent constitution. Kurdish leaders warn the US that they will not participate in a Shi'ite-controlled government unless they were sure that their rights were preserved. "The people of Kurdistan will no longer accept second-class citizenship in Iraq," they write. "If you end up with a divided Iraq," says a senior Turkish official, "it will bring momre blood, tears, and pain to the Middle East, and you [the US] will be blamed. From Mexico to Russia, everybody will claim that the United States had a secret agenda in Iraq; you came there to break up Iraq. If Iraq is divided, America cannot explain this to the world. ...The lesson of Yugoslavia is that when you give one country independence everybody will want it." If that happens, he warns, "Kirkuk will be the Sarajevo of Iraq. If something happens there, it will be impossible to contain the crisis."
- Although good for the Kurds, as a top German national security official warns, a resurgent Kurdistan, particularly one with control of oil fields, will further destabilize the Middle East. He also warns of elements within the Bush administration, particularly the coterie surrounding Paul Wolfowitz, who may tolerate a new Kurdistan. The Germans believe that a newly announced Kurdistan will trigger a military response from Turkey, and possibly precipitate a war. Such a move would further strain the strong relationship between Turkey and Israel, as well as Turkey's ambitions of joining the European Union. In the meantime, the Israelis view the Kurds' large and well-trained militias, including the notorious pesh merga, as a counterbalance to the Shi'ite militias in other regions of the country. Additionally, if the Sunni Ba'athist militia becomes too powerful, Israel feels it can unleash the Kurds on them as well. Kurdish commando units are being trained by Israel's legendary Mistaravim commandos, with the ultimate goal of killing off the leadership of both the Shi'ite and Sunni insurgencies. A former Israeli intelligence officer says, "Look, Israel has always supported the Kurds in a Machiavellian way -- as balance against Saddam. It's Realpolitik. ...By aligning with the Kurds, Israel gains eyes and ears in Iran, Iraq, and Syria. What Israel was doing with the Kurds was not so unacceptable to the Bush administration." The problem is Turkey, who is increasingly angered by the growth of the Israeli-Kurd alliance and worries that the Kurds now being trained to function inside Iraq could easily turn on Turkey. As for Israel, its main concern is containing Iran, and is willing to sacrifice some of its relationship with Turkey to keep Iran in check. The Germans believe that for its part, the Bush administration continually misread Iran. "The Iranians wanted to keep the Americans tied down in Iraq, and to keep it busy there, but they didn't want chaos," says the German security official. And a senior European official says, "The Iranians would do something positive in the south of Iraq if they get something positive in return, but Washington won't do it. The Bush administration won't ask the Iranians for help, and can't ask the Syrians. Who is going to save the United States?" He adds that a number of top European officials told Iran at the start of the American invasion of Iraq that "You will be the winners in the region."
- Former CIA analyst Flynt Leverett, who served on the NSC and is now a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, says that during the summer of 2003 "the administration had a chance to turn it around after it was clear that 'Mission Accomplished' [a reference to Bush's May speech] was premature. The Bush people could have gone to their allies and got more boots on the ground. But the neocons were dug in -- 'We're doing this on our own.'" Leverett continues, "The President was only belatedly coming to the understanding that he had to either make a strategic change or, if he was going to insist on unilateral control, get tougher and find the actual insurgency." Instead, the administration decided, according to Leverett, to "deploy the Guantanamo model in Iraq" -- to put aside its rules of interrogation. That decision will not only fail to stop the insurgency, it will eventually lead to the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison. (New Yorker, Seymour Hersh)
- July: Neoconservative writer Robert Kaplan glories in the prospect of achieving US superiority by stealth warfare. Global imperial efficacy, he writes, will require the CIA and Special Forces to "operate in the shadows and behind closed doors." Congress and the rule of domestic and international law should be ignored. Consultations with Democrats and other administration opponents should be minimized and rendered irrelevant. The model should be late-twentieth-century US activity in Latin America -- in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Chile. Even Cuba should be seen as a learning process. The Bush administration has exemplified the Kaplan doctrine. (Lewis Lapham)
- July: John Donvan of ABC News says of the Iraq media coverage, "We never show you how horrible it really is. And we talk all the time about that. Should we break that taboo? And if we did, that would have a huge impact. Huge." Unfortunately, Donvan's soul-searching, made at a conference of journalists, had, and has, little impact on the media's enthusiastic acceptance of the Pentagon's restrictions and guidelines on war coverage. (Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
- July: In an example of Bush's use of the 9/11 attacks to justify his own political agenda, this time justifying why he needs $170 million to run unopposed in the Republican presidential primaries, he says, "Every day I'm reminded about what 9/11 means to America.... We're threatened." (Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
- July: In the current issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, the editor of the Nashville Tennessean tells an interviewer that, although the letters his paper receives are about 70% in opposition to the war in Iraq, he is printing as many pro-war letters as possible in order to avoid charges of liberal bias. (Columbia Journalism Review/Paul Waldman)
- July: Asked whether he will revisit the case of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, Bush says, "Well, I said very clearly at the press conference with Prime Minister [Mahmoud] Abbas, I don't expect anybody to release somebody from prison who'll go kill anybody." It is obvious that Bush isn't sure who Pollard is -- the most famous American spy in recent history, and whose jail term still is a bone of contention between the US and Israel. (Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
David Kay inspection team readied to search for WMDs in Iraq
- Early July: David Kay is chosen by George Tenet to lead a team of weapons inspectors in Iraq to produce evidence of WMDs (see earlier pages). Kay, who was the former vice president of defense contracting company Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) until 2002 as well as a former section chief for the IAEA and a former Reagan White House official, was part of the Reagan and Bush administrations' attempt to pressure the IAEA into "finding" evidence that Iraq had nuclear weapons, a pressure that the IAEA resisted. In 1992, Kay was made chief nuclear inspector for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) on Iraq, a commission created in response to US claims that Iraq possessed an array of WMDs that had to be removed. The evidence that Kay's investigations turned up was suspect at best and blatantly fabricated at worst. (Some of this same evidence was used to bolster the 2002-03 claims of Iraqi WMDs that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq.) In 1992, Kay was fired from UNSCOM for using "underhanded methods" to concoct false evidence of Iraq's WMD programs. Kay's former company SAIC has close ties to many in both Bush administrations; Kay is believed to still hold considerable stock in the company as well as maintain close ties to SAIC's executives. SAIC has received lucrative contracts from the current Bush administration. In the fall of 2001, before the invasion of Afghanistan, SAIC was contracted to create a mockup of an Iraqi mobile biological weapons lab under the direction of Stephen Hatfill, to be used as a training aid for teams searching for WMDs in Iraq. The vice chairman of SAIC, retired Admiral William Owens, currently serves on Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board. Another SAIC board member is retired Army General Wayne Downing, who until last summer was the chief counter-terrorism expert on the National Security Council (NSC) staff. (Before his NSC post, Downing served as a lobbyist for Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.) SAIC has been running the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council (IRDC) since the body was established by the Pentagon in February; IRDC employs 150 expatriate Iraqis, most with ties to Chalabi's INC, to put an "Iraqi face" on the reconstruction processes. SAIC also runs the Iraqi Media Network (IMN), a company that intends to put together an entire media industry for Iraq, including radio, television, and newspaper outlets.
- To run INC, SAIC hired away the director of Voice of America (VOA), Robert Reilly, an outspoken right-wing ideologue who began his public career in the 1980s as a propagandist in the White House for the Nicaraguan contras. Reilly immediately came into conflict with his deputy, a Pentagon contractor who worked on media issues in Kosovo; both were gone by the end of June 2003. "sAIC didn't have any suitable qualification to run a media network," says Rohan Jayasekera, an observer for the London-based Index on Censorship. "The whole thing was so incredibly badly planned by them that no one could make sense of what they were doing." The project is currently in abeyance. (Baltimore Independent Media Center, Asia Times)
- July 1: After months of hedging and refusing to divulge the estimated costs of the Iraq occupation, Bush tells the press that it will probably be "a massive and long-term undertaking." He refuses to define "massive," nor will he discuss the possible costs either in dollars or in lives. (David Corn)
- July 1: The Bush administration bans military aid to almost 50 countries because these countries continue to support the International Criminal Court and refuse to vote for exemption from prosecution for the US. 44 governments have publicly signed the exemption request, and 7 others have signed in secret. (Reuters/New York Times)
- July 1: Paul Bremer, Iraq's administrator, requests more troops and civilian aid to help bring order and restore public services to Iraq. "It is a legitimate critique of this administration that we did a brilliant job of planning the war, we didn't do a brilliant job of planning what's going on now," says one senior US official. Speculation is high that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Undersecretary Wolfowitz are arguing against the request because it would mean that they were wrong in their previous assessments. (Knight Ridder/Mercury News)
- July 1: Congressman Jim McDermott, a Democrat and a psychiatrist, accuses the Bush administration of deliberately playing on the stress and fear caused by the 9/11 attacks to further buffalo the American people into supporting its foreign policy aims. He states, "The deputies of the Bush Terror Posse -- Donald Rumsfeld, Tom Ridge and John Ashcroft -- are conducting a deliberate campaign to frighten us. One facet of the campaign has, over the last 18 months, persuaded large portions of the population to rush to the stores for water, food, plastic sheeting and, of course, duct tape. The threats of impending danger are on record for the future, the administration seems to be saying. When something happens, you won't be able to say we didn't warn you. This is just the latest and most egregious step in a fear campaign designed to prepare Americans to do whatever the administration wants us to do. Here's how it works: Throw a hundred claims against the wall and poll every night to see what sticks. Leak stories that are later discredited. Get a graduate student's dissertation and plagiarize it. Lift paragraphs from a war-industry magazine. Every so often, raise the danger level to code 'yellow' or 'orange.' Give the people a rest. Then start all over again. Mix it all up and put an official seal on it. Now it seems true, despite the skepticism of intelligence professionals. We have been inundated with fables, lies and half-truths. Remember the 33 pounds of 'weapons-grade uranium' being smuggled in a taxi from Turkey to Iraq? A few days later, it turned out to be about 3 ounces of nonradioactive metal. And then there is smallpox: The administration is encouraging vaccinations, but it's only in parentheses that it adds that there is 'no imminent threat' of a smallpox attack. There is no clear reason for this focus on smallpox, except to ratchet up the level of anxiety. Our leaders have worked hard to keep the anxiety level up so that the public will forget about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.... Instead, in Iraq, we focused on an impaired dictator of a country with a deteriorated infrastructure and a destroyed economy. ...Lately, I think often of FDR's admonition, 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' Americans may have nothing to fear but the fearmongers themselves." (The American Prospect)
Bush dares Iraqi resistance forces to "bring it on"
- July 2: In his reply to a request for more troops in Iraq, President Bush issues a taunt to Iraqi resistance forces, daring them to "bring it on" against American military forces. "There are some who feel like -- that the conditions are such that they can attack us there," he says in response to a reporter's question. "My answer is, 'bring 'em on.' We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." A number of congressional Democrats immediately criticize the taunt, saying that it unnecessarily endangered American lives. "I am shaking my head in disbelief," Senator Frank Lautenberg responds. "When I served in the Army in Europe during World War II, I never heard any military commander -- let alone the commander in chief -- invite enemies to attack US troops." Lautenberg says that Bush's words are "tantamount to inciting and inviting more attacks against US forces." Representative Richard Gephardt, a presidential candidate, says he had heard "enough of the phony, macho rhetoric" from Bush: "He's president -- you don't taunt the enemy. You try to keep our troops safe, you try to help them in what they're doing. ...This phony, macho business is not getting us where we need to be." Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor also mounting a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, says Bush "showed tremendous insensitivity to the dangers" troops face. Senator Bob Graham says Bush's rhetoric "may be appropriate for a referee in a Las Vegas boxing match, but not for the man we trust to lead our men and women who are in harm's way," and Senator John Kerry said Bush's comment was "unwise, unworthy of the office and his role as commander in chief, and unhelpful to American soldiers under fire. ...The deteriorating situation in Iraq requires less swagger and more thoughtfulness and statesmanship." Both Kerry and Graham are presidential candidates. Ari Fleischer claims Bush isn't inviting attacks: "I think what the president was expressing there is his confidence in the men and women of the military to handle the military mission that they still remain in the middle of."
- The next day, one soldier is killed and 30 wounded in guerrilla attacks. Writer Mike Shannon declares, "For a man who has never heard a shot fired in anger to stand in a public forum and deliberately goad others to take violent action against the men and women he is directly responsible for is an abomination. How dare he be so callous? How dare he be so hypocritical? How dare he be so stupid?" The Philadelphia Inquirer asks, "Mr. President, do you live in a play house or the White House?" And a US soldier in Germany writes in a letter to Stars and Stripes, "How long are we going to sit around and let our friends, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, aunts and uncles stay in Iraq? What is the magic number of dead American troops that has to be reached before Bush gets tired of telling Iraqis to 'bring it on?'"
- During a press conference on May 25, 2006, Bush implies that he may have erred in making the statement, when asked if he had made any mistakes that he particularly regrets. Bush replies, "Sounds like kind of a familiar refrain here -- saying 'bring it on,' kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner -- you know, 'wanted dead or alive,' that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted, and so I learned from that." (Reuters/Washington Post, Reuters/Washington Post, AP/Mercury News, Smirking Chimp, Philadephia Inquirer, Stars and Stripes)
- July 2: An Army Times editorial points out the disparity between the Bush administration's rhetoric towards the military and the way the administration actually treats it. The writer points out that the administration attempted to block an increase in the $6000 gratuity paid to the family of a soldier killed while on active duty; it is attempting to roll back recent increases in monthly imminent-danger pay from $225 to $150; it refuses to consider a number of tax relief provisions for military families; it wants to cap salary raises for several pay grades well below the average raise of 4.1%; and along with the House Appropriations Committee, it wants to slash nearly $2 billion in military construction funds, the bulk of which would be used to upgrade substandard housing. Bush has threatened to veto bills attempting to end the 100% tax on disabled military retirees, and threatens to veto any attempt to grant retirees lifetime medical care. His administration has slashed VA hospital funding. Democratic Representative Chet Edwards notes that the House passed a resolution in March pledging "unequivocal support" to service members and their families, and retorts, "American military men and women don't deserve to be saluted with our words and insulted by our actions." (Army Times)
Increasing anger and disillusionment among US troops
- July 2 - July 10: Postings from military members and their families on a military message board show increasing disillusion and frustration in the military about the Bush administration's treatment of US soldiers. Anger about the low pay, lack of medical and tax benefits, and other areas of concern are heightening. The wife of a Vietnam vet posts, "There are a lot of people like me who are outraged about the shameful hypocrisy of the current government's 'lip service,' and we're working hard to change it -- can you all manage to hang on until November '04?" A retired Army master sergeant writes, "This does not suprise me what so ever. When George W. Bush was running for the office of President, regarding veteran's rights and military retiree's rights, he stated; 'a promise made is a promise kept.' Since that time, he has allowed, and sometimes directly contributed to, the steady erosion of those rights and benefits. He has consistantly threatened to veto a bill to end the 100% Federal tax on disabled military retirees (formerly known as Concurrent Receipt). He is still threating to veto any act which will enforce the right of the retiree to life-time medical care (as promised). He has failed to provide adquate financing for the VA hospitals to meet their mandates. He is doing the same with the active duty military personnel. As long as the big businesses get their share of the Defense Department fiancial pie, the lowly troop on the ground does not matter, except, of course, when Bush is in need of a good photo-op to help get re-elected. Any active-duty military person who supports G.W. Bush should take a long, hard look at, first, what he is doing to you, and second, what he has already done, or threating to do, to the veterans and military retirees. If you own stock in a Defense Department contractor, then you may be alright. If not, take another look." (Military City Forums)
- July 2: NSA deputy Stephen Hadley chastises Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage for his "bad body language" during the deputies' meetings. Hadley says it makes Armitage look disapproving and uncomfortable. Armitage retorts, "Steve, I don't like what the president is being told. So yeah, I'm very unhappy. I'm not unhappy with the president. I am unhappy with the brief we are getting. It is a sophomoric brief." Armitage realizes, once again, that he and his boss Colin Powell are nothing more than window dressing, no more influential than potted plants. Everything is based on Donald Rumsfeld's positive spin in the principals' meetings, and there is no one challenging him and no NSC interagency review to test his assessments. (Bob Woodward)
- July 3: Former CIA deputy director Richard Kerr, leading the examination of the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq, says that so far his inquiry has determined that the CIA's intelligence had been "ambiguous," that CIA analysts had been pressured by Bush officials to reshape their findings into something far more concrete and damning than what they were finding, and that no evidence of any ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda existed. Much of Kerr's remarks defend the CIA analysts as doing the best job they could under the circumstances, considering the lack of hard intelligence since the 1980s and the pressure from the White House. Kerr implies that Bush and his officials misrepresented the intelligence they were given as part of their push for war. (David Corn)
- July 3: Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the allied forces in Iraq, acknowledges that "we're still at war" in that country. He emphasizes that rebuilding the country and fighting the enemy will have to take place side by side. Also, the US announces an offer of $25 million for information leading to the arrest of Saddam Hussein. (New York Times)
- July 3: It is revealed that Stephen Hatfill, the "person of interest" in the anthrax attacks of 2001, trained US special forces to detect and disarm mobile biological weapons labs three years before the Iraqi invasion. (Sydney Morning Herald, New York Times/UCLA School of Public Health)
- July 3: Democrat Max Cleland, a Vietnam veteran who lost his bid for re-election in 2000, says, "The state of American politics is sickening." An author of the original Homeland Security bill who was tainted as a "Saddam-lover" by his opponent, Republican Saxby Chambliss, Cleland regrets voting for authorization of the bill permitting the invasion of Iraq: "I voted for it because I was told by the secretary of defense and by the CIA that there were weapons of mass destruction there. The president said it, Colin Powell said it, they all said it. And now they can't find them! Our general over there, who has no dog in this fight, he said he sent troops all over the place and they found two trailers and not much of anything else. So we went to war for two trailers? ...Now wait a minute. Let me run this back: We have a war. A bunch of Americans die. After the war, we try to figure out why we were there. There's a commitment of 240,000 ground troops with no exit strategy. You know what that's called? Vietnam! Hey, I've been there, done that, got a few holes in my T-shirt." (Cleland lost both legs and his right arm in Vietnam). (Washington Post)
- July 3: British Air Chief Marshal Malcolm Pledger, who was responsible for deploying equipment for British forces to the Gulf, confirms that the invasion of Iraq was advanced by 14 days from the original plan. He declines to name the reason, but it is known that Saddam Hussein was planning on setting the Rumailia oil fields afire. US General Tommy Franks tells the New Yorker, "I made the decision to do the ground force early because our reconnaissance told us that we had the opportunity to get the southern oil fields intact." (Guardian)
- July 3: A bipartisan group of US senators returns from a three-day trip to Iraq and warn that US forces are stretched thin and will face increasing resistance. The Pentagon has had only limited success in convincing other nations to send support troops to bolster American efforts to pacify the country. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his top aides continue to insist that forces already there are sufficient to do the job. Rumsfeld says that he will wait for a report from Gen. John Abizaid, who is replacing supreme commander General Tommy Franks on July 7, before making any decisions. There are about 12,000 US and British troops in Iraq now, and Pentagon officials say that more than 30 countries have promised a total of between 20,000 and 30,000 troops to replace them. Those troops will begin arriving in August. (New York Times)
Illegal incarceration of US citizens without charges or due process draws fire
- July 3: Bush has named six suspects currently being detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to be the first to be tried by US military tribunals. The administration refuses to name the six. It also states that even if any of the six are found innocent, they may continue to be incarcerated as "unlawful combatants." A spokesperson for the American Bar Association says, "The State Department issues a report every year in which it criticizes those nations that conduct trials before secret military tribunals. What I'm hearing sounds alarmingly like something similar. ...If they're going to be charged by military tribunals then they have a right to full due process and the public has a right to know who's being tried and what the charges are and the government has an obligation to run these tribunals in a fair and transparent way." Critics say the rules for the tribunals, particularly their secrecy, give prosecutors an unfair advantage. "It's a Draconian system of justice that is almost guaranteed to get convictions, including a possible death penalty," says Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Officials at the Guantanamo Bay facility are planning the construction of both tribunal chambers and an execution chamber. Meanwhile, the European Union's executive commission warns that applying the death penalty to any of the suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay would risk undermining international support for the US-led war on terrorism: "The death sentence cannot be applied by military courts as this would make the international coalition lose the integrity and credibility it has so far enjoyed," said spokesman Diego de Ojeda. Britain says it will raise its objections with the US government at the "highest level" after it is revealed that two of the six are British citizens.
- Human rights lawyers say the military process is discriminatory, as US detainees can be tried by ordinary civilian courts while those accused in the tribunals, which will take place behind closed doors, will have no right to appeal outside the military. It is later revealed that the two Britons who are going to trial have been given the choice of pleading guilty and accepting a 20-year sentence or being executed if found guilty. US sources call this a strategem to ensure maximum "cooperation" from the two. A lawyer for one of the accused, Moazzam Begg says, "Anything that any human being says or admits under threat of brutality is regarded internationally and nationally as worthless. It makes the process an abuse. ...Begg had a year in Bagram airbase and then six months in Guantanamo Bay. If this treatment happened for an hour in a British police station, no evidence gathered would be admissible." (Begg has never seen or spoken to his lawyer.) Stephen Jakobi of Fair Trials Abroad, which is leading the campaign for the two men, says, "Our concern is that there will be no meaningful way of testing the evidence against these people. The US Defense Department has set itself up as prosecution, judge and defense counsel and has created the rules of trial. This is patently a kangaroo court." Foreign Secretary Jack Straw intends to ask that the two be sent to Britain where they can be tried in British courts under standard British law. (AP/USA Today, Financial Times/CAIR, Guardian)
- July 3: Family members of American soldiers in Iraq express their frustration and anger at the situation with their people. "I want my husband home," said the wife of one soldier. "I am so on edge. When they first left, I thought yeah, this will be bad, but war is what they trained for. But they are not fighting a war. They are not doing what they trained for. They have become police in a place they're not welcome." A meeting with spouses at Fort Gordon turned so ugly that a colonel had to be escorted from the session. "They were crying, cussing, yelling and screaming for their men to come back," said an Army spokesperson. "The soldiers were supposed to be welcomed by waving crowds. Where did those people go?" asked another wife. Some of the soldiers are no happier. A soldier writes to his family from his post outside Baghdad, "I've learned there are two types of people in Iraq, those who are very good and those who are dead. I'm very good. I've lost twenty pounds, shaved my head, started smoking, my feet have half rotted off, and I move from filthy hole to filthy hole every night. I see dead children and people everywhere and function in a void of indifference. I keep you and our daughter locked away deep down inside, and I try not to look there." (New York Times, Rolling Stone)
- July 3: An inside source notes that tensions between the Bush administration and the US intelligence community are terrifically high. "Guys are pissed off that they're being asked to take the fall for the White House. Look for more leaks in the future," he says. (Ted Rall/Bartcop)
Britain says it has given up on finding WMDs
- July 3: The British Foreign Office now states that it no longer believes Iraq possesses any WMDs, and that none will be found in Iraq. It is also revealed that Britain was much less adamant about Iraq's WMDs when it advised Spain over deploying its troops as part of the anti-Hussein coalition. Spain told its troops there was no imminent threat from biological and chemical weapons when it dispatched about 500 of them to the battle zone, based on information provided to them by the British. Written orders issued to Spanish troops contradicted the British media claim that Iraq could launch a weapons strike against them within 45 minutes. A 50-page manual reassured them about the dangers from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. It contained six pages about snake bites and spiders and just two paragraphs on weapons of mass destruction. (The Advertiser)
- July 3: Poland says that it supported the US/UK coalition in Iraq in return for direct access to Iraqi oilfields after the Hussein regime was toppled. The Polish Foreign Minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, says, "We have never hidden our desire for Polish oil companies to finally have access to sources of commodities," and affirms that access to the oilfields "is our ultimate objective." (BBC News)
- July 3: A former Iraqi soldier in Basra says, "Our patience has run out. We've no money to feed ourselves, we haven't been paid for six months and we're fed up with broken promises. We've told the British today that if we're not paid by Friday, we'll arm ourselves with guns again and start killing every foreigner we see in Iraq." Basra, whose population seemed to welcome British forces three months ago, is on the verge of open revolt, with rare;y more than 300 British troops on hand to keep things under control. A British emigrant who has lived in Basra for 35 years says, "It breaks my heart to say this, but the British are losing the battle here. I can see the people turning against them. Unless Tony Blair sends the tanks back, and triples soldiers on the ground, he'll have a disaster on his hands. Dozens of those poor British boys who are working so hard here could lose their lives. They'll be the ones who'll get the backlash, not Blair. ...The Iraqis who expected so much from us are losing faith. They may be free on paper, but their everyday lives are worse than under Saddam -- in some cases a lot worse. So little has been delivered. It's playing into the old regime's hands. Only the most senior Ba'athists fled. Most of the others are still here waiting for when people listen to them again. That's beginning to happen." (Mirror)
- July 3: Vietnam veteran Stan Goff writes, "Yesterday, when I read that US Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, in a moment of blustering arm-chair machismo, sent a message to the 'non-existent' Iraqi guerrillas to 'bring 'em on,' the first image in my mind was a 20-year-old soldier.... This is the lad who will hear from someone that George W. Bush, dressed in a suit with a belly full of rich food, just hurled a manly taunt from a 72-degree studio at the 'non-existent' Iraqi resistance." (Counterpunch/Buzzflash)
- July 4: In an Independence Day speech at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Bush says, "Our nation is still at war. The enemies of America plot against us." He promised that the US would conduct further pre-emptive strikes or full-fledged wars against any country or organization he deems a threat: "The United States will not stand by and wait for another attack or trust in the restraint and good intentions of evil men." (Reuters)
- July 4: An editorial in the Russian newspaper Pravda characterizes Afghanistan as a "disaster zone." It states, "The authority wielded by Hamid Karzai extends to the limits of suburban Kabul, the capital. There are reports of attacks against foreign troops almost on a daily basis, with the cultivation of heroin reaching record proportions. ...The pretext for this 'crusade' was Osama bin Laden -- or was it? In 1998, Mullah Mohammad Omar stated to the Pakistani daily Dawn that he knew the Americans would attack because he had refused to accept a billion-dollar bribe to allow a US-based firm to construct a gas pipeline across Afghanistan to Pakistan three years before September 11th." As for Iraq: "...the Bush administration was and is lying. These people have been lying to the United Nations, lying to its partners in the international community, lying to the Russian Federation, lying to its institutions, lying to its people. These people have been lying through their teeth, because the regime knew that the Ba'ath government of President Saddam Hussein constituted a danger neither to the USA, nor to the UK, nor to their allies, nor to anyone else. ...This attack was more than a monumental violation of international law; it was a violation of the integrity of the human race, a violation of the norms of decency and a violation of the fabric of confidence which human beings need to feel between themselves and their governments." (Pravda)
- June 5: The controversy over Bush's January State of the Union reference to Iraq's supposed attempt to purchase uranium from Niger -- the infamous "sixteen words" -- continues to heat up, and is becoming a symbol both of the administration's failure to find WMDs and of Bush and Cheney's cherry-picking of intelligence to support their plans for war. The CIA's George Tenet confers with NSC spokeswoman Anna Perez. Perez believes the fault for the inclusion lies with both the NSC and the CIA. "We;re both going to have to eat some of this," she tells Tenet. Tenet had gotten the reference to the uranium yanked from Bush's Cincinnati speech in October 2002, but national security deputy Stephen Hadley, who had reviewed the State of the Union speech, had let this one slip. Tenet himself had not reviewed the speech as he should. Tenet speaks with Condoleezza Rice, who agrees that the issue has to be put to bed. Tenet believes that the CIA and NSC should share joint responsibility for the false claim, but Bush is traveling in Africa and won't be back to speak on the subject for days. Tenet agrees to put out a statement, but on July 7, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had gone to Niger to verify the claims a year before, published an op-ed in the New York Times savaging the White House over the claim (see item below). On July 8, the White House issues a "clarification" that states, "Knowing what we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union address." "What else don't we know?" demands Bob Graham, the Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee.
- In subsequent news conferences with reporters, Rice lays the blame squarely at the feet of the CIA and Tenet, saying that if Tenet had told them to remove the reference, they would have done so. "The agency cleared the speech and cleared it in its entirety," she says. Bush echoes Rice's claim: "I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence agency," he says. Tenet is livid. "Condi shoved it right up my *ss," he tells a colleague. While he had worked to craft a statement carefully sharing blame with the NSC, Rice had "dropped a dime" on him, blaming him and the CIA exclusively. Tenet knew how this would play out. He decides to fall on his sword and take the entire weight on his own shoulders. (Bob Woodward)
- July 5: Conservative talk show host Michael Savage, host of MSNBC's Savage Nation, viciously attacks a gay caller on the air. "Oh, you're one of the sodomites!" Savage shouts, then follows: "You should only get AIDS and die, you pig! How's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig? You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage! You have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it!" Savage, whose hate-filled tirades are his stock in trade on his radio show, goes too far for the MSNBC brass, who promptly fire him. Savage, nee Michael Weiner, is a Jewish former counterculturist who once sold organic herbs in northern California. His quasi-autobiographical novel Vital Signs features a character who is haunted by the memory of an emasculating father who constantly upbraided his son for possibly being gay, and constantly mulls over his attraction to "masculine beauty" and says he chooses "to override my desires for men when they swell in me, waiting out the passions like a storm, below decks," though the book is strewn with scenes of the main character having sex with a variety of men. If the book is any indication of Weiner/Savage's own character, his violently hateful diatribes against homosexuals become more understandable, if not forgivable. (Mark Crispin Miller)
Wilson accuses Bush administration of twisting evidence about uranium sales to Iraq
- July 6: Joseph Wilson, the former US ambassador who investigated the claim that Iraq was buying nuclear material from Niger, accuses the Bush administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. "Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat," he writes in a New York Times op-ed entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa." He confirms that he went to Niger at the request of the CIA, which itself was spurred by inquiries from Dick Cheney's office. (Wilson speculates, correctly, that Cheney himself is the source of the inquiries, though he cannot be sure.) Of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, he writes, "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." He goes into some detail about his eight days in Niamey, the Nigeran capital, and his discussions with a variety of Nigeran officials. He explains how such a uranium transaction would have had to have taken place, and shows that no evidence exists that it did take place, or in fact even could have taken place. (See earlier items for more details.) He acknowledges that he has never seen the forged documents themselves, but has been briefed on their contents, and is familiar with their debunking by the IAEA and the CIA's and State Department's intelligence analysts.
- Wilson notes that although he didn't file a written report, he was thoroughly debriefed by CIA agents upon his return, and that his findings should have been shared with Cheney's office, the source of the inquiries. He confirms that, to the best of his knowledge, Dick Cheney's office received the report, telling the press: "The question was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president. The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked, and that response was based upon my trip out there." So, he asks, why did the White House continue to promulgate the Iraq-Niger uranium deal story? He writes that if the administration had ignored his information "because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses." He suggests that Congress investigate Bush's use of the Niger charge, and writes, "[Q]uestioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor 'revisionist history' as Mr. Bush has suggested." Wilson tells reporter Seymour Hersh, "I gave [the White House] months to correct the record, but they kept on lying." The administration will retaliate with a full-bore smear campaign against Wilson, culminating in the criminal outing of his wife Valerie Plame Wilson as an undercover CIA agent (ironically working on tracking the nuclear capabilities of rogue nations as well as working on the Joint Task Force for Iraq, which is helping hunt Iraqi WMDs).
- Wilson follows up on his op-ed with a full-bore media blitz, including an appearance on Tim Russert's Meet the Press, where he tells guest host Andrea Mitchell of his belief that Cheney must have been briefed on his experiences in Niger. (Apparently Wilson is wrong; the debriefing of Wilson did not immediately make it to Cheney's desk, though it is certain that some of Cheney's underlings knew of Wilson's findings.) With Mitchell, Wilson goes even farther than his op-ed, charging that by exploiting the issue of WMDs, the administration is trivializing and politicizing the issue: "There is no greater threat that we face as a nation going forward than the threat of weapons of mass destruction. And if we've prosecuted a war for reasons other than that, using weapons of mass destruction as cover for that, then I think we've done a grave disservice to the weapons of mass destruction threat. The bar will be set much, much higher internationally, and in Congress, when...another administration has a true WMD problem." And to Washington Post reporters Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby, Wilson sums up the bottom line: "It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the fact on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war. It begs the question, what else are they lying about?" (New York Times, Reuters, Madison Capital Times, Frank Rich [PDF file], Seymour Hersh, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
- July 6: Within minutes of Joseph Wilson's appearance on Meet the Press (see the item immediately above), the damage control begins in the White House. The State Department's Richard Armitage orders the INR's Carl Ford to update the memo Ford has sent to State's Marc Grossman about Wilson and send it to Colin Powell. While Armitage and other White House officials turn to preparing Bush for the upcoming onslaught of questioning, Ford goes to work on the update. But there is little to do: the memo stands perfectly well on its own, noting that the Iraq-Niger claim has been debunked, and noting that State had advised the White House never to make the claim. But the memo contains the same mistake as the old -- identifying Valerie Plame Wilson as the CIA agent responsible for orchestrating Wilson's trip to Niger. Though the entire Iraq-Niger debacle strikes Ford as ridiculous, he realizes that, politically, it is a firebomb. Now, he thinks, "the whole underpinning and logic of the war was unraveling." (Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Frank Rich [PDF file])
- July 6: Liberian president Charles Taylor accepts an offer of asylum from Nigeria, and flees the war-ravaged country. (He will formally resign in August.) Civil war has raged in this West African country since 1999, with several rebel groups taking control of large segments of the territory. Taylor was left in control of the central section of Liberia and the capital city of Monrovia, and, faced with rebel forces assaulting the city and UN charges of human rights violations, chooses to flee. After Taylor flees, the country descends into absolute chaos. Although Bush has repeatedly spoken of the US's "special ties to Liberia" and his "determin[ation] to help the people of Liberia find the path to peace," and promises UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the US will "participate with the [UN peacekeeping] troops," Bush acquiesces to Donald Rumsfeld's objections and refuses to intervene to protect the populace.
- Though US warships carrying 2300 Marines anchors offshore, Bush authorizes a mere ten Marines to land, and their single task is to protect the US embassy in Monrovia. US troops are not allowed to do anything to prevent "the rape, looting and gunfire that are terrifying residents of the capital...." In mid-August, the tiny contingent of Marines returns to their ship after eleven days onshore. Robert Warwick of the International Rescue Committee says, "The US squandered their opportunity.... There was a moment when it seemed like all the players, even the rebels, were willing and anxious for the US to get involved. An earlier intervention would have stemmed the loss of more than a thousand lives from fighting and illnesses, and the looting of food and supplies." Reporter Robin Wright observes, "It baffles Liberians that American soldiers would interfere where they are not wanted, and stay away from where they are."
- Taylor is a notorious dictator with known ties to al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, and is every bit as guilty of the most heinous human rights crimes as Saddam Hussein. Unlike Hussein, though, Taylor enjoys the support of a number of prominent Republicans, not the least of whom is former presidential candidate and Christian conservative leader Pat Robertson. Robertson, a staunch supporter of Taylor's vicious regime, accuses Bush of "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels" by asking Taylor to step down. "How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down?'" (I leave it to the reader to make the comparison with Iraq, and Robertson's support of the overthrow of Hussein.) Robertson's support of Taylor may be in part explained by Robertson's $8 million investment in a Liberian gold mine through a Cayman Islands subsidiary. (Robertson tells the press he has "written off in his own mind" the investment, and says he is looking for a buyer for the investment.) Robertson considers Taylor, who directs his soldiers to line their checkpoints with human skulls and piles of intestines, a "fine Christian" whose indictment for war crimes "is nonsense and should be quashed." Veteran African journalist Gitau Warigi observes, "Bush's singular achievement has been to make Americans resented in Africa -- and elsewhere -- to an unprecedented degree. America's unilateralist behavior under Bush has messed up much of the goodwill America has enjoyed here.... America has become a dirty word." Eventually, UN peacekeepers, mostly from Nigeria, restore order in Liberia, though the peace in that country is still fragile. (CNN, CBS, Wikipedia, Washington Post/AP/Los Angeles Times/The Nation/Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
- July 6: Experts warn that Iraq could turn into another Vietnam-like quagmire. While the Bush administration insists that the attacks on US and British soldiers are the work of steadily dwindling bands of disorganized hooligans, Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies and an expert in counterinsurgency warfare, says, "We have to look at Iraq as the beginning of a classic counterinsurgency campaign." Rumsfeld recently stated, "The reason I don't use the phrase 'guerrilla war' is because there isn't one, and it would be misunderstanding and a miscommunication." However, Colonel Kenneth Allard, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says, "Are we facing the prospect of a guerrilla war? The answer to the question is yes. When you are doing the kind of sweep operations that are being done over there right now -- guess what, you are in a guerrilla-style conflict. Heyman continues, "There is quite obviously a large groundswell of support among the ordinary people for operations against the coalition, especially in the Sunni areas. Mao Tse-tung said the guerrilla is the fish that swims in the sea of the people, and you have got to have a sea of people for the guerrilla to swim in." Administration officials privately say that while Hussein's regime was successfully toppled, the structure of his Ba'ath party was not destroyed, and that is one of the major sources of the increasing resistance. "I thought we were holding our own until this week, and now I'm not sure," says retired Air Force Col. Richard Atchison, a former intelligence officer for the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East. "If we don't get this operation moving soon, the opposition will continue to grow, and we will have a much larger problem." Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency expert on Arab military issues, says, "There are a lot of worrisome aspects about the current situation. Resistance is spreading geographically, resistance groups seem to be proliferating in Sunni areas, resistance elements appear to be tactically adaptive, resistance elements appear to be drawn from multiple elements of Sunni society, our operations inevitably create animosity by inflicting civilian casualties, disrupting lives, humiliating people and damaging property." (Chicago Tribune, Washington Post)
- July 7: General Tommy Franks retires, turning control of the US military forces in Iraq to his deputy, General John Abizaid. Franks says during the ceremony, "As President Bush said recently, bring it on. That's been the attitude of this command. ...Rough road behind. Rough road ahead. Bring it on." (Reuters/ABC News)
- July 7: A British parliamentary committee report questions the validity of the Blair government's use of the claims that Niger provided Iraq with uranium, noting that the CIA had debunked the intelligence as specious. In Bush's State of the Union address, he credited British intelligence with the evidence for the charge. The report notes that, though the government has insisted that other evidence exists besides the forged Italian documents, it has never produced a shred of the alleged evidence. (The Butler report, which will come out a year later, cites a report of a February 1999 trip to Niger by Iraqi ambassador Wissam al-Zahawie as the additional evidence, but the al-Zawahie report cites no mention whatsoever of any uranium deal.) The report accuses the Blair administration of misleading Parliament as to Iraq's WMDs, though it refuses to acknowledge that the Blair administration "sexed up" its claims. (David Corn, Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Frank Rich [PDF file])
- July 7: Bush is on his way to Africa to promote his administration's $15 billion commitment to fight AIDS and famine on the continent, but the discussion on the plane ride over the Atlantic is not about AIDS, but about Joseph Wilson and the Iraq-Niger claims. Ari Fleischer deflects a barrage of press questions: "There is zero, nada, nothing new here," he says about Wilson's July 6 op-ed, and implies Wilson is nothing more than a publicity hound by saying, "Ambassador Wilson, other than the fact that now people know his name, has said all this before." He insists that the administration has long since admitted the Iraq-Niger claim was specious, a lie -- only in the last few days, and only very grudgingly, has any Bush official publicly acknowledged the spuriousness of the charges. Fleischer continues to insist, again falsely, that no White House official could have known the charges were bogus. He even tries to defend Bush's infamous sixteen-word claim in his January State of the Union address, telling a reporter, "I see nothing that...would indicate that there was no basis to the president's broader statement," then about-faces and says that "we've acknowledged" the uranium claim was wrong. (Tellingly, it is difficult to find a statement from any White House official saying flatly that the claim was wrong. For months, they stood by their statement, then in recent days some have flipped to saying that they have already acknowledged the error of the statement. An actual admission of error is very difficult to find before July 8.) Fleischer refuses to answer questions about claims that the administration has other evidence besides the forged Italian documents to back up the uranium claims.
- Privately, White House officials realize that between Wilson's media blitz and the British Parliament's damning report of the same morning (see above), there is no wiggle room left: they need to craft a concession statement. They immediately run into opposition from Dick Cheney and his office, particularly Lewis Libby, who don't intend to back down from anything regardless of the evidence. Besides, for both Libby and Cheney, they now have a personal grudge against Wilson, feeling (correctly) that Wilson has challenged their credibility. (The fact that both of them have knowingly and systematically lied about the entire Iraq-Niger claim for months, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, seems to have not tempered their thirst for vengeance against Wilson one iota.) Cheney has nitpicked Wilson's July 6 op-ed, and has found enough overstatements by Wilson (see above) to claim that Wilson has misstated Cheney's position. He wants to know if the CIA has ever sent a former official of Wilson's stature to check on any similar question in the past, apparently unaware that Wilson had previously journeyed overseas to investigate A.Q. Khan, the notorious nuclear black marketeer. He wants to know if Wilson's wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, brokered the trip. Cheney already sees Plame as a source of a counterattack against Wilson. Libby agrees.
- Cheney sends Fleischer a list of talking points to use against Wilson's claims, most significantly denying that he himself had known anything about Wilson's trip to Niger. Libby has lunch with Fleischer, startling the press secretary, who recalls that Libby, who usually operates "in a very closed-up fashion," wants to dish against Wilson. Libby denies that Cheney asked that Wilson be sent to Niger, a true statement. He then follows up with a lie: "He was sent by his wife [who] works in the Counterproliferation area of the CIA." Libby lets Fleischer know that the information about Plame "is on the Q.T.," very hush-hush. (Libby denies discussing Plame with Fleischer over the lunch, but Fleischer testifies to the content of their discussion in grand jury hearings in 2005.) About the same time, Powell and Armitage are both receiving the faxed memo about Wilson and Plame from the INR. Anyone who read the memo would quickly draw the conclusion that there is a fishy connection between Wilson, his wife, and the Niger trip -- just the impression that the White House will later attempt to exploit.
- Interestingly, conservative columnist Robert Novak calls Fleischer later that evening; it is possible, though not proven, that Fleischer discussed Plame's identity with Novak.) (Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Frank Rich [PDF file])
- July 7: The Nation's Robert Dreyfuss observes that, in retrospect, the Bush administration's planning for the post-invasion phase of Iraq was virtually non-existent. Dreyfuss writes that the administration "did not even bother to prepare and internally publish an intelligence estimate about postwar Iraq." The first meeting to discuss the aftermath of the war wasn't even held until February 21, 2003, after troops had already started deployment. Former CIA analyst Judith Yaphe, who attended the session, says, "The messiah could not have organized a sufficient relief and reconstruction or humanitarian effort in that short a time." (Nation/Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
